Moony (Golden Doodle) started at 1.5 years old, she was a strong puller, reactive to dogs, and over excitement. Moony lives with two older King Charles Cavelier sisters. One of them is blind so she can only scurry to navigate to the world. The other is Poppy, naturally fast and commanding with her barks. We decided to also train Poppy in order to get effectively get Moony trained.
The trio makes a cute mess, they are all over each other in a scurry for food or attention all the time, it’s always about the fastest dog wins. And because it looks so endearing, humans encourage it by giving attention. The addictive nature of intermittent reinforcement of behaviour-reward was in proper display.
At the start, Poppy was barking incessantly pulling at every chance of stimulation. Moony was constantly aroused and unable to calm herself down. Thankfully, both dogs are just as hungry for a challenge in drills. We customised their drills durations to be halved, but double-down on repetitions, just to keep them constantly busy on either a challenge, or resting in place (12 drills instead of 6, 20 times in/out of crate instead of 10). We stepped up on training (twice weekly) for a couple of months to cement a strong foundation. They were categorically more serious cases that needed more foundation work to undo undesirable habits that require conditioning to chip away at.
After months of small wins, we started to see drastic results! Moony no longer pulls on the leash at all times, Poppy was acing her drills, helping to teach other puppies. Poppy stopped barking completely, rests when she’s on sit-stay, or goes to sleep once she’s in her crate.
Poppy and Moony has graduated into our maintenance pack, they come in regularly once a week to get their dose of crucial stimulation from structured activities to challenge their minds and bodies. We are immensely proud of their long term transformation to more calm, balanced and happy dogs.
Thank you very much for your patien
Place command aka forced meditation is the best thing to nurture a calm mind. While the activity is not physically challenging; it is comfortable like a hammock, the challenge lies in controlling the impulse to not respond to their busy minds, but stay still and only get off when the command is given.
A happy, balanced dog must have these regularly: physical challenge, mental challenge aka impulse control, sniffing around and socialising with other dogs. With place command, the mental challenge is at its highest.
In nature, dogs use impulse control to hunt, escape from predators, navigate dangerous terrains, if not they perish to the organic hostile environments.
It’s kind of like humans: with the advent of city life, we lost the natural balance that pre-civilisation offers. Consequently, humans invented lifestyles to create a balance: we’re the only animals that work out for the sake of working out, lift heavy bells off the rack only to put them back after. Because it feels good to push your limits, you’re sharper and more confident when you’re fitter, because we feel more satiated and balanced to the unnatural city lives that we have adapted to.
As hunter-gatherers, we use to simply sweat it out for livelihood, and now as citylings we get creative to achieve a healthy balance. If not, chronic diseases of the body and mind could stem from not prioritising balancing our unnatural lifestyles. And as nature goes, only those who take it upon themselves to do it right, reaps the benefits.
By extension, not everyone will spend time to nurture a balanced dog. But only those who do it right get to reap the benefits.
It starts with Sit stays for 10-15 seconds, but we’ll eventually get your dog to at least half an hour without breaking command. Every dogs’ journey is customized to make sure they get there at their own pace, and we get every dog there, one by one.
Drop us a line to training alongside us today!
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#dogtraining #calmness #calmdog #bala
And that’s a wrap to a pawsome year! Our class of 2023 has been a wave of puppies join our regular weekly pack, we’ve been growing our TnT staff team, and it’s been such a swell time evolving with time. 😍
We are a team of behaviour trainers specialising in behaviour issues in domestic pet dogs. All the activities in our structured daycare program is designed to help the most common struggles of domestic dog owners.
We start with an assessment of your main struggles with your dog and set milestones with you. Your dog starts for several weeks on our weekday daycare sessions with us, and we’l pepper in consults with the handlers at home along the way, so we can make sure your dog is proficient before we teach you.
Our goal is to make sure your problem is solved and your dog masters the five basic commands to their highest potential. We send videos weekly and homework for the learning handlers at home. It is our shared responsibility to get your dog to our agreed goals.
After graduating to packwalks and your struggles at home are solved, we move your dog from a training price to a lowered maintenance price, to keep their basic commands sharp and a weekly dose of everything a dog needs: mental and physical stimulation, structure and boundaries as well as socialising and playing.
We customize training drills for every dog to ensure they can learn at their pace. We measure and analyze every training dog’s week-on-week progress We believe that the process matters, and that translates to results when their foundations are strong.
Drop us a line, our 2024 enrolments are open!
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#dogtraining #igdogs #singapaw #cutedogs #igdog #singapawrean #doggydaycare #dogtraining #instadog #muttsofinstagram
Merry Christmas 2023, from our pack to yours, sending universal love and light across all creeds and breeds and species, one love to rule them all, and we all sleep soundly tonight 🎄❣️
#christmasdog #doggydaycare #packwalk #behaviour #sgdogs #dogsofinsta
Did you know that most of our work is done before you see our packwalk posts?
Back in 2019, we noticed that some excitable/fearful dogs do not do as well on the conventional packwalk service. Since then, we reconstructed the program from the ground up. Every dog needs to work with us individually on basic commands, and their triggers first, before anything else.
Featuring Forrest, an intelligent Doberman teenager, with all their alertness and sheer athleticism. As a pup, he was endearingly aloof; sensitive to sound and fast moving objects, unfamiliar humans, had a tendency to drift off focus after a trigger, and then fight or flight might ensue. This makes a lot of situations in city urban life stressful for both Forrest and his Mama.
Here’s Forrest doing Heel + Sit Stay drills, in a situation where there is moderate stress for him. Without distractions, he is already near perfect with his basic command drills at this point. In this clip, we’re working on controlled exposure to a variety of stresses using the same drills in the hundreds across weeks.
We record every drill, measure and grade, compare and analyse, and then formulate his next week’s stress exposure for the same drills. It’s boring technical, scientific work, but it works.
Forrest is still working his way to our fully-trained packwalk crew, but Mama Christine @ruffcutssg is already reaping the benefits where it matters: she gets to bring him out to for her events and races. Check out @bubba_forrest for all the new adventures unlocked with his new found confidence!
We are all sentient beings motivated by our desires and fears. Insecurities and fears are the hardest and most important work. ᴛʜᴇ ᴏʙsᴛᴀᴄʟᴇ ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ.
Every dog deserves the individual attention to help them with their fears. Hit us up to learn more! Our year end enrolment is filling up fast, book your consults before we close enrolment for the year!
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#igdogs #dogsofinstagram #dogtraining #sgd
