Concept training

“Arousal” is your dog’s responsiveness or the degree of activation and intensity of your dog’s brain in any given situation.

Your dog’s level of arousal will directly influence how it reacts to events in the environment, how it can listen and respond to you when you ask it to do something, how it processes events (positive and negative) and what emotional response is triggered.

Teaching arousal up/down gives your dog the ability to move between arousal levels – from high energy and engagement to lower energy levels and calmness. The ability to manage their arousal level and to operate at a level appropriate to the situation is a skill you need to inspire. For example, when coming in from an outside play session, you want your dog to transition to calmness.

Think of this control as your dog’s dimmer switch. Sometimes, the light is super bright; at others, it’s barely glowing or even off. Reactive dogs, conversely, only have an off-and-on switch and cannot move between arousal levels.

Growing your dog’s dimmer switch also helps your dog empty their emotional bucket more quickly. This makes dealing with everyday events much easier for you and your dog.

Calmness is one of the most significant gifts you can give your dog. It is an essential concept for any dog to understand as it navigates life. Ideally, calmness should always be your dog’s default state.

Calmness allows your dog to choose contented independence over separation-related behaviours. Calmness allows your dog to choose a quiet, relaxing activity over pulling on the lead, barking and lunging.

A calm dog behaves appropriately, is not frustrated, and fears are not overwhelming.

The advantages of calmness include:

• ability to relax at home
• loose lead walking
• makes good choices
• happier and healthier
• maintain an empty stress bucket
• greater capacity to learn
• better thinking in arousal. 

Confidence is the concept that allows your dog to go through the world feeling like a superhero – whatever might happen!

Confidence can be defined as your dog’s willingness to try anything and everything you put in front of them.

• How happy is your dog to have their body touched and manipulated or nails trimmed?
• How willing is your dog to put themselves in different situations?
• How does your dog respond to failure?

Your dog’s level of confidence determines all these things.

True confidence goes beyond how your dog interacts with the world; it also influences how they interact with you and engage in your training sessions.

Disengagement is your dog’s ability to see value in moving away or ignoring distractions and events, whether positive or negative. These things are not your dog's business and should not be investigated.

Can your dog acknowledge that something is not its business and remove its attention without interacting with it? If your dog reacts to things in the environment, it needs disengagement!

If your dog remains still when it sees a distraction, won’t take food or struggles to move away, it needs disengagement!

Growing value in moving away from novel situations will serve your dog well in all aspects of life, including:

• less leash-pulling
• greater recall success
• appropriately interact with dogs
• remain calmer in new situations.

Engagement is your dog’s ability to remain focused on you no matter what. Your dog chooses and enjoys playing games with you and thinks you’re the best choice! 

This concept works best when combined with other concepts, such as self-control and disengagement. Developing a ‘passion reward’ is a great way to grow engagement.

What are passion rewards? When you play with your dog, look for intense engagement that excites it. Aim to create an experience your dog wants to engage with over everything else, no matter what, but with you at the centre!

For example, my Border Collie’s passion reward is chasing me while I’m holding a tug toy. When he catches me, we play tug.

Each dog will have their passion reward, so find yours today.

Many owners overlook the fitness concept, especially if they don’t intend to do any dog sports. However, no matter their role, every dog is a canine athlete.

No matter how old your dog is (puppy to senior) or what you plan on doing with your dog, it is vital to work with them on their fitness to prepare them for navigating life, to avoid injuries, and as a great way to keep their body and mind enriched.

You should be passionate about dog fitness, encompassing your dog’s flexibility, general cardio-vascular fitness, respiratory fitness and physical strength.

Fitness is essential for so many reasons:

• Reduced injury rates. If you have a super fit dog, it can engage different muscle groups. That, in turn, gives a better, safer performance—fit dogs perform better. 
• Awesome relationship. Positive interactions are the best way to invest in your relationship bank account. Fitness games are great for this!
• Reactive dogs. Dogs need exercise, but that doesn’t always mean walks. Fitness is a great alternative. Sometimes, walking your dog is not in anyone’s best interest. If their bucket is overflowing, you need to consider an alternative. What better than practising fitness at home instead of allowing that bucket to empty?

Flexibility is an important personality trait you can teach your dog. This concept dictates whether your dog will always behave the same way in similar situations.

Can your dog adapt, think quickly on their feet, and recover if there is a change in their life? Do they go with the flow and adjust accordingly, or do they shut down with anxiety or stress?

Can they take instruction they weren’t expecting and be flexible in the real world? For example, if your dog can sit quietly between your legs at the park, could they do the same on a train? This is true flexibility!

Flexible responses in your dog include:

• not barking at other dogs whenever they may be
• not jumping up on people or furniture in different environments
• not leaving the yard if the gate is left open.

A flexible dog can make different choices when presented with the same situation. Ditching routines is one key to building your dog’s flexibility.

Does your dog focus on you or the environment? Where does your dog see value when you are out and about?

Focus is your dog’s ability to stay committed to you or a task. This can be handler focus (focus on you) or forward focus (focus ahead while still being able to think clearly about the instruction you are providing). Focus is the foundation for many positive interactions between you and your dog.

Your dog might have fantastic focus, but is it on appropriate things? If they focus on the cat, a jogger, the dog across the street or a fencepost, you will likely encounter a few frustrating behaviour struggles!

Your dog’s focus on you will impact:

• their recall
• their ability to perform well in dog sports, such as agility
• their off-leash freedom
• their on-lead walking.

