Dogs Behaving Better

20/11/2024

Dogs who are often over-the-top will benefit from a daily nap, especially puppies!

Chase-Free Living - Creating Healthy Sleep Habits! 💤

Just like us, our dogs thrive when they’re well-rested. 🐶✨

Sleep plays a crucial role in their physical health, emotional well-being, and even their ability to learn new skills (yes, including not chasing critters!)

Here’s how to help your pup get the quality snooze they deserve:
�✔️ Create a cozy sleep spot: A quiet, comfy area where they feel safe is essential.
�✔️ Stick to a routine: Regular exercise, meals, and bedtime help their body clock stay on track. ⏰
�✔️ Calm the chaos: Activities like sniffing games or gentle chew toys can wind them down before bed. 🦴
�✔️ Respect their rest: Teach your family to avoid disturbing your dog while they’re sleeping.

A well-rested dog is a happier, calmer, and more focused dog. Let’s help them recharge those paws for a lifetime of adventures! 🌟

How does your pup like to wind down before bed? Share your routine below! ⬇️

20/11/2024

Management is Step 1 of changing any unwanted behavior. Then training is Step 2.
I can help you and your dog with both steps.

ARE YOU MANAGING?
Are you managing your dog’s environment to prevent or improve unwanted behaviour?

As people, we tend to prefer and look for the more complicated solutions to problems. This tendency is termed “complexity bias” - the tendency to prefer complicated explanations and solutions instead of looking for the simpler ones.

Surely a complicated, time consuming, detailed solution has to be more effective, superior, impressive, or correct?

Complexity bias is so relevant when it comes to changing a dog’s unwanted behaviour. We often get so stuck on trying to modify behaviour through counter conditioning, desensitization or detailed training plans when sometimes the simplest solution to the problem lies in simply managing the environment.

Dogs will do what dogs do – when an opportunity arises to help themselves to food left on a table, to bark at the gate at anyone passing by, to have a drink from that big water bowl at the perfect height, that we call a toilet, to running off with irresistibly smelly dirty underwear, to rummaging through bins in search of anything that may or may not be edible, to running out an opened door in search of adventure - the list is long - dogs will be dogs.

Parents of little children use management all the time without giving it much thought. Baby locks on cupboards, covers on electrical sockets, valuable or dangerous items put far out of reach, fences and locks around pools, etc.

We wouldn’t just train a toddler not to stick their fingers in an electrical socket, not to open cupboards, not to touch a hot plate – it’s far safer, simpler and logical to first manage the environment, to prevent potential incidents.

The same principle should apply to managing a dog’s environment to prevent unwanted behaviour.

The more a behaviour is practiced the more difficult it is to prevent. The more a behaviour is rehearsed the better dogs become at it.

Preventing the behaviour from happening in the first place by using management is the logical, simple and effective way to address it.

Be a good manager – it’s far less stressful, for both us and our dogs.

17/11/2024

Dogs who aren't comfortable in new places won't get better by just exposing them to environments that are scary or overwhelming. That's flooding, not socializing.

If your dog is too fearful or reactive to take out in public, I can help.

09/11/2024

The Great Escape

06/11/2024

Understanding works better to improve behavior.

If we're always focused on labeling our dog's behaviors as simply "good" or "bad," we may overlook the underlying causes that truly require our attention.

This binary thinking can prevent us from understanding the deeper reasons behind certain actions, such as fear, anxiety, or even physical discomfort.

For example, if a dog is constantly barking or acting out, it's not because they are "bad," but because they're stressed, bored, or feeling neglected.

By focusing on understanding rather than judgment, we can address the root of the issue, whether it's through training, environmental changes, or even a visit to the vet!

31/10/2024

So funny!!

30/10/2024

It’s GOOD to help our dogs feel better when they’re upset!

16/10/2024

More distance is the best way to manage reactivity. To improve the behavior, get professional positive help. I offer training packages for reactive dogs.

DISTANCE ASSISTANCE
It’s not easy having a reactive dog. As much as we may feel frustrated, restricted, angry or even ashamed or embarrassed, our reactive dogs are also experiencing a range of negative emotions when they react to something that triggers them.

This reaction is usually caused by anxiety, fear, feeling threatened, frustrated or related to pain.

These emotions cause high levels of stress and stress prevents both us and our dogs from being able to process information, think clearly or learn a different, more acceptable way of reacting to whatever triggers us.

This is why creating enough distance is so important. I’m really scared of snakes and even struggle to look at them. The only thing I want to do is run away and create as much distance as possible.

If someone was restraining me, forcing me to sit down and look at the snake while trying to feed me my favourite chocolate, telling me there was nothing to worry about or trying to educate me about the specific species, it would do nothing to alleviate my fear and would only increase my stress levels.

Doing this at a sufficient distance, where I felt safe would be far more effective and my stress levels would be much lower. In time, with patience and practice, I may even be able to get much closer to the snake without having a negative reaction.

The same principle applies to reactive dogs. Creating sufficient distance where they can see the trigger but still feel safe and don’t react is the best way of helping them to cope with their feelings.

Some dogs (and people) may never be able to decrease that distance and that’s also okay.

Accept your dog for the unique individual they are, keep working on the things you can change and accept the things you can’t.

