Dog training isn’t always fancy and prancy.
The first time I met Ruba she was completely and utterly wired. She was running around in circles even on lead and completely winding herself up. She’s reactive to pretty much everything.
We’ve been working on her lead walking and environmental exposure, as well as plenty of decompression time, but we’ve now turned our attention to a bit more still and calm.
I didn’t get much footage today, but while this may look like nothing, this is huge. She’s calm and not scanning for triggers.
We did lots of static behaviours, threshold work in the car and then mixed in some small bits of scatter feeding to keep her arousal levels lower.
We also rewarded with small scatters when she made good choices and disengaged from triggers. People walking by, dogs barking, noises in general often illicit a reaction.
By keeping her arousal levels down, she’s so much easier to work with. It won’t fix her reactivity, but it lessens the speed with which she escalates to a reaction, as well as the severity of the reactions.
Lovely Max! I work with loooaaaads of cockers and they more or less always come for either lead walking or recall😜
I know spaniels don’t like a slow pace, in a straight line, but it absolutely is possible to teach one to walk beautifully!
Horse or a dog?
This absolute gentle giant was in for some training today. Gorgeous Axel!
He can be a little reactive to some dogs when out and about and needs some work on his engagement and loose lead walking. He’s a big lad to be dragging anyone about!
He’s used to coming to the field for a free run, so he was incredibly distracted on arrival as he knew where he was. Watching his engagement improve throughout the session was fantastic to see.
Annoyingly my phone has had a wobbly and won’t load some of the later clips, but here’s a little snippet of this handsome boy!
Ruba is an absolutely gorgeous girl, but she’s incredibly reactive to an awful lot of stuff in her environment.
She lives life at a million miles an hour.
She’s so incredibly lucky to have wonderful committed owners who’ve worked so incredibly hard with her for the short time they’ve owned her and she’s making fab progress.
But, it’s easy to do too much. This is already a dog who lives life at a fast pace. She wants to move all the time, to the point where when I first met them for a session, her owner was spinning in circles on the spot with her while I talked to her 😆
But it’s not a healthy state of mind to be in for her (or her owners 😂).
So their homework this week is to do nothing…
… and by that I mean to take the time to do very little. Static behaviours. She finds SO much enjoyment in moving, but she also ends up suuuuper high arousal.
It’s my best advice for busy dogs. We rarely take the time to do nothing. Being out of the house generally involves lots of movement and some dogs need to do less.
Try taking just a couple of mins out of your walk to do nothing.
Very excited to say that I have the wonderful Rachel joining the team! Today, we had a couple of day trains in, including the gorgeous Lua.
She’s crazy. One of the craziest dogs I’ve seen. When I first met her, she chased everything. Even rubbish or feathers in the wind would send her loopy. She chased cars and would lose her mind if she saw a dog or a person.
Rachel took her out today into the ‘wild’. This is a dog who once upon a time couldn’t cope with people the other side of the car park. She’s desperate to say hi to everyone and nothing would break that fixation.
She smashed it today. She managed to walk through the pet shop, sit outside the supermarket, walk on a loose lead through the retail park and hold a place with 7 other dogs in a busy area!
Rachel has been shadowing me for a long time now, as well as spending years working hard with her own dogs and will be starting officially from the middle of July, offering walk and trains and potentially some day trains too. I’m so excited to welcome her to the team and as you can see, she’s done some fantastic stuff with Lua today!
Our first urban neutrality group class!
I’m adding an expanding range of different real life group classes. So, today we headed into Worcester and set about working through some training challenges in the wild!
This class is a mix of reactive and over friendly dogs, adults and puppies! It’s perfect for everyone and everything is scaled to suit the individuals.
We worked lots on neutrality (of course) but also loose lead walking skills, general engagement and settling - the art of doing nothing!
The dogs absolutely smashed it!
Back with the lovely Snoop working on a bit of loose lead walking.
I think it’s easy to assume dog trainers have perfect dogs. Or you see snippets of perfection posted online and it’s easy to think that’s 100% representative of their dog.
I have had my fair share of reactivity struggles with Hoax. I failed to advocate well for him as a puppy and paid the price.
