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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 canine DNA in his blood. Having trained more than 24,000 vets helping you and your fur babies thrive. Live in studio. It's Pet Talk today with Will Bangura answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert, will Manura.
Speaker 2:Good Saturday morning, pet lovers. I'm Will Bandura. Hey, thanks for joining me. It's March 11th, it's another Saturday. We're here on Facebook Live. I'm here to help you deal with all of your dog training and behavior issues. If you're brand new to PET Talk today, let me talk a little bit about how this works. All you've got to do is type in the comments section, whatever question you have. Maybe you've got a problem that's, you know, serious, maybe you've got a dog with anxiety, fears, phobias, aggression, type the question in the comments section. Maybe you've got more of a nuisance behavior problem, jumping, barking, stealing things off the table, getting on the furniture. Maybe it's puppy issues like potty training. Again, doesn't matter what kind of problem it is, doesn't matter what kind of dog you have, doesn't matter the breed, doesn't matter the age. I'm here to help you deal with all of those behavior issues. Well, good morning, everybody. If hey, all my regulars. So glad that you're here. Thank you for being here. Hey, Debra, good morning. How are you? Um, also do me a favor. Let us know even if you don't have a question, but if you do or you don't have a question, go ahead and in the comments section, let us know where you're watching from and what kind of dog, what kind of cat, what kind of pets do you have? And again, if you've got a question, you can go ahead and type that in the comments section. Um, I'm gonna be talking about a few things today. We'll be looking at questions in a second. So go ahead and get your questions in the comments section. Um, and also do me a favor, show some love, hit that like button. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, Hey folks, if you like what we're doing, please give us a five star review on the audio podcast, apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to the, uh, audio podcast. Hey, is it Mickey or Mikey? Good morning from Tucson. Glad that you're here with us today. Glad that you're here. Um, I want to talk about a couple issues today. And one of the things that I want to talk about, um, is gonna be about dog to dog introductions. You know, a lot of times people are introducing their dogs to another dog, whether it be a family member's dog, a friend's dog. Maybe you've adopted a new puppy, maybe you've adopted another dog and you're trying to integrate another dog into the home. And it can be disastrous. It can be disastrous if you don't know what you're doing. And you know, most people, they just take the two dogs, they throw'em in the backyard and and say, Hey, you guys work it out. Well, sometimes that works out, but sometimes that doesn't work out at all. It can be really, really bad. So I'm gonna be talking about how to do safe appropriate introductions, especially if you've got dogs that have issues. How would you handle that? So we're gonna be talking about that a little bit later on. Um, also today I'm gonna be talking about car ride phobias. Do you have a dog that's afraid to ride in the car? There's a lot of dogs that are absolutely panicking about car rides. They get in there, they're panting, they're pacing, they're whining, they're drooling, they're trembling, trembling horribly. Their tail is tucked and whining. They're having a horrible, horrible panic attack. So we're gonna talk about what can you do to help a dog that has a fear of car rides, to get them over that fear and to help them be comfortable riding in the car. So I'm gonna be talking about that as well. Um, hey, Debra, you need absolutely need help with everything. You've got your hands full. Well, you know, Deborah, type your question in the comments section. If you've got a specific question, I will be happy to go ahead and, uh, address those. Let's see what we have here. Oh, I know what I wanted to do. Hey, Lynn. Well thanks Lynn. You've got a Siamese cat, a links. Very nice. All right, Sheridan in Wyoming. We've got Gail watching and Sheridan. And let's see what else we've got here. I wanna talk about. I, you know, there was somebody that left a comment 24 hours ago on the thread from last week's show, and it was from Carol. And Carol. I don't know if you're watching right now, but I, I mentioned to you that I would go ahead and address this on the show today. Um, Deborah, yeah, you've got, you've got three that are afraid of car rides. Well, Deborah, you're gonna wanna hear what I have to say in a little bit. And if anybody else has a dog or knows somebody with a dog that has a fear of car rides, make sure that you share, make sure that you share this with them. Um, yeah, you've got eight. It is hard to train eight Deborah, my goodness gracious. Um, but yeah, I'm gonna be talking about car ride phobias, how that you, how you get that, uh, worked out with a dog. Um, but anyway, Carol had left a message from me and Carol said about an hour before feeding time, her dogs go absolutely crazy, absolutely crazy barking, running around. And no matter what she's done, she's not been able to get this to stop. And she's just pulling the hair out of her head going crazy. What can she do? What can she do? Well, first of all, the thing to understand is that food is a very motivating factor. And if you've got a dog that likes their food, if you've got a dog that um, is um, very food driven and they're hungry, they can get excited, right? And when they get excited, they can start vocalizing. But in your situation, one of the things that you're talking about is that, hey, an hour, a whole hour before feeding time, they start getting crazy. So it's not like this is happening right when you're setting up the food. However, Carol, that's probably where it started a while back, you probably had dogs that were rambunctious and barking and excitable when you were getting the food ready and prepared. So let's talk about prevention. The first step would be to, when you're preparing food for your dogs, that's a great opportunity to work on some self-control exercises. I love to use that place, cut that place command, send them to their bed or their place. So they've gotta stay there and they've gotta be calm and quiet while I'm preparing the food. If they start getting rambunctious, I stop preparing the food. I walk away, they stay on that