Campbell K9 services

22/09/2024

15/09/2024

Training a protection dog involves several challenging aspects, but one of the hardest parts is teaching the dog to distinguish between real threats and non-threats while maintaining control over their aggressive responses.

The key to this training is ensuring the dog can reliably differentiate between situations where it should act protectively and situations where it should remain calm. This requires a combination of controlled exposure to different scenarios, precise command training, and reinforcing proper behavior through positive reinforcement and repetition.

To address this challenge effectively:

1. Controlled Exposure: Introduce the dog to various stimuli in a controlled environment, such as different people, noises, and situations. This helps the dog learn to assess potential threats accurately.

2. Clear Commands and Cues: Use consistent commands for different actions. For example, teach clear distinctions between commands for aggression (e.g., "Attack") and calmness (e.g., "Stay").

3. Positive Reinforcement: Reward the dog for correctly identifying and responding to threats and for remaining calm in non-threatening situations. This reinforces the behavior you want to see.

4. Gradual Progression: Start with low-stress scenarios and gradually increase the complexity and intensity of the situations. This helps the dog build confidence and learn to handle real-life situations better.

5. Professional Guidance: Seek the assistance of experienced trainers who specialize in protection work. Their expertise can provide valuable insights and techniques tailored to your dog’s specific needs.

Balancing a dog's protective instincts with controlled and appropriate responses is crucial. This training process requires patience, consistency, and ongoing reinforcement to ensure the dog can effectively and safely perform its protective role. - Shane Doss

06/09/2024

03/09/2024

Reposting because this hit too close to home recently 🙃

ShopCanineAesthete.com

29/08/2024

Training a dog to bite so that he won't bite.

Training a dog to bite to give it an outlet for an instinct is a subject for discussion. By allowing a dog to bite and bite hard during play or training won't make it a vicious animal no more so than a dog becoming a bloodthirsty man killer because he has tasted blood. Now I'm NOT talking about allowing him to be an aggressive dog in the sense of a dog that has a temperament issue. This is a recipe for disaster. A dog with a stable temperament and sound nerves needs to bite. I'm talking about controlled aggression. By managing controlled aggression, you are fulfilling a natural canine behavior. Same goes for growling. You never want to suppress a dog's only ability to vocalize his emotional state. Some inexperienced people who don't understand canines and their behavior will tell people that "a dog being trained to attack is dangerous." This is true if you train him to attack and you allow him to attack whoever whenever by sending the command to do so on innocent bystanders and not having control over the dog. By training a dog to bite on command on the right object such as leather rags, bite pillows or training sleeves or suits is equivalent to a child learning karate. Does sending a child to a karate class train him or teach him to attack others with hatred or malicious intent? Now is there an issue with children who do so? Absolutely! There are bully's out there. This is a temperament problem. If you have a child that is always in trouble for fighting and causing problems, you don't say hey let's train him the right way to really hurt somebody because he can't control his temper. Same goes for a dog that has people or animal aggression. By giving a dog his emotional needs helps go a long way, we must never forget to give him outlets for his physical needs as well. This helps the dog understand his boundaries in his day-to-day life. By doing so, this can teach your dog impulse control.

We should never forget that it's natural for dog's to stalk, chase, bite, and kill...better to do so under controlled conditions with boundaries.
- Shane Doss

27/08/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/MxRD34CbXGqz8hnT/

🏆34th Annual Breed Grading & Critiquing Show & KwaZulu Natal Regional Sieger Show🏆

Judge: Mr Neil Perkins

Date & Time: 19th October 2024, Judging commences at 09h00.

Venue: Gelofte Hoërskool, 2 Caversham Road, Pinetown.

Entry Closing Date: 19th September

Fees: R220 per dog, per class

Show Entries & Enquiries: The secretary Jaide Gower-Winter, 084 847 9146, [email protected]

25/08/2024

Be the mentor you wish you had when you were new. 🤍🐾

Show your love for dog sports in style! ShopCanineAesthete.com. 🛍 🐾

24/08/2024

I’m so glad it turned out to be dogs. 🤍🐾

24/08/2024

What is the last naughty thing your dog did? 🤭

18/08/2024

Learn from each and every dog you handle. 🙌🏽

14/08/2024

Let your car and apparel do the talking. ShopCanineAesthete.com

10/08/2024

First, let’s address what we all know is coming in the comments: “But what about play, affection, freedom, and not creating robots?!?!” 😡

I would be quite the unnecessary dog training content creator if I devoted time to that which every single owner does/shares/engages in without any prompting. Which is precisely all of the above. ☝️ And if you’re still buying the myth that rules, structure, and accountability will create personality-less robots… well, you might need to get around more well trained dogs and see just how robotic they aren’t.

So, back to the post. This simple formula (rules, structure, accountability—or said more simply: healthy leadership) constitutes the majority of what we share with the countless struggling dogs we see, and then pass on to the countless struggling owners which bring them to us… and which transforms both creatures.

It’s the stuff that’s almost always missing, and the stuff which helps them find mental peace and balance, and safe, healthy behavior. The play, the affection, the freedom? Nah, there’s plenty of that going on—as the owners always share. And to be clear, once dogs get into a healthy space with us, they earn all that good stuff as well—but it’s earned and balanced and healthy.

So why do we see this continuous imbalance? For some it’s laziness (too much work), for others it’s ignorance (knowledge gap), for others it’s selfishness (allowing dogs to do as they please and spoiling them—actually spoils the owner emotionally), and for still others it’s a misguided moral issue (they feel “imposing” their will and leading is oppressive).

Whatever the reason, it’s always the dogs who suffer due to our gaps. We can choose to honestly examine these gaps, and decide whether our dogs are worth the effort and personal growth, or we can ignore them and keep blaming bad behavior on dogs just being dogs.

09/08/2024