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.
DOG TRAINING TODAY with WILL BANGURA: Science-Based, Vet-Endorsed Advice for Pet Parents, Kids & Family, Pets and Animals, and Dog Training Professionals. This is a Education & How To Dog Training Podcast.
Looking for a science-based, vet-endorsed dog training podcast that is perfect for kids, families, and pets of all ages, even other Dog Trainers and Pet Professionals? Look no further than Dog Training Today with certified dog behavior consultant Will Bangura, M.S., CAB-ICB, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP.
In each episode, Will provides practical advice and tips on everything from teaching your dog basic commands to addressing common behavioral issues. He also covers topics such as:
- How to choose the right dog for your family
- How to socialize your puppy
- How to manage and modify behavior problems in dogs
- How to crate train your dog
- How to teach your dog basic and advanced commands
- How to address anxiety and phobias
- How to manage dog aggression
- How to create a positive and rewarding training experience for both you and your dog
Dog Training Today is more than just a dog training podcast. It's a holistic resource for families with pets. Will covers everything from diet and exercise to mental health and behavior. He also interviews experts in the field to provide listeners with the latest research and insights.
Who Should Listen?
- Pet Parents seeking to understand their furry companions better
- Dog Trainers wanting to enrich their toolkit
- Veterinarians and Vet Techs interested in behavior
- Pet Guardians looking for trusted resources
- Anyone passionate about dogs!
Remember to subscribe and leave a review if you find our content helpful. New episodes are released every week, so stay tuned for more practical advice, expert interviews, and step-by-step guides.
If you're a parent, pet owner, or anyone who loves dogs, Dog Training Today is the podcast for you. Subscribe today and start learning how to be the best pet parent possible!
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Category Pets and Animals, Dog Training, Kids and Family
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.
Dog Training Podcast #124 Will Artificial Intelligence be Used to Train Dogs? How to Teach Place, How to Stop Unwanted Barking, Reactive and Aggressive Dogs. Dog Training with Will Bangura, M.S., CDBC, CBCC-KA, FFCP, Pets and Animals
Can artificial intelligence ever replace the special bond between a pet and its parent in the training process? Ponder over this as we venture through the fascinating world of AI in dog training. We share the captivating story of Bobby, the world's oldest dog, and how AI technology has progressed to capture, label and even reward dog behaviors. A listener's question sparks a discussion on the necessity of exclusively positive reinforcement training for an anxious dog, and we lend our insights on this pressing concern.
Ever wondered about the most significant commands in dog training? We reveal them and guide you on how to use a food lure to educate your dog, with emphasis on the significance of markers in this process. Make no mistake about it - training should be enjoyable for both you and your dog. We shed light on how to verify your dog's understanding of the 'place' command. Furthermore, we provide strategies for effectively managing your dog's behavior using the 'place' command.
Finally, we dive headfirst into the realm of reactive dog behavior modification and the importance of identifying and avoiding triggers. Explore with us the innovative uses of props like mannequins and stuffed animals in training. We emphasize timing, patience, consistency, and repetition in counter conditioning and desensitization. Learn how to elicit a conditioned emotional response to modify your dog's underlying emotional state and behavior. This episode promises a treasure trove of knowledge for all dog parents out there, so tune in and let's embark on this journey together!
If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
Go here for Free Dog Training Articles
Will artificial intelligence be a part of dog training? Do you think we'll use AI in dog training? I got news for you AI is coming for your dog and it's going to be training your dog. All that and more. Don't go anywhere. This is another episode of Pet Talk Today.
Speaker 2:Raised by wolves with canine DNA and is 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 1:Good Saturday morning dog lovers. I'm Will Bangura. Thanks for joining me for another Facebook Live episode of Pet Talk Today. Hope you're doing well today. Get those pups, get your favorite something to drink and come on over to the screen. As I said, I'm Will Bangura.
Speaker 1:I'm a certified dog behavior consultant and professional dog trainer and I'm here each and every Saturday morning at 9 o'clock Pacific, 12 noon Eastern time, and this is an opportunity to talk about your dog training questions, your dog training behavior issues that you're dealing with your dog. If you're brand new to Pet Talk Today, let me talk a little bit about how this works. If you've got a question about your dog's training, if you've got a question about your dog's behavior, do me a favor, just go ahead down below in the comments section. Type your question in the comments section. Also, let me know where you're listening from, where are you from and what kind of pets do you have. And if you want to include goofy names that you have for your dogs I love that stuff too All right. So, yeah, what do you think? Ai, artificial intelligence Is artificial intelligence going to be a part of dog training?
Speaker 1:I'm going to talk about that in a second, but we have to start the show In remembrance. Rest in peace, bobby. Bobby lived in a small Portuguese village for his whole life. Bobby, the world's oldest dog ever, has died after reaching the almost inconceivable 31 years and 165 days, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. That is unbelievable, matter of fact. I have a hard time believing it. I guess I'm going to trust that Guinness did their due diligence in checking that out. So artificial intelligence will it be part of dog training? Will artificial intelligence be training your dog? Folks, it's already happening. I was privy to some information that is not actually out. I can't talk about the company, but I watched a demonstration and they have cameras and they outline your dog and it's assessing data all the time. And what this machine does besides taking video and assessing the data? So here's the thing this machine can read perfect canine body language in an instant In an instant.
