What is the Ethical Approach and how is it any different to other dog training?

 

The Ethical Approach is to take our knowledge of understanding our dogs natural instincts, environments, behavioural needs and communication skills and apply them to our every day lives and activities with our dogs to ensure optimum physical and mental health and wellbeing.

 

A trainer has the skills to manipulate a dogs choice of behaviour and swap one unwanted behaviour for a behaviour that we as humans would like our dogs to perform instead, usually using some form of reward or punishment. This can be a fantastic skill, especially for teaching dogs specific tasks. 

 

However using The Ethical Approach we spend more time holistically assessing your dog, from their physical health, their day to day routines, reducing stress levels, to building up confidence within their social interactions and relationships. Instead of training alternate behaviours, we instead encourage engagement in natural behaviours, a more natural balance of sleep/wake activity within their day to day routine, reducing tension and stress, encouraging natural movement for physical health and exercise, and we manage their environment to help ensure they are feeling comfortable and safe.

 

Any physical stress, discomfort or pain should always be considered, managed and treated adequately by a medical professional. We then work on reducing any stress related activities, monitoring exercise and play, and helping them to feel less stressed. We will then be providing and encouraging activities that can reduce stress within our dogs. Stress is a common factor in many unwanted behaviours in dogs including hyperactivity, jumping, barking, rushing around, lunging, pulling on lead and more. Training an alternative behaviour without assessing and managing the underlying cause can be very difficult.

 

The activities we provide for our dogs are to develop independence and self confidence, and autonomy based on their own ability to explore and interact in their environment naturally without our constant control. We will use the same strategies and principles to help them with their social relationships and interactions, in which we support them, and they are set up to safely succeed, however we try to allow them to problem solve and use their own natural abilities to communicate effectively with others within social situations.

 

This isn’t to say that our dogs are not taught boundaries and skills, by focusing on our dogs needs, natural behaviours and reducing stress and tension, we end up with a more relaxed dog, more able to feel safe, confident and comfortable and cope with environmental or routine changes, reducing unwanted behaviour and allowing them to learn, develop and adapt much more easily.

 

We still teach skills such as loose lead walking and recall, as these skills are essential for our dogs to be able to engage in and enjoy activities alongside us. We use two main cues our connection cue, and our disconnect cue. Keeping the communication basic, simple and consistent and easy for them to understand and always allowing our dogs to make choices outside of the boundary we are giving them. Focusing on connection and safety, not control.

 

The Ethical Approach is a Training, Behaviour and Wellbeing program developed from a combination of the teachings, principle and practices of incredible, compassionate, ethical and educated dog professionals including Turid Rugaas, Sindhoor Pangal, Amber Batson, Julia Robertson and more. Developed from my own learning, qualifications, experiences and insights, in order to help more people and dogs build a better and healthier understanding and relationship.

 

 

Jodie Griffin, Canine Behaviour Practitioner, associate member of Pet Dog Trainers of Europe

ISCP level 5 Full Qualification Diploma in Canine Behaviour (passed with distinction)

Advanced Certificate - Introduction to dog behaviour, dog body language and problem solving

CPD Certificate - Canine Essentials 101 

CPD Certificate - Introduction to Canine Massage and Visual Assessment  

Student in Galen Myotherapy, studying canine anatomy, biomechanics, movement, posture, rehabilitation therapy, to become a fully trained professional canine Galen Myotherapist.

Assistance Dog Trainer for UK accredited assistance dog organisation Dog A.I.D.

CRB check & fully insured