Applause for Paws Dog Training & Behaviour

22/01/2025

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BIG ON LOVE, SMALL ON TIME

Are we all big on love, small on time? What really makes our dogs happy and what do they want from us?

I’m back at the pub tonight and it makes me remember a sunny day a couple of years ago when I was sat outside my local pub by the Thames, enjoying the sunshine (and a glass of wine) and people watching. I saw a couple sat in the corner with a GSD asleep under their table, they got up to leave as it got busier and carefully manoeuvred so that he didn’t have to go near any of the dogs coming in. I watched as they walked down to their little boat moored outside the pub.

This lovely GSD lad climbed onto their little boat and watched as they opened a box with a new blow up boat in and he sniffed and investigated the new thing and they gave him time to do this, he watched as they spent 20 minutes blowing it up, just lying down casually watching life around him. He watched every single thing they did, every move they made and if they made eye contact with him he wagged softly.

They spoke quietly to him and stroked his ears whenever he came over and nudged their hands. They ruffled his neck and showed him everything they were doing, pointing out the new items they unboxed. I watched as he got off the boat to lie on the grass with them and as he picked up a feather to play with and as he went with his people to the bank to feed the ducks and cautiously wagged at them and then backed away (I got the feeling he wasn’t the bravest of dogs!). He put his head back to sniff the air taking in so much sensory information around him on the river (and probably the smell of the lunches from the pub too).

Occasionally other people with dogs would walk towards them down the path and they’d put him back on the boat and stand in between. He wasn’t showing any overt aggression as they made sure he had space and moved him away, they were really good at giving him the space he needed with no fuss or drama.

It got me thinking about our dogs and what makes them happy and what our expectations are. I doubt this GSD lad ever went offlead or visited a park. I doubt anyone ever even thinks about how his skills are at meeting and greeting other dogs offlead or worries that he’s not got a host of doggy friends down the park. He looked truly happy and content.

He’s happy as he’s with them and participating fully in their lives. He has the thing that our dogs value the most, he has their time. I think sometimes that we have all become so obsessed with our dog walks and trips to the park as we don’t have much time- many people work full time and so our meaningful interaction with our dogs comes mainly down to two short periods we can schedule in. We want to wear them out physically and mentally so that they are tired for the day until we can interact with them again. This all becomes incredibly stressful when you have a reactive dog and you’re trying your best to get them out for quality time without it all going wrong.

Even if we do work full time (and I do totally understand that people have to!) we can increase our meaningful time spent together, let them sleep in your room or near you (that’s another 8 hours of company), let them eat sociably with you rather than having their meals when you are leaving for work.

If they are dog reactive but fine with people let them come with you to visit a friend or neighbour. Take them to car parks and industrial estates just to check out the sniffs. One of our clients takes her dog to her yoga class with her and he lies watching her do the downward dog. One of mine finds true joy in digging and rolling in cut grass (my garden finds less joy in this activity!)

Let them investigate and participate fully in your lives whenever they can. Forget about the walks and see what enjoyment you can find doing other stuff together. Sit quietly and just watch the world around you together. Time spent together is what builds a secure attachment and mutual trust and there’s no short cuts to this, if you can give them anything, give them your time.

Laura McAuliffe, Dog Communication 2025

21/01/2025

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Small dogs can have a really tough time of it. Because they are small they are not always respected and listened to as much as larger breeds.

I should add that there are many excellent guardians and caregivers of small dogs who do make a huge amount of effort to help their small dogs feel comfortable in the world and who advocate for them, but sadly there are also far too many who don't, or other people who don't understand and don't try to.

Because these little dogs are small enough to be easily manhandled, the same amount of time is not always put into their training and ensuring that they are comfortable with what is going on around them.

Is it then any wonder that they become scared and vocal about their fear and wish to be left alone?

For more see a link to an article in the comments.

