BONDING WITH BOWSER         by Dawn Kadish, reprinted with permission from DOGS,DOGS,DOGS (Feb/Mar 2003 issue)                                                                             www.dogsx3.com Everyone who owns a dog wants to have a good, healthy, mutually satisfying relationship.  Many behaviour problems stem from a poor or unhealthy relationship between dog and owner. Several myths and misunderstandings surround the human/canine relationship.  Some believe you must dominate a dog to earn his respect while others beleve you must satisfy a dog's every whim to win his love.  The truth is somewhere in the middle. To have a good relationship with your dog, he must be able to: * Respect you  *Trust you  *Understand you * Predict your behaviour  *Enjoy your company In many ways, a relationship with a dog can be compared to that of a parent or teacher to a child.  Kindness, communication, encouragement, discipline, manners and rules are needed.  Developing a healthy alliance can be very easy, especially when the owner and dog are well matched.  It can be more of a challenge if the match is a poor one, or there is a past history of an unhealthy relationship.                     STEPS TO A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR DOG 1.  Dogs must work for a living.  Whether a Chihuahua or a Malamute, today's dogs retain deep instincts that are highly adaopted to the complex and challenging jobs of hunting and killing prey.  Dogs needed many skills to be successful hunters.  Most often these skills were developed in a pack environment which made social communication and cooperation necessary.  Not every hunt was successful, but each was a learning experience.  From the day a puppy is born, he starts working on the skills that would make him a successful hunter.  If you think about your own dog, I'm sure you can list many behaviours that he or she exhibits at home that were, at one time, needed for survival but are now considered games, annoyances or problem behaviour.  A great part of each day of a wild canine's existence was spent trying to procure a meal by hunting or scavenging.  Today's dog simply waits for his meal to arrive in his bowl with no more mental or physical effort than was required to walk to the bowl and eat it.  Your dog will be much happier if he feels he has earned his meal and the attention that you bestow upon him. 2.  Dogs must know rules.  Dogs, like children, need rules.  Rule set boundaries and acceptable norms for your dog.  They allow your dog to predict you behaviour and provide him with a sense of security.  They will often test boundaries to make sure that the rules are enforced and remain unchanged.  Rules that are constantly changedor not enforced will give your dog a feeling of insecurity and will cause him to test the boundaries more often to see what the rules are each day. Constantly changing and non-enforcing rules creats anxiety in dogs. 3.  Don't expect your dog to know things that you have not taught him.   Yelling "sit" at your dog when he really doesn't know what it means tells your dog that you are out of control.  Your dog sees that you are upsat for no reason.  He will feel that you are unpredictable and he will not known how to act around you.  He may learn to ignore you, avoid you, or be excessively submissive toward you. 4.  Instill self-confidence in your dog.  Give him simple and increasingly (but slow) complex problems to solve.  Praise him for trying, and reward success.  Never punish his failures.  Do not be overly protective.  You are his best friend and you'll be helpful and supportive, but you should not be your dog's security blanket. 5.  Teach your dog to accept unpleasant and uncomfortable things. Just as life for humans is not one long, never-ending party, neither is it for your dog.  Just as your lie contains a certain amount of drudgery, inconvenience, disappointment and discomfort, so does your dog's.  Nail trims, baths, overbearing children, taking a pill or getting a vaccinatioin may not be your dog's favorite things, but he has to learn to accept and tolerate them. 6.  Learn how your dog communicates.  Spend a lot of time with your dog.  Observe. groom, touch, play, and interact with him.  Can you recognize when he is sad, upset, frightened, thirsty, has to urinate, wants to play, wants attention, or is hot?  Watch him interact with other dogs and people.  Can you interprete his body language and expressions?  He is busy observing you and interpreting what your body language and expressions mean.  Vocal language is not nearly as important to dogs. 7.  Learn what motivates your dog.  Given the chance, would your dog love to play Frisbeem herd, track, or dig all day, or will he do anything for a tiny treat?  If you know the things your dog enjoys and is motivated by them, you can use these as rewards for good behaviour.  You can also restrict these activities for breaking the rules or other unacceptale behaviour.  Knowig what motivates your dog will also help you predict his behaviour and make training easier. 8.  Teach self control.  We all have wants and desires but, fairly early in life, we learn that we can't always have or do everything we want.  It is also important that your dog learn self-control.  He may want to chase that squirrel, but if you have told him to sit, that squirrel will have to wait until later. 9.  Teach your dog to accept confinement and restraint. This is really a combination of two other skills that he should have already learned, self-control and accepting unpleasant things.  Crate training at an early stage will allow your dog to have a pleasant association with his crate (his private bedroom).  Dogs do not like being separated from their families and they do not like being alone.  Crate training will help your dog accept being apart from you.  Teaching your dog early to handle this stress in an acceptable and non-destructive manner will be of great help to him now and in years to come.   10.  Enjoy, care for and love your dog.  He will have learned very early in life that a human smile is a good thing.  Your smile, kind expression and caring will not go unnoticed by your dog.  If all you ever do is fawn over him, your pats and cuddles, smiles and praise may mean very little.  If, however, he respects you and sees you as a fair and strong leader, you affection will mean a great deal to him. Dawn Bilz Kadish and her husband Howard are the owners and teach at D.O.G. Sports Centre in Alton, Ontario.  She is a Veterinarian with over 16 years of dog training experience.  Dawn also breeds Border Collies under the name HiQ Borders.