Hello Dog Owners!
It’s over! No sooner had it started but it’s all finished in the blink of an eye.
One minute I’m walking around in my t-shirt feeling all hot and bothered and then next I’m impersonating a drowned rat, freezing cold and soaked to the skin.
What kind of summer is this? Surely last winter was dryer than this!
It’s been a very unsettled summer this year and it’s getting around the time to look at getting some indoor classes going over the autumn and winter months. I’ve had it with the summer this year – what an absolute washout!
I’ve been taking the time to learn loads though and seeing as I am working with a whole load of dogs that have been given up to shelters before being re-homed, I thought that it would be beneficial to update some of my training skills and techniques specifically catering for rescue dogs.
After all, my little guy, Joey, is a rescue pup too.
Dogs that have spent any time in shelters change rapidly and not for the better. They smell and experience the stress and fear of the other dogs, have had their trust completely broken by being abandoned by their original owners and they quickly revert to survival mode, doing what it takes for them to feel safe.
Whether that be to become a submissive and fearful creature bowing down to all and sundry in order to survive, or transforming into a perceptively angry and noisy individual intent on making everybody more scared than they are, so that people and dogs alike keep their distance and leave them well alone.
Unfortunately this last choice can and often does, lead to dogs being destroyed, rather than being re-trained (if possible) and re-homed.
Whatever these poor unfortunate animals decide to do, they’re simply doing their best to survive, probably no longer trust humans and wonder what the hell is happening. They are labelled as aggressive or reactive and sometimes haven’t got a hope in hell in finding a nice loving home.
I have witnessed the dogs that I am working with change … rapidly.
One particular dog, a Belgian Shepherd, was continually nipping at me and mouthing repeatedly so hard that bruises, teeth marks and scratches (and sometimes blood) came home with me after the first few sessions. I couldn’t get anywhere near her to put the slip leash loosely around her neck as she would run for cover.
In actual fact, her nipping and biting at strangers that came to the house, was the reason I was asked to help!
She still has a fair few smaller things to iron out on top of continuing to build her confidence, but after just a few sessions she became more interested in me and the content of our sessions together. She reluctantly let me put on the leash and trusted me enough to follow me, although tugging and pulling all over the place.
Oh how a few short months can change everything! Now, she’s my little girlfriend and I love her to bits.
I can do almost anything with her now and she itches to go out on our training sessions, waiting for me to get in the gate where she follows me up the garden. When she sees the loop of the slip leash, she literally pushes her head in so fast it’s unreal.
She walks by my side faultlessly and sits each and every time we come to a halt – without being asked to most of the time. I can easily put my hand in her mouth if I need to in order to check teeth or retrieve a toy or something else she may have picked up and I kiss her on the nose when we have a hug!
She didn’t know me from Adam (whomever he his!), but she has made the choice to trust and has been amply rewarded … and so have I.
Her confidence level is increasing each and every time we work together and she doesn’t find people half as scary as she did before.
The nipping? Stopped.
If she can create this massive change…..
TODAY IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS YOU’LL LEARN
✔️ Engagement: The Essential Attention Skill
✔️ How to get your dog to pull on leash
✔️ Being an advocate for your dog
FANCY COMING TO CLASS?
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, things have taken a bit of a tangent with DOT Academy this year, due to my little pup unexpectedly turning up on my doorstep at the beginning of the year needing help and a home. Being just me, he took a lot of my attention for a fair few months which meant that I couldn’t leave him alone to hold classes.
But now, I can!
So, this coming Autumn I am looking to start holding classes again, if there is enough interest to build up the appropriate numbers for each class.
The main classes that I am planning to hold are:
CATCH-UP CLASS specifically designed for adolescent dogs from 6 to 18 months, that haven’t had any, or only minimal, puppy training and are slightly behind in their basic obedience, manners and socialisation.
JUST WALK loose leash walking basics. Make constant pulling a thing of the past on walks, give your arm a rest and come to enjoy each walk with your dog.
ROCK-SOLID RECALL giving your dog the gift of freedom to explore the world knowing they’ll come running back to you each and every time you ask them to.
FUNCTIONAL OBEDIENCE – the core of DOT Academy – teaching the skills both you and your dog need to be able to take each other virtually anywhere.
