The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Happy to hear it! I was surprised at how effective it was myself, so I'm happy to share the power of verbal-physical training. Also, if the dog grabs stuff and doesn't let go, the trick to opening their mouth is pressing your thumb on the front of their lower jaw, right behind the front teeth. For whatever reason, dogs can't hold the mouth closed when you press that bottom palette, and it's saved me a number of socks, lol. Don't attempt if the dog is violent, obviously. Also a firm grip around the snout is worth twenty collars.
Perfection is the enemy of good or great, I personally spoil my dog in a number of ways, lol. It's about managing the creature, not controlling it outright (unless you intend for a show dog, which I'm assuming isn't the case). Dogs get better and more well behaved with age, and I think someone else mentioned more dogs lead to some amount of self training. In the same way, your behaviors directly effect the dog's behavior; it's why many dogs seem to be a microcosm of the owner. Just give him/her a number of ways to burn energy in a sanctioned way, like through toys, fetch, walks, etc. Hopefully the behavior becomes more manageable with these strategies and tricks.
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