Okay, folks, welcome to this week's episode of Terrier Talk, where we are deciding what's more important: is it the training of your dog or the biological fulfillment of your dog? Okay, when it comes to, I don't know, anything like getting over behavior problems or just purely and simply having a happy, satisfied family pet. Now,
what do we mean by both of these things? Training is basically teaching a dog to do something. Okay, so like from as simple as, you know, when you first get your puppy, everybody teaches them to do a sit. When they get their foot on the floor, or they get their bum on the floor, sorry, for the first time, you go, "Oh, well done, sit," and you give them a reward for it. Okay, up to and including,
you know, teaching a dog to, you know, search for drugs in an airport. Okay, that's all training. They're the things that we teach them in order to essentially control their behavior to a certain extent. Yeah. And then we've got the biological fulfillment side of it.
And these are the things that we do with our dogs that give them outlets for their energy, for their natural drives, you know, remembering that we've genetically manipulated these dogs for years and years and years to perform certain tasks, and that really those tasks are now like driven and built into them,
and they are part of like the profile of that dog's needs on a day-to-day basis, really. And, and, and, you know, what, what can we do when we've taken on these dogs like this, and then we're trying to sort of shoehorn them into our pet dog lifestyle, you know?
So which one is more important? Like if I was going to do one or the other, which one would I concentrate on? And how do we kind of get the two of them working together in order to have a kind of happy, fulfilled family pet, which is, you know, if you're listening to this, what you're really looking for, ultimately, I would imagine.
So I'm going to come down on the side of that. If I had to pick one, and all I could do was all I had time to do was put time into fulfillment or time into training, then I would 100% put my time into fulfillment. Okay, like if I had to pick one or the other, or let's say I'm going to bias my, you know, like my day towards more than the other.
So the reason for that is that the majority of behavior problems, and really, let's be honest, what we're talking about with a pet dog is behavior, not training.
Okay, and again, these, these are the little kind of like nuances which might seem kind of silly, but when you actually wrap your head around it, you're like, "Oh,right, okay, I now see why the training that I've been doing with my dog has been failing." Okay, because I haven't really been taking into account behavior, and I haven't really been taking into account this kind of like biological fulfillment piece. Okay, so I'm going to,
you know, like put myself out there and say that biological fulfillment is the most important thing that you can do with your pet dog. Okay, now, of course, we're here talking terriers specifically. So what is biological fulfillment going to look like? So for the most part, we're looking at exercise, okay, which is genuinely really important.
And one of the biggest things that I see from, from the dogs that come to me for training, you know, clients calling me up, and when I go through that first call with them, and we're going through lifestyle, and I'm asking all the questions about, you know, what does your dog's day look like on a day-to-day basis?
The biggest thing that usually kind of flags up in my mind is that dog is probably fundamentally underexercised. Now, I genuinely think it's quite hard in a modern nine-to-five working job to give a dog that needs it, the amount of exercise that it needs. Now,
some of you will have terriers that are fairly chill, okay, and they get away with having less exercise. But the reason why the ones of you who are listening to this with a with a terrier that has behavior problems is because you've got one that's still got a very strong genetic drive, okay, and those genetic drives have become the behavior problems that you're now facing. And one of the biggest things that dog will need,
and will, and that you will be able to help yourself out massively by providing is good exercise. And it isn't just running around like a crazy thing. It's, it's kind of like low-level, steady, covering distance, and just being out and getting exercise.
Half an hour around the block in the morning and half an hour around the block in the evening is not enough. Okay, it's not enough physical movement. It's not enough of the dog just being able to use their body and be out,right? And if you can't give your dog enough physical exercise, yes, we can work around it to a certain extent,
and we can shoehorn in some mental exercise, and we can kind of do a bit of this and a bit of frustration relief, and we can do play, and we can do all those kinds of things. But really, for the steadiest, calmest, most chill pet family dog, in my opinion, the best thing you can do, give them is good quality exercise. And that can look like, you know, two to three hours a day for a very fit,
strong, drivy, young terrier. And I think that's massively underestimated in these dogs that have huge behavior problems. And it might be that if it's within your means, you're employing people to come and to help you with that, especially in the short term when you're trying to sort out behavior problems. I know that's not achievable for everyone, but you know, as a gold standard, that's really what I would be looking to do.
Then you're looking at like kind of like the biological fulfillment piece. Now, terriers really, if you can get them out into environments that are suitable and they are safe in those environments, terriers will fulfill themselves to a certain extent, because really what they are is hunting dogs. They're hunting dogs. And for me,
the key, absolute key to a terrier is that they get the chance to behave independently, okay, more than they get directed activity. They have time to make their own decisions and do their own thing and go off, you know, like sniffing and doing. And I'm not saying that you need to let your dog go off hunting for 1000 and miles away from you. You know, all of this can be,
again, going to use the word training, but you can do training to make sure that this kind of happens within a sensible distance of you. But you, you know, if you can get out into a nice woodland for two hours a day, potentially a bit more if you can manage it, your terrier will for the most part fulfill themselves, you know, like all you really need is good recall.
