Enlightened K9 Training

08/06/2022

How do we control a reactive and aggressive boston terrier who has no problem with conflict? Patience. Calm energy. It's quite common for some dogs to have behaviors that require more work than just correcting the behavior out of them. I would argue it's more common than not. Almost never can we correct aggression out of a dog.

We can however lead the dog. Set the dog up for success until we build a better relationship with the dog and we can communicate more clearly. I don't have any sort of relationship with Mahoney at this point so I only have him around the easiest dogs that I have.

31/05/2022

Pretty unique insight into how we address when two more dominant male dogs get into a little disagreement. Sometimes doing nothing is best like what happened here. Not every circumstance requires intervention from a human.

29/05/2022

Here's the full video from my last post. Gotta figure out how to do this again 🤪

28/05/2022

I'm back! Going to start posting two or three times a week again. It's been a long time but it's going to feel good connecting with you all again.

This is Bella, a dog available for adoption through Canine Cupids. She has a hard time meeting people but she's shown a great amount of progress in just the first few days being here.

04/05/2019

Sox is here for a few weeks for some.pnvious reasons. Shes a young girl who doesnt quite know how to control her excitement. She did not have much success in her prior introductions to dogs in one of her previous rosters, so we are starting from scratch with this one. She's been here for about a week now and has already made some big strides.

02/04/2019

Some of you may remember Clara from last summer. She did 3 weeks with us to work on her social skills with dogs and people. As you can see she has been doing great while her foster family is on vacation.

Unfortunately Clara needs a new foster home, preferably with dogs already, that can get her on a walk every day and socialize her with their dogs. Shes great with all medium to large dogs with proper introduction. She currently lives with older kids. Shes definitely someone's dream dog, we just need to find that someone.

If you are interested in adopting or fostering Clara long term, contact me or Tara with Paws Up Pet Rescue. I'm sure she will be commenting on this post 😊

25/03/2019

Charlie is here to hang out for a week while her parents are out of town. Clients like Charlie's parents take full advantage of our client exclusive benefits.

Charlie would not do well in a standard run of the mill daycare as she can be bossy around other dogs and has a bite history with people. We are able to give Charlie's parents the peace if mind they deserve in knowing their girl is safe and she will not be harming anyone during her stay.

22/03/2019

This is my man Apollo. He's here for a few weeks to learn some manners and off leash ecollar conditioning. Hes a super cool meat head of a dude he just needs to understand boundaries and limitations.

21/03/2019

Gigi is here for a few weeks for a quick reality check. She's got quite the bite history and is not the most pleasant dog when greeting new guests in the home.

Here's a sneak peek into how I take dogs out of the kennel with a bite history whom I have no relationship with.

Hint: trust your GUT!

11/03/2019

How can you tell if your dog trusts you and respects you? Here is common test you can use to see where you are at with your dog.

Goldie came to us guarding her food and toys. Resource guarding, in most cases, is simply a symptom of lack of respect for authority or lack if trust in general. With Goldie it was both.

She had no reason to respect humans since no one ever guided her in a way she understood. Because of this lack of leadership she became an extremely anxious dog who would growl and nip when simply being touched in a way she did not approve of. That is where the lack of trust comes in.

Through consistent leadership and a lot of relationship building exercises, she learned that A. She has no reason to guard food and B. She CANT guard food. Now we get to have a dog who respects boundaries by waiting patiently for her food, and does not growl while shes eating since she trusts that we will not annoy her.

11/03/2019

Just checking in to remind everyone that we are still active and busier than ever! With that said, Enlightened K9 has some BIG news coming to you all this spring. There will be a restructuring of all of our training programs to better suit your needs. We have been working very hard to meet the demands of our awesome clients, and let's just say that this May, that will be getting a whole lot easier! Stay tuned for a big announcement coming in the next few weeks!

Any guesses as to what that announcement could possibly be!? (A few of you know already, no cheating please 😉)

25/02/2019

What's better than working with a Rottie you ask? Well, working with two of course. Grover is the new guy on the left you will all be seeing plenty of. Cash is a client from about a year ago hanging out for the weekend while his parents take a trip out of town.

23/02/2019

Grover is a young Rottie who came with some more serious issues, reactive on walks, buting his owners, guarding food and toys. The whole nine. You may wonder why I dont cover any of that in thus video. The answer is simple.

In order to truly get rid of problem behaviors you need to build a relationship with the dog built on a foundation of trust and respect. Trust is what we are establishing in this video. A trust that when he sits, I'll give him food. When he goes to place, I'll give him food. I'm teaching him a language and he has got to trust that I will never fail him. I'll talk about respect in a separate video.

10/02/2019

Big man goes home today. I miss every dog I spend a week+ with, but this guy and his big head just got something special goin on. Whoever ends up adopting him is most certainly going to have their dream dog. Available for adoption through Lucky Mutts Rescue.

27/01/2019

Some dogs need more than what I can do myself. It is very important that dogs like Blue learn to respect other dogs. This is best accomplished by socializing them with more dominant dogs at a young age.

Blue is about 7 months or so and clearly has never dealt with an assertive presence like Marlin. It was important that he get a reality check from his own kind. If we can teach young dogs to respect other dogs without having to intervene, we will have done them a great service.