cot. When they get calm and quiet again. Now I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna start preparing the food again. So it starts from day one. It starts day one with prevention. It starts day one with not continuing to allow excitable behavior when food is being prepared, uh, to take place because that, that doesn't get better. It just keeps getting worse over time. And the next thing that we need to take a look at is what kind of cues, what kind of things are you doing before you feed? Because dogs are masters at figuring out patterns. They are masters at taking things that are very black and white, very cause and effect black and white associations that are paired close together and figuring out patterns. And you know, for example, um, maybe your dogs know when you're getting ready to leave the house because maybe you grab your car keys, maybe you grab a wallet or a purse, maybe, um, uh, you grab a coat or a jacket, maybe you put on a certain pair of shoes. Those are what we call pre-departure cues. Things that cue the dog that you're getting ready to leave before you actually leave. Well, there's all kinds of cues that are pre cues. There are lots of pre cues to the dogs eating, what happens before they eat? What happens when you're preparing everything? What happens right before you prepare it? Are you sut carroll? Are you a creature of habit? I mean, most, most humans are. We're we're, we're habitual, we're creatures of habit and we create patterns. And what can happen is your dog sees those patterns each and every day and they know that A plus B plus C plus D plus E plus F going all the way to Z, we get fed. So there's all these little steps that go by all these little things that we're doing throughout the day. And if what we do every day pretty much is the same, they're gonna figure out when it's time to eat and they're gonna know that well in advance. The other thing, believe it or not, um, dogs can kind of tell time. And they know if you're feeding every day at the same time. Well, the sunlight is different at 10 in the morning than it is at five at night. And they know that and they can perceive that they pick up on that. And that's a pattern as well. What is the level of sunlight typically when they're eating well, as the sunlight starts to change, that becomes a cue. Hey, we're gonna be getting fed here soon. And again, if you let them get real excited in the past, well they're just gonna get more and more and more excited and they're gonna start getting excited sooner and sooner and sooner. So we've got the cues that we could present to them in our actions that we do every day. But then in addition to that, the one of the ways that they can tell time besides, you know, different environmental cues like sunlight changing, we talked about that, but scent load, I don't know if any of you know about scent load, but you know, the dogs have this incredible sense of smell. And I mean, literally they could smell one drop of blood in 55 gallons of water. You could have a, a big 55 gallon barrel of water, put one drop of blood in there and you could have three other 55 gallon drums full of water that had no blood. And if the dog was trained to alert on the scent of blood, that dog's gonna go to the feral, the 55 gallons of water that has that one drop of blood. And he is gonna tell you, Hey, this is the one that's got the blood. So their sense of smell is incredible and scent dissipates all throughout the day. So for example, you know, some dogs can tell when, uh, when their owners are gonna get home, I'll, I'll have, you know, a husband or a wife tell me, you know what, the dog starts to get excited 20 minutes before Carol gets home. Um, or John gets home. I don't understand. They can tell time. Well, here's the thing, yes, there are these other environmental cues that I talked about. Sunlight is one of'em. The smell of the environment changes throughout the day. Your scent load, you know when you are home with your dog in the morning before you go to work, your scent is there, then you leave, your scent didn't go away for the dog. That scent stays there and that scent does not go away because you're not gone long enough. You'd have to be gone for a month or so before your scent would completely dissipate. But as you're gone minute by minute, hour by hour, the scent load, the load, how much of your scent is there begins to dissipate. And if you come home around the same time every day, your scent load is at a certain point when you come home. And that is different. That scent load is different than when you are home or when you first left. That's different than the first hour you were gone. It's different than the second hour you were gone. So as that scent load dissipates and gets to the scent load that they begin to associate with, Hey, this, when it gets to this scent load, that's when mom or dad comes home. And that doesn't change day by day. So there are so many environmental cues that dogs can use to figure out what time it is or we're gonna be eating. And yeah, they can get excited well in advance because they're anticipating, they know what's going to happen next. So Carol, what can you do about it? Well, the first thing you can begin to do is have lots of what I call pseudo meal preparation. You get the food ready, you get the dogs on place, you're making'em be calm and quiet. And if they're loud, you're not gonna continue to do the food. Now you're gonna have to wait'em out. You know, there's a thing called extinction. There's a thing called extinction burst before a behavior extinguishes, if we're ignoring it, it's gonna get worse before it gets better because the dog's gonna be frustrated. They have learned that they're vocalizing, their pestering is getting them what they want. They've got you trained and now all of a sudden you've decided, hey, I'm gonna go ahead and ignore this behavior. Well, they're not gonna just go, oh, my pet parent's gonna ignore the behavior and let me walk away. No, they're gonna try harder, more intense, more frequently to try to get what they want. And eventually they'll give up. Eventually they'll give up when you're not responding to them. But you've gotta stop responding. Okay? Now what you also wanna do is teach appropriate behaviors that they can do, that they can get rewarded for. Because behaviors they're rewarded for and that we're consistent with, they're gonna want to go ahead and do those more often. So one of the things that you wanna do is, I mentioned earlier about teaching your dog to go to its bed, teaching the dog to go to its place and