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.
#75 PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. This Week we Take Calls and Answer Questions. How to help fearful dogs, and more. Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist. Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura
If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
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Raised by wolves with canine DNA in his blood, having trained more than 24,000 vets helping you and your fur babies thrive live in studio it's pet talk today with will. Bangoura answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert will man. Good
Speaker 2:Saturday morning, everybody. Welcome it is September 24th or three days until Phoenix sun's training camp begins I'm will Bangor and I'm Jordan Martel. And you are listening to pit talk today, as well as watching to pit talk today here on Facebook live we're here each and every Saturday morning from nine until 10:00 AM. That's specific time, mountain time. That's 12 to 1:00 PM Eastern time, 11 to 12:00 PM central time. Um, if you're brand new to pet talk today, let me talk a little bit about what we do. Um, we're here to help you deal with all of your dog, your cat, your pet training, and behavior issues. Um, not everybody can afford private in-home training. Um, so this is our labor of love. This is our opportunity to be able to, um, help those people that need help with, uh, with their pets. Um, last week we talked a lot about, um, loose leash walking. Yeah, absolutely. Which I mean is important for all pet owners as, uh, the weather's getting nicer and people are taking their dogs out for walks. And we're also talking about leash reactivity last week. Yeah. So, um, if you've got a dog that doesn't walk well on the leash, if you've got a dog that has reactivity issues, um, and you happen to miss last week's episode, um, you can just go ahead and scroll down on the pet talk today, Facebook page, um, and you're able to watch last week's episode as well. Do us a favor hit that like button for us by hitting that like button, it allows more people to be able to see what we have to offer and more people get to benefit from this. And also do us a favor, hit that, share button, go ahead and share this to your Facebook page. So your friends, your family, if they've got issues with dogs or cats or other pets, they can get help, uh, with that as well. Um, like I said, what we do here at pet talk today is, um, we help you with your pet behavior and training issues. One, two ways that we can do that. Um, we've got a call in line. We're here to take your calls and answer your questions. We've got just one line. So as we're taking calls, if you hear a call, if you hear us talking to a caller, um, just wait till after the call, before you call back in, because you're just gonna go to voicemail because we only have one line also, you can go ahead and we encourage you to type your behavior and training questions into the comment section. And also do us a favor in addition to hitting that like button in the comment section, let us know what kind of pet you have or pets and where are you watching from? Okay. Um, we're gonna go ahead and should we give out the phone number? Absolutely. So, um, if you'd like to call and you'd like to get some help with a problem, a training or behavior issue, the number to call
Speaker 3:That is(602) 525-6880. Again, that is 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0. We look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't be, don't be, uh, bashful. We love getting your calls. Also, if you are a longtime listener in watcher of pit talk today, if you've taken some of our training tips, uh, behavior advice, and you've been working on it and you have been having some good success, we'd love to get your feedback as well.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Oh, look at that. Looks like we already have a call.
Speaker 2:All right. We've got a caller.
Speaker 3:Thanks for calling pet talk today. Where are you calling from?
Speaker 4:Um, I'm calling from Belford, Washington.
Speaker 3:Ah, Belford, Washington. There we go. How's the weather up there?
Speaker 4:Um, lemme see outside. It looks a little outside. There we go.
Speaker 3:There we go. There we go. So what's your question. How can we help you?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, last week, I, I just forget to say thank you guys for what you do. It's really, it's really appreciated at least for me its and I'm sure there's other people out here that are, are in the same situation. I am. I'm a local trainer. OK. And you guys last week made a comment about, um, reliable cues, how many repetitions it would take to, um, secure that queue. Yeah. Um, and I was wondering if you guys might, uh, kinda, um, talk about that a little bit more, cause I not able to really find the research or I would like to go back where you found that research. And um, I'm just wondering, because a lot of people out here are thinking, you know, it's really hard to train your dog and find the time. And then, uh, a number like that at 9,000, I think it was about 9,000 times, um, in repetitions. Um, that's a large number for people to grasp. So I was just wondering if you could kinda elaborate on that a little bit more for me. Yeah,
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So, so the first thing that I wanna say, the reason why I said, and the number that I said was 9,762.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:Okay. And the, the reason why I say such a large number is because practice does not make perfection. Okay. Practice exactly
Speaker 4:Makes
Speaker 3:Permanence. And the thing is right. What a lot of people don't realize is that this is a always continuing, always ongoing thing that you need to keep doing my dog. It's a lifestyle. Exactly, honey. Exactly. Yeah. My dog, my dog is a, she's a trained cortisol detection dog, but the thing is nice. I haven't done any work with her cortisol detection, probably in a little over a month. And as a result, I've noticed that she isn't responding quite as quickly when I'm having my, my moments. And what that, what that, what that speaks to is that there is not any number. In fact, I believe that there was a book that was written that said it takes 66 days
Speaker 2:Or something like that. No, the book, the book that was written a long time ago, this was an old book. Um, 21 days to a new habit. There we
Speaker 3:Go.
