Many would see our work on our social pages and think we focus mainly on ‘tricks’, but did you know our main passion and drive is the rehabilitation and modification of dog behaviour? We love nothing more than helping a dog reach a better level of mental health and building stronger relationships for our furry companions.
However, during our years of training one thing remains consistent, if we only focus on the dog and not the handler the problem is only half addressed.
We LOVE tricks and find the training of them has NUMEROUS and UNDERESTIMATED benefits to our dogs behaviour, and our proficiency as trainers and guardians.
Here are just some of the benefits from training tricks:
1. You improve as a handler. Your timing, leash techniques and communication vastly improve and your become a better duo as teachers and students. Sometimes we are the teachers but most of the times we are the students to the dog!
2. There is no “wrong”, there is no “perfect’. It is all about problem solving, enjoying your animal friend and learning to laugh and spend quality time together.
3. Instead of teaching your dog to obey, you teach your dog to think! The better they think, the quicker they can learn and develop their skills to tackle those nasty habits.
4. Your create focus and engagement. Is your dog reactive? Want to achieve an awesome recall? Then having the dog focus on YOU because YOU are valuable and interesting is crucial!
5. Confidence an issue? Struggling with anxiety or fear? Then training and performing your tricks can help address these issues for both dog and handler. Tricks help us focus on our dogs confidence and anxiety issues, but also our own.
6. BECAUSE THEY LOOK AWESOME!
We hope you enjoy this little video of our Ringmaster Scott and his Kato Potato. As a good friend of ours Tammy from Precise K9 says, this is him “warts and all”. He is not looking for perfection from Kato, he is going with what Kato wants to do, just a man spending some quality time with a dog that means the world to him.
If you want to start learning about the benefits of trick training then come and join our AWESOME and UNIQUE ‘Canine Carnivale’ show, new classes starting again in August!
FIGHT fear with FUN and CREATE confidence with COOL!