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Raised by wolfs with K nine 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. Good
Speaker 2:Saturday morning. Happy September 17th. Hey, happy responsible dog owner month. Did you know that? Uh, did you know that September was responsible dog owner month?
Speaker 3:You know, I do now.
Speaker 2:Well, when you listen to pit talk today, you find out these things, Hey, I'm will Bangor and
Speaker 3:I'm Jordan Mar
Speaker 2:Steller. And as you're finding out, you're listening and watching pet talk today, we're here each and every Saturday, unless we take a, a week off we're here each and every Saturday morning here on the pet talk today, Facebook page doing a Facebook live show where we help you with your dog training, uh, behavior issues whatever's going on with your pet. And it doesn't have to be just a dog. Uh, we, we do a lot of stuff with dogs, but we also talk about cats and other, uh, pets as well. If you've got a training issue, if you've got a behavior issue, um, there's a couple ways that we can help you with that. Um, one of the ways is to go ahead and in the comment section, go ahead and type in your question, but do us a favor, um, right now, go ahead and hit that like button so that more people get to see this and hit that share button. Um, this is a labor of love for us. Not everybody can afford private in-home training by you hitting that like button by you hitting that share button. This information gets out to those people as well. Share this on your Facebook page. Um, today we're gonna be talking about a couple topics. Um, we're also gonna be taking phone calls. We're gonna be answering your questions. Um, when you put a question, if you type a question in the comment section, let us know where you're watching from, what city you're from, or what country you're watching from. And also what kind of pet that you have. Um, today we're gonna be talking about loose leash walking.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I think arguably loose leash walking and loose or leash reactivity training is probably a staple for every single pet owner out there. It is a necessary training. So many people have these dogs and I watch them. I watch them walking down the street and they are not walking. Their dogs will, their dogs are walking them.
Speaker 2:And, and that's the case for a lot of people. But, you know, I figured the fact that, um, September's responsible dog owner month. And what do dog owners do more than anything, right? If they're gonna do something with their dog, they typically walk the dog, walk the dog. Yeah. And as the weather is starting to get nicer. Now I know across the country, the weather is really good in a lot of places, but we're here in Phoenix, Arizona. We are still in triple digits. Oftentimes. Absolutely. Um, so if you live in an environment, if you live in a state where it's really hot, you need to be careful. Um, here in Phoenix, when it's 90 degrees outside, the pavement is actually 150 degrees.
Speaker 3:No, it that's the truth. I, I kid you not. I so many times I'll be at Petco pet smart and I'll see these little dogs, big dogs, dogs in general, being walked on this hot pavement. And you can watch as they're literally like bouncing off of their pause because it burns.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm not asking you to go out there with a thermometer, but do me a favor. When you go out to walk your dog, place your hand on the pavement or the surface you're walking on. If you can't hold your hand there comfortably for 10 seconds. Now
Speaker 3:This is the back of your hand, not your Palm.
Speaker 2:Okay. If you can't hold it there comfortably for 10 seconds, you need to have some, uh, protection for your dog's feet. That can be little infant socks. I like putting socks on rather than the booties. Yeah. Cause the booties are clunky and they fall off. Yeah. You know, get a nice snug, uh, baby sock on there or
Speaker 3:Two absolutely.
Speaker 2:Or two, if you need to. Yeah. But yeah. So, um, if it gets down to 77 degrees outside, because a lot of places across the country, Hey, it's 77. Weather's a lot nicer than Phoenix, Arizona right now. But at 77 degrees, the pavement is still 125 degrees. Woo. Now people will say, well, you know what? I walk my dog all the time when it's not like that. My dog doesn't burn it's it's feet. It's pause because it's got callous pads unless it's a very young puppy. Okay. Um, and hopefully it's because the feet keep moving. They're not yeah. Stationary on that hot pavement for any prolonged period of time. So, um, we wanna talk about loose leash walking. Absolutely. And we wanna talk about one of the problems that a lot of people have, and that is leash reactivity.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And you know, a lot of people are like, well, is that aggression? What is leash reactivity? I think, you know, one of the things we need to do is define what leash reactivity is, cuz it, uh, different people and even different trainers might have different ideas. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know, I think, I think that there's levels to this will there, the thing is that loose leash reactivity can be identified by so many different things. I would say that every dog that is untrained has to some extent leash reactivity by leash reactivity. We aren't talking about the dog. That's just going crazy pulling at the end of the leash barking, lunging, things like that. Growling. No that's aggression, right. Also leash reactivity, but on a different level. When we say leash reactivity, we mean a dog who sees something in its environment, some sort of distraction, whether it's a person, another dog hears a sound, sees a car, anything like that and is no longer walking in a loose leash next to you is pulling, trying to get to that or the opposite direction, trying to get away anything that distracts your dog and keeps them from being in a loose leash. I personally would consider leash reactivity.
