One of the biggest issues we find people have when trying to train new behaviours or change existing behaviours in their dogs is that they ask their dog to make leaps in learning that are too big and cause the dog to fail, and then the dog gets blamed for being stubborn, or unmotivated, or not very smart. In reality, what we’re observing is a process called lumping, which is where we’re essentially asking dogs to learn a skill without breaking it down fine enough for them to

Check in with where we're up to with Sun-Bun!

Disclaimer: this is the full unedited session, so it might be a bit boring to watch the whole thing! Feel free to skip through bits and just get the jist!

As requested, session 2 with Sunny!

Here’s a video of my first muzzle training session with Sunrise. It’s unedited so there are some messy bits!

It’s been over 3 weeks now and we’re seeing slow, but steady progress.

Essentially all ‘open bar / closed bar’ means is that when her trigger (Lewis) is in sight, food will flow. When her trigger goes out of sight, the food stops.

Not a training session at all! But had to share because I’m SO EXCITED to see Sunrise coming out of her shell building a relationship with me. We can’t force this stuff, but we can actively work on it. There’s specific stuff we can do to build a fun trusting relationship with a dog so that they will be interested and keen to engage with us.

First week update for little miss Sunrise. She's still very fearful and spooky, but is slowly coming out of her shell. She's slightly more relaxed with me (though still spooks easily) and has shifted from being quite hesitant about engaging with me, to really excited and keen to train. We introduced a couple of new behaviours, to strengthen our relationship, keep her mentally stimulated and build her confidence.

Our newest foster, Sunrise, arrived on Tuesday afternoon. Sunrise is a 3-year-old Rough Collie who is very nervous and fearful of new people and the world in general. She has a particular fear of men, and dislike for vacuum cleaners - and has been known to react and bite - though luckily her bites aren't severe, they predominantly just leave a scratch.