Article appeared in 'Our Dogs' in 2007

Being an animal trainer and working with my clients is a rewarding experience, especially seeing them enjoying training their pets and solving any behavioural problems that they may have using kind and effective methods.

Among my work as a consultant is giving Pet Aid training to clients that may have disabilities and who would benefit from some help from their pets, such as people that may have got a dog and at a later date found themselves disabled and needing some assistance from their dogs, or people who have got puppies and need to start training these behaviours at an appropriate time so they can assist theirs owners as apposed to dogs specially selected to be trained by a trainer and supplied to the owner, although this may be appropriate if the disabled client is unable to contribute to the training.

One of my recent pet aid clients was Emo, a 14 month old Black Labrador, and a loved member of the Setterington family in Witham, Essex, who had already spent hundreds of pounds on anti bark collars and other such ‘quick fix’ devises to no avail.

Mr Setterington, Emo’s owner is disabled and called me in to help with the behavioural problems that the family were having with Emo and Emo’s brother, Eddie of 7 months.   They also required help to enable the dogs to carry out certain behaviours that would be helpful and aid Mr Setterington with his daily activities.

There were many issues I had to address, such as diet, exercise, feeding regimes, training techniques, sleeping arrangements, routines within the household, previous behavioural and veterinary history, breeding, relationships between the dogs and owners etc, to give me good indications of where problems lay, possible courses and treatments.

After the first appointment, progress was seen with Emo and Eddie as the Setterington family were working very hard and keeping their diary of training schedules and progress, but also recording any additional notes that they may have wanted to discuss with me on my next visit which at first was once a week and then every other week.  I also provided additional telephone and email support.

My first objective was addressing diet in liaison with the vet as this was manifesting itself in disruptive behaviour due to the hunger the dogs were experiencing due to an inappropriate set target weight.

Behaviours such as jumping up, stealing food, attention seeking etc were apparent as a symptom but also because of the Setterington’s perceived lack of dominance in the house and the consequent lack of obedience of the dogs.

I advised the client to use healthy treats for training together with an appropriate food to aid behaviour in terms of reducing any hyperactive behaviour and to compliment the training being given.

The food Arden Grange, a food I recommend to my customers was given to Emo and Eddie which appeared to have a calming affect on their behaviour which then helped within the house in terms of managing the dog’s behaviour and aiding more efficient training.  Arden Grange food also has chondroitin and glucosamine which helps protect the joints which was particularly useful as Labradors can sometimes tend to have problems with their joints but also Emo sometimes did appear a bit stiff.

Another important part of their new schedule was increasing the exercise to keep a good weight and also to reduce any unwanted behaviour in the house by allowing the dogs to expel their energy, giving them one to one bonding time with their owners and facilitating their natural behaviour.

Heelwork was trained using clicker training as was utilised in all of the training as the Setterington family found Emo and Eddie very hard to control on the lead.

Emo and Eddie were crate trained with their own individual crates, as I felt this would establish a routine in the house, giving the dogs an area to retire to when they wanted space from each other or from the family due to the size of the house, which I felt was a bit too small to make it possible for Emo and Eddie to express their behavioural repertoire, especially as their on and off the lead exercise was fairly low when I met them.  They were both trained properly to use the crates using voice command, clicker and treats as so the dogs would be desensitised to being in the crates and also by being fed and having toys in the crate, the dogs came to associate the crate with positive things.

Shortly after, the dogs were introduced to my class, at the first class, Eddie had showed aggression at which point I explained to the family that this could be addressed through training but they felt it better to re-home Eddie with a family member.  According to my original assessment, Eddie hadn’t been socialised so this could be one of a many possible contributory factors to his aggressive behaviour.

Changes in behaviour were also noticed after this point, I believe due to Emo getting one to one attention and having the space within the home to express his natural behavioural repertoire.

From this point on, Emo continued to progress, Mrs Setterington had had most of the problems with Emo as he just didn’t listen to her.  Through establishing a bond through training for 10 minutes each day and Emo consequently seeing her as dominant, problems with jumping up and pulling on the lead were quickly solved, but in my experience Mrs Setterington’s increase in confidence due to the training had also contributed to the improvements.

