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.

#113 Clearing Misconceptions about Positive Reinforcement and Opposing Animal Abuse, Dog Training with Will Bangura, M.S., CDBC, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP

• Will Bangura, M.S., CDBC, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP is a World Renowned Dog Behaviorist, Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, Certified Professional Dog Trainer, and a Fear Free Certified Professional with over 36 years of experience with the most difficult of • Season 4 • Episode 113

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Welcome to The  DOG TRAINING PODCAST Can you imagine punishing your child for not knowing the rules of a game they never learned? It's a bewildering concept, and yet so many of us are unknowingly treating our canine companions in this same unfair manner. We're busting the myths surrounding positive reinforcement dog training in our latest installment, revealing how it can indeed stop unwanted behaviors, and emphasizing the essential role of educating our furry friends on the rules they're expected to follow.

We're diving into a treasure trove of practical tips and techniques to handle those pesky undesired dog behaviors. From using incompatible behaviors to stop unwanted ones to managing relentless barking and counter-surfing, we're giving you an arsenal of strategies that rely on positive reinforcement. We'll also discuss the vital role of food as a reward during training and the magic trick behind a reliable recall. For the anxious pups out there, we'll explore the benefits of the Dog Anxiety supplement Calm Dogs Calming Aid for Dog Anxiety,  and how it can help them cope with their fears and phobias.

Lastly, we're taking a stand against animal abuse. We'll be shining a light on the contentious 'dog daddy' and discussing the actions that constitute legal dog abuse. We encourage you, our listeners, to raise your voices, peacefully protest, and spread awareness about this crucial issue. Remember, our dogs are not just pets; they're family. Let's give them the love, respect, and understanding they deserve.

Dog Training with Will Bangura, M.S., CDBC, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP.

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Speaker 1:

Raised by wolves with canine DNA and his blood. Having trained more than 24,000 vets helping you and your fur babies thrive, live in studio. It's pet talk today, with Will Bangura answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert, will Bangura.

Speaker 2:

Good Saturday morning pet lovers. Hey, I'm Will Bangura. Thanks for joining me for another episode of pet talk today. We've got a lot to talk about today. Do you know about the dog daddy and the dog daddy controversy? We're gonna be talking about dog daddy and I'm gonna be asking you to do me a favor, and that is call him out for the abuse, the dog abuse, the legal definition of dog abuse that goes on in his seminars. Why, why has he not been arrested? Why is the dog daddy not behind bars?

Speaker 2:

Then we need to talk about all the myths that are behind positive reinforcement. You know, there's a lot of balanced trainers or trainers that like to use aversive tools, like to use aversive methods, and they call poo poo on positive reinforcement training. One of the biggest myths that they talk about is that, hey, positive reinforcement is great for teaching and training of behavior, but you can't stop behaviors with positive reinforcement, and that is just wrong. That is a myth we're gonna be talking about. How do you stop unwanted behaviors with positive reinforcement? All right, so how are you guys doing today? Are you having a good Labor Day weekend? How about there? Excuse me, is it Labor Day? Yeah, labor Day weekend. So we got Labor Day weekend coming up. I don't know if they're gonna be shooting off fireworks like they do, at least in my area. When it comes to like Memorial Day and all different holidays, they blow off the fireworks. So I don't know if that's something that you'll be dealing with with your dog or not. But let's talk a little bit about before we talk about dog daddy. I'm gonna get into that.

Speaker 2:

I also want to answer and take any questions that you have. So if you've got questions about your dog, if you've got questions about your dogs behavior or training in issues, if you're having challenges or if you're struggling with your dog, this is your time to ask me anything. If you're new to pet talk today, let me talk a little bit about the way this works. If you've got a question and I don't care what it is any behavior question, any training question you can ask me. If you've got a question, go ahead. If you're watching live on Facebook, put your question, type it in the comment section below. Also, please let me know where you're watching from and what kind of pets that you have. And if you've got some cute nicknames for your pets, let me hear those. I love hearing those as well. Also, I want to go over some emails. I've got some emails this week.

Speaker 2:

We've got a lot of great people out there that are listening to the show and I really appreciate you and if you love and appreciate what I do, how you can thank me. I know it's a pain, but if you can, go to Apple podcast, look up the pet talk today podcast takes two seconds. Go to Apple podcast, scroll down. Once you find the pet talk today podcast, scroll down to the bottom of that page, which allows you then to give a rating and a review, and we really appreciate the ratings and reviews. That's what allows us to go up in the ranking and more people then get to see pet talk today. So I hate to have to push for reviews. I know it's a pain in the butt, but please, if you love what we do, help us out so we can continue to do this as well.

Speaker 2:

All right, so I want to talk about some myths for a second. While you're thinking about your questions, while you're typing your questions in the comment section, I want to talk about some myths as it relates to positive reinforcement. Now, I kind of got a cheat sheet here so that I don't forget what I want to talk about. The first thing and the biggest myth is that you know positive reinforcement trainers, they don't say no, they won't tell a dog no. Well, let me just say this it's not completely off the table, okay, but I want you to think about this.

Speaker 2:

Think about a dog when they first are born and they come into our world because usually they're not born outside in the wild. Now that we've domesticated them, we have brought them into the human world. We have brought them into our world. There's no rulebook. They have no idea what it is they should do. They have no idea what they shouldn't do. How well are we teaching them what it is we want them to do and help them to divert the behaviors that our behaviors we don't want?

