If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
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If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
Go here for Free Dog Training Articles
Raised by Wolfs with kine 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 Manura.
Speaker 2:Good Saturday morning, pet lovers. I'm Will Bandura in. You're watching Pet Talk today here on Facebook Live. I'm so glad that you're here today. Hope you're having a wonderful Saturday morning. Grab a cup of coffee, bring the fur babies over to the computer. We're gonna be talking about your pets today. We're gonna be talking about their behavior, um, their behavior problems. If you're a regular viewer, a regular listener of Pet Talk today, thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting the show. Do me a favor, hit that like button. Go ahead, hit that like button, hit that share button so that more people can benefit from the help that we're doing here at Pet Talk today. If your brand new to Pet Talk today, let me talk a little bit about what we do here on the show. I'm here each and every Saturday morning. Um, it's nine o'clock here in Arizona. I'm not sure exactly where you are in the country or in the world watching the show today, but, um, most shows I am doing a lot of q and a. Um, if you've got a problem with your dog, uh, maybe it's a listening issue. Maybe your dog just doesn't listen. Maybe you've got an obedience training issue. Maybe your dog can't handle distractions, pulls on the leash, uh, won't sit and stay. Maybe you've got some manners issues. You've got a dog that's barking or jumping or stealing things. Maybe you've got a more severe problem like separation anxiety, fears, phobias, aggression towards people, aggression towards other dogs. Maybe you've got multiple dogs in the home fighting amongst each other, which can be the most difficult problem to deal with. Doesn't matter what the problem is. I'm here to help you deal with all of your dog training and behavior issues. Um, as I mentioned, I'm Will Bangura. I'm a nationally certified, uh, canine behavior consultant and dog behaviorist. Um, I'm the owner of Phoenix Dog Training. That's my local business here in Phoenix. I also have an international consulting business for people throughout the world that I work with virtually. And that's at dog behaviorist.com. If you are looking for help, maybe you don't have a qualified professional where you live, uh, maybe you've worked with people and it just didn't work for you. Um, check out my website. Like I said, I do behavior consultations throughout the world and you can find out more information@dogbehaviorist.com. So how are we going to do this? Um, I'm gonna develop most of today to q and a. And what I want you to do is if you've got a question about your dog's behavior, go ahead and type your question into the comment section. But do me a favor, let me know where you're watching from and also what type of pet you have. So even if you don't have a question, please do me a favor, comment in the comments section, where you're watching from and what kind of pets you have. And like I said, if you've got a question about your dog's behavior, go ahead, type it into the comments section and I will help you out with that. Also, I am gonna be taking calls today if everything works, right? If we don't have technical difficulties, um, if I do get a call, that's gonna take priority. So if you definitely, uh, wanna get your question answered, hey, give me a call. Let me give out that number, grab a pen, grab some paper. That number to call me is(602) 769-1411. Again, that's(602) 769-1411. Give me a call and um, we'll get you on the air and I can spend a little more time with you and I can get a little more detail if you do call. And so sometimes those are the best, uh, scenarios as far as, uh, being able to, uh, learn some stuff. Let me take a look at what we have here in, uh, the comments section, see if we have any questions yet here as we scroll through this. Good morning. How are you? Hey Janice. Thanks for being here. Oh, we've got a lot of static today. Uh oh. Janice says, we've got a lot of sound of static. That's not a good thing. We had that last week and I couldn't figure out why because the podcast, we did not have any problems last week in terms of, um, the audio podcast when I recorded on my end. Um, everything's good, but it seems like when I'm on podcast or when I'm on Facebook, somehow, um, I am, uh, we're turning up where we've got, uh, the static. So, um, I'm not sure what I can do to fix that static. I wish that, uh, I wish I had a quick, easy answer for that today. But we're in the midst of the show and I don't know that I'm gonna be able to, to fix that problem. So I apologize if we've got some static. It's something that I can work on throughout the week, try to figure out what the problem is. So sorry, bear with me. I apologize for that. Um, okay, so going through the questions here. Hey, good morning, Christina, West Virginia. Fantastic. Um, let's see. Janice said she was talking about her dog bladder infection. Did take her dog to the vet, and of course, uh, he's got another bladder infection. So my vet recommended then I give him, get him neutered. Uh, so this coming week he'll be getting neutered. Yeah, we talked about some natural alternatives for those U t I infections last week. Um, Laura's got a rescue malua mixed dog that will not leave my driveway on a leash. Um, I can drive to the next block and walk her from there. Ah, but she won't leave the driveway, huh? Well, what I would say, um, what are you doing to motivate, number one, what are you doing to motivate your dog to get your dog to go out of the driveway? You know, Mallin was typically have very high prey drive. I would be surprised if you had a tennis ball and you threw that tennis ball that your dog would not chase after that tennis ball and maybe go over the driveway. Or if you had a tug toy and you were going back and forth really fast, um, does your dog have high prey drive? Um, is your dog food motivated? Can you toss some pieces of chicken and get your dog to go across? And then what I would do is I would get the dog back into the driveway right away so it's not so scary. Go over the driveway, reward back into the driveway over the driveway, reward back into the driveway. Make it very easy. Make it very simple. Um, motivate the dog with a toy. Motivate the dog with food. Um, and maybe you gotta put a tiny little bit of pressure and show the dog what it is that you want. Sometimes though, if we're using that leash and we're pulling and we're trying to pull the dog somewhere, they resist, it's called oppositional reflex. I