New look, same expert puppy training—by Kira & the Canine Code team!

How we help you fast track

How we help you fast track

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

Fighting the pandemic of separation anxiety

Fighting the pandemic of separation anxiety

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.

What you need to know about giving your child a puppy as a gift

What you need to know about giving your child a puppy as a gift

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.

Doggy Door Training From A-Zuccess!

Doggy Door Training From A-Zuccess!

Training your dog to use its new doggy door can be very fast, but you will need a good strategy. If you give a young puppy a fright, they will refuse to use the door in the future. Here is how to get it right…

Before you start…

Chances are, you are eager to teach your dog how to get out of the house to do it’s business. Therefore teach your puppy how to get out of the doggy door first. You will find that your dog is self-motivated enough to figure out, how to get back in. Timid dogs may need a little extra help.

Doggy Door Set Up

You’ll need a bit of string and a large elastic band. First wrap the elastic around the doggy door flap. Now tie the string to the elastic band and open up the doggy door flap so that it is wide open. You can usually secure the string to the door handle. Now put a rolled up old towel over the lower opening to soften all hard plastic edges. At this stage, it is important that the drop from the doggy door opening to the ground is only small. If needed, roll up a second towel and use it as a step under the first towel (as shown on 2nd photograph below). Your dog will be much more willing to walk through opening without the door flap or any sharp edges.

Training Plan

Picture 1: Use an extra good treat (and a little patience) to lure your dog through the door opening.

Picture 2: Now push the elastic band on the doggy door-flap up higher towards the hinges; this will automatically lower the flap. If your dog is quite intimidated by the flap, break this process down to tiny steps, only lowering the flap 2″ at a time. Never move forward to the next step, unless your dog is already completely confident going through the doggy door at the current level.

Picture 3: Help your puppy practice coming out through the doggy door, now with the flap so low that it brushes against your dog’s back, but it doesn’t yet require pushing with the nose:

Picture 4: Of course, it is now awkward for your puppy to come through the doggy door from the side, where it needs to lift the flap rather than push it (because the flap is lifted up to one side). This is actually an important part of the process, because it forces your dog to start maneuvering the flap with its nose. It is by trying to squeeze under the flap, that your dog will gain the confidence to push the flap when it is eventually completely closed.

Eh voila! Now you just need to set up some situations, where your puppy reeeaally want to come through that doggy door…

How will you train your dog next?

If you would like some great tips on toilet training, go straight to our blog for new puppy parents: the-first-5-things-that-you-should-know

Kira the Dog Whisperer featured on television

Kira the Dog Whisperer featured on television

Want to be a fly on the wall and watch a canine behaviour session? Here’s a chance to get a peek of a dog whisperer in action. Denmark’s national TV station aired a program featuring Kira as a Danish dog whisperer living downunder. Popular Comedian, Jan Gintberg, tagged along with Kira as they visited Murphy, a Wheaten Terrier that really doesn’t like visitors coming into the house. By design, dogs instinctively do not let strangers enter their den. Just like Murphy, their natural reaction is to bark and try to intimidate the intruder to go away. If you want your dog to greet visitors politely, then you will need to show your dog that you are in charge of deciding who’s welcomed into the house. Hence your dog’s participation is never necessary. Click on the image below to see how things went when Jan and Kira visited Murphy.
The first 5 things that new puppy parents should know

The first 5 things that new puppy parents should know

Puppies easily win over our hearts in a single beat. You are without a doubt totally in love with your new puppy. However, issues that are perhaps only small now tend to grow bigger along with the dog. It is fairer to the dog and easier for you if you teach your puppy good manners from the start. Correcting bad behaviour later on will always be more difficult.

Typically, the first thing people think of, in terms of puppy training, is commands like ‘sit’ and ‘drop’. In reality, any dog under the age of 10 can learn obedience commands quickly, so there is actually no rush. Instead of focusing on how to teach your puppy, you will do yourself a grand favour by focusing on how to raise your puppy.

There are a few things that are essential to get right from Day no 1. Use this as a check list and as your guarantee of getting off to a good start.

Prevent Separation Anxiety

It is not natural for a puppy to be completely alone without its mother and its littermates. Your puppy will instinctually get anxious about the separation and try to change the situation by whimpering. Take the first chance you get to train your puppy to cope with being alone.

At the age of 8 weeks, your puppy only has very little capacity for feeling fear. With age, your puppy will gain a much stronger expectation and sense of entitlement to have direct access to you. If you wait to train, your puppy’s anxious reaction will only get worse. Training your puppy to be alone right from the start is much easier and less traumatic than it will ever be in the future. Here is how to do it:

  • When bringing the puppy inside, head straight for an area where you can prevent it from having access to humans. It could be in a puppy pen, in the laundry or outside in the garden. Stay in this area with your puppy until everyone has had time to enjoy the puppy’s arrival and it has familiarised itself with the new surroundings (at least 10 minutes).
  • Then leave the area, so that your puppy is alone and has no physical access to any humans. Chances are that your puppy will cry to make you come back.
  • Wait to go back to your puppy until it has become completely quiet, relaxed and accepting of the separation. Realising that it can feel good and safe while being alone, your puppy will become accepting of the separation much quicker for each time it has the same experience. You are simply helping your puppy to get used to it.
  • If you do go back, you have just taught your puppy that making noise is how to get you to come back. Don’t do that.
  • If you first ignore your puppy, but then cave in after 10 minutes… or 1 hour… or 3 hours… then you have just taught your puppy that persisting and intensifying the sound is how to make the strategy work. It will do the same thing next time. Don’t do that.
  • Construct frequent separations so that your puppy gets plenty of practice in being alone. 3 -5 times per day would be a good ratio. It doesn’t matter how many minutes the separation lasts, it only matters that your puppy is quiet, relaxed and accepting at the time when you reconnect with it.
  • Randomise the nature of the separations, so that your puppy experiences being alone outside, being alone in a room and being alone in public. Make sure that your puppy gets to learn the same lesson in all the different likely scenarios in your lifestyle.