Speaker 1:One of the things that this machine does is it captures behaviors all day long. It waits for the dog to do something that you want to put on cue. Everybody wants their dog to sit, everybody wants their dog to lay down. Well, capturing is a process where you're not asking for the behavior. You're capturing the dog engaging in a behavior that you want, that you like, that you want to reinforce, that you want to put on cue or command. So this machine watches your pet, watches your dog all day long, and every time your dog does something, it captures it, it labels it and it automatically gives a food reward. Every time your dog sits, it says sit and it rewards your dog. Every time your dog lays down, this machine says down. It rewards your dog. Every time your dog comes running over to the machine because it's wondering hey, there's food coming out of there. They label, they capture that behavior, they label that come and they reward that. It's unbelievable, unbelievable. I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it. Ai is coming for your dog and it's going to be training your dog. So, those of us that are dog trainers, we're going to have to figure out a whole new business, unless we're going to become programmers for artificial intelligence and help them to design the program. But there's already animal welfare advocacy groups that are writing ethical guidelines for training dogs, for AI training dogs. They're writing the ethics behind it. It's coming, it's going to be here.
Speaker 1:What do you think about that? Do you think it can successfully train a dog? Do you think AI can do that? Do you foresee a day when it's more than just a machine capturing, labeling, marking and rewarding and then, once they've done that enough, you can ask for it? Do you think there's a day that robots are actually going to be training dogs? What about the emotional bond? What about the emotional bond that we have with our pets? Is training just this mechanical, mechanistic activity that has punishers and reinforcers, or does that bond matter when it comes to training? Interesting? I don't have the answers. I don't have the answers for it. But what I thought? There was a time when I thought, nah, there's absolutely no way. There's no way that a robot or artificial intelligence is going to be able to train a dog. My mind has completely turned 180 degrees. I absolutely believe it's going to happen. I don't know. It's either scary or exciting, depending upon how you look at it.
Speaker 1:Good morning, gail. I'm glad that you're here. Let's see who else is here. Lynette, thanks for being here. Lynette's got a question right away. Let's take that.
Speaker 1:How do I convince an intellectual engineer type of the necessity of exclusively positive reinforcement training for our anxious dog? Ok, listening from Texas. Well, my guess is, if you're wanting to train exclusively with positive reinforcement, you're wanting to avoid corrections, you're wanting to avoid punishments, you're wanting to avoid using aversive tools, aversive methods, punishment and negative reinforcement the way that they work. At least. Positive punishment means adding an aversive when the dog is doing something wrong. Your timing's got to be really good and the theory is that if you're consistent, if your timing is really good and if the stimulus is definitely very unpleasant, then it might work. But you've got to have phenomenal timing and you have to be consistent and it's got to be very unpleasant. There are a lot of people out there that think that they're punishing and correcting their dogs and they're just interrupting the behavior. It's not unpleasant for the dog. They keep doing it over and over and over. Now I'm not advocating positive punishment, adding an aversive when your dog does something wrong to stop that behavior. There's much better ways to do that and that's the first thing I want you to say to your engineering type. Ok, this person.
Speaker 1:First of all, if the dog is anxious and we can agree, if everybody can agree that the dog is anxious, that means the dog is fearful, that means the dog is stressed. You've already said the dog is anxious. What do you think using methods that are not positive reinforcement? What do you think using methods that involve fear, some level of fear, some level of pain, some level of intimidation? How do you suppose that's going to help a anxious dog? It's going to make the problem worse.
Speaker 1:And one of the things you need to tell your engineering friend is that it's not about the behavior, it's about the underlying emotional state. Behaviors just don't happen in a vacuum. Ok, a dog has to have internal motivation as well as external stimuli to do a behavior. And when the dog is experiencing punishment, when the dog is experiencing pain, fear, intimidation, a correction being yelled at someone using an electronic collar, a choke chain, a prong collar Besides creating more anxiety, fear and stress and pain, it ruins your relationship with the dog. And when a dog is in that emotional state fear, anxiety, stress their ability to access the thinking part of the brain is very, very limited because they're in fight or flight, they're worried about survival, they're not thinking about what to do, so you're gonna have a tough time when a dog's in that state trying to teach them anything. Now here's the thing Even if punishment works this is what I want you to say, this is what I want you to say to your friend If you can get the same results, and even perhaps better and even perhaps faster, by just using positive reinforcement, why would you choose to use a training method or a tool that causes fear, pain or intimidation Folks?