don't know, maybe that's part of what you're experiencing. Maybe there's some oppositional reflex where you start pulling and your dog is resisting and pulling back. So loosen the leash if that's the case, and give a light little guidance tug, and then loosen it again. But you've gotta be moving, move your feet. Um, I don't know. Hopefully that will help you. Hey, Gloria. Gloria is in Phoenix. She's watching Angie in the uk. Thanks for being here. Angie. Uh, Bonnie in fil thank you Bonnie. Um, Audrey, when our seven month old golden retriever pup gets, um, people greets people at the door, he's so excited that, uh, he jumps on them and it's hard to handle. I have him sit, tell him to wait, give him a treat, yet he can't settle down for at least five minutes. You're from Wisconsin. I'm from Wisconsin. Audrey, I'm from, uh, brown deer Wisconsin. Originally in, uh, a little tiny village of Milwaukee County. Um, you know, it is difficult. It's one of the most difficult things when people come to the house. The dogs get really excited, but you know what? They start getting excited when the door knocks. They start getting excited when the doorbell rings. So you can do a lot of proactive work and you need to do a lot of proactive work because when the doorbell rings, when the door knocks, you're trying to deal with the people at the door and it's difficult to deal with the people at the door and deal with your dog. I would get a helper to knock on the door, and then I would send the dog away from the door. I like teaching a place command, teaching a dog to get on one of these elevated dog cots and teaching them to stay there. Okay? And I do a lot of distraction work. And if they try to come off, I walk into them with my body, I use my body to block them, put them back on. I recom command place and I do a little distraction. And if they don't take the bait, of course, I start distracting very lightly. Hey, hey, hey, hey. If they don't move forward, then I'm gonna go ahead and mark and reward. I'm gonna reward the, the fact that they stayed on the cot. Little by little, I'm gonna increase my distractions. Every time they don't take the bait and they don't come off that place co I'm gonna reward them. If they do come off, I'm gonna put them back on and I'm not gonna reward them. I teach the dog to come off of that place with a release command. I use the word break. I help them off. When I say break, they get rewarded again. But I'm going to have a helper knock on the door. And then the next thing that's gonna happen is I'm gonna take my dog to that place cot and I'm gonna work the dog on the cot. And I'm gonna have the helper open that door and I'm gonna be there by the cot. If my dog comes off, I'm gonna put them back on that cot. You see, there's something about that cot because it's elevated up off the ground a couple inches. It's got like a psychological cliff effect. And also it's got that clearly defined boundary. It's like a rectangle. And it's because of those two things that dogs are less apt to come off of there and they're more apt to stay on there. So we can teach a really strong stay with heavy distractions 12 times faster, starting off on one of those elevated cots. And from there we can start ringing the doorbell with our helper. And those are the things that start getting the dogs excited even before the person comes there. So you've gotta work on keeping your dog calm when the doorbell rings, keeping your dog calm when the door knocks. And part of that is having somebody start knocking on the door and start feeding your dog high value food rewards and having somebody ring the doorbell and start feeding high value food rewards. Desensitizing your dog to the door, knocking in the doorbell. Because right now, anytime the door knocks, anytime the bell rings, your dog knows, Hey, somebody's at the door. Well, what if we change that association? What if it got the door was knocking all the time or a lot of the time and nobody's there? How about if the doorbell rings a lot of the time and nobody's there? How about if we go ding, dg, ding d ding d ding d, ding d, and we're feeding. We go knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. We're feeding. We do that a bunch of times. Well, now all of a sudden, the dogs, after a while of us doing that, you know, maybe a week or so, the dog really doesn't care about the doorbell, doesn't care about the door knocking, which is the first step in keeping your dog calm when a stranger comes over, when a guest comes over. And then the other thing is learning to teach your dog to stay put. And you've gotta motivate your dog to stay put because you know your dog is highly motivated cuz it's exciting to see who's at that door or I'm scared who's at that front door. They're motivated to be there and see what's going on with the guests. And it sounds like your dog is really friendly, so it likes to jump on people. Okay? Your dog cannot be staying on that place co and jumping on somebody at the same time. It, it would have to give up one behavior for the other. It can't do both behaviors. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna start teaching your dog alternative behaviors. And the cue or the command for getting on place is actually gonna be the doorbell or the door knocking because the sequence is door knocks. Boom. You take the dog over to place you mark and reward. Do that again. Take the dog off, knock the door. Knock on the door. Your helper knocks. You run the dog over to the place cot, put the dog on place, you mark and reward. Do that over and over and over. Do that with the bell also. So you're desensitizing your dog to the door, knocking the bell, you are making the door knocking and the bell basically a queue or command to get on place. And you're doing that over and over and over and over and over hundreds of times, hundreds of times because it takes a ton of repetition for there to be permanence and reliability. There takes a ton of conditioning and repetition for it to be automatic where the dog doesn't have to think about it. We need to get to muscle memory. And that's why people don't have success because you guys aren't practicing enough. You think you do it three or four times and you're good. No, absolutely not. And then proactively, you need to be able to have helpers now be at the door and be excited little by little. You want your guests to be more animated, more excited, which is a bigger distraction, which would then tend to get your dog's attention. Your dog would want to come off that cotton, get to the door. But you need to be at that cot so that you can redirect the dog back on that cot. And you need to have a good reinforcer. High value food rewards