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If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
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Raised by wolves 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:Well, good Saturday morning everybody. I'm Will Bandura and you're watching Pet Talk today here on Facebook Live, where I'm here each and every Saturday morning here on Facebook Live, answering your dog training and dog behavior questions. Hey, if you're a regular viewer, regular watcher of Pet Talk today, thank you so much for your support. Do me a favor, go ahead and hit that like button, hit that share button, that's the way more people can benefit from this show. If you are brand new to Pet Talk today, let me talk a little bit about how this works. Most shows I'm doing q and a, so most shows I am reading your questions that you're typing into the comment section. That's right. If you've got a question about your dog's behavior, if you've got a question about a training issue, please do me a favor and type your question into the comment section. Also, let us know where are you watching from. Yeah, where are you watching from today? And also let us know in the comments section, not only where are you watching from, but what kind of pets do you have. We all wanna know that that's right. Well, happy Saturday. As I said, it's January 21st. It's National Train Your Dog Month. And so I wanted to take most of all of January to just be able to take your questions, um, and answer those for you Also today, and I'm gonna take preference, I say this, I know you guys are scared to call in. I don't know why, I don't know why you're afraid to call in. Um, you get a lot more of my attention. Um, I can ask you questions so I can get more information from you and help you better, um, in a little bit. I'm gonna be giving the number out and hopefully we've got some brave people that are willing to call into the show as well. And we'll take your calls. That's right. I'm gonna take your calls as well as answering your questions in the comments section. Um, again, do us a favor, hit that like button, hit that share button so more people can benefit, uh, from Pet Talk today. Um, just a little bit of information. Hey, I've got, I've got something interesting coming in February. Uh, mark this down. You're gonna wanna make sure that you watch the show and also tell your friends about February 18th. That's right. Saturday, February 18th. I've got Stephanie Cohen. I'm gonna be interviewing Stephanie Cohen. She's a licensed clinical social worker and also the author of Overcoming Your Child's Fear of Dogs, A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents. And she's got, uh, a website overcome fear of dogs.net that's overcome Fear of dogs.net. You know, it'll be very interesting to have Stephanie on the show, um, talking about her book, um, overcoming Your Child's Fear of Dogs, A step-by-Step Guide for Parents, um, because most of what I do as a dog behaviorist, most of what I do as a certified behavior consultant, where I specialize is dealing with dogs with fear. And I'm a change maker.<laugh>, I help change the dog's fear and get their emotional state in a relaxed state where they can handle what they were afraid of. And, and so it'll be very interesting to see, um, how similar the work is working with children to overcome their fear of dogs as it is for me and, and many other behaviorists and behavior consultants, how we work with dogs that have fear. So I'm excited about that. Write that down. That's gonna be Saturday, February 18th, Stephanie Cohen, licensed clinical social worker, the author of Overcoming Your Dog's, fear of Dogs or Your Child's Fear, sorry, overcoming Your Child's Fear of Dogs. And for some of you, you've got dogs that are afraid of your children. I get that. Uh, but this is a step-by-step guide. You can get that book, I'm assuming if you go to her website, overcome fear of dogs.net, and I'm sure that you can find that on Amazon as well. Anyway, we're excited to be able to have her. Um, let's go right to questions. Let's see. I've got, um, Anne. Anne is saying, my child barks and barks when strangers come into the house to visit help. Well, let me ask you this, what happens immediately after the dogs bark? And you know why the dogs are barking? I mean, it, it's common for dogs to bark when somebody knocks on their door when they ring the doorbell when somebody new comes to the house. But most dogs, you know, we get the person in the house and usually pretty quickly the dogs settle down. They're friendly. Hey, maybe they want to jump on the people, right? But they don't continue to bark. Now, if your dog is continuing to bark, chances are your dog maybe has some fear, okay? Most, most dogs, their aggression is based in fear. Now, I'm not saying that aggression means necessarily have to bite. It could be barking and lunging, showing your teeth. Okay? So why is your dog barking? Is it because they're afraid? And then what happens immediately after your dog does the barking? I'm guessing it's one of two things, or both. I'll bet you, you at once your dog starts barking, I bet either you remove your dog from the situation or the individual that your dog is barking at, backs up, moves away from the dog. Now, I get it. I understand why that happens. And so do you. But that's negative reinforcement. That behavior, your dog's behavior of barking at that stranger is functional. Your dog's not gonna give that up anytime soon. And let me tell you why, because it's being reinforced. Okay? Your dog barks because it's scared. What does your dog want? Your dog wants distance and space. And what hap happens, probably immediately after your dog does this, you remove your dog or the individual backs away from your dog. So distance and space was created by the dog's behavior. See, negative reinforcement. Remember, anytime I say reinforcement always thinks strengthened, reinforcing a bridge, right? So strengthening a behavior, all reinforcers strengthen. There's two kinds of reinforcers. There's positive reinforcer. We all know that one, right? We ask the dog to sit, dog sits, we give it a treat. Positive reinforcement. A dog, an animal is working, doing the work because it wants, the reward is gonna get as a result or a consequence of the behavior in negative reinforcement, a behavior is occurring to remove something scary or to remove something unpleasant. All right? Lemme give you an example of negative reinforcement for you and I. We get in the car and we don't buckle the seatbelt. What happens? Something unpleasant, right? Ding, ding, ding, ding. Something annoying, something we don't like. I don't know if it's scary