Free e-book

Just thought this might be useful...

https://nbn.absolute-dogs.com/optimismrocksbook

Very interesting, Gilly, thanks. I'll look at it properly later.

But I do hate the word 'naughty' for animals! It used to drive me nuts as a trainer as it has a connotation of the dog doing 'wrong' and that implies that they are being 'bad'. Naughty also implies they're doing whatever it is deliberately. No matter how good these guys are, I do wish they'd avoided that word.

It's subjective. I don't think a dog is deliberately doing wrong when I use the word 'naughty', just that the behaviour is unacceptable to me & so needs correcting. Even the word 'correcting' is subjective & can mean gentle persuasion as well as aversive treatment.

But you're a very dog savvy person who uses her brain to think through dog problems from the dog's point of view. The problem with using the term 'naughty' in this sort of situation is that many, many people do think animals do things deliberately. The number of times I heard clients tell me their horse was doing something just to wind them up, the number of dog owners you hear saying 'oh he knows he shouldn't do it'... they way outweigh the owners who say 'I know he's just doing what he feels is right' or 'I can see that he doesn't understand what I would like him to do instead'. So using the term 'naughty' for the majority risks (in my opinion) validating that their dog is naughty as in deliberately being difficult. Words are more powerful that we sometimes realise and we need to pick them with care.

True. I must admit I hate hearing people say "he's only doing it because he knows I don't like it".

... 'and he knows he's done wrong because he hides (usually ha ha ha)'. That's always sad because it usually means they know what your reaction will be. Poor 'naughty' dogs