Shaping, Luring and catching

What a lovely way to spend a sunny afternoon, we have been working with Swedish Vallhund 'Lady' (www.dalysdogs.co.uk/lady) showing how you can teach your dog amazing tricks by shaping, luring and catching behaviours using a clicker. While the theory behind clicker training has been around for years, it was Karen Prior, a marine mammal trainer and author of 'Don't Shoot the Dog!', who brought it to the attention of the dog owning public.

Clicker training is fantastic because it opens up a channel of communication between dog and owner and uses a positive reward as a primary reinforcer such as food. It speeds up learning and keeps it fun for both dogs and their owners.

Freddie update

We popped in on Freddie today - what a difference, it is so pleasant to see a nice quiet dog sitting on a bed than be greeted by barking! Freddie has also been getting better around other dogs, but this does take time so Freddie and his owner should keep up the good training. When we are up and running, subscribers to Naturally Happy Dogs will be able to send in their own questions or dog training issues for us to feature in future videos

Filming Freddie

Off to Harlow today to film little Freddie a Miniature Schnauzer who has a habit of running up to the front door, barking madly whenever anyone knocks. His behaviour showed me he was actually a little anxious of who or what could be the other side and he wanted to make absolutely sure that whatever it was knew that there was a 'big scary dog' the other side and that they shouldn't try anything funny! We taught Freddie to go to his bed and stay there for a treat. After he got the hang of this, we asked him to go to his bed when the doorbell rang, soon the doorbell should become the actual cue for him to go to his bed to get his treat and Freddie's house should become a much quieter place!

Freddie is also worried about other dogs so by using Lady, Dougal and Sandy as stooge dogs (see their profiles on our facebook page) we worked on getting them slowly closer. After a while and a lot of good praising and interrupting from Freddie's very patient owner, we got close enough for Freddie to have a sniff of the other dogs and they became friends.

Naturally Happy Dogs emerges

What a packed few weeks, having decided to start Naturally Happy Dogs, Caroline, Kev and Sally have had meetings, set up all the legal side of things, created the official company and somehow fitted in filming in there somewhere!

We have been reviewing some of the footage we took a while ago of a very cute little Cavalier King Charles puppy, teaching the sit, lie down and stay. She was very good and while she hadn't previously learned any commands, she picked these up very quickly.