Lucky’s Paws

Resource GuardingIs a HUGE issue but one that is increasingly more common. Here are a few things you can implement to prevent/work through instances of guarding but it’s one of those behaviours that if you see any signs of it, reach out to a suitably experienced trainer/behaviourist to help with a proven track record of overcoming such an issue.#dogtraining #dogtrainingthoughts #dogrecalltraining #reactivity #dogreactivity #huddersfield #dogbehaviourtraining #dog #doglover #dogsofinstagram #resourceguarding #leave #drop #management #training

This Is EVERYTHING 👏👏

This Is EVERYTHING 👏👏 Fay DREADED walks with Harlow. With every reaction, her confidence took a knock and walks became more and more unenjoyable… UNTIL…. Two days ago! Harlow’s owner Nathan has been putting the work in with Harlow and our final session two days ago was all around implementing everything we have done with Fay. We know Harlow can do it, it was just a matter of Fay believing she could do it too! This was a video from their walk yesterday following that session. I feel like this is the first day of their new chapter together and I am absolutely here for it. Well. Blooming. Done! ❤️ #dogtraining #dogtrainingthoughts #dogrecalltraining #reactivity #dogreactivity #huddersfield #dogbehaviourtraining #dog #doglover #dogsofinstagram #relationship #confidence

Leave 🛑 Does your dog truly know leave?

Teaching your dog this is a MUST. But most people take a GIANT leap from getting their dog to leave a treat on the floor when in a sit to shouting it when the dog is chasing a squirrel or lunging for a doner kebab somebody dropped in your local village on a boozy Friday night. Teaching a solid leave command is made up of 3 key points: 1. Management! What does this look like? Preventing your dog from doing the behaviour you don’t want them to. Whether that be using a muzzle, using a lead all the way to ensuring the dog doesn’t have access to counter surfing when you are not there. Every time your dog gets to eat/chase that thing you don’t want them to, it reinforces the behaviour and therefore, they are more likely to do it again. 2. Training! Jumping steps and asking too much too soon is the biggest mistake I see people make. When your dog leaves that piece of food you placed carefully on the ground it is not the same as those real life situations where your dog dives into a bush and comes out with a dirty tissue in their mouth, despite shouting leave multiple times. Start by building that solid leave command in a controlled environment and when ready, build in more challenging scenarios. There are so many variables you can control here to make the training easier/harder. Those include but are not limited to the value of the item they are leaving (start low), the value of the reward (start high), how close you allow them to get to the item (start further away) and how far they are away from you (start close to you). Manipulating these variables will allow you to push the training bit by bit, not moving on until you’ve seen consistent success at that level. Side note: Shouting leave 5 times does not mean your dog knows leave. They’re likely complying because of the tone of your voice, NOT the command itself. Following first time in a normal tone is your goal. 3. Reps! Do the above… over… and over… and over again. Build in difficulty, different loc

Unwanted, Rehearsed Behaviours….There are lots of them! Barking, jumping up, picking up rubbish, stealing, counter surfing, mouthing, pulling on the lead, running up to people/dogs when off lead… the list goes on.The more these behaviours happen and the dog receives a positive outcome, the more they are repeated; like Dexter and his barking!So many books and Internet pages tell you to ignore these behaviours. In fact, I would say every single house I go to where the dog jumps up or barks at people the owners tell guests to ignore the dog. Low and behold that behaviour is still there, stronger than ever. Whether you or the guest “says hello” or not, the dog is still getting enjoyment from performing the behaviour.So what do we do? The answer is multi fold! This is specifically focused on barking.PREVENT- the behaviour happening in the first place. If you know people are coming round, put your dog on a lead beforehand and give them an alternative behaviour such as a bed command.MANAGE - the behaviour if you don’t have time to do the training. Put your dog in a crate/ another room/ behind a baby gate and give them something to do or ask someone to remove them from the situation completely.TRAIN - the behaviour and more importantly the emotion you want instead. Know that if you allow a positive outcome from a negative behaviour it will reinforce it. Giving your dog an alternative job and waiting for them to calm down before allowing the positive outcome, will reinforce the thing you want.REINFORCE - positively what you want to see. Your dog is being quiet and calm? Give them a treat, let them say hello, let them get out of the carINTERRUPT - what you don’t want to see. If you can see your dog is loading/fixating and about to perform the negative behaviour, turn into them, create space and re approach when appropriate (just one way to deal with this).BOOK - in with a trainer to work through this sooner rather than later. It will only get worse. They’re not

