Up to this point in your dog’s life, your training might not have worked the way you would have liked it to work. You can fix that with a simple set of progressions, and you can start right now. I know this works as it has worked for every dog I’ve ever raised, including rescue dogs, and it has worked for many thousands of my students. It all starts with arranging coincidences and positive associations.
In the episode you'll hear:
- What my goal is when I am raising a dog.
- How to look at life from the eyes of your dog and arrange coincidences.
- A real-life example of coincidences with a puppy.
- How positive associations can come through you.
- The dog training progressions that I’ve been using for many years.
- How you can start again right now.
- Why we want the correct behaviour to be extremely easy for our dogs when we start.
- The importance of trust, transfer of value, and our dogs making choices.
- How layering of confidence lets you advance your training.
- What the mid-level on my training progressions chart looks like and how choice is in play.
- What I do to set my dog and myself up for success.
- How to create opportunities for choice in training progressions.
- About the advanced stages of training with my adult dogs who have the layers of confidence in place.
- Why my dogs love challenge and why they choose correctly.
- How the connection I have with my dogs, and my students have with their dogs, is possible for everyone.
I’ve been listening to Susan’s podcasts while driving on some medium-long trips starting at Podcast #1 and I just finished #44. I was on my way home from picking up my son’s female 15 lb 5y/o Mini LabraDoodle (Piper) to dog sit. At home I have a female 8 m/o 25 lb Mini AussieDoodle (Dharma) who I knew would be very exuberant to meet and play with Piper. I also knew that Piper is a little cranky with puppies who get over excited and push her to play. So right in the middle of Podcast #44 entitled “Using Coincidences and Positive Association in Dog Training”, I sat in my driveway talking to my husband about being planful about the dogs meeting each other. I knew my puppy gets over-excited with dogs (especially small ones) and when an adult dog tries to put her in her place to show better manners, she will often respond with equally harsh behavior toward the adult dog. Not an ideal situation to keep the dogs from having a negative association to each other.
So my husband and I strategized what to do. I realized that so many things that I had learned from Susan in the earlier podcasts came to my mind when making a plan. We finally decided I would take the puppy into our bedroom to play tug for awhile and have Piper in the kitchen behind a movable fence. When I opened the bedroom door Dharma tried to rush out so I shut the door until she sat. Then opened it again several times until she decided that sitting quietly was the way she was going to get out the door. Then I called her to me two feet at a time and made her sit, gave her a cookie. I did this all the way down the hall while she got the idea that she wasn’t getting past me without sitting and getting a treat. When the dogs finally met between the fence, I kept treating both of them only when they were just sniffing each other and being calm. Eventually, they were allowed to be together with lots of treats for calm behavior and many times sending the puppy to her “place” with liver treats which she did happily in spite of Piper being in the room. I would try to play tug with Dharma (which she loves) because she was trying to get to play but Piper was not ready yet. Sometimes Dharma was too consumed with trying to play with Piper to tug but sometimes she could be distracted with a game of tug. I also gave Piper lots of treats for letting Dharma sniff her and touch noses. I allowed Piper to be up on the couch since she is smaller than the puppy. They are now coexisting well with Dharma following Piper around everywhere and Piper not paying attention to her. I think (hope) they will start to play together in the week that we have Piper. I’ve learned so much in the podcasts and hope I can continue to implement the concepts I’ve been learning. Thanks, Susan
I love your program and podcasts. Perhaps you could talk about Alpha and Beta dogs. I’m in rescue and need to respond to this. People will tell me their dog is alpha over them because the dog keeps other dogs away from them.