Speaker 2:Right. And when, when the guy was interviewed, he admitted he made up the number.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Oh exactly. Okay. So the reason why I say such a big number is just to emphasize that this is ongoing. So the biggest thing I want people to recognize when you have dog issues, whether it's behavioral or just regular obedience, it is a lifestyle. It is something that continues forever.
Speaker 2:Now I, I just wanna say, cuz you asked about numbers and you asked about, um, what it takes to get, you know, reliable cues. And there's a couple things, okay. Numbers are part of it. And the science, the research showed it was 66 days to a new habit. Okay. Now that was for people is
Speaker 3:That's
Speaker 2:Where that was for people, people. Okay. Yeah. Now interestingly enough, I read a study a couple days ago and this was about, um, dogs that were fearful in shelter settings mm-hmm<affirmative> and they were talking about doing counter conditioning and desensitization and what it took to turn around and really help these dogs that had, you know, pretty significant fears, uh, being in the shelter there mm-hmm<affirmative> and it turned out it was 72 counter conditioning and desensitization exercises in 96 days. Wow. So 72 sessions and the sessions were about 15 minutes long and mm-hmm<affirmative> for over a 96 day period. So you figured that's about three months. Okay. Right. Um, 80%, I believe it was 80% or more that really turned around and had significant improvement. And, and we're talking about super fearful dogs in a shelter mm-hmm<affirmative> environment. And that is just a Testament that if you don't give up, if you keep on putting the work in, um, you know, you talked about a lifestyle and, and you know, it's one thing, if you just want little fluffy to sit exactly. To give a treat.
Speaker 3:Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's a whole, another thing, if you know, fluffy is scared to death of everything or fluffy is aggressive
Speaker 3:Exactly. Towards everything precisely mm-hmm
Speaker 2:<affirmative>. And when it comes to doing the work that you need to do for a dog that has a serious behavior problem where there's a strong, um, emotional factor that underlies that fear, anxiety, um, rage, you know, those things are going to take a lot of repetition and there's a couple reasons mm-hmm<affirmative> we've talked about it before, you know, number one. Yes. It takes a lot of repetition. Okay. Think about muscle memory. Alright. Mm-hmm<affirmative> and if a dog is even slightly over threshold, there's that potential that they can't access the frontal cortex. So as far as thinking, right. Thinking about the queue, thinking about what we want them to do, chances are,
Speaker 3:It doesn't
Speaker 2:Matter unless we've
Speaker 4:Been, yeah. They're not catching it.
Speaker 2:They can't think, and they can't learn. And when they're in that state, they can't learn. They can't think. And, and the memory's just not gonna work well, mm-hmm<affirmative> so it's about lots of repetition, but it's also about keeping them under threshold when we're doing the work and making sure.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think a lot of people don't realize how, how easy that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, a lot of people think, let me just, let me just expose my dog to what it's afraid of and stuff, food in
Speaker 3:His mouth, food in his mouth or, oh my gosh, my dog barks. Every time he sees a stranger, when he starts barking at strangers, let me start giving him food, you know,
Speaker 4:There's right. And they don't realize what they're doing at that point is, well yeah. What they're going to be, you know, what's causing problems. Yeah. Well
Speaker 2:The biggest thing that I'm
Speaker 4:Trying, they have to do it over and over
Speaker 2:When people are trying to desensitize their dogs to a fear or desensitize their dog when they're aggressive. The biggest challenge that I find is that if they're keeping their dog below threshold and doing the counterconditioning and desensitization work, they feel like they're not doing anything. They, they feel because
Speaker 4:The dog run across that. Yeah. Because
Speaker 2:The dog's not, you know, reactive. It's not crazy. It's not, you know, how could we be doing any work? The dogs calm.
