Trainer's Tips RSS

Being a healthy weight plays an important role in a dog’s health, well-being, behaviour, and training ability.In a good condition, you should be able to easily feel your dog’s ribs just under the skin, covered in some muscles. You can see me show you a quick check you can do in a short video we've put together over on our Facebook page: Click here to watch video guide   Or, read on to find out more. Before Anglian Dog Works, I worked at the University of Cambridge for 10 years.During this time I worked closely with the vets and one of them told...

Free 5-Day Recall Challenge Question:  “I’m at a loss to know what I can do because she runs off, so far, she’s never been gone for more than 10 minutes at most, but it’s worrying… I know that rehearsing misdemeanours is bad -  it would mean the absolute world to me to have a dog which came back when I called.”   Solution: As a dog trainer, I realised that not only was recall the number one goal for so many people I worked with, but it is also the behaviour that can have the most impact on enjoying life...

A lot of people check in with their own health in January and it's good to be thinking about your dog's health for 2023 too! 📝 We want you to start the new year off right with your dogs too! 🐾🥳 I will be sharing some top to toe checks with you And what better place to start than the mouth? Do your dog’s gums bleed when you play tug? Breath smell?   It's estimated that almost 90% of dogs will have developed gum disease by 2 years of age1  Causing red gums, bleeding, and bad breath… But also playing an...

Transferring a cue simply means teaching your dog to respond the same way to a new cue (folding your arms to ask your dog to lay down) as they did the existing cue e.g. by saying “down”. I really like this using this to train dogs to settle in social situations silently, only using hand signals. Conventionally, the method for training an ‘off switch’ is teaching that when you step on your dog’s lead, that a cue that no training is happening and it’s time to settle & praise any signs of settling with "gooood" and stroke. Without a prompt, many...

The Conventional ‘Training an off-switch method’ is when you teach your dog that when you step on their lead, that a cue that no training is happening and it’s time to settle.  Teaching the off switch is an important life skill for when you are occupied, so the dog can relax and watch the world go (for example the pub!) Here’s what Laura, Luna the English springer’s Mum, had to say about the value of training this behaviour: "As high-energy dogs, we wanted to work on having Luna relaxed joining us at the pub and sports events. We worked on settle training...