for us, but annoying. It's unpleasant and it keeps being unpleasant until we do the behavior. And as soon as we do the behavior of buckling up, that's something unpleasant goes away. It's removed. So negative and negative reinforcement, remember, that's a minus sign. That means the removal of something. In this case for your dog, it's the removal of the stranger, either by you moving the dog away from the stranger or the stranger backing up. All right? So now that we understand the problem, what do we do about it? Cuz a lot of you have this problem. A lot of you have dogs that are reactive and have fear, aggression when strangers come into the home, right? What do you do about it? Well, I'll tell you what you can't do and what will never work. Allowing your dog to continue to be in those situations and letting your dog continue to rehearse those behaviors over and over, getting more and more ingrained, more and more conditioned, that'll never get better. If your dog continues to experience that strangers coming into the house and it reacting that way. Remember the behavior's functional and it's always getting reinforced by the distance or the removal, right? How are you gonna get on top of that? Rule number one, rule number one, until you can do the work of behavior modification, you need to avoid the triggers. That means you can't put your dog in those situations right? Now, I realize that's not the fix, but that's the first step in getting to the fix. Don't put your dog in trigger situations and, and folks, I don't care what the trigger situation is, if your dog's afraid of people, dogs afraid of cats, okay? Don't put your dog in that trigger situation. You know what's gonna happen? You're, you're setting your dog up for failure, right? We know what's gonna happen. And some of you are saying, well, if I just keep exposing my dog more and more, the worst one that I hear, oh, lemme take my dog to the dog park and socialize my dog. When you got a dog that's not social. When you got a dog that's fearful and you flood the dog with fear and the dog ends up biting a dog in the dog park. But you have to first avoid the triggers, then you've got to begin the long process of gradual and systematic desensitization and counter conditioning. And that's a very specific way of exposing your dog to strangers. We've gotta expose your dog at strangers and it starts at a distance. Remember, cuz your dog wants distance. The more distance, the more relaxed your dog is, we've gotta get to that distance where your dog sees the stranger, but really doesn't care, really doesn't care. And at that distance, we start exposing strangers to your dog over and over and over and over at a distance where your dog's emotional state is. Okay. If we start to expose your dog to triggers in your dog's emotional state has fear, anxiety, worry, stress, it'll never work. You're never gonna get your dog better. And, and with counter conditioning, you know, I talk a lot about counter conditioning, counter conditioning, counter conditioning, but that is the gold standard for dealing with fears and almost all aggression. Reactivity is based in fear as well. So it's the gold standard for fear, anxiety, and aggression. And with counter conditioning, it's just a fancy word for, we are pairing something very positive with something that the dog doesn't like. In this case, it's a stranger. So the stranger comes into the dog's view at a distance that the dog can handle at a distance where the dog's emotional state is okay, it's neutral, all right? And as soon as your dog sees that stranger, you wanna get the highest value. Food, rewards and feed, feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously. The whole time. The stranger is there for about one to three seconds, and then I want the stranger to go away. And then as soon as the stranger goes away, you stop feeding and you are gonna repeat that again. Again. Stranger comes into view, your dog sees a stranger at a distance where your dog is emotionally neutral, you feed, feed, feed, feed. High value food rewards, constantly, continuously one to three seconds, then have the trigger go outta sight, have the people leave you stop feeding. The dog begins to associate the good stuff, the food, the positive reinforcer associated with the trigger. The strange person. Now, I don't care if your dog's got a fear of cats, at fear of another dog, fear of children, fear of adults, fear of people outside, fear of people in the house, fear of people when they get close to the couch, okay? The work is the same. It's all about counter conditioning and desensitization. Now I do talk a lot about it and I can't spend the entire hour going into all of the tiny little bitty details, but um, if you go to, I wrote this down because I always talk about this. Um, if you go to the Pet Talk Today podcast, the audio podcast, put in a Google search for pet talk today podcast. Look for episode 81. Episode 81. I devote the entire show. I think it's an hour and a half. We even went over to all the details of counter conditioning and desensitization. That is what you need in anybody else dealing with this problem. That's what you need. Hey, that was a great question. I know it took quite a while to go through that one, but, uh, that was a good one. So Janice has a question. It says, so I got my dog neutered, so hopefully he won't get any more bladder infectious. He's still recovering, but doing much better. Well, good, I appreciate that. Um, that update. Janice, I don't know if you ever tried any of the natural stuff that I talked about, the eia, the marshmallow root extract, um, in the cranberry extract. If you did let me know, um, let's see, more people talking about barking. Let's see, what do we got here, Nancy? I'd like to know how to get my three month old puppy to quit pulling on the leash. Well, that's a fantastic question. How do we get your puppy to quit pulling on the leash? Well, the first thing is to understand that if you don't want your dog to pull on the leash, that's a hard thing for your dog to do, especially if it's a puppy. The number one way that your puppy makes sense out of the world understands the world is with its nose. So as soon as they get outside, there is just this plethora of sense. It's this cornucopia of communication all through the nose. And so the puppy wants to go everywhere and check out all the different smells, cuz there's probably lots of dogs that are going around as well. So picking up on those smells. So it's not anything that's easy. That stuff is really interesting to your dog, really interesting to your dog, right? And maybe your dog sees another dog or another person, and that's really interesting to your