Cracking The Code: Canine Misconduct

Certified Dog Trainer & Behaviour Consultant Kristina Dieta Setiabudi of Puppy Colours shares her valuable insights on canine misbehaviour with us.

Tell us more about yourself and Puppy Colours.

Personally, I have been a professional dog trainer for six years. In Puppy Colours — we’re a dog training school — I work with another teacher and two teaching assistants; between us we can take in about four to six dogs per class. This is also to ensure that we don’t stretch ourselves thin and every dog and owner will get enough attention in each class. We use methods based on behavioural science, along with positive reinforcements.

What are some of the common dog behavioural problems you come across?

Things like resource guarding, leash reactivity and barrier frustration, fear towards other dogs and strangers and trouble staying at home alone are some of the common issues we deal with.

Are certain dogs more prone to developing certain behavioural problems?

Various behavioural problems can occur in different dogs regardless of their breed. If we’re talking about the environment — the house itself, for instance — dogs living in a condominium may learn to bark excessively at any noise from outside the door as the units are closer to each other. Dogs housed in landed properties may develop the same problem as well — where they bark at others, animals and humans alike — who are are passing by.

From my observations, however, it always correlates back to how the owner spends time with their dog; in other words, it comes down to the dog and owner’s relationship with one another. Therefore, our goal is to educate dog owners and their dogs on how to communicate effectively in order to better understand each other; developing a wonderful relationship based on trust and mutual respect. We want to train the dogs to make good decisions instead of making them just respond to commands like “sit”, “heel”, “stay” and so on.