Sit. Stay. Stay! Good reader! It can be hard enough to get people to listen to you, let alone your dog. So what chance does that little puppy have of understanding what you mean when you say ‘sit’?
“Just think, you go to a foreign country and you don’t understand some sport at all, you’ve never seen it played, you have no idea and someone’s trying to show you how to do it.” That is how Sarah Wilson, Master Dog Trainer and author of numerous books including My Smart Puppy (Grand Central Publishing, 2006), describes what it’s like for dogs during training. Your job is to eliminate confusion for your puppy so they can learn to the best of their abilities. In other words, it’s on you to learn how to train a puppy so that they can excel.
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If you were perusing British newspaper headlines in 2002, you may have come across the story of Bramble the dog. Bramble, who had recently celebrated her 27th birthday, was then considered to be the oldest living canine in the world. While any dog living to be 189 dog-years-old is remarkable, what had many pet owners talking was the fact that the border collie had been fed a strict vegetarian diet since the age of two. Her story sparked a conversation about dogs and vegetables.