Speaker 2:

How fair think about this how fair is it to punish a dog who doesn't understand what the rules are? Who's just being a dog? You know very common, a very normal behavior for a dog to get up on the counter and steal food. That doesn't mean that it's a bad dog, it doesn't mean it's a dominant dog. You know it's not uncommon for a dog to want to jump on somebody. That doesn't mean they're a dominant dog, that doesn't mean that they're a bad dog. That doesn't mean that you know they're trying to be dominant. Same thing about getting out the door ahead of you. All right, dogs are dogs and they're social opportunists. You know. Think about a two-year-old child. Very selfish, okay, and they have no filters and they just do whatever the hell they want to do, and that's a dog. And that doesn't mean that they're bad. When we get a dog, when we get a new dog, we get a new puppy. It's our job to teach them what are the rules. How fair is it when you don't know what's expected of you to do something and all of a sudden it's against the established norms that you don't know about and you get punished?

Speaker 2:

You know I've said this story before. I'll use the analogy again. You know, you've got the first day of preschool and the teachers up there and we're learning shapes and the teacher draws a circle, says class, this is a circle. Draws a triangle see, class, it's a triangle. Draws a square, says class, that's a square. They repeat that. Then they go out for recess. They come back 15 minutes later and the teacher says Johnny, and she points to the circle. She says Johnny, what is this shape and Johnny says it's a square. And she says no, it's not a square. How can you be so stupid? Punishes Johnny. Johnny was set up for failure because Johnny didn't get to learn and nobody took the time to really teach Johnny what those shapes really were.

Speaker 2:

And we do that with our dogs, don't we? I mean, how normal is it for a dog to go to the bathroom in the house? Very normal. They don't know that they shouldn't go to the bathroom in the house. They don't know that they shouldn't jump. They don't know that they shouldn't get up on the counter. They don't know that they shouldn't rush out the door ahead of you. What are your rules and what rules have you taught? See, these dogs aren't bad dogs. They're not dominant dogs. They're unruly dogs. Think about it unruly without rules. And it's our job to teach them the rules.

Speaker 2:

So, as a positive reinforcement trainer, I don't believe that it's fair to be punishing a dog and correcting, correcting a dog listen, corrections just a nice name for punishment, then. I don't believe that any dog needs to experience punishment. They don't need to experience fear, pain or intimidation. It's just not fair. We need to teach them what it is we want them to do so how do we teach a dog, or tell a dog no, without punishing them? And you know even the word no, depending upon your tonality, can be punishment right. You've got a, let's say you've got a really soft dog right, a really sensitive dog. Some of these dogs, you could barely look at them and point the finger at them and they fall over, get on their back and start peeing themselves. They're so submissive. It's all about the dog, it's all about the dog's temperament.

Speaker 2:

And when we're working with your dog, I want you to realize they don't know what's expected, and when they do something that we don't like, they don't know it. Now a lot of you are telling me hey, I've taught my dog not to go to the bathroom in the house. Or I've taught my dog not to jump, and my dog still jumps, and my dog still goes to the bathroom in the house. They know what they're doing is wrong, they know better, but they keep on doing it. No, they don't know better. They really don't trust me. If your dog knew better not to go to the bathroom in the house, it would go to the bathroom outside to avoid the punishment that's coming. That you give your dog the same thing for any other behavior, like jumping, see.

Speaker 2:

The problem is is that we don't realize that training requires conditioning and that means a lot of repetition. Where they don't have to think about what they need to do, it becomes an automatic conditioned response and that means putting in time. There are no quick fixes and when people tell me this is a oh, my dog looks guilty. No, your dog looks like a dog that's going to get punished, because that's what some of you have been doing and that has been a conditioned response in your dog. Your dog is not looking like it's guilty, it's looking like it's in trouble because it doesn't want to get punished and it knows that in certain situations it's been getting punished. If that applies to you, hopefully not hopefully, if you've been listening for a while you're using positive reinforcement. The jury is no longer out. The verdict has been in for a long time.

Speaker 2:

Punishment based, aversive based tools, using shock collars, prong collars, using choke collars, using punishment that's all outdated stuff the science has told us. There are numerous organizations, numerous studies out there that show that positive reinforcement is the best way to go and that punishment can cause long-term psychological and even physical damage to your dog. So let's talk about. What can we do? What you every time let me take a drink of the coffee here Every time your dog is doing something that you don't like, I want you to think about what behavior would I like my dog to do? Instead, we use what's called differential reinforcement in positive reinforcement to be able to stop certain behaviors. And what differential reinforcement? I want you to think differential, think different, right? Think about teaching your dog a behavior. One of the differential reinforcement strategies is DRI. That's differential reinforcement incompatible. Dri allows us to teach a dog a behavior through positive reinforcement that if the dog was committed to that behavior that we're training with positive reinforcement, it would be incompatible with a behavior that we don't like.

Speaker 2:

Let me give you an interesting example. Then I'll give you a classic one. So one of the local police departments where I live contacted me years ago. They had a dog and of course they spent in some cases up to $100,000 for these police dogs. They had a dog that would bite without being told to bite. Well, you can imagine the liability that is. But when you've spent $100,000 on a dog, you don't want to all of a sudden have that dog be a washout and be out that money. So they contacted me. They wanted to know what I thought and what I thought we could do. Well, what I actually had them teach the dog to do was, before the squad car door opened up and the dog came out, the dog had to grab a glove and the dog had to keep that glove in its mouth until it was given a cue or command to do something else. And that's differential reinforcement, teaching a incompatible behavior. That dog cannot bite and have that glove in its mouth at the same time. It just can't happen. Now, after a while doing that behavior, they were able to have the dog go out without the glove.

