PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. #72. This week I take Callers Calls and Questions on various dog training and behavior issues, Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist. Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura Dog Behaviorist, Dog Behaviorist
If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
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PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. #72. This week I take Callers Calls and Questions on various dog training and behavior issues, Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist. Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura Dog Behaviorist, Dog Behaviorist
If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
Go here for Free Dog Training Articles
Raised by wolves with canine DNA in his blood, having trained more than 24,000 vets helping you and your fur babies thrive live in studio it's pet talk today with will. Bangura answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert will man.
Speaker 2:Good. Saturday morning pet lovers I'm will Bandura. Hey, thanks for joining us. You're listening and watching another episode of head talk today. We're here each and every Saturday morning here on our Facebook live stream. And that starts at 9:00 AM Pacific time. That's 12 noon Eastern time. And like I said, we're here each and every Saturday morning. What we do oftentimes is we have guests on the show where we interview pet professionals on really important topics. Last week, we had Dr. Karen Becker and we were talking to her all about diet and nutrition and got some great information about your pet's health needs. Then there are other days where we just do Q and a, um, I'm here to help you deal with all of your pet training and behavior issues. Um, if you have a question about your dog's training, if you have a question about your cat's behavior, this is your opportunity to be able to get some answers. Not everybody can afford private in-home training, and that's why I do this show. This is my labor of love to be able to give back to the community and help those people that might have training and behavior issues with their pets. And they just can't afford, uh, the training. So do us a favor, go ahead, show us some love. If you would please hit that like button hit, that she button hit that heart button, let us know that you're out there that you're watching. And also do us a favor if you would go ahead after you've hit that like button, could you go ahead in the comment section, mention where you're watching from and also what kind of pets do you have? What kind of pets do you have? And then in a little bit, I'm gonna be going ahead and checking for Q and a checking for questions and answers, um, for the show for, uh, today. Um, I hope everybody's had a good week hope that, uh, you're having some fun with your dogs, hope that you're taking, uh, your training seriously. Um, I'm also gonna be taking calls, uh, in a little bit. I'll go ahead and give out that number, um, in just a little bit, um, but go ahead and start thinking about what your training, training and behavior questions are.
Speaker 3:But
Speaker 2:Before we go into Q and a, we haven't done this for a while, but I think it's about time for some pit talk news. What do you think? Well, here's the buzz on insect based dog food, plus a new way to induce vomiting with eyedrops. Is there dog food made from bugs? Well, yes, as strange as it sounds, there are several dog foods on the market that are made with insect protein. These dog foods offer an alternative to meat and fish based diets and are popular with vegan and vegetarian consumers. The idea is that by using insects as the protein source, the environmental carbon footprint could shrink significantly. Insect farming requires less land and water than livestock production and results in lower greenhouse gas emissions. Purina has announced the launch of its beyond nature's protein in Switzerland. This month Yura is a UK based company producing insect protein dog foods. At this time, United States, regulators have not permitted the use of insect based ingredients in dog foods. However, some treats containing insects are on the market as treats are not as strictly regulated manufacturers claim their products taste great and are highly digestible and contain as much protein as traditional sources, such as poultry meal and fish meal. Recent studies found the digestibility and amino acid profiles to be high. I don't know. What do you think? Are you willing to, uh, feed your dog insect based protein dog? Food sounds interesting. Is there a new product that will induce vomiting in dogs? Well, yes, the food and drug administration has recently approved clever, which is Ropinerole ophthalmic solution, which is an eye drop use to induce vomiting in dogs. The indications for inducing vomiting are when the dog has ingested a poison or eaten an object that will not be able to pass through the intestinal tract. Hydrogen peroxide given orally will make the dog throw up, but can be irritating to the stomach and throat in the process. One trick to avoid this irritation is to soak pieces of white bread in the peroxide and feed them to the dog. The bread will pan around the foreign object, absorb some of the toxic substance and protect the stomach and throat as the dog empties. The contents of its stomach clever comes in prefilled single dose droppers. The number of eyedrops administered is based on the dog's weight. Small dogs get one drop in either eye while large to giant breeds, get two drops in both eyes initially. And one more drop in each eye. After two minutes studies report the majority of dogs vomit after the first dose, while a smaller number of dogs needed a second dose, 20 minutes later. So there you have it, folks that is pet talk news for today. Like I said, we're gonna be, I'm gonna be, I, I shouldn't say we, I, as you can see Jordan, well, maybe you can't see, Jordan is not here today. Um, Jordan's actually somewhere in the Indian ocean where he is, um, doing some deep sea salt water fishing. He's in a contest that, uh, he does every, um, every August. So, uh, we wish you well, sales up. Good luck. Uh, make sure you send us a picture of, uh, whatever it is that, uh, that you're catching out there in the Indian ocean. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and give you the number, um, and I'm gonna take priority to phone calls. So anybody that calls with a question, I'm gonna take that over anybody that's posting questions. If you would like to talk to me, if you've got a question about your dog, your cat, any kind of pet's behavior, you can give me a call. The number to reach me is 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7. I'm gonna give that number out again. It's 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7. And you can go ahead and give me a call right away. Um, if you've got a comment about today's show, you can go ahead and post that in the comment section. I'm gonna be taking a look and see what, uh, what we currently have going on right now. As far as, let me try to get into the comment section here. Where are we here? You're gonna have to bear with me folks. I'm doing this by myself. So we got Regina from Corin, Mississippi is it? We've got, uh, Gina from Florida. We've got Marissa from New York. We've got Denise from Oregon. She's got some shes. We've got Stacy. Hey, Stacy from Wisconsin. I'm from Wisconsin. Stacy, let us know what part of Wisconsin you're from. I'm originally from brown deer. We got Carrie she's from Mesa. She's a local lady. We've got Regina and Regina's not telling us, I don't think Regina's telling us where, where she's from. Um, but yeah, we've got a lot of people here. Uh, fantastic. We got somebody here with the German shed mix. Who's in Prescott. Uh, looks like they're, uh, impersonating Jordan, Mar stellar. Now Jordan's actually on vacation this week. He's up in Prescott. He's enjoying himself. We hope he has a good time. Apparently he can't step away from work because, uh, he's, uh, he's here commenting on this section. Um, but yeah, if you've got a question about your dog, your cat's behavior, you could give me a call. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and take a call right now. It looks like we may have somebody let's find out one second here. Let's get them onto the roader pro. Um,
Speaker 4:I'm
Speaker 2:Go ahead and take right now. If you're calling talk today, I need you to turn your volume down. We got an echo going on there. Hello. Welcome to talk today. How can I help you?
