I think Ian Dunbar trains his dogs to calm themselves, but I’m only going by hear say from what my dad read up on because I never read Dunbar’s books(mostly because he’s like Victoria and has discriminated against Cesar).

It probably would since dogs can’t really lie with thier body language; if they could it would make trainers have an even harder time!

It would be a pretty bad idea to teach your dog to lie with his body language even though he’s not that way on the inside.

Hmmm, this reminds me of when Cesar Millan raises a dog’s tail or puts a harness-like thing on their back to keep them from tucking their tails between their legs. I wonder if changing the external body language can change their internal state as well.

I know it works in some circumstances for people.

So it would be the same idea with training various calming behaviors. The question is – will having a dog do calming behaviors on command actually help to calm him down internally as well? Would be interesting to test out – wonder if there are studies on this …

I think you can train a dog to act threatening than teach it to act calm when it’s not.

Thank you. Now I can read it without my glasses.

Not sure how you would find a dog thats trained to do that; maybe an actor dog?

Heh – yeah would be interesting to see if a dog could be trained to do that. I am not sure how to do it though, since calming signals is more a whole way of being, rather than just one behavior. I suppose one could start by training single behaviors that are associated with calming signals such as ‘Sniff grass’, or maybe ‘Lick lip’. Although, if a dog does that, but still had dominant energy, that would just be really confusing to other dogs.

Another thing; could you maybe make you text darker? I’m here with my glasses on and still have a hard time reading your post.

Done. Hope it is better now. Let me know if you want me to darken it more.

I think Daddy is pretty trained to give calming signals all the time! Therapy dogs are calming, too. Not sure how you would find a dog thats trained to do that; maybe an actor dog?

Another thing; could you maybe make you text darker? I’m here with my glasses on and still have a hard time reading your post.

It is good of you to go get the small dog back for the owner. Hopefully the owner properly thanked you, and will take extra special care in the future.

It would be interesting to train a dog to help herd other dogs on command – although I guess that could trigger a fight. Perhaps we could also train a dog to give calming signals on command, to try and calm other dogs down.

Wonder if anyone has done this … seems like it would be very useful to have a helper dog like that.

The body block is a great way to train dogs on a variety of things – not bolting out the front door, giving you space while you are sweeping or vacuuming, giving you space while you are preparing or eating food, etc. Great low stress technique.

And yeah, I think yelling never really works. It indicates a loss of control and being calm is important, especially when the dog is really stressed. Yelling only gets the dog even more stressed, and may cause even more extreme behaviors.

Also great point with recall. Never call a dog to you and then punish him with scolding etc. when he arrives. That just teaches him not to go to you in the future.

I should write all this up – it is good stuff. Thanks!

While I was a little flustered after thinking that the dog was going to attack Lupin, I’d hate to see a dog get injured because of the fault of it’s owner.

1) Understand and wield the power of the body block, it makes life so much easier for everyone. What an easy and effective way to set boundaries in the house! I usually just see people yell at the dog, and the dog has no idea what is going on. I suspect a lot of these escapes wouldn’t happen if the owners regularly practiced the body block.

2) Yelling at the dog AFTER he has done something “bad” does nothing to teach him what he did wrong. So these owners of escaped dogs angrily yell at the dog and continue to yell after the dog has returned, making the dog less willing to return.