dog. So of course your dog wants to pull to get to it. You've gotta be more interesting than your puppy. You've got to be able to motivate your puppy more. And you've got to be more interesting than those smells. You've gotta be able to motivate your puppy and you've gotta be more interesting than strange dogs or strange people. That's one of the reasons why me personally, I don't let my dogs go crazy and have the greatest time in the world with other dogs. I don't let my dogs go crazy and have the greatest time in the world with other people. I know you're gonna say I'm a bad pet parent. Guess what? My dogs could care less. My dogs love me. They love my family. That's who they wanna play with. They wanna play with their few dog friends that we have. They could care less about anything else. Anything more than that is me trying to meet my own emotional needs. I've never had my dogs wake up in the morning, whisper in the ear, Hey, let's go to the dog park. That's a you issue, not a dog issue. They don't need it. Yeah, they need exercise, of course they need exercise. Go throw a ball, go find a place, a green belt to run your dog around. Anyway, I digress. Let's get back to leash pulling. Okay, the first thing you need to know, okay, cuz we're talking about walks, we're talking about walking. When you wanna teach your dog to walk on a loose leash, it's not about going for a walk. Not initially, you're teaching your dog. Or you need to be teaching your dog to follow you, to follow you, to stay in position, to follow you, to stay in position, to walk at your pace, to follow, you stay in position, walk at your pace, and pay attention to you. And one of the number one ways that happens is by constantly changing direction on the walk. All you need is 15 feet of sidewalk. Hear me out, 15 feet of sidewalk walking back and forth on a straight line, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Now here's the deal. If you want to take that first step with the puppy and the puppy's eyes are in front of your leg, don't walk forward, turn around, walk the opposite direction because your puppy's already leading. Listen folks, anytime your dog, anytime your puppy's eyes are in front of your leg, your puppy is leading the walk and they're not seeing you, how are they gonna follow you If they can't see you, how are you the leader if their eyes are in front of your legs? So again, if they start out in front of you, make a U-turn, 180 degrees. Walk the opposite direction now as your dog, cuz your dog will have to turn around if you change direction to follow you, watch the dog, turn your head around and look and as your dog turns around to follow you, mark and reward your dog. Okay? And if your dog's eyes are at your leg or behind you, then you can start walking forward again. But at the point, your dog's eyes get to the front of your leg, make a u-turn away from the dog, not into the dog, away from the dog. 180 degree u-turn, head the opposite direction. Now that puts your puppy, that puts your dog behind you. If it's behind you, it can't pull right? But now the puppy, now the dog's gonna wanna catch up to you because it's behind you. Remember when you make that turn, look back at the dog, watch where the dog is. What is the dog doing? Look at its head. And as the dog makes the turn to then try to catch up to you, mark and reward. And you're gonna do that over and over and over. Maybe you start this in the house in a hallway, okay? And then you go outside where there's no distractions, and then you start working in areas that have more distractions. But when you're outside, please start this on the sidewalk. You need 15 feet of sidewalk. You're going back and forth and back and forth. As your dog gets good at this, every time your dog's eyes get to the front of your leg, make a u-turn 180 degrees away from your dog and mark and reward When you, when this starts to get good, when you start moving, say heal mark and reward. When you make a turn, say heal, and your dog follows mark and reward, then start making pace changes. Once your dog's walking, well start getting your dog jogging with you. The rules remain the same about turning the dog's eyes. Get in front of your leg, turn around opposite direction, then walk at a old person's shuffle step. Little tiny little steps, very, very slow. Again, the rules remain the same. Dog's eyes get in front of you, make a u-turn away from the dog. As the dog turns the catch up mark and reward. Okay, you, um, you're gonna spend maybe five minutes doing this a day, and don't worry about how far you go. A matter of fact, even if your dog, even if your puppy is doing perfect, don't go more than six or eight steps without making a u-turn. Make lots of u-turns. First of all, making lots of u-turns in quick succession. Your dog doesn't have a lot of term, a lot of time, excuse me, to get distracted. Dog's looking at something. Oh, where's mom going? Looking at something else. Oh, where's dad going? Oh, I'm smelling something. Oh, where are we turning now? So you keep redirecting their focus back to you when you're making those turns. But make sure you're rewarding them for paying attention. Make sure you're rewarding them for following you. Make sure you reward them for turning. Now, as you make a lot of turns, a lot of dogs, they're gonna start checking in. They're gonna start looking, where are we going? Huh? Where are we going now? Oh, we turning again, huh? Oh, where are we going when you see that? If you see that, and you will, you'll see it mark and reward that behavior because now they're really paying attention. So you do that. Now you've got a dog that can walk in position, walk at your pace instead of you changing your pace for the dog. How about we teach the dog to walk at our pace and pay attention, position pace, pay attention, and your dog learning to follow and not lead. Give that a shot. Try that. Everybody give that a shot. This is January's national train your dog month. Get your dog's walking. Well do that. Now, I I talked about mark and reward. Mark and reward. If you're not training with markers, you need to be, if you don't understand what markers are, then go to the Pet Talk Today podcast again, do a Google search for the audio Pet Talk today podcast and look for, let's see, episode 80. Episode 80 is all about training with markers. And it's critical that you train with markers. I can't get into all the details, that's why we have a specific show on those things. But episode 80, you can learn how to train with markers. Great question. Let's look back and see what else that, uh, that we have. Yeah, Ann's talking about her dog barking and it's anxiety. Definitely it's anxiety and that's why we do the