Tina

Tina is a young German Shepherd who finds herself in rescue. She is quite timid with new people to begin with and has never been walked.

She is nowhere as fearful as Sienna when she came into rescue, but we must still take things slowly.

Tina met me for the first time, and you can see she is panting. It certainly wasn’t because she was warm!  She also paces a little.

I do not call her or try to lure her over with food. She needs to make her own choices and have time to settle and adjust. Luring dogs with food can create conflict for them and that is the last thing we want to do. We need to build her confidence and work at her pace.

In the next video you can see she is starting to become curious. Still panting and still pacing although now she is listening to other dogs in the kennels too.

I change positions in the kennel and she immediately investigates where I had been sat and starts to explore the environment. She is still too stressed to engage with the loaded snuffle mat though. Stress affects appetite and digestion, but she is beginning to gain confidence – she is sniffing. Sniffing is essential. It aids learning, relaxation, builds confidence and creates calmness.

Watch the following video for some very subtle body language signs. Some of these signs are easily missed or misinterpreted.

Tina chose to come and sit next to me, leaning in for some affection. Notice the lip licking, turning of her head away from me, and the increase in panting.

She comes back in for some more affection but suddenly starts licking her paw. This is a displacement behaviour. I stop giving affection, but she continues to lick for a while.

She leans back into me, pokes her nose at the intrusive phone and does another head turn, still panting.  I start giving affection again but watch what she does – she licks my hand. A clear signal saying please stop!

We often interpret a dog licking our hand while giving them affection as a sign of them giving affection back because we humanise them. While it can be a sign of affection, if accompanied by other signals and behaviours, it is often the dog saying please stop.

I restart the affection and Tina chooses to move away. Again, another clear signal – please stop.

In this instance though, the reason for Tina’s increased stress is actually my phone! As soon as I put the phone away and stopped videoing she came right back in close, leaning on me for affection with no stress signals at all.

Now she is calmer she starts to show interest in liver paste!

Looking forward to doing more work with this little lady.

Meet Gryffin

Please meet young Gryffin. He is also with Terrier SOS and not had an easy start to life. Gryffin is a 13-month-old male wire fox terrier who finds life incredibly exciting!

Gryffin has missed out on positive socialisation and has no clue how he should behave! He has spent very little time in a home and has not had any boundaries. Boundaries do not need to be harsh but they do need to be consistent! Decisions about whether he is allowed on furniture, decisions about what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Once we decide, we need to stick to it and reward wanted/acceptable behaviour, otherwise dogs have no idea how they should behave.  Gryffin does have a lovely temperament though and will make someone a fabulous companion.

Gryffin approaches life full on. Those of you who follow my blog will know what I have to say about excitement!  Dogs that become over excited or overly aroused are not having a good time! Very often this over arousal leaves their body feeling full of stress, particularly in young dogs. 

Excitement is a heightened emotional state that can easily tip over into problem behaviour, leaving the body full of stress. We also know that stress takes a while to leave the body which means it is constantly topped up.

Gryffin needs to learn to be calm.  Even a person standing up quietly is incredibly arousing for Gryffin, causing him to launch into zoomies around the furniture if given half a chance.

We manage this by preventing the problems in the first place. So much better to prevent problems than have to find a cure later on!  You will see in the photo above, Gryffin is wearing a harness and lead indoors. This allows us to manage him and prevent problems from occurring in the first place. 

When dogs begin to “misbehave” very often the word NO is used. Dogs have no clue what no means – but it is attention for the behaviour and before long, they have learned that if they are bored, they just need to “misbehave” and they will get attention and if they are really lucky, possibly a chase game!

Mental stimulation (nothing too exciting) is essential. There is a short video clip below of Gryffin investigating some of the things carefully planned and laid out prior to his arrival.

We then reinforce any calm behaviour and reward with a small food treat. You may find lots of information about teaching a “Calm” cue or “Settle”. 

We have found that it is far more beneficial (to owners and dogs) to teach life skills rather than putting various behaviours on cue.

We can use a clicker or a verbal marker such as Yes to mark wanted behaviour but for Gryffin, who finds anything new arousing, we opted for a silent thumbs up sign quickly followed by a small food treat. This works so well for Gryffin and he soon learned that being calm feels good (and we prevented any unwanted behaviour from taking place).

Gryffin is such a fast learner and is quickly learning how to be calm.

Creating Calm

I work with a number of rescues and had the pleasure of working with two Terrier SOS dogs today. Terrier SOS are a fabulous rescue to work with - they treat each dog as an individual and allow them all the time they need, nothing is too much trouble and...they provide ongoing support for their adopted dogs.

Sir Galahad had a dreadful start in life and is only 3 years old.  He is currently in kennels but will hopefully move on very soon.  He is very worried by new things but through patience, dedication and careful set ups he is coming on leaps and bounds.

He now happily jumps into the car and quickly investigates interactive toys. This video clip is when he had just arrived at the rescue volunteers house - setting him up for success by creating calm and confidence.  Although Sir G was able to investigate on other visits, the tension in his body was evident to see.  Just look at him today.

Sir Galahad then went out for a walk. The dogs we used were carefully selected to avoided pushing Sir G over threshold and setting him up to fail. We began with a female dog with a see through barrier in between. Barriers can often help provide a feeling of safety for dogs that are worried by other dogs.

Sir Galahad did so well we decided to do some parallel walking without the barrier. Sir G was rather interested in Winnie and it was most definitely reciprocated!

Sir G continued to do lots of sniffing, even in the presence of another dog.  However, it is so important to go slowly and not rush things. Although Sir G (and lovely Winnie) were giving all the right signals and we allowed them to be fairly close - see the image below,

you can see that Sir G is overly stimulated and overly aroused.  When dogs are not calm, it can easily tip over into snapping behaviour or even aggression. Sir G is becoming quite "bouncy" and it could be mistaken for play bows or wanting to play.  However, he is just becoming over excited so we move away in a nice calm manner.

Sir G then resumes his sniffing.

I spend a lot of time talking about creating calm to my clients. This is fundamental to changing behaviours and to allowing dogs to be dogs.

Being over excited, over stimulated does not feel good.  Being calm does.

We decided to build on his success with Winnie and introduced a male dog, starting again behind a barrier.

Initially Sir G does not engage with him and both dogs avoid looking at each other. Lovely calm polite behaviour. 

This time they do glance at each other as we pass by, still relaxed and still calm. In the image below you can see Sir G check back in with me. Beautiful!

Sir G did so well today with meeting a new dog.  When doing work around other dogs, the goal should be calm - not necessarily interaction.

So often, socialising dogs seems to focus on meeting and GREETING and PLAY.  It is much better to teach dogs life skills - being able to walk past other dogs without pulling and lunging to get to them (or to run off and play and then forget they ever learned recall)!

Well done Sir Galahad, you are a star.  We then took him back in my car, another first for him.