Dr Amanda Florsheim was our speaker for the May 14th meeting and every seat was filled - with many members arriving 30 minutes beforehand. During her talk, Dr Florsheim mentioned several things about how dogs think and perceive things, which is so differently from how we see things. For instance, for those members who have dogs that bark at every person who walks by their house, Amanda explained that every day your dog is getting positive reinforcement because when they bark, the person or dogs go by so that satisfies your dog that he has done his job. The 10 minutes you spend telling him no bark does nothing as he has had all day reinforcement that if he barks, they go away. So how to stop this behavior? Block the dogs view, whether it is to put film up on your windows so the dog can't see out, or close curtains and shades so your dog can't see out.
Dr Florsheim also talked about positive reinforcement such as giving your dogs treats to motivate them to do what you want them to do. Her case studies were very interesting, especially how the wrong type of training can literally change a "good" dog to a "dangerous" dog. She also talked about the 3 questions to ask all dog trainers and here is a link to an article Dr Florsheim wrote: FINDING THE RIGHT DOG TRAINER .
Dr Florsheim's website has a GREAT resource section, CLICK HERE to see many articles written by her along with great articles written by others and links to various training methods etc. She also recommended the book we handed out as a raffle prize: The Other End of the Leash by Patricia B McConnell along with Decoding Your Dog by Debra F. Horwitz. The links for these books do go to Amazon.com but another good website to purchase used books is BetterWorldBooks which also ships free and supports literacy by giving away a book for every book purchased.
When asked about what food to feed our dogs, Dr Florsheim did mention that most dog foods are over processed, and vitamins & minerals are added in afterwards and whole food is good supplements for our dogs. But what to give them? She mentioned Balanceit.com as a great resource for nutritional information on whole foods for your dogs. We were so fortunate to have Dr Florsheim to talk to our group and thanks goes to Rebecca Laschinger who was able to get her to confirm a date.
Election Results are in and the current board was elected for another year term. Members of the 2022 -2023 Board are as follows: President - Lorraine Wilson 1st Vice President/Programs - Donna Steibel Vice President/Membership - Rebecca Laschinger Treasurer - Sandy McAfee Madame Secretary - Kim Grasser