Dogs and humans have been working, playing and living together for tens of thousands of years, and for the most part it’s been a pretty smooth ride. Humans did things such as hunt and ranch. Dogs helped out and were fulfilled. Humans had jobs and so did their dogs. The result was a happy, balanced relationship between dogs and humans.
Nowadays most humans live in cities, work in offices or on computers. People are cooks, yoga teachers, grocery store workers and insurance agents. We still have jobs but our dogs...not so much. Dogs aren’t good cooks or yoga teachers (debatable). They suck at selling insurance and if you put them in a grocery store, they’re more likely to eat everything they can than restock a shelf. You get the point. Our city jobs don’t include our dogs, and that can be a good thing. What’s not a good thing, however, is the imbalance that a lack of work or purpose is creating in dogs. These dogs aren’t getting fulfilled and because of that they’re not happy.
Why should we care if our dogs are happy or fulfilled? The sad truth is, that many people don’t ever stop to even think about their dog’s fulfillment. They just assume the dog is happy because they are happy with what they are getting from the dog. Consider this: is a truly happy human aggressive, frantic, fearful, fully insecure, highly anxious? No!! Well, neither is a happy dog. People will come to us with problems ranging from a dog who constantly barks when the doorbell rings, to a dog who won’t stop pooping on the carpet. They want us to train their dogs not to do those things. We tell them we can’t do that. Then people leave and we never see them again-just kidding!!
What we do is introduce a new perspective. You can train a dog to do or not do a lot of things, but none of it matters if your dog is still unfilled. If your dog is unhappy and out of balance, your dog will still act out. On the flipside, if you prioritize building a relationship with your dog while also training them, you’ll find that virtually all of the unwanted behaviors naturally disappear. This can take time.
At Bevill Dog Behavior we have spent years developing and fine-tuning a system to help humans build a happy relationship with their dogs. We haven’t shunned traditional dog “training” but instead put an emphasis on creating a balanced and fair environment where the human leads the dog. The fact is that the modern human world makes very little sense to our dogs, but it doesn’t need to in order for our dogs to be fulfilled. All that our dogs really need to be happy is to know that they are safe and have a purpose. As the leader, we can provide all of those things.
When you start to understand the human/dog relationship you realize that a city dog can be just as happy and balanced as a ranch dog. That is our goal at BDB and that’s why we’ve developed the Bevill Dog Behavior Method. There are many facets to the BDB Method, but at its core it’s a very simple system of values and exercises that anybody can implement. It starts by taking a look at our actual goals. We want dogs who we can live with, create memories with and enjoy. We want our dogs to be happy too, because we understand a relationship works both ways. This has nothing to do with training, at least not in the traditional sense. This is about teaching and learning. It’s about being rather than doing. We don’t really care whether or not your dog can do any fancy party tricks, we just want them (and you) to be happy. Welcome to Bevill Dog Behavior.