Speaker 2:You know, the thing that we get calls a lot for is people will say, listen, my dog loves dogs. We go to doggie daycare. My dog has a great time. We get great reports from the staff. They say that my dog interacts great with all other dogs. We go to the dog park. Yeah. Same thing. But by gosh, we put the leash on and we go walking down the street in our neighborhood and here comes one of our neighbors, five doors down and they come out with their dog and now I've got a dog that was just this sweet dog. And the dog is barking and the dog is lunging and it looks like it might be aggressive. And we're just not sure. Right? What's that all about?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, so here's the thing. When, when you have dogs that, you know, whenever there's nothing in their environment, the sweet little calm, but then a dog pops up. And next thing you know, as soon as your dog sees that dog they're barking, growling lunging, you might potentially be looking at an aggression issue. Maybe, maybe I there's a lot of factors that go into play here. You have to be able to pay attention to your dog's body language. You have to pay attention to exactly what they're telling you about what they're getting from their outside world. So you need to start learning canine body language. And if you notice that every time that your dog is seeing other dogs, you're getting lots of, and they're called stress signals and distance increasing signals. There's a chance that you might have a deeper rooted neurological problem. That's going to require a little bit more behavior modification in addition to regular loose leash obedience training. So the thing is nav stimuli, right? If, if you have a dog that never gets to go outside, never gets to see the outside world and is never being exposed to these things. And what the word that a lot of people like to use is socialized, right? And we could go for hours on what is and is not socialization, but when you have these dogs that never ever, ever experience the outside world and suddenly they see another dog, a lot of things can happen in that dog's mind. They're just suddenly like, oh my gosh, what is that? What is that? And there's a, there's such thing as barrier, frustration, leash frustration. There are dogs because they have this innate, uh, reflex called oppositional reflex. So the idea here is when somebody grabs your hand and they shake your hand, right? The idea is that they let go and then you go about your day. But if that person was to start pulling you towards them, eventually you're going to pull back. That's your oppositional reflex in dogs. However, that reflex is so much stronger when they feel that leash on their neck, pulling the opposite direction, they will inherently pull against it and go away from the, the way that the pressure is on that leash, plain and simple. That's why it is so important to teach your dog to walk right next to you with a loose leash. Because if not, if that leash is already tight and they're walking in front of you, five, six feet in front of you and that leash is already tight, you've already set them up for failure because of that oppositional reflex.
Speaker 2:So I wanna talk about and get into some of the stuff that we put down absolutely. On the sheet of paper so we can get into. Okay. So we're gonna talk about the steps, um, what equipment you need, what are the exact steps for you to teach your dog? How to walk loosely on a leash next to you? Um, we're also gonna talk about leash reactivity. We are also going to be taking your calls. We're going to be answering your questions. Um, if you're just joining us right now, I'm will Bangor and
Speaker 3:I'm Jordan
Speaker 2:Marelli. And this is pet talk today where we help you with your dogs, training and behavior issues. Do us a favor, hit that like button hit that share button and comment where you're watching from and what kind of pet you have. And if you do have a behavior question, a training question about your dog or another pet, doesn't have to be a dog. Go ahead and type that in the comment section. Um, let's do this too. Let's um, I've changed my mind. Yeah. Let's give out the phone number. Okay. All right. So if you wanna give us a call, if you've got a question and the phone calls are going to, uh, be priority over yeah. Comments, um, in the, uh, in the comment section questions in the comments section. Now we've got one line. Yeah. So if you hear us talking to somebody on the phone, don't try to call in. Absolutely. You're just gonna get frustrated because we can't take that. We can only take one call at a time. Yeah. Jordan, if you wanna give out that phone number,
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So the number to call in and remind you, if somebody is on the line, you will be sent to voicemail. The number is 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0 again, 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0. Don't worry for those of you that, uh, for those of you that are here specifically for leash reactivity, we are going to make sure that that is
Speaker 2:Exactly we're gonna cover loose leash walking. We're gonna cover leash reactivity, but we know that we've got a lot of people that have tuned in a lot of people watching across the country, across the globe for, for what that matters. Um, and they've got questions and you know, when we only do an hour and we've got 50, 30, a hundred people watching and, and a lot of those people are, are asking questions. We can't get to everybody's questions. Absolutely. Now a lot of times a question you may have 10 other people have the same question and we may get to somebody else's question and it answers yours. Absolutely. But again, that number, if you would like to give us a call and ask a question and get some help with your pet's behavior, that number is 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0. That's 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0.
Speaker 3:That is correct. All right, so let's jump right into it, right? Let's start with what equipment you need in order to be successful in teaching your dog to walk loosely on the leash. All right. So the first thing that you're going to have to get is a nice harness. All right, you're gonna want to invest in a harness that has at least two points of connection, one on the chest and one on the back. All right. The reason why you want both of these is because the one on the back is going to promote pulling, right? This is where you're gonna connect to when your dog has already learned how to walk loosely on the leash, but you wanna be able to connect to the front of your dog. In the meantime, while you're teaching them how to walk on the leash.
Speaker 2:Now, why would we hook to the front? And what is that doing for us?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So when your dog decides to start pulling what happens is oppositional reflex, right? So when your dog goes to pool, the tension on the leash is going to cause the front of their body to go down right left. And it can, for a lack of better words, contorts the dog into an uncomfortable, unnatural position. And it's going to inherently make them want to stop pulling because they learn. I pull, I get pulled to the side. I don't pull, I get to walk
Speaker 2:Straight. And, and when they are being pulled to the side, when you hook it up to that front cl uh, clasp of that harness, it kind of turns them a little bit. Yeah. It kind of turns them towards you a little bit Absolut. So, um, we don't want to put a regular collar on the dog. Yeah. Because if we've got a dog that can't walk in a loose leash lesion, they're pulling, we got a dog that's coughing, gagging. Absolutely. Um, putting pressure on the esophagus and the windpipe, especially if you've got a bully breed. Okay. Absolutely. Um, we don't want that. There's a lot of breeds that, you know, just regular collars are not absolutely something that's gonna be, um, appropriate and safe for them. So
