As A Dog Thinketh: Daily Words of Wisdom for Dog People

By Monique Anstee

Daily reflections, guidance, and sound advice from a top trainer and competitor.

Confused by your canine? Monique Anstee believes we have made dog training much too hard, when it really is very simple. Anstee teaches you to think differently, which will help you get out of your mind and into the moment.

Monique Anstee trains dogs kindly, but effectively, and her clients love her for her honesty. Now, she has compiled a book of daily wisdom in which she shares her most deeply held values and philosophies, and her most sought-after lessons gleaned from more than 25 years in the business. With her signature no-nonsense approach and wry sense of humour, Anstee shares reflections that will inspire a-ha moments, nurture your confidence, and invite you to be more authentic with yourself and with your dog.

When should you reward, and when should you tell him to try harder? How can you create ten moments a day where you can praise your dog sincerely? How can you use your own thoughts, beliefs, and body language to improve communication with your dog? How are we creating reactivity in our dogs?

Anstee offers a new and inspiring way to think about your relationship with your dog, tempered with the clear-eyed perspective of one who has seen dogs and their owners find solutions to all kinds of problems. She empowers her readers to affirm their instincts with their dog, and to believe in the power to change together, each and every day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Touchwood Editions
• Release date: Dec 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781771512381

Monique Anstee

Monique Anstee is the founder and head trainer at the Naughty Dogge. She has earned national rankings in obedience competition, and was the first Canadian to represent Canada in International Obedience at Crufts, the world’s largest dog show. Monique is a frequent guest on Victoria’s C-Fax Radio, and also has been a guest on the A Channel and Shaw TV. Find out more at naughtydogge.com.

Book preview

AS A DOG THINKETH

Daily Words of Wisdom for Dog People

MONIQUE ANSTEE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thirteen years ago I was a good dog trainer. I’d accomplished things with some challenging dogs, and decided to venture into the sport of IPO, formerly called Schutzhund, with my Tervuren, Basil.

Since that time, I’ve become a wiser person. A kinder person. And I have developed a much greater understanding of both dogs and humans—and of myself—all because of two people.

Almost all of the ideas in this book, and certainly most of the thoughts in my head, are sparked from my many conversations and learnings from these dear people. They gave so generously of their time, knowledge, and friendship to help me and my husband, Brian, learn and grow.

This book wouldn’t have been possible without their mentorship. Thank you so much, M and C.

Contents

Introduction

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Index

INTRODUCTION

As we all know, there is a big difference between being educated and being a good person. Of course, all parents aim to make sure their children are both educated and good, but people can certainly be educated without being nice or good. And likewise, people can be nice or good without being educated. The same applies to our dogs. They can know the exercises, like sit and down, thus being well-educated, but will happily bite you if you interfere with their agenda, making them not nice.

Obedience training was created to make our dogs nice people, with the added bonus of having obedience at the end. As time passed, training got more sophisticated. Kinder. Smarter. More fun for all involved. People get the end result, kind of, yet still struggle with their dogs.

Right now where I live, dog attacks and bites have majorly increased, and my location is not the only one. Yet people are invested in training their dogs, and there is more information to be shared. So what is happening?

I believe we are no longer using these learning opportunities to create character and teach life skills. We are failing to make our dogs nice and a pleasure to live with. Dogs can sit and stay, but struggle in daily life with a myriad of issues, such as reactivity and anxiety, and this has almost become the norm. There is a gap between getting our obedience exercises and having a well-balanced dog that is not only a good person, but enjoys his days and his life. This book explains the gap and will teach you how to get both. It’s like 365 days of parenting tips, but instead of human children, it’s for dogs.

As any parent knows, no two children are alike. You cannot parent them the same, talk to them the same, reward them the same, or even have the same expectations of them. Dog owners know this, too. While you might need to be very serious and focused with one dog, for another you might need to loosen the dog up and get him smiling. And what you did to raise your first perfect child, who never got into trouble, might be disastrous for your second. You can’t raise two kids the same way, and you can’t train two dogs the same way either. But you need to be able to read the dog to tell the difference.

A fearful little Chihuahua cowering at the back of my class is not going to learn the same as the German Shepherd Dog trying to eat through my knuckles to get at some treats. The first is too scared to process my request. Teaching him to sit while terrified is going to make him dread sitting. The second hasn’t even heard my request because his brain is processing how to get the cookie out of my hand. This dog needs to learn patience, and to listen to me, to get what he wants. Each dog has unique learning needs, and you must learn to recognize them.

