A highly smart malinois

What is it - the healthy life of your dog?

     Most of the dog owners answering this question will put on the first place good quality food. Of course, good food with necessary vitamins, and minerals is an important precondition for maintaining health of a dog. A lot of responsible dog owners will be surprised to know that regular quality meals, being of course very important, are not the main thing that keep your dog in good physical form.

     Let’s not forget that dogs, our pets, are predators. And predators  are not always lucky at a hunt. No, I do not think that our pets should starve, for God’s sake! But feeling hunger from time to time will cause them no harm. By the way, a lot  diseases of our pets are provoqued by overeating.

     As experienced dog owners consider that the best formula of dog’s health is the following: good walk and biting once a week.

     

     A good walk doesn’t mean that your dog walk quietly on a leach. A dog should run at least four times more than his owner walk.  The dog should run and  jump   and fight playfully. If there is no space for running  it is possible to play with your dog, for example with disks or balls.

     

      Biting. A lot of people are afraid of dogs’ aggression. However, aggression is a normal instinct of dogs as predators.  Practically every dog irrespective of the breed  becomes aggressive when protect heir food or toy.  It is possible to suppress the aggression but it seems more effective to give the dog possibilities to drop down the aggression. For large breed – shepherd dogs (German shepherd dogs, malinois, herders and a lot of others), dogs, Dobermans etc. - it can be training with a decoy on a training ground, for medium and small breeds – active games when they can bite rubber toys, for example.

     

       These three components – good physical exercises, training or games that increase adrenalin and  help to drop down aggression, quality food – will provide health and energy of your dog.  

     The finish of a healthy day: it seems I'll sleep this night on a mat :))

Malinois: protection of the object – advanced stage

      The goal of the next step of the protection-of-the-object-training is to protect the thing from the decoy who tries to take the object (a bag, chair, etc.).

      The decoy is moving  around the dog at the distance of two meters. The dog bites the decoy  only when he steps inside the circle (remember - the radius of 2 meters?). Once the decoy tries to go away from that distance, the dog should return to the object.

      The most difficult thing in this training  is to teach the dog to come to the object when the decoy is going away with the dog  biting his costume.

Our malinois. Defense training in Belgrade

          When we came to Serbia one of the priority issue we faced was to find a new instructor and decoy for our dogs. It’s not no easy task as mondioring is not very popular in Serbia. However we were lucky to meet a professional instructor and decoy, an owner of a sport dog center “Balkanika”  Dushko Jovanovich. We resumed our training and our mali made the next step in defense education – attack on the arm.

           Mondioring is a very dynamic and exciting kind of cynological sport, which develops many useful skills. Hope  it'll gain popularity in Serbia.

A radio collar: to use it or not to use?

My experience tells me that a rare dog-lover will support using of a radio-collar. The most popular argument: oh, no! It hurts the dog! Few years ago I was also strongly against this instrument of education. However, with my new dog – a strong Alpha Canaan male – I faced the big problem: he was too intolerant towards male dogs and – unfortunately – he picked from the ground. I met with a dilemma: either I had difficulties with other dog masters, or I found some method to make him more civilized. It also necessary to bear in mind that picking from the ground can be rather dangerous for dogs’ health. I bought a simple radio collar, got instructions from my trainer and took my dog for a walk. That collar had seven levels, I never used high ones, only up to the third level. I pushed the button twice to stop picking and three times to stop fights. It was enough!

The next step of my experience with the radio collar was during defense training. I would not say that it was always successful and produced the best results.

Indeed, the effect of training with radio collars can very good, however it depends upon too many factors. It was very effective for some training of my elder dog. As for my younger one – a malinois – it gives rather poor results, and I prefer to use usual collars.

Today I always put on my dogs radio collar while walking in the forest or in the mountains to have an additional instrument to keep them under control. Low levels do not hurt at all but it prevent a lot of troubles if you walk with your dogs in places where there many wild animals, foxes in particular. 

I'll appreciate your view on using radio collars. Please, share your experience.

Are all dogs good students?

     I believe ‘yes’! For many years I work with two-legged students and come to a conclusion that four-legged students are more attentive, have more zeal and, what is very important, follow each other’s better examples.

    This short video shows an element of obedience training (practically, two commands) with three dogs. One of them – a young herder girl – joined our team only recently. She is not good in focusing her attention. This is the reason why I decided to train her with my other dogs. You will see how her attention and interest in the training is growing an she starts to fulfill the command as her companions.

    In the beginning it’s better not to make such a training long and finish it with a pleasant game.

Would you like your dog to protect your bag?

      Protection of an object is an element of defense training, a mondioring exercise and a rather useful skill in  our everyday life. It’s not very difficult to teach your to protect a bag or other thing you left for a few minutes. The very beginning can be trained even with a puppy of, say, six months old, giving him tips. The second step is more  difficult and need special equipment as the dog should bite. The idea is that the dog should stand on the object and keep under control the circle with the radius of about 2 meters. The dog should bite  only when somebody tries to approach the object stepping in the circle and let him go when he goes away. In the video you can see the very process of teaching.  Make the training enjoyable like a game!