Mutt Matters

14/06/2024

Thanks for the kind words and the trust in me! I am so happy too to see the amazing changes in the dogs at home!!

10/06/2024

Will be giving a talk at this event - 5pm at the Stage area.
You can find me at the Dog run area too until 7.30pm.

Easties, please drop by to say hello or if you have any burning dog training questions!

TAMPINES WEST LITTLE FURRY FAIR
Date & Time: Sat, 22nd June 2024, 5pm to 8pm
Venue: Play@West, Tampines Street 81, Singapore 523890
Guest-Of-Honour: Mr Masagos Zulkifli

Experience captivating performances including magic shows 🪄 and live performances 🎤 and informative pet talks!

More information at https://go.gov.sg/twlff2024

06/06/2024

Does your dog shy away, hide, growl, snap or even bite when you try to put the harness on him/her?

Junior is a 2yo poodle with severe body handling and sound sensitivity issues, making it challenging for his owners to provide daily care for him. They were unable to wipe him or put on the harness or leash, or even touch him in certain contexts without him growling and snapping. Feeding him medication or cleaning his body after diarrhoea was also an uphill struggle for his humans.

At one year old, Junior started to develop anxiety with household sounds, which manifested to aggression towards family members after his sterilization. After going for one session of "pack walk", Junior was traumatized and became very fearful of large dogs, which took him several months to recover.

Junior would also guard resting spots in addition to other resources. He would bark, growl or snap at anyone approaching the room or walking near him, or if anyone at home started to laugh or made any sudden movements like getting up from bed or walking quickly in the house.

Junior was also very anxious with household sounds from neighbours, such as pin-dropping or furniture dragging sounds. At the slightest sound upstairs, he would shut down in a corner or go into panic mode, frantically pacing in the house looking for a place to hide. The poor boy also had disruptive sleep patterns and would wake up every 2-3 hours, as well as a very low motivation for food, making it tough for the owners to complete the training with his previous trainer.

Upon a detailed assessment of his behaviours and history, I recommended his owners to send Junior for a thorough medical check, as underlying pain and medical conditions can have an effect on severe sound sensitivity and body handling issues. The medical check journey was long and tough for Junior's owners as the vet couldn't detect issues at first but I encouraged them to persevere with the tests, which they fortunately did. Thanks to his owners' and the vet's determination and perseverance, Junior was finally diagnosed with a host of medical conditions including IBS and electrolyte imbalance which the vet advised could have made him more sensitive to touch and sounds than other dogs.

Whilst working to alleviate the medical conditions, Junior's owners also started to find alternative, creative ways to approach his body handling care. We also incorporated cooperative care and consent in the humans' interactions with Junior to rebuild the trust and communication. Using food and games, we slowly got Junior to accept the harness again and in fact, be happy about putting it on!

This video encapsulates the turning point in our training - the joy and fun in both the dog and humans with harness wearing - something that many of us take for granted but was so so precious to this family who never gave up in their dog ❤️

Jiayou, Team Junior!! I hope everything is well and your life together continues to get better!

02/06/2024

Are you planning to bring your dog with you on a flight?

If so, what are you doing NOW to prepare your dog for the flight?

When we think about flying with our dogs, many people only think about doing crate training - no doubt this is a BIG part - we need our dogs to be COMFORTABLE being confined in a small crate for loooong hours, and that's A LOT to ask for from our dogs indeed! Can you imagine YOURSELF doing it in place of your dog?? 😱

But other than crate training, there are many other elements involved in being on a plane that can be quite stressful to our dogs - the LOUD public announcement system, babies crying throughout the flight, weird strangers walking frequently past your seat, big loud trolleys rolling down the aisle... Imagine being your dog, not understanding anything on why they are trapped in this weird, scary, noisy place for 18 hours, and not having any control nor being able to move away from these strange things going on around him!