To add another layer of complexity, every dog changes! Training a dog is like peeling the layers of an onion. What you desperately need on week one might be totally wrong in week two. My Chihuahua, mentioned above, needed to get cheekier and naughtier so he could sit on his own. But because the fear is there, if I only build bravery, I will turn him into a little itty-bitty tiger. New confidence on top of deep-rooted doubt creates a bully. This type of guy will learn to take cheap shots at dogs and people once they turn away from him. So yes, he needs bravery. He needs to learn to sit on his own like a big boy. But, in addition to that, he needs to learn to never approach people from behind, and he needs to be told that he is being naughty the first time he tries it. Once he is brave enough, calling him on his naughty thoughts and telling him he was a turd will actually make him stronger. Dogs need some stress in order to grow stronger.

This is stuff that we all know in our human relationships. I know when I can push my friends and give them an encouraging boot, but I also know when I need to give them a hug and tell them it is okay. I know when to gently tell them they were being rude, and I also know when to tell them that they crossed a line. Communication is key. It must be the same with our dogs. Do you know when you can push your dog and demand more effort? And when to back off and reward for just a tiny bit less?

This book explains training methods where no hard and fast rules exist. It’s all about relationships. It’s about trust, understanding, and being a good coach and role model. And teaching obedience.

ABOUT MY DOGS

You’ll notice that I refer to several of my dogs throughout. Each dog teaches me something. Hilda was my darling, scrappy Irish Terrier, in her first dog fight at seven weeks old. While that should have been a warning bell, I took it as a challenge! Sadly, scrappy Hilda recently died at age sixteen. She was a cool dog that helped me work with my reactive clients (dogs, not human!). For someone who was so intolerant of the tiniest slight from another dog, she had the patience of a saint when it came to reteaching a dog social skills.

Basil is mentioned throughout. He is my Tervuren, now fourteen and hanging in there for me. Basil is well-accomplished in the competition world, and took me to Crufts to compete in my very first international adventure. He opened my eyes to things much greater than I had previously dreamed. And he reinforced that nothing is impossible so long as you can think outside of the box, and are willing to work extra hard.

Mandy was my Italian Greyhound. We had many adventures together and I loved her with every cell in my body. The feeling was not mutual and she considered me her servant. She became an Obedience Trial Champion, and also won some impressive competitions. We also failed way more, but being successful with an Italian Greyhound requires one to be forgetful and forgiving. When Mandy left this earth, the grief was overwhelming and was present every single day for a full year. I don’t think it went away until Pippa politely wormed her way into my heart.

Pippa is my perfect, darling Border Collie. I know she isn’t nearly as perfect as I think she is, but I don’t care, nor do I want to be confused by the facts! She is the first sheep-herding dog I’ve had. And as many challenges as she has given me, every one of them has been enjoyable. She’s easy to live with, easy to love, and I’m smitten. She understands me. She’s brilliant at helping me with reactive dogs. And I trust her.

Kate, my second Border Collie, is new to my house. She came with a myriad of behaviour problems and, as we later realized, health problems too. She’s a different dog now, but she will always be a skank—a much-loved, endearing skank. While Pippa pretends to love me (either to make my husband jealous or get into my pockets when I’m vulnerable and unaware), Kate is so much more genuine. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is clear with how she is feeling, and is this shy, quiet little thing, with perfect manners and her soft little voice, yet she reminds me of Stephen King’s Carrie! We all know not to mess with Kate and her polite ways, or we must face her evil consequences. This is all fine and good, but sweet little Kate is living in a house full of blind, deaf geriatrics who cannot hear or see her clear rules.

Reggie appears in many of these pages, though I believe he remains unnamed in most. He is my seven-year-old German Shepherd. Reggie is a magnificent dog. He believes in right and wrong. He has a cruel sense of humour, which fortunately is mellowing with age. He’s proud and demands to be treated with respect. And he’s taken me to two world championships so far. He’s introduced me to new mentors, has cemented old ones as dear friends, and has taken me on adventures far and wide. He’s taught me to be so much clearer in my requests and not to let the small details slide. He has forced me to think more clearly, and demanded that I learn how to be calm. Next to Mandy, he has taught me more about myself than anyone else in my life. He is my partner. And he knows it.

These are the main characters featured throughout these pages. None of my dogs are perfect, but they are perfect for me. They are my teachers, my mentors, and share my daily journey, the same as I do theirs. I am a dog trainer because of them. They help me every single day in my work. They have made me. And from their lessons, and the people they introduced me to, came this book.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

I live in a small community where businesses are made or broken by word of mouth. Years ago, a few people targeted me because we had different philosophies about dog training. They used social media to spread the word about how awful my training was, so I decided I could do a better job of describing my training methods myself. Thus my daily Facebook posts began. As my keyboard got warmed up, their attacks slowed down.

