welcome to Canicross Conversations with me, Michelle.
And me, Louise, talking all things dogs, running and canny sports. Hey Michelle, have you heard that Non-stop are doing a bark run on Saturday, the 21st of September, in London?
Wow, where abouts in London?
They're doing it at Wormwood Scrubs, and basically you can just come along and have a go at Canicross. They've even got kit there for you to try.
Fantastic. How far is the course?
So, you can come and complete a mile course with your dog, and you can do it however you want, whether you're walking, jogging, running or rolling, you just need to get around the mile, but give it a go.
So, if people haven't done Canicross before, I assume they can get some tips and borrow kit.
Yeah, they're going to have the brand ambassadors there, so they're full of experience. And guess what? I think we should go.
I think we should definitely be there, Louise, you're the best Canicrosser who comes out there.
So, there will be a live podcast as well on the day, and also Skinners are there. So, if you've got any nutritional questions, then this is the right time to go and ask them.
And if you've been wanting to try out some non-stop kit, this is your opportunity.
So, 21st of September, 12 to 5, it's £5, and all the entry fees go to the Mayhew Animal Welfare Charity. Come and join us. Thank you to our sponsors Non-Stop Dogwear for sponsoring this episode.
welcome to this episode of Canicross Conversations. Today, we're joined by Dumb Behaviourist Alex Cooper from Coxhill Behaviour. Hi, Alex. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Hi. Thank you for having me.
Would you like to introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners before we get started?
Okay. I'm Alex. I run Coxhill Behaviour Services. I have a postgraduate diploma in clinical animal behavior from the University of Edinburgh. My business sort of formed when we got a rescue street dog and I thought my training isn't working here. And so I decided that I needed to question everything I've ever learned. And that's how I started the business in the end, because I just sort of did it on the side. It's a bit of fun before. Yeah.
Wow. My ears pinged up then when you said rescue street dog, because as listeners know, I have one of those. Yeah, they really do change your life, don't they?
They do. Yeah. Oh, normal training methods don't seem to work.
So tell us about that first dog then.
So that was Zebby. He's our big stripy dog. So my partner competes with him. He's done two ultras now. Yeah, two ultras and the Mountain Challenge. He's doing the 40-mile in April or March, whenever it is. He came over from Bulgaria. He was about six months old, they said. He wouldn't get much bigger than a spring espanol. He's big. He's a shepherd. So yeah, he was just, yeah, he's stale everything. He's shredded everything. He barked at everything. And then we say we did some training with him.
He's actually still barks at dogs, but he's not, he's a lot better and he loves running.
So what didn't work, sort of normal traditional training? What didn't work and how did you have to change it?
So I found that we say, for example, we taught him to sit down. One day he'd do it and then the next day he'd be like, no, that is, and he just wouldn't do it. So we had to have, we had good research into treats and found black pudding sticks, which he would do anything for. We changed all of his diet. And then eventually, once he'd settled down and had some decompression time, he did start to learn.
But it was just watching his body signals because they were completely different to another dog because when they play as well, they sound like they're fighting, especially all mine when the seven of them play. It's horrendous, but they're not. And they just play really roughly. So for him, when we were out and about, he wanted to play with the other dogs and was like trying to pat them on the head. But everyone thought that he was being nasty when he wasn't, he was just him.
So it was just learning all their little quirks really that they have.
It's what they've learned on the street as well, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned diet there, Alex, and I want to pick up on that. So what kind of prompted you to change diet and how does that help?
So my spaniel that we had at the time, we only had my spaniel as ever before we expanded. He had to have raw because he had really bad skin. So he was always on raw. When we got Zebi, he was on Ardour branch from the rescue. So we changed him over to raw, because also we couldn't get any weight from him. As soon as we changed him over to raw, he started putting weight on, he's calmed right down. Everyone always says that I had to farm his springers when I had to.
I think it was because they were raw fed. They don't have anything processed, they literally just have a raw diet and natural traits. And it works really well for them. It works quite well for a lot of my clients as well.
