Trick drills (TDs) are not only good for obedience practice, they're useful in socializing animals with anxiety, ADD, and OCD tendencies.
Trick drill s help animals maintain focus and reduce anxiety by offering them a distraction. TDs also help the trainer redirect the animal during stressful situations.
It's important to practice TDs often during low stress periods. Doing trick drills a few minutes a day, several times a day make the responses automatic. In the end, the practiced drill are very useful to calm your dog under extremes.
Bella (video 1) has OCD, and will fixate on anxiety producing situations/noises and begins self-calming rituals like pacing between her "safe" areas. In this video Bella and I are working on a trick drill because she is worried about the noises (people walking and screaming pet bird) outside of the room .
We do a few TDs for practice only each day in different places. She's most comfortable doing drills while on walks or in the dog park. She's a bit camera and tripod shy, so inside or out it's hard to get good shots of her doing anything but backing away from the camera.
Maggie is a wolfdog who on arrival at Howling Woods Farm was presenting extreme fear and anxiety, through pacing, panic on approach, and freezing at the touch of handlers. She has come a long way and is learning to use trick drills to calm and redirect anxiety to more acceptable responses, like "settle" down. She has done very well through the process.
Trick drill s help animals maintain focus and reduce anxiety by offering them a distraction. TDs also help the trainer redirect the animal during stressful situations.
It's important to practice TDs often during low stress periods. Doing trick drills a few minutes a day, several times a day make the responses automatic. In the end, the practiced drill are very useful to calm your dog under extremes.
Bella (video 1) has OCD, and will fixate on anxiety producing situations/noises and begins self-calming rituals like pacing between her "safe" areas. In this video Bella and I are working on a trick drill because she is worried about the noises (people walking and screaming pet bird) outside of the room .
We do a few TDs for practice only each day in different places. She's most comfortable doing drills while on walks or in the dog park. She's a bit camera and tripod shy, so inside or out it's hard to get good shots of her doing anything but backing away from the camera.
Maggie is a wolfdog who on arrival at Howling Woods Farm was presenting extreme fear and anxiety, through pacing, panic on approach, and freezing at the touch of handlers. She has come a long way and is learning to use trick drills to calm and redirect anxiety to more acceptable responses, like "settle" down. She has done very well through the process.
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