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.

#95 PET TALK TODAY - Dog Training with Will Bangura, How to Teach Dogs Loose Leash Walking

May 20, 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 95
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.
#95 PET TALK TODAY - Dog Training with Will Bangura, How to Teach Dogs Loose Leash Walking
Show Notes Transcript

PET TALK TODAY #95  Dog Training with Will Bangura. How to Teach Dogs Loose Leash Walking. Q & A, Dog Anxiety Supplements, Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist Will Bangura. Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, Certified Professional Dog Trainer Dog Behaviorist Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, it's Will Bandura. A real quick, uh, comment. If you love Pet Talk today, if you're a regular listener, please do me a favor. Give us a five star review on whatever platform that you listen to. We need your reviews, we need your feedback so that more people can benefit from Pet Talk today. I really appreciate you

Speaker 2:

Raised by Wolfs with canine d n a 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 man.

Speaker 1:

Good Saturday morning pet lovers. I'm Will Bandura and you are watching another episode or listening to the podcast of Pet Talk today. I'm here each and every Saturday morning at 11 o'clock Eastern standard time on Facebook Live. And if you miss that, you can always go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast. Hey, if you love Pet Talk today, if you're a listener of our podcast, please give us a five star review wherever you're listening from, whether that be, um, apple Podcast, whether it be Stitcher, um, Spotify, we really appreciate your feedback. We love your reviews. Hey, if you're new to Pet Talk today, let me talk a little bit about what we do here. I'm a certified canine behavior consultant, also a professional certified dog trainer. I work with some of the most difficult dog behaviors such as severe separation anxiety, fears, phobias, aggression reactivity, dogs that are impossible to potty, train dogs and have obsessive compulsive behaviors and the list goes on. Anyway, if you're new to Pet Talk today how it works, if you have a question about your dog's behavior, if you've got a training question, I'm here to help provide you with positive solutions to those problems. So type into the comments section. Yeah, write in the comments section. You can go ahead and type in your question and also do us a favor. Let us know where you're watching from and what kind of pets that you have. We're so glad that you're here today. Um, I'm gonna be in addition to, um, answering your questions today. Um, gonna be talking about a few, uh, different topics. Um, last week I never got around to how to teach your dog to walk on a loose leash, how to teach your dog not to pull on the leash. You know, the weather is real nice right now. People are getting out with their dogs and you know, a walk can be a really pleasant thing for both you and the dog, but it can also be a nightmare if that dog is just trying to pull your, your arm out of its socket and your dog is going after other dogs or going after people or just pulling you, dragging you down the road. Well, we're gonna talk about how do you stop that? How do you teach a dog to walk on a loose leash? So we'll be talking about that as well. Well, those of you who haven't heard that sound before, that means it's time for pet talk news. Every once in a while, we've got a great story in the news that we need to cover. This week, Colorado driver tries switching places with dog to avoid D U I A D U I suspect in Colorado, tried unsuccessfully to pin the rap on his dog. According to police in eastern Colorado, cops in Springfield, Colorado wrote on Facebook that the attempted switcharoo happened around 11:30 PM last Saturday. When officers pulled over a vehicle driving 52 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone, the driver attempted to switch places with his dog who was in the passenger seat. As the officer approached and watched the entire process, the male party then exited the passenger side of the vehicle and claimed he was not driving. When police asked the suspect if he had been consuming alcohol, he ran away abandoning both vehicle and pooch. Well, he was caught about 60 feet from where the incident began, charges against the unidentified driver who allegedly had outstanding warrants including suspicion of DUI and resisting arrest. And if you're wondering, well, the dog was given to an acquaintance of the driver yep, to take care of the dog while the party was in jail. And police said that the dog does not face any charges and was let go with just a warning. Anyway, that's Pet Talk News four today. Crazy things happen if you've got a, by the way, if you've got a crazy story about your dog or you've got a crazy story about somebody else's dog, hey, do me a favor, email that story to me. You can send that to info pet talk today.com. Also, if you've got ideas for different topics, you can send those to info pet talk today.com. All right, I had mentioned we were gonna be talking about, um, we're gonna be talking about loose leash walking here in just a little bit and we're gonna be taking your questions as well. Do me a favor, hit that like button, hit that share button so that more people can benefit from what we do here at Pet Talk today. Hit that share button so more people can, can go ahead and see that. Appreciate that as well. Well, we need to take a quick break. We need to talk about our sponsor, calm Dogs. Do you have a dog that is stressed? Do you have a dog with separation anxiety or fears and phobias? And have you tried all kinds of natural alternatives to try to help them with their anxiety, with their fears, maybe their aggression, maybe they got problems with fireworks, uh, storms. There's a lot of things on the market, but there's nothing like Calm Dogs. Maximum Strength Veterinary Formula. Visit their website@calmdogs.com made by Pet Scientifics Science that you can trust. The nice thing about calm dogs, it comes with a 100% money