Don’t just slap a muzzle on your dog and expect it to go well!
Muzzle training your dog is a great skill for any dog, not just those who bite when stressed.
It’s important to keep in mind that dogs won’t instinctively understand how or way they should accept wearing a muzzle.
This is a very human construct that is counter intuitive to how dogs rationalize the world around them.
That’s why muzzle TRAINING is the key word here.
We need to teach their dog how to accept and understand something that doesn’t come naturally to them as a dog.
Most people we talk to say that “they tried to use a muzzle but their dog hates it”.
That’s because most of the time, the dog is only forced to wear a muzzle AFTER the dog has become stressed and already tried to bite.
When the muzzle is used this way, the dog ties the emotional experience of stress and fear with the muzzle as well, thus creating a negative assoiciation.
In this video, Sabrina and Jaimee coach this dog’s family on how to teach their dog how to engage with and accept wearing a muzzle by marking and positively re-enforcing any engagement with the muzzle.
Taking the time to allow the dog to explore and interact with the muzzle in order for the dog to gain a reward is a great way to create a positive association with not only seeing the muzzle, but eventually wearing the muzzle longer and longer.
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Re-patterning your dog’s “fight” response starts with understanding how dogs think and respond to stressors.
Dog’s instinctively will respond to stressors 1 of 4 ways
Fight
Flight
Avoidance
Acceptance
Most dogs that move to “fight” the stressor do so because the other options have not worked or are not available to them at the time.
Once a dog learns that the “Fight” response consistently helps them to feel better, a belief system and habit is formed in the dog about how to deal with stress surrounding that specific trigger.
This is when dogs are most frequently labeled “aggressive”.
But “aggression” isn’t a comprehensive diagnosis nor is showing aggressive tendencies and blanket personality type.
An aggressive incident or reaction, is just that, a momentary blip in time. Not the entirety of the dog’s life.
The dog in this video shows resource guarding behaviors around food, space, and high value bones.
So when he is feeling uncomfortable with someone moving into his space he has learned that showing “aggressive” behaviors or moving forward into fight mode in the quickest way to make that person go away so he can feel comfortable again.
But that doesn’t mean that a habitually patterned responses can’t be re-patterned.
Here, as Jaimee walks towards Brody’s kennel, she tosses food away from her and behind Brody while says MOVE.
This not only conditions a positive association to Jaimee’s approach, but it also teaches Brody that moving away from someone who makes him uncomfortable is also a option while laying the foundation for the MOVE command down the road.
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Dog’s speak body language and your body is speaking to the dog!
A dog’s native language is “body language”.
They communicate with other dog’s and the world around them through moving their bodies certain ways and also responding accordingly to what they are seeing from another dog body movements.
And just like us speaking in the only language we know how to speak, your dog is going to interpret what your body is doing through the Lense of what those movement mean to a dog.
That’s why it’s so important to be aware of how you are presenting yourself to a dog, because while your voice could be saying “hello, I want to be friends” your body could be communicating “I’m a threat and you need to be concerned about me”.
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Walking your reactive dog isn’t just about your dog’s reactivity!
It’s also learning how to properly assess and navigate your enviornment.
Here Sabrina coaches our shadow student how to successfully navigate a portion of the path at the park that is really narrow with a dog who struggles with reactivity towards other dogs.
The question is “how do you create space for your dog when there is no space to create?”
Which is the question that any one with a reactive dog will need to answer at some point on their walks with their dog.
When you can’t turn around to avoid an on coming dog and you you can’t “pull over” to let the dog pass at a distance and the only way out is through, what do you do?
You can creat the illusion of space.
In this situation, Sabrina coaches our shadow student to move towards the middle of the path while walking towards the on coming dogs.
Then as soon as our dog notices the oncoming dogs, we ask him to “come” and step out into “space”.
The width of the road hasn’t changed, the oncoming dogs didn’t move, but by starting out closer to the dogs and then stepping away from them, we helped our dog create the feeling that they had space to move away from the oncoming dogs and be more comfortable passing them.
There are multiple factors that play into why and when your dog reacts to dogs or people while one a walk.
But one of the biggest and most overlooked factor by owners is how the enviornment around them plays into their dog’s feeling and reactions.
