GROOMING AND OBEDIENCE
The time spent grooming your dog in class is a wonderful opportunity to continue the bonding process.  This should become an important part of your daily routine, as it will always be a special, quiet time together.

Other important reasons for a good, daily grooming routine include maintaining a good appearance and good health for your dog.  When dogs shed, the hair will be left in your home, travel, and work environments.  This can create problems for other people sharing these areas.  Daily grooming will remove excess hair to control this shedding.  It will also remove dirt and disperse the oils in the coat, helping to control dog odor.  There will always be some shedding, but at certain times of the year there may be a heavier coat loss.  This may add to your grooming time.  Removing the excess hair is healthier for the skin, prevents matting in the longer-coated dogs, and allows you to monitor your dog’s body condition more easily.

As a part of your daily routine, you can monitor your dog’s health by checking its eyes, ears, and skin.  It is not unusual for your dog to have a small amount of discharge in the inside corners of its eyes.  If this is excessive, it could indicate a problem.  Monitoring the ears can be done by checking for odors or observing excessive head-shaking or scratching.  Check your dog’s skin by running your hands over its entire body, looking for skin irritations, hair loss, bumps, or lumps.  This is also a wonderful time to assess your dog’s weight.  Although your dog will mature and fill out, there should not be a significant weight change.  Carrying excessive weight decreases your dog’s working life.


While daily grooming is the best way to control dirt and odor, an occasional bath may be necessary.  Be cautious about over-bathing as this may dry out your dog’s skin.

Just as grooming your dog will become a part of your daily routine, so will obedience exercises.  In class your Instructor will start out assisting you in your obedience sessions with your dog.  You will be expected to continue this on a daily basis.  Obedience and control are very important in your relationship with your dog.  The following article, entitled “Every Dog Needs a Number,” by Charlotte Schwartze discusses an important aspect of the relationship between man and dog.

Once upon a time there were two dogs, a Cocker Spaniel and a German Shepherd dog, who lived next door to each other.  In each of the dogs’ houses there also lived a man, a woman, and two teenaged children.  One day, the dogs were talking to each other over the fence in the backyard.  The German Shepherd dog was looking very glum that day, and the Cocker Spaniel asked him what was wrong.

“Oh, I don’t know.  I just can’t figure out my pack.  One day the man lets me sleep on his bed and tells me how handsome I look lying there with my head on his pillow.  The very next day when I lie on his bed, he comes into the bedroom and screams his head off at me.  The next thing I know he grabs me, and when I growl at him, he thrashes me.  Yet, sometimes I growl at the woman and she just leaves me alone; says I’m becoming mean.  I am confused,” lamented the German Shepherd dog.  “Do you ever get confused in your house?” he asked his friend.

“My goodness, no,” said the Spaniel.  “What’s your number anyway?”

“What do you mean, what’s my number?” asked the Shepherd.  “You know—your number.”  For example, my man is number one; the woman is number two; and the children are numbers three and four; and I’m number five,” explained the Spaniel, emphasizing the number five.  “Isn’t that great?  It’s wonderful to be number five,” she added, puffing herself up with pride.

The German Shepherd dog looked at his small, blonde friend and envied her such an important position in her pack.  He wished that he had a number and could be just as proud as she.  But, instead he lowered his head and mumbled ever so softly, “I don’t have a number.  Nobody every gave me one.  How did you get yours?”

“Oh, I’ve always had number five, ever since I came here.  I hardly remember how they gave it to me, but every once in a while, when I get too excited or noisy, or whenever one of my pack thinks that I’m being naughty, they remind me of my number.  Then they always tell me how wonderful I am to have a number five.”

The little Spaniel lowered her sultry eyelids, wiggled her whole bottom and with a self-assured twitch of her stubby tail, she pranced back towards her house.  As she left, she said, “I hope you get a number some day.”  With that, the handsome Shepherd went over to lie in the shade of the big maple tree and think about the conversation he had just had with his friend next door.  He wished he could talk so he could ask his family pack for a special number too.

This little vignette is, of course, fiction, but the message it conveys is a prudent fact.  Pack animals, such as dog and man, can only exist and flourish in a social group which has clearly defined hierarchy.  Without the harmony which a hierarchy creates, the species cannot hope to perpetuate.  In other words, the structure of an order of dominance in any social group insures its survival.  In the preceding example, the Cocker Spaniel will live out her life in peace and fulfillment, providing she continues to accept her number and is content with it.  To her, it is not important that she is number five.  It only matters that she has a number.  The only exception to this would be if she were unfortunate enough to live in a household where the humans made her number one.  In that case, she would fail because she would be incapable of making decisions and being responsible for the welfare of the pack of humans.  The case of her friend, the German Shepherd dog, is another matter however.  Apparently, the social structure of his household is rather loose.  Sometimes he’s number one in the hierarchy; sometimes he’s number five, and I bet money that there are also times when he fits somewhere in between.

As the article states, the structure of an order of dominance between you and your dog insures the survival of your relationship.  For you and your dog to realize your fullest potential, you must be number one and the dog must be number two.  Doing obedience on a daily basis will help you assert your dominance over your dog and give you an opportunity for positive reinforcement in order to prevent confusion on your dog’s part.  There will be occasions when working in harness that you may misinterpret your dog’s action, creating a grey area for you.  When you are doing obedience, however, everything is black and white, allowing you to be more certain of the appropriate response.

Daily obedience training will result in positive, consistent handling which reinforces, in your dog’s mind, that you are number one and he is number two.  At the same time, it will insure a healthy relationship and a smooth-functioning team.

12/2004
DSR/ncn