Thinkdog with Lewis Nicholls

29/01/2025

Lots of dogs haven’t been designed to remain calm and indifferent in certain situations.

I’d be more concerned if my dog didn’t get excited if a rabbit sprang out and ran in front of them.

Excitement isn’t the enemy. It’s normal, useful and something we need to accept in our dogs and ultimately learn how to work with it rather than against it.

28/01/2025

If we want dogs to do what we want them to do we have to show them what it is we want them to do as clearly as possible.

Take this behaviour for example - I’m asking her to get into a right heel position. I’m phasing out my hand cues now and pairing a sound with the behaviour.

For a dog to learn this there are concepts they need to understand like moving their back legs independent of their front legs which isn’t something that usually comes natural for dogs. The dog also needs to target an area with their front feet and keep them there as they pivot round and a host of other little things too.

So when we’re asking dogs to do anything we should ask ourselves what steps do they need to understand to be able to do what we’re asking of them.

And if we haven’t taught them the concepts needed then it’s very unrealistic to expect them to be able to do what it is we want them to do.

The onus is always on us to show the dog more clearly what to do if they aren’t able to perform whatever behaviour we ask of them.

If you would like help get in touch with us via our website:

www.Thinkdog.nz

25/01/2025

Lots of the dogs we work with all share a similar challenge - they are all trying to cope in our society whilst receiving inadequate stimulation and exercise.

If I lay about the house all day, staring at a screen I know eventually I’ll feel like s**t. I know I’ll always feel better if I move a bit and have something to focus on. And so hiking and working with a dog is a good way to make me feel good and it’s also a great way for your dog to feel good too.

Nose work is one of the best ways to give any dog a challenge that they can use a very natural desire (sniffing) to help solve the challenge. It’s also a very calming activity.

I’ve noticed if I work with a dog that is bouncing off the walls with energy, doing something that is mentally stimulating and thought provoking like nose work is a great way to help keep them calmer more often.

We need to make sure our dogs get plenty of physical exercise whilst alongside that plenty of opportunities to use their brain and get a good mental exercise is as well.

25/01/2025

I like to think of dog training like a dance.

It needs to be cooperative and both parties need to be enjoying the process.

Their needs to be clarity in terms of what is expected of both parties. As the human you will take the lead so when things don’t go to plan you need to reasses and do things differently next time. You’re the teacher and they are the learner.

It needs to be nice and fluid. Your handling, movement and footwork all play a part in how the dog will respond. You can train a dog to do all sorts of things without even saying a word.

But why is training like this beneficial? You’re creating a very positive association with being interacted with. You’re making the fun happen around you. And you’re teaching the dog skills they can eventually perform in challenging environments.

www.Thinkdog.nz

23/01/2025

We always need to be one step ahead of our dogs and thinking about creative ways to get the behaviours we want..

Loose lead walking is something that we all want and in theory is a relatively easy thing to teach but when we apply the theory in practice in can become somewhat hard and leaves a lot of us very frustrated - including the dogs.

It’s a behaviour that I expect and allow to take some time - it’s not something I expect to see ‘complete’ so to speak and it’s a behaviour that I will continually reinforce intermittently for the dog’s life.

It’s a challenge because

a) we naturally walk a lot slower than dogs.
b) there are LOADS of competing motivators - especially smells.
c) it’s not something they innately want to do.
d) it’s boring, not fun.
e) it’s something we have to train EVERY time we walk with them.
f) sometimes we don’t have anything the dog wants compared to what the environment can offer.

So it’s actually quite a hard thing to teach in a fair and cooperative way.

The way I view teaching this behaviour is through developing a habit. I know that throughout a dog’s life they are not always going to want to walk by my side…. So I make it fair. They don’t always have to be by my side - there will be plenty of walks where they can do what they want. A sniffari is what a lot of people call some walks where their dogs can just sniff and we don’t nag them.

I teach them that fun things happen by my side at home - I literally walk around the home and pay them for being where I want them to be. So when it’s dinner time I walk about and when they are by my side they get a snack and I practice this a lot. This just builds a positive association with walking next to a human.

I use different harnesses or collars depending on what we are doing during the outing. We run with our dogs where they are encouraged to pull as much as possible - but they are always on a specific harness. Think about guide dogs - when you see them working they’ve always got their working harness on - this helps them understand the expectations. And so when it is a slow plod we have them on either a different harness or simply the collar depending on the dog. So from the get go the dog understands what is likely to happen based on what they are wearing.

We go at their pace and try not to ask too much in challenging environments until they are adjusted or desensitised to an environment - if for example we have a puppy that is overwhelmed in a new situation we won’t ask them to walk nicely at that stage - we’ll simply just be with them and help them cope better. Once they are less sensitive to the environment and more able to look and focus on us we will then train them to walk nicely in that environment.

