What do you do when years of exposure, treats and counter-conditioning haven’t changed the dog’s fear? And what do you do when the alternative — correcting the dog for trying to escape like many would do with fear reactivity— would probably make the dog look even worse? This was Munchkin. Traffic and cars weren’t just uncomfortable for her. She was genuinely terrified. Her owner had already spent years working on it with multiple trainers. Exposure, desensitisation, counter-conditioning, food around the trigger — all the things that would normally be suggested. What about stopping avoidance and let her get used to it? With a dog as sensitive as Munchkin, I would expect that approach to produce: Tail down. Shut down. Even more scared. I joked with my friends that Munchkin was going to be a proper stress test for my TBRR system. I was working on it for over a decade and shared for the first time in my book Braveheart. It aims to build Confidence from competence. From sense of control and trusting the handler. Munchkin reminded me my dog Bran very much when I got her. Bran, my rescue malinois that was also terrified of traffic. She wouldn't come close for about 30 meters to the roads, struggled to walk past parked cars, refusing to take food - all that on horse dose of medication. She was also trained for about a year with standard combo of exposure/counter conditioning with no improvement. After weeks training we could walk through the road. After 3 months we travelled half of Europe with the car. Now medication free she is like a normal dog. These are the transformations that give me the most satisfaction as a trainer, because there is no shortcuts here. I broke the whole process down into three stages in the new YouTube video. If you work with fearful or reactive dogs — or you’re interested in what confidence training actually looks like beyond simply “getting the dog used to it” or ''chicken next to trigger'' — this one is worth watching. share that to anyone who needs to watch it.

Thank you for all of you that voted! As most of you are at the beginning of the journey with heelwork training I plan to publish 2 extra modules. 1) 3 alternative ways to start heelwork training (step 1). - there are different ways to the same goal and sometimes with some teams we do first step in a little bit different way. But also few of you have started heelwork training different way (eg. left hand lure) so I want to give you roadmap on how to fit that into H4D and 7 step system. 2) All learning starts with motivation and building focus. And we need quite a lot of it in focused heelwork (no pun intended). We start often with the food games and luring but then adding some more drive and enthusiasm with toy play. Some of you did Play with Purpose so that will be brief reminder of lay formula while others will get some idea on how to build play event to power their heelwork training. Stay tuned!

Hey guys! First of all thank you to all joined Heelwork 4 Dummies! If you are new here don't forget to introduce yourself in pinned post :) Second of all - Help me Help You! 🚨 ⚠️Tell me what is your biggest challenge in heelwork training? or what stage you are at? 🐕 I'm planning extra content on focused heelwork (along with street aka everyday heeling that was heavily requested) That will give me ideas for the content and tutorials that are coming!

Thank you @Alex Lato for the fabulous workshop at the weekend. Mind is blown, kong hand understood and hw hackers training will be starting today 😊 just a few of the photos of my boys at the weekend 😊🙏 plus Ohfa wants to know if he can come live with you for more bitey fun 😂