About
My dachshund Kody in the snow
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Hi, my name is Matt and I have a Dachshund named Kody.
Actually, he’s 75 percent Dachshund and 25 percent Yorkie, but he looks and acts 100 percent Dachshund. He was actually given to me by my good friend Michal which turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to me. Giving dogs is a bad idea, and Michal is guilty of all the reasons you shouldn’t give dogs, but in this case, he lucked out. I had always wanted a dog but was waiting until I got a larger place with a yard. But looking back, I just needed a nudge.
The night I got Kody, Michal and his wife came over to visit. I thought it was just a random holiday visit because they were out and about. We sat down on the couch and were talking. Michal’s wife is black, which is important because I thought I saw her hand wrapped around Michal. I was doing the math of how her hand could possibly be in that strange position, when all of a sudden what I though was a hand turned into a tiny 8 week old Dachshund puppy that ran to me and started giving me kisses.
I lost it. I just started crying. That was one of the happiest moments of my life. I love Kody, and my life is so much better with him in it.
Well, if you know me, you know I do things all the way. I tried to be the best dog dad I could be. My vet told me to train my dog after he received all his inoculations. This was false, you should train your dog at 8 weeks or whenever you get it. Weeks 8 to 12 are the main socialization period for a puppy, and you want to expose them to lots of other safe dogs and people during that time only in controlled environments. This is kind of hard for most people, so if they’re young they have special puppy classes where they can be off leash with other puppies and other people and get socialized quite well under the supervision of a professional. This is perfect, because you don’t have to worry about adult dog/puppy conflicts. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this out until 6 months later and those special puppy classes are only for puppies 5 months or younger. On the good side, Kody did see his brother Flex every day, so he wasn’t completely unsocialized.
What I did was read up on Cesar Millan and try his ways, which you’ll read a lot about here. I don’t like Cesar Millan’s methods. While he may have some good insight on how to think about dogs, his techniques are destructive and abusive. Note that there’s a warning message at the beginning of the show saying not to try his methods at home. There’s a reason for that. Google for it, you’ll find much surprising information. Anyway, after a few months of beating myself over the head as to why we weren’t making progress, I finally went to training class.
In training class I learned all these great punishment free methods of training. Kody loved it, and I actually had some control over him. We both got happier and calmer after that. I learned about Ian Dunbar, who’s methods we used, and have been a fan ever since.
Cesar Millan talks about a dog being calm submissive, but nothing makes your dog calm submissive like training him to sit. He’s submissive I guess, but mainly he’s just calm and happy. And a calm and happy dog is a good dog.
So this web site, while mainly just about the fun of Dachshunds, is part of my reaching out to all people to encourage them to learn what are quite easy positive training methods. I can’t teach training online very well, and I’m not a trainer anyway, but if you have a dog, go to a positive training class, now! To find out if they teach using positive training methods ask if they use positive training methods such as “luring”. Even if you think your dog is trained, it will change your life and your dog’s life. And what may surprise you is that the most important training is for you, not your dog. They train you, you train your dog.
I hope you have fun on this website, get involved, comment, ask questions, question me. Whatever, it’s all good. We’ll learn together to be better dog parents.