Speaker 2:

Because one of the biggest things we need to do is stop rehearsing the behavior that we don't want. So, first thing, if you've got a behavior that your dog is engaging in that you don't want, the first step all right. It's not the fix, but it's the first step to the fix. You need to make sure that you avoid those situations, unless here's the kicker unless you're doing training, because early on you're just gonna set your dog up for success if you know what's gonna happen. So I need you to avoid those situations. We know what your dog's gonna do wrong, we know that it happens all the time, or almost all the time, in certain specific situations. So stop putting your dog in a situation where your dog's gonna make a mistake, because that puts you in a situation where you think you've gotta correct the dog right. So avoid all the triggers.

Speaker 2:

Now, I'm not telling you to avoid things and just hope they all go away. See, that's the myth. That's what balanced trainers are saying is that when your dog has a bad behavior, the positive reinforcement trainers, they just tell you to ignore it until it goes away. That is not true. We want you to avoid the triggers. We don't want the dog to continue to rehearse the behaviors.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, let's say that every time somebody comes to your house, knocks on the door, rings the doorbell, your dog goes ballistic. Your dog starts barking, running at that door, just with all this crazy energy. And if you can't open the door but if you could open the door when you do open the door, the dog's going crazy, jumping all over the person, and it's this crazy excitement. What do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you don't allow that behavior to happen until you've done the training. So anytime somebody's coming over to the house. You have to have an alternative plan right now. Maybe you put the dog in a crate, maybe you put the dog in the other room, but you need to stop the dog from rehearsing the behavior that you don't want. Secondly, now, proactively not right away when somebody's coming through the door, but proactively we need to spend time training the dog to do a behavior that would be incompatible with jumping on folks that would come through the door.

Speaker 2:

So how about teaching the dog to sit every time somebody comes in the door? So we're gonna start working on sit. We're gonna reward sit with very high value food rewards. Remember, what we're teaching the dog to do has to be more interesting, more enjoyable to the dog than meeting the new guest and jumping all over the guest, and as far as the dog's concerned, that is a blast. So you better make this really fun. If you're not an animated person, you know it's early in the morning, I need my coffee. I'm not animated, but you gotta fake it. You've gotta be animated. You've gotta get the dog excited. This has to be fun Now, not so excited that the dog will break command and go jump on somebody, but you've gotta have a lot of fun when you're doing this with your dog.

Speaker 2:

So you know, working fast, asking the dog to sit, making a big deal, yes, with your marker, rewarding the dog, doing a lot of sit. So have somebody knock on the door once, have the dog sit, mark and reward. Knock on the door once, have the dog sit, mark and reward. When the dog can handle that well, have him knock twice and then sit. Then three times knocking, then four times knocking and sit. Then make the knocking louder and more frantic.

Speaker 2:

Get the distractions in. You gotta start with slow and low distractions. If your dog can't maintain that sit, your distractions are too high. You need to back up a little bit, do more conditioning, more work with the lower level distractions. But little by little you need to practice with a helper knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell, coming through that door, teaching your dog to sit.

Speaker 2:

You're gonna start very quietly, just one little knock, okay, and keeping the dog sitting with very low, quiet knocking. Right, you have your helper out there going, knock, mark and reward, knock, mark and reward, knock, but very light, low knocks. If your dog gets up from the sit, they're knocking too loud. Just work at the dog's pace. What you wanna do is get constant knocking and the dog is staying in that sit. So the knocks have to be slow and they've gotta be quiet and you might not be able to start off going knock, knock, knock, knock quietly. You might only be able to do one knock Mark and reward, a second knock mark and reward. But if your dog's doing well, if your dog's maintaining that sit, knock a little bit more. Knock, knock, knock mark and reward Little by little, gradually not over hours or days, over weeks, maybe months depends on your dog You're going to bring up the intensity of that knocking and having your dog sitting.

Speaker 2:

Then you gotta start working on having people come in. They come in quietly and stand still and you reward your dog and you condition that quite a bit. Then they come in, they start becoming animated, talking and moving and you positively reinforce your dog for maintaining the sit. Again, anytime your dog can't maintain the sit, the distraction is too much for the dog, too soon you need to take a step back and work on lower level distractions and spend more time conditioning your dog. And again, you've gotta be more fun. You've gotta be more exciting than that person coming in the door.

Speaker 2:

The second thing you can do you can start getting the recorded sounds of the doorbell. You can start playing those at very low volume and getting your dog to train with you and respond to cues and commands with low level doorbell ringing. And again, if your dog can't focus on you, if your dog loses its focus on you, if your dog can't respond to commands, if your dog won't take the food, chances are that volume of the doorbell ringing is too loud. You need to bring that down. But you see, proactively, there's a lot we can do.

Speaker 2:

We never had to punish the dog for jumping. We never had to yell at the dog for just being a dog, just being a dog. And for us never showing the dog, hey, this is what I want you to do instead. That, I think, is appropriate when somebody comes in, rather than just being you, rather than just being a dog and jumping on somebody Because you're in my world now and now, I've got certain rules that I need you to follow. So that's one of the things that we can do.

