Recall
Pixie
Pixie was rescued by her owners at 18 months. Before she was taken in my the rescue, she lived with an elderly man, who was unable to give her the physical exercise and mental stimulation she required. She had next to no training but an awful lot of love to give!
Her owners contacted me in the weeks leading up to Pixie’s adoption. We had a session before she came home to talk through the first days. We spoke about sleep, separations and what to expect in terms of her behaviour.
Over the next few months, we covered many areas including: lead walking, scent-work, breed specific games, recall, self-settling, car travel, basic obedience and how to handle interactions with other dogs.
We also spoke at length about diet and joint care, as Pixie has the early warning signs of mobility problems. This likely stems from a lack of appropriate exercise when she was younger.
Pixie is a very intelligent girl and her owners were 100% dedicated to giving her the best home possible. I am happy to say that she is thriving in her new home and has settled in beautifully!
Ash
I first met Ash and his owner when I was out for a walk with my own dog down by the river. Ash was nervous of the dogs around him, barking and growling if they came too close. We got chatting and it turned out that Ash had been attacked by a dog at this location just a day before. He was bitten, quite badly, and pinned down by a much larger dog.
Ash’s owner decided that he wanted some support to help Ash recover and regain his confidence around big dogs again. He also wanted to tighten up Ash’s recall and his lead walking.
We worked together to build Ash’s confidence back up and to teach him to disengage from dogs when he sees them, over the course of a couple of months.
Ash’s owner was brilliant with him and Ash already had a huge repertoire of commands he knew. We worked on some additional, fun tricks with him and incorporated new commands which would help him to focus on his owner and build a more solid recall.
Ash is now back to his former self – but with improved lead-manners and recall. Well done, Ash!
Squitchley
This French Basset Hound is cute – and he knows it! But his behaviours were making life at home difficult for his owners. Squitchley would bite his owners hands, feet, clothes (whatever he could get hold of!); steal and destroy high value items (including a designer handbag!) and become aggressive if his owners attempted to take it away; mount people’s legs, backs, arms; pull on the lead, bite the lead and would not recall to his owners. There was a lot for us to work on!
First port of call for us was to look at the routine that Squitchley had as it was clear that he was over-stimulated. We looked at implementing a routine where Squitchley had ample opportunity to sleep, relax and have quiet, calm time. We also spoke about how enrichment could be used to increase Squitchley’s calmness.
Next, we looked at introducing some impulse control exercises and well as basic obedience so that Squitchley could control his urges and listen to his owners, rather than tuning them out completely. This massively reduced his biting behaviour whilst increasing his ability to listen out on walks.
We spoke about how we needed to manage our behaviour to set Squitchley up for success and discussed how to best tackle his resource guarding. This was tricky for his owners as the items that Squitch was prone to stealing were so high value to us – glasses, tv remotes and even a steak knife!
Squitchley’s owners were 100% dedicated to his training and he is now a different dog. He is calm at home, no longer bites for attention, rarely feels the need to steal items and is able to listen to his owner and behave beautifully on his walks.
This training journey took us three months from start to finish, with 6 sessions in total – his story really is a testament to the power of positive training. A very big well done to Squitchley!
Bean
Training for Bean the Boston Terrier. Bean was six months old when her owners came to me looking for help with her recall.
Bean was over-excited around other dogs and was unable to disengage when she saw them. If she was off the lead, she would not listen to calls to come back and she would be gone! Whilst her love of other dogs was sweet, her owners recognised that it jeopardised Bean’s safety; a solid recall is absolutely essential. What if Bean ran over to a reactive, on-lead dog? What if she ran across a road?
Recall training looks different for every dog as they each have their own reasons and motivations for not wanting to return to their owner, but for Bean, it was simply that other dogs were far too exciting.
We worked together on a mixture of training and management strategies with the end goal of making Bean’s owners the most exciting thing on her walks so that she would choose them over other dogs. We taught Bean new commands that her owners could throw in on their walks together to keep her focus and engagement on them. We also spoke about how to read the environment and Bean’s body language to prevent her from ‘locking on’ to other dogs and retain her attention.
As Bean is still young, her recall training will be ongoing but her owners now feel equipped to handle whatever their walks may throw Bean’s way.
