I urge you again to open your mind to other possibilities!!! Maybe it's not working because it is giving the dog the wrong signals and maybe you are inconsistent because you know, deep down, that it won't work???

Vet's are not behaviourists. They have no behaviour training and most of my business comes from vets who are big enough to say, "I spent seven years training to make sick animals better and all the animals I see and all the things that can go wrong with them took all that time!! I can tell you what might be a pssibility with a behaviour problem but I'm not the one you should be talking to!"

In the same way I can tell what might be medically wrong with a dog and even give a few suggestions but I can't give a firm diagnosis, prescribe drugs or perform surgery.

I am not a vet and the vet is not a behaviourist.

Dogs are smart, but only on the dog smartness scale. They can only interpret what you do with a canine mind. They can not interact with the world or the humans in it in any other way - that is why we love them, because they are dogs.
It's not rocket science, it's nothing new, it's just seeing and understanding as a dog.

Your dog is different from other dogs, but it is still a dog and still understands the pack structure and still understands the dog language (believe me when I say we are talking of different things when we talk about language here!).

If you are using understandable (to your dog) language - it will work. If you are using forty year old ideas of dominance and punishment, I've done two things to show you I'm the boss and you will be punished every time you disobey from now on....well, if I have the time - it won't. It won't work if you are more consistent. It won't work if you get harder with the physical punishment.

The very big clue to your dog not trusting you as leader is in the statement that you don't get out of bed, "until Josie wakes me up wanting food." She simply wouldn't do this if she saw you as the leader. She sees herself in the position to tell you when it is time for her to eat and all she has to do is demand it and you obey.

Finally the incident on the road that you witnessed is a person using the exact same strategies of dog training as you are. The only difference is that he was slightly more sophisticated than you. He has gone a little further along the learning curve ( of an outdated system) and also believes he is doing the best for his dog.
It is not acceptable to have a dog ignore your command and wander across a road. This is a life threatening thing for the dog who knows little of the dangers of traffic. This guy is making sure the dog never, ever forgets that running across a road is a really, really bad thing. He is hoping that the dog will remember it and never do it again.
This is dog training at it's best in one way beacause people can relate to it, can understand and react in the natural human way to a life threatening situation.

Sadly it won't work at all - the dog has no idea why it is hauled off and the best that can be hoped for is the dog will recall much better for a couple of days. It will not relate the incident to the road and the guy won't have the information he needs to reinforce the recall lesson and that too will fade quickly.
The only way this will benefit anyone is to repeat the excersise every other day.
The guy is only following the instructions of trainers just like the ones you have been listening to - and think about it, it does make sense. If it is OK to swat the dog on the butt for barking in the garden, that doesn't work very well but you are prepared to believe that is the best way to train your dog. You are out walking one day and the dog runs across a road, ignoring a command from you, right in front of a car. The only sensible thing to do in this situation is to go mad on the dog - if you swat the dog for barking then you have to make an impression in a big way for the dog putting itself in danger. (I know there was no car involved but the guy could obviosly imagine the implications.)

What has not been recognised is that the dog trusts it's own view of the world more than the owners. It does not believe the owner is capable of making decisions that will benefit it, so it makes it's own.

My way of thinking - and something I have proved over and over - is to get your body language as close as you can and to use the same strategies as Alpha canines use. If you can learn this and carry it out your dog does not have the need to run away from, or to confront, situations because it is the leader's job to decide how to handle it. If you can tell your dog, in language it understands, not language that makes sense to humans, that you are in control and understand much more about the world than it does then your dog can not help itself - it has to do what you want because it is genetically programmed to live life under a competent leader - it wants to! The pet dog has the major problem that it can't find a really trustworthy leader that understands it and that it can understand.


EVERYONE!!!
Please, if you have just skimmed through, don't be upset until you read the whole thing - thanks.