The training is very simple - we create a predictable reinforcement zone by our side and postition our hand in a way that means they have to be behind us to access it. Over time you start to see a dog that sees value in that area and simply walking next to us.

In saying all this, we have to make sure that we’re meeting their needs first as best we can - for example I wouldn’t expect any of this to work if the dog in question is a border collie that gets a ball thrown for them once or twice a day or for a husky that lives in suburbia that gets to run for 45 minutes every other day.

If our dog’s genetic outlets are ignored, then the training we asked of them is going to be ignored too.

www.thinkdog.nz

22/01/2025

I’ve heard “I don’t let my dog have a ball because I don’t want them to obsess over it.”

Usually they’re people with border collies or other dogs that typically obsess over things. The problem we see here is that for a lot of these dogs it’s not a case of IF they obsess over something, it’s a case of WHEN/WHAT they obsess over.

I’d recommend to play as much as you can with your dog. If you’ve got a dog that is crazy for a ball use that as the thing they are allowed when they do the things you want them to do. Just throwing the ball for them over and over again is not something I’d recommend.

You want to play a game with them that is similar to a dance. Something that has clarity and fluidity. Something that gets their brain working just as much as their body.

I guarantee if you don’t give them something to get jazzy with, they’ll quickly find something else instead and that might happen to be a cyclist or a runner and once your dog learns something to fixate on it’s always a lot harder to modify that than if you simply gave them something appropriate to fixate on in the first place.

www.Thinkdog.nz

15/01/2025

Each dog will have a different way they like to interact with people.

Some dogs need space and time, others are much more open and willing to engage. It really depends on the individual dog.

Elvis loves touch and playing with people and so we can play like this. Sunny would bite me if I tried this with her… so I just don’t play with Sunny like this and interact with her in a way that she prefers.

Each dog is an individual. Treat them as such.

11/01/2025

Training with a little audience today 🐮

09/01/2025

It's not uncommon for things to get really tough from when dogs hit 6 months to around 18 months. Loads of dogs in shelters are between this age and there is a reason for this: adolescence.

One thing that crops up over and over again is young dog's sensitivity to strange dogs. The chances are for a lot of dogs there's a genetic predisposition for sensitivity towards other dogs - especially for the bully breeds the same way that border collies are sensitive to sheep, or a greyhound is to a rabbit.

Like everything dog training, there's not just one thing we need to do to help our dogs. It's lots of little things that we need to do on a consistent basis long enough that changes behaviour.

In our latest video on the website we look at ways to help these such dogs.

Follow the link here to sign up to our online community and get access to hundreds more videos too:

Capa is 9 months old is hitting a challenging period in her development. It's not uncommon for things to get really tough from when dogs hit 6 months to around 18 months - sometimes things can be tough all the way up to 3 years old. Most dogs in shelters are between this age and there is a reason fo...

08/01/2025

I like this.

06/01/2025

Filming for the website is very similar to actual dog training.

A lot of the time it just doesn’t go to plan.

06/01/2025

Did you know we have a website with over 100 videos showing how we train our dogs (and client's dogs), how to dos, what not to dos and videos like this that slowly break down dog body language to help you not only get the best our of your dog, but also so you can understand them much better..

Follow this link to see the rest and join our friendly and supportive community.. If your New Years resolution was to do more training with your dog more here's how you can start:

www.thinkdog.nz/members

30/12/2024

Happy new year all!

Just a reminder, the way to reaching a goal is to simply do and then to keep doing.

Giving up is the only certainty for failure.

Here’s Sunny years on from the days when she wanted me buried 6 feet under.

22/12/2024

I am not just a dog trainer.. I am the super dog trainer.

Happy holidays all!

21/12/2024

Poodle doesn’t like dogs.

Poodle is a very selective dog that has a tendency to respond aggressively to strange dogs.

We’ve had him since he was a pup and from day 1 he has always been very stiff and combative when greeting new dogs. If we were to do things again we would have done a few things differently but hindsight is a bitch and we are always learning and changing how we do things for the better (hopefully). Even now, with dogs he likes he will not roll over and we have to make sure the interaction is nice for both dogs.

As dog trainers, this is a mild inconvenience. Having a dog that is very selective towards other dogs can make things tricky but through careful planning and training we have a dog that can tolerate other dogs at a small distance. Poodle has helped us with countless reactive dogs as a stooge over the years.

This is only one thing that makes things a bit tricky. Having a dog will likely mean we will have to compromise at some point and accept the cards we are dealt. We can choose a breed that might meet our expectations and what we are after in a dog, but it can never guarantee how they will behave, what they will like and what they won’t like. Training is there to teach them how to behave but we can’t teach them what to like and what not to like. Counter-conditioning and/or classical conditioning can create pleasant associations but very rarely can it make our dogs like something they simply hate.

