Remember Dog Faming? It’s a response to the trend of “dog shaming,” where people post photos showing dogs doing “naughty” things. These always highlight lack of training rather than anything intrinsically wrong with the dogs, and often show dogs that are very stressed and unhappy. Isn’t it nicer to catch our dogs doing something good and clever that we are proud of?
At the time of my first Dog Faming posts, I started a FaceBook page by that name. But I had so many irons in the fire that I stopped putting any energy into it. Dog Faming lives again! Blog reader Courtenay Morgan famed her own dog, Edward, found the page, and volunteered to bring it back to life. I had a little Faming session last night, and as usual, learned some things from the videos I took. (I often take videos so as to capture stills.)
The first thing I learned is that it is perhaps asking a lot to cue a two year old, high energy dog, with whom I have not played tug in several weeks, to watch from her mat while I play with someone else. I perhaps didn’t really need a video to realize that, grin. We had to review a bit. But Clara was a good sport and got the hang of it fast, especially when she got a turn to tug as reinforcement. The second thing is something I learned from the video. Here is a tiny clip. See if you can see it.
Yet another reason why filming training is such a good idea. Bob Bailey says a trainer’s best tool is film. If I hadn’t filmed, I wouldn’t have noticed that one of the dogs was unhappy with the setup.
So what are you waiting for? Go put up a sign, cue your dog, take a picture, and head on over to the Dog Faming FaceBook page. At the very least you’ll get a fun photo, but you also might learn something about your dog or your training!
Thanks for viewing! Coming up:
- But I Want to Use ALL the Tools in My Toolbox!
- What You Reinforce is What You Get
- Threshold!
- OMG Could She Really be Talking about the Continuum AGAIN?
- But He Was Wagging His Tail!
Copyright 2013 Eileen Anderson
I loved the idea of Dog Faming so I famed Max. I just posted his on the FB page!
Max is a superstar!Thanks for Faming him!
That Clara’s pretty impressive!
Thanks, Marjorie. I’m awfully proud of her.
Sorry the pingback arrived before I could comment! I don’t have that piece of paper in the picture where the text is supposed to show up against as a sign, but I hope it counts as faming? Thanks 🙂
And I missed the picture and commentary on the first time around. Linking it here. Great job! I need to teach my dogs that.
Thank you, only works for dogs that can fit on the weighing scale 😛
I’m aiming Clara in that direction. I don’t think it would hurt any of our other behaviors for me to teach her to perch on something little. The trick will be to get her on the scale and still see the readout!
😀
I know what you mean about the energy it takes to keep an fb group going! I also started one in response to dog shaming called “trained dogs can” on fb, but it’s hard to get the word out enough. I hadn’t heard of dog faming though, and think it’s wonderful! We need to pay attention to the things our dogs do right, and to the benefits that training a dog will bring. 🙂
Courtenay Morgan has done such a great job engaging with people who post to Dog Faming just from the goodness of her heart. I couldn’t have done it. I even bought the domain names but am just sitting on them for now. Maybe the right person will come along who wants to go places with the idea. I just don’t want it to get all commercialized…but perhaps that’s silly of me. Not many sites can stay up without some kind of revenue stream. Thanks for the comment!