To add on to that, his human suddenly stands up, walks away and leaves him all alone, trapped in this small bag and he can't open the bag on his own!

To us humans, we are ONLY leaving our seat to go to the toilet.. but.... how would our dogs understand that??!!

And then, being lifted SUDDENLY and wobbling inside the bag, being carried from one strange place to another, or rolling on a loud baggage trolley!

While we do such training using food, we also do not want our dog to get too excited but be able to learn to settle and sleep in the crate, because it's gonna be a good 18 hours inside the bag! How do we do that? And what flight timings should we choose to make it optimal for our dog to last that long in a small bag? And not forgetting toilet breaks - how many times do YOU get to go to the toilet whilst being on the plane?? Your dog has ZERO toilet breaks. So not forgetting, potty training or conditioning your dog to be comfortable wearing and doing it on a diaper!

So if you haven't realised it yet, it's a long list of things to train for! So start calling your trainer NOW and not shelve it to the last minute!! #不要临时抱佛脚 #请听老人言 😆

30/05/2024

Thank you Svea for the regular updates on Rasmus and Fenja! It always brightens my day to see how far little Rasmus has come, and to witness the amazing effects of R+ generalizing to all aspects of his life, turning him into a much more optimistic, calm and confident boy!

And thank you too for the doses of R+ in helping me continue doing what I do!!

29/05/2024

"Hello, big guy, how are you?"
"Yo, little one, how do you do?"

When Big meets Small, it's important to teach them to do so calmly and gently.

Here are two dogs learning to greet a new dog calmly. ❤️

29/05/2024

Teaching Wynter and Dubu to ignore a new dog they just met - Wynter working on his frustration-based reactivity, while Dubu learning to entertain herself instead of dashing towards the new dog.

I still remember how this boy used to bark, whine and scream when he saw a dog he couldn't access!! Look at you today, boy, you've come so far!! 💪 So proud of you!! ❤️🤩

29/05/2024

2 dogs practising on their Wait and learning to ignore a new dog at an open gate. Good job, guys!! So proud of you!! 👍💪

09/05/2024

Heads-up!

Did you know that some baby wipes contain xylitol? If you do not already know, xylitol is harmless to humans but toxic to dogs! Please be careful and read the ingredient list, even for wipes that you are using for your dog!

I found this whilst shopping at Watson's.

09/05/2024

Simba and Odin's humans were in desperate need of help when they contacted me in January. They had added a new puppy (Odin, a bernese mountain dog) to the household and their existing dog (Simba, a HK special) was aggressive to the puppy - barking, growling, snarling and even charging towards him, scaring the poor puppy! To add to that, like many rescued street dogs, Simba was a skittish dog who was fearful of strangers, loud sounds and anything novel!

Instead of "correcting" Simba for aggressing towards the puppy, I helped his humans understand that Simba's aggressive behaviour was a fear-based response and coached the humans to take a different approach to help Simba feel safe (and happy!) with the new puppy's presence in the house. We needed to improve the home situation quickly too as the puppy was getting traumatized - something definitely not desirable for a dog at such a highly-sensitive age!

After some coaching and hard work, we started seeing improvements at home between the relationship of the 2 dogs. Things started to stabilise at home and the humans + dogs started feeling safe for the 2 dogs to be in the same space, so much so that we started thinking we could now start working on other behaviour issues for Simba too - his over-reactivity towards strangers and the intercom!

And our rewards - this surreal picture of peace and harmony in the household ❤️ and OMG... 2 smiley faces looking back at me adoringly at the same time!!! Aww........ my heart is full..... ❤️❤️❤️

18/01/2024

How timely and apt, following my last post.

Professionals are often charged with the task of cleaning up the mess made by an amateur.

It happens across professions, whether it's a hairstylist fixing a bad color job or a behavior consultant like me contending with the damages caused to a dog with inhumane training. I am often the 3rd or 4th trainer a person comes to, in an attempt to help their dog (and thank goodness for their perseverance!)

