I just wanted to share a book I came across that made a real difference in training our dog.
It is called “Click to Calm” by Emma Parson.
After a real roller coaster of learning experiences for everyone involved (the dog, my husband and me) I kind of hit a wall motivation-wise. The dog, a hunting terrier, male, 9 months old is quite the opposite of being aggressive as he loves people and playing but from the start he was way too excited and hard to calm down.
After some time I was just tired of getting sarcastic comments like: “Well, great decision to get a terrier as a first dog.” The dog is a fit, but we as owners clearly were lacking the tools and knowledge and attitude it takes to train a self-confident dog.
The clicker training really helped. He entered puberty full swing and was suddenly half-deaf when it came to following commands and acted just stupid. Then we started the clicker training and two weeks later we had him temporarily fixed with a hormone chip. That has been nearly two weeks now and man, this dog is making progress. He can suddenly concentrate and train with the other dogs instead of being all excited and jumping around, pulling on the leash. And he manages to calm down while in company. He still has a big kennel in the living room for the night or for short periods when we can’t supervise him and he doesn’t want to rest, but suddenly we experience more and more times when the dog is sleeping on the carpet or chewing a bone and being super relaxed. It might be a combination of the clicker and the hormones but the clicker had shown great results from the start.
We (dog and humans) all still have a lot to learn but the improvements have been really amazing and maybe the book is worth a read for other dog-owners.
It is called “Click to Calm” by Emma Parson.
After a real roller coaster of learning experiences for everyone involved (the dog, my husband and me) I kind of hit a wall motivation-wise. The dog, a hunting terrier, male, 9 months old is quite the opposite of being aggressive as he loves people and playing but from the start he was way too excited and hard to calm down.
After some time I was just tired of getting sarcastic comments like: “Well, great decision to get a terrier as a first dog.” The dog is a fit, but we as owners clearly were lacking the tools and knowledge and attitude it takes to train a self-confident dog.
The clicker training really helped. He entered puberty full swing and was suddenly half-deaf when it came to following commands and acted just stupid. Then we started the clicker training and two weeks later we had him temporarily fixed with a hormone chip. That has been nearly two weeks now and man, this dog is making progress. He can suddenly concentrate and train with the other dogs instead of being all excited and jumping around, pulling on the leash. And he manages to calm down while in company. He still has a big kennel in the living room for the night or for short periods when we can’t supervise him and he doesn’t want to rest, but suddenly we experience more and more times when the dog is sleeping on the carpet or chewing a bone and being super relaxed. It might be a combination of the clicker and the hormones but the clicker had shown great results from the start.
We (dog and humans) all still have a lot to learn but the improvements have been really amazing and maybe the book is worth a read for other dog-owners.