Me And My Dog Academy

Impulse control… 😇

Try this super easy exercise to improve your dogs patience & impulse control! 1️⃣ Cue your dog into Middle position. 2️⃣ Throw out their favourite toy or treat, whilst holding them in position. 3️⃣ Keep hold of them until you start to feel them relax under your hand, to the point you could take your hand away and they’ll stay in the position. 4️⃣ At this point release them to their toy or food that you’ve thrown out. 5️⃣ Have a good play with that toy, or jackpot reward with food! Why is this such a brilliant exercise? They are learning both patience & impulse control here, meaning: 👉 Better focus around distractions 👉 Less problem behaviours like jumping up, counter surfing, over excited greetings. 👉 Helps them learn how to manage frustration. 👉 Improved emotional regulation leading to happier more balanced dog. 👉 Improves cue awareness and listening skills. Soooo many benefits and such an easy exercise to integrate into your daily routine 👌 #dogtraining #dogtrainingclasses #dogtrainer #impulsecontrol #lovedogs #dogtrainingbournemouth

Beginner Scentwork ❤️

Ooooh I looooove teaching Beginners Scentwork 🥰 There is something SO special about seeing the dogs fall in love with their noses and turn into really cool little scentwork stars over just eight weeks. 🥰 Leaves your dog feeling fulfilled as they can harness their primary sense! 🥰 Builds your dogs confidence as they learn to trust themselves and work independently. 🥰 Boosts the handler-dog bond as you learn to work together to solve problems. 🥰 Improves the handlers ability to read their dogs body language, thus improving communication. 🥰 Exhausts your dog! Just 10 mins of scentwork can replace an entire hour or more of physical exercise! So if you want to get started join our Scentwork Beginners Course and begin your scentwork journey! [https://mamda.co.uk/scentwork/scentwork-beginner-course] 📲 💛 Got a reactive dog? Or do you fancy more time/space between your sessions? Then no stress - join our Reactive-Dog Friendly Scentwork Beginners programme instead where each dog works one at a time in four two-hour workshops over four months [https://mamda.co.uk/scentwork/reactive-dog-friendly-scentwork-beginners-workshops] 📲 #scentworkclassesbournemouth #scentwork #scentdog #searchdog #scentdetection #scentworkclasses #scentworkdogsofinstagram #dogtraining #dogtrainer #lovedogs

New Year Goal: No jumping up! ✨

NEW YEARS GOAL: to stop my dog jumping up ❌✅ Does your dog… 🫣 …jump up excessively at you or visitors into your home? 🫤 …launch themselves at strangers or dogs as you pass them by on walks? 🫠 …counter surf in your own stealing food or other items off surfaces? 😶 …lack patience waiting for rewards and jump/snatch them from you as you are training? It may feel like everything you’re doing is futile because dogs LOVE getting up close and personal. But it’s important to know that EVERYTHING valuable to a dog is from the waist up! ❤️ Hands give them rewards (toys/treats/fuss). ❤️ The face gives clear communication and we know that they often seek eye contact to release dopamine. ❤️ Even our odour is stronger higher up (armpits etc)! Last time I checked my knee caps were not that exciting to any dog 😂 So your goal for no jumping is to CHANGE THE VALUE. Make those kneecaps exciting! Or more realistically - make the floor exciting, make the ground the best place to be. If you want help in achieving this goal then here’s our offering: ✅ Both our PUPPY and TEEN LIFE SKILLS classes have impulse control & no jumping games woven into them. Your dog will learn patience and jumping-up-control in a way that will help them at home and out and about (📲 https://mamda.co.uk/classes). ✅ But we understand that often no jumping up training takes a bit more work, so we have our completely dedicated NO JUMPING UP course which over four weeks takes your from the basics to mock-real-life situations (📲 https://mamda.co.uk/classes/no-jumping-up-course). ✅ If you don’t think group classes are for you then a STANDARD Package of our ONE-TO-ONES can be used teach and develop the skills for No Jumping that are taught in our classes, just on a private basis (📲 https://mamda.co.uk/one-to-ones/in-person-training). #dogtraining #traindogs #dogtrainingclasses

12 Days of MAMDA Christmas! 🎄🐾

We hope you are all enjoying a smashing Christmas Day! 🎄🥳 The Teams here at MAMDA may not be in training classes during our festive break, but it doesn’t mean they haven’t been training! In fact they’ve been hard at work undertaking my ‘12 Days of Christmas: MAMDA Edition’ challenge, training different skills each day on the run up to Christmas - and here is the final result! 👏 Really great to see so many clients showing up and training, even at a busy time of year - remember you only get change when you put the work in! Fantastic stuff & great festive cheer too. Enjoy this compilation of the MAMDA 12 Days of Christmas. Enjoy! ❤️🐾 #dogtraining #traindogs #lifeskills #puppyclasses #dogtrainingclasses #dogtrainer #bestdogs #tricktraining #caninebehaviour #reliablerecall #looseleadwalking #BreedSpecificTraining #DogBreedLovers #confidentdogs #dogtrainingacademy

