the raising of a confident puppy
little do's, little don'ts, little wills, little won'ts
so you live with a confident puppy
principles & procedures
for confident puppies
a confident puppy can
what trashes confidence in puppies
the number one trick
understanding the thinking of puppies
the responsibility is not the puppy's
excitement and loving a puppy
limiting expectations to within limitations
anger & frustration in the caregivers
why have a self-confident puppy?
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a confident puppy can
* try new things without being anxious
* relax without it causing anxiousness
* can be happy without it causing anxiousness
* can be corrected without it causing anxiousness
* can be loving & affectionate without anxiousness
what trashes confidence
* unrealistic demands from caregivers
* caregivers holding onto anger & grudges
* punishments are often very harsh
* best efforts that fail get harsh punishments
* exploring gets punished
* caregivers make demands beyond abilities
* being happy makes caregivers angry
* being relaxed or asleep makes caregivers angry
the number one trick
to assuring a confident puppy
* the caregiver takes responsibility for what the puppy might do
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“How do you do that?” the young woman sitting on my office couch asked. I had told her that my goal was to raise the two puppies she was petting to be very self confident.
Her question struck me as an obvious hole in her education. Here she sat, a young woman about to finish high school who might be raising children in the next few years. She needed to know the answer to this question. Raising a confident puppy is a challenge that is, for the most part, identical to the challenge of raising a confident child. Only the time line is different.
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understanding the thinking of puppies
To understand how to get from point A to point B in life, it is very helpful to understand where you are at point A. Confident puppies are puppies who have understanding caregivers who understand what they can do to effectively teach them and who understand their limits and needs.
A puppy is a little biological furball that can think, learn, remember, love, look forward to things and joyfully experience life.
It is important to understand that, like almost everything else in life, puppies have limits on what they can learn or be expected to remember. It is also important to understand that a puppy doesn't decide what he or she learns, doesn't decide what he or she reacts to and doesn't decide what limits he or she has. A puppy begins with a certain amount of thinking pre-programmed in by his or her DNA and then learns a few basic things about life from the experiences he or she has with his or her siblings and mom and whoever else is around until he or she moves on to his or her (hopefully) final home.
When a puppy is confronted with a situation, a command, a temptation, it's brain makes some rapid decisions, all of which are based on it's built in tendencies plus what it has learned. A puppy only does what his experience plus his biology says he should do. A puppy ALWAYS tries to do the BEST it can do. A puppy doesn't decide to frustrate it's caregivers or make them mad and a puppy doesn't decide to not know things or be bad. And a puppy doesn't cause itself to have limits on what it can do. Everything a puppy does is based on his built in tendencies, his physical biology and what it's experience has taught it. A puppy always only does what it's wiring and its experience tells it to do.
the distinction between "no" and "no, that what you are doing is wrong"
A puppy who is shopping in a laundry basket for a sock that smells right can be told "no" without communicating wrongness. You can say it with a smile and a laugh in your voice and it only communicates that the puppy does not have permission. This can be very different than being caught in mid-shred of a sock and being told a "no" that means "this was bad behavior." One message is just about what is permitted and one is about wrongness.
For the most part, it is best to as often as possible to convey "no - not permitted" rather than "no - this is you being wrong here." The best way to avoid self-confidence hits when correcting your puppy is by saying the "no" with a loving and playful, nice smile without any communication of any "wrongness" -- at least the first fifty or so times that the puppy does the particular not permitted behavior. This is easiest to accomplish by assuming the puppy will be doing all sorts of new things and will want to be chewing on socks and such and not seeing most unwanted behaviors as problems -- and by NOT assuming it will have a built in awareness of your sense of what is right and what is wrong.
the distinction between "no, that is dangerous" and "no, that what you are doing is wrong"
It is also possible to think in terms of communicating danger in some instances rather than wrongness. A puppy who wants to run across the road if he can get loose, for example, is doing something dangerous. Dogs don't understand lectures on the basis of the verbal communication but they do understand body language and can sometimes understand tone and body language to get the message conveyed. Many things that you don't want your puppy to do may be learned better and quicker if you convey "dangerousness" rather than "wrongness" when correcting behavior.
the responsibility is not the puppy's
The most confidence-killing thing a caregiver can do to a puppy is demand that it do more than possible. And the most hurtful thing that a caregiver can do is make a puppy responsible for its own upbringing.
Expecting a puppy to be responsible for its own upbringing and training is absolute folly and it results in repeatedly conveying to the puppy that it is inadequate. Repeatedly conveying to a puppy or child that it is inadequate is how you assure that you trash self confidence.
I work with parents of children and owners of puppies and hear frequently about their frustrations. Life is a frustrating, high stressing, struggle-full thing. And dealing with life is quite challenging. And when parents and caregivers can't quite figure it out it is silly to think that their children and puppies should be able to do better.
All of a puppy's (or any child's) decisions - and all of its behaviors whether good, bad, bright or dumb - are based on a blend of its biology and its experience. All of a puppy's experience is the responsibility of it's caregivers.
