Your puppy’s first Christmas is coming!

If your puppy is brand new and very young, then he needs to be protected - as you would protect any baby - and keep his routine as near as possible to how it usually is.

If your puppy is older, more excitable, boisterous - or perhaps nervous around strangers - then a slightly different approach is indicated.

Either way it’s important that you are on the ball and can give your puppy the attention and care he needs, regardless of how busy your schedule may be.

In general, Christmas is a time of upheaval for dogs.

Upheaval = stress

Stress for your dog = stress for you, and for your guests!

So what can you do to minimise the stress?

Very young puppy up to 15 weeks old

Let’s look at the brand new puppy first.

This is a vital time for your puppy’s socialisation - which can only effectively happen between the ages of 3 and 15 weeks.

As ever, ALL experiences must be positive!

So this means you are on duty the whole time your puppy is awake and there are visitors and new activities taking place. As this young a puppy should be sleeping at least seventeen hours a day, this really isn’t hard!

For a puppy who’s still a bit leaky, greet your visitors outside, then it won’t matter if the excitement causes damp patches on the pavement.

It’s important that you maintain his usual schedule, in terms of sleeping, eating (should still be on 3 or 4 meals a day), and housetraining. You’ll have a cosy, quiet, place for him to do all of this, and you need to ensure that your puplet won’t be disturbed by anyone, especially over-excited children!

If you haven’t already got a cosy nest, make one now - set it up in a quiet room whose door you can lock - and start using it straight away! Consider soft lighting, half-covering the crate, soft music (classical, Mozart, is best - but you can also find stuff on Youtube). The music will not only soothe and calm your dog, but also muffle some of the sounds of the household.

The older puppy, over 15 weeks

Your older puppy is well past the socialisation period, but you have hopefully been introducing him to new experiences - happily - ever since.

The more novelty your young dog enjoys, the better he’ll be able to cope with novelty in the future.

You’ll be following the same guidance as for the very young puppy, but he’ll be sleeping an hour or so less. And depending on how much he’s learned of the outside world, you may need to do some counterconditioning work to help him cope with visitors invading his usually quiet home!

We can show you how to do this in detail in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy, but what counterconditioning means is gradually acclimatising your dog to something new - firstly in a very dilute form (I.e. at a great distance) and slowly nearer, always with lots of tasty treats. How do you know how to get nearer? When your dog shows little more than curious interest at the sight of the thing that previously worried him.

Remember he’s still very young, and very impressionable!

And remember too that lasting damage can be done if you fail to protect his burgeoning personality, his confidence.

Not to mention the damage that can be done to squawking children or furniture if your puppy is allowed to get overstressed and exhausted!

You’ll find more ideas in our free e-course with eight lessons here.

Keep your dog and your Christmas food safe!

There’s still time to stop your dog scarfing up all your Christmas goodies, get dangerously ill and have you all spending Christmas at the vets.

Christmas may be a time of peace and harmony, but it’s also a time of entertaining and chaos! And if there’s food everywhere and no-one minding the dog, then this can end badly.

I’m not just talking about the children’s tears when their chocolate is stolen, but that a lot of our festive goodies are seriously toxic for dogs!

Grapes in any form can be poisonous for dogs. So Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, and mince pies can result in that vet hospital stay for your dog.

And that isn’t just alarmist nonsense! I know people personally who have had their Christmas ruined by someone not noticing that a handful of mince pies and an untrained dog were left unattended in the same area!

Fortunately their awareness of the dangers and emergency action saved their dog.

Chocolate is another villain for many dogs.

And of course, cooked poultry bones are also a hazard.

It’s so easy - in all the excitement - for your guard to be down, and visitors leave stuff around in reach of your dog.

But how much better to teach your dog the impulse control necessary to enable you to relax!

If you start now, you can have your dog leaving food - just like puppy Lulu in the image above, and Lois here, impressively undisturbed by the fry-up inches from her nose!

Not to mention young Red, studiously avoiding the sausage sandwiches beside him! (These dogs are all students of mine, who learnt by the method I’m going to show you.)

So how are you going to do this? Nothing could be easier!

Just follow the lessons in this step-by-step book, and your dog will be ignoring dead birds on walks, discarded chips, found food, food on the counter, even cake on the coffee table!

