Blog — Health and Well-Being

Expressing Sympathetic Arousal with Resistance Feeding and Tug-of-War “In the intensity of sympathetic mobilization your clients are looking for an organized way to use and safely discharge their energy. “    --Deb Dana, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection   Resistance Feeding:   Allows the dog to express the “surge” of energy resulting from sympathetic arousal Dog pushes into the handler to discharge sympathetic energy of fight/flight/hunt Constructive way to channel fear, reactivity, fight drive, and even hunting instincts       Tug-of-War:   Uses the dog’s natural instinct to bite in a playful way that regulates the dog and...

  If you have an anxious or overstimulated dog: Remember... Talk Without Touch is overstimulating, confusing, and activates the sympathetic nervous system. However... Touch Without Talk can soothe an overactive mind. Petting is just petting, and often done in a mindless way, or worse, in a way that satisfies the owner's need to be validated and soothed. If you want to truly start to heal your dog and the connection you have with yourself and your own nervous system, first: Get quiet. Set an intention. Know that this will be healing for both you and your dog if you go...

  Enrichment has been trending in the dog training for quite some time now, but do you know WHY it's actually so important? It's not just about providing your dog with puzzles and distractions to drain their energy. Environmental enrichment that provides breed-specific biological fulfillment actually changes your dog's brain! It makes your dog's brain more flexible and open to learning.   This is ESPECIALLY important for behavior modification because we need your dog's brain to grow new neural pathways so they can learn and actively choose new behaviors. So while it may make sense for a short time to...

  Many people are aware that puppies go through a "fear period" where they are particularly sensitive to experiences, and that it is important to protect them from having bad experiences during this time. Did you know that there is a second "fear period" during adolescence? As dogs become sexually mature, they go through another imprinting phase where positive and negative experiences become especially salient to their learning and ultimately end up shaping their personality.      This is a great time to keep training and hand feeding high on the priority list. You will probably see breed traits become...

  Guests for this podcast are brother and sister, Campbell and Nerida, who grew up immersed in the world of dogs at their family’s boarding kennels, where their mum bred and showed champion Borzoi and kept Staffies. After finishing school, Campbell wasn’t sure what direction to take, so he traveled the world before settling into a decade-long career in finance. Realising this was not a fulfilling career, he reignited his passion for dogs and decided to make it his life’s work. Campbell joined a mentorship program, and obsessively studied canine behavior, securing a job as a behavior trainer at Melbourne’s...