No puppy can craft the experiences it experiences. Its caregivers are responsible for its experience. And though clearly it is tough to craft every experience that a puppy might have, it is still the responsibility of its caregivers to live with the experiences that a puppy might have.
When a puppy is pooping on the carpet it is the responsibility of the caregiver. The caregiver is responsible for having let the puppy be running around and needing to poop. The caregiver is responsible for having taught the puppy to hold its poop and ask to go out. The caregiver is responsible for the decision as to whether the puppy should be expected to hold its poop until it asks to go out and is let out -- or whether the puppy should have just been taken out.
If the puppy is pooping behind the couch, it is showing that it has figured out that pooping on the carpet is something to hide. It is the responsibility of the caregiver for teaching it that it should hide where it poops instead of teaching it to ask to go outside. It is the caregiver's responsibility to teach it to ask to go out and then hold its little bowels until outside.
Again and again I hear and see evidence of caregivers reacting as if a puppy is intent on being bad, trying to anger the caregiver, trying to cause trouble and making some real bad decisions.
If a puppy is trying to make a caregiver angry, it is the caregiver's responsibility to understand why and to make sure the puppy makes different decisions. If a puppy is making some real dumb decisions, it is the caregiver's responsibility to help the puppy make better. If a puppy is wanting to be very bad, it is the caregiver's responsibility to understand why and to do what can be done to change that in the puppy. And though yelling and spankings may actually work in some cases, they should only be used if the caregiver believes this will help the puppy learn.
Understanding this responsibility and understanding it with respect to all the puppy's behaviors, will not keep its caregivers from frustration BUT it might go a long way to keep them focused on who is "to blame" when it comes to dealing with those frustrations.
excitement and loving a puppy
Puppies, like all kids, really love love and excitement. Exaggerated, hyper, loud, high-pitched excitement about loving the puppy is a puppy's delight.
The most confidence promoting thing you can do to foster a confident puppy is be excited and loving a lot of the time. Be excited to see your puppy do a cool thing. Tell it you love it and pet it all over with energy and lots of affection. Be excited to have it come when you call it. Be excited and love that it likes your attention. Be excited and loving like it is back to you. As with all little kids, a puppy loves excited and rejoicing communication and love. Be excited and encouraging when it does something new. Be excited and encouraging and affectionate when it does something right -- even when it does something only a little bit right. Be excited and delighted when it does something cute.
Confidence comes from feeling you can do things pretty well. This is true for grown-ups, children and puppies. Puppies don't have much verbal language but they understand body language and excitement and affection very clearly and quite well.
AND when you give a puppy a lot of affection and encouragement, correcting the puppy goes much better. A lot of love and encouragement makes a puppy more interested in pleasing and makes it much more resilient when you goof up. Further, when you have been very loving and encouraging, you can sometimes be angry inappropriately and make other mistakes and not have it damage your puppy.
watch for those many positive behaviors
It is a silly thing that this needs some quick saying but I know from discussions that it very much does. With puppies and kids it is really, really helpful to watch for their positive behaviors -- which will be happening again and again throughout every day -- and excitedly acknowledge that goodness. In spite of the theory that some have that such "pats on the back" encourage lax behavior -- making the puppy or child think they can now stop all trying -- this is only the case when the puppy or child is so overpressured and overwhelmed that it might make them feel that they have permission to stop and relax (which would be a clear sign that there are other things wrong). The fact is that puppies and children are built to love love and to love to have their successes acknowledged and praised and when you praise good behavior the puppy or child redoubles his or her efforts and tries even harder to do everything right.
limiting expectations to within limitations
As noted above and as pretty much anyone might simply guess, the more successes you have the more confident you become -- and the more mistakes you make, the less so. Asking a puppy to do more than it can -- or less than it can in some cases -- leads to more struggles and troubles and goofs and a lot more experience of wrongness.
Understanding that puppies have limited ability to hold their pee and their poop -- and having an accurate idea of what else to expect -- helps a great deal to avoid expecting more than a puppy can do. And avoiding expecting more than a puppy can actually do avoids pressuring it to do things it can't -- which is a big self-confidence downer.
this includes not expecting a puppy to behave without supervision
A very good policy in raising a puppy is not letting it be allowed to run free without supervision. This doesn't mean it can't be allowed in a kennel. It does mean it should not be left to monitor its own behavior in the house. A puppy should have sufficient supervision to make sure any negative behavior can be caught immediately so it can be redirected with a little "no" rather than an explosion.
