THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610250265
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: RANDOM RAMBLES
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: 76 lines
As the saying goes, a dog is man's best friend. A dog was also P.J. Reilly's career counselor. Sort of.
It happened because P.J., a very small woman, once had a Great Dane, a very large dog. ``I couldn't control him,'' P.J. says. ``He took me for walks, not the other way around.'' So she enrolled him in an obedience class, and he graduated magna cum well-behaved.
``I loved seeing the change in the dog. I loved being able to control and enjoy him much more,'' P.J. recalls. In fact, she was so impressed that she decided there was a definite future for her in dog training.
Today, P.J., 50, and her daughter, Lisa-Marie Janotka, are partners in Canine Training Unlimited. It's a thriving sort of canine college off Kempsville Road with a staff of 11. P.J. didn't blink when I asked her age, but slammed shut when I wondered what P.J. stood for. It's neither Penelope J. nor Prudence J., because I tried them. As for small, she tops out at four feet, 10 inches.
Apparently, a lot of P.J.'s clients show up at her door with laments like ``I can't do a thing with him.'' Or her. Well, P.J. told me, too many people wait too long to teach their dogs to behave. Even a puppy can be corrected and can learn. P.J. ticked off a list of good behaviors that make dog-owning a lot happier. They are sit, down, stand, stay, come, heel and no pull.
The bit about ``no pull'' makes a nice leisurely walk possible, P.J. points out. P.J. also notes that vets love it when the dogs learn ``stand'' and ``stay'' because that makes the pooches easier to deal with in an examining room.
To teach your puppy to stand and stay, P.J. says, hold it by the collar, put a hand under its belly and give the commands. Give it big-time praise when it succeeds and use the words ``stand'' and ``stay'' often so that they're drummed into the pup's vocabulary.
Besides waiting too long to train their dogs, another major owner error is not being consistent, P.J. says. Like when the pup does something wrong and you tell it ``No!'' but laugh indulgently the next time it does the same thing. OK, even dog misdeeds can be cute, but stick with the program. Don't chastise one time and chuckle the next. That leaves Rover bewildered about your expectations.
Then there is that indelicate subject, house-breaking. No, says P.J., there is no magic formula, no wave-of-a-wand technique that will teach your pup instant proper poop protocol. There is, however, patience and perseverance. To house-break, P.J. says, you watch over the pup. Every couple of hours, you take it out the same door to the same spot in the yard and give it no more than a couple of minutes to perform.
If it doesn't, bring it in, watch it carefully and take it out again in 10 or 15 minutes. Same door, same place in the yard. That establishes a pattern of behavior that the pup associates with bathroom business. It also means you don't have a whole yard to clean. And when the pup succeeds, don't forget to pour praise on its fuzzy little head.
Yes, house-breaking a pup is a time-consuming procedure, P.J. agrees, but attention and care and love are what owning a dog is about. The patience part is big in house-breaking. It takes time and P.J. points out that the drill may be even tougher with a pet shop dog. They have been taught to poop right there in the cage whereas, normally, dogs won't mess their ``special'' place. Hang in there, though, and Rover will eventually answer nature's call like it was a friendly fax from a best buddy.
Another point P.J. made had to do with the behavior similarities of puppies and small children. You ``child-proof'' a home by making sure that the dangerous and breakable and chewable stuff is out of reach. Do the same when the little one has four legs and a tail and you fend off a lot of woeful moments.
Attention and obedience training are keys to a happy pooch-person relationship, P.J. says. Certainly you can train a dog yourself, but she says that training in a class provides socialization for the dogs and teaches them to behave well even when there are distractions. However, one thing she's seeing disturbs her enough to comment on it:
``More and more, dogs are coming in that are over-aggressive. And a school teacher has told me that she's seeing the same sort of change in children. Society as a whole is becoming tougher and more aggressive, and it's trickling down to our children and even our pets. That's too bad.'' by CNB