Many people these days take advantage of EU laws making it easier to transport domestic animals between the UK and France. Gone are the times of long quarantines. Hopefully, DEFRA will continue to honour the EU passport as the UK leaves Europe. Only time will tell.

There are three main ways that pets travel to the UK from the continent. One is with their owners. Another is with a pet transfer service. The final way is as a newly adopted animal into the UK from a shelter or rescue association on the continent. The system for transferring animals from a shelter in France to a home in the UK is different and usually follows a system called TRACES which helps track animals and ensure that their health is regularly checked.

Travel with owners

For the most part, pets who travel with their owners are either travelling on holiday to the UK or on holiday to France.

All major crossings accept dogs.

For details of P&O crossings with pets from Dover to Calais, click here

For details of DFDS crossings with pets from Newhaven to Dieppe, Dover to Calais and Dover to Dunkirk, click here

For details of Brittany Ferries crossings with pets from Portsmouth to Caen, Poole to Cherbourg, Portsmouth to Cherbourg, Portsmouth to Le Havre, Plymouth to Roscoff, Plymouth to St Malo, or Portsmouth to St Malo, click here

Longer ferry crossings usually have kennels in which you can put your dogs, and shorter crossings usually expect your dog to stay in the car. Please be aware that you cannot stay in the vehicle bays with your animals so you will have to leave them for the journey or return to your vehicle only if accompanied by a member of staff. This has implications for dogs who have separation anxiety or who may find the voyage stressful. Foot passengers cannot usually travel with dogs.

You can also travel by Eurotunnel. This is ideal if you wish to stay with your pet and if you want the shortest crossing time.

Several airlines also fly dogs in the hold on short and long-haul flights. Some airlines have a maximum weight for dogs they will accept. Occasionally, airlines will fly dogs of less than certain weights in the cabin. Both Air France and British Airways will fly pets. In some cases if the combined weight of the dog and its crate are more than certain weights, your pet will be required to travel freight. For very long journeys, the advantages of flying a pet may outweigh the disadvantages, especially in comparison to leaving a dog for long periods of time in kennels on a ferry.

All cross-channel services require you to follow the PETS passport scheme.

Travel with a pet transfer service

Several companies exist to take animals back to the UK for you. These can be expensive and spaces are booked well in advance, particularly at peak times (summer holidays and Christmas). If you intend to use a pet transport service, book well in advance and make sure you have all the details of your animal to hand. You will be expected to pay in advance, have photocopies of all relevant passport pages and conform to their standards. Spaces for bigger dogs often go more quickly. Check that vans are suitable for transporting animals, and that regular breaks are scheduled. If you have a nervous or flighty dog, this may not be the most suitable method for them. Expect to pay at least 200€ for transport from France to the UK and to book a good few weeks in advance. Also, it is worth bearing in mind that communication from pet transfer services can be quite poor if they are on the road.

PETS passport system

Whether you are travelling with your pet or not, the PETS travel system is a simplified way to ensure animals are transported without the need for long quarantine periods.

The first requirement is that your dog is microchipped. Please be advised that there have been some issues with animals who have been tattooed. It is worth checking with the carrier. DEFRA specifically requests animals be microchipped.

Once your dog has been microchipped, they can be vaccinated against rabies. Usually this is done on the same day. The vet will complete an EU pet passport for you. All of the animal’s essential details must be included. Please note that changes came into play at the end of 2014, and that passports must have sealed sections so that they cannot be tampered with.

The passport includes:

• Owner details
• A description of the animal
• Markings or colour
• All relevant rabies stamps, stickers and signatures
• Details of the vet issuing the passport
• Details of tapeworm treatments

For dogs travelling from France, they do not need to have a blood test to prove the efficacy of the rabies vaccination. You can only travel twenty-one days after the rabies vaccination has been administered.

A vet must have administered a tapeworm treatment (and recorded it) not less than 24 hours before the crossing and not more than 120 hours (five days) before the time of the crossing. The treatment must include praziquantel or an equivalent. For short trips from the UK, you will need to administer the wormer before you leave and worm 28 days later.

Some transport companies may require you to have a letter from the vet before you leave certifying that the animal is in good health.

You can find clear details about the PETS travel scheme on the DEFRA website.

Travel from a foreign shelter (TRACES)

If you have adopted an animal from a foreign shelter and the dog is being brought to England, you will need to follow additional guidance. This is called the TRACES tracking system.

