#94 PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with WILL BANGURA M.S., CBCC-KA Certified Dog Behavior Consultant and Professional Certified Dog Trainer

PET TALK TODAY #94  Dog Training with Will Bangura. Q & A, How to stop Puppy Biting. How to Stop Jumping, Canine Socialization and more.   Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist. Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Raised by Wolfs with canine DNA in his blood, having trained more than 24,000 pets helping you and your fur babies thrive. Live in studio. It's Pet Talk today with Will Bangura answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert, will Manura.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Good Saturday morning, pet lovers. I'm Will Bandura. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Pep Talk today here on Facebook Live where I'm here each and every Saturday morning at 11 o'clock Eastern standard time. We're here for an entire hour where we take your questions about your dogs' behavior and training issues, and I help provide you with positive solutions. Um, as I said, I'm Will band girl. If you're brand new to Pet Talk today, let me talk a little bit about how this works. If you've got a question about your dog's behavior, if you've got a question about your dog's training, all you need to do is go ahead and type your question into the comments section below. And do me a favor. Let us know where you're watching from and what kind of pets you have. Also, hey, how about showing us a little love? Hit that like button. Hit that share button so that more people can benefit from what we do here at Pet Talk today. Uh, this is a labor of love for me. Um, not everybody can afford, uh, professional dog training. Not everybody can afford to hire a professional certified behavior consultant. Um, and that's what I do. Um, if you would like to have somebody to help you one-on-one, of course I'm always available. And you can visit my website@dogbehaviorist.com. That's dog behaviorist.com. Um, like I said, we'll be looking at your questions, um, in a little bit. If you'll type them in the comments section, I will go ahead and answer those for you. Also, I've got a few topics that, um, we might talk about today. One of those is puppy mouthing. You know how puppy, you call it biting, but I don't call when puppies, if it's not aggressive, if they're not trying to hurt you, if they're not trying to get you away from them, and it's just a playful thing. Now, it might hurt, but I call that mouthing and and I just make that distinction between biting and mouthing. Mouthing is playing, biting is aggressive, but we can't have dogs. We can't have puppies mouthing and mouthing hard. And and anybody that's had a, a young new puppy, you know what it's like when they got those sharp razor sharp puppy teeth, right? And they're chomping you using you like a pin cushion. So I'm gonna be talking about how do you address that? How do you get a rambunctious little puppy to stop using you as a pin cushion and stop biting on you and mouthing you? And even an older dog, because some older dogs, they just don't have good mouth manners. They don't have, uh, good, uh, bite inhibition. Sometimes. They never learn that when they should between three and five weeks of age in the litter. And we'll talk a little bit about that if, if we get to that topic. Also, I thought we could talk a little bit about canine socialization. You know, we're always talking about socialize, socialize, socialize, however, what does that really mean? Socialization, that's a big term. And I think sometimes it gets misconstrued. There's a big difference between getting your dogs exposed to lots of people, places, things, stimulation, versus does your dog have to meet and interact with every person and every other dog and every other animal. So what is socialization? And when we talk about that, let's talk about what's the actual goal, what are we trying to accomplish with it? And then that helps us understand a little bit more about how we should go about that. I also thought we could talk today if we have time. Um, how do you teach a dog to walk on a loose leash? How do you stop this, this snagging pulling on the leash that we all hate? How do we get a dog that can walk nice on a loose leash? And then also, um, if we have time, we could talk about, um, introducing a new baby into the home. A dog that's never met a baby introducing a new baby. So there's a lot of different topics that I could, um, go into. There's a lot of different things that we could talk about. And like I said, um, I want to be able to take a look at your questions that you type into the comments section, and I want to be able to help you and provide you with some answers for that. But first I need to talk about calm dogs, our sponsor. Do you have a dog or do you know a dog that has anxiety, fears, phobias? Do you know a dog that's reactive or aggressive? Maybe they've got problems with thunderstorms, fireworks, car rides, that visits grooming. There's never been a product on the market like calm dogs. It's the world's most effective calming aid for dogs without a prescription. It's made by, with 21 all natural herbs, vitamins and amino acids, um, made in the United States. This comes with a 100% money back guarantee. Try it for six weeks. If it doesn't help your dog, you get your money back. So you've got everything to gain and there's no risk because there's a money back guarantee. And I guarantee you, there's nothing like this product on the market. Well, we are gonna be talking about, uh, I said we're gonna talk a little bit about puppy mouthing. So let me talk about that. Puppies, typically, they're gonna learn good bite inhibition at about three to five weeks of age in the litter when they're playing with the other puppies, when they bite down too hard, one of the other puppies is gonna yip and go. Yep. And it kind of startles the puppy that was biting. And that's kind of what corrects them and lets them know that they're biting too hard when they're nursing on mom and they might be biting on the nipple and they bite too hard. Mom might