like cooked chicken or little cut up pieces of hotdog or cheese. You've gotta make, you've gotta make this worth your dog's while your dog needs a paycheck. Remember distractions. They're competing motivators. And either what you're doing with the dog training is more motivating and fun and exciting for the dog or the distraction is you've gotta be more motivating. You've gotta be more exciting, more interesting to your dog than anything in the world. But try that out. The other thing, you know, if your dog is jumping, all right, go take your dog and put your dog in the kennel for two minutes. Give it a timeout. But you need to do that when the dog's in the act of jumping. Okay? When your dog's in the act of jumping, put the dog in the kennel, put the dog in the crate for two minutes, then take the dog out. If the dog comes out of the kennel, excitable, put him back in there for another two minutes and take him out. If he's still excitable, put him back in there for another two minutes. Anytime the dog gets excited, put the dog back in the kennel for two minutes, give it a timeout. The consequence of overly excitable behavior is a timeout. And when you're consistent with that and your dog understands, Hey listen, um, you're gonna take away my ability to interact and engage and put me in a timeout and I don't like that. And every time I get excited, that's what happens. And when that happens enough and you're consistent, the dog's like, Hey, I'm gonna be calm. And then reward the calm behavior. Okay, let's make sure that we're not just dealing with the bad behaviors. Let's make sure that when the dog displays good, calm behavior, that we're rewarding the dog. And we're doing that a lot and we're very consistent because dogs are going to repeat behaviors that are rewarded and reinforced. So it's our job to make sure that we're doing that. All right, let me take a look. Let me take a look here and see, uh, what other questions we have. How, um, Michelle says, how do I stop a 10 week old pup, uh, from stop nipping at me? It hurts. Um, 10 week old pup nipping at you. Well, you know what happens? These puppies, when they're in the litter with their litter mates, you know, they start biting on each other between about three and five weeks of age. You know, they're doing that. They start learning, um, bite inhibition between three and five weeks of age when they're with the litter. Um, that's their first kind of socialization period with other dogs. But when it's just kind of a natural thing when one of the puppies bites on the other puppy and it hurts the other puppy Yelps. Yep. And it kind of startles the puppy that did the biting and the puppy's like, oh. And it kind of self-corrects that hard biting. So that's one thing you might do is, you know, as your dog is biting you and go, yep, that high pitched. Yep. And it might kind of send your puppy into, whoa, what was that? And it's a little unpleasant. And so your dog might not wanna do it again cuz it's a little unpleasant. But here's the thing, you already, you know, puppies are biting everything. Don't give them your hands. Don't give them your fingers if you've gotta put your hand up to the puppy. You know, they can't be biting you when your hand is like this, but they can when it's like that. Okay? So when you're around the puppy, you know, kind of always do that with your hand so they can't bite on you. But you always want to have something in your pocket. You always want to have appropriate chew toys around and you want to give that to the puppy so that they have appropriate things to chew on. Cuz puppies are chewing machines until their adult teeth come in at about seven to eight months of age. So they're gonna chew, chew, chew. You have got to give them a lot, a lot of things to chew on. And you know, if we move our hands really fast by the dog that may, you know, get the dog into play mode and they wanna start puppy playing with their little biting. Um, so watch the fast movements with your hands, especially near the face and the head. Now a lot of these puppies, people are just, oh, I'm gonna pet my puppy but I can't pet my puppy cuz the puppy keeps nipping. Well, as soon as the dog wants to do that slowly, not quickly, cuz it'll chase that hand slowly remove the hand and then give the dog something appropriate to chew on. Okay? And you can also be proactive with this. You don't always have to just be reactive. If you are proactive, these problems will go away quicker again. Now what you could do is you could get your hand in front of the dog, right? You could bait the dog and the dog goes to try to bite and you go, yep, pull that hand away and bring that hand out there. Try to coax the dog into wanting to bite that hand. The dog tries to go for it. You go, yep, pull it away. Do it again. The dog doesn't take the bait, the dog's not taking the bait. What are you gonna do? Yes, reward. You're gonna mark and reward the good behavior, then you're gonna go ahead and do it again. Try to bait the dog to go after the fingers if the dog takes the bait, yep. Move that hand away, slowly bait the dog again, if the dog doesn't take the bait mark and reward, try to get three wins. Try to bait the dog and have three repetitions of the dog not taking the bait where you can reward the dog three times. And you can do that several times throughout the day. And if you'll do that, and also again, give the, keep giving your dog appropriate things to chew on, um, that behavior will stop pretty quickly if you're proactive. If you're only being reactive when it happens, well it's gonna take a lot longer. So give that a shot. Hopefully that helps. I'm Will Bangura, you're watching Pet Talk today here on Facebook Live where I take your calls. I take your questions. Um, if you've got a question, go ahead and type it into the comments section. Do me a favor, hit that like button, hit that share button so more people can benefit from this. Um, let us know in the comments section who you are, where you're watching from, what kind of pets you have. And of course, if you've got a question, type it in the comment section. I'm going through those questions and I'm gonna try to answer as many of those as I can. Also, if you would like to call me and get a little more detailed help, you can give me a call. That number is 6 0 2, uh, 7 6 9 1 4 1 1. Again, that's 6 0 2 7 6 9 1 4 1 1. Let's go back to the questions in the chat here. Um, Gloria's got a three year old standard poodle. It steals items from the counters in the kitchen, mostly food. It does not matter. Oh, where did your thing go? Oh, I lost your question. Well, I think I've got the, uh, the general idea. Um, so if it's an issue of a dog that counters