Leave it! How to teach Amazing Impulse Control to your Brilliant Family Dog in the series Essential Skills for your Brilliant Family Dog

And to get you started, here’s an excerpt from the book!

INTRODUCTION: Now you see it, now you don’t!

“I only turned my back for a second,” Sally wailed to me in class, “and the whole cake was gone!”

She’d left it on the kitchen worktop, out of reach of her dog Jacko - or so she thought! She came back from her phone call to see the dog in his bed, his face festooned with frosting, polishing off the last remains of the cake.

This thieving happened regularly, which showed that Sally was a bit of a slower learner than Jacko!

For some dogs it’s “counter-surfing” - stealing food from the kitchen worktops. For others, it’s anything they can snatch up from the floor. It could be the children’s toys, stones from the drive, or ice cream from a child’s hand.

Oh, and don’t forget dead things they find on country walks which will make them sick on the carpet later.

There’s also the safety issue of sharp things, poisonous things, and medications. It could be jumping out of the car as soon as the door is opened a crack, crashing through doors at home, barging past you on the stairs to trip you up, or leaping about like a thing possessed when you mention the word “walk”. Then there’s barking at the window, yipping at other dogs playing, and whining for dinner.

All stem from the same issue - lack of impulse control.

See it - gotta have it!

We have no problem teaching our children how to control their desires - so why do we struggle with dogs? Perhaps people tend to think they can’t expect anything better. “It’s only a dog,” they tell themselves. As you probably know if you’ve reared children or managed staff - what you expect is what you get!

Dogs can learn just as well as children can. In the wild, they would need to learn self-control in order to survive in a competitive environ- ment. Puppies learn early not to interfere with big brother’s dinner, and organising a hunt can involve days of hunger, stalking, and patience. In their natural state, dogs are opportunist scavengers. A whole cake just above nose level? Obviously a prize for the dog.

There isn’t a moral issue here. Until you teach her what’s what, any food is fair game for your dog.

Dogs don’t do things to spite their owners! Dogs do what works.

If swiping the cake off the counter tastes good, then they’ll do it again and again. Why shouldn’t they? But it doesn’t mean that your house has to be in permanent lockdown for the next fifteen years.

● Would you like to be able to leave food out wherever you want, secure in the knowledge that your dog won’t touch it?

● Would you like to have a dog who sits calmly to have the lead put on when you’re getting ready for a walk?

● How about waiting at the top of the stairs to be released, rather than charging down to trip you up?

● Keeping their feet on the floor when visitors arrive?

● Or leaving those tasty and dangerous slugs and pebbles well alone?

I hear you thinking, “This must involve loads of different training techniques. I’ll be forever training my dog new things when all I want is a companion dog and a quiet life!”

Nope. It’s just the one thing: Impulse Control …

You can enjoy this book in ebook or paperback here, or audiobook direct from the author here.

Choose your poison! And do let me know how you get on!

By the way, for English readers, here’s a load of money off a super food I regularly use and here’s another where you can get a big discount using this link - they provide high-quality fishy treats and foods, which are firm favourites with my crew!

Old dogs are the best!

There’s a charm, an utter delight, to be found in our old dogs.

Such loyalty and devotion down so many years demands equal loyalty and devotion from us.

And it's in reciprocating this love that you can find the deepest pleasure in giving - not in receiving, as you may be led to believe from all the noise and clamour around you!

Looking after your old friend is a pleasure, not a chore.

And a few simple thoughts may help you keep him or her fit and well for as long as possible.

1. The first thought, handed down to me many years ago by Bing Bellamy of Sealight Border Collies fame, was “Never leave an old dog wet.” Many of her dogs were kennelled so this was doubly important.

My old guy Rollo who you can see above - who sleeps indoors in comfort, and who’s 15½ now - would love to lie about on the wet grass. Nope! He’s not been allowed to stay outside in the wet for quite a few years now.

2. Similarly, make a comfortable bed for them. As many Border Collies do, Rollo eschewed comfy beds for years, always preferring the floor. But he’s always had the choice. And the mattress-style bed he has now has found favour with him, and although he normally starts the night on the floor, he shortly afterwards transfers to the bed for night-long comfort for his old bones.

3. For diet, my dogs have always been largely raw-fed, so no change is required. Rollo still has a good set of gnashers and has no difficulty crunching bones. I do think this is down to the raw feeding anyway.