counter conditioning, um, that we were talking about to desensitize that. Okay, let's see here. Allison, you live in Maine, you got two horses, hens, and two dogs. Fantastic. All right, we got Gloria in Phoenix. She's got a rescue dog about 11 years old. Um, she's had her for about that long and also she's got a standard poodle who's three years old. Well, hey, thanks for watching. Appreciate that. Um, Cindy, Cindy's got a question. Cindy says, how do you get your dog to stop eating cat poop? Oh, that's a good one. She walks up to the cat litter box and decides to dig and eat it right there, or takes it to the carpet and eats it there. It's gross. Yeah, it is. I have a min pin and she's three years old now. However, she, let me open this up so I can re however, she's always done this. Just curious how to stop that. Well, let me say this. Um, cats, when they poop, there's a lot of undigested protein in the feces. Cat food has usually much higher protein than dog food does. So cat poop is an incredible food source, incredible food source for dogs and dogs love stuff that's stinking, that's why I like to get in the trash, the stinkier the stuff is the more they want it, it seems right. All right, so let's talk about a couple things first and foremost, again, folks, you gotta understand this. If you are having problems with your dogs and they've got manners issues in the house, and this is a manners issues, this is a nuisance behavior. This is not a behavior rooted in anxiety, okay? Now what we need to be doing is watching the dog. And if we can't watch the dog, and I don't care what the problem is, if it's eating cat poop, stealing your remote control, uh, chewing on your glasses, getting up on the counter, stealing food, peeing in the house, doesn't matter. The number one rule when we've got house manners issues, you need to supervise your dog. Your dog needs to be in your eyesight, and you need to have a leash on your dog at all times. When you can't have your dog in your eyesight, when you can't have your dog with you unleash at all times, you need to be crating your dog. No, I don't want your dog being in a crate. Well, not that it's a bad thing, but we can't have the dogs continue to engage in the behaviors we don't want and us not being there to redirect that behavior. It'll never get better. I'm telling you folks, number one rule, keep'em in your eyesight so you can work with the problem or create them. And if you don't want them in the crate, then start working with the problem. So we already talked about cat poop is an incredible source of food for all dogs. They're not gonna wanna give it up. So you either take that litter box and you put it in a place where your MinPin can't get to it. Now, as soon, I think you said MinPin min pin's not gonna jump that high. Not at the age. Yours is. Cats usually can plop up pretty high, so maybe you can put that up higher so that your MinPin can't get to it. Okay? The other thing you can begin to do is have your MinPin on a leash and you could present the litter box. And every time your MinPin wants to go towards a litter box to go ahead and try to get a secondary source of food, I'll say that to be nice about it. Call your MinPin back to you and reward with high value food rewards over and over and over and over. Don't let, don't let your MinPin get all the way to the box. As your MinPin starts showing interest in looking at the litter box, I want you to call your dog to you and reward your dog if you get your dog marker conditioned. Remember episode 80, marker conditioning. You need this. You'll click and treat and you'll click and treat. You'll click and treat condition the marker. Or you'll use a word like nice and treat nice and treat or yes and treat and yes and treat. Now you've got markers. If you don't know what that means, episode 80, pet talk today, audio podcast, check it out. You need to know how to use markers. But what you can do is begin to teach your dog engagement disengagement. And when your dog starts looking at anything, once you've got a marker condition, you can mark your dog. Your dog's gonna then look back to you for a food reward, right? Your dog's gonna look at something, you click or you give the mark, your dog looks back to you for food. You can do this every time. Your dog's looking at the litter box click the dog looks back at you so your dog learns to disengage rather than go there, look at you and get a food reward. The other thing, I'll bet you anything, your dog is bored. I could be wrong, but most dogs are bored. We need to be providing mental stimulation for our dogs. We need to make sure they get enough physical exercise if they're able to, if, if they're not too old. But, you know, get some nose work games, puzzles, things for your dog. Um, learn, learn what scatter feeding is. Hey, all of you do a search for scatter feeding with dogs. You know, your dogs are, they're supposed to be hunting and foraging and looking for food and they don't do that. We can simulate that. They love it. It's great for their nose, it's great for their brain. Anyway, hopefully that helps. Um, let's see. Terry, good morning from Indiana. Hey Terry. I'm in Arizona and the Phoenix Suns are playing the Indiana Pacers tonight. Are you a basketball fan? Um, let's see. Good morning from Indiana. I have a seven month old extra large bully that will not stop standing up to me. He weighs about 60 pounds and it's, and he just about knocks me over. Now Terry, I don't know if you're talking, when you say standing up to you, I don't know if you mean he's standing up on you or trying to get up on you. So maybe you can clarify that for me a little bit more. Um, let's see. Okay, let's see. I'm gonna wait to see if you gimme more information. If you don't, I'll go back to that question. Okay, Ella, did I get that right? Ella says, how do you introduce a visiting dog to your dog? Hmm, good question. First of all, does your dog like other dogs as your dog, ever had issues with other dogs? If your dog doesn't like other dogs, don't introduce them. If your dog has had issues with other dogs, don't introduce them. You've gotta do the work of counter conditioning and desensitization. Episode 81, okay? I'm not gonna go through all those details. However, let's say that you've got a relatively stable dog and the other dog is stable. Oh, and that's the other thing, not just your dog. What's the emotional demeanor of the other dog when it sees strange dogs? But what I like to do, both dogs are unleash, okay? I bring'em to a neutral territory. There's two handlers, one handler for each dog. Both handlers have treat pouches with very high value food rewards. Or you've got a squeeze bottle and you've made a