26/06/2025
I'm excited to be delving into a week long course in July all about Building Resilience!
If you've ever met me, you'll know that I find immense value in exploring how to gently push dog's out of their comfort zone. Even so, to do this well, it needs to be achievable and rewarding for the dog despite small discomforts in the initial challenge.
So why do I want my dog to be uncomfortable?
Well, I really don't but the fact remains that life will often throw curve balls at you!
How many times have I heard things like, "my dog was great in the car until we had an accident" OR "we were fine until that car backfired" (incidentally this happened to me last week at agility!)
Given that these things do happen and when they do we have little control in the event, it makes sense to me to help prepare your dogs for unexpected andf sometimes aversive incidents by training ahead of time to Increase your dog's resilience to these things!
This can be done by carefully and safely introducing noises and challenges whilst still working to be successful and rewarding.
If you look at Tallulah's face here, she isn't at all sure of that cone's stability but I'm asking her to trust me and repaying that trust by ensuring that her bravery pays off!
Its also raining so theres that! ;P
If you train your dog at all, do you build resilience training into your sessions?
How do you do that? Anyone interested in our journey over the weeks course?
