Fearless Friday- Bottle Bath. For puppies but not only!

Many puppy owners are concerned about socialisation of their youngsters during the lockdown. We don’t have possibility to introduce our pups to as many different places, sounds and noises, people or dogs as we would normally do.

And I think… it might be for good!

Let me explain.

Often puppy owners are so focused on socialisation that they are overexposing their pups to a number of uncontrolled stimuli and situations. This can be very overwhelming for our youngsters and instead of building confidence we are achieving the opposite result.

For example: I truly believe that wrongly understood socialisation with dogs is actually be a reason why we have so many reactive dogs nowadays. But I will write more about that next time.

I keep on saying that confidence is like a muscle. You need to train it, build it and even feed it to keep it in a good shape!

If you put too much stress on your body with too much of intensive workout you will never get stronger nor feel better.

Therefore with the lockdown or not, I prefer to work in as much controlled scenarios as possible. It allows me to fully control the environment so I can adjust to even the most sensitive puppy. Therefore there is no risk that any confidence exercise will become overwhelming or risk that my puppy will get scared. It is a great way to start building confidence. It I give my puppy little challenges and let him to show bravery and build that muscle. It also helps me to get to know my puppy better, how brave my puppy actually is so then I can plan exposure to real life situations accordingly.

One of my favourite games that you can do literally without leaving your home is Bottle Bath or some other people calling it noise box. I will fill bath or any other contained area with plastic bottles, balls or even lego blocks and let my dog it eat his breakfast from it or search for favourite toy. It is a great game for performance and companion dogs to build confidence around noises and unable surfaces!

Here is video with my dog when he was a puppy.

That was the start of every single day for us. The second video is from today and my dog is 3,5 years old and we got back to our in-home confidence training just to kick off and make a better start of each day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwE6Eov2Ghg

Can you imagine a better way? Imagine yourself starting each day with success, with even little accomplishment. You are being challenged but you are succeeding and you can enjoy that dopamine boost for rest of it. Great isn’t it? Let your dog to feel it!

If you are new to it:

-start with only few bottles and lure your puppy to walk around them

-drop some food and let them sniff it from around the bottles

-add more bottles once you see your dog is comfortable

-reward walking over bottles and stepping on them

-once you have more bottles drop some food so your dog will have to push them with the nose in order to get it.

-keep adding bottles till you cover all area. You can feed your dog from hand or let them search through the bottles with their nose. With more advanced dogs we can do play, search for the toy or even obedience exercises!

If you are a puppy owner and you are looking for help, advise or just new ideas and a great company in your puppy training adventure please check our Perfect Puppy Pack- Online Learning. We cover every aspect of training and socialisation from as early as 8 weeks old. https://www.temperamentdogs.co.uk/perfectpuppypack

Boost Motivation

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Thanks for reading and watching,

Alex