correct them. Well, if they don't have those experiences at three to five weeks of age, and those of you that have rescued dogs and maybe the rescue organizations got these puppies, um, before they had gone through all the developmental process that dogs need to typically go through from the time that they're born until the time that they're actually adopted out. And, and typically that's gonna be eight to 10 weeks of age. But if they miss that critical canine socialization period, they're gonna have problems with biting typically, and they're gonna have problems maybe with other dogs. So it's not always that. Sometimes we have dogs that have very high drive and anything that moves fast, they wanna reach out and grab. And puppies, they're like infants in the beginning. They wanna put everything in their mouth, including your hands, your feet, everything that they possibly can because they're teething and their gums hurt just like a, a human baby would. And they're gonna be teething for about seven months. So they might be chewing on things. You might be dealing with destructive chewing issues for the first seven months of a puppy's life as well. But one of the things you can do, you can do exactly what the litter mates did in the litter when the puppy bit them too hard. How about letting out a little bit of a y hi pitch high, high tonality, very sharp. Yep. And what you'll probably see as surprise on the puppy's face and be taken aback a little bit. Now, your puppy then might recover from that very quickly and wanna go right back into biting your hands. One of the things that's important is are you setting your puppy up for failure? Listen, almost every puppy, if you wave your fingers around its mouth and what do we do? We pet them, right? We're we're petting and we're petting and we're petting and we're petting. And so there's our fingers, there's our hands. And they communicate with their mouths. Like we communicate with our hands, we touch with our hands, they touch with their mouths. They think it's natural, but don't always put your hand by their mouth. Are you setting them up for failure? Or when you bring your hand towards their face and mouth, do you have an appropriate chew toy that you can immediately give them, giving them an alternative, something appropriate that they can chew on rather than chewing on your fingers? Okay? And then one of the most important things that you need to be thinking about is, and we always forget this, are we rewarding good behavior? Are we reinforcing good behavior? You know, if you've got your hands around your dog's face and your fingers are moving around your dog's face and your dog's not biting and mouthing on you, you need to be rewarding your dog. Give it a treat. Give it a high value food reward. Tell it it's a good dog. And if your dog goes to try to nip at your fingers, be careful if you try to pull it away fast, because a lot of times that's gonna bring about some chase. The puppy's gonna think it's a game, right? That's how they play. Go back into that. Yep. And keep your hands down. Leave your hands away from their face and start carrying some appropriate chew toys with you. Put'em in your pocket so that when you, you can, what you wanna do proactively, spend a couple minutes a day, start reaching towards the puppy's face, move your hands around if the puppy goes to want to mouth at you, go ahead and yep. And then bring your hands back out there again. And if your puppy tries to go for you, do that. Yep. And then bring your hands out again. And if your puppy doesn't take the bait, give a high value food reward. So you're teaching mouth manners, okay? And if you spend a minute or two a day doing that, you'll be surprised, especially if you're giving your puppy alternatives, have those chew toys with you. Absolutely have those with you. So that's one thing you can do in terms of dealing with puppy biting. Uh, with mouthing. Let me take a look at, uh, what we've got going on here. Uh, Kath. Katherine. Hi, Katherine. Good morning. Um, how can I train my 10 month old Malua to not react and go crazy with motorcycles? Well, Katherine, are you an experienced dog owner? Um, are you an experienced dog handler? Um, are you somebody that's very familiar with one of the, um, highest drive working breeds that are out there? Belgian malua are bred for work. They are bred for law enforcement. They are bred for military. They are bred for protection sports. They are the epitome of a working dog. And when you tell me that your dog likes to go crazy and reactive and and go crazy to motorcycles, I'm assuming barking, lunging, wanting to chase after them, these dogs, these Belgian mawas have incredible over the top prey drive. Anything that moves fast, they're gonna want to chase, they're gonna want to chase. You've got a tough job, Catherine. I don't know if you're an experienced dog handler. A Belgian malua is a breed that, in my opinion, definitely not a breed for a first time dog owner. Probably not a breed for a second time dog owner. Um, and unless you have the ability to give this dog a job and have it have an incredible amount of exercise every day, all day long, it's probably not the dog for you. And I know you don't want to hear that, and I could be way off, Katherine. Maybe you're very experienced with Belgian melon was. But one of the first things you need to ask yourself, and all of you, whenever you've got a problem with your dog, when you're asked or when you're bringing up the point, Hey, I don't want my dog to do a I don't want my dog to do b I don't want my dog to do this. I don't want my dog to do that. Think about what would you like your dog to do instead? Okay, now you can take that prey drive and use that to your advantage. Katherine, I'll bet you your Belgian malua absolutely goes crazy for toys. Also, a ball that you throw a tug toy. All right? If your dog's going crazy after motorcycles, your dog's crazy for toys, bring the toy with you, okay? Bring the toy with you and see if you can't play. Get your dog's attention with the toy and be more interesting with moving that toy around really fast and trying to have a