💅🏼 Nail Trimming 💅🏼
Did you know that you can teach your dogs to file their own nails?!
Tide as a puppy injured her toe and had to have some injections as treatment. As a result she doesn’t like having her nails cut using nail clippers so she files them herself!
For less than the cost of dog nail clippers you can make your own scratch board!
Drop a comment if it’s something you’re interested in and I will do a free training video on how to make your own board and how to train your dog to trim their own nails 🐾
❄️🌨️ There was a smattering of snow today and it was super chilly! Some dogs loved it and some wanted to go back to their toasty warm beds 🤣🌨️❄️
🎄🎅🏻 Christmas Prep 🎅🏻🎄
Chip came to us in the summer and so it’s important to get him ready for his first Christmas with us. As a rescue I don’t know what he experienced last year.
Christmas can be quite unsettling and stressful for dogs; there are lights/sounds/people etc that weren’t there before and routines change.
Before I make changes in my home and put my tree, lights and decorations up I want to make sure Chip has had positive experiences of these things.
I took Chip to The Range (who are now dog friendly!) and let him lead the way; freely moving around the shop experiencing the Christmas changes at his own pace. He got lots of treats and praise and as you can see he was happy and confident throughout.
These experiences will help when the holiday season reaches our home and routine :)
🦌 Real life recall 🦌
I was on a walk with my 6 dogs and we were following a footpath along the countryside. Reef & Chip were right by me and the other 4 were a few meters ahead.
As we turned the corner into the next field a deer popped out the hedge, lept over Reef and took off. Reef and Chip went to chase the deer.
I cued my emergency stop cue to my other 4 dogs who all stopped and stayed where they were then I turned and whistle recalled Reef & Chip.
Reef & Chip spun on the spot and ran straight back to me, allowing the deer to get away safely.
Reliable recall and management of actions are super important, especially as I have so many dogs. For the entirety of their lives my dogs get rewarded with tasty treats and their fave toys for recalling back to me because it’s super important to keep that up. It’s very easy to fall into bad habits of expecting your dog to do this for free.
I did LOTS of play, praise and treats for this. I’ve muted the audio as it’s me screeching YES BOYS GOOD BOYS THATS IT and I am LOUD 🤣🫣
Did I expect a deer to leap out and over one of my dogs? No
But boy am I glad that I never stop reinforcing check ins and recall as that saved the day today 🐾
🍂🍁 Autumn leaves make great natural snuffle mats 🍁🍂
Hands up if your dogs do this ✋🏻🤢
Our very own Ocho stars in the upcoming Rivals series coming out this month on Disney+ spot him in the trailer!
Warning! If you haven’t read the Jilly Cooper books then this might be surprisingly raunchy!
Yes we see some interesting sights as animal handlers on set 😳🫣
I do TV & Film work with my dogs and one of the things we have to teach the dogs is to follow direction without vocal cues due to the main stars acting and speaking their lines.
This is Ocho practicing this technique of following me whilst on set on a night shoot we were doing. He was tasked to follow me ‘to heel’ without me holding the lead or cuing anything.
I stopped and then changed direction and Ocho naturally did the same. As he’s a large dog this makes it really easy to walk him as he doesn’t pull and follows my direction so not only is this helpful for media work but also for day to day life.
Buckey REALLY likes the paddling pool 🤣
Who doesn’t love the sound of a shnuffling shhpaniel shnaz 😍
This is Chip, he is an adolescent male hound who has recently joined my group. He came to me with minimal exposure and he had never been off the lead.
Chip has only been with us a couple of weeks and something we’ve been working on is recall. Like all dogs there are times where he is better than others and we are now looking at recalling around distractions.
Something Chip loves is running around with my other dogs, naturally this is exciting to him and he wants to be involved so I’ve been recalling him away from them as that’s a really big choice for him.
All the foundations I teach in recall lead to this response, look how well he recalls away from my other dogs playing 🤩
Yes he fell over as he recalled back to me 🤣🫣
Sometimes training doesn’t go to plan and that’s ok!
Here I am doing some training with Reef in a pet shop…
The Plan - This was to ask him to wait next to food which he is stood by, Reef is a big foodie and LOVES food, he would take it at any opportunity from anyone 🤣 The plan was for me to move around the shop while he waited and really proof that wait behaviour around distractions and food.
But things didn’t go to plan…
There was a dog in the background that REALLY wanted to get to Reef, it was vocalising over excitement as you can hear in the video and dragging itself down the aisle towards Reef as you can also see in the video. Reef notices this, he makes a good decision to turn back to me but breaks his wait to move to me away from the other dog.
I rewarded him and moved him away from the other dog, why? Because he made excellent decisions. He didn’t want to engage with a dog that was overwhelming to him, he wanted to move towards me and away from that situation which I admire in him. Situations like that can often lead to behaviours and reactions in dogs such as defensiveness, nervousness, worry and anxious responses due to it being a full on experience having a dog come towards you like that because our dogs do not know its intentions.
So instead of reacting he chose to remove himself from the situation, I recognised this and moved to another part of the shop, allowed the dog to leave and carried on our training.
The dog was a large breed who was very excited at the possibility of a potential friend but Reef wasn’t sure of its intentions and I don’t want Reef, a young adolescent dog, to have to possibly make a bad decision under pressure. In the real world these things happen so it’s good to be able to read your dog and change your plan on the spot. Yes Reef broke his wait I asked him to do but for good reason and that’s ok.
So even if it doesn’t go to plan still reward your dog for trying, for making good decisions, for avo
A qualified and accredited Dog Trainer & Behaviourist using ethical, positive and science based methods covering Wiltshire and surrounding areas. 5* Rated
