Conditioning Your Dog to a Muzzle

Conditioning Your Dog to a Muzzle

With Ed Frawley & Cindy Rhodes

31 Videos

1 Hour, 15 minutes of Content

This course has been months in the making. Leerburg has over 130 different sizes and styles of dog muzzles. Ed Frawley and Cindy (his wife) have been training dogs for many years. In this course, Ed and Cindy detail how they condition their dogs to wear a muzzle.  

Their approach is to tailor how they condition a muzzle to the temperament and experience of the dog they are working with. They understand that every dog is different and a cookie-cutter method of training will not work on every dog. 

We begin by discussing the various uses for muzzles. While dog aggression is usually the first thing that comes to owners' minds, there are many reasons why we teach every one of our dogs to feel comfortable in their muzzle.  Those reasons are covered.             

In the course, Ed explains how some dogs can be introduced to a muzzle through free shaping, some can learn through luring and some who have had negative past experiences with muzzles may need to learn, as a last resort, through compulsion. The fact is most dogs who have had a bad experience with muzzles will still respond positively to one of the other two methods (free shaping or luring).

Ed and Cindy are reward-based trainers who use markers and high-value food rewards to train their dogs.  If you look below you will see the outline on how the course is laid out. We explain how we introduce a dog to the muzzle, and then there is a segment on how to free-shape the muzzle and a segment on using luring to teach the dog how to put their nose in the muzzle.

Once a dog can willingly put their nose in a muzzle, we work on adding duration to the work. This means we teach the dog to leave his nose in the muzzle (without buckling the straps) until we take the muzzle away. 

When we are satisfied that the dog understands what we expect in duration we demonstrate how to teach our dogs to remain calm while we fasten the straps. There is a section explaining 2-strap and 3-strap muzzles. There is also a segment that explains the various styles of muzzles. 

Once we have a dog that is not stressed with the duration phase or when the straps are buckled we begin the process of teaching the dog to walk in muzzle. New dog trainers may think this is silly, but the fact is walking in a muzzle is often the place in training where a dog has issues. Our course shows how to help a dog get through this phase. 

One of the common questions we get is "When do I know when my dog is conditioned to the muzzle?"  We answer this question in a segment of the course.

And finally we have a segment titled, "Where should you go from here?" This can be an important question for those dog owners who have a reactive dog. A muzzle is not a solution that fixes dog aggression or reactivity. It's just a tool to make sure our dogs are safe in any environment we choose to put them in. People with reactive or aggressive dogs are often put in a position where the muzzle becomes part of the dog's life, in other words, it becomes and stays a lifestyle. 

Course Outline