(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Okay, hi folks, welcome back to Terrier Talk. It's been a wee while since we've had an episode, but it's time to get the podcast back on the waggon. And this first episode is about getting my own dog, Elvis, who is kind of the reason behind Terrier School, really, that a lot of you will know about, back on the behaviour waggon himself.
So, to give you a little bit of a backstory to Elvis, so you kind of understand where he's been and kind of like my journey with him. So, he's a Border Terrier. He's now six years old.
He is still in Tyre. And I got him, wait, six years old. So, he got him relatively close to the start of COVID, just when he was born, you know, like in that, in that period where we all thought, oh, this will just last for six weeks and then it'll all go back to normal.
You know, when we were all that naive. That's when he was born. And so, the first year of his life was very quiet.
Okay. He didn't get any of the kind of puppy socialisation, really, that a breeder would normally have done with him. People didn't go around to the house.
You know, all of that kind of stuff that out and about, so the breeder would have done, didn't get done for COVID reasons. When he came to me, everything was super quiet because there just, just wasn't as many people. And, you know, I already live in a relatively quiet place.
I mean, it's a small town, you know, there is stuff. It's not, I'm not like out in the middle of nowhere, but I'm not somewhere super busy. It's not like a city or anything.
So, during COVID, everything was very quiet. Okay. And we would walk him every day and he would walk around local to where we lived and he would be in the local parks and he would be in the forest and things like that.
And really, it was all very quiet. There wasn't a lot of meeting dogs. There wasn't a lot of meeting people or anything like that.
So, his actual kind of like what I would call early socialisation was not badly done, but it was very quiet. Yeah. And then when he did start to get to do socialisation with dogs, he was a bit older and he was in that sort of struggling adolescentee, early adolescentee type time, I think, like looking back on it.
So, right when he was getting to the stage where his hormones were kicking in and all that kind of stuff was when the world opened up and he ended up with some sort of not great experiences with dogs. At the time also, I didn't really know what I was doing with a terrier specifically. And, you know, like I was working, the trainer that I was working for was a gundog trainer.
And all of my training knowledge at that point was very much based around that. It was all about, you know, working labradors, spaniels and kind of, he worked with pet dogs as well, but really his, all of his thought process was in and around those types of dogs. It wasn't, you know, he's a good dog trainer, but, you know, it was all very much about obedience and looking, you know, working with a dog that is kind of intrinsically motivated to work with you, which is a different thing to working with a terrier.
And so, yes. And then also being a border terrier, he ended up with quite sensitive guts. Anyone who has a border terrier with behaviour problems will probably also be in this same boat.
So we kind of went through some problems with that. And we, and as he came up to, I don't know, maybe when he was about 18 months old, he started to show some issues with one of his butt legs, which we eventually diagnosed as a luxating patella. Same time-ish around, it must've been when he was about a year, he started to show some symptoms of allergies.
He was biting his tail, all that kind of stuff. So we had to work through that as well. Okay.
And all of that took, took a bit of time really, partly because there's people go, there's nothing wrong with him, or just put him on pyriton or, you know, he's fine, all that sort of stuff. And I had to really fight to get diagnosis and, you know, vets just wanted to put him on to like a hydrolysed kibble and leave it at that. You know, all of the things that, you know, like I now deal with day to day for people, I've kind of been through myself with Elvis.
So in, then in and around the time I then got BT, when he was about 18 months old, he, he was, when I got BT, I would say Elvis was not the best dog socially in the sense that he was a bit pushy around other dogs, but that was quite an age and stage thing as far as I was concerned. And he was really excited around dogs. He found dogs very exciting, always had them, but Elvis finds everything in life exciting.
And partly because that's the character he is. And partly because of his early socialisation and sort of lack of basically. So then he started to become reactive right about the time I got BT.
And now I can look back and see there was about a row of three or four incidents where large entire male dogs of various breeds, which was mostly kind of Labradors, Vizslas, that kind of thing. You know, very, very bouncy, big gundog type dogs who would come bounding over to him. They would challenge him for space.
These dogs aren't inherently aggressive most of the time, these big kind of like pushy gundogs, labs, visas, all that kind of thing. They're not, they're not in for a fight, but they are argy bargy, especially males at that age. You know, there was, they've got the whiff of another entire male and they've come over to square up, you know, but I, mate, who are you? Let me get all your details.
