You can attend a class or a private session of dog training and do your best to absorb all the new the information on the spot -or you can fast track.

By supplying you with information already before our first face-to-face session, you get a chance to absorb the basic information, write down questions and practice practical exercises in preparation. This fast tracks your learning significantly and helps you achieve a much more advanced goal -without extra cost. Kira aims to achieve the best result possible for you, fast and cost effectively.

There will be certain things that are unique to you and your puppy’s situation, but many issues -and their solutions- are generic to all dog owners. Kira calls these the ‘pantry items’, because although all dishes require their own combination of ingredients, they all need you to have salt, pepper and oil in the pantry. Kira’s pre-consultation and pre-class videos will give you an understanding of what is generic and what is unique about your circumstances.

You might be fatigued by watching videos on Youtube and perhaps disheartened about their content. Those videos are designed to leave you hungry for more. Don’t worry, Kira’s videos get straight to the point and deliver practical, easy-to-implement instructions. We are in the business of helping you fast track and make the most out of our time together.

Click here to see a sample

Some say it’s a government conspiracy. Others say it came from bats, others from cats. Anyone who has ever lived with a dog knows who had the most to gain from spreading covid-19!

This article explains why I’m anticipating a pandemic of separation anxiety and how to prevent it.

WHY IS THIS RELEVANT TO ALL DOG OWNERS NOW?

Have you ever had a needy lover? The relationship started off great, couldn’t get enough of each other… until you did. When you then wanted to revisit other interests in your life, they wouldn’t let you. They felt anxious at being apart and had become co-dependent on you.

Just like it doesn’t serve people to be in co-dependent relationships, it doesn’t serve dogs either. Dogs are more prone to separation anxiety than humans because they have a greater yearning for company -and proportionally, suffer all the more from the anxiety when unable to cope with being alone.

The bad news is, there’s no satiation point, where your dog will have ‘had enough of you’. Instead, attention and companionship gradually take the nature of a drug and eventually create an addiction that’s entirely suffocating and life debilitating for both of you.

Now that we are all doing our best to stay at home to stop the spread of covid-19, our dogs’ expectations to companionship will grow and they could forget all about how to be alone. I fear the repercussions, when we all return to our usual lifestyle and need to leave our dogs home alone again.

Severe separation anxiety often plays out as the dog barking, chewing up doors and window frames, escaping from their yard or self harming. It’s extremely hard to treat and it is one of the most common reasons why people surrender their dogs to shelters. Let’s not let that happen to you.

AVOID THESE COMMON MISTAKES

Anxiety is commonly the end product -but rarely present at the start. This is why it is much easier to prevent it than to cure it.

Typically it all starts with just the puppy’s innate preference for being together -a little whimper when mama-dog leaves the litter. She wouldn’t dream of running back and giving up feeding herself, just so the pups won’t whimper and get distressed. She needs to take care of herself so that she can in turn take care of her pups.

When we get our puppies at typically 8 weeks of age, they are still only just learning how to be alone. If we won’t allow them to feel the discomfort and continuously provide them with the opportunity to practice, then they won’t learn it. They miss the lesson of how to self soothe and trust that you’ll be back in your own time.
Instead, they will learn that they can avoid their discomfort by whimpering and calling you to come back. If it works, why wouldn’t they do it again next time? And next time again. Inadvertently, you are training your puppy to cry by rewarding it with your return and ensuing company.

The point where the problem truly escalates, is when you finally decide that this is an unsustainable situation and you choose to ignore the whimpering…. but then cave in after all. Your puppy will deduct that a little whimpering used to work, but from now on, it takes a lot more. It must cry louder, perhaps even bark and definitely carry on for a lot longer in order to see success.

After you caving in a few times -or many- your dog’s faith is strong: a big tantrum will work, it just has to carry on long enough. As your dog throws the tantrum, the adrenalin in it’s body surges. With time, it will learn to rev itself up so much that the adrenalin gets so high that your dog will legitimately have a meltdown and arguably a traumatic experience. That’s when you can legitimately call the condition Separation Anxiety and when you can argue that separating from your dog really does make the problem worse. It is also somewhat a point-of-no-return or at least a very difficult situation to bounce back from without drugs and an almost inhumane effort from you to reschedule your day and build up your dogs resilience to being alone in very small increments.

Do you see why I want you to be 10 steps ahead in preventing this monstrous condition? It creeps in so easily, grows bigger right under your nose while still undetected and then BAM! Suddenly you can’t close the door behind you to the bathroom, put the dog outside in the garden while the kids are baking in the kitchen or go to the cinema without dropping your pooch off at your mum’s place.

HOW TO PREVENT SEPARATION ANXIETY

Regardless of where your dog is at in the scenario described above, right from a fully fledged attention addict to a completely healthy and asymptomatic dog- the answer is the same: Keep your dog’s expectations and sense of entitlement down to a sustainable level.

