New trick taught through capturing 😆❤️
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
Training a Wait with real-life reinforcers.
There are 2 life reinforcers that I am using here that are attached to his Release - FREEDOM from the room + ACCESS TO THE SMELLS left behind by the dogs.
This is R+ training without using treats.
There are reinforcers everywhere in our environment. Make good use of them, or the environment will reinforce other behaviours that you do not desire your dog to repeat.
#sgpositivereinforcementdogtraining #sgdogtraining
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
Somebody is expecting his dinner because that's the usual routine - end of walk > predicts > dinner 😆.
Even though he ALREADY had his dinner today BEFORE going for his walk.
This is classical/Pavlovian conditioning - associative learning is THAT BIG a deal in a dog's life!
When he finally realised there's no dinner coming, he went to look for a chew from his toy box! Because he DOES need to eat something after his walk! Because THAT'S the ROUTINE (so taught to him by Dr Ivan Pavlov)! 😂
(Learning happens ALL THE TIME.
Even when you are not paying attention to it...)
#sciencebasedtraining #dogsarelearningallthetime #classicalconditioning #animallearningtheory
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!! ❤️🤩
#dogreactivity #frustrationbasedreactivity #behaviourmodification #sgdogtraining
I have a new job starting next week.
Because of a popular TV show many years ago, many people have a deep, entrenched wrong perception of how to train aggressive dog behaviours. CM wannabes without any education or qualifications in dog behaviour suddenly started hanging out their shingles and self-proclaim themselves to be a "dog trainer" or worse, a "behaviourist" and start taking money from unknowing dog guardians and start meddling with "aggressive" dogs, without truly understanding what they are doing and worse, without even realising the harm that they are doing to their client dogs.
To make the problem worse, this misconception of how training an "aggressive" dog looks like had driven unrealistic, harmful expectations in many common dog owners when they engage a dog trainer to deal with their dogs' behaviour problems.
A common complaint that I would hear from my new clients would be - my last dog trainer didn't even manage to hold my (aggressive) dog's leash / touch my dog!
Up till today, our dogs are still suffering from the aftermath of that TV show. It is still common for us to see CM wannabes and self-proclaimed "professional dog trainers" and "dog behaviourists" doing harmful "training", creating long-term emotional trauma to more dogs, and abusing + bullying dogs in the name of "training".
The local media reports we have seen this week on the abusive dog training and handling practices by this joker young punk is unfortunately not uncommon in our dog training industry.
To uplift the standards of our local dog training industry, the demand side of the equation must change - our dog owners NEED to be equipped with the CORRECT knowledge and expectations of how a training session SHOULD look like, esp when dealing with fearful or aggressive dog behaviours. Only then will they not be fooled by jokers who pull the wool over ignorant dog owners' eyes and do emotional damage to the poor dogs which will stay with them for many years to come 💔.
It is with this hope that I created this vid
Because of a popular TV show many years ago, many people have a deep, entrenched wrong perception of how to train aggressive dog behaviours. CM wannabes without any education or qualifications in dog behaviour suddenly started hanging out their shingles and self-proclaim themselves to be a "dog trainer" or worse, a "behaviourist" and start taking money from unknowing dog guardians and start meddling with "aggressive" dogs, without truly understanding what they are doing and worse, without even realising the harm that they are doing to their client dogs.
To make the problem worse, this misconception of how training an "aggressive" dog looks like had driven unrealistic, harmful expectations in many common dog owners when they engage a dog trainer to deal with their dogs' behaviour problems.
A common complaint that I would hear from my new clients would be - my last dog trainer didn't even manage to hold my (aggressive) dog's leash / touch my dog!
Up till today, our dogs are still suffering from the aftermath of that TV show. It is still common for us to see CM wannabes and self-proclaimed "professional dog trainers" and "dog behaviourists" doing harmful "training", creating long-term emotional trauma to more dogs, and abusing + bullying dogs in the name of "training".
The local media reports we have seen this week on the abusive dog training and handling practices by this joker young punk is unfortunately not uncommon in our dog training industry.
To uplift the standards of our local dog training industry, the demand side of the equation must change - our dog owners NEED to be equipped with the CORRECT knowledge and expectations of how a training session SHOULD look like, esp when dealing with fearful or aggressive dog behaviours. Only then will they not be fooled by jokers who pull the wool over ignorant dog owners' eyes and do emotional damage to the poor dogs which will stay with them for many years to come 💔.
It is with this hope that I created this vid
