Why can’t I take my dog to the fair?

Well … maybe you can. Maybe you have a bombproof dog who loves everyone and likes nothing more than all the busyness, noise, and goings-on at your local summer fete.

Then again, maybe your dog is like most dogs, and finds traipsing round a hot and busy fairground, on a short lead, with children screaming, people laughing, smells of burgers, spilt chips in the grass you won’t let him eat, loudspeakers blaring - a complete nightmare.

You can’t put him back in the car as it’s way too hot. So your unhappy dog is stuck with this for as long as you choose to stay at the event. Hot, bothered, fed up.

Now this is where you’ll send me a photo of your dog on your last outing, quietly standing beside you. All the more surprising to you because your dog is usually wary of strangers and other dogs, and seemed to be “absolutely fine” in the midst of thousands of them.

“He’s fine!” you’ll assure me.

But it’s very likely that this change in behaviour was not down to him “being fine”, rather that he’s “shut down”. This is a coping mechanism we all employ when overwhelmed.

We become subdued, we stay quiet, make ourselves small. We hope not to be noticed, spoken to, or challenged.

It’s a form of learned helplessness.

We know that nothing we do will change the situation, so we give up. Surrender to our fate. But it doesn’t mean we’re enjoying it!

Your dog, as I so often say, is the exact same. He finds himself in a situation he can’t handle. With hundreds of people, children, dogs, in close proximity, he knows he can’t employ his usual methods of requesting space - barking, lunging, screaming, snarling - which work like a charm at removing the approaching thing from their path, or getting themselves removed by an embarrassed owner.

Watch and wait

Some dogs will be much happier out of the thick of things, on the sidelines where they can safely observe what’s in front of them without having to scan the full 360° (see there’s nothing behind this puppy in the picture - she only needs to check in front of her).

He will also appreciate you watching how he is (soft mouth, soft ears and shoulders, no gasping panting, head not dropped, no twitchiness or slinking about) and removing him from the situation after maybe as little as three minutes. And yes, you can’t plonk him in the hot car or you’ll have a worse problem! Take him home.

You may be surprised that even your very friendly dog finds a busy outing a bit too much. Continually being restrained from jumping all over a thousand new friends who must want to meet him, will wear him out!

If you’re planning on visiting a big event, put your dog in training for the occasion. You can start with a walk past the local shops, sitting at the other end of a school road at school-out time, a shopping centre car park on a quiet day, a busier day, a Saturday …

Don’t plunge him into a new and strange environment, which could cause him distress, without finding out beforehand how he’s going to manage.

Then you can amend your plans accordingly. We can enjoy our family outings, but we don’t necessarily need to take our dog.

Here are some more articles which will help you understand just what’s going on with your dog when you’re out and about:

How to get calmer dogwalks

How heat can affect your dog’s coping skills

How to plan a successful day out with your dog

Need more help understanding your Growly Dog? Get this free e-course

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How Lacy helps other dogs

This article was first published on 4knines.com and is reprinted here with permission.

Even as a young puppy Lacylu scared people. They would cling to each other and cross the road when they saw her coming.

She looked like a brown bear cub. In no way was she a petite or cute pup, though she did have a very pretty face – still does.

But it was clear from very early on that she was going to struggle in an urban world, full of people, other dogs, things that go bang in the night …

As she matured Lulubelle became more, not less, difficult. She reckoned that she needed to protect the 3,000 acres around us, starting at my feet. Anyone or anything that hove into view prompted ferocious barking - and if she was able she would chase them away.

For help with your reactive, anxious, aggressive, “growly” dog, get our free email course here.

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I know just what it’s like to be a pariah. I’ve had the wrath of ignorant people rain down on me when my dog has barked and lunged toward them. If only they could understand what a gentle and loving dog she really is!

And this is where my lessons began

I’d been training dogs for competition for many years, and after lots of study, I had opened my dog training school the year before, at an age when many people are slowing down and switching off – not studying, sitting exams, learning about SEO, public indemnity insurance, and payment systems!