ADULT OBEDIENCE – Sit, Down, Stand, Recall, Heel-Work, Impulse Control & Manners as starters and upwards from there!
Classes will only start when there are enough people enrolled in each class. And once we have enough people for a class – we’ll open it up!
Who knows, there may be an offer or two to be had when we open the doors!
Why not take a look at some of the classes we have to offer and add yourself to the list?
A list of classes can be found on the DOT Academy website.
ENGAGEMENT: THE ESSENTIAL ATTENTION SKILL
Are you and your dog engaged?
No, not as in the marital sense!
Engaged as in connected with each other, where their attention is on you and they are aware of where you are and what you’re doing.
Are they?
If your dog ignores you when you ask them to sit, come, leave it, go to bed, or walking along the street, then it could be that you have an issue with gaining your dogs attention.
Being able to get your dogs attention easily and when you ask for it, is an essential skill for your companion dog to learn and keeps the focus firmly on you, rather than everything else that’s happening around them.
Although establishing Engagement is one of the most basic and first skills to teach your dog, it’s surprising how many dog owners haven’t given it a lot of, if any, thought.
Only when their dog ignores them, fails to come back when called, lunges towards people and other dogs and becomes a little uncontrollable in the home, do they start to question the behaviour they are witnessing with their beloved canine companion.
Before we start delving too deep into the depths of obedience training, it is essential to build engagement as a core skill for your dog to always have.
So, how do we do it?
Practising Engagement
For me there are 3 primary ways to establish engagement and attention from your dog, these are:
1. Conditioning of focused attention
2. Movement
3. Focused Play
Let’s take a look at each of these in turn…
1. Conditioning of Focused Attention
As the title suggests, we are actually conditioning behaviour in the dog. This means that it will eventually become an unconscious response that the dog will do as a matter of course.
First-off, we need to choose a “marker” word or sound. Alternatively you could use a clicker. Personally, I’m not a great fan of clickers and prefer to engage my voice with the dog.
The marker word I use is “Yes!”, said sharply with excitement and in an upbeat tone to stimulate the dogs drive to engage.
Other words such as “good” can also be used. Whatever you choose for a marker word, stick with it.
Secondly, we need treats.
Standard kibble used prior to feeding may be good enough for some dogs, otherwise use something that the dog finds high value such as dried liver, string cheese or hot-dog sausage! You only need a small amount about the size of your little finger-nail. If you use too much the dog will get full too quickly.
NOTE: Don’t go overboard on treats as they may not be too good for your dog and ensure that you cater for the extra food when feeding – we don’t want an obese dog now, do we?
Now all you need to do is hold some treats in your closed hands underneath your chin, so that when the dog looks at your hands where the treats are, they are looking upwards towards your face.
Give them a treat so that they know you have some and then wait….. Don’t say a word.
As soon as your dog glances at your face, immediately say “Yes!” (or whatever word you have chosen for your marker), wait half a second and then give your dog a treat, then wait until they look at you again and repeat the marker word and give them the treat.
There are 2 things to be aware of here:-
– Firstly, your dog may take a while to look at you if they are distracted, that’s fine, just wait it out. If a lot of time passes such as a minute or two, you can always make small sounds of encouragement or say their name to get their attention. Really though, you want the dog to make the decision to look at you, so don’t encourage too much.
– Second-off, it is imperative that you wait half a second or slightly longer after you have said your marker word and before moving to give the treat, otherwise your dog won’t get conditioned to the marker word. If you wait longer than one second, your dog probably won’t get conditioned either, so between half and one second is perfect to ensure adequate conditioning.
Once your dog is successfully conditioned, you should notice some change in behaviour immediately when you say your marker word, such as a lick of the lips, a shuffle of their feet or a wag of their tail.
Your dog will be different, but be on the lookout for a response as soon as you say your marker word and before you give them the treat.
Congratulations! Your dog is now conditioned.
We shall go over some advanced strategies on this exercise in a later newsletter and talk about how to add a command to the exercise, so that you can ask your dog to look at you whenever you want.
In the meantime, enjoy this exercise and keep it to around 5 minutes once or twice a day.