21/01/2025

17/01/2025

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17/01/2025

Separation Anxiety can be so hard for our Dogs and their families

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11/01/2025

Team Clover 🍀 making beautiful progress. She even fell asleep on her mat when I was there yesterday 😍

10/01/2025

Thank you for the lovely review team Remi 😘

10/01/2025

When I started working with team Rafa, one of their goals was to have Rafa relaxed in cafes and pubs as they adore camping.

Here is today in cafe where there were three other dogs present

Well done Team Rafa 👏 👍

08/01/2025

Another brilliant post from Kahla 👌

https://www.facebook.com/share/18RmuxWEBA/

✨ Wisdom Wednesdays ✨

Today is one for the adopters of ex street dogs amongst us. Let’s have a chat about these often complex dogs and why they aren’t as straightforward as they may seem.

I’m gonna get a bit nerdy to start off with and talk about epigenetics. Put VERY simply, epigenetics can be behavioural traits passed down family lines. There was a study done on rats that showed that fear can be passed down as many as five generations and the same likely goes for dogs. So if your dogs great grandfather was beaten by a man wearing orange with a stick, your dog COULD carry this fear too, despite never having encountered a man with a stick wearing orange before. Epigenetics are POWERFUL. This is of course a gross simplification of the process but it holds true. Epigenetics exist to aid the survival of the animal, and if ancestors can ‘warn’ you about danger, you’re more likely to survive.

So what does this have to do with street dogs?

Street dogs are vastly different to pet bred dogs in many ways, but the main thing is that even if your street dog was born in captivity or ‘rescued’ early on, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents and so on will likely have lived a semi feral life where survival was a much higher priority than your pet bred golden retriever.

These genetics DO pass down. I see many street dogs adopted from Romania, Cyprus, Turkey, Portugal and many more places. I recently worked with a dog from the meat trade. All of these dogs have two things in common:

- A strong dislike of being on a short lead.
- A hypersensitivity to change in environment.

This is epigenetics at play. You cannot escape threat when you are trapped and you must be aware of your environment in order to survive.

Training CANNOT and WILL NEVER change genetics. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. Your dog ‘saved from the streets’ will likely NEVER be the same level of social, relaxed and easygoing as a Golden Retriever purposely bred and raised for generations to be those things.

If you’ve got an ex street dog. You are possibly experiencing;

- Lack of lead skills
- Sound sensitivity
- Fear of people or other dogs
- Resource guarding
- Generalised anxiety

These things, for a dog living on the streets, are NORMAL. If your dog lived on the streets for a while, these ‘behaviour problems’ kept your dog alive. They were repeatedly reinforced by the very act of surviving another day and all of their grandparents genetics are laid out to aid that survival. They aren’t ’bad dogs’ or ‘problem dogs’. They are exactly what they are meant to be and when they were shipped to a two bed town house in a different country, the comfy sofa did not immediately erase everything the dog is.

A few years ago I received a call at 9pm with an older lady desperate for help immediately. Her family had adopted a street dog for her to ‘guard her house’. Yes, some questionable ethics on all counts there especially the rescue organisation! The dog had been driven in a van over days, and deposited in her house in the middle of a town. She had never met the dog, the dog had never met her. She had read that a stuffed Kong can help dogs relax and suddenly the dog was ferociously guarding the Kong and she couldn’t get into her own sitting room. She was distraught. The dog was explosively stressed. None of what played out was surprising. I did that emergency visit that night and took the dog out of her home and took him to a kennels where the rescue then re placed him. I don’t know what happened to him after that and I wonder often.

So what can we do? This isn’t about whether I think rescuing from abroad is appropriate or not and I want to keep that out of this discussion. What do we do if we find ourselves living with such a dog?

We honour them. For who and what they are and what their generations before created. Honouring them means seeing exactly who and what they are and not trying to force them to be what they aren’t. It’s a humbling process.

The first thing is that they need a lot of time. Space to just be. They often don’t want a person up in their grill trying to drag them down the street on a lead on day one. They need often weeks or months just to acclimate to the home environment.

