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🐾🌟 Socialization Adventures- Part 2 🌟🐾
How to respond if your puppy encounters something potentially scary during a training session.
Here's a glimpse into Ciana's journey as she learns to navigate new challenges with courage and resilience. Previously, you saw her practice climbing on the teal circle and blue bone, and now I’m leveling her up to the black box. This item is slightly higher and more slippery than the other two, making it more of a challenge.
In this video, I guide her towards the step, encouraging her to choose to interact with it. Notice how I position myself so that the box is between us, encouraging her to explore. With patience, I tap it lightly and await her response. When she seems uncertain about what to do next, I adjust my expectations and reward her for simply sniffing the top. Despite Ciana's limited experience with shaping, she quickly grasps the concept and begins offering other behaviors, like stepping onto the box. I promptly mark and reinforce her exploration, celebrating her progress. As she confidently climbs all the way up and sits… whoops! She miscalculates the placement of one of her back legs and takes a tumble. Given her young age and the possibility of a potential fear period, it's crucial to help her recover from this potentially scary fall.
📝 Here's how I handle it:
1️⃣ Immediate Reassurance: As soon as Ciana takes a tumble, I immediately offer her treats to mitigate any alarm or fear she may have experienced, helping to neutralize the incident.
2️⃣ Toss a Reset Treat: Giving the puppy a break allows her to reset and decide whether to re-engage. Ciana comes right back but needs some time to think about whether she’ll try climbing the box again.
3️⃣ Adjust Expectations: After the reset, I lower my expectations and reward Ciana for smaller steps, like sniffing the box or staying near it. It's essential to respect her boundaries, rather than pressuring her to try again right away.
4️
🐾🌟 Socialization Adventures 🌟🐾
Want to raise a pup who can confidently navigate a variety of tactile experiences, like walking over grates, crossing bridges, climbing stairs, etc.? It all starts with teaching your puppy that new textures and objects are fun to interact with!
Watch as this 8-week-old Golden puppy, Ciana, embarks on an exciting tactile exploration journey, gaining body confidence and awareness with each step.
🧩 The puzzle mats on the floor have various textures and uneven surfaces, providing a stimulating surface for exploration. Around these mats are other body conditioning equipment, incorporating elevation and balance to further the challenge.
It is wonderful just to let puppies explore and climb around on this kind of equipment, offering encouragement and timely reinforcement can truly enhance their experience.
Here are a few things to notice in this adorable video:
🟢 Encouraging Exploration: Notice how Ciana approaches new challenges with curiosity. While we encourage independent exploration, a little guidance can go a long way in boosting confidence. When I touch the teal circle, Ciana comes over to investigate and tries climbing on it. As you can see, I was able to fade that out a little over the course of the session as Ciana was able to guess which behaviors would be reinforced.
🐾 Confidence Building: Every climb and step earns Ciana a tasty reward, reinforcing her bravery and enjoyment of exploring unstable surfaces.
🔄 Breaks and Resets: Occasionally, I offer Ciana a break by tossing a treat off to the side, allowing her to “reset” and choose her next move. Doing this provides caluable insight into her comfort level and eagerness to continue exploring. As you can see, she comes right back over to try again!
🎖️ Reinforcing Good Behavior: If Ciana chooses to stay on an object for longer, I mark and feed her a few times to reinforce that. At one point, Cia chooses to go onto the texture mats and sit. I
🐾🌿 Early trail walk with an 8-week-old puppy! Trail walks involve letting a dog explore their environment safely on a long line as you guide their interactions.
Wondering why you should start trail walks right away after bringing home your puppy? Here's why:
🌟 Building Focus and Engagement: Trail walks provide authentic opportunities for your puppy to learn to automatically "check in" with you, even when "off-leash" (or the illusion of being off-leash wearing a long line). Any time the puppy pays attention to the handler, the puppy is praised and offered a treat. As you can see from the video, this increases voluntary attentive behavior – the handler doesn’t need to ask the puppy to pay attention, the puppy chooses to do so! This is also the foundation of walking on a short leash because the puppy is learning to enjoy staying close to their handler.
🐾 Building Confidence: Show your puppy that the world is safe to explore! By going on trail walk adventures early and often, puppies quickly build confidence in outdoor environments, which can be highly distracting or overwhelming for puppies. This skill is further developed by going on trail walks at different locations, so puppies also get comfortable with new environments.
🐶 Handling Encounters: Trail walks teach puppies how to handle encounters with people, dogs, wildlife, sounds, and more. Although that isn’t captured in this video, when puppies encounter new things on a trail walk, the handler is ready to guide the puppy off the trail and feed the puppy treats until the “trigger” passes. After many repetitions of this, puppies learn to look to their handlers each time they see/hear something new up ahead.
Check out the video to see this little pup enjoying one of her first trail adventures! 📹🐕 #PuppyTraining #TrailWalks #PositiveReinforcementTraining #ConfidentPuppies
Creating Positive Playtime with Your Pup!