If we are stuck focusing on one or two things that our dogs a bit tricky this will likely over-shadow all the things that make them a pretty damn good dog instead.

Around the house Poodle is super easy. If we're not up for a busy day and want to blob he'll just blob with us. If we're up for hiking for hours he's keen as too.

In nearly all aspects he's the ideal dog for us. He is very responsive and very tolerant in nearly all situations and he's very safe - meaning, though he might respond aggressively, it's very loud but it would be incredibly unlikely any damage would be caused. Plus, through careful management and training we almost never see the aggressive responses now.

Adolescence was tricky, but it usually always is and that's usually the most important time to train but often a time lots of people give up as they don't see results immediately.

If there was one piece of advice I could offer anyone struggling with a dog that is between 6 months and 2 years is to just keep going and get help if you need to get more support.

Moral of the story - don't focus on the bad stuff about your dog. They're dogs, they're going to have quirks that we might not agree with but having a dog means we need to compromise certain things and accept some of those quirks. If you can't change it, focus on things you can change or just be thankful for all the good things they naturally dog that others might be struggling with.

Training will modify behaviour, it won't make them any less of a dog and dogs are individuals just like us. Work with the dog you have, not the one you had hoped for.

Here’s Poodle with our latest adoptee - he naturally acts as an unpaid babysitter. We couldn’t really have hoped for much better than that with our lifestyle.

www.Thinkdog.nz

21/12/2024

New member of the gang here - Cruella the orphan magpie.

19/12/2024

Having a dog that is unpredictable is a common complaint we hear a lot. However, if we learn to look out for the very subtle cues from dogs that could suggest how are they are feeling and how they may react, they then become a lot more predictable.

This new video on our website breaks down the subtle cues between two dogs meeting for the first time, how conflict can happen, how it is avoided and when to step in and help the dogs out. Follow the link to check this video and many more out:

This is a breakdown of body language between two dogs meeting for the first time.

18/12/2024

It wasn't so long ago when a dog growling at someone who was approaching them whilst they were eating was an accepted and normal response from a dog.

'Of course they are growling at you - they're eating, leave them alone' would have likely been the school of thought then. Unless you have a very trusting relationship with your dog or they are just really tolerant then it's very normal for dogs to growl if someone approaches their food. It's a bit like you seeing a dog going for your phone and you reacting because just like the dog's food, your phone is very valuable to you and you don't want to lose it. Resource guarding is normal in many different species.

It's not uncommon for us to get emails expressing how badly we are needed to help train a dog because of these things:

A baby has been growled at because they pulled the dogs tail or wok the dog up or stepped on the dog. We've even had people contact us saying their toddler hits the dog and the dog is growling, so how can we 'fix' the dog and stop it growling at the child.

I want to take my dog to my friends house who has a dog but the dog's don't get on and fight.

I want my dog to come to the cafe with us but they bark and react at lots of things.

20 odd years ago when I had my first dog I didn't even consider taking her to a cafe or the pub as I got older. There were the occasional cafe dogs or pub dogs that grew up in that environment but it wasn't the norm. We very rarely had other people's dogs in our house and one of the few times we had another dog in the garden there was a scrap over a bone - and we just thought 'fair enough, let's not do that again.'

Things have changed so much in a short space of time in terms of what we expect our dogs to cope with, tolerate and how we expect them to behave. If there was a children's party the dogs would have been kept away so things didn't go wrong, now we expect dogs to be involved whilst playing dress up. It's quite a wild progression in a short amount of time.

Dog training isn't there to train the 'dog' out of the dog. Dogs are dogs and they will behave as such. Training will not create super tolerant dogs either. We can do all the training in the world with some dogs, but if they don't like being touched by kids, then you just won't want to put them around kids - and I don't care how much 'desensitisation and counter-conditioning' you do, it sometimes just isn't enough.

It would be great to see people just as, or if not more interested,
in getting their dogs into sports or activities that allow them to express their genetic predispositions. And going to the cafe isn't on many of the lists I'm aware of. Now if your dog can tolerate the cafe or better yet, enjoys it, then take them as much as you like but don't forget you're doing it for yourself, not for them. We need to do things for them that they actually want to be doing.

Sharing your life with a dog is about compromise. Your life will change. It will have to if you're going to keep them happy. I hate the word 'potential' but I cannot help see so many dogs that have unmet needs and have never been trained in a way that would not only give them a better life but also give us better lives too.

Training a dog isn't about getting a dog to sit and stay and tolerate us doing whatever we want to them. It's about teaching them how to thrive in our society. It's about figuring out what we can do to meet their needs as best as possible and in return have a dog that is willingly cooperating with us through the challenges our society throws at both of us.

www.Thinkdog.nz