Speaker 3:Now you've invested in a nice harness. Okay. Um, there are lots of no pool harnesses out there. Like there's one by Halte, which is a fantastic harness, but it's not the best because you can't hook to the front next. You're gonna want two different types of leash. All right. A leash that is at least 10 feet long. I recommend no more than 15, 20 feet for that long line. And then also a six foot leash. Now these are not retractables. And these are not bungee lines. These are flat regular leashes with a loop on the end for you to put your hand through and a regular clasp on the other end. Okay. Now the reason why you want a 10 foot leash is because as you start shaping these behaviors, giving your dog a little bit more freedom and giving them more room to where that leash is not going taught and turning on that oppositional reflex is going to help you have a lot more success next, make sure that you invest in a decent treat pouch. This doesn't have to be some extravagant, amazing thing. In fact, I tell most of my clients for all I care, you can take a sandwich baggy and staple it to your hip. The thing is, it just cannot be your pocket and it cannot be your hand. The reason why it can't be your hand is because then you're bribing the dog. The dog starts to rely on the food being in the hand. It can't be your pocket because you can't get rid of your pocket. So what that means is you'll never get to a point where you can extinguish the need for a treat pouch. You can't get rid of that. Treat pouch. If the treat pouch is your pocket next 15 to 20, I normally say 30, but 15 to 20 works feet of sidewalk. Just, that's all you need. One of my clients, it's my favorite line. One of my clients, they, uh, they run full marathons and he says, well, I take my dog on like a five mile walk every single day. And I said, that's fine. You can still take your dog on a five mile walk. And then he was like, well, you just told me that I'm not leaving this 30 foot stretch of sidewalk. And I said, yeah, what's five miles divided by 30 feet. You know, because here's the thing you're going to get your dog to be obedient and walking with a loose leash for the most important principle. And that is lots and lots of turns because those turns cause your dog to focus on you and start taking cues off of you. It's not about how far you walk it's about how much you turn and make your dog have to take cues off of
Speaker 2:You. You know, after that, we talk about the realistic stuff, dogs, human helper just let's avoid that for now because that's gonna be leash reactivity. Absolutely. Um, one of the reasons why I say to have a 10 foot leash or a 15 foot leash is because, um, you've already got a dog that's gonna pull, right? You don't have a dog that walks loose on the leash and you're already gonna wanna tighten up that leash. Absolutely. We know that we watch you guys do that. Absolutely. Under revisit. They choke that the longer the leash almost better, but it gets cumbersome when you start having a really long leash. Um, but to start with, I like a 10 foot leash. Yeah. And then once the dog's walking on a loose leash on that one, then we can switch over typical six foot leash. Exactly. Um, now before we get started training, we need a system of communication. Absolutely. And we need a marker system. Absolutely. I'm gonna go through this real briefly. I'm not gonna go into it in, in great depth. That's for another show. But a marker system is something that, um, signals to the dog that it's getting a food reward and we use a signal to mark behavior. So timing's everything in training. So when a dog does the correct behavior, we've got zero to a half, a second to get the reward to the dog. In this case, we're talking about maybe a high value food reward. It's difficult. It's very difficult. Especially when you got a treat pouch and it's not in your hand and we don't want the food in your hand to all of a sudden, the dog does the right behavior. I've got zero to a half, a second to reach in that, treat pouch, take that food and get it in the dog's mouth for the dog to connect the dots as to why it got the treat zero to a half a second. So what a marker system does, it is a signal that tells the dog, you are getting a food reward. Absolutely. Now some people are familiar with using a clicker as that signal, as that marker, that marks the behavior and signals to the dog. It's getting a food reward. See when there's a signal that has been conditioned that the dog understands it's gonna get a food reward. Um, we can have a few seconds. It buys us a few seconds. Um, it's a bridge to the food. It's what we call a secondary reinforcer. The food's a primary reinforcer. Now in order to get this, it's really simple. You're gonna get 30 treats. Okay? You're gonna do get 30 treats. You're gonna do this for three or four days. You're gonna do it in a row. Yeah. And all you're gonna do is you're gonna either use a clicker or you can use a word as a marker. We have our clients use the word nice often, and the way that you condition that nice equals treat is very simple. It's boring. It's robotic, but this is how you do it. You go nice. 1001, give the dog food. Nice. 1001, give the dog food. Nice. 1001, give the dog food. Nice. 1001, give the dog food. I told you it's robotic. It's boring. Do that for three to four days after you've done that, the following day have your high value food rewards. Your dog needs to be awake. Your dog needs to be relatively close to you, but I don't want your dog just like totally focusing on you. Yeah. And I want you to say the word nice. Just like you did when you were conditioning, nice equals treat. When you were doing the repetitions. If your dog turns and runs and comes to you, Hey, where's my food. We know now that the marker nice is the marker has been conditioned that the dog understands nice equals food. Now that zero to a half, a second problem we have of needing great timing. We've bought ourselves some time because where it might take us longer than zero to a half, a second to get the food out and in the dog's mouth, when it does the right behavior, what we can do very easily within zero to a half a second, when the dog does the right behavior. Nice. You know, I see the dog sit. Nice. Yeah. See the dog lay down. Nice. And it doesn't matter if it takes me five seconds to get the food, to give it to the exactly. Give it to the dog. Exactly. The dog understands. Nice means holy cow, I'm getting up food
Speaker 3:Reward. Exactly. And then you do the same thing with a clicker. If you want to use a
Speaker 2:Clicker. Right. And, and you know, for deaf dogs, it could be a thumbs up. Yep. Treat thumbs up, treat thumbs up, treat thumbs up, treat. Okay. If you've got a blind dog, it can be a sound as well. Yep. All right. So it doesn't matter if they've got some challenges there
Speaker 3:And then people say, what if I have a deaf and blind dog? Well, you can go out and get yourself something for touch. Whether it's a vibrating collar, something like that. Or
Speaker 2:You can just touch the dog period. Exactly. Now when we're talking about, um,
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 2:Now markers, let me just say one more thing about markers. Okay. Why do we do a marker? Because communication is key and the more black and white that we can make things for a dog, cuz that's the way they understand the world. Dogs think black and white cause and effect association. They're looking for patterns. We gotta take away the gray and by having something so precise, so clear, they do the behavior click or they do the behavior. Yes. Whatever we've conditioned either yes or nice or click equals treat. Now we have the way to communicate effectively with the dog and the dog needs to know what behavior's being rewarded. Right. You know, a lot of people are using food in training, but they're getting the food to the dog late. Now, trust me, the dog's gonna love the food regardless. And maybe the overall experience is pretty cool. But as far as the dog connecting the dots that the food, the reward is because of a specific behavior. A lot of that's not happening because they're not getting the food to the dog in zero to happen. Exactly. Exactly. So we wanna be effective. We wanna be efficient. So that's why we use markers in training. Exactly. Okay. So to begin with, I always say start inside when you are teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash. Yeah. Because here's the thing teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash is not about taking a walk.
