URBAN TRAINING, THE FOUNDATIONS

WHY (reactive)?

The parentheses are because reactive is a buzz term at the moment and I wanted to be found by people wanting to train their modern pups. Also I currently have a reactive pooch and I know there are many urban reasons for our domestic pooches to become reactive in the very urbanised world we place them in.

We get our pooches from neighbours, friends, from rescue shelters and from registered breeders, or sometimes we find a homeless dog on our travels. My point is, in our modern urban environment the pool of available pooches is vast and there is always going to be a mix of reactive and non reactive dogs getting brought home.

Reactivity or non reactivity is not a breed specific thing but a breeder can breed for it or can selectively breed reactivity out of a line. In a working dog reactivity and immediate positive response to stimuli can be desirable and selectively bred in, for a domestic pet you may seek a breeder of docile less engaged pooches, you can work to select the best type of dog for your lifestyle, no guarantee though. If you get a pup from a friend, neighbour or if you find one, you get what you get.

Reactivity in dogs can be as much from the genetics as it can be from past experience, even in a young pup. Reactivity is not gender dominant, male and female dogs are equally likely to be docile or reactive.

There are great benefits to owning a lively and engaged reactive pup and there are great benefits to owning a docile obedient placid pup. Neither is a better pet than the other and neither are harder to train and neither are more or less loving, rewarding companions.

The simplest way to think of it is that a reactive pup may initially be alert and involved in its environment before it is alert to you. A non reactive dog may be attentive to you for guidance in its environment and may be more dependent.

Either way the training here will be your solution for a pup living in the urban world. I will not distinguish between reactive and docile pups from here on in as the training is going to be equally appropriate. Together we will help the pup understand its role in your family life and that this is a calm safe happy place to be.

There is no such thing as a perfect urban pooch, but we can adapt ourselves and pooch so that imperfections are less jarring. I had a discussion with my wife the other day, when our Bindi was being very Bindi, about why she was such a trial sometimes. We have a lot of neighbour dog owners to compare our experiences to. There is a cocker with over excitement issues, a Labrador with overly protective issues, a very barky spaniel, a couple of reactive terriers, another totally loopy german shepherd and a number of aggressive/defensive shitzu cross breeds. All of which are well adapted happy family dogs at home and loved to bits, but none are perfect. Dog ownership is loving the lovely bits and dealing with the other bits.

URBAN LIFE

Most of us dog owners now live in cities, towns, housing estates or busy villages where open spaces, quiet streets, local parks and country fields are not as accessible to us.

Any spare time that we plan to have for pup training, our urban life fills with additional work, interests, sourcing food and the necessities to keep alive and well. Then there are time-stealing commitments to family, friends and colleagues. We can get so busy that rest, calm space and the ability to truly relax vanishes from our days.

Into this cacophony of concentration and contractual obligation, for whatever reason, we introduce a dog. The pooch is our act of charity, our wanted to be friend, a comfort, fresh air buddy, confessor or companion.

We are probably happy enough to be urban dwellers and we ask our dogs to live in these busy crowded environments where skills from our past dog owner methods become less and less appropriate. We need to ensure, now things have become more and more compressed in our lives that we provide opportunities for a grace and some calm space in which our pooches can thrive.

There is one thing that remains a constant over time in dog training. We and they need to arrange clearly defined times to share. As owners we need to provide the amount of time our pooch needs to not only learn an action but to understand, apply and adopt the action as a habit.

From research and popular experience it takes a human around 28 days of repetition to form or change a habit. For a dog, sometimes more, sometimes less. It depends on the dog, the breed, the temperament, the inherent calm or lack thereof in the pup’s emotional mindset. But 28 days for us, per habit.

So, that is a lot of time to find in our hectic urban schedules. You will need even more time to dedicate to your pup if it has a habit that in any way jars with your chaotic urban life. Oh, and on top of that we also need lots of play time, probably why we got the pup, the best part of having a dog is how wonderful, rewarding and fun it is to play with. Really, so much wonderful.

So little time.

There it is, the conundrum. You want a pup to share quality time with and a pup is a time-stealing lump of work for you. It is an oversight that prospective new owners are not counselled about the amount of time and calm needed to train an urban pooch.

And it’s not only time you’ll need but a level of patience and persistence that you will be surprised you can muster. Good news, that calm resolve and the time is there in your day. You will find it not because you have to, but because the happiness your pup will inject into your life will be like a scrumptious addictive drug you will both want more of and will be happy to work together to ensure.

If you choose to skip a good play-time routine, and if you steal time to rush through some training that’ll be fine. Pup will adapt. Just maybe not how you want.

What you absolutely need with pup is lovely clear, calm time. Lovingly provided and without any begrudging of what is required for pup to be happily learning. You will get back the most wonderful rewarding and totally trusting relationship you may ever have in your life. Every minor sacrifice and unexpected joy along the way is worth each second spent.

