Dog Trainer Wolli Creek – Classes & Home Training – What to Focus on?

Dog Trainer Wolli Creek – What to Focus on When Training?

Today I wanted to talk about something very important that I can see people sometimes struggle to understand. And that’s knowing what to focus on when we train a dog and especially when we try to fix a learnt behaviour. I’m going to use an example, a real client of mine. The dog reacts badly when he sees quests through the fence outside and also through the back door inside. The reaction is barking and jumping up in a very excited and frustrated manner that the owner mistook for aggression. The dog has several other issues caused by the same reason, over-excitement. Over time these behaviours have escalated. Here’s advice from a dog trainer in Wolli Creek on how to know what to focus on when we start fixing this situation.

Is Something Triggering the Behaviour?

In this case, it’s obvious that the guests trigger the behaviour. But we need to dig deeper than this, since this is just the tip of the iceberg. These are the questions I always ask my clients:

• How long has this been going on? And do you remember anything that might have triggered this behaviour?
• Are there any other situations where the dog reacts the same way? Inside or outside?

After asking these questions I learnt that the dog had been reinforced to react to people arriving to the house from a young puppy by one of the family members and it was still going on. I also learnt that the dog reacts the same way when moved outside without anyone else than family members present. So I figured out that the issue is actually bigger than just reacting to guests. Guests were simply an additional trigger. So there was no point on focusing on guests arriving when the behaviour happens without them as well!

Start Easy

So, fixing this issue obviously became more challenging. It was clear to me at this point that all of his over-excitement issues were linked and affecting all his behaviours. So we needed to start easy. There’s no point trying to fix everything at the same time, it’s simply too difficult for everyone. What was needed now was prioritising, we needed to start with behaviours that happen more often and were harder to manage. Guests are easy, you can easily not invite anyone to the house for a few weeks. That’s one trigger we could control. But moving him outside and the reactivity caused by it was something that will happen every day so that was the first trigger to focus on and to get under control. Then we would start adding more triggers. Right now the dog is on a lot of desensitisation training and positive association training with been alone. While at the same time, he will not get anything he wants when he’s over-excited. As it sounds, this will be difficult training for everyone. When a dog’s had years of over-excitement and he’s learnt to get what he wants when excited, it’s a hard road of unlearning the old and learning the new. There are no short cuts!