Speaker 2:

And again, I need you to think differential reinforcement. What behavior do I want my dog to do that's incompatible with the behavior it's currently doing? How about barking? Now I've got two schnauzers. Jumping is a huge thing, right, it's one of the biggest nuisance behaviors. Barking is another huge nuisance behaviors.

Speaker 2:

What do you do about barking? Well, here's the thing You're never going to train your dog to be mute, meaning that you are never going to train your dog to never make any sounds and not have any vocalizations. What we're talking about, what we probably need to be looking at, is I don't want my dog to be barking excessively. Dogs are going to bark, they're going to hear things, they're going to alert Again, a very normal, very normal behavior, not an abnormal behavior. But what do we do? We punish them, and I want you to think about this. All these normal behaviors that dogs do and we combine come behind them and we punish them. What's really happening is we're punishing our relationship with the dog because the dog's just doing what dogs do. They don't understand that it's wrong, and now the dog is engaging you doing something and the dog's experiencing pain because you're punishing the dog. Punishment is just going to ruin your relationship with your dog.

Speaker 2:

You need to help your dog do the right thing so that your dog's not doing what you don't want it to do, and you need to take the time to teach that. So barking is another thing. Now we want to teach the dog two things. One, at least in my opinion we want to teach the dog what quiet is so that eventually we can ask for quiet. So when your dog is barking, when your dog stops barking and you've got about three seconds of quiet, you can label that quiet mark and reward. Now I'm saying mark.

Speaker 2:

We use markers and markers are critical in training. If you don't know about markers and using markers and training and how that helps to communicate to the dog what we want and helps to speed up the training, go to the audio Pet Talk Today podcast. Just do a Google search for Pet Talk Today and look for episode. I believe it's episode 80, which is on markers. Episode 80 is all about using markers. It's about an hour, hour and a half long. Check that out, all right.

Speaker 2:

So we've got a dog that's barking. We haven't done anything to quiet the dog yet. We've not done anything to stop the barking. The dog is just being normal. We get the dog with us and when the dog stops barking for about three seconds, we're now going to label that quiet, we're going to say quiet and we're going to mark and reward. So you need to start teaching your dog what is quiet. You need to put that on cue and you're going to start capturing quiet behavior that your dog offers you. The times your dog is quiet, right after it's barking All right, it's barking, it's loud, it stops. Wait about three seconds. If you've got three seconds of quiet, label that quiet, mark and reward. I want you to do a lot of that Now.

Speaker 2:

You could actually, if you wanted, one of the ways you teach a dog to be quiet is putting barking on cue as the dog's barking. You could start saying speak, mark and reward or bark, mark and reward. Okay, eventually you can then ask for barking and when you ask for barking, you've got more opportunity for the dog to be quiet. You've got more opportunity to label quiet. It works. It really, really works. But you've got to put the work in. You've got to be proactive when you're doing this. Okay, you can teach your dog to bark on cue. You just have to label it when they're doing it and reward it, and do that over and over for several weeks. If you've done it well for several weeks now, you should probably be able to ask for it and the dog will bark Again. More opportunity for the dog to be quiet, so that you can teach what quiet is as well. So that's one strategy.

Speaker 2:

Now, the strategy that I use is when my dogs bark, after a few barks, I call my dogs to me. They come running, they get a very lot of praise, they get a treat, they stop barking. I'm interrupting that barking and having them come to me. Now, I've done a lot of that with my dogs and they previously to that, though we worked on a recall. So my dogs know how to come when called right, and that is something that has high value. They're motivated to come to me because really good things happen, and so when they're barking, I will call them to me and they'll get a reward. You do that long enough. What happens is you create this pattern. You create a routine where your dogs do a couple barks, they stop, and now they come to you because that's the pattern that we created. So eventually, they just only give a few barks bark, bark, bark, they stop and they come finding dad. I love that, right. I want you. Hey, let me know there's something going on. Then come see dad. I say, hey, thank you, everything's okay, I'm marking reward. So that's another behavior right.

Speaker 2:

We don't have to punish the dog for barking the dog, just being a dog, just being a dog. Think about all the behaviors that are so normal to a dog that we immediately want to punish without realizing that, hey, they're just being a dog. And what have we done to teach them what is the right thing to do, so important when it comes to animal welfare. You know, I'm going to be talking a little bit about dog daddy. I don't know if you know about dog daddy, but this guy literally, literally abuses dogs in a public forum, in workshops, videos that puts it up on YouTube and this guy's not behind bars. There's a federal law, the federal, as a matter of fact. Hold on, let's just talk about this guy. Let's bring this guy up right now. Where are we? All right, here we go, here we go, let's see.

Speaker 2:

All right, you know this guy, dog daddy. I mean, he's incredibly popular. He's made a big name for himself by being absolutely outrageous dresses outrageous, looks outrageous. The dogs that he grabs are aggressive. He hangs them from the leash, choking them out, jerks the hell out of a prong collar is unbelievably abusive and he's selling out all over the world. People are coming to him because they see quick fixes. They see the dog daddy, take a dog that's aggressive and he punishes the hell out of them, hangs them from the leash where they're choking out, they can't breathe. And then all of a sudden now he can take the leash off or take the muzzle off and the dog's not biting.

