When I teach dog listening I want to teach the whole family. For dog listening to be truly successful, for the dog, every person in the family has to lead.
This is often the hardest part! I am usually dealing with the one person who does the feeding, the cleaning, the walking, the training…while everyone else does the playing, mucking around with and loving of the dog. I know how hard it is to get everyone on board with solving the dogs problems. It took me over a year to get my husband Nick to agree.
I read The Dog Listener in February 2019 and managed to get Nick to not look at the dogs for a few days, so we saw an immediate dramatic improvement in recall. I then went on to do the online course, the foundation course, the advanced course and the graduate course. All the time improving my skills and working with dogs.
Nick carried on just as he was. I could get so far with Lupin my Springer but was seemingly failing to get her completely relaxed on lead, her perceived danger on lead still created anxiety. Then lockdown happened and I finally got Nick to watch The Dog Listener DVD. Kate Atkins who I trained with created the progress chart and I got Nick to fill it in honestly. Suddenly I was aware that he was only doing about a quarter of what he was meant to. The chart and watching Jan made a change in him and he started following the rules.
The change in the dogs was equally as dramatic and the final piece of the puzzle to make them truly trust us was in place. About a week later he had the cheek to tell me:
“So Dog Listening only really works when the whole family take the lead”
Never a truer word spoken!
Sarahx
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