5 Things To Do With Your Dog EVERY DAY At Home!

In today's video I'm going to talk about the five things you should be doing with your dog every single day. Now you're joining me in the beautiful British countryside out on a driven game shoot with my best mate Uncle Sully doing what he absolutely loves to do more than anything else which is exactly what he was bred for. Now in this video I'm going to demonstrate these five really important things that you should be doing with Uncle Sully whilst out on this day and show you where these things are useful in an extreme circumstance like this but explain why they're incredibly important in his role just as my pet dog at the same time. And arguably the most important thing is what we're doing right now but it probably isn't what you think it is and we'll come on to that later because it'll make sense then. So the next thing you have to make sure that you're doing with your dog every single day is walking them to heel. Now when you come out on a game day like this if you want to compete with your dog they have to be able to walk to heel off lead or you'll be disqualified. Now I don't compete Uncle Sully but it is just very nice to know that I can come out here and just know that wherever I am he'll stay by my side without a lead it just makes the experience more fun but for you guys at home that might never come out on a shoot day like this I still think that you should be teaching your dog how to walk to heel because I truly believe that 98% of problem behaviors outside of the house can be solved if you teach your dog to walk to heel on a loose lead. You don't even have to do it off lead that allows you the control because for your dog to be able to follow your guidance and direction they have to be able to see you and for them to be able to see you they have to be either just behind you or by your side no matter which direction that you go it means that you're in sync it means your dog's following you and they're looking to you for guidance and direction it also means that they're not already 90% of the way towards reactivity because they're out there they're nice and under control back here waiting for your guidance and direction for you to be able to communicate to them what's next so if you're having any difficulties with your dog outside of the house the very first thing that I would be doing is teaching you and your dog how to walk nicely on a loose lead not only will it solve those problem behaviors but it'll turn the chore of your day of walking your dog into the joy of your day whether that's just going around the block in your neighborhood or coming out into the beautiful countryside and enjoying it now the next thing you should be doing with your dog every single day is crate training them now if loose lead walking your dog solves 98% problem behaviors outside the home I truly believe that good crate training will do exactly the same thing inside the home you put those two things together and there's no reason you should ever have to deal with the vast majority of problem behaviors now it doesn't mean your dog has to live in a crate the whole time but just being able to control and manage the environment removes their ability to make bad decisions whilst we work on their training and slowly then reintroduce a little bit of freedom a successful moment at a time now Uncle Sully doesn't really need a crate day to day anymore he's absolutely superb but the reality is is that when we come out shooting I need to be able to transport him and oftentimes I need to be able to transport him with multiple dogs depending on where we're going sometimes you might get chucked in the truck with me sometimes you might have to get trucked in a truck with somebody else or a van with somebody else because we're all trying to condense down in vehicles so him being able to jump in a crate quickly often with other dogs is really important but like I say for you guys at home crate training is one of the most fundamental pieces of training obedience and things that you should just be topping up with your dog every single day it teaches them how to be alone it prevents separation anxiety it stops them chewing and destroying and even if your dog doesn't have any of those things anymore just giving them a little moment each day to be in their crate on their own sets them up for success should you ever need it for things like family emergencies and you need to leave your dog with somebody else or they have to god forbid go and spend some time in a vet and they have to stay overnight if they're crate trained all of those things are a much more successful experience now uncle sully we're about to go on to the next drive sully hop up did it swing shut on you mate come on will more than happily jump up in a crate whenever I need him to and that just makes this experience way easier now the next thing you should be working on with your dog every single day sit is threshold manners now thresholds are anytime you go from one environment into the other now when we're out on shoot days we do loads of different thresholds whether it's going through gates whether it's going over styles and you may or may not have noticed but I am not exactly the smallest of gentlemen and there are many times where we have to go over very skinny bridges and the last thing I want is to fall in a river because my dog with bad manners has barged past me so I want to make sure that my dog will display lovely manners as I go through those thresholds first while he then waits until I invite them over and we have just stumbled across one now which is an incredibly sketchy style which absolutely could be a recipe for disaster and if right now when I'm trying to squeeze over this avoiding all these gnarly brambles he blasted through I definitely do not want to fall into that bramble bush but I can ask him to display these excellent manners until I'm over safely and then with just a simple sully it's not the most glamorous of approaches but we've got over together now on the other side of the threshold I simply ask for my heel command and we will carry on onto the next drive to continue our amazing day heel good boy heel so let's take it full circle and bring it back to what I mentioned at the start of this video is probably the most important skill that you should be working on with your dog every day that's also probably the most underrated skill that not enough people do and that's something that I call impulse control right now we are watching a drive and there's birds dropping all around us as they're being shot and every single part of uncle sully's fiber of his being is desperate to go and get those things he's looking around for all the birds that have dropped around us but he is using good impulse control to do what it is that I've asked him to do which is just to simply sit and wait until I tell him that he can go and get those birds now when it comes to him as a pet dog there's lots of things that we teach him many things that we've talked about in this video like heel like crate training like place work like recall all the other nice things that we do with our dogs and we train them in our living room to teach them and that's all great but the reality is is that it does not matter how much training you do in your home if you can't bring it out and use it in the real world whether that's something extreme like this or whether it's just simply trying to take your dog to the pub and ask them to sit and chill yes they might be able to do it in your home but can they fight the impulse to go charging off towards that other dog that they've just seen over there even though you've asked them not to so you need to make sure that you're practicing the skill of impulse control now how you go about doing that is really fun and there's loads of fun ways that you can do it and we cover loads of those here on this channel so make sure you subscribe for new videos I can't wait to see you over there