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Raised by Wolf's with canine DNA in his blood, having trained more than 24,000 pets 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 Manura.
Speaker 2:Good Saturday morning, pet lovers. I'm Will Bangura and you're listening to Pet Talk today here on the Pet Talk today Facebook page. We're live every Saturday from nine to 10:00 AM Pacific time. That's also mountain time. That's I believe, 12 noon to 1:00 PM Eastern Time. We're so glad that you're here today. Do us a favor, hit that like button, show us some love, hit the heart button, and also do us a favor and hit that share button too, so that more people can benefit from this podcast. Um, anybody, uh, own any cats? It's National Cat Day, believe it or not. Wow. Yeah. Little meow today. So if you've got a cat and you've got a question about your cat, I definitely wanna take those. But we know we've got a lot of people that have dogs, that have puppies. You are probably dealing with all kinds of nuisance behaviors like jumping or barking, stealing things that they shouldn't have in their mouth. Maybe they got poor door manners. Um, maybe you have potty training issues going on in the house. Nobody likes that. Um, if you have a problem like that, we wanna help you with whatever problem you're having. Maybe you've got something more serious. Maybe you've got a dog that's reactive or aggressive towards another dog in the home. Maybe they're reactive or aggressive towards other dogs on walks. Or maybe you've got a dog that's aggressive towards people. Maybe you've got a dog that's very fearful, you know, trick or treats coming up, Halloween's coming up that scares the heck out of a lot of dogs. Is your dog one of those dogs that gets scared on the 4th of July on Halloween? Maybe you've got a dog that has problems with thunderstorms, fireworks, doesn't matter what kind of problem you have, doesn't matter what kind of pet you have. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to help you deal with all of your dog and cat and other pet training and behavior issues. Like I said, go ahead and hit that light button for us. Let me tell you a little bit about how this works. If you're brand new to PET Talk today, those that have been regular listeners, you know the drill. If you've got a question about your pet's training and behavior, do us a favor. Go ahead and type your question into the comments section. So you're gonna post your question in the comments section, and also do us a favor. Let us know where you're watching from and also what kind of pets that you have. Okay? Um, maybe a little bit later on, I might open it up to some phone calls, but, uh, we're just gonna go ahead right now and just start answering questions that, uh, that you posted. Say good morning to my better half.
Speaker 3:Good
Speaker 2:Morning, my beautiful bride, Miss Hana, ura.
Speaker 3:Good morning. How are
Speaker 2:You? I'm doing pretty good. What's happening in the feed? Do we have any questions?
Speaker 3:I don't see it
Speaker 2:Unless you see it not showed up.
Speaker 3:We have to
Speaker 2:Check. May have to check it. Um, the other thing as far as the month of, uh, well actually right now, this part of the month, um, it's national pit bull,
Speaker 3:These
Speaker 2:Questions, Awareness month, I believe as, as well. Um, so those of you, maybe you've got a pit bull. Uh, maybe you, I have
Speaker 3:A question here when you're done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, You got a que Well, let's take the question. If there's a training question, I wanna go straight to that.
Speaker 3:Why would my cat poop outside of the litter box? He does this every once in a while. This is from Lynn.
Speaker 2:Okay, so Lynn, does Lynn say where she's watching from?
Speaker 3:She does not.
Speaker 2:Okay. So a lot of people are dealing with those type of elimination problems, uh, with their cats, where they don't always use the litter box. So there's a couple things that are really important as far as must haves and must dos. One other. The thing is, you need to make sure you've gotten more than one litter box. You need to have more than one litter box. You should have at least two. Even if you've got just one cat, you need two litter boxes, and they need to be in areas where the cat has easy access to them. That's the first and foremost. The second thing is you need to be cleaning the litter box every day. Every day. Get everything out of there. And one of the things that you're gonna wanna do is change the litter more often. And you may have to play around with different kinds of, um, matter as far as the, uh, whether it's gonna be gravel, whether it's gonna be pellets, sand. Um, there's a lot of different things. Now, one of the things that we need to do is to begin to positively reinforce the fact that we want the cat to go in the litter box. Okay? And that means being able to know our cat's patterns. If we're feeding on a pat feeding on a schedule, there should be some kind of pattern. Pretty much. If you keep a, a diary or a log, you should know roughly after your cat eats, how long it's gonna take before they should be going to that litter box. You wanna help get the cat over to there during that time. And we need to create a marker system to be able to reinforce your cat. All that means is you're gonna take some yummy little pieces of treats. So maybe you get some pounce, you know, those treats for cats. Cut'em into super tiny little pieces. 30 of'em do this for three, four days. Go. Yes. Give a little treat. Yes, give a little treat. Yes, give a little treat over and over. We want your cat to understand 30 times in a row for three days, we're gonna condition it. That yes means it gets a treat. When your cat gets in the litter box and goes to the bathroom, you're gonna mark that behavior with yes. When it finishes, Don't say yes while your cat is in the active stage of defecating or urinating. Wait for them to complete it. But as soon as they complete it, mark with yes, give a high value food reward. Also, you're gonna wanna go around your home with a black light and clean up all the accidents. I don't know if it's just poop. Maybe there's some urine too. Clean up all the accidents that are there with a black light. It's gonna allow you to see where there have been accidents and you clean that up. Try that. If you're very consistent with that, this should turn that problem around. Okay, That was a great question. Yes, National cat day. Love the cat questions.
Speaker 3:Terrence was the first question. I wanted to know why the puppy and the cat, they don't get along.
