We’ve been Patterdale and terrier owners for 20 years, and prior to that also had not the easiest dogs to manage but had always trained them ourselves and been fine. However last year we added Bill to our pack of a 14 year old and 4 year old Patterdale and a 13 year old Parson Russell. Bill is a delight in many ways, but despite our terrier experience, we were stuck with a few things.
He pulled like a sled dog, even though we’ve taught all of our others not to. He barked at people and other dogs whilst on the lead, and if on the rare occasion we encountered an off-lead dog, would charge up to it barking – if we didn’t see it in time to put him on the lead. He was basically 100% of every single Patterdale trait possible!
I read about Ingrid in an article about training Martin Clunes’ terriers, and honestly thought if she can sort those, she can help us!
My husband wasn’t keen – he doesn’t like treat training, and thought we didn’t need help, but I persevered – Ingrid doesn’t use treats, or the ‘ignore the bad praise the good’ approach, which sounded perfect, so off we went for a day course.
The training seemed straightforward, although tough. It’s a 4 x 30 minute per day commitment, with no walks at all, and is very repetitive. Bill seemed bored a lot of the time, would be brilliant some days, and on other days we would wonder if anything was going in. However, even within the first few days we started to see a difference. The aim of the training is to get the dog to focus on the owners: prior to training simply walking from home to our orchard across the road was a chore. Bill pulled so hard, it was impossible to control him, as he knew he’d get to play with a ball over there. Within days this became manageable, we almost couldn’t believe it.
He would sit and stay and walk to heel off the lead in the orchard by the end of 3 weeks training, and getting him out of the house on the lead was like having a different dog. Off we went to our next session with Ingrid, half expecting him to not perform in the training field due to all the new smells and not having been walked for 3 weeks solid!
We were wrong! He walked to heel on and off the lead, stayed without any failure, recall was perfect – we honestly couldn’t believe it!
We’d felt we were failing Bill, as when he was a tiny puppy he was so good to train and focussed on us and it had all gone wrong. We’ve now got that back. We’re walking him again and his recall is great. He walks to heel off the lead out on a walk too – which we still truly can’t believe. He’s still a little puffed up when he sees people but doesn’t bark, it’s improving all the time though.
Ingrid isn’t a magician – although it feels like it (!), simply taking your dog to see her won’t fix the issues you have. She’s incredible, her methods are such common sense, straightforward and work, but it’s down to the owners to put in the hard work. The training has been exhausting, but so worth it.
Thank you so much Ingrid!