Trust me, your path will be much smoother and the costs (both monetary and emotional) will ultimately be much less if you start with a qualified professional from the beginning.

Learn about finding a qualified professional in the unregulated industry of dog training in this week's blog post: https://rescuedbytraining.com/2024/01/15/dog-profession-titles/

15/01/2024

I know dear Hobbit and Melanie personally. Hobbit is such a gentle, clueless and friendly girl with no mean bone in her body that my heart breaks everytime I imagine the trauma that she went through in this incident. Ironically, I got to know them because I was engaged to help with Hobbit's brother's emotional trauma exactly for a similar incident - because he was attacked by an off-leash dog, and completely unprovoked too. That poor boy was then only slowly coming out of his shell and only slowly starting to enjoy (instead of fear) being in the outdoors, only to be attacked by an off-leash dog in his neighbourhood. And he too, was only minding his own business at a distance away when the other dog dashed towards him to attack him. Often it only takes one single such incident (single event learning) to scar the dog (not only physically but emotionally) for a very long time to come. 💔

Unfortunately the problem of off-leash dogs is very REAL and everywhere in Singapore - not only dogs that run out of open gates, but owners who intentionally choose to unleash their dogs in public. I have seen and dealt with the aftermath of too many of such cases that such irresponsible dog owners really trigger me.

As dog owners, we need to be responsible and consider other users as well (humans and dogs) of public spaces, not only ourselves and our own dogs. Other humans and other dogs have the same right as us and our dog to these public spaces. They are not called PUBLIC for no reason!

If you do not care about being responsible and considerate of others, know that leashing your dog in public is not a request - IT IS THE LAW. And the FINE for failing to do so is $5,000.

(I earnestly hope though that the authorities do more enforcement of these "laws". Laws are useless without enforcement. Paper tigers do not have effect at all on changing behaviours in our society.)

01/12/2023

Dogged out puppy ♥️

27/11/2023

Mr polar bear in the cottage today for day training ♥️

26/11/2023

Indeed.

PSA: Just because your dog doesn't growl or bite when your child handles them roughly, it doesn't mean they should have to tolerate it.

The onus is on the parent to teach children age-appropriate ways to interact with dogs.

The responsibility of safety is NOT 100% on the dog.

Teach the kids, not just the dogs.

24/11/2023

A few weeks ago, a reporter from Yahoo news approached me to speak about the current state of our dog training industry in Singapore. We did a long interview (stretching to an hour!) and spoke at length about our industry, some of which were covered below in this article published today.

One point that I made but was not included in the news article:

Q: "Why are some dog trainers still using outdated training methods?"

Me (aka Koo 😆): "Using punishment-based training methods feels very reinforcing to the trainer. All animals learn the same way, including the human who is training the dog! When a trainer or dog owner inflicts something aversive to a dog who is, say, barking at the door, and manages to temporarily suppress the dog's barking (without resolving the root cause for the dog's behaviour), the human gets relief from the barking noise and that becomes a consequence that the human gets from his behaviour of using these aversives. Hence this trainer or dog owner's behaviour of using these aversives becomes reinforced and will likely be repeated in future! That, in science, is what we call negative reinforcement - the same reason why we may keep taking Panadol if it gave us relief in the past for our headaches. If we do not understand how we ourselves are also learning, as with our dogs, we may go into this spiral of repeating behaviours that make our dogs' behaviours worse and damaging our relationship with our dogs.

That, to me, is one of the biggest dangers of using punishment-based training methods that often gets overlooked - that it feels very reinforcing to the trainer!"

------

What I actually said which got lost in translation after being paraphrased by the editor in the article:

Q: "Why are some dog trainers still using outdated training methods?"

