You may have heard people talking about understanding the dog’s point of view. What does it actually mean and how can it revolutionize your thoughts about training your next puppy? Let us tell you an example of one puppy’s point of view.
Let’s imagine that an 8-weeks-old, cuter than ever little puppy moves into your house. From your puppy’s point of view your home may be full of really odd stuff, or a lot of familiar things. It all depends on what your puppy was used to during the first few weeks of its life.
Your puppy has quite a lot to learn. Where can I go and which places are not that safe for me to go in? What’s my name in human language? Who are all these new guys to start with? Do I dare to eat from that bowl that makes a whole different sound than the one I had back home?
The great thing is that you puppy still has a few weeks of time left to learn things like the super puppy that they are! And you can make learning easier for your puppy by looking at things - of course - from your dog’s point of view!
There’s one goal to understanding your dog’s point of view: to make understanding things as easy as possible for your puppy.
Let’s imagine some more. Your puppy started their life in a home with a nice breeder and spent the first weeks of its life in a space that had a vinyl flooring. Your kitchen on the other hand has a slate floor and that’s where you’re going to serve your puppy its first meal. You drop the new, nice metallic feeding bowl on the floor before you have time to fill it up and your puppy gets frightened. Is the puppy too timid? Probably not, it just hasn’t had a similar experience before.
Looking at things from your puppy’s point of view, the metallic bowl is quite an exciting item at the moment. It’s up to you whether it will remain such. Did you actually observe your puppy and notice them being scared? Or are you just wondering why they’re not taking the food?
OneMind Dogs Puppy Training teaches people to observe their dog’s reactions to different things, and helps the puppy and its whole family to get to know each other. You will learn to recognise what your dog likes and what makes them scared - in other words, to look at the world from your dog’s point of view! It will also help you to more easily notice any anomalies in your dog, e.g. pain or feeling ill.
So what happened to the puppy that got scared of the metal bowl? They happened to be a greedy little puppy so we just put some meat in the bowl and put the bowl on the slate floor. The puppy eagerly ate their food while we banged the bowl onto the floor - and at the same time the puppy learnt to understand that a banging noises are no big deal at all. What would be the best way for your puppy? You’ll learn it by looking at things from your dog’s point of view!
