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Engage Dog Training

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24/01/2023

Ready to learn?

Learning to identify and manage your dogs energy level is one of the keys 🔑
to better behaviour management and creating an optimal learning environment.

While it's not easy, it's 100% worthwhile.

22/01/2023

Does your dog have an off switch?
Or is your house parkour palace?

While we could look to teach this through a verbal cue or association to an item, I've found building an association with a particular environment to be the most effective and straightforward 🏠

Here are some tips

👉 Choose your locations. Pick easily distinguishable areas and assign low and high arousal activities respectively. The easiest way to apply this is to make outside a place for play and inside a place of calm.

👉 Set your dog up for success. Before implementing your new rules around calm behaviour inside, ensure the dog gets adequate physical activity outside.

👉 Free shape desirable behaviour. Whenever your dog chooses to relax inside reward it. This can be done with food, praise or affection. What's important is that you're rewarding calm behaviour, in a calm manner, with a calming reinforcer. Pay attention to how your dog acts after being rewarded. Rewards that elevate the dog too much can be counter-productive.

👉 Utilise a house line. Keeping a leash on the dog in the initial phase of building a calm association can be very helpful. This is our means of preventing the dog rehearsing unwanted behaviours (parkour) inside. If the dog is beginning to elevate use the leash to prevent undesirable behaviour and provide direction to a preferred behaviour. Any alternate behaviour should be incompatible with being a lunatic (a solid down stay or place command can come in handy).

👉 Be consistent. Bending the rules now might seem nice to the dog but it's mean in the long run. It's not fair to give mixed signals but later get upset at mixed results.

👉 Mind your energy. This is the hard one. Like it or not, most dogs pay very close attention to your own energy level and use it as a means of gauging whether anything exciting is going on.
Most dogs will find it very challenging to relax if you're four coffees deep trying to scrub the ceilings, giving your best rendition of Toto's Africa and trying to get 10,000 steps in.
If you struggle sitting still yourself, crate time with a frozen kong is preferable.

20/01/2023

The more you know 😁
Don't be that owner.

Why it matters:
👉 Your dog's safety. Your dog may be 'friendly' but others are not (most dogs are selective).
👉 You're obliged to keep your dog under control at all times (*not legal advice, see the Dog Control Act 1996).
👉 You may be misinterpreting the situation. 'Friendliness' is often mistaken for invasive or over aroused behaviour leading to impolite greetings.
👉 Other people and dogs may wish to be left alone. We all share the public space but we all also have a right not to have our private (bodily) space invaded while there. Under the Dog Control Act you must take reasonable steps to ensure that your dog is not a nuisance to others.

What you can do:
👉 Practice recall. Start small in a low distraction environment from a small distance and build.
👉 Put safety measures in place. If your dog's recall is a work in progress keep it on a lead. Once the dog reliably returns on lead graduate to a longline (they're brilliant). Once you're good on line drop it but leave it attached. If your dog has reliable recall by know you're likely ready to graduate to off leash time.

Dog's are amazing, but we put future ownership and freedoms at risk of tighter legislation every-time we set a bad example.
Being a responsible owner is an investment in our future ability to have dogs that participate in public life. 🤝

If you need help with your dog's recall we're here to help 📩

19/01/2023

So you have a new puppy, maybe the first few weeks go smoothly as this barely aware bundle of joy sleeps the day away.

However, one day you awake to find yourself living with a furry terrorist.
An energiser bunny with no regard for life limb or property. Holding your sleep and socks hostage.

Here are some tips

👉 Don't sweat the biting. It's perfectly natural. Use it as an opportunity to teach the dog what's suitable to bite and where. Learn to play with your pup and build engagement.

👉 Utilise the crate and / or puppy enclosures when you're unable to fully monitor. Puppies tend to investigate with their mouths, best it's not the power cord.

👉 Build associations between arousal levels and areas. There are places to play and places to relax. Make it easy for your puppy to understand by keeping it black and white. Want to play? Take it to that area. Ready to relax? Pop the puppy in their crate.

👉 Forget formal obedience. Unless you're raising a working or sport dog chances are the perfect sit or down stay is not going to set your dog up for success in the expected environment. Instead focus on building engagement and giving age appropriate exposure to novel stimuli.

👉 P*e pads just teach dogs to go inside. They are s**t. That is all.

18/01/2023

We're hoping everyone had a great break!
Looking to work on your relationship with your dog?
Maybe there's a fluffy new addition to the family.
EDT is here to support you in your training journey in 2023.

23/11/2022

Engage Dog Training is very pleased to be offering Leash Services.
This is not your average dog walking.
So many people struggle with their leash walking, but it doesn't have to be this way.
We're here to help.
Click the link to get started.
https://www.engagedogtraining.com/leashservices

19/11/2022

Ready to gain a better understanding of your dog? 🐶

If this helps follow along, in the next educational post we’ll be going beyond behaviourism and looking at prepared learning 🧬

13/11/2022

Welcome to the first in a series on learning theory 📚

Understanding how dogs learn can be super helpful in understanding and training your K9

If you learned something or know someone who would benefit feel free to to like and share 🐾

If you’ve accidentally taught your dog the wrong thing through CC feel free to fess up in the comments 👇

Next time we’ll cover Operant Conditioning (there’s some gems so be sure to follow along)

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http://engagedogtraining.com/

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