BONDING - BONDING - BONDING ... ultimately one of the most misunderstood terms in the dog world. A day does not go by that someone does not ask for a six or eight week old pup, because they were told if they do not start young, the dog will not bond. Then there are those folks who had a bad experience with their last dog "bonding," and they are sure it was taken from its mother too young, now they are looking for an older dog. Then, of course, the more typical statement: their last dog was older and it took months to bond or the caller felt the dog never really accepted the family. Well, the fact is that bonding is just a state of mind.

Find a dog seeking a close relationship with humans and humans who are seeking a close relationship with a dog and like-magic BONDING occurs. If you question this, consider the seeing eye dog. It is raised in one situation and trained in another before it is turned over to its new master.

LET THE PUP HAVE A CHILDHOOD ... another of those strange 'facts.' Being a child, to a dog, is chewing everything, jumping on everyone, an hour by hour life of trouble. We cringe when we read that one should wait until a dog is six to nine months of age before setting up a program, or that the local trainer told an owner of a protection breed that setting rules too early will damage its natural protection capabilities. Then there is the dog training club that will not let your dog join until it is at least six months of age. Apparently these individuals have never known the joys of working with a great Dobe. Remember the following: Educating before the bad habits develop is TRAINING, after the fact it is just a series of REPRIMANDS.

THERE ARE NO BAD DOGS ONLY BAD OWNERS ... This has a yes and no answer, and a common thread that we see on the Internet is in defense of the dogs who are problems. In actuality an irresponsible owner is the downfall of a good dog no matter what the breed, but the best owner cannot create a superstar if the dog's God-given abilities are not equal to owner expectation.

A DOG WILL ONLY WORK FOR THE TRAINER ... This may be true in most situations, but not when the dog was introduced to training as a form of communication rather than an act of discipline. The difference here is that we convince our Dobes that obedience workouts are fun. It is quality time between two friends.

A simple example is the command of sit. It is much more complicated to teach sit than to ask a trained dog to sit. An excellent analogy is teaching the deaf to pronounce a word that they cannot hear. To the new canine student who may have just learned its name (a feat in itself), what they hear coming from our mouths is just gibberish, more confusing than even our trying to understand a foreign language since we at least understand what is going on around us. While I would not know where to begin in teaching the deaf to speak, we are untouchable in the world of the Dobe and early education.