Words and Links

Bear the Dog

The most important thing to know about barking is that it is a normal dog behavior. At appropriate times and levels, barking is even considered to be a useful behavior. Many people get dogs because they want them to bark when someone is either coming to the door or prowling around at night. But when barking becomes excessive, the noise can be a real headache for owners and their long-suffering neighbors. According to the Cornell Animal Behavior Clinic, up to one-third of behavioral complaints involve nuisance, inappropriate, or excessive barking.

Before things get out of hand, take steps to teach your dog when it’s okay to bark and when she should stop or remain quiet. If you want her to bark when people approach the house, enlist your kids, spouse, or a neighbor to help with the training. Ask the helper to come to the door and knock or ring the doorbell. If your dog doesn’t bark at the noise, encourage her by excitedly asking, “Who’s there? Is someone at the door?” Praise your dog when she barks at the sound.

Once your dog is barking to alert you, the next step is to teach her when to stop. After she has given a couple of barks, hold up your hand and say a code word or command, such as enough or quiet. Give the command in a firm, quiet tone of voice. If you yell, your dog will simply think you’re barking back at her, and she’ll just bark more. If your dog stops barking, praise her¡ª”good quiet!”¡ªand pop a treat into her mouth. Be sure you give the praise and treat only when the dog is quiet.

Often, showing the dog a treat may be distraction enough to stop the barking. Say, “quiet,” and give her the treat after several seconds of silence. As your dog starts to learn what the word quiet means, extend the amount of time between saying the command and giving the reward.

Some trainers recommend wrapping your hand around your barking dog’s muzzle, or snout, and saying, “quiet” or “no bark.” That works sometimes, but you have to be careful when trying that technique. If your dog is barking frenziedly, she may accidentally bite you when you try to wrap your hand around her muzzle.

A safer way to get this effect is to keep a halter collar on your dog while you’re at home. This type of collar has a loop that wraps around your dog’s muzzle. When your dog barks more than once or twice, give a quick pull on the lead to tighten the loop around the muzzle. As soon as the dog is quiet, say, “good no bark” or “good quiet,” and reward her with a treat.

Another way to stop the barking is to call your dog to you or give her a down command. Calling your dog to you usually interrupts barking. And a dog hardly ever barks when lying down. Choose a command such as come or down and use the same one every time. Offer praise for silence and then reward your dog with a treat.

Be sure you don’t unintentionally reward your dog for barking by hugging her or saying soothingly, “It’s okay, Sweetie.” When you do that, the dog thinks she must have been right to bark. This simply encourages her to bark more the next time a similar situation occurs.

How can we nurture habits of serious, critical thought in our children? How do we help them sharpen their minds for a highly competitive future? The answer is to stretch the mind beyond the obvious. Experts say that the only route to that would be to develop a “thinking environment” in our home.

Children’s understanding and potential may be defined largely by the age group they belong to, yet a broad set of do’s and don’ts may be all we need to help them make competitive thinkers and well rounded humans as a whole. Here is a “crash course list” of some of those:

The starting step would be first and foremost to examine our own “thinking about thinking”. Deep thinkers may not always be best scholars or the most intelligent kids. The reason behind this may be that while an intelligent person may be able to give quick (read lazy) answers, on the other hand, a daydreamer may often provide deep insights.

Start early. Even as a 5 year old, an early start may give the child a much needed head start as well as an ingrained sense of really thinking about things.

Give them something to think about. Taking the kids to excursions, museums, sharing TV time with them and then discussing about what they have just experienced, challenge their imaginations. Like it may be thought provoking for them if after a tour of the museum you ask them “What might the earth be like if the dinosaurs come back?”

Involve the whole family. Dinner time conversation or small harmless talks at gatherings can go a long way in developing the thinking habit as it will develop the tendency to give and take ideas and sense of sharing thoughts and experiences.

Find patterns. Teach the child to relate new information with the old one. Once the child recognizes patterns of sorts, the decision making and understanding of choices are easier done. What factors determine the purchase or rejection of a certain toy today, may go further and help them decide whether or not a certain bicycle is worth buying or not.

Say what you mean. Be articulate so as to give clear ideas and signals to the child. Asking the child to daily relate certain story or to describe a picture in detail and then discuss the same with them. This will teach them to understand and relate their own experiences in clear words.

Urge them to wear the other person’s shoes, make them understand how others think and feel. Often putting oneself in the other person’s place can drastically alter our perception of the situation.

Teach them to take responsibility for their own expenses in an interesting way. Each time we pass a toy shop, how often have we heard “I want this …” or “buy me this”? This situation presents us with an opportunity to teach another important lesson about personal finance and savings and to make the kids understand that people often save their money for things they want to buy.
This may be done by introducing the concept of piggy bank or earnings through household chores.

Thinking is not a substitute to studies. Thinking and education can not be substitutes for each other, both are necessary for intellectual development.

Thinking takes practice so keep at it! Young people do not develop the habit of logical thought over the night. But if you keep at it then like any well learned skill, it is worth it.

The key here is to follow our hearts. Keep the malleability of their little minds in consideration while trying to instill any values in the children, and what is most important … treat them and their decisions with respect. That way they will also come to respect your decisions and aspirations for them.

It is a very simple process to add hyperlinks to whatever document you are posting on the web.  The first step is finding the HTML code for the word that you want to make into a link.  This is the computer code that is used to display a web page.  For example, if you wanted to make a word on your MySpace profile a link, you would go into profile –> edit profile. In this section you will see a box filled with code that might look something like this…

<p align=”center”><a href=”http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRvd3d3LnBpbXAtbXHJvZmlsZSb20v”><img border=”0″ src=”http://content.pimp-my-profile.com/support2.gif” alt=”MySpace Layouts” title=”Myspace Layouts” style=”position:absolute;top:0px;left:0px;”

Your code might not look exactly like this, but this is what you are looking for.  Scroll through this until you find the word you want to make into a link.  Or use other words as a clue to where you want to add the word.  When you find the location that you want to place your hyperlink, use the following template…

word = the word that you want to make into a link

xyz.com = the location that you want the link to point to

then add the code for the link as follows…

<a href=”xyz.com”>word</a>

So if I were going to add a link for this site somewhere it would look like this…

<a href=”http://wordsandlinks.com”>words and links</a>