The Dog Blog

I’ve been spending a LOT of time down at Town Lake the last few days. Several of my clients have made it to the point in their training where we have to start practicing with LOTS of distractions and craziness going on and there’s no place better than under the Mo-Pac bridge at town lake.

Last night I had a rare and wonderful pleasure. A client that I had worked with several months ago wanted to meet me down there to work with her six month old Golden named Friday. The last time I saw Friday he was tiny pup of 10 weeks that was doing well with his training but he was still a pup. Well, last night, Friday heeled with his owner right up to me and sat down like a perfectly behaved dog and waited for me to pat him. Even being a trainer is still amazes me when one of my client’s dogs shows such skill and good manners! I was thrilled.

Friday heeled around the lake with us, fetched some sticks in the water and generally was a fantastic dog. The only thing the owner was concerned about was his biting the leash after he got out of the water and was bouncing around in an excited state. We worked on that for a bit and then Friday heeled back to the cars like the perfect gentleman.

So, I’ll miss working with Friday but I’m sure I’ll see him down at the lake with his owner while I’m working with other clients trying to get them to his level.

So, if you see me down at Town Lake working with clients come on over and say “Hello”. We’ll use you as a distraction for the pup we’re working with!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Sometimes the work I do really turns out well. I’ve been training the deaf boxer dog Ginger for the last few weeks and I’m happy to say that I got a call from Austin Boxer Rescue today. It looks like she’s being adopted by a family that has committed to continued training for her! All of us are so happy that these folks found her.

Take care Ginger and enjoy your new Family!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

I get to meet the most fantastic people and dogs being a trainer in Austin.

Jenn and Sara from Austin Boxer Rescue contacted me a few weeks ago asking if I had worked with deaf dogs before. I guess they had been reading the blog, about the other pup I worked with a couple of months ago with such great success. It seems they had spoken with several other trainers here that just didn’t have experience with these deaf dogs, and thats a shame.

So, the next several Sunday afternoons are donated to the folks at Austin Boxer Rescue and Ginger their latest hearing impaired addition.

Ginger started using my favorite tool for working with deaf dogs, a Dogtra collar with a vibration feature. We use the vibration feature of these collars to “call” the dog and to get it’s attention so that we can give it other commands such as Sit, Down, Come, Heel… It’s kind of a slow process in the beginning but by the second session with Ginger she was starting to sit when we “buzzed” her twice with the vibrating collar and started doing a down when we gave her three short buzzes with it. I honestly believe that if she keep us this pace of work she’ll be well trained in the basic obedience commands within the next month or so.

That means, if you are looking for a boxer that is well trained you should contact the Austin Boxer people and go take a look at Miss Ginger. She’s a great dog that needs a good home and it won’t matter one whit that she’s hearing impaired once we get her training finished.

All of Austin Boxer Rescue’s contact info is here:

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Yesterday was just full of interesting activities for the old Austin Dog Trainer.

My first client of the day is moving to Japan so we worked on what was going to be necessary to get the dog moved and then what we needed to do once the pup was in quarantine in the country for three months. It seems that Japan has cancelled their “fast entry” program for dogs that they had and now every incoming pet must be quarantined for three months. Luckily the quarantine facilities there are supposed to be fantastic but still….it’s at least an hour away from her new home in Tokyo and that’s with no traffic!

Second dog of the day was a pup I visited for the good folks at Austin Cocker Rescue. This pup had recently gone deaf and the new owner needed some help because the cocker had begun barking at strangers on their walks. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on with this guy (he didn’t want to bark at anyone with me around) but we worked on a few basic behavior things that I noticed and hopefully we got that under control.

Third dog of the day was my most recent Rock Star client. Can’t tell their name (privacy you know) but I can tell you that this person is an amazingly good dog trainer, and I believe it’s because of their innate laid back attitude. Lots of fun training with this person and their dog is just a fantastically smart little pup.

