Ummm….not really.
Sorry to burst your bubble but in spite of not being a human being your dog too is expected to be polite. Sure his antics might seem adorable to you, you might think it’s cute when he jumps up at neighbors and scratches up doors, but your dog’s victims sure as hell wouldn’t agree with you.
You might think you do not want to exercise the sort of authority required to tell him to behave any better, and that’s all quite all right really. Being the owner of a dog doesn’t require you to suddenly transform into a whip swinging ring master and you are right in denouncing the pathetic idea of establishing who the boss is when dealing with an animal.
Where you are wrong, however, is in your basic understanding of dog training. You need to realize that training your dog is not about proving how much better you are than it, you are not trying to teach it ‘human rules’ and thereby attempting to make it more ‘human’, training is not a method of ‘humanizing’ a dog. What it is, in fact, is a way of improving the relationship you share with your pet, and of course a means of making it more sociable.
‘What’s the point of that?’ you might ask. Well, here is the thing. Most of us spend the larger fraction of our daily lives toiling in office, drinking our instant coffee, reading those balance sheets. The little time we get with our family and pets we try to merge with some sort of socializing. We go to the park for a stroll on a lovely evening after work, or to a friend’s house to watch a movie. If our dogs are unfriendly then on all these occasions we keep it back home, alone, such that in no time it’s in no way a part of our life at all.
Now, like human beings your dog too gets lonely, it gets lonely and depressed and awfully sad especially when it’s left all alone in a dark house where there isn’t anyone to pat his tired little head.
So you see ultimately due to your aversion towards training you keep your dog from enjoying the sort of company and activities it would like to.
Obedience training is a means of letting your dog cope better with it’s immediate environment. It grants every dog an easier life and makes them easier to live with. Training your dog will give you more opportunity to spend more time with your beloved pet, no matter where you are going and who you are going with.
So get in their and give your dog a nice pat and take it out for training. A few magic words like ‘heel’, ‘down’, ‘stay’, ‘come’ and ‘sit’, will change your relationship with your favorite companion forever. Good luck.