The key to good training? 🗝️🤔 👉 Your mechanics as a handler! 👈 Your dog can only be as good as YOU are! So time to take some responsibility in your dogs training journey, and step up how you train. Your luring movements, your marker timing and your reward sequences are all SUPER important components in the success rate of your dog! 😅 Not sure what the above things are? ✌️ Luring Movements - most behaviour is created by the handler moving a lure / reward in a certain shape or pattern to get the dog to initially perform it. If you’re luring is sloppy, or unplanned you’ll find you can never create the behaviour you want, thus never teach it! Your dog can’t magically learn how to sit, if you can’t guide the correct position first. ⏰ Marker Timing - the marker indicates to your dog what they did right, if you’re one millisecond out you may accidentally reinforce the incorrect behaviour. If you, for example, marker the moment the dog goes to get out of a sit, rather than when they’re stationary you may find your dog gets much more easily confused. 🥩 Reward Sequences - you’ve got to make things valuable when your dog is first learning something. They have to understand why performing sit is the best thing they could possibly do - otherwise, why would they bother doing it? You certainly wouldn’t work for no money, and nor would your dog. Make sure you’re always rewarding the right things, that are valuable to your dog in sequences that build motivation & excitement! That might all sound quite overwhelming. But the good news? This is all in YOUR control! The ball is in your court. If you get the above things right you will see a marked differences in your training journey with your dog. Helping you get to your goals faster! ✅ You can get help from all of the above in our Classes. We teach Handlers Mechanics from the ground up so you can be the best trainer your dog needs. Whether you’ve got a Puppy, or Teenage, or dog

Training an Indication! 😎

Let’s get started with an indication! These beginner search dogs are learning the very basics of the indication and we’ll slowly improve it as we train! 👏😍 An indication is SO important in Scentwork training. There’s no point a dog making a find but not telling you…! 😅 An indication helps: ✅ Clarity of the find ✅ Stops dogs trashing/messing in search areas ✅ Reduces frustration (less barking, pawing, digging, biting) ✅ Stops dogs trying to retrieve the hide What does an indication look like? There are countless options! You can choose what suits your dog best: 👉 Freeze (our personal favourite for Passive Searches) 👉 Sit 👉 Down 👉 Bark 👉 Bounce Back 👉 Retrieve (for Active Searches only) It’s the thing that takes the most handler determination to train, as you have to keep going back to it! You can’t just teach it one day and it’ll be there, it needs to be cemented day in day out until it’s solid. Think about training it every time you boil the kettle for a cup of tea 😉 And remember you can play the freeze/indication game that we teach in our classes on ANYTHING. It does just have to be on your odour (ie Kong). You can train the skill on: 🍯 Jar Lids 🪙 Coins 📦 Cardboard Square 📑 Post-It Notes 👋 Even on your hand! (Like a hand-touch) The more ways you train it the more solid it becomes. Good luck 👏 #DogTraining #PositiveReinforcement #DogTrainingAcademy #DogTrainerLife #TrainingSuccess #TrainingWithLove #LifeSkillsForDogs #DogsofInstagram #DogBreedLovers #ScentworkDogs #DogBreedCommunity #PuppyPower #DogLife #BreedSpecificTraining #Scentwork #ScentDetection #ScentWorkDogs #K9Scentwork #DogScentTraining #SniffingOutSuccess #CanineNoseWork #LifeSkillsForDogs #DogLifeSkills #ConfidentDogs #HappyHealthyDogs #CanineConfidence #DogSkills #DogBehaviour

Testing the advanced dogs! 🙌

Ohhh what a privilege to live and train dogs in gorgeous Dorset! 😍 🌊 Watch four amazing trailing Teams (Rosie, Phoebe, Frank, and Ebony) have an absolute blast while putting their Mantrailing skills to the test in the most exciting environment yet! Each dog was focused, determined, prioritising the trail at every point despite the excitement and challenges posed by the sand & wind! Can’t wait for our next seaside session 🏖️ #DogTraining #PositiveReinforcement #DogTrainingAcademy #DogTrainerLife #TrainingSuccess #TrainingWithLove #LifeSkillsForDogs #DogsofInstagram #DogBreedLovers #ScentworkDogs #DogBreedCommunity #PuppyPower #DogLife #BreedSpecificTraining #Scentwork #ConfidentDogs #HappyHealthyDogs #CanineConfidence #DogSkills #DogBehaviour #TrailingDogs #Mantrailing #TrackingDogs #TrailingTraining #SearchAndRescueDogs #K9Tracking #DogTrackingSkills

