All behaviour in every animal (humans included!) serves a function. When we’re trying to change behaviour, it’s important to acknowledge the function of the original behaviour and try to replicate it as much as possible. For example, if your dog jumps up on people when they come to visit, it’s likely that the function of …
This is going to be controversial, I’m okay with that. Punishment in the world of training is defined as anything that reduces the intensity or frequency of a behaviour. Putting this in context, if your dog is barking at a dog walking past the window, and you happened to sneeze at the same time. The …
Dog training is a physical skill, like learning to drive and it takes time to get used to this. We all go through the stages of learning skills; unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetent, conscious competence, unconscious competence. For dog trainers who have been teaching behaviours for years, we tend to lie in the unconsciously competent stage …
If you have a reactive dog, any measure of how stressed your dog is a helpful thing to know. How dogs take treats can be a fabulous indicator of how stressed your dog is and provide you valuable information on how your dog is feeling before those feelings become a reaction. Pumba has a fantastically …
Taking Treats – A measure of your dog’s stress levels Read More »
A video version of this tutorial can be found HERE. Any questions? Pop them in the comments!
Clients rarely come to me asking to teach a behaviour. Usually I’m asked to stop behaviours. ‘I want to stop her pulling on the lead’ in comparison to ‘I’d like her to walk next to me’, ‘I want to stop him running off’ rather than ‘I’d like to teach him a good recall’. I’m good …
Check out how to train a killer chin rest with the following infographic and video tutorial: The video version of this tutorial can be found HERE. Let us know what you think! Feel free to share your own attempts at training this down below. We’ll happily give feedback on how to improve your chin rest!
Over my lifetime of living with reactive dogs I’ve experienced the pressure that people feel when out in public to be seen ‘doing something’ in response to a dog reacting. There is a definite feeling that you should be seen to address a reaction outwardly when in the public, particularly when you’re out walking your …
There is also a video version of this tutorial available HERE. How do you like this tutorial? Let me know in the comments!
Paw targets are one of my most used and favourite behaviours to teach. You can check out our tutorial HERE. Give this a try and let us know what you think! Hard? Easy? Helpful? If you’re having any problems I’m happy to help coach people in the comments!