That's interesting, isn't it? We've touched on it before in a couple of episodes. And it's kind of no different from humans in a way, isn't it? It's what we feed has an impact on our behaviour, I think. Anyway, that's all another story. What sort of triggers were you seeing then that people may be able to identify that, you know, have either just rescued a dog or are not sure how to deal with their dogs?
Well, when we say people are going to react, he gets a lot bigger. So when we watch him, he will grow and his ears start to prick up and his tail comes up. And then you know, and if you can catch him in that split second and tell him it's fine, he's like, okay, it's fine. But it's just knowing that dog's behaviour. I've got a really reactive one, which I'll talk about later on. And yeah, seeing him, his behaviour as well, he gets a lot bigger, his tail goes up. He's a Caucasian Shepherd Cross.
So, I mean, so yeah, so let's just chat about kind of what makes a dog reactive. And we've mentioned before on the podcast that we don't really like labelling dogs as reactive, because there's always a reason behind behaviour, isn't it? So, I mean, what causes dogs to react in the way that they do, that may be seen as aggressive?
So we found in the background, it could be their genetics. So like with Herbie, he's my really reactive boy. I said he's Caucasian chequered cross. So in his genetics, he's designed to guard. So if my daughter takes him, he's quite good. But if I take him, he wants to guard me all the time. It could be the owner. So if the owner's quite nervous, that goes down the lead. I've had clients before who won't let their dogs say hello to another dog. So that causes frustration and this reactivity.
Any past trauma they've had as well. So again, Herbie, he doesn't like people that smoke. And if you're ginger and smoke, that's the ultimate. Can't stand you. He doesn't like people with cats either. So he's obviously got some past trauma that's gone on when he was in Bulgaria before he came over. And pain. Pain is a massive one. Most, about 75% of reactive dogs are because they're in pain. So I always recommend a vet check when we see any reactive dogs.
And that's quite, if dogs become reactive, especially if they get older, that's a really positive, you know, a really thing that could be happening, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. So Herbie had luxating patella. We found that when he was about a year old. So now we're still working on his reactivity because where the pain was still there, he still thinks about it and he's getting better. But he's still quite reactive.
I wonder whether that's where Poppy's reactivity stems from partially, because she had elbow dysplasia when she was younger. So it perhaps maybe started with the pain. That's something I've never considered actually. That's really interesting. Yeah, definitely.
We have a lot of pain that are quite reactive and they remember it as well. So it might only be there for a couple of weeks, but then a dog bumped into them. They've learned, they've decided actually next time a dog comes near me I'm going to growl. That dog won't come near me. Then they've conditioned themselves that actually if I bark, nothing's going to come near me.
So how do you do with that to get them out of that pattern? I suppose it is.
So we tend to have a lot of fun. So I run reactive dog classes and they are literally about fun. So we have a confident circuit for that. They do first, we have jumps, weaves, mats for them to lie on, tunnels, anything fun, a few games. We go around the circuit, they do a couple of minutes on each, and you don't have any dogs reacting because they're concentrating so much on what they're doing. They learn that actually I can have fun around these other dogs.
So we always do that first before we move on to anything in the field where they're walking closer to each other. Because they're learning, they can have fun. And then we do a little trick bit, so we get them to go through the legs and do the little zigzags. Again, that's quite good for the owner if they're out, they need the dog to come to them and be safe. So yeah, we tend to do a lot of that.
That's quite interesting, isn't it? Because we, I run a Canicross Social Club and we have reactive dogs that come and they love running in a pack. So what you're saying is they're used to it, they're safe and they're having fun.
Yeah, yeah, if they have fun and they learn that they can have fun around other dogs, their confidence grows. And we also start, if I do a behavior consultation, I will start with what I call the rebalance session. So I will go into the owner's home and I look at what they're fed, how they sleep, because dogs should sleep quite a lot. I find that actually a lot of these reactive dogs only sleep for two or three hours.
Is it because they're not allowed to or because they just don't relax?