🐾🌟 Puppy Playtime 🌟🐾
Embarking on the journey of puppy parenthood? From the moment your puppy comes home, how you interact with them is shaping how they behave! Wondering how to play with your 8-week-old puppy in a way that nurtures desirable behavior? 🤔 Watch our video and read below for insights on fostering healthy development through engaging play! 📽️👀
🐾 Puppy Pen Paradise: Puppy should be safely enclosed in a well-designed pen, creating a haven that prevents mischief and fosters safe play. Using pens with vertical bars deters climbing, and cleverly placed cardboard barriers blocking the couch prevents fabric-biting tendencies. There is a walk-through gate that leads to a quick-access potty area outside the sliding door. Also, the pen is attached to the puppy's crate so she can practice resting there.
🎉 Toy Wonderland: Foster healthy chewing habits and keep your pup entertained. Surround your pup with a variety of toys for optimal decision-making! Soft, hard, rolling, noisy- offer plenty of choices that engage and satisfy their natural instincts. Having plentiful toys within reach makes it easier for the puppy to make appropriate choices and practice chewing on toys (rather than humans or human objects).
🍗 Edible Enrichment: There are a couple chews available in case the puppy gets bored of play, having these handy allows us to transition seamlessly from interactive play to independent downtime with tasty chews. This ensures your pup stays engaged, satisfied, and happily occupied.
🤗 Positive Playtime Voice: Adopt a gentle, happy voice during interactions. Most of Kyla's narration is for your (the viewer's) benefit to make it easier for you to track her thought process and choices, but it is certainly helpful to use a playful tone while interacting with puppies during play. Mimic this approach to build a strong bond with your pup.
🔄 Adaptable Play Strategies: Respect your pup's choices in play. Learn to adjust your pl
🎃 Halloween is finally here! It's a time of spooktacular fun for kids (and the kid in all of us), complete with candy, costumes, and all sorts of creepiness. But as your devoted canine advocate, I want to ensure that your four-legged pals have a fantastic and safe time too! 🐾
Darkness, costumes, and the excitement in the air can make even the calmest of dogs a bit uneasy.
Here are some important things to keep in mind this Halloween:
👻 Kids in costumes can be unpredictable, and some go all out to get reactions. Your dog will not understand why people suddenly look different and may become distressed.
🐾 In the video we've shared, we're working with a 10-month-old lab, practicing her ability to ignore potentially scary "monsters." While the dogs I work with are comfortable around various distractions, I wouldn't expect them to interact with a person in costume, as unfamiliar appearances can make them unpredictable. As you'll see in the video, this rockstar pup shows how early socialization and training have helped her stay cool in the face of this spooky fiend.
🐶 Should your dog walk with you on Halloween night? Well, it depends on the individual dog, but the odds are, probably not!
🍫 Are you 100% sure your pup would ignore candy found on the ground? Remember, chocolate and other treats from kids' bags are very dangerous for dogs! It's almost guaranteed that there will be spilled or discarded treats on the ground. Will you spot that open bag of M&M's in the grass before your dog gobbles it up?
In this video we are practicing a default leave it, meaning I do not cue my dog to ignore the food on the ground; her training tells her that food on the ground is not for her, and she should look to me for guidance (and dog-safe compensation 🌭).
🐕 Let's make this Halloween paw-some, where the scariest thing is how well-behaved your furry friend is becoming! From our dedicated team at Shyne Dog Training, we wish you a 'howl' of a good time this sp
👻 Ghosts and goblins in your neighborhood? Don’t let your pup be spooked, we’ve got the training covered! 👻
Video shows client pup, Levi, using the Control Unleashed pattern game of “look at that” (LAT) to help him feel better about a new, potentially scary Halloween decoration while still at a safe distance away. LAT is perfect for dogs with big feelings who may need extra support when seeing new things, people, or even other dogs. Could your dog benefit from LAT? Contact us for more information!
#positivereinforcement #dogtraining #petsonhalloween #lookatthat #controlunleashed #patterngames
🐾🐾 Does your puppy's name response look like this? 🐾🐾
An immediate "whiplash" turn to a name cue can save your dog's life! The world is full of distractions and temptations that can grab our dogs' attention and put them in dangerous situations. It's critical to be able to get fast, reliable eye contact to keep your puppy safe!
Here, Akira is showing off her instant orient-to-handler behavior when I call her name. With this cue, I'm not asking her to come all the way to me, just to pay attention - but she comes anyway for her reward! ☺️ I taught Akira this life-saving behavior through training games inspired by the renowned Control Unleashed Puppy Program.
Like/Follow to learn more about life-saving behaviors and how to train them!
#dogtraining #puppytraining #clickertraining #positivereinforcement #dogobedience #trainingtips #trainwithlove
