Valleys Dog Behaviour And Training

Whilst we're all about excellent nutrition for our dogs, and it's one of the things I harp on about probably the most 😅 But, we also love it when our dogs get a yummy treat once in a while! Kiara's favourite is a bit of squirty cream, and we follow a strict method of 'one for me, one for you!' -Gabby

Wisdom Wednesdays! - with Valleys Dog Behaviour and Training Welcome to our weekly series where we dive into a new dog-related topic every Wednesday! We’d love for you to join the conversation—share your thoughts in the comments and let us know what topics you'd like us to cover in the future. To start off the year, I've gone for something that's fundamental, but I think is vastly overlooked and misinterpreted by many - communication and body language. Dogs are masters of body language, they will have conversations with each other with just minute changes in body language; how they hold their tail, the way they position their ears and more. They're constantly communicating to each other, and to us. But how much do we really understand and pick up from them? We've worked with so many clients who come to us with dogs with reactivity towards people, yet at their behavioural consultations they're so surprised that the dogs are fine with us, as we've read their body language and what they're trying to communicate with us and given them the space they need and are asking for. One of my recent favourite interactions was when working with a collie on a home visit who had struggled with interactions with people, including baring teeth and snapping (we had previously met at an initial appointment at our outdoor venue). What I found was that this dog was an excellent communicator, she wanted affection from people but not so full on an intense. She was quite clear to me in communicating this, moving her ears back if things were getting too much, showing some subtle signs of stress such as lip licking, tail wags slowing down so just the very tip of her tail was all that was moving. Being able to read this and adjust my body language, what I was doing, how I responded back to her, meant that this dog very quickly felt listened and understood, and within about 15 minutes of me being there, she was relaxed enough that she was fast asleep on the floor at our feet whilst

Meet the absolutely GORGEOUS Toxic! Toxic is a Welsh Sheepdog and he started on the Tame That Sports Dog package today. Toxic’s issues are; - Pole knocking - Inconsistent contact equipment criteria - Tunnel MONSTER! (Even in training if he isn’t controlled he will race around ALL the tunnels with glee!) - Overly gregarious toy play and toy zoomies leading to it being hard to reward him - No control with the toy (namely a conflict free release) - General overarousal on the course, ringside and on approach to anything that might be agility equipment. Now his handler is a talented agility handler! She has had multiple dogs in top grades but Toxic is proving to be much harder work. His handler has defaulted to trying to ‘obedience’ the crazy out of him and it’s got her to a point, and his obedience in day to day life is outstanding, but it hasn’t resolved the emotional overflow that leads to errors on course and in training. Imagine you have a can of coke and you shook it repeatedly, then set it down on the side. If you open that can of coke, it’s gonna explode! The same goes for dogs like Toxic. We can ask him to sit and stay, but the fizz is still there just waiting to blow! Then we say ‘go’ on the startline and seven poles come down and your dog launches off the dog walk into space. I’ve left the sound on rather than putting music over so you can hear what we are working on. The first clips we are working on what might seem like a very simple behaviour but it’s one that is critical for all dogs and especially sports dogs. The ability to swap between food and toy. Generally speaking for dogs like Toxic; Toy = speed and drive Food = thinking and calmness We picked some food that’s very salient and used big chunks that are super chewable to initially get him thinking about food. This is a dog that typically won’t take food in an agility context. We then started using this to eliminate the racing off and shaking the toy relentle

Brand new never seen before method of achieving a focus heel! Super advanced method. So much science. Absolutely not just messing about and inventing something silly on the spot 😂

Steps to having ‘scary dog privilege’ and being able to say ‘yeah I’m a real dog trainer now I have a protection dog’. 1. Don’t get a Labrador 2. Don’t teach her a bark and hold using a squeaky chicken (No shade to those who train bitesports and protection work well!) My favourite thing is teaching fun things for literally no reason other than it’s an honour to hang out with my dog and learn stuff together ♥️ - Kahla

Cue Understanding

How good is your dogs understanding of verbal cues? Did you know that the answer to most frustration based behaviours is clarity? An absolute understanding of what’s expected at any moment. Every day I hear ‘they can do this at home’ or ‘they can do this in training’ but the dog in front of me in fact, can’t. This is usually down to a baseline lack of true understanding. For example in this video I use two cues. ‘Ta’ meaning to drop ‘Okay’ to mean grab Let’s break this down further. ‘Ta’ is also an implied duration behaviour. Once I have asked for the drop, it is also a cue to not take again until I have cued otherwise. ‘Okay’ is my generalised ‘do the thing you want to do’ which in this case is tugging. When you ask your dog to sit, what does that actually mean? Do you say sit, then stay? Then repeat your stay as you walk away? Then the dog doesn’t truly understand their sit cue! Sit should mean sit. Nothing more nothing less. Just sit until a verbal cue of something else is given. Often we add in all these words and extra ‘help’ to try and help the dog get it right. We walk away saying ‘stayyyyy, staaaaaayyyy!’ and all we are doing is creating confusion, which will ultimately lead to deterioration of behaviour understanding. Clarity creates confidence, in handler and dog. If you’re repeating your verbal cues, then ask yourself if your dog TRULY understands what that verbal cue is or not? This week I want you to test this theory yourselves. Give your dog a verbal cue they understand, then do something unexpected. So a single ‘sit’ cue followed by you doing a star jump or a little jog on the spot. Don’t repeat your cue. Watch your dog. If they stay sat, then congratulations, they understand! If they break their sit, then consider whether they really understand and whether your foundations may be a little shaky. I could go on about these concepts forever, but you’ll have to book some 1:1s or a

Beginners Agility Class

Firstly, sunshine is SO GOOD FOR THE SOUL! And dry ground is good for your trainers soul 😂 My beginners agility group today did incredibly well doing some work on early blind crosses and driving their dogs on independently. Learning to trust your dog is so hard and I couldn’t be more proud of how well they are all doing! All of my classes today absolutely smashed it out of the park 🎉

You know Nyx loves agility because she gets the shepherd head tilts when she hears her training video from today 😂😂♥️♥️♥️

I just want him to be calm! I’ve ranted about this before, and I shall rant again! Meet Wyn the Border Collie. He is 8 months old and has shown significant desire to chase cars. This is very very common in Border Collies as we have bred them for generations to want to herd things that move. He stalks cars, lunges at them, barks at them and otherwise loses his mind around cars. Like most working dogs who are staring at something that gives them big feelings, you could wave a whole roast chicken in front of his face and he would push it out of the way to stare and lunge some more. We could scatter feed and ask for calmness. We could ask him to sit and look at us. All of these things right now are far too difficult! However, play and chasing something else is possible. He can just about manage that! Trying to fight prey drive (which is essentially what car chasing is) with calmness invariably ends up with two ends of the lead frustrated as hell. However fighting prey drive with play has POWER! It is not the total solution but it’s the starting point. Wyns handlers homework is to set up somewhere at home where Wyn can see cars but he doesn’t have the build up of cars coming towards him. He can hear them but not see them for too long, and the second he notices the car, we activate play with a favourite toy. We bang the toy off the floor to create explosive movement and engagement to us. Over time we will fade the use of the toy and switch to food, then eventually to nothing at all as the desire diminishes. What we want is engagement offered willingly around the cars, then we can ask for what we need (such as lead walking or a sit etc). We cannot ask him to do what he cannot currently do. Well done Wyn and his human for this first step and being proactive while he is young! He is bright as a button and you know I’d love to sneak him away in my van ♥️