Let's work out what's going on here. And he never reacted in those situations really. But looking back, he obviously struggled with this a lot more than I really realised.
And I do wonder if there was a wee bit of protection over BT as well involved in it at the time. So he gradually then started to become reactive. He got into a couple of scraps and then I had that kind of like big incident where he wouldn't recall off that Great Dane and he went and actively started a fight with the Great Dane.
The first kind of scrap he got into, I sort of assumed it was the other dog because he'd never done anything like that before. And I was like, well, it must have been the other dog that started that. He's met loads of dogs and been fine.
And the other owner's like, well, it was your dog. And I was like, well, I don't think it was. And then so on and so on.
And it probably was Elvis that started it. And then obviously he actively went and had that fight. And then that's when I sort of knew, okay, right.
Like I've got a problem. And then to cut a long story short, I went going, this is how I got really deep into the, I was already working as a dog trainer, but this is how I got very deep into behaviour specifically. And realised that the tools that I had available to me weren't going to help the situation and they weren't helping the situation.
And so long story short, a lot of work with Elvis and a lot of working through his medical stuff and several years of me doing more education. And here we are now, right? So now I have a dog who is, remains entire male aggressive in the sense that if an entire, a large adolescent entire male comes and gets in his space, he will defend his space. Right.
And I wouldn't ever allow him to socialise with other entire males because it just seems like a silly thing to do. But he's gone from being like forwardly aggressive where he would actively go and attack them. And when he was getting to a stage where he was barking and lunging at every dog we were seeing pretty much to being able to be around that.
So, you know, I'm not, the prey drive thing was another thing. I would lose him for hours chasing deer, that sort of thing. Well, it's not really the conversation here, but basically he was a pretty difficult dog.
So that's the backstory. That's where he was. That's where I took him to.
Okay. And we've, we've for the last kind of like two years, uh, because mostly happened between ages of like 18 months and three, really. He's been fine to live with on a day-to-day basis.
Uh, we get the odd incident where somebody else is very rude, large entire male comes galloping up to him. And that might end up in a bit of a snarly scuffly type of situation, but he's only ever defensive. Um, he's not offensive anymore and he walks past most dogs.
We have a routine where he sees a dog. He comes to me, he pops on lead. We walk him by.
I don't allow into interactions with strange dogs because that's just his routine. That's security for him. Don't worry, mate.
You do not have to interact with that dog. We're just going to go by it. That's that.
And I will advocate for his space and keep other dogs out. And in return, I expect him not to bark, lunge and be an idiot at those dogs basically. Um, and we've lived very happily like that for the last couple of years.
He'll go anywhere. You'll see if you've watched any of my stories and stuff on the social media, we just had a holiday where he was sitting on ferries next to other dogs. Um, you know, he'll go anywhere and do anything, you know, pretty much without any bother.
But what I have noticed over the last month is that we have had a couple of reactions. I would say we probably had four now, like four or so where he has, we've seen other dogs and he's kicked off. And the first time we did it, I thought, okay, we just started doing a load of physio work because we were trying to improve his looks and put him back on paracetamol for six weeks to help him through that.
And I was getting, hearing his stomach gurgling a lot. And I thought, okay, that paracetamol is causing him pain. Like it's obviously irritating his stomach because he's got super sensitive guts, like a lot of Border Terriers.
Um, so I took him off that and the next few dogs we went by, he was fine. And I was like, he was obviously very sore. And he felt like it, like, you know, like he was just not, not coping and it was coming out with him barking at dogs, which is obviously a behaviour that he has previously been found to be made himself feel better with.
So, you know, it's not unusual that it would come back, you know, something's not quite right. So, and I thought, okay, fine. That was, that was that explained, keep him off the paracetamol.
I now know that's a problem for him. We'll have to look at the methods of pain relief if we need to put him on pain relief again. So, um, and that was that.
And then over the net, the last sort of fortnight, I've had another three or four quite big reactions, mostly at big entire males, to be fair, but normally he'll walk by them. I'm not saying he's loving it. You know, like he's not watching them.