back guarantee. Use it for six weeks. If you don't see an improvement in your dog, they will refund your money. So you've got everything to gain, nothing to lose. Visit calm dogs.com. It's the world's best calming aid without a prescription. All right, we're back. Um, I wanna talk about loose leash walking. Um, and again, I know you have questions. Do me a favor, type your questions in the comments section, let us know where you're watching from and I will get to those as well. And if you love what we do, hey, please give us a five star review wherever you're listening. Um, oh, did you know that today, by the way, is National Rescue Dog Day? Maybe I should talk about rescue dogs today as well. Maybe some of you have rescued dogs and you've got stories about the dogs you've rescued and, and if you've got a great story about a rescue dog, we'd love to hear it. Also, I'm gonna go ahead and open up the phone lines. Would you like to talk to me directly? I can give you a lot more help. I can give you a lot more advice cuz I can get a lot more information from you if you call in today that number to call. If you'd like some help on the caller line, the call in line number is(414) 400-3647. That's 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7. Write that down. 4 1 4 4 0 0 3 6 4 7. Uh, for the next hour I'm gonna be available. I will be taking calls as well as answering your questions that you type into the comments section. Um, but yeah, it's National Rescue Dog Day. Um, you know, I love the fact that we rescue dogs. We've got way too many dogs. There's more dogs than we know what to do with. Unfortunately, you know, I live in Arizona, um, Maricopa County, that's the largest county that encompasses all of Phoenix in in in more than just Phoenix. And as of, oh gosh, maybe five years ago, a minimum, minimum of 60 dogs a day are getting euthanized. That, that's sad. And did you know, did you know what the number one cause of death is for dogs under the age of three? Think about it. Nope. Not not getting run over by a car. What's the number one cause of death for dogs under the age of three? Nope, not cancer. Behavioral euthanasia is the number one cause of death for dogs under the age of three. Now, if you don't know what behavioral euthanasia is, it's a term that we use for dogs that have behavior problems and their pet parents don't work on those behavior problems, don't get those resolved. And then they ship'em off to the shelter, they ship'em off to the pound, and then somebody else gets that dog and they don't deal with the behavior problem, simple stuff that we could be addressing. And they get sent back to the pound, they get sent back to the shelter as a rescue dog. The number one cause of death for dogs under the age of three behavioral euthanasia. And that's why I do this show. Not everybody can afford to hire a professional animal behavior consultant or dog behaviorist. Not everybody can afford to hire a professional dog trainer and rescue dogs. They come with their own set sometimes of unique problems, right? They might be very destructive. You know, a lot of people surrender their dogs because they're, they've gotta go to work and they come home and the dog's destroying the house and they don't know how to deal with it. Or their dog has separation anxiety and maybe they live in an apartment and they're getting letters, all right? And they're being told, Hey, if you can't get your dog to quiet down, we, you're gonna have to leave. We're gonna evict you a and then maybe we've got dogs that, you know, are aggressive or reactive towards strangers coming in the house and they feel like they can't have a social life. They can't have anybody over to the house and they'd love maybe to take their dog for a walk, but their dog might be aggressive and reactive towards people and other dogs. And people give up on it. They don't put the work in, they don't do the training and they send'em to the shelter. And these dogs get recycled oftentimes, and then eventually they're put down. Yeah, the number one cause of death for dogs under the age of three, sadly, is behavioral euthanasia. So let's talk about loose leash walking. We all love to walk our dogs or walking our dogs can be a real pain in the, you know what, the first thing you need to understand about teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash is that for a dog to pull on the leashes about the most normal thing that a dog could possibly do, if you're listening to the podcast and you hear that pause, that means I'm taking a drink of my coffee. So it's very normal for a dog when they get outside to wanna go all over the place and search all over the place with their nose. Do you know how incredible their sense of smell is? Imagine this, I could have 3 55 gallon barrels, okay? 55 gallons. I could have three of them full of water to the top. I could have an eyedropper of blood, I could take that eyedropper, I could drop one drop of blood, just one drop in, only one of the 55 gallon drums of water. So I've got 3 55 gallon drums of water. They're all, three of them are full of water. One of'em, I've put one drop of blood. Now I've got a dog that's a cadaver dog and it uses its nose to find people that might be trapped or dead. And part of what they alert on is blood. Okay? Now the dog doesn't know about these three barrels of water. The dog doesn't know about a drop of blood that's in there. Six months goes by still. We've got these 3 55 gallon barrels of water. One has a drop of blood, they've been sitting there for six months. You take that dog that has been trained to alert on the scent of blood and you tell'em to find it and you bring'em in the room where those 3 55 gallon drums full of water are, that dog immediately is gonna go to the correct drum that had one drop of blood put in it six months ago. I say that story sometimes so that people understand how incredible their sense of smell is. So when they get outside of the house, they wanna go everywhere. They wanna follow their nose all over the place, okay? It's like their primary sense is their nose, not their ears, not their their