Do you have friends you trust and that are calm around dogs to be able to generalise your handling training with? I have 2-4 people I rotate through including one male friend. I do this before I then ask unknown people to Ruse to help me, typically it’ll be a mentorship student. Then I go back to known people again before I ask someone he doesn’t know to handle him. Something to think about when we start to push the training… Who can you ask?

My biggest struggle with Ässo right now is his anticipation of pain at the vets after surgery and he has started growling and wanting to get out of the restraint. I’m going back to basics with his handling training now during rehab! Olle is over aroused and gets silly - only to then go over threshold and start nibbling the person or crawl around on the floor. He doesn’t really have a protocol or handling training yet — so I’m going to introduce a prey lock to him!

It’s a piece and something we build with our own dogs and demonstrate in the course. But if it was JUST about staring at something, everyone would be doing it easily enough at the vets. We use a motivator as a part of the puzzle but work towards showing the dog how to work through the stressor and then the reward becoming accessible. There are layers to building handling drills with our dogs 🧡

Simply click the “CLASSROOM” tab and find it all there 🧡

So excited to share this space with Alba and you all. A place to celebrate our successes and work through the challenges together 🧡