WaggaWuffins Canine College

20/02/2025

Puppy Training and Socialisation Classes at WaggaWuffins Canine College

Lovely mix of breeds in this class 🥰

🐾 www.waggawuffins.com 🐾

20/02/2025

SPANIEL SUNDAY AT WAGGAWUFFINS
with Jane Ardern
March 2nd 10am till 4pm £168 per handler
The theme for this one is Tricks and Shaping Day.

We'll be looking at luring, shaping, merges and chaining as handler skills. We'll be training tricks which depending on what the handlers want will range from basic to complexed. We will look at variations in shaping and how to shape and avoid attaching frustration to behaviours in high arousal dogs.

This is suitable for pet owners and professionals

So if you want to get geeky about training with your spaniel 🤓 and learn some cool stuff, come and join us.

I have been asked if non spaniels can attend, which is fine. They can be honorary spaniels for the day.

Call Barbara on 07817771585 to book your spot. 🐾📞

Picture - 'A chaos of cockers'

20/02/2025

This week's APDT UK Good Companion Awards
Ollie passed Puppy
Parker passed Intermediate
Georgie passed Puppy

🐾👏

20/02/2025

Windy and warm this morning

Carrot 🥕

20/02/2025

Parker passed the APDT UK Good Companion Intermediate Award last night and next week he starts his Advanced Award and Assistance Dog Training through Dog AID 🤎🐾

I really like how the APDT UK Awards have supported the foundations he needs as an assistance dog. It's worked really well as a starting point for him from being a puppy.
He's a special little monkey 🐒 his eyes make my heart melt 🫠🤎

20/02/2025

A few of the Wednesday gang at WaggaWuffins 🐾

19/02/2025

Some photos from Gundog Class this morning 🐾🐾

18/02/2025

Puppy Training this morning.

Both these puppies are doing the executive puppy package which means they get 4 one to ones before they do the group puppy classes. Luna has had all her vaccinations so she came to WaggaWuffins today, she has been quite worried about other dogs approaching her outside, so today she met Pebbles in a controlled environment where the social interactions were her choice. We discussed how the same can be achieved out and about on walks.
She did exceptionally well and had a play, mooch and they snaffled for treats together in the free work area. 🤎

Next up was a home visit with Bertie who's not had his vaccinations yet. We looked at some basic training and general life skills. Berties owner is a first time dog owner and they are doing a brilliant job with him already 🖤

If you're interested in Puppy Classes or Home Visits drop us a message or visit the website www.waggawuffins.com.

14/02/2025

Some of this week's one to ones.

First up was Sprout the springer who I forgot to get a photo off.
We looked at his reactivity around other dogs and did an assessment of him with Drift.

Finn the Golden Retriever has been working on walking nicely on lead, engagement and recall off lead and general impulse control. He's unbelievably awesome to train.

Then we had Rosie who is an ex breeding rescue. She is quite scared of big wide world but she has a wonderful owner to support her and other resident dogs to too. We have been working on building confidence and helping her feel safe. She has a long way to go because this takes time but we've seen some lovely improvements.

Today I saw Coco who is a nervous puppy and has started to become reactive towards people and other dogs. We looked at helping her build confidence by giving her control over social interactions, reading her body language and understanding how her nervous system reacts to scary things. We rewarded her for brave choices but her rewards happens in a safe space. Where she could retreat and eat in safety. We managed to get Drift in the room and they did some sniffing and snuffling together.

Feelings of Safety is emotional reinforcement and dogs that feel safe will explore their environment. Research in humans shows that hedonic reinforcement activates exploritory control processes in the brain. I believe dogs are the same.

It can be frustrating for us because we want to fix things quickly but the best thing we can do is create a safe environment and then let the dog explore and investigate at their own pace. It's important to make sure any rewards used are provided in a safe space and provided by the owner away from the scary things.

Using a verbal marker means you can mark brave behaviour and then reward in a safe space.

Feeding in the scary space can create conflict so we only do that once we see relaxed body language that tells us the space is no longer scary.

I do love helping build confidence in nervous dogs ❤️❤️❤️

13/02/2025

13/02/2025

Catching up on APDT UK Good Companion Awards !
Last week
Basil passed the Improver Award
Otis passed the Puppy Award
Jax passed the Improver Award
Dylan passed the Intermediate Award
This week
Flynn passed the Improver Award

Well done everyone 👏👏

12/02/2025

If you start your training journey with reward based training you might suck at first, and that's pretty normal for most new skills we learn. It doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means you suck at it......but with practise you will get better and you may even become a reinforcement based ninja 🥷

Your dog will love you for it. ❤️

If you use positive reinforcement to train your dog you will become skilled at using positive reinforcement and when you come across that dog that it doesn't seem to be working with you don't resort to punishment. You talk to your other reward based trainers and someone will have a solution or you work through finding one yourself and in turn you get better and more skilled at it

It's absolutely not just about treats and harnesses. That's what it appears to be to the untrained eye of those who don't use it or understand it fully.

It goes way beyond operant conditioning because when we are working with a dog with big emotions operant conditioning often doesn't happen.

We use neuroscience, we look at emotions and conditioning. We use intrinsic reinforcement and neurochemistry as reinforcement, we use premack. Our tool box of rewards contains much more than cheese 🧀 and a harness 🦮

My goal in training is to use as little aversives as possible and I absolutely love finding better ways to train dogs with reward based training 🐾🐾

12/02/2025

How gorgeous is my new lanyard ?
🖤💜🩵
My favourite colours 🐾

https://www.facebook.com/share/15hio62Sih/

07/02/2025

Pebbles had her fitness and conditioning session with Jo today. We've booked a course of sessions and as a trainer I'm totally geeking out on training these exercises 🤓 We're having so much fun 🤎

Highly recommended 🐾