2. Movement
Have you ever called your dog and it’s stood there staring at you as if to say, “Yeah, What?”, or even better just totally ignored you altogether?
What about walking? Does your dog just plod along looking totally unmotivated or is it just insistent on sniffing everywhere and paying attention to everything apart from you?
If this sounds like a familiar story, then maybe a bit of movement could help.
Movement is energy and energy can be contagious!
Instead of just standing in place shouting “Come!” or “Here!” in a gruff frustrated tone, why not try running away from your dog as you call it, in a playful upbeat tone?
When you’re out for a walk, what do you think would happen if you started acting weirdly upbeat, kept changing walking pace and direction, or even started dancing and skipping along the road?
At home when you’re training, why not try moving a bit more dynamically and purposefully and see if your dog pays more attention to you.
Notice how your energy can change their energy and thus their behaviour.
Movement is a wonderful thing to behold once you get it right. Each dog is different and responds differently to the different types of energy you can bring into the relationship.
If your dog is high energy all the time, then you may need to calm your energy down using slower movements and calmer vocal tones, but if on the other hand you have a sluggish and bored-looking dog, then exhibiting bursts of sudden high energy may be just enough to spark some interest, even for a little while.
Have some fun and see if you can find out how to move in order to get your dogs attention.
3. Focused Play
We should take some time to play with our dogs each and every day in my opinion. Just 5-10 minutes of structured focused play, can bring a wealth of value to your dog and work wonders for their training.
Here’s an example…
One of the German Shepherd dogs that I am currently training – “Bear” – has super-high energy and this can be just what you need for certain types of training. Although it may not be too useful for teaching him to settle-down, it’s working wonders in our training sessions and the rate of improvement in training in a quick 10-15 minute training session is fabulous!
So, we have a ball he absolutely loves playing with, on a rope. We train off-leash in a secure field.
Here are the rules of the game:
1. Bear can have the ball that he wants, but he can’t have it unless he does something for me first.
2. As soon as he brings it to me, the game begins and we play tug. He wins, I let go and beacon him back in and the game continues.
3. If he doesn’t bring it back to me, then the game ends, his leash goes on and he goes home. This is non-negotiable!
4. When I ask him to give me the ball (“Out”), I won’t throw or let him have it unless he spits it out.
5. As soon as he lets go, I mark “Yes!” and immediately throw the ball without delay.
6. If I ask him to “Sit”, he won’t get the ball until he sits, then he can have it.
7. If I ask him to “Come” and he doesn’t come, he won’t get the ball and he’ll go home.
8. If he comes when I ask, he’ll get immediate access to the ball, at which stage I call him back for a game of tug.
Quite quickly he learns that to gain access to the ball and all the fun that surrounds it, all he needs to do is what I ask of him and the quicker he does it, the sooner he can play!
This lends itself to a quick response in obedience commands!
Here’s another example…
I bumped into a friend on the field the other evening. He had his super-high energy black Labrador with him, called Jack.
Jack has never been trained to any extent and he came barging in on mine and little Joey’s late afternoon training session on the field, unable to be recalled by his owner.
Jack wanted Joey’s ball-on-a-rope that we were training with.
“No problem Jack! You can have the ball, if you do something for me……’Sit!’”
It took a while and the introduction of a bit of spatial pressure, linked with a hand signal, to encourage Jack to reluctantly sit. But sit he did and as soon as his butt hit the ground ….. “Yes!” and the ball was thrown.
As soon as Jack got the ball, I shouted for him to “Come!” and ran away from him with matching high-energy. Did he come to me? Yes he did and as soon as he got to me I grabbed the rope of the ball and we had a brief game of tug until I asked him to “Sit” and once again used spatial pressure to get him to do so.
This is where the hard work came in. Now I had to teach Jack what “Out!” meant as his jaws clung to the ball like a tightly wound up vice.
What Jack didn’t know is that I had another ball that was exactly the same as the one he had and as soon as I said “Out!”, I presented him with the other ball. He quickly let go of the ball he had and without delay I marked “Yes!” and the second ball was thrown, he brought it back and the game began again.
Rinse and repeat.
Jacks owner was amazed at how quick Jack was learning. Within 5 minutes and before his very eyes, Jack was sitting on command, letting go of the ball on command, playing tug and recalling on command.