Is your dog reactive to people coming into the home? A lot of people hate to hear the word reactive when describing their dogs, but it shouldn’t be a taboo word. It simply means showing a response to a stimulus. This, most often in my line of work, comes from a place of fear or over excitement. For Rosie, it is fear and uncertainty. Whilst we will be helping Rosie to develop more positive relationships with people, on arrival I needed to be able to have a conversation with her owners about Rosie. Usually I would either meet on a walk or pop Rosie in another room but neither was possible. We couldn’t put her in another room because she has quite severe separation anxiety and it wasn’t possible to do this out on a walk because Rosie‘s behaviour on the lead is also quite erratic and would’ve made it difficult for her owners to concentrate. What did we do? We gave Rosie a little bit of guidance to stop her brain having to think too much about the danger (me). We added a lead to stop her running around and barking which was causing her stress as well as her family, we put her behind her owner on a loose lead, but still allowed line of sight so that we weren’t blocking her vision but we were protecting her space and we gave her a job (which was initially a sit) and rewarded her for doing it. A dog in a state of stress often needs guidance from us to help them make better choices. This allowed us to have a chat and get started with the training in a much calmer state. For those with dogs who react to people coming home, there are a few things you can do to help: - meet outside and go on a walk first - teach the dog an alternative cue such as a bed command and reward them for that - having a lead on your dog to prevent them running towards the person - YOU be the one to reward the dog initially, not the guest. For fearful dogs, they generally don’t want to take food from a stranger but you can make it a much more positive experience by rewarding th

✨ Practice makes perfect ✨

✨ Practice makes perfect ✨ Massive shout out to Emily’s puppy class client for sending in this amazing footage of what “heel” for a puppy under 6 months can look like with consistency 🤩 Not ONLY that but check out his eye contact!! Consistency really is key. Working with puppies can be challenging and we only have a limited window of opportunity before they get bored so we have to keep things simple, rewarding and engaging. We’re not asking for a “perfect heel” over a long distance. But short bursts like these clips are what set the foundations that can be built on over time as your puppy develops ♥️ If you guys keep up with your training you’ll achieve great things…bravo 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼 #puppy #puppyclass #puppttraining #dogtraining #training #doberman #labrador #doberdor #crossbreed #heel #heelwork #puppyheel #eyecontact #client

🐾 Exposure> (over) Socialisation 🐾

Click bait… my bad😁 Socialising your dog is important, we all know that but what I normally see is a lot of OVER socialisation which creates issues in the long run. Allowing your dog to say hello to every dog you see, pull you towards every person to get a fuss, chase birds/squirrels with no longline and no chance of a successful recall is teaching your dog: 🐾 Pulling on the lead= reward whether this is affection from humans, sniffing grass or greeting another dog 🐾 It’s okay to ignore recall, in fact if you ignore the recall you can keep playing or chasing those birds! 🐾 Other people are more rewarding than me, of course you should pull to say hello 🐾 Dogs out on a walk mean you can play with them all whenever you want - even if you don’t know whether the dog is friendly or not A lot of dogs I see in day to day life clearly display frustration based reactivity. Those cute puppy behaviours start to become more problematic the older and stronger the dog becomes. And sadly, many others I see are the opposite; they are fear reactive due to being continually pestered by out of control, off lead dogs. Focusing on exposing your pup to the environment and the things in it will pay dividends in the future. Working on you being highly rewarding to your dog and use greeting other dogs/people as a reward for good behaviour. In this short clip a lady is passing with her two dogs. Dylan is a young pup, he would love to go over and say hello. Emily could allow him to go across, have a play, but… 1. She doesn’t know these dogs, nor did they express any interest in wanting to interact with Dylan 2. Teaching Dylan that looking at the dogs and disengaging to look back at me = reward. 3. Dylan has lots of other opportunities to interact with known dogs, he doesn’t need to say hello to every dog he sees. We of course want a social dog but not one that behaves poorly when not allowed to say hello. In this situation it was more beneficial to Dylan’s