So Lulu arrived at a very good time for me (and, I think, for her).

I started learning about fearful dogs, anxious dogs, aggressive dogs, Growly Dogs; guardy dogs, nervous dogs, barky dogs (Lacy loves to bark); people’s fears, people’s reactions, people’s emotions.

I was voracious – all the available methods were scrutinised and run past my personal ethos. Many were dismissed out of hand as being harsh or even cruel. Some were hard to assimilate into everyday life. Some were ineffectual. Finally I found the best of the best and focused my energies on developing my skills there, and building my own system.

• I learnt why anxious dogs behave as they do

• I learnt kind techniques that put a worried dog at ease – CLUE: the first step is always distance!

• I learnt how to keep people away without causing them to panic

• And – most important – I learnt how to help other people with their “growly” dogs

Lacy’s now able to look at a strange person or dog and move on. She logs their position carefully, just in case they should try anything … but she can pass them peacefully. (She’s never bitten anyone.)

My fluffy bear cub has come so far in a few years – and is helping others like her to gain confidence and give their owners at the other end of the lead a bit of peace. Both dog and owner learn new coping skills together.

Helping my dog get over her fears has led to a better life for so many more dogs!

Once the poor harassed owners learn that their much-loved dog is not nasty or vicious a new life opens up before them.

It certainly did for me!

Your first step towards your new life with your growly dog is in this free e-course

   

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Are two puppies better than one?

People often come to me with problems with their two (or more) dogs.

They tell me they got two dogs usually for one of these reasons:

• The first puppy was so cute and adorable they just had to get another.

• They’re at work all day and feel guilty about the dog being alone.

• They just thought it would be twice as much fun.

• They got one for each child and mum ended up with both of them …

• They were pressured into it by the “breeder” (this is a common puppy farm ploy) and were sorry for the puppy being left behind.

So there often wasn’t too much thought involved, and little prior research!

More commonsense tips to be found in this free 8-lesson email course to get you started with your dog

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Now I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t have two or more dogs - as long as you have the time for them. I have four, and I know lots of people with two+ very happy dogs.

 But what you need to know is that it isn’t necessarily plain sailing!

You can’t just get another dog or pup and toss it into the mix and let it sink or swim! There could be lasting bad fallout from this. Either the older dogs (who never asked for another dog in the family) are pestered mercilessly till their temper frays and they snap at the youngster. Or - possibly worse - the two dogs become such firm friends that the newer dog has no relationship with you whatsoever, and is wild.

Keep ‘em apart!

What many people don’t realise is that you have to rear the new dog largely separate from the present incumbent.

This is fairly easy with a puppy as they’re on a completely different sleep and feeding schedule from your older dog, and need to be kept to limited space for sleep and housetraining purposes. Walks should be solo so that you can keep up your relationship with your older dog and develop one with the newcomer. Yes, it requires double the work, but you end up with two dogs who enjoy each others’ company, but enjoy you most of all!

To find out exactly how to introduce a new puppy into your household of one or more dogs, read this post

Littermates

But the big trouble comes when people get two puppies at once. Or they get another puppy when the first is only a few months old.

They expect them to entertain each other, to save them the bother of doing it themselves. They let them roll and scrap all day long. They leave them more or less alone together. When the lunatics begin to take over the asylum, they don’t know who is responsible for which misdemeanour. So they either ignore the poor behaviour and let it develop and grow, or they punish both puppies just to be sure, to be sure.

They don’t know how much either pup is sleeping, how much he’s eating, and who is producing which poo (important to keep an eye on this for health reasons).

In any relationship, one tends to make the decisions and the other tends to follow. What will happen to your shyer pup if you lose the bolder one? It could take years for the remaining dog to recover from the loss.

So can I get a second dog?

Broadly speaking, yes - if you follow these guidelines:

• Your first dog should already have reached maturity - 1 to 2 years old for most dogs. The larger the breed, the slower they are to mature.

