Today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants will be presented in Cantonese, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

I want to remind people who really have the intention to have a dog companion, apart from loving care, you need perseverance and have to make a lifelong commitment to take care of the dog.

Gracious viewers, welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today’s show features Dogartists, a famous non-profit organization in Hong Kong which offers courses to people facing challenges in training their canine companions. Dogartists, founded in 2007, uses compassionate teaching methods to impart skills and teach appropriate behavior to our beloved dog friends.

Dogs are very intelligent; so are other animals. But dogs are great companions because of their submissiveness.

In January 2011, Jacky Ching, the founder and chief dog trainer at Dogartists, established The Hong Kong Academy for Professional Dog Trainers.

The Academy offers dog trainer diploma courses that involve intensive study of canine behavior and emotion. Currently there are six qualified professional dogs trainers who have graduated from the school. They work together with Jacky to do canine training work at stray dog shelters, charity organizations and pet hospitals as well as give private lessons. The institution seeks to inform the community that all dogs are capable of being trained as canines are very clever, friendly, loyal in nature, and full of love and joy.

Actually the so-called training is like everyday life (to them). Therefore, I don’t think of “sit” or “down” as actions of obedience; they aren’t. Therefore, oftentimes our dogs are so happy to listen to what you say to them.

The Academy organizes dog shows and encourages caregivers in the community to enter their canine companions in these obstacle and obedience competitions.

What is the purpose of your dog shows?

We want to deliver a message to the public that every kind of dog can be trained, including mongrels, Rottweilers, or dogs that have been labeled as fierce. There is no untrainable dog; there are only untrainable caregivers.

My initial intention to do shows with a few of my students was to promote the concept that different species of dogs can become obedient, and we should not label certain dogs as good or not good. That was our original idea. We have been sending this message at our shows. Then later on, many charity organizations sought our help.

In Hong Kong, the majority of stray dogs are mixed breeds. In most cases the canines have been treated inhumanely, not received proper loving care, and have behavioral issues. Dogartists focuses on training mixed breed dogs and encourages the public to adopt them instead of only pure-bred canines. Dogartists works with the Mongrel Club, a Hong Kong-based organization formed by more than 100 caregivers of mixed breed dogs to change society’s attitudes toward these canines.

Now we help the Mongrel Club organize regular monthly training classes. We started to teach the caregivers of mongrels, and at the same time, explain to everyone that mongrels are good dogs. We have trained a few very obedient mongrels. One of them is called Aunt Xiang. She is regarded as the Liu Xiang (Chinese track star) of dogs because she was the top runner in several international obstacle races. Therefore, we mainly help the Mongrel Club train mongrel dogs, letting their inner beauty shine, which is the major goal of our training program.

Rebecca Ngan, a Mongrel Club staff member, trained with Jacky Ching for more than a year and is one of his most outstanding students. She now offers free-of-charge canine training seminars to schools and other community institutions as well as promotes better treatment and adoption of mixed breed dogs.

I just mentioned that I met my teacher three or four years ago. I got to know him when I was attracted to Dogartists’ amazing stage shows. So I knew he was a dog trainer. After following my teacher, I felt that he really loves dogs very much and he is very fair and never judges a dog by their breed in determining whether or not to teach him/her.

Frankly speaking, it is not easy to find a dog trainer who is willing to teach mongrels so much. I think he not only has an effective method, but has put a lot of thought into it. One of a dog trainer’s missions is to influence the dog caregivers of a community that dogs need to be trained and can become very obedient.

Wong Ha-wai is a superstar dog in Hong Kong, as she has won many canine competitions and is very obedient to her caregiver Jacky Ching. Years ago he and Wong Ha-wai were featured on Japan’s NHK TV.

I adopted my dog when she was around four months old. Her name is Wong Ha-wai. Now she is six and a half years old. Since she was a stray dog before, her body had many problems that took about three months for her to recover from treatment. After that, we started fun obedience training. Later she took every command as a kind of game. From then on, she would not resist anything we taught her, because she thought they were games; that’s it.

She has been trained for a long time. In fact, formal training takes only six months. Now she has acquired a lot of skills. For example, she can do obstacle and obedience tasks, as well as tricks like acting as a goalkeeper and shooting a basketball, etc. I usually teach them skills useful for interacting with humans such as dumping trash and turning on the light.

When she was still a puppy, Wong Ha-wai already started taking part in competitions. She would compete in any tournaments such as the obstacle race or talent competition, and she was always the favorite. She was either the champion or the first runner-up for each event. She used to win more than 40 championships in a year. She started competing when she was 19 months old. She participated in competitions for14 months, and won more than 50 prizes and was the first place more than 40 times.

My doggie did not understand what a tournament is. She just thought that it was a family game.

I truly admired the relationship between my teacher and Wong Ha-wai. The doggie was very obedient. So I admired him very much.

Dogartists team member Candy has a canine companion named Bingo who was trained with the help of Jacky Ching.

I agree very much that dogs have high intelligence. It is because they can sense if I am in a blue mood that day from my subtle facial expressions. Then he (Bingo) will sit quietly and wait for my commands. Therefore, I think he understands people very well; we understand each other very well. From my facial expression or body language, he would know whether I want to play with him or do my own things. Then he would stay next to me and not bother me. From his body language, for example, looking at me from time to time while walking, I know that he wants to pee.

It is very easy to know as we are living together every day.

Now let’s meet Yan Tin-yan Wu who has also learned dog training from Jacky Ching.

As Jacky’s student, could you talk more about training?

Jacky is the chief trainer of Dogartists. He is in charge of everything. Once by chance or affinity, I started learning dog training from him. I like the way he trains the dogs. He makes them very happy and willing to perform the tasks, instead of forcing or frightening them.

As part of their social system, wild dogs have what is called a “pack leader” who makes the decisions for the group and is responsible for the pack’s safety. Domesticated dogs also have pack leaders. Mr. Ching now explains the need of the caregiver to act as the pack leader for training purposes.

A dog follows the leader of a pack. Therefore, as long as you become his leader or master, he will be very obedient. First, you have to become his leader. Second, you have to let him know that you are a protective leader, making him feel protected and at ease everywhere. Then he will not be scared to see any people or dogs. Then, we can start to do the fun game-orientated training.

The highest level of dog training is absolute obedience. Once a dog has reached this level of absolute obedience, he will protect you regardless. It is because he would protect his pack. So we should develop the pack concept, that’s it. Dogs perceive us as their pack leaders.

How do dogs communicate with us? Why is swimming good for canines? To discover the answers to these questions and learn more about Dogartists, please join us again tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants as we present the concluding episode of our program on the wonderful work of this group.

For more details on Jacky Ching and Dogartists, please visit:

Thank you for your gentle presence today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, right after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. May Heaven’s Grace and Love always accompany us and our precious animal friends.