serves, it's usually because they've gotten food in the past and that has been a really strong reinforcer to make them wanna go back to the counter and look to see if there's more food. Now here's the thing. You've gotta have your dog in your eyesight. All right? Because the worst thing that happens, I don't care what the behavior problem is, it could be a dog that likes to steal remote controls and chew them up. It doesn't matter what the behavior is. If your dog can rehearse the behavior, if your dog can continue, uh, doing the behaviors we don't want and there's not a consequence, it's gonna keep going on and on and on. So if you've got a dog with behavior problems and you cannot watch your dog, your dog needs to be created until you do the behavior modification work or your dog does not get into trouble when you're not around, then your dog can have the freedom and not be created. But we've gotta stop the dogs from rehearsing the behaviors. Now when they are out, we need to be watching them. And when we can't watch'em, what do we do? Put'em in the crate. Because you're setting your dog up for failure. You know what's gonna happen until you do the work with your dog and teach your dog. You know, most dogs aren't dominant. They're not trying to be mean or tricky to you or mess with you. They're unruly. That means without rules, you've gotta teach them what the rules are. Dogs are unruly. And one of the things that you need to do is teach your dog that, Hey, when it comes to people food, you only get that either from my hand or in your dog bowl. Okay? And one of the things you can do is you can start taking people food and putting it on plates and you can bring your dog near it. And as your dog starts to show interest, call your dog to you. Move your dog away from it. And now reward your dog. Bring your dog towards the food. Again, don't get, don't let your dog get right up to it cuz your dog's gonna snatch it. Okay? Make sure you got a leash on the dog too. Bring your dog near it, near it only to the point where your dog wants to turn its head and start sniffing so that you still have the ability to be able to pull the dog away. Give the dog the cue of come even if you're just walking back two steps. Reward your dog. Have a high value food reward. You wanna do this over and over and over until you start moving your dog towards that food and your dog wants to turn around to come to you and get food instead, because that's where it gets the food. You need to do that with all kinds of different foods. You need to put food in different places. You need to be controlling these variables. You need to be setting up the situation, not leaving food out when you're not able to watch the dog. But really what you're teaching the dog is, is, you know, when can I have people food? In what context can I have people food? And you've gotta help your dog to, to understand that. But until you've done the work, you need to put away everything and you need to make sure that you do a good job putting it away cuz you know what's gonna happen. And it's not the dog's fault because you know what's gonna happen. Hey, if I'm a dog and I can get up on the counter and you're gonna leave food out and I can get it, I'm gonna do it. Why not? Why not? Uh, there stu there says, I've got a 16 month old rat terrier, uh, loved walks until last July when someone set off a very loud firework. Uh, she was terrified. And ever since then, it's been getting worse with any sounds that are sudden even in the house and outside. Uh, when we go to the dog park, where is this? When we go to the dog park, she's okay until there's a noise. I e kids skateboarding at the park and she runs to me shaking. Sometimes she'll go back and play, sometimes not. Also, she will not walk around our block anymore since the firework episode. How can I help her to get over these fears? Oh, that's a good one. Um, excuse me, I can't remember which episode it was, but we did a full, I think we did a full episode on fireworks. So what you might do is start scrolling down in the Facebook page and try to find that one. But what might be easier too is um, if you did a Google search for pet talk today and then put in fireworks and the podcast probably will come up. But let me talk a little bit about this. All right, there's a couple issues and one is dealing with noise sensitivities. Um, and the other is doing the work of counter conditioning and desensitization with those sound phobias. And the other is, hey, when I don't, when I haven't done the work, what am I doing to support my dog? Um, your dog's having a severe reaction, having, um, noise phobias. And if you know there's going to be loud noises right now, I recommend you talk to your veterinarian and see if maybe they can give some medication so your dog doesn't have to suffer. Now that's just very temporary. That's to use in emergent situations where you know, there's gonna be loud noises, you know, if there's gonna be fireworks again, if there's gonna be a thunderstorm. Um, if you've got, uh, construction in the neighborhood and you've got big trucks coming by, whatever it might be. However, what we really need to do is we need to start exposing your dog to these sounds, but at very, very low levels, very, very low levels that we can play for a very short duration and we can pair high value food rewards. Um, there's all kinds of recorded firework sounds on YouTube and all over the internet. Get those, download those sounds of fireworks. If your dog has a problem with thunderstorms. Thunderstorms, if your dog has a problem with large trucks, you can get sounds of large trucks. If your dog has a problem with babies crying, you can get sounds of babies crying. You can pretty much find anything on the internet. Okay? Now you need to have a really good speaker system. If you're playing this on your smartphone, this isn't gonna work. You need a good speaker system. Bluetooth usually these days. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna set the volume really, really low and you're gonna press play. And as soon as the sound of the fireworks start, you're gonna start feeding your dog extremely high value. Food rewards like chicken or cheese, you're gonna feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously for about one to two seconds while the sound of the fireworks are happening. And then you press stop and as soon as the sound stops, you stop feeding. Now you wait a few seconds, you press play again. As soon as the dog starts hearing the fireworks at a very low volume, you start feed, feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously during the all sounds. Then you press stop after a second or two, you stop feeding. You're gonna do that over and over and over for about five minutes. You're gonna do that once a day after, I don't know, a few days, maybe a week. You'll start to see your dog will start to love the game. Once your dog loves this game and is excited about it, then try turning it up a little bit, a little bit. This takes time. It's a very gradual, systematic process of desensitization. If when turning up the volume your dog starts to get concerned or nervous, you've gone up in the volume too high too soon. You need to bring the volume back down, back down and take a slower approach. Okay? And you can do that with any sounds. You know, you start with recorded sounds and if you're in a situation where you can't avoid sounds and they're happening all the time and you've not done the work yet, um, again, you need to talk maybe to your veterinarian about possibility of medication to help your dog while you're doing the work, cuz we don't want your dog to suffer. But it's all about counter conditioning, it's all about desensitization. Um, either episode 80 or episode 81 of the Pet Talk today podcast. If you go to the the audio podcast, and it was a few weeks ago, we did a entire show on counter conditioning and desensitization, which is what you're gonna use to help any dog with an anxiety issue, a fear issue, a phobia issue, an aggression issue, counter conditioning and desensitization. I think it's, uh, the podcast episode 80 or 81. Anyway, that was a great question. Let's see, uh, let's see what else we got. Uh, Michelle from Michigan. Hey Michelle, thanks for being here. Um, Rachel, how to help my fur baby not pull when walking. I've got two, two chihuahuas and a, uh, aish, um, pulling on a walk. Well, first thing, if you've got two dogs pulling on a walk, um, you need to start working with one dog at a time and get each dog walking well individually where each dog individually is not pulling before you start bringing two together. Okay? So let me talk about how you teach a dog not to pull. First of all, we're not initially going for a walk. Teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash is about teaching the dog to follow you, to pay attention, to walk at your pace, and to stay in a specific position. Okay? Now we wanna start this where there are no distractions. You can start this in the house, okay? You can get your dog to follow you around next to you by putting a few treats in a ladle and bring that ladle down next to your left leg by your hip. If you got a dog that's that tall, you got a little dog, well, you gotta bring that arm down quite a bit or get a very long ladle<laugh>, okay? Um, but you what? You wanna make a lot of turns you wanna teach the dog, follow, follow, follow, follow. Don't just keep walking in the same direction you wanna teach the dog to follow. You're gonna make a lot of turns. Get the dog following you with the food. Then when that's going well, you wanna get outside in an area that's quiet. You wanna start doing that outside the same way you did it inside. Okay? Now here's the rule. Once you start getting out there in the real world, and there's a few distractions that Laila's gotta come outta your hand, you're gonna have a treat pouch with high value food rewards in the treat in the pouch. Forget about walking forward. Always start by making a U-turn because your dog's probably already in front of you. And if your dog's already in front of you, your dog's not following, your dog is leading. So start by making a u-turn, 180 degrees away from the dog that puts the dog behind you. You start walking forward, turn your head back and look at your dog's head. See where your dog is, your dog. When you made that turn got behind you and now it's starting to catch up. When your dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg, make a quick 180 degree u-turn and start walking the opposite direction again. That puts the dog behind you. Turn around just your head as you're walking, see where the dog's head is. Watch as your dog starts to catch up. And when your dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg again, make a 180 degree u-turn away from your dog. It puts the dog behind you. Now I'm gonna add to that. When you make that turn and the dog catches up, give the dog a food reward and then make another turn. Let the dog catch up. Give the dog a food reward and make a turn. Let the dog catch up. Give a food reward. Make a turn. Then start doing that. When that's going, well start doing that and make a lot of turns. Don't go more than about six to eight steps without making a sharp u-turn. You're walking on a straight line, folks, okay? Get on the sidewalk and do this. I don't want you making ovals and all this stuff. It's straight this way, straight back this way, straight this way, straight back this way. No more than six or eight steps in one direction, even if your dog's in the perfect position. But anytime your dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg, you're gonna go the opposite direction. Reward your dog. As you start to do this, when you make that turn, your dog's gonna start looking up at you. If you make a lot of quick turns and quick succession, I like, where are we going? Where are we going? Where are we going? When your dog starts to do that, because you're making lots of quick turns when your dog looks up at you, mark with yes and reward. If you don't know what marker training is, if you'd not using markers, you need to episode 80 or 81, I don't remember. One of'em is markers. I think it's 80 is markers and I think 81 is counter conditioning. Um, but yeah, you're gonna start rewarding the fact that your dog's looking up at you and paying attention when your dog can do well. Consistently staying in position and paying attention to you for those six to eight steps that you're doing. And every time you turn it, just the dog's just right there on that loose leash. Now start adding a few more steps before you turn. Maybe you go 10 and turn, maybe go 20 and turn as long as the dog's staying in position. But if that dog starts to inch forward, if those eyes get further than the middle of your leg, you need to make 180 degree. You, you turn away from the dog, you're teaching the dog to follow and pay attention. Then start doing that at three very distinct paces. Do it at a normal pace, do it at a jog, and then take little old person shuffle steps. If you're an old person, I am too. Don't be offended. Little shuffle steps, okay? So that your dog learns to walk at your pace, not that you are compensating for your dog and walking at the dog's pace. So give that a shot. Uh, let's see, what do we got here? Uh, you're welcome, Janice. Elaine, I've, I have a soon to be two