eyes. You know, we get outside, all of a sudden we, we see something, oh, I wanna go shopping at that store. You see it and then all of a sudden you go run over there or you hear something and, oh, let's go talk to Mary or John. They're, they're saying hello. We are stimulated by what we see. We're stimulated by what we hear. And that may drive our activity for a dog, their primary, the thing that they're stimulated by the most and drives their activity is their nose. Okay? It's as if when they go outside, there's a hundred people screaming for your attention, waving for your attention. But in this case, it's a scent rather than something visual or auditory. So the first thing to know, it's a normal behavior. Don't consider your dog to be a bad dog because he's pulling on the leash. Your dog is being a dog. Don't consider your dog to be bad because it wants to get out the door before you. Your dog is not being dominant. That is not a dominant behavior despite what you might read on the internet, despite what you might hear on television shows from people that have no certifications but are very charismatic. I love Caesar, but most of everything he says does not stand up to evidence-based, science-based training. Anyway, don't wanna get on that tangent, but we have to. When we're looking at teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash to understand that it's a normal behavior, it's not a dog being dominant, okay? They don't come into our world, the human world with a book Emanuel that says, Hey, this is how you need to behave. And these are behaviors that are unacceptable. It'd be nice if they did, but we forget that we get dogs. They come into our house, they do normal dog things, they jump, they get up on the furniture, they tear things up, they knock things over, they get up on the couch and they may pee in poop in the house. All normal behaviors for a dog that has not been trained to do anything. It's your job when you get a dog, whether it's a rescue dog, because today is national rescue Dog day, or whether it be a dog that you get from a breeder, it's your job from day one to teach them the behaviors you want them to do. And when they do behaviors you don't want, don't punish them. How fair is that? Did you teach them the correct things to do? Did you take enough time and repetition to teach'em what to do? Or are you just punishing a dog for being a dog? And that usually doesn't work because they have drives that they need to to deal with. And if you don't give them an alternative behavior, hey, that energy's gotta go somewhere. So we need to be teaching our dog alternative behaviors. So the behavior that dogs typically wanna do, as soon as that door opens up, boom, they wanna get outside that door in, they wanna pull. Why? Because there's all kinds of smells that are screaming at them. Check me out, check me out, check me out. Now, when you're teaching your dog to walk on a loose leash, I want you to forget about walking. Forget about the walk, we'll get to the walk. But if you can't get your dog to follow you, to pay attention, to walk at your pace, to stay in the position that's right next to you, you're not going for a walk. And if you can't get that for one or two steps, you certainly aren't gonna get that walking down the road, walking around the block, going a mile, going two miles, going three miles. It's not gonna happen. So the first thing you need to understand is when we start teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash, we're not going for a walk. Now, the way that I like to do it is I like to go with the dog outside on a sidewalk when it's relatively quiet when there aren't a lot of distractions. Now listen, if your dog gets distracted easily, don't try to train this to begin with where there are distractions, you're setting your dog up for failure, you're setting yourself up for failure. Go where it's quiet. And if you can't find a place outside that's quiet, you can do this in a hallway in your house to begin with. But we're gonna start on a sidewalk. Now I'm gonna ask the dog to sit and I'm gonna position myself next to the dog where the dog is on my left side. I never, when I'm walking, unless I give my dog permission to be free and do what it wants to do, I never, when I'm walking, want my dog's eyes in front of my leg. If my dog's eyes are in front of my leg, my dog is leading the walk because those eyes are the thing that's furthest forward. All right? And if my dog's eyes are in front of my legs, if I were to make a turn, my dog loses that visual cue that I'm turning. And visual cues are an important part of training. Okay? So when I sit the dog down on the sidewalk, I position myself next to the dog. I want the dog on my left side. I try to position it so that the dog's eyes are already in front of my leg just a little bit. Now when I start walking, I do not step forward. Nope, I do not step forward. Dogs sitting next to me, its eyes are a little bit in front of my leg. I'm gonna make a 300, excuse me, 180 degree turn a complete sharp U-turn, not into the dog but away from the dog. As I make that U-turn away from the dog, I'm gonna start walking the opposite direction. As I start making that turn away from the dog, 180 degrees, making that U-turn and start walking away from the dog, I've got my head back. I'm looking at the dog. I need to see, hey, is the dog turning with me? Because remember, I turned away from the dog. Don't turn away from the dog and not look at the dog. You've gotta keep your head cocked over to your shoulder and looking at the dog behind you. Because as soon as you turn away from the dog, the dog then is now behind you. Okay? And now the dog's not leading or pulling right? Because you're in front as your dog begins to catch up to you because it will watch its eyes as your dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg, between the middle and the front of your leg, not after they're in front of your leg, but when your dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg or the front of your leg, you're gonna make a 180 degrees sharp U-turn away from your dog. We're