Transforming Dog Behavior - The Story Of This! So Far: Dog Training, Agility, Nutrition And Beyond

I've shared This!'s story so far throughout our podcast videos, and many of you have let me know that my discoveries have helped with transforming dog behavior. This comprehensive compilation about This! covers dog training, agility, behavior issues, and beyond. It also explores how nutrition and diet have played a crucial role in helping This! find joy in everything we do together. A massive shout out to everyone on Team This! Your amazing support means the world to us.

🐾 This! - The Story So Far:

00:08:00 Reactive, Unmotivated and Fearful: Finding Resiliency For This! Beyond Dog Training
00:27:56 Dog Behavior And Diet: Recovery For This! Beyond Dog Training
00:49:42 First Dog Agility Competition: Creating Joy For This! By Maximizing Reinforcement
01:08:33 Goals, Challenges And Joy: Reflections On The Canadian World Team Dog Agility Tryouts With This!
01:28:27 Dog Agility Before And After: From Reactive And Fearful To This! Joy And Confidence

💜 You can watch more videos where I cover This!’s story as it unfolded:

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Dogs That is brought to you by Susan Garrett and the Say Yes Dog Training Team.

Susan Garrett’s interest in animal behaviour started at the University of Guelph where she earned a Bachelor of Science majoring in Animal Science. Since then she has developed into a preeminent dog trainer and canine sports instructor and competitor. Susan is one of the most successful agility competitors of the last three decades. She has won multiple Gold Medals at National or World Championship events with every dog she has ever owned over the past 30 years.

A natural teacher and an entertaining speaker, Susan is world renowned as a leading educator of dog trainers. Her understanding of how to apply science-based learning principles to both competitive and family pet dog training has been pivotal in changing how dogs are trained.

Susan is now helping many thousands of dog owners in 132 countries have the best relationship possible with their dogs. The real joy for her comes from bringing confidence to dogs and their owner through playful interactions and relationship building games that are grounded firmly in the science of how animals learn.
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[Freyja-fm]

Key Take Aways: Maximize Joy and Maintain Connection. Awesome

[janetburton]

I am SO thankful for this podcast. When I heard today "You cannot train something that isn't a dog training problem" I felt like crying. With a reactive rescue I truly want to see her have Joy! More than anything else I want to see her have joy. At 2 she has almost zero prey drive, totally food unmotivated (despite yummy different treats), and won't really play with toys. She goes to class once a week and does all her commands almost perfectly but she has zero joy. Now I know more what I need to focus on. Thank you, thank you so much.

[Freyja-fm]

Hi Susan. I heard you say this about liver previously when you first had This! tested. I cut out all foods with liver in it for all my pets and digestion and energy improved dramatically, even for the cat. Life changing! My GS mix loves green peas with dinner, and sweet potatoes of course.

[quan-lauranguyen]

Thank you! Tears in my eyes over here because so many things sound just like my nearly one year old mini goldendoodle. The vet gave him a clear bill of health and a shrug “that’s weird” about his dramatic reactivity to paper rustling or me scratching myself, among other behaviors. He also doesn’t seem to have the joy for training I would expect. Believing our comeback will be so much greater than our setbacks!

[anneparker]

thank you, this was so interesting, and I'm sure a lot of less dedicated owners would have just given up with the agility!

[Doktracy]

This has so many ideas for one of my Dobermans that I’m struggling with, getting her show championship.

[DogtorADR]

Your story of This!'s transformation is inspiring. As a veterinarian (in the US), I always tell families to trust their gut feeling when something is wrong - even when they don't have the videos and journaling to back up that emotion.

You may be interested in taking a deep dive into how the gut microbiome affects our neuroendocrine system (including dopamine and mental health). I'm not a proponent of raw feeding for a few reasons, but the main one is the companies perform essentially zero research on their diets. Whether on a quality control level (heavy metals) or digestability/bioavailability of nutrients. Yours is not the first story I've heard of nutrient imbalances from a raw diet. It's not that it can't be done, but you can't rely on the companies (at least in the US).

There is so much of our (dogs and human) mental health wrapped up in our gut biome. If you continue to rear puppies in the future, your mention of antibiotics in a neonatal puppy was the likely trigger in all of this. While the littermates did okay, she had the first/worst inflammation in her intestines (indicated by the diarrhea). Probiotics and supportive care (with electrolytes, hydration, fiber, etc) are slowly becoming the first line of treatment, rather than reaching for the antibiotics which can have a devastating impact on the microbiome for a long time.