Speaker 3:No, it is not. After
Speaker 2:Your dog can learn to walk on a loose leash. Now you can go for a successful walk, but teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash is not about going for a walk. It's about teaching the dog to follow you, to pay attention and to stay by your side and filter out distractions.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Now everybody that puts a leash on the dog, they just get up and go. The first thing that you do to lead the walk rather than follow the walk, all right, you get the dog out to the sidewalk and please folks do this on a sidewalk. Okay. You've got barriers on the left and the right that sidewalk helps the dog stay close to you. Um, and when you start going outside doing this, you want to do it on the sidewalk, but in the house, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have the dog sit. Now we're assuming the dog knows how to sit. Now. I don't care if your dog sits on the left side of you or the right side of you. I prefer the dog on the left side when I'm walking on a loose leash. Um, so I would have my dog sitting next to me and what I would do, I would take a big step backwards away from the dog. I'm turning away from the dog 180 degrees and the dog is going to then turn around to follow. Because when you turn away from the dog, now, the dog's behind you. And they don't like that. The dog starts to move in towards you ask the dog to sit mark with your marker. Whether it be nice, whether it be yes, whether it be the clicker and reward, okay, then you're gonna do the same thing again. The dog's sitting next to you, take a big step backwards, turn away from the dog. 180 degrees as the dog follows, you ask the dog to sit mark and reward. If you can't get your dog to follow you by making a U-turn and taking one step and sitting, there's no way you're going for a walk on a loose leaf. Absolutely. It's not gonna happen. And, and so that's where you start and listen, you've gotta be more interesting than everything else in the environment. And,
Speaker 3:And here's the thing about that, about being more interesting than everything else in your environment, right? It, everybody like a lot of people will say, once I get outside, the treat no longer matters. Once I get outside, my dog no longer focuses on me. Once I get outside this, once I get out well that's because you didn't start inside your dog, didn't find the value behind paying attention to you yet. Yeah. Yeah. So if you start in an environment where your dog is being set up for success, where your dog has no other distractions where you are already, it's main focus. Hopefully if not that's that's okay. This training will help with that. Your dog starts to learn, oh man, paying attention to mom or dad is really valuable here. Um, now, uh, in, in, in regards to this, we actually have a little comment that I think is important to, uh, address here. Who is that from? Um, from Russ, he's actually one of our, one of our regular viewers.
Speaker 2:Where is Russ from?
Speaker 3:I'm pretty certain he's here in, in the valley if I remember correctly. Okay. Um, so he has a dog named Barney and he said his dog is not treat reward motivated. He would much rather get loving. Now here's the thing. There are plenty of dogs out there that love a good scratch or verbal praise, but I can, I can find right here right now, pull'em up. Plenty of studies that prove dogs and animals in general would prefer to work for their food over food. That is free.
Speaker 2:There's a couple things here though. There's a couple things here. Now, if your dog likes taking the food in the house yeah. And then you get outside and there are distractions and your dog doesn't want to take the food. Um, your dogs probably too
Speaker 3:Aroused. Absolutely
Speaker 2:Has some stress, has some anxiety. And they're kind of in that fight or flight, even though it might not look like it. And they're saying, Hey, I don't need to digest food. So that's one thing it could be. Um, the other thing, you know, you were talking about Contra free loading and I wanted to talk about that. So there are studies out there that show that animals would prefer to have to do something, to have to work for food rather than just being given food. Um, they're, they've took rats and, and they've got the food set out where they can go ahead and eat it. But what they could also do is they could hit a lever and food would spit out and they could eat that. And the rats choose to hit the lever. They choose to work. Same thing. When we did studies with dogs, they prefer to work for their food. So one of the things, if you've got a dog, that's not that food motivated, listen, they've gotta survive. They've got to eat. Okay. So, and they prefer to work for their food. So you might start thinking about, let me use my dog's food. If it's kibble. Yeah. Canned food. That doesn't work so good. Yeah. But if it's kibble, you know, we can start giving that as food rewards now. Absolutely. If that's not working, the other thing sometimes is you guys are not finding what your dog's high value food rewards. Exactly. How would they do that?