Speaker 2:Come on Terence. You know, cats and dogs don't get along what to do? No. And and so here's the thing. Okay, um, dogs, what are they? They're predators. Okay, cats pray. Well, they're predators too. But for a dog, a cat is prey. And especially if you've got a dog that has a lot of chase drive or prey drive, um, it can be problematic. So one of the things that you have to do is you have to be able to manage and control the situation for a while while you're doing training and behavior modification. In order to do this, you're gonna need a harness for your cat. You're gonna need a leash for your cat. You're gonna need a harness or collar for your dog and a leash for your dog. You are going to want to purchase one of these elevated dog beds or dog cots. I call'em a place cot. They're elevated about two inches off the ground. Uh, there's like a mesh material. Dogs typically love to hang out on those. You're gonna wanna begin to teach your dog to go to that place. Reward your dog and teach your dog to stay there with distractions. That means that you're gonna have to create some distractions. And when your dog comes off of there, off of that place, you're gonna have to remand and help your dog back on. Now, if your dog takes the bait of the distraction comes off a place, don't reward the dog. Put the dog back. When you do a distraction and your dog doesn't take the bait and stays reward your dog then, and you're gonna need to do this over and over. Um, you're gonna spend about five minutes a day doing this. You need to, to be doing this every day. It's gonna take a month or two to really get this solid with distractions. You're also gonna need to teach a release command. Okay? Free break. Allowing the dog to understand what is the command, What is the cue? What is the word that allows the dog to come off of that place? Now, why do we wanna do this? Well, it's called differential reinforcement. We're teaching the dog a behavior that would be incompatible with chasing after the cat. The dog can't be committed to hanging out on that bed or place cot and chasing after your cat at the same time. So we're beginning to teach impulse control. We're beginning to teach the dog to be calm, and we're creating a behavior with the presence of the cat being there that is calm, and we need to do that for a month or two. Then we go to the next step, and that's releasing the dog with the cat being out. Now, if the dog gets excited, wants to go after the cat, you're gonna recomm command the dog back to place until the dog learns that it's gotta come off a place calmly, quietly, and not chase after the cat. It's just about putting in the word. Make sure you're motivating your dog. When your dog does the right thing, reward the dog. Why do we have a harness and a leash on the cat? Because it wouldn't be fair if the cat's just batting at the dog or really getting in its space when we're trying to teach the dog to stay. So give that a shot and hey, folks, any of you that are asking questions, we're giving you some solutions. We love it. When you come back, you give us a call or you post in the comments section how it worked. Did it help you? If that's you, we wanna hear from you too. All right? Do we have any more questions?
Speaker 3:Yes. Kathy has a question. She says, How can I help my two year old lab mix? She's so nervous. And then she said she will bowl her head and not walk anymore. I don't, I'm not waiting.
Speaker 2:She'll do what with her head. B
Speaker 3:O w L. I'm not sure if it's a misspelled.
Speaker 2:Might be Bow. Bow, okay. And stop walking. Um, so again, anxiety, fear. Yes. Well, the question becomes, is your dog afraid of real threats? Is your dog anxious about real threats? Or is your dog being fearful and anxious just because it perceives something as threatening? You know, if you're, if a dog or any animal, myself included, if we are threatened, it's appropriate to be afraid. It's appropriate to have anxiety that can lead us to action. Okay? But when the fear, when the anxiety is perceived, that's a whole different ballgame. And I don't know what it is with your, with your dog. Now, I also have to ask, how old was your dog when you got it? Was this a dog that pretty much out of the womb was anxious and fearful? You know, not every dog, not every cat, but there's a lot of dogs and cats if that anxiety is severe and it's pervasive, meaning it's not just one thing that they're afraid of, but multiple things. And if that fear is severe, if they hold onto that fear for a very long time and don't let it go, even when the trigger goes away, it takes'em quite a while to get back to baseline normal. These are things that are very pathological, very abnormal granite. We're gonna do behavior modification and training, but this is a dog that may need behavior medicine too, in order to really have success, um, with that level of fear and anxiety, the frontal cortex shuts off when they're in fight or flight. So their ability to think, uh, use logic and reason, just shuts down and they're all in instinct. They're back in thelia. So when we have a dog that fearful and we're just trying to do training and behavior modification, um, they can't think, they can't learn, they don't remember. It's very difficult because they can't access the part of the brain that they need to. Um, so I'm going to first refer you to your veterinarian. Um, make sure there's nothing medical going on, and then see about if your dog's a candidate for behavioral medicine. Um, and then it's a matter of exposing your dog to triggers using counter conditioning and desensitization. Um, I've done a whole show on counter conditioning and desensitization. Um, basically you're pairing something positive, like high value food rewards with the exposure of the trigger that the dog finds scarier, anxious. However, you need to be far enough away you and your dog from that trigger to start with. Where your dog does not have a care in the world. It can't have any concern. It sees the trigger. You feed, feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously. Then have the trigger go out of sight. When the triggers outta sight, you stop feeding again. Trigger comes into sight, feed, feed, feed, feed. High value food rewards constantly and continuously three to five seconds, then have the trigger go outta sight. Now you're gonna need to repeat that and do that for about five to 10 minutes. You're gonna need to have about three to five counter conditioning and desensitization exercises per week. And it's probably going to take you about three months. You cannot work faster than your dog's pace. At any point your dog has a care or concern about the trigger, you've gone too close, too soon. Very slowly, very gradually, you are gonna get closer and closer and closer. Very gradually, very slowly. Again, if your dog starts showing concern, you've gone too close too soon. Anyway, give that a shot. Great question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Laurie Oman, she has a eight month old Chewie keeps chewing on everything, especially cords,
