Dog Training Today with Will Bangura for Pet Parents, Kids & Family, Pets and Animals, and Dog Training Professionals. This is a Education & How To Dog Training Podcast.

#90 PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. Separation Anxiety, Jumping, Pulling on the leash, Puppy Biting, Dog aggression in the home towards other dogs, Dog aggression with dogs on walks. This and more discussed today. Dog Training, Dog Traine

March 18, 2023 PET TALK TODAY: Dog Training with Will Bangura, Dog Behaviorist, Dog Training, Cat Training, Pet Health, and Wellbeing with Will Bangura Season 4 Episode 90
Dog Training Today with Will Bangura for Pet Parents, Kids & Family, Pets and Animals, and Dog Training Professionals. This is a Education & How To Dog Training Podcast.
#90 PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. Separation Anxiety, Jumping, Pulling on the leash, Puppy Biting, Dog aggression in the home towards other dogs, Dog aggression with dogs on walks. This and more discussed today. Dog Training, Dog Traine
Show Notes Transcript
Speaker 1:

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 Manura 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 everybody. I'm Will Bangura. Hey, thanks for joining us. You are watching another episode of Pet Talk today. Maybe you're listening to the audio podcast. Hey, thanks for being here. If you like what we do, give us a five star review. So today we're gonna be talking about, uh, last week I wanted to talk about dog on dog introductions. How do you take a couple dogs that have never met before? Maybe you're adopting a new dog, maybe you're getting a new puppy. Um, maybe you're trying to integrate two families. Maybe you've got a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a new husband, wife, and, and they've got dogs and your dogs need to coexist in one house. How do you do those introductions? I'm gonna be talking about that today. And as always, I'm going to be answering your questions about your dog's training and behavior issues and a little bit. Um, I'll be looking at the comments section. If you've got a question about your dog's training, if you've got a question about your dog's behavior, it doesn't matter what the problem is. Doesn't matter what kind of dog it is, doesn't matter how old it is. Do me a favor, type your question in the comments section. Also, let us know where you're watching from, type that in the comments section and let us know what kind of dogs that you have. So, do me a favor, go ahead and put your questions in the comments section. We love your questions, love to be able to help you with those problems. Also, if you're a regular viewer and we've given you some suggestions in the past and you have been working on those things and they're benefiting you, they're helping you, man, I love your feedback. I get emails from you all the time telling me how things are going. Some of you are asking questions, but I love that feedback. Um, it's working and you guys are doing a fantastic job. You're learning what I'm always talking about. Don't think so much about what you don't want your dog to do. Think about what you would like your dog to do instead. And with positive training, we can come up with positive solutions to some of these problems. So again, if you've got a question about your dog's training and behavior, put it in the comments section. I'll be looking at those shortly. Um, hey, did you guys find out we've got a new most popular breed in the United States forever. In America? It has been. The Labrador retriever has been American's number one favorite dog. The Labrador retriever forever has had the most number of registered dogs. Well, that's all changed. Give a round of applause to the new top dog. That's the French bulldog, everybody. Yep. We've got a new king of dogs. We've got a new king of dogs, and that's the, the French bulldog. Um, how do you feel about that? Those of you that have Frenches, I'm sure you love'em. They're not the easiest breed. They're not the easiest breed. Um, it makes me a little bit nervous. I live in Arizona and the weather's really hot and, and, um, a lot of these dogs, um, they've got the brachiocephalic issues and they can have breathing issues. Um, so there's some medical things that, that you have to think about that. All right, we got some people jumping in, leaving some comments. Uh, Lynn, you've got a problem with your puppy jumping? Yeah, we can talk about that. Um, Janice, good morning, Brian. Good morning. Already said Lynn. Good morning. And see, Brian says, how do I stop my dog from Where did you go? I just lost it. Oh, li Kim listening from Maryland, we've got a 10 month old standard poodle, a 10 month old lab shepherd mix. Well, welcome Teresa from South Carolina. Welcome, glad that you're here. Um, let's see if I can find Brian's question again that I, that I lost. Cuz as you guys are typing, they start moving around. How do I stop my dog from snapping at other dogs when their dogs come up to my dog's face? Oh, Brian, that is a good question. Let me ask you a question, Brian. If somebody obnoxiously invaded your personal space, what would you do? Um, your dog snapping at those dogs, is your dog communicating to those dogs? Hey, back off. I need distance. I need space. Okay, I don't, I I, Brian, I don't consider, you know, if, if dogs are coming up to your dog uninvited, uninvited, and it sounds like your dog is nervous about having these dogs that close to its face, and I would be too. I wouldn't like that. So your dog's snapping. If it's just the snap in air, an air bite, that's not a big deal. That's good communication. That is a dog communicating to another dog. Hey, back off. I need space. Now, not all dogs can read communication. Well, not all dogs had that early socialization. Not all dogs learned, uh, canine communication early in the litter when they're roughly three to five weeks of age when they're supposed to learn that. Okay? Um, it, it, it's a real problem. I've got lots, you know, most of the dogs I work with have aggression issues, fear issues in aggression, fear, they go hand in hand. And one of the biggest challenges we have is dogs that are off leash. Irresponsible dog owners in the United States that allow their dogs that they don't have off-leash reliability with to be off-leash. And they're running up to your dogs. Now, a lot of you have dogs that are nervous and anxious and fearful, and then that turns into aggression when they can't get their distance in space. And, and really that's what aggression is all about. Aggression is