Speaker 3:Okay. So what you're gonna do is you're going to get a variety of options. Now, once you have these, these ideas of, oh man, my dog really likes this and my dog really likes this. And my dog really likes this. You, you can do a few things. You can go out and get yourself a little muffin and tin, but you don't have to, or you just take little piles of these different foods and you put'em on the ground. Then you're going to take a little piece from each pile and give it to your dog. Right. Make sure that the piles are spread apart. You know, at least six inches between each pile minimum and then just let your dog go choose. And they are going to go to the first one. The first one that they pick is usually their highest value reward. Then you do it again. Now, you know, oh, they went to the blueberries. Okay. They went to the blueberries first. So now we pit the blueberries against what we think might have been their second choice. And we do it again. And then you pit the blueberries against something else. And you keep doing that until you realize every single time, no matter what the combination is, my dog is always going after the blueberries
Speaker 2:First. And I'm gonna gonna tell you, blueberries are not usually it's gonna be human food, absolutely human grade cooked food. The only chicken cooked steak. The only reason why always been reading a book on veganism, forget it. He's trying to be healthy and all the BS, you know, and blueberries anyway. No, but it, you know, here's the thing. Forget about getting, uh, treats from the store. All right. Your dog's gonna like cook chicken, cook steak, something like that. A whole lot better. Listen, if you want your dog's attention, if you want your dog to be motivated to do some work because that's their paycheck. All right. How motivated are you? If you don't get paid to do work? Okay. Um, food rewards can be faded out, but you need them for training cuz you need a paycheck for training. And usually when somebody says, Hey, my dog's not food motivated. Um, they haven't found a high value food reward like cook chicken, cook steak, right? Something like that. Um, pieces of hot dog, you know, things of that nature. They typically have just not found what the dog's quote unquote, exactly chocolate is. All right. So we've gotta move along in this. I, I talked about the first step is you start in the house. Absolutely. The dog is sitting next to you, either on the left or the right side, you take a big step backwards and you turn 180 degrees away from the dog. The dog then follows you. You ask for the sit, you mark and reward the dog. You're gonna do that over and over. Now that's gonna help teach the dog to follow because you know, you all have the dog right. Facing the same direction you are. And you start walking the dogs pulling immediately. Forget about walking forward to start and start with this one. What I call step behind you. Step behind you turn, have the dog sit after that's going successful in the house. Then what you wanna do is the same thing. Only. You're gonna go about three steps after you make the turn. So the dog sitting next to you, take a big step back. You turn 180 degrees away from the dog. You take about three steps. Stop, have the dog sit, mark and reward. Okay? And you're gonna do that over and over in the house. And then you're gonna go to six steps and then you're gonna go to nine steps. Now, one of the places where you can do this in the house that sometimes helps to teach the dog to follow and stay next to you is in a hallway, especially when you're just doing three steps, six steps, nine steps. Doing that in a hallway. Now once your dog is doing that well in the house, go ahead and have somebody. Hopefully there's, maybe you don't live alone. Maybe you live alone with your dog, but if not, if there are other people around, have them give very, very mild distractions. Okay? As soon as your dog takes the Beit of that distraction, make a U-turn away from your dog. Your dog has to follow. If you keep moving and as your dog makes that turn to follow you mark in reward, you're teaching the dog, give up and ignore the distraction. And if you follow me and pay attention to me, you get a high value food reward. Now, every time you make these turns and we're making a lot of'em in quick succession, early on. So if you get dizzy, stop, it can happen. But the reason we're making a lot of these turns again, teaching the dog to follow, but we're teaching the dog. Hey, pay attention. What's gonna happen is as you start increasing a little distance, you get to six steps. You get to 10 steps. Make that turn. The dog's gonna start looking up at you as you make the turn, Hey, where are we going? Hey, where are we going? When that happens? I need you to mark and reward too, because now you're marking and rewarding focus and attention. Okay? The next step's gonna be to do this in your backyard. Now you're outside. There's more distractions getting in the front yard, doing this on the sidewalk, uh, in the front of the house. That's gonna be more challenging than doing it in the backyard. So then start doing it in the backyard. Hey, start from scratch from zero. Just do that one step behind because you have gone into a new environment. You start from zero. You do that step behind that big step behind you make that U-turn away from the dog. You ask the dog to sit you mark and reward. You do that over and over and over. Okay. Over and over. If there are distractions in the backyard that are too intense and your dog can't focus on you, you need to go somewhere where there's less distractions and need to condition this behavior with lots of repetition. Before you go into a more distracting environment, here's the key. I don't care where you're training. If your dog can't focus on you and take the treats, you have gone too quick, too fast, into too distracting of an environment. Absolutely. When your dog gets distracted and you lose its focus and I'm not talking for just a brief second, Hey, they're gonna notice things. But if you can't get their focus back, you have a dog that's over threshold and you have gone into a distraction. That's just too intense for the dog. You need to back up, work with lower level distractions and get that connection.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And you know, will, I think this is a good time. I think, I think this is a good time to, to talk about focus because one of the things that I have all of my clients do when it comes to teaching the loose leash walk is also teach, focus separate to the loose leash walking protocol. So basically it's important that your dog is able to pay attention to you. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna start after you've built that marker system, same exact way, get yourself 30 pieces of food, right? Maybe a few more and have your dog on leash. And you're just gonna say their name. And as soon as they make eye contact with you, after you say their name, you're going to say, or click whatever your marker is and then reward them. And you're gonna do this 30 times in a row, once or twice a day for about three to four days. And then after that, just practice it every now and then once your dog gets a really good idea of, I say, mom or dad says my name. I look at her, I make eye contact with them and then I get rewarded. Then we start adding it in while the dog is moving around where maybe now we've started to do that loose leash, walking training inside the house. I'm in a hallway and I'm just slowly walking up and down my hallway. And I'm going to say my dog's name. They look up at me and make eye contact. I'm gonna mark and reward. Now my dog is starting to learn to make eye contact and focus on me while we are walking. Then what I start to do is once your dog realizes that I'm getting rewarded for looking at mom and dad, so much dogs are social opportunists. They're going to start offering that behavior on their own. They're going to just start looking up at you and making eye contact. And you're going to start rewarding that behavior. When your dog looks up at you and just makes eye contact without you having to say their name, mark, and reward and do this every single time that your dog looks up at you. And what you're going to start noticing is that when you have your dog on leash, they are not looking at their surroundings. They are looking at you. They are paying attention to you because they know looking at you is how they get the food. And now if your dog is so focused on you before we've even stepped out that front door, if your dog can't be focused on distractions, can't be focused on distractions. If it's focused on you,
Speaker 2:You need to be proactive. As you're doing this again, you're gonna start doing this name recognition. You say the dog's name. They look at you, you mark and reward. Um, you need to start adding little distractions. You could have somebody in the house going
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And of course your dog might wanna look at them and you're like, boo, that's my dog. Boo boo. Watch boo. Come up the stairs. If you hear little toenails going, click, click, click, click, click on the yeah, right on the wooden stairs. You know, that's my dog coming up. But I think the dog's outside checking out the handyman.
Speaker 3:Maybe it just doesn't have a good recall.