Accelerate the Toilet Training

Toilet training is essentially creating a habit for your dog to go to the toilet in a certain area (outside) every time. The more often you get your puppy to toilet outside, the stronger the habit becomes. Every time your puppy toilets inside, it’s an exception to the pattern and fails to support building the habit.

Dogs naturally don’t want to toilet inside their den. In most cases the puppy will be toilet trained once it understands what area is the den and what’s outside it. It’s often hard for a new puppy to grasp that a big open house with panoramic windows is the den. Here’s how to make it happen:

  • Limit your puppy’s access to a small part of the house. Once your puppy is reliable in that area, gradually expand the area to the rest of the house.
  • Feed your puppy in the area in which you are currently toilet training your puppy. It’s a great idea to always place the food bowl where your puppy last had an accident.
  • Take your puppy outside every time it eats, drinks, wakes up or has played for more than 10 minutes. Most puppies need to toilet every 40-60 minutes, unless they are sleeping. If your puppy has stayed outside, while you were not at home, do not let it inside until it has gone to the toilet first.
  • If you catch it in the act, scoop up your puppy and rush it outside with a sense of urgency.
  • Do not scold your puppy for going to the toilet inside. You’ll only teach your puppy to hide and do the accidents when you are not paying attention. It may also refuse to go to the toilet in front of you when you take it outside in the garden.

Avoid Rewarding Your Puppy’s Annoying Behaviour

Puppies are insatiable attention seekers. Although they are cute and deserve your attention, make sure that your puppy knows when to leave you alone. In particular, make sure that you do not train your puppy to perform annoying behaviour to get your attention.

Typical attention seeking behaviour that you will not appreciate when the inconvenience has grown bigger along with your dog’s size are: jumping up against you, barking at you, chewing your shoe laces, chasing your feet, pawing or nudging at your leg and stealing stuff such as tissues, socks and children’s toys. Here’s how to prevent the problems:

  • At times when your puppy is being attention seeking, avoid giving your puppy any attention. Do not offer eye contact, talk or touch the puppy with your palms.
  • Make the puppy’s game ineffective or even uncomfortable. You could for example leave the room and close the door behind you. -Or walk straight towards your puppy forcing it to run away from you. -Or take its bed or favourite toy and keep it in your arms and out of reach (when it has stolen your belongings).
  • Do not chase your puppy or let it tease you into acting frazzled. Your puppy’s attention seeking game is a test to your ability to stay in control. Do not in any way let off that you lost it.

Beware Of Habituation & Socialisation

While your puppy is still under 16 weeks of age, it is very capable of coping with new sounds, movements and surfaces. After that age, it will be suspicious and even fearful of new experiences. They will appear as foreign, unusual or just not matching its expectations. It is important that you habituate your puppy to many different sounds, movements and noises while it is still young. That way, your puppy will avoid stress from encountering unfamiliar things in its environment.

In addition, it is important that you socialise your puppy. The concept of meeting strangers –individuals that are not members of the usual pack- is very unnatural for dogs. In particular, it is very abnormal for them to let strangers into their own den, hence why dogs often bark and jump up at visiting humans or attack visiting dogs. Here’s what to do:

  • Expose your puppy to stranger men (=known them for less than 10 minutes). Especially men with beards, hats, hoods, glasses, umbrellas, uniforms, big bodies and deep voices and men coming into your own home.
  • Expose your puppy to stranger dogs that may belong to friends or family, so that you know with certainty that they are vaccinated and healthy. Also grab the opportunity to let your dog socialise with unfamiliar dogs at puppy school. Professionals will be there to supervise and advise on what is happy and friendly play.
  • Expose your puppy to sounds like thunder, fireworks, dog barking, door knocks, crying babies, loud machines and air whistling. You’ll find a handy compilation of puppy habituation sounds on our Youtube channel (turn the volume down to zero before you click the link!).
  • Expose your puppy to bouncing balls, flagging arms, rolling trolleys and wheely bins, and fabric waving high up in the air.
  • Expose your puppy to slippery, shiny, slanting and unsteady surfaces. Also practice standing or walking near ledges and walkways with gaps between the slaps. Once your dog has mastered ordinary stairs, you can start practicing on open slab staircases.

Pick The Right Vet For The Puppy Vaccinations

  • Pick a vet that offers the most modern vaccination type, which only requires 2 shots. The second shot is often given at 12 weeks of age, but it can be given at 10 weeks. This means that your puppy will be safe to socialise with random dogs in public already at 11 weeks of age. This is a huge advantage to your puppy’s confidence and its joy of meeting other dogs throughout life, not just while it is young. Also, you’ll save yourself the cost of a third vet consultation.
  • Avoid vets that use the old fashioned vaccination type, which requires the puppy to have 3 shots. With this vaccination programme your puppy will not be ready to socialise until 17 weeks of age. Holding back your puppy from socialising with unfamiliar and stranger dogs in public can easily affect your dog for life. Even if it seems fine as a young puppy, it may start showing overly timid or even fear aggressive behaviour towards dogs in the street or in the dog park later.

In our Basic Package of puppy classes, you will learn how to teach your puppy to be patient, self-disciplined and focused when training. In our Advanced Package, we teach you how to get your puppy to listen to you and respect your house rules. Our Master Class Package is for those who are on a roll and ready to complete their puppy’s training as a well behaved pet at all times, when out and about as well as in the home.

We hope to see you in class soon and wish you and your puppy a great start to living together.