And once you have that, your dog will go out, they'll sniff, they'll have fun, they'll dig, they'll do all the things that a terrier needs to do on a day-to-day basis, and you just chuck in a little bit of tug play here and there, and you're pretty much golden. Like that's one of the beauties of having a terrier is that independence is their fulfillment in many ways. And so a nice,
you know, lots of nice outdoor walks in stimulating environments is going to tick those boxes for you. You know, if you live somewhere where you cannot provide that just because of purely because of your location and circumstances, you know, and your day-to-day looks urban, then you're looking to having to provide that fulfillment some other way.
And the key things again for a terrier are going to be an outlet for their kind of like slightly aggressive tendencies. So are we playing with them? Are we giving them that higher adrenaline, you know, fun that they're looking for? I'm going to use the word fun, but that's how we look at it. And then I am looking then also to give them things like digging if I can,
you know, if they don't get to do that. And also, again, the opportunities to make independent decisions and to work independently. And for me, scent works an absolutely brilliant way to do that, you know.
So can I provide this dog with 20 minutes' worth of scent work, you know, I can go up my garden and teach them an indication and get them, you know, hunting out things or even as simple as getting them hunting out a bit of food every day, you know, just it doesn't have to make it complicated. And then if you if you are doing any of those things over and above that good physical exercise where they've got independence to make their choices,
you know, you should at least fundamentally have a dog that's fulfilled. And then if you have any behavior problems that you need to sort out, you know, so something that's happened over time, a habit that's formed, you know, something that's, you know, your dog's been attacked or some sort of trauma that's happened or something that's carried over from puppyhood or adolescence that you've, you know, you've not managed to sort.
As long as you've got that fundamental fulfillment through the behavior, a tiny bit of training on top should really help you out, you know. What happens is, unfortunately, people go straight in for the training because in their heads, that's what they need to do. I need to train this dog, train, train, train, train, train. And really, they're like pushing custard up a hill because they're just not getting the fulfillment.
So even if you do loads and loads of training and you say to somebody,right, I mean, you can use a personal example, you say,right, you could train me to do, you know, like maths,right? Like I could learn, I'm like, like I'm just thinking of some rubbish art maths,right? I could learn, I could sit down and try really hard and put the effort in, and I could learn to get better at maths. But then if you then put that maths in front of me,
when I haven't had any sleep and I haven't eaten and I haven't, you know, done the things I need to do in a day, and my mental health is really poor because I've been cooped up in a house for, you know, six weeks, you know, like we've all been there, let's remember COVID, and I'm going to fail at that maths,
even though in theory I know how to do it. Okay. So really, while both are massively important, the training and the biological fulfillment, to me, there's very little point in doing that training until you've done the biological fulfillment.
And you'll find if you work with me as a trainer or you come on the group coaching, we spend a lot of time initially working on that.
Okay, so we really tinker lifestyle and we work on making sure that the biological fulfillment is as good as we can get it for you, whether that's whether I'm working with you personally or in a group situation, you know, and we tinker and we tweak and you and people are like, wow,
my relationship with my dog is so much better and they're just so much calmer now and all this kind of stuff. And those and those kind of like leaps and bounds of behavior improvement start to come.
And then then we're going to give the dog skills and like so training now, and then we're going to use that little bit of training just to help them fit in a bit better in our in the lifestyle that we need them to fit into. Because I mean, ultimately, they weren't bred for it. They weren't born for it. There's no, you know, there's no they have no obligation to behave the way that we want them to behave.
Okay. So, you know, you really need to be signing a contract with your dog. And that contract is, I will give you the biological fulfillment that you need. And in return, I'm going to ask you for some bits of behavior, and hopefully you will perform those for me, but based on the fact that I've given you the stuff that you need. So yeah, that's how I work as a trainer.
And that I think you find it most good trainers will agree with me. And you, and if you're currently training, training, training, training, you know, like you're thinking, God, I've got to stuck with this problem. And you've watched some Instagram clips and you've thought, allright, I'll do this and I'll do this and I'll do this. And it's not working. Okay, this is why. And you really need to look at that biological fulfillment piece.
So that's my little roundup of this month's, this week's, sorry, terrier talk. And hopefully it's given you some, you know, some things to think about, a little bit of insight. And as always, if you want to work with me, whether that's group coaching one-to-one, you can get hold of me through any of the normal means. Jump on the website, email, get me on Instagram or TikTok or one of those places,
or give me a good old-fashioned phone call. I still take those. And I'll hopefully see you for the next episode.