Speaker 2:It probably has allows you recall, right. Actually, um, comes not the dog's recall word. So it's there something different anyway, but, but you know the thing about it is you need to proactively add a little distractions. It's you, if you don't train with distractions, your dog's gonna lose it when they're distractions. But the key is keep'em low, make it successful, make it successful, keep it low and condition. You know, most of you really underestimate how many repetitions you need to have a reliable dog. Yeah. Okay. You want good reliability with distractions? You need to practice like an athlete.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Because big distractions are big work. It takes a lot of conditioning.
Speaker 3:9,762
Speaker 2:Repetitions. Is that what it is? Yeah. Okay. So there you have it folks. Um, now we talked about, once we get outside, do this on the sidewalk. Okay. Do this on the sidewalk. Um, start from the beginning again. You're just doing that step behind. You're not going for a walk. You're just doing a step behind. And,
Speaker 3:And here's the thing. I understand that we're telling you that you're not taking your dog for a walk. And we're also going to tell you, we haven't gotten there just yet. Um, but we're also gonna tell you when it comes to this distraction training, you need to not go for these long walks until the training is done.
Speaker 2:And then people
Speaker 3:Say, they say, well, my dog needs to get exercise. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, doing these step behind turnarounds, making your dog walk, sit turnaround, walk, turnaround, sit all your
Speaker 2:Dog's gonna be more exhausted. 10 minutes of that than if you went for a three mile walk. I
Speaker 3:Exactly
Speaker 2:Mentally they're having to use their brain. They're gonna get mentally exercised as well as physically exercised. It's more challenging
Speaker 3:Exactly. Now will. How, how long does this entire process take? That's a question that we were just
Speaker 2:Asked. Okay. Well, when I'm doing training sessions with the dog and I'm doing that daily, hopefully I'm out there for maybe five to seven minutes. If I can do that more than once a day. Fantastic. If I'm gonna do it in the house again, every day, five to seven minutes, short sessions and many are much better than doing a very, very long session. Now, um, when you can successfully be outside on the sidewalk and your dog can pay attention to you and you can walk 20 feet down and make a turn and walk 20 feet the other way. And there's crazy distractions around you, then your dog is trained and now you can use it. If you need it on a walk.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:See a normal walk. The dog should be sniffing. They have to sniff people. They have to sniff. They need to go on walks. They gotta sniff. That's part of what they have to have to be happy and healthy. But what if there's a distraction and now I need to get my dogs focus. Exactly. Can I give the cue? Can I give the command for the dog to walk with me? And I use let's go. Yep. You might use heel. It doesn't matter. You could say pudding just really doesn't consistent. So I say, let's go and I need to know that my dog is gonna pay attention and, and follow me and stay with a loose leash and not begin to pull. Exactly. Every second of every day is an opportunity to train. And Jordan, you made a great point. We cannot have the dogs going out, rehearsing this crazy behavior of pulling on the leash. Not paying attention. Yeah. Trying to pull you all over the place.
Speaker 3:Folks. I promise
Speaker 2:You stop doing that because that's getting conditioned. Exactly. All right. Start in the house, baby steps. Yes. That way, once you get outside, you're not gonna have that insanity. If you are listen, this takes time. It does. It takes time and you've gotta be more interesting than your dog. And you know, part of that is just being excitable. Exactly.
Speaker 3:You
Speaker 2:Exactly. We're working with dog. Like, Hey baby, what's going on? Keep making crazy noise. Exactly.
Speaker 3:Now, now, and here. Here's
Speaker 2:Baby talk. They
Speaker 3:Love it. Yeah. And here's the next thing. Many people in many, many people have more than one dog. Now, if you have more than one dog, you have a couple of options here. Ooh, excuse me. If you have more than one dog, you have a couple of options. Option one. You can teach both of them to walk on the same side. I personally think it looks better and it's a lot easier to teach them to walk on opposite side.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing with multiple dogs. Yeah. You've gotta train each dog separately. That's
Speaker 3:Exactly what
Speaker 2:I was doing. Each dog individually from their low level, they're low skill level to a high skill level. Exactly. Individually.
Speaker 3:And then
Speaker 2:Each dog has to be at a high skill level. Then you can bring them to Miguel.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And then if you, if you have the, if you have the luxury of having another individual who lives in your home, that can help you after you have your dogs at such a point that they are really good by themselves, then you and another person are going to take both of your dogs on a walk. And you're going to keep them at a distance from each other. Maybe start at 20 feet, 30 feet, 50 feet, whatever it is to keep your dogs below their threshold. And then you practice these same skills and you get closer and closer and closer and closer and closer. And then you're ready to take both leashes
Speaker 2:Folks. If you have not been paying attention and you forget everything that we said, and you remember shame on you and you remember one thing. And that one thing is when you're teaching your dog to walk on a loose leash, instead of stepping forward, step behind and turn away from the dog.
Speaker 3:The idea is wherever your dog wants to go, you are going the
Speaker 2:Opposite opposite direction. Now, once you start walking and you're going some steps, here's what you need to watch for. This is critical. When your dog's eyes get lined up with your leg, you need to do that. U-turn away from your dog. If every time see you do the U-turn away from your dog. Now, your dog's behind you. And now your dog starts to catch up the eyes, get to the leg, make a U-turn away from the dog. Now the dog's behind you. It starts to catch up. When the eyeballs get to the leg, make a U-turn, your dog starts learning that it's, it's fruitless to try to get a position any further forward, and we're gonna turn around and they're gonna be behind us. They're learning to follow.