Learn to be aware of where you are in your surroundings and how to guide your dog through those things and your walks and your relationship with your dog will improve over time.
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Positive and negative experiences are like deposits and withdraws.
When there is broken trust between a human and a dog, it can be hard to know how to rebuild that relationship.
But when we are trying to teach a dog how to relearn responses based on that broken trust, it’s important to understand how to build trust through positive experiences.
A positive experience doesn’t always look like a happy, relaxed, excited dog.
A positive experience can just mean that the dog remained neutral in a situation that would previously cause a reaction or that the dog didn’t feel threatened or provoked enough to respond in an unwanted way.
To achieve this, we (the human) needs to learn to read and understand our dog’s body language and then change our approach of how we are handling the dog in those situations.
Once the dog begins to see that we are “hearing” them through what they are communicating to us, we open the door to the dog being receptive to following communication with us.
This is how we begin to create positive interactions.
Each positive interaction is like putting $5 dollars in the bank.
We want to make as many deposits as possible in order to increase our dog’s trust in us and to help re-pattern the dog’s response to something, well, more positive.
How many positive interactions does it take to build up a healthy “bank account” of trust?
That depends on what your “trust balance” looked like before you started.
If you were in the negative, then you’ve got some work to do in order to get back into the + trust numbers.
This is it’s important to understand because negative experiences (experiences where the dog does feel threatened enough to react) are withdrawals from your “trust account”.
And they can cost infinitely more than deposits.
So tell us, how’s your dog’s trust bank account looking?
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Do you know what raised hackles really mean?
While we have heard it called many things by dog people, it’s actual term is Piloerection.
Piloerection is a term used for when the dog’s “hackles” or hair along the back, shoulders, and/or tail is raised or stands up.
It is an involuntary reflex that causes the hair along the spine to raise that is similar to the human experience of “goose bumps”.
It’s important to remember that when you are trying to determine meaning, isolating a body language cue or a body part of the dog is not the only indicator of what a dog is truly thinking or feeling.
Just like any word in the human language can have multiple meanings based on context, usage, and intent, Piloerection is no different.
It usually happens when a dog is aroused.
But arousal can happen when a dog is unsure, afraid, over excited, defensive, in prey drive, or has aggressive intent.
While Piloerection can be an indicator that a dog is experencing emotions, learning how to put that into context with the other communication pieces your dog giving you and/or the situation is how you can determine what your dog is actually feeling or how they are intending to respond in any given situation.
Would you like to learn more about how to “speak dog”?
Reach out! We’d love to chat with you about how we can help you learn fluent dog language and culture.
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Our “obedience” commands for our dogs are just a way for us to communicate the standard of behavior of how we want them to behave in any given situation.
A lot of times people teach dog’s “obedience commands” as just showing the dog that when we make a certain set of sounds of out our mouths it means that the dog needs to put it’s body into a physical position in order to gain a reward or avoid a correction.
While, yes, at its most rudimentary definition this is correct, but when people seek out obedience training they don’t want just physical positioning.
They want the dog to be calm, still, self controlled, able to listen and respond for safety- they want communication and connection.
That does not come with physical positioning only- it comes with an expectation of a certain standard of behavior.
And standards of behavior don’t change just because the environment or situation does.
We stand in line if we are waiting to get our favorite latte or if we are at the DMV.
We obey the rules of the road (most of the time wink wink) and those rules are enforced, even when we are running late or have to go to the bathroom really bad.
These are standards of behavior that are expected to be adhered to and enforced no matter what situation we find ourselves in.
Do these standards come with some sort of physical compliance?
Of course! But the physical form we take while complying matters less than following the actual standard of behavior.
The same is true for your dog and we would be doing dogs a disservice if we only taught obedience as physical compliance without teaching a standard of behavior along with it.
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Is your dog’s love for other dogs causing you problems on leash?
When we work with dog friendly dogs, the first thing we do to introduce them to each other is to teach them how to be neutral and calm.
It’s very common for dogs to be “friendly” or “good with other dogs” off a leash, but then struggle with reactive behaviors when on a leash or behind a fence or barrier.
One of the reasons for this is because dogs are associative learners.
If a dog’s only experience with other dogs is wrestle mania playtime, then that’s what their association is when they see a dog.