There are rules in place to ensure animals are not trafficked across borders. These rules are the same for animals from breeders on the continent, who must also adhere to these rules.

The shelter will contact the department vet around 48 hours before the animal is due to travel. A shelter or association must have been approved before this point by the department vet. At Mornac, our team contact the state vet with all the necessary information, including your address. The state vet then issues a certificate (usually duplicate) that needs to travel with the animal and its passport.

The shelter or association is not the only side with obligations: you must notify your nearest animal health office in the UK at least more than twenty-four hours before the animal is due to arrive. They reserve the right to ask you to go to the centre with the animal, to visit the animal or even to ask for the animal to stay in quarantine.

Although you will find a number of unscrupulous “charities” transporting dogs from various shelters in Europe, please be careful. There are daily arrests at Calais of people who are transporting animals without passports or TRACES paperwork. These animals are often transported in articulated lorries without adequate air. Some of them are driven over seventy hours without breaks. Even some very well-known charities in Europe transport large numbers of animals (around 70) on one crossing in one container, running the risk of getting caught against the profit of doing it without paperwork (some charge around 400€ to transport and adopt an animal).

Every single time a rescue in Europe transports animals without the right paperwork, without proper microchips, without rabies vaccinations or wormers, they increase the chance that the UK will return to a quarantine system or that animals will not be allowed to be adopted directly from the continent. These unscrupulous rescues and individuals spoil it for the rest of us, who happily microchip and vaccinate our dogs, who take them for vet visits, get all of their TRACES paperwork in place and vet homes very carefully. With thousands of dogs put to sleep every year in the UK, please consider your choices carefully. Although we are happy to help you adopt breeds that are rare in the UK, we are also mindful of how complicated it can be if things go wrong. A large number of our popular breeds that are less familiar in the UK are dogs who have lived outside, have lived as part of large packs or have been used to working. For that reason, we undertake extensive interviews and expect you to keep in touch at every point of the adoption process.

Edit: this post was updated in November 2021 to reflect new laws.

Since January 2016, laws have been in place regarding the advertisement and sale of dogs (and cats). This includes details about puppies too (and kittens!). In fact, laws and requirements have been in place for some time regarding identification. But, for the first time, animal welfare groups joined forces with vets and breeders to help the French government create a law that would put a stop to the backyard breeding. Or at least give the authorities powers to put a stop to it. It’s not a perfect law, but it’s a law nonetheless.

So if you’re buying a puppy, what do you need to know?

You’ll find here details relating to pedigree puppy sales and other puppy sales. Then you’ll find further details about the purchase of adult dogs, about the conditions that exist when giving dogs away, and then conditions relating to adoption of an animal from a shelter.

Pedigree puppies

A puppy is considered a pedigree if four rules have been conformed to. You need to know these rules if you are looking to buy a pedigree puppy.

1. BOTH of its parents are “LOF confirmé”. LOF means the “Livre des origines françaises”. This is essentially the French Kennel Club papers.
   
   ONLY dogs with LOF papers have a right to be called a pedigree dog, or a “chien de race”.  
   
   However, pedigree is not granted automatically. All puppies that are born to LOF parents are LOF themselves. BUT…. they are not “LOF confirmé”.
   
   To be confirmed, the dog needs to have seen a pedigree judge. This happens at different times in a dog’s life depending on their breed, A dog can be confirmed between ten months and fifteen months. This means a judge has agreed that your dog conforms to breed standards and is a good example of the breed.
   
   There are specialist meetings for confirmation, and breeders must pay a price to do so. This means that you can’t slip a whippet X in as a Labrador LOF and breed from it.
   
   A judge will know straight away that it is not a pedigree dog and it ensures breed standards are kept to. There are fees to do this.
   
   These laws are more stringent than UK kennel club laws where a dog whose parents are one registered breed can be registered themselves and go on to breed with another registered dog and have puppies that have the right to be registered and so on. It can be confusing for people breeding dogs in France to understand this second confirmation before breeding. Of course you will see that these confirmation meetings are set so that people do not breed dogs that are too young.
   
