Our Readers Write

Positive reinforcement is a better training option for pets
Editor:
I’d like to add some information to an article regarding a veterinarian’s answer to a reader’s question regarding her pet’s coprophagia. While Dr. Dan gives some good advice regarding prevention of the behavior by picking up the stool, I believe that it would be prudent to supply your readers with an alternative method to modify a pet’s unwanted behavior.
Dr. Dan’s recommendations of leash-tugging, can-shaking, and citronella collars are negative training tactics that many of us find unfavorable. This “training” advice is really more about punishing a behavior rather than focusing on actual training or teaching. A better technique would be to teach your dog commands like “leave it” or something that you want him to do, and reward him positively with something more rewarding than stool.
Practice and patience will pay off, and the bond you form with your dog while teaching him more positive behaviors will provide you both with a rewarding relationship built on trust rather than fear. This comes from first-hand experience since I, too, have a dog that has the same dirty little habit, and this type of positive reinforcement training has helped us both overcome his behavior.
Dawn Munger
Littleton

DeGette is all about what?
Editor:
To read the Page 1 story in the Columbine Courier on Jan. 25, you would think that Congresswoman Diana DeGette has long been focused on jobs and economic issues. And her website has been nicely remade to say “jobs, jobs, jobs,” just like she means it.
But anyone who regularly receives Diana’s e-mail updates knows the real story. She’s all about support for abortion, abortion, abortion. Then she sends out the occasional e-mail about stem-cell research, or support for a wilderness bill. These are her signature issues, and she cares about little else. In the past two years I can’t remember a single e-mail update that even mentioned the debt or deficit, or jobs, for that matter.
When she does focus on economic issues, it’s to spend money. Our money. Or, I should say, our children’s money. She voted for every stimulus package, large or small, for cap-and-trade, and for Obamacare. She has voted against every sensible piece of legislation designed to help create private-sector jobs, reduce regulation, and curb out-of-control government spending that has come before the House in the past year. And, in between, she found time to travel to Copenhagen to spend our money on that important global-warming conference.
Don’t be fooled, South Jeffco residents. Check her record and her old speeches online before you fall for the new image of Congresswoman DeGette with a yellow hardhat.
Here are a couple of links to help you to get to know the real Congresswoman DeGette: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JdkqPHwufw; http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400101&tab=votes.
Peter D. Boddie
Littleton