Speaker 4:Um, we have a recently acquired two year old standard poodle. He was a show dog Uhhuh, and he's got severe separation anxiety. Um, even if we're here and he doesn't see you, he cries wine circles, poops and peas, and he's done it every day. The week we've had him. And we are wondering if this is fixable or if we should send him back
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm<affirmative> so you've had, I wanna make sure I understand things correctly. This two year old stand standard poodle you've had for how long
Speaker 4:A week
Speaker 2:You've had for a week. Okay. Where did you get this? Two year old poodle from?
Speaker 4:We got, we got him from friends in poodle club who, um, had four dogs and they wanted to, you know, get rid of one. So we said we try him out. Mm-hmm
Speaker 2:<affirmative>
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm<affirmative> and apparently after talking to her yesterday, um, he did poop at their house.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Um, he's very sensitive. Mm-hmm<affirmative> um, and he is kind of a little skittish, but he's very lovable. Um, he wants to be with you. He loves my husband already. He's a good dog. Very quiet. It's just when, um, if you go outside and he doesn't see my husband or something, um, or we leave and we have done, um, crate and we did, um, a small like mud room kind of a thing. And he did pee there and he didn't pee a poop in the crate, but I'm just wondering for long term, can we get over this behavior?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot that we can do, you know, and, and a big part of being able to come up with the right kind of, uh, treatment plan. The training protocol is being able to really get a good idea about everything that's going on. Now, you mentioned that he didn't go to the bathroom in the crate. My question for you, when you put him in the crate, how did he do? Was he anxious? Was he crying, whining barking? Did he lay down calmly? What was his demeanor like when he went in the crate,
Speaker 4:He was cry. Well, we sneak up on, well, he's okay when we go in, but then when we're out of the house and when we come back and we sneak up, we can hear him cry and barking in the, in the crate.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm<affirmative>. Do you know once you leave, does he start crying and barking? Have you been monitoring? I don't know if you've got some kind of a device where, you know, some people put baby monitors up and then when they leave, they can hear whether or not the dog is vocalizing. Some people have, you know, their, their smartphone and, and they're able to do some video and they're checking out. Right. And that's important to,
Speaker 4:No, go ahead. We, we don't, we don't know, but like I said, when we come home, I drop my husband off and he goes around the back and tries and sometimes we hear him and sometimes so I dunno if he's doing it the entire time. Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the things that's important to do is to find out, you know, what level of distress when you are gone and the dog is in the crate, the dog might be having, because crates are a great thing. In the beginning. When we have a dog that we don't know that we can trust, are they gonna pee? Are they gonna poop in the house? Are they gonna be destructive? Okay. But we don't want a dog that has maybe severe separation anxiety in that crate. If the dog is going to hurt themselves, trying to get out, and some dogs will, they'll just be frantic trying to get out. And we don't want a dog. That's having a massive panic attack. We don't wanna put them in the crate in, in a situation where they're hurting themselves. So separation anxiety can be helped. My question though, too, if you talk to these people that you got the dog from, is this a dog that has other issues? Um, is this a dog that is generally anxious or is this just, uh, limited to a separation issue?
Speaker 4:Well, I do know that his bigger brother, um, kind of dominates him. I guess she told me that sometimes he doesn't poop outside because he can't get the chance of the other mm-hmm
Speaker 2:<affirmative>
Speaker 4:And their, when they were in the house, the four of poop, mm-hmm in a very like living room, kind of a situation. Right. Um, and I know that them took the dogs with them a lot. They just loaded them up in the truck and they took them. So I don't. Okay. And plus we don't have another dog right now, so he is the only dog here.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:He doesn't have a pack.
Speaker 2:Sure. So let me talk a little bit about what we can do now. There's a couple things that are going on here. One, we've got a dog that was taken out of its environment and put into a brand new environment. That's only been with you for a week. It takes dogs typically two to three months before they settle in completely. Okay. That transition time takes a while. You don't even know what you truly have. Like when people adopt a dog, they don't really know what they have until that dog's been with them for about two to three months. So that's one thing that's very early and pretty normal for a dog that got taken away from their home and brought into a new environment to have a certain level of anxiety, a certain level of stress, maybe to be a little bit skittish. What we wanna look for is over this next two to three months, is this a dog that begins to adjust? Or is this a dog that continues to have high levels of anxiety or fears or phobias or staying skittish or something that scares the dog. And it takes forever for the dog to recover, to get back to normal. So those are some things that, you know, we wanna look at. The other thing I wanna ask you is, do you know anything about your poodle's health? When's the last time this dog was seen by a veterinarian how's its health?