lot of high drive fun with your dog, with your malua, and be more interesting than the motorcycle. Now, you may have to spend some time before you get around motorcycles, playing with your dog, with these toys, and really building up that drive and building up this, um, engagement between you and your dog. And make that the, the highlight of your dog's day. That should be the thing that's absolutely the most fun thing imaginable. And start doing that in the house. And then start keeping your dogs focus and attention playing with you around small distractions. And then go to bigger distractions and bigger distractions and go to different locations. Now, I've not even talked about motorcycles yet. How about we get some recorded sounds from YouTube? Cuz there's sounds that are recorded. There's very few sounds that there's not a recording of on YouTube, if you have dogs that need to be desensitized to sounds, start playing motorcycle sounds at very low volumes, very low volume. If your dog's getting excited, it's too loud. Little by little over time, gradually, systematically bring that volume up. I'm not gonna encourage you to do counter conditioning because feeding your dog or that's gonna get your dog excited. When we're pairing that with the sound of a motorcycle, we wanna bring that energy down. So what we can do is just gradual systematic desensitization. Very long term, very slow process. But you start out at a super low volume and play motorcycle sounds over and over and over and over and over until that becomes the most boring thing in the world for your dog. And then you bring the volume up a little bit. This takes weeks, maybe months, okay? But part of the dynamic when you're out there with your malan one, it's going crazy with these motorcycles, is the sound. Now granted a lot of it's movement, but if your movement with the toy is more interesting, and you've been working on that proactively with your dog and making that the highlight, that play that fun, the highlight of your dog's day, you just might be more interesting than at motorcycle. Now the other thing is you've gotta start teaching focus exercises and impulse control exercises. So you begin working on things like leave it not with the motorcycle. Not to start with that. That's the hardest thing for your dog to leave. Start with something small. You could have a piece of kibble in one hand and you could have another piece of kibble in your other hand. Close your palms, put one behind your back, open up your hand slowly with that kibble as your dog maybe goes for that kibble. Say, leave it close your hand and then bring out your other hand and give the piece of kibble from the other hand. Start teaching your dog to leave it with little things. And then start teaching your dog to leave it with toys that your dog might be more excited about. Okay? But always have two. So the one that they have to leave in one hand, you've got another one in the hand that you're hiding behind your back. And when they leave it, you give them the reward of what they were leaving alone. So they're not losing. See, a lot of you are making the big mistake. Your dogs grab things, you tell'em to let it go. You call them to you and you take it away from them. You don't give them anything else in return. And before long they don't wanna come to you anymore because their association is, Hey, every time I come to mom and dad, usually I got something I like in my mouth and they take it away from me. Therefore, don't come to mom and dad again. That's called poisoning your recall or your come command or your cue. You've gotta trade out, you've gotta trade out. And those of you that aren't trading out, you might be contributing to a dog that might be a resource guard down the road because what are you doing? You're teaching them that resources are scarce. And all dogs by nature genetically are resource guarders. Yeah. Did you know that genetically dogs are programmed to resource guard? All right, so anyway, Catherine, you may have to hire a professional dog trainer because malua are difficult. I mean, they're smart dogs, they're great dogs, don't get me wrong. I love the breed. I've, I've owned a malua, one of the best dogs I ever had. But you really have to know what you're doing because they are super high drive. And, um, if you're not a, a real, real, real experienced dog handler, dog owner, I, I recommend that you find a good dog trainer. But make sure you find somebody that uses positive reinforcement. There's so many trainers out there calling themselves professionals, and all they're doing is punishing your dogs. They won't call it punishment. They'll use the word correction, but the correction implies they're using some level of fear, intimidation or pain. A leash in collar correction is painful. An electronic collar correction is painful. A prong collar is painful. These tools, the only way that they work, are by creating pain. Now, I don't care what anybody says out there that uses these tools and tries to tell you that they don't, they do do. Now that doesn't mean that you've got dogs screaming and suffering and being tortured by prong collars and electronic collars and choke collars. But don't let anybody try to trick you and convince you that it doesn't create a certain level of discomfort. It does. That's the way it works. Because what they'll do is they'll tell you, oh, we're just using it to get their attention. Well, look folks, there's a lot of ways to get a dog's attention other than using a shot collar and a prong collar. And, and those of you that wanna be haters to me, because I'm bad mouthing the prong collar in the shot collar, I used them for years. I'm not one of these trainers that has never used them and don't know what I'm talking about. I used them for years, very well educated on how to use an electronic collar in a prong collar. I don't use them anymore today. I don't see a reason why they're necessary. The science out there, it's definitive. There's no longer an argument. Positive reinforcement is the best way to train any animal. It's the most effective, it's the most efficient, and it has the least amount