A small grumble

I'm really getting frustrated with some people in my life in regards to my dogs. My sister is one of the biggest offenders. She KNOWS I'm working to get Pedro to greet people nicely, but she insists on winding him up the second she walks in the door. Then she wants to gripe because he's bouncing all over her for 20 minutes. Well, HEL-LO, you got him this way.

Then she goes into telling me that I need to put his prong collar on (nope, not happening, I'm DONE with that thing!) and just correct the snot out of him for being a spaz. She's also constantly sending me CM links/stories and now has moved on to "The Dogfather."

Even when she sees how well he responds to the training I'm doing with the clicker, she still wants to rag on how stupid the method is. And to top it all off, she doesn't even have a dog of her own. She's always been around dogs, but none have ever been HER responsibility. Bah!

Forgive me, I don't recall your age or if you are still at home..........your sister is still at home, or you are both adults with separate homes.

If you are both adults with separate living quarters, I would learn to ignore her 'advice' and do what you know is working. I would even go as far as putting Pedro on a lead when she comes to visit so you can control his behavior with her..........take him out of the room away from her even if she doesn't cooperate with how you want him greeted. Obviously telling her isn't working.

If you are both still living at home, then it gets a bit more tricky..........

I've found the perfect solution to all of my sister's "better than thou" advice . . . I live 2000 miles away

The only fool proof solution, since she's obviously not trainable, is to keep Pedro away from her if you can and to just tune her out when she starts talking about dog training.

Or - you could use the prong collar . . . on her

I have a friend who does the same thing to me - even though I've been training professionally for years, she still thinks she knows more about training that I do. It especially drives me crazy when she "SSSSSST"s my dog (that noise CM swears by). So I've learned just to NEVER talk to her about anything dog training, and if she gets on the subject, change it quickly! Also, I never complain about my dog to her (even just the casual, "I wish she would sit faster" or whatever), because that is her proof that I don't know what I'm doing.

Awww, haha!

Wonderful ideas!

Oh my... I know EXACTLY how you feel... I get it from friends and from some of my family that assume my methods of training are odd and I get the "why would you use a clicker? that's just weird" comments... I also get a lot of grief because I feed my dog a partial raw diet and apparently that means I'm going to kill him.

I live on the other side of the country from most of my family and the family that's in VA I'll ignore if they say anything negative about my training methods (they haven't so far). I have friends and people from work who think my methods are weird too. Like for example... I brought Bamm to work one day and he decided to growl whenever anyone walked through the main door into the office. I used my clicker and would reward him anytime the door opened to teach him that the door opening was ok. I would have him slowly greet whoever came in and then reward him again. That helped a lot, but it's a slow process. My coworker thought it was odd and said, "Well, why don't you just make him deal with the situation and force him to be ok with it?" Ummmm... NO!!! I'm not going to flood my dog and end up breaking his spirit or increasing his fears. We take it slowly and he learns that it's ok. By forcing him into it I only validate his reasoning for why he is afraid of the door being opened and someone walking in.

Same goes for introducing him to other dogs. He's a reactive dog... but I always get the "well I don't understand why you don't just let him offleash to meet other dogs. The other dog is nice and Bamm will see that and be ok." ummmm ya... cuz it's smart to let my reactive dog loose on just any dog that he happens to see...