Blog — Holistic Dog Training

Did you know that the most important thing about being a dog owner is being able to read their body language?  You can talk to your dog all day long, but do you also know how to listen? It seems many people do not. I have created this slideshow to give you some insight into your dog's only language: Body Language!!!  

What does it mean to work with your dog's drive? First, you want to find the thing that most motivates your dog. Think of arousal as the thing that piques your dog's interest, and persistence as the annoying way they obsess over that thing!  Some dogs will have more prey drive, some have more play drive. Dogs with high prey drive will even have a preference for different types of prey, this might be a squirrel, chipmunk, or fluttering of birds. Other dogs are more closely attuned to larger prey like skunks, cats, deer, or even horses!  Many dogs are...

"Dogs are very sensitive to body language, so the least little tense movement--a change of gait, a slight hunching of the shoulders--can be observed and interpreted as something being amiss. When we're upset, our voices can go up slightly in frequency as well. Dogs get these nuances in ways most people don't.  Masking strong feelings by acting like things are OK may not always work, either: It's quite likely that dogs can smell fear, anxiety, even sadness... The flight-or-fight hormone, adrenaline, is undetectable by our noses, but dogs can apparently smell it. In addition, fear or anxiety is often accompanied...

Because dogs are predatory by nature, their instincts dictate that they channel their energy (and built-up stress) into hunting activities. For different breeds, this means different things, such as eye-stalking, digging, tracking, etc. However, the culmination of every hunt is the bite, because the goal of hunting is killing the prey. So the act of biting, and specifically biting and carrying an object, represents a successful “hunt.” And then chewing and ingesting completes this cycle of emotional grounding. Try to keep this in mind when working, walking, and training your dogs. Keep their jaws busy and you will have a...

I don’t usually give prescriptions to “fix” a dog’s behavior because every dog is an individual and therefore should be treated as one. In addition, each and every moment is unique and may call for a different protocol. To this end, I ask that you ALWAYS use your gut feeling and intuition to do what is right for your dog in each present moment, no matter what I or anyone else has advised you. With that being said, I’ve come up with some guidelines, or let’s call them suggestions, for calming a hyperactive or anxious dog. 1. Reduce the amount...