2. The breeder has declared the mating. In French, this is called the “Déclaration de Saillie”. In the 8 weeks following a mating, the owner of the female must notify the Sociéte Centrale Canine in order to receive a certificate of mating. This is the first step in the process of ensuring breed standards are kept to. There are dossier fees to pay to get this document. If you try to do this after 4 months from the mating, the SCC will pay you a little visit. After 8 months, it is impossible to declare the mating and even if both parents are LOF confirmé, the puppies will not be. You can, of course, sell them as ‘type’ rather than ‘pure breed’.
   
3. The breeder has registered the births of puppies. This must be done within two weeks of the birth.
   
4. The breeder has asked for the litter to be registered. This can only be done once the puppies are microchipped or tattooed.

You’d expect such a breeder to have been on an ACACED training course and have a certificate to show this, to have solid understanding of the breed and to provide all these documents without asking. They are proud of their dogs. If you can’t see mum or dad, if you can see they have more than two or three different types of dogs, if they have multiple litters, if they are advertising on the internet… they’re probably missing some vital part of this. Anyone advertising their ‘type’ dogs online for the same price as dogs whose breeders have gone through these stages is no doubt profiting handsomely from your ignorance.

There are no laws to require breeders to undertake health checks for genetic diseases. However, a good breeder will have done these on both parents. To some degree, the confirmation of the parents will negate the need for French breeders to do this.

If the female animal is yours and you are selling her puppies, you are considered as a breeder. If the female animal is not yours and you are selling the puppies, you are considered as a seller.

Non-pedigree puppies

In this case, what you are buying is considered ‘type’. This is only an issue if you are being asked to pay pedigree prices and if you expect a pedigree puppy, or if you are buying a dog that is subject to breed specific legislation. If you don’t mind having a poodle that looks like a poodle but doesn’t have a pedigree, then go for it. There are plenty of people who have great dogs who are mixed breeds, or, indeed, who would prefer a mixed breed or one who just ‘looks like’ the dog breed they like but have no official claim on the title.

If your dog does not have LOF confirmé parents, they are just a ‘type’. They may have the best and most beautiful award-winning parents in the canine kingdom, but if they haven’t gone through the steps above, their puppies are ‘type’ not ‘race’ or pedigree.

Plenty of puppies slip through the net, it must be said, because their breeders have missed a vital part of the process, usually the declaration of mating, or a mating with a dog who is LOF, but not confirmed. Do not trust people who sell you a dog and say these papers are on the way.

For some ‘type’ dogs, you can apply to have your dog confirmed as a pedigree if they aren’t already. Say, for instance, that I pick up a beautiful whippet in the UK and I intend to breed her. She may not have pedigree paperwork if I don’t know where she came from or she wasn’t chipped. I can apply to have her confirmed LOF even though she has no paperwork. She can go to a show and a judge will say, ‘Yes, she is a marvellous version of a whippet’ and grant her a LOF confirmé status. You would need to make a demand via the Société Centrale Canine for an inscription “à titre initial” You need to do other things, like have tests for inherited diseases, pass tests for sociability, behaviour or aptitude, and be judged as of the highest quality by an expert judge. But it’s possible in certain cases if the breed is considered to be an ‘open book’ breed.

You can, of course, do this even if you have no intention to breed, if you wanted to show them, or you just wanted to say what a marvellous example of a breed you have.

That is IF the SCC are accepting ‘new’ dogs to the pool or book, known as the livre in French. For many breeds, they’ll accept a new dog who just turns up and has all the characteristics of a pure race dog. This is a good thing to improve the gene pool and make sure it doesn’t become too limited.

BUT… the register is closed for certain breeds where there are a large number of dogs or where the dogs are subject to regulations. Since 1978, the register has been closed for German shepherds, Belgian shepherds, dobermann, boxers, fox terriers, dachshunds, springer spaniels, cocker spaniels, American cocker spaniels and poodles among others. That means, even if you have the most marvellous example of a German shepherd that you intend to breed from, it doesn’t make any difference. If you don’t have pedigree papers, they’re just a ‘type’ and it will always be so. You have no chance at all of ever breeding from that dog and the puppies being accepted as pure race.

The register has been closed since 1994 for American staffordshires, bull terriers and Staffordshire bull terriers. It is also closed for rottweilers (since 2001). That means if you own a ‘type’ American staffordshire, you have no chance at all of having it registered as a pedigree dog and no chance at all of removing the Category 1 restrictions.

