Haley Young

Interview with Haley Young

Topics covered in the interview.

Making a schedule

• Weekly checklist
• I’ve always hand fed her.
• I try to spread it out a little bit more doing a couple of sessions a day.
• Daily short sessions.

Checklist

• Muzzle conditioning session a week.
• Outside engagement.
• Heeling or leash manners.
• Middle session.
• Nail session.
• Handling conditioning.

Advice to those who want to start training their dog

• We are always training our dogs even if it doesn’t feel like it.
• If you own a dog you’ve been training that dog from the moment you brought it home.
• You can always adjust, you can always do more, you can always do less, but your already training so don’t let that word scare you.
• Don’t try and ask for too much too soon especially when your first starting out.
• Try to avoid playing the comparison game and getting that out of your head is really helpful and just realizing that anything you do is worthwhile.
• Start really simple things like if you’re a little overwhelmed by the idea of training try just feeding your dog their dinner as a reward for giving you eye contact.
• We do like three to six sessions a day depending on the day but those sessions are really short so when I say six sessions and that sounds like a lot I might be talking about six sessions that were two minutes long each so twelve minutes at the end of the day.

Advice on reactive dogs

Just forgive yourself as an owner and don’t hold on to what you could’ve done or what you think you should’ve done because a lot of dogs end up developing reactivity. Sometimes genetics are playing a rule sometimes it’s because they didn’t have enough exposure when they were in their critical socialization period.

Don’t dwell on what you didn’t do or on what you think you should’ve done because your dog forgives you they’ve already forgotten about it.

I do tell her NO! if she starts to react I will give a verbal correction or a soft leash pop and break her fixation and as soon as I break her fixation were having fun together I’m engaging with her so I’m trying to show her hey stop paying attention to that other dog you don’t need to care about that pay attention to me.

Approaching a dog trainer

• I looked into professional trainers.
• I’m really big about mixing methods so I don’t really like to play the game of like one method is always right or one method is always wrong I just think it limits my ability to learn.

Special thanks to Haley Young for sharing with us her experience. Talking to other “dog people”can always help you! Their background, skills and what they do might help you understand something you’re struggling with, or maybe you can figure it out together. Just remember to be polite!

If you want to know about Haley and her process you can look into her blog Paws and Reflect! We recommend it, she is an amazing writer.

Previous posts All about Tomy , Training Tomy, Finding a good trainer, Goals, Making a schedule.