Speaker 2:Especially cords. Boy, that could be dangerous if, if they're plugged in, that's for sure. Um, okay, so the number one rule, whether it be chewing, whether it be getting up on the counter, whether it be potty training, any dog that's destructive, any dog that's doing something we don't want it to do in the home, the number one rule, This is critical. That dog needs to be in your eyesight. You need to be able to supervise at all times. And when you cannot supervise, when the dog cannot be in your eyesight, you have to crate. So if your dog's not crate trained, you need to crate train. And the reason why, when we don't see the dog, when we can't have the dog in our eyesight, even if it's for 30 seconds, cuz you go to the bathroom, how many of you gone to the bathroom, walked out and the dog had chewed something up, or pee or pooped in the house? Happens all the time. Those 30 seconds or minute or two minutes you took in the bathroom prior to going to the bathroom, you should have created your dog. It's not the end of the world if your dog makes a mistake. The end of the world is when your dog keeps making mistakes over and over and over, and you're not there to redirect. You're not there to train, you're not there to help. You're not there to correct. There's no consequence. And if there's not a consequence and that keeps happening over and over, you're never gonna get a handle on that. So that's management. Now, from the training perspective, these things that your dog or puppy likes to chew on, when you're available to watch, you're gonna take about two to four minutes every day, even maybe twice a day. And you're gonna bait your dog. You're gonna put out and make it really easy for your dog to be able to go after the things that it wants to chew. And when your dog goes to chew, you need to recall the dog back to you. Just call the dog back to you. Have it sit, give it a food reward and then release it. Every time your dog shows interest in an item that you don't want it to show interest in, call the dog to you in a happy jolly tone. Hey, boo, come and give a food reward. Keep interrupting that behavior and redirecting that behavior. You're gonna do that first. Gonna teach a dog an alternative behavior. If you've done that for about a month or two and your dog's still not getting it, that's when you begin to start correcting your puppy. Negative punishment means taking away something they like. Well, they love their freedom. You happen to notice your dog chewing on something. It shouldn't, and it has to be in the act. Or don't do this. Take the dog, put it in the crate, give it a two minute time out. If you're consistent with that, the dog starts to understand, Hey, there's a pattern. Every time I chew on something that I shouldn't be chewing on, I get a timeout and I don't like that. Therefore, I'm gonna stop chewing on the things that I get. Time, times out, time out for. Now the other thing, you've got to make sure that your dog has plenty of appropriate things to chew on. And if your dog's not gawing on it, then it's not good enough. Real bones, bully sticks. Um, calling products, those are all good alternatives. You just gotta find what your dog likes and give it in an alternative to that. So teach an alternative behavior and give your dog something appropriate to chew, supervise when you can't confine. And if you do that, things are gonna get a whole lot better, but you gotta be consistent and, and don't avoid creating. It's so critical. All right? Okay. Very
Speaker 3:Good. All right, we have, Dean has a question. Dean, she's from New Jersey.
Speaker 2:New Jersey? Yeah. All right. You lived in New Jersey.
Speaker 3:I did Cherry Hill for, for
Speaker 2:A little bit Cherry Hill. Okay, so what's her
Speaker 3:Question? So she said, whenever she, um, walks her Yorky, Yorky loves to eat anything outside. And when she tries to grab it out of his mouth, he becomes aggressive and tries to bite me and growls, How do I stop
Speaker 2:This? Well, you need to teach the dog to leave it or drop. Okay? And you, you have to understand whatever your dog has in its mouth, it's considering to be very, very valuable. And we need to have something more valuable to use to teach. So, I don't know if your dog has any food allergies, don't use a protein that it has an allergy to. But let's assume your dog does not have a chicken allergy. Most dogs love chicken. And one of the things that you're gonna do to teach the dog to leave it or drop it, and you're not gonna do this around items your dog likes to pick up that it shouldn't, but you can do this in the house, but then you're gonna wanna generalize it outside in different locations. You're just gonna take about four pieces of chicken, little ones about the size of a pea, you're gonna drop'em on the ground. And as you drop them on the ground, you're gonna say, leave it or drop. The dog's going to eat those pieces of chicken. You're gonna move maybe a foot away from the dog and you're gonna drop another three or four on the ground. You're gonna say, leave it or drop. And the dog's going to eat the, uh, chicken. You're gonna need to do this at least 10 times a day. And you need to do this every day and probably need to do this for about one to two months before it's gonna be really effective when there's lots of distractions, Okay? You want to begin to test it, to test it after you've done this for about a month, and you're gonna test it on a low value item. So, you know, maybe there's something your dog puts in its mouth, maybe one of its toys that it doesn't consider to be as valuable as the things that it's picking up that it shouldn't. And you can test your drop it or leave it. What happens is you're conditioning the dog to look down at the ground and to take some food. And so in order to go down to the ground and take food, they're opening their mouth. The assumption needs to be, and we need to create the pattern that there's gonna be food when we say drop it or leave it. Now, when you begin to actually use this, you need to have a treat pouch on. You need to have high value food rewards like chicken in there. And you need to, in the real situation, use this. Your dog goes to get something. You say, leave it or drop it, whatever cue you've been as associating with this, drop the chicken. Your dog's gonna let go of that item to go get the chicken, and then you can get the heck out of there. Um, it's gonna take a while for you to be able to do this with food rewards before you can begin to fade that out. Don't even think about fading out food rewards until your dog is 99% successful each time you say drop it with the food that your dog's actually dropping the item and going for the food. When you get to that point, then I would say about every other time you say, drop it, put food out. Okay? And