Speaker 4:Um, I don't know any health issues.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, you trying to find out when the last time the dog was seen by a vet it's two years old. I don't know if you know, if it's current on its vaccines. Um, yes I do. Okay. Well, most likely everything's fine, but you know, one of the first things that we do when we start dealing with behavioral problems is, you know, we wanna make sure and rule out that there's not any medical issues. Now. There's probably not any problems as far as a UTI or a bladder infection or anything like that, as far as pertaining to why you're having, um, accidents, as far as, you know, the dog peeing in the house. But that's always a possibility. And I, I mentioned that to people, right. You know that sometimes when we've got elimination disorders, we need to look at, is there a medical factor that is involved in that, but right. You know, you had mentioned that the previous owner said, Hey, this is a dog that would sometimes have accidents in the house. So one of the, one of the things that we know is that this dog is not sure this dog does not have the understanding that going to the bathroom inside of a house is not okay. Right. Even if, if the dog goes to the bathroom in the house and you look at it and the dog gives you like this guilty look, and you're like, you're thinking to yourself, man, I know the dog knows what it did was wrong. That's not what you're seeing. We misread the body language. We think that they're guilty when really they just know we're upset about something and they're feeding off our energy. Okay. Uh, and sometimes it's our body language in, in, in how we're looking at'em, you know, so one of the things that we have to do is we have to start potty training 1 0 1, we gotta go back. Okay. Gotta go back to basics when it comes to potty training. Okay. All right. And I'll get back into that in a little bit. But the other thing that we need to do is we need to, you know, help get the dog comfortable in its new surroundings. So one of the things that's really important is to do some enrichment activities, okay. Getting puzzles, getting games, you know, for dogs, things that will stimulate your new dog's brain, it's mind, you know, one of the things you can do, you know, you can just take little treats and you can hide them all over the house and help the dog find them. Okay. Okay. One of the things that does is it allows the dog to explore its new surroundings and get a bunch of high value food rewards, which are very positive. So as your dog is now exploring its new environment, it's getting this positive reinforcement everywhere it's going. So we're creating positive associations by doing that as well. So not only does it stimulate your dog's, um, brain, okay. Give it mental stimulation. It gets it physically going around. But again, as it's exploring areas of the house, if it keeps getting treats that it, you know, you maybe hide in the carpet or around a couch or something like that, um, that can be very beneficial as well. Dogs when they're nervous, when they're anxious, one of the things they need more than anything is predictability, the more they can predict what's gonna happen, the less fearful they're going to be. So what does that mean? Structure routine, getting into daily routines that are the same waking up at the same time, feeding at the same time, going for a walk at the same time, and exercise is critical. We've got to get the dog exercise, whether that means taking the dog, um, out back and throwing a ball around, whether it means going for a 20 to 40 minute walk every day, we want to be able to do that as well. Um, so making sure medically everything's okay. Making sure that we're dealing with boredom and mental stimulation. Okay. Getting the dog used to being in different areas of the house. Okay. And then also making that crate definitely a positive experience. What I would recommend is I would feed the dog in the crate. Do you feed, um, on a schedule?
Speaker 4:Um, he was free fed.
Speaker 2:Okay. I would start feeding on a schedule. He may be a little finicky about the food for the first week. When you do that, I would put the food in the crate, keep the door open, guide the dog to go in there and give about 10 minutes. If the dog doesn't eat anything, put the food up for 12 hours, put it back down. Okay. 12 hours later back in the kennel, uh, for about five to 10 minutes, dog doesn't eat anything. Put it up. Your dog's not gonna starve itself. The worst dog ever saw went five days. Didn't eat, didn't die. Didn't star. Okay. But that's the worst I ever saw. And, and I've not heard anybody else tell me that they had a dog that went more than five days. Now. The other thing that we're doing by feeding in the crate and not closing the door, by the way, when they're eating in there, right. Is again, we're creating a positive association, the food, hopefully the dog likes its food and being in that crate. Okay. And then what I would do is I would start doing what I call crate games. Does your dog like to play with toys at all?
Speaker 4:Um, yeah. He's not a feer. Um, he doesn't do it for very long and we did try to put high quality treats in there and he'll put like one foot in, you know, he's not
Speaker 2:Sure he's and you just said, you've gotta be patient okay. With him. And, and you know, you put that treat, you know, maybe make a line of treats from a little bit outside the crate, going all the way to the back and let, let him decide, you know, when he wants to go in there, the, the biggest mistake a lot of people make is they force the dog in there and then they have a bad experience. They don't want to go in there and then it makes it all the much more difficult. Okay. For them. Yeah. To do that now, um, where do you have the crate located?
Speaker 4:Um, in the living room.
Speaker 2:Okay. So that's
Speaker 4:And we have one upstairs by the bed.
Speaker 2:Okay. And in addition to, you know, putting the food in there, toss treats in there on occasion, see if you can play a little game, don't force the dog to go in there. Okay. Now, once we get the dog, um, comfortable with the crate, then we can start talking about separation anxiety. After the dog is comfortable with the crate. Now this is a tough one because there's work that needs to be done to help desensitize this dog to the fear of being alone. But what we really need to do between now and the time the work is done is we need to ensure that the dog doesn't have the isolation that the dog doesn't have that separation. I don't know what your lifestyle's like. Are you able to not leave the dog for a while? Or is that impossible?
Speaker 4:Yes, we, we can do that. We're retired.
