Dog loving youth goes into dog training business
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday November 2, 2018 14:29
A young Motswana man is determined to change the public’s mindset on these animals while protecting their rights through his newly established dog training business. In an interview, Laone Mathe said he started off his business in 2014 as a freelancer. Mathe decided to take the dog training business professionally last year after completing his studies.
“Dog training is important to dogs as it helps in protecting their rights, we educate our clients/society on how to handle and raise a dog. Dog training also helps curb the rate of criminal activities as we train protection dogs for individuals and company working dogs.
This business is quite different from those that we are used to and one may think most Batswana would not be that responsive to it, but the great news is that the response has been so good considering that our company mainly deals with ensuring security for families,” he confidently said. He added that people started training their dogs in order to protect themselves and their loved ones from criminals.
Mathe said all dogs needed proper training as they experienced different behavioural problems. He explained that a lot of people had tendencies of giving up on their dogs to an extent that, some sell, abandon or even leave them at the shelters because they do not understand that their dogs also have feelings and could also suffer from stress. He therefore emphasised that dog training was the only solution to that.
Mathe said all service dogs also need proper training like therapy, guard, detecting dogs to name a few. He added that dogs were very sensitive animals as compared to human beings saying that they had very strong senses. He said dogs also get stressed, have anxiety issues as well as depression, and that leads to behavioural problems.
“Different people prefer different dogs for different reasons, some are livestock keepers, some need therapy dogs or family protective dogs and some are trailing and tracking dogs that help you on your needs without forgetting its rights and needs,” he said.
Mathe said so far, he has trained a number of dogs for both individuals and companies for different fields. He added that his business Dog Training Botswana, trained dogs for different fields and services that they offer are dog food poison prevention, behavioural modification, obedience, bite work and protection, buying puppy advice, therapy training, tracking and detection and others.
He said his company also educates people on how to become dog pack leaders in order to avoid separation anxiety, dominancy, and other health issues.
He added that there was nothing like you cannot train any old dog new tricks saying that any dog could be trained regardless of breed, type and age.
Mathe did his dog handling, dog training and advanced instructor courses at the South African Dog Training institution.