Dog = high excited energy and play.
This is not a bad thing!
But it’s not always the right time or place to engage in that activity.
This is why our dog’s can become frustrated on leash or behind a barrier when seeing another dog. There emotions are telling them they can behave one way, but their environment is preventing them from doing so.
That’s why teaching a dog friendly dog how to be calm in the presence of other dogs is so important. Especially, when introducing 2 dogs together for the first time.
If you know that your dog can have a good time and play and be rambunctious with other dogs, they can always access that skill set.
So what they might need to learn more of is how to be calm and in control around other dogs when it’s not time to play.
If you want to learn more about how your dog thinks, feel free to reach out by clicking the link in our bio!
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Sweater weather ❄️🩵
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Does your definition of active match your dog’s definition of active?
When we ask our clients why they chose the dog they chose, they give us a lot of reasons, but one of the most common reasons is because they wanted an “active” dog to do things with.
They tell us how they are active people and wanted a buddy to take with them on all their adventures.
As active people ourselves, we love hearing this!
But things can go sideways when an owner chooses a breed of dog or a specific dog because they were told that that dog was “active” but then their definition on what an active lifestyle looked like does not meet the needs of what their dog’s level activity to be to be fulfilled.
How do we avoid this (or how do we fix this once we have the dog in our lives)?
We ask 2 questions
What does active look like for us?
What does active look like for our dog?
By answering those 2 questions honestly we can build a better picture of what our lifestyle should look like so that both our dog and us can enjoy the active lifestyle we dreamed of living.
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Are you taking your dog’s developmental age into account?
One of the best “catch phrases” in the parenting world is
“The days are long, but the years are short”
And this is so true for raising not just human children, but dogs as well. Especially when raising a puppy!
In your day to day struggle of managing potty training, jumping, mouthing, chewing, barking, zoomies, teaching general manners and/or general puppy cuteness, it’s easy to forget that your young dog is just that- YOUNG.
While dog’s mature mentally and physically much faster than human children, your dog’s developmental age plays a large factor in not just their behavior, but their overall understanding of the world around them and how life works.
Just like human children, everything is new and exiting or overwhelming and scary or causes uncertainty or peaks curiosity.
Why?
Because it’s still novel.
The older a being gets, the more life experience they have and the world becomes less “new”.
It’s easy to forget this when the pup you brought home, doubles in size within the first 6 months of living with you. But just because they are bigger doesn’t mean they aren’t “all grown up”
Keeping your expectations for your dog’s behavior at the appropriate developmental level can help lessen your frustration level and create a better understanding and relationship with your dog.
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What if the life you wanted to live with your dog isn’t possible?
When we decide to bring a dog into our lives, we take a gamble.
We can do all the research on the breed, go through a lengthy foster or adoption process, consume all the content on how to be a great dog owner or how to train your dog.
But there is still an unknown, uncontrollable factor-
Who the dog is.
Just like with human children, we can dream and plan for how we think that picture of our lives as parents (to canines or kids) is going to look.
Who and how we are going to be as a dog owner or parent and how we want the other being to make us feel.
But we forget to take into account the other being in the relationship- in this case- the dog.
Dogs as a species don’t have the same world view, culture, or relationship expectations as we humans do to begin with.
Then within that, the dog as an individual has needs and instincts and drives that need to be factored into your relationship dynamic.
We might think we prepare for that, yet sometimes, we discover that our dog won’t be able to meet the vision of what we think our lives would be like at dog owners.
For whatever reason, the dog we took so long to choose or dreamed about for so long, is not living into our idea of how we wanted to experience dog ownership.
So what do we do?
First- mourn the loss of the the dream you created. Allow yourself to feel sad that at this time, this dog, is not what you thought he/she would be. It’s not the life you thought you would be living.
Second- Create a new dream around who your dog really is and become the person your dog needs you to be to live that new, successful, happy life.
When you and your dog are struggling with behavioral or relationship issues, it’s ok to have feelings of frustration, resentment, anger, grief, hopelessness, and/or sadness.
That doesn’t make you a bad dog owner or say that you don’t love and care for you dog immensely.
Acknowledge those feelings, and
Working with You to Train Your Dog and Change Your Life