Speaker 2:Okay. So here's the deal. If your dog keeps having negative experiences when you leave and what I mean by that is if somebody leaves and there's this absence and there's this separation and your dog has anxiety, then chances are, that's not gonna get better because your dog keeps experiencing that same anxious moment over and over and over again. And your dog continues to display and rehearse these anxious behaviors day in and day out when it's happening. And that just means that that gets more conditioned, not only the emotional state of the dog, where it's fearful and anxious, but also the behaviors, which might be barking, howling, whatever they might be. Okay. Um, if the dog's not in the crate, you know, a lot of times anxious dogs. Yeah. They, they can have elimination problems in the house when they have high levels of anxiety. So we need to stay home with the dog and then we need to start the process of desensitizing the dog to our separation. That's a long term process and you can't work any faster than the dog's pace. Some dogs will go quickly. Some dogs are gonna go very slowly, but the way you're gonna start it, the dog goes in the crate and you walk out the door for a second and you walk back in and if the dog was fine, then you walk out the door for two seconds and you walk back in and three seconds and walk back in and four seconds and walk back in and five seconds and walk back in where your dog starts to have a problem is where your dog's threshold is. So let's say you're doing fine. All of a sudden, you get to 30 seconds and your dog's showing signs of anxiety. Well, you've gotta work at below 30 seconds for a while. And let me talk about how you do this. First of all, you've gotta be the most boring person in the world when you leave. The worst thing we can do is make a big commotion when we leave or make a big commotion. When we come home, that just adds to the anxiety. Okay? We want the dog to think that, you know what? Mom can leave at any time and for any duration of time and it's no big deal and it's, it's just boring. And so if you go out for a second and come back in the dog's fine, you go out for two seconds, come in the dog's fine. Three seconds. The dog's fine. Five seconds. The dog's not fine. Well, you need to do this one to five, second duration of coming and going okay with absolutely no attention being made to the dog and do not treat the dog. A lot of people are trying to do this. They come back in, they give the dog a treat that gets the dog all excited. Again, we don't want the dog to get excited. Okay? Okay. This is very boring. This is one you don't do with treats. Now, as you start getting more time duration where you can walk out that door, you know, one minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes. Dogs are really good at picking up patterns. And if the pattern is every time you walk out the door, there's more duration of time that you're gonna be gone. The dog will figure that out and may start to get anxious. Okay? And so we've gotta then trick the dog by doing some short duration leaves as well as the longer duration. So maybe I leave for a second. Come back in, leave for two seconds. Come back in, leave for 30 seconds. Come back in, leave for two seconds. Come back in, leave for 25 seconds. Come back in, leave for four seconds. Come back in, leave for 35 seconds. Come back in, leave for two seconds. Come back in. Do you see what I'm saying about mixing up the pattern, throwing in some shorts with longs so that the dog doesn't get in its mind, this pattern that it's experiencing? Oh my God. It's just gonna keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse. Cause they're gonna be gone longer and longer and longer and longer. And then that anxiety comes back. Okay. So that's one thing that you've gotta do now when we leave the house for real, there's usually what we call pre departure cues. Maybe it's picking up a set of keys. Maybe it's putting on a certain kind of shoes. Okay. Um, I don't know, know what your pre departure cues are, but usually the dog knows when you're gonna leave before you leave because we're creatures of habit ourselves. So let's say getting the keys is something that gets the dog excited, cuz the dog thinks, gosh, you're gonna get the keys. They're gonna leave after you've worked on your duration and desensitizing your dog to the duration of you being gone then, and you're doing shorts and longs, then you gotta start working on desensitizing pre-departure cues and you'll start all over. You'll grab the keys. You walk out for a second, come back in, grab the keys, go on for two seconds. Come back in. Now if you get to a point and the dog gets anxious and nervous the dogs over threshold, you've gotta work shorter duration and get the dog used to that and not care that you're going, cuz it's boring. And you always come back before you start doing longer duration. Okay. Remember throw in those shorts as well as the longs so that the dog doesn't pick up the pattern and you're gonna do this with all pre-departure cues, whether it be shoes, whether it be grabbing sunglasses, whether it be keys, um, it could be a lot of things grabbing your purse. So you've got to become aware of what are these pre-departure cues that your dog, uh, keys in on that, cause it to, you know, have that anxiety. Now, if you're doing this and you're not making any success in two months and you're really putting in the work and especially if your dog is having severe anxiety and what I mean by severe screaming, crying, hurting themselves, trying to bust out of that crate being frantic. Okay. That might be a situation where you need. In addition to behavioral modification, you might need behavioral medicine. Now a lot of dogs don't need behavioral medicine, but there are some that do. And there are some that are not going to be able to get through that process, um, without both behavioral modification and behavioral medicine. And so that's something to keep in mind, but that's typically if it's super severe or if you're putting in the work and you're making no progress and you've been working for about two months now, you've got the other issue of the potty training. Remember I said, Hey, you gotta start potty training all over again from the beginning. Um, I've got 45 minute podcast that deals with potty training. So you're gonna wanna go to the pet talk today. Podcast. You can go to any of the hosting platforms for podcast. It can be apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast. Um, and look for pet talk today. Look for episode one or excuse me, season one, season one, episode 16, season one, episode 16. And that is 45 minutes on potty training. Um, I guarantee if you follow that to a T you can potty train the most difficult dog. Um, and you will get some benefit from that. Um, okay. When your dog starts showing signs of fear or skittishness around things, you need to keep your dog at a distance where it doesn't have concern from that trigger. And when that triggers presented to your dog, you need to start feeding high value food rewards. When the dog sees the trigger to begin to what we call counter condition, teach the dog that, Hey, these scary things bring about really positive, good things. Okay. Okay. All right. You think you can try some of those things?