Speaker 3:Why is it when, why is it when the eyes match up with the leg will instead of, instead of when the dog is now doing the undesired behavior and pooling, why, why do we, why do we do it when the eyes match up with the leg?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a couple things, you know, I'm communicating with the dog verbally. All right. I might be communicating a little bit with a leash. Okay. Tactile. But part of the visual cue to follow me would be missing. If the dog's eyes were in front of me, it doesn't see me turn.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And, and my, what I would like to add here is two things. Firstly, once your dog is pulling, it's too late, you missed it. You missed it. Now your dog has learned that mom and dad are not going to turn me around and make me walk the other way until I'm already distracted. Additionally dogs are social opportunists. And so if you train your dog to wear the eyes, do not pass your leg. They're always gonna try and test the waters just a little bit, just a little. And so they're gonna try and push that line forward, just a smidge. And so now I have a dog who may not be eyes at my leg level, but it's just a little bit in front of that. But if what you're doing is you're waiting until the dog's head or half of their body is already past your leg. Before you turn around, then the dog is still going to push that line. And now you have a dog that's even further in front of you because they are social opportunists. They are really, really good at training us.
Speaker 2:I promise you. Now I know there are people out there right now saying, Hey, I thought this was gonna be about leash reactivity. Yeah. You guys have spent 45 minutes screwing around, talking about walking on a loose leash.
Speaker 3:And you
Speaker 2:Know, it's interesting. Here's the thing when your dog is
Speaker 3:Reactive. Yeah.
Speaker 2:In its simplest form, what they're reacting to is a distraction and teaching your dog to follow you, teaching your dog to pay attention and filter out. These distractions is half the battle. So again, you've gotta have these loose leash walking skills. Now you may hit a plateau where yeah. Your dog will walk on a loose leash, pay attention to you. Follow, stand position when there's all kinds of distractions. Except when I see a person. Right. Or except when I see another dog or except when I see another person and dog. Okay. So that's a huge part of it. Now let's talk about how, you know, distraction training and keeping the dog focused. That's number one. Yeah. That's teaching the dog. Hey, what do I want it to do? Instead of this reactivity, you've gotta teach a dog, an alternative behavior, exactly. Walking on a loose leash, paying attention following you. That is an alternative behavior.
Speaker 3:And it has value because we've spent so much time training it and showing the dog that this is where the love happens. This is where the reward happens. So, so now that your dog has value behind walking loosely on the leash, staying with you, not pulling ahead, right? Not getting distracted, focusing on you. That's when we now finally get to start introducing the actual work to fix leash reactivity.
Speaker 2:So we we've got about 10 minutes and I'm gonna burn through this pretty quick. It's not, it's not that difficult because it's relatively simple. It's just time consuming. You gotta have a lot of repetition. All right. We talked about keeping dogs below threshold. So if we get outside and that trigger, uh, the strange dog, the strange person gets your dog leash reactive. Um, you're too close too soon. So what I recommend is that you get a human helper that has a dog so that you can, um, control the distance to begin with. Because when you wanna present this trigger to your dog, it needs to be where your dog sees. The other dog sees the other person when it's on leash. But they're far enough away that your dog is not reactive. You cannot do this. If your dog is reactive, all right, we have to condition your dog. When your dog is calm and relaxed. And so there's a distance. I don't know what it is for your dog, but there's a distance far enough away where your dog won't react. Now, one of the things we're do is we're gonna play a game. Look at that. Your dog's gonna check it out. And when your dog goes to look at that dog or person, when your dog goes to look at that trigger, you're gonna go look at that. And you're going to mark. Yes. Nice or click your dog. Offers behavior. Looks at the trigger. Look at that. Nice. Now, when you say nice, your dog's gonna turn around and look to you and you're gonna reward the dog. If your dog does not turn around to look to you for food, your dog's over threshold. You're too close too soon. Okay. This is where you really wanna have the high value food rewards cooked chicken cook steak, more so than if you're using, uh, your dog's kibble to train with, but you're gonna do this at a distance. That's comfortable for your dog. So your dog's gonna learn. Hey, when I see another dog, it brings on great treats. When I hear, look at that great things happen. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna turn that into a positive experience, cuz it's been a negative experience for your dog. And that's one of the ways we do that. And that's playing the look at that game. Exactly. Now the other thing is you might not be able to control the people and the dogs in your neighborhood. I'll tell you what works really good. You get yourself a couple realistic stuffed dogs.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. Yes.
Speaker 2:Now, listen, I'm gonna tell you, you might think this is crazy, but your dog has no clue. It's a fake dog till it gets right up to it. And even then it takes'em a little bit. It really does. They are gonna sniff the genitals of the fake dog. Okay.
Speaker 3:Telling you my dog was in my vehicle at a training session with me. And she watched, as I pooled my decoy dogs out of the back of the vehicle, she watched me, I closed the hatch. And by the time I walked around the side of my vehicle with these decoy dogs in my hands, she was at the window ears, perked looking at it like, is that a dog? Yeah. What is dad doing with another dog?
Speaker 2:So bottom line is, if you can't find people to help you, that's not an issue that shouldn't stop you from training. Get some fake dogs. You set'em out far enough away. Where when your dog comes out the front door with you and sees it, your dog knows it's there, but your dog doesn't have a care in the world. Yeah. Soon as your dog sees it, you go look at that. Yes. Reward. Yes. Would be a marker. Dog looks at that. Look at that nice reward. Nice is a marker dog looks at the other dog or the person in this case. We're talking about dogs. Cuz we brought out the stuffed dog. Okay. Dog looks at the dog. Look at that click and the dog gets a food reward. Yeah. So we're starting to pair positive associations with that.