then start varying it. Do it every time. Do it every third time, every second time. Give it on the first and second and third time. Give it on the first time and the fifth time vary. But don't spend a lot of time saying drop it or leave it without rewarding. But little by little you can fade out the food rewards, not a hundred percent. You have to continue to reinforce the drop it or leave it behavior with food. But once the foundation is there, you only need to do it maybe once or twice a month. And it should be, should be good. Okay? Give that a shot. Give that a shot and report back to us. Let us know, let us know how that works. I'm Will Bangura and you're watching Pet Talk today here on Facebook Live. I'm here each and every Saturday morning helping you with your pet training and behavior questions. Do us a favor, hit that like button, show us some love. Also hit that share button so more people can benefit from this. If you've got a question, you're just joining us, go ahead and type your question in the comments section. Let us know where you're watching from and what kind of pets you have. And we'll be happy to answer your training and behavior question. Let's go to another one.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So Lorraine has German shepherds that bark when they're playing. She would like to know how can she stop that from
Speaker 2:Happening? Well, you know, we have schnauzers and I say it, they might as well just name that breed bark cuz that's what they do. Um, let's talk about a couple things. You know, dogs bark because they're bored. They bark to alert and they bark because they don't like something. And oftentimes they want something to move away from them. For example, my schnauzers, they like to bark at the kids next door and the kids next door don't hang out by the wall. That's between our two houses all the time for long periods of time. But they happen to walk past that. The dogs then bark and not because of what the dogs did, it's just a normal thing. The kids move away from the wall just as a normal part of their day to day routine. But the dogs think that they're barking cause the kids to go away. And that's a functional behavior. If your dog wants distance from something, you know, sometimes they get nervous because a UPS driver comes and delivers a package and they start bark, bark, bark, bark. What happens? Well, the UPS driver or the, the Amazon driver, they don't just stay there forever. They drop it and leave. Well, guess what? Your dog thinks that it's barking caused them to leave. So the barking is functional. They don't wanna give that up. It has a great purpose for them. They're able to get something scary to go away. So they think, so they think one of the things that you can do, believe it or not, it's a little paradoxical. You can teach your dog to bark on command. And that's helpful to teach your dog to be quiet because now we've got a contrast between the two. One of the things you can begin to do is capture your dog barking. Put a cue on that, like speak or bark and give a food reward. Do that over and over and over. Your dog doesn't bark forever. Your dog stops barking every time your dog stops barking for at least a second. You can say quiet and reward that. All we're doing is we're capturing barking, putting a label to it, making an association with a high value food reward. We're taking the behavior of being quiet. We're capturing that, we're labeling that we're giving a high value food reward, creating that association. Once we've done that for a while, we can reverse things. We can start saying, speak the dog barks. We can start saying quiet. The dog gets quiet. When you get to that point, when you ask the dog to speak or bark, don't reward the dog. When you ask the dog to be quiet and the dog is quiet, reward the dog. Make quiet that behavior more valuable when you get to the second stage. Okay? Now the other thing, and, and this, you know, you're never gonna get your dogs to stop barking completely. That would be inhumane. We don't want them to be mute, but we wanna stop excessive barking. So if they understand what quiet is, and you can say that, you're like, Oh, I checked it out. There's nothing going on. I say, quiet now my dogs are quiet. The other thing you might do is something that, that I do oftentimes with my dogs. I hear them barking. I call them to me, they come to me. Do I scold them because they were barking? Absolutely not. I praise them for coming to me. I make coming to me more exciting, more fun, more valuable than the behavior of them trying to get something scary to go away. And when I'm consistent with that, okay? And I do that, the barking is gonna decrease a little bit. As you probably hear my dogs barking in the background, right? Again, schnauzers, they should have been named bark. Um, you know, that is something that's gonna take some time. And also, while you're doing that work, you if, if possible, try to keep your dog out of those trigger situations that causes the dog to bark before you've got this training in place so that you're not fighting and competing against all of the conditioning that happens when your dog is barking at something.
Speaker 3:So, but Will, in Lauren's case, yeah, they're barking when they're playing. So it would be the same thing.
Speaker 2:Well, they're barking when they're playing. Why?
Speaker 3:She wants
Speaker 2:To stop that. Yeah. Um, well, I guess you're gonna have to stop your dogs from playing. You're gonna have to stop your dogs from playing.
Speaker 3:Then they'll
Speaker 2:Know. Do you wanna do that? I mean, you know, I always like to say with my dogs, if they're playing and they get rambunctious, I don't want that happening in the house. I, I have'em go outside. Now, I don't know if this is a problem for you when, if it's happening outside and inside, but yeah, it's gonna be the same thing, um, to be able to do that. Now, one of the things you could do, I talked about a place cot in in one of the previous, uh, questions. You know, when your dogs get rambunctious, you wanna give them some alternative to do that would be incompatible. It's called, uh, dri differential reinforcement incompatible. You're teaching them, go to the bed, go to the place cot. When you get too excitable, they can't be on the place caught in the bed and be playing at the same time. And that means that they're gonna be quiet. You keep interrupting that behavior and you put'em on the cot. Okay? It's also a little bit of negative punishment, taking away something they want. They wanna play, They want some freedom. Well, when it gets outta control, when it gets too loud, they lose that freedom. If you're consistent with that, that is going to, that behavior's gonna extinguish. But you've gotta be consistent. And most people underestimate how much time they need to put in. The miracle will happen. Don't quit before the miracle happens. Okay? Give that a shot.