My honesty and passion showed in my writing, which helped the right type of clients find me. Posting on social media also meant that people from much farther away than my little community could learn how to understand their dogs better. Long after the gossip stopped, I continued writing. I started to tackle more and more obscure concepts and put them into words for my clients to understand in my daily Facebook posts. I’ve built a wonderful community there—a community for which I’m grateful.

This book is a collection of those daily insights and thoughts, which I shared after working with clients and their dogs, or my own thoughts and reflections as I continue to grow and learn as a trainer. It is the growth I witnessed or experienced working with different dogs with different personalities and different problems, and this is what it looked like as it happened.

JANUARY

January 1

Why dogs misbehave

There could be several reasons why your dog is misbehaving. Here are some of them:

LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

Some of our communication is so unclear that it is a miracle that dogs are able to meet any of our requests! Sometimes our dogs simply have no clue what we want of them. And generally we keep asking the same thing, only with a louder voice and more forceful actions, not realizing that the explanation needs to be delivered in a different way.

LACK OF MOTIVATION

The dog is not motivated to do what you are asking. Lack of motivation can come from a variety of reasons. I like to pick on clients being boring. Some owners are just incredibly dull, and they suppress their dogs from being dogs. They have too many rules. Because of the constant rules, when the dogs finally get a taste of freedom, they will lose all control, as there is no way that you can compare with a running rabbit or great dog game. Please remember that the entire purpose of giving rules is to give freedom.

Your dog may not be motivated because her rewards are predictable and always present. If you ask your dog to come ten times, and each of the ten times she gets a piece of cheese, it won’t take her long to realize the food is always there, so skipping an occasion to chase a rabbit won’t kill her. But if the food is only sometimes there (variable reinforcement schedule) then she has a reason to find out if maybe this time she will get something. We want to turn our dogs into little gamblers.

In addition to this, our rewards themselves are sometimes dull. Cheese? Every time? Nothing is good every time. How about having boring kibble, some cheese, a few pieces of hot dog, and three meatballs in your pocket? If the first reward is kibble, the second is a meatball, the third nothing, fourth nothing, and the fifth a hot dog—wait and watch the speed of your motivated dog. Keep them guessing!

Now, while this sounds like way too much work, it isn’t. All it means is on treat-cutting days, you have seven zip lock bags, and you put some of each in each bag. Toss the bags into your freezer, and grab a bag for each training session.

For all of you diligent treat-preparers, once in a while pull your zip lock out of your freezer, have it on you, and don’t dispense one single treat. Teach them that while the food might always be there, it doesn’t mean that receiving will always happen.

Feeding treats should not be an expectation your dog has of you. It is a reward given only when deserved. Second commands never get fed. Mediocrity does not get fed. Only brilliance does. And brilliance means they should be ten times better than last training day!

LACK OF RESPECT

Quite simply, your dog does not respect you. Would you take advice from someone you think is an idiot? Well, neither will your dog. Respect is a beautiful thing that will only be given when earned.

Your dog must care what you think before he actually chooses to follow your instructions. So many of the dogs I see are coddled spoiled brats, and the saddest part is that they are unhappy.

Your dog deserves to be happy. He deserves to have rules and boundaries so that he can carry out his responsibilities well. Don’t become a Pez dispenser for treats in an attempt to fake respect. When your treats run out, so does your dog’s interest in you. This really is not the dog’s fault but your own.

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM

Sure, some dogs come with baggage. But more often, these dogs have handlers who still carry their dog’s perceived baggage, even though the dog has long since let it go. Sometimes, for example, your Labrador Retriever puppy is constantly measured against your thirteen-year-old Labrador who just died. It’s easy to forget how naughty the thirteen-year-old was when he was ten months old.

To have a healthy relationship with a dog means you must be worthy. Build your dog’s strengths, decrease his weaknesses, and become his fearless coach, showing him how life should be lived.

January 2

The reason I train dogs

Whatever endeavour I take on, I usually lose interest once I’ve mastered the skill. Fortunately for me, when it comes to training dogs, that’s impossible.

We can never know it all. And there is nothing simple about dog training.

To get the most out of any individual in a relationship takes thought, work, and then more thought. Recently, after many lengthy conversations with a mentor, followed by work, thought, and some more thought, I worked out something profound about my new puppy.

This is the case with every dog that enters my house. Each one has asked me a question that I have not known the answer to. Then their growth and my growth combined results in us finding that answer together. Training is a relationship where you both learn to understand each other’s needs and complexities, and then you work out how you can help them be the best dog they can be.

