Woofton Dog Training

08/02/2024

It’s here! It’s back! Get in while you can!

The Frustration Masterclass is /hands down/ the best money I have ever spent on educational content. Not only is it a steal of a deal with a tremendous amount of content for a low cost, but that content will absolutely blow your mind.

If you are a person that considers themselves a dog trainer in any way, shape, or form, you need this course!

💥 The Lighten Up Frustration Masterclass is now O-P-E-N ! 💥

How I wish I'd known all this sooner.

Ten years ago, I started learning about dogs.

I spent £££££ on courses to help the dogs at the shelter where I was a trustee and a dog walker. I had a bunch of dogs in foster, and a director who kept putting me on the phone to people with dog problems. I was basically running around with my hair on fire, trying to put out other people's emergency fires too, all while being herded by collies & malinois, jumped on by big dogs and even hu**ed from time to time.

So what did I learn in those courses?

I learned all about fear and anxiety.

That wasn't such a steep learning curve, if I'm honest. A background in psychology helped a bunch with that.

And I learned a lot about aggression. Helpful, if you want to avoid getting bitten on the arse.

I learned about dog training. If I'm honest, this was the easy bit. You don't teach Shakespeare on Friday afternoon to teenagers for twenty years without having some serious skills.

And the people whose courses I bought, they all mentioned frustration. It's not like nobody was talking about it at all. I thought I had it covered.

The thing was, it was always mentioned and never really addressed. It was always an add-on, as if to say what you do for fear & anxiety will also work with frustration.

And nobody explained that frustration not only fuelled the worst cases of aggression or bites - or that a whole range of diverse and seemingly unconnected behaviours were driven by frustration. Or that shelters and agility rings alike are chock-a-block with frustrated dogs. Or why so many training situations added to frustration.

Or HOW these things were all connected.

I developed a bunch of intuitive and instinctive wisdom - skills on the floor, if you will.

What that meant was I worked out what was successful and what wasn't through trial and error, without really understanding why some stuff worked and some stuff didn't.

What I didn't have was a thorough, systematic understanding of so many things...

⭐ WHAT causes frustration

⭐ WHAT does it look like in dogs - beyond biting people on the arse or barking at them

⭐ WHAT kind of canine behaviours are fuelled or created by frustration

⭐ HOW so much of what we do worsens frustration, even if we mean well

⭐ WHY great dog trainers seem to instinctively channel frustration and HOW

⭐ WHAT frustration tolerance is and why we even need to bother teaching it

⭐ WHY so many of our 'high drive' dogs struggle with frustration in particular

⭐ HOW frustration develops

And, the most important, the overaching goal.... how you tackle it!

Solutions, please!

Those are some pretty big gaps in understanding to have.

Don't get me wrong... I kind of knew frustration. I'm not a gibbering fool. You don't spend 8 years in a shelter where most of your dogs are big old units without learning some skills on the ground, nor living with a bunch of adopted dogs of your own.

But when I look back now, I realise I barely knew it at all.

So, if you want to REALLY know frustration, if you want to be SURGICAL about it... if you want to see it, solve it, take it off the table for good... the Masterclass is NOW open!

💡You can book your place today. It opens on the first Monday of September and sales will stay open until the end of September. There are payment plans if you want them - nobody should have to get into debt to get learning. Plus, my intention was that it would be the best value ever. If it's important, it's important, right?

💡There are 6 modules covering EVERYTHING: ethology, neurobiology, behaviour, training, development, solutions. Those are divided into smaller sessions of between 20 minutes to 2hrs. There are video materials in each session, and a transcript. And subtitles. And quizzes. And summaries. And flashcards. And case studies. And references. Because we don't all learn the same, do we? It's taught how you learn so you don't quit. PS there's no tests. But if you want a test, I can sort that for you... I know some people LIKE tests and need a finish line to aim for! You do you. I'm here to help you learn. You're not here to have to adapt to how I teach.

