Trainer calmer behaviours before leaving the house- over excitement on walks.

Over Excited going in a walk.
Pixel is a little mixed breed from Eastern Europe. She's recently moved to Glasgow with her dad and adapting to her new home. She gets super excited when she's getting ready to leave the house. When this happens with our dogs, we very often rush through the leaving procedure to reduce our own stress, which inadvertently reinforces all the excited behaviours from pup.
There's a balance to be struck. Moving too fast leads to reinforcement of excited behaviours with the reward of the walk. Moving too slowly means she gets frustrated and more excited as a result.
What we are doing here is using the focus game
glasgowdogtraineronline.think...
to help her remain calmer while we prepare her for outdoors (harness, lead etc).
We then use aspects of it to reinforce calmer behaviours on each landing.
As you can see from the last clip, she us settled when the mum walks past with the toddler in the buggy.
If our dog is excited even before we get out the door, we're likely to have an excitable walk. If we spend some time settling pup before we go out, we'll have a calmer walk.
Remember, we don't need the full picture straight away, just steps in the right direction which accumulate over time.
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