Speaker 4:Yes. Um, with the crate increasing times and stuff. How many times a day am I gonna work with this?
Speaker 2:Well, you're gonna also read the dog. You know, how willing is the dog to want to play. Okay. And, and, and you wanna play a game. All right. Tossing toys in there, tossing treats in there, having the dog come in and out in and out without staying in there. You wanna make that a positive, fun game in addition to you feeding in there. Okay. Okay. And again, you can't go faster than the dog's pace. If your dog is showing care, concern, nervousness, anxiety, um, the dog's telling you you're moving too quickly.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:All right. Thank you.
Speaker 2:All right. Give that a shot. Hey, I definitely, we appreciate that call. That was a great call. Um, if anybody else has a question, like I said, I am taking priority to phone calls. Um, if you're just joining us, I'm will Bandura. You've been listening to pit talk today here on Facebook live I'm here each and every Saturday morning from nine to 10:00 AM. Pacific time. That's 12 to 1:00 PM Eastern time, 11 to 12 central time. Um, do us a favor, hit that like button also hit the share button so that you can share this to your timeline so that more people can benefit from the show. If you've got a question about your dog, your cat, your pet's behavior, or if you've got a training issue, I'm here to help you deal with all of those problems. Give me a call. The number to reach me is 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7. Again, that number is 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7 or 4 1 400 dogs. Um, I am gonna be looking at questions here and see if we've got anybody. All right. Let's see, dove says, what can I do to help or condition my dog to be more comfortable around children? That's a great question. Um, hopefully dove, you're still here. Um, if you are comment, what type of dog you have, but you know, there's a lot of dogs that are fearful of children, especially little children that are right at their eye level. They look like little monsters running around with their arms waving and they make all these crazy sounds. And it's very scary for a lot of dogs. Um, I talked in that last call about threshold and a threshold is about a dog's underlying emotional state. So if we've got a dog that's fearful of children, the distance that the children are to the dog, the distance where the dog just starts to have care and concern about that child, that is a dog that's over threshold. Our job, when we know that we've got a dog that's fearful of children is to keep the dog outside of that threshold below threshold, far enough away from children where your dog knows that there's a child there, but it doesn't have a care in the world. You know, there's that magic line, that distance you get to a certain point and all of a sudden your dog gets nervous. I call that their circumference of comfort or their circumference of discomfort. We've gotta keep em in their circumference of comfort. So that distance from the child to the dog has to be just right where they don't have a care in the world and what we want to do. We're gonna set up training situations. We're gonna do this at least three to five times a week, five to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, each training session, three to five times a week. We're gonna present a child. We need a helper. We need someone with children that can help us. The child comes into the dog's view. The dog is at a distance where it's below threshold knows the child's there, but doesn't have a care in the world. As soon as the dog sees the child, you're gonna take the highest value food rewards, usually cook chicken, cooked beef, something. They love, hope, nothing that they're allergic to though. And you're gonna feed feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously putting high value, incredible food rewards in your dog's mouth. The whole time that that child is there and that's gonna be feeding for five seconds or so. And then you're gonna have that child go outta sight. As soon as the child goes outta your feeding stops, you pause for a little bit. Now, all of a sudden the child comes back into the dog's view and you start feeding again constantly and continuously feed feed, feed, feed feed for five to 10 seconds. The child goes out of you. As soon as the child's out of you, you stop feeding and you are gonna repeat that over and over and over. And your dog is going to begin to associate that child at that distance is a wonderful thing because it means that high value food rewards come as a result of the child. Okay? When you par it and make it that black and white, and you do it repetitiously, the dog's gonna view that trigger, that it is afraid of the child as a positive trigger. That gets food. Now, once your dog understands that game and things are really going well at that distance. Now the next step is you get to present that child to your dog, but at a little bit, and I mean a little bit, a little bit closer distance. Now you have to read your dog's body language. Are they calm? Are they relaxed or are they tense and stiff? Okay, you've got to know whether they're over a threshold or whether they're under threshold. We gotta keep'em under threshold where they don't have a care in the world, but because we positively conditioned them to that child at a distance that was okay for them. And they found that to be wonderful. Maybe we did that for about two weeks at that distance. And now we've moved a little closer and now we're doing the same thing. Again, we're presenting the child to the dog feed, feed feed constantly and continuously for five seconds. Then make the child disappear and do that over and over. It is a process of gradual and systematic desensitization. You take little baby steps as you're doing this. And if you do that dove, um, you can begin to desensitize your dog to children. Now you would start with children just being stationary. Then you would start that process all over again with kids making movements. You'd add more distance again and start over with kids making lots of movements, cuz they can be scary. And then you'd get that counter conditioned. You'd get that desensitized. And then you would have the kids start making movements and vocalizing cuz kids scream. And when they scream those high pitched baby voices, those toddler voices, they sound like wounded prey and that can get dogs very, very nervous sometimes when they hear kids screaming. So that's something that we would have to desensitize. You may have to record the sounds and start playing them at low volumes and you play feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. While the sound is coming, stop, stop feeding, press the play button, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, press the stop button, stop feeding. Um, but that's how you would begin that process of, of doing that. You don't want to flood your dog with children and get the dog too close, where it's nervous and, and expect it to get used to. It's not gonna happen. You don't want kids reaching out right now and touching and petting the dog. Okay? You don't want PE these