Steps to having ‘scary dog privilege’ and being able to say ‘yeah I’m a real dog trainer now I have a protection dog’.
1. Don’t get a Labrador
2. Don’t teach her a bark and hold using a squeaky chicken
(No shade to those who train bitesports and protection work well!)
My favourite thing is teaching fun things for literally no reason other than it’s an honour to hang out with my dog and learn stuff together ♥️
- Kahla
Cash the BC - Tame That Sports Dog
Meet Cash the Border Collie
I have seen him for two sessions now as part of my Tame That Sports Dog Project and he is SO much fun to work with.
His main issues are:
- no startline waits
- pole knocking
- biting his handler HARD whenever she makes an error on course
Cash is a sensitive boy with many big feelings. Like a typical border collie he also has a ‘strong eye’ for movement and a strong desire to bite movement when in a state of high arousal. He is actively competing in agility and his handlers other dog is Grade 7, so this isn’t a case of a clueless owner in the slightest! She has gone above and beyond for this boy, even resorting to wearing custom made padding on her arms to protect herself when he does bite.
We are tackling Cash’s issues under a few different headings. Namely;
- Working on his general arousal around equipment
- Desensitising him to erratic movement from his handler
- Improving his focus on equipment
- Creating routines that provide clarity for him
Last session we worked on his startlines and these are now translating into training events and some in a competition environment too. We also worked on his ability to go up and down in arousal and taught him and his handler alternative regulation skills. His owner even forgot to wear her arm protection in two runs!
Today we started getting into the gritty issue of ‘my handler is a naughty sheep and must be corrected when she moves too erratically’. As you can see in the first clip, after a tight turn he looks up and locks onto his target! So today’s session was:
- Teaching Cash about weight shifting of the handler, meaning he keeps his head down and targets the next obstacle. This means we can get some success and reward him away from the handler, creating confidence.
- Teaching Cash a forward focus cue based on a hand gesture. Teaching him that if he follows a ‘point’ he will get reinforced for it will again create clarity in handling.
- Teaching Cash a solid
Herbie The Working Cocker Spaniel
He can only do it if I have a treat!’
This is a huge misconception and something I hear on a daily basis. I also hear ‘reward based trainers just bribe their dogs’ when this couldn’t be further from the truth. Did you know though, that for dogs that are stuck on the food, it has a really REALLY simple fix??
The problem usually comes about because we have stuck in the luring phase for too long.
Take loose lead walking for example. We typically show the dog where we want them to be with some food. Especially in young dogs and puppies we use luring to get that initial behaviour. This is where people get stuck! They say ‘but he knows what he should do!’ and yes, he does, but only with the food to follow!
The issue is, people often don’t know how to train the middle ground of transitioning between the lure and the fully trained behaviour. The easy way to fix this is to have a really strong marker. Be it a clicker or a word it doesn’t matter as long as it’s consistently the same. As long as your dog understands that the marker means ‘that was it, your reward is coming now!’ then we can start to progress.
If we break this down with some science, we have;
- An initial lured behaviour the dog understands.
- The dog offering that behaviour
- A marker (a sound meaning ‘that’s correct!’)
- The bridge (the space between the marker and the food being delivered)
- The reward event (this can be food or toy or anything your dog loves)
For the nerds amongst us, look how many more paces the handler gets of heeling between the marker and the reward being delivered. This means we can start to increase duration of behaviour while strengthening it too!
An easy way for you to try this at home is to put your treats in a tub on the side. Ask your dog for a behaviour they know, and when they do it, say ‘yes!’ or click your clicker, then dash to the tub to get their reward.
This separation of the different components of training will up your trai
Wyn The Welsh Collie
Meet Wyn the Welsh Collie.
Wynne is a typical teenage herding dog. Namely he wants to chase stuff that moves and his testicles have well and truly taken over his brain meaning that he also wants to thoroughly investigate any dogs he comes across on walks. If he can’t, he lunges and barks and gets thoroughly ‘locked on’.
One of my favourite ways of dealing with this frustration is through something called ‘front loaded reinforcement’. Namely I allowed a greeting to happen, utilising the gate to stop any overtly rude behaviour, then we backchained what we wanted. Ultimately we want him to view other dogs with nothing more than a passing curiosity.
For some frustrated dogs, distance actually makes things worse. We hear a lot that ‘if your dog can’t cope, move away’ and yes that is absolutely bang on for a lot of scenarios, but in the case of actually working with frustration, continually moving away only serves to INCREASE the frustration. By allowing a small and protected greeting, we were then able to work on his emotions and teach Wyn to move away from dogs of his own accord.
Wyn needs to learn alternative behaviours to barking and lunging, but he cannot learn those while he is frustrated. We need to meet the need he has, then train those alternative behaviours.