He's not like, Oh, let me be friends with you. But he'll walk by them and he'll tolerate them and he'll hang out next to them. And, you know, he's, he's okay.
Um, and, uh, he hasn't been able to do that. Like a big entire male in anywhere in his space, nevermind one that's getting up in his grid and being rude to him. Like he just hasn't been able to cope with at all.
Um, and we've had one or two sort of reactions at like starey border collies, one at a very fast spaniel that went zooming by him a hundred miles an hour, you know, stuff that he would have traditionally found tricky. Those are the things that he's, he finds hard. If you know what I mean? Like, I don't think you ever get a dog to a stage where they like breezing through stuff that they find super hard, but he's coping and regulating and able to deal with those things.
Right. And the last couple of weeks, he just hasn't been able to. So I've been like, okay, this is not great here because now we're going, this is the start of the behaviour that descends into full reactivity and starts to become a problem.
So I now need to get on top of this and help him solve, you know, help him through this. Right. Because this isn't, this is not good.
So sitting down and thinking about it, the reasons why he might be reacting, there could be a pain issue, but I think that's probably not it. Um, I did wonder, you know, have we pushed him in too hard with the physio? Is that hurting his leg? But I've been back to the physio therapist to see, and she says it is less pain in his stifle than there was there before she thinks when she's manipulating it and stuff. So we say, if anything, that's got better.
So we probably shouldn't be that. Um, we've just come out of school holidays and obviously I have a 11 year old son. So, you know, the dogs don't get as much attention over holiday periods.
Um, and the stuff that we do is a bit more out of their normal routine because we might be visiting places and you know, all that kind of stuff, holidays and things. So, you know, that's a bit off in that respect. So we've had that heatwave and during that heatwave he didn't get any play.
Um, we was able to walk them. They still got plenty of exercise cause it wasn't as hot here in Scotland as it was in other places, but I couldn't ramp them up right. I couldn't get them chasing flirt poles or doing loads of high adrenaline tug or anything like that.
So he, there was about three weeks where really he didn't get any, what I would call like outlets for his terrierness. I think his relationship with the lead has become pretty poor. Um, which is my fault really, because he has, he's off the lead the majority of the time.
You know, like I live very close to forests and places where he can be off lead. Um, that's what I do. I get them out the van.
They might be on the lead for a minute or two as we walk out of the car park and then we're into the forest, they're off the lead and off they go, right. And same two minutes back or whatever. And the only other time he goes on lead is if we see something where I need to put him on a lead, right.
Which might be another approaching dog. Well, I'll put him on lead for politeness. It might be that we see something like a sheep or we go into a field and the sheep needs to be on the lead.
But essentially the only reason he would go on a lead is to prevent him from something. Right. So I feel like his relationship with the lead has become quite negative.
Like he's like, I only ever get put on this thing for reasons where I'm going to start struggling. Right. So I think that's happened.
And I'm probably being a bit slack with lead pressure in a sense. He doesn't pull on the lead as such, but he can be a bit pully here and there because he's hardly ever on the lead. It's just not a big deal, if you know what I mean.
So like, I don't have to train that because it's not like I'm walking miles on the lead every day. So although he walks, he doesn't pull, it's, you know, like he's, that's not the problem, but he might get a little bit pulley to get to a scent or something like that. So, you know, I think, you know, really over the last couple of years, I haven't been on top of it as much as I should be.
And then just generally he's been out of his routine, you know, which I think affects him quite a lot because he is quite a emotionally sensitive dog and he likes his routine and I think he's been out of it because of the holidays. So, you know, I think that's affected it. So that's kind of what I'm hoped has happened and that we've just had a very slow build up back to where we are.
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to, I'm going to carefully manage like his kind of like decompression walks. Okay.
So his walks where we aren't anywhere near triggers, which is the majority of what we do most of the time, not because I actively avoid triggers, because that's just what my life looks like. So those walks I'm going to very carefully manage and I'm going to make sure I keep him away because I don't want to put him in the place of erupting again. Right.
I want to keep him out of that situation for now because I don't want this behaviour, which is starting to slip, to slip any further. We will meet dogs here and there, but I'm going to actively work for him to not, normally I would just walk him by. I don't really do anything.
