Muzzles are an invaluable piece of walking equipment. They are required by law for some breeds and mixes so they keep your dog safe and inkeeping with legal requirements. However, teaching your dog the skill of comfortably wearing a muzzle has endless benefits. It makes vet visits and nail clippings far less stressful when wearing a muzzle is already apart of their behaviour repertoire. It means they don’t have to be in uncomfortable cones if ever they’ve had to have surgery to prevent them licking stitches. Your dog will have to wear a muzzle if ever you wish to travel on the ferry with them and it makes everything far more simple when they are already muzzle trained.
Being comfortable wearing their muzzle is as simple as wearing their collar and harness. Desensitization training to a muzzle is a fun bond building training journey that strengthens you and your dog’s relationship. When choosing a muzzle, be sure to always opt for the cage or basket muzzles like in the video below. Your dog should always be able to pant comfortably, lick their lips, take treats and drink water easily while wearing their muzzle. Any muzzle that inhibits their ability to do any of this is the wrong kind of muzzle and likely is only supposed to be worn for very short vet visits.
When training your dog to wear a muzzle, if you move to the next step and they’re pawing at it or refusing it, it might be because you moved too quickly and you need to go back a step. A dog should see a muzzle and have a great reaction to it and never run away from it – otherwise we are doing something wrong. A muzzle is like any other piece of walking equipment, just like a harness or collar.
To successfully introduce your dog to a muzzle, you place it on the floor, toss treats around it and leave your dog to investigate it themselves without any prompts or luring from us. Let your dog go at their own individual pace. Repeat this a few times. Once you’ve allowed your dog to be introduced to the muzzle successfully, we can bring in muzzle games.
Look at that!
The first one is “look at that”. Hold the muzzle in one hand and have treats in the other. Say nothing to your dog for the first few moments. As soon as they look at or go to sniff the muzzle themselves, mark that moment with a verbal “yes” marker and trest them. Repeat a few times until they are happily ‘booping’ the muzzle and taking treats.
Getting Nosey
When your dog has a positive association with the muzzle and interacts nicely with it, we can move onto actually putting their nose in it. Smear Peanut butter or Hold treats right at the nose of the muzzle and gently present it to your dog. We don’t want to chase them with the muzzle or force it on their nose. Instead we want them to sniff out the treats and choose to put their nose in themselves. Hold the muzzle while they investigate and as soon as they stick their Snout into the muzzle to check or lick the tasty treats, mark that moment with a “yes”. Repeat a few times until your dog is comfortably whipping their nose in and out of the muzzle themselves to fish out the treats every time. For noise or touch sensitive dogs, it might be a good idea to take off any straps temporarily so that it’s not finicky.
Muzzle up (on cue)
Once your dog can comfortably place their snout in, take treats and interact with the muzzle, we can move onto the next step. Sit on a chair in front of your dog, have treats in your hand but place hand behind your back so there is not a treat lure in front of them. Hold the muzzle between your knees and wait. They should choose to stick their nose in themselves and as soon as they do; say “yes” and reward from your other hand. Repeat x 4 times. The objective here is for our dog to have total agency around the muzzle. We can then start to add in a cue word for the muzzle. This can be any word you want. In the video with Luna below, we just chose “muzzle”. Be patient, we may regress muzzle training if we rush our dog. Switch it up by tossing a treat away from you on the ground every couple of seconds for your dog to retrieve and when they turn back around to you, say ‘muzzle’ with the muzzle held steady and reward against when they put their nose in. Building up their choice to wear the muzzle while simultaneously giving you the opportunity to reward it every time.
Repeat these games a few times and use them as simple short mental stimulation sessions to tire out your dog while they learn the skill.
The next step would be to build duration of them holding their nose in the muzzle, do this slowly, counting higher each time.
Once they are comfortable with all the above steps, then we can add in straps and slowly add closing the straps into the last game before immediately removing the muzzle again. We then build duration of closing the straps each time. Starting with just straps closed for 1 sec, then 2, then 3 secs and so on!