Speaker 3:So now my dog has a good understanding of LA. And after your dog understands, look at that and your dog is starting to understand the game of all that it takes is for me to look at this item. And as soon as I see it, fun things, good things, positive things are happening. You're still not ready. Your
Speaker 2:And, and the other thing there other thing is doing is teaching the dog to engage and disengage. Absolutely. Because as soon as you give that marker word, your dog stops looking and looks at you. Exactly. So you're teaching your dog. If you get into a situation when you use, Hey, look at that and you mark, you can get the dog's focus again. Exactly. And if you think there's gonna be a problem, now you can give your dog other commands to stay focus focused precisely on you as well. Now, the other thing that we need to do is counter conditioning and desensitization. Exactly. Um, especially for the dogs that are super reactive and the way that that's gonna work, let's say you've got that fake stuff dog out on the sidewalk. And maybe it's 50 feet away from the driveway. Okay? Um, maybe it's a hundred feet away. Maybe it's five feet, whatever the dog's threshold is, whatever that distance is, where your dog can know it's there, but doesn't care. That's where we start the work. All right. The dogs out there, the fake dog, you bring your dog out. As soon as your dog sees the other dog, it's feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously high value food rewards. And that is going to happen for about three to five seconds. And either a helper is going to take the dog away and you stop feeding for about three to five seconds or you turn your dog away. Yeah. And you stop feeding for three to five seconds. Then the triggers presented again, you feed constantly and continuously high value food rewards, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed three to five seconds. Then that animal disappears and you stop feeding. The goal here is to have a very black and white pairing of high value food rewards that are gonna be associated with the trigger in this case, um, a dog do the same thing with people do the same thing. If you've got a dog and a person. Yeah. Um, the key here, keeping the dog below threshold. You all wanna get your dogs too close too soon. And here's the thing this could take months. It could little by little, by little, by little, by little to follow these guidelines. Okay. Um, I guarantee you, if you think that you're gonna stop this by punishing your dog leash corrections, yelling at your dog, no. Using a shock collar, prong collar choke collar, all you're gonna do is suppress your dog's behavior, you have not made any changes to the underlying emotional state and that behavior's gonna come back and it's gonna come back worse. So, absolutely. Um, you're fooling yourself. You need to do these type of behavior modification exercises in order to make this work now. Exactly. The other thing, not all dogs are social. I know you think that your dogs should play with everybody, but quite frankly, there's about 20% of dogs out there. Your dogs should not be playing with.
Speaker 3:And, and here's the next thing we forget that dogs have feelings too. Dogs are animals. Dogs are living beings who are allowed to set healthy boundaries. If your child had severe social anxiety, are you going to force your child to go to the park and play with other children? Probably not. You're probably going to allow your child to have fun in your own home, in the safety of your own area and not force your kid into an uncomfortable situation. Why do we not hold the same standard for our dogs will like I don't. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and the thing about it is about having standards and it's about being consistent with those standards. Okay? And like I said, none of this is difficult. It's just time consuming and
Speaker 3:Inconvenient
Speaker 2:And inconvenient. But boy, the rewards of being able to do this, being able to take your dog anywhere on a loose leash, not having to worry about your dog, being reactive, not having to worry about losing your dog's focus to a big distraction. Hey, the weather's getting really nice. Wouldn't it be great to be able to take your dog everywhere?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So that's why I want you guys to practice this. If you've got a dog that's reactive. If you've got a dog that pulls on the leash, you've gotta work this, and we're not talking about a day. We're not talking about one training session, 2, 3, 4. We're talking about doing this for weeks folks.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 2:Then, and maybe months, once you start getting into the big, big distractions,
Speaker 3:And then once your dog is nice and well trained for loose leash, guess what? You're gonna have to keep up with that training on
Speaker 2:Occasion, do
Speaker 3:It. You're not gonna have to do it every day. Like you were before. For example, my dog, I just had to retrain her waiting at thresholds. And it, it took me, it took me maybe a month of teaching her to get her, to learn how to wait at thresholds. But last week I spent two days and over those two days, a total of 20 minutes of training for two, two days, and everything came back just like that. So once your dogs learn these things, upkeep is simple. You just gotta do it every now and then.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And you know, some of you aren't quite sure is my dog just reactive. And when it gets to the dogs, it'll be fine or is my dog aggressive. Right. And I have to say this, if you're unsure, you need to get a professional's opinion. Absolutely. Have a professional, evaluate the dog to see if it's aggression. If it's aggression, please use a professional. Absolutely. Um, aggression is, is a difficult thing to work with. And
Speaker 3:If it's anxiety
Speaker 2:And fear and anxiety, anxiety's difficult to work with, you need to make sure that you're consulting with a professional. Absolutely. Um, if you're local here in the Phoenix area, you can contact us at Phoenix dog training. You can go to our website at absolutely Phoenix dog training.com. Again, that's Phoenix dog training.com. You can also call us at Phoenix dog training. That's 6 0 2 7 6 9 1 4 1 1. Again, it's 6 0 2 7 6 9 1 4 1. And
Speaker 3:Then even if you're outside of the valley, please, we absolutely do virtual evaluation and virtual behavior modification
Speaker 2:Training. If you are not local, you can go to dog behaviorist.com, go to dog behaviorist.com like Jordan was saying, we do virtual, uh, consultations all over the world. Um, this is responsible dog owner month.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:You're feeling pretty responsible as a dog owner.
Speaker 2:I, I like where we went today. I think it's a good time to begin to talk about loose leash walking. I think it's a good time to talk about leash reactivity. Yeah. As to weather's getting nicer, people are getting their dogs out there. Um, realize that when we do these shows, we can't give every tiny little detail on how to do these things. Absolutely. Um, and, and we realize that, you know, things that we work with clients week after week after week, we're trying to condense yeah. Into an hour. But hopefully, uh, that was helpful. Do us a favor though, hit that like button hit
Speaker 3:That share button hit
Speaker 2:That share button, share this to your, your Facebook page. More people will be able to see this. More people will be able to benefit from it. Um, and who knows, maybe you sharing this gets to the dog, guardian, the pet guardian, who has that reactive dog on your street, who wants to go after your dog. Exactly. Right. So you never know it's a small, small world. Well, we've had a great show and that means we are just about out of time. I'd like to thank everybody that, uh, has come to the show today. Yeah. We didn't get to really take a lot of questions. So we'll probably next week. We'll do a lot of Q and a. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know, I think that's because, uh, everybody was really, really intently listening. There weren't too many questions today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, listen, folks have a wonderful weekend. Be responsible with your pet. We're outta here.