What are Life Skills?
Life skills are the skills and behaviours you teach your dog to enable them to be happy, friendly and relaxed in all situations and that you have a relationship with them to keep them safe. Skills include but are not limited to:-
- having a great recall
- being friendly towards other dogs and people.
- not pulling on the lead
- having focus for you
- being confident
- being able to disengage from things in the environment
- learning to settle
- solid behaviours like sit, down & stand
- leaving things when asked
How do I teach?
There are really only two reasons why a dog won't do as you have asked. Firstly because they do not understand what is wanted of them or they are not motivated enough to want to do it.
All my teaching uses positive reward-based training using food an toys and play. The key to training is giving your dog an experience that they want again. I teach you how to train your dog to make the right choices by rewarding the behaviours that you do want and redirecting any behaviours that you don't want on to doing things that you do want them to do. When dogs get positively reinforced for making the right choices they will keep repeating those choices. Equally, if behaviour issues are not addressed then repetition will ensure that they continue or get worse!
My aim is to give you and your dog a fun experience and to give you the tools to be confident that you can manage all the situations you are likely to be faced with on a day to day basis. In doing so with positive reinforcement you will build a fantastic relationship and be happy to take them anywhere.
Lesson Information
I have a field, just outside of Wantage where I teach small class lessons and agility.
1:2:1 sessions will vary depending on the dogs needs and what we are working on with them at the time. I avoid teaching "in the situation" because a dog can not learn if they are fearful, stressed or over-excited.
In some cases, training may be best done at your home in a less distracting environment.
It may be that we need to work in an environment where there are distractions and so we would meet at an appropriate public site.
The key is making sure that the training is done in the best environment to ensure your dog is happy and can succeed.