They just don't relax enough or they might not have the sleeping options or sleep pace where they're comfortable. So yeah, we'll look at sleeping, what they sleep on, giving them more choice of toys and chews, giving them a choice of bed. We also introduced food trays for them as well. So all my clients' dogs are now really spoiled because they have a food tray once a week where they have different bits of veg and fruit and fish and meat and they can choose what they want to eat first.
Oh, that was nice. So giving the dogs kind of the choice themselves to decide what they want. Yeah, that was lovely actually.
Yeah, it gives them a bit more confidence.
And then so, but I know what my dog's like. She's not reactive, but I know what she's like with remembering things or even seeing. I mean, we had something, so we're not at home at the moment, but there was a pigeon on a wire and she really reacted to it, you know, barking at it, whatever. And the only thing I can think associated with, was when we were dog training one day and there was a squirrel along the wire, you know, and she sees it and it's like, but that was months and months ago.
So she's still got that in her. So how do the dogs not still remember, even though they're having all this fun and doing all this stuff, do they still not remember that actually if that dog sort of runs into me, it's going to hurt me, so I'm just going to tell it to go away.
It takes time. So if you're reactive dogs, it takes time and consistency. Maya was my first reactive dog after Zevi. So we fostered her for the rescue. We didn't realize we were sort of her last chance at the time. She had a couple of fosters, and she came in and basically got on the bed. You could just see in her face, this is where I'm staying. She just stayed with us. She's blind. She's deaf now.
She's only a couple of years old, but she was probably a dog they should have put to sleep rather than rescuing because she was full of worms and ticks and fleas, and she was almost dead when they found her. So yeah, she's had quite a traumatic past, but for her, so we've had her, say two years now, and we can take her up with vets, and she won't react. She started saying hello to dogs. She'll even say hello to her nemesis, which is Ginger Poppikoo. She will say hello to them now.
I still miss her for her safety, but that's taken us probably about two years with her, but we've got there. But again, where she's deaf now and she's blind, it's harder. But some dogs learn it really quickly, some don't. We also teach them how to relax on command. So if anyone sees me before the canicross, I'm always in the corner with Herbie, getting him to relax. Then he just lies down between my legs and just chills. So yeah, it's quite a mean feat trying to teach some of them.
Well, that's a skill. We need to learn that. So, I mean, where do you start with managing a dog's reactivity? Ideally, people will contact a dog behaviorist, won't they? But is there things we can do at home to help start that process?
So we tend to do it for the distraction games. So we teach them to relax. We will do, look at me. So we teach them to look at me first, and then we actually teach them to look at what they're scared of or reacting to, and then look back at us. So we're doing like a disengagement game. We'll do patting games as well. So anything like that that can keep their attention on us, and it's also say learning about their behavior, what does trigger them.
Can they go past, say like with Maya, she could go past 100 dogs and then a ginger cocker poo would come along, and she would react, because I don't know why, she just didn't like them. Say with Herbie, he'll react to anything. So it's trying not to trigger stack them, because again, when we went yesterday, we went for a walk, and there was two golfers, and he was fine, we walked between the two golfers, didn't bark at all. The next golfer came along, it was like he was going mad at them.
And I was thinking, you've just walked between two golfers. But obviously, we stacked him by that point, and he was like, no, I've had enough. So yes, being careful of that, and just knowing their behaviour, how they're going to react, and what you can do to get in there. Using those high-value treats, so again, we use the black pudding sticks, or ostrich sticks, they're quite good as well, sprouts, anything like that, which they will get their attention straight on you.
And there's a last resort, squeezy cheese. It's hard, a big mouth, and that distracts them.
It's really hard though, because there's me saying my dog's not reactive. She's not reactive to other dogs, but she will react to people in hats, but not all the time. So it's not, it's random. And, but golf, so we walk across the golf course, and yeah, it's the ball. It's the ball flying, and the sound and chasing after the ball, I think, with her. Yeah, I need to be a bit more consistent with getting her back to me, and yeah, not picking up golf balls.
Alex, you mentioned, like, obviously they react when you stack the kind of incidents on top of one another. So should we be avoiding situations like that, or should we be actively trying to desensitise the dog in those environments? What's the best way?
