More Than Pets

We haven't posted much this year about classes or private clients' stories - it has taken 10 years of fighting with myself to realise that social media isn't my strong point 🫣 We are currently in the 2nd last week of group classes and I wanted to present some of the skills we have been working on in a different picture to the dogs and handlers. Here you can see the dogs practising stays in sit and down with another class member weaving around them and practising loose lead walking past different distractions and everyone working on maintaining their dogs focus on them. All of these dogs are under a year old and have made wonderful progress in the last 8 weeks. Our next group class will start after the school holidays so if you would like more info please get in contact.

Due to the rain and flooding of our driveway, we returned to work on Friday. And what better way than a trip to Magnetic Island to visit Rhoda and Cherie.... The trip over was less than exceptional, and as someone prone to sea sickness in my later years, this trip left me unsteady on my feet and nauseous for just about the whole day. But it was worth it as Rhoda has been cleared by her supervising company to do her PAT 😁🎉 Cherie contacted me before they even had Rhoda to sort out what to do and where to start so Rhoda could become an assisstant dog and has done so much work over the 20 months to get to this point 😊 Looking forward to completing their test in the next month or so.

What does your loose lead walking look like? Key words here are loose lead walking. This is a surprisingly controversial topic, and one my opinion has changed on over the years. My background is competition obedience, I was training to compete before I became a dog trainer, and it very much influenced the first couple years of my work with clients. I wanted quick responses, focused shoulder to leg heeling and all the pretty things we see. And I do still want that in my competition dogs. However, my clients just wanted to walk their dogs and enjoy the walk so after expanding my knowledge and going down the rabbit hole on leash walking with many different trainers and courses I have adjusted my view and techniques. This young dog is Mishka. Here, we are practising figure 8s to work on tighter heeling for close situations or times you want more control, but before this we watched the world calmly, sniffed the seagull poo and she walked around us on her loose leash- not snaking, pulling or being rude to other walkers. Was a thoroughly enjoyable experience for everyone.

Bandit has had a couple of bad interactions with one dog in particular at the dog park. But he started to generalise his lunging and barking to all dogs when out walking. We have done a few sessions counter conditioning and teaching alternative behaviours when he is uncomfortable, and at the end of his session before this one, we did do some meet n greets between Bandit and Nana Jess. He loved her, but everyone loves Jess (at the end of this session, a lady stopped and offered to take Jess home, lol) So, in this video, he is rather comfortable with Jess being right there. We asked him to do some known and some not as well-known behaviours like in the video below while working on his endurance and tolerance around dogs. We don't jump straight into these sorts of exercises straight away. My aim in training is not to overload a dog and push them over threshold but to build confidence and knowledge and let dogs like Bandit dictate how quickly we progress and when he has had enough. His owner is doing fantastic work with him.

We have been very quiet this year so far on social media for many reasons. Study and training my own dogs being big ones but also the toxic bullying and bad mouthing of other trainers that is happening on social media. I will not be part of it and if asked for my opinions on other trainers even in private or during consults, whether they be local or interstate or international, I won't be part of that disgusting, demeaning and ego building culture. But behind the scenes, we have been busy with clients and revamping our Beginners Course, which I hope to have up and running shortly. Below is a video of one of my better runs with Lucifer in jumpers last month. I am still struggling with getting my cues out in time and not getting in lucifers way but breathing, running and giving cues is not one of my strong points lol but we are having a ton of fun and providing many laughs and entertainment for the judges and other competitors I am sure 😆

First night in Trick n Treat and what are we doing besides having fun? Learning about free shaping and how to give our dog information on what we want through the timing of the marker- in this case a clicker- and reward- reward placement will come in time. By using each other to free shape a random behaviour or sequence. In this video Robyn is working with Liz- who has many many years of training and shaping under her belt- and teaching Robyn about being clearer in what she wants, breaking the exercise down into easier more manageable steps plus introducing the idea of having a clear idea of what you want your end goal to be. And lots of laughing and lollies.

Maggie Island was showing us some of her inhabitants today. A spotted ray, with the oddest looking head- bat x platypus maybe???? I have seen a couple the last couple times heading over.

Rhoda is working towards her PAT to become a service/assisstance dog for her young owner. We have been working hard around distractions the last couple of weeks to help improve her focus. At 9 months old, she is still easily distracted, so we pulled out a few things to add besides people to tempt her. And this fluffy tug toy was very tempting. Rhoda has improved so much and already fulfills the emotional support needed from her.

A beautiful day to head to Maggie to do some training. I am so very lucky.

A lot has been happening with the puppies since my last video. They are 6.5 weeks now and had their first puppy party last weekend. They run flat out now with minimal falling over and toileting is going really well. It was 8 degrees this morning and they still wanted to go outside to toilet and play. Yesterday we introduced the ball pit now that our smallest puppy can get in and out of clam shell pool. Enjoy the video

This week we have been working on the puppies startle-recovery reflex. What we want to see when working with the puppies is a stopping of activity or a slight jerking motion. Then they should carry on with what they were doing. You will see this in the video. Having our puppies develop this reflex before they understand what fear is helps them work through novelty/unfamiliar/scary situations . While we try to expose our puppies to as much as we can that they might come across once they leave us it is impossible for us to expose them to everything the world can throw at them. While this is week 1 of their socialisation period we only have a very brief window of opportunity from when they can hear to when they develop a fear response so having our puppies work through startle-recovery will help them to work through the rest of their life. We have also had going construction and fireworks sounds, the blender, vacuum, fan and dremel.

In the space of a couple days the puppies have gone from slugs to getting up on their legs and lurching around the box. The first puppies eyes have started to open which you will see, so we have stopped ENS and the puppies move into the transitional period. They are interacting more with the world around them through mouthing- each other, them selves, the pee pads and bedding and us. As you can see they have started weeing by themselves now so we have set a nest area up for them but they will still sleep where ever and toilet wherever. Over the coming weeks they will get better at toileting off their bedding and this will lead into their toilet training. Their ears are not open yet but once we get that first startle we will move into week 1 of their socilaisation period which will go through until they are 16 weeks and we will also begin their startle-recovery response. This week when they are steady on their feet and eyes are all the way open we introduce items into the whelping for them to interact and play with. We raise our puppies with Puppy Culture Protocols.

We had fun on Tuesday night with the Maintenance Class working towards off lead exercises. We introduced a few fun games and the teams had a great time. Below is Leonie and Lys. Hopefully in the comments i can add more videos from the night.