I will actively work for him not to engage with that dog in a kind of like more earlier training scenario. Like I'll make sure I engage him. I will let him look at the dog, all that sort of stuff to make sure that he doesn't take the opportunity to do any reacting.
I'm going to work on his relationship to the lead. A little bit of putting him on and off the lead regularly on a walk for periods of time, just so that he gets back used to being on the lead again. It's not necessarily linked to seeing another dog, all that sort of stuff.
I'm probably going to do some work on lead pressure with him again and just make sure he understands how to deal with that. Because I do think that his reactions sometimes are based on just a bit of pressure on the lead that he doesn't like in difficult situations. So I need to make sure that we are, his relationship to that lead pressure is good and not causing the reactions.
So I will be working on that. And then we are just going to go back to just doing some controlled socialisation again. I don't need to do any of the foundation stuff, that's all there.
And also making sure that his outlets are good. We're making sure he's getting plenty of play and that he's getting all of that stuff that he really needs. And then we are going to move, I think once we've done that, I'm going to move on to working about him meeting dogs more regularly.
Because I think part of the problem is that really the way I live, he just doesn't meet that many. Not because I actively avoid it necessarily, just because it's just the way I walk. I drive 15 minutes from my house into a lovely forest and we just don't see many dogs.
Because that's the way we like to live. So I think I need to make sure that I keep that work up with him. So once a week I take him for a walk around town and we make sure we meet some dogs and see some dogs.
We'll meet some, we'll not meet others and he just keeps that skill set up. So it's not a big stress for him when it happens. So that's the work I'm going to be doing with him over the next couple of months.
And we, me and the are going to document it all in the Terry School community. I've set up a little extra channel within the community, it's called Elvis All Shock Up. And I'm going to pop in little videos of what I do with him on a day to day basis, how we're getting at stuff.
It's all going to be, you know, kind of bootleg filmed, just as I do it myself, rather than kind of like formal training tutorials. But it will be a document of working him back to being better. And, you know, as a dog owner that's had reactivity, you will always get ups and downs and you might have to readdress situations at times.
So it's a nice little documentation of how I do that, what it's going to go wrong, right? There's no way that I will get through this whole thing and it'll all go smoothly. At some point there'll be reactions and something will go badly and I'll have to dig it out and work out what went wrong and all that sort of stuff. I will have days where I don't get stuff done, so you can see like a real time sort of progress about of how all that goes.
And you'll get to see really how I work with a dog and how I work with my own dog, right? Like, who's obviously the most important dog to me. So you know, you'll get to see that in real time. So yeah, if you want to come join us in the community, there's a 30-day trial.
We are, where are we now? We're towards the end of August now, so August of 2026, depending on when you're listening to this. If you're listening to it fresh new or, you know, sometime, you know, autumn 2026, you know, you could still take advantage of this. And otherwise it will still be there and be archived and you can watch it back through if you're listening to this at a different time.
But if you want to do that, I will pop a link somewhere around about, depending on how you're listening to this, but I will make sure there's a link somewhere nearby in the notes of the show and all that sort of stuff. And you will be able to take advantage of a 30-day free trial to join the community and watch me work it through. And hopefully, you know, you'll choose to stay in the community afterwards and work through with your own dog.
So that's it really. That's just a little welcome back to the podcast. I have got a list of things I'm going to record for the podcast.
Let me find it, which we can then, you know, which are coming forward. Oh my words, I can't find my list. Where is my list? Okay, here we go.
So I'm going to talk about the role of food in nutrition and training, why play is important. This thing that I call putting your dog's behaviour into containers. Keep it simple.
Your foundations are everything. The joy of a good dog walk. Don't get stuck in management mode.
So I've got a whole list of really cool titles now for another season of the podcast. So keep an eye on it. Subscribe wherever you are.
And we'll get more Terrier stuff out to you in this format, which I really like because I get to give you a bit more detail about stuff. So great. Hope you want to come and follow along the journey with me and Elvis.
And I know a lot of you will be in a very similar place to where I was six years ago. Or you might even be in a similar place where I am now and that you've done a lot of work with your dog and occasionally things slip or you've done work and you can't seem to progress and you want some help getting to that next stage. In which case, join us in the community.
Find the link that will be somewhere in this episode and come join and follow along and we'll see you in the next Terrier Talk.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
