Kaye Hargreaves (Australia)

Kaye Hargreaves is a professional dog trainer and canine behaviour consultant. She set up Wagging School in Melbourne, Australia in 1989.

Personal profile - by Kaye Hargreaves

When I was about 12 , an old family friend came to stay. He made the usual remarks typical of aunties and uncles - "hasn't she grown" - which I privately thought was a bit lame, since I had been seven years old the last time he saw me. Then he said he had an image of me as a child appearing over the horizon with a pack of dogs at my heels. That's pretty much how it is today. There was a period when I was a student that I didn¹t have a dog, but when I started work and had my own accommodation, the first dog of my adult life, Delta, turned up. She had been left in the street when her owners moved house. I adopted her. She was about 12 weeks old. Over the next couple of months little teeth periodically appeared amongst my bedclothes.

A while later I went to the Lost Dogs Home to get a female puppy to be her companion. I came home with a 4 year old male, Rock. After I had paid for him, they told me he was not a stray, but a dog who had been brought in because he was "uncontrollable". Actually, he was very smart, had heaps of initiative and was highly trainable. That¹s how my present obsession with dogs and dog training started, over thirty years ago. Rock lived to be 17. His many exploits included a cameo role in a stage production of Steinbeck¹s "Of Mice and Men". Individual dogs, sadly, have come and gone, but the obsession has stayed.

When I returned to study, I started giving individual lessons to help put myself through Law School. By the time I finished my degree, six years later, I decided to continue dog training full time. I think it was the best decision I ever made.

I set up Wagging School with the aim of catering for people who wanted practical help with how to control their pet dog at home - something which the rote exercises of obedience clubs did not cater for. I gave people individual attention in their own home. I focussed on solving their problems in a practical way. How can I stop my dog from jumping on me and nipping at me from behind when I go outside? What should I do when my dog bangs at the back door, how can I teach my dog to bark when someone comes to the front door but be friendly when friends come in? Why does my dog jump on and knock over one of my kids and not the other one? What can I do about it?

I found myself dealing with problems which I had never experienced with my own dogs. They just didn¹t do that stuff. Unhappy with escalating levels of correction, I started to ask why my dogs - even the ³uncontrollable² one - didn¹t display all these problems.

I discovered in my own behaviour practices and attitudes which I took for granted, which resulted in my dogs routinely offering more acceptable behaviour. I worked on articulating the unconscious dog-handling knowledge which I presume I learnt as a child. I then tried to integrate this knowledge into the scientific body of knowledge about how dogs learn.

I aimed to develop the best available training methods, based on canine behaviour and dog psychology. Those methods are based on establishing a relationship of pack leadership and motivating the dog through positive reinforcement of desired behaviour.

In 1993 I went to the US with Wendy Nicholson where we studied with leading experts such as William E. Campbell, Dr Ian Dunbar, the Volhards and others. I was admitted as a member of the U.S. National Association of Dog Obedience Instructors (NADOI) and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) which was set up that year.

Together with Wendy Nicholson, I was a founding member of the Humane Pet Dog Trainers Association.

I have found that problems such as unruly behaviour, aggression, nervousness, chewing, digging and nuisance barking can be prevented or eliminated in many cases by re-educating the owners of the dog and encouraging them to change the dog's environment and most importantly how they relate to the dog. My methods combine positive reward-based training with problem-solving techniques based on a detailed understanding of canine behaviour. In particular, I try to remove the causes of problems, rather than trying to 'correct' the dog for displaying symptoms.

I readily adopted Ian Dunbar's saying that if you can't sit in a chair with a drink in your hand and train your dog, you're using the wrong training methods. At Wagging School classes you can sit in a chair and teach your dog to sit quietly at your feet, just as people might want to do at home, if they have an unruly young pet dog. The same principles apply whether you are feeding the baby, training from a wheelchair or just relaxing with a coffee.

To my knowledge I was the first professional dog trainer in Melbourne to specialise in training 'in your own home' and to develop training content and methods based on the specialised requirements of the modern working dog - the family pet. This approach continued as I set up group classes conducted indoors, where classes included teaching handlers to go through the doorway without their dogs barging, teaching the dogs to lie down while people sat in chairs, going to the door and learning to sit to greet a visitor and other practical control exercises.

In 1993 I ran my first Wagging School Certificate Course.

From time to time I run "Dogs and Small Children" a seminar series for parents. The main theme is how to identify and minimise the risks associated with dogs and small children. Specifically, the series deals with introducing a new baby to the household where there is an existing dog, dealing with the toddler stage, and managing dogs around older children.

1993 was also the first year that I offered "Understanding Your Dog" a seminar course for instructors, handlers and people working with dogs. More recently, specific seminars for people working with dogs have included "Safer handling of difficult dogs" and "Puppies - their socialisation, training and behaviour : a seminar for veterinary nurses and people working with puppies". All of these initiatives have developed and expanded over the last five or six years.

To contact Kaye please phone 03 9489 5095

Wagging School

276 Glenlyon Rd North Fitzroy
VIC 3068, Australia
Email: kh@netspace.net.au

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