There were a couple of other clients in there that just needed some basic obedience work and then my fun lesson of the day with a Senior VP of Dell and his wife. We had a great time working with their lab puppy. The weather at 7 last night was perfect for dog training and nothing could have been better than teaching this pup to heel off leash and to start doing recall, down, sits, and drops as the sun went down over the hills.

As I finished with my final client at 8:45 last night, I drove home thinking “I’m the luckiest guy in the world” I have wonderful clients that love their dogs, and I get to spend all day with these people and the pups. What could be better than that?

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

A few weeks ago I was working with a client’s cattle dog which had just TONS of energy. To the owner this was kind of a pain, but to a Dog Trainer a dog like this is FUN. I look at it as something different than the average dog I train each day.

In any case, this guy did great during his first session and I was astonished when I arrived for his second. He was waiting for me on his dog bed, a little excited to be sure, but doing his job the way her should and not jumping off the bed ever other second. As we started working outside he was attentive to his owners and was watching where they were and what they were doing, basically, he was doing what he should.

The lesson was a breeze. We worked with a long line on Bleu’s recall and by the end of the session he was coming back to them every time they called.

So, for all of you out there with a wound up bundle of energy dog, there is hope and with training you can even get that guy to come back every time you call.

I can’t wait to see Bleu’s progress at his next session in a month or so!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Dog trainers have exceptionally good days sometimes. Today was one of those.

My last client this evening was a couple that had a three year old Golden Retriever that they had adopted from the Austin Golden Rescue. They’ve been having a bit of trouble with this girl on Recall, or more commonly known to those that aren’t dog trainers, COME.

In any case we started to work with this gal and within about 30 minutes we had a very reliable long line recall going. The long line recall is the first step to an off leash COME and is an exceedingly important training step. It’s sort of a “you can’t get there from here” unless you use a long line situation.

By the end of the session, the owners were pleasantly surprised at how well their gal did and I got to finish the day with two very happy people and a proud dog that better understood what was expected of her.

A good day all around.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Technorati Tags: Dog Trainer, dog training, Dog Recall

Well, what do dog trainers train their own dogs to do? Most of the time we train them to do things that save us time or effort……mostly effort. For instance, one of my dogs has the job of counting all the other dogs and closing the front door after they all come inside. I trained her to do that out of self preservation or at least preservation of my love of sleeping in.

Recently though I’ve had another need for training.

My wife and I go on hikes with the three dogs on a regular basis. Usually one good hike a weekend at least. We’ve never had any problems with the dogs on these hikes until recently. My oldest dog, a 14 year old schnauzer named Halloween, has recently lost her hearing and her eyesight isn’t doing so well either. Now, this hasn’t really slowed Hallie down much, she still likes to go on hikes with us and roam around in the woods but it has made calling her back to us a bit more difficult lately. That’s a problem. Because when she wanders off she wanders into the type of brush I just don’t like walking through (prickly, low limbs smacking me, mud……you get the idea). So, what’s a lazy dog trainer to do?

I read an article a while back about dogs that were used in WW I. They patrolled the battle field after an action, and if they found a wounded man they would grab a ribbon off their chest or shoulder and run it back to the medical officers, then lead medics back to the person. I figured I could adapt that for my old deaf dog.

So this weekend we started working with Gwen, my springer spaniel getting her to go and grab a tab leash with her mouth and pull on it. We started by just dangling this thing on a string off my belt and telling her to “go get Hallie” and grabbing the leash for a treat. After she got pretty good at that, I started moving the tab closer to Hallie and getting her accustomed to having Gwen run up to her at a good clip. Then, I hooked the leash to Hallie and sent Gwen to go grab it. At this point, that’s all the training I’ve accomplished but by the end of the weekend, I should have Gwen so that she’ll grab the tab leash and lead Hallie back to me! Is that cool or what? It’s a great job for Gwennie and it keeps me from having to wade through the stickers to get my old dog every time she wanders off the path.

