Harry’s Hounds Dog Training

20/11/2025

My beautiful old girl ❤️

14/11/2025

We can spend a lot of time going through behavioural adjustment training but if your dogs aren’t able to just be dogs in an appropriate manner, you will see an influx of unwanted behaviours. It’s still our dogs just being dogs, they’ve just learnt how to get rid of their frustration in ways we deem as “bad behaviours”.

It’s our responsibility to channel their energy into outlets that they need.

13/11/2025

Out for a stroll with the pack and fancied a coffee…

Did I use a focused heel or a flashy middle position? No.

All I need from my dogs is solid understanding of the basics, combined with high levels of impulse control. That just comes through practice.

I love playing around with precision obedience but it’s rare I’d ever actually need it.

12/11/2025

Splodge the young collie has some real big feelings about the world. Living on a sheep farm means she hasn’t seen much of the world. When she does, she has a tendency to react extremely badly.

It’s no kind of wizardry that she’s dealing with my dogs in a calmer manner. She was set up for success, non confrontational dogs made it possible.

If you want your dog to be more confident around dogs, show them that it can be calm and non intrusive experience. They won’t always stare at you in a threatening manner or try and force an interaction on you. Pick and choose your interactions to create this thought process.

09/11/2025

08/11/2025

Roxy the Huntaway mix has got extremely high arousal levels, and even though she does very well in her focus training, due to over socialisation during puppy classes, she is obsessed with other dogs.

Her owners are great and work hard with her. Counter conditioning this kind of obsession is a battle in a high drive, high arousal dog. It can take time and a lot of patience.

We have to choose what interactions our dogs have for a long time to convince them that it can be a calm experience rather than the extremely high arousal moment they have come to expect.

My advice is to socialise in a calm manner to begin with and then when our dogs are ready, we can allow them the freedom to socialise with higher energy dogs, knowing they can make good decisions.

03/11/2025

30/10/2025

Working with Maggie again this week…

In the process of working through reactivity we are going to have moments where we are caught off guard. That may be because we’re focused on our dog and a trigger comes out of nowhere, it could be that we break focus on our dog. Whatever the reason, don’t beat yourself up or get frustrated with your dog. Let them calm down, then carry on with what you were doing. I want a dog to remember that area as a place of focus and fun, not anxiety and reactivity.

We live and learn about our dog’s spacial comfortability in differing levels of energy and proximity of triggers.

Just after I ran out of memory and the video ended another person came, but this time I created a little more space a little earlier and Maggie did great.

Play isn’t just a great reinforcer of behaviours, it’s one of our dog’s best outlets for frustration and tension. As with everything, just a cog in the machine that is raising a dog.

Try and finish every outing with your dog on a positive note, no matter how small a win, it’ll still be a win 😊