And lovely as your ‘type’ cocker spaniel may be, it’s as muttley as the next dog. Not that I disapprove of that. But if you paid 50€ for a dog on the internet, you can call it a collie if you like, but it’s a muttley whatever it looks like. Likewise, there are breeders and sellers who sell puppies for €1500 or more on sales sites who count on you not caring that the dog is simply a ‘type’ and not a ‘pedigree’.

Selling a puppy: the law since January 2016.

In January 2016, the law regarding the sale of animals changed in France. This was to shut the door on backyard breeders making 1000€ from a litter of ‘type’ Yorkshire terriers that they’d sold on the internet for €200 – €1500 each.

Make no bones about it: for the government it’s a financial decision. This is a black market and therefore there is tax to be raised from it. These are fiscal obligations and are followed up by the tax authorities.

By closing the door on backyard breeders, they are making sure nobody is pocketing a sneaky couple of thousand a year on the sly. Or more. The breeder we shut down in Juillaguet in March 2014 had 160 dogs on site, few of them registered. To sell them on the internet for 150€ a dog, you can imagine how much back tax she owed!

For breeders, the new law just makes it even more restrictive for unsavoury types to get involved. It gives breeders prestige and limits competition from those people who want to buy a yorkie. They’re no longer being undercut and the breed standard is maintained.

From an animal welfare point of view, it helps us stop backyard breeders and allows us to trace and track dogs more efficiently. In theory. In practice, some of those against the law predicted that we’d be inundated by litters that people could no longer sell. In reality, it’s not been any worse or any better this year for puppy litters than any other. We had the beagles thrown in the Charente that was obviously linked to the limitations on selling, but five years after these rules came into play, there has not been an increase in the number of puppies surrendered as a result of these more restrictive rules.

What the January 2016 law says about selling animals

Anyone who sells a dog or cat if they own the mother is considered a breeder. To be a breeder, you must register at the Chambre d’Agriculture. You can get a dispensation from the Chambre d’Agriculture if you want to sell a litter a year.

If you sell more than a litter a year (and are therefore not a “hobby” breeder) you must also register with the departmental health authorities (DDPP or DDCSPP) so that you can have obligatory training, be taxed and be subject to site visits. You must have proof of ACACED training to be a breeder.

All dogs or cats (and puppies and kittens) must be microchipped or tattooed before being sold and the price must be displayed on the advert.

Normally, the law says that all dogs older than 4 months and all cats older than 7 months must be identified, but to sell, you will need to do it younger. Vets do this on tiny kittens of 700g at the refuge, so find a vet who will if yours is delaying and you want to sell your animals. You will receive a provisional certificate of identification from your veterinarian and you will be able to sell your animals. You are also responsible for ensuring that changes are updated on ICAD, the national database for identification information, within 8 days of the sale.

You must declare the sale on your tax return. (Told you… the governments will agree to anything if there is revenue for them!)

If you advertise your animal for sale you must:

• Mention the age of the animal and state whether it is LOF or not
• Give the number of its identification or that of the mother
• Say how many animals were in the litter
• Give the SIREN of the seller

If you sell your animal, you must also:

• have an “attestation de cession” – basically a transfer document that shows you have given the animal up. This should mention: the seller’s name and address, the name of the animal, its ID number, the date of the sale, the name and address of the person buying the animal, the sex, race, type of fur and colour of the animal, the animal’s date of birth, any distinguishing features, LOF details (if LOF) and LOF details of parents (if LOF) and the price of the sale. It should be done in duplicate and signed by both parties.
• have a document that explains to the buyer about how to care for the animal.
• have a copy of the provisional or actual ICAD document.
• have a health certificate from a vet for any animal over three months of age.

A health booklet is not necessary. You do not have to supply details of vaccinations as they are not obligatory. However, a good breeder will have a health booklet or “carnet de santé” for their puppies or dogs, cats or kittens.

If you buy a pedigree dog or “race”, you should get a birth certificate for the animal from the SCC.

You can see why breeding should really be left to people who know what they are doing.

You will also notice that shelters will have a contract for you to sign that includes much of the information. That’s why our dogs and cats leave vaccinated, with a health booklet, and identified. It’s why we stress that our fees are not to “buy” the animal but to cover the costs incurred. It is an adoption fee. However, such documents are legally and fiscally considered sales documents and shelter contracts must contain the same information. Likewise, any adverts should follow the same guidance.

