26/08/2021
One of our puppy students has been struggling to keep calm and focused around other dogs so I've used one of my own dogs to help with his training.
Last week, Jack was getting hugely overexcited when he saw my dog Corri, even from across a paddock, and we spent time working at a distance, and then slowly reducing the distance until he could be near her without trying to leap on her.
When we have overly social dogs that cannot contain their enthusiasm about other dogs, we work on actually desensitising them to other dogs and teaching them that most dogs are boring.
This is really important because many dogs do not like being bounced on by unfamiliar dogs for a wide variety of reasons, and some dogs will be afraid, and others may try to defend themselves.
So it is our responsibility to teach our dogs polite manners with dogs unless in the presence of known play mates.
It took just 2 short sessions to make this progress, with him being able to ignore Corri and be responsive to his owner.
There's still lots of work to do, but showing Jack that dogs are actually quite boring, and that hanging out with his owner is much more fun, is a critical skill. We've also taught Jack's owner a lot of valuable skills about how to understand dog body language, and how to encourage calmness and focus around big distractions.
Their homework is to actively seek out 'boring' dogs (we mean this in the nicest way!) such as older steady dogs, or very well trained dogs that are highly focused on their owner, and to do lots of calm walks together until Jack no longer views every dog as a new play mate.
Of course Jack will still be getting loads of fun playtime with his owner instead!
Super proud of you Jack! 😎
(and my little Corri too, a perfect stooge dog 💜)