• You must follow a program of relationship-building between the two dogs, and each dog and you. This takes TIME! Follow the guidance in this post

• You need to focus most of your attention on the new puppy for his critical first year. Have you enough time to go round?

• Before you even consider adding another dog in to your home, read this series of posts on how to choose the right dog for you.

• If you fall for your heart’s or your child’s or the puppy salesperson’s nagging and get two littermates - you really have your work cut out! Follow the guidance in the linked post. Sleep the puppies in separate crates, maybe separate rooms, feed separately, walk separately, go on socialisation outings separately, separate handlers in puppy class - or separate classes, play separately, and so on. Of course they can interact with each other, but a good rule of thumb is to allow ⅓ the amount of time for playing together as you can give each individual puppy. Yup. That means they get to play together for 20’ in the day, perhaps 5’ at a time, as long as you can give each dog 1 hour of your time. And that play must always be actively supervised!

Still want to get two puppies?? 

Follow these guidelines and you’ll end up with two well-balanced, and possibly well-trained dogs (that depends entirely on how much time you put into training them!), who respond to you.

And for more helpful and dog-friendly advice - on what to do with the critters once you have them! - get our free 8-part email course here.

More commonsense tips to be found in this free 8-lesson email course to get you started with your dog

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My dog knows he's done wrong

No he doesn’t!

He has no idea!

All he knows is that you are cross and he has not got a clue why!

So he runs through a series of appeasing behaviours to show that he’s no threat. This may include lowered head, looking away, lowered body posture, creeping, slinking away, screwing up his eyes and grinning, licking his lips, yawning, walking in slow motion silently, licking you, jumping on you, nudging you, burying his head in you. A young puppy can even lose bladder or bowel control in his distress.

All the while you are wagging your finger, shouting or yelling - or worse (as anyone who had a vicious headmistress like I did will know!) going very, very, still and quiet and saying “What. Do. You. Think. You’re. Doing?”

He doesn’t know. Really. He’s a dog.

Dog Body Language

More commonsense tips to be found in this free 8-lesson email course to get you started with your dog

   

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Dogs express themselves largely through their body language. While most people see nothing - just a dog - it’s in fact a sophisticated language which is very clear, once you learn it.

As a dog-owner it’s your duty to learn Dog Body Language!

You wouldn’t adopt a child from another country and refuse to listen to anything she said until she could express herself fluently in your language. It’s such nonsense when you look at it like that!

So know that you have to observe your dog, look out for every ear-twitch, every sideways glance - what’s his head doing? what’s his movement telling me?

There are some good resources online for learning these movements. Here’s a good one from the amazing artist Lili Chin, of the Body Language of Fear in Dogs

Do you recognise some of these from your own dog? Start looking! You’ll see them all, in time …

So why does he look so “guilty”?

All this is telling you that telling your dog off and assuming that because he slinks or cowers or looks away, he understands what you’re on about, is mistaken! (That’s polite-speak for WRONG!)

Dogs don’t “look guilty”, or “know they’ve done wrong”. Something a few correspondents have been trying to tell me this week.

Those awful videos that get circulated online - of dogs “looking guilty” - are horrible. Anyone who actually understands dogs knows that the dog is deeply unhappy and distressed by the hostility her owner is demonstrating. Having no idea of the cause, all she can do is grovel. Setting these situations up and videoing them is cruelty, no less.

What can you do instead when something you don’t like has happened?

The first thing to do is to look at why the thing happened. And very often you’ll find the finger is pointing at … yourself!

◆   Who left the dog alone with the kitchen waste bin?

◆   Who left the door open so that your curious dog went out through it?

◆   Who failed to follow a force-free housetraining program and now has a confused dog who doesn’t know where to relieve herself?

◆   Who left valuable yet chewable items within reach of a puppy who has as yet no boundaries?

So if you come home to find a mess, just clear it up quietly, while resolving to change your own habits so that it can’t happen again.

Our dogs have it hard enough living in our strange world without being told off for breaking rules they didn’t know existed! If you follow this path, you’ll have a hard time ever gaining her trust.