really wonderful high value food paste where you've pureed chicken and you're squeezing out a paste. When you've got them in a neutral territory, you want to have them at a distance from one another, turn them away from each other, turn them towards each other, feed, turn them away, then bring them a little closer, turn them towards each other. Feed them, turn them away and a little closer, feed them and turn them away. Now, at any time you're moving in closer. The dog is like losing it because it is freaking out about the other dog. Whether it's so excited to want to get to that dog and play or whether it's aggressive, doesn't matter. That other dog might freak out because your dog's energy is too high. I am not gonna let two dogs for the first time that their energy is way jacked up. Connect isn't gonna happen. I will keep them together at a distance until they can be calm and little by little I'll get them closer and closer and closer. And I'm not in a hurry. Don't be in a hurry. That's why things don't work. Everybody's in a hurry. Things don't happen quickly. If they do be grateful. But little by little you get them closer and closer and you've gotta read the dog's body language. And then when it, both of'em emotionally are just fine and relaxed and they're taking food and they're close to one another, you let them connect for a second and pull'em apart. You let'em connect for a second, you pull'em apart, you let'em connect for a second, you pull'em apart, you let'em connect for a couple seconds, you pull'em apart. Watch their body language. If they get too excited or they start showing stress signals, okay, then you need to back up and have more space. Don't be in such a hurry for dogs to meet each other, okay? And read your dog. Who wants to see the other dog? Your dog. Or you want the dogs to see each other? A lot of dogs aren't social, A lot of dogs aren't social. Why are you making them be social? I know it would be nice if you had a normal dog, but you don't all have normal dogs. I've had plenty that were abnormal. They didn't like other dogs. Um, so finale, try that. See if that is something that you know can help. And, and folks, when I'm giving you advice and you try it, please come back to the show and let us know how it's going. Okay? Judy is in Pennsylvania and she's got three great py. Yeah, golden retriever and two German shepherds. She's currently working with a behaviorist from great behaviorist, from great pys about my one-year-old resource guarding. All my pack have different personalities and traits. My py are all rescues to, of which I fostered first then adopted. Barking. Barking is a appears given. So I deal with that with whistle training has worked great. The only issue I seem to be having again, is resource guarding. And I am working hard on this. He just turned one year old in January the fifth. He goes to daycare and loves people and other dogs, but does not want anyone in his space. Yeah, it's a space issue. Aggression is always a space issue, you know, and your dog is viewing a threat when there's not a real threat. The one thing you don't wanna do, and you probably have figured this out, don't try to take it away from your dog. You're probably gonna get bit okay? And a lot of people make this worse. Their dogs steal things and then they yell at their dog. They call their dog back to'em and they take it away from the dog. So the dog learns it should guard resources cuz you keep taking stuff away. So if you're gonna take away something from your dog, make sure you give them something better, reward them. You're not rewarding them for stealing the item. You're rewarding them for giving it back to you. Okay? Now I've got a lot of podcasts that I did on resource guarding. I'm glad I wrote these down today because resource guarding is very challenging. The only thing I think more challenging than resource guarding might be intro dog aggression, where you got multiple dogs in the same house that are fighting. But when we're talking, um, about resource guarding, okay, episode 52, episode 53, and episode 54, I've got three podcasts devoted to resource guarding. Go do a Google search, pet Talk Today podcast. Again, it's gonna be episodes 52 episodes, 53 episodes, 54 on resource guarding. Um, you know, resource guarding is again all about counter conditioning and desensitization. And it's about desensitizing a lot of different variables because we've got a location, um, the space, we've got the item, all right, we've got perhaps the individual or dog. And then we've got the distance where the dog starts getting upset and then, you know, we're working on trying to get closer. Well, there's a couple things that people do. They might bend over. So standing up versus bending over is different for the dog. Okay? Reaching your hand towards the dog versus not reaching your hand for the dog is different for the dog. So there's all these little pieces that we've gotta get the dog comfortable with your approach bending over, bringing your hand towards the dog. Okay? But again, when we're doing this, we're keeping our distance from the dog. We're keeping our distance from the dog and we're making sure that we don't have the dog in an emotional state that's just exacerbating the problem and we're pairing our exposure to something very high value. It's tricky and there's so many steps involved. That's why I've got three podcasts. What did I say that we're 52, 53, and 54. Okay, those are the episodes. The other thing that I like to do is teach a dog. Drop it. Teach the dog to come when called, teach the dog to go to its place and stay or to lay down and stay. See, so many of you just wanna grab it from the dog when it's so easy to just teach a dog, drop it and then call the dog to you. See, you don't need to go right up to the dog. The closer you are to the dog asking your dog to drop it, the less likely they're gonna drop it. The further away you are from the dog and ask'em to drop it, the more likely they're gonna drop it and then call them to you. Reward them, mark and reward, right? And then give them some alternative behavior to do that would be incompatible with guarding that resource. Your dogs can't be on a downst stay. Your dogs can't be staying on their mat, their bed, their place, their spot and be going for that resource at the same time. They'd have to give up one behavior for the other. So a lot of times folks, we need to say, okay, what would we like the dog to do? Not just focus on what we don't want it to do. Okay, now some of you say, my dog won't drop anything. Sure they do. They drop things all day long on their own. They pick up a toy, they drop it, they pick up this, they drop it, they pick up that they