Genetics/breed isn’t everything when it comes to our pups but it sure does matter! Fiadh saw sheep for the first time today at 19mo - within 15 min, we were here - looking forward to sharing these experiences with her as we most definitely will be going back to learn as much as we can 🐑 🐑
I see many people get upset when their dog doesn’t respond to a “known cue” such as Fiadh showed here re: two tone whistle. Often, the dog really doesn’t “know” the cue as well as the person thinks bc they are using it in a new environment or under higher distraction etc but since I’m focused on this stuff for a living 😏 I’m clear on mine/Fiadh’s understanding of the recall cues.
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She was so excited when we got here today, actually whining on the highway a mile before the exit..more excited than usual after us not going for a while
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She didn’t respond to the whistle in this video and many people would have whistled again…I just really hate repeating a cue bc I believe it waters it down - I don’t even add a verbal cue until the behavior is really strong so what option did I have?
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Fiadh was still looking at me, she didn’t take off running after the whistle so I said Here which is also a known recall cue (I use whistle at greater distances usually in open areas such as today) and where might be in a dog park or by our home. By saying ‘here’ instead of whistling again I didn’t water down the whistle and I gave Fiadh more info to work with / it was enough as she came running.
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It’s human nature to get annoyed or embarrassed when our dogs don’t respond and many would have yelled “Fiadh!!! Get over here!! After she didn’t recall on the whistle”. All u r doing there is damaging your relationship if your dog even comes to a person who’s putting their Safety at risk
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Remember that our dogs are doing the best they can with the training we’ve provided in the situation we are in at the time - if you don’t train a whistle recall at the beach to 99% under all distraction/excitement levels your dog may not respond #itsjustinformation
Great work by this team today …Hector learned a couple markers, hand targets, and voluntary check ins over the last two weeks so we started to piece them all together at a wide open park today. Great results so the team will practice over the week during walks and if all goes well, we will move to a more confided area where Hector often encounters triggers 💪
Part 1! SOUND ON to 👂 what’s going on!!
Fiadh has been getting very excited when seeing other dogs on leash recently so I’m adding it to our training list.
✳️ Pro Tip - exercise before starting to practice…Fiadh and I were in the dog park for about 20 min (pretty hot today) playing frisbee and meeting dogs before we started LAT. Our goal is to always set our dog up to succeed and then gradually making things more difficult / distance is often what we play with first but changing how much exercise before starting could be another until you are ready to practice with full energy out of the gate. Please comment or reach out if you have questions. I’ll post part 2 in a bit which will show where we ran into some issues.
I try to practice whenever I take Fiadh into public which is basically everywhere I go. I often wait to go into public until after I’ve added a verbal cue to a behavior without distractions but everything’s flexible - just be ready to adjust to the information your pup is giving you aka ERRORS
We’ve been slacking on our frisbee lately but glad to see the little one is still up for it
I rarely tell anyone that I’m a pro trainer when out and about…but I always look for opportunities to train my pup Fiadh around other dogs and if it can help the other pup too, great! Chloe was adopted about a month ago so she’s starting to figure things out. We were happy to help her build some super positive associations around being alone/calm, and being around food / another dog 🐾🐾🎓
A clip from Scout & Family 2nd session today - this team is killing it! One thing you didn’t hear jn the clip…after ignoring the “error” and resetting…your next rep should be easy enough to guarantee success - you can then work toward your most recent level of success - Good Luck !
❇️SETTLING at DOG PARK❇️
If I’m awake & Fiadh’s awake, then learning is happening even if there’s no intent to train. That’s why I build short training sessions into everything we do. Today, it’s settling at the dog park. She had a good 15 min of frisbee and chase with other dogs before attempting this (set her up to succeed). Good is my continuation marker (keep doing what you are doing, reward is coming). Free is her release cue which functions as the reward bc she gets to go whatever she likes!
My Black/White collie (B/W below) plays well with many dogs but is very selective with play partners - other herding dogs seem to be great partners in general for her. The Brown/White Aussie/collie (Br/W below) was hanging around us a bit as Fiadh swam to retrieve toys - once I stopped throwing the toys, he came over for a hello. The play session was really good from start to finish so I decided to break it down a bit. The numbers are second marks of video - look at how many behaviors can be seen in just over 40 seconds and I’ve only listed about 1/3 - 1/2 of them - feel free to comment ⬇️ with more! Dogs are expert communicators but nearly all of it is done through body language - dogs speak dog so they usually understand what each position/behavior means but the overall majority of dog owners have never had a chance to take a deep dive and miss so much of what our dogs are saying which of course leads to challenges in the home. While I’m not suggesting you start play bowing on the ground with your dog (although I do daily and it works :) breaking this video down can help understand a lot of the most common play behaviors.
Bouncy/Silly Movements - dogs that are moving like these two are wasting a lot of energy, that’s what play is…if either was worried about the potential of fight/flight, you’d see stiffer slower movements as they’d preserve energy
Mouthing - there’s no latching/folding onto fur - latching often leads to problems as does grabbing the back of necks & hind legs
Play bows (lowering front of body with elbows near to ground) is a way of inviting play/taking a break - dogs will often reciprocate as a way of saying ..let’s do this!
Role reversals - dogs should be trading who is in top during wrestling, who is chasing who every few seconds - it’s polite and it evens out the energy. When one dog is always chasing ior pinning the other down, it’s often trouble just waiting to happen.
Shake offs - kinda like stretching or anyth
Just messing around with the lil one @fiadh.the.bordercollie - I love how as I tease her by shaking the frisbee she looks away from it / toward me to say…ok guy, I get it …I “left it” give it back now which is why I delayed it a bit. Side note / how cool is it when the background music provided is as awesome as Tom Petty!! No need to do any fancy editing 😁
Believe it or not, I’ve never played around with spins or leg weaves/heeling with Fiadh to this point as she’s always kept me busy with things like resource guarding (a nice variety, not just food), noise sensitivity, intermittent issues with things that have wheels, and I could go on 🤦🏻♂️ ..so the fun stuff has been on back burner. It was great to see Emily Dogmantics Dog Training in action after only briefly meeting her and how engaged/quick to pick things up @fiadh.the.bordercollie was. I learned she’s a “righty” not wanting to spin left and a nice way to work on it.
I spent the majority of my Pre-Family/Dog Training career at AT&T coaching & training sales and customer service teams. @att is phenomenal at promoting positive reinforcement throughout all levels of the organization so after nearly 20 years, it’s part of my DNA…a great background for working with pups and their families….after all, it’s really “People training for dogs”. This amazing family has never trained a pup before this video and I couldn’t be more proud of how they all did. You’ll hear a super happy “he’s so smart” off camera at one point which was very reinforcing to me as the teacher but the highest value reinforcer came as we were heading back to our cars…Scout’s mom said “thank you so much, you were so gentle with everything - there was no yelling or anything close to it and he did so well!” 😀 well that says it all. As my buddy @mypositivepup says “Love-Praise-Reinforce-Repeat” 👍🏻
Repost - huge thanks to Emily and her pups for the warm welcome - was so much fun getting to meet the @kikopup family!
❇️There’s a new trainer in town! John Knuth @dogsmartsandiego has moved to San Diego!!! So cool to have another awesome positive reinforcement trainer here! Thanks John for building Halo’s confidence with male guests! So great to have another trainer to refer clients to! 😃 Welcome to sunny San Diego!
Working w/my lil one @fiadh.the.bordercollie to build overall swimming confidence and adding the verbal cue of “swim”. She won’t swim on her own most times so I got in the water with her today and practiced just getting her to walk in toward me before this video/tossing the toy in water low enough for her to walk and gradually a bit further. After 10 minutes she would reliably come in with me to depth where she’d have to swim so started adding “swim” just as she was making that choice/movement. “Get It” is a marker for her like Yes or a clicker but it means a toy will be thrown for her to retrieve - I’ve delayed saying get it here until she’s paddling a bit as I was adding some duration to the swim. Kept it fun & short 🐾 🏊♂️
One year ago today….I can report that @fiadh.the.bordercollie is still doing her best to get Kaya to play with her despite zero success #persistence & #resilience
THIS ➡️ @glasgowdogtrainer Synergy - moving in sync with your dog - both moving together. Have you ever felt a synergy with another person? When you just click and move together towards the same goal? I think this is a thing worthy of striving for with your dog.
Here Roxy and her human are moving through the environment together. Before training, Roxy would be vocal and pull towards other dogs in order to interact with them and wouldn't always introduce herself appropriately. After a few weeks of positive training and understanding her needs and body language, here we are.
There are still rules to this. If the other dog doesn't want to engage, we don't engage. If we say hello, we do so appropriately. We can build these rules with good use of our bodies and intention of our movement which Roxy will respond to.
Very often clients working through issues like this have either been to other trainers who used aversive training methods such as slip leads, prong collars, e-collars or choke chains or they were recommended that those were used. As you can see from the video, these are unnecessary. Roxy is not hugely motivated by food so we didn't use that much food to get to this stage. We often hear "that's fine, but what happens if you don't have food?" This. This happens. Food is one thing we can use to reinforce behaviour we want to see more of, but only one.
While some are saying it can't be done without outdated, aversive training (mislabelled as "balanced") others are out there doing it.
Well done to this team, you've come a long way.
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