Me (Koo): "Some trainers using aversive consequences to train may be thinking that they are applying operant conditioning. But they forget that animals are also always doing classical learning at the same time - if what you did to the dog managed to suppress the behaviour, it would mean that it was aversive enough to the dog and that the dog would have to learn when this scary or painful thing is coming (classical association). If the dog was barking because he was afraid of a stranger, now you have made the dog even more afraid of strangers because seeing strangers now also predicts his own human doing scary things to him! Sometimes, you see cases only starting off as a reactive behaviour like barking and lunging. But by the time it reaches the hands of another trainer, you may now have a case of biting and aggression with a lot of distrust,"

"Fear is very easy to install and very hard to remove. Even if you can suppress a behaviour using punishment, you should not attempt to do so. It's not worth installing fear along the process."

"I don't believe that trainers come into this job thinking that they want to harm dogs. They come in with the love of dogs. However, without a sound education and understanding of how animals learn, some trainers may not even realise that they are doing more harm to the dog in the long term. So you can imagine how much more confusing it is to dog owners, with so much outdated and conflicting information still out there on the internet on dog training."

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/should-you-train-dogs-with-reward-or-punishment-views-vary-singapore-dog-training-community-030005535.html

24/11/2023

A few weeks ago, a reporter from Yahoo news approached me to speak about the current state of our dog training industry in Singapore. We did a long interview (stretching to an hour!) and spoke at length about our industry, some of which were covered below in this article.

One point that I made but was not included in the news article:

Q: "Why are some dog trainers still using outdated training methods?"

Me (aka Koo 😆): "Using punishment-based training methods feels very reinforcing to the trainer. All animals learn the same way, including the human who is training the dog! When a trainer or dog owner inflicts something aversive to a dog who is, say, barking at the door, and manages to temporarily suppress the dog's barking (without resolving the root cause for the dog's behaviour), the human gets relief from the barking noise and that becomes a consequence that the human gets from his behaviour of using these aversives. Hence this trainer or dog owner's behaviour of using these aversives becomes reinforced and will likely be repeated in future! That, in science, is what we call negative reinforcement - the same reason why we may keep taking Panadol if it gave us relief in the past for our headaches. If we do not understand how we ourselves are also learning, as with our dogs, we may go into this spiral of repeating behaviours that make our dogs' behaviours worse and damaging our relationship with our dogs.

That, to me, is one of the biggest dangers of using punishment-based training methods that often gets overlooked - that it feels very reinforcing to the trainer!"

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/should-you-train-dogs-with-reward-or-punishment-views-vary-singapore-dog-training-community-030005535.html

11/11/2023

Happy to be certified again as a Canine Behaviour Consultant for another 5 years!

It's been 5 years since I first obtained this professional certification from the U.S. in 2018. Back then, behaviour modification was still relatively new locally and everyone would wrongly call me a "behaviourist" which I would take pains to correct and explain how that is not the right term to use for most dog trainers and how this term had been grossly misused. But sometimes I would give up and let it go, because it was too tiring! Lol.

Today, I find myself only having to do this once in a while!

In just 5 years, our local training landscape has transformed so much!! Not that old, but suddenly feeling very old!!

10/11/2023

New milestone achieved today in this household of 3 dogs 🎉- ALL 3 dogs have learnt to wait calmly for their turn (instead of jumping, barking, snatching)!

Training in a multi-dog household requires a lot of multi-tasking - watching/managing/rewarding EACH dog present at the RIGHT time when EACH dog does the desired GOAL behaviour! Often it involves working more on one or two dogs than others and adjusting each dog's criteria according to their respective current skill level!

16/10/2023

SO MANY inconsiderate small dog owners who refuse to leash their dogs in public and keep letting their small dogs run up to other dogs on leash.

Please understand that it is a very bad combination to have an off-leash dog run up to a dog on leash. It makes the dog on leash feel TRAPPED and more inclined to bite your dog to defend himself.

Please do NOT be that inconsiderate small dog owner who only thinks about yourself and your own "friendly" dog, with no consideration for other people or other dogs in public spaces.