of fallout. There's a lot of damage that can be done to dogs that are punished. The biggest thing, you know, we get dogs that are resource guarders. We get dogs that are a little bit, uh, protective, territorial a little aggressive. And you've got a lot of well-intentioned. I don't think there's any, well, there are a few, but most trainers have really good intentions. They just don't know any better because it's not a regulated industry. And they're not educated. They don't know that they don't know. But punishment does nothing but suppress behaviors. If you've got a reactive dog and you're walking and you punish that behavior, of course they're gonna use the word correction, right? Give it a leash and a collar correction. Pop it, show'em who's boss. Hey, when you start hearing those terms, you gotta show your dog whose boss, your dog's being dominant, that's a bunch of bs. Your dog's being a dog. Dogs are not being dominant. They're not trying to overtake the human race. They know they're a dog. They know you're a human. You are not the same species. Listen, your dogs don't eat and get water without you. You're way more than alpha. You're God, okay? And when we use punishment, we ruin our relationship with the dog. Oftentimes the dogs don't understand why they're being punished. And 99.9% of the time we're just repressing outward behavior. We're not changing anything in terms of the underlying emotional state. And that's what needs to be changed. You change the underlying emotional state. If your dog, Catherine, if your dog's emotional state and perception of that motorcycle changes, the behavior changes. If you punish your dog for that behavior, you might stop that behavior for a while. Why? Because the dog doesn't want to engage in it cuz it doesn't wanna get a leash and collar correction, doesn't wanna get shocked, doesn't wanna get punished, doesn't want to experience something that's uncomfortable. So it stops that behavior, but it's inside. It wants to go nuts. And that energy, that anxiety builds and builds and builds. And it's not long. Usually about two to three months. Usually corrections and punishment might at best suppress behaviors for two to three months. But the pressure's building inside and building and they snap. And now we gotta come behind the trainers that use punishment and do all kinds of positive reinforcement, counter conditioning desensitization to try to turn things around. There's no reason to use punishment. It's quick. It's quick and it's easy if you're real lazy. But how fair is it? Think about this. Did your dog come into the world with a manual? How to behave in the human world? Because we're bringing them into our world. We're bringing them into our lifestyle. We're asking dogs to adapt to the human lifestyle, the human world. What have you done to teach them proactively with positive reinforcement? Hey, these are the behaviors we want, instead of just immediately correcting behavior. Oh, bad dog. Why is it a bad dog? Because it got up on the counter and, and ate your, your Turkey. Of course it's going to get up on the counter and eat the Turkey. It's a dog. You've gotta teach it the right kind of behaviors to fit in our society to be able to live in the home with you. Dogs are doing what dogs do. They're like two year old children, very, very self-centered. They're gonna do whatever it is they're gonna do. That's fun. Why not? It's incredible to get up on the counter and eat a Turkey. It's fun to grab some tissue out of the trash can and run around and have you chase me. That does not make me a bad dog. It just makes me a dog when I'm a dog. And I jump on you. Well, you taught me how to jump on you. You're like, will, what are you talking about? I didn't teach my dog to jump on me. Yes you did. Your dog, you picked it up as a puppy. Your dog put his paws on you and you started to pet it. And the dog learns that there's positive reinforcement to try to get up to you. Yeah, they don't jump by nature. I know there'll be people that will disagree with me, but I watched video of dogs that are only bred for work. Um, and this was someplace, I wanna say it was near the Caucus Mountains. If Steve Zorn is watching he'll, he'll know maybe what this breed is. It's not the Caucasian shepherd, but this wor the, the, they had these working breed puppies out and there were a bunch of maybe three, four year old kids out there running around. Those puppies never once jumped on those kids. And they were in extremely close proximity being very active. But that's because they were taught to leave the puppies alone. They didn't pet the puppies. They didn't pick the puppies up so they could be as crazy and run around as much as they want. And the puppies never jumped on'em cuz they didn't learn that. It's our job to teach our dogs what it is we want them to do. Let's go to another question. Um, Lisa says, I've got an 11 month old male Sharpe. He's a real handful. I have his neuter scheduled, uh, for one day after his first birthday. Will that calm him down? Is one year the correct age to neuter? Uh, coming at you from Ci Navar Neve, Ohio. Love Ohio, love the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Well, Lisa, um, some males are calmed down a little bit by neutering. Most are not. Um, we usually don't see much difference in a dog that's neutered. Um, the veterinarians are pushing the neutering, uh, you know, for to prevent testicular cancer. They're pushing neutering to prevent unwanted, uh, pregnancies. We've already got too many dogs running around we can't find homes for, but it doesn't do a whole lot. Um, in terms of calming your dog down. Um, the biggest thing is start teaching. And, and, and I didn't get to this point with Katherine, but with her Malmo and, and Lisa, with your Sharpe, you need to teach impulse control exercises. I started talking about leave it, leave, it is one impulse control exercise. Teaching your dog to stay is an impulse control exercise. Teaching your dog to wait for its food is an impulse control exercise. Teaching your dog to wait at the door is an impulse control exercise. You have got to teach your dog alternative