One of the most important things to do with in this time, the time you didn’t know you had, is to play with your urban pup. Include play in every day. Do things like tug of war, let it win, tickle it and teach it not to nip, get pup to chase you for a pat or cuddle - do not chase pup, play rough house and teach how to stop rough house. Make it talk and teach it to be quiet. All those things are some of the best bits of having an urban in-the-house pup. I give tips along the way for these things in the pages that follow.

Training an urban dog to behave for the times we are out and about with them can become far too much of our focus. We spend a little bit of time out in the urban streets and much more time with our pooch at home. Use home time for play, and for value based training in house and urban behaviour.

There are some urban issues that apply equally for all dog breeds and owners when we have to introduce a pooch to the busy modern environment.

In this book I address the ones I hear about most often. I want this to be your guide for how to raise a dog in the cities towns and increasingly crowded streets of our modern urban life.

There is a good chance you will read other books or look at webinars and on-line things so in this book I will not concentrate on basic home training and we will stick to what we can call the urban woofare.

Urban style training is 100% positive and works for dogs kindly, lovingly and with no one being a bossy bully.

One thing that remains constant in all training, and in life, is that success requires persistence.

No victory or achievement is ever won by sitting on your behind reading everything and doing nowt ‘bout it. The tips you read here will require persistent application and, if a change in how your dog reacts is sought, a change in your manner may be required.

It won’t surprise you when I say that dogs can adapt just fine to whatever environment they find themselves in, they are one of nature’s great survivors, blessed as they are with canine intelligence. But dog smarts are not human smarts and the people/pup divide is real.

We may not like the way dogs adapt to live in our urban life but they find a way which works for them and are fine with it. If it wasn’t for us humans getting all academic around things that really don’t require that much thinking, we would get on much better with our dogs when out and about in our streets, shops, parks and fields .

Making some basic changes in how we notice, react to and stimulate our street-dumb pups will result in happier pooches and happier and calm pup parents. If you persist.

Persistence provides normality. Dogs do like to know that things you provide in their life can be relied upon. Your consistent positive attitude and firm resolve will stand you in good stead as you do want your pup to learn the difference between what pleases you and what is unacceptable behaviour.

Teaching an urban dog relies on a few other key things too. We need to provide pup a safe place, to be consistent, to calmly repeat and to give immediate valuable reward for achievement. Frequently and always.

What we are trying to do as we urbanise pooch is adapt or overwrite some fundamental, genetic, learned or instinctual dog behaviour that is not desirable in urban life. Teaching a dog to ignore the stimuli it gets from living our frantic lifestyle is not dissimilar to trying to teach yourself not to look at your phone on its vibration, light or sound. Instinct, the nature of the dog and past learned behaviour will push your pup’s reaction buttons to urban noises. Instinct, learned behaviour and the pooch’s nature all need time, caring and calm reflection to modify into suitable responses to modern life hubbub.

WHY ARE YOU HERE?

I’m guessing you are reading this because you fall into one of three camps.

You may want to figure out how to fix some unwanted behaviours in your urban dog.

Perhaps you want current training ideas before you adopt a previously owned dog that has urban ‘issues’.

Maybe you are a caring pup-parent-to-be and are awaiting a furry soul to join your urban household.

You are to be commended if you are in the second or third camp. It is always good to be prepared, but in my experience, there is nothing like living with the dog to teach you how to live with the dog.

So much of what you read before you have a dog in your life will seem irrelevant, weird, impossible, or will amuse and be forgotten. Until your perfect pup turns out to be not that perfect and you scrabble to find that thing you read or heard somewhere.

If you are in the first camp and want to fix some behaviour in your dog, whatever that behaviour is, then the things I am going to cover are only good if used kindly, calmly and consistently. A sharp knife cuts well but if misused will blunt quickly. So please relax into these tips, handle gently, carefully implement, persist and don’t over complicate, it’s all simple stuff.

Unacceptable pup behaviour is not the dog doing something wrong, it is the dog doing a thing that has worked for it in the past or that is or was at some time, fun to do.

Dogs can learn in a surprisingly short time, in fact a life lesson may have been just one 5 second event that gave them a coping tool they continue to rely on.

Flight or fight is the primary response. Maybe submission also worked for them, maybe play moves worked, maybe barking, charging, jumping up, maybe mouth activity solved the problem or got the attention they wanted. If it worked once then in the dogs mind it will work until it never gets a result again.

Even a bad result in our mind is a result in the dogs feelings and therefore rewarding for pup. Hopefully by the end of this book we will have been down a path with your pup that results in future miles of happy walks and many days of companionship and play. BUT,

... A BIG BUT...

BEFORE YOU START URBAN-TRAINING YOUR PUP

GET A HEALTH CHECK.

Please, please, please have your pooch checked over by a very good vet. It is THE most important urban preparation you can do.

A standard vet blood test should report on haemoglobin and T cell count, pancreas, liver and kidney function. A physical check will detect localised infection, joint function, dental stability and general body condition.

There are many stories of people vainly trying to train behaviour change in dogs who are reclusive, angry or aggressive because they are not physically well.

A pooch who feels ill, sore, uncomfortable or is in pain from movement will probably have a rather poor learning attitude.