drop it. You can begin to capture these behaviors. You can begin to capture your dog dropping things on its own. You can begin to label that behavior. You can begin to mark and reward that behavior and now you're starting to make associations and condition. And then eventually you can ask your dog to drop it. So here's how you do it. Maybe your dog likes to pick up a ball. Okay, roll the ball. Dog picks it up. Wait for the dog to let go of it. As soon as the dog, lets go of it, say drop mark and reward. Do it again. Dog picks up the object. Wait for the dog to drop it, say drop mark and reward. You can do it over and over and over. Obviously you're gonna be using much lower value items. You know, you're not gonna go for the biggest, highest value resource there is. Okay? You're also gonna be teaching your dog a cu command. Do that over and over and over. Make sure you're rewarding your dog. Make sure you're training with markers so that you can have the most success possible. And then, then you gotta teach your dog to stay. See, we do a lot of work with dogs with resource guarding and we do all the counter conditioning and desensitization to get those dogs comfortable with people and other dogs coming up to them when they do have those resources so that they're not aggressive and they don't bite. We do a lot of work on that. But you know what my instructions are when we're done. Don't ever go up to your dog and try to take something away. Do it the other way. Ask'em to drop it. Call them to you. Put'em on command where they've gotta stay. Go grab the object. Okay? Now, if your dog is stealing things that it shouldn't have, shame on you for not supervising or confining. Remember number one rule when we got house manners, dogs in your eyesight at all times, there's a leash on it. It's with you. When that can't happen, you have created the dog so that your dog cannot continue to rehearse unwanted behaviors. The only time your dog should be exposed to triggers is when you're doing the work of behavior modification of counter conditioning and desensitization. You know what's gonna happen? You're setting your dog up for failure. Why do people keep thinking their dogs are gonna grow out of it? Most don't. That's a myth. That's a huge myth. Most dogs do not grow out of it. You gotta work through it. Good question. Let me see, uh, let me see what else we have here. Um, and you know, with the great pys that's, uh, part of their breed too. They're possessive breed, um, pie. I love that name. Welcome pie. Thank you for thank you for watching pit talk today. Um, pie says, my cat hula is very bossy and tells me what he wants by barking and won't stop unless I give him what he's asking for. Food toy, um, outside. What can I do? Well, let's take a look at this. Your cat hah is bossy and your cat hula is doing what we call demand barking. It wants your attention, it wants you to pet it, it wants you to take it outside, wants you to feed it, wants you to give it a treat, wants it. You give it a toy and you have been the loving good pet owner and you have complied. Your dog has you trained very, very well, very well. Here's the thing. We talked about the way behaviors are reinforced. Your dog engages in the behavior you don't want. And yet your dog gets something it does want right after that behavior that's gonna strengthen the behavior you can't give into your dog. What you need to do is you need to stand up, turn your back to the dog and walk away. Okay? Now let me tell you what's gonna happen when you ignore a dog that demand barks. Let me tell you what's gonna happen. When you deal with a dog that's bossy and likes to pester you and you ignore it, it's gonna get worse before it's going to get better. Before a behavior extinguishes completely ends, there's gonna be an extinction burst. And what that means is there's a burst of behavior. The behavior happens faster, quicker, more intense before it ends, okay? It's all about expectations. It's all about conditioning. You see, your dog has an expectation that when it does the demand barking that you're gonna give in and give it what it wants. And so when you don't give in, it's gonna cause some frustration. Your dog's gonna try harder and faster to be able to get you to do it, okay? Gotta be strong. I'll tell you some other things you can do, but you gotta be strong. Part of it's letting you know, Hey, this is what's gonna happen. Let me give you an example of what an extinction burst is. If, if some of you aren't getting it. Um, we've all had a situation where you put money in a vending machine maybe to get a, a candy bar or a, a soft drink and nine times outta 10 you push the button and whatever you want drops in, you get your candy bar or you get your soft drink works just fine. Then one day you or somebody else puts a dollar in that vending machine, you press the button and nothing happens. Nothing drops. And what do they do? They just turn around and walk away calmly, right? No, there's a burst of behavior. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They start banging on that button harder and faster. That's an extinction burst, okay? But people can use logic and reason and critical thinking after that. Silly mistake, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and say, oh I guess it's not gonna work. Dogs aren't gonna do that. They're gonna need to experience the conditioning over and over and over. Okay? Now a lot of people get frustrated with extinction. They say, you know what? I've been ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. It's just not going away. Well, sometimes that can be problematic. So then we talk about, okay, how can we also change this behavior if ignoring is not working? Well, there's a thing called negative punishment. Negative punishment means remember, negative is removal. We're removing something that the dog likes. Well, your dog likes to be out with you, be doing things with you. If ignoring doesn't work and you are seeing your dog not stop the behavior when your dog does the behavior, you can take your dog to the crate and give it a two minute timeout. But you gotta do it every time. You gotta be very consistent. Your timing's gotta be good. The dog's gotta understand that the consequence of demand barking and being bossy means it is going to lose its freedom for a couple minutes. Put the crate in another room. I know you probably have a dog that's gonna go ballistic in the crate. That's another issue. The other thing I'm telling you, how much obedience training are you doing? What are you doing to stimulate this dog mentally? What are you doing to stimulate this dog physically? How much exercise does the dog get? Okay, everybody go look