Speaker 2:

Why do you suppose the dog all of a sudden has stopped being aggressive? See, the people there buy into the BS. They think that the aggression has been corrected. No, it has not. The outward behavior, the aggressive behavior that you see, has been suppressed. The dog is too afraid, it's intimidated and it doesn't want to experience pain. So in that moment, with that individual dog daddy, the dog is not fighting. But if you look at the, if you look at the body language, you're going to see that there is a shut down dog. It's called learned helplessness and a lot of you, just like dog daddy, are fooled that you have corrected the aggression and things are good to go when they're not, because the aggression wasn't the problem.

Speaker 2:

Dog daddy, this is the problem with you. This is the problem with anybody that's using aversive tools like shock collars, prong collars, choke collars or anybody that's using punishment in general. You think you're correcting the behavior when you are temporarily putting a band-aid on it. You're suppressing the outward behavior because of fear, pain and intimidation. But that outward behavior was motivated by an underlying emotional state of stress, fear and anxiety. No animal goes into fight or flight unless they perceive something as threatening. Bottom line no animal goes into fight or flight unless they perceive something as threatening. And to perceive something as threatening, there is anxiety, there is stress, there is fear. When you address the underlying emotional state, and only until you address the underlying emotional state of stress, fear and anxiety, will those behaviors change. Long term. Can you temporarily stop the dog from being aggressive by punishing the dog? Absolutely, but it's temporary. The pressure inside that dog is building and building and building and eventually, boom, the dog snaps.

Speaker 2:

I get calls all the time from people that had aggressive dogs sent their dog to a two-four-week board and train where they used punishment, they used an E-collar or they used a prong collar. Dog comes back, comes back, everything seems fine, no aggression, they're happy. Or they went and they got private lessons. Maybe the trainer came into their home and they did maybe six private lessons and the training is done. The dog is no longer acting out aggressively. Why? Because they used punishment. They corrected with a lesion collar correction, with a prong collar or a choke collar or an electronic collar. They shocked the dog and the dog's not acting out. But I get the calls. I get the calls and it's usually about two months later. After about two months, all of a sudden that aggression comes back and it comes back even worse than what it was before and now they're thinking, well, nothing's going to work. I got to put my dog down, I got to euthanize my dog. No, you don't.

Speaker 2:

We use positive reinforcement all the time to rehabilitate dogs with aggression. It's called counter conditioning and desensitization. You know good dog training when you're working with an aggressive dog, good training with an aggressive dog is the most boring thing in the world. That's why you don't see videos of work with myself and clients. It's boring why? Because we don't get the dog so close to the trigger that the dog is going to have a meltdown, get into the red zone and go absolutely ballistic. When they're in that state, you are not teaching anything. You cannot teach anything. They don't think well, the memory is not good. The frontal cortex, where executive functioning and thinking happen, that frontal cortex there, the neocortex that shuts down when the dog is in fight or flight. They're in the amygdala, working off instinct. Their instinct is to survive when somebody, like a dog daddy, is out there abusing them. It's abuse.

Speaker 2:

Federal laws We've got the Federal Pact Act preventing animal cruelty and torture act that was signed into law in 2019. Why is nobody arresting the dog daddy for violating that federal law? Why is nobody arresting this guy? He is breaking the law and there's video and he's going to city after city breaking a federal law. We need to do something. If you don't cry out, if you don't say anything, this is gonna keep coming and it's only gonna get worse because it looks like it's working, but you're not seeing what happens to these dogs or the people that he's working with.

Speaker 2:

With these dogs, two, three, four months later, it's people like myself and other behaviorists and behavior consultants that are getting calls after the fact because you think they're gonna go back to the person that they worked with that it didn't help. So if they worked with dog daddy or someone else that used punishment and after two months the aggression came back worse, do you think they're gonna go back to that person? No, in most cases not, because they're saying to themselves, hey, this really didn't work, they're gonna look for somebody else who does something different. I am one of those somebody else's who does something different. That get calls day in and day out. I'm tired of getting the calls. I'm tired of hearing the same story.

Speaker 2:

These dogs that have been through board and train, these dogs that have been through private training, working with trainers that use aversive tools, aversive methods to correct and punish the aggression, all they're doing is suppressing the outward behavior. They're not really rehabilitating the dog because they've not addressed the underlying emotional state. That needs to change. And when we do us positive reinforcement, trainers come behind them and have to rehabilitate them. We have to start these dogs at a distance, far away from the trigger, where they're not reactive, where they're not in that red zone where they can see that other person or dog that they are wanting to be aggressive towards, but they're far enough away that they don't have a care in the world. They see them, but they're far enough away that the dog doesn't care. At that distance we start pairing high value food rewards or very high value positive reinforcement with the presentation of the trigger, but at a distance where it's safe and the dog is not freaking out. The dog is calm and we do a lot of repetitions of that and eventually that dog is really looking forward to that strange person or dog that it would have wanted to be aggressive towards. It's now looking forward to that appearance because that signals and means, hey, I'm getting high value food rewards. That I love. Also the experience that they're having. Nothing bad is happening because we're controlling that. So the dog's having a good experience with something that it was nervous about. And gradually, systematically, little by little, we're gonna get closer and closer and closer and closer and closer, but slowly and gradually, over weeks, over months. There is no quick fix. But as we get closer the dog continues to have a positive experience and we're making sure that the dog is not going over the top.

Speaker 2:

If your dog is reactive, when you're doing counter conditioning and desensitization, you're not doing it right. But we can take any dog I don't care how aggressive they are and we can help that aggression. We can change that underlying emotional state. And when you change the underlying emotional state, the behavior changes. If the dog no longer views the trigger as a threat, there's no reason for the aggression. So we're changing that conditioned emotional response that the dog has to the trigger and bringing about a positive association. So the dog doesn't want to, or the dog doesn't feel that it has to do that.