If your dog focuses on events and things that are not its business, playing games that promote this concept will transfer its focus back to you.

Frustration is an emotion that occurs when something you expect to happen doesn’t happen or doesn’t happen immediately.

Your dog might experience frustration if:

• it isn’t being rewarded quickly enough
• it cannot reach a food item behind the bars of a puppy pen
• a walk or training session that doesn’t happen.

Frustration is a high-arousal emotion that can make your dog transition into fear. Many behaviour struggles are linked to a lack of frustration tolerance. However, life is frustrating! Dogs won’t always get the outcome they want or expect; sometimes, you need your dog to understand that.

Your dog won’t always get to greet the dog across the park that they want to say hello to or get to chase the magpie. Not every experience your dog wants to have will be good for them or one you want them to engage with.

The only way to prepare your dog for real life and to teach it to be OK with frustration when it happens is to work with frustration within the context of games. You want your dog to flex their tolerance of frustration muscles in a game so that this learning translates to life.

Grit is the concept that dictates whether, when presented with a challenge, your dog steps up and pushes through or gives up.

It is the understanding that when not given an immediate reward, it pays to try harder rather than give in – like learning to catch a piece of food. Misses are still wins!

Imagine a police dog who searches for a missing person or drugs. That dog will only be good at its job if it is persistent (“gritty”) and doesn’t give up if not immediately rewarded with a find. There will be occasions when there is nothing to find, yet the sniffer dog is expected to search and approach the next job with the same determination.

A gritty dog will push harder and will bounce back more quickly.

A dog who has plenty of grit will be better at:

• engaging in activities for longer
• working without (immediate) rewards
• reliability of behaviours in everyday life
• calmness, patience, and household manners.

Independence is your dog’s ability to work away from you. It means your dog can make the right choice without guidance. Independence determines whether your dog sees value in spending time away from you and is comfortable doing so.

On the face of it, that might feel counterintuitive, right? You want engagement and proximity! However, there are times when you need your dog to operate independently. It’s essential to be clear that proximity and independence are not mutually exclusive. A dog can do both!

An independent dog can be in the backyard, curled on their bed while you mow the front lawn and remain unconcerned.

A dog that understands the value of independence is much less likely to struggle with separation anxiety.

Sometimes, you need to be able to do things that don’t involve your dog. There are occasions when you will need your dog to be calm and content with spending time away from you. Independence is a vital concept in these situations.

Many dogs find new or novel situations or objects challenging. Novelty, or new experiences, are constants in your dog’s life, from encountering new people to exploring unfamiliar places. How your dog responds to novelty is important – ideally, you want your dog to have no response at all!

This is where the concept of optimism comes in. How does your dog perceive a new or ambiguous situation? Does your dog see that novelty positively or negatively? How do they judge a novel scenario?

If your dog is worried or startled by new things in its environment and reacts towards them either actively (barking, lunging, pulling on leash) or passively (freezing, staring at the distraction, trying to hide behind you), it needs optimism!

A dog’s level of optimism can determine how they react to:

• Another dog, whether that dog is giving ambiguous signals, is barking and lunging, or is another very polite and average dog.
• A new or unusual object (an umbrella, a hat, a new object in the house, an existing object moved to a different location in the house)
• A knock at the door
• A particular person (size, shape, beard, hat, coat or anything new).

Many dogs with reactivity, separation struggles and resource guarding lack optimism.

Proximity is the concept that shows your dog that there is value in being close to you.

A dog who values proximity will:

• enjoy off-leash freedom
• walk loosely on the lead
• stay close to you
• check-in often
• have a reliable recall.

You want to provide your dog with many great experiences around you! If you add more value to your dog's time close to you than being further away, your dog will actively choose to spend time in proximity.

A dog with value in proximity has the skills to hang out with you and make great choices.

The advantage of a dog that stays close is that you have better control when an unexpected event occurs, such as the motorbike that roars past or the cat that appears out of nowhere!

Self-control, or impulse control, is the concept that enables your dog to see something they value or have a desire for and still be able to control themselves.

This is such an essential skill and one closely linked to calmness.

Your dog always has impulses, whether for movement, scents, tastes, people, or other dogs – the choices are endless! However, you don’t want them to interact with distractions constantly, and you don't want to continually nag them not to do things that may be inappropriate or dangerous!

It is worth noting that the impulse might be for something your dog wants or is frightened of. For example, dogs might pull and bark on lead because they want to say hello or are scared.

Instead, you want to inspire your dog to control itself around distractions and impulses – self-control and calmness work together.

A dog with self-control won't:

• jump on visitors
• counter surf or take food that’s not given to them
• run up to every other dog they see on a walk
• chase birds, or children, or joggers
• run out the front door or jump out of the car when the door is opened.

Thinking in arousal is the concept that determines whether your dog can listen and respond appropriately to you when its arousal (excitement or fear) increases.

What does this concept look like in a dog?

• If your dog sees another dog they are worried about, can they still come when called?
• If your dog starts to chase a bird or cyclist, can you call them off the chase?
• Can your dog perform well in the ring when excited and still be able to hear and respond to your cues?

If you understand the bucket analogy, the point at which your dog’s bucket overflows is the point at which they “react” – perhaps they lunge, bark or run away. This overflow signifies the moment your dog can no longer think appropriately.

By growing the concept of thinking in arousal, you increase the size of your dog’s bucket. A larger bucket can accommodate more emotions and allow your dog to listen and operate when excited or fearful.