In the case of my puppy, I had to find out the answer to the question that she wasn’t asking, and it took hours to work out what that question was. The answer was simple. She was the kid in class that would never put her hand up to answer a question because she hated to be wrong. She knew the answer, but she’d never take the risk because in her head being wrong was forbidden.

My job was to teach her that being wrong is just fine. But you must have the gumption to commit to an answer—even if it is the wrong one.

I’m sure this is something that all good parents have become masters at. And it is something that all good dog trainers strive to master.

January 3

The secret to being the best

We all want a winning performance, and from watching my teachers I have learned their secrets. Work harder than everyone else. Never give up. Always commit fully. Finally, always question what you are doing to see if there is a better way.

January 4

Through the eyes of a puppy

Having a puppy means there is a whole world to be seen: daisies that need their heads bitten off; tree branches that need to be tasted and swung from; pine cones that must be picked up and played with; logs that must be walked on and fallen off; and shells that need to be picked up, crunched, and treasured.

The best shells and sticks must always be pointed out to distract away from poo, slugs, clumps of mud, and other things that also go down the gullet.

There is a whole world full of people, sensations, and scary distractions that must be seen.

There is nothing more fun than re-exploring the world with a young puppy. Go enjoy our glorious world as it is shown to us by our dogs. When were you last excited to see a pine cone? When did you last point out a crab shell to your dog on a treasure hunt?

Through the eyes of our young puppies (or children), we can find beauty and excitement in all the things we have become blind to. Go get out there, and enjoy their treasure hunt with them.

January 5

Don’t be a Pez dispenser

When training with food or toys, always make sure that your dog is working to please you, and then dispense the reward. You must have that personal connection, and make sure to use your voice to let your dog know how brilliant he is.

Your voice needs to show pride and excitement—please don’t shriek loudly with lots of volume. This does not demonstrate pride!

We want to use our voice and build up pride in our dog, so that he is happy with what he did. And he learns to like it when we are happy too. Without doing this seemingly unimportant piece, you can quickly turn yourself into a magical Pez dispenser or ball-shooter that entertains your dog. You don’t want a dog who is only working for what he can get for himself. There is nothing worse than a self-absorbed dog.

Take that one moment to connect with them immediately before you reward—this minor difference will transform your training by keeping you in the reward loop, rather than just being a dispensing machine. This will help keep your relationship where it needs to be.

January 6

Dogs give us exams

Every dog you get will give you exams. If you answer the questions wrong, and don’t end up passing with that dog, you will be repeating the lesson with your next dog.

It took me about four dogs until I passed the exam on handling dog aggression. Other lessons have included learning to be fun and stupid, learning to expect more and not reward just because they are there, and how to be calm and clear.

Learn to enjoy the exams as they get thrown at you. They are coming whether you want them or not, so you might as well embrace the process and enjoy your mandatory learning.

Just remember, we are not training dogs, we are working on ourselves.

January 7

Double your trouble?

If your first dog has bad habits that come from fear or uncertainly, or that are highly reinforcing, odds are your next dog will learn them from him. If you have a dog with separation anxiety, your new dog will quickly learn it too. Or if your first dog is scared of dogs and overreacts, your second will too.

So, if you struggle managing one dog, managing two will be even harder. Doubling a problem just isn’t fun, or sensible.

Make life easier for yourself—address your first dog’s issues before you get a second dog.

January 8

In your mind’s eye

Performance and self-image are always connected. You will only do as well as you expect to do. What you imagine is what you are going to get. You will never do better than what you expect from yourself, though it is possible to do worse! You hold the key to your success.

You can only have one type of thought at a time—positive thoughts or negative thoughts—and that shapes your consciousness.

Whatever you think is what you will picture, and that is what your body language and energy will get for you. You can imagine your dog coming back perfectly, as he does in training, or you can imagine him completely ignoring you and playing with another dog.

If you imagine the latter, this will show in your voice, your energy, and your body language when you call him back. If you think he won’t come back, you are right—he most likely won’t. But if you believe he will—at least you are doing your part of the bargain in making that happen.

Take action by controlling what you picture. If you feel a negative thought coming on, shove it away, and picture what you want to happen.

January 9

No one likes a nag

Are you a nagging mother with your dog? No one likes to be nagged at, your dog included.

If you’ve said the same thing more than three times in a row, you might be guilty. It is time to aim for clear communication, so that you are no longer constantly chipping away at your relationship with your dog (which nagging inherently does).

