Adventure Walkies Bolton

Two sensible dogs and one absolute chaos goblin.

Bonus Beau and Luna from Tuesday where we had a nice lie down in the shade and chatted about how much we hate cats (it’s a lot)

A little glimpse into the Tuesday Loonies Club Featuring: Beau, Luna, Barbie and Faye misjudging a ditch.

Beau, Luna and Barb showing off their being very polite and standing out of the way for joggers technique. 😌 clever dogs.

Absolutely amazing work once again from James who completed his FIRST full distance PRO Iron Man today in Hamburg. Casually completing a 2.4-mile (3.9 km) swim… then 112-miles (180.2 km) cycling … oh and running a marathon… that’s 26.22-mile (42.2 km) also in 8 hours 11 minutes and 12 seconds. That’s how long it takes Faye to bend down to tie her shoe laces! We are all very proud!!

Beau and Luna demonstrating their individual attitudes towards having a grass twiddled at them on Tuesday. Everydoggy is different 😌

There are two (2) types of dobermann

He only retrieves mud

There are two types of Dobermann.

Got there in the end.

Beau decided he didn’t need his coat today. He left it in a very convenient place for Faye to retrieve. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Can you dig it??

Barbie would like some of that, no, not that???

Barbie has been learning emergency stop today.

Faye has started teaching Murphy a cue of “have a swim” so we can get him in the water without throwing a stick or ball as those activities get him too wound up. Swimming is a nice full body, breed appropriate form of exercise for him to do, it’s self-reinforcing as that’s one of the things labs are built for!

Barbie gets fed after the 6pm bongs. This is a great example of an “environmental cue”, where the dog gets a signal to do something from their surroundings rather than from you. Environmental cues can be subtle - you putting a jumper as you get ready to go out Or really obvious - the doorbell ringing Dogs are learning from their surroundings 100% of the time they’re awake, it’s always worth having a think about what cues they may be acting on when they perform behaviours. Nothing comes completely out of the blue!

Today, Death-Wish Smith (aka Murphy) jumped off a fallen tree right into Barbie’s face. We diffused the tension with a little more tree jumping. It’s certainly a good job she likes him!

Murphy was doing a sniffy set up/ training session sandwich this morning. Sniffy session - short training session - sniffy session - short training session and so on. This means he has time to consolidate any work done during the training bit whilst he does his sniffy foraging game. Sniffing also lowers the breathing and heart rate, so is a super calming activity if the training you’ve just done is a bit exciting. We used different textures on the ground, bath mats etc. to help the neural connection between feet and brain, this serves to bring the dog back “into” themselves and ground them. If a dog spends a lot of time bombing about like a loon, they can end up sort of running on autopilot with their physicality, they become clumsy and can end up hurting themselves. Having them do some sniffy work on a few different textures gives their paws a chance to start giving signals back to their brain. So, with the combination of novel textures and then opportunity to get his nose going, Murph was noticeably more engaged with each training session as we went through the hour. The little sniffy set up calmed him, brought him back into himself and focused him for the next task. He also did a beautiful job of waiting on his mat whilst Faye set up his sniffy game, and returned back to the mat when finished. We’ve not used “place” as a cue with a mat since last year, so it was brilliant to see he remembered it. Having “place” on a mat gives the dog a defined area to keep their “stay” or “wait” on, so it’s a handy thing to do when you’re setting stuff up or if you take your dog out anywhere with you.

Is there a You’ve Been Framed for dogs?

Not sure if they are a celebrity power couple or a slapstick comedy duo.