teaching it to be there calmly. Now you're gonna wanna start teaching that not during the time that they're crazy, not that hour that they're going nuts. You're gonna do that at other times. You're gonna spend a couple weeks doing that. You're also gonna wanna do some distraction training on place, okay? Because it's one thing for them to stay there when things are calm and quiet, the whole nother thing for them to stay there when there's a lot going on in the environment. And so, uh, we do, we wanna create distractions. We start off with low distractions, little by little. We're gonna increase those distractions until we've got a dog that is hanging out there. Now the beautiful thing about distraction work is that not only does it help you proof like a really good reliable stay on that place cot, but one of the benefits, the side effects is that it teaches the dog to have better impulse control. And, and Carol, we're talking about an impulse control issue with your dogs barking an hour before and getting crazy an hour before you feed them. So doing distraction work on a implied stay command like place is going to help them have better impulse control and they need that. The other thing it's gonna do, it's gonna help them have a higher tolerance for frustration. Cuz if we're baiting and distracting, Hey, hey, hey, p b and the dog takes the bait, right? We're gonna go ahead and put'em back on plays, put'em back on their bed, we're not gonna reward. They took the bait, we'll bait them again. Hey, P B b, they don't take the bait, they stay there. We're gonna mark with our marker, whether that's the word yes or a clicker, and we're gonna reward, and we're gonna do that over and over. So we're gonna show the dog, Hey, this behavior, there's a payoff. The other behavior is there's not a payoff. Now, if you've been doing your due diligence with positive reinforcement, if you've been doing your due diligence with what we call differential reinforcement, that's just teaching the dog an incompatible behavior, your dog can't be running around going crazy and staying on place calmly at the same time. It'd have to give up one behavior for the other. So we wanna use positive reinforcement to teach different behaviors, alternative behaviors that would be incompatible with the thing we don't want them to do. See, you are always thinking about what you don't want your dog to do. We need to start getting in the mindset, what would I rather have my dog do? And we need to proactively begin teaching the things that we want our dogs to do that are different and incompatible behaviors with the behaviors we don't like. A classic example is a dog that jumps. We don't want them to jump. So we work on teaching a very strong, a very reliable sit command. We don't do that when the dog wants to jump, we start teaching that reliable sit command when there's no distractions, then we start adding distractions and we're setting time aside each day that we're proactively working on this. And then we begin to use that when strangers come over. But what we might first do is we might elicit some help. We might get some helpers where we can stage and set up after we've been working with the dog, teaching'em how to sit, we then are gonna set up some situations where we're gonna have people come over to give the dog an opportunity to have that trigger and perhaps want to jump where we're then going to interrupt that behavior and ask for sit. So we're gonna be training this proactively and then hopefully we're able to use it in the real world when the situation truly happens. Um, and it's not a setup, but you've gotta do your due diligence. Um, with all these things here, you've got to go ahead and do the positive reinforcement, the differential reinforcement, the ignoring of the behavior. Now, if you've done all that and you've been consistent and your timing is good and you've put time into this, what is time into it? And I don't know, have you spent a couple months? Yeah, that's right. There are no quick fixes. I g those of you that wanna use punishment, I'm not here to shame you, but I got news for you. Punishment just suppresses the behavior temporarily. And if you don't believe me, how many times have you told your dog? No? How many times have you told your dog? No. How many times have you scolded your dog for doing something? And my question to you, is your dog still doing it? Yeah, I thought so. So again, punishment oftentimes is not gonna truly work. It just suppresses the behavior in the moment. We need to teach alternative behaviors. Those need to be rewarded, those need to be reinforced. Those need to be the things that the dog says, Hey, this is where the payoff is. Of course, I'm gonna gravitate towards those behaviors. That's where the good stuff happens. But you've gotta put in the time, you've gotta put in the work. A few minutes here, a few minutes there, a few minutes here, a few minutes there all throughout the day. You don't need to carve out an hour of time every day. You can do two minutes of training here and then go about your business. Two minutes of training there. Go about your business. Three minutes of training here. Go about your business, one minute of training, go about your business, 30 seconds of training. Now go about your business. Throw in lots of different training cues and ask for lots of different things throughout the day. Because think about it, in the real world, your dog doesn't have a 20 minute warmup session of training before it has to perform appropriately. We need your dog to respond in the moment. In the real world, you don't get a warmup or a practice. So when we're going all throughout the day and just issuing a, you know, asking the dog to do a behavior, asking the dog to do this, go to your place. Sit, lay down, come to me, shake, roll over all throughout the day, little little bit here, little bit here, little bit there. They start learning that, hey, at any given time you could be asking me to do something. And that's gonna help you to get your dogs actually doing things in the real world when you needed to actually work. Um, all right, so that, that's dealing with Carol. Carol, I hope you were listening because you asked that question and I mentioned I was gonna talk about it, um, uh, with the, uh, the show today. All right, let's take a look and see what kind of questions that we have here, um, before I start going into it. And like I said, we're gonna be talking about dogs with car phobias today. I'm gonna go through how do you help them if they have, um, car phobias and oh, Robin says, my dog love car