I`ve just finished reading S. Fogle`s [I]The dog`s mind[I] and I relize that I am a softie from my dogs`poing of view. My father had dogs for hunting and they were extremely well behaved, no need for alpha training and all that. Then a had a Briard that slept in my bed and was very spoiled but she did not misbehave although she had no obedience training. Twenty years later I found a puppy and decided to keep him. He went everywhere with me but he learned bad things from other dogs such as byke chasing, rounding cows (he looked like a border collie blue merle) and people were terrified of him. He adored me but he looked at me as if saying: I am protecting you and I know that this person is bad and wants to hurt you. I then rescued other dogs and the situation got worse as they all had some australian cattledog mix and people in rural Costa Rica are not very dog friendly.
Finally the worst thing happened and I decided to train my dogs and be very strict even if it means doing things that go against my nature and not do other things that I enjoy doing with my dogs.
Anyway I agree that when you get a new puppy you should be very firm with him or her, but if a dog is not aggressive nor destructive, surely it is OK to spoil him.
Maybe I shouldn`t have dogs because although I am very patient for training them and I won`t allow certain things like begging for food or growling at me, I am just too soft and dogs feel it.
I will post pictures of my rescues soon.