💡You get lifetime access, because there's nothing worse than losing access when we know that the best way to remember stuff is to revisit it. And because you just remember that one thing you want to come back to some three years later, but you've lost access and it makes you grrr. Also, each year the masterclass runs, I give you the lowdown on how research has developed over the last year, so you get updates that add to your skills, rather than staying stuck in knowledge from thirty years ago.

💡 There are also 12 weekly LIVE sessions so you can get answers to the things you really want to know from a person who's made frustration her focus for the last four years (me!) and who simply couldn't let it rest.

💡 There's case studies, examples, video analysis - all the practical stuff to help you move theory into real-life practice with a bunch of dogs who need us to be at the top of our game. A frustrated dog is not the kind of dog you can mess around with, and so we need to be at our best so we don't make it worse - and also because they need it more than the ordinary dog on the street. They deserve us to be our best.

💡 It's your one-stop-shop. The course is unique. There's NOTHING like it out there. Let's face it - how could anything do in an hour, in three hours or in a day what's included in the Masterclass? PS If you want a short course on frustration, I have one of those as well. It's just four. For those who want the headline figures and aren't ready for the smorgasbord of frustration.

💡 It's designed to be a conversation, not a firehose of information. I'm not some distant instructor who created something and then disappears when you've got a question you want answering. So it's both professional and informal. You do you. If you like to just inhale content and can't be bothered with the social side, or you want to ping me the odd WhatsApp or FB message, you can absolutely do that. And if you like chewing things over with other human beings, you can do that too.

The Frustration Masterclass for dog trainers, behaviour bods and dog nerds is NOW open.

Send me a direct message if you want the link or stick "I NEED DEETS, Emma!" below.

07/31/2024

Scatter feeding is, and always will be, one of my top recommendations for dog owners looking to add a little something to their dog's daily routine. It is beginner-friendly and easily scalable in both space and difficulty-- what's not to love!?

These days my old boy Kodi has been enjoying a daily scatter in the grass while the Canadian weather allows. Scatter feeding encourages low-impact movement, allowing our senior dogs some physical exercise without overdoing it and risking injury. What is your favourite use of scatter feeding?

If your dog is energetic and over excited, scatter feed them. Use their meal if they have kibble and it will motivate them or some tiny bits of smelly food cut as small as possible then throw them all around your garden. It will use up their energy and make them unbelievably happy at the same time. Plus it will give you a little space too.

03/31/2024

I hope everyone had the chance to enjoy some fresh air and downtime this weekend ☀️

Happy Easter 🐇. He's not ready to go pro just yet, but he's a keen searcher Woofton Dog Training 🥚

03/23/2024

Coming up this Monday!
One of my favourite people is treating us to a “pay what you can” evening discussing empathic strain, secondary traumatic stress, and burnout (with all proceeds going to everybody’s favourite husky rescue!)
I hope to see you there!

Chasin' Tails Dog Care Center is hosting Marlene O'Neill Laberge in a Paw-some workshop! visit https://www.chasin-tails.ca/events to sign up! 100% of the proceeds go directly to us to help as many huskies as we can🐾💙

01/17/2024

REGULATION IS NOT A SYNONYM FOR IMPULSE CONTROL

I knew that writing a course on impulse control would bring ethical and philosophical thinking - as well it should. So many people don't like the notion of control. It feels deeply uncomfortable.

It can be tough to get our heads around the fact that sometimes our motivational systems have to change tack. Sure, you might want that tasty bush there Mr Zebra, but eating has to take second place when Miss Lion is bearing down on you with a hungry look in her eye.

Being able to temporarily put aside one desire for another involves inhibitory processes. Stop one. Do another.

It's also part and parcel of mammalian life. Living in a social group is a cost-benefit exercise from an evolutionary perspective. Social groups are good for us social mammals and they bring us many benefits. They also mean that we can't go around beating everyone else into a pulp just because they happened to chew their food with an open mouth or they got busy with our current flame. Being able to inhibit our behaviour is an important and necessary part of that.

