Canine Skills
Canine skills are all skills that encompass life skills, including play, dexterity, and, specifically, what makes it useful for this dog to learn this skill and why. In other words, how can this particular skill be applied to the way that the dog is going to live? How can this be applied to the way you are going to collaborate with the dog? What makes this skill functional? Practical? Useful? For example, imagine a dog who has a reliable recall. In other words, when you say “Sally, here,” Sally comes from wherever she is. Recall is a life skill that can be applied to many situations. Imagine your doors are left open because you had guests over and they weren’t so mindful. If your dog wanders outside, you want to be able to call them back. So for many reasons, it is useful for a dog in our world to know their name, to recognize it, to acknowledge it, to respond with a recall, which means coming back to you. So that is a skill that we would teach.
Skills we teach include how to collaborate with another, whether that’s a human or another dog, in a way that is functional and in a way that is useful. Think of when dogs play with each other. They may play in a way that is normal for them but it is likely that the human counterpart will not understand it, will not tolerate it, and will heavily penalize both dogs, or even end play because of misunderstanding of this skill or behavior. So in other words, behaving in this particular way is not useful to you. On one hand, we need to teach dogs to demonstrate ability in a behavioral way, in a way to behave in a particular manner when they are told a certain signal, word, or cue. In other words, we have to protect the experience the human wants to have with the dog as well as the experience the dog wants to have as a dog. In skill building, we refer to it as not raining in the sense that it is obedience-heavy. The only reason we will teach a skill is by asking what function does learning this behavior have in your real world? How is it going to be useful? What more do you now get out of your life experiences because you are willing to behave this way?
Teena Patel is the founder of the canine enrichment campus, University of Doglando, for restricted canine companions. The University of Doglando is a place where dogs can be dogs and live a fruitful and purposeful lifestyle. To learn more about Teena Patel and the University of Doglando, please contact us online or call us at (407) 574-3160.