If it helps, know that it is AGAINST THE LAW to off leash your dog in public and the FINE is $5,000.

NParks

04/10/2023

So happy to receive another update today from Rasmus' mummy on his modification training for dog reactivity on walks.

Rasmus had unfortunately gained notoriety in the neighborhood for his long, high-pitched screams on walks, so the look of shock 😲 on the neighbours' faces when he was all calm and quiet today when he saw a dog was a HUGE deal!! 😆🤗



Good job, Svea!! 🎉 Woohoo! All your hard work is paying off!! 💪 Thank you for your trust in me in making the changes in the walks and training! But our job is not done yet - we are only halfway through the training program! 😆 Looking forward to more progress from Rasmus as he continues to grow in his confidence and trust in us as his guardians!

****

Background:

Rasmus' humans approached me for help 3 months ago for his dog reactivity amongst other behavioural issues. Rasmus would whine, yelp and sometimes do high-pitch barks at the smell or sight of a dog from far away. Even long after the dog was gone, poor Rasmus would remain nervous for a very long time and unable to calm down.

Rasmus is also a sensitive dog who is unable to contain his excitement. The anticipation of going for walks would trigger him to do long, high-pitch screams which could last all the way from leaving the house to the lift and beyond, until he reaches the grass field.

Poor Rasmus was also very anxious going to new places outside of his neighbourhood. Whenever he was in a new place, he would make yelping sounds and dart from one area to another, and unable to remain at a single spot calmly.

04/10/2023

Thanks Wendy for the kind review and for trusting me in Coco's learning journey! It's so fulfilling seeing this little hyper girl maturing nicely to the "almost" lady teenager of today! 😆

###

Wendy adopted Coco when she was 3mth old, together with her mother dog Faye.

Soon after her arrival to the home, it became apparent that Coco was more than a usual 3mth old hyper puppy - she would jump constantly at the humans' face and legs, and bite relentlessly on their knees, ankles and clothing for attention. Whenever the humans try to pat or carry her, she would snap, growl or bite. Coco would also jump and play-bite at her mother dog Faye's face relentlessly, refusing to take "No" for an answer to play, despite being bitten by Faye.

Coupled with the hyperactivity, Coco also had severe body handling sensitivity issues. It was also impossible to put on the collar or leash on Coco, or to clean or wipe her as she would snap or bite anyone who attempted to do so.

To add on to that, Coco was also very fearful of the outdoors. Walking Coco posed a falling risk to the humans as she would hide under or skirt in between the humans' legs during walks.

Understandably, little Coco was an overwhelming project for the household and Wendy quickly approached me for help at the recommendation of human (thanks Joyce!!) and the rest was history.

02/10/2023

Please help the street dogs in Malaysia and this shelter that is in desperate need of funds! Dog rescue work is never easy and such a long thankless marathon. Poor Aunty seems to be on the brink of mental breakdown with the lack of funds. Let's give them a helping hand, however small it may be. Donation link can be found below!

I’m Jolean, based in Singapore and came across their video interview on TikTok (vt.tiktok.com/ZSN8u2Vfn) and have offered my help to Aunty Li Yan to create a fundraising page for her, in hopes that more people would be more people to contribute and support them. I have spoken to Aunty Li Yan a

27/09/2023

Our suddenly-not-so-little Coco girl continues to amaze us today with bringing further what she learnt from her training. Thank you Coco's mummy for sending these updates! You are maturing into a fine adolescent, my girl ♥️. So tall already!!

15/09/2023

Ok we DO need to shout out again to our outstanding A-star student Coco for her another outstanding performance today with the new baby! We are so proud of her 💪 - knowing her nature, this must have required so much restraint from her end - to ignore a rolling baby on the bed! 😆 Our little hyper girl seems to be growing slowly to be a fine lady! ♥️👏

14/09/2023

2 well-mannered Polar Bears in disguise as dogs 😆