Rewarding the dog the Woodhouse way.
Our ownership of dogs is very important to us but the training and rewarding of dogs is a bit of a “bone” of contention. It’s quite one thing to own a dog but keeping it under control around people and the house can be a bit of a testing time. One of the pioneers of training a dog in a very public way was the infinitely charming and perfect for television Mrs Mary Woodhouse. In the 1970’s and 80’s if you had an issue with a dog “The Woodhouse Way” was the bible of how to train it. Mary’s style was won born out of having fame sort of thrust upon her when she appeared on the celebrated TV show “What’s my Line”. In the show the celebrity panel has to guess what it is the person does with 20 questions that can only be answered yes or no. The panel failed to guess what Mary did for a living but her general jolly demeanour and natural effervescent personality soon made her a fan and caught the eye of the television executives.
Although she appeared to be English through and through Mary Woodhouse nee Blackburn was in fact Irish, being born near Dublin. A move to Brighton and then Oxford on the event of the death of her father shaped the young Miss Blackburn but the inherent feistiness was soon in evidence when she became the only female student at the highly respected Harper Adams Agricultural College, which must have been interesting for her.
When she was unleased upon the TV world Barbara soon became a figure to admire and poke a bit of good natured fun at. She took this all in her stride. Mary’s central ethos was that there were no bad dogs only poor owners that could not control them. She believed in being firm and that voice tone was key. The cry of “Walkies” to let the dog know it was exercise time and the firm but far “heel”, getting the dog to walk alongside you, plus the famous command of “sit!” when you want the dog to sit down soon stuck in the national conscious. Her TV show Training Dogs the Woodhouse way was a huge success making her a household name. If you have a good dog that you’d like to reward then Healthy Dog Treats at https://theinnocentpet.co.uk/collections/healthy-dog-treats is a great place to have a look for some proper purchases for your pooch.