about a dog that's afraid, nervous feels there's a threat. I don't care. Even if it's resource guarding feeling it's a threat, they're gonna lose that resource protecting you, being territorial, fearful that something's gonna happen to you, fearful that something bad's gonna happen on their territory. All aggression is based in fear. No animal goes into fight or flight unless they perceive something is threatening. So all aggression is communication. I need distance and I need space. And very, very, very few dogs fight without warning. I know a lot of you say it happens all the time, comes outta nowhere. But it doesn't, you just don't know how to look for, you don't know how to read the many tiny little subtle cues that dogs give in their canine body language. And they can happen fast and they can be super subtle. If you've got a dog that's fearful, anxious, reactive, aggressive, you need to take the time to learn canine body language. It's critical. That's how your dog communicates with its body language. If you don't understand in depth canine body language, you can't understand what your dog's communicating. And if you've got a dog that has problems, again, anxiety, stress, fear, phobias, aggression reactivity, you need to know what your dog's communicating. So Brian, in your situation, if your dog is not aggressing and, and I mean not going after dogs, um, that are not in its personal space, then what I'm gonna say is that you need to advocate on behalf of your dog. You need to keep your dog safe. You need to keep other dogs away from your dog. Your dog's got some space issues. Now, I don't know if it's all dogs or if it's just one or two, but it seems like maybe it's more than just one. And granted, there are things we can do behaviorally to help your dog. If your dog is nervous about dogs, to help your dog be more comfortable with space issues, to get your dog more comfortable with dogs coming closer. But a lot of dogs don't want dogs close to their close to their face. And think about it, this introduction, if we want to even call it an introduction, Brian, um, was not asked for from your dog. And bam happens just like that. That's scary. So if it's me, I'm getting my dog the heck out of there. If it's me, I'm gonna know the areas of my neighborhood, the near areas of my town where there's a greater chance that off-leash dogs might run up to my dog. I'm not gonna go there. I'm not gonna go there. Now, if I've got a dog that's really a biter and the dog has poor bite inhibition, um, and the dog has poor bite threshold, what's the difference? Bite threshold is the level of stress it takes before a dog uses their teeth. Okay? Some dogs very little stress and they're using their teeth, all right? They've got a very low bite threshold. At what point does a dog think it needs to bite? Okay? Some dogs have a very high bite threshold where it would take just an incredible amount of stress before they would feel the need to use their, their mouth, their teeth and bite. So that's, that's bite threshold. Bite inhibition is how hard or how soft you bite. Okay? Um, a level one bite is basically kind of an air snap, a level two bite. They have made contact with the skin, but there's no puncture. Maybe there's a little mark from the tooth and maybe somebody pulled their hand or arm away, and there's just a little scratch. That's a level two bite, A level three bite. There's one to four punctures. So that means one or four teeth punctured the skin. However, that puncture is less than half of the depth of the dog's canine too at the incisor. All right? When we get to a level four bite, we've got a single bite. Oh, by the way, level three bites. A single bite. Level four bite is a single bite. It's got one to four puncture wounds, but the depth of it is greater than half of the dog's incisor. Typically, when we're looking at a level three bite, less than, uh, less than a half an inch, a level four bite, a half an inch or more level five bite is gonna be multiple bites. Multiple level four bites is what a level five bite is. Level six bite, that's gonna be a fatal bite. Okay? So Brian, your dog. Um, it's bite inhibition is really good. Level one, when we get a dog, that's a level three biter research and studies have shown we are not gonna modify that dog's bite, um, inhibition. If they bite, they're gonna bite hard. They're gonna do damage, okay? What we can do is we can change how they feel about the trigger. So in this case, it would be another dog. Does your dog view it as a threat? Does your dog view it, um, as something scary? Well, we can change that emotional response to the trigger by doing counter conditioning and desensitization. I talk all about that. You can also go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast by doing a Google search, pet Talk today podcast. Find episode 81, which is an hour and 35 minutes on nothing more than how do you help a dog with anxiety? How do you help a dog with fears? How do you help a dog that's reactive? How do you help a dog that has aggression issues? And that's all about counter conditioning and desensitization. I go in depth into that on episode 81. Um, let me get back to the questions. I and Brian, you might not like that answer, but you need to advocate on behalf of your dog. Other dogs should not be in your dog's face. Um, that behavior by your dog, I considered to be normal canine behavior, um, might not be the greatest thing, you know, if your dog ends up biting another dog. But you know, if these dogs are running into your dog's face, that is an issue. Kim, listening from Marilyn. Hey Kim, how are you? Uh, Theresa, I've got a one year old lab. She won. She won't stop jumping on you. All right, Theresa, let's talk about jumping. I talk a lot about jumping. Um, and again, earlier in the show I talked about we need to take the mindset of not so much thinking about what I don't want my dog to do, but what would I like my dog to do instead? What would be an alternative behavior to jumping that would be a good behavior, an acceptable behavior? When does your dog jump on you? What's happening right before your dog jumps on you? Is it when you come home and are you excited? Well, when you come home, come home and be very calm, calm and stop stand like a tree because a lot of times the dogs are jumping. When we get excitable, we have to watch our energy and bring that down. Okay? Now, start proactively not when your dog's jumping, but proactively every day. Having training sessions with your dog, teaching your dog to sit for a food reward to sit