rides, but how can I stop barking when I'm driving? Well, we'll talk about that too, because Robin, um, there are a lot of dogs that they're afraid of cars and car rides and, and they're barking as well. All right, let's see. Uh, Tacoma, Washington, Lisa, welcome. So glad that you're here. Hey folks, do me a favor. Hit that like button. Also hit that share button so that more people can benefit from this. Um, and if you would please, if you like this podcast, please go to our Apple podcast, the VI audio podcast and give us a five star review. Okay? So let me talk a little bit about car phobias. So if you've got a dog that is, doesn't like car rides, and, and that can be, you know, there's varying degrees of severity of dogs that have problems riding in the car. I mean, you've got some dogs that fall apart. I mean, it's so sad. I mean, literally, they are a mess. They are just a trembling ball, a drooling ball of fur trembling. Pupils are dilated, they're crouched down. Um, they might be, um, submissively urinating. They could submissively defecate. I mean, that's, that's severe, very severe. Now, in that situation, I'm gonna refer you to your veterinarian to get some medication. And then we're gonna do behavior modification with behavior medicine because when a dog is that severe, they can't learn. There is nothing that we are gonna teach a dog that is in that emotional state. When you're in a total panic, I mean, think about it. Imagine that you are more afraid than you have ever, ever been in your entire life. Now you really gotta get into that mindset. Folks, again, you, this is the greatest fear you've ever had in your life. And here I come along and I wanna start teaching you how to do algebra. I wanna start teaching you how to do trigonometry. I wanna teach you how to do calculus. How well are you gonna be able to focus? How well are you gonna pay attention? How well are you gonna learn? What's your memory gonna be like? It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. And I think people forget about that. There are times we need to use medication. I don't want your dog to be stoned. I don't want your dog to be a zombie. I'm not talking about that kind of medication, but I am talking about something that takes the edge off so that they're in a better place to be able to do the work. Because when we're doing the work, I don't care what the trigger is. In this case, it's a car and a car ride is the trigger. I don't care what the trigger is. The first step, when you're exposing your dog and starting to desensitize your dog to whatever the trigger is, you've gotta expose them at a distance or in a way that that trigger is turned down, toned, down, very, very, very low. Where they know the trigger's there, but they don't care. Well, here's the thing, can we do that with your dog? Or is your dog so upset that there's no distance from the vehicle that we can help your dog? Now the problem starts usually well before the dog is in the car. I mean, think about, think about if you've gotta take your dog to the groomer, you gotta take your dog to the veterinarian. So you're going in the car. What is the sequence of events? Do you get a harness out? Do you get a collar out? Do you get the leash out? Get your keys, your purse, your wallet, put your shoes on. Probably some combination of that. And I'll bet your dog is excited because normally when those things come out, maybe we're going for a walk and that's a wonderful thing, all right? But, but this time, once all that equipment gets put on the dog, rather than walk to the front door to go out for that fun walk, we start moving ourselves and the dog towards the door in the house that leads out into the garage. And for a lot of dogs that have a fear of car rides, that fear starts there. Think about it, that fear for a lot of dogs starts when you start bringing them towards the door in the house. That opens up into the garage where the car is. Now, some of you don't have garages, but you get my idea. We have to take a look at what point does the dog start to show stress. Maybe we can get the dog to that door. Maybe we can get the dog out that door, and maybe we can get into the garage. Maybe we can even be near the car. But if we open the car door, maybe that's where the anxiety and the fear starts. I don't know, maybe it starts once we are in the car. Maybe your dog's okay getting in the car. Maybe it starts when you turn the car on, maybe your dog's okay, still at that point. Maybe it starts when the car starts moving. My point is we have to take a look at the entire sequence and we have to identify where does the dog begin to experience stress? There's a point where your dog doesn't have a care in the world. There's a point where your dog is relaxed, your dog is calm, the body language is loose and relaxed, and then all of a sudden your dog gets a little stiff and gets a little nervous. Now the point where your dog begins to get nervous, that is the point where your dog is basically at threshold. Okay? Thresholds are where we're looking at a dog's emotional state as it relates to a trigger. When a dog is calm and relaxed, when in the presence of a trigger, that dog is below a threshold. When a dog begins to start experiencing mild anxiety, that threshold when the dog really goes over the top in fear or aggression, that's way over threshold. When we're doing this type of work, I don't care what the trigger is, I don't care if it's thunderstorm phobia, I don't care if it is car ride phobia. I don't care if it's phobia of the vet visit, the grooming doesn't matter. It could be a phobia of another dog, phobia of another person. We need to make sure that when we first expose and, and present this to the dog, that it's done in a way where the dog is relaxed, loose, will take food, will listen to you, can focus, can respond to commands, knows that the trigger's there, but doesn't have a cure in the world. All right? So let's just fast forward a little bit. Let's say that everything is fine with our dog until, until we get to the door that's leading to the garage, okay? And as we get to that door that leads to the garage, that's where the dog starts getting nervous, okay, I need to back up a step. What did I do before that? Well, we put the harness on, put the collar on, put the leash on. I got my keys, I got my wallet, coat, whatever. I'm gonna start getting all those pre-departure cues and I'm gonna start positively reinforcing those through classic counter conditioning. And basically what we're gonna do, I'm gonna show the leash and I'm gonna give a treat. I'm gonna