Free to a good home

Ahhhh, don’t get me started. Even if you offer kittens or puppies as ‘free’ to get around the law, you STILL need to identify them. That is the law. Maybe the 50€ microchip cost puts people off, but it also means that anyone who has to pay 400€ to identify a litter of accidents just might think about sterilising their animal (or keeping them out of harm’s way if they’re in season)

It is not difficult to keep an in-season dog away from others. Thousands of breeders do it every year to give their females a rest between litters. Even if you have dogs in the home who live together, you’ll find breeders using kennels with secure facilities to ensure there are no accidents.

Ultimately, the ‘accidents’ need to stop. People need to be more responsible about their animal’s reproduction. If you can’t be good, be careful, as my Grandmother says.

It is not a myth that these ‘free’ dogs end up in shelters, or lost on the lam, or much, much worse. Where do you think the 350 unidentified dogs that the pound picks up every year in North West Charente come from?

They are free dogs. They were given away to neighbours. They were passed on to strangers in carparks.

They are not registered dogs, on the whole. And if they are, we can often get in touch with breeders who come and pick up their pedigree dogs to rehome themselves.

Responsible breeders are not causing shelter problems.

Backyard breeders selling dogs for €150 or €1500 on the internet are.

Irresponsible owners who don’t take precautions when their female is in season or their intact male is free to roam the streets are a massive contributing factor.

In January 2021, the French deputies have added a clause to say that pet shops will no longer be able to sell dogs and cats. This law excludes certain types of animal, including hunt hounds, and does not include small animals known as NAC, or les nouveaux animaux de companie which includes animals like hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits. This law will come into place in January 2024. Discussions relating to animal welfare and the use of animals in circuses, keeping whales and dolphins, the trade of exotic animals, raising animals for fur and the sale of dogs and cats in pet shops were controversial and amendments may yet be made. However, this is unlikely to affect small breeders in France who want to sell puppies or kittens.

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There are times when you may find your dog completely and utterly untrainable. Why is it that his sit in the house is perfect and his recall in certain place is amazing, but then he’s off like a shot in others? Why is it that you can walk past one house on your walk and you’ll find your dog absolutely and utterly going nuts at the dog behind the fence? Often, the moments when our dogs are Duddley Dogs and not Dog Ninjas is the time we seek out help from trainers. It’s also the number one reason I get a call back after adoption.

One of the questions I ask most often when problem behaviours occur is how reliable is your dog’s ‘Look at me’?, or how reliable is their ‘come’? Can they do a ‘sit’? 

“Oh yes,” say the owners. “Maniac is very good at sitting.” I can sense in their voice they are wondering what this has to do with Maniac’s running feud with the neighbour’s dog.

Sure enough, Maniac’s “come” is perfect… if he’s following you into the kitchen. On a walk, well, “Oh he’s never been so good at recall out of the house,” say the owners.

The truth is that dogs don’t generalise well. They don’t understand that the behaviour you’re asking them to do in one place is the same behaviour you want them to do outside. Example: I was trying to teach Heston to play bow on cue. He’d already started bowing every time I got the dustpan and brush out in the house, so I knew they 100% predicted a play bow. I took him out into the workshop to try there. 0%

Not the same at all, is it?

So when it comes to problem behaviours, if your dog has never, ever been asked to look at you outside, if they’ve never been asked to do a sit on a walk, or if their recall is atrocious, then you may find your dog looking at you all…

 

When it comes to training or replacing habits with new ones, there are 3 Ds that you have to take into consideration. This includes teaching behaviours like ‘Maniac, come here!’ and training replacement behaviours, like walking nicely on a lead around cows rather than dancing on hind legs barking at them. With the 3Ds, you can turn your Duddley to a Ninja much more easily.

Distraction

As I tried to get Heston walking on a loose lead yesterday in the forest, the 1st D reminded me just how hard it can be. Distraction simply means all of those things that make it more difficult to get your dog’s attention. That can be things you can see, such as bikes, joggers, other dogs, cats, deer, toys and cars. It can also be things you can’t see, but your dog can hear or smell. For Heston, the sound of jays drives him mad. He can tolerate virtually every sound distraction but that. Don’t forget that whilst there are things you both might hear or see, your dog will be able to smell things that you just can’t. So when Amigo went after a deer that could have been no more than 10 metres into the forest from the path, I had no idea it was there, but he certainly did.