year old rat terrier that we adopted from our local shelter when she was six months old, of which all right, when she was six months old, of which was where she spent her entire first six months. She was very afraid of everything, uh, when we brought her home and a lot of work. She has come a long way. My question is, uh, she's very noise sensitive and can at times be aggressive when she feels threatened or possessive of us or an object. Okay? Um, let me just from Indiana, all right, the Hoosier State, um, those pacers are doing really good this year. Well, they were doing really good earlier in the year. They're kind of middle of the road now, actually. I was excited about, we took Tori Craig from you guys. He was a phoenix sun, that he went to the Pacers and now he's back to the suns enough of basketball. Those that know me know I love basketball, but we're talking dogs today. Um, I was just talking about noise, uh, sensitivities with fireworks. So hopefully you were listening to that. Um, as far as aggression, first thing that everybody needs to know, aggression is not the problem. Aggression is the symptom. The problem is fear. No animal goes into fight or flight unless they perceive something as threatening. Now, that doesn't mean that there's a real threat. There's all kinds of animals that are perceiving things as threatening when there's no real threat. But no animal, again, goes into fight or flight unless they perceive something is threatening. So all aggression is based in fear, okay? The aggression is the symptom of the problem being fear, which is an emotional state. We are not gonna stop aggression by punishing out of animals, okay? Not gonna yell at the dog. No, stop. And it's gonna go away. You're not gonna give the dog a physical correction and it's gonna go away. Oh, wait a minute. Now you can use those things, which cause a little bit of fear, intimidation, and it's punishment, and it will suppress the behavior. You'll have a dog that won't be exhibiting those outward behaviors, the barking, the lunging, the growling, the snapping. But you've done nothing to change the internal emotional state of your dog. So when you do that, when you suppress those behaviors through punishment and corrections, it's like putting a lid on the top of a pot of boiling water. The water's, the aggression. You've just put a lid over it. The fire underneath that pot of boiling water is the anxiety, the fear. You gotta put out the fire because if you just cover up the behavior with punishment and put a lid on it, that boiling water keeps boiling. The pressure of that fear, that anxiety builds and builds and builds and builds, and eventually the dog snaps. That's why punishment doesn't work short term. It may seem like it works. You know, I got a lot of people that send their aggressive dogs away to a boarding train. Two, three weeks, four weeks, dog comes back, everything seems fine for about three months. Two to three months, almost all of them come back. And within two to three months, they're aggressive again. Punishment doesn't work and there are no quick fixes. Poor aggression, counter conditioning and desensitization is the process of exposing your dogs to triggers, whether it be a scary person, a scary dog, a scary sound, exposing them to the triggers at manageable levels. So if your dog is afraid of people or dogs, if your dog is aggressive towards people or dogs, you need to find a distance that your dog can have from that trigger where your dog knows that it's there, that knows that the dog's there knows that the person's there, but it really doesn't care. You know, it's very aloof. It'll take treats. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna have that trigger, whether it's a person or a dog that your dog is aggressive towards at a distance where your dog can see it and really doesn't care about it. When your dog sees the trigger, you start to feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously one to three seconds, then have that trigger go outta sight when the dog can't see the trigger stop feeding. You're gonna do that over and over and over for about five to 10 minutes. You need to do this three to five times a week minimum when your dog loves that game. After about a week or so, now move a little closer and start that work all over again. And then a little closer and a little closer and a little closer, a little closer. Over months, not days, months. If in that process of getting closer, your dog starts to get nervous or anxious, you have gone too close too soon. Now again, there's more detailed information on our podcast. Go to Pet Talk Today podcast, episode 81. I believe that's the one Encounter conditioning. Also, if you don't have a qualified professional, contact me. I do, uh, virtual behavior consultations all across the world. I'm helping people all over the world with aggression cases, fears, and phobias. Um, if you need some help, um, you can check out my website@dogbehaviorist.com. Again, that's dog behaviorist.com. Do me a favor, hit that like button, show us some love, hit that share button so more people can benefit from what we do here at Pet Talk today. Alright, today's q and a Saturday. Let's take a look at the comments and see if we can't, uh, find more questions to answer. Um, how do you stop your dog? Let's see. Julie says, how do you stop your dog from running out on the road to a noise from a neighbor's or person walking? Um, Julie, I'm trying to understand this. I'm guessing that, uh, your dog runs out into the road whenever there's a neighbor or a person walking. Bye. Okay, first thing, why is your dog not on some kind of a leash or a line? How is it that your dog's getting to the road? I hope it's not a busy road. I hope that we're not at danger of your dog getting hit by a car. Um, but you need to do some boundary training, okay? And what you'll do is, without distractions, without sounds, without people walking by, take your dog up to the area that goes to the road, whether it be your driveway, whether it be, uh, the front boundary of your yard. Um, go to the boundary and as soon as your dog, let your dog kind of sniff there, get up to it. As soon as you get there, start running backwards. Call the dog, come. And as the dog comes to you, given high value food rewards, you're gonna do that all along the boundary line, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Constantly. Daily, 10 minutes a day, you're gonna do this for about two months. Two months. You gotta condition your dog really, really well. Then what you wanna do after that, you want to go ahead and have your dog on like a 15 foot long line, long leash. Get a 15 foot cotton training lead and get your dog