Parker and Pooch - Dog Training & Solo Walks

Alice & Tess

Now that the evenings are getting a teeny tiny bit lighter, Space Walks are coming back out of hibernation 🤩 For those of you who don’t know - Space Walks are social walks for two dogs who both need a bit more space… these are great for dogs who are scared or worried about interactions with other dogs (or people), and can also be great practice for dogs who get frustrated when they can’t meet other dogs or people. There's only one rule for Space Walks, and that's that everyone gives and gets the space they need ❤️ Tess and Alice had a Space Walk together yesterday… they first met back in September last year, so it'd been absolutely ages since they’d seen each other - but they slotted back into each other's company like it had been five minutes 😍 Tess was a superstar, giving Alice the distance she needed at the start. And she nailed it when two cyclists came past and she looked like she didn’t have a care in the world 🥳 Meanwhile Alice’s finest moment was munching on something unidentifiable but definitely dead that she found in a drystone wall 🙈🤮 Are you thinking - but my dog needs a football pitch of distance, so Space Walks are no good to me…? Ok so yes, Tess and Alice were walking close together by the end - Tess struggles with unknown people more than dogs, and Alice doesn’t mind other dogs as long as they don’t get in her face. But! No distance is too big a distance not to be catered for 🥰 We've communicated by hand signals, or even by phone before now. A Space Walk can mean the other person is a just little dot in the distance… if that's the space your dog needs, that's the space they'll get 💕 And the other lovely thing about Space Walks is zero judgement. We all have dogs who can be a bit shouty. So if there does turn out to be any barking or lunging, no-one could care less 🤗 We’ve now got a Space Club whatsapp group where you can arrange walks with anyone else in the group. There's no charge for

The reason I don't use "Find It" as a recall cue

So, the reason I don’t use “Find it” as a recall cue… To recap: “Find it” is where your dog learns that hearing that phrase means that you’re going to toss a treat on the ground for them to find. Which means that once you’ve practised it enough, their head whips round to you as soon as you say the magic words. If you play “Find It” a lot and your dog comes bounding over to you as soon as they hear you say it - because why wouldn’t they, it means the fun is about to start - you might be thinking: ooh this would work really well as a recall cue. And to be fair it would. But the reason why I don’t use it for that purpose is this: I like “Find It” to be a conversation, not a command. And what I mean by that is that if the dog I’m working with doesn’t turn round when I say “Find It”, that’s not a failure. That’s just information that in that moment, “Find It” doesn’t trump The Thing. The Thing being the person or the other dog or the squirrel or the sheep - the thing that the dog is too worried about to take their eyes off, or too excited and interested in to take their eyes off. And so whether I’m using it as a training technique, or I’m just trying to distract a dog to manage a situation… I'd like the dog to turn round to me when they hear “Find It”, but I truly don't mind if they don’t. Whereas I want a recall cue to mean “come back to me no matter what”. Which is very different to “come back to me if you can”. To be fair, to the dog - there is no difference. They either will come back or they won't. But the difference lies in us as human beings. If you have an expectation that a dog will do something you ask, you will likely be frustrated if they don’t. Whereas if you have a genuine curiosity about whether a dog will do something you ask, then you won't be frustrated if they don't / can't do it. And that’s why I don’t use “Find It” as a recall cue. Because I always want it to

I've said it before... if I could have a superpower, it would be that I could smell like a dog (I should rephrase that but I'm not going to 🤣) This is Alice sitting in the middle of a bramble bush next to the car park at the end of a walk - I want to know what she’s smelling and why it’s so amazing 🤩 Is it just me, or would you love to know exactly what your dog is sniffing? (excluding 💩 obviously 🙈)

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Oh, and also, this little clip of Tyra, cos it makes me smile every time I watch it 😍

We were down in Devon the weekend before last, staying with my mum and dad. So I took the opportunity to use their lovely garden for al fresco breakfasts for Alice... she always gets half her food in a bowl, and then the rest in two kongs that she has to find. The first morning I didn’t think to take videos, but there was a slight breeze blowing up the garden carrying the scent to her, so she found them both within seconds. This is the first kong from the second morning, when there was zero wind which made it a lot trickier. Still nailed it though 🤩 One of the things I love most about dogs is just watching them do their thing ❤️ PS: Diamond Dogs this speeded up video will be way too busy for you, even with the calming music 🤣 I’ll pop another one in the comments that will be more your bag 😍