show the leash, give a treat, but do that over and over. The dog's gonna love seeing that leash. Maybe it already does, but I've gotta do this because we're gonna be taking a sequence of steps where we're gonna be bringing the dog into something it doesn't like. Okay? I'm going to start putting the leash on the collar, giving a treat, taking it off, putting the leash on the collar, giving a treat, taking it off, put the leash on the collar, give a treat, take it off. I'm gonna walk a step towards that garage door, give a treat to the dog, then I'm gonna back away. I'm gonna take a step towards that door of the garage, give a treat, walk away. Now as I'm doing that, I gotta read my dog's body language. Is my dog calm and relaxed? Does my dog start to have anxiety? If my dog is starting to have anxiety, maybe we start seeing the dog start to um, uh, do tongue flicks, lip licking. Okay, that's a sign of stress, maybe a yawn, okay? Little tiny stress signals are letting us know we've gone too close too soon. So maybe I've gotta be 10 steps away from that door that leads to the garage. And at that point, that distance my dog's, okay? So I go up to that point. I feed, feed, feed. We leave that point, we go up to that point. We feed, feed, feed. We leave that point, we go up to that point. We feed, feed, feed. We leave that point. So we're pairing positive associations, in this case, really high value food, like cut up chicken, little pieces of hot dog, making a nice little meaty paste that you can give the dog. Pairing that positive association with the trigger, but presenting that trigger in a very bite size piece, a little slice, just a little bit that the dog can handle, and creating lots of very positive experiences. By the time we're done doing the counter conditioning and desensitizing at that location, your dog should be absolutely thrilled. It should be the greatest thing that your dog ever does. And so then after we've done that for a few weeks, if we wanna take two steps closer to that door that we couldn't do today, but after two weeks of presenting it and doing the work, now everything's good to go. We can take two steps closer. We're not gonna be greedy, so we're gonna go two steps closer. We're gonna feed, feed, feed. We're gonna walk away. We're gonna go two steps closer, feed, feed, feed, walk away, two steps closer, feed, feed, feed, walk away. You get the idea. Pairing high value food rewards with the scary aspect of moving towards the door that the dog knows is gonna lead us to the garage. The dog knows the car is there. We're probably gonna go for a car ride. But as we get closer and closer and closer to the car, that anxiety goes up, up, up, up, up. We've gotta break it down into bite size pieces and we've gotta start desensitizing the dog. And all of you are going too quick, way too fast. You're throwing the dog in a situation where it's scared and maybe you're feeding. You're not gonna help the dog. Then if they're too scared, they're not gonna learn. Remember, their brain is not in the place to learn. They're in fight or flight. They're not thinking about learning, they're not gonna learn, they're not gonna remember. So little by little, we're getting closer and closer and closer to the door. And this is the door in the house that leads to the garage. So let's say that, hey, we are good to go. We've spent weeks, we've spent weeks, we've done three to five training sessions every week. We've spent weeks just building up to getting to the door. We've done it in a way that the dog is comfortable, the dog is relaxed. Now things can happen. You could be moving closer thinking everything's going just fine, and then all of a sudden, one training session, you move closer and the dog's not okay. The dog starts showing low level stress. When that happens, you just back away and you start doing the work a little bit further back. The dog wasn't ready. You didn't do enough counter conditioning, which means we're pairing high value rewards with the scary thing. You didn't do enough of that at the previous step to be able to go to the next step, but we wanna keep moving forward. Okay? So I spend about a week or two working on all of those pre-departure cues, and then I'm gonna spend about another two weeks getting all the way up to the door and opening the door that leads to the garage. All right? Let's say we've done our work and we've gotten to the point where we're all the way up to the door and we can go all the way up to the door that leads to the garage and the dog is just fine. Loves this game. Remember, we're doing these exercises three to five times a week. A training session's, about 10 minutes, about 10 minutes long. But you gotta do this three to five times a week or it's just not gonna happen. And if you wanna learn more about counter conditioning and desensitization, then you can go ahead and go, where is it? Where is it it? There it is. You can go to dog behaviorist.com, dog behaviorist.com, click on free articles where the articles are. I've got an article on counter conditioning and desensitization that's gonna tell you how this works. Also, I just did an article on understanding thresholds. Understanding thresholds to be able to have success, counter conditioning and desensitizing. And in order to do that, you have to have a good understanding of canine body language because it's the little tiny, subtle stress signals we need to be aware of. Those are the ones that we miss. Those are the ones we miss. But if you know canine body language, then you're able to keep your dog below threshold. If you understand thresholds and you know how to do counter conditioning and desensitization with that and canine body language, you're gonna have success. So again, canine body language critical. When you're doing this, if you wanna know canine body language, let me tell you, there is a$12 cheap,$12 online course@crismanhound.com, crisman hound.com. Boy, they're getting a good plug for for free. I recommend everybody take that canine body language course. It will change your life. If you've got a dog that has any type of fear, anxiety, aggression, reactivity, you need to know canine body language or you're not gonna help them. It's critical. Cause I guarantee it. You're flooding your dog, you're putting your dog into trigger situations, that's too much for your dog and that is not gonna help. We've gotta avoid those triggers and we've gotta do setups and we have to do it in a way that the dog can handle. All right, so back to our car phobia. We've successfully spent a month and we've been able to get to the door