out there. Make sure that if your dog starts to move towards the road, that your dog can't actually get to the road. So, you know, you gotta figure out with the 15 feet where you need to stand, you are going to go ahead and get a helper to walk by the house. Get a helper to start making noise. People noise, neighbor noise. Okay? When your dog begins to alert, perks up, oh, there's a person perks up. Oh, there's a sound. That's when you call your dog to you on come start running backwards. Your dog comes to you. Reward the dog. Now release the dog to be free. Have your helper walk by, have your helper make some sound. Don't wait for your dog to run to the road. Soon as your dog starts showing interest, gets curious, I hear something, I see something. Call the dog to you. You're gonna do that over and over and over again. You're gonna do that for about a month. Now, we're three months into this, you might say, oh my God, three months. Well, that's a big cost, isn't it? What's the cost of losing your dog, getting hit by a, by a car? Okay. Um, and if it's me, I'm not letting my dog run around off leash in the front yard. If my dog's running into the road until I'm doing the work, and I've gotta do the work over and over and over, and I gotta be proactive. And then little by little, I'm gonna have my helpers get more animated. Okay? I'm gonna train with greater distractions than hopefully anything my dog is gonna experience in his normal day-to-day life. So that when I do that, when I get there after I've done all this training, it's gonna work. Because what good is it? If your dog can only listen when things are called and quiet? That's not, that's not difficult. The difficult situation is when there's big distractions. So we need to be working with distractions. But again, slowly, gradually, and you catch the dog before it hits that red zone. Once it hits the red zone, forget it. You're gone. Gotta catch it early. There's a saying called Slay the dragon while it's small. Remember that Slay the dragon while it's small. You gotta intervene quickly before things get outta hand. All right, let's take a look and see, uh, what other questions we have. Uh, Carolyn. Hey guys, tell me where you're watching from, okay? And what kind of dogs you have. Um, Carolyn says, my dog barks when I close the door and he attacks the door. Also, what can I do? Well, you could take the doors off the hinges, but that wouldn't be very practical, would it? So, um, dog barks when you close the door and he attacks it, we start by taking the dog as far away from the door as possible. And you need to then watch your dog as you go to reach for that handle and open it up. Now, my guess is your dog starts getting outta control before you ever open the door. It probably starts when your hand gets to the handle or even maybe when you're walking towards the door. So you need to start at a far distance and you're probably gonna need to helper cuz one person can't be with the dog at a far distance and also be at the door at the same time. So your helper starts to reach for the door handle. If that's going well and your dog's not excited, then they turn the handle. If that's going well and your dog's not excited, you begin to open it up where your dog gets excited, you've gone too far, you need to back up right before that. So let's just say for explanation purposes, your dog gets excited as soon as the hand gets on the doorknob. You wanna walk up to the door or have your helper walk to the door and feed, feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously for about a second or two, and then have that person walk away from the door and stop feeding and that person walk up to the door, not grab the doorknob yet, walk up to the door, you feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously at a distance where your dog can see this and doesn't really care about it. And you do that over and over until your dog is super excited about a person going near the door because good things happen. Now, I get high value food rewards. That might take several days, it might take a week, it might take a month. I don't know, you can only work as fast as the dog paces as much as we want to. We can only work as fast as the dog paces. You can't take the dog over threshold. When you do counter conditioning and desensitization, your dog's emotional state needs to be aloof. Maybe slightly curious, but not anxious, not stressed at all. Okay? Now the next step might be putting my hand on the doorknob. Having that helper touch the doorknob and you with the dog far away from the door, but can see it feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously for a second or two. Then that person takes their hand off of the doorknob, you stop feeding, then they touch the doorknob. You start feeding, they let go of the doorknob, you stop feeding, they touch the doorknob, you feed, they let go of the doorknob, you stop feeding. You're gonna do that over and over and over until they love that game. Then the next step would be turning the knob, not necessarily opening the door because you turn the knob. Now the dog might get really anxious. So what we're doing is we're taking little successive approximations to actually opening the door and desensitizing the dog by counter conditioning, pairing high value food rewards with what the dog viewed as scary, but giving little, no pun intended, bite size pieces to the dog along the way. And then it would be opening the door an inch feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. Close the door helper walks away, open the door for an inch feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, close the door, stop feeding helper goes away. And then that inch goes to two inches and four inches and six inches, and then eventually all the way open, okay? All the way open and that you're doing at a distance. Once your dog can handle the door being opened at a distance and is calm and relaxed. Now you start the process all over again, but you're bringing the dog a little closer and you're counter conditioning there. And then you bring the dog a little closer and a little closer and a little closer and a little closer. So this might take several months, okay? It is slow work. It's slow work. There are no shortcuts to this, but if you do it, it pays off. You know, there were studies, there was research that said that, alright, let's say we have one issue. We need to desensitize the dog too. Let's say it's fireworks. We need to do about 72 counter conditioning and desensitization exercises in a period of about 90 days to have success. So that's about three to five days a week that we need to be doing this. The sessions are short, they're like