This will be Pepper’s last week with us 💔.
We will be closed Friday March 18th.
Sunday morning fun 💕🐾.
What are you and your pup doing today?
** JULY BOARDING **
July 9th - 12th we are full for boarding.
Mabel has been working on building some confidence and self control and is doing a great job 💕🐾.
She was able to hang out on place while some of the dogs were picked up in the afternoon without breaking command for 30+ minutes.
Then we practiced some commands and short distance recalls around the house with some of the other dogs helping add distraction.
Mae, like many young dogs and new pups to our program, heard a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood and understandably responded with some concerned alert barking.
She doesn’t know that random barking is nothing to be worried about. We all know in this crazy world we live in barking happens A LOT and not always for a purpose (some dogs just bark at everything for no reason). She will be exposed to that so we want to help her be less triggered to react or become worried/stressed when she hears other dogs bark.
What we are helping her learn is barking is not something to be scared of, get tense about or bark back at. Mae doesn’t know that she isn’t supposed to bark when she hears another dog barking, she is just reacting based on instincts.
She has some great positive influence from the other pups we have her out with who you can see in the video do not react to the barking dog sounds coming from another yard.
Mae even looks around at the other dogs confused as to why they aren’t reacting to the barking (but observing and learning from them at the same time).
Then we offer some rewards to her for listening to the barking and I even tell her “yes that’s barking”. The rewards are not to reinforce her for being fearful or for barking back. This is to help change her association with hearing barking and then (which you can see happens quickly), reward her for hearing the barking and maintaining some neutral observance - aka not reacting back.