Speaker 1:The reason that we're using those tools, the reason that we train that way, is because it's tradition. That's what we've always done for years and years balanced trainers. Now, I'm not gonna get into the debate about whether it's okay to spank your kids or not, and I'm not gonna get into the debate whether or not it's okay to use punishment or a versus with your dog. You know my position. I'm against it and I am someone who was a former balanced trainer. Most of my career I was using electronic collars and prong collars. I was balanced. Yeah, I rewarded with food, and this is what I'm gonna tell you, because I said it and I hear it all the time from balanced trainers that use corrections and aversives.
Speaker 1:They will say it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when there's going to be a distraction that is more powerful than the positive reinforcement you have and you're gonna lose control of your dog. My answer to that is you didn't do enough training. You may not be as skilled as you need to be in positive reinforcement. You may not be as skilled as you need to be in differential reinforcement. You may be moving too quick, too soon because the dogs and the cases that I used to believe and think that I needed to use an aversive, that I needed to use negative reinforcement. I don't need to. I've been doing it now for several years and I've not come across a case yet that I needed to use any kind of an aversive.
Speaker 1:Everything is being handled through positive reinforcement. Everything's being handled through differential reinforcement, counter conditioning, desensitization, enrichment and, quite frankly, if you I mean you can go to Google Scholar okay, do a Google, search Google Scholar and they'll bring up a whole new search field. Start doing searches for training methods and take a look at the many, many, many, many, many, many, many many studies. Okay, there's a reason why the majority of European countries have outlawed prong collars and electronic collars. There's a reason why most all of the major associations that trainers or behavior consultants belong to the American Veterinary Society for Animal Behavior. They're all in agreement that the use of punishment, that the use of aversive, is not necessary. It's not necessary and my whole thing is if it's not necessary, why would you choose to do it? And I've put this out there. If you're a balanced trainer and you think that it's absolutely necessary, I will mentor you for free and teach you how to get it done with just positive reinforcement, because that's my commitment to the industry and moving in that direction, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I hope, lynette, I hope that helped. Sis, good morning, how are you? Thank you for being here. Thank you for your message today. I'll look forward to speaking with you, all right. So today I wanted to talk about something that is really one of the mainstays, I think, in a lot of people's training with their dog, and that is. Thank you, lynette.
Speaker 1:That is, how do you teach place and what is place? How do you teach place? Why is teaching place important? So I'll talk to you about it from my perspective. So for me, when I teach place. I'm teaching a dog to go to one of these elevated dog cots. They're up off the ground about two, three inches. They've got kind of a mesh material on it. Some people call them little trampolines. I don't know why they don't look anything like a trampoline. I don't think Maybe the material on the top does. But they don't bounce. But what it is it's an elevated dog platform or dog bed in a way. And when I teach place I teach the dog they've got to go to that elevated dog cot and they've got to stay there. It's an implied stay and to me the two most important things that you can do are have an emergency recall where your dog's going to come every single time, no matter what's going on, and that you've got a place command that you can send your dog somewhere and your dog's going to hang out and stay there no matter what's going on. And these things require a lot of proofing. Oh, by the way, if you don't have an emergency recall, if you go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast, episode 123, I did it this week did a podcast on how to teach the emergency recall. Also I've got a few other audio podcasts. I've told you guys time and time again that there are a lot of podcasts on the audio podcast that never make it here to Facebook. These three episodes, I think in the last week that I did on the audio podcast, pet Talk Today episode 120, key9 Socialization. Episode 122, using nose work, scent work for enrichment for your dog and how to do that. And then episode 123, training the emergency recall. Please go to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast, subscribe and if you love what we do, please give us a five star review. We really appreciate that.
Speaker 1:So let me get back into place. I want them to go to that elevated dog cot. I want them to stay there. Now, for me there's three components that I teach with place. The first component is I've got to teach the dog. That place means get on that cot. And then I teach a release command. I happen to use the word break. Break means you can come off the cot and now you're free. And the way that I do that to begin with I use a food lure. I know there's gonna be some purist clicker trainers out there that just want me to do all free shaping. That's not happening. So I'm gonna take that food lure, I'm gonna lure the dog, okay, onto that place, cot. As the dog's feet get on that cot, I'm gonna label that place and then I'm gonna mark and I'm gonna reward. If you don't know what markers are, you need to go to episode 80 of the Pet Talk Today podcast.
Speaker 1:Markers, in my opinion, are critical. Using a marker training system are critical to have great success, to have great timing and to help your dog connect the dots cognitively in a much faster way. That's why we use markers. But episode 80 is an hour all on how to use markers. So I'm gonna lure the dog with some food onto that cot as the dog gets on there, I'm gonna label that behavior place and I'm gonna mark and I'm gonna reward that. Then I'm gonna do the opposite. I'm gonna take that food, I'm gonna lure the dog off of the cot as the dog does that, I'm gonna label that behavior break and I'm going to mark and reward. I'm gonna do that 30 times in a row and I wanna have fun with this. Okay, so I'm gonna be animated, we're gonna have fun. The dog's gonna be moving fast. Training should be fun. It should be enjoyable for you, it should be enjoyable for your dog.
