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| 7 things I wish I knew before getting my first dog Posted: 02 Aug 2009 03:48 PM PDT  As I've admitted in the past, I was once a bad dog owner. It wasn't that I was intentionally a bad dog owner, I loved my first dog from the start, but I was so clueless about what needed to be done with a dog, that I didn't practice most of the essential dog ownership habits. In fact, I was so clueless that I felt I was doing it right, and didn't research what anyone else did with their dogs until many months after I got her. There's a few things I wish I knew before getting her: - Create training is not cruel, and it does work: I find this is common with new dog owners, they look for manuals on how to potty train and find crate training  , with an explanation that it is not cruel and it is very effective. However, most new owners still feel it's wrong to put their new lovely dog in a cage for a number of continuous hours. So here it goes once again hoping to convince someone: trust me, create training it is not cruel and it does work. At least give it a try.- Puppies need a lot of attention at first: and a lot more than I thought. If it's a 3 month old puppy, then she needs a potty break every 3 hours, including the hours in the middle of the night. My wife and I worked at the time, and we thought we'd get a puppy for the apartment. Needless to say, we had a lot more accidents than where necessary. If you get a new puppy, make sure you read and understand the work you need to do with them during those first months of life. - Potty training by hitting your dog with a newspaper is not the right way: I am ashamed to admit it, but I potty trained my first dog by hitting her in the snout with a newspaper while rubbing her nose in her poop. It was what I remembered people did when I was younger. It wasn't until later that I found out that, though that's what some people did, it is not the right method anymore. Just as we have advanced in psychology and understand that hitting kids with a ruler in their hand is not the best way to teach them, we've advanced with dogs too, and understand that hitting them with a newspaper is neither the most effective nor humane method to train them. - Dogs get sick: Many new dog owners believe that diseases, and doctors, are mostly for humans, not for dogs. I knew vets existed, but I thought they where only for rabies or something else, but say, ¡a cold?! I honestly didn't believe dogs could get a cold the first time my puppy got one. Sure, it makes sense, if they are animals, just like humans, why wouldn't they get sick? Dog cancer? Yes, it happens! - A misbehaved dog is often just an untrained one: my dogs destroyed things, and I always thought it they just couldn't behave, that they where the problem. It wasn't until I got Cesar Millan's book that I found out dog walking was important and that my dogs could have a lot of built up energy that they needed to get rid of, I was the problem. I wasn't giving them enough exercise to release their energy. Once I started doing adequate walks, they started behaving better immediately. - Dogs fart: the first time we lay our dog in our bed and she farted I was absolutely amazed and, to be totally honest, quite disgusted. I just didn't understand dogs as the animals they where. Nowadays, gas still happens, as is natural, but I don't have much of a problem with it anymore. Share your feedback! Email me at jorge@packsandpaws.com 
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