For the past few years I’ve been working hard to build up his confidence, but in the last 6-12 months when I opened up my mind in my training philosophies, I started to see the biggest change and improvement.
I would go as far now as to say he’s not really reactive. He still struggles with dogs rushing him, but that’s entirely fair. But even then, his tolerance is considerably higher and his trust in me is much greater.
As you can see here, I’m working both of my boys (Hoax who is reactive and Evo who is super social). Another challenge people often face in reactive is owning multiple dogs. That’s a whole other thing in itself. Walking multiple dogs is harder than walking one, particularly when dealing with reactivity.
Reactivity is one of the toughest things to crack, particularly towards dogs. You are so reliant on members of the public having control over their dogs.
I get it. When you come to me with a reactivity struggle, I know how it feels. But I also know how to help you. I have lived the up and down days. I have lived the walks where it feels like you’ve gone 5 steps backwards. I have celebrated the small and the big wins. I have worked my ass off to get to where we are today. I know how mentally draining it can be.
If you’re struggling with your dog, seek help. Don’t let it fester and get worse. It always gets better with the right help and support 🫶🏻
The lovely Ruba! She’s very reactive. On her first session, she was spinning on the end of her lead, winding herself up and reacting to dogs miles away.
She’s a super sweet girl, but she didn’t have the best start and her lovely new owners are working hard to get her living her best life.
This session was spent working on her loose lead walking. We need to get her under some more control before we can probably tackle the reactivity head on. There is absolutely no way we can work through this with her without everyone being a little more relaxed.
We looked at static positions, lead pressure and free shaping her heel position.
She did great. This was a hard and much busier environment than she’s used to, so very proud of her for managing to keep her cool and stay so focused!
Beautiful Kora has just finished the final part of her ecollar training. Her very committed owner made the 3 hour trip twice and stayed overnight both times to complete the training.
The second half was mainly about proofing it and sheep!
Kora has previously managed to worry sheep. She’s a prime example of management failing and a dog’s ability to sniff stuff out. Her owner passed a field of sheep with her on the lead, continued a considerable distance before letting her off and she backtracked to find the sheep.
For obvious reasons, her owner then started having to lead walk her for her own safety and that of other animals. She’s very successfully hunted many birds and small furries.
Well, we’re off the lead now and they both have a new found joy for their walks! We did a forest walk with an abundance of wildlife smells very successfully. We did a sheep aversion session on my flock successfully and had her off the lead around them and then went out to find sheep in the ‘wild’. Obviously she was on a long line for this as they’re not my sheep, but she nailed that too.
It’s been an absolute pleasure working with the pair of them and I have been loving all of the videos I’ve received of her enjoying her new found, safe off lead freedom🤩
Following on from my video yesterday about handling with Hoax, I thought I’d post more snippets of the journey!
Harnesses are our nemesis. He doesn’t find the harness itself aversive, but the act of putting one on is his idea of hell. Now, we could skip harnesses, but he wears one for canicross and Bitework, so it’s a necessary skill for him.
Again, utilising the trusty hand touch to start to give him something else to focus on that isn’t his rather overthinky collie emotions. If he’s allowed to just stand there and think about it, he makes poor decisions. Now, we are well on the way to him tolerating such things much better 🙌
I hear this ALL the time.
“I didn’t train this week because I was too busy”
I get it. Life is BUSY. Time flies and finding time to train can be tricky.
So, we get creative!
I’m cleaning my kitchen this morning (ugh). But that time can be doubly productive, because I can train the dogs at the same time.
They’re holding a ‘place’ while I clean the kitchen. They understand this well, so I can open doors, handle food, leave the room etc and they won’t budge. But it’s a PERFECT opportunity for me to practice a really important life skill, while doing an essential task and without demanding too much of my time.
You can make dog training work for you.
2 of you going to do a food shop? Take the dog. 1 of you do the shop and the other can use the car park and shop entrance area as the perfect training ground to work on neutrality.
Popping out in the car for a bit? Pop the dog in the back to practice travelling.
Going to the pub? Take the dog to practice settling.
Bonfire night? Find somewhere near to a display where you can watch from a safe distance and help your dog/puppy get used to the sounds.
Got 2 dogs? Practice one dogs place stay while the other does something with you.