Speaker 1:So, 30 times in a row, one rep is luring the dog on place, labeling it, place marking and rewarding. Then luring the dog off a place, labeling that, break marking and rewarding. So for this exercise you're gonna need a treat pouch, you're gonna need high value food rewards. I recommend that you put a six foot leash on your dog. Let it just drag, in case your dog wants to run away and grab the dog. Start by doing this in your home, where there's little to no distractions. Okay, and again, 30 times in a row. That's what I want you to do to teach the concept of place means get on there. Break means get off of there, okay. After you've done that for several days, you should start seeing your dog try to anticipate you and maybe jump the gun and start getting on place faster.
Speaker 1:At that point. That's when I want you to test your dog. You know, up until this time we've been creating the behavior with the lure and we have been labeling the behavior. We haven't asked for it yet. Now I want you to ask for it, test it, ask for it, say place, but before your dog gets on there, because your dog's gonna try to preempt you. I guarantee you you do this. Enough repetitions that dogs will be like yep, that's the pattern I'm getting on there before you say it. So test that and once you can ask for it, now stop luring the dog. You can use your hand that had that lure as if there was food in it and point to that place cock.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, when you're pointing to get your dog to go in a specific direction, don't point like this. Your dog's eyes are not up where my fingers are. Your dog's eyes are much lower. What you need to do, if this microphone is your dog's eyes, you need to put your elbow at eye level and you need to point in the direction you want the dog going to. Again, get your elbow at their eye level and then point. Then they can see where you're pointing to. I watch a lot of people make a bunch of mistakes with that.
Speaker 1:Now I've got the second component and I work all three components together. They just happen at different times throughout the day. Component two I'm working on the implied stay, and component two I'm doing about a two-minute duration exercise. It's not about how many repetitions, it's about what I'm doing for a two-minute period of time. So I'm first going to and I'm going to do this once I can ask for place and once I can ask for break and the dog does that reliably. So I'm going to ask for place. The dog's going to get on there. I'm going to mark and reward, but then I'm going to start giving a few more rewards. I might take a step back, step forward reward, step to the left, step to the right reward, maybe two steps to the left, then back to the center reward. I'm giving a lot of rewards in quick succession and I'm slowly, with little movements, moving around that place caught All right. Now, if the dog makes a mistake and comes off, I am going to ask for place again. I am going to give that cue again. However, when the dog gets up there because I had to give a re-command or I had to cue the dog again, I am not going to reward the dog, but I'll wait about 10 seconds after I've got the dog back on there, and now I'm going to start rewarding the dog for staying on there.
Speaker 1:I never use the word stay. I teach place as an implied stay. If you're wondering what I'm doing, I'm looking for my coffee. So I teach place as an implied stay and I start by just moving around that cot, taking steps to the left, steps to the right, step back, step forward. Then I start doing that clapping, and then I start doing that whistling and making noise and all kinds of things. Now if every time you're throwing out a distraction your dog is coming off of place, you're throwing in distractions that are too intense too soon. You've got to begin to teach your dog what success is. How does the dog get to get the food? How does the dog get the reinforcer by staying up there? So if your dog is failing most of the time, again you're working your distractions too heavy too soon. You need to dial those back and slowly, gradually, systematically, make those distractions more and more difficult, and I'm going to tell you this right now you need to make your distractions insane. The distractions that you proof your dogs with should be much more difficult than anything you and your dog are going to experience in a normal day to day life.
Speaker 1:I bait my dog, I try to coax my dog. You might say it's unfair, but guess what? None of the stuff I'm doing the baiting, the coaxing, all those things none of those are cues. None of those mean come off of place. It's only two ways my dog gets to come off place. It's release command and a recall. If I ask a dog to come to me and you train this everywhere you go in different rooms backyard, the front yard, in front of Home Depot, in front of the grocery store, at your friend's house, in the park, and again every time your dog makes the mistake and comes off during those two minutes. Remember the distraction training part.
Speaker 1:Where I'm teaching, the implied state is a two minute duration exercise. Every time the dog comes off I ask the dog to get back on, but I do not reward. When I re-queue the dog, I'm going to reward the dog for staying there and little by little I'm adding distractions and as soon as a dog doesn't take the bait of a distraction, I am rewarding the dog. So if I go and the dog doesn't do anything, boom, I'm marking and rewarding. If I go, hoo-hoo and the dog doesn't move, I'm marking and rewarding. And in the beginning you got to be pretty quick with rewards. In the beginning you got to be pretty generous with rewards or the dog's going to pop off, especially because the dog's used to component one going on, coming off, going on coming off, asking for place, asking for break. So that's component two.
Speaker 1:I like to do component two twice a day. That means that I'm spending two sessions, two minutes long each, baiting and distracting my dog, proofing distractions, teaching my dog what the implied stay is. I don't say stay. Then I have component three, that I teach with place. Component three is long duration. What's long duration? An hour. However, it's not as bad as you think. So when I start to work on an hour long duration, keeping my dog on place for an hour, first of all it can have a toy, it can have a bone.
