Solutions for our Naughty But Nice Dogs
I became a dog trainer because I owned a “Naughty But Nice” dog…
Jazz, my first cockapoo, was so loving and attached to me I didn’t really notice the problems until they had really piled up…
Here are just SOME of the things I found myself dealing with:
REACTIVITY… Barking and lunging at some dogs – at first it seemed to just be schnauzers or black dogs (Jazz is a black dog so this always amused me slightly!)
Over time: The list of “types of dogs” grew longer and we started to avoid all dogs just in case they might trigger him.
OFF LEASH PROBLEMS … Off lead Jazz would run ok with some dogs he knew fairly happily. And actually if we were alone his recall was pretty good – But as his reactivity got worse we had some very unhappy off-lead instances: Like when he ran into barbed wire to try to run away from a dog that suddenly appeared in front of him. Or the time he chased a deer through the woods for an hour on holiday in Devon. (I literally kept seeing glimpses of him and the deer dashing through the trees and then he was gone again!)
These were incredibly frightening experiences and led me to become nervous of giving him off lead freedom!
HOUSEHOLD MANNERS … I now know that a lot of Jazz’s problems were fear based. But over those first few years of owning him I was at a complete loss. He would bark at the door – then he started barking at visitors who had been invited in. Then he began lunging or barking more at male visitors. I started to think it was a reaction to their testosterone!... Even 10 year old friends of my son could trigger this reaction!
As the years rolled on I tried various things to fix these problems.
I bought many books and watched the TV shows that promised quick fix’s
I went to dog training classes with him,
I even engaged a behaviourist consult
I tried the techniques I was learning and all of them made him worse.
You don’t know what you don’t know …
BUT I DO KNOW NOW!
The reason the things I had tried did NOT WORK was because every single one of them was about putting my dog in the situation that upset him so much and trying to train him IN the SITUATION…
I now know that this is very frustrating for both dog and owner and not very effective because if ever it seems to work it is likely to be due to subduing the dog’s reactivity as it shuts the dog down in the situation… But - It is not changing the dog’s mind about anything.
Think about it – if you are afraid of spiders… would putting you in a room with spiders and telling you “its ok” and rewarding you with cake for just sitting quietly in the room with spiders make you feel ok about spiders? – Of-course not! – Yet this is what we do to our dogs in some popular training methods!
Thankfully I finally found AbsoluteDogs who train dogs FOR the moment not IN the moment. The basic idea is to change the dog’s thinking about things that cause “problems”
NOT by making the dog experience lots of what they don’t like but by GROWING the concepts in the dog’s mind that drives their perceptions about something. It is literally RESHAPING the dog’s brain. Making new connections to help the dog think better.
The rest, as they say, is HISTORY.
I have since trained with AbsoluteDogs to become one of their Pro Dog Trainers.
Using their games based methods to grow concepts in the dogs brain for what the dog needs to deal with the world, dogs can truly be transformed from “Naughty But Nice”… to just… NICE!
This really is a gamechanger! – Dogs are not put in the situations that disturb them – so the training is fun and stress free for both owner and dog – YET make no mistake, dog IS being trained through those games FOR success in those situations in the future - so that when they occur again, the dog can deal with them better.
It’s like giving the dog the right tools to handle the world.
ALL my Faithful Friends training is done like this and I have several online video courses and offer zoom one to one training so dog training continues whether it is lockdown or not.
And Jazz? - He is better than he was on all fronts… but to be honest he is very old now and has health challenges so now I mostly just keep him comfortable and stress free! - I only wish I had been given these tools earlier in his life.
If your dog is showing any of these naughty but nice tendencies that I have discussed – please don’t leave it. It won’t solve itself!
BUT There are REAL solutions.
It might take some time to grow new ways of thinking in your dog – but it is possible - and actually 1% extra training a day will yield huge rewards over a year!!
I offer one to one training on zoom if you need help with your Naughty But Nice dog.
Feel free to contact me if you want more info on anything I have discussed here.
Meanwhile…
Keeeeep Playing with your dog!
*”Naughty But Nice” is a term used by AbsoluteDogs who are the creators of the solutions I teach in my dog training… you can visit them here: https://absolute-dogs.com