What about the dog? What actually does a dog (or most any animal) need? Without mixing in human control, emotions or considerations; what can a dog achieve past basic survival? What motivates a dog to continue to share life with humans, live in a human world and learn what is needed to be learned?
We all know the benefits of allowing a dog to scent and gather information about their environment. This is an exercise you can do at the beginning of each day to allow high energy dogs as well as shy and insecure dogs to focus and decompress. Place a number of household items scattered about in one area of your training space. You can use things such as folding chairs, large stuffed animals, children's toys, umbrellas, suitcases, rollerblades and various kitchen gadgets.
We all know the benefits of allowing a dog to scent and gather information about their environment. This is an exercise you can do at the beginning of each class to allow high energy dogs as well as shy and insecure dogs to focus and decompress. Place a number of household items scattered about in one area of your training space. You can use things such as folding chairs, large stuffed animals, children's toys, umbrellas, suitcases, rollerblades and various kitchen gadgets. As dogs and students arrive, have each team walk their dog through the enrichment area one at a time, letting them sniff any object they wish to. There is no food or play involved with this exercise. Students can praise shy and insecure dogs for showing courage in sniffing any item.
Dogs have a drive to chase prey which for our domestic dogs includes chasing toys, butterflies, leaves, and food. We can use this desire to chase increase the value of the food that we are offering the dog as reinforcement by bringing it alive with movement. The use of food in training is very common, and very advantageous. But food alone has its limits - dogs can become full, and not all dogs have strong enough food drive alone to overcome the challenges of everyday distractions. Adding movement to our food delivery skills is a crafty way for the handler to increase the energy and appeal of our food rewards in training.
Over the decades, I’ve heard many arguments for and against playing with dogs. The most involved discussions are generally about how playing with your dog can create an aggressive dog. This is mostly apparent when talking about the game of tug. When taught respectfully and with rules, tug and fetch games are not only a great way to develop self-control in a puppy, they are also powerful trust building exercises. Puppies that trust their owners are much less likely to run off when called, to steal forbidden items and play keep away, to refuse to give up a fetch or tug toy during a game, or to become resource guarders.