By the end of this video you can see Blue is much more respectful around Marlin because of Marlins presence, not because I am helicoptering over him, even though i did sneakily step in to help a teeny bit in this video. If we could get Bkue around many more dogs like this, he would learn to respect other dogs' space by default (reliable habit) rather than assuming he can run up on them barking his head off.

22/01/2019

Another big reason to have your dog trained. Even if they aren't aggressive, they can still cause harm. It sounds like the dog in this article was a dog who had no ill intentions. Still, he managed to injure two people and now the county is ordering him to be rehomed or put to sleep.

We've had a case like this in the past. It was a more serious case (Buster the St. Bernard) than the dog in this article. Buster actually bit a couple people and was genuinely aggressive toward people. Dogs like him are what these laws are made for. However, the law does not know the difference. It is important to know that if the hospital you go to for medical attention finds out it is a dog related injury, they are legally obligated to report it. You will have little say in your dogs fate thereafter depending on your county regulations.

It's very sad what could happen to this family. But when it comes down to it, if your dog is well trained, you will never have to worry about any of this.

In a lawsuit, a Waukesha family says the county overstepped its ordinances and want the court to prevent them from having to euthanize their Great Dane.

21/01/2019

We had a lot of questions about our recent post about dominance come up in our personal messages, so let's talk more about it.

If you don't know by now, these are my two dogs Marlin and Mya. We had just finished playing with this toy and Marlin ended up with it. Now that you have the context, let's dissect some things I've said in the past.

In response to a question somewhere along the line of "Which of your dogs is most dominant?" You may have heard me say "none of them are, I am." That statement is true, however not entirely. There most certainly is a pecking order in our house. Now the next question is "who decides the pecking order?" That gets tricky.

Ultimately, I have no say in who is number two, three , four or five. All I am concerned with is who number one is (me) and every other animal is below that. I could care less what they decide among themselves who ranks higher. Ultimately the stronger dog is going to assert themself over the other dogs. You can see a little snippet of that hear.

Mya is absolutely toy obsessed. Despite having only three legs, she will chase with the best of them and often times take the toy right out if their mouth if she does not get their first. So, why isn't she taking it from Marlin? She clearly wants to, you can see in her eyes that she's going crazy. She simply respects Marlin that much. She is aware that he is fully capable of asserting himself over her.

Now there are a couple more questions I know I will get from this. "Jake, if Marlin is being territorial, why don't you correct him and tell him he can't be territorial?" The short answer is to see the fourth paragraph. I simply do not care what these two (three if you include Rocko) figure out among themselves. If I know there is a risk for a fight, that will be handled accordingly. In this context, I know Marlin would at worst tell her off.

Now to answer another question that will give you a bit of an insider secret within the dig training community. At least among those of us who specialize in dog to dog socialization: I want Marlin to be the most dominant dog in every setting possible. Since he is clearly the most balanced and dominant dog that I have, he has slowly earned a lot of trust from me over the last few years when it comes to doing what is necessary to help a dog learn the proper way to socialize. If we have an annoying, immature, young punk in, I know I can simply put him with Marlin and he will most certainly put the dog in his place without causing any harm (video on that coming soon). If we have a timid, insecure dog in who would rather not be around dogs, I am 100% confident that Marlin will ignore the dog and allow it to approach him first, whenever they are ready. Those are things that I simply cannot accomplish as efficiently if I do not have a dog like Marlin. With severe aggression cases, he understands to stay out of my way and let me work the dog up to the point of being able to greet other dogs, and then his instincts will tell him exactly what he needs to do from that moment forward.

This is not something that I would advise ANYONE to do with their personal dogs. It takes a ton of time and relationship building to get any dog to this point. I have had Marlin for three years and he still has some learning to do. Most families that have multiple dogs most definitely should not even be thinking about this stuff. It's simply not necessary and can go very wrong if you do not know what to look for. I am only explaining this to you all so you can have an extra glimpse into what goes into the training of my personal dogs and ultimately my clients' dogs as well.

18/01/2019

Insecure reactive dogs. See it every day. In fact, most reactive dogs that I work with are very insecure. It's important to understand WHY a dog is reactive, but does how we come up with a solution vary depending on the dogs tempermant? Only slightly. .
Whether to dog is insecure or over confident, we still need to be able to communicate to the dog that it is not okay to enter a reactive state of mind. We most certainly will find an appropriate way to correct every dog who is over reactive, regardless of why they are doing it. .
What changes is what happens after the correction. With over confident dogs, we won't have to worry as much about tearing down their spirit. Certainly it is something we are always aware of, but if a dog is truly over confident, even after firm corrections, they simply enter a respectful, calm state of mind. .
With a nervous and insecure dog, as soon as we snap them out of this reactive state of mind, we have to be very mindful of the repercussions of whatever correction we applied. If the dog runs away and hides in the corner, proceeds to shut down, we have to bring them out of that hidden, defeated, shut down state of mind by bringing them back into the room. Only then can they realize it was not their presence that was corrected, but their action of reactivity. .
One more thing that MUST happen. Whatever is making the dog be reactive (human, dog or other stimulus), must respect the dogs boundaries and IGNORE them. That does not mean walk up to the dog and bend over and offer your hand to sniff. Simply act like the dog is not there. Don't touch them, don't look at them, definitely do not approach them. .
This combination of holding the dog accountable and the stimulus respecting the dogs boundaries will allow the dog to feel like A. They are not ALLOWED to react, B. They do not NEED to react C. "This is not so bad after all."