doing this on a sidewalk or in a hallway in our home. I don't want the dog to have a lot of room to move left or move right? That sidewalk or that hallway keeps the dog closer to us. I would not do this in a parking lot. I would not do this in my backyard. I would not do this in a park to begin with. That sidewalk really helps. The hallway really helps when we're first teaching the dog. So again, I start my training by turning 180 degrees away from the dog, looking back as I'm doing that, watching the dog as the dog then turns to follow me. And that's key. One of the first things you're teaching your dog when you want to teach your dog to walk on a loose leash is not about walking, it's about teaching your dog to follow you. Your dog can't be pulling on the leash and following you at the same time, but have to give up one behavior for the other. First step. Teach a dog to follow you. How do you do that? Turn 180 degrees away from your dog, which puts your dog behind you. And then your dog begins to catch up to you. And when your dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg or at the front of the leg, make another sharp 180 degree U-turn away from the dog. But look back, make sure the dog's actually turning around to follow you cuz there might be a distraction. There might be a distraction back there. And you're walking, you've turned away from the dog, you're walking, you're not looking at what's happening behind. And all of a sudden, next thing you know, you got a tight leash. Why? Cuz the dog's wanting to go that way cuz there's a dog. When you do this exercise, you are always looking at the dog's head always. You do not take your eyes off the dog's head. You need to know where they are. Eventually you can take your eyes off their head, but not when you begin to train. So again, first steps. We're on the sidewalk, we're in a hallway, we've got a leash on the dog. The dog. We asked the dog to sit next to us. I like the dog on my left side. That's tradition. I don't care if it's left or right, but the principles are the same. The dog's eyeballs are in front of my leg. I make a 180 degree U-turn away from the dog, which puts the dog behind me. I'm looking, watching the dog catching up as the dog catches up when its eyes get to the middle of my leg or the front again, I'm gonna make that sharp 180 degree U-turn away from the dog. Now the dog's gonna offer lots of opportunity for you to make that sharp 180 degree U-turn away from your dog because they're used to pulling, they're used to being in front of you. They're used to going wherever they wanna go. They're not used to giving that up and having to follow you. So the way it might start out, your dog's sitting next to you, you make 180 degree U-turn away from your dog. Then all of a sudden your dog follows and maybe it's two or three steps. And now your dog's eyes are at your leg again and you're making a U-turn. And then your dog follows maybe two or three steps before it catches up and the dog's eyes are by your leg and you're making another U-turn. Well, if you can picture this, taking two or three steps sharp U-turn, two or three steps sharp U-turn, two or three steps sharp U-turn, you might get dizzy. You're making a lot of turns. If you find when you have to make that 180 degree U-turn, you're starting to get dizzy instead of immediately turning when the dog's eyes get to the middle of your leg, start walking backwards. Start walking backwards and very slowly as your dog is following you, then go ahead and make the rest of the turn. That'll keep you from getting too dizzy if that happens. The other thing you can do if you get dizzy is just stop. Ask the dog to sit. Okay? Because you're not going very far. You're forget about distance when we're doing this. Matter of fact, even if your dog is walking perfectly following you, the leash is loose. Oh, and by the way, you need to keep the leash loose. If you're one of these people that like to walk your dog with a tight leash, you need about two inches, three inches, four inches of loose slack in that leash. Otherwise, you're not training the dog. You're just restraining and muscling the dog. And a lot of dogs will try to resist it when you've got pressure on the leash. It's called oppositional reflex. They do worse when the leash is tight. Now I was saying, even if your dog is walking perfectly next to you, the leash is loose, the dog is following you, it's eyes are not getting in front of your leg. I don't want you taking more than about six or eight steps in one direction without making a turn, 180 degrees away from your dog. So at most you're going six or eight steps. You turn away from the dog, six or eight steps, you turn away from the dog, six or eight steps, you turn away from the dog. Now, you might make that U-turn before six or eight steps. Remember, if your dog's eyes get to the middle or the front of your leg, you need to make that U-turn. And maybe they get there on step two, step three, step four, before we get to six or eight steps. Well, don't wait because you're counting six or eight steps if your dog's getting in front of you, turn before that happens. Okay? So that's teaching the dog to follow you. We're also teaching position. We're not allowing the dog to be able to get in front of us. We're making sure that the dog's eyes are not in front of us. Every time we do that, we turn before the eyes are in front of us, puts the dog behind us, they've gotta catch back up and again, we turn again before their eyes are in front of us. So we're teaching them to follow. We're making a lot of turns in relatively quick succession. They don't have a lot of time to look around to sniff, check this out, check that out. They're like, oh, where's mom going? Oh, where's dad going? Oh, we're turning again. Oh, where are we going this time? Oh, where are we going? And you're teaching them not only to follow you, you're teaching them to stay in position, but you're also teaching them to pay attention. Oh, where are we going? Oh, we're turning. Oh, we're turning. You make a lot of turns in quick succession. Your dog does not have much time at all