Speaker 2:

You know it's 2023 and I can't believe that we are still having this debate whether or not punishment is effective when it comes to dog training. Organization after organization after organization, I'm looking around to see if I even have the paperwork. I don't have it in front of me. There's dozens of organizations the American Humane Society, the American Society for Veterinary Hospitals, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Association of Animal Behaviorists, and I could go on and on and on. All are saying punishment is not what you should be using for your dog. It causes problems and it leads to dogs becoming more anxious and more aggressive. Why? Because they're more fearful, because they're being hurt. Of course, they're more anxious and more aggressive.

Speaker 2:

But you see things on the internet. You see these videos that look really incredible. Do you see this dog just over the top freaking out, being super aggressive? And then the next thing you know, the dog's walking next to dog daddy, all calm. That makes for incredible marketing. It makes for people wanting to call dog daddy and say help me with my dog. I need that right away. I need that quick fix and all you're seeing is smoke and mirrors, because he didn't do anything to help the underlying emotional state. He just abused the hell out of those dogs and there's a lot of that going on Maybe not to that degree, but the use of punishment, especially when it comes to aggression you are not gonna use aggression to help aggression, not in the long term, not for any type of permanence and reliability or not. Yeah, it just drives me crazy.

Speaker 2:

All right, let's talk about some other things. As far as, okay, positive reinforcement, what can you do in terms of stopping unwanted behaviors? We talked about jumping and teaching a sit behavior and, little by little, adding more distractions to that. We talked about barking, where we could begin to teach what quiet is and eventually we could ask for it, or we could teach the dog to bark on cue or command, giving us more opportunity to have quiet, to teach what quiet is. What are some other things that we can talk about when it comes to positive reinforcement? Let me look at my list here. All right. Destructive chewing how do we deal with destructive chewing? Well, there's a couple of things, okay. First of all, we're gonna talk about how to deal with stress.

Speaker 2:

Okay, first of all, when you're not there to supervise your dog. If your dog has house manners issues, if your dog is chewing or going to the bathroom in the house or getting above and the counter and stealing things, okay, getting on furniture maybe you don't want it to get on the furniture. If you're not there to supervise, you need to confine your dog and that's why crate training is so important. Dogs have a natural denning instinct. It's not a cage, it's not jail. It can be uncomfortable for a dog if you have never taken the time to train them and teach them how to use a crate positively. But that is something that I believe is just part of everyday, normal dog guardianship. If you're a pet parent, you need to be teaching them crate training, potty training, basic house manners, teaching basic commands to them so that they can function in our world. But if you've got a dog that has problems in the house and you've not done that, you can't turn away and take your eye off the dog. You're setting the dog up for failure again. And then what do you do? You come out, you're mad, you're upset because the dog chewed something up or peed in the house. You should have known better. Did you take the time to teach the dog to do something else? Is the dog there yet? No, it's not. Crate the dog when you can't watch the dog. So the dog can't make a mistake. They're not gonna learn if they keep rehearsing the unwanted behaviors.

Speaker 2:

These are self-reinforcing behaviors. It's uncomfortable to hold back when you've got to have a bowel movement. It's uncomfortable to hold back when you need to urinate. The whole act of the dog going to the bathroom, the whole act of any animal going to the bathroom, is relief. And when that happens, that reinforces the behavior, because the dog feels less uncomfortable when it relieves itself. That's why it's called relieving itself. That is negative reinforcement. Forget about the negative. Don't think about good or bad. Negative means the removal of something uncomfortable. Well, it's uncomfortable to have to hold it. When I relieve myself, ah, there's relief. Same thing for the dog. That reinforces that behavior.

Speaker 2:

Create your dog when you cannot watch your dog and then it's your job, when you can watch your dog, to proactively teach behaviors that you want and to proactively teach incompatible behaviors that would be in place of the behaviors that you don't want. Okay, so we're gonna talk about chewing Again. First thing, you're gonna create your dog if you can't watch your dog. Second thing, if your dog's a chewer, you wanna make sure that you have plenty of things that are appropriate for your dog or your puppy to chew and you want things like hard things to chew on, soft things to chew on, things that have different textures, different shapes. Find out what your dog really really likes and put that stuff up. Don't just leave it out. This is valuable stuff for you. Put it up on the fridge and when your dog wants to chew on something it shouldn't take that out. Give that to your dog an alternative thing to chew on. Don't punish your dog for doing what a dog does normally and then make sure that you're using that. Every time your dog is wanting to chew on something it shouldn't, you pull out something it really likes and you allow it to chew on that. Okay, eventually you're gonna leave those things out as the dog starts to understand it shouldn't chew on something and you don't have to crate the dog as the dog's learning. You're gonna have appropriate things for the dog to chew on and that chewing is not gonna be an issue. But you know you gotta teach a dog what to do Digging.

Speaker 2:

What do you do? If you don't punish a dog for digging? What can you do? How about making and creating a spot for the dog to dig? Right, you can have make a little sandbox for the dog. Encourage the digging there, reward the dog for digging there. Give the dog an outlet, give the dog an alternative to do.