Of the following steps, take ALL the ones that are possible for you:

• Only give your dog attention when it doesn’t tell you to. Attention includes eye contact and palm touch.
• After every separation, wait to greet your dog until it is not telling you to. Then you can greet your dog as warmly and playfully as you like.
• Whenever reasonably convenient, make a point of barring your dog from entering the space you are in until you have given an invitation. Only invite your dog in, when it is not telling you to. For those who need a little help to implement this, watch this video.
• Only allow your dog up on the couch when… ? You’ve got it, when you issued an invitation and your dog didn’t demand it.
• Ideally make your dog sleep in a separate room at night, all by itself. Very few dogs, who can do this, develop separation anxiety.
• Leave your dog alone in the garden, the laundry, a pen/ crate or any other suitable space, so that you have several options for where to put him/her in different situations.
  Leave your dog without any elaborate goodbye ritual.
• Even if you are at home all day, create frequent separations from your dog. For most dogs, 3-5 separations per day would be enough to keep separation anxiety at bay.
  If your dog throws a tantrum, NEVER go back until it is calm and accepting of the separation.
• Note, if you get ‘stuck’ in a situation where your dog is throwing a tantrum and you have to undo the separation before your dog has become quiet and accepting, barge into your dog’s space acting very preoccupied with anything else than your dog (ie weeding, poop scooping, watering the plants). Don’t pay your dog attention until it has stopped trying to get a greeting from you.

Good luck!

-Feeling overwhelmed and thinking you’ve already got yourself in a bit of a pickle? Call Kira on 0400 354 092 for a private session to work out the best strategies for your dog and your specific situation.

Giving a child a puppy is a very loving thing to do –but is it the smart thing to do?

I often meet a lot of misconceptions about what role a child will play in a puppy’s life and consequentially, some disappointment that things aren’t panning out as expected.

This article will sum up some realities and give you an understanding that can save you and your child a lot of grief.

Misconception No 1: My child should/ will/ must be the puppy’s pack leader and should be in charge of the puppy at all times.

Many parents wish to encourage their children to develop a stronger sense of responsibility and assertiveness. The intention is great and the goal is not unachievable, but putting your child in charge of a puppy is like strapping a baby into a parachute… The lesson will be a disaster before the teaching has even begun.

Fact: It does not feel instinctively safe for a young animal to put another young individual (child) in charge of their life. When an assistance dog is trained to support a special needs child, the dog doesn’t usually meet the child until the dog is over 2 years of age. At that point, the dog itself is mature and happily adopts a babysitter role to the child. Although it obeys certain commands from the child, it does so to earn a reward -not because the dog respects the child as it’s ‘pack leader’.

Puppies will typically look for confident, calm and self-contained adults as their authority. That person becomes a key ingredient for the puppy to feel safe, even if they never feed, walk or play with the puppy. If more than one adult appears authoritative within one family, then your puppy will feel even more safe. Strong adults are the most important ingredient for a young puppy’s survival. The more of them, the better!

Misconception No 2: My child must learn to stand up to the puppy and gain control of it.

Fact: Puppies mature MUCH faster than children. Within only a few weeks, your new pup will see itself as older than any 10yo child. During the transition, while they are somewhat peers, it is common that there’ll be lots of hard play biting, stealing toys and wrestling too roughly. It is important that you DO NOT encourage your child to fight back harder. It could become very dangerous, because without holding an adult’s level of authority, your child will only achieve revving up your puppy even more and could even get ‘told off’ with a nip. Instead, the disciplining should come from you. Your puppy must treat your children respectfully because you say so, just like the children must treat the puppy with respect because you say so. You decide how your family/ pack members may interact with each other. You must be the one to decide who gets sent to their room or out in the garden to cool off. Getting a puppy will be another lesson for you in developing responsibility and assertiveness!

After this phase, your young dog will eventually take on the babysitter role as described previously. Your more mature dog will become increasingly tolerant, accepting and somewhat protective of your children. Like a big sister or brother. It’s a beautiful thing that will happen naturally -without anyone needing to rush it or generate it. Getting a puppy is also a lesson in patience by the way!

Misconception No 3: My child pestered me to get this puppy, so now my child must train it.

I see the rationale, but whoah, good luck with that!! Putting an 8yo in charge of training a dog that you must live with for the next 15-18 years? Think this through again… Do you really trust your child’s timing, consistency, tenacity, intuition and accuracy to do a job that most adults find difficult?

Your child may have pestered you to get a dog, but the decision was ultimately yours. Now the responsibility for the puppy is ultimately yours too. The sooner you accept this, the better trained and better behaved your new dog will be.

Misconception No 4: My child must be the most important person in the puppy’s life.

Sometimes giving a puppy to a child comes from an intention to help the child battle with loneliness. Often the idea has sprung from a bit of guilt to do with relocating to a new country or separating from the other parent.

Fact: The only person who can stop a puppy from bonding with a child is the child itself. If your child ignores the puppy and refuses to interact with him, then they may not develop a bond. Even so, it would be hard to avoid it and the relationship could still easily be formed later. So there is no reason to try to make sure a bond forms between your child and your new puppy. It will happen anyway.

Just like children, dogs can -and should- love several family members. The more, the better! And just like in human families, dogs will love the family members for different characteristics. Typically it will love the children as playmates, the more nurturing parent as a place to go get a hug and rest, and the more authoritative parent as the pack leader who upholds order and gives directions. Just like it wouldn’t serve your child to love only one person (or a dog) and develop a co-dependent relationship, it won’t serve your puppy either. The puppy could develop separation anxiety, which would in turn make it bark, scratch doors and chew furniture when separated from your child. Your child may have reached school age when they are meant to form friendships beyond their own family, so it would be counterproductive if your child has to stay home to keep your dog from getting anxious!

I hope I have shed some light on what you can expect from life with a new puppy in your family. If you are not already there, then I hope to see you soon in our puppy classes. For those with a busy or irregular time schedule, we also offer puppy home schooling.