behaviors. Lisa, that would be incompatible with this. He's a handful. What does that mean? What does that look like? What does being a handful look like? Is that we're outside on a walk and he's pulling, is that we're in the house and any time, uh, the doorbell rings or somebody knocks on the door, he goes crazy. Um, or are we talking about when I come home from work, my dog has the zoomies? Um, are we talking about when I come home from work, um, from the time I come home till the time I go to bed, the dog keeps running up to me with a toy. Want me to play, play, play? I don't know exactly what you mean, Lisa, when you say your dog's a handful. But all dogs need to be taught the manners we want them to engage in. They're being dogs. And some dogs have very high drive. And you know, the number one problem that most dogs have is boredom. I know you don't want to hear that. You don't think you're boring. You're not boring. But you know what? In the real world, the wild for dogs, they're out there sniffing all over the place. They're scavenging for food. There's all kinds of mental and physical stimulation going on for dogs. They lose most of that when they live in the home of a human being. What are you doing for canine enrichment? What are you doing to stimulate your dog's mind? What are you doing to stimulate your dog physically? What kind of exercise does your dog have? Dogs need at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise every day. Walking is not an aerobic exercise. Dogs are sprinters. They're not long distance runners. Those of you that want to take your dog for nine mile runs, they're gonna have orthopedic issues. Dogs are not long distance runners, they're sprinters and they need 20 minutes of aerobic exercise a day. You need to maybe start thinking about doing some enrichment activities. If you go to my website@dogbehaviorist.com and you go to the menu, go to the article section. I've got an article on canine enrichment, how you can help stimulate them mentally, how to stimulate them physically, give them the stimulation they need so they're not so bored. A lot of this hyperactivity is boredom, okay? But training. How do you handle a dog that has a lot of excitement? Another great article, uh, for you as well, Lisa, and also for Catherine. Go to my website, dog behaviorist.com. Again, go to the menu, go to the article section, look for the article on the relaxation protocol, on the relaxation protocol, and check that out. But also, we need to talk about our sponsor. We need to take a quick second. Please go to calm dogs.com or you can go to dog anxiety.com if you've got a dog or you know, somebody that has a dog that has anxiety, fears, phobias, aggression reactivity, calm dogs is the world's number one calming aid for dog anxiety. It comes with a 100% money back guarantee. There's nothing like it on the market. Check it out@doganxiety.com or calm dogs.com. All right, let's get back to your questions, um, that we have here. I've got, uh, let's see, Jodi. Jodi says, Hey, watching from Tempe, I've been watching a friend's dog for about three months. The owner will be moving out of the state. The dog has bonded with my dog. What is the best way to separate them? Should I have my dog? Watch them go. I gotta expand this message here. Um, I'm sorry. What is the best way to separate them? Should I have my dog just watch them go or just not have my dog present when they leave? Well, yeah, that, that's a tough one. Um, Judy, you know, what you might start to do is start having a little bit of duration where they are separate before they leave each other. And what I mean by that is right now they're probably spending 24 7 together. I don't know if one or the other is crate trained. Maybe, you know, a few days or a week before the dog's gonna go, they start spending less time together, gradually, slowly decrease the time they spend together. And then the other thing, when the other dog leaves, that's gonna put a, that's gonna be a void in your dog's life. You need to fill that void, not with another dog, with activity, exercise, play, enrichment, games, puzzles, training, fill that void. There needs to be more activity for definitely a few weeks after the other dog leaves. And, and you know, there might be a little bit of, uh, might be a little bit of depression. It can happen. Then again, the dog might leave and, and the dog could care less.<laugh>. I've seen it go that way too. It can go either way. Um, got a question from Anne. Anne says, how do you teach fetch? I'm trying to do play activities that wear him out and or give him some exercise. He'll fetch maybe one or two times, then he is done. He's one years old. I just lost your question. Let's grab it again. Um, he's one year old. Uh, I've never been able to get any of my dogs to play fetch. What am I doing wrong? Well, let's talk about that. Not every dog is a dog that retrieves or that retrieves well or has interest in retrieving. What I think you're talking about is maybe throwing a ball. Your dog chases after the ball, picks the ball back up, comes back to you, and you get it again and you throw it. Providing exercise and activity for your dog. How do I teach my dog to fetch? Well, there's two, well really three things here. There's getting your dog to chase after something, then getting your dog to pick it up, then getting your dog to bring it back to you. Then getting your dog to leave it or drop it. Now I can teach you how to get your dog to pick up an object all day long. Teaching a dog to fetch is easy. Okay? Anything they're willing to pick up, maybe that ball, roll it. As soon as your dog puts its mouth on it and picks it up, label that fetch. Give a high value food reward. Hey, I realize your dog will drop the ball if it wants the food more, that's okay. Roll the ball again. Dog picks it up. Say fetch. Give a high value food reward. You're not asking for fetch. You're creating the situation that causes your dog to use its mouth to pick something up and put it in its mouth. And when that happens, at the exact moment that happens, you are labeling that fetch and you're giving a high value