Woofington Grammar School for Dogs

16/03/2022

Fern, one of our ‘product testers’ enjoying one of the healthy natural rabbits feet from Happy pet supplies.

18/02/2022

Great place to source your natural treats

21/09/2021

It's true 😊

25/07/2021

Learn your dog’s silent language so you can understand what he is trying to communicate.

Be open to listening. Let go of human expectations.

Gently, without coercion, try to teach skills (not obedience training) to help your dog navigate the human world.

Try to remain flexible although some things might not make sense from the human perspective. Trust the dog's perspective is valid and very real to that individual dog.

You will make mistakes along the way, get frustrated, and lose your cool at times, but you will learn so much from your dog’s point of view and, in turn, learn about yourself as well.

22/07/2021

Hands up who's hot? Skye is melting into the sofa ☺️

10/07/2021

Should dogs be 'smacked' or 'tapped' in training?

We hope you agree 💯 the answer is no.

Normally we'd give you some Friday facts to end the week - but we got asked to comment on a news story for this week and we wanted to highlight it to you, our followers, on our position with coercive and aversive styles of training.

The APDT was set up to provide a space for trainers using Kind, Fair and Effective methods. Our founders didn't believe that tools and methods that caused pain or fear were right, and they wanted to help educate the public to help them find suitable, qualified and assessed trainers.

Sadly, we've seen a resurgence in these kind of methods in the last few years, these methods hurt dogs, and they also cause huge emotional pain for the owners.

You can read the full article we were asked to comment on in the link below.

We're so pleased people have CCTV cameras and can find out when abuse like this happens, it needs reporting on more, our dogs deserve better than this.

https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/ring-doorbell-camera-catches-reading-20980486

Blue background with quote from Reading Live. Quote reads 'Should dogs ever be 'smacked' or 'tapped' in training'? The Association of Pet Dog Trainers an organisation that provides accreditation to dog trainers, training resources and advice to trainers - was shown the video by BerkshireLive and asked whether this form of training was acceptable.

They said: "Physical corrections have no place in modern dog training. The latest behavioural science and ethical thinking all point to the fact that dogs trained with Positive Reinforcement based methods, learn faster and learn in a way that is conducive to positive emotional health. Positively reinforced dogs are more optimistic about life, and work because they have a joy in doing it.

"Sadly the dog training industry is still unregulated, the Association of Pet Dog Trainers was formed over 25 years ago to push back against the old fashioned methods of using coercion and punitive methods, and all of our fully assessed trainers use Kind, Fair and Effective methods.

"We would ask the public to complain if they see dog trainers using punitive or abusive methods, both to their local council and the RSPCA, in order to highlight this issue."

09/06/2021

Brachycephalic breeds really do suffer with the heat and this article explains why

31/05/2021

Sunday cuteness courtesy of Jax ❤️

24/05/2021

23/05/2021

I do like a bit of Oatmeal. 🙂