06/09/2024

Yes yes yes

03/09/2024

Comforting should mean doing something to help your dog feel safe and secure, not “poor you!”

FACING THE FEAR
There is a common disbelief that comforting a dog that is feeling scared, anxious or stressed will only reinforce, encourage the feeling and make it worse.

This belief is incorrect. Fear is an emotional response and one that a dog does not choose or decides to feel.

An emotion is an involuntary, uncontrolled response that cannot be reinforced.

Punishing fear-based behaviour is even worse than not providing comfort as it creates even more negative associations with whatever the “scary thing" is.

Behaviour and emotions are intrinsically linked in important ways, but they are still not the same thing and require different approaches when they become a problem.

Imagine an intruder broke into your home, tied you up and took off with your belongings. After being freed and getting help, a friend arrives to see how you are.

Your friend tells you that she can see that you’re really anxious and scared but she’s just going to completely ignore you, is not going to attempt to comfort you, sit with you or support you because by doing so she will make you even more afraid and upset. Does that reaction make any sense?

Why should it be any different for dogs that also experience a range of emotions? Why then is it still believed that we should ignore our dogs?

Probably because there is confusion and misunderstanding about the difference between an emotional response - which is an involuntary response and a learned response - which has varying degrees of conscious control.

If we acknowledge that providing comfort and support to a dog that is experiencing these emotions will not reinforce them, do we know if providing comfort will reduce these emotions?

Research on this subject is showing evidence that providing comfort and support in stressful situations decreases a dog’s heart rate, salivary cortisol levels, reduces stress responses and increases calm behaviour.

Ignoring a dog’s emotions because of misinformed advice in the belief that this will change the behaviour is more damaging than helpful.

We need to accept and acknowledge that our dogs are having an emotional response and not a behavioural problem.

We need to show compassion, understanding, be a secure base, a safe haven and provide the appropriate comfort when our dogs need it.

01/09/2024

Letting dogs watch from a safe distance or safe space, like your car, is really helpful.

08/08/2024

Wonderful book!!

My book, Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy, is published in the UK today. It's available from all good bookstores, including your local indie and via Bookshop (which supports indie bookstores): https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/books-by-zazie-todd-phd

08/08/2024

How to get your dog comfortable in a baby pool! I’m gonna try this.

04/08/2024

Changing mindset improves dog behavior!

How we view our dog’s unwanted behaviors can lead down the wrong path--or the path that actually works to improve things.

Labeling is one wrong path: this is when we use labels like dominant or stubborn or super-friendly to try to explain why the dog is doing the unwanted behavior. But changing that mindset to a more objective view leads to real solutions.

For example, a very common behavior for dogs, jumping up to greet, is often believed to be due to personality (labeling) or disobedience (she knows Sit, she just won’t do it). So this mindset causes annoyance and repeated “corrections,” which may temporarily suppress the jumping but doesn’t keep it from happening again—and can even make things worse.

But when we understand that that the real reasons for jumping up (and many other unwanted behaviors) are emotions, over-arousal, and a history of reinforcement, we have proven, science-based, positive solutions.

In real life, until a better behavior is installed, we need first to physically prevent the dog from (a) being able to jump on people and (b) getting reinforced with attention, even sometimes.

For more on this topic, see my blog post on obedience versus cooperation. https://www.dogsbehavingbetter.com/blog/lets-replace-obedience-with-cooperation

Obedience mindset. Another attitude that often blocks real behavior improvement is thinking that we always need to TELL dogs what to do and not do—even though we know from experience that they cannot respond when they are over-excited, worried, fearful, frustrated, angry—in other words, Not Thinking.

A far more effective approach is to teach dogs how to feel calmer (which sometimes means feeling safe) in certain situations or environments. With this type of training, we see a lot less—or none—of the unwanted behaviors happening. A calmer dog learns to control herself.

When you see frenzied barking, zooming or bouncing around, lunging on leash, hu***ng, or repeated jumping up on people, remember that Sit, Come, and NO simply won’t work. And repeating commands just adds more pressure to a dog already over her threshold, whose mind has gone off-line.

There’s a better way. We can teach what TO do in those challenging situations, using much easier training set-ups.

When calmness comes first, the average dog is able to think and learn that a desirable (to us) behavior works out better for her than what she was doing before. With enough practice under threshold, the context can become the cue for the new, replacement behavior.

Focusing on calmness over obedience has major benefits for all of us! We don’t have to get upset with our dogs, feel embarrassed and powerless, and worry about our own safety and others’.

Here are 5 easy ways to help you and your dog to start feeling better and behaving better: https://www.dogsbehavingbetter.com/blog/1-training-myth-my-dog-needs-to-be-more-obedient

Good behavior is not so much about responding to commands . As you have probably noticed, commands and cues don’t work well whenever a dog is scared, anxious, over-aroused or over-excited. That’s because emotions block thinking. This is when you need to change emotional responses in order to imp...

02/08/2024

Bouki and Mischa, almost 2 year-old Yorkies, are starting to settle on their mat. We’re going for a relaxed Down, then will add in distractions.

Just 2 weeks ago, Bouki was barking at me nonstop for almost an hour. But thinking dogs are quiet!