Friday, February 19, 2016

Handling exercises


There are a couple places during the CGC when your dog will be expected to allow a stranger to touch her in different ways.  Here are a few articles that may help you with teaching those.  
Most dogs don’t automatically like being reached for. Dogs communicate through their use of personal
space. Some dogs want more space around them than others. When you reach into a dog’s personal
space, it may move away or seem stressed unless it has been taught otherwise. 

Sometimes this teaching happens without us needing to put forth any special effort. The dog learns
from consistent experience that people reaching for it always means good things are going to happen.
All too often, however, dogs learn to distinguish between pleasant reaching and not-so-pleasant
reaching based on the person’s voice tone and body language. Dogs are very good at learning which of
our signals lead to an experience that won’t be very nice for them. 

This doesn’t mean the dog has been hit or corrected in some way (although it can mean that). If your
particular dog doesn’t like to be brushed, and you reach for his collar and then brush him, he will quickly
learn that you reaching for him means he may be getting brushed and he will begin to avoid your reach.
Or he may learn to avoid your reach only in certain rooms or situations, or at a certain time of day– depending upon where and when you try to brush him. 

To read the rest of this article, click here ... 


Two other blog posts that may be helpful include: 

Grooming tips for blind/deaf dogs - click here ... 
Overcoming grooming fears - click here ...
Worried about strangers - click here ... 




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