TIPS & TRICKS
Cooperative Care
Does your dog struggle being handled? Brushing our dogs’ coats or teeth, cutting their nails, applying ear and eye drops, going to the vet, having wounds checked or injections given. Does is have to be a fight with our dogs?
What toys can we recommend?
Our dogs need mental stimulation. Giving food for free is a wasted opportunity. So, besides using the food for training, we can use it to occupy our dogs and make them calm and mentally tired by using food toys.
Daycare: Good or bad?
Let’s talk about the Pros and Cons, the risks and benefits, the questions you should ask and the alternatives very much worth considering. Do dogs actually need daycare or can it do more harm than good?
To Fetch or Not to Fetch!?
Is your dog ball obsessed and fetch seems to be the best way to control them and tire them out?
Is that healthy or are there risks to their physical and mental wellbeing?
What are good alternatives?
Relaxation, Stay & Focus
Could you use a bit more focus from your dog and would like them to be more relaxed? Help your dog to rely on you for cues as to the appropriateness of its behaviour, so that they can then learn not to react inappropriately.
Puppy Socialisation
The most important thing to teach a new puppy, much more important than obedience. Find out how to create purposeful positive experiences for your growing puppy in their critical socialisation period.
Bike Rides with your Dog
You enjoy biking with your dog, but that’s not safe off-lead everywhere and holding on to a lead while biking is quite dangerous. Find out a safe way of biking with your dog, even a strong dog with a strong prey drive.
Fear of fireworks
There are things that can be done leading up to the scary Guy Fawkes night.
Be in touch if you want help with this. Find some tips for the 5th of November itself.
Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning
Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning
We can use classical conditioning to create amazing recalls or through counter conditioning and desensitisation create new positive emotional responses to previously scary triggers, like other dogs or strangers in reactive dogs.
Jumping on Visitors
Just folding your arms and turning away is usually not enough. You want to put proper management techniques in place. Part of this is having a sign for the door that explains your visitors how to behave, buys you some time and takes away the stress. Find it here:
A Dog’s Emotional Cup
Every dog has a cup that needs to be filled - with social connection, security, access to reinforcers, and enrichment. To ensure your best friend is and stays mentally healthy find out what empties a dog's cup, what refills it and signs that your dog may be nearing an empty cup.
Keep dogs and children safe
77% of dog bites come from the family dog or a friend’s dog. It’s not for lack of love, it’s for lack of understanding.
Learn how to keep kids and dogs safe around one another, how to greet dogs, what signals to look for, how to supervise appropriately and more.
Aggression Ladder
Recognising the lower-rung gestures is important so a perceived stress or threat to a dog can be removed sooner. Dogs communicate their discomfort with a situation and a desire to end an interaction by using visual cues.
Trigger Stacking
Why is my dog one day fine with something and the next day they suddenly react to it? Why is my dog better in the morning than in the evening? Why does my dog seem to have better and worse days?
On-Leash Meetings
Even dogs that have previously met and liked each other may react snarly when meeting on leash. Reserve dog-to-dog interactions for settings in which they can act freely without restraint. If not avoidable, learn the rules.
Does my dog love other dogs?
Why it is not okay to let your dog run up to another dog on a leash. Just like people, dogs have different levels of tolerance for other dogs. Their social tolerance changes over time and is flexible and manageable.
Adolescent Phase
Why are adolescent dogs difficult? How can you best work through it?
How to identify the Adolescent Stage.
What happens with the hormones?
What else to know and what to do.
Appropriate Play
What play is appropriate and healthy? What signs are we looking for?
See examples and find out what to look for to ensure you are raising a confident pup, but not a bully.
Desexing Age
What is the right time to spay or neuter? There is no simple answer that can be applied to all dogs. But you can read through this to figure out what’s best for your situation and your dog.
Dog Age to Human Age
Do you wonder how old your dog is in human years? It turns out some parts of a dog’s life follows the same pattern as humans, though other longevity milestones don’t link up quite as nicely.
Headcollars
It’s time to step away from using headcollars and focus instead on improving training methods and their application. There is no cure-all to replace lead walking training, but instead these tools provide stress, discomfort and a reduction in enrichment during walks.
Cortisol
Cortisol levels can greatly influence the emotional state, physical state, activity and reactivity of our dogs.
There is a lot going on underneath all that fur. If you want to make sure your dog can truly cope in our human world, you need to learn about Cortisol.
Car Sickness
Motion sickness, often car sickness, is a common experience for puppies and some older dogs. We should strive to avoid creating negative associations with the car. Read here what we can do to help our dogs overcome motion sickness.
Puppy Captain
Dogs labeled ‘dominant’ are actually the ones that are the most scared, frightened, worried, or anxious. And the methods used to ‘stop a dog being dominant’ are generally things that make the dog feel even worse. Crazy isn’t it?