The Phlegmatic Temperament 101

We sat down with Olympic gold medalist and National Champion defensive All American Cayla Barnes, on her home ice rink at the Ohio State University to talk about training her dog "Hulk", her collegiate athletic career and what's next as she prepares for the draft and the Professional Women's Hockey League.
Training inert - (phlegmatic) type dogs. This type of dog reacts slowly and apathetically to stimuli, has difficulty with rapid switches between excitation and inhibition, changes, and relearning of skills. When training begins, these dogs are slow to form conditioned reflexes and to convert them into skills and learned behaviors. They lag behind other dogs in training. Trainers make the mistake of using stronger and stronger stimuli with these dogs, which leads to the development of a passive-defensive and even cowardice. This type dog needs to be trained as follows. They are assigned to energetic and active people. The trainer must react calmly to the dog's sluggish nature and gradually develop more energetic basic reactions. During the initial development of conditioned reflexes, the trainer needs to maintain sufficient intervals between exercises and pairings in exercises, and not permit rapid changes in conflicting commands, since complex skills with positive and negative reflexes develop slowly. This training requires an effort to energize the nervous processes to prepare the nervous system for the formation of complex learned behaviors or skills. The main training methods are the food-reward based and contrastive. This type of dog usually can easily select people and objects, rarely commits errors, and for that reason they are most often used for sniffer dog work. it is possible to eliminate sluggishness and raise the energy level of these dogs in their work by using systematic exercises to energize nervous processes.
K9s 4 American is a non-profit company that helps provide service dogs to veterans and law enforcement. k9s4america.org/
Our Mission
We enhance the safety and improve the health of American communities by providing highly trained canines to law enforcement, veterans and schools. Specifically, K9s 4 America will:
Enhance the safety of our communities by providing MWD K9s that are highly trained for protection and detection to law enforcement agencies and first responders.
Provide renewed independence and enhanced quality of life for American veterans through the donation of specially trained MWD K9 service dogs.
Secure the safety of our communities by introducing specifically trained MWD K9s for the protection of children, teachers and other employees in our schools.