The other week, I was talking - aka having a mild rant - about letting our dogs sniff. So to follow on, I want to talk about the power of scattering feeding i.e. scattering food on the ground for your dog to find. Scatter feeding is such a simple thing to do, but can have big benefits… ⭐️ Scatter feeding can help an easily worried or spooked dog, by building their confidence and their resilience: “I found a treat! Yay me! And I found another one! Yay me again!” 🥰 ⭐️ Scatter feeding can help an easily frustrated dog, by growing their ability to cope with micro doses of frustration: “Can’t find it can’t find it…. Yay I found one! Can’t find it can’t find it… Yay I found another one!” 🤩 ⭐️ And scatter feeding encourages any dog to sniff, which releases endorphins and encourages relaxation 😍 Here’s a little video of the awesome Layla Dog, showing you all how it’s done (Just so you're mentally prepared, nothing interesting happens at the end, it’s just 53 seconds of the ginger ninja sniffing. You're welcome 🤣 Personally I could watch her all day ❤️)

Let’s talk about long lines… Long lines get a bad rep in some quarters. I think some people feel like they’ve failed if their dog has rubbish recall and they have to use a long line. And also that they’re failing their dog - that it’s cruel to not give them freedom. And I think some other people judge those first people for using long lines. Actually I don’t think it, I know it. Alice doesn’t have rubbish recall. She has zero recall. Nada. It’s not even a thing where she comes from 🤣 And you know what? I used to feel like a failure. Especially once I became a dog trainer. Call yourself a dog trainer when you can’t even let your own dog off-lead? 🤷‍♀️ But these days, I have a different perspective on it. In my book, long lines don't take away freedom, they give freedom 🌟 Regardless of whether your dog is on a long line temporarily - maybe because they're a teenager with big hormones and no brain cells 🤪 Or whether they're on a long line permanently because they can’t be trusted not to run away and live out their days on the moor (and yes Alice I'm looking at you right now 😍🤣) Either way… a long line lets you give your dog freedom, to still explore the places they couldn’t otherwise go. So please, don’t ever feel guilty about keeping your dog on a long line if you need to use one 🙏 It keeps them, you, and others around you safe - and that can never be a bad thing 🫶 And just in case you needed a reminder that dogs can still have fun on a long line, here's a (very unseasonal) video of a very happy dog on a long line ❤️

I'm tired this week and so this might come out wrong, but let's do it anyway: 👤 How do I get my dog to stop sniffing so much? 🐶 You don't Most of the time in training sessions, if someone asks “how do I stop my dog from doing X”, we'll explore how we can make that happen. [Spoiler: it generally starts with “let's think about what you want them to do instead” … but that's a whole other facebook post] But if someone asks how do I get my dog to stop sniffing, my answer is: “you don't” We see the world 🌎 Dogs sniff the world 🌏 Imagine being told you can't look at an amazing view - whether that's from a mountain top, a beautiful sunset across the sea, or maybe a whole cityscape laid out in front of you… whatever floats your boat. ❌️ Nope, you’re not allowed to look. Shut your eyes and move on. Mean huh? And it's the same for our dogs. Sure, we don't think a lamppost or that patch of grass is very interesting - but it is for them. It tells them all about who or what's been there before - other dogs, wildlife, people, other scents that have landed there on the breeze - in truth we don't know the half of what they're sniffing, because our noses are positively amateurish compared to theirs. As well as gathering information, sniffing can also help a nervous dog relax, it can help them feel safe. It can even be a displacement behaviour - a “I'm a bit worried about what's going on over there, so I'm just going to hang around here and do some sniffing” kind of thing. There’s can be so much more to sniffing than just sniffing 🤩 Alice had stopped wanting to walk most mornings as her arthritis had got worse. She’d do a wee on the grass outside our house and that would be her done. Now she's on an extra painkiller that works for her, she's got her mojo back a bit - she wants to walk more, and every blade of grass and patch of tarmac needs investigating. Do I begrudge the fact that her morning toilet walk has gone back to