Blog

(Mostly Archived)

My Seven Links

Alright... first of all, a sarcastic thanks to Kristine over at Rescued Insanity for nominating me for the My 7 Links challenge (I'm calling it a challenge) that was started by Tripbase Blog.  The idea was to connect a very wide range of niche blogs through posting a...

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Why it's hard living with a.. Shih Tzu?!

Living with Bandit, my mom's Shih Tzu is generally easy (minus his fence fighting) but he is obsessive about playing in mud.  He gets a mud bath and then must get a normal bath because the stench doesn't brush out LOL.  When we go to the pond (if I bring him along...

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OMG.. ANOTHER DOG.. LOOK LOOK!!!!

First of all, let me apologize.. my reactivity series has been absolutely all over the place!  Out of order, poorly planned... just a bit of a mess.  I'm putting them all in the "reactivity" category so if you want to find them all and read them in a manner that makes...

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Cool, Calm and Collected

Cool, Calm and Collected "Why doesn't he completely lose it when you are working him?  I don't understand.  How does he know the difference, I only gave you the leash!" I heard this from a client quite a while back and the answer is so simple but so difficult at the...

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Take a break for It's Yer Choice

We'll get back to the reactivity posts quite possibly tomorrow... it was a very busy weekend with a Nicole Wilde seminar and then a full-day's worth of family time with extended family.  It's only 10:30pm and I'm falling asleep.  So, instead of writing a post, I...

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Tools for Reactivity

Again, my apologies for being totally out of order, but I just realized it may have been helpful to talk about the tools I suggest for working through reactivity.  I do think there are some training tools out there that are actually quite counterproductive when...

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Cars for focus?

One thing that I was extremely remiss to talk about so far is car work (Ali Brown writes extensively about this).  I like to use car work as foundational steps to generalizing behaviors and teaching pups that regardless of where we are, it pays to focus on me.  I use...

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Seeing Spots

Yesterday we met up with our friend from Got Spots blog and her younger dog, Doc for some training and fun.  Doc has shown some limited reactivity so we worked on some BAT and LAT with Shayne and Rio as bait.  Doc did lovely and seemed perfectly fine under the...

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Foundational skills and maneuvers

I suppose this should have been earlier in my reactive dog series.  Mea Culpa--my fault.   I wanted to mention some foundational behaviors, important moves, and management techniques that I suggest people put in their tool box for working with reactive dogs.  Some of...

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Considerations for Reactive Dog Handlers

When you have a reactive dog (particularly, though not exclusively, with a dog who may become physical [bite/scuffle] to get the scarey thing to go away or to express frustration/arousal) it is of the utmost importance to advocate for your dog.  Dogs that live in a...

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