Now, if you ever wonder what a dog trainer trains his own dogs for, thing laziness and you’ll be close to correct.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Technorati Tags: Dog Trainer, dog training, Deaf Dog

I had a wonderful client today that lives just about three minutes from one of the largest dog training centers in the state of Texas. Yet, when he was looking for a trainer they chose me and patiently waited the month it took for me to actually get to him instead of walking a couple of blocks. I am amazingly grateful that people think so highly of what I do with Fidelio.

In any case, this couple had a wonderful and VERY STRONG Catahoula, also knows as a leopard dog. These guys are tough! Over in Louisiana and east Texas they use them to hunt wild boar if that gives you any idea of their tenacity. They called because they were having difficulty getting the dog to pay attention to them and were at their wits end about how to deal with him. Well, come to find out, he was a rescue dog and really just hadn’t ever been taught to try to “read” people and see what they wanted. We worked with the guy for about an hour and by the end of the session we had it staying on it’s dog bed, walking beside the owners, and coming to them reliably using a 20 foot long line. I think we made good progress today. With another lesson they should be well on their way to having a well behaved strong minded and confident dog.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Technorati Tags: dog training, Catahoula dog training

Dog trainers dread getting a client that has a dog with serious aggression issues. When we get to the client the family is in turmoil over the dog’s behavior, most times someone’s been injured or threatened by the dog, and it’s a horrible situation for all involved. Most dog trainers feel we need to do everything possible to help these clients, it’s more or less our professional credo as well as our job.

What clients really don’t understand is once a dog has started down the aggression path it’s impossible to “turn back the clock” and “cure” the dog from doing such things ever again. Now, don’t get me wrong, aggression is not as simple as that last line and it’s super difficult to diagnose what’s going on much less train for and modify the behavior. But, the best most of my clients can hope for is to MANAGE what’s happening using training and behavior modification tools.

Working with these dogs is hard under the best of circumstances. It’s difficult for me and it’s infinitely more difficult for the clients who aren’t as schooled in dog behavior. Where we run into problems is with how the dog interacts with the family in daily life and how they will be forced to modify how they live with the dog in order to work on the problem. Change doesn’t come easy to people, but in dealing with these dogs they’re forced to modify their lifestyle and expectations on a daily, hourly, and minute basis with the dog.

My most successfu clients have the mindset of, I love this dog and I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep him alive and keep everyone that comes into contact with him safe. Unless they maintain that as the core thought in their head when the dog is around there are going to be problems.

As a dog trainer, I struggle mightily trying to get my clients to comprehend the seriousness of what they are undertaking in these situations, but I’m not always successful. I always wonder what I can do to “help” them make the commitment to protecting their dog and family. Sometimes I just can’t get them to see the danger and even though I work with them on obedience and continue the training in hopes things will “click” for them I have little hope all will be well.

At the conference I attended this week someone asked Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, what he did when clients didn’t do what he told them. How did he handle people who refused to practice the behavior modification program he gave them. His exact words were “I leave”. I sat agog for a few minutes as he continued on but his point made sense. There are over 1 million dogs put down every year in the U.S. If we waste time on clients that don’t want to help their dog then we’ve potentially taken away the life of one out there that has an owner that will do the work to save it. Now that is a Powerful thought indeed.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

Technorati Tags: aggression, dog Aggression, dog training

I’ve got a wonderful client that I’ve been working with for the past few weeks that has started a blog on her experiences while working with her pup on a troubling issue.  Carrie is documenting her progress as she moves through training and behavior modification work designed to address her dog’s aggression issues with men.
I urge everyone to read through her entries to see how difficult this work is and how much time she is devoting to it.
She’ll be discussing the use of some medications we will be using with her other dog which has a high level of anxiety and fear around people other than his owner.  We’ll be monitoring both of them closely as she moves through the exercises.
 
Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogs.com 
 
 

I got a call the other day from a woman who wanted to know if I sold "no pull harnesses". This got me thinking about what’s going on in the dog world with harnesses.

The harness manufacturers have done a great job of trying to promote their products and a more Humane way to attach your dog to you. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some pups (like little tiny dogs) that benefit from having a harness, but to tell you the truth these contraptions are more trouble for the average pet owner than teaching the dog to walk properly on a leash.

Most trainers only use harnesses when we WANT the dog to pull. We use them in tracking, carting, and a few other specific applications but I would never tell one of my clients to use one as a general purpose dog handling tool, and I’ll tell you why.

Dogs have this thing called opposition reflex that makes them Pull harder when they have pressure on their lower neck and chest. That’s exactly where a harness puts the MOST pressure on a dog. We use that reflex in tracking to get the dog to pull forward, but for general obedience work you never want the dog to pull you.

So, enough of my rant on the harness sales industry. Do yourself a favor if you dog is pulling you around. Don’t rush out to the local big box doggie store and get the latest no pull harness, call a trainer to come to your home and give you one lesson to fix the pulling. Your life will be easier and your right arm will thank you.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodog.com

Fear:

For the past three weeks I’ve had a client’s dog staying at my house for training.  I’ve worked with this dog before during one of my three session classes but we had difficulty making headway with him for a host of reasons.  But, after having him here for these weeks some things have come clear and he’s proving to be a challenge for a whole set of different reasons.

Without giving away much information, I’ll say that this pup is right around a year old, in VERY good physical health, and is one of those breeds that I constantly tell people need more exercise than they are getting.  In short, to look at this dog you would think he was perfectly normal, but he’s not.  He’s scared of EVERYTHING.  Every noise sends him running for the door to the house. Every car that drives by makes him cringe and curl up in fear, and any type of correction is very hard on him.  In short, he’s a classic case of not being socialized as a puppy. And the training designed to help him now is much more work that it would have been when he was eight weeks old.  That’s my rant on socializing your puppy, on to this particular case.

This pup lives most of his life in one of the gated communities around Austin.  It’s a very quiet and peaceful environment for the most part but they are tough for puppies because they get very little exposure to the outside world.  When this dog was young it lived behind the walls of his lovely home with the other family dog that’s several years older.  Once the pup arrived home he was put outside with the older dog where they immediately bonded but the owners didn’t have the opportunity to work with him very much. So the inevitable consequence is that he got comfortable with their dog but not with people or the world at large.  Now, the owners want to take him out in public with them and it’s just torture on the poor pup.

Over the course of these weeks my job has been to de-sensitize the pup as much as possible to the outside world.  I’ve done this in a sort of textbook manner by teaching him commands (sit, down, heel…) and having him apply those when he gets nervous out in the neighborhood.  We have indeed made progress with this as the pup can do his commands very well as long as there’s a very low level of stress in the environment.  As a matter of fact, I would have to say that this pup is well above average in intelligence and picks things up faster than most. But the fact is, he’s not where I would want him to be emotionally and I know he’s not where the owners are going to want him. And there is little at this point we can do from a strict training perspective.

To get this dog moving to the next stage he’s going to need something other than just de-sensitization work to lower his anxiety level. We have to find something that will allow him to function when the big outside world brushes up against him.  Now, he can do his commands beautifully until someone else walks down the street toward us, then he bolts for the house.  We’ve got to give him a tool so that he can assess the threat of the situation accurately, and respond accordingly,  before we can move much further with his training.

Every textbook I’ve read on anxiety says that desensitization is a tough program, and it is.  Very few clients have the time or energy to work on it to the level that they need to, and none of them can afford to have me do it for them.  The fact of the matter is that for many of these dogs to have any sort of normal outside life we’ve got to do more for them and the MORE often includes anti anxiety medication in conjunction with their training.

