Some of you will have read this before, but if not, here is an overview of the Partnership Compass Point.
The aim is to get you thinking about the relationship you have with your dog(s), as well as their overall lifestyle.
Included are some suggestions of small changes you can make that will make a big difference to your dogs’ health and happiness.
Please feel free to share any thoughts about Partnership with me in the Facebook group, or drop me an email.
Partnership is…
- Helping your partner out of trouble when they need it.
- Acknowledging that dogs are not machines or robots. They are individuals with their own personalities and preferences.
- Spending time together without and goals and objectives.
- Clear communication – both in the way that we communicate with our dogs and taking the time to learn their way of communicating too.
- Training to enhance our dogs’ safety and quality of life, not just for the sake of it.
- Fulfilling their enrichment and sensory needs.
- Playing together. A study released by Bristol University has found that play is the key to our dogs’ wellbeing.
- Gentle touch. There is evidence that physical contact lowers stress in dogs, measured by reductions in heart rate and the stress hormone cortisol as well as by an increase in the anti-stress hormone oxytocin.
- Using reward-based training methods and avoiding aversive equipment such as shock, choke and prong collars and anti-pull harnesses.
- Allowing our dogs to make their own choices when safe and legal to do so.
Let’s have a closer look at choice in the next section.