Regulation is kind of a nicer word, isn't it? It doesn't come with the jackboots and khaki trousers we associate with words like control.

What we can't do, though, is assume these are synonyms for each other outside of general chat. Sure, in those terms, who cares? We regularly play fast and loose with words and their meanings. It's just chat. We're humans.

In psychological terms, regulation is a MUCH bigger field than impulse control, and inhibition has a much broader use than impulse control. It's important that we don't just switch to saying "self-regulation" as if this is the same as impulse control, just a prettier word.

Regulation involves lots more than simple control. It involves active processes, replacements, alternatives. It involves *doing* things as well as *not* doing things.

I think it's also important to truly understand what it means exactly. It's not just an excuse to rebrand processes because we don't like what someone called them, especially if we're just going to carry on doing the same thing.

For instance, if we're going to say 'I'm teaching self-regulation in my dog-training classes' simply because it invites less criticism from our friends who don't like the word 'control' or 'impulses', but we're simply going to teach the same things we were always teaching - especially those that are simply from obedience classes - then we've missed the point. Regulation is not an opportunity to sanitise our language because we don't like the other words.

It's also a bit disingenuous. We have to be able to justify what we're doing.

I, for instance, have no qualms justifying why I teach some things like 'leave it!' or teaching dogs not to pull on the lead and occasionally to walk close to me in a heel position.

I have no problem doing this. It helps the clients I work with and it helps the dogs they live with.

One of them before Christmas came with a dog who'd been operated on six times to have textiles and stones removed from his stomach. Teaching a 'drop' and a 'leave it!' as well as some proper impulse control stuff is important for that dog.

I'm not a silly 'slippery sloper' who's going to say that he'll die if we don't teach him this in the same way that some trainers who justify the use of abusive tools say that it's their way or the animal dies, as if there is no alternative.

At the same time, there are dogs who do need to be taught to leave socks alone and to work through a programme using positive reinforcement & differential reinforcement for replacement behaviours, because following your impulses isn't conducive to a long life or a healthy life. I'm one of those people who are on a journey to do that in the least harmful way I can with the dogs I know.

For instance, I used to teach drop with toys going dead. I don't anymore. This can be really frustrating for the type of dogs I work with. I then used trade, but this never worked with guardy dogs who knew that you literally had nothing to crown what they already had. Now I mostly use Chirag Patel's method of building strong habits to recall and empty your mouth without even thinking about it. Added to a 'leave it' when it's too tough for the dog to make a decision that won't predictably end at the vet is quite useful. It's a journey.

Teaching dogs impulse control in itself is useful. I do it all the time and I'm happy to justify why I do so. It's important. It's part of being a social animal and part of an ecosystem.

I wish there were words for it that weren't quite so ugly.

However, I'm not about to start calling it self-regulation or regulation, when that's something much bigger and much broader. Impulse control is only one facet of self-regulation. I *also* teach regulatory skills and competencies. That's even more important than impulse control.

But I'm not going to pay lip service to regulation and misuse it simply because I'm afraid of the conversations I might have to have with people about words like 'control' or 'impulses'.

We need both to be healthy and to grow emotionally and psychologically.

But they're not synonyms. Not exactly. Not in terms of what they entail.

And I think clarity and precision is important. I especially think it's important if I was planning on doing the same old stuff and just relabelling it because people are asking questions about our relationships with dogs and how we support them in living in our world.

These are tough conversations we have with ourselves, but they're important ones.

After all, thinking about these things and thinking about what's right for our dogs is exactly what "ethical" means. When we make choices based on that thinking, we can't go far wrong.

Keeping ourselves on a learning journey and questioning everything is just about the best way to do that, if you ask me.

12/22/2023

If happiness isn’t a collection of cards signed with dog names, I don’t know what it could be.

Happy holidays, friends 🐾