Speaker 2:

Okay, what are some other things that we can talk about besides digging? Oh, stealing food or counter surfing. So when we talk about differential reinforcement, oh, let's talk about begging too, right? So let's say that you're eating and the dog is begging, and the dog's trying to get up on the table or trying to get up on the counter. You're cooking, dog's trying to get up on the counter. How about teaching the dog, through positive reinforcement, proactively to go to your bed or go to your place, go to your spot, lay there calmly and stay there while we're eating. Or go to your bed, go to your place, go to your spot, lay there calmly while you're cooking Again, teaching an incompatible behavior.

Speaker 2:

Your dog can't be staying in their bed or their spot or their place and be begging, begging you at the dinner table. They'd have to give up that behavior of being on their bed or place to go beg. Same thing that they have to give up that behavior to go counter-surf and get what's on the counter. And again, early in training, when you don't have permanence and reliability, you don't leave a dog that's destructive alone unsupervised. If you can't watch them, you crate them. I don't care if it's for two minutes. You gotta go to the bathroom and you've got a dog that you have not completed its training. It's still would chew on something or maybe get up on the counter or maybe steal some food if you weren't looking. Hey, if you've gotta go to the bathroom, crate that dog. Go to the bathroom when you get done, get the dog out of the crate. It's those small moments when we turn our back oftentimes when these things happen, and so we wanna make absolutely sure, absolutely sure, that if we can't watch the dog, that we can definitely, definitely crate the dog, and that's critical, absolutely critical.

Speaker 2:

I'm Will Bangura. You are listening to Pet Talk Today here on Facebook Live. I'm here each and every Saturday morning at nine o'clock Pacific time I think that's 12 o'clock Eastern for an hour where I talk about dog training and behavior issues. If you have questions, if you're new to Pet Talk Today. You can type your questions, put them in the comment section. Also, if you have not subscribed to the Pet Talk Today podcast, there's a lot of episodes that I do that are just audio podcasts, that are not put on Facebook. So make sure that you do a Google search for Pet Talk Today, subscribe to the audio podcast so that you never miss an issue. And if you love what we do, please, whatever platform you're listening to, whether it's Apple podcast, whether Spotify please leave us a five star review if you love what we do.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna be going and looking at questions. Now I'm gonna be taking questions. I'm gonna be answering some email questions that we have as well, but Diana has a question. She says how do you teach the rules to a dog that I've adopted who already learned bad manners and behaviors? Well, diana, a lot of dogs, yeah, that you rescue, they've got bad manners and there's been a lot of conditioning of those bad manners. Now, diana, I don't know what specifically the manners that you're talking about, but let's say that I've got a dog that's jumping on people, that goes absolutely crazy when people come in the home. Well, again, if I've got people coming and going until I've got the training intact. Remember we talked about teaching the dog to sit and be calm and we did distraction work with knocking and ringing and people coming in proactively, and it takes weeks weeks to do that, not days.

Speaker 2:

If my dog is not ready for the real thing when somebody comes over, I need to crate the dog. I'm not gonna allow the crazy behaviors to happen, right, and then I'm gonna take proactive steps to simulate the situations where the dog's having problems and teach the dog a different behavior and reward the heck out of the dog. I'm gonna use super high value food rewards little cut up pieces of cheese, little cut up pieces of hot dog, little cut up pieces of cooked chicken something the dog loves and we're gonna have a lot of fun, a lot of excitement and this is gonna be the highlight of the dog's day our learning the behaviors that I wanna teach that are incompatible to the behaviors that your dog is doing, that you don't like and that's critical. So you didn't list exactly what's going on with your dog, so I don't know what behaviors you're dealing with. But that's the process, let's see. Michelle says I just rescued a new Chihuahua a few days ago and she's nonstop barking. So this is so valuable to me. Yeah, fantastic, I would start working on excuse me the recall. Get your dog to come to you a lot and reward the heck out of it. Make that the most fun game. Lose my voice here. Make that the most fun game you could ever do.

Speaker 2:

There's two things that every dog parent needs to have with their dog. One is a recall, very strong recall. You need to know that your dog will come every time, every time you call it, no matter what, and you want to make sure hey, we're asking the dog to do work. There better be one hell of a paycheck, especially something like a recall. So when you call your dog and your dog gets to you, I hope you are rewarding the hell out of it with the most valuable food that it loves.

Speaker 2:

Okay, those of you that don't want to train with food or you think it's bribes, let me tell you something. What do you do for work? Do you do the work and not get a paycheck? Are you just volunteering all that work and not getting paid? Absolutely not. I don't know anybody that is. Why should it be any different for your dog? You're expecting your dog to do a lot, to do things that you want that are not natural to a dog. That's hard work. There better be a really good paycheck. There better be a good paycheck. Why are you making this harder than it needs to be? Those of you that don't want to use food you are making this so difficult If you use food right and I've talked about it.

Speaker 2:

So if you don't know how to use food right, you got to continue to listen to these podcasts and learn. There's a right way and a wrong way to use food. Matter of fact, I'm going to write an article because that makes for a great article. That's something I haven't written about. I will write about it this week.

Speaker 2:

If you have not gone to my website, go to where is it here? I'll get the finger right DogBehavioristcom. You can go to dogbehavioristcom. I've got almost 70 articles using positive reinforcement. How do you deal with these nuisance behaviors like barking, like jumping, like begging? I've got articles on there. How do you deal with separation, anxiety? How do you deal with fears and phobias, aggression and reactivity Almost 70 articles. Go to dogbehavioristcom. There's a lot of free, great information. Keep coming by. There are more and more articles that go up there weekly. So if you've got a really difficult problem and you need to hire a professional. I do online virtual behavior consultations all over the world, working with some of the most difficult behaviors aggression, fears, phobias, reactivity having great success all over the world doing this.