to deal with the distractions that are out in the real world. You have to make sure that when you're doing this, you're also rewarding your dog. Your dog's gotta be motivated, right? To wanna do this. And just saying, oh, good boy, good girl. That's not enough. Because that dog distraction down the road, that person distraction down the road has much more value than you petting the dog and saying, good boy, good girl. You need to find an extremely high value food reward, something your dog loves. I don't care if it's cooked chicken, cooked beef, the highest value, because that's currency. That's the paycheck for the dog to learn. You don't have to use food forever. And we're not bribing dogs with food. We can wean off the food, but when we first start teaching, we need a motivator. And there's usually nothing more motivating, nothing better in terms of positive reinforcement typically than a very high value food item for a dog. Now some of you're saying, eh, my dog really doesn't like treats. You haven't found the right stuff. Have you tried a little piece of bacon? Have you tried a little piece of chicken? Have you tried a little piece of beef? Have you tried a little bron swagger, liver sausage? There's all kinds of things. Trust me, you've gotta find out what their quote unquote chocolate is. All right? All right, so let's talk about now. Rewarding the dog, motivating the dog, how and when we're gonna do that. Those of you that are regular listeners, you know that I'm talking about using markers in training, that you need a marker system when you train. Um, a marker is just something that signals to the dog. Two things. One, that behavior at that moment in that location I like. And that behavior is going to get a reward. And sometimes people use an auditory marker, like the word yes. And sometimes people use clickers, a clicker, a marker as well. I like using clickers because they all, they sound the same. I could hand a clicker to another person, they could work my dog. The click is the same, but their voice isn't the same as mine. Now, before I can use a marker in a marker system, I've gotta understand what that is and I've gotta condition the marker. That word yes or that clicker means absolutely nothing to the dog. Doesn't mean anything to the dog until it's been paired and associated over and over and over with food. And that's easy to do. You get like 30 very tiny little pieces of like cooked chicken or beef. And these little tiny pieces I'm talking about are about the size of a pe. You got about 30 of them and you sit down with your dog. You don't do anything the wherever you are, it's a quiet area. Nothing's going on around the dog. You're not saying anything, you're not doing anything. This is your job. You've got 30 little pieces of chicken. You go click, give the piece of chicken to the dog. Don't say a word when the dog finishes, click. Give another piece of chicken to the dog. Don't say a word. Very robotic. Click treat, click treat, click treat, click treat, click treat 30 times in a row. Do that for about three or four days. Dogs are typically definitely conditioned that click equals treat. They understand click is treat after about three or four days if you wanna test it. And you should one day, not the same time of day. You normally are practicing this exercise. But one day when your dog's around, not sleeping, but not looking at you either click that clicker, does the dog come running to you looking for that high value food reward? If it does, you know that the dog understands click means treat. Now we use a clicker so our timing can be perfect. It's okay if we're a little bit late with the food reward. If we have a clicker that tells the dog, or we have a marker that tells the dog that behavior's getting a food reward, it buys us a little time. Because if we don't use a marker system, we've gotta get that food reward in the dog's mouth between zero and a half a second. And that is almost impossible to do. Let me give you an example. When we're working on this loose leash walking, and as the dog's eyes get to the middle of my leg before they get in front of my leg, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna make that U-turn away from the dog, 180 degrees. I'm looking back at the dog, making sure the dog follows as the dog turns to now follow and walk with me. I'm going to click and reward. The fact that the dog made the turn and is following me as the dog gets up to my side is when I'm gonna feed. See, that clicker buys me a little time. It's a bridge to the food. That clicker means I'm getting food. The dog understands that if we condition it. So again, what's that process? I take a 180 degree U-turn away from the dog. Soon as the dog turns to follow with me, I'm looking behind me. I'm gonna click, dog gets right up next to me. I'm gonna give it a food reward. Then I'm gonna make a U-turn away from the dog, 180 degrees, do the same thing again. I'm gonna repeat it. Wash, rinse, repeat. And I'm gonna do this over and over. Remember I said, even if the dog's walking, great, I'm not going more than about six or eight steps and I'm gonna do this for two to three weeks. And when I do this, I'm going outside. I'm gonna do this for about seven to nine minutes, at least once a day. If I can do it more, great. When that is going very well, one of the things that you're gonna see is your dog is gonna start checking in. Your dog's gonna start looking up at you because you made so many turns. Your dog's gonna be like, where are we going? Where are we going, mom? Where are we going, dad? Hey, what we doing? So again, paying attention. When you see that whenever your dog looks up at you, I want you to click and reward. Reward that focus, reward that attention. Because again, what we're really doing, forget about the walk for a second. We're teaching the dog to follow you, to pay attention, to stay in a position that we want it to be and to walk at our pace. Now let's talk about adding more steps. As the dog is doing a lot of checking in, that's when you can start adding more steps. And I'm not talking about a thousand steps, all