politely. You're gonna start asking your dog to sit. You're gonna reward your dog. We use marker training in my system. If you don't know what markers are, reward markers. If you don't know what a clicker is and how to use a clicker or at least a verbal auditory marker word, make sure that you go to the Pet Talk today podcast. Look at episode 80 on marker training, because it's critical. If you want your dog to understand why it's getting a reward, you need to be using markers. That's episode 80. Um, so one of the things that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna proactively be working on sit over and over and over. I'm gonna work on sit in different locations. I'm gonna do that when there are no distractions. And little by little I'm gonna start adding more and more distractions. Little by little, I am gonna be getting a little more excitable. Okay? Now I've gotta have very high value food rewards because distractions are competing motivators. Is my food reward more motivating than the distraction? Am I more interesting and more motivating when I'm working with my dog on these commands? Can I keep my dog engaged? Or are the distractions, the competing motivators in the environment more interesting to the dog? So I'm gonna be working on sit all over the place everywhere, throughout the house with and without distractions outside, everywhere, outside off property, on property. I've gotta do the work. I can't just ask my dog to sit and expect it to happen when I haven't put in the time, haven't done the work. And then guess what? I'm going to have helpers. I'm gonna set this up. Once I've taught my dog to sit, now I'm gonna start using that trained behavior to interrupt the dog from jumping and give the dog something else to do where there's a paycheck. The food reward, high value food reward. Maybe your dog likes a toy more. Whatever your dog likes the most, that's what you want to use for the reward. But once you've worked on that, sit once you've worked on, sit in exciting environments and your dog can do that. And again, it's a process. This might take a month or two to really get the dog proofed and generalized. Granted, I know you can get your dog to sit right away. I'm talking about getting your dog to sit and stay in that sit when all hell's breaking loose. Might take a month, but you gotta do the work. And then in those situations, those locations, those times when your dog wants to jump, ask for, sit and reward, that I guarantee you it works. But you've gotta do the work. Now you always, you can be lazy. I don't recommend it. I think it's inhumane to punish your dog when it doesn't know better. And trust me, it doesn't know better because if it knew better, it wouldn't be doing it. A lot of times your dog has no clue that you don't want it to jump. I watch people say no all day long and it's an interruption. It's not a correction. And think about it. Why would we punish? Cuz that's what correction is. It's just a nice word for punishment. Why would we punish a dog for doing a very natural behavior? Which by the way, jumping is taught. A lot of that's taught by us. You know how it's taught. We pick up our dogs, yep. From the time they're a puppy, we pick'em up, they learn to come up to us, we make it happen. And then we get upset when they jump on us. They don't know any better. And oftentimes when they're jumping, we're reinforcing it. Are you reinforcing the jumping? Are you petting the dog, touching the dog? That's positive reinforcement. Even acknowledging and engaging the dog is positive reinforcement. The other thing you can do is just turn your back to the dog when it jumps, walk away. That's, that's the only kind of punishment I advocate. That's called negative punishment. Taking away from the dog something it wants. Well, it wants your attention. If jumping means you turn away from the dog and walk away and the dog doesn't get your attention and you're consistent with that, your dog's gonna probably stop jumping. Now before you even try that, how about working on that set? Giving your dog something else to do? We call that differential reinforcement. Think about a differential like the word different. Having the dog do a different behavior that if the dog's committed to that behavior, sitting its butt on the ground would be incompatible if it was committed to sitting to the behavior we don't want, which is jumping because the dog can't have its butt, it's rear end on the ground to be jumping at the same time. So that's how I would be addressing that. Um, Kim, from Maryland, you've got a 10 month old standard poodle and a 10 month old lab shepherd mix. And I think I already mentioned that, Teresa from South Carolina. Hey, I got friends in South Carolina, bend to South Carolina, bend to Myrtle Beach, love South Carolina. Absolutely love it. Um, alright, so Lynn says she's got a puppy and puppy nipping is a problem. Well, again, let, let's talk a little bit about this. Um, puppy nipping is a normal canine behavior. Now, we don't like it, especially when they're young, because got those little razor blade sharp teeth, okay? But puppies also are gonna be teething. They're not gonna have their adult teeth till they're about seven to eight months of age. So they're gonna have some soreness, gum soreness, and, and irritation for roughly, perhaps on and off, seven to eight months. So during those seven to eight months, it's critical that your dog, your puppy has something appropriate that chew on, and that's something appropriate, has different textures. So you've got multiple different things, different sizes, different textures, and a lot of times you've gotta spend a little bit of time engaging with the puppy, playing with the puppy, with those items, okay? And one of the things that I like to do, you know, just a little fun game with a puppy. You know, you kind of tease'em with the toy, kind of wave your hand in front of'em, right? Just wave that hand in front of'em with the toy and then toss it a little bit and they go get it. And the puppy goes and picks it up. And guess what I do when it picks it up? I'm gonna label that behavior fetch, right as the puppy's picking it up. I'm gonna start making that association. Hey, when you pick up something in your mouth, it's called fetch. I'm not gonna ask for it, but I'm gonna label it. I'm gonna create the behavior of getting the dog chasing after the toy to get the dog to pick it up. I'm creating that behavior so that I can now overlay and label the word fetch with that behavior. Because eventually I want to ask for fetch. I know