Speaker 1:When we first start this and I do this when it's our downtime, so it's usually going to be much later in the evening I might be watching television and typically the dog's going to be laying next to me on the couch anyway. Only this time the dog's going to go on place and maybe it gets a toy, maybe it gets a bone, and I'm going to keep the dog there for an hour. I don't care if it falls asleep. We're just starting to teach the dog that, hey, there might be times. I want you to stay here for some duration and as I'm doing that with the dog intermittently, I will reward the dog If I start seeing the dog get a little antsy. You know I might ask the dog to do a watch or a look and then reward that and do that a few times and then let the dog settle. You know I can have the dog do some things while it's on place, but for the most part I just want the dog to chill and every time the dog gets off I give the cue to get back on to place After a few seconds 10, 11, 12, 15, 30, I'll start rewarding. I'm not doing any distraction work during component three, the long duration. But if you'll do that in your downtime, I guarantee it it's going to work in other times. And as you're doing component two, the distraction work and really teaching, that implied stay. That's going to make that long duration more reliable. As the second component, you're building up the skill level there.
Speaker 1:I think places, like I said, one of the most important cues exercises, commands that you could have with your dog. I want you to think about this. Not that I advocate this, but let's say you had the world's most aggressive dog towards people. This dog is vicious. I mean vicious, a dog like that. If you have a solid place command and you ask your dog to go to place and you tell people, leave the dog alone, you can manage that dog, you can manage the dog. Again, that's differential reinforcement. You know, having the dog do a different behavior, that would be incompatible with being aggressive. Our management skills and place is a management tool. We wouldn't leave it there. We're going to do counter conditioning and desensitization as well. We want to keep the dog below threshold. We don't want to set the dog up for failure and just pop in a trigger, a strange person, so the dog gets aggressive.
Speaker 1:But again, the importance of place how many of you are cooking in? The dog gets under your feet, boy, how about put the dog on place? How many of you have dogs that beg? How about put in place near the table but not close enough for the dog's going to beg? Does your dog ever lay at your feet and fall asleep and you ever get up and the dog gets aggressive? I got a lot of clients that have dogs like that. They get up and, yeah, they're going after their feet. Well, in the beginning I'm going to manage that. The dog's going to stay down there, but it's going to be just a little bit away from their feet and it's going to be on a place cut, can't be on place and going after them.
Speaker 1:At the same time, getting your dog to stay and have a solid, solid stay is critical. What I find I can teach a dog to stay so much faster they get it that light bulb comes on so much faster when I'm using one of those elevated dog cuts. That little bit of elevation it's got this psychological cliff effect. It helps them to stay up there and it's got this very clearly defined boundary. It helps them to learn to stay.
Speaker 1:If I were to start teaching a stay, say just arbitrarily, I'd pick just a spot on the tile and I say sit, the dog's halfway ready to get up and go. That's not going to be as reliable. It's going to be harder to teach that stay with distractions. Same thing if I'm teaching just the dog to lie down and it's not on any kind of a border, boundary dog cut, I can teach it, but it's going to take much longer. The beautiful thing that I find about teaching that place command it goes much faster. The work that you do there.
Speaker 1:Once you want to start teaching your dog to do a sit stay not on place, do a down stay, not on place, the work that we did on place, transfers over, it's going to carry over and that light bulb is going to come on as you start doing the down exercise, the implied stay with that, the sit exercise, the implied stay with that, dogs are going to be like oh, that's like place. We've played this game before. The pattern is the same. Dogs are incredible about picking up patterns and again, once they understand the pattern, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 1:So let me talk about a couple other things, because a lot of times on the show we're dealing with problems with dogs that have fear, anxiety, that are reactive, that are aggressive, and dogs that are reactive, dogs that are aggressive. There's a couple of things that they have in common. One, they have poor impulse control and two, they have a low tolerance for frustration. Not all, but most have a low tolerance for frustration and poor impulse control. When you're doing the distraction work, the baiting and distraction on that place, teaching the implied stay yes, we're doing it to get a super reliable stay under heavy distractions.
Speaker 1:But let me tell you what the wonderful byproducts are of doing heavy distraction training. They start gaining a much higher tolerance for frustration because it's a little frustrating that exercise, but we make it positive, but it's a little frustrating. The dog's got to think. Dogs got to use its mind. The dog's figuring out how come I didn't get a reward this time? Why did I get a reward these other times? In addition to having a higher tolerance for frustration, they're also going to learn better impulse control. They're learning hey, I don't need to react to every little stimulus in my environment. They learn to relax. They learn to be much calmer. They don't have to be as reactive. It's a byproduct of this. So three components First component I'm doing 30 reps every day teaching the dog to go to place teaching break.