food reward. Now you should be marking and rewarding with a marker system, whether it be a clicker, as a marker or a verbal marker. Like yes or nice. If you don't know what marker training is, you need to learn because it makes a huge difference in the success of your training. It makes a huge difference in your ability to communicate clearly to your dog A what you want and b, what gets the rewards. Cuz timing is everything. If you don't know about clicker training, if you don't know about marker training, go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast. You can go to Google, you can go to um, apple Podcast. You can go to Spotify, Stitcher, any of the hosting platforms that have podcast or just do a Google search for pet talk today podcast. Look for episode 80. Episode 80 is all about marker training, all about clicker training, all about using markers and training. You need to be doing that, definitely. So what we're doing is we're creating an association and we're creating this association between your dog picking something up and the word fetch your dog doesn't you, we can say fetch all day long. Your dog doesn't necessarily know what it is. Now some of you think your dog does because you'll throw the ball, say fetch, and your dog picks it up. Your dog's not probably picking it up cuz you said fetch your dog's. Picking it up because it's got prey drive and it's chasing after that ball and picks it up, which is a natural thing for a dog with high prey drive to do. Remember I said there's a couple things here. There's picking it up, but there's also chasing after it. Not every dog wants to run and chase after stuff. Then again, there are some dogs that that's all they wanna do. The Belgian mal wall, right? You start labeling fetch and your dog won't hold that item forever. Your dog's gonna end up letting it go as it lets the item go on its own label that drop and reward the dog. So you're capturing, you're creating the situation where your dog's grabbing and picking up something, maybe a ball when it picks it up, you're labeling that fetch and you're marking and rewarding. When your dog releases the item from its mouth, you're labeling that drop and you're marking and rewarding and you're doing that for a long time. That's called capturing behaviors or shaping behaviors. After a while, once we've made that association over and over and over, repetitiously, after a while as that's happened and your dog has gotten rewarded for that, then we can begin to ask for fetch and your dog will pick something up. We can begin to ask for drop. And your dog will let something go. Folks, when you ask your dog to drop or leave it, give them something else. That way they'll always drop and leave. Whatever it is that you need, you'll avoid resource guarding. Imagine if somebody, if you had something you liked and 5, 6, 10 times a day, somebody just took it away from you. A lot of you are doing that with your dogs. Not, not, I mean, you don't get it. And that's okay. You don't realize what's happening when you're doing that. You just don't want'em to grab the stuff they shouldn't have, right? Um, but you know, getting back to, um, Anne's question about the fetching. You might not have a dog that wants to chase. So if you're throwing that ball and your dog only wants to go after it one or two times, you probably don't have a dog that's gonna be playing that kind of game. And you, you said, I've never been able to teach my dogs to do it. You can can teach'em to do it if they like to chase and they like to continue to chase, but if they don't like to chase and they don't like to continue to chase, this is not a game that they're gonna engage in. But you can teach'em to fetch and pick something up. You can, you can teach'em to drop something on cue or command, but that chasing aspect, that's drive and that's genetics, that's drive in genetics. They either have it or they don't. And Catherine says, yes, she absolutely loves food and toys. So make the food and toys. Catherine more interesting than that motorcycle. Okay, um, let's see here. Anne is also saying, I wanted to add, he's a mini doodle. He lives with two other dogs. One who is six, one who is 15. Benny is full of energy. He has taken three obedience classes and is for the most part a good boy. I just feel like he needs more play exercise. Uh, we are hoping he will be a certified therapy dog, um, like his two sisters, you know, and since you're active with your dogs and, and you're going through the process of wanting him to be a certified therapy dog, have you thought about doing any kind of dog sports? Have you thought about dock diving? Have you thought about agility? Have you thought about fly ball? Um, something more that can activate him. But you need to teach relaxation exercises too. You need to teach him how to be calm and relaxed laying down on a mat or a bed. And part of that is there are times when your dog is not hyper. All of you, all of you, there are ti a anybody that has a hyper dog, they're not hyper 24 7 unless they have a medical condition. There are times when they settle down. How many times when your dog settles down, are you rewarding that positive reinforcement? It's the rewards, again, the word reinforcement is going to strengthen that behavior, make it more likely to occur again in the future. But what's happening is we're punishing our dogs for them doing normal behaviors that we have not taught them to do appropriate behaviors for. And then when they're doing appropriate behaviors, we ignore it and we don't positively reinforce it. We're doing everything wrong. Not all of you. Some of you are doing wonderful things, okay? And everybody has the best of intentions. But you have to understand the canine mind. You have to understand the evolution. You have to understand how they think, how they learn, how they process information now. And sometimes too much exercise can make a dog hyper. Think about it. Exercise increases blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, get some jacked up, right? If we have a dog when it's not exercising, that is very excitable, already has maybe higher