we're talking about puppy biting. I haven't lost my, my track. I'm also going to wait for the dog to let go of that item, the puppy to let go of that item. They're not gonna keep it in their mouth forever when they let go of it. I'm gonna go drop. I'm gonna label that I'm, again, I'm not asking for it. I'm creating a situation where I know I'm gonna get the puppy to pick something up. I know if I wait long enough, the puppy's gonna drop it. And all I'm doing is I'm labeling those behaviors and I'm gonna reward them. I'm gonna reward them with high value food rewards. And I'm gonna do that over and over and over. Making those associations proactively. Remember, I'm getting the dog to do this. You can always do it reactively. You happen to just notice the dog picks something up. Go ahead and, and label that and then mark and reward. But you can also proactively make this happen. Now, you might be saying, we're talking about puppy biting. Why are you doing that? I'm teaching mouth manners. Mouth manners, because I can say drop when anything is in that dog's mouth or the puppy's mouth, including my fingers. When the puppy understands what drop is, okay? But when we ask the dog to give something up, we need to make sure that we're trading out with something of greater value. And if you don't do that, the puppy's gonna say, Hey, why, why should I give it up again? We're talking about competing motivators. Let's be real here. All right? If I got a hundred dollars and you wanna swap out with five, I don't think I'm giving you that a hundred dollars bill back, okay? You need to be able to swap out with something of equal or greater value for the dog. So that's one thing. You can begin teaching a drop command. You can be or leave it, and you can begin using that when your puppy starts biting at your fingers proactively, you'll be working on that. You can use drop or leave it proactively. You need to be teaching your dog and helping your dog know what can it chew on. And make sure you got plenty of that. Make sure every time the puppy wants to mouth on you or bite on you, I call puppy biting, mouthing versus biting, being aggressive. But you're gonna interrupt that behavior. Give'em something appropriate to chew on. And again, you can use, leave it and drop. But you've gotta teach that first. They don't know what that is. And if you're just punishing your dog, shame on you. Shame on you for punishing a behavior that is so natural and normal to them that they don't know any better. Your dog's not being dominant. The puppy's not dominant. The puppy's unruly. That means without rules. And it's your job to teach the rules. Now, we talked a little while ago about bite inhibition. How hard a dog bites bite inhibition typically is learned at three to five weeks in the litter when the puppies are playing with each other. It's also learned when they're nursing on mom, because if they bite down too hard, mom gets up and goes, what the puppy wanted? The food has been removed. That's negative punishment, taking away something the dog wants to change a behavior. Now it happens naturally. It's not like mom is, you know, um, BF skinner and understanding opera and conditioning and classical conditioning, it hurts. So mom got up and left. But when that consistently happens, then the puppy learns, Hey, it's not beneficial for me to bite that hard at three to five weeks in the litter with their litter mates when they're playing and they bite down too hard, one of the puppies goes, yep. And it startles the other puppy. It gets their attention. Like, whoa, whoa. I guess that wasn't okay. Something unpleasant just happened and it happened right? When I bit that hard, then they start learning not to bite that hard and to bite softly. And if they didn't have those experiences, they might be a dog that has poor bite inhibition, they might bite hard. Now we can use that idea of doing the yip like one of the litter mates would do. And that might work and help you to resolve the issue. But then again, your dog might get desensitized to that sound and, and not care. Okay? Again, what did, what did the mother dog do when the, when the puppy bit too hard, she got up and left, right? What if you got up and left when your puppy's biting too hard? What if you went, yep. And if your puppy didn't stop, you got up and left. What if you were working on fetch, working on drop or leave it? What if you were teaching your dog what it could have in its mouth that's appropriate? And what if you carried those with you? And also know that hey, when you start bringing your hand towards the puppy and, and like I know you're petting the heck out of the puppy, you're picking the puppy up. And by the way, picking puppies up is what teaches them to jump. I know you want to pick your puppy up, um, but you have to teach your dogs what you want it to do before you start thinking about what you don't want it to do. Because they don't know. Trust me, they don't know. I know it. You're saying it right now. Oh, they know better. No, they don't. If they knew better, they would be doing better. All right, back to the questions here. Let's see what we've got. We've got, uh, V from Los Angeles. Welcome, um, Lynn, we talked about your jumping. Um, we got Lynn from Glendale, Arizona. Janice already said good morning to you, Heather. Heather says There's a dog fight between my 10 year old mini bull and my 10 month old German Shepherd, uh, had the shepherd since three months. Last week they had a fight. Uh, we broke them up and separated for an hour. Uh, then leashed both reintroduced them and the mini bull went after the shepherd again. So have been, uh, creating both ever since rotating one in and out and haven't reintroduced them. Um, Heather, right now, that's what you need to do. You need to keep them completely separated. And I don't know if they should see each other, if, if they're close enough when they're separated, they see each other and you know, if they're giving, uh, different body language cues like distance increasing cues. Definitely. If, if the one or both dogs are aggressive or reactive, they're too close, we need them to be relaxed loose with their body language and calm. So if they're separated and can see each other and that's the way their body language is, that's fine. But if they're not relaxed, if the body language isn't loose and relaxed, then you need to create more distance or you need to make sure that they can't even see each other. Now, Heather, two dogs fighting in the same home is the most difficult behavior problem that anybody could be