five minutes, 10 minutes would be long doing this. Okay? And you know, when I'm feeding high value food items, what I like to do is I like to get these squeeze tubes and I like to take some, uh, canned chicken, um, canned beef or something, and I like to puree it, make a paste, and I put it in a s squeeze bottle. And so when I'm feeding the dog, I'm just squeezing just this little stream of yummy, yummy stuff onto their tongue. And this way they're getting something really high value. They love the taste of it, but we're not filling up their belly by just giving chunks of this chicken or chunks of the beef. So think about that, maybe puree some meat. If you gotta add a little bit of broth to it so that it'll come out the squeeze tube. Do that and use a squeeze tube. Okay? Give that a shot. Um, yeah, the thing about your dog wanting to attack the door, this is, you know, whether it's barking or attacking the door, this is gonna help with both of those things, okay? Um, Janice, every time my aunt comes to my house, she brings her dog and he pees all over my house. We put him and he still continues to pee in my house. Uh, she's telling me that, uh, he does not pee in her house. I don't know what to believe. Uh, you think it's a spiteful thing that he does that because he doesn't like being here? Um, I don't think it's a spiteful thing. I do think that it's related to anxiety. Okay. I think it's related to anxiety. Um, and I would tell your aunt she can't bring the dog, you know, because it's a tough one. If they're there infrequently and the dog keeps peeing in the house, the dog's gonna keep doing that. And I don't want you to punish the dog cause this is an anxiety issue. Punishment just makes anxiety worse. Okay? Now, you know, you might try bringing the dog to the yard to relieve itself first before you bring it in the house. And if it doesn't relieve itself, maybe your aunt has a crate in the car and she could put the dog in the crate for 15 minutes and then bring the dog back out to try to pee in the yard. And if the dog doesn't pee, she could bring the dog back in the crate in the car for 15 minutes. But the weather's gotta be okay. We don't want dogs in a car when the weather is either too cold or too hot. Always keep that in mind. We want the dog to be safe. But, you know, maybe I, I don't let the dog into the inside of the house until the dog pees, but I don't wanna just leave the dog outside unsupervised because the dog's gonna get anxious and bored and probably start getting destructive and barking and jumping on the door and the window and what have you. Um, but yeah, it's, um, I it's not spiteful and, and I believe your aunt that the dog doesn't do it at her house. All right? You, you have dogs and, and you know, her dog's probably nervous about what's going on there. I don't have all the information, but, but that's what, uh, my take is on that. Michelle. Michelle says, how old should a lab be before you take him to puppy school? Um, your puppy needs to have its second set of shots, okay? Doesn't need to be fully vaccinated. The American society of veterinary behaviorists who are veterinarians and also behaviorist will tell you, you need to begin to socialize your dog before it has all of its shots. Because the critical socialization window is from three weeks to 13 weeks. Most dogs don't have all their shots until they're 16 weeks or older. So when you wait until they have all their shots, you've missed the critical window of socialization. That's not to say that your dog's gonna have problems. It could, but the best dogs are the dogs that have the most exposure to many things, as many things as possible as early as possible. Okay? Me personally, when I get a puppy immediately, immediately before it even has its second set of shots, I've taken my dog everywhere, okay? Now, I don't let my puppy walk in urine and feces. I don't go around a bunch of other dogs where they've been peeing and pooping. If I have my puppy around other dogs, I know for sure that they're healthy and vaccinated and that they're calm, very mellow dogs that would not do anything to offend my dog. But I want my dog to hear everything. I want my dog to see everything, my puppy, to see everything. I want my puppy to feel everything to walk on different surfaces everywhere. Everywhere. Everybody's worried about parvo in distemper. It doesn't happen that often your dog is more likely to die from behavioral euthanasia than parvo. Do you know the number one cause of death in dogs under the age of three is behavioral euthanasia. These dogs that have behavioral problems, usually because of poor socialization and people can't deal with the problems, so they send the dog to the shelter, and then somebody else adopts a dog and they can't deal with the problems, they bring that dog back to the shelter and somebody else adopts it. And we've got this dog who becomes a rescue dog that is on this merry-go-round, this revolving wheel of adoptions, and eventually the dog gets euthanized unless somebody deals with the problem, the behavior number one cause of death in dogs under the age of three behavioral euthanasia. It's sad Very sad. All right, let's see here. We've got about two minutes. Gosh, I don't know that I can answer another question here in two minutes unless I want to go over a little bit. Um, let me scroll down a little bit, see if I can find one. Oh, come on. Lots of thank yous. Um, well let me just say this cuz it we're almost out of time. Um, January is National Train Your Dog Month. Um, not surprising. January, people have, um, new Year's resolutions. Make a New Year's resolution. Get out there, train your dog. Um, dogs the number one cause of behavior problems is boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom. Do me a favor, look up canine enrichment. We're gonna do a show on canine enrichment. I'm gonna find an expert on canine enrichment and I'm gonna bring them on the show. We're gonna interview them because a lot of dogs need canine enrichment. They're bored out of their mind. Um, so if you don't know about canine enrichment check into it. Um, it's really providing things for them to do, physically, providing things for them to do mentally, um, games, puzzles, things of that nature. But there's more to it than that. Um, but I just want to thank everybody for being here today. That music means we are out of time. I want to thank Janice and all of the Pet Talk today, fans, viewers, and listeners for your questions. Do us a favor, hit that like button, hit that share button. Be sure to join us each and every Saturday morning right here on Facebook Live on Pet Talk today. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody. Stay safe.