ABC Dogs NZ

What if you're trying to “fix” the wrong thing?
The barking?
Those lunges when they’re reacting?
How about the pulling when walking?

What if I told you working on just those could be the exact reason there’s little to no progress.
They’re often behavioural symptoms.

There is usually something much more happening and bubbling away under the surface.

If you really want to make progress, look at the reasons.
That’s not as simple as it sounds though.
Why is this happening.
What emotions are they feeling?
Because if it’s frustration and it isn’t looked at as a “whole”, not much will change.

How is your timing?
Timing in training is everything too.
Especially with reactivity and please, be careful with the advice to “just let them watch”.

Some can watch the world go by and make progress.
Others?
All that could be happening is allowing your dog to fixate MORE.
And it sneakily looks like “progress”

There are glancers.
There are lookers.
And there are fixaters.

A dog standing quietly can look like progress.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes there's still a storm underneath.

Above all else.
Get onto issues asap.
They really don’t grow out of it, they tend to grow into and practice behaviours far, far more than time just magically waving over them and “voila”.

You can (please hear me with this), you can make progress.

It is often slower and more involved than some people realise.
But there are some key areas we all need to look at.

Timing.
Emotions.
Individuality.

They all play the biggest parts.
By far.

Tails can have an unsure side?👀
Tails are sneaky.
Their tail isn't just moving.
It's communicating.

Most people only look for one thing
Wagging = happy.
Except that's not always true.

A dog can wag when they're excited.
Wag when they're frustrated.
They can wag when they're worried.
They can even wag when they're deciding what to do next.

This is where it gets interesting.

Because it's not just if the tail moving, it’s which side too.

Researchers have found that some dogs can wag more to one side than the other depending on what they're feeling.

Theres a catch though.
The problem is we often focus on the tail and ignore the rest of the dog.

A wagging tail attached to a relaxed body tells a very different story to a wagging tail attached to a dog with a closed mouth, hard eyes and a body full of tension.

That's why tails can be so misleading.

The same signal can mean completely different things depending on what comes with it, what side as well as where and when it’s wagging.

A tail can give us a clue.
But clues really aren't the whole story.

So what emotion are they communicating?

To answer that, we need to look at the bigger picture.

"I swear he wasn't like this yesterday."

The dog that's grabbing clothes, barking at everything, jumping and squealing or struggling to listen.

I know it feels like it happened overnight.
What if it didn’t?

What catches people out is that dogs don't reset to zero after a sleep.

Excitement can carry over, long after the ball has been put away.
Frustration can carry over, even when there's no obvious cause.

A busy weekend gets added to the counter too.
Sometimes even a busy week.

We don't want to stop the fun.
We see them happy.
Engaged and loving the intensity.
Wanting to interact over and over again.

So we keep saying yes.

We excuse it.
"He's just a teenager."
"She gets mouthy when she's happy."
But eventually we can end up with a problem that excitement won't solve.

Because we've added more onto a dog who was already carrying the days before.
And the days before that.

That's why over-arousal can be so difficult to spot.

It disguises itself as fun.

As excitement.

As "the best day ever."
And it does that day after day.
Week after week.

And then we add more to “tire them out”.

The trouble is that sometimes the last thing an over aroused dog needs,
is more.