My dog knows when he's done wrong

My dog doesn’t need a muzzle

Oh yes. He does!

All dogs need to be familiar with a muzzle and accept it without demur. There are lots of reasons for this - safety round other dogs, keeping other dog-owners away, scavenging and picking up stones and slugs, for treatment at the vets - the list goes on.

I think a lot of the antipathy to muzzles is because of some wrong thinking. People think that if a dog is muzzled it is dangerous. In fact, it’s the safest dog around! His armoury is all behind closed doors.

But people seldom think this through. That doesn’t matter when we’re talking about other people. But when we’re talking about you, the owner, it does matter!

Why do owners resist teaching their dog to wear a muzzle, and why should they anyway?

I go into detail on this subject in my post at https://www.brilliantfamilydog.com/blog/should-my-dog-wear-a-muzzle

So here I want to focus on the most depressing thing I see.

Ex-racing Greyhounds

I know personally of two gruesome cases where unmuzzled ex-racing greyhounds attacked a small pet dog. In one case a beloved puppy was ripped to pieces in front of his family. In the other case a small dog was almost pulled apart by two unmuzzled ex-racers but rescued by brave passers-by. It took many months of care from her vet and her distraught owner for her physical wounds to heal, and her PTSD-type memories are still needing work, years later.

It’s fashionable for people to adopt ex-racing greyhounds. These dogs are usually spent by about 3-5 years of age (if successful) and earlier if they were not winning.

Sighthounds are naturally quiet and biddable most of the time. They can make great pets in the home. They like to sleep 23 hours a day,  wake up for a bit of food then go back to sleep.

But you have to remember:

These dogs are killing machines

Now before you throw up your hands in horror and stuff my inbox with complaints, think about what they have experienced all their lives. They have been trained to chase down anything small, fluffy, or fast-moving, and kill it. That’s what they’re bred for, and that’s what they are encouraged to do.

They are muzzled from an early age, usually with comfortable, light, racing muzzles that allow them to pant freely and drink.

In some countries, greyhounds must be kept on lead at all times in public, and the number of greyhounds led at a time is limited. In some countries also, greyhounds need to be muzzled at all times.

To be fair, some of the greyhound adoption agencies recommend that at least to start with your ex-racer should be muzzled in public, though it’s not the law in most of the UK (Northern Ireland excepted - where all sighthounds must be muzzled in public). It’s so easy, because it’s what they’re used to!

Your newly-adopted ex-racing greyhound is an unknown quantity to you. You need to take precautions for many months before you know whether you have one of the lazy ones who couldn’t be bothered to chase anything, or one whose switch can be flipped in a second, triggering a chase that no dog or cat can escape.

The owner of the greyhounds in one of the instances I mentioned above had only had her two dogs for a couple of weeks. She had NO idea how dangerous they were, singly, and together. The adoption agency had not told her anything about the dangers, only that these were gentle pets. This nonsensical approach caused the horrible incident where the new elderly owner watched - screaming helplessly -  while her two new dogs attempted to pull the small dog apart.

She was traumatised by the event, paid the victim dog owner’s vet bills, and returned the dogs immediately to the adoption agency.

Unnecessary suffering

These horrors were totally unnecessary!

• If the adoption people had faced the truth and told it to the new owners;

• If the new owners had had the sense they were born with and took steps to take the firing pin out of their dangerous weapons;

• If an inexperienced elderly lady had not taken on two large dogs trained to kill;

• And if owners of small dogs were aware of the danger;

all this may not have happened.

Small-dog owners need to take care

My smallest dog is fluffy and fast. So whenever I see ex-racing greyhounds on my travels, Coco Poodle is either close to my feet on lead, or I pick him up, to remove the instinctive visual chase response from the hounds.

And before you all sharpen your quills and dip them into poison ink, I declare that I have a sighthound too. She was never raced, but her chasing instincts are strong. See the power in her leap! But yes, she does sleep most of the time!

More commonsense tips to be found in this free 8-lesson email course to get you started with your dog

 

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Well that was a great week of dog training!