Speaker 3:Great. So Maribel wants to know why her nine month old Black Shepherd likes to dig holes in the yard
Speaker 2:Because it's fun. Um, so there's a couple reasons. One of the biggest reasons is boredom. Do you have a dog that has destructive behavior or problems in the house? So they get stuck outside for long periods of time and then they get bored? That happens a lot. I see lots of clients that contact me for help, and their solution to destructive behavior in the house or potty training in the house is to shove the dog outside. And then they get bored and they dig. That's one thing. If it's really hot, they may dig and lay in it to be cool. That's another reason why they dig. They might dig to bury something, that'd be another reason why they dig. And then there's the whole issue of sprinkler heads and drip systems. Uh, sprinklers go off. Some dogs think that's fun, they start digging at it, the drip system goes off and all of a sudden air goes through the line And it gets the dog's attention. They're like, Huh? And they go over to that drip system, it's going, Nelson water comes out. Then they start licking on it, and the next thing you know, they're putting their paw it and they're digging it up. So that is almost like the sprinkler system or the drip system teasing the dog. Okay? If it's a sprinkler of the drip system, well, you could turn that on and off, and every time your dog wants to go for it, you wanna be proactive. That's what I mean about turning it on and off. You know, you're not being reactive waiting for it to happen, but you're being proactive, creating the opportunity. When your dog takes the bait, boom, turn it off before your dog can get to it. Make it so that it, nothing happens. It doesn't work when your dog does not take the bait, give it a high value food reward. You've got to show your dog what you want and reward what you want. And you've got to be creative. Part of this is being proactive, spending five minutes a day, going on and off, on and off with that sprinkler system or drip system. If that's the case, if it's a matter of boredom, okay? And your dog's out there for a long period of time, you need to figure out why you have your dog out there for such a long period of time, Okay? Dogs are social animals. They don't wanna be outside by themselves. They wanna be with you. They're social, they love you. Now, the other thing is, if your dog continues to dig outside and you are not there to interrupt it and redirect the dog, this will never get better. And again, this is the same thing almost about problems inside where you gotta supervisor, find well, confinement from outside is inside. So anytime your dog goes outside for the next 60 days, you need to be out there with your dog so that if your dog begins to want to dig, you can call the dog to you, interrupt it. Reward the dog for coming to you. Give the dog something else to do. Make that something else. Very, very valuable, Okay? But also teach your dog what not to do. You've got to work both ends. And again, I'll say it over and over, You're gonna have to do this more repetitiously than you think you need to if you really want permanence with this. Yeah, A lot of people with dog, with dogs that are digging, um, especially now, you know, they're, it's nice out. So they're, you know, letting their dogs out more and they don't realize how bored they get, or that it's a matter of the drip system or the sprinkler system, or in the summertime it's hot and they need to cool down. All right?
Speaker 3:Okay, So Deborah Renova from San Bernardino wants to know how she can discipline her three month old husky puppy not to bite as she's playing with, with her.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm assuming when you say bite, we're talking about puppy biting or puppy mouthing, not an aggressive type of biting. Okay. Um, when you're playing, is that what you said? When she's playing? When they're playing, Okay. And one of the things that you need to do is have something as an alternative that you can put in the dog's mouth when it wants to do that. So always have like a bully stick or a chew toy or, or something that you can pop in the dog's mouth when it wants to go ahead and bite on your fingers. Okay? Um, in the litter, when puppies are born between three and five weeks of age, they learn canine socialization. Um, and they learn bite inhibition. And how they learn bite inhibition is that it's, it's just a natural thing. They bite too hard on a puppy and the puppy goes, Yep. And it kind of startles the dog. Like, Oh, what happened? You can do the same thing. Your dog starts to bite mouth on. You go, Yep, watch your dogs. Whoa, what's that? Might startle'em a little bit. It's okay. If they hold onto that fear, then that's a problem. It's too intense, but you wanna interrupt that. They're gonna start a little little bit. You're doing exactly what another dog would do, what a puppy would do in the litter. They understand that when you're playing with your dog, your puppy and your dog is not going for your fingers. Make sure you're rewarding the dog. Okay? And you may begin to start teaching the dog what no means. Okay? Your dog goes to bite on your hands, you pull it back. Nope. Bring the hands towards the dog again. The dog goes to bite. Nope. Bringing the hands towards the dog. The dog doesn't bite. Yes. And give a food reward and be very consistent. Again, we're teaching both ends of the spectrum. What gets a reward? What gets a consequence? Making it very black and white and being very, very consistent. If you do that, the behavior will extinguish depending upon the age of your puppy. Um, this stuff can go on for seven, eight months of the, the first seven, eight months of their life. If they're, if they're teething. Okay? So give that a shot, give that a try. All right.
Speaker 3:Okay. Terrence Fagan from Boston once to
Speaker 2:Boston. All right, Terrence,
Speaker 3:What's a good treat to give? Four month old puppy? He wants to know about healthy treats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, healthy treats. Um, well, if you're talking about, um, snacks or if you're talking about training rewards, I don't believe dogs need snacks, right? Humans do snacks and we're a bunch of fatties. Jordan always says that they're a bunch of fatties. Um, and, and American dogs tend to be fatties cuz we keep giving'em snacks. What is a snack? It's when they get a food item other than their meal, and they don't have to do anything for it. Now, if you're talking about training rewards, where we reward the dog with high value food rewards for training, one of the things that I like to do, they have these things. They're, they're called food rolls. They look like a big salami. Here we go. They look like a big salami. Um, red barn is one natural balance is another one. Um, it's dog food and it's not wet. Don't, I'm not talking about the wet food that's in a tube. It's relatively dry, it's a little moist. You're gonna cut that up, slice it, cut it up, dice it into little pieces. Now this is dog food, nutritious, good dog food, and dogs love it for training rewards. So it's healthy. Make sure when you're using training rewards, folks, that your food rewards are about the size of a pee. You're feeding your dogs way too much. Giving your dogs way too big a pieces the size of a pee, okay? Try that. Natural balance food role, Red barn, food roll. Those are things that a lot of dogs definitely like, um, you could, if your dog doesn't have a food allergy, uh, to say to chicken, a lot of dogs do. But you could cook up, boil up some chicken and cut it into little tiny pieces again, the size of a pee. All right? Um, that's healthy. So try those, you know, those are some suggestions that, uh, that you could try Terence.