respiratory rate, maybe already has a higher heart rate, maybe the dog's got a little bit of generalized anxiety, I don't know. But if we've got a dog that's amped up when there's nothing going on, sometimes exercising just makes it worse. I know we've all been told that you need to exercise. If you wanna call em dog, exercise, exercise, exercise, yeah, for some dogs and in the long run. But you know, you can have a dog that's a hyper dog and say to yourself, okay, we're gonna have guests over. And my dog always goes crazy whenever there are guests over. Therefore right before the guests come over, I'm gonna run my dog. And the dog might be even crazier when the guests come over because it's all jacked up from that exercise. Now that's not every dog could be yours, might not be, but it does happen. This is something that's a real phenomenon. It happens. All right, let's go back to the questions. Um, let's see. Oh, okay, so I think it's Rona or Rono. How can I get my puppy to do number two on the paper? She pees on it though. Well, I don't want your dog using paper at all. I want your dog going to the bathroom outside where an animal should be going to the bathroom. I don't like using a house as a toilet. Now you may want your dog to go on the paper. Okay? I think you should be teaching your dog to go outside. I think you should be going to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast and looking at season one, episode 16. Again, season one episode 16 of the Pet Talk Today audio podcast. Do a Google search. 45 minutes to an hour of nothing but potty training. How to house, train the most difficult dog. Okay, teach your dog to the go, go to the bathroom outside. Don't have your dog going to the bathroom in the house. It's nasty. There's gotta be some really good reasons, in my opinion, to have your dog trained to go to the bathroom in the house versus going outside. So you probably don't like that answer. Um, if you're watching still, maybe tell me why, why your dog has to go to the bathroom in the house and why we can't teach the dog to go to the bathroom outside. If you're still listening, you know, maybe answer that question for me and I can perhaps talk a little bit more, um, about that. Um, Andrea says, how do you stop your dog from jumping? Well, Andrea, what would you like your dog to do instead? And in what context is your dog jumping? Is your dog jumping when you come home? Is it on you? Is it on other family members? Or is your dog jumping on guests with new people when they come over? Or does your dog jump on everyone? When your dog meets people, including yourself and family members and strangers, are they calm or are they excitable? Has your dog ever gotten up on you and you've pet your dog? Are you positively reinforcing by accident? This behavior of jumping? If your dog's having fun and your dog looks like it's having fun, when he is jumping, it's being positively reinforced Again, you have to think about what can I teach my dog to do? That would be a behavior, an alternate behavior that would be incompatible with jumping. Meaning if my dog was taught another behavior and was committed to that behavior. And if that dog's committed to that behavior, holding that behavior, it can't be jumping very simple, teaching a sit, teaching a down, teaching your dog to go to. Its better place, but you've gotta spend time, days and weeks and maybe months every day practicing working on si. You know, last was, I think it was last week, maybe go to last week's show, maybe scroll down in the feed. I think I talked about, you know, people coming to the home, knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell, dogs getting excited, dogs being crazy and jumping. And I talked about how to teach them to go to their bed or go to their place instead of going crazy when the doorbell rings or the door knocks, instead of running to the door, going crazy instead of jumping on people. We even talked about how to eventually turn the sound of the doorbell or the knocking into the queue or command for the dog to go to its bed or to go to its place and stay there. So check out last week's episode. Pretty darn sure that I talked about that last week. I am getting older. Could be the week before. Don't be mad at me if I'm wrong. But you've gotta teach your dog an alternative behavior. And when you're teaching an alternative behavior, like your dog can't be committed to staying on its bed and jumping on somebody at the same time, your dog can't be committed to laying down and jumping on someone at the same time. It'd have to give up that other behavior laying down or being in its bed in order to jump. It cannot be sitting and jumping at the same time. So these are some things you wanna work on. A lot, lots of repetition of sit, lots of repetition of down, laying down, lots of repetition of going to your bed, lots of distraction training, lots of distraction training. Also, I've got an article on Jumping Go to my website. You can go to dog behaviorist.com and you can go to the menu, go to the article section, look for the article on jumping. There's dozens of articles on all kinds of different behavior problems. So if you've not checked out my website@dogbehaviors.com and have looked at the articles, you're missing out. There's a lot of great stuff up there, a lot of great articles that can help you with a lot of these issues. Pet talk today is brought to you by our sponsor, calm Dogs. If you've got a dog that has anxiety, fears, phobias, aggression reactivity has problems at vet visits or car rides or grooming, or just a a nervous dog, a skittish dog, check out Calm dogs@calmdogs.com. You can also find this calming aid@doganxiety.com. Um, there's a great video on there that goes through all of the science, everything, all the ingredients. And by the way, this is natural. This is the strongest thing that you can get for your dog without a prescription. And it comes with a 100% money back guarantee. You've got everything, uh, to win. Give it a shot. If it doesn't work after about six weeks, well get your money back. But try that now. Everything always works best when you're doing