Speaker 4:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're trying to expose the trigger. You know, whether it's
Speaker 4:Little bit by little bit,
Speaker 2:But if it's a sound, we're gonna turn that sound way down. If it's a visual trigger, we're gonna send that trigger way, the heck out of there. So when the dog experiences the trigger in training, ah, they know it's there, but it's mild. It's mild to the point where they don't have really don't have a care in the world if emotionally, right. If emotionally there is distress, then that is what we're conditioning.
Speaker 4:We're conditioning. Yeah. And you don't realize how many times, I mean, you go out in public, you're trying to, you know, you're trying to do this, but you know, you only can get out there once or twice, you know? And, and like, let's say approximately two week time, a it's just not, it's not gonna work out. You've gotta, you've
Speaker 2:Gotta. And when it comes to counterconditioning and desensitizing, these serious problems where there's a strong, um, undercurrent and emotional state that we're trying to change, we need to be doing this three to five times a week. We need to be doing this about 15 minutes each time. Yeah. And like I said, based on that study that I just read, um, you're gonna be doing at least 72 counter conditioning and desensitization
Speaker 4:Exercises. Oh yeah. Out with your figure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Over a 96 exactly. Day period. If you're lucky you're gonna do that. You that's what you should try to, to shoot for mm-hmm<affirmative>. Yeah. And you know, I'll have people say, well, my dog's aggressive to dogs or my dog's aggressive to people. And the problem is we just don't have people over or right. We don't see a lot of dogs. Right. Well guess
Speaker 4:What exactly.
Speaker 2:You can buy all kinds of realistic looking stuffed animals
Speaker 4:And you I've just started that. Yes. Yep.
Speaker 2:You can set them at a distance and
Speaker 4:It's interesting.<laugh> well, they can't tell
Speaker 2:No, they can't. Yeah. And a lot of times you can get'em pretty darn close and they still can't tell, which is pretty amazing. Yep. But it works. Yeah. And when it comes to people, um, mannequins, if you really have to, you can purchase a mannequin, you can keep dressing up that mannequin differently.
Speaker 4:You's gotta be creative and think outside the box a little bit. Yeah. And, and set'em up in a scenario that they can repeat it over and over again. Exactly. And like you said, it's muscle memory from there and, and it takes, they can access. So I call it their lizard brain. They have<laugh> exactly lizard brain, you know?
Speaker 3:And, and, and the thing is, so to kind of, to just sum it up that number, that big number, the big reason why I said that number is because I just need people to understand exactly what you said. It is a lifestyle. There is no such thing as that 21 days to a habit. And even after
Speaker 4:You don't need to be a trainer. Exactly.
Speaker 3:And even after you build
Speaker 4:That need to take on your dog.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And even after that habit is built, you gotta keep practicing. Well, right. Thank you so much for calling. We
Speaker 4:Appreciate it. Well, thank you guys. Oh, you guys are beautiful. Thank you very
Speaker 3:Much. Right. Wonderful day.