Keeping an eye on your old dog’s poo is important to remember. You can get a lot of warning of change here. Raw-fed poo is small, very firm, and dry. Good stuff.

My dogs tend to make old bones - 14-16 years old - and I put this down to plenty of carefully-regulated exercise to suit the individual, a great varied diet, and keeping away from meds and routine treatments as far as possible!

Old age kicks in

4. A lot of dogs lose their hearing as they age. And Rollo has been pretty deaf for a couple of years now. He can still hear a high-pitched shriek or whistle (he’s lost the lower register) and chooses to stay very near me on walks, so he can still get plenty of off-lead exercise, snuffling, and mooching about.

5. His eyesight is also diminishing. But it doesn’t offer any problems at this stage and he can still see plenty. His long gaze into my face, accompanied by his ever-waving tail, show me that he can still see the important things in life - my love for him.

6. One thing it’s essential to keep up is stimulation! Whether that’s plenty of exercise or only a little, your old dog just needs to move a bit and enjoy the outside world - sniffing, mooching, snuffling - new scents and sounds, and to revisit favourite places. The beach is a firm favourite with Rollo, so we make sure to include beach visits regularly. These activities are all vital to keep his brain active and his days fun. It’ll also help keep those joints moving longer.

7. You’ll probably get to know your vet a bit better at this stage of your dog’s life. So be sure your vet is prepared to give your dog the extra time and care he may need.

There are new developments all the time, and a good vet will be aware of these, and can alleviate the pain of stiff old bones, perhaps giving your dog a new lease of life - those extra months or years that will be so precious!

I have found too that the services of a Canine Massage Therapist, or perhaps even a Physio, can also help greatly.

And at the end, if you can have your vet come to your house, rather than subject your very very old dog to one last distressing journey, that would be the best solution all round.

7. You have to allow extra time for your old fella, or old girl. Just a bit of extra time to negotiate corners, letting him become aware you’re wanting to get past, help on stairs, perhaps adding baby-gates to ensure he’s safe, making him feel as included as he’s always been.

I’d like you to read this article too: Celebrate your Dog while you still have her

And do tell us in the comments - how are you getting on with your dear old dog?

So you want to become a dog trainer?

You love the life you can enjoy with your dog, now you know how you can teach her in a totally kind and loving way!

And you’d love to help other people improve life with their dog too, so that both they and their dog can have a happier life.

So many of you would make great dog trainers - and so many of you think you can’t do it.

Why?

We have a mechanism in our brains that tends to stop us doing what we know we really want to do.

We get caught up in thoughts of insufficiency, not-good-enoughness, inability to run a business, can’t manage tech … all these things are just your brain reassuring you that staying in your box and forgetting your dream is the right thing to do.

But it ain’t!

If you truly want to devote your life to helping dogs and their owners, you need to say, “Thank you, Brain, but I’ve got this!”

And do it!

See how things changed for EB once those misgivings were pushed aside:

“The support from you all has been great for my confidence and you are so encouraging Beverley, that your belief in me has made me believe in me!” EB

Support all the way

I love helping gifted force-free dog trainers bring their gifts to the world! 

I love knowing this is my legacy to the world - so that those who like what I do can continue to teach people and their dogs in the way that I have developed and that resonates with so many.

“Thanks for what you do for dogs and their people!” CT

“You are a real blessing to me and many others!” DB

“Things were going from bad to worse with my dog. Thank goodness I found Beverley whose kind, insightful and exceptionally effective methods are simply the best!” LA

Want to teach your dog an instant recall?

Do you want an instant recall?

I don’t think there’s any sane dog-owner who’d say, “Er, no thanks, I don’t care whether my dog comes back or not.”

Everyone wants an instant recall!

And an instant recall is not hard to teach - in fact it’s great fun to teach! But the operative word here is TEACH.

Your dog does not arrive with an instant recall installed. Whether a tiny puppy or an older dog, he does not have any idea what you want … until you teach him!

So yelling his name, nicely or crossly, stamping your foot, blowing a whistle - none of this will work until you teach him what it means and why he will WANT to do it.

[HINT: if he doesn’t want to do it, you’re wasting your breath yelling and all the rest! This is a two-way thing.]

The first step

So how do you achieve this wonderful Nirvana state of calling your dog, just once, and having him thunder back to you with wild enthusiasm?

The very first step is to teach him that you are nice to be with, you are reliable, and it’s worth his while to keep a close eye on you, and respond when you ask.

This isn’t done in a soggy field, as your dog hurtles off, nose to the ground, on some chase or trail.

This happens at home. In your kitchen. Many times a day. It’s what I call “All Day Training”.

All Day Training

We want to teach our dogs to respond to us every time, not just when they feel like it, or when they have nothing better to do.

And that’s why we need to build up this deep history - that every time they respond to us, they get some kind of reward.

To start with, by far the easiest and most effective reward is to give a treat. Instantly, as soon as their head starts to turn toward you.

And the key is that this reward must be given EVERY time you ask, and they do.

No exceptions!

If you want it to work it has to work every time, without fail. As soon as you start to demand compliance with no semblance of a reward being forthcoming, you are starting to hammer nails into your Recall coffin.

The first step in detail

So your first step is to make your dog’s name precious. Whenever she hears her name, she stops in her tracks and responds to it - whether that means turning round in front of you, or racing back from 50 yards away.

And I go into detail into how you can precisely and positively make your dog’s name precious to her - in two places for your convenience!

The first place is here in Here Boy! Step-by-step to a stunning recall from your Brilliant Family Dog which you can find in ebook or paperback at Amazon and in audiobook direct from the author right here.

And the second is here in our

free Workshop

on getting your dog to LISTEN!

 

Choose your poison! And let me know how this game transforms your relationship with your puppy or dog, and you can see it setting you on the road to having that stellar recall you’d love!

For some dogs, love is not enough

There is a fashion in dogs - well there are a few fashions, but let’s stick to this one for now - that because you have a big heart, and go all gooey inside at the thought, you can pluck a dog off the streets of some foreign land, park it in your living room, and everything will be FINE.

Just seeing that written down shows how nonsensical this may be!

If you adopted a really, really difficult child, one who’d been abused, abandoned, kicked, starved, injured . . . and all the rest, would you expect this child to settle immediately into your family, enjoy school, and never give any problems of any kind?

Of course not!

You’d know that you’d need specialist training, help from professionals. That this child may wring your heart out and leave you desperate.

You would not expect him to fit seamlessly into what we may consider a civilised, well-regulated, life.

What’s sauce for the child is sauce for the dog!

So your damaged street-dog, captured, uprooted from somewhere he knows (albeit possibly a very unpleasant place), transported by strangers thousands of miles in the back of a lorry, is likely to be a bundle of nerves when he arrives in your country.

Add to this that many of the people doing this rehoming have zero training in how to manage damaged dogs, and may resort to yet more brutality and chastisement . . .

When the dog you want to help actually arrives with you, he’s a mess.

All is not lost

This is not to say that things can’t be turned round. I work with many students who’ve found themselves - all unwittingly - in just this situation.

Their generosity has resulted in them taking an unsuitable animal into their home.

And I’m happy to say that in all the cases I’ve worked with, we’ve managed to make huge progress!

While the dog may never be what others may expect of a dog - lollopy, easy-going, loves everyone, enjoys everything - the owner learns so much that makes the whole enterprise rewarding for both human and dog.

It’s all about connection, and the relationship of mutual trust they build.

And, if you take the trouble to learn what these people did, then you too can have a great outcome, with many years of companionship ahead of you!

“He has certainly blossomed from the abused boy he was when he was first fostered! What you taught us about walking on leash, meeting other dogs etc. made a lot of sense and following your advice has worked wonders for our walks - we both now enjoy them and he is a lot less nervous. Once again many thanks - you have been a brilliant help and a breath of fresh air!” ML  

“.. when I got him he was scared of everything. Thank you so much for your support which has enabled me to train a 4 year old rescue sprocker the way life should be - fun and running free.” CF

“Your training is great and makes a lot of sense. Thanks again, what you’re doing is great, you can feel so isolated with these issues and you are providing a much-needed lifeline for people.  Every time I read these lessons I get a renewed sense of calm and my resolve is strengthened. This support is helping me to really focus on helping my little rescue dog. Thank you Beverley, you are amazing.” EO

“This is a radical change in attitude, thanks to you, and has led to an improved relationship.” AH

Want to get some of what they got?

You can start with this free Growly Dog ecourse, enjoy our free Masterclass for anxious dogs

 

And check out this boxset of the whole Growly Dog series of books!