The Common-sense Dog

By STEPHANIE VICHINSKY

The Common-sense Dog

Happy New Year!

I want to take a moment on a personal note to thank all of the readers for the wonderful feedback and kind-hearted thoughts that have come our way over the holiday season. It’s a great honor to know how many faithful readers look forward to our column and appreciate our passion for helping your pups.

Since the holidays have passed and we are all getting back to our daily routines, now is a great time to reflect on how the holidays affected our dogs, especially how they handled the hustle and bustle. I speak often about the energy we have and how that energy affects our dogs. Whether we are calm and collected or an excited mess, our dogs pick up on it and often mirror that mindset.

If you found yourself stressed during the holidays, it’s likely that your dog picked up on it and was sharing that stress. Now you may even see your dog exhibiting atypical behaviors as a result. The stress can manifest itself in many way, such as excessive barking, licking, restlessness, panting, or even more extreme behaviors such as pottying in the house, nipping, and full-on biting, depending the level of stress and more importantly, how the dog is enabled to release the stress.

I am a firm advocate of creating strict daily routines with our dogs. For creatures of habit such as dogs, these routines are a source of certainty and can help them through many stressful situations. Unfortunately, holidays and busy times are not only the most stressful for us and our dogs, they are often the times we abandon routines.

In preparation for this new year and busy times, take a moment to come up with a daily routine for your dog. For instance, they wake at 6 a.m. and go potty followed by working ng for their breakfast. This gives our dogs a nice predictable and fulfilling morning. Maye after that, they enjoy a jog on the treadmill or structured walk before you head off to work. While you’re at work, they have down time. When you get home, they go potty, work for dinner, a nice game of fetch, snuggles by the fire with the family, and then lights out. This simple setup can be highly effective in keeping problem behaviors away.

Stick to this routine throughout the year, and when it comes time for the holidays, don’t push it aside. If you need extra help around holiday time, ask some friends or family to help with tasks here and there while you work the dog. You will see much better success in the long term with your dog and hopefully sidestep many behavioral problems by sticking to the schedule you’ve made.

Happy training!