Basic Training Plan

Basic Training Plan

Are you looking for help and advice to train your dog and not been on one of our training sessions? or perhaps you have been on one of our sessions already. It can be super overwhelming after a session as there can be a lot of information thrown at you, so we thought we would create a little guide with the basics that is nice and clear. Then whatever we discuss is more tailored to your dogs specific needs.

Hand feeding

Hand feeding is the biggest game changer for you and your dogs relationship as dogs respect the hand that feeds them. You may think that by you putting the food in the bowl that them dog respects you, but unfortunately it makes it far too easy for the dog! By making your dog work for every bit of food you are fulfilling their basic drive to work (yes, even those non working breeds).

Take the food out on your walks or anywhere that you are having issues. If there is more than one person dealing with the dogs split it up. Measure the dogs daily allowance in the morning and use it throughout the day. Dogs don’t need set meal times. If you feed raw you can put the food in a silicone pouch or sistema soup cup and use gloves to feed! Same with wet food.

Structure not routine

Dogs need structure not routine. Because when we set a strict routine and something out of the ordinary happens we throw our dog off. You want to teach calmness in the house, this is where we chill. Then training, walking, play sessions when you decide.

Not the dog. Using a crate or a place command will help with this. We put dogs who have extreme issues or are new to us through ‘prison phase’. This isn’t as cruel as it sounds, I promise. But basically, we stop the dog from making mistakes by controlling their environment whilst reprogramming behaviours and building a bond.

The dog is crate rested until we do something. Play, hand feeding, grooming, walking and training all comes from the person. When we’re not doing anything they’re resting. Dogs need 14-16 hours sleep a day (more for younger dogs) If we are fulfilling them by doing training etc they will happily switch off.

There are some dogs that need told what to do every minute of the day and that’s okay. If we leave them to their own devices this is usually when they make bad decisions or start displaying unwanted behaviours. So if you follow the rule of if you aren’t doing anything with the dog, the dog is chilling in their place or crate.

Even when you’re sitting on social media or watching tv, the dog should know what is expected. People coming into the house, use the crate and place as you don’t want the dog learning self rewarding behaviours from visitors. Calmness gets them what they want, not excitement!

Say what you mean and mean what you say

Dogs read our body language. They make associations of verbal words to a behaviour we want them to do. They don’t understand English.

If your dog isn’t listening to you, don’t mindlessly speak to them. It becomes white noise. So they easily ignore us when we actually ask them to do something. If you ask something of the dog and they refuse.

First ask yourself do they understand what this means? If not, re teach. Don’t give in .They will press every single button to get what they want. If they are 5 years old and we are doing re training, they have 5 years of repeated history and you will break before they do. Be strong!! If you are getting frustrated in your training session, put the dog away. Its completely unproductive to continue.

Little and often

If you train 4 times a day at 5-10 minutes your dog will benefit much more than 1 session of an hour. They have short attention spans so we need to work the dog in front of us. Video your session and you will see when they switch off.

If he switches off after 4 minutes, next time train for 3. Leave them wanting more. This will help with your hand feeding because the dogs needs to eat so you will be more motivated to train. If you have food left over and its 8pm at night and the dog is done with training, scatter feed the rest of the food. No bowls!!

Management

When solving behaviour issues or raising a puppy we need to manage their surroundings. Dogs can easily get overwhelmed by too much space and freedom.

Especially puppies. If they are chewers, crate them. If they have separation anxiety, crate train. Go wild at the park, take them somewhere else. Manage your environments etc until we have the foundations set in.

The dog knows exactly what is expected in a sterile environment, then we can build them up to busier environments.

As the distraction gets higher the less we need to expect from the dog on the first time. The basic that we want is engagement and calmness.

Walking

We as a nation seem to have this idea that our dogs need to be off lead every day for 4hours running around like a headless chicken to be satisfied. WRONG. Structured loose lead walking with opportunities to sniff, training and playing with you is far more beneficial. Obviously dogs needs physical exercise but you can achieve it in other ways than letting them off to cause carnage.

Be the leader, not the littermate

People gets dogs for all different reasons. Companionship, to work, family pet, working dog or sport dog. Whatever the reason we as a human have to meet that dogs needs.

We need to create structure, boundaries, we need to socialise properly, set up clean communication. Ultimately we need to learn to love in the right way. Sounds weird right? But if we treat our dogs like babies, we end up with temperamental toddler with teeth that can end up ruling the roost. It isn’t a case of dominating your dog, its as case of building a relationship, a partnership that the dog follows your lead.

You make the decisions, you make the rules and create the boundaries, not them. You choose when and what they do, not them and I can guarantee when you start making the changes you will have a much calmer, level headed dog in your house. Because we show them that their job is to follow and not to lead. So when things go wrong, it’s not the dogs fault, it’s the humans. When we have this mindset we often find that we become much more aware and responsible about what we do with our dogs.

If it’s not beneficial to your progress, don’t do it

When we are training we can get side tracked by other people’s opinions and feelings as they can say you’re being cruel and a dog should be a dog. Ignore them. If they won’t listen and respect what you are doing with your dog and treat the dog how you would like. It’s simple, they don’t get to interact with your dog. Don’t let other peoples feelings distrust your training and your dogs progress.

At the end of the day, who is going to have to fix what they may ruin in less than 5 minutes, you. So don’t put yourself through it. If you are working on do g reactivity, don’t go to the dog park. Or somewhere you know you are going to meet countless dogs, we’ll build up to that. Have this minded in everything you and you’ll make progress.

We specialize in nose work, we cover behaviours modification
puppy classes, bootcamps and so much more!

Now there is much more in owning a dog than what we have included here, but we cant give everything away for free! here at K9 Manhunt and Sentwork Scotland we run a wide range of courses from our 6 week Puppy Course to 1-2-1 courses at our Glenrothes base to home visits and so much more.

Please take a look around our website for further details on our course and should you wish to book on any please  click here to be taken to our booking page. Should you requere any further information please click here to get in touch, or you can call us on either 07803 925099 or 07359 158662