You owe it to your dog to be clear and to quit harping on her. Once she understands what you want, both of you can have fun again.

January 10

From gulping to giving: Retraining resource guarding

As a child, I used to go to the beach and find shells. Or pebbles. Or whatever. When I was successful in my hunt, I would show my prize to my parents, and they always admired it.

I just got a puppy. This little puppy did not have the same experience. Every treasure that she found was taken away from her. What she learned was to be apathetic to her environment because any action would get her into trouble. But if she had something that was worth the risk of taking, she would guard it or gulp it. And she learned: do not trust humans with your treasures. Actually, just don’t trust humans, period. Or dogs.

Young babies are so mouldable. She quickly learned that I would go treasure hunting with her and point out non-killing items. She ate a variety of chunks of crab shell, disgusting fish bits, pine cones, goose poo, and other equally unappealing items. And in the process, learned that I was her partner in the hunt. I would find it; she would eat it. Eventually the sheer abundance of treasures changed from eating, to carrying. And in the process, she learned to trust me both as a person and with her treasure items.

We then progressed to high-value items, such as chewies, and she learned she was safe with them. No one in this house would take them. There was no need to hide with her treasures. She could eat them in the open.

The second step was to work around food-filled zip lock bags, or bait pouches, that she found. These went in the mouth all the way to the back of her throat, and her eyes went glassy as her mind said, Make me give it up. I wiggled a hole into the plastic bag, pulled out a cookie and put it onto the floor for her. She then let go of her prize and I continued to wiggle cookies out of the bag while she supervised me and ate her find. It only took two finds of food bags and she was willingly giving them to me for help.

Another young dude tried to gobble a paper towel. Once he had his item, his eyes said, I dare you to take it. I tried feeding him bits of it, and he did relax, but then he switched back and got too intense eating his little pieces of towel, so I went to plan B. As he went to grab it, I allowed him to have it all, just as he wished. On my terms. I held his mouth closed, while I kissed his velvety nose and asked how it tasted, then took it out. He grabbed it again, so he got to have it again, all of it jammed in there, with his mouth held closed. This continued until he decided that it really was not fun to grab it on my terms. The paper towel stayed within grabbing distance, and he decided to leave it alone.

Don’t fight your dogs on fights you cannot win. In these cases, the dogs learned to be dishonest and to gobble and run before they could get caught. To retrain one, she learned that she was allowed items, and no longer felt the need to behave that way. To retrain the other, who was older and had a more established gobbling habit, he was still allowed to have his items, but in a way that wasn’t fun and that I controlled.

Please let your puppies be puppies. Let them go treasure hunting, make daisy chains, and explore the world, just as we did when we were children. If it won’t kill them, groan and grimace, and look the other way. They are, after all, dogs.

Allow them to play in mud, eat goose poo, dig holes, find treasures, and gallop in fast crazy circles, just as a puppy should. Let’s let our children be children as we teach them how life will be. They have their whole lives to be refined adults.

But also get creative in stopping behaviour that cannot continue. In the case of established behaviours, if your dog is doing something that you don’t want him to do, help him to do it on your terms. This idea is not mine, but belongs to the brilliant Sylvia Bishop. It has gotten me through almost all pet dog training and domestics.

And if you don’t like the behaviour of puppies, get an adult dog.

January 11

Not all information is right

Training puppies can be so challenging. Keen new owners read as much as they possibly can and absorb so much information, much of it wrong.

Wrong? Why?

I just had a puppy at my house. She was the sweetest, kindest, most lovable soul. Despite her rough beginning, she loved people. She loved all people. It was the sweetest thing to see, and made her one of the nicest puppies I’ve had in my home in quite some time.

But if her new family were to educate themselves on the internet, they would learn to socialize her and to get strangers to ask her to sit for cookies. For this dog, this is the absolutely wrong thing to do.

Her love for people is already so strong that her new family’s job is to teach her that they are the best in the world, and other people are unimportant. If they follow the normal training logic that they are taught on the internet, they will turn her into a dog that will drag them in front of a bus to greet a stranger on the other side of the road. With her, I would be extremely cautious about how many people greet her. Asking her to come when called will be an issue. Walking past people will be an issue. Being examined by a vet will be an issue. She’ll just become really annoying, always wanting to run to a new person, never sticking with her family.

Be careful what you read. Make sure it caters to your puppy. All information is good. Sometimes. But when it does not cater to the individual puppy, read with caution and think about how this will benefit or harm your individual puppy.

January 12

Disappear once in a while

When teaching a new dog to be responsible for knowing where I am on walks, I will often hide on them. This involves booking it behind a tree, or running down the