Golden Mountain Dog Solutions

I was responsible for naming the family dog, a mostly black Border Collie, after "Bullet the Wonder Dog", trusty companion of Roy Rogers in the adventure series that aired from 1961 to 1964 and that I never missed.

When I was growing up in the small fishing town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in the 1960’s and 1970’s it was the norm, after feeding them a meal of table scraps, for people to turn their often unspayed and unneutered dogs loose “for a run” in the evening with the expectation that they would go on a toot and return before the family retired for the night. While this practice makes me cringe on a range of levels too broad to mention here, and I decidedly do not recommend its adoption by anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at any time, EVER, it actually worked amazingly well, and had a few valuable side effects on my formative years that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Most particularly, as a kid on the go in the streets of Lunenburg it was not uncommon to encounter dogs running loose, singly and in groups. Sometimes you knew one or more of the dogs you met, sometimes you didn’t. Parents of the town understood this as a reality of life, and instructed their children in the basic rules of conduct that would increase the likelihood their offspring would return home with all fingers and facial features intact. Most kids therefore understood what kinds of human behaviour would increase or decrease the chances of a person being chased or bitten, and those who didn’t soon learned the old fashioned way. I was fascinated by the obvious compulsion dogs had to seek each other out and gather in packs, and unlike the children of Lunenburg, how infrequently, when left to themselves, this resulted in any kind of conflict. Read the rest of this entry »

Diana and I regularly encounter questions about our work, our attitudes about dog training methods and specific dog trainers, about the latest books on dog related subjects, if we do group sessions and teach obedience classes, et cetera. While we’ll ultimately post articles dealing with all of these points, this article will address the common connection people make between our methods and those of well known dog behaviourist Cesar Millan.

I’ll start with an anecdote. Most people reading this will have heard of the television series MacGyverthat ran for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992 and starred Richard Dean Anderson in the title role. In case you’ve forgotten or are too young to know, Angus MacGyver was an incredibly creative and resourceful fictional secret agent who preferred non-violent means of conflict resolution and, while he refused to use or carry a gun, was never without his trusty Swiss Army Knife. Read the rest of this entry »