Tango and I worked on something new tonight. Middle. Middle is something you would use if you wanted to do agility with your dog, and I would love to get Tango into that eventually but you can also do this with a dog that needs some confidence and security. I haven’t actually introduced the word “middle” yet because when teaching any new command, your dog has no idea what you’re asking when you say “sit” so we practice by luring. You can see he isn’t too sure about it at first by the fact that he bounces right back out from between my legs but he does start to give me some duration towards the end. I also add the focus cue to get eyes on me and off the food. How this can help an anxious dog is when you’re in public, getting your dog in a down in middle can help them feel more secure in an unfamiliar setting and can also prevent those unwanted hands from reaching out and touching your dog. Don’t mind the end lol.. I’ve been working on luring Tango into the seated heel position and have been unsuccessful in those attempts thus far but we will keep trying!

PS.. notice Athena being awesome on her place the entire time I work with Tango 😉

While my dogs do not wear muzzles, I have had fosters who have needed them and I have friends who have needed them. Muzzles should not be looked at like some barbaric tool. They are necessary in some cases and should be treated with respect. If you have a reactive dog and are actively working with your dog to overcome that reactivity, do not be afraid to utilize a muzzle. You are showing that you are a responsible owner and are taking precautions while you help your dog overcome their fears and anxieties. My go-to in muzzle choices in the baskerville (pictured below). Your dog can still eat, drink and pant while wearing one. Muzzle training can also be made into a fun game so it doesn’t become an extra source of anxiety for an already anxious dog. If you need help muzzle training or know someone who does, feel free to reach out and we can work through that together

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Hide and seek! A fun way to train with your dog on recall. You can do this alone like I did with a long lead or you can include a friend or family member to hold the line while you go hide and then call your dog. Once they find you, love em up! If I wasn’t trying to record this, I would have asked Athena for a bite on a bite toy when she found me as a part of her NDT training. Since we didn’t have a toy, I asked her to make contact with me instead which she happily does. Training should be fun for you and your dog. You’ll both enjoy it and it won’t feel like such a chore.

BO!!❤ This handsome fella was my first Regional foster and I got to see him tonight! His mom would love to take him through therapy dog training but before he can do that, he needs to become a Canine Good Citizen. After the holidays we will begin working on fine tuning his skills so he can take that test and pass with flying colors!

If you’re interested in going through the course yourself, feel free to reach out and we can prep you and your dog as well.

I’ll be looking to become a CGC evaluator once I meet the requirements

I found this article while doing a little research on resource guarding and really liked how they explained it and gave some helpful tips on how to 1) prevent it from happening and 2) things you can do to work through it once it appears. This is something I still struggle with with my own dog but with lots of work and lots of patience, I am seeing it start to diminish.

I think our biggest mistake when dealing with a dog that guards is that we instinctively react and want to punish our dogs for having wants and desires and that’s what this really is. Our dog wants or desires to have something whether its a toy or a sock and we told them NO and took it away and never replaced it with a more appropriate item. While I opted to go the Natural Dog Training route to help my dog, there are many other ways to go about helping your dog work through this and hopefully you catch it before it becomes a serious problem and rehoming or euthanasia look to be your only solution. If you happen to notice any of these signs in your dog, please reach out and do not brush it off or push it out to a later date. Your dog’s life just might depend on you recognizing that there is a problem brewing.

If you follow my personal page, you know we had a rough rough week. Turned out Athena didn’t just have a stomach bug but rather a blockage that required emergency surgery Wednesday.

However. Because you can find a teachable moment in just about everything, I’m going to spin this negative into a positive.

With a surgery such as the one Athena went through, she obviously had to spend the night at the hospital and will be on restricted activity for at least the next 2 weeks until her staples come out. While this is pretty stressful, it had the potential to be 10x more stressful if Athena wasn’t crate trained or well versed in the art of calm. Take this as another thing you don’t think about when you bring a new puppy or dog home. We aren’t planning for something like this to happen so you don’t think about the impact that having a dog that can be safely crated will have until your dog has to have an overnight stay at the hospital and now has to be drugged in order to remain calm. You can easily avoid this situation by making the effort to crate train your dog and continue to utilize the crate throughout their life.

With that said, please stop thinking the crate is some horrible torture chamber. These are exactly the moments we don’t think about and come to regret because we had that preconceived notion that crates are bad. The crate just might be your best friend in times of crisis.

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I saw this posted in a group I follow and just had to share it here. Putting it semi-bluntly, this is exactly the stuff we do that ruins our dogs. Some people do it knowingly, some people don’t. We really do coddle and humanize our dogs far too much and it tends to do more harm to the relationship with our dogs than we realize.

So today kind of sucked… both dogs ended up at the vet on an emergency basis. To make this negative into a positive, both of my dogs behaved beautifully despite neither feeling well (Athena – stomach bug. Tango – swollen face). We promote calm, a lot, in our household between place and box and changing the way we pet our dogs by doing slow deep massages. By continually promoting calm as the answer, my dogs can take that from our house to the car to the vet’s office.

The other thing I’ve made sure to do from very early on is to have my hands all over my dog’s body. Constantly touching their feet, rubbing down their legs, checking their ears and mouth and applying pressure through massage over their entire body. Why does this make vet visits easier? This is stuff they will have to endure during a regular exam when they are feeling good, but they will also have to go through this at the vet during a time of higher stress because of an injury or illness. Tango was very clearly not feeling well and was in quite a bit of pain but he sat through a full exam and while a stranger stuck their hands all in his mouth without a growl or any indication that he was about to snap. How? Because of the above. This is nothing new for him. It doesn’t matter if you get your dog as a puppy or an adult, this is something you should make an effort to do. Help take some of the stress of a vet visit out of the equation.

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Body language is so important when dogs are interacting and figuring each other out, including during play. If you don’t know how to read your dog, you may miss key signals of when play is about to become something more, something more dangerous.

Regional’s adoptable beagle mix Reese came over for a photo shoot and afterward I decided to let him meet Tango. Dogs should never meet face to face and on leash isn’t ideal but it’s safest. If it was lighter out, we would have done this outside to remove a layer of possible tension but these guys did pretty good in the living room. The boys did a good amount of polite sniffing prior to this video.

Tango wasn’t quite feeling it when Reese moved up toward his face and he deflected into a play bow and thankfully Reese reciprocated. The body language on both dogs is a little stiff and they were too quiet but overall, this wasn’t bad for a first meet and ultimately, if Reese was staying, I’d trust these 2 to play together.

Proper play should be curvy and loud. Both dogs should be able to play bow each other and ideally not jump up at the same time. Dogs partaking in good play should also be able to separate on their own before things get out of hand.

If you know anyone interested in adopting little Reese, send them my way

Preach Place!! You have no idea what you can accomplish using “place” until you put the work in and test it. This was last Saturday morning. All 3 of these dogs are dog reactive yet all 3 are completely relaxed in the presence of each other. No tethering. No walls. I’m able to test these boundaries because I’ve put in the work with my own dogs and I know they are not going to instigate but I also can read their warnings to avoid a situation as well. Your dog can relax easier and faster when they know the rules and they have boundaries because they know what to expect.