up. Um, the relaxation protocol. The relaxation protocol by Dr. Karen overall. O V E R A L. I think it's just one L Dr. Karen overall relaxation protocol. It's a 15 day protocol and you're doing a lot of obedience exercises. I recommend all my clients do that. It is great for the dogs, it's great for you. And you know what a lot of people tell me once they start doing it, a lot of behavior problems start to go away cuz the dog's not bored. Anyway, try some of that stuff. Thank you Pi for that question. I appreciate that. I'm Will Bandura, you're watching PED Talk today here on Facebook Live. I'm here each and every Saturday morning answering your questions about your dog's training and behavior issues. Do me a favor, hit that like button. Come on, you can do it. Hit that like button, hit that share button. That way more people can benefit from the show. Um, let me go back in and take a look at more questions that we might have here. Um, thanks for addressing dog intros. Okay, yeah, no, not a problem. Uh, da da da. Let's see, what do we have here? Well, Anasa says, this is a great show. Thank you. Hey, I appreciate that feedback. Really do appreciate you guys. Hey, you know what everybody could do to help me. I need a favor. Can you guys do me a favor? It's really hard to get reviews on Apple Podcast. And based on the number of reviews you have on Apple Podcast is how Apple ranks the podcast. So if you don't have any reviews, you rank really low. And if your Apple Podcast has lots of reviews, you rank higher. If you like what I do, if you like what I do, if you find benefit from it, could you do me a favor? I'm serious. Could you go to Apple Podcast and look up pet Talk today, my podcast? And would you be willing to give me a review on Apple Podcast? I really would appreciate it. It will help out immensely. That's one way you could give back to me. I would really appreciate that. Thank you. All right, getting back to questions. Let's see here. I'm gonna scroll down to the bottom. Can you give that relaxation you were just telling us about? Can you give that, um, finale? It's the relaxation protocol by Dr. Karen overall, O V E R A L, Dr. Karen. Overall the relaxation protocol. You can find it online with usually, um, a PDF downloaded. It's a 15 day protocol. Every day you've got exercises that you need to do. It's fantastic. Do that, do that, do that. All right, let's see what else we've got going on here. As far as questions go. Uh, Janice, Janice, you always have great questions. My son's fiance has a coonhound mix. He had a very, he had a very experience in, I'm guessing a very bad experience in the past that he doesn't like other dogs. He attacks them. He's friendly around people, but not other people's dogs. Yeah, there's a lot of dogs that are like that. And again, it's about doing counter conditioning and desensitization. Episode 81, pet Talk today podcast, the audio version, episode 81. Um, it's about exposing those strange dogs to his dog, but at a far enough distance to begin with that his dog is okay. His dog can't have a care in the world. If his dog is nervous about the other dog and you're trying to do the work, it's not gonna happen. First of all, when they get stressed out, the thinking part of the brain where the executive functioning is where they make decisions, where they learn, that kind of shuts down. It gets all messed up because the dogs in fight or flight and they're working off an instinct. They're back in the, the older part of the brain, the Amy Neglia, and they're not accessing the thinking part of the brain. So if you're trying to teach and the dogs in that emotional state, their ability to think and learn and remember just isn't there. So you're wasting your time. You've gotta do this when they're calm and you expose them at a distance where they know the trigger's there, they know that dog's there, but they really don't care. And then you pair the presentation of the dog with the presentation of food and then the dog goes away and the food goes away. And you do that over and over. You need to do counter conditioning and desensitization exercises at least three to five times a week. Now when you're doing these, there are about a five minute session back and forth, over and over conditioning this little by little you can get closer and closer and closer as you begin to get closer. If you notice your dog's starting to get stressed out, you've gone too close too soon. Okay, too close too soon. Get a book on canine body language folks, you need to be able to read your dog's stress signals. There's a lot of very subtle stress signals that dogs give that you have no clue about, that are telling you that they're stressed out. And you need to know that because they can't tell you. And you need to know what their internal emotional state is because if they're over threshold with anxiety, you're gonna make things worse. And it's not just about throwing your dogs in the pool, so to speak, okay? It's about exposing them little by little gradually, systematically. Okay? Now, um, you can use puppet dogs. Yep. Get some realistic looking stuffed animal dogs that are stuffed animal dogs. They got some really good realistic ones, a bunch of them different breeds on Amazon. And hey, when you're starting at a distance, your dog has no clue that that's not a real dog. And then you've, you've got the ability to manage this and, and, and work with it and different dogs cuz you got puppet dogs. Okay? As that gets better, then you start exposing your dog to live dogs. But you go back to a further distance. And when there are live dogs, you bring'em closer and closer and closer. You go back through the process you did with the puppet dogs. If we're talking about a dog that has aggression towards people, one of the biggest challenges my clients have is getting helpers. Who wants to be bait, right? Who wants to be bait for the aggressive dog mannequins? Yeah. We use mannequins all the time. At a distance. The dog sees the mannequin at a distance, the dog knows it's there, doesn't really care. If it was closer, the dog would be going ballistic. But at that distance, the dog really doesn't care. It sees that mannequin, it thinks it's a real person. As soon as it sees it, we feed, feed, feed, feed constantly and continuously one to three seconds. Then we move the dog away. And when the dog can't see the mannequin, or in this case, all right, the substitute person, because it has fear, aggression towards people, the feeding stops. We gotta do these sessions three to five times a week. Sessions are about five minutes each. You've gotta do about 72 counter conditioning and desensitization exercises in about 90 days to really have success. Takes