Red Robin Dog Training and Behaviour

06/12/2024

Grandad’s Robin, always with me 🥰

03/12/2024

A fab training walk with Sammy the Lab this week 🥰🐾

02/12/2024

A lovely consultation to start the week, with Freddie the Cocker Spaniel 🥰 Freddie can be reactive towards visitors sometimes, and triggers such as delivery people and delivery trucks on his street. New training plan in place now. What a handsome boy he is 🐾

28/11/2024

New training client, beautiful two year old rescued Staffy girl, Rosa 🥰 Rosa is in her third home and hasn’t had a great start to life, but she’s in the right place now with humans who are doing their best for her ❤️ We are going to be working on over-excitement, loose-leading, a bit of dog reactivity and a touch of resource guarding 🐾

27/11/2024

My sharky boy 🥰 He wasn’t feeling his walk yesterday, so we found a quiet patch of grass and hunted for cheese instead (well Reg did, I did the hiding) 😆🐾

26/11/2024

A lovely little wander around the garden centre with handsome Ren this week, passing people and other dogs calmly and happily. It’s amazing to see how far he’s come in recent weeks, thanks to his fabulous humans putting the work in to help him 🥰🐾

25/11/2024

New basic training client, handsome young Lab Sammy 🥰 Starting off with excitable mouthing, greeting visitors, pre-walk protocol and some basic scent work and focus games 🐾

23/11/2024

💃🏼🙏🏻🐾

22/11/2024

Handsome Hugo 🥰 He’s 3/4 Staffy and 1/4 Pug! Hugo did super well on our walk, working on pre-walk protocol first and then some loose-leading and passing other dogs calmly as he tends to get excited and then frustrated when he can’t greet. It was amazing to have Hugo’s fabulous dog walkers taking part in the session too 🥰 Well done Hugo! 🐾

20/11/2024

Pretty Derbyshire 😍❄️

18/11/2024

It’s my Kimmi Pearl (aka Pog)’s 10th birthday today!

I can’t believe it’s almost ten years since I brought my tiny little anxious pup home 🥹 She has taught me so much, and she’s my best friend ♥️ My AsbonStaff Pretty Princess, my Baby Angel Pig, my Feisty Pet, my Rolling Thunder 🥰

Celebrated at the weekend with woodland walks, cake, new toys and harnesses for Kimmi and Paddy, as they both always celebrate their birthdays together 🥰🎉

17/11/2024

Force-free and fun!

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16/11/2024

These are my dogs, Kimmi and Paddy.

Paddy wants to be your friend.

Kimmi does not.

Paddy’s walks are all about the people he may get loved by and the dogs he may get to play with. Kimmi’s walks are about enjoying her time alone with her human, sniffing, exploring and fetching her ball.

No, she is not aggressive, but she would prefer if you not try to touch her.

No, I am not sorry or embarrassed to tell you this.

Yes, they are both absolutely beautiful and you are more than welcome to look at them, and to fuss Paddy who loves all humans immediately, but if you try to touch Kimmi without asking or following the protocol I will give you, then I WILL stand up for her.

Kimmi gets along well with people she knows, and will make friends with new people if they play by the rules and give her space, but she has strong genetic programming to be wary of strangers.

Because of her training and the amount of effort I have put into her socialisation for the last almost 10 years, Kimmi can coexist just fine with strangers and isn’t reactive when people walk closely past. However, she would prefer not to be touched by them.

Both dogs have been raised by myself from 8 weeks old and provided with the same level of training, socialisation and habituation in those crucial early weeks. They are related to each other and share 50% the same genetics. Kimmi was born anxious and wary, Paddy was not.

Does this make Kimmi any less of a ‘good’ dog than Paddy? No. Paddy will accept cuddles all day from a complete stranger, but that doesn’t make him better than Kimmi in my eyes. What it does mean, is that when I take them out, I have a different mindset for each dog, it’s not all about what I want out of their time outdoors and from public interactions. It’s about what THEY want and what makes them happy. They may look very much alike, but they are actually like chalk and cheese!

I understand my dogs’ breed, their individual personalities and their motivators. I respect them and work WITH them, rather than against them. That gives me happy dogs. That gives me dogs who trust me, who trust me to keep them safe and always do my best for them. I do not set them up for failure or put them in stressful situations.

This may mean that Kimmi gets left at home while Paddy gets taken to street fairs, busy pet stores, on the school runs, to markets, local events. She isn’t being ‘left out’, I just know that these places would cause her stress. She would ‘behave’ and may seem fine to people who do not know her, but I would see the stress and upset. Kimmi would rather not visit these places, and is happy to sleep at home instead and then be taken for a quiet long walk in the woods later on.

Remember that your dog liking everyone and wanting to say “hello” to people is an expectation YOU have, simply because it makes us feel like the dog is a ‘good dog’, but the majority of dogs out there are more like Kimmi than Paddy, and they’d really love some understanding and acceptance rather than disappointment.

15/11/2024

My second handsome Fox Red Lab boy named Max recently! Although technically this one was the first as he did puppy training with me last winter 🥰 It was lovely to see Max again, and what a fabulous boy he has grown into. A refresher on visitor protocol (he loves them LOTS), and we have some upcoming recall work to do too 🐾

14/11/2024

Big squishy pup Ragnor being a superstar on our training walk this morning 😍 He loves the horses, bless him and enjoyed sitting watching them mid-walk. He can be a little nervous in new places around various triggers so we started working on that today 🥰

12/11/2024

My best Land Shark 🥰 He’s been with me from the start - one of my first clients 7 years ago when I first embarked on my journey of self-employment, and I’m lucky that I still get to see him twice a week every week. Love you Reggie ♥️

11/11/2024

Lil’ Molly looking rightly proud of herself after some serious bravery at our session today! Working on Molly’s fear of passing vehicles, at a safe distance, on a nice comfy bench. Great session, well done Molly 🥰🐾

10/11/2024

Remembering today, as well as the human soldiers and lives lost, the 8 million horses lost in WW1, countless donkeys and mules, and over 1 million dogs who served and died 💜