Rehabilitation and Natural State Dog Training 

Let’s talk about rehabilitation dog training. First how do we define “Rehabilitation”? According the National Library of Medicine rehabilitation is defined as:

Rehabilitation is the process by which physical, sensory, and mental functional capacities are restored or developed after damage. In the context of injury control, rehabilitation is the process by which biologic, psychologic, and social functions are restored or developed to permit an injured person to achieve maximal personal autonomy and an independent noninstitutional lifestyle. Rehabilitation is achieved not only through functional change in the person (e.g., development of compensatory muscular strength, use of prosthetic limbs, and treatment of postinjury behavioral disturbances), but also through changes in the physical and social environment, such as reductions in architectural and attitudinal barriers that hamper those requiring use of a wheelchair.

The key point here is “restore or developed after damage”. To rehab a dog there must have been some form of damage. I you are dealing with a dog that was breed to have a high prey drive and you want to “rehab it” you cannot. Nothing is broken in the dog, this is a drive balance issue and obedience issue. Do not give your money to someone who does not know the difference between a natural state of a dog and rehabilitation.

There are plenty of dog trainers who will say they will rehab your dog’s behavioral issues. When in reality there is nothing to rehab and they will more than likely suppress the behavior and cause side-effect due the repressing the natural state of the dog, therefor causing additional unwanted behaviors.

If you have a dog that was bred to be a certain way. You cannot use rehab dog training to rehabilitate your dog’s natural state. You can suppress that dog’s action and you will have side effects to that. So do not waste your time and money with unethical trainers who will say they can take your Malinois and make it not what to chase things; Impossible! You can manage that behavior, you can redirect it, and give your dog an appropriate item to chase besides the neighbor kids and the rabbit on your nightly walk. No matter what you do your dog was bred to do a job. In this case, Malinois wants to chase things that move. That is what makes them so great as police dogs and sport dogs. They will naturally chase something. It is part of their DNA. You cannot rehab that out of them it is their natural state. Want to learn more? Contact me and schedule a call.

An ethical trainer that is following LIMA training, will understand what the natural state of a dogs is and train to that. They will work with mother nature and not against it. Natural state dog training is dealing with the dog’s nature. Finding what motivates the dog and what are their drives allows training to go smoothly and quickly. If your dog is not motivated by treats, but will play tug, once they learn if they work they will get the tug toy. They will work for for that tug, this is the concept behind Premack Principle. Remember you dog is not broken it does not need rehab.

When Does My Dog Need Rehabilitation Training?

If your dog had an injury then it will need rehabilitation. The some common type of rehabilitation training we see is a dog that had a negative experience with something. Then its become a deconditioning problem. We start to change the dog association. A common one is a dog had limited access to food for a long time, the natural state of that breed should not show resource guarding behaviors. Due to the lack of food the dog has now developed resource guarding behaviors. That is a behavior that can be rehabilitated to bring the dog back to its natural state.

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