TLC Pet Services

14/12/2024

Who's coming??
PACKWALK is on for Sunday Dec 15/24.......
Wear your ice grips if needed
Meet 10am Centennial Park parking lot by playground.
$15 per person/dog team
No flexi leashes permitted

07/12/2024

Who's up for a Wintery Packwalk?
Wear your Ice Grips!
Temps tomorrow am -7 Brrrr
10am Mapleton Park - Mapleton Rd entrance by Princess Auto
$15 per person/dog team
No flexi leashes permitted

30/11/2024

Who's Coming!!
PACKWALK is ON!
Sunday Dec1/24 @ 10am
Meet at Centennial Park parking lot in front of playground
$15 per person/dog team
No flexi leashes permitted
Anyone new who would like to join, send me a message😊

30/11/2024

A Word Of Advice re "On Leash" dog meet ups.....

23/11/2024

No PACKWALK Nov 24/24 due to rain & wet conditions. Fingers crossed to resume next week😊

16/11/2024

WHO's COMING?
PACKWALK is On! Sunday Nov 17/24 @ 10am.
Meet in Riverview at Holy Whale parking lot. ( AKA ) Chocolate River Station.
$15 per person/dog team
No flexi leashes permitted

16/11/2024

Abby AKA "Bad Bunny" sz hunting is a full time job for this Springer!

16/11/2024

Abby sz Chocolate anything is perfect, especially when it's her😅

16/11/2024

Zeus enjoying Centennial Park & all the squirrels he'd like to chase.

12/11/2024

A Rainy Day with Indy! 😊 He sz Kent's Stores rock ❤️

12/11/2024

Another great Packwalk🐾🐾🐶
The usual plus " walk the log" 🤣 & some work on " place".

11/11/2024

08/11/2024

WHO'S COMING??
PACKWALK Nov 10/24 Sunday 10am at Centennial Park meeting in front of the playground.
$15 per person/dog team
No Flexi leashes permitted thanks

05/11/2024

Meet Zeus! A beautiful 4 year old German Shepherd that will be working on some prior training review as well as getting some extra activity & exercise.

03/11/2024

PACKWALK fun was had by all 😊
Sits, downs, slow walking, weaving using the dogs as posts, place work intro, direction changes & more.
Sometimes our dogs suprise us with better than expected behavior. WIN WIN

02/11/2024

Don't forget TIME CHANGES tonight!!
WHO's COMING?
PACKWALK- Sunday Nov 3/24 TIME- 10am
WHERE? MAPLETON PARK Mapleton Rd Entrance by Princes Auto.
$15 per person/dog team
No flexi leashes permitted thanks

01/11/2024

🎉CELEBRATING!!🎉

❤️❤️TLC'S❤️❤️

9TH

ANNIVERSARY

29/10/2024

An intelligent read for any reactive dog owner. The earlier you start addressing this issue the better.

There’s two enormous hurdles to overcome to create success with seriously reactive dogs once they go home. The first is owner association—meaning how the dog feels and thus acts simply by being in the presence of the owner. Think about a doorbell or knock on the door as an association that creates arousal-fueled feelings/actions because they predict certain events. (Guests, delivery people etc.) Owners who struggle with reactivity on walks almost always have association issues in other areas of their life with their dogs—their presence typically predicts chaos, excitement, play, affection… and almost never the necessary balance of healthy and believable discipline and leadership. Thus these owners get arousal-fueled feelings/actions in general due to their unbalanced association/relationship. It’s exceptionally rare to have a truly balanced human/dog association/relationship in all the other areas of life and have something truly problematic on the walk. So the general relationship dynamic and the association that dynamic creates needs to be carefully examined and all areas that are problematic everywhere that aren’t the walk need to be resolved—if one is to have a fighting chance on the actual walk.

As for the walk specifically, like the doorbell, the owner’s presence on walks creates arousal-fueled feelings and actions towards triggers because their presence has been a critical (and constant) piece of the predictive sequence. The owner is always present and is always part of the reactivity event. These “events” have been felt and practiced countless times by the dog with the owner, and so the walk with the owner becomes one long doorbell ringing sequence—with extremely intense arousal-fueled feelings and actions towards the triggers… all due to deeply created negative associations via repetition.

So you have general association/relationship issues (baseline/constant overly aroused/poorly behaved dogs to start with), and you also have specific association/relationship issues on walks (due to the specific patterning of feelings/actions with the owner on walks).

Trainers have neutral associations—our presence doesn’t have a history of predicting feelings/actions—so our work is far easier. The dog will likely start off aroused and chaotic because that’s its normal state, but that is easily addressed and changed. As for walk issues, the dog will likely engage in the reactivity behavior initially out of simple patterning and the association with the walk and triggers sans owner—but trainers will only have to contend with addressing the far easier association issue of the walk/triggers on their own without any of the far deeper and more challenging aspects of the constant negative psycho-physiological impact of the owner’s presence.

Second, the owners have to develop the same degree of skill with awareness of both the triggers and their dog’s early loading signs, they need to learn how to strategically use space without panic, they need to learn how to be creative and insightful and resourceful even under intense pressure, and they have to learn to become as adept with the tools as you, and they have to unlearn all their patterned stress/anxiety responses which often cause people to freeze/lose the ability to confidently and fluidly think/act.

So it’s quite the tall order if we’re talking about seriously reactive dogs who have deeply developed associations with their owners and owners who have to become quasi-dog trainers.

This means, if you want owners to be successful with seriously reactive dogs once the dogs go home, or are back with their owners after a training session, you have to explain everything I just explained, you have to ensure your owners fully understand all these moving parts to the deepest levels, you have to ensure your owners are DEEPLY committed to transforming ALL the problematic associations/relationship dynamics everywhere, they need to be aware that they’ll have to become highly skilled and educated—becoming quasi-dog trainers, and you have to prepare them for what will be a long, arduous, non-linear journey.

Most trainers don’t understand all the elements in play, or they aren’t skilled at communicating them, and so they don’t adequately prepare owners for what they’re up against, and then owners feel deflated and defeated when things inevitably go sideways—which they most certainly are going to initially, until the association is changed (that wondrous space where the owner’s presence predicts very different feelings/actions), and the requisite skills are developed. Once these two exceptionally demanding buckets are adequately filled, and are repeated over and over, the reactivity will fade, it will then be replaced by a neutral response, and the owners will get the same response you get.

Unfortunately, everyone is far too fixated on “fixing” the reactive dog, and not nearly fixated enough on all the elements that need to be “fixed” with the owner—which, if done correctly will actually fix the situation.