Speaker 3:So I guess Jelly wants to know who is this? There's no jelly, but there's no question. But she's saying she needs to change food. I guess she wants to know how to switch food because the dog is losing hair.
Speaker 2:Oh, losing hair,
Speaker 3:Hair loss
Speaker 2:Issues. Okay? First and foremost, if you have not been to your veterinarian, you need to go to the veterinarian. That is a medical issue, okay? Your dog should not be losing hair because of diet. I've not seen a dog lose hair because of diet, unless it was a severe allergy and the dog was chewing the hair off, chewing the fur off. Okay? You need to go see your veterinarian, all right? Um, and, and maybe you need to look at, well, I'm not gonna say that I'm not a veterinarian. Take your dog to the vet. Um, get that ruled out. First is if your dog checks out fine medically, um, then come back and ask the question again. But the first thing we need to do is rule out, um, any medical contributing factors. So do that first, please.
Speaker 3:Okay. Lauren wants to know if living her dog, if she goes to work for 14 hours mm-hmm.<affirmative>, is that an excessive time for a one year old puppy?
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing, Um, yes, maybe no. Depends on the dog. Here's the thing. We know that dogs literally sleep about 16 hours a day on and off quite a bit. We know that when you're gone, for the most part, the dogs are sleeping. Okay? My concern would be, does the dog have the ability to relieve itself? Go to the bathroom, Do you have a doggy door? Okay, that's a long time to have to hold it. And we could be, uh, potentially causing problems, having to hold it that long. That's my biggest concern. My my second concern is what's your dog doing when you're gone that long? Is your dog just laying down, resting, sleeping, sleep? Well, I don't see that as a real issue. Granted, we would love to be able to be home with our pets all day long. That's not the real world. Most of us have to work. Most of us are working eight hours a day. Most of us have a commute time as well. A lot of dogs are home 10 hours at a time, maybe even a little bit longer. That's our lifestyle. Is it ideal for a dog? No. No it's not. Is your dog sitting there being resentful all day long? No, it's not. They have to live in our life. You need to know is your dog having separation anxiety? Yeah. Then maybe it's an issue. There are some unknowns that I don't know that you can either comment on right now, come back into the feed or next week. But those are the things that, that I would, uh, suggest to you. Okay,
Speaker 3:Great. Jackie Harris wants to know how to stop a three year old Shaun Poodle from Pee in the house.
Speaker 2:Jackie, nobody likes their dog to use the house as a toilet. That's gotta be the least favorite thing of anybody I deal with. Um, if there's one thing that people want resolved quickly, potty training. Okay, here we go. But before I get into a few tips, potty training is in depth. If you really wanna get a grasp, if you really wanna handle on the potty training, you need to go to the Pet Talk Today podcast. Go to Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Buzz Sprout, audible, Doesn't matter, iTunes, doesn't matter what it is. Amazon look for the Pet Talk today podcast. Go to season one, episode 16. I've got 45 minutes of very, very in depth information on potty training from A to Z. That podcast is based on the most difficult dog in the world to potty train. So I don't care if you got the most difficult dog in the world. If you follow the guidelines on season one, episode 16, our potty training episode for the Pet Talk Today podcast, you can't help but get your dog potty trained if you follow those instructions. Now let me give you a couple tips. You know, I can't go into 45 minutes or we we'd be done with the show. Number one thing supervisor can find your dog cannot be allowed to have accidents that you don't see supervisor can find. Dog's gotta be in your eyesight or you create the dog, number one. Number two, get your dog or puppy outside more often. Make sure that there's a high value food reward that the dog gets for going to the bathroom in the correct spot outside so that there's motivation to wanna go back there. Don't be cheap with your food rewards. The highest value food, I don't care if it's bacon, I don't care if it's chicken. Again, we don't want the dog using the house as a toilet, okay? So you need to be positively reinforcing the behavior, okay? Outside. The other thing that you can do to help yourself to know when the D puppy needs to go to the bathroom is you can feed in water on a schedule and keep a little journal and it will, after a few days, you're gonna learn, well, x amount of minutes or time after the dog eats, it's gonna defecate X amount of minutes or time after it eats or drinks, it's gonna urinate. You start fighting a pattern. If you keep the data now you can set your smartphone with a timer to hopefully get the puppy out before there's an accident. Being proactive, okay? The other thing you need to do is you need to clean up with a really good product. Something that has enzymes in it that gets rid of the smell at the dog's level where they can smell. Cuz they can smell a drop of blood a mile away, but we can't. And a lot of times we're using products to get rid of the odor for us, but it's still there for the dog. We need to get rid of that. Uh, the other thing is if you're, and you're supposed to be watching, right? The dog has an accident, what are you gonna do? You're gonna take the dog, you're gonna put it in the crate for about two minutes time out and you're gonna go clean up the accident, okay? Those are some things, trust me, that's not it. There's a lot more, a lot more to it if you want to be successful. Pet talk today, podcast, season one, episode 16. Anybody else that's got a potty training issue, I guarantee that will fix the problem. All right? Okay.
Speaker 3:You have Sarah. Questions about dog jumping either on guests or when they come home. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, how to stop that.