🐾 Enrichment 🐾 Some commonly asked questions at puppy class are… “How do I stop my puppy chewing my things” “How do I tire him out, we’ll go for a long walk and he goes nuts when we’re back inside” I’ve even had a client tell me they’ve been advised not to give their puppy enrichment to rip up/ chew because it will encourage this behaviour with other items in the house you don’t want them to chew! 😱…which is just not true! Young dogs chew! And it will happen regardless. If we can meet that biological need in a safe and controlled way then great! Enrichment looks like the following and some examples: 🐾 Sniffing and foraging - enrichments boxes, scatter feeding, find-it games around the house 🐾 Ripping and licking - lickimats, kongs, boxes, paper 🐾 Chewing and crunching- high value antlers and chews (age appropriate and always check this!) or frozen carrots Providing your puppy things to focus their senses will mentally tire them out and bring their energy down slowly - we need to balance physical exercise with a walk and mental stimulation through training and enrichment. It will not encourage your dog to be destructive inside the home because: 1. Your puppy should never be left unattended and if they are at such a young age they should be in a crate so they can’t chew unwanted items 2. Your focussing that energy into something positive - if you don’t then they’ll likely find something to satisfy their needs anyway (which could be your best slippers) 3. You will give them a start and end cue such as break/okay/go and an “all done” cue These guys absolutely loved exploring all the enrichment we provided for them. Some we’d spent a bit of money on and others we’d just used an old twisted up towel to create a snuffle mat, some cardboard boxes and tubes and a longline all with treats scattered inside! So go grab yourself some enrichment and tag Lucky’s Paws in your videos! It can be as simple or as com

Muzzle training: Part 4 Once your dog is comfortable having the muzzle on inside the home you can move the training to more distracting environments. With Boston I started in a field (his favourite place) just down the road from home, he’s familiar with the area and the field was really quiet which is what you want initially I worked up gradually to walking next to main roads, new walks that are unfamiliar and after all that, that’s when I started implementing the muzzle training in the scary places, like the vets. What I didn’t do is think “right he’s fine with the muzzle on, let’s go to the scary places” because I’d completely set him up for failure. Too many distractions, too many triggers that would ultimately cause him to feel stressed and likely try to pull the muzzle off. Your dog should not be trying to get the muzzle off with his claws, rubbing his face on the floor or standing stiff and uncomfortable. If that’s what is happening we need to take it back a step and make it easier Let me know how you get on and keep your eyes peeled for part 5! 👀 #muzzletraining #muzzle #muzzletraininginprogress #dogmuzzle #dogs #huddersfield #balancedtraining #balanceddogtrainer #dogtrainer #gooddog #dogintraining #september

Muzzle Training: Part 3 Once your dog is successfully putting their nose inside the muzzle on command, keeping it there until they hear the “yes” marker and you’re able to fasten the clip behind your dogs head without issue, you can start adding in short bursts of movement Start with small movements like “sit” “down” and “heel” then you can start recalling your dog across the room etc etc until you can eventually put a lead on and walk around the house with the muzzle on Keep your eyes peeled for part 4 👀 #muzzletraining #muzzle #muzzletrained #dogtrainer #dogtraining #yorkshire #rommierescue #rommie #dogs #huddersfield #balanceddogtraining #balanceddogtrainer #balance #vet #vetchecks