I always encourage those I support on their behaviour journey with their dogs or those getting started with their puppies, to incorporate all the exercises that we learn. Right from the beginning I want the foundations done in as many places as possible once they are well established and doing them on the walk is not only a great way of working on focus around distractions but it makes the walk more fun.
For our dogs, most walks with their humans are very dull. For a start we just don’t walk fast enough for most dogs, and in general, we er quite boring! The problem that I often see is that the exercises get turned into chores rather than games and no matter how much I try to explain it or demonstrate it, it’s not easy to get the idea of how an interactive walk might look. I also try to explain why the foundations are important, how to use them, what kinds of behaviours they help with and how they can be useful in getting dogs used to working around distractions but it isn’t always that obvious unless you see it in action.
Another subject that often comes up is recall and although important, for many dogs, especially those who have already lost the chance of the best recall or for those that are much more stimulated by movement, the emergency sit might be a much better option. You might be surprised at the number of people who want this and yet never follow through on the activities and training that will get them there. For all these reasons, I decided to make this video about how I have an interactive walk with your dog and in it I use a fair number of the activities I teach as part of my behaviour programmes for calm, focus and good manners.
Many of these same activities will also help other behavioural issues including confidence for shy/fearful dogs and fear reactive dogs. This is because they are taught by allowing the dog to become part of the decision making process and they teach dogs to look to us for support and guidance, something that dogs have developed a special part of their brain to do!
- Interactive exercises involving brain work create the biggest improvement in rehabilitating dogs or dealing with behavioural issues.
- Using commands and instructions takes away independence and confidence – this is why training with commands/obedience type training is often not the right answer for behavioural issues. However, using verbal representative feedback is important.
- Verbal representative feedback is vital and is far more useful than clicker training for behavioural issues and is far more effective than click and treat training altogether: Think of verbal representative feedback like the game of “hotter/colder” with children. The voice is always with us and we can vary it in pitch and tone.
- Experiments using interactive play with dogs has shown that they learn far quicker and retain learning more readily this way than with click and treat training. Add in verbal representative feedback and food rewards and we have a winning combination.
- Two of the most effective activities a dog can do which helps with neurogenesis (creating new neural pathways in the brain, is where all 4 limbs are used in a thinking way and his nose. Interactive walks will incorporate both of these and you will see I use find it games, natural sniffing and Parkour.
During an interactive walk I incorporate postures taught during the foundations, such as stepping two paws up four paws up, hind paws and other Parkour exercises. These help to slow down the dog and help him or her create a mind space. Having paws at two different heights helps with the neurogenesis needed for creating new habits.
Not only do dogs love doing these Parkour activities, they are so easy to include on walks. When practiced enough they are highly effective in stressful situations, but it is important to use them correctly, slowing down the positioning to help them think and not just jump on all obstacles like we might do in agility and they should not just leap onto things impulsively.
With an interactive walk I allow both the sniff walk and a focused walk, and this brings me onto a subject that is a bit of a bug bear of mine – the one where everyone says, “but you must allow you dog to sniff, otherwise it is like taking me for a drive blindfolded”. What nonsense!
The Sniff Walk and Focused Walk – both are used on the interactive walk:
I am NOT saying, don’t let dogs sniff, but just allowing them to do so all the time anywhere and everywhere is not helpful – especially if you are struggling with focus and have a dog that is highly distracted!
There are research papers that show sniffing has a calming effect – but as with a lot of these papers, they sometimes raise more questions than they answer. I have all too often seen the exact opposite. Sniffing all the time, for some dogs, is highly over stimulating. With such dogs, sometimes the environment itself can be contributing to the very problem someone is trying to resolve.
Maybe the following will bring this all into perspective. If you needed a guide dog or other service dog, would you want them dragging you off to sniff everything all the time? No, I didn’t think so. I would like to see someone brave enough to criticise how guide dogs need to work!
In the same vein – just because I like to take a scenic drive, if I was driving you and I decided to look all over the place and not keep my eyes on the road – would you be happy? I think not. This doesn’t mean I’m not seeing anything, nor does it mean I’m not enjoying the drive – just as walking your dog doesn’t mean he doesn’t smell anything if he hasn’t got his nose stuck in a bush or to a lamp post!
In all the Mantrailing workshops I have attended I have always been told – your dog is taking in his environment and scents all the time. This is so true.
Yes, allowing a dog time for a specific sniff walk is good, healthy and wonderful, but it doesn’t mean that he has to be dragging someone hither and thither with his nose on the ground, unfocused and distracted the whole time. In fact, this is not helpful at all. Focused, directed or purposeful sniffing can help in training and behaviour work. Creating a difference between focused walk time and sniff walk time can be a way of offering your dog a great reward for when he does give you focus.
We have to be careful and ask questions when we see things written or posted. It’s so easy to just share these things on social media and not ask ourselves if it is useful or not. Many such articles and posts are written in an emotive way – guilting people into thinking they are not doing right by their dog.
Sweeping statements are not helpful and often clarification needs to be made. I hope that this article and video will bring all this into perspective and clarify exactly what I mean by an interactive dog walk.
The video is played in real time – over the first 25 minutes of one of my regular hour long dog walks. It shows exactly how I walk my own dog during this time period. The rest of the walk would be continued in a similar vein.