Speaker 2:Well, if you come home and there's someone else there before you get home, they need to put a leash on the dog and you need to let them know before you're gonna walk in the door. They let that leash hang down, okay? And right as that leash makes that turn, cuz it's gonna come down straight from the dog's neck. And then once it gets to the floor, it's going to make that turn and then it's gonna be parallel to the ground right in the spot that first begins to get down on the ground. You're gonna step on that. The dog will not be able to jump other than about two inches if you stepped on the leash short enough. It's a self-correction. That's one thing that you can do if it's guests that are coming over, same thing, you know, when they're coming over or if it's an unannounced guest, go put the leash on the dog first. You need that. You need that tool until the training's in place. Okay? Um, other ways of dealing with this and that is negative punishment. The dog's interested in jumping, wants attention. You turn around and walk away. Give the dog the cold shoulder. And if you do that every single time, the dog's gonna learn. You know, jumping has no value. Matter of fact, jumping has a negative value because it takes away what I want, which is attention. Another thing you can do is work really hard proactively to teach a sit command with high value food rewards. Then begin to teach that sit command around excitable places and activity cuz it's excitable when somebody comes to the door or when you come in, you can then ask the dog to sit instead of jumping. So now, if the dog's got an alternative behavior, you can reward and if the dog jumps that behavior, you can use negative punishment. You turn away, walk away, give the dog the cold shoulder. Okay? Um, you've gotta be consistent. Again, I'll say it over and over. Most people give up before the miracle happens. It takes conditioning. Most of you are just interrupting behavior and you haven't done it long enough for the dog to really learn another behavior and you haven't been rewarding high enough to motivate the dog to wanna do that. It takes time, it takes motivation. Your food rewards are paychecks. You don't wanna pay. Well, don't expect them to work well pay well, they're gonna work harder. All right,
Speaker 3:Great there. Bennett from South Carolina.
Speaker 2:South Carolina, I got a friend in Florence, South Carolina.
Speaker 3:She's only, she has a six month old lab that only listens when have the, the training call on.
Speaker 2:Okay? There's a couple things, all right? Um, you probably put the training collar on when you train or have a problem and as soon as you're done training or the dog stops doing that problem, you probably take the training collar off the dog. If that's the case, a lot of people do that. I'm not saying you did that, but if that's the case, your dog is learning, it only needs to listen when the training collar is on because you have control and your dog doesn't have to listen when the training collar is off, okay? Keep the training collar on from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed. Take it off when you go to sleep at night, you're not available to use it. Take it off when you leave the house, Nobody's there with the dog and you're not available to use it. I'm gonna ask you to do one additional thing. Put a leash on that collar, put a leash on that collar and let the dog drag that around all day long when you're home so that you can begin to redirect your dog with your training collar, okay? I like to use about three to four feet of rope with a leash clasp and attach that to the collar rather than a leash. And as the dog gets better and better over time, I like to cut little pieces of that rope off so that line starts off three to four feet and little by little it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Then I get to the point where I take off the training collar. But guess what I do when I take off the training collar? And your dog always has to have a regular collar on a regular collar, You know, the kind that you put ID tags on. Well, when you take the training collar off and you've done all this work previously, we gotta back up a little bit. We're gonna put that three to four foot line back on the dog with the regular collar. You still have some control with that. All right? And that, that, that line gets smaller and smaller and smaller. You keep cutting off little pieces over time. You need to be able to supervise or confine as well, okay? You gotta be consistent, very, very, very consistent. And if you do that, um, you're gonna have success. You just gotta put the work in. All right?
Speaker 3:Okay, so Dwayne, Danger from Pennsylvania wants
Speaker 2:To know Dr. Oz. Is he in Pennsylvania?
Speaker 3:<laugh>? Yes he is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Don't forget to vote not for him.
Speaker 3:Okay, we'll skip through
Speaker 2:That.<laugh>. No, no, no. What, what's going on in Pennsylvania?
Speaker 3:No. Wants to know how to stop his board. Colly lab from resource guarding.
Speaker 2:Resource guarding. Guarding is a very, very difficult, problematic issue. Um, we did two or three shows on resource guarding. They were quite a while ago. You can scroll through the feed here on the Facebook page and, uh, you'll probably find that, but let me talk a little bit about it. Interesting. Research shows that many dogs benefit and the resource guarding decreases when we add a probiotic to their diet.
Speaker 3:Oh wow.
Speaker 2:You know, it's the research. Why? I don't know. I don't know. But it helps. I'm not saying it's gonna fix the problem. It helps. Okay? There's a couple things you need to do with resource guarding. Number one, never try to take the item away from your dog. There's a couple things you need to do. You need to teach your dog to drop it. You need to teach your dog to come when called. You need to teach your dog to either go to a place or lay down and stay on command, Okay? We use the obedience training and those skills to be able to manage this, okay? Don't try to be a hero and pull it out of the dog's mouth. Okay? If I got a resource and you go snatch it away from me, I'm gonna get aggressive too. Now, we talked earlier about how to teach, leave it or drop it with chicken and dropping the food on the ground. If you weren't here for that, you need to rewind when this is over and listen to that part of today's show on how to teach it. Leave it or drop it once the dog is learned to leave it or drop it, and you're gonna start doing that. By the way, start doing that with low value items that the dog doesn't resource guard or the things that have the least value before you go up to the higher value items, okay? You need to teach that strong recall. So you need to be every day, 10 times a day calling the dog to you. And boy, when that dog moves towards you, that dog better get a jackpot of high value food rewards. Okay? Then you need to teach the dog to lay down or go to place and stay. We talked a little bit in the show today how you're gonna do that place command, how you're gonna do that. Stay command. How you're gonna get the dog to stay with distractions by baiting the dog to come off. And if the dog takes the bait, putting the dog back on, baiting the dog to come off of its bed. And if it doesn't, giving a high value food reward, conditioning the dog to stay there when there's a lot going on. Wouldn't it be nice if your dog grabs something, you can say drop it. They drop it and you say, come. You put'em on the place, they're on place and you can go over there and pick up the item and you can pick up the item. Okay? I need you to proactively work on this with Lowell value items and then little by little into higher value items that the dog views as a bigger resource. But don't ever try to fight with your dog and take it away from your dog. I see so many people getting bit, so many people getting hurt. Um, and, and it's not a good experience for the dog. It just makes things worse. Makes things worse. By the way, if your dog ever growls or snaps or goes to bite, don't scold, yell at or correct the dog. These are warnings. Don't make the dog stop giving warnings because you've punished that behavior. We need that information. That means, hey, back off. You know, if I got a dog that's a resource guarder that growls, I know, whoa, I need to back off. But imagine if I kept correcting that. Well, the dog won't growl, but it doesn't change the fact that the dog's a resource guarder. Now when I go to reach for it, the dog bites without warning. Don't do that. That's a great, uh, that's a great question. Okay,