right? Maybe you go from six or eight steps to maybe 20. But during those 20 steps, hey, remember the rule. If your dog's eyes start to get to the front of the leg, now you still need to make that U-turn. 180 degrees. Looking back, making sure your dog's following you as your dog makes the turn to follow you click as the dog gets up to your side, reward, wash, rinse, repeat. Okay? Over and over and over. Little by little this will turn into a walk. And now how do you deal with distractions? As soon as you see the mild distraction and you gotta start working with mild distractions outside, you're gonna make a U-turn 180 degrees away from your dog. Then you're gonna turn right back towards that distraction and you're gonna turn away from it again. Every time your dog follows, what are you gonna do? Click Every time your dog gets up next to you, reward, then turn away from the distraction. Little by little, what you're gonna be doing is you're gonna be going in little circles and little by little you'll go further and further and further and further and further down the road until you can eventually pass the distractions. But basically, as soon as your dog sees a distraction, you're turning the dog away from the distraction, making the dog focus on you non-verbally. You're basically telling the dog, Hey, forget about that. Pay attention to me, okay? And you'll find as you do this, you'll have a dog that pays attention to you. Now, if your dog can't pay attention to you, if your dog can't, if your dog won't take the food and your dog's all reactive, you are way too close to any distractions. You have got to get much further away. Your dog's not ready for that. You gotta take this in little bite size steps, okay? Watch that. You don't hold the leash tight, keep the leash loose. There should be like a little U shape, you know it's attached to the dog's collar. There should be a little U shape in it and it's loose. Now, don't have that U shape so low that the dog keeps putting its paw over the leash. And then you gotta keep adjusting the leash but keep it loose. And when you turn away from your dog, most people turn away and they start pulling the leash in that direction and immediately there's a tight leash on the dog. No. As you make that turn, remember I said you, I want you to look back at the dog cuz I need you to see does the dog turn to follow you? And if it does, you gotta click and then reward when the dog gets you. But as you turn away from the dog, bring your hands and the leash towards the dog so that it's loose. Keep walking away from the dog, but bring the leash towards the dog because if you have a tight leash, you're gonna have problems. The leash is there to restrain the dog. Ba. Basically it's a safety net. It's like wearing a seatbelt. You hope you never have to use it. The leash doesn't train. The leash is there to restrain. Now the last thing you know, I talked about pace. We need to teach the dog that it needs to walk at your pace or whoever is walking the dog's pace. Not that we adjust our pace for the dog. So you're gonna gonna start this process just with a normal pace, okay? Your normal walking pace, then you're gonna start doing it as a jog. Very distinct, faster pace. The rules are the same. Okay? Then you're gonna do the exact same thing with shuffle steps. Like an old person, little tiny shuffles inch here, inch there, inch here, inch there. Very, very slowly. The rules remain the same. The dog's eyes before it gets to the front of your knee, make that U-turn. 180 degrees. Dog follows click, dog gets up to you, reward. Now we have not said anything to the dog. Everything that we have done has been taught by visual cue and the food reward and the marker. First, we're going to get the dog doing the behavior. I know that might sound counterintuitive to you. Y'all wanna give your dogs commands and then you're surprised when they don't do it<laugh> because they don't know it, they've not been conditioned. Okay? You're like heal, heal, heal. And they're all over the place. One of the reasons I don't like to start throwing cues or commands on these uh, exercises or behaviors until they know it first, is because they're making mistakes. I don't want that cue or command to be associated with a mistake or with doing it wrong. Okay? So once they begin to understand it, once they're doing it well, my cue, my command to start moving is let's go. I don't use heel, I just say let's go. Every time I take a turn, I say, let's go. Every time I start walking, let's go. Every time I speed up, let's go. But every time I slow down, I say slow. Then when I wanna go back to my normal pace, let's go. Now remember, the dogs already learn to walk at our pace without hearing anything. Now we're just labeling these behaviors. We're adding cues or commands, pairing those associations with those behaviors. You can also, when your dog looks up at you begin to start labeling that watch. So at any point in time down the road, you can go watch your dog looks up at you. But you've gotta have that happen over and over and over and over and over again. It takes a lot of conditioning. But again, you're only doing this seven to nine minutes a day. If your dog needs more exercise, go throw a ball in the backyard. By the way, dogs are sprinters and the kind of exercise a dog needs is not a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 mile walk. They need 20 minutes of sprinting. Dogs are sprinters, they're not long distance runners. And those of you, God love you for wanting to take your dog on these long runs. But if you're a ru, if you're a runner like you know, partial marathon, marathon runner and you're bringing the dog with you, your dog's gonna have orthopedic problems. Guarantee it. They are not built to run and run and run long, long, long distance. Oh, can they do it? Will they tolerate it? Will they put up with it? Of course, of course. Unless they're exhausted. But the damage that's being done over and over and over on their hips, on their joints, that becomes problematic. Absolutely. Well, let's quick take a break. Talk about our sponsor. Calm dogs. Do you have