kids giving the dog treats either. Okay? Because when they're hand comes towards a dog, they're getting into the dog's personal space and you need to desensitize your dog to those spaces. Excuse me, losing my voice there. Um, let's see what else we have for questions. Let's see, we've got, uh, my dog is a one year old, three month old, one year, three month old mini golden doodle. He barks a lot when he sees people, how should we stop that? Well, you know, dogs are gonna bark and what you probably need to be asking yourself is how do we stop excessive barking versus barking? That is nonstop. Most people want their dogs to alert. Most people want their dogs to alert that there's a stranger, a person. So what I would begin to do when your dog starts to bark, I would call the dog to you and I would reward the dog and I would do that over and over. And if the dog learns that if it barks, but then comes to you and when it comes to you, it gets a food reward. Then that's what the dog's gonna begin to do. And when the dog barks and comes to you, it'll stop barking. You've interrupted that behavior. Rewarded it. Basically what you're saying is, Hey, thank you for letting me know something's going on. So you reward the dog, you go check it out. Okay? And maybe there's nothing going on. Maybe there is something going on. Now that's one thing you can do. A second thing you can do is you can interrupt that behavior, give the dog something else very specific to do. So for example, your dog's barking. Maybe, you know, that's something specific to do that I just mentioned was having the dog come to you and rewarding you. But the other thing that you can begin to do is you could have the dog come to you and do a down lay down and get rewarded. You could have the dog come to you and do a sit and get rewarded. You could have the dog when it begins to bark, go to its dog bed and you reward the dog there, but basically you wanna stop excessive vocalization. Now the other thing to do is to begin to capture quiet, right? Your dog. Doesn't always bark. Let's say your dog's barking. Woo woo. Woo. Woo. Woo. Woo. Woo. And you get about three seconds of quiet. I would ask you to label that behavior of quiet, but make sure there's about three seconds of no barking. And all of a sudden you go quiet and reward the dog when the dog's barking again, and the barking stops. Wait about three seconds of quietness. When you've got that, say quiet, reward the dog, be consistent, do that over and over. It's gonna take a while because you're capturing quiet. You're capturing it. You're labeling it. You're rewarding. It it's gonna take a while and some repetition before you're gonna be able to reverse engineer that and ask for quiet, but you will. You'll be able to do that eventually. All right, let's see. We've got Carrie from Mesa. She's got a two year old, uh, Chiney. It's overly protective of her when he sees anyone around me or when any other dogs are by me, he acts like he's going to attack. However, when my boyfriend is around others or dogs, he doesn't react any suggestions. Um, I don't know what your boyfriend was doing with the dog. Um, maybe your boyfriend's a disciplinarian. Maybe he punished the dog for that. And maybe the dog's afraid to engage in that behavior and has stopped doing that. Um, I do not advocate punishment. I'm not saying your boyfriend did it. Okay. Um, but that those things do happen. Punishment, um, might stop a behavior, but that behavior is gonna come back because we've stopped it and created anxiety and behaviors that are stopped or suppressed with fear, pain, intimidation, corrections, um, they tend to come back and the problems tend to become worse over time. Um, first thing I wanna say to you, Carrie, is that when we're talking about aggression, um, that can be a serious problem and it's always best to hire a professional and work with a professional it's even difficult for a lot of professionals to deal with. So I would look for a, uh, behavior consultant, somebody that specializes in aggression and con contact them. You're in Mesa. So if you wanna contact my company, Phoenix dog training, you can go to our website, Phoenix dog, training.com. Um, you can also give us a call at(602) 769-1411. Again, Phoenix dog training.com 6 0 2 7 6 9 1 4 1 1. Um, but basically just as I was talking about Dove's dog, that was nervous about children, where we needed to do the counter conditioning and desensitization by presenting the child and then feed, feed, feed, high value food rewards to the dog, pairing that very specifically with the presentation of the child and then the disappearance of the child. Um, we would do the same thing when it comes to your dog. Um, because you're telling me that you're Choni anytime he sees anyone around you, uh, or when any other dogs are by you, he acts like he's going to attack. So these people that come near you or these other dogs that come near you when he gets to the point where he wants to attack he's way over threshold. So what that means is the strange people or the strange dogs have gotten too close to you and your dog and he can't handle it. And when your dogs are reactive like that folks, there's nothing you're gonna do because the part of the brain, they need to access, uh, to think, to use the little bit of logic and reasoning, they have to do executive functioning to use that frontal cortex, forget it. They're in fight or flight. They're in the Ilia, the older part of the brain. And when that Ilia is set off, the ability to access the frontal cortex is very, very, very limited. And so we can't even do a whole lot of teaching when they're in that state, they're just not gonna get it. They, their whole concept is man, I'm gonna be killed. I gotta go into fight or flight. And that's all they're worried about doing. So when it comes to these strange people, these strange dogs, we need helpers. We need people that can help us strange people. We need strange dogs that can help us. Obviously we need the people that own these strange dogs that can help us. But what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna, again, just like with Dove's dog and presenting children, we're gonna present the strange people to you and your dog, but at a distance we're gonna present the strange dogs to you and your dog, but add a distance that's far enough away to start with where your dog knows that there's strange people out there coming towards you. Your dog knows there's strange dogs coming towards you, but they're far enough away that your dog notices them, but doesn't have a care in the world and they need to come into view and you feed feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously extremely high value food rewards, something that your dog would never get, but would absolutely love like chicken steak, something just yummy. And then as soon as that strange dog or person is removed, we stop feeding and we wait about five seconds. We have the trigger be presented again at a distance. That's okay for the dog. And you feed feed feed constantly and continuously the whole time the dog sees the trigger in this case, the strange person or strange dog. And then that strange person, a dog goes out of view and