There are ways to make it work for you. Yes, many sessions will require your full and undivided attention. But you can get sessions in at least daily that will barely inconvenience you in the slightest.
Dogs aren’t easy and training them isn’t always either. It’s just part of dog ownership. But you can do a multitude of things to make it easier to get those extra, useful sessions in!
Received this lovely video from these lovely clients who have been working hard with their cocker, Max.
Like many cockers, he was borderline unbearable on the lead and taking him places wasn’t enjoyable for anyone.
The hard work is paying off and receiving this video was a lovely way to start the week!
FANTASTIC work from the lovely Charlie today. This is is second session working on his loose lead walking and dog reactivity.
He’s a prime example of the importance of doing your homework between sessions (it really shows!!) and also how a clear communication system and solid markers can make a huge difference when working around reactivity issues.
He’s a strong lad, so his lead walking needed to be neatened up. He was previously only really manageable on a halti, so we’ve got to work on that too. More relaxed owners and less tension on the lead also really help with reactivity.
Suuuuper excited to see how these guys continue to progress
Shippers is a typical greedy lab! And he loves to counter surf.
We addressed some of the issues that were leading to the counter surfing, such as fulfilling his needs more, but we’ve also introduced a place command too.
I highly recommend using a backtie (a lead attached to something solid) for place training. The behaviour needs to be taught first, but then it really helps add duration and the dog learns to settle without expecting treats or self releasing.
Shippers is ‘triggered’ by particular foods. Ham is one of his faves😂. So we set it up today to work on him maintaining position while we ‘made’ a sandwich.
The backtie allows his owner to go about her tasks in the kitchen and for him to learn to settle.
Is he fully settled here? Nope. He’s still watching very intently. But as the reps increased, we saw glimpses of relaxation which was lovely to see.
He won’t need to be tied forever, assuming there is consistency, but it’s a great way to bridge the gap!
Calm behaviour at thresholds are SO important.
I generally include all doors associated with excited things - front doors, back doors, gates out of the garden, crates in and out of the car.
The first clip is of Lua throwing a paddy because she wanted to come out of her car crate. She’s excited because she’s somewhere new, but she also then comes out of her crate completely wired.
These clips are a week apart. Her owner has been working on her calm crate boundaries and the difference is crazy.
While it won’t fix issues in itself, it will go a long way to improving her arousal levels when she comes out of the car!
So proud of Bodhi.
They’re just coming to the end of their ecollar training sessions so we headed out into the wildlife-filled forest.
Fantastic progress and consistent recalls.
THIS is what an ecollar trained dog looks like - a happy dog with tons of freedom ❤️
Loose lead walking is one of the hardest things to master in my opinion.
Not necessarily because it’s a difficult skill in itself, but many people give up as it’s boring and repetitive, or at least it can be.
So, what are some of the key points regarding loose lead walking that I’d like to emphasise?
Loose lead walking is often a symptom of other issues. It may be entirely necessary to address the other issues before or alongside training lead walking. For example, if your dog boots off at every dog it sees, that will need to be addressed separately.
Different tools can mean different things. So, my dogs do canicross. Canicross is a pulling sport, which means I run and they pull. They do this on a harness, but it’s mighty helpful if they help me up the hills, so I don’t want them on a loose lead for this.
Harness = pull
Collar = loose lead
But…. Here’s how I differentiate it.
When in harness (I use these for hiking too), I have no objections to them pulling. I generally use bungee lines with my canicross belt. When hiking, this is acceptable for me too. However, they understand their ‘close’ command regardless of equipment and can do it off lead too.
So, while I am fine with pulling into a harness, I expect them to come into a close if asked.
Close means, by my side, not ahead.
So, on a collar (or in this video, a slip lead), I expect to feel no tension on that lead, ever.
However, if not in a close command, they are free to sniff, toilet etc as long as they keep that lead slack.
Again, if asked to come into a close, I expect them to drop back a bit and walk next to me.
Same applies off lead. They can mooch around as much as they like, however close means close if requested.
Different tools make it super clear and I really like this clear distinction.
Harness - tension is okay
Collar (of any description) - tension is not okay
This also cuts you some slack when you aren’t in the mood for working with them on a loose l
