Paw Attitude owner John Egliens with some of the breeds he works with. Photo: Supplied.
At Paw Attitude, John Egliens takes a tail-wagging approach to dog training, helping even the most rambunctious “footballer” dogs thrive.
By blending a fear-free philosophy with free-range “daycare with a twist” farm days and adventure days at his Marshall Mount property, John is rewriting the playbook for behaviour modification, one happy pup at a time.
John admits he often attracts the dogs rejected by other doggy daycares – but that’s a challenge he loves.
Starting Paw Attitude 20 years ago, and operating on and off during that period, it was watching Mexican-American dog whisperer Cesar Millan that made him realise he had a gift with canines.
“My family always had dogs, and our dogs never had leads,” he said.
“My thought was that everyone could train a dog.
“I just thought it was common practice that you had a dog, you trained it.”
By John’s mid 20s, Millan was a TV celebrity, becoming popular by challenging traditional dog training methods.
“Everyone was going on about this guy who can train dogs by body language,” he said.
“I had a lot of people who knew me going, have you seen this guy on TV? They said, he just does what you do and he’s killing it.
“So I saw a niche, and I thought, hang on, maybe I do have something natural.”
He went and studied in New Zealand and worked at what was then the only business in the Southern Hemisphere with a similar approach to Millan.
“It was a 14-acre property, and we ran dogs in packs, so that’s how I got introduced to it,” he said.
He started as a volunteer, but soon was employed due to his natural abilities.
“On the second day I was there, I was put in with about 20 power breeds. These are dogs like rottweilers, pit bulls, mastiffs, German shepherds,” he said.
“They were in a really big old horse pen, and you police them all day.
“You’ve got to stop fights before they start, or you’ve got to break them up when they start. It’s very intense.”
He said the owner marvelled at the fact that by day three he had 20 dogs sleeping peacefully around him due to his energy.
Two years later, he returned to Australia, where he is now a dog behaviourist specialised in fear-free dog behaviour modification.
Now located at Marshall Mount, between Albion Park and Dapto, he offers one-on-one training along with free-range dog daycare – known as farm days – where dogs roam freely without being penned or tethered.
He said some indoor daycares didn’t have the time to modify a dog’s behaviour, so misbehaving dogs got penned for extended periods.
“I don’t work like that. If your dog cannot fit in with all my knuckleheads, I’ll be honest with you and say I’m not going to take your money because it’s not good for the dog,” he said.
“So when the dog comes to my place, I tell people, there’s no walls and there’s no concrete floors. Your dogs free run.
“If they get in an altercation, argument or even a fight, my system is like football. They go in a sin bin for 15 minutes.
“They calm down, I bring their energy back down and, as quickly as possible, I introduce them back into the pack.
“If they’re still having a problem, then I’ll go, OK, let’s put you with a couple of different dogs.”
He said dogs he attracted were often those barred from other doggy daycares.
“It’s like taking your kid to primary school and your teachers say, ‘Oh, he’s just a horrible kid,’” he said.
“Then you get a teacher that goes, ‘No, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just got a lot of energy. He’s a great kid.’
“That’s what I do for these dogs. I go, ‘Look, there’s nothing wrong with your dog. Your dog’s a footballer. Your dog has to play with other footballers’.
“Whereas other places, they’ll put footballers with chess players.
“The footballer won’t intentionally hurt that small dog, but because he’s big and rugged and plays rough, that’s why he gets in trouble.”
He said he broke the dogs into categories for the farm days. The first was for working dogs, like collies, cattle dogs and pointers, whose main aim was to chase. The second group was for power dogs like rottweilers, mastiffs and staffies, whose main game was to wrestle hard.
“The difference with being fear-free is that I will not dominate a dog through fear, but there’s always boundaries.”
He said boundaries weren’t punishments.
“I always teach the dog, if you choose the right thing, I open up the world,” he said.
“You choose to be a pork chop and a knucklehead and you don’t want to listen, well, you don’t get punished, but the world stays restricted.”
He said dogs just needed someone to take the time to work through the issue, so he worked to teach owners how a dog thought.
“I teach people how to have the right energy around a dog, and I teach people how to be clear with them,” he said.
“I’ve only learned that, not by textbooks, but by being around dogs all my life and observing them and being with them in their natural environment and seeing the dynamics change in different situations.”
Learn more about Paw Attitude’s one-on-one in-home behaviour medication training and Farm Day dog daycare.
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