Speaker 2:

I don't need to be there to see your dog. You're the one that needs to be trained and I'm not doing my job if I'm doing the work. My job is to teach you to do the work and not only do you know what to then do with your dog when it makes a mistake and that's important do you know what to do when your dog makes a mistake? If somebody else did all the training right, it's your dog. You should be doing the training. Never send your dog away for training. You should be the one being trained. I'm training you to be a dog trainer. I'm training you to be a behavior consultant to do what you need to do with your dog to have success. But if you can't find somebody to work with you and you need help, go to my website. You can get a hold of me at dogbehavorscom. I work with a lot of people that watch the show and we're having fantastic success.

Speaker 2:

Let me see here Bonnie. Bonnie and Hope are here still working on the bells. Hey, bonnie, the bells. How is that going? And you know what? Send me an email. Go to will at PetTalkTodaycom. Will at PetTalkTodaycom. Send me an email. Give me an update on how your dog is doing as well. All right, let's see. Do I have any other questions here? Yeah, the nonstop barking.

Speaker 2:

Michelle, again, I like to do the recall. That's how I like to do it. I like my dog bark two, three times. I like to call him to me. Now the question is can you get your dogs to come to you when they're barking, or are they so crazy when they're barking and so fixated that they don't hear you at all? Now, if that's the case, you've got to proactively work on the recall when they're not barking and really make that a rewarding behavior for them to do. And when you're working on a behavior, make sure that you're doing minimum 10 repetitions in a row and you should be working on it daily. You know the best training sessions are really short five to seven minutes long, five to 10 minutes long. Those are the best training sessions. Doing a few of those short sessions are so much better than doing one really long session. Okay, the more often you train and it could be for just a little duration. But the more often you do it, the quicker things are going to go. Again, I like to use the recall.

Speaker 2:

My dogs bark. I let them bark a couple of times. I call them to me, they come to me. I've done that so consistently with the dogs that almost always not always, but almost always they bark a couple of times and without me calling them, they just run to me because that's the pattern. That's what we've done. Okay, that is the pattern.

Speaker 2:

Need to talk a little bit? Take a quick second. Once I get my phone open here, could take a quick second to talk about calm dogs. Let me do that. So here we go. So do you know about calm dogs? This is a supplement that I created.

Speaker 2:

It took me five years to create a supplement that would help dogs that's all natural with anxieties, fears, phobias, sound issues like storms and fireworks, and even aggression and reactivity, or dogs that have problems with car rides or a fear of vet visits or grooming. Calm dogs has 21 all natural ingredients vitamins, minerals, amino acids and herbs. Each one of the ingredients in calm dogs is scientifically proven to help with these problems, the reason I came up with my own product was because I had a lot of dogs that I was working with and my own dogs that needed something. We know that dogs that have severe issues have serotonin deficiencies. But my dogs weren't so bad that they needed to go on Prozac or some other type of medication and I didn't want those side effects. So I tried lots of natural products that were out there. The problem is, none of those products worked. They did nothing. And when I went and did the research I found that, yeah, those products, those ingredients, they don't do anything. So that's when I went on my five year adventure, my five year journey to do research and development, to make sure that I could come up with a product that every ingredient, all 21 ingredients, are scientifically proven through peer reviewed studies to help dogs be calm, to help them relax, to help decrease aggression reactivity.

Speaker 2:

So if you haven't heard about calm dogs, go to calmdogscom. You can also go to doganxietycom. The nice thing about calm dogs. I'm so convinced my product will work. It comes with 100% money back guarantee. That's right 100% money back guarantee. Try the product for 45 days. Give it to your dog twice daily, as it's supposed to be given, if your dog is not being helped. If your dog doesn't benefit from calm dogs, it's free. You contact me. You get 100% of your money back. So, again, go to calmdogscom or you can go to doganxietycom for this product, all right?

Speaker 2:

Well, my gosh, we are almost out of time. This went really, really quick. I'm amazed. Next thing I know it's almost 10 o'clock here. It's been an hour.

Speaker 2:

Let me see if there's anything else that I want to talk about in terms of here you know, going back to. Let me go back to dog daddy. Where are you, buddy? There's dog daddy. Guys, do me a favor.

Speaker 2:

I need you to comment, I need you to talk out and on the internet where this dog daddy is and let him know that there is no, there is no place for abuse and punishment when it comes to training dogs. And when you're glorifying that and driving around in big, fancy cars and dressing like you're a rapper, this is just a joke for him, this is entertainment. Well, our dogs and punishing our dogs, abusing our dogs, should never, ever, ever be entertainment. And if we don't talk about it, if we don't hold people accountable for their actions, it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. So if you know anything about dog daddy, I want you to comment on social media. If dog daddy is coming to do a workshop in your part of the world, I want you to protest peacefully. There's a lot of trainers, a lot of people out here that are really upset with dog daddy, and they should be. The guy literally abuses dogs. I don't understand why he's not in jail. It just doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

Speaker 2:

Well, folks, I am out of time. I appreciate you being here. Appreciate your questions, appreciate your support. Do us a favor If you love what we're doing, give us a five star review. Have a great weekend, everybody. Weather's getting better. Talk to you, dogs.

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Will Bangura M.S.,CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP

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