behavior modification and training and not just giving a supplement or not just giving prescription medication. You know, I've got a lot of people that wanna put their dog on Prozac, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, granted, don't be putting every dog on Prozac. Don't be put putting every person on Prozac. But there are certain populations where it's appropriate, where they've got a neurochemical imbalance, they've got an anxiety disorder, they've got a real clinical problem with aggression. But not every dog needs a prescription medication. The problem is that there's not very many good supplements out there. Most of them make big claims, but they do very little calm dogs@calmdogs.com or dog anxiety.com. Every ingredient has been researched. It's based in science, it's evidence-based that everything in there actually works in double blind placebo controlled studies. There's 80% more ingredients in calm dogs than any other product on the market. It's five times stronger than anything else. Check it out@calmdogs.com. At dog anxiety.com. All right, let's get back to the questions here. See what we've got. I gotta scroll down here a little bit. Da da da da. Uh, I don't know. Bonnie says silly question mark. I'm not sure what you mean is silly. Bonnie, tell me what you think is silly. Lisa says, thank you. Great information. Well, thank you Lisa. Appreciate that. Judy says thank you. Hey, listen, if any of you have been viewers, if any of you have attempted and tried to do any of the suggestions that I've given you, give some feedback. I love it when we get feedback. I get feedback all the time from people telling me how, uh, they tried my suggestion and did it, and everything's going great. Hey, I got one last week from a woman who was having a horrible time potty training two dogs, and she went to episode, or excuse me, um, season one, episode 16, the Pet Talk Today podcast on potty training. And she successfully potty trained two dogs that she was having big problems with. So those of you that today have been talking about, Hey, I've got potty training issues, and the gal that has the dog that won't poop on the paper. If you wanna learn how, I mean, you can teach'em the poop on the paper, but check out the podcast because it might be easier just to teach them, uh, to go outside. Okay? All right, let me look at the questions here, see if we've got any other questions here cuz we're almost out of time. Pee in the house. Silly. Yeah, I think it's silly to pee in the house. Bonnie says it's silly to pee in the house. I, I think that's what you mean. Yeah. I I don't like the house being used as, as a toilet. I've got about four minutes. So let me talk a little bit in the next four minutes. I can't cover much, but let me talk a little bit about canine socialization. Getting your dogs exposed to as many people, places, things, animals, sounds, structures, um, textures as possible is important. The critical socialization window is from three weeks of age to 13 weeks of age. Well, what does that mean? It means that by the time your dogs are fully vaccinated, that critical window of socialization has passed. A lot of you are keeping your dogs away from everything until they get all of their shots. And maybe your veterinarian is telling you that I'm not a veterinarian, I can't give out medical advice. However, what I can tell you is that the American Society of Veterinary behaviorists, their position statement is do not wait until your dog is fully vaccinated to get your dog out there and exposed to people, dogs, places, things. Now be smart. Don't bring your dog that's not fully vaccinated. Somewhere where dogs are peeing and pooping all over the place. Okay? And this does not mean canine socialization does not mean that your puppy or your dog has to be nose to nose, nose to butt with another dog. It simply means that your dog needs to be comfortable and have been, and, and have been exposed and have been around other dogs, been around other people in close proximity. And you're making that a positive experience. So I'm bringing the puppies around other dogs. I'm bringing the puppies around other people. I'm feeding them. I'm bringing them to different locations, they're experiencing different sounds and I'm feeding them, playing with them. I'm playing with them. They're not necessarily playing with the strange people, but I want them to be okay being around people. Personally. I could care less if my dog ever is pet by another human being. It's my dog. You know, if you let every person engage with your dog and it's this crazy excitable experience, well that's what's being taught. That's what's being reinforced. Don't be mad at your dog when it meets a person and it gets excitable because that is what you have taught the dog to do. Canine socialization should be called exposure. Getting your dog exposed to as many things as possible. And you've got that short window, three to 13 weeks. Now granted, you're gonna continue to do it after that time, but you need to be able to read other dog's body language and understand it well. You need to be able to read your dog's body language, understand it well, when dogs meet, they should be swapping scent first. You know, if I got two dogs I wanna introduce, hey, before they ever see each other, they're smelling a towel of the other dog's scent for days before I ever bring'em even close together. Then I bring them together at a distance and I wanna see how they're reacting. If they're excitable, they're not going any closer. If they're reactive, they're not going any closer. Canine socialization is not just throwing your dog into a dog park. That's a bad idea. It's about exposure. It's about exposure. Well, we are out of time. Again, it's been another quick but wonderful show. Appreciate everybody all of your questions. Do me a favor, hit that like button, hit that share button. Come on back next Saturday. I'm gonna be here again, 11 o'clock Eastern Standard time, taking your questions and providing you with positive solutions. Have a great weekend everybody. Practice, practice, practice doesn't make perfect, makes permanent.