The conversation I’m going to have with this dog when it’s owners return is that we need to provide every tool we can to this pup to offer it as normal and fulfilling a life as possible.  We will, of course, continue with the behavior modification techniques and de-sensitization work but I want to move through that so that the dog actually has more opportunity to "Learn" that not everything is going to cause him harm.  I’ve seen this with other clients and I have seen the medications do wonderful things for dogs that were "hopeless cases".  

Without a doubt, this is a controversial stance in the dog trainer community, but I think that the pups deserve just as much an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors as we do.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidleio Dog Works
www.fideliodogs.com

Over the last few years I’ve run across several different combination designer dog breeds. Labradoodles, cockapoos, goldendoodles…you get the idea.  It’s an interesting idea to mix breeds like this because it widens the gene pool and allows for the best traits of both breeds to be combined.

Today I started working with a wonderful little 12 week old puppy today that was of a mix I’ve never seen before and has a wonderful mash up name.  This pup was a cross between a Cavalier King Charles and a mini Poodle.  It’s a Cavapoo and was it ever cute!

That’s one for the new name book for sure.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogs.com 

My deaf dog training update.

Right before the holidays I got to meet my favorite hearing impaired dog that I had been training recently.  I wanted to meet in a park where i knew there would be crazy and tons of other dogs would be running around.  In short, this was the training test for these clients.

I’d had two sessions with this dog practicing with the remote vibrating collar.  Everything had gone great in their yard and neighborhood, but I wanted to see how things would work out in the real world.

To me, training recall is one of the tougher things to teach a dog. There is always something "out there" more fun for the dog to sniff or play with rather than come back to the handler.  Dog trainers constantly struggle with clients to make them understand how important it is to practice recall until their dog comes to them without thinking about it.  Every dog trainer wants to make certain that running back to you is automatic response when the dog hears the word "Come".

With this deaf dog we taught it that when a vibrating collar was activated it was the same as the word "come" to a hearing dog.  

What I got when we got the the park was a fantastic surprise.  They let the dog go and it immediately streaked out into the park to play with the other off leash dogs.  We let it play for a few minutes and then the owner "pressed the button" to call the dog.  She stopped playing immediately, looked around for her owners, and came running full speed back to them.  I was completely elated.  She did that every time we called her for the next hour out there and in the midst of the most extreme distraction (30 or so dogs) imaginable.  I was so proud of the three of them.

I have great things happen to me all the time training dogs, but when the owners told me that they were now confident they could take her anywhere with them, I almost cried.  To give that dog and those clients a much better quality of life is why I LOVE training dogs here in Austin.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogs.com

Temple Grandin is an amazing lady.  She has a gift that allows her to see things as animals do in many circumstances which puts her on a different level than the rest of us.

 As a dog trainer I run across odd things now and again that require me to actually sit down and think like a dog.  This happened last week and I thought it was interesting enough to write about and something others might find helpful.

I’ve been working with a client whose dog was refusing to use their dog door.  This isn’t that unusual for dogs newly faced with a dog door but this pup had been going in and out of a different doggie door for several years.  It turns out that the owner had recently replaced their house door and put in a shiny new doggie door for this pup which it wouldn’t have ANYTHING to do with, it wouldn’t even put it’s nose to the door when I got there. 

This just didn’t make sense.  Most dogs would have some trepidation about going out a new door but it was almost like this dog had "forgotten" how to open it and that just didn’t square with how intelligent this dog was in other areas.  After sitting down for a few minutes and looking the doggie door over, I thought back to something Ms. Grandin said in one of her books about animals and shiny things.  This dog door had a small shiny edge on the bottom of the plastic flap that stood out.  We grabbed some painters tape and covered over the shiny part and within five minutes we had the dog jumping through the door and pushing the flap up himself.  Amazing!  Something that simple had kept this pup from going outside for weeks and weeks.

Moral to the story is, sometimes all the dog training in the world won’t help you, but cutting out the glare from the shiny stuff will.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogs.com
512.231.8095