Speaker 3:Bonnie to Pensky says she rescued a dog six weeks ago. He knows nothing and he is scared of everything. How do I train a dog who backs up mm-hmm.<affirmative> when teaching a sit and how do I get him to trust me
Speaker 2:More? Yeah. Um, well, one thing I would have you hand feed him instead of feeding meals out of a bowl, I'd have you hand feed him, and I would have you use your dog's food as the training rewards. Okay? I would have you do that. Um, six weeks, usually by eight weeks, the dogs in their new environment have settled down. They're happy, they're content and things are going well. That tells me that perhaps part of the problem might be neurochemical, whether it be from previous trauma and that affected the nervous system or whether it be genetics. Okay? Um, you need to go see your veterinarian again. I talked earlier and you can listen to the first part of the show if, if you're just joining us. But, um, if your dog is scared of everything and if there's no real threat, the dog's perceiving everything is threatening and it's severe and the dog hangs onto that for a long period of time. That's pathological. That's saying that the dog's not just responding to external stimuli, the dog's responding to internal stimuli, and we're not gonna be able to do much training and behavior modification if we have a dog that's that paranoid and scared because it's always in a state of fight or flight and it can't use the thinking part of the brain. It just wants to run or fight. In this case, it wants to run as they get older, that strategy changes from flight to fight, usually need to get a handle on this. Now go see your veterinarian and then go find yourself a certified behavior consultant to help work with you. Okay? If you can't find anybody in your area, you can contact me. I do virtual behavior consultations throughout the country. Um, you can email me at info pet talk today.com and that's for anybody else. If you can't find somebody good to work with you, we do behavior consultations, virtual online, uh, face to face, so to speak, but online. And it's super effective, super effective. We learn that during the pandemic that we didn't have to be there about teaching you anyway. So if you can't find somebody to help you, that's good, then send me an email and we can get you set up for a, a behavior consultation. Excellent.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So Michelle wants to know how to stop her two year old lunar lab mix from aggressively reacting to certain dogs, but will walk past other dogs Yeah. With no issue.
Speaker 2:Um, well try to see if you can figure out what the characteristic is of the dogs that your dog is reactive to. Are they little dogs? Are they big dogs? Are they dogs that are calm? Are they dogs that are pulling and moving out front on the leash? Are they dogs that are barking and and wild and excitable? Are they black dogs, white dogs, males, Females? Okay. There's probably some characteristics, but bottom line, let me just say this for a lot of people. Do you know that 20% of dogs just absolutely don't want anything to do with other dogs? Why are we forcing that? Not everybody's a social butterfly, but we wanna be able to walk the dog down the street, not have the dog going ballistic, Right? So what you need to do, I talk about it just about every show, Counterconditioning and Desensitization. That is a process of exposing your dog to this trigger, which are strange dogs, but it's gotta be at a distance. You start at a distance where your dog doesn't have a care in the world, sees the other dog, but doesn't care. Totally aloof, knows it's there, but the emotional state, there's not a care in the world. We present the trigger, here comes the dog into the your dog's view, and we feed, feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously high value food rewards for about three seconds. Then we have the helper with that strange dog. Take the dog outta sight of the dog. And when that happens, you stop feeding your dog. You're gonna do that for about five to 10 minutes, three to five times a week. You're gonna need to, as your dog gets really comfortable at that far distance, after a few weeks, it should move a little bit closer and start all over again. And then your dog should be comfortable at that distance. And when it does, you move a little bit closer. This could take months and you may find that your dog, where maybe it was 200 feet away, it was reactive. Maybe you get your dog to be calm up until two or three feet. Not every dog, you're gonna be able to get them nose to nose and sniffing butts and playing. And happy. For some of you, your, your treatment goal, your training goal needs to be, Well, I can move my dog around other dogs and people, but my dog doesn't have to engage them. My dog is being trained to be aloof. That's what we want, but we've gotta change that emotional state. It's not about correcting or punishing your dog that'll suppress that reactive behavior. Make the dog more reactive. We have to teach the dog how to relax, counter conditioning and desensitization. I've done a whole show on that. Um, we'll probably do another show on that pretty soon because it's such an important topic. Absolutely. All right, we've got one minute, I'll take one more question and then we've gotta end the show. Good.
Speaker 3:This is a good quick one. Cheryl wants to know, how often should a small indoor dog bathe every three months or once or twice a month?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a good question for a groomer. I'm not a groomer. I've always been told, uh, pretty much, don't wash your dog, don't bathe your dog more than once a month. That it can dry out their, their skin and, and cause issues. Um, so I'm gonna default to that. I don't know if it's the right or the wrong answer. I'm not a groomer, but I would talk to a groomer, you know, post that question on a, on a grooming website. Try to figure that out and see, you know, what they have to say. But, um, I'm just gonna go by what my groomers have told me. And that is you probably shouldn't, uh, have that done more than once a month. Well, folks, that sound means we are out of time. We've had another great show. We were able to answer a lot of your questions. Listen, if we didn't get to your question, please come back next week and visit us on the Pet Talk Today, Facebook Live show. We wanna help you tell your friends about it. Work with your dogs. Have a wonderful weekend. We're outta here.