The Brittany Forum

.:HayleyH:. · Bretonnier Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 236

This past weekend I attended a Dogs Trust seminar, called "Pulling On The Lead".
The speaker was Turid Rugaas, from Norway where she runs a dog training school (Training the people to train the dogs). I found this was a very interesting seminar, albeit a lot less 'hands on' than the T-Touch one I done last year. Funnily enough it was a lot more.. seminar-like Wink

Her main focus seemed to be stress, and helping the dog be able to 'cope' with it's surroundings. Fear periods and Calming Signals were another big point.

The fear periods being at 8 weeks old and 4/5 months old with the possibility of another at 18 months old. Apparently, when the dog goes through these the best thing to do is nothing. Meaning no training and definitely no new situations, however these 'fear periods' only last for roughly a week.

Calming signals are what the dog uses to, surprisingly, calm people or other dogs. These include yawning, licking lips, turning the head or even the whole body away, and laying down.

Her training for getting a dog to heel is a little like clicker training, but using the mouth, which, if you have multiple dogs is a lot better than risking accidently strangling one dog to click a behaviour of another Rolling Eyes

The clicking noise made with the mouth is to get the dog to heel but also to be used if your dog is fixated on another dog or if their stress level is building, to get their attention back on you so you can help calm them.

I admit I don't quite agree with some of her points. But she is definitely worth listening to. Especially so if your dog can be intolerant of either all other dogs or specific ones.

http://www.canis.no/rugaas/

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Hayley, Moss, Briar and Ben.