Turn and Face (TAF) for Reactive Dogs
Turn And Face
About Turn And Face
Turn and Face (TAF) is a way of calming dogs and halting arousal caused by aggression, fear, over friendliness, over excitement, or learned habitual overly reactive behavior. It usually works within a few seconds or minutes of the first application and can then subsequently be used by the dog's owner, at any time when the dog becomes overly reactive or aroused.
In most cases TAF dogs will soon adopt a calmer quieter attitude as ‘the way to be’, and they quickly become much more manageable in formerly ‘reaction causing’ situations.
Most dogs like being calm, but somehow many come to ‘forget’ this. Turn and Face reminds them.
About Denise Mcleod
Denise Mcleod owner and founder of CaDeLac dog training (Nottingham and Derby) has been training dogs professionally since 1992, full time since January 2001 when CaDeLac became her full time profession.
All through my childhood I helped people with their over excited animals using Turn and Face and when in 2001 I started CaDeLac Dog Training and Behaviour as my full time career, Turn and Face was number one in my tool kit for helping reactive, over excitable dogs to live calmer, quieter lives. Allowing them to have much greater freedom to go out in public and enjoy the things that non-reactive dogs enjoy.
In September 2016, I released my first book ‘A Dog Behaviourist’s Diary’ and in it I gave information about the Turn and Face technique in the form of a real case study of a highly reactive GSD who had been reactive for over 6 years and who become completely non-reactive, inside 3 days.
Within 2 weeks of the release of the book, very experienced owners or trainers who were already dealing with aggressive or reactive dogs, started to report that they had been able to use TAF with not just fast, but dramatic results within minutes of using the technique. In many cases dogs who had been through a variety of other rehab processes, with little or minimal improvement, often responded to TAF in minutes and they witnessed an immediate beneficial result, to a variety of reactive or fearful situations.
Anyone interested in the use of TAF, should read the chapters in the book on Sabre and the appendix, as a starting point, before deciding how to proceed. There is also a Facebook group where those that have read the book can watch videos of live TAF cases.
Turn and Face uses no specialist ‘tools’ and only requires that the dog wears a comfortable, normal flat collar and lead. It has a very high success rate but as with any methods it does not work with every dog. Since the release of the book and the adoption of TAF by trainers all around the world, there has been a less than 10% failure rate reported, meaning that over 90% of dogs have been helped or have simply stopped their former undesirable behaviour, after Turn and Face has been implemented.
I've worked with aggressive dogs for 20 years and have never seen such a long lasting, effective method that makes the dog so happy.
Ace Fisher
Dog Trainer Derbyshire, UK