Why was he doing this so quickly? Simply because….
He wanted to play!
More specifically, he highly valued the play that we were having with each other and he was prepared to work for it.
A lot of training can be done very quickly when play is involved and it cements engagement and focus on you.
HOW TO GET YOUR DOG TO PULL ON-LEASH
Yes, you indeed read right!
This is a slightly fun, tongue-in-cheek article about my observations in the reality of the world.
We are going to talk about how we can get our little – or large – furry friends to pull on-leash and the first thing we need to do is to get the right equipment.
Two vital bits are necessary:
1. An Appropriate Harness
Harnesses are designed to enable a dog to pull as hard as possible and pull as safely as possible. They are fastened directly to the dogs body, usually around it’s chest and shoulders, which is the strongest part of the dog. A harness fitted like this will ensure that the dog has maximum pulling power and doesn’t put pressure on sensitive areas such as the neck and throat.
Harnesses have been used by sledge-pulling dogs for decades and are also used in tracking activities where the dog can pull the handler along the path of a scent.
A properly fitted harness is both the safest and most efficient way to give the dog maximum pulling power.
2. An Extendi-Lead
This is a vital piece of equipment and one that’s extremely convenient for the handler, as there’s only one way to hold it and it comes complete with finger-tip lock control and an attachment for clip-on accessories such as a poo-bag holder and torch (both of these accessories are not crucial for our goal though).
In addition to this, the dog is able to easily follow a trail with the absolute minimum of interruption by the handler, meaning that the dog can fully concentrate on the activity at hand and be virtually unrestricted.
It is also vital for the dog to work from the full extent of the length of the leash (which a dog will always do) so that it gets maximum benefit and ensures minimal interruption by the handler.
An extendi-lead is a important piece of equipment and is a “no-brainer” that ensures absolute minimal control of your dog.
The Training
Once you have these essential pieces of equipment, then all you need to do is take your dog out for a walk along the street or in your local park while listening to music, interacting on social media or speaking with your bestest buddy on the phone.
Don’t pay any attention to your dog in the slightest.
After a very short period of time, you will have trained a dog that pulls brilliantly on-leash and you can pat yourself on the back at how easily this behaviour was to accomplish.
Whether you are actively training your dog to walk on a loose leash, or passively training your dog to pull, you have made the decision about the type of behaviour you are prepared to accept from your dog.
This is why you need to choose how you want your dog to be, wisely!
In upcoming newsletters we’ll look at some strategies we can use to train your dog to walk nicely on a loose leash, so stay tuned!
BEING AN ADVOCATE FOR YOUR DOG
Why do some people take for granted that they can approach your dog and pet it without permission?
Why do others think that it’s acceptable to reach inside their pocket, whip out a treat and give it to your dog without asking you first?
What happens if a child incites your dogs’ prey drive, your dog gets excited and jumps up knocking the child over and when the child hits the ground they badly hit their head and cause permanent injury?
What then?
Who’s fault was it really?
What happens to you?
What happens to poor, happy-go-lucky Fido?
I wrote a blog post a while ago on the website about Advocating For Your Dog in these types of instances and others. You may find it interesting and a worthwhile read.
In order that our furry buddies don’t learn how to create issues with certain types of people, so that they don’t get ill if somebody feeds them something that doesn’t agree with them or they are allergic to and to ensure that a child or older person or anybody for that matter, doesn’t get unnecessarily injured, we need to ensure that our dog has as many good, positive experiences as possible.
Don’t put your dog in a position that sets them up to fail, so that they have a bad experience that effects there experience of people, life and ultimately adversely affects their behaviour.
A question I ask myself and others alike is:
How would a parent feel if you went straight up to their child and started touching it all over without announcing your intention or asking permission to do so?
I’m sure some police involvement may be instigated, or something a bit more immediate that may involve a punch or two. But these same parents may think it’s acceptable to do just that with your dog.
Be your dogs’ best friend, its carer and its protector. If you have a sensitive and fearful dog, you will be surprised how quickly it will change for the better once you start advocating for it and stop repeatedly putting it in situations that it is fearful of.
With all that said…..
Until next time,
Happy Training!
If we change, others change too – be a leader
– Stuart