Sausage tree is a need oriented game, perfect for dogs that love to search, consume and scavenge.
This game uses the first part (searching) and last part (consuming) of the predatory sequence, both of which can promote a decrease in arousal, making this game perfect for cooling off periods.
To up the difficulty of this game, you can squish treats into to the grooves of the bark, but be careful with this as some trees can produce sap and bark that can be toxic to dogs.
The best part about the sausage tree game? No trees are needed! You can get creative and use your imagination, walls can be a great alternative.
I love playing this game on walks with my own girl, Misty, and all of my walking clients, any breed of any age can play this.
For younger and smaller dogs you can simply place the treats lower down where they can reach easily and safely.
None of us like to do the same things day in, day out, and neither do our dogs, use this game to make your walks more enriching for your dogs, to feel less like a chore for you and to make your walks more fun and interesting for the both of you!🐾
If Misty wasn’t bit by another dog at 9 months old Wülfgang Dog Training wouldn’t exist.
Almost 5 years ago Misty was born, I believe that she likely left her mum and litter mates before she was 8 weeks old, and I have been told that she then stayed at two different homes where she had already been involved in negative experiences with other dogs before coming to me at around 12 weeks old.
I’ll be completely honest, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to socialisation, she was a lockdown puppy, so the “socialisation” that she had was spending a lot of time playing with other dogs off lead whilst us dog parents socially distanced and watched. This was the first mistake that I made when socialising her, I shouldn’t have encouraged her to play with other dogs on a regular basis until she had learned to simply just be around other dogs first.
Then at 9 months old, she was bit by another dog. All she had known before now was Play Play Play! Her arousal was already high when around other dogs, but now she had fear and the memory of being bit added into the mix.
Due to the extent of the bite she had to stay at the vets overnight with the possibility of needing surgery. This was the first time she’d been without us, at a time when she was in pain, somewhere new and needing us the most, we weren’t able to be there with her due to Covid restrictions.
Because of the events on this one single day, and some of the events leading up to this day, we now had a dog that was struggling with:
❌ Fear of all veterinary practices, even new ones
❌ Was now considered a bite risk at the vets
❌ Fear of some unknown people
❌ and the big one, Reactivity towards most other dogs
I didn’t want a reactive dog, or a dog that was considered a bite risk to vets, I didn’t know anything about reactivity or about how to help reactive dogs, I felt ashamed, embarrassed and dreaded leaving the house with her most days.
For me at the time reactivity = aggre
I could watch dogs simply just being dogs all day🥰🐾
Myself, Kenzo and his parents have been working on a lot over the last few weeks, from lead walking and socialisation to preventing resource guarding. He has made so much progress already🥰
Today we worked on habituation to new stimuli that a lot of young dogs might find arousing, exciting, frightening or stressful. We seen a train, a number of cars, and watched lots of dogs and people from a distance whilst practicing and reinforcing engagement with me, so proud of how well he did💙
Can you guess Kenzo’s breed?🐾
Can your sighthound watch squirrels play without trying to chase them?
Indy can🥰🐾
I’m mostly rambling on in this, but I talk about some great points that may be able to help you and your canine companion🥰
The first being Shake offs- What they mean and why I praise and reward shake offs, particularly when working with dogs that can be easily frightened, reactive, nervous or struggle with high arousal.
The second is Eating cow poo, and why I don’t try to stop it. If I tried to stop it, Misty wouldn’t have got what she needed from that little bit of cow poo that she ate. If I punished her for it or tried to correct her she more than likely would have tried to eat almost every cow poo that we walked past, but because she had a small taste of just two cow poos, she was able to walk past 20+ without trying to eat them. The 20+ that she was able to walk past I praised and rewarded her for doing so to build more positive associations with ignoring cow poo, making poo eating less likely to happen in the future.
The bit of cow poo that she did eat, I asked her if she can leave it, and if she could keep going, but she couldn’t. In this moment trying a bit of cow poo was a need for her and I respected that. When she’d eaten enough and was able to move on, I praised her for that.
Punishment and preventing dogs from meeting their needs can have a massive negative effect on our dogs wellbeing and our relationship with them, which can lead to a lot of frustration from both us and our dogs which can damage our bond.
I know it’s gross for us humans, the thought of eating poo isn’t a very nice thought, but we have to remember that dogs aren’t humans, they have totally different needs to us, they are extremely inquisitive and learn a lot through taste and smell, on bin day Misty will often have her head in the neighbours bins having a good sniff, so as long as it is safe to do, so long as it’s non toxic, poisonous or something they are intolerant or allergic to or won’t cause injury, let them taste things, let them sniff, let them lear
Are E collars really needed when teaching dogs to disengage from other animals, particularly sheep? What do you think?
This week at class our students worked on their impulse control and their parents learned some new, easy, simple and cheap ways that we can give our dogs safe outlets within our own homes🐾
Myself and Cait are so proud of everyone who joined this week, helping their confidence grow and seeing their true quirky selves shining through is the reason we do this, we couldn’t be happier with how well everyone is coping in what can be scary and unusual environment for many dogs🥰
There’s so much more to changing behaviours and big emotions than training🥰
Scout started to struggle with settling in the evenings and became anxious of a number of triggers, but with the help of free work he has become more confident in himself, more relaxed and is now considerably less interested in his triggers💙
Sully and I skipped our walk today and did some free work in the garden instead. He has been reluctant to toilet in the garden recently, it unfortunately isn’t uncommon for dogs to feel less confident in their gardens during firework season, sometimes due to being spooked in their garden by a firework or even due to the smell of fireworks lingering. But after some free work Sully was confident and relaxed enough to do one wee and two healthy poos💩 in the garden today💙
POV: Giving our dogs safe outlets to meet their needs is necessary when treating most unwanted behaviours.
Remember- Unwanted behaviours are ONLY unwanted to us, but they are often natural behaviours to them, that they perform to meet an emotional or genetic need. By giving them outlets to meet these needs we can help to create a happier, less frustrated and calmer dog🐾
So proud of how far Indy has come along over the last few months🩷
Sighthounds and rescue dogs aren’t always easy, especially those with backgrounds like Indy, but Indy’s mum has done amazing with her training and she’s come so far since I first started working with her🥰🐾
