WELLINGTON COUNTY – As we head into a night of fright this weekend, dog trainer and founder of Back 2 Basics Dog Training and Your Family Dog Trainer Bill Verbakel has released a three-part question-and-answer blog-style series on how to keep your kids and dog safe this Halloween.
“Navigating Halloween can be a tricky thing when you’ve got a new puppy or a dog who is uncomfortable with all the sights, scents and sounds that come along with it,” Verbakel explained.
Verbakel will be going through the “do’s” and “don’ts” of how families can keep kids and dogs safe, happy and stress free on Halloween in a series of blog posts leading into Halloween.
Topics to be covered include whether you should take your dog trick-or-treating, is it okay to dress your dog up for Halloween and how to help your dog cope with costumes.
Verbakel said when it comes to taking a dog trick-or-treating people should look at what the dog is like on a daily basis.
He recommends families practice dressing their kids in their costumes to see how the dog’s body language responds.
“The first thing I would have people ask themselves is has the dog ever been dressed up before. If not, take it slow, you can practice and try ahead of time to see your dog’s interest and capability with that.
“And then in that we would give the tips of what to look for if they’re not okay with it, things like flipping it off, avoidance and moving away.”
Verbakel said one of his main tips will be looking at ways to help desensitize dogs to things like costumes and loud noises.
“So how to desensitize that exposure to those costumes in a way that makes the dog feel good and confident and happy to be around it.
“It can go as far as working with dogs that are sensitive to the doorbell and those types of things too,” he added. “There’s lots of things that we can tap into around things that affect the dog in everyday life and are going to be even more heavily emphasized in the Halloween season.”
Verbakel said the goal of the series is to bring awareness to “all these seasons of life” that people and families go through with their dog.
“People typically wouldn’t tell but for a lot of dogs, they need an advocate, they need someone advocating for them, understanding from their perspective what this is like and then having some things we can actually do to make it better for them.
“And so, when we present that with families, assist (in educating), we’re really helping to see how they can help.”
Verbakel noted when people think about dogs out in neighbourhoods, they often without question will take their dog out, and the same goes for Halloween night.
“Maybe it’s because they just think it’s good to expose the dog to things, maybe it’s because they just always have but they’re not really listening or watching what their dog’s doing.
“If that’s the case, you’ve got a whole bunch of kids running up and down sidewalks in costumes that are causing dogs to potentially react and lash out to protect themselves and feel safe again.”
He added, for him, it’s just about presenting the information so that people are thinking about it.
“When someone sees an article like that or information about it, it might cause them to pause and think ‘oh, actually I never thought about it that way, should I even take my dog’ or ‘maybe I can take my dog, maybe it’d actually be great to be out there and having fun with everybody.’”
He added he wants people to know their choices in each of these types of situations really matter, adding “each thing that we choose to submit our dogs to, or subject them to, has a ramification in their life and ultimately in our life.
“So just looking at each situation with the goggles through the lens of the dog’s view and ‘how might they see this’ and then from there we can make better decisions together.”
To find more information on how to keep your kids and dog safe on Halloween, visit the blogs page of Your Family Dog Trainer website at www.yourfamilydogtrainer.com.