Speaker 1:Second component twice a day I'm doing two minute duration exercises where I've got the dog on place. I'm doing distraction work with the dog, teaching the dog the implied stay. Third component once a day I've got the dog on place. When it's downtime, when we're just hanging out, nothing's going on, it's quiet, dog's on place for an hour. Three components give that a shot. I think once you have a place command you're going to be so glad that you do. There's so many applications that you can use that for. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:We've got a question from Mary Ann. Mary Ann says how to get the dogs from barking at. People have two heavenes and golden retriever. Well, mary, the question first is why is the dog barking? Is the dog just being a dog Saying, hey, somebody's here, they're new. I don't know who they are. I'm letting you know, mom. Or are they barking because they've got fear, aggression? Are they barking because they're territorial, or they're protective of you or of one of the other dogs, or both of the other dogs? So if I had a little more information, mary, it might be able to give you a better answer. But my guess is AI. Yeah, what are you going to do, sis, if the robots take over training? What's going to happen to your business?
Speaker 1:But, Mary Ann, let me just say this I want you to do something for me after the show. I want you to go to my website at dogbehavioristcom Again, dogbehavioristcom. Within the last two weeks I wrote a guide on how to stop barking. Okay, a guide on how to stop barking. It's up. If you go to dogbehavioristcom, go to the menu and then click on where it says articles and you're going to find that guide, and then there's going to be another article way down, another one on barking. Okay, so there's some help that you can have there. Probably the other thing, mary Ann, that you probably should do is take a listen to episode 98. Get on the audio podcast, the Pet Talk Today. Just do a Google search for Pet Talk Today podcast and listen to episode 98. Episode 98 is an hour and a half on counter conditioning and desensitization.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing. I could be wrong, mary Ann, but I'm guessing your dogs are probably a little nervous about these people, or maybe a lot nervous, and they've got this conditioned emotional response, one that has some anxiety, and so what they want? Maybe, if I'm correct I don't have a crystal ball, I'm just kind of guessing here they want distance and space. They're not happy with those people, they're kind of scary and they want distance and space. Now, every dog has what I call a circumference of comfort. All right, maybe if people are 20 feet away from your dogs, they don't bark, but maybe if they're within 15 feet, they start barking.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things that we need to do is start pairing positive associations, positive reinforcement, with the presentation of the triggers, In this case the strange people that your dog might not like that it's barking at. However, when we do this and we're doing this proactively right, we're gonna have helpers. We start at a distance that's far enough away where the dog does not have a care in the world. Mary Ann, your dog needs to be far enough away from strangers where it can see them, but it doesn't care. It's certainly not reactive at all and the body language is loose. It's relaxed. Your dog will play, take food, listen to cues, respond to behaviors that you've trained in. If that's not the case, you're too close too soon and what you wanna do with your helper is have them come into view and, as soon as your dog sees them, start feeding your dog constantly and continuously for about three to five seconds feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. Then have your helper walk out of sight. When that helper walks out of sight, stop feeding and do that maybe 10 times, and do that four, five times a week, and do that for a couple of weeks, and if your dog seems to start to enjoy this, then you can start closing that gap a little bit. Come in a few feet closer and start that process all over again for several weeks. Then, a few feet closer, start that process all over again.
Speaker 1:Go to episode 98, the Pet Talk Today podcast on counter conditioning and desensitization, because that's how you deal with dogs that are reactive, aggressive. That's how you deal with dogs that have fears, anxieties, phobias. Marianne, I don't know if you left us or if you're still here because you didn't give me any more information, but that's what I think is going on, with just a little bit of information. I'm Will Bangora. You're listening to Pet Talk Today. I'm here every Saturday on Facebook Live At nine o'clock AM Pacific time, 12 noon Eastern time. I'm here to help you deal with all of your dog training and behavior problems and needs.
Speaker 1:If you've got a question about your dog's behavior, if you've got a question about your dog's training, do me a favor, go ahead and type that in the comments section below. Let me know where you're listening from, where you're watching, from what kind of dogs you have. All right, so this says how's the AI able to keep their attention? It's only capturing, yeah, it's only capturing right now and it's in its infancy stage. Actually, the company the company that has that they've got it ready to go, but they've put it up on the shelf because right now they're putting more time, more money, more investment into AI, reading the dog's physical gait and movement and it's assessing pain problems where we never would have even thought there may have been a problem with pain or orthopedic issues. It seems like that company thinks that that is a more profitable area for them to put their focus on. But I saw what they have for behavior, dealing with dogs and training and it just blew my mind away, absolutely blew my mind. So Mary says thanks for your help. Well, hopefully that helps you, mary. I want you to try counter conditioning and desensitization. I want you to go to my website, dogbehavioristcom. Go to the menu, click on articles. There's almost 80 articles on there on how to deal with a variety of different behavior problems, so chances are the answer might be there, and some of those articles also have the podcast embedded in there, so check that out.
Speaker 1:Got a question from Laura. Laura says would you recommend the same thing for a one and a half year old standard poodle that barks at cars and reacts to other dogs on walks? Yes, I would, laura. You need to start your dog at a distance where it doesn't bark at cars. You need to start your dog at a distance where it doesn't react to other dogs on walks. Now here's the thing, guys. You need to understand this. While you're doing the work to modify your dog's behavior. You have to avoid these triggers. You can't keep going for walks and having your dog be reactive and then think that you're gonna be doing training sessions, doing desensitization work and that you're gonna have success, because your dog keeps going back to the behavior we don't want. We can't have your dog continuing to rehearse these behaviors.