Typically ex street dogs do not do well with the family trip to the park on a busy Sunday. Everywhere there is threat. This stacks up. Even if they don’t react to everything on the walk, they get home and guard their food bowl with incredible intensity because it’s all they CAN control now. Or they bark at anything that looks suspicious because that’s what kept them alive (or their parents alive) for years.

My favourite, really simple thing to do with street dogs, is a harness on, long line walk and explore of grotty back alleys, industrial estates, wasteland and environments like that. Mimicking that environment they came from and survived in is a real key to their hearts. When you explore those environments together and delight in the discovery of gutter snacks or an interesting p*e smell with them, that’s where they come alive.

Street dogs were not born in the UK. They were not born to run around the park playing with everyone. They were born to survive. Of course there are exceptions and I’m fully waiting for the comments of ‘my street dog isn’t like that’. Many are though.

The single biggest thing we can do is to honour everything that they are and stop trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Meet them where they are at, and accept that they may not be what you expected. They are still very much trainable, but the process is likely to look very different to a ‘normal’ dogs progress.

Do you have an ex street dog? How has your experience with them been?

- Kahla

02/01/2025

Gorgeous lad, Rolo 🥰

01/01/2025

Beautiful Sascha 😍

26/12/2024

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⚠️ BOXING DAY : EXTRA CAUTION REQUIRED ⚠️

Your dog or puppy may be over stimulated, tired, sore and irritable 😠 🥱 😩 😵‍💫

Take extra care today, please keep in mind that sometimes the first symptom of a dog or puppy being too tired, sore or over stimulated is behaviour change. Behaviour change which, in some instances, can appear to come from nowhere.

‼️ A dog’s usual levels of tolerance may be at risk of lowering.
‼️ Their startle responses may increase.
‼️ Their sensitivity to stimuli, including being touched, may heighten.
‼️ Their ability to recollect prior learned information (their training) may decrease.
‼️ Their social skills may become compromised, which may result in them failing to read the room or being more irritable.
‼️ They may be quicker to fatigue on walks.

Nick and I travelled to see my step mum on Monday. Christmas Eve, we spent the first part of the day cleaning the house and Christmas Day we travelled to see Nick’s parents.

My dogs don’t sleep deeply in the car and despite taking their beds to both family homes, they didn’t sleep for as long, nor as well as they would have at home. They were understandably easily disturbed by the activity and were even following me to the bathroom each time.
Our cleaning related hustle and bustle on 24th would have also interfered with their usual sleep quality.

Yesterday Amigo also dedicated a good hour of his day on his feet putting pressure on kitchen door activity - hoping for a management slip up that would get him access to the food being served and the plates being cleared away from the dining room. You can take the stray off the streets…… 😆

So all in all, across three days- I would guess that my dogs are about 15 hours in deficit (of sleep).

During sleep, stress hormone levels are lowered, the brain’s toxins are removed, cellular repair across the body occurs, and the immune system gets a boost. The body is given an MOT that helps regulate its responses to stimuli the next day.

This includes regulating the perception of pain and of course, quality rest supports the reduction of any inflammation.

My dogs were on their feet - getting up and down more than normal - across the past three days. Any muscular or skeletal pain can become heightened- especially for my senior dog Kanita.

Additionally, during sleep information is processed and stored. Whilst relevant for all dogs, those with young puppies should be especially considerate to the fact that there’s only so much sensory stimuli the young brain can process. A high intensity of stimuli (noise, sights, scents, and touch!) parallel to compromised sleep can lead to an over stimulated puppy- this usually results in a puppy that jumps and mouths more!

Lastly, most of us humans get tired from all of the activity. The usual level of management and ‘tolerance’ of our dogs and puppies may start to slip.

Contexts in which to be cautious:

☑️ Visitors arriving to the home- caution letting dogs greet them at the door or in narrow hallways!

Also be cautious of your dog accidentally escaping out the door or gate left open. Stay vigilant and remind guests to keep the usual doors and gates closed.

☑️ People touching your dog or puppy! Does the dog WANT to be touched? Have they asked to be touched? Is touching the puppy leading to them jumping and mouthing? Is the dog and puppy being touched and/or picked up too often?

Make sure everyone, especially children, leave a resting puppy or dog well alone and that there's understanding of what 'no thanks' looks like (they don't approach to interact when asked, or look away, move away or tense up when being interacted with).

☑️ Monitor anyone playing with the dog/puppy very carefully. Normally, it's the humans that struggle to regulate their behaviour intensity or duration - and the dog/puppy simply responds to that.

☑️ People (including children) behaving in an animated way (loud noises and sudden or unusual movement).

☑️ How WE humans respond to undesired behaviour. Are we appearing confrontational? Are we intensifying the level of stimuli or calming things down?

☑️ Leaving dangerous foods and items around. Keep things out of reach of your dog or shut them away from your dog.

If your puppy or dog 'steals' an item that they 'shouldn't have', trade it for treats. Don't rush to grab things off them and ensure everyone present knows to do the same (or better yet, alerts you to do it). You'd be suprised how many bite incidents happen towards people who aren't the dog's primary carer and who go to take things off the dog/puppy.

☑️ Interacting with unfamiliar dogs on walks (or even their buddies!). Dogs who are tired or in pain may be more quick to be defensive, over stimulated dogs and puppies may be more likely to socialise inappropriately- which may result in them being the target of defensive behaviour.

☑️ The walk itself! Pay attention to the environment, something that’s harder to do when walking in a group!
Be aware and considerate of others, but also towards livestock and wildlife if you’re walking somewhere different to usual.

Keep your dog on lead if you’re not sure their recall is up to the usual standard! Remember, memory recollection AND sensory processing is compromised when dogs are tired.

Lastly, if your dog doesn’t normally go on epic, long hikes, then stick to a distance similar to their usual walk duration. Please don’t exhaust your dog by taking them on an endurance hike they’ve not built the fitness up for, or that they may be too old or less physically able to enjoy.


Today we are meeting my brother, his wife and my two young nephews at the pub for lunch. Kanita doesn’t like children too close and Mohawk gets a bit nervous of their excitement- so we have opted to meet away from the home so my dogs aren’t put in a situation they may struggle with more than normal.

It’s just not worth the risk! I’d rather be labelled as too cautious than there be a concerning or serious incident. My dogs will be happier at home resting.

Be your dog's advocate ❤️

22/12/2024

🤣🤣🤣

20/12/2024

Wishing all my clients and their lovely dogs a very Happy Christmas

I am working in between Christmas and New Year so if you're not too busy partying and want to continue to send you training videos, please do so 🎅🌲🎁

20/12/2024

Rescues are at breaking point. Reputable breeders will take their puppies back if things don't work out. When the puppies come from somewhere other than a reputable breeder, rescues are left to pick up the pieces.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14fpW9nFvC/

I really shouldn't have to write this post, but I'm going to because the phone hasn't stopped ringing.

If you are getting a puppy this Christmas, please make sure you have thought it through PROPERLY.
Have you got the time, energy and patience to train it?
Can you meet it's mental and physical requirements?
Are your work or home situation likely to change in the coming months?
Can you afford veterinary care and insurance?
Can you commit to the dog for the next 15 years of its life?
Have you got children? How will they cope with a biting, scratching whirlwind for the next few months?
Have you got other animals? How will they react to the whirling dervish that is about to enter your home?
Are you buying from a good breeder? Will they take the puppy back if it doesn't work out?

Don't be like Ruby's owner who didn't think it through. And now I have a 10 week old puppy to look after over Christmas. I don't have enough fosterers for the dogs I get phone calls for. Please don't make it worse in the new year when you realise you haven't thought it through properly.

Have a great Christmas with your two and four legged family.