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Showing posts with the label dogmisconceptions

12 Useful Tips for New Dog Owners to Avoid Common Raising Mistakes

12 Useful Tips for New Dog Owners to Avoid Common Raising Mistakes The first three hours are a blur. I remember the box was open and Biscuit stood in the doorway of our apartment and did not come in. I had read that dogs need a few days to decompress. That sounded reasonable at 2pm on a Saturday with a dog I'd never met. So I sat on the floor in the hallway and waited. He waited. We were both fairly certain we had misunderstood something about this. Three hours later he was on the couch, head on my foot, asleep. Nobody had told me what those three hours were actually for. That's the thing nobody tells you. Raising a dog well isn't a set of rules you memorize. It's about a hundred small decisions, most of which you make once, in the first weeks, and then live with for a decade. Get a few of them right and the next ten years get easier in ways you can't measure. Here are the twelve I'd give a friend on day one. Start With a Vet Visit Before You Start With a Traine...
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6 Counter-Intuitive Truths About Dogs That Your Vet Won't Tell You

6 Counter-Intuitive Truths About Dogs That Your Vet Won't Tell You I used to think I was a pretty good dog owner. Three years in, one vet visit changed that entire perspective. Dr. Chen looked at my chart, looked at my dog, and said something that completely wrecked me: "You're misreading almost everything she's telling you. And that's completely normal. Most people do." She wasn't being mean. She was being honest. The truth is, everything we think we know about dogs is filtered through human logic. We project. We assume. We interpret their behavior through the lens of how we'd feel in the same situation. But dogs aren't little humans in fur coats. They're a completely different species with their own logic, their own communication system, and their own set of rules for how the world works. Here are six things I wish someone had told me three years ago. 1. Tail Wagging Does NOT Mean Happy Let me start with the big one because this one broke me....
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