Does your dog green other dogs inappropriately? 👬

Does your dog greet other people/dogs inappropriately? 🤔 Do they jump up, act pushy or even rude? 🫣 Are they hyper and desperately trying to greet every person/dog they see? 😖 Then you need to use the: 🌟🌟🌟 RULE OF THREE 🌟 🌟🌟 The rule of three refers to these 3 principals whilst you are training your dog to have better social relationships with people and dogs: 🌟 Allowing your dog to interact with one in three dogs MAXIMUM. If they greet one, then they must ignore the next two at least! 🌟 Allowing greetings between dogs & humans to last for periods of 3 seconds at a time. This helps maintain hyperness levels and improves the likelihood of calm and appropriate greetings. 🌟 When greeting people/dogs for 3 seconds, you want to repeat no more than 3 times in a row! Otherwise your dog will get progressively hyper and more likely to trip up into old unwanted behaviours. Of course as your dog improves then you can allow them to greet others for longer. But when you’re dealing with a young dog who doesn’t have the best social skills this is your starting point! Build it up slowly and improve their skills over time rather than rushing and potentially having to spend ages unwitting the undesirable behaviours… 🫣 If you need help with this then we can support you in both our One-to-Ones or Classes. Get in contact to find out which might suit you best: at [email protected] or book online at www.mamda.co.uk 💻 #dogtraining #dogtrainingclasses #dogtrainer #lovedogs #boxer #cockerpoo #bestdog #leadtraining #longline#reliablerecall #traineddog #smartdog #traindogs #puppytraining #puppyclasses #puppytrainingclasses #teenagedog #wellbehaveddog

Automatic Behaviours are the BEST 💥

Automatic Behaviours are the BEST and make my dog-owning life so much easier!! 💥 🔊 Turn the sound on to the video for a description of automatic behaviours and how I trained Sputnik to stop and wait going up the brow of a hill. Let me know what you think in the comments! What automatic behaviours have you successfully intentionally (or unintentionally) trained? 👇👇 #dogtraining #dogtrainingclasses #dogtrainer #lovedogs #sighthound #lurcher #bestdog #whippet #greyhound #traineddog #smartdog #traindogs

The second Annual MAMDA Mantrailing Murder Mystery on Halloween weekend is complete, and we had an UTTER blast 🎃🕵️‍♀️ The weather today was been utterly gorgeous (makes a change from last year) and the Teams were absolute incredibly undertaking two incredibly challenging trailing skills: 🔪 Dead-Body Starts: Traking scent off a human trail layer! The dogs have to identify the trail layer (i.e. ‘murderers’) scent and discount the victims. We had some very dramatic deaths today, and many of the dogs attempt resurrection with kisses and cuddles. 🚓 Police Line-Ups: With a set of suspects in a row, the dog must go prioritise the trail layers scent by pairing that to the correct person. The handler must watch carefully for an indication or change in body language to call out which suspect they think did it! Alongside this the human end of the lead focused on clue-solving to figure out where the murder happened, what weapon was used and most importantly: who did it! 🔍 The answer… it was the ‘Site Manager’ Larry McGaul, with the Hi-Viz Jacket, in the Back of a KJP Lorry 🚚 So much content to share over the next few days, but let’s start with this highlight reel celebrating some of the epic stuff that took place. Well done Team Bentley, Team Phoebe, Team Frank, Team Cooper, Team Vala, Team Matilda, Team Billy, Team Brigitte, Team Pixie, Team Toby, Team Meg, Team Alba, Team Dodge, Team Dodge, Team Cirilla, Team Rosie, Team Senka, Team Otis, Team Blue, Team Bea and Team Jack - I’m buzzing 🤩🌟 Case Closed. #mamdamantrailers

It was a hare! 🐇

How can I tell it was a hare? 🐇 For Sputnik his body language subtly differs depending on the animal that he’s trailing meaning I can identify most prey accurately. If you know wildlife well you can also tell based on how the trail itself is behaving (ie how the animal has walked) helping you become a detective to figure it out! Here’s how I knew: 🔎 Clue #1: Rabbit Radar Ears. My affectionate name for Sputnik’s ears in hunt mode, but I must clarify - these are aptly named. Sputnik’s ears ONLY pop up like this when trailing rabbits, hare or deer (and sometimes when mantrailing humans). Never for squirrels, pheasants, etc. So pretty quickly we can work it down to a smaller number of animals to choose from. 🔎 Clue #2: Nose FLAT down. Sputnik’s nose position gives you a damn good clue as to what he’s trailing. The bigger the animal, the further off the ground he’ll be (air scenting more), the smaller the animal the closer to the ground. With deer or humans he trails very head up, dipping his nose occasionally to check in with contact points. With rabbits, squirrels and smaller critters he keeps his nose low - I suspect because there’s more animal-ground contact. So now we’ve weeded out deer! 🔎 Clue #3: This clue comes from knowing wildlife trails, and how they work. Rabbits tend to have trails that are more erratic - zig zags and wiggles. The fact that this trail was dead straight with very little left/right deviation suggests an animal that moves in more forward lines. Hares typically move in deliberate forward patterns, especially when running, meaning this track was far more likely to be a hare than a rabbit. 🔎 Clue #4: To compliment the above you can also think about terrain. For sure we were in a lovely dense area with plenty of brambles - perfect terrain for rabbits. BUT the wider landscape was VERY open - the environment far suits a hare with speed on its side then a vulnerable bunny. So all in all, Clues 1-3 wittle out dee