that leads out into the garage. Our next step is putting our hand, putting our hand on the handle of the door, the door handle, put my hand on the door handle, I feed, feed, feed, take my hand off the door handle, put my hand on that doorknob, feed, feed, feed, take my hand off of the doorknob and I'm gonna do that over and over until the dog just loves that. Maybe I'm gonna do that for a week. It, I don't know. We can only go as fast as the dog's pace. I've got this broken down into a six month program, but maybe it takes three months, maybe it takes two months, maybe it takes eight months. The process is the same and you can only go as quick as the dog's pace. So I'm gonna desensitize the dog next to me, just grabbing a hold of that door handle. Then after I've done that for a little while, now it's about turning that handle and maybe opening the door slightly, maybe an inch or two, maybe an inch or two, and then another inch or two and then another inch or two, little by little, little slices, what we call successive approximations that we need to desensitize. Then the next step is gonna be, I'm gonna be walking up opening the door. Now we're gonna step into the garage and when we step in the garage, we're gonna take a step in feed and we're gonna get out of the garage. We're gonna take a step in the garage feed and we're gonna get out of the garage. We need to do that until that is the greatest thing in the world for your dog. Maybe it's a week or two of doing three to five sessions a week, 10 to 15 minute sessions. Then our next step, when the dog loves that, we're gonna take a few more steps towards the car. We've not gotten to the car yet. We've gotten in the garage, we've opened the door, we've gotten in the garage. We've taken one or two steps, we've gone out back in one or two steps, gone out back in one or two steps, gone out. We've gotten that desensitized over a couple weeks. Now we're gonna take a few more steps in same process, just a few more steps closer to the car. And at any point you notice in your dog's body language that it's showing even slight, even a little bit of stress, you've gone too close too soon. You need to back up to a previous point where your dog was not showing any stress and continue to do the work at that point. Now after um, after we're, we're making the approach to the car. Once we get to the point where we're all the way to the car, we're not going in right away. We go all the way to the car, feed, feed, feed, get out of there all the way to the car, feed, feed, feed. Get out of there, over and over until the dog loves that. Then it's the same thing like with the handle on the door of the house that led to the garage. Well, there's a handle on the car, the car door handle. You're gonna grab that feed, feed, feed, let it go. Grab the car, handle, feed, feed, feed. Let it go. Grab the car, handle, feed, feed, feed. Let it go. You're gonna do that a bunch of times. Maybe you're gonna do that for a day, two days, maybe a week, maybe a month, I don't know. Again, the canine body language, reading your dog is letting you know when you have gone too close too soon and when you need to back up, then of course the next step's gonna be actually opening up the car door. But I'm gonna only take part of that behavior. I'm just gonna open it up maybe an inch or two and feed, close the door, open it up an inch or two, feed, close the door, you get the idea. And I need to do that over and over and over. If my dog's okay with that, now I can begin to open up that car door a little bit wider and feed, feed, feed and close, open it up a little wider. Feed, feed, feed and close. Open it up a little wider. Feed, feed, feed and close. Open up a little wider uhoh. My dog's starting to show some stress signals. It's licking its lips given a tongue flick. Started to open its mouth and start breathing. A little bit of a pant. I need to back up. I've gone too far too soon. But once I'm able to get that car door open all the way, and once the dog is fine with the car door opening up all the way, well, our next step's gonna be getting in the car and we're gonna get the dog in the car. We might have to start with the dog just getting its front two paws in the car and then we get out. Get two front paws in the car. Feed, feed, feed. Get out two front paws in the car. Feed, feed, feed. Get out. We do that over and over and over and we can use food lures. But again, at any point in time your dog starts to show anxiety. You've gone too far too soon. Little by little you're gonna be able to get your dog in the car and you're gonna get the dog all the way in the car feed. Take the dog out all the way in the car feed, take it out. When that's all going well, then the next step is to be closing the door and moving into the driver's seat. So you close the door where the dog is usually in the backseat. You're gonna go ahead and you're gonna move to the front seat. You're gonna feed the dog. And then you're gonna go back to the dog, take the dog out of the car, bring the dog back in the car, close the backseat or close the the door to the uh, back. You go into the front seat, the driver's side, close the door and feed. And maybe you do that for a couple weeks. Then the next step is a big one. And that's turning the car on that. Even if we've done great up until now, that oftentimes is the situation where the dog begins to start showing signs of stress. And what we're gonna do, we're gonna do everything we just did. We're gonna put the key in the ignition and we're gonna feed, we're gonna take the key out of the ignition feed, put it in the ignition feed out of the ignition feed in the ignition feed. We're gonna do that for a while. Don't know how long it's all up to the dog. Maybe a week or two. Now I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna do everything we've been doing. Get the dog in the car, close the door of the back seat, get into the driver's side door, put the key in the ignition. I'm gonna turn the car on, turn it off and feed. I'm gonna turn the car on and off and feed, turn the car on and off and feed on off and feed on off and feed. Now I can make that less intense by not doing it too quickly as far as repetitions. I could turn it on off and I'm feeding, feeding, feeding, turn it on. Feed, feed, feed, feed. Turn it off. Wait a little while, let the dog settle, turn it on. Feed, feed, feed, feed. Turn it off when the dog is doing well with that, the next step is gonna be doing all of that, all the previous steps. But now you put your foot on the brake and you put the car in gear. You don't