Speaker 2:We'll take your call anytime. Thank you. Um, you know, so that's a great call here. We've got another trainer, um, in Washington and you know, she's talking about some of the things that we've talked about and, you know, that's the kind of feedback that we're getting that we're getting from, uh, people that are watching the show. You know, we work with a lot of dogs where, you know, it's not just about teaching sit or teaching them to come. Um, but dogs that have a lot of fears, a lot of phobia is a lot of aggression, a lot of anxiety. And when you've got to train a dog like that, to be able to have a different emotional response yeah. To those triggers, um, you've gotta, gotta do a lot of pairing, a lot of work to turn that around. And you know, Jordan, you mentioned a lifestyle. Yeah. Um, we're asking these dogs to do something that is extremely difficult. I mean like the most difficult thing that they
Speaker 3:Imagine, I want you to imagine the scariest thing that you can think of, whatever the first thing to come to mind is. Yeah. And now I'm telling you that whatever, that super scary thing is, I'm going to put it in your bed with you while you're sleeping. Yeah. I'm going to force you to sit on the couch as that scary thing comes over and gets on the couch with you. I'm going to tell you that you have to just sit there and watch quietly with a wagging tail while that thing comes into the house. And that is what we're asking our dogs to do now, can it be done? Yes. But it is slow. It takes time because here's the thing. I get it. I know that everybody's saying, well, well, my dog has absolutely no reason to be scared of strangers. Yeah. Probably not. You're probably right. There probably is nothing in the dog's history. You know, there's no trauma or anything that most likely
Speaker 2:You've got those stages of, uh, um, death and dying. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, you know, and you got the denial and all, and the bargaining, I see the same thing with dogs and their owners. Okay. Um, you know, they, they start bargaining about their dogs' behavior. Um, and they go into denial about the dog's
Speaker 3:Behavior.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Um, the, the thing about it is if you've got one of these dogs, that's extremely fearful, anxious, or a dog that's very reactive. Yeah. Or aggressive, um, you need to keep that up on a daily basis, the work where at least once you've got all the foundation and you've gotta keep practicing on a regular basis. Absolutely. Because it's like being an athlete. We are absolutely asking these dogs to perform in inordinate circumstances for them. Yep. Because what another dog might find fine. They find to be, you know, scary as hell.
Speaker 3:Scary.
Speaker 2:Absolutely as hell. Well,
Speaker 3:We do have a question here. All right.
Speaker 2:Let's
Speaker 3:We have a couple, we have a couple actually, but we'll start with this one. So Tony, uh, says that she's a new dog, mom, seven month old pointer, lab and retriever mix. Ooh, that's gonna be fun. Uh, I just adopted him yesterday. Congratulations. Tony need lots of information. As much as I can get first things first, what can I do to keep him off of my sofa and out of my bed? He doesn't do well with anything other than positive reinforcement. So Tony, here's the thing you you're, you're already moving in the right direction because you said the word positive reinforcement. So the first step, like we tell every single person step one is to build a marker system. Okay. Your dog has to understand what a marker is. And basically a marker is something that tells the dog good stuff is coming. Food is coming. You did well. All right, once you've developed a marker we're then going to start providing the dog with alternative incompatible behaviors in addition to marking and rewarding the desired behavior. So if you're in the living room and you notice that your dog is not on the couch is not trying to climb on the couch, mark and reward that behavior that's called capturing. Okay. If every single time that your dog goes and lays down in the corner, he gets rewarded for that. He's gonna start doing it more often.
Speaker 2:If you're consistent and you create a pattern, dogs, learn by patterns. There, there are magicians at figuring out patterns. Now, absolutely. If you're not consistent and you don't create a pattern, it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Exactly. So now we've started capturing the desired behavior, right? So if you were to literally make a tea chart and on the left side, put undesired behaviors, and then on the right side, literally put, what is the, what would I prefer the dog to do instead? So here, I'm assuming getting on the couch is undesired behavior. What would you like the dog to do instead, not get on the couch, lay down in the corner, go to his bed, sit, things like that. So your dog goes to jump on the couch immediately. As soon as those paws hit the couch, send your dog to his bed, give your dog a sit, tell your dog to lay down and then reward him forgiving that alternative behavior. And you have to be consistent here. Build that pattern what's gonna happen is your dog's gonna go to jump up on the couch. You're gonna send him to his bed and reward him. He's gonna go to jump on the couch. You're gonna send him to his bed and reward him, jump on the couch, send him to his bed and reward him, jump on the couch, send him to his bed and reward him. And then he's gonna one day suddenly he's gonna go to jump on the couch and he's gonna stop and be like, oh wait, mom's gonna send me to my bed and just go to his bed on his own. And that's how we create that chain. That's called differential
Speaker 2:Reinforcement. And, and I always like to tell people, okay, think about the situations where you're gