Senior Trainer Eastbourne, East Sussex

Teddy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, has now returned home after his four-week residential training stay. Teddy is a naturally nervous boy who has struggled with severe reactivity, finding people extremely intimidating. For the past two years, his owners have relied on private hire fields for exercise, as his reactivity made public walks too overwhelming. Throughout his stay, we focused on building his confidence, starting in quiet, low-pressure environments and gradually progressing to walking through busier areas, including the town centre. We also worked on improving his loose lead walking, helping him to remain calm and engaged with his handler. Additionally, we introduced structured recall training, teaching him to disengage from other dogs and navigate his surroundings with less stress, ultimately working towards making his daily walks more enjoyable and relaxed.

Molly is now back home after her four-week residential training stay! Although she’s always been a wonderful dog, she initially struggled to stay focused outside the house, and her low food drive made lead walking and recall more challenging for her owners. Over the last month, we focused on increasing Molly’s food motivation and strengthening her bond with her handler, gradually extending this newfound engagement to a variety of settings—from bustling town centres to tranquil woodland walks. With this stronger connection, we were able to tackle recall, impulse control, lead walking, and her natural hunting instincts. Molly truly excelled, and we’ll continue supporting her owners as she adjusts and confidently uses her new skills at home. www.adolescentdogs.com

Rocky has returned home after completing his 11 week residential training stay while his owner recovered from surgery. Rocky is such a lovely dog, so loyal, affectionate and clever. His owner has clearly worked hard with him before he arrived but there were some struggles that were making day to day life quite stressful. He’s very alert to his surroundings and worries quite a lot which leads to barking and lunging especially towards people and big dogs. He had got himself into fights at his local dog park and had been known to bite guests when they’ve visited his home. We’ve worked through building Rocky’s confidence and having better control overall to help him feel safer and make better choices. Rocky has come a long way since he arrived, he can now happily walk through busier areas, passing people happily without barking and lunging towards them. He can settle in a cafe and watch the world go by too. On walks he has learned to stay nice and close to his handler, engaging beautifully and following through with all cues asked of him. His recall is fabulous which means he can come away from doggy greetings before the situation becomes too much for him, meaning less likely to get himself into bother. At home he is very territorial but can now cope much better in these situations. The most successful strategy has been sending him to his crate before guests enter the house, giving him time to process the voices and smells before he introduces himself and then settles with guidance and rewards. If guests are only staying for short periods of time he’d much prefer to feel safe in his crate. Rocky has been an absolute joy and we look forward to welcoming him back for a refresher stay at Christmas. www.adolescentdogs.com

Lily has completed her 4 week residential training stay. Lily is an excitable dog with strong instinctual drives, unfortunately these had been coming out in undesirable ways. Chasing traffic, dog reactivity, fixations on birds and chasing too. She is already big and strong and still growing so this made walks difficult and often stressful for her owners. During her stay we worked on her impulse control and ability to offer a alternate conditioned response on sight of triggers. Lily's reactivity around dogs was frustration based of her wanting to go to greet or interact with the other dog, this caused her to bark and lunge towards them. We have worked on focus and engagement around other dogs and changing her expectations when she sees a dog along with teaching an alternative behaviour. We also worked on lead walking, recall, settling in public places and a settle may in the house to manage counter surfing. www.adolescentdogs.com

Harry the Dalmatian has completed his 4 week residential training stay. Harry is a nervous boy who struggles with other dogs and people along with finding some environments difficult. During his stay we worked on building his confidence in a variety of environments. Building his confidence around people and crowds by changing his associations to more positive ones. We worked to reduce his reactivity towards dogs, teaching him to reorientate back to the handler as an alternative response. Building his response to his name strengthening his recall. Along with working on his lead walking and general engagement. We will continue to work with his owners to progress what he has learnt during his stay. Www.adolescentdogs.com #dalmatian #residentialdogtraining #dogtrainer

Bodhi has completed his 4 week residential stay. Bodhi struggle to focus and listen to cues around distractions, jumped up and got excited with people when out and visitors coming into the house. During his stay we worked to build his engagement and focus levels in distracting environments, within the his responsiveness to cues became speedier and more enthusiastic. We worked on him being calm around people and being able to stay calm while having a conversation out and about. Working on his settle both in the home and out in public to. He found it difficult to stay settled in public with people walking around him as he wanted to greet and interact with them. We work on more indifference to people in public which helped him stay settled while people are passing and moving around him. We also worked on more appropriate greetings without jumping up. Lead walking, recall and general obedience www.adolescentdogs.com #rhodesianridgeback #residentialdogtraining #positivedogtraining

Rousseau has returned home after completing his 5 week stay. Rousseau was showing reactivity towards people and dogs along with a sensitivity to some busy noises. During his stay we worked on teaching an alternative response when he saw another dog or person, we worked to lower the distance he could cope at and the amount of time he could spend at the closer distances. Towards the end of stay we had several training sessions at a busy dog show where he did amazingly well throughout! Linked to his reactivity he also struggled with arousal regulation which we built in several management techniques to be able to help him. Loud or busy noises such as traffic and crowds of people chatting, Rousseau found difficult and contributed towards how much he is able to cope with before hitting his threshold. We worked to pair these sounds with positive associations. Classically conditioning playing soundtracks while he was enjoying a filled Kong or food puzzle. We also worked through a lot of engagement games to build focus and attention in different environments and his general obedience and responsiveness to cues, including meet and greets. www.adolescentdogs.com #rhodesianridgeback #residentialdogtraining #positivedogtraining

Zennor has returned home after completing his 4 week residential stay. He struggled with his arousal control, becoming over excited very easily. This then caused him to react to moving stimuli, including chasing traffic, jumping up and mouthing/biting, and becoming easily distracted. During his stay we worked a lot on impulse control and arousal regulation. We were able to build focus and engagement around triggers while working on his impulsivity by teaching alternative responses. We worked to build calmness around people and have him settle down while people are talking without feeling all the attention should be on him. We also worked on lead walking and recall, general obedience including door manners and settling and transitioning between being excited and calm. www.adolescentdogs.com