go anywhere. It's that. You know how when you put your foot on the brake and you put the car in gear and it moves the car, that's the first movement, the dog experiences. We need to desensitize the dog to that. So you put it in gear, feed, feed, feed, put it in park, put it in gear, feed, feed, feed. Put it in park, put it in gear, feed, feed, feed. Put it in park. Get the dog comfortable with that. Once that's gone, well then the next step that you're going to do is you are going to move the vehicle a couple inches. Okay? So you put the car in gear, you move a couple inches, you put the car in park while you put the car in gear and you're moving those few inches. Feed, feed, feed. You might need a helper for this cuz you shouldn't be driving and doing this at the same time. I shouldn't say might get a helper. You have to have a helper. You drive a couple inches, they're feeding you stop, they stop feeding, you drive a couple inches, they're feeding. While you're doing that, you stop. They stop feeding if everything is going well. And by the way, you are going very slow. You're only in the driveway. Moving forward and backwards a little bit, pairing that with food, little by little you're going to extend the distance. Right now it's just a couple inches. Then it's gonna be a foot, and then it's gonna be three feet and five feet. Then it's gonna be around the block. Movement, slow movement, slow, slow, slow movement. Okay? When the dog gets comfortable with that, now it's about duration of the ride, making them longer and longer a little bit at a time. And then it's also about do we need to get the dog desensitized to turns? Think about it. If you make a turn, what's the dog doing? If that's upsetting the dog, then we need to proactively set up situations where we get the dog in the car and we can make very slow, very wide turns while we're feeding. And little by little those turns get tighter. Little by little those turns get faster. And that's how we desensitize the dog to turns. Maybe the dog has an issue. If we go over a bump, well, we need to very slowly go over a very small bump. As we feed and do that over and over and over, then we add more speed to it, then we can start going to bigger bumps. Maybe going up a hill or down a hill is an issue for your dog. Think about it. We got speed and duration. We've gotta break these down into little tiny baby steps. Okay? Now let me throw rain on the parade. Oftentimes when we bring the dog in the car, we're taking'em to the vet, we're taking'em to the groomer, all right? And they're having a bad experience. If you do all this counter conditioning and desensitization work and the only time your dog is going in the car is when you go to the vet or go to the groomer, all the work you're doing is gonna start to go to hell. Why isn't that? Because we've asked the dog to do this and the dog's being punished at the end, not by you, but the dog hates the groomer, hates the vet that's punishing for the dog. So the dog's still having that association. Oh, the car got me here. Car brings about bad things. So one of the things you need to begin to do is desensitize your dog to those scary places, bringing the dog to the vet feed, getting him out of there in the office feed, get out of the office, in the office feed, get out of the office, breaking that down into little bitty baby steps. And you need to start taking your dog in the car, going fun places. The dog's experience going in the car should not be one where, oh, every time we get in the car, we go somewhere that I absolutely can't stand. And that's scary. The main thing is that you are taking your time and that you are not rushing through any of this process. And like I said, I want you to extrapolate the information I'm giving you. This isn't just about car phobias, okay? This could be about thunderstorm phobias and you're using recorded sounds and you start pressing play at the lowest volume. And when the sound is happening, you're feeding your dog. Then you press stop. And then when the sound stops, you stop feeding. And little by little you turn that volume up. When have you gone too loud? Well, when you start to see little, tiny, subtle stress signals, and I'm telling you canine body language, you have to know it. If you wanna be successful understanding thresholds, you have to know it to be successful. Understanding counter conditioning and desensitization, you have to know it to be successful. If you've got a dog, any kind of anxiety, fears, phobias, reactivity, aggression, you've gotta understand canine body language. You've gotta understand thresholds, you've gotta understand counter conditioning and desensitization. You can go to my website@dogbehaviorist.com and you can look at my article on counter conditioning and desensitization. You can look at my article on thresholds canine body language in understanding those to have successful counter conditioning and desensitization. Do that. It's gonna help you. Also critical, go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast. You're gonna have to do a Google search, pet Talk today podcast. Look for episode 81. Episode 81 is an hour and 35 minutes of me doing nothing but talk about counter conditioning and desensitization. The process that you need to go through to help any dog with any kind of anxiety, any kind of fear, any kind of phobia, any kind of reactivity, any kind of aggression. And also, I'm gonna give them a plug again for free crimson hound.com. They've got a great$12 course for pet parents on canine body language. It's the best$12 you'll ever spend. Now, if you really wanna know canine body language, if you really a geek like me spend the$45 and do the professional course on canine body language, I think it's like six hours. I mean it's in depth, it's intense. But if you've got a dog that's really got some severe fears, phobias, anxiety, aggression, reactivity, you've gotta know the canine body language or you can't help'em because that's the only way they speak to us. And we need to know what's going on internally. What is that underlying emotional state? Because you're gonna make things better when you change the emotional state. Yeah, we don't like the behaviors. You know, it hurts us when the dog is running away. It hurts us when the dog is acting out aggressively. We don't like that. But what we really need to think about is we need to deal with the underlying fear, the underlying anxiety. And those behaviors, change and punishment will never work. If you're punishing your aggressive dog, you might be punishing out the warning before the dog bites. If