It’s not about the tricks
(Why I started a Circus School… for Dogs)
To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of ‘trick training’.
Working on the front line at London’s busiest rescue centre and studying animal behaviour at university in my down time, it was hard to imagine what possible use a bunch of (admittedly often impressive) tricks could be when dealing with serious, life-limiting, behavioural issues. Beyond prepping dogs to do TV and film work, I couldn’t see any real-world purpose and figured it was something people did who just loved training their dog so much they had basically run out of new things to try.
The lightbulb moment came when I started working as a behaviourist and quickly realised that many of the dogs who developed a solid behavioural issue were lacking two things:
1. Confidence and 2. Resilience
I’ll be talking about those two things A LOT…
So if you want to know more about why I consider them to be THE. MOST. IMPORTANT. THINGS. EVERY. DOG. NEEDS, sign up for our newsletter below.
Somewhere, between cute puppy and the distressed dog in front of me who was no longer coping with their day-to-day life (the very definition of a behavioural issue), these dogs had not acquired the two most essential skills to make it in our super human-centric world.
They may have had a great start - good parentage, flying colours at puppy class - but then somehow, maybe around adolescence, maybe later, things started to go slowly awry and they simply were not equipped to cope. Something scared them and these particular dogs simply did not possess the ability to recover - no bounce-back-ability if you will. The scary thing became a Bigger scary thing, then a Really Big scary thing and - BOOM! - you’ve got a Really Big Behaviour Problem on your hands.
The Epiphany
This was the moment that changed everything for me.
Instead of coming in at the point everything had gone to heck and trying to mop up the fallout (don’t get me wrong, this is ESSENTIAL work and hats-off to all my lovely friends and colleagues who do this work day in day out. You have my forever admiration) why not create a program which focuses on creating emotionally robust dogs?
Then, if they do find themselves in trouble later, they already have a solid foundation from which to stage a recovery. Heck, maybe we could even PREVENT some of those anxiety-driven issues from developing. Big dreams…
The Problem
Dog training is boring. There, I’ve said it. It’s ‘work’, a chore that has to be done.
And after 6 weeks of (often) feeling more than a little incompetent in a room full of perfectly-behaved cutie-pooches (surely that wasn’t just my experience…) that’s it. Breathe a sigh of relief, the dog is now officially ‘trained’ and you’ll never need to go to a class again. At least not for the next 15 years anyways.
The biggest disservice the training industry has given the dog-owning public is, in my opinion, to perpetuate the myth that puppy class is enough. Yes, it’s super-important to attend a well-structured course run by a qualified expert who not only loves dogs but also enjoys working with people (spoiler: this is not always the easiest thing to find IME), but it’s not enough! Your pup hits adolescence just around when puppy class ends and you no longer have the support of an expert (even if you were lucky enough to have found one) just as your dog enters one of the most developmentally influential periods of their life. Eek!
The Solution
Play. Play is magic. A secure framework through which to explore the world, it creates the optimum conditions for learning, builds brain muscle and forges friendships. Co-operative, collaborative, engaging, experimental and, most important of all, FUN. Kids do it naturally and so, as you will know, do our dogs, but (most) human adults are rubbish at playing. Somewhere along the line play starts to equate with competition, with comparison and, by default, with being ‘not good enough’ and so we either become the best or stop doing it. Either way we are no longer playing, but that’s how our dogs (and kids) are learning and somehow we need to find a way to bridge that gap…
To the Circus!
An inclusive conceptual platform where exploration is encouraged and individual differences are celebrated.
Supportive not competitive, relaxed not formal, inventive not prescriptive and infinitesimally creative, the Circus is the perfect environment to both identify our dogs’ unique talents and to focus on building those two crucial skills in our dogs of Confidence and Resilience to fully equip them for a long and happy life with us.