So we don't want to slug them by, say, trigger stacking them, but we don't want to completely avoid. I know people that go behind cars and all sorts. Because when we do that as well, we're teaching them, a bit like in COVID, we need to stay two meters away, and we're teaching them that. We're teaching them actually we need to stay away from people, or dogs, or whatever it might be. So what I would say is, take them out.
Don't take them out in the middle of the night so you don't meet anyone, but just go somewhere where you know there's a wide path, or you know it's going to be quiet. Local seafronts are notoriously busy, so don't take them down there. Just take them maybe to the woods where you might see one or two dogs. So you're still seeing the dog, but there's room to get out of the way and say you're not flooding them at that point.
Do you think that leads make them more reactive? Because I keep hearing this, if my dog is reactive, it's because she's on a lead.
What are your thoughts on that? They can't get away. Obviously, they have to fight or fly. So when they can't fly, because they can't run away, they're on the lead. So they think, I need to fight. Again, ours are on the lead all the time. It's just making that fun and knowing that actually I'm on the lead, I am safe, nothing's going to happen to me. So all of ours will come between our legs, sit between our legs now when the dog comes. So they know that they're safe.
That's how we've got around that. But yes, a lot of dogs are reacting on the lead and not reactive off the lead. Because they can't run away. They don't have that choice. So you're saying, right, we're walking past them or nothing.
Yeah, and it goes back to sort of dog etiquette, doesn't it? And if you see a dog on the lead, perhaps put your dog on the lead because there's a reason why. And then if they're both on the lead, that sort of changes it a little bit, does it or not?
Mine will still be actually dogs on the lead. It just depends. As long as those dogs don't come up, I think most people, if you've both got them on the lead, you sort of know there's probably an issue there. And we tend to just walk nice and quickly and confidently past because that's another thing you need to make sure that you're confident. I see a lot of people, they're reactive dogs, which walk very slowly and timidly.
And I always say to them, think about someone that you like in front of you, I usually say Tom Hardy, and you're trying to catch up with him. So you're doing a nice, active, powerful walk.
Yeah, that's a good idea. Good idea. So what are we looking for in progress? How do we know that it's working with our reactive dogs?
So if I tell you the story of my Herbie, because that probably sort of, you can see then what, how far he's come. So this time last year, we thought we were going to lose Herbie. He'd lost a lot of weight. He was really reactive. He was going with the dogs in the house as well. And the vet didn't know what was going on. He had loads of blood tests for like lots of the foreign diseases. We had to bring him away on holiday with us in case anything happened.
And when he got back, he had his luck taken for teller surgery. So after that, he has come on quite well. So the first progress was obviously he has to go to hydropathy. Now, we turned to hydropathy obviously with his really reactive dog, which will bite when he's scared. And we had our muzzle on and the lady was like, oh, you can just take that off. So we started off, we helped them. So we held him on the side, no one went in with him and he just went on his treadmill.
So now he happily walks in, gets straight on the treadmill, they get straightened behind him. And between the sort of sessions, when they stop the treadmill, they can stroke. So that is a massive marker for him that he's improved with that. We took him up to the vets. So the last time he went up to the vets for his booster, we could not. It was fun, let's say. This time the vet managed to become his booster and his kennel goth. He didn't bark at the vet and he was a male.
He was actually Bulgarian, our vet, and he smoked. So for Herbie, that was quite a big one. And I can take him places now. He does bark, but I'm just like, come on, let's go and we go past. So for him, it's massive improvements. So I wouldn't have got him past those two gulfers. He'd have just sat there leaping on his lead, barking at them. But so now we can walk past people. So it's just seeing, it's little improvements. There's quite a few balanced dog trainers in my area.
And one of them goes around and he says, oh, if they can't cure their own dog to be active behaving, they can't cure yours. And I'm like, that's not necessarily the case. So for Herbie, he's come on so much. For some people, they might be still reacting. I'm like, he is, but I can do things with him. I couldn't take to the vets by myself because now I can. I wouldn't take him out for a walk by myself because now I can. And things like that. He's away with us now.