Distraction means that you are fighting for your dog’s attention. It means every single thing that you are fighting against. If your dog is a Duddley sometimes, this is mostly why. And this is also where we need them to be a Ninja.

Distance

There are two distances you should be aware of. The first is the distance that you are from your dog. Simply put, the closer you are to your dog, the more likely they are to respond to training. That’s why your dog may do a perfect sit right up close to you and struggle when you are two metres away. Mind you, sometimes that’s just a lack of ability to generalise and a firmly implanted habit. Your dog has always sat within 50cm of you and therefore he won’t think that you might ask him to sit when you are a metre from him.

The second distance you should be aware of is the distance between you and the distractions. Simply put, if you’re up-close and personal with a distraction, you may not have a cat in hell’s chance to get the dog’s attention back on you. Thus, if Heston is ten metres from another dog, the chances of him performing a requested behaviour is almost zero. When we’re two hundred metres away, it’s a good start.

So if I’m walking my dog or working with my dog and he’s right near me, the further he gets from me and the nearer he gets to a distraction (like a lovely bunny rabbit), the harder it will be to teach him new behaviours or to expect him to offer behaviours that are rock solid. If the rabbit is 200m away and Heston is 2m from me, he’ll do pretty much everything I ask of him. Likewise with Hagrid at the shelter. If we’re 10m from another dog, he’ll do everything I ask.

But if the distraction is right there in my space up close, the task is suddenly impossible. For Hagrid, if a dog is within 4m, I could be waving a leg of lamb and he wouldn’t care less. For Tricki Woo dancing on his lead when he sees a cow, nothing is pulling him back from that. And for Heston, if there are swallows dive-bombing us, what I’m asking him to do will be impossible.

Duration

The longer I ask my dog to give a behaviour, the harder it is. Not all behaviours have a duration. Holding a sit, keeping eye contact, staying in a down position, keeping in a stay position… all get harder the longer I need a dog to hold them.

Put all three together and you’ve got three Ds that make learning either very easy or very hard. They are also things that we can manipulate to get the best out of our dog and to make sure that learning is rock solid under all circumstances.

You can see them here on this simple diagram.

Step 1: Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

 

Here, I’m starting to teach a behaviour (and yes, I’ve just realised the smiley face and the Duddley face are the wrong way round for Distance, but hey ho)

There are few distractions. There is a long and large distance between me/the dog and any potential distractions (I’m taking it as read that you are close to the dog at all points for the 3Ds and that you might start putting distance between you and the dog at another point). And I ask for a very brief behaviour. Here, the learning is most likely to succeed. No distractions. Plenty of distance. Short duration.

So… can I get Tricki Woo to stop dancing when he sees a cow and to walk calmly when he sees them? It’s easiest when there are no other distractions (so a quiet road or space with no other dogs, passers-by or crazy cyclists) and when there is a big distance between us and the cows, and when I don’t ask him to walk calmly when looking in the direction of the cows for very long before stopping and rewarding him.

Can I get Maniac to stop barking and lungeing at other dogs? Again, easy when it’s a calm environment with few other distractions, when there is a huge distance between us and the other dogs, and when I expect him to walk calmly for just a short burst. I might even then walk away completely. Those first times, I have no intention of changing the bars on this chart. He has achieved the learning goal for the session so I’m not going to add more challenge.

Step 2: Increasing the challenge

For this, I’m going to expect a little longer duration for the behaviour. If I’m teaching my dog to heel around people, I’ll ask them to do it a little longer. Not much longer. I don’t want to do it until they fail. I want to stop whilst they are succeeding and reward them for their learning. I’ll keep the distance the same and the low level of distraction the same. So if I want Loobi Loo to stop and stand when a cyclist goes by, I’m going to ask him to do that for a little bit longer than he was doing before, and I’m going to stop before he fails.

Once I’ve upped the duration a little, I’m going to bring them a little nearer to the distractiony things. Thus, if teaching Tilly to walk to heel when we pass cow pats and not scamper off to feast on such delights, I’m going to keep doing a heel and start just that bit closer than before.

When Heston was barking at cyclists out of the car window, I asked him to look at them from a distance. The looks got longer and I got closer. Like before, quit whilst you’re winning.

When I want to add in distractions again, I’m going to take away some of the other challenge and go back to a shorter duration (or even a safer distance). Thus, rabbits might be a distraction for Amigo, but rabbits and pheasants is going to require a bit less of him in terms of duration. I might even up the distance again.