Thanks for the inspiration to keep making progress with my 10 month old puppy! Two steps forward, one step back...

[rebeccaburnell]

I'm so grateful that you put the different parts of This' story together in one video. I've watched them all separately before, but I caught bits today that hadn't connected for me, watching them at different times over the past 6+ months.

Very helpful clues to know about, regarding how to troubleshoot things that aren't making sense with our dogs' behaviour/attitude.

I'm so happy This! has seen such critical improvement in her background comfort level in life, no matter what that translates into, for where her joy takes her.

[animaldefender]

This story and video was SO good! It was inspiring watching This find her joy! It gives me hope that one day, I will be able to help my BC find joy, too. Marta is reactive to so many things (moving vehicles, any humans or animals running, sheep and cattle, chickens, she HATES bicycles, scooters and skateboards), and there are only one or two places where she can be allowed off her lead (a fully fenced rodeo pen). But she so wants to run in fields, chase birds for the joy of it, and do zoomies. I feel so bad that she can't be allowed to run free, but she has no recall. I hope one day to be able to train her to have recall so she can run free.

[carolynmvc]

Thank you for posting this again as the information in incredibly important and helpful. I would like to know how long it took to add that many fruit and veggies into your dogs’ diets. My one dog in particular gets the runs at any new addition so I have to add new things in very tiny amounts.

[alexelliott]

Rebel also came into all of these fear things when he hit adolescence. We're still trying to deal with it. Fear of strangers.

[Freyja-fm]

Ya, YOU can have that confidence that its NOT the training....but true, if the dog has health issues, motivation goes thru the floor to an all time low

[robinrutherfordcost]

We have a local grocery store who actually puts the cuts of meat in a container and sells it as dog food. It's awesome! No organ meat, just cuts that can't be sold for humans. We also get the butcher cut marrow bones that we freeze before they get them. Double checking the thickness of the bone and the size of the hole so if they can get their bottom jaw through the hole, it easily comes off. Hope that helps.

[LinneaVoss]

Thank you for sharing your journey! I’m curious if the black gums changed when her diet changed?

[ceejay]

This is interesting. My collie cross seems to get brain fog and is noise sensitive. She also has the black gums. My BMD is quite short of stature and suffers with yeast which could be linked to acidity. Both are raw fed on premade 80/10/10s here in the UK. However, I have now checked protein % in their raw food and it is 17% so not that high really.

[lindajakub]

I can't help wonder if that might be my dog Maples biting problem. I feed her freeze
dried raw. Also some kibble and veggies and some fruit.

[butterflywings]

I don’t understand, why don’t you just get a chicken quarter and feed that to your dogs or a piece of steak if you don’t want to feed organs?Surely not all meat sold in canadian supermarkets is minced?
Anyway, thank you for sharing this story. It’s very inspirational and has definitely given me lots to think about as I too am a border collie raw feeder.
Thank you for all your videos. Love from Australia 💖

[cindyclark]

I have to know; once you changed the protein level in your dog’s food did the black line on their gums disappear?

[anantea]

How are your dogs traveling to Europe? In plane? In cargo with luggage? Do they get drugs to be calm? Just curious. I am too afraid to put my dog to cargo.

[watchmoivies]

Oh, this was very good. I watched the whole thing it was pretty long so tell me, will you still do agility with her or are you just doing it with your new dog ? Maybe you have come to the conclusion that she’s just not a top-notch agility dog and she wouldn’t be happy doing it.
Maybe it’s just who she is not all Border Collie compete at high levels even with excellent trainers maybe you should still do agility with her but expect nothing and just go and have fun but maybe it’s hard for a good trainer to go out there with an average dog, I’m not sure ? You always talk about your past dogs and what they did so it must be hard to have a dog. That’s not 100% Top Notch. I’m not trying to be mean but probably that’s how it is. I know I’ve done obedience and I’ve done very well almost got an OTCH with my past Border Collie and the one I have now that is four years old like your THIS he’s off-the-wall and I have come to the conclusion that we just do other things. We’re not doing obedience at this time, but possibly when he’s 10 years old
I hope this wasn’t too much to say, but it’s how I feel about my dog and I know how much you love the little black beauty and want the best for her