Normally, he would be barking this time last year, but he's over in his crate, not making a noise. So it's just looking for those little improvements. It doesn't have to be massive. It's not going to come overnight. Yeah, this has taken us about nine months with Herbie. And hopefully, this time next year, he'll be even better.
It's good to hear as well, isn't it? And he's getting a better life, isn't he? More chilled.
Yeah, more chilled, yeah. He's fine in the house. He loves us. Gives me big bear hugs. Just everyone else. He hates.
Yeah, it's funny how they go out into an environment, isn't it? And they change. And it doesn't have to be a rescue dog or a street dog, does it? It just happens to be. But why does that happen? So it's sometimes a lot what's in the dog, isn't it? What's spread into the dog rather than something else.
And over socialization as well, because we have in our heads that as soon as we get this puppy or rescue dog or whatever, we need to take it out. We need to take it out for a walk. We need to take it to puppy socials or puppy parties, the vets run. And actually a lot of the time, they don't want to socialize like that.
Like taking them out and getting them used to the horses or different smells, the traffic, it's far more beneficial than taking them to a puppy party where actually they might not get on with the other dogs, or there's just too many dogs there. Some dogs absolutely thrive on it, but others, they don't. I think a lot of the time it's because they've been over-socialized, with the wrong type of socialization, getting them to play with dogs.
And also, we went to see a puppy yesterday, so my dogs had puppies, but we went to see a 13-week puppy, and Pickle's really good because she couldn't care less about other dogs. And it was really nice to see this puppy is very wary, but slowly by the time we finished, they were interacting and sitting by each other and stuff like that. And I thought, I said to my friend, that's been really good for your dog because it's not in your face, but it's just learning from another dog as well, isn't it?
Yeah, that's the right time for socialization.
Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, it's interesting. Whereas Pickle's pops gone round and it's madness. But anyway.
It's just about building confidence, I guess, isn't it? And I guess success and that timeline will look different for every dog, won't it?
Yeah, so some of the reactive dogs as well, like after a couple of sessions, they're absolutely brilliant. They don't react at all. But then those that have got deeper trauma or say they breed, they take longer or if they've had pain association, it just depends. The ones that say aren't very confident and they're reacting, once they've had a few steps put in place and their confidence is growing, most of the time the people are awake. They're off, they're walking.
We had a client the other day and the lady had problems with her hand, so she was finding it really hard to walk the dog. Then she messaged me the next day and we put a couple of things in place. She's like, we've just been on a two-hour walk. It's fantastic.
That's quick.
Yeah, that was quick with them because I think it was more reacting because she was nervous. It was trying to protect her when she was in pain and couldn't hold the dog properly. But where we changed what she was using on it and she could hold it, she was perfectly happy then and confident. It wasn't dragging her towards the sea. That literally was all that dog needed.
The other thing I noticed when I'm out and about, and I suppose Canicross has brought that to me, when a lot of people still don't understand reactive dogs and it's not just bad behavior, there's a reason behind it. But you just get looked down your nose and stuff.
But you were aware of that, aren't you, Michelle?
I'm very aware. My default saying now is she's very scared, just give us some space and people are like, oh, okay. Kind of changes the reaction.
I think, yeah.
She has been shouted at, I've been shouted at in the past saying, why have you got an aggressive dog here on a narrow path? And I'm like, she's barking at you because you're shouting at me.
And how did they react to that?
He shouted some more because he, yeah. It was not a nice interaction actually.
Yeah, it is interesting. Anyway, let's move on to muzzles because we get asked a lot about this and there's sort of lots of stuff out there. So why do we muzzle a dog?
So, not all dogs that are muzzled are aggressive, obviously. Some of them, say they eat food that's on the floor that they shouldn't eat. If they've got dietary problems and things, a lot of people will muzzle them. A lot of them will eat poo, like the animal's poo, so they're muzzled for that. There's loads of different reasons why we have to muzzle. Also, say, with the XL bullies, they have to be muzzled now due to the law.
