Understanding Dogs

SEPARATION ANXIETY: is a dogs' inability to cope when left alone. Typical symptoms are howling , barking and scratching or chewing at furniture and fittings. In order to stop the 'bad' behaviour the dog needs to become more confident and secure in himself, and less dependent on you. You need to teach him this by changing the way you treat him in your home environment. If your dog is allowed to follow you around the house, i.e. when you get up to make a cup of tea or run a bath, you must stop him from now on! In order for your dog to become more confident about being left when you are out, he must first be able to cope with letting you out of his sight when you are in the house. He must have a bed of his own and he must learn to stay in it when you leave the room. If you know that as soon as you leave the room he will get up, then hide around the corner and be ready for him. Put him back in his bed and start to leave the room again. Every time you return praise h...

  Training your puppy/dog is like teaching someone a foreign language. He can already sit, lie down etc. It will be your job to teach him the English words and your hand signals for each action you want to train on request or command, remember dogs do not understand human words but can learn to make associations between our noises, our body language & whether it is rewarding to do the behaviours for you or not. Rewards are praise (strokes, happy talk, pleased tones, rewards & other things they like such as food and toys. We can use these rewards to train behaviours quicker, even more so when we get our timing right!  The easiest way to build up associations in the early days is to try and work on one or two things a day without over confusing issues, if you repeat the word every time the dog does the behaviour and with a reward the good behaviours increase. Once they learn behaviours are rewarded they learn to offer them over and over in the hope of training u...

PREVENTING JUMPING UP, BITING & CHASING CARS, CATS OR SHEEP! We are seeing more and more dogs developing behavioural problems and I have noticed some recurring themes over the years. From a very young age our pups jump up clawing at us or our legs to get attention and we reward this by stroking them, petting them, cooing over them and picking them up so we are setting them and ourselves up for problems as our puppies grow into adult dogs.we will deal with adult dogs that jump in more detail later on however somebof this may also be useful if you have recently taken on a rescue dog. It is quite normal for puppies to jump up to greet you however, once pup is fully grown this behaviour is usually no longer acceptable especially when humans are all dressed up in 'their sunday best' so to speak so as hard as it is it is essential that we try to teach them from day 1 that jumping up is not allowed. Practice sessions where puppy is encouraged to approach and sit in front of ...

TOILET TRAINING YOUR NEW PUPPY   THE FIRST RULE IS WATCH YOUR DOG — Dogs & puppies give us many signals we humans often miss, so look out for pre-elimination behaviours such as circling & sniffing or even sneaking off or heading for the door. Puppies have a very strong urge to eliminate after sleeping, playing and eating or drinking so being prepared at these times will help speed up the process of training. If you are not available to supervise i.e. when you are at work or busy in other areas of the home then puppy should be placed in his/her confinement area to prevent accidents happening throughout the house. If this area is small enough the pup may have sufficient control to 'hold on' for  up to l -2 hours - puppies instinctively will not eliminate in their sleeping areas in the wild past a few weeks so we can use this instinct in small confined areas. If you have been away for some time it is only fair to expect some mess accidents will continue for som...

Dogs learn by making associations between our words our body language and our reactions to their behavioirs whether these are rewarding or not. Therefore using what motivates our dogs is a much quicker way to get the behaviours we want. I notice the calming signals in this puppy big tongue over nose and one paw lifted high - more on these later! ) So we all know iving with a dog can and should be a rewarding experience but all too often problems develop so it is up to each of us to put in the work in the early days  to prevent common problems developing later on. Mouthing and biting are normal puppy behaviours but it is vital that puppy is taught that it is not acceptable with humans. Teaching pup at a young age to have a 'soft mouth' with humans is essential to prevent adult dogs that think nothing of biting humans whether children or adults sonwe must do everything we can to teach this as soon as possible. More on teaching 'bite inhibition in next blog) but if durin...

Congratulations on your new best friend! We have tried to put together a series of short informative articles and clips to help you make the settling in period as easy as possible and to help with any problems along the way. Most importantly we want you to enjoy your time with your new puppy. Be aware there will be accidents they will chew things and in the beginning they may try to transfer puppy play behaviours such a nipping biting and chasing to you, your children other animals or humans in their vicinity! If they have just left their doggy family to come into your human home it will now be your job to teach the rules some super cool nrw tricks but most importantly we want to help you raise a safe friendly dog that is not fearful or aggressive in later life. Prevention as we know is so much easier than curing more serious fears and phobias and behaviour problems such as dog to dog or dog to human aggression in later life. Your new dog or puppy may become very excitable in...

The majority of dog owners are aware of the joy and companionship a dog or two can bring to our families, if you are new to owning a dog or puppy we hope you find our site useful as we try to cover the many areas new owners experience problems with from toilet training to training puppy to follow you or do high fives! We also describe in detail early preventative techniques to prevent fears/phobias in later life. DOGS BEHAVING BADLY sometimes difficult to understand that some dogs could develop such severe problems that many owners feel unable to cope and may feel the need to give the dog up or re-home it. With help from a good dog trainer and/or dog behaviorist the majority of problems can be reduced if not eliminated fairly quickly. IMPORTANCE OF SOCIALISATION If we start training early we can prevent many problems from developing into more serious issues in later life. We therefor would like to share our knowledge in the hope that we can help you to better understand your...