Your Adult Dog's Needs

Three training sessions per week is a good maintenance "recipe" in adulthood. Training your dog on a regular basis continues to polish his skills as a cooperative companion. It will maintain rules, reinforce your positive relationship, practice your teamwork, and prevent boredom. If his skills remain sharp, you will continue to share pleasant time and good teamwork together.

Special needs

If you have trained your dog using hand signals as well as verbal signals, you may find that you will be able to use your hand signals in an interesting way. Some older dogs lost their hearing as they age. It is then particularly helpful to draw on and use your dog ability to see a "silent" hand signal and understand you even if he can not hear you.

You can use more exaggerated body language, facial expressions, and hand gestures to communicate concepts to your dog if he is experienced any hearing loss.

If your dog vision has become impaired, approach him by talking softly and gently to him to announce your approach. When you reach for him, do so slowly and gently so that your dog would not flinch or be frightened.

Before touching your vision-impaired dog, let her "see" and smell your hand in front of her nose. Touch her gently from under her chin and slowly move your hand around to her body. This will remove the startle of being touched unexpectedly.

If your dog is hearing impaired, tap on the floor with your foot as you approach him, especially if he is sleeping. The vibration from the floor will give him an alert that you are coming and you will reduce an chances of startling him.

You may want to practice giving your dog a gentle body massage on a daily basis. Older dogs experience the same kinds of aging pains that humans do. The effect of gentle hands massaging his body will greatly decrease discomfort.

Everything is more sensitive as your dog ages. You may want to down-grade your grooming tools to soft, gentle brushes and hand-mitt brushes so that your dog is getting the ultimate in gentleness.

Use baby gates at stairwells. If your older dog is experiencing difficulty with the steps due to arthritis or poor vision, you may wish to prevent his use of the steps while you are gone. That way there is no risk of his falling down the steps and injuring himself in your absence.