They don't have to be dogs that are regressive, and even the dogs that are regressive, they're good dogs. I've got one of the muzzle movement tops that says, good dogs are muzzled too, which I love wearing when I take herby out. Because he is a good dog. He's just had a past.
There are those perceptions out there that, the dog has got a muzzle on, it's dangerous. So we need to normalize this, don't we?
Definitely. I used to say the muzzle movement muzzle, and I think they are doing quite a good job at trying to do that. Because they've got their t-shirts, they've got bags, and they are always out promoting. Everything they put on there is always a hashtag, good dogs wear muzzles too. I think they're actually getting the message out that actually, your dog doesn't have to be an aggressive dog, it can be normal.
Even a lot of my clients, they're like, oh, but if I put a muzzle on it, people think it's dangerous. I'm like, well, I think that if I put muzzle on, my dog can do things that the other dogs couldn't do if he didn't have a muzzle on. I couldn't take her for a walk if he didn't have a muzzle on, but now he's got a muzzle on, he's comfortable with it. We can go for a walk. We can go to the beach later. We can do everything a dog isn't muzzled can do. It's protecting him.
If a dog comes up to him and he doesn't like that dog, and he want to bite it, he's got a muzzle on, so they can't say anything. They can't say, well, your dog bit my dog, but actually no, he didn't. He's got a muzzle on. So yeah, all four muzzles if they're needed.
Yeah, and so can a dog wearing a muzzle, can it help in reducing its reactivity or is it just purely safety?
I'd say it's purely safety. I've not had one that you've put a muzzle on and it stopped its reactivity. It's literally just to keep the dog safe, people safe, other dogs safe, rather than just be able to stop it. So I do know a few people say that we'll put a muzzle on and just take the dog to any situation and completely flood that dog, which again is something we shouldn't do.
We, even though they're muzzled, we shouldn't put the situation that they're going to be, going to take them backwards or really upset them.
How do we go about muzzling and introducing a dog to a muzzle?
What I normally do is I get my muzzle and I will smear usually peanut butter on the inside, so dog-friendly peanut butter. Then they put their nose in, lick it. We'll do that probably for about five minutes, depending on how long it takes them to lick the peanut butter off. They're just putting their nose in there. We do that in our dog class as well. Any dog class I run, we always do a muscle training.
They either smear something or be stick and scrap through, and they just have to put their head through in and do it. I would probably spend, I do like five minute training sessions. I probably do about three a day and then see. Some dogs take longer. Maya, it took us probably about a week doing that, to be able to then move on to the next step. But Herbie was quite comfortable straight away, so we only did that for a couple of days.
Then the next step would be, say, to stick the sprat in and get them to put their head free for the sprat. Then finally, do it up. Then they can have a few minutes walking around with it on, take it off, and then just keep building up the time that they put it on. Say again, with Herbie, he was fantastic. I think he went for quite a long walk quite soon after having it on, because it would be so comfortable in it.
That's nice to hear.
Yeah. How can we tell that they're comfortable in it? What signs should we be looking for? Or how do we know the stress?
It's just looking for their behaviour. If they are panting a lot, obviously, if it's hot, they're going to pamp. If they're panting a lot in it, they could be clearly quite stressed with it. If their body posture is low, they're not going to be happy. If they're rolling along the floor all the time, trying to get it off or pouring at it, trying to get the mask, bashing it into things, Maya used to try and get hers off of my willy and she'd hook it on my willy strap and try and pull it off.
But if they're happy and content in it, their body posture will be normal, they'll have these tails up, he's wagging it, trotting along, he won't roll on the floor and try and get it off. He did with his old muzzle, but say if he's new, he's fine with it.
So just go back to it because when you put the loop around the dogs to stop them pulling, whatever you think about that. But often I see dogs trying to get those off as well. So is that just more an irritation and how can we stop them doing that? So because with the muzzle, you don't want them to be doing that, do you want them to be able to?
If it's well fitted, they shouldn't do it. It's one that is nice and got all that full pampering and everything, they shouldn't do it. Some of them do, but again, it's just heat and rewarding. When they're not doing that, again, you squeeze your teeth, brilliant. You can stick that through the holes and they can lift that off. Just when they start doing it, just come on, let's go, really jolly. Just keep praising them for not doing it.