dealing with with their dogs. I don't recommend that anybody try to do this without the help of a professional. Now, I don't know if there are good positive reinforcement trainers, certified trainers. Really what you need is a certified dog behavior consultant or a certified behavior consultant. Canine is what they call it. Um, because behavior consultants, they specialize in things like aggression. What's the difference between a behavior consultant and a regular dog trainer? Well, dog trainers, they teach, um, obedience command, sit down, come, they might deal with some nuisance behavior like jumping begging. They might help teach some sports like agility or competition obedience. But they don't typically, I'm telling you right now, 99.9% don't have the education training and knowledge and experience and understand science-based and evidence-based training practices and protocols to be able to help a lot of people that have serious behavior issues like aggression, fears, phobias, oh, they're, well, they've got great intentions and they don't know that. They don't know. Cuz unfortunately, the dog training world, the industry is not regulated. Oh, your plumber needs to be certified and licensed. Your nail tech needs to be certified and licensed. Your barber and your hairdresser needs to be certified and licensed, but not anybody working with your dog. It's a shame to travesty. We need to be regulating the dog trading industries so that we have standards and we know that what trainers are doing, there's some basis and science and it's evidence-based, and we stop, uh, using punishment for dogs because it's so outdated. Oh, it's, look, do you need, if you are calling yourself a professional dog trainer and you're punishing dogs, I'm not gonna call you a professional. I'm gonna call you barbaric. Anybody can punish a dog. Two and three year old children are punishing dogs. Again, anybody can do it. It takes somebody skilled to know how to train an animal, to know how to train a dog. And that's the humane thing to do. Um, so Heather, you need a professional. Now you can hire somebody local. Um, I do behavior consulting all over the world and I specialize in aggression. You could contact me, um, at where is it? Where is it? Right there? Dog behaviorist.com. Dog behaviorist.com. By the way, any of you folks, if you're looking for great dog training and behavior articles, go to my website@dogbehaviorist.com. I've got over 50 articles I've recently written, um, and a lot of'em deal with fears, phobia's, aggression, so great stuff there. Um, but yeah, Heather, you need to keep them apart and, um, it doesn't get better. They don't grow out of it. It gets worse. Um, and right now it's about management. Now, Heather, you can go to my audio podcast pet talk today and listen to episode 81 on counter conditioning and desensitization, which is kind of the gold standard for helping, um, any dogs with aggression. But again, this is difficult work and you can get hurt and there's not a lot of success when you've got multiple dogs in the house fighting unless you've got somebody that's really, really skilled and knows what they're doing. Um, I wish I had a better answer for that, but Heather, that's the most difficult problem that, uh, that you could have. Um, yeah, Brian said it's an air bite. Okay, um, Sandra, she says, okay, I've got a leash puller and she's all over the place. When she pulls, we change direction over and over, but I can't get her to look at me to mark and treat a few times calling her name. She would sit and look at me. Uh, though we are just using a few feet of sidewalk. Well, Sandra, it sounds like maybe you're trying to follow a little bit of my protocol. I have people teach the dog not to pull, to walk on a loose leash, um, by using about 15 to 20 feet of sidewalk. And if your dog's eyes are in front of your leg, you are gonna turn away from your dog. 180 degrees. You're going to make that u-turn and as your dog starts to catch up, cuz remember when you make that U-turn, now you've put the dog or puppy behind you, they're gonna wanna catch up as they start moving forward. Make sure you're turning back and looking at them. You know that they're moving forward, okay? And before their eyes get to the front of your leg, you need to again, make another u-turn away from the dog. Now, even if your dog is walking, well, not pulling on the leash right next to you, don't take more than about six to eight steps without making a U-turn. We're teaching the dog to follow. We're teaching the dog to pay attention. If you make a lot of turns in quick succession, U-turns, eventually the dog starts checking in, kinda looking up at you. And then you can mark when they look up at you and you can reward. And Sandra's talking about that. I believe you probably either listened to a podcast or, or we're listening to the show or we talked about it. Um, you just gotta keep doing it. Okay? And one of the things you can do is after you make that turn and your dog gets you, you know, make a sound like, or, or your dog's name like what you said, and when they so create that behavior, do something to create the behavior. If you're not getting it, okay, get your dog's attention looks up at you, mark and reward. The other thing you can do proactively, when you're not walking just in the house, start teaching your dog that name. Recognition means look at you. So if your dog's name is Boo, one of my dogs go boo boo boo. All of a sudden boo looks at you, boom, mark and reward and keep doing that. And then as the dog gets that change your criteria where now you make the dog look at you a little bit longer before you mark and reward you start little by little extending how long the dog needs to look at you before you reward. Make sure when you're rewarding, when you mark your reward every time, vary the reward. Sometimes maybe three little pieces of chicken, sometimes maybe one, sometimes maybe two. Mix it up a little bit. What we don't want your dogs to start learning is that, hey, you gave one treat and now we're done. And then as soon as they get rewarded, they check out. They're no longer paying attention to you. But when you feed one, two, or 3, 1, 2, 3, maybe next time one, maybe the next time 1, 2, 3 treats. Maybe the next time one, maybe the next time two, they don't know. So they're gonna hang out there a little bit longer. They're gonna wait. They're not gonna just check out immediately because they got their one treat and we're done. Okay? But proactively teaching your dog that name recognition means looking at you and