Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
This is a training session where I am working with my own 3 year old dog Bliss on his arousal levels and ability to listen reliably off leash around squirrels when out and about. This is his third training session around squirrels out and about. This is the same process you would use for any dog even if they had higher levels of arousal, but you would just stay at a further distance after working on the foundations behaviors for more training sessions to get to the point where the dog could be successful and calm before progressing onward to being within feet from the squirrels. In my opinion, by breaking the steps up to be easy for the dog to be calm and listen and then progress as the dog is calm is much easier than trying to teach a dog to calm down when they are already over excited in an unpredictable environment. Bliss is a really stable dog and so I do actually use him at home to chase squirrels from my back yard as there started to be too many squirrels hiding out in my yard for protection against coyotes and bob cats so they were attracting the coyotes and bob cats. Bliss is allowed to chase them to the fence line as he sees then and then ignore squirrels on the other side of the fence. So as you can imagine when seeing them out and about it has been hard for him. In san diego there are very few places I go away from my property with squirrels, so until now I didnt really need to work on it. But I thought I would as it's his one issue and I really do love this park at Liberty Station.
Here is the first video in this series: youtube.com/watch?v=NysvG6Hj3DY
Here is the protocol: dogmantics.com/protocol-for-emotional-and-behavioral-modification
This is a training session where I am working with my own 3 year old dog Bliss on his arousal levels and ability to listen reliably off leash around squirrels when out and about. This is his third training session around squirrels out and about. This is the same process you would use for any dog even if they had higher levels of arousal, but you would just stay at a further distance after working on the foundations behaviors for more training sessions to get to the point where the dog could be successful and calm before progressing onward to being within feet from the squirrels. In my opinion, by breaking the steps up to be easy for the dog to be calm and listen and then progress as the dog is calm is much easier than trying to teach a dog to calm down when they are already over excited in an unpredictable environment. Bliss is a really stable dog and so I do actually use him at home to chase squirrels from my back yard as there started to be too many squirrels hiding out in my yard for protection against coyotes and bob cats so they were attracting the coyotes and bob cats. Bliss is allowed to chase them to the fence line as he sees then and then ignore squirrels on the other side of the fence. So as you can imagine when seeing them out and about it has been hard for him. In san diego there are very few places I go away from my property with squirrels, so until now I didnt really need to work on it. But I thought I would as it's his one issue and I really do love this park at Liberty Station.
Here is the first video in this series: youtube.com/watch?v=NysvG6Hj3DY
Here is the protocol: dogmantics.com/protocol-for-emotional-and-behavioral-modification
