Can a working dog really be a pet?
Short answer yet, BUT.
Let’s not forget that each breed is unique, they all require exercise and some form of genetic fulfillment that they are bred for. Every breed is different and all need to receive different levels of work. Energy, drives, physical and mental challenges are all things we need to consider when bringing a dog into our home with the hopes of having your ideal pet.
Every dog has the potential to be a wonderful pet, if we are ensuring that we are meeting and fulfilling all of their needs.
The higher the drive and work ability, the more structure and boundaries we need to build. These dogs thrive off of stable environments where they are being told how to exist and know that there are expectations of them and how they should be behaving.
Again the higher the drive and working ability, the more we need to spend time fulfilling their mental and physical needs. Majority of working breeds will not be satisfied with a daily walk or fetch in the park. This is where we need to ensure we are channelling their drives and ensuring the work we are doing is tailored to their breed.
Lastly these dogs often need to be taught how to turn off. Unlike lower drive dogs these furry friends do not come with an off switch, so we need to install one. It’s healthy and highly advised we teach them how to relax, not only to aid their transition from working to pet life, but it’s also needed for recovery and promoting calm behaviour.
A day with Kelc! He was eager to learn and extremely happy we hid inside from the cold weather. 🥶
Sport Tip Friday.
There is no such thing as “it’ll come” if your dog does not show that they understand the work immediately and begin to make progress it is not “going to come”
Clear Communication should be your #1 priority always and your training should reflect that. You cannot force a dog to learn by continuing to train in methods your dog does not understand. When using the right foundations and training techniques you should see your dog begin to understand a training method almost immediately and progress should be slow, consistent and steady from there on. Not seeing your dog understand within the first few minutes? Do not push the work, change it until they are clear of what you are trying to teach and ask of them.
“Product testers hard at work making sure your pups will love all the new stock!
Everyone has loved the 4” buffalo bones we have brought in so we thought we’d try out these 10” buffalo bones for the big pups. These long lasting chews are all natural pressed buffalo hide, the product testers have given them a rating of 1000000/10 so it’s safe to say your pup will love them too.
And what’s not to love about the price! Only $15.00 plus tax for these huge bones that will last your big dog for hours!”
How to create a reactive dog.
-Negative Exposure
Exposing your dog or new puppy to too many things all at once can be overwhelming, overstimulating and result in undesired emotions towards new experiences. Exposure is a slow and guided process that needs to be geared towards consistently setting your dog up for success and positive experiences.
-Trauma
All it takes is 1 fight, or 1 extremely frightening incident and improper handling to create life long anxiety and reactivity. It’s our job to advocate for our dog’s space and always have a recovery plan ready when scary incidents may happen.
-Enabling Bad Behaviour
A young puppy or friendly dog that wants to say hello to every doggy and human friend you come across is adorable until it is not. We all want a social dog, but improper socialization leads to leash reactivity and conflict between you and your dog when the “rules” aren’t black and white. It’s vital we are careful what behaviours we may be accidentally encouraging.
We love, love, love, leash manners…
but do you know what we love even more? Teaching it! 🐾
Possession
What is it? Do we encourage it and is it a desired behaviour in the sport world?
First off yes, possession is a desired trait in the sport world. Preferably a genetic trait, but is a behaviour that can be encouraged when the genetics are not extremely supportive.
So what is possession?
Possession is owning/claiming/controlling an item of value or something found highly desirable. You’ll find that dogs will possess their stuffies, balls, treats, blankets, food etc.
Is it encouraged? Yes! But we like to target our working canines possession to include their handlers. We want these dogs to possess these toys with us and feel safe to do so.
How do we encourage this? The use of possession games are an extremely fundamental activity and when done correctly will encourage and further develop confidence, independence and teamwork.
Starting possession games when our pups are small is important and as we always stress the importance of engagement we also want to stress the importance of possessing toys as a team especially when it comes to sport protection. Your pup should confidently possess on their own and be willing to possess with their partner as well.
These games can also come in handy for pet dogs that struggle with resource guarding, showing your dog that you are a safe space to share their highest value item with can help balance out undesired behaviours.
This is important and an often overlooked topic.
It’s common to believe that because your dog is trained in a sport and can heel fancy, bring you dumbbells, run blinds, run obstacles, respond quickly to commands, etc that these dogs are now officially trained in every aspect of being a good dog. Wrong, definitely wrong. We love that you love spending time with your dog and we love that you put time and effort into training, but let’s face it that fancy heel doesn’t mean relaxed loose leash in the stores, those speedy commands don’t eradicate reactivity and those fast blinds don’t = neutrality in public spaces. We cannot forget the other half of training and what it really means to be a good canine. We want to see dogs that understand the world’s expectations of “a good canine” and we want to see them happy to live and thrive in that structured life. We are providing our dogs with so many good things when we enter sports, but we can provide them so much more when we also add that work ethic to day to day life skills as well.
Also to note, no those leash skills will not effect your dogs working drive, and no public manners won’t effect protection sports. There is no negative cross when training pet and sport obedience, so yes we’re telling you that YOU can have the best of both worlds.
Good boy Jax and his matching buddy.
A few adventures with Kane and Clover 🤎
Help your helper!
Today is your gentle reminder to start incorporating foundations and skills into your play that will benefit your helper. As handlers, it is our job to ensure we set our dogs up for success and build the beginning foundations for protection work. One way you can begin doing this, is by practicing good targeting skills!
Straight line playing encourages the growth of good targeting and depth perception skills required to develop great bite work.
Did you know our dogs are too smart?
Yes! Too smart. These intelligent dogs of ours are always trying their best to please us and often they do this by “skipping to the next step” if they can anticipate what you are going to ask before you ask they truly feel as though they have done exactly what you wanted! Some examples of this are your leave it command. Have you ever noticed that your “leave it” command starts off strong and then somewhere throughout your dog just completely disregards this and shoots for the food you dropped? Are we after saying “leave it” then letting the dog go grab the food off the floor when they listened? Are you seeing where we’re going with this? Dog realizes food on floor means you can eat it, they’re going to skip the “leave it” step because what they really think is that you want them to eat the food.
Another example is your dogs sit,down,stand. We must beware when training that we are not asking the dog to do the same thing in the same sequence every single time. The speed will become fast yes, but the dog will have stopped listening to commands and started running through the pattern…see smart, smart dogs.
In order to appease us trainers and pet owners and get our dogs actually listening 👂 and not instantly acting we must eliminate our dogs ability to anticipate what we are going to ask or say next. If they are unaware of what you may be asking next, we can set them up for success and reinforce those actual listening skills.
Fort McMurray & Edmonton Dog Training. Relationship and reward based dog training services to suit each dog's needs.