a dog that has anxiety, fears, phobias, maybe your dog's afraid of people, maybe your dog has aggression. Maybe it's separation anxiety. Maybe you just got an overall nervous dog. Check out calm dogs@calmdogs.com. It's the number one natural calming aid for dogs with anxiety. It's made with all natural ingredients. There's 21 ingredients. Matter of fact, there's 80% more active calming ingredients in calm dogs than any other calming aid on the market. It's also five times stronger than anything on the market. Um, the best thing, how often do you see this? A 100% money back guarantee. You're not gonna see that much with other supplements that's out there because they don't really work. This one works. Try it for six weeks. If it doesn't help your dog, if you don't see a reduction in your dog's anxiety, call us. You get your money back. But check out calm dogs again. Go to calm dogs.com to help your dog who has problems with anxiety or let somebody else know about it if they've got a dog with a problem. All right, we're back. Let's take a look and see what we've got going on in, in terms of, uh, questions here. Um, Linda, all but one of my dogs have been rescued. You got seven, bless you, bless your heart for rescuing them. Um, then we've got Linda, well same Linda, you're from Portage, Michigan. She says she loves the show. Well, thank you so much Linda. Do you ever listen to my audio podcast? Cuz a lot of times I've got audio podcasts that aren't on the show. If you go to like Apple Podcast, you can go listen to that. And if you love the show, hey, please give us a five star review on on Apple Podcasts. Um, Mary Jane, she's asking her friend Paula to watch this. All right, so Linda's got a question. How do you feel about prong callers? I have one. Someone told me I needed smaller prongs to make them more effective. Um, where do we get these clickers? You can get a clicker on Amazon. You can go to any of the pet stores and ask'em for a clicker. If you don't know about clicker training or marker training, go to the pet Talk today audio podcast. Look for episode 80, episode 80 of the Pet Talk Today podcast. The audio podcast. That's all about marker training. It will teach you everything you need to know about clicker training. Marker training. Yeah, check that out. Um, all right, let's talk about prong callers. I have used prong collars. I have used choke collars, I have used electronic collars, I've used about everything. I've been doing this for 36 years. I do not use prong collars anymore. I do not use electronic collars anymore. I do not use choke collars. I do not use aversives. I do not use anything that causes discomfort to the dog. Why? It's unnecessary. Now, I could train dogs faster with aversives, however, it took away from the bond and the relationship that you have with your dog, number one. Number two, it's not quite being fair to the dog because we need to be teaching them first what it is we want them to do. Again, dogs oftentimes are just being dogs and we're punishing them for being dogs. That's not fair. We need to teach them what to do. Um, now I know the argument sometimes is, hey, um, I've got this petite, uh, female that weighs 105 pounds and she's got, uh, 180 pound um, mastiff. And the mastiff is pulling her all over the place, gonna knock her down. We need to give her an electronic collar, a prong collar. So she's got leverage. I get that. But what I'm also hearing is that nobody has attempted to try to teach the dog what to do the correct way. And maybe you did, but you didn't do it in an environment where there weren't distractions and maybe you didn't have high value food rewards. Again, good boy, good girl, pat on the back. That's not enough. Imagine going to your job, right? Tomorrow's Sunday, most of us are going back to work on Monday. Go back to work Monday, work the entire week. Let's say you work two weeks cuz paychecks are usually every two weeks or bimonthly. And at the end of the pay period, you go to HR to get your check and they go, Hey, you are fantastic. And they pat you on the back. Have a great weekend. How happy are you after doing all that work? Was it worth it? Are you gonna come back to work? Are you gonna continue to do that work if you're not getting paid? Most people, it's a no, it's no different for your dog. Now again, those rewards can get faded out down the road, but we need them to motivate the dog. If you can't control your dog and you need a prong collar, you're probably training in an environment where there's way too many distractions. You probably have started to go for a walk, which the dog, almost every dog's gonna be ahead of you in the beginning. Remember their nose? It's like a million things screaming at them. Check me out, check me out, check me out. It's like if you walked out the door, if it's like if you walked out the door, Linda, and there were a thousand people saying, Linda, Linda, you're gonna come running towards them. Will all those smells are screaming at your dog? And then you start following. Remember, when I start teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash, I don't move forward. I turn away from the dog. So the dog has to immediately follow me and the dog's immediately behind me. And if it's too distracting, I outside, I'm gonna do it inside. I'll do it in the hallway and then I'll start having somebody in my house act as a mild distraction, will continue to do it in the hallway. And then I'll ask them to put up more distractions. And then I'll go outside and I'll start doing this on the sidewalk by my house. When they're little to no distractions. Look, you can only work at your dog's pace if you need to use aversives. You're trying to rush the process and it's not fair to the dog. Now, I'm not blaming you. I blame the individual that said, Hey, use the prong collar and they have good intentions. I'm not bashing people that use prong collars, electronic collars, chokers. I'm not bashing them. I was them. They have good intentions, but they don't know that. They don't know. See, the problem with the dog training industry, it's not regulated. There are no