1. Reinforcement – In really simple terms, dogs, like humans will naturally repeat what they are rewarded for and stop what they chastised for, be it negative or positive reinforcement, in order to change unwanted behaviour we need to make the reinforcement of the desired behaviour higher in competing motivators in an appropriate ethical manner.
2. Timing – The average handler is around 3 seconds to late in spotting the opportune moment to interrupt the behaviour chain and stop reactivity before it starts
3. The Behaviour Chain – a breakdown of your dog’s signals leading up to certain behaviour. For example, in reactivity the process may start with something as little as the dog scenting something in the air and raising it’s head, and finish with a display of reactivity. There are 10 steps here and the average dog handler only really notices the last 2 or 3 by which time it's too late to do anything.

4.Expecting it to go wrong – this is all about awareness, we can modify behaviour long term but we cannot modify natural instinct or temperament, therefore no matter how long it has been since successful training we always expect and are looking out for an issue to crop up again, this mindset underpins fantastic timing in interrupting the behaviour chain.
5.Competing Motivation – One must understand that if your dog values the action taking by it becoming reactive more than whatever incentives or disincentives you are trying to use to stop it, it will never happen! You must discover the most appropriate way to ensure the motivation to perform the desired behaviour is greater than the unwanted behaviour
6.Active vs Reactive Training – The best form of recall is a dog that never runs off! We train our customers to train their dogs to have fantastic attention on them, this means that rather than the dog doing what it wants until told not to, we have dogs who are actively checking in to see what and where their owner is.

7.Word Association – Sit, stay, lie down, roll over, hold, wait, stand, left, right, fetch, heel, away, paw, leave, take, eat, toilet. Say all that again without looking! Typically it takes up to xxx times for a dog to associates a word with a command….Assuming the timing is perfect to avoid confusion. How many average dog owners have the time to dedicate in properly implementing word association for all the common commands? Not many or we wouldn’t be doing this 6 days a week. We take a character based approach, teaching your dog to be calm and attentive at all times removing the need for so many commands, why tell your dog to sit in a restaurant when if they are calm, attentive and actively looking for your behaviours, when you stop, they will sit or lie down anyway.

8.Repetition – We all know how important repetition is for learning, remember doing lines in school, I did! Now as with word association the amount of times needed to embed new behaviour and expectations surpasses most people’s ability and availability. We use techniques to gain maximum variable repetitions in a short period of time along with a plan to elongate the time needed between training
9.Finally – Skill fade – We get results really quickly, but it’s nothing unless one is aware of the need to plan for the relaxing of a handler’s attitude once we have succeeded. So many times, I see handlers have great success, consider the job and relax to the point of indifference. This typically results in the unwanted behaviour returning. We use a pre-planned timeline and structured techniques to ensure this doesn’t happen, mitigate skill fade and remove the need for constant training sessions or refreshers.
So how did we use the above training concepts in a practical, hands on training session with the reactive GSD in the video transformation video above?

To help Marcia and Cooper achieve such a life changing transformation we first helped her understand why Cooper was being dog reactive, then we explained what to look for before showing her how to interrupt his behaviour and replace it with a more desirable one (handler attention). Once we had done this (usually 15-20 minutes) the rest of the consultation was spent building Marcia's confidence and her handling ability to ensure she would easily be able to keep the results when she was home again and we weren't there to instruct her.

Training a dog to behave differently is one thing - training the average owner to be good enough to change their dogs behaviour themselves quickly, efficiently and in a manner which will last is a completely different challenge altogether! Luckily, it's one we have a huge mount of experience with at WKD!