The 5 Day Workshop was roundly acclaimed a great success! People got results that astonished them. Things they’d been struggling with for months or years were resolved in just five intensive days. 

I love celebrating my students’ successes, so while my team and I are still working on the aftermath of the Workshop and welcoming new students into the two courses recommended,

From Wild Puppy to Brilliant Family Dog

and

From Challenging Dog to Brilliant Family Dog

… I thought I’d let the Workshoppers speak for themselves:

Thank you for caring, it is so genuine. I am looking forward to this course!

My 14 week old puppy loved this! He couldn’t take his eyes off me, plus he sat after every treat without being told.

Did two sessions already and his recalls outside improved. This is going to be a fabulous week!! Thank you so much!

Thanks for your kind approach; it’s so much nicer than harsh words or worse!

Thank you for making the course and emails so easy to follow!

So Meg (the world's most anxious Border Collie who we've only had for a few weeks), has been playing - yes real playing with tail wagging, playbows, and coming back for more! She's now exhausted and flat out after all the playing - looking very relaxed. I'm a convert.

You are so amazing. I’m so enjoying this training video - hugs from me and Rory

He's improved so much and isn't as reactive when out.

You put the tools in front of us and give us the confidence to experiment! I so appreciate your clarity!

Though I teach others and we do this practice every day with my own dogs, we are loving and benefiting from the group experience. Thank you so much for this, this is my first course like this. The course so far is great, even for a training professional!

She is much better on the lead since playing the focus game yeah

This is really revolutionary! Thank you for sharing your wisdom and by that helping a huge number of people be their best version of pet companion.

This course really works and not just for a week. I haven't used any verbal cues or hand signals while playing the game. Looking forward to tomorrow morning when we do the next unit.

It usually takes at least two calls to get him in reluctantly from the garden. Today after the focus game, adding the sit cue, I called him, he came racing in on first call and sat in front of me! It’s only day 4 …

You’re a godsend.

Molly has always been very responsive to training (she's a collie/springer cross) but OMG! What an eye-opener and what fun to actually see her thinking and working out what I want her to do! It's so different but she's so engaged with me - I think she’s really enjoying it. It's amazing!! I feel tickled pink!

So proud of how my little dog is progressing, thanks to what we are learning from Beverley, would never have thought it possible, but we’re steadily getting there!

Fantastic information delivered in a very easy to understand manner. I always pick up a great tip from you - Thanks!

It all makes so much sense. And we are seeing such changes in both dogs.

Just wanted to say thank you for the 5 day workshop, we have seen a really big difference in Maisie, she is a lot more calm and much more focused on her walks which means no pulling on the lead and she also seems much more content.

Thank you so much for the workshop. It's has been incredibly helpful and great fun and has finally tired her out!!!

Thank you so much. Your 5 day Workshop has been most enlightening, I have always taught my dogs using a soft voice and a gentle touch, but I must say your method this week has been an eye-opener, letting the dog work out what is required! Fantastic idea.

This week has been thoroughly enjoyable for both myself and Maisey,

Isn't it fabulous how focused they are on you?

It’s amazing how quickly they work it out x

We have learned so much from Beverley Courtney's Essential Skills for a Brilliant Family Dog and the Growly but Brilliant Family Dog books.

Love this training. Bonnie and I have learned so much in such a short time. Thank you Beverley.

Saw so much progress with the 5 day Workshop. Dogs and us calmer and enjoying each other so much more. Stress levels right down.

I love love LOVE that as a beginner it’s about just doing the exercises and letting the magic happen, whether with my creativity or my dog’s responses! THIS I can do!!

 A big thank you Beverley and team for a fantastic 5 day Workshop.

Basking in praise?

No, I’m not! I’m too busy helping the new students find everything they need and supplying them with their course notebooks …

But I can allow myself a pat on the back for helping more dogs round the world have a happier life with their devoted owners, and be better understood.

I’ll drink to that!

Plenty of ideas in this free 8-lesson email course for changing your life with your dog!

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