Some dogs may be scared of certain things like vacuums, lawnmowers, or dirt bikes even. Their reaction may not seem fearful. Remember the 3 F's: Freeze, Fight or Flight response. When your dog "fights" the object, it is most likely because he is scared of it. Desensitizing and reconditioning exercises are necessary to help change your dog's response to the stimuli. Desensitization: To make less sensitive. So our goal is to make whatever gets your dog hyped up with fear or anxiety have minimal to no affect on your dog.
Counterconditioning: attempt to change a habitual response. So our goal here is to “reteach” how your dog responds around whatever gets him nervous or scared. If you have a fearful dog, contact me and we can work on some exercises to help curb the fear and recondition your dog to have a positive experience towards the stimuli. Remember, nothing happens over night, like with all training time and patience are essential.
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Key points to remember during training:
SET YOUR DOG UP FOR SUCCESS, if you know he will not do the command due to distance, or distraction, don’t give it. Stop training BEFORE he looses interest. This will keep training fun for you both. When he is successful with a command 90% of the time, up the anti. Add the 3 D’s. Duration- wait time before you click, to hold his position Distraction- try it when the kids are playing or outside Distance- between you two when you give the verbal When he is confident with just the cue, add the verbal. Eventually you can phase out the cue, if you wanted. I notice when working with clients and in my own personal experience, that kids tend to have an undefined role when it comes to our dogs. We need to realize, their role is quite simple, they are the human. So what this means is our dogs need to listen to them, as a human, as a leader. I know it can be difficult when we deal with younger children, say under 10, but we need to be more diligent. How often do you see a 4 year old, eating a snack, walking by an adult dog, you know, at the perfect height to grab that chip out of her hand? We need to teach both our kids and dogs that it is necessary for the child to be able to say "leave it" and equally as necessary for our dog to obey. When we take the time to train our dogs, let's include our kids and practice all the commands with them. It is not ok for our dogs to "walk all over" our kids just because they are kids. Humans are the leaders when it comes to our pets, so whether the human be a 4 year old girls or a 45 year old man, both humans need to demand the same respect from our pets to keep proper balance in our packs.
This being said I am running a "Back to School" special right now for $125. Let's include the kids in our training sessions. Remember "Properly trained, a man can be a dog's best friend." -cory ford “ABC [Animal Behavior College] defines a dominant dog as assertive, independent and sometimes controlling. ABC defines an aggressive dog as hostile, combative or even offensively or defensively antagonistic. The words dominant and aggressive are not interchangeable. Remember, a submissive dog can become aggressive if provoked.”
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