Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Welcome to A Balanced Dog!

Welcome to the launch of my site!  Lets get a few things straight right off the bat:

  1. I am not a pet expert, although I do work with dogs as a groomer.
  2. I am in absolutely no way shape or form a professional writer.  I took ONE writing class in college.  Cut me some slack.
  3. I have been studying dogs pretty much day in, day out, for the past 5 years or so.
  4. I'm a proponent of positive reinforcement training as opposed to old adage dominance theories.  Dominance training has been proven less effective, and positive training less harmful overall, no matter the dog.
  5. I've attended a seminar on wolf and dog behavior at Wolf Park in Battle Ground, IN.  They confirmed the theories that positive training is more natural; they train their wolves using methods similar to clicker training.
  6. I feel very strongly that all dogs should be crate trained and that any accidents in the home, be it soiling, destruction, or thievery, could all be avoided with a crated dog.  Freedom is earned, not given out right.  Dogs love to den, and will love their crate in turn if it is introduced correctly.
  7. I feel out of all the breeders in the world, possibly only .001% of them should actually be breeding their dogs.  I feel that if a dog isn't going to be used for a specific job where a solid background is required, or if health isn't such an issue where you're better off going with a breeder that carefully tests and monitors the lines of his or her stock, you're much better off going with a rescue dog.  You'll pay a lot less for a dog of the exact same quality as you would get from a sub-par breeder.
  8. I'm very opinionated when it comes to dogs and the issues surrounding them.  You've been warned.
This page is pretty much going to be an outlet for my thoughts and feelings on issues related to our canine companions, including selecting a dog/breed to fit your life, training, nutrition, breeding, and dog/pet related laws.  In addition, I'll occasionally post links I've found to be interesting and helpful in my own research and articles I've written.  As a teaser, I already have some set to go on a few different breeds as well as a great step by step guide to getting your dog ready for grooming.

Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you like what you find!

4 comments:

  1. Posting a test comment -- I'll definitely be monitoring your blog.

    - a life less

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, thanks! I fixed the text for you. ;) I realized my problem, before I'd finished fiddling with the colors, they had a default grey text that was hard to see, so I threw everything I had at it to get it readable before I'd thought to change it to black. Then "something" was wrong, but I couldn't pin it down. Plus, I have a hard time seeing text as it is, so I think part of it was my own shitty eyesight. At any rate, thanks for the suggestions, it does look better now! Although, you can't get me to stop double spacing. :argh:

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha. I'm sorry -- I didn't want to be an ass about the text. But it definitely is much more readable now.

    I'm currently putting together a megapost on dog training for PI -- I'm currently hammering together classical vs operant techniques, etc. Then I'll go into reward vs punishment based training and more. Good idea? Wasted time? What do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I definitely think it's a good/worthwhile idea! All that conditioning crap is super confusing when it's only brought up in sections, so it'll be a good resource to have it all laid out in one area. It's also likely to bring on discussion/debate, which is always a good thing, and it'd be a nice place for people to discuss training issues they've had to bounce around different ideas. I'd say go for it!

    ReplyDelete