you stop feeding. You're gonna do that. Three to five times a week. Training sessions are about 5, 10, 15 minutes. You can do it more than that, but you've gotta keep the dog below threshold. If you, as you're bringing the trigger closer to the dog, as you're going through this process, which can take weeks and months as you're getting the triggers closer to you and your dog, if your dog becomes reactive, if your dog is not relaxed, you have gotten too close too soon. You can only work as fast as the dogs pace. So hopefully that, uh, makes sense. And hopefully you can do that. Uh, let's see. I've got somebody by the name of mags. I've got four French bulldogs and they are great with each other great in the house. And with people that come to the house, my problem is with aggression with people on the other side of the fence once inside. There's no problem. Okay. So we're talking about barrier, frustration or barrier aggression. And one of the big things is, um, keeping the dog from rehearsing the behavior until you've done the work of desensitizing the dog. Okay. So what does that mean? That means that we can't have your dog out by that gate when there are other dogs or people on the other side where your dog normally would be reactive. We already know what's gonna happen. We can predict what's gonna happen. It's been going on. This is a problem. You've got to avoid it for now. And you've got to start creating training opportunities. So you create the opportunity. But again, on the other side of that gate, we need the trigger and or the dog to be far enough apart where your dog knows that they're there, but doesn't have a care in the world. If your dog is anxious and nervous, you're too close. So you get your dog to the distance and you have another dog walking back and forth behind that gate. And you start feed, feed, feed, feed constantly, and continuously notice that there's a theme here. Folks pairing high value food rewards to the presentation of the triggers that your dogs don't like, but they are experiencing these triggers at a distance. That's manageable. Remember the closer they get the scarier. It is the further away they are. The more comfortable it is. If you are pairing high value food rewards with a trigger and the dog has an emotional state of anxiety, you're reinforcing anxiety. That's why you've gotta be far enough away from the trigger where when the dog sees the trigger, it doesn't have a care in the world. The emotional state is calm and relaxed, and now you're pairing high value food rewards to an emotional state. That's relaxed to a trigger that was scary. And again, we do this very gradually, very systematically, very slowly, only working at the dog's pace. All right, hopefully that helps you as well. Let's see Gloria, our dog caught onto our preparation to leave the house and would back away from the room where he was left in. He could moonwalk across the entire backyard. Strangely, he will go in his crate at night. I would start playing crate games during the day where you're not actually keeping the dog in there, but maybe throwing some treats in there. The dog gets the treat. Come in, come out, throw a treat in there. As the dog goes in to get the treat. Why don't you just label it? Kennel dog comes out, throw a treat in the kennel. Dog goes in. Soon as the feet hit the inside of the kennel, say kennel, dog eats a treat, um, throw toys in there, make it a fun experience. You know, a lot of times, the only time we put the dog in the crate is we're gonna go ahead and, and shut the door and leave. And that becomes, you know, a downer, a bummer for a lot of dogs. So start mixing things up a little bit where you're not necessarily putting the dog in the crate for any long period of time. Um, let's see Yon from outside of Kansas city, Missouri, she's got, uh, two blue healers and a Texas healer and one of the Texas healers will grab and hold the blue healer and bite him for a reason that she's unsure. Um, well, when you say bite, you know, dogs communicate with their mouth, um, are we talking about an aggressive bite? Are we talking about play? Um, are we talking about a dog? That's just kind of checking another dog. So there's a lot of information that I, I don't have there. Um, so I can't help you with that completely. Um, my dog, let's see, Chris says my dog goes from zero to 10 when he sees other dogs went on, walks, help, Chris, everything I've talked about about counterconditioning and desensitizing you can take and use for, um, your dog that goes from zero to 10 when he sees other dogs, um, on walks pet talk today, how can I help you?
Speaker 5:And good Mor good morning, UHT. And it's good afternoon here in West Virginia,
Speaker 2:West Virginia. Who are we talking to?
Speaker 5:This is Russ. Hey,
Speaker 2:Ross. You've called before. Haven't
Speaker 5:You and my side. Yes, I have my side kick is Barney. Uh, great. And he's at me like, yeah, you're talking about he little bit of, um, personality over his dog food it, and I'm wondering why he does that. Mm-hmm<affirmative> he, he used to do it with his, uh, water dish, but I bolted it down to the floor. He can't do that anymore. And I have, I don't have to mop it up.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 5:And I was wondering why he does that.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know exactly why. Um, are you wanting to truly know the reason why are you want to it to stop?
Speaker 5:I would like for it to stop. Well, he turns it over and I said, okay, well, there it is on the floor. Eat it off the floor if you want. But mm-hmm<affirmative>. I was curious about that. And uh, if it's a problem that he's having, I'd like to correct it for him.
Speaker 2:Sure. One of the things that I would do be personally, if it were my dog, I would put a little bit of kibble in the bowl. Okay. And if the dog tipped the bowl over, then I would pick everything up and I would probably put it up for 12 hours, put it back down for another, put it back down. And if the dog tipped it over again, I'd probably put it back up again for 12 hours. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show the dog. Yeah. That when you tip your bowl over, you're not gonna get to eat. Okay. You're not gonna get to eat.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 2:Now the other thing is when he is not tipping the bowl over, even if you have to help coax him to eat by giving him a little bit of kibble in your hand and putting do that, we want him to realize that when he doesn't tip the bowl over, he gets to eat. When the bowl gets tipped over, he's gonna have to wait to eat. Okay. I don't know why he is doing it. You know, maybe he's just playing a game, but that's what you need to do. He
Speaker 5:Acts like it's a game.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, and, you know, BEC he's getting you to interact with him. Okay. So part of what you might wanna also do, how about having a little bit of enrichment, having a little bit of play with him before you feed him, give him the attention that he might be seeking from you. Okay. Before you put the food down and then maybe he won't do that. I don't know. That's something you could try. Yeah.
Speaker 5:He gets a lot of that play with me.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm<affirmative> and you know, this might, like I said, it might just become a fun game. Hey, he knocks it over. You pick it up and this starts to become habituated. So I would do that. Thank you. Okay. Hey, no problem. Yeah. Hey, thanks for giving us a call again. We appreciate when you call in, um, if anybody else has a call, I can take, I've got time to maybe take one more. Call. The number is 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7. It's 4 1 4 400 dogs. Um, let me look and see if I've got other questions here. I know we got a lot of questions. I apologize with Jordan not being here today. I can only get to so many questions. Um, let's see. I've got Darcy says I got a 16 month standard poodle who's barking at things outside. She used to stop barking when corrected. Now she ignores the correction Darcy you're correction was probably an interruption. Okay. Um, and I don't advocate punishing your dog. Um, and corrections are just nice words for punishment. Meaning that we add something unpleasant to try to stop a behavior. I had talked about a dog barking. I don't know Darcy. If you had heard me talking about the other dog that had a barking issue, but to kind of chain together, another step, the dog barks and comes to you and gets attention or the dog barks and comes to you and lays down or the dog barks and comes to you and sits. I also talked about beginning to capture, quiet and label, quiet reward, quiet. So that down the road, you can actually ask for it. So, um, if you weren't around for that part of the show after the show, uh, the video's gonna be here on the pet talk today, Facebook page, and you'll be able to listen to that again. Do us a favor. Everybody hit that like button for us, hit the sheer button. Let other people benefit from the information that we're putting out today. I definitely appreciate everybody being here. I appreciate the calls. I appreciate, uh, the questions. Let's see if, uh, I can get to one more, uh, another one with separation anxiety. We talked about that. Um, let's see, my dog will not use the wewe pad. She's six month. She'll do everything on the floor. Well, I'm not a fan of potty pads. I think it teaches dogs to go to the bathroom in the house. You need to potty train your dog the right way. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have, uh, with four minutes left in the show. Time to talk about potty training. If you were listening earlier, uh, you know that I've got an entire episode, season one episode, 16, 45 minutes on potty training. And that's where you need to direct yourself. Go to apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, any of the podcast, uh, hosting platforms, do a search for pet talk today. Podcast look for season one, episode 16, listen to that potty training episode. I guarantee if you follow those guidelines, you can't help, but potty train the most difficult dog there is to potty train. Uh, let's see, how do I train my dog to bark on command? Um, Jasmine says, how do I do that? Well, you do it the reverse way. Your dog barks. Many times throughout the day start rewarding the dog. When the dog barks, if the dog's getting reward, when it barks, it's gonna want to do that behavior more often. You're getting the dog to elicit that behavior more often. Why you wanna do that is that we need to make associations. That's how dogs learn by associative learning. That's classical conditioning. So the dog barks, you give a reward, the dog barks. You give a reward. The dog barks. You give a reward. Now barking has some value for the dog because he realizes after a while, Hey, I can get you to pay out a reward. The second step is the dog barks. You label it before you give a reward. So the dog barks, I might go speak, then reward dog barks. I say, speak, give it a reward. The dog barks. I say, speak, give it a reward. The dog barks. I say, speak, give it a reward. Now you don't have to say speak. You can say whatever word you want. You can say, putting but what we're doing again, we're pairing and making associations bark and speak close together. That's close together with food. Okay. So the dog barks, I say speak. I give it food. I do that over and over a lot. Then one day I say to myself, let's see if the dog understands the association. I go speak, the dog should bark. If I've been pairing the associations long enough and I've been rewarding them. And my timing is really good. That way. You'll get that. All right. Let's see what else we got here. Oh,
Speaker 6:Let's see.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Do we have any more? Oh, a lot. Lot of the same questions here. Dogs having problems with kids. Um, how do you train a dog? Not to run after bunnies and cats? Well, we need to ask ourselves, what would we rather have the dog do? What's an alternative behavior. How about I teach a dog to stay on an elevated dog bed. One of these cor beds. How about I teach him to stay on that bed? And then I put my dog in a situation where there are these triggers. Okay. Where there's bunnies and cats, but far enough away from the bunnies and cats where it's not too overwhelming because if the bunny and the cat's right in the dog's face, it, it they're gonna go after the bunny. They're gonna go after the cat. Okay. You've gotta do high value food rewards with your dog. Staying on this, uh, dog cot orand bed and high value food rewards for paying attention to you. You need to teach the dog, Hey, stay on the bed. Pay attention to me, do that with lower level distractions. Okay. And make staying on that bed and paying attention to you more valuable by rewarding that behavior. Again, use high value food rewards and little by little as the dog gets better at paying attention to you and settling in. Get yourself a little closer to bunnies. Get yourself a little closer to cats. If your dog takes the bait. Well, you've gotten too close too soon. You need to slow that down a little bit. Okay. So we are just about out of time today. Um, I want to thank everybody that had submitted questions today. I'd like to thank everybody. Um, that, uh, called in today. We appreciate your calls. We appreciate, uh, your, your questions as well. Um, like I said, we are here each and every Saturday morning on the pet talk today, Facebook page, you can also make sure you subscribe to the pet talk today. Podcast. Sometimes we've got podcasts and topics that we don't do on the show. We're here two weeks from today. We're gonna be off next week.
Speaker 7:That's
Speaker 2:All folks, but we'll see ya the week after that, Hey folks have a wonderful, wonderful weekend, everybody.