But as soon as you get a bit of a bit of a muzzle on, most of them never stop.
That's interesting.
Yeah. How do we find the right muzzle for our dog then?
What would you recommend? It's got to be one that you can have a full pan, nice and lightweight. They can eat in it, they can drink in it, they can play. Some of the toys that you can get now, they can actually pick up with their muzzles on. Not a ball or anything, but something fluffy. They can. Not those nylon ones that shut their mouth. They're not particularly great. Always one of the sort of like basketball type, as we would say. There's quite a lot.
So most of the websites now, they have a fitting, so you can put your dog sizes in and they'll tell you what muzzle is appropriate and what size you'd need for the panting.
Yeah.
Okay.
And they're perfectly safe to run in as long as they can pant, can't they?
Yeah. So I use the muzzle movement one, mainly because when I went to, you see the lightweight, the sort of lightweight metal, but they're not. But they're mainly for the sight hounds and Herbie's face was too wide. So that's why we went to muzzle movement and he's got a nice wide. It looks huge, but when it's on him, it's not. Muzzle, but yeah, perfectly safe to run in. There's quite a few of them, I think, on the circuit do wear muzzles. So, Herbie is one of them.
But are there any activities or situations where muzzles shouldn't be used?
So, when they go to hydrophilic things, we always have to take, if he had his muzzle on, if he doesn't now, have to take that off. Again, don't use it to put them in a situation that they're not going to be comfortable with. So, say if I was having a party or something and I thought, I'm just going to let him out of his muzzle on, he's not going to be comfortable for that. We shouldn't use it for that. We should purely just use it for when we need it, for going out for our training.
So, it was the running and things like that.
Yeah, because I guess we don't want them to associate it with negative things.
No, it's always got to be a positive. So, Herbie knows when he has his on, he's going out.
So, are there any common mistakes that we should avoid when we're muzzle training? Anything you see that shouldn't be happening?
So, usually an ill-fitting muzzle or rushing them. A lot of people just say, I'm just going to track it on, do it up and off we go. And obviously, that's not a nice experience for them and they just get to associate the muzzle with horrible things. As I say, it can be perfectly normal for a dog if you do it properly.
It's the same with everything, isn't it? It's like fitting a harness and all sorts. You've just got to get them used to it before they, yeah, and then they can enjoy it.
But it would be good, I think, if all dogs are muzzled trained, because if you go to the vet, sometimes their behaviour changes. And if they've been in an accident or they've really hurt themselves, the vet might need to muzzle them. And that's going to be an awful experience for dogs who have never had a muzzle on. So if all dogs, you know, you don't have to, a dog doesn't have to wear muzzles, but if it's had that training, it knows the muzzle is OK.
Then if you're ever in a situation where you need it, it's there, ready for them.
That's good advice.
Yeah, it is. And that would help to normalise it for everybody as well, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
Maybe vet should take it on and say, like, let's get your dog's muzzle trained, even if we don't use them.
Yeah, that would be a good idea. So I know I use it in classes. I know a few other people use it in classes as well. So all the dogs have had a muzzle on their face that needs to be done up.
So they know.
Excellent. So where can our listeners find you online? And yeah, whereabouts?
I've only got Facebook and Instagram at the moment. So it's Coxhill Behaviour Services. A purple logo with four of our dogs on there, including Herbie. He's the biscuit and white one.
We'll put the link to you in the show notes. Whereabouts in the country are you based in case people want to book in personally?
I'm in Kent, so near Dover. But I can do anything over Zoom, but say in person. Yeah, that's where I am.
Brilliant. Excellent. Well, if you've got any questions, then go and find Alex online, and I'm sure she'll be happy to answer anything. But thank you so much for your time, Alex. It's been really interesting. Actually, we've learnt a few things that I need to go and practice with Pickle, I think. So thank you for your time. We hope that you've enjoyed this episode, and we will see you on the next one. We hope you've enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and share with your friends.
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