A puppy can be informed that this or that is a "no" without any concern about how often. What is damaging to self confidence and self esteem is being discovered after having done something very negative and having a caregiver explode with a message that conveys to the puppy that it was very bad. The closer a puppy is monitored, the more information it gets about what it should avoid and the less explosions about it being bad are endured.
expecting a puppy to remember why you are angry
Holding onto anger and grudges is a good way to trash a puppy's self confidence because fifteen minutes after an incident -- maybe even only five -- the puppy will know it did wrong but have no clue what it was that it did. It will be more focused on you being angry and worried about stopping what it is doing that might be making you that (-- maybe I shouldn't be breathing or standing here?)
the limits on criticism relative to praise
With puppies and children there is a limit to their ability to hear critical statements. If you communicate wrongness, it hurts in the heart (it hurts self esteem and self confidence). A good rule of thumb is to not give any more than two communications of wrongness to every three communications that the puppy (or child) is doing very good. (Again, there is a distinction between telling a puppy 'no' about something it starts to or wants to start to do, versus catching the puppy in the midst of something that is wrong. So this doesn't mean two "no's" to every three "okay's" -- rather, it means two "you are doing bad things" to every three "you are doing so very, very well."
expecting a puppy not to have emotions
An important thing to understand about puppies is that they have emotions almost identical to human emotions. They are, emotionally, pretty much identical to a small child. A puppy should not be expected to endure what you would not put a small child through. (Many people confine puppies to kennels for long periods of time to be alone without any contact. They can endure this, yes. So could a small child. But it is not emotionally healthy. Dogs are so similar to humans with respect to emotions that when psychologists and other medical professionals study human emotions but need animal subjects, they use dogs -- not monkeys, not chimps, dogs.)
The more you respect your puppy's emotional well-being, the more emotional well-being and confidence it will have.
anger & frustration in the caregivers
Anger and frustration are sometimes quite appropriate in the training of a confident puppy -- but a good rule of thumb is that if you actually do get angry and frustrated, you are probably going to make a mistake in training and in fostering confidence.
Anger and frustration are best expressed in limited amounts as a consequence equivalent to spanking. Sometimes a spanking is called for but it should be a communication that a particular behavior was very wrong (e.g., something like jumping up on a child and taking away a sandwich). This is best conveyed when not actually angry or actually frustrated since these emotions actually cut down on clear thinking.
As noted above, it is the responsibility of the caregiver to get things right. But puppies will not understand that any better than any child does when his parents get angry and frustrated with mistakes and mishaps. It is very helpful to self-confidence if caregivers do not let themselves get angry and frustrated with a puppy's behavior or lack thereof. Anger and frustration convey to a puppy that it is making big-time mistakes.
As with children, anger and frustration on the part of caregivers -- even if not intended to be directed at young ones around -- gets interpretted by them as related to something they did or didn't do correctly.
Confidence is best fostered in environments where caregivers do not express and vent anger and frustration about anything -- or they at least do this very seldom. If there is anger and frustration being expressed --
or, worse, if anger and frustration is being expressed directly to the puppy to indicate problems with his or her behaviors -- it is important that it be balanced by a lot of extra loving excitement about successes.
trashing self-confidence by holding a grudge
As noted above in the limitations section, holding a grudge is a really negative thing. This actually is negative in most any area of life. Holding onto anger feels like it is reinforcing a statement of wrongness and drilling it into the grudge's target for better effect. No. Not likely. Not likely at all. All holding onto anger and holding a grudge does is mess with the grudge holder and everyone around. It messes with a puppy and messes with a child by conveying great anger when the puppy or child has no clue why the anger is there. It is basically dumb. It is harmful to loved ones, it is harmful to you. It confuses all young ones and hurts them very deeply. (If this is a problem for you, you can add this to the other two hundred reasons you already are aware of -- and hopefully let it help motivate you even more -- to learn to let go of anger and not hold onto grudges.)
additional ways caregivers can trash self-confidence
Humans being such crappy critters at times, we tend to take our crap out on those weaker or more dependent on us. So many puppies (and many children, too) are robbed of self-confidence growing up by adults and older kids around them who are angry and resentful of anyone not obviously stressed and distressed.
This is a devistatingly harsh, easy way to destroy self confidence -- shock attacks of anger and venomous resentment blasted at a little one when the little one is relaxed and sleeping or playing quietly. This happens a lot in our world and is probably happening somewhere on the planet right now as you read this -- the adult, angry and frustrated, stressed and distressed by life, comes into a room and there is the little one happy and relaxed and being everything that the adult feels robbed of by all the struggles he or she is facing and he or she explodes with ugly resentment. This only needs to happen a few times for a puppy or child to become a nervous wreck. If you find yourself doing this, get some help.
why have a self-confident puppy?
The reasons for wanting a self-confident puppy are virtually identical to why you would want a self-confident child.
A self-confident puppy grows up to be a self-confident dog who, compared to an anxious dog, will make better decisions, will have less problems following directions and requests, will be less complicated by negative emotional problems, will be more effectively loving and supportive and an all around better helper and contributor to the family. Less shoes, couch cushions and carpets will be destroyed. Less damage from inappropriate chewing will occur. Medical problems will be less and behavior problems will be less. A self-confident dog is more likely to be protective in a rational, positive manner -- following the expectations of its owners more effectively.
Self-confidence makes a puppy and dog a much more rewarding and helpful friend and support.
Note: If you believe that anything above applies only to puppy dogs and not to human children, you are mislead, in denial or deluded about children -- or I have not done a good job in articulating the ideas I meant to convey. Absolutely every issue and every suggestion is appropriate, if not essential, information for the raising of a confident (or not confident) child.
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