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Hello, I'm Tracy and I would like to welcome you to this blog. I'm here to help you get real life results and have the dog you dreamt of having even before you got a dog. I specialise in turning your struggles into strengths.
Today we are talking about big dogs versus small dogs when it comes to training. Now I love all dogs and one of the beautiful things about dogs is not only is each dog an individual, but we also have differences between the breeds. We go from teeny tiny chihuahuas to huge great danes and this variety is just wonderful. I often hear a myth, and that is I have a 'such and such breed and they are untrainable' or they behave like this because they are a certain breed. This is absolutely not the case. All dogs, no matter what their size, are trainable. Yes we may have to adopt certain methods, or how we approach training a dog, but we have to do this for individual dogs much more that a certain breed or size. For example you can get a high drive Border Collie who wants to work all day, or you can get a Border Collie that is a complete couch potato. They're the same breed and size, but a different approach is needed to get the most out of training them. The high drive dog will need more calmness from the handler, whereas a lower drive dog will need more energy and enthusiasm from their owner to get better results.
We have to adapt our methods for the size of the dog in some scenarios. One game we can play with our dogs designed to improve proximity and focus towards the owner is called Funder. It involves the dog running through the owners legs chasing after food. In my case this wouldn't work for me if I had a Great Dane, as I am only 5ft 3. But what I can do is adapt the game slightly. So I can have the dog running past the side of me instead of under me. If I owned a Yorkshire Terrier then I wouldn't have any problems playing Funder. I can also change the game to a different game such as the orientation game. This game is similar and works on the same concepts of proximity and focus, but instead the dog runs in front of me from left to right, or right to left. With a bit of flexibility I can train the dog the same concepts no matter what the size, just using slightly different methods.
All dogs are trainable, no matter what their size, through the power of positive reinforcement.
Some of the things we do have to take into account for small dogs is the amount of food we have available to use when training them. The daily food allowance is obviously much smaller for a small dog. This means I may have to be more specific as to what I want to train and reward. So if a small dog has multiple issues that need training, I may have to focus more on one specific struggle. For small dogs we have to prep their food more to have smaller pieces of food to allow us to reward more. So you could use a small dog or puppy kibble, which means the pieces are smaller. You could put the kibble in a bag and break it down with a rolling pin. I use a kibble which is quite thin. This allows me to break the kibble in half. This gives me twice the amount of kibble to reward my dogs. The smaller the pieces the more we can reward.
Sometimes we don't play as much with smaller dogs. We can use games such as catch, retrieve, tug and chase as rewards as well as food. We need to work as hard on getting our dogs to play as we do in training them. I ensure my dogs have some form of play several times a day. Not only is it a great way to reward, but also strengthens the bond between you and your dog.
Obviously the biggest difference between large and small dogs is their size, but more specifically it is the way they move. Small dogs move much quicker and need less space to run at full speed. We may need to encourage large dogs to move faster, which we can do by animating the food, such as rolling it and encouraging the dog to chase it. Smaller dogs on the other hand you need to reward very quickly. As they tend to offer the behaviour and quickly offer a different behaviour. This means we need to be quick when offering the reward to capture the behaviour we want.
We also have a tendency to protect the world from large dogs. So large dogs don't necessarily get away with some of the things that the smaller dogs do. For example, if a German Shepherd is pulling and lunging on a lead, it's going to pull on the owners arm, or may pull the owner over, and it is perceived as more dangerous that say a bichon frise pulling on a lead. A small dog doing this people may even find funny or cute, whereas a large dog we are more likely to try and stop them from pulling on a lead. Large dogs can also be a bit too heavy to play with smaller dogs, so we may stop them from playing or interacting with other dogs once they reach a certain size. This leads to larger dogs having more rules and restrictions, which in turn can lead to the dog becoming more frustrated. As owners try and implement these rules it may lead to nagging or negative methods being used. This can break down the relationship between the dog and the owner. We can instead use games and inspire great choices in our dogs to make these restrictions feel more fun.
So we all have our own reasons for getting a dog, and we're quite often drawn towards a certain type for their size. Sometimes it doesn't always go how we imagine and we may have to work hard to achieve our goals. We need to aim for our relationship potential so we can live a life with more freedom for us and our dog.
So dogs are dogs, and there are some things we have to take into account when training dogs of different sizes. But we actually have to adapt our training more for the individual dog rather than the size of dog. All dogs can be trained and we're here to help you achieve your training goals and have the dog you dreamt of
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