Kostilow Canines

I need him, as much as I need my heart to keep beating 💔🥺

Dog trainer things 💅

Play is so beneficial to your relationship and therefore your training journey with your dog 👏🏼 I for one, have previously made the mistake of not playing with my dogs because they aren’t “fun” to play with… but it’s all about finding how they WANT to play and building that co-operative play to begin with. No one likes all work and no play, right 🤷🏼‍♀️So get out there and do a play session if all else fails 🎾

I’M NOT TRAINING MY PUPPY.That may not be a statement you expected to hear from a trainer or quite frankly, anyone whose just gotten a new puppy. However, I’ve made the decision to really slow my training process down with new puppy, Raya. With every dog I’ve owned and worked with, I’ve learnt something new, with that knowledge and experience I want to ensure each of my dogs is the best they can be, however with that knowledge, comes a lot of pressure. The pressure I put on myself and also on my dogs to be “well behaved”, but what does well behaved mean to you? Each persons expectations of their dogs comes from themselves, there are no single ways and means of a well behaved dog. With all of my dogs I’d openly admit I’ve made mistakes, but the ones that I fully regret, were the expectations I had for Stitch to not be a “typical yappy dog” and Kovu to not be out of control as “he’s going to be a big dog”, with those expectations came so much pressure and training from day 1 and resentment set in, they resent training with me and vice versa and conflict within our relationship was prominent, needing repairs later in the line when it should never have been there in the first place. I feel that and see that every day throughout my pack, my bond with Harlow and Duchess is totally different, they enjoy training for and WITH me, I raised them both with 0 pressure in the first few months, Harlow was my first dog as a teenager and in that time I was learning with him, Duchess was never meant to stay so I had the mindset of “not my dog not my problem” 👀 until it became my problem 😂So what am I doing with Raya? Crate trainingHouse trainingCharging marker wordsRecallPlace training Environmental exposure Our typical day to day life consists of a few minutes free shaping behaviours, taking her everywhere with me, food searches or hand feeding meals, play sessions and plenty of naps. That’s it. I plan on continuing this until around 6 months b

Saturday was a sausage dog kind of day 🤣 A household full of love and a whole lot of chaos 🙈 We worked on reactivity with Trigger, Benny and Frank. Lots of homework to do and we will be having weekly sessions together but they absolutely smashed it 😍

Dudley’s Behavioural 🤩

Introducing Dudley 🐾 Yesterday we had the pleasure of meeting this little boy and breaking down why he had such big emotions around strangers, noises outside the home and especially the postman 🙈 ▪️ So Dudley has a history of some seriously noisy reactivity and has nipped in the past, his owners kept him separated from strangers and were becoming increasingly worried about his behaviour and wanted to help him and them get to the bottom of it. ▪️ Dudley was very insecure, we could tell this by his reaction when I (a stranger) took the lead, he instantly wanted to run back to dad and climb up his leg! We also managed to break his fixation with the use of treats and sniff games, meaning he wasn’t too over threshold and fearful or aggressive to be able to take food ✨ ▪️ So with that we got to work! We broke down his triggers into really small sections, such as the second the doorbell went off, to the door opening and the stranger walking in, to his emotions surrounding someone new in his home. ▪️ We always look at the walk and home situation as a whole as you can’t have one without the other, so we also went for a nice structured walk around the block as a way of bonding with him prior to working on the in home stuff! ▪️ As you can, see this boy was super quick to learn, we taught him what was expected and what behaviours we didn’t want, and gave him new ways of coping with his stress to enable him to learn to be calm and content in the presence of people in the home - which can be seen in the last clip, both clips beginning and end are within an hour apart! 👀 ▪️ He and his owners absolutely smashed it and I’m super excited to see and hear how they get on in future but they’ve got their homework to do 😍