Ghillie got to spend his birthday with me during our day train programme!
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Ghillie is 4 today🎉🥳
Aegir recently completed his 10 Day intensive training programme with me. He was a big guy with lots of energy.
With a dog like Aegir it’s important to meet his physical and mental needs. This approach allows us to do this whilst also having time to teach him the new behaviours he has to learn.
The way I see it, if you have your dog attached to you with a fixed length piece of material-there is ultimately going to be a time where that singular piece of material will become tighter and will create some form of discomfort for the dog (regardless of whether you're using a collar or a harness).
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This extra tension can create a feeling of restriction to the dog-which can then create frustration as they can't seem to get rid of this sudden added tension.
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This adds fuel to the fire of a reactive dog. Your dog has already noticed their trigger (which is enough pressure as is) but once your dog moves forward or tries to escape and is met with restriction from a tight leash their behaviour will become even more explosive.
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To work on this, I teach the dog that when they feel that pressure-it's a cue to engage with me. This is called "Leash Pressure".
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I want the dog to be aware that they can remove that tension and restriction by choosing to move towards me. Feeling pressure shouldn't be an entirely negative thing, it should be an opportunity to make their situation better.
#dogtraining #dogtrainer #reactivedogtraining #dogreactivity #germanshepherd #germanshepherds #glasgow
I had both Kira and Sophie finish up their 10 day stay with me recently!
They both got along so well that I was able to let them freely socialise with Hendrix.
Was definitely an interesting pack of dogs to have😂
This is the difference that 3 sessions can make!
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Fingal is a typical Jack Russell: Highly driven, low tolerance for frustration, and enjoys seeking conflict.
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This all means he can turn into an angry raging nightmare in a split second (his reaction in the video was a mild one!). Better yet, he’s got a few serious bites on his record.
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We’ve still got some more work to do but this has been great progress in a short amount of time from both Fingal and his owners
Kira and Hendrix just winding down and chilling out😁
Amber kisses on the first date🤣
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Hendrix has been super busy as my right hand man the past few weeks and today we worked on Amber’s social skills around new dogs.
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I think it’s fair to say that it went quite well!
I took Kaiser down through the woods to the river this afternoon and the water helped him cool off😊
I feel like he’s imagining himself as a grizzly catching some fresh salmon😂
Isn’t it supposed to be spring!?😂🌼☀️
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A couple of drenched Border Collie’s for Buddy’s training session today.
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Working on his dog reactivity but he’s been doing so well recently that it turned out to be a very easy session😁
This is what fear can look like in a dog.
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It’s easy to mislabel these dogs based on what the outward behaviour looks like. I know, that with this dog in particular, the LAST thing he wants to do is bite me.
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He’s just learned that acting this way gets people to leave. This behaviour gets him exactly what he wants.
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When dogs see strangers as threats, they often don’t think that their owners will be able to handle these situations. So they take it upon themselves to handle it, which only works to create more suspicion and nervousness around new people.
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One of the first things we always want to do with a nervous/fearful dog is build confidence. Confidence will build resilience to stress and curiousity with new things. If you combine all of this, you’ll get a dog that doesn’t feel the need to even react in the first place because there’s no fear anymore.
