It’s never too late to train your dog “Smiles”

When Judi Robertson met Hampshire dog trainer Sarah Miles she was at her wits’ end as her 18-month-old cocker spaniel chased anything that moved and totally ignored commands.

Like many untrained dogs, Gemma was frequently running off – responding to her “hunting instincts” – and failed to take a blind bit of notice as Judi called in vain for her to return.

Fearing the dog was a bit of a lost cause, Judi entrusted Gemma to Sarah – who runs Dog Training with Smiles – and now describes her as a “super little dog” who responded perfectly to the East Meon trainer’s tried-and-tested, professional methods.

Judi said, “I love cocker spaniels and now have three of these busy little dogs and it is essential that they are under control and respond to my commands, I consider the training with Sarah to be very important and also ongoing. My dogs love her and really enjoy their training sessions and I continue to learn a great deal. I am often complimented on my dogs’ good behaviour and have frequently recommended Sarah’s training to those in need of help with their pet or working dog

Judi’s three cocker spaniels are just an example of Sarah Miles’ many success stories and her new workshops are going from strength to strength and are set to be expanded.

Sarah works by observing each dog and then tackles any behaviour issues by observing its nature and innate tendencies of the breed. She also helps owners to carry on the good work and to understand their dogs’ needs. Her key message is that happy owners, make happy dogs – KISS – Kind, Informative, Sensitive and Simple.

Sarah’s notched up particular success with older dogs – some of whom have been dismissed by other trainers as being too old to train. The most common issues include:

• Disobedience to the recall
• General disobedience and failure to sit and stay.
• Lack of heeling both on and off the leash
• Over excitable behaviour
• Aggression

Sarah said, “In an ideal world one would start training your puppy the moment it comes home, however at this stage it is not called training it is conditioning. A simple example of this is when feeding your puppy, stand in front of your pet with the bowl of food and if the pup is standing just hold the bowl above the head and wait until the dog sits. Immediately this happens, then give the puppy the food.  After a while bring in the word sit, and by the time the puppy is ready for more formal training you will have a dog sitting on command.

”However life is not always perfect so I get all types of dogs coming for training at all ages – some people leave training too late, some because they don’t require their dog to be well behaved until it gets too uncontrollable. The longer you leave the training of a dog and the inherent bad problems they pick up the more difficult it is to resolve. The older the dog the bigger the footprint of the type of bad behaviour.”

Sarah runs one-to-one training and classes from her Hampshire base. In addition, once a month she holds a workshop based on “Understand your Dog“, helping owners to recognise and understand what their dog is communicating to them and how you, as the owner can communicate with them.

She said, “Psychology of both people and animals plays a large part in the way that I train and I observe the dog for some time to see what type of nature it has. With animals the signs you are giving them can be very subtle – just the movement of your hand can be enough to signal that you want them to do something.

“A lot of people treat a dog like a person and they are not – they are animals with animal instincts and behaviour. However, they are very happy to be trained and understood. They then become a well-behaved, loyal companion and friend for the duration of their lives.”

For more details about Sarah’s training methods and classes, visit www.smilesdogtraining.co.uk or call 07768830937/01730823818

…ends…

Press Release August 23, 2010

Media enquiries: For more information please contact Catherine Kelly or Joss Loader at Primary PR, telephone: 01903 783832, 07704 130226, 07838 379599.    E-mail: catherine@primarypr.co.uk or joss@primarypr.co.uk

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