you're punishing your aggressive dog, you're suppressing the behavior. Maybe the dog's not acting aggressively. Maybe it's not lunging, snapping, barking, showing its teeth, but internally the dog wants to eat ya. But it feels pressure because it got punished. There was fear, pain, intimidation that suppressed the outward behavior and the outward behavior's not the problem. It's the underlying inner emotional state. That's the problem that motivates the external outward behavior. We need to teach the dog when it sees these triggers, when it experiences these triggers, that they are good, positive things, teaching them to be calm and relaxed. And that is a gradual and systematic process. That takes time, takes time, takes time, takes time. These are severe emotional states that we're trying to change. It doesn't happen quickly. So anyway, that's some great information. Hopefully you got a lot out of that. Like I said, you can extrapolate that and know that you can use that same process for any type of fear, any type of phobia that there is. All right, let's take a look. Uh, suggestions on how to pair food with learning. People are good. I take to Home Depot. Well, the thing about that, Matt, your dog at Home Depot and you're pairing food with it, your dog might be over threshold. You know, your dog might have some mild stress and that might be too much. Um, you know, what I do is I get a helper and I get that helper really far from the dog, the helper's out of view. Here's the dog. All of a sudden, helper comes into view, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. Then the helper goes away, feeding stops. But you gotta start that at a distance where the dog has no stress, has no care in the world. They need to be loose, relax, not have a care in the world. That's the starting point. And so many people are starting when their dog has stress. You can't do that. You gotta start when the dog has no stress and get the dog so happy about that place, that trigger in that situation over and over and over. After a few weeks, hell yeah, I'll take a step closer. That's the way it's gotta be. And it's a slow painstaking process. There's no, there's no shortcuts, none whatsoever. Uh, let's see here. Looking back here, I have questions. Okay, I have a question once in a while. When I take my female Yorkie Terri to PetSmart, she growls at certain dogs. Why does she do that? Well, you know, dogs aren't gonna like all dogs and dogs are forever putting out signals in their canine body language. I don't know what these other dogs, what kind of signals they're sending out. I don't know what kind of signals your dog is sending out. But what it tells me, Janice, is that you need to do some work. And one of the things we do is we avoid triggers when the dog has a problem. We need to be setting up the situations ourselves, presenting the triggers ourselves in a way that we can do behavior modification. But if every time your dog sees a trigger, your dog reacts to it, it will never get better The first step. Not that it's the fix, but it's the first step to the fix. And that is avoiding the triggers that cause your dog, the fear, anxiety, aggression or reactivity. Avoid the triggers. We know what's gonna happen. History's gonna repeat itself. I don't know why you wanna keep bringing your dog in that situation. They keep rehearsing that behavior keeps getting conditioned. They keep experiencing that disempowered emotional state and that gets conditioned. We've gotta stop that. That's the wrong kind of conditioning. I know it's not easy. I know it's not easy to avoid triggers, but we have to. And then we've gotta set up those triggers in a way where we can manage them in a way that we can expose the dog to a trigger where it's manageable and we can do the work little by little by little. Getting your dogs to be more comfortable, getting your dogs to be more relaxed. Well, I'm gonna take another question here. I've got, uh, some email questions that, um, I wanted to uh, get to that I don't typically get to. Um, I've got a question from Julie. Julie says, my three year old Jack Russell Terrier male is marking all over the house. This is a new behavior. He was fully potty trained. He knows that he needs to go outside. He knows better, but he is starting to mark all over the house. Well, he's three years old. It's interesting that it's just starting now and that it didn't start before. I'm wondering if there's been a big change in lifestyle, routine environment, uh, people in the household coming and going, meaning that somebody you know is no longer living there or maybe somebody went on a long trip. Um, did you get a new pet in the home? Has anything disrupted the dog's routine or environment? Okay, that's number one. Number two, is your dog bored? You know, so many behavior problems are a result of dogs being bored. You've got to do canine enrichment. If you don't know what canine enrichment is, go to my website, dog behaviorist.com, look for the article on canine enrichment. You've gotta stimulate them mentally. You've gotta stimulate them. They're bored. A lot of behaviors, a lot of anxieties. A result of boredom. Okay, you gotta get out there. You gotta do things with your dog. Now the other thing is, I know you said your dog knows where to go and your dog's potty trained. Doesn't matter. We need to re potty train your dog. And we need to be rewarding your dog when he goes in the correct place so that your dog is motivated to wanna go out there. Again, we need to be supervising and confining your dog anytime. We can't watch your dog. Your dog needs to be in a crate so that it won't have an accident and not be caught in the act. Now there's a lot to re potty training, you know that. But you know what? I've got a 45 minute podcast that is devoted n but to nothing but potty training. If you follow the guidelines in my potty training podcast, you cannot help but to stop this marking behavior and get your dog going to the bathroom outside in the appropriate place. Again, you're gonna wanna do a Google search for the Pet Talk Today podcast. Look for episode 16. Episode 16 is all about potty training. Well, folks, it's been a wonderful show. I hope you got a lot out of the information I presented to you. Make sure that you tell your friends, your family, other dog lovers about pet talk today. We're Here each and every Saturday at 11 o'clock Eastern time, helping you with your pets. Get out there, walk your dogs, do some training, folks, put some of this stuff to work. Have a great weekend. We're outta here. We'll see you next Saturday.