By this time changes in the food, coordinated with the vet and the training Emo seemed a lot happier and calmer with the eradication of behaviours like stealing food and jumping up at the table and visitors.

Emo then attended my obedience and agility classes on a regular basis. The obedience classes would help them to be able to work towards Emo being obedient in the house and on walks but also to be able to recall him by him getting used to being obedient around distractions.  The agility I felt would help Emo to keep a good weight and to get rid of excess energy.  At first Mrs Setterington couldn’t work Emo without him running off whilst off the lead or him pulling so much on the lead, after four one hour classes Mrs Setterington was able to work him off the lead and maintain his attention around the agility obstacle course.

As progress was made and behavioural problems addressed, I then started to help Mr Setterington to train certain behaviours that would aid him at home and on his travels in the local town.

The first thing we did was teach Emo to heel next to the wheelchair and also to heel when the power trike was attached to the wheelchair which was achieved by clicker, voice command and treat.

Adding to this it was also required for Emo to touch the buttons to call lifts and to enter the doors at the bank.  This was achieved by target training, this was trained using a target stick which is essentially a stick with a ball on the end, Emo soon learnt to touch his nose to the target using clicker and treat, then the target was gradually replaced with an adhesive button used in the house and placed on the wall; then the command ‘touch’ was given that had been previously given for touching the target, Emo then started to touch the button by jumping up and placing his nose on the button.  With training given at home, Emo then was able to call the lift.

Next we then trained Emo to pick up different items on command, for example, phone for phone, keys for keys, injection for insulin.  The next step in shaping the behaviours that Mr Setterington needed was teaching Emo to retrieve on command by giving ‘fetch’ and ‘bring’ commands which he did in quick time.  We then placed the items such as the phone, insulin and keys on hooks in kitchen all in the same place and then Emo was taught to take these off the hooks according to the item command that was given (i.e. fetch injection, bring) and bring it to Mr Setterington wherever he was in the house.  We also trained Emo to retrieve Mr Setterington’s credit cards as it had been a problem in the past when he had accidentally dropped them in stores when out shopping, normally someone would pick them up but what would happen if nobody was available to help? So it was very useful that Emo could retrieve his cards.

We are also going to teach Emo to press a panic button just in case this was needed by Mr Setterington at a point where he was home alone, especially as Mr Setterington suffers from diabetes and could experience an attack or if he had had an accident at home.

Recall was also quickly addressed on their local playing field after two one hour sessions, by improving their confidence to handle Emo and by using clicker and treat, varying their routine so Emo wouldn’t automatically think that the lead would be put on when recalled but also by the ever stronger bond that was achieved through training so that Emo wanted to come back and by the practice done in the classes.  By giving him the freedom to play off the lead and ‘say hello’ to other dogs, they were easier able to teach him to recall.

The Setterington family are very happy with Emo and have solved the issues they were previously facing with Emo’s behaviour, especially as they continue to train and work hard.  They also continue to keep up on Eddie’s progress with his new family.

The work that Mr Setterington has done with Emo has blossomed into a co-operative and loving relationship as Mr Setterington gives Emo lots of mental stimulation and enrichment in the form of training and toys and Emo helps him in his everyday life.

It isn’t only dogs that can help their owners, I am an animal trainer and it is possible to train other pets to retrieve certain items to aid their owners, obviously you can’t take your parrot into the local Sainsbury’s or bank to open up doors, I am not sure what the people in store would say, but you can achieve certain behaviours within the home that may be of assistance to disabled owners, you can train all types of animals!!’

Victoria James BSc (Hons),
Animal Behaviourist & Trainer

Victoria James, BSc (Hons) (Licence),
Dresseuse et Conseillère en Comportement d’animaux

Tel: +33 (0)4 93 36 79 09
Mobile/Portable: 0033 (0)6 89 19 50 88
Email: victoriaspettraining99@yahoo.co.uk