Speaker 1:I've used an analogy it's like having a broken water pipe. Imagine the problem wasn't your dog's behavior, it's a broken water pipe. What's the first thing? What is the first thing that we need to do if we wanna fix that broken water pipe? Yeah, that's right, we gotta turn off the main water valve. Now we can begin to work on fixing the broken pipe. But imagine us trying to work. Imagine us working really, really hard and we never turned off the main water valve. It would just be a mess. All of our work would be for nothing. And that's what happens when you don't avoid the triggers. Avoiding the triggers is turning off the water.
Speaker 1:When you do the work to fix the problem, when you do the behavior modification and your dog is better, then we start going into more real world situations. But chances are, if you keep letting your dog rehearse these behaviors, they're not gonna get better. So you've gotta do a good job. You've gotta be creative. How can you avoid these triggers? And I will say it if you have to stop going for walks for a little bit, stop going for walks, it's not the end of the world.
Speaker 1:Or you make a choice. Do I wanna go for walks, have my dog be reactive, or do I wanna fix this so, down the road, I can go for walks and my dog's not reactive? You've gotta be proactive, using helpers, whether it's dogs, whether it's people. Now, if you can't find helpers, you can purchase a mannequin and they can be the strange human. It's a little bit harder to work with because you're gonna have to move that thing around. You gotta be a little more creative. You're moving the dog around more than the mannequin. You can use fake dogs. What I mean by that are stuffed animals that look very realistic, dogs. And again, same principle You're gonna have your dog at a distance where it can see them, but it doesn't care. And you've gotta start pairing high value food rewards. If your dog loves a toy more than food, then play with the dog with the toy, and when the helper goes out of sight, stop playing. And again, you wanna spend about 10 minutes doing this. You need to do this at least four or five times a week or it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1:You've gotta keep your dog below threshold. What do I mean by that? Threshold means where your dog's starting to get stressed. I don't wanna see your dog stressed out at all. I think that's where trainers make mistakes. I watch a lot of trainers trying to counter condition feeding dog's treats when they think they're counter conditioning and desensitization and the dog's stressed out. No, the dog's not being reactive, but you're seeing all kinds of other stress signals and that's why I think canine body language is so critical to know. I don't think that you can have great success with counter conditioning and desensitization changing the underlying emotional state of the dog by pairing something very positive with the trigger it doesn't like. Over time, over and over and over and over, we need to get a different, what we call CER. Cer stands for Conditioned Emotional Response. You change your dog's underlying emotional state. The behavior changes. There's no reason for that reactive, aggressive behavior if your dog's really happy and thinks that strange dogs and strange people are wonderful things because they bring play, they bring yummy, high value food rewards.
Speaker 1:The key is being patient and being consistent and your timing, timing, patience, consistency and repetition. I cannot say that enough Timing, patience, consistency and repetition. Most people completely underestimate how long or how many repetitions it takes to get a dog really well trained. We're not talking about we're talking about getting your dog conditioned. Conditioning is like when you learn how to play an instrument you don't even have to think about it anymore. Like the piano in the beginning, maybe it's all this, this thought process, where do I put my fingers? And it's a mess and it's got all these different steps. We're like driving a stick shift. But if you keep practicing over and over and over and over, you get muscle memory. It becomes an automatic reflex that you don't have to think about. I want you to hear that it becomes an automatic reflex that you don't have to think about. If you've got a dog that's reactive or aggressive, if you've got a dog that's fearful, when you're doing counter conditioning and desensitization, you have to do enough repetition that you have a conditioned remember I said CER conditioned emotional response when it's automatic. It's an automatic response. It happens. You just got to put the work in, you got to put the time in. Listen, nothing good comes without hard work. I truly believe that Nothing good comes without a lot of hard work.
Speaker 1:I'm Will Bangura. If you're just joining me, you are watching Pet Talk Today here on Facebook Live, where I do this show Each and every Saturday morning, 9 am Pacific time, 12 noon Eastern time, where I take your questions about your dog's training and behavior. If you are just joining us and you've got a question, go ahead and type your question down in the comment section. Let me know where you're watching from. Also, we'll kind of pets that you have as well. All right, now it's time for me to give a little bit of a plug. Here we go. I'm almost there, guys. I'm almost there. All right, let's talk about calm dogs. We talked a lot about dogs that are reactive, dogs that have aggression, dogs that have fear, anxiety, phobias.
Speaker 1:Calm dogs is an all-natural supplement. There's 21 ingredients in it vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs. Each one of the 21 ingredients is backed by science that scientifically it has statistical significance, that it actually helps with anxiety. I developed calm dogs. The reason I developed calm dogs is because I was looking for something natural for my dogs and I tried everything and literally nothing worked. So I got very frustrated and I spent about five to six years doing research, doing development, testing this product.