Watch how we are able to swap from toy reinforcement to food and then to being able to stand and have a chat with minimal input to the dog. After this session he was able to calmly exist by another dog of mine without an initial greeting. Well done Wyn!!!
Cue Understanding
How good is your dogs understanding of verbal cues?
Did you know that the answer to most frustration based behaviours is clarity? An absolute understanding of what’s expected at any moment.
Every day I hear ‘they can do this at home’ or ‘they can do this in training’ but the dog in front of me in fact, can’t. This is usually down to a baseline lack of true understanding.
For example in this video I use two cues.
‘Ta’ meaning to drop
‘Okay’ to mean grab
Let’s break this down further. ‘Ta’ is also an implied duration behaviour. Once I have asked for the drop, it is also a cue to not take again until I have cued otherwise. ‘Okay’ is my generalised ‘do the thing you want to do’ which in this case is tugging.
When you ask your dog to sit, what does that actually mean? Do you say sit, then stay? Then repeat your stay as you walk away? Then the dog doesn’t truly understand their sit cue! Sit should mean sit. Nothing more nothing less. Just sit until a verbal cue of something else is given.
Often we add in all these words and extra ‘help’ to try and help the dog get it right. We walk away saying ‘stayyyyy, staaaaaayyyy!’ and all we are doing is creating confusion, which will ultimately lead to deterioration of behaviour understanding.
Clarity creates confidence, in handler and dog. If you’re repeating your verbal cues, then ask yourself if your dog TRULY understands what that verbal cue is or not?
This week I want you to test this theory yourselves. Give your dog a verbal cue they understand, then do something unexpected. So a single ‘sit’ cue followed by you doing a star jump or a little jog on the spot. Don’t repeat your cue. Watch your dog. If they stay sat, then congratulations, they understand! If they break their sit, then consider whether they really understand and whether your foundations may be a little shaky.
I could go on about these concepts forever, but you’ll have to book some 1:1s or a
Beginners Agility Class
Firstly, sunshine is SO GOOD FOR THE SOUL!
And dry ground is good for your trainers soul 😂
My beginners agility group today did incredibly well doing some work on early blind crosses and driving their dogs on independently. Learning to trust your dog is so hard and I couldn’t be more proud of how well they are all doing!
All of my classes today absolutely smashed it out of the park 🎉
You know Nyx loves agility because she gets the shepherd head tilts when she hears her training video from today 😂😂♥️♥️♥️
Competition Obedience Heelwork
One of my favourite things to train is heelwork. No we don’t use this for ‘day to day’ walking but it shapes connection and engagement on another level. It can be very useful for reactive dogs too when moving them past something they may struggle with if you can’t get distance! Whether it’s a focussed heel or a moving hand target, it’s connection. Bonus is that trained well, it’s also fun for both parties!
I just want him to be calm!
I’ve ranted about this before, and I shall rant again! Meet Wyn the Border Collie. He is 8 months old and has shown significant desire to chase cars. This is very very common in Border Collies as we have bred them for generations to want to herd things that move. He stalks cars, lunges at them, barks at them and otherwise loses his mind around cars.
Like most working dogs who are staring at something that gives them big feelings, you could wave a whole roast chicken in front of his face and he would push it out of the way to stare and lunge some more. We could scatter feed and ask for calmness. We could ask him to sit and look at us. All of these things right now are far too difficult! However, play and chasing something else is possible. He can just about manage that!
Trying to fight prey drive (which is essentially what car chasing is) with calmness invariably ends up with two ends of the lead frustrated as hell. However fighting prey drive with play has POWER!
It is not the total solution but it’s the starting point.
Wyns handlers homework is to set up somewhere at home where Wyn can see cars but he doesn’t have the build up of cars coming towards him. He can hear them but not see them for too long, and the second he notices the car, we activate play with a favourite toy. We bang the toy off the floor to create explosive movement and engagement to us.
Over time we will fade the use of the toy and switch to food, then eventually to nothing at all as the desire diminishes. What we want is engagement offered willingly around the cars, then we can ask for what we need (such as lead walking or a sit etc). We cannot ask him to do what he cannot currently do.
Well done Wyn and his human for this first step and being proactive while he is young! He is bright as a button and you know I’d love to sneak him away in my van ♥️
The other week I was asked to teach my dogs to play the drums so they could come to Cardiff Dogs Home, The Rescue Hotels day at The Principality Stadium and meet the amazing Wet Leg! (Who by the way are the LOVELIEST people!) I’ll share the ‘proper’ video later this week but for now, enjoy ‘Band Practice’ 😂
One of my favourite games to play! Imagine if instead of telling your dog to STOP lunging at other dogs in the agility ring while queueing, you could actually tell them when to watch and when to switch their focus on a verbal cue? All will be revealed in the next few weeks! 👀
Not all training I do is glamorous or cool. Sometimes it’s just pjs and a dog belching in my face
