I recently saw a post on a Doberman Pinscher club e-forum, that drew an array of annoyed post-ers. One that got under everyone’s skin, albeit as a sharp-tongued respondent, made valid points.

This Doberman obtained a pizza box, and then aggressed toward owner, when owner tried to recover it. She’s looking for a trainer… well done in my opinion!

The angry respondent exclaimed that if you cannot get a pizza box back from your dog, you shouldn’t own the dog.

Here’s my view:

In a perfect world, and in the case of humans choosing to own predators, we should be knowledgeable and fully capable of handling our animal w safety to the animal, safety to wildlife, safety to the public and safety to ourselves.

Not all people even recognize that their dog/ cat is a predator. Their clueless to the potential of their animal. Often folks see their animals as fluffy human children.

It’s not ok to bring predators into suburbia, that we can’t control.

Particularly as well, since we have encroached more than our fair share of habitat, and now threaten the existence of thousands of species of wildlife, it appears the only wildlife that will succeed, are the species that have adapted to co-exist alongside us. Those are relatively peaceful, and with less innate defenses.

We now have dogs that kill for sport vs food. This used to be a HUMAN-ONLY activity. It’s horrible stewardship of our environment. It’s not appropriate in my opinion, for us or our dogs, to kill wildlife outside of the need to feed, or defend our family, pack, herd, flock, etc…

We should all theoretically at least, be able to obtain a pizza box (or something more harmful, like a poisoned steak or hot-dog, toad, cleaning supplies, medicine bottle, etc ) from our dogs!

But that’s just far from what’s reality.

And we can only ever start, from where we’re currently at…works in progress.

In my opinion, this Dobie owner was taking responsibility, by reaching out for help from a professional trainer. If she hires the RIGHT help, she’ll learn now and forever, how to successfully obtain authoritative control over her large dog. Kudos.

My one tip, is to hire a behaviorist vs an animal trainer.