Speaker 1:I guarantee there is not another product on the market that is as effective as calm dogs. I'm so convinced of that. I offer you a 100% money-back guarantee. But this is how it works. You need to take your dog need to take the calm dogs twice a day for six weeks, at the right dose. If your dog takes the calm dogs twice a day for six weeks, at the right dose, and you don't see any improvement in your dog's behavior, you let me know and I will refund all of your money. There's no risk. I took it all out for you. You can only get calm dogs at the calm dogs website. You can either go to calmdogswithanuscom or doganxietycom. That's calmdogswithanuscom or doganxietycom. Check out calm dogs. Also, ask your vet to carry calm dogs in your veterinary office as well. All right, let me take a look and see if we have any other questions. If not, I might take a question I got by email. Let's see.
Speaker 1:Sis says. I'm a trainer who backs this product. It's a good blend. Thank you, sis. And yeah, I've got a lot of trainers that use the product, that recommend that product to their clients.
Speaker 1:Now let me just say this it's always important that you consult with your veterinarian. I'm not a veterinarian but I know a lot about nutrition, diet supplementation. But I'm not a veterinarian and depending upon your dog's health and what's going on with your dog, maybe it's not appropriate for your dog. Had a wonderful testimony the other day. I had a lady. They tried behavior meds on her dog and she couldn't use behavior meds at all because it would cause the dog's liver enzymes to go up and that's dangerous. The dog can have heptic shock and have problems, could die. Actually, everything gets filtered through that liver. Anyway, she wanted to use the calm dogs and I said you know what I said that can damage the liver, perhaps just like medication can. If your dog has a sensitivity, I said please ask your vet if your vet thinks it's okay to try. And if your vet thinks it's okay to try, my recommendation even though I'm not a vet would be to check those liver enzymes. Make sure that everything is copaesthetic with the calm dogs. Well, I got a call from her the other day and she told me and her dog's been on it for, I think, three or four months she told me that the blood result came back liver enzymes were perfect. I was thrilled to hear that because she's not alone.
Speaker 1:There are some dogs that, for whatever reason, they might not be able to take medication, yeah. So it says, yeah, you always wanna check with your veterinarian. Okay, especially you know what. I don't say this enough, but especially if there's been a major change in your dog's behavior and it happened overnight, make sure that you get your dog to a veterinarian. We always wanna rule out if there's anything medical going on, because, think about it, if there's a medical contributing factor, chances are training and behavior modification isn't gonna be able to touch that right and we want your dog to get as healthy as your dog can be healthy, okay, not just physically but emotionally as well. And so sometimes there's medical contributing factors. I think I was reading something that in about 80% of aggression cases there's an underlying medical issue, not necessarily and usually not the cause of the problem, but exacerbating the problem.
Speaker 1:A lot of times it's pain and I've known a lot of dogs that look like they had no pain whatsoever. I've had a lot of pet parents say, oh, my dog's not in pain. I've had my pet parents say we took the dog to our regular vet and the vet said he's not in pain. But they're telling me the dog's got horrible hip dysplasia and I'm suspect. I'm like did you guys go to a veterinary orthopedist? No, ask your vet if that might not be a bad idea. Sure enough, they sent their dog to the veterinary orthopedist. The dog's got pain and they put the dog on pain meds.
Speaker 1:The behavior took a dramatic turn. This is an aggressive dog. Now is the aggression gone? No, we're working on that. But imagine if we didn't know the dog was in pain and we did not treat that pain. We weren't gonna get better with that dog or we were only gonna get just so far with the dog. So yeah, thanks for saying that.
Speaker 1:Sis, you always want to. When you've got a behavior problem that's serious. Get your dog into the vet for an exam. Always start there first. All right, let me see if there's any other questions here.
Speaker 1:Yes, dogs, animals.
Speaker 1:They mask pain and you know what.
Speaker 1:They're just so damn tolerant.
Speaker 1:They're not cry babies like me. I mean I get a hang nail on my. I've seen dogs get their legs amputated and the next day they're running around playing, having a blast Just blows my mind and they're still in pain. They're in pain, but, boy, dogs are tolerant. You know, we have so much to learn from dogs. They're so tolerant, unconditional love. Everything I need to learn, I learn from my dog.
Speaker 1:Right, I'll tell you what dogs are absolutely amazing. That's why I love this. That's why I love my work. I love doing this for folks like you guys. Do me a favor hit that like button, hit that share button. I really appreciate it if you'd share this to your Facebook page so that more people could benefit from that. Also, again, if you're not subscribing to the Pet Talk Today audio podcast, please subscribe and also give us a review if you love what we're doing. All right, we are just about out of time today. I'm gonna end here. It's been a good show. I appreciate all the comments. I appreciate all the questions. Check out my website, dogbehavorscom. I'll be here again next Saturday. Have a good weekend, everybody. I'm outta here. Dogaboo, dogaboo.