Some days the universe does not cooperate and gives me a world with a lot of distractions. This can even happen in the garden if there are vans going past or stopping, or the post lady, or there are dogs barking or tractors. In the forest, it is full of unseen distractions and asking for a behaviour is tough. For instance, if I want to improve Heston’s recall, I’m going to put a big space between us and those distractions. That might be 400 metres or more.

This is how I use the three Ds for recall.

First, I know where the distractions are (red). These are areas where I will get recall only when Heston has completely exhausted his sniffing. Therefore, he is on the lead when I get too close to those distractions. Distance is my friend.

You can see there are parts of the walk that are green, because his recall is 100% here. There are parts that are orange, where I will get a fab recall about nine times out of ten.

Then there are pink bits where I might as well have gone home.

The red bit on the left is either uninhabited most of the time, or the deer graze on the other side, or the smell is weakest. Thus, even though it is only 300m away from the path, it is less distracting.

The red bit at the top of the diagram is heavily distracting (and of course, is filled with hunters and their dogs at the moment) and there are plenty of deer in that small bit. So although it’s 500m away, if the smells are strong, Heston is off.

Off the map on the right is a heavily wooded area with boar, deer, roe deer and plenty of other things. Thus, there is no way he goes off lead here because it is too close and too distracting. Although he could happily (if he wanted) run off into this forest from his ‘green’ bits (it’s only a kilometre across the field to the forest off to the right of the map) he never does. Thus, on a good day, as long as the wooded areas are more than 300m away, his recall is NINJA level!

That means I need to set 300m as his default ‘distance’ and work on his recall with maybe a less distracting environment at 250m, then take it back out and trial it at 300m in a more distracting environment. At the same time, I have to say “Wow, you’re doing great, Dog Ninja… a 450m recall is AMAZING!”

PS… here, his recall is zero metres.

Why? A gamillion gazillion distractions all far, far too near. He’ll come back when he’s good and ready if he’s off lead here. There might as well be lions, elephants and ogres here.

I also have to think of the task I’m asking him to do. Recall is TOUGH NINJA stuff. Doing a sit on a lead and a down… well even Duddley here can manage that despite the distractions.

Step 3: Moving to Mastery

So in a distracting environment, I’m going to keep duration short and my expectations low. I’m going to manage distance carefully and know that 500m is safe but 450m is not.

I can then ask for longer behaviours. This doesn’t need to be Heston’s recall over a 500m testing ground. It can be Hagrid and his 4m comfort zone for giving eye contact instead of lunging and air-snapping at a passing dog. I’m only going to ask him to do it for a short while at first as we have more and more dogs about invading his space, but we’ll step up the length gradually and I’ll be happy to have eye contact for a couple of seconds as those dogs get nearer. I still don’t want any fail moments though. Time for us to put distance between us before he fails. It’s also true of Tricki Woo and his field of cows. I’ll ask for that 4-paws/non-dance loose lead walk for a longer duration before turning around and saving the next step for another day.

Just before we get to Ninja Dog Skills, I’ll ask for a longer duration and a very close distance to fewer or less challenging distractions. For Dances-at-Cows, that will be to be up-close-and-personal doing a loose-lead walk with all four feet on the floor… and I’ll make it a less challenging distraction – a non-moving cow facing away from us minding its own business.

Finally, when my dog is ready, we’re ready to master Ninja Dog Skills Level: Expert. He can handle multiple distractions at a close distance and for a longer period of time.

If you just have the 3Ds in the back of your head when you are asking your dog to do stuff, you’ll be able to help make their learning much more effective. Be aware though that if you’re constantly asking your dog to do difficult stuff over a long period of time in a highly-distracting environment in close proximity to those distractions, they are likely to fail even if they never have before.

Notch back on one of the Ds and you’ll find your dog much more able to cope. So for Toby today finding it very hard to sit and NOT be fixated on a cat sitting on the table whilst his owner ate his lunch, distance made things much more manageable. I’m pretty sure he could cope with that usually, but then he was also surrounded by a lot of very distracting stimuli.

So when we talk about challenge for our dogs, we need to think in these terms, and then we will find that our dogs are much more able to make great progress in their learning. Next time your dog has selective deafness, ask yourself how next time you can keep within safe limits and you’ll find your distracted, reactive dog is biddable, willing and keen.