Emotions are a hugely tricky subject when it comes to dog training. There are various camps with strong opinions across a spectrum of ‘we should take emotions into consideration at every single step’ to ‘we cannot necessarily accurately identify emotions with other people so how can we identify them in a different species?’ I personally …
Dogs are the kings of context. This can work both to our advantage and disadvantage. If we’ve got an undesirable behaviour that we would like to stop happening, often we can change the context that it occurs in and that’s sufficient to change the dog’s behaviour (this is more successful if you change the context …
You’ll often hear trainers talk about efficient training. There is a lot that contributes to this, and a certain amount of what constitutes ‘efficient’ is down to each trainer’s personal preference. I share my thoughts on the topic below. 1. Clarity for dog and human Training that is confusing or makes either end of the …
Fear. What is it? What does it mean? How should you respond? Fear is a topic that has a lot of myths surrounding it in the dog world. Regardless of what has made your dog afraid you can use the following steps to help your dog through the situation. 1. Don’t push your dog to …
Demanding behaviours such as barking, jumping at humans or onto furniture that dogs aren’t allowed on or asking to go to the toilet when they don’t actually need to go are behaviours that I have seen a huge increase in since the start of the various lockdowns from March 2020. I’ll be referring to barking …
In the dog world I occasionally see or hear a trainer being slated because they did something one way and have since changed how they do it. Certainly, among dog trainers this can be simple nasty chit chat. However, I wondered if owners ever see a trainer’s social media, read their blog, or attended classes …
When it comes to training a reactive dog for their reactivity, fitting the sessions in can be a challenge, especially if the trigger is something outside of your house. Your trainer will have implemented management which means that your dog isn’t exposed to their trigger(s) too regularly or at a level they are unable to …
One of the common criticisms of positive reinforcement training methods is the fact dogs can become overweight or obese because we use food. Frankly, this is a very valid concern and obesity is one of the leading killers of dogs nowadays, which is a problem we don’t want to contribute to when training. Here are …
When it comes to dogs who are worried about things in their environment, be it inanimate objects, other dogs or people, we need to change the dog’s feelings towards what concerns them. This requires counterconditioning, we want the scary stimulus to elicit neutral, or positive emotions upon sight of the scary thing, rather than icky …
A Plea From a Behaviourist – It’s Not About Distraction Read More »
Whenever we work on a behaviour, we’re pretty focused on what we’re reinforcing. Often so much so that it can lead to training paralysis, especially when it comes to a behaviour we may not want to reinforce. If we respond to our dogs with cues, eye contact or attention upon them displaying an undesirable behaviour …