extending that look a little bit longer over time. Gradually, systematically rewarding that. So now you can start using your dog's name to look at you, okay? Um, you can use a food lure, bring a food lure down by your dog's nose and bring it up to your eyes as you're walking and have them look at you and you can walk a little bit and then you can mark and reward them. You could use a toy if they're really toy motivated to do that. But don't give up, Sandra. A lot of times it takes more repetition than most people think that, that it's gonna take. Um, so give that a shot. I appreciate you letting me know how things are going. Um, Cheryl says, I work from home, so I'm home all day with my pup. If I walk out of the house for just a minute, she barks uncontrollably. I can't leave her home at all. What do you suggest? Um, okay, so Cheryl, it sounds like your, your dog or your pup has a little bit of separation anxiety. There's a couple things here. Um, the fact that, that you work from home is a good thing. Nobody wants to hear what I'm about to say. The first step to dealing with separation anxiety is not leaving your puppy alone. Oh my God, how do I do that? I gotta work, I gotta do this. Gotta do that. You're gonna have to be creative, pet sitter, doggy daycare, working from home, family member that you could take your dog to. Now, I'm not saying to avoid the separation anxiety issue. I said the first step is to not have your dog stay home alone. Why? That can be trauma for a dog and a puppy. And that gets conditioned over and over and over and it gets worse over time. Every time the experience happens, it gets worse. That's why we tell everybody, Hey, when you've got big problems, you need to avoid those triggers. That's the first step. It's not the fix, but it's the first step to the fix. Then we've gotta do the behavior modification work. We've gotta do the work so that I've got a fan going off. You know, I've got one of these fans in the bathroom and they're, they're going bad. So have you heard that crazy sound? That's what that is. Um, but getting back to the separation anxiety, they can't keep experiencing that over and over. Now proactively, we can begin to work on it to create a different association with you leaving. Now, the old way of dealing with separation anxiety was you go out for a second, come back in, give the dog a treat, go out for a second, come back in, give the dog a treat, go out for two seconds, come back in, give a treat, go out for three seconds, come back in, give a treat four and five and six seconds, and then 10 and 30 seconds to come back and give a treat. You get the idea little by little, very gradually, very systematically leaving for longer periods of time when we come back and give the dog a treat, we don't do that anymore. First thing is, you need to be boring as hell. When we come back and give a treat, gets a dog excited, it's that excitability that we don't want. We want them calm, Ms. Heck, we want you call Ms. Heck. So what you're gonna begin to do proactively, and you gotta do a lot of this. You're gonna walk out the door, you're gonna walk right back in and go about your business. You're gonna do that a lot throughout the day. We're, I'm talking walk out right back in the most boring thing in the world. Don't pay attention to the dog. Walk out, walk back in, do that over and over and over until your dog is like bend there, done that big deal. Yeah, mom, dad, they come and go all the time for a second big deal. They're never gone long. The dog doesn't care about that second, oh, in the beginning they do. But when you're coming and going for a second or two seconds ignoring your dog being extremely boring, they get desensitized to that. When that happens, then you start leaving for a little bit longer and you come back in and go about your business. Don't acknowledge the dog. You need to create lots of proactive departures. Short duration. What is short duration? Well, if your dog starts to get concerned, it was too long, too soon, you gotta do this in little bite size pieces for your dog to get used to it. Okay? Little by little you're gonna extend the amount of time. Again, you gotta keep your dog what we call below threshold. What does that mean? It means that your dog's body language is loose, it's relaxed. Your dog's not experiencing any kind of fear, stress, or anxiety. If your dog continues to experience that, then that's what your dog's gonna experience. We've gotta create different experiences. Now, here's the trick. Little by little, as you're adding time to your departures, you need to what we call toggle back and forth. As you make those departures longer, you can't just keep the pattern always going a little bit longer, a little bit longer, a little bit longer, a little bit longer, a little bit longer. Because dogs are phenomenal at recognizing patterns and picking up patterns. And that is a pattern that's telling them, Hey, guess what? This is gonna keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse. Mom and dad are going to keep leaving longer and longer and longer. And while they were initially okay with your little very gradual short departures and coming back, doing nothing, now all of a sudden in their mind they're thinking, oh crap, this is gonna keep getting longer. Now I'm nervous. We found that that was the case and that's why we need to toggle back and forth. And what I mean is this. Let's say I built up the dog. The dog's fine If I leave for 30 seconds and come back and again coming and going, boring as heck, I'm doing that a lot. But when I get to 40 seconds, the dog's not okay. All right. So what I'm gonna begin to do is I'm gonna go out to that 30 seconds, come back in. I'm gonna do a lot of that, but I'm also gonna go out for five seconds and come back in. I'm gonna go out for 30 seconds, come back in, I'm gonna go out for two seconds. Come back in. I'm gonna go out for 15 seconds. Come back in, go out for 20 seconds, come back in, go out for 20 seconds, come back in, go out for 20 seconds, come back in, go out for 30 seconds, come back in, go out for two seconds, come back in, go out for 10 seconds, come back in. I'm gonna keep on extending the time and duration over time, slowly and gradually, keeping my dog in a state of relaxation and calm. If I've left and my duration causes the dog to be anxious and nervous, I've left too long, too soon. You've got, this is a, this is a process. It takes time. Now there's other things that you need to desensitize and that is the, what we call the pre-departure cues. You know how