national standards. You don't have to have a certain level of education. You don't have to be certified. You don't have to be licensed. You don't have to be insured. That's kind of scary, huh? Anybody can call themselves a dog trainer or a behaviorist, put up a website, start working with dogs the next day. They may never have owned a dog in their life. Your nail tech ladies has to be certified and licensed. Gentlemen, your barber has to be licensed and certified. You call a plumber, they've gotta be licensed and certified. You call someone in an electrician, they gotta be licensed and certified. Not your dog trainer, not your behaviorist. It's sad. And that is something that needs to change. There's so much misinformation about dog training, so much bad science out there. People that are perverting the science out there, you know, the balance trainers that use corrections and rewards. And by the way, corrections, those are just kinder words for punishment. Balanced trainers that are uni using punishments and rewards, they're gonna say, Hey, the science of learning theory has four quadrants. Two of them are punishment, two of them are reinforcers. Well, yeah, they are. And they, they argue that those of us that use positive reinforcement and say that we use science-based training, that we're saying that what we're doing is science-based, but what the balance trainers is not. And they're saying, Hey, it is science-based because there's the science of learning theory and there's four quadrants to our punishers and to our reinforcers. However, through research, through science, through studies, through working with training animals, what science has also taught us is that the most effective, most efficient way to train an animal is through positive reinforcement. That it is not as efficient, it is not as effective as punishment. And that punishment can cause long-term psychological problems. It can cause physical problems. It can ruin the bond and relationship you have with your pet. And it's just about learning how to do it. Look, it can be, there is nothing that I cannot train or train out with positive reinforcement alone if I'm willing to do the work. Now I can't be lazy and I've gotta be fair to the dog. So this is about animal welfare and this is about not being lazy. Look, anybody can punish a dog. A dog goes in the trash. I can go over there and kick the dog. Might not go in the trash again. That was fast. But the dog may never come near me in the kitchen again because the dog might be scared to death that I'm gonna kick it. There's problems with punishment. I don't advocate punishment. All right, let's see if we've gotten any more questions. Um, so yeah, so now you know how I feel about, uh, about the, uh, prong collar. Um, and I've used them and uh, I think my dog has a d d is that possible? I adopted her about a year and a half. American bully. You know, a d d we call that hypokinesis or a hyperkinetic dog. There is such a syndrome in dogs. It's extremely, extremely rare. Um, they are bouncing off the walls all the time. I mean, they are. And, and you know, the thing about it is hyper essis or a hyperkinetic dog is very difficult to distinguish from a dog that has a lot of anxiety. Now my wife works in psychiatry and, and her and I oftentimes have discussions that, um, it's easy to misdiagnose somebody as a d d or a D H D when it's really anxiety. And the same thing happens a lot with dogs. Your dog, Linda, probably has a lot of anxiety. Okay? Um, probably a lot of anxiety. Again, very, very rare to have a dog that, um, is hyperkinetic. And the only way that we can really diagnose it is we bring the dog into the vet's office. They're given a stimulant. Yep. Just like stimulants are given for a D H D. And if that stimulant relaxes and calms the dog down, well yep, then that's a true case of a dog that has hypokinesis is hyperkinetic. It's the same thing with people with a D D A D H D stimulants. Don't wind them up. True. A D H D true. A d d a stimulant will relax them, calm them down. So it's really easy to determine who's faking and who's not faking, you know, cuz these kids are always coming in. Eh? I've got a d h D, they just want stimulant so that, you know, they don't have to sleep. All right, let's take a look, see if we have any more questions cuz we are just about almost not quite, but just about out of time. Oh, let me make an announcement. Uh, next Saturday, May 27th. There will not be pet talk today. Um, that is the weekend I believe of, um, Memorial Day. Memorial Day weekend. I am gonna be taking that off. I hope you have a good Memorial Day weekend as well. But we'll be back the following Saturday, just like any other Saturday. Um, at 11 o'clock Eastern standard time. We're here, uh, all our taking your questions, answering your questions, providing you with positive solutions. Please share this with your friends. Hit that like button. Hit that share button. Um, if you had a question and I was not able to get to it, please keep coming back to the show. I'll get to your questions. And those of you that are sending emails telling me how you are practicing and using the advice that I'm giving you and the great success you're having, please keep sending me those success stories. I love to hear it. I got one, I don't know if I talked about it last week, but I got one lady who, um, listened to the podcast on potty training, had two very difficult dogs to potty train and now they're potty trained. So that was fantastic. And if you've got a dog with a potty training issue, check out season one, episode 16. I think that's probably the number one podcast, maybe 81, which is about counter conditioning and desensitization. That might be, uh, the one that we have the most, uh, the most traction on. Well, that music means we are out of time. It's been a great show. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for sharing this. Thank you for hitting that like button. Hey, if you love Calm Dog, if you love Bed Talk today, please give us a five star review. Have a great weekend. I will see you in two weeks. Have a good, uh, have a good Memorial Day.