work. Takes work. Now, there's a lot of people, they're punishing their dogs for aggression. Don't do that. Does punishment work? Yep. Temporarily, it can look like your dog no longer is aggressive because the dog was punished. Fear, pain, intimidation, suppresses behavior does nothing to change the internal emotional state of the dog. So when you use punishment, it's a temporary quick fix. It'll give you a false sense of security that the dog's not aggressive. But because we didn't deal with the anxiety and the fear that's underneath the behavior of aggression, we've put a lid on top of a so-called pot of boiling water. The punishment is that lid. The boiling water is the fear in the anxiety, and the pressure just builds and builds and the builds and builds. And eventually the dog snaps. I see it all the time. People send their dogs away to board and train aggressive dogs to a board train. You know, the, the trainers are promising'em big things. Send your dog to us for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, we're gonna send your dog back. Perfect. And for the first two to three months, many of those dogs seem like the aggression's gone. And then it comes back and it comes back bigger and batter because I get those calls all the time. All right, let's take a look and see if we've got more questions in the queue. Again, do me a favor, everybody hit that like button, hit that share button so more people can benefit from the show. I'm Will Bangura. You're watching Pet Talk today here on Facebook Live. I'm here each and every Saturday morning. If you're just joining us, do me a favor. If you've got a question about your dog's training or behavior, go ahead and type your question in the comments section and also let us know where you're watching from and what kind of pets that you have. We appreciate that. We appreciate all of your support. You know, we've got some great fans that keep watching week after week. We love you. Absolutely. Um, let's see. You love the mannequin idea, Sue? Absolutely. Oh, you're a foster mom. Yes. That's very And and the puppet dogs. You know, if you're fostering dogs that have, uh, issues with other dogs, those work really well also. Um, oh, I lost the question I was looking for. All right, uh, pie, did you have another question? Yeah. You've got a street rescue male terrier, and he escapes the yard constantly to run the neighborhood. Even though he's exercised regularly. Well, is the male neutered number one? Maybe he's smelling females in heat and he's trying to get to them. Number one, um, bottom line, you can't have your dog outside out, back or wherever or without being there with your dog. If, if you're putting your dog out back and the dog is escaping, um, that's a problem Your dog could get run over by a car. Where is the dog escaping from? How is it escaping? Is it going over a wall, a fence? Is it digging underneath something? Cuz a lot of times it's management folks, sometimes it's just easier to block off the problem. But again, your dog's probably bored. If things are fun and interesting at home, I don't wanna be going all over the neighborhood. But you know what? If things at home are really boring, yeah, maybe I'm gonna do that. Enrichment. Get your start training your dog, obedience training. Teach your dog to sit to lay down to come win. Called to go to its bed, or its place, or its spot. I g Teach your dog to look at. You say your dog's name, your dog looks at you, mark and reward. Start teaching your dog that when you say its name, it need to focus and pay attention. Anything that you can do to stimulate your dog is going to help. But you need to be outside. You need to be around your dog so that you can interrupt your dog. When your dog's trying to escape, start calling your dog to you and reward it with high value food wards. Make being with you. Make being in the yard. Make being at home more interesting than wanting to run away. All right, let's see what we've got here. Uh, my dog had no issues with other dogs before Covid Ella, I don't know that Covid caused that. I hear that all the time, but I gotta tell you, a lot of times it is a dog getting to a specific developmental stage. Now granite, they're, they'll do better if they have good socialization, but I can't tell you how many puppies, how many dogs that I know had zero, zero socialization, zero exposure to anything, and they're doing just fine. Lot of dogs in Covid got exposure to nothing. They're doing just fine. Never discount genetics. Now, I'm not saying, you know, exposure doesn't help, certainly does. But um, it's a little too easy sometimes to just blame everything on, on Covid. Um, there's a lot of things that we can be doing. Um, Wanda says, any advice on timing to get a puppy neutered? My Ossie is a rescue. They're confirming that she should be six months. However, I have been reading that it's best to wait longer. Well, Wanda, I am not a veterinarian and I can't give out medical advice. I can tell you what my preference is. I can tell you that some of the research and the literature out there, um, shows that you should wait until all of the bone growth is done, which is at about a year, year and a half. Okay? Um, especially with large breeds, folks, stop. Well, the literature says we shouldn't be neutering them large breeds too early because the bone plates are not growing together. And large dogs that you nute early, they can start having orthopedic issues, is what I've been told what I've read. Um, but you're gonna have to do your own research, talk to your veterinarian, unfortunately. Um, and I got a lot of respect for veterinarians. They've gotta know a lot of information on a lot of different species, but they can't keep up with all the latest research and, um, so they might be giving out, uh, old information. Ah, let's see here. Let's see. Yvonne, I love your show. Thank you, Yvonne. I love those comments when I see that. Hey, again, do me a favor guys. If you would do me a big favor, go to Apple Podcast. Give me a review on Pet Talk today, on my podcast, on Apple Podcast. Um, and like this particular show, share this particular show to your page so that more people can benefit from it. I wanna thank everybody for submitting all of your questions. It has been an incredible, incredible show. Um, and oh, there it is. It came in a little bit late, but yeah, it's time, it's time for me to go. It's been another great Saturday. Thank you so much for giving me your questions. I hope this has been beneficial. I hope that this helps. Um, do me a favor, tell your friends about it, train your dog, and have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful weekend. We're outta here. I'll see you next Saturday.