Some of our Top Tips
Below are some of the tips we most regularly give to dog owners
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Training for success
When training dogs or working with behavioural issues, you must remember that success comes with:
Consistency
Repetition
and
Patience
......and lots of it!!!
Stimulate your dog
Stimulation plays a massively important part in giving your dog a healthy lifestlye.
Exercise is of course the best way to give your dog the physical stimulation it needs, but what about mental stimulation?
Mental Stimulation is also very important, and you can provide this through play-time and human interraction, through solcialisation with other dogs, and by leaving toys with treats inside when the dog is left alone, to encourage it to problem solve.
Lack of stimulation and boredom is often the route cause to many behavioural issues, including; destructiveness, nipping, and pulling on the lead.
Make life easy for yourself
Use the correct tools and aides for the job! One of the most common errors we see is people using the wrong/inadequate equipment for the task at hand! For example;
If your dog drags you down the street and you have it on a harness, well frankly, what do you expect!? Harnesses were designed for pulling! Think of sled dogs like Huskies!
If your dog has aggression issues, take sensible safety precautions and buy a suitable muzzle for it to wear in public, and take time and effort to muzzle train your dog.
If you would like advice on training equipment, leads, collars etc. just give us a call or drop us an Email.
Get the timing right
This is really important. When correcting a dog's unwanted behaviour timing becomes crucial. It is better to correct a behaviour early than it is to correct it too late! Unwanted behaviours become harder to correct the more a dog gets into a 'high energy' state of mind - the aim is to try and keep your dog in a calm and relaxed state of mind all of the time, correcting any unwanted behaviour before the dog works itself into a state, by which time it will be getting very hard to control and correct the behaviour.
Diet
Diet can play a big part in behavioural issues.
When it comes to dog food, generally speaking you get what you pay for! The lower quality foods have more preservatives and colourings, which - just like e-numbers with children - can affect your dog's behaviour!
When experiencing behavioural issues, one of the first steps we advise dog owners feeding dry or tinned food, is to change their dogs diet to more natural, less processed foods. Even if there is no difference in behaviour after a few weeks, at least it will have eliminated diet as a factor.
Chicken, liver (but not too much), mince, boneless white fish, oily fish, pasta, broccoli, carrots, celery etc. are all foods that are healthy for your dog, and can be sourced easily and cheaply in any supermarket. Pet stores also have a range of pet grade frozen meats and tripe, which is far less processed that tins of pedigree and so on.
Control your emotions
You can't lie to a dog about how you are feeling. Fact. If you are feeling anxious/tense/frustrated/angry etc. your dog will know it, and your state of mind will influence your dog's responce to any given situation. If you can train yourself to remain calm, relaxed and confident, while being assertive, you are likely to notice an immediate difference in your dog's perception of the situation, it's response to your commands, and subsequent reaction to the situation.