your dog knows, they know when you're getting ready to leave cuz you pick up your keys, your wallet, your purse. Maybe you put on a different set of shoes than you normally wear. Maybe you go out a different door, maybe you go out the door that leads to the garage cuz you're taking your vehicle to work versus just walking out the front door with your dog for a walk. They know the difference. Those are called pre-departure cues. So you need to start working with those pre-departure cues, however they already signify stress, cuz it represents the fact that you're leaving. Don't start desensitizing pre-departure cues. Start by de start by desensitizing these little brief absences, these little brief short duration absences. And once your dog's gotten a little comfortable with that, now start working on desensitizing, the pre-departure cues. You can go to dog behaviorist.com, you can go to my website, it's right down there. Dog behaviorist.com. And I've got an article on counter conditioning and desensitization and I've got a couple articles on separation anxiety. Um, also another great resource, uh, Meena D Martini as a book on separation anxiety. It's fantastic. I recommend anybody that, uh, has that, uh, that book can help them also. Um, separation anxiety can be tough. Sometimes it's so severe that dogs are hurting themselves trying to escape. Sometimes it's so severe they'll cry at the top of their lungs for hours and not stop. In those severe cases, you might need to see your veterinarian cuz you might need medication short term along with behavior modification. A lot of times when it's severe, that's what we need. Okay? But you can go to my website, find some articles. You can also hire me. I do consultations all over the world. I do those virtually. Do I need to see your dog? Absolutely not. It's all about trading you. All right? So try that and hopefully, um, that will help. Well, good. Brian. I'm, I'm, I'm hoping that that helps and, and give that a shot. Um, Benjamin says, what can I do with my female dog who has anxiety? Anytime me and my wife go out, our dog scratches at the doors, pulls at our curtain, pulls the curtains down and pulls the pillows off the couch. Well, Benjamin, I just got done talking about separation anxiety. So if you're here, that is what you need to do. Um, we already talked about that cat from Florida. You got a CATA hula. All right, I love the Cata Hula. Um, let's see here, Heather. Let's see. Those are the ones that we're fighting. Yep. And we've got Kim. When my two puppies are in training class with other dogs, the lab barks and wines incessantly throughout the whole class. She follows commands, but is loud and whiny the entire class. This is the only environment which she does this. Uh, what may, let's see here. What does it say? Uh, come on, expand this. What, what may be the cause in how to minimize? Um, well one of two things, Kim. Is your dog friendly with other dogs? Has your dog ever been anxious and nervous or snapping at or aggressive towards other dogs? Because it's one of two things. Typically your dog's either overexcited, overstimulated over aroused, wants to get to the other dogs and play, or your dog has some level of anxiety and nervousness and might want some distance from those dogs. If it's more of a high pitched bark and a wine, it might be more, I want to go over there and play. Um, if it's more of a deeper bark, it might be what we call a distance increasing bark. And, and basically your dog's saying, Hey, I need some space and distance, but what you need to do and why didn't you ask the trainer what to do? Right? And maybe they told you it didn't help. Um, you need to work further away from the group. You need to back away from the group at a distance where your dog is not doing that behavior and continue to work your dog and reward your dog for that calm behavior. And little by little over time, you can move a little bit closer, but as soon as your dog starts that behavior again, you've gone too close too soon, you need to back up. Now, proactively, what you might wanna do is start taking your dog places where there's other dogs, green belts, parks. I'm not a fan of dog parks and I want you to be working obedience training at a distance from other dogs. But again, you gotta find that distance. What's your dog's threshold? At what distance is your dog still loose and relaxed? We'll take food rewards, we'll focus on what you're saying will respond to commands that's below threshold At the point your dog starts showing nervousness, anxiety at the point your dog is focusing on that other dog kind of heavily. That's your dog, okay? At threshold, your dog's over threshold when it starts that barking and whining and doing all that stuff, by the way, go to my website, dog behaviors.com. I just recently wrote an article on understanding thresholds and canine body language to be able to successfully do counter conditioning and desensitization, which is the work that needs to be done for any behavior that's related to, um, excitability fears, anxiety, phobias, aggression reactivity, but excitability and being overstimulated as well. Um, give that a shot. See if that works. If you need information about counter conditioning and desensitization, go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast and um, look for episode 81. I know I say that all the time, but you know, again, that's one of the biggest things that people need when we're dealing with these issues is counter conditioning and desensitization. It's as simple as that. Okay? Do me a favor I didn't ask you before. Hit that like button for me. Hit that smash button, hit that share button so that more people can benefit, uh, from what we do here at Pet Talk today. And do me a favor too. I need some reviews on my audio podcast. That's how the ranking goes up. We're ranked really low. Everybody loves the podcast, but nobody wants to give a review. Go to Apple Podcast. That's where I need the reviews. If you like what we do, please take a minute, go to Apple Podcast, give us a review. Um, I don't wanna push anymore about that because the reason I do this, this is my labor of love. I get nothing out of this. I don't sell sponsorships. You don't hear advertising. Um, this is my way to give back to the community. All I ask for you is to share this with other people so other people can benefit. Not everybody can afford to hire a private behaviorist, a private behavior consultant, a private dog trainer. It's expensive. Um, all right, back to back to our questions here. Oh, you know what I wanna