DunbarAcademy.com

I feel that dog professions are still neglecting the mental health of dogs (and cats, and horses, and all domestic animals). We cannot continue to blame 'irresponsible ownership'. Who should know better, dog professionals, or novice dog owners? And who is instructing prospective and new puppy owners how to prevent predictable behavior, temperament and training problems?

Aside from breeders, that raise puppies, veterinarians and pet store personnel have only short encounters with dog owners. Trainers only get to see puppies too late (after 12 weeks of age) and shelter/rescue personnel usually encounter puppies much too late — as adolescent or adult dogs looking to be trained and socialized to become more adoptable and find a new home.

To give puppies the education and wholesome upbringing they deserve, owners need to know what to expect and what to do, specifically how to prevent the development of utterly predictable, behavior, temperament, and training problems. 

Consequently, nearly 20 years ago I wrote two little books, BEFORE You Get Your Puppy and AFTER You Get Your Puppy that triaged all that needs to be done in terms of URGENCY and IMPORTANCE.
After I published the books, I decided that we should give them away, and as part of the OPEN PAW Shelter Behavior Program that Kelly created. I distributed boxes of the two books to shelters/humane societies and veterinary clinics (in the SF Bay Area) that participated in our OPEN PAW Education Program. 

Distribution took a lot of time, so we shipped them instead, but shipping cost three times more than the price of the books. Then technology caught up with what we wanted to do and we converted paper books to eBooks, which have been available for free download for anyone from all our websites, with the hope that doggy-interested people would SHARE THE BOOKS with all their doggy friends, neighbours, work colleagues, clients, and dog professionals in their communities.

Recently, we added a third free eBook — Dr. Dunbar's Good Little Dog Book because of the marvelous sequential training photographs, plus several free courses.

THE TWO MOST URGENT ITEMS on any new puppy's educational agenda:

1. HOUSEHOLD MANNERS SCHEDULE
2. SAFELY SOCIALIZING PUPPIES WITH PEOPLE prior to 12 weeks of age, when the Critical Period of Socialization starts to close.

1. ESTABLISH AN HOURLY SCHEDULE during your puppy's first few days at home to teach your puppy (or dog, or cat): To Eliminate on Cue so that you may be there to show where, verbally instruct, observe (for proof of pee and poop), PRAISE, REWARD, inspect, and clean up (essential for cats).

• To be a Kongaholic and ONLY chew chewtoys. If fed exclusively from hollow chewtoys, the number of daily barks and steps (activity) are reduced by 90% in just 48 hours.
• To thoroughly enjoy little quiet moments on their own, happily passing the time of day with their newfound, acceptable, autoshaped, chewing hobby to be prepared for longer times when left at home alone and so, PREVENT SEPARATION ANXIETY.
• To Lure-Reward Train their puppy/dog to Come and Sit-Stay-Watch to greet people and to Stand-Stay and Rollover-Stay for examination. Although not urgent, Lure-Reward Training is quick, easy, and so much fun and so, why not teach the puppy/dog English as a Second Language (ESL)? Comprehended words are so useful to instruct dogs how we would like them to act and to offer verbal guidance when they go off track — Sit, Settle, Shush, Steady, Off, Gently, Tranquillo, Go Pee, Find Chewtoy, Go to Bed, etc., etc.

2. SOCIALIZE YOUR PUPPY (or dog, or cat) with PEOPLE — SAFELY AT HOME

Socialisation with people is beyond ultra-urgent for every young animal, humans included. Bring the people to the puppies! The OPEN PAW Minimal Mental Health Requirements for Puppies state: Puppies should be handled and trained by at least 100 unfamiliar people, safely at home. (Outdoor shoes remain outside).

Invite ten people twice a week, ask every person to bring a friend and encourage everyone to wear costumes, masks, beards, sunglasses, baseball hats (on backwards), and hoodies, and carry potentially scary items, such as umbrellas, walking sticks, skateboards, noisemakers, etc.

Make the unfamiliar and potentially scary of adolescence the snoring-boring familiarity of early puppyhood. Additionally, there are many other Parvo-SAFE ways to socialize young puppies with people. Carry or cart the pup Downtown and sit on a park bench for 2-3 hours and handfeed dinner piece by piece while the pup can watch the world go by and habituate to all the sights, sounds, smells and sheer hubbub and hustle-bustle of our world. Or, drive and park in a shopping center with a sign on the car, 'Please Pet my Puppy', or "$1.00 a Smooch'.

Stressful? Yes. Every novel stimulus, whether a person, another animal, action, object, or scenario is mildly stressful for young puppies; exposure causes minor cortisol blips. But young puppies bounce back so quickly However, early exposure to these stimuli prevents the colossal, adrenal-emptying, cortisol overreactions to these same innocuous stimuli in adolescence.

Is there a study on that? Yes. Loads. For starters, read Dr. Michael Fox's 'Integrative Development of Brain and Behavior in the Dog' to learn about the notion of setting the adrenal 'hormonostat'.

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT ITEMS on a puppy's educational agenda are:

1. Learning BITE INHIBITION so dogs will never cause physical damage should they be provoked to bite a person or fight with another dog.

2. SOCIALIZING PUPPIES WITH PEOPLE (as described above).

1. BITE INHIBITION is the single most important quality in any domestic animal and the single most influential prognostic factor should adult dogs bite or fight. If they cause no damage, classically condition them to change their perception of unfamiliar people or dogs. However, if they puncture skin, then you must also teach Bite Inhibition to an adult biting dog, which aside from being complicated and extremely time-consuming, is not without danger.

Learning Bite Inhibition is beyond important, but not so urgent. Much is learned during early puppy play but they continue to perfect their bite inhibition well into adolescence if they are allowed to continue to play off-leash, play-fight, and most importantly, play-bite with other puppies and with adolescent and adult dogs.

Most puppies have spent eight weeks play-fighting 24/7 with their litter mates and after a short (one- month doggy social vacuum), within a couple of minutes of their first off-leash puppy class session, most puppies bump-start puppy play, play-fighting, and most importantly, play-biting and quickly learn to reduce the FORCE of their puppy bites (with weak jaws but needle-sharp teeth) before they develop big old blunt teeth and extremely powerful jaws — so they never harm their own kind, or humankind, during play or disagreements.

Teaching Bite Inhibition is poorly understood. If we inhibit puppies from biting altogether, they cannot learn bite inhibition. The more puppies bite in puppyhood, the safer their jaws in adulthood. The 4-step process of teaching Bite Inhibition is clearly explained in the AFTER You Get Your Puppy eBook.

Additionally, we must teach puppies Bite Inhibition with people by handfeeding kibble as we teach Off, Take it, and Gently.

2. SOCIALISATION — Off-leash puppy classes also provide a safe forum for puppies to socialise with another 24 unfamiliar people (the other puppies' families) and unfamiliar puppies as well as building confidence and social savvy, so that in adolescence and adulthood, they know how to deal with other dogs that may not be similarly well-socialized.

Please DOWNLOAD THESE BOOKS and SHARE THEM with all your doggy friends, neighbours, work colleagues and clients, and dog professionals in your community, across the States and around the globe, urging them to share the books with their friends, neighbors, colleagues and clients in their communities. Please email the books, post them (or the link) on social media, and upload them to your own website for free download. We have made it easy to customize each book's frontispiece with your business name and contact information to help you brand your doggy (or non-doggy) business in your community.

We have spent two decades promoting our FREE eBOOK programme but we are nowhere close to achieving our goal. Please help spread the word.

EVERY PUPPY IS BEGGING FOR THE EDUCATION THEY SO DESPERATELY NEED... AND DESERVE