do? Wait a minute, Linda. Linda says, my question is, why give a treat all the time? Why not reward them with a pat good dog happy experience. Um, Linda, in the beginning, when a dog is first learning something, it's hard work and the paycheck, that's what I want you to think about. A positive reinforcer as a paycheck. We want that paycheck to be as valuable as it can be. The more valuable, the more that reward is valued by the dog, the quicker the training's gonna happen, the more moti. It's all about motivation. We want the highest level of motivation while we're teaching and training once. And, and, and the reward schedule is a one-to-one ratio, or a two to one or a three-to-one ratio. Dog does behavior, they always get rewarded with food. They might get one, two, or three food rewards. We'll vary it back and forth once the dog is consistently and reliably doing the behaviors with distractions. Because think about it. What good is a training if the dog can only perform and listen when there are no distractions? That's not the real world. We need your dog to be reliable and respond to commands and cues when all hell's breaking loose. And when your dog can do that consistently over a period of months, no matter where you take the dog, now you can start fading out the food rewards. Now you can start using lower value positive reinforcers like a good boy, good girl, little pat on the back. By the way, your dogs have no clue what good boy and good girl mean. Um, if you have a really happy, joyful, high pitched tonality, that might get them a little happy. Okay? Um, but that's why, and hopefully that makes sense to you. Um, I always tell people, even if you love the work you do, how long and how motivated would you be to do your work if you stopped getting a paycheck? What if your pay for your work was, Hey, good job,<laugh>. Good job, Linda. Oh, uh, uh, uh, paycheck. Nah, let me give you a pat on the back instead. So, you know, think about it in those terms. And there's a big difference between bribing a dog to do something and rewarding a dog. If you're not using a treat pouch, if you've got food in your hand at all, if you're reaching for food at all before the dog responds to your command or cue, you're not using food properly. That's a bribe. That's not a reward. And bribes are hard to get rid of. Food rewards are not all right. Uh, yep. Cheryl says, yeah, she knows when you're getting ready to leave. Yeah, they are. Um, I've got five minutes. I wanna talk about something. You know what, I didn't get to talk about introducing dogs. I'm, I've gotta get that in here in the next, uh, couple weeks. How do you introduce dogs the right way? But let me talk about Germany. Germany's got some incredible dog laws that I wanted to talk about. Um, by the way, if you own a dog in Germany, be prepared to pay a yearly dog tax and pay dog insurance fees, and you must have them chipped. Okay? Um, now your dog in Germany, kind of like here, they need to be collared, they need to be leashed. If, uh, they're not collared, if they're not leashed, um, you can be fined up to$5,000. But then people are saying to me, Hey, wait a minute, will, I've been to Germany. I see dogs off leash all the time, and they're incredibly well trained. Well, let me tell you how that happens. Those dogs are wearing a green ID tag. And, and in order to wear a green ID tag to be able to be off leash, okay? Uh, those dog owners, they need to go through a lot of steps. Um, they need to, let's see, they've gotta attend a dog training school. They've gotta pass a written theory exam of dog ownership and commands. Um, then they gotta complete a practical exam to demonstrate that, uh, their dog understands and follows commands to the letter. And that's with distractions. Hey, the Germans take their training seriously. Okay? But once, uh, you complete all that, then you get your permit and you get your green tag that you can put on your dog's collar and then your dog can be at certain places off leash. If it's a restaurant with an open kitchen, no, that can't happen. Medical facility, no, that can't happen. Um, oh, check this out. Any of you crate your dogs. Well, if you were in Germany, it would be illegal to crate your dog longer than five hours. That's right. Longer than five hours, you can be fined up to$25,000. No, that is not a typo. Um, also leaving a dog on a balcony is not a good alternative to leaving them caged up. Um, they will bust you for that as well. Um, make sure you've got the right training collar in Germany. If you happen to move to Germany and you've been used to using a shock collar, a prong collar, a cho collar, forget about it. They're all illegal in Germany. Isn't that amazing? Everybody thinks those tools are so necessary. They're illegal in Germany. And Germany has some of the best trained dogs anywhere and they're using positive reinforcement. That should tell you something. Um, yeah. Oh, by the way, you like to hoard cats, hoard dogs. You can only have five cats or dogs or ferrets in Germany. Um, let's see some other interesting things here. Oh, oh, here's the thing. Check this out. Not only is it illegal to have your dog created for more than five hours, the law in Germany, you are required. Listen to this. You are required to walk your dog twice a day. Your dog needs to be outside for exercise. You need to walk the dog twice a day. And we're not talking about just a little stroll around the block. Each time you take your dog out by law, you need to have them out for an hour, an hour walk twice a day by law or don't have the dog. And I would be on a business if we lived in Germany because everybody is doing everything right now. That doesn't mean there aren't dogs with issues, but boy, we've got a long way to go here in the United States to, to get with the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to how we treat our animals, how we train our animals. Um, there's so many different, uh, animal welfare issues that, uh, that we could discuss. Well, we are just about out of time. Everybody. I want to thank everybody for, uh, yeah, that's the just about out of time music. Wanna thank everybody for your questions today. Please hit that like button. Please hit that share button. Please give us a five star review. Tell your friends, your family, share the things you're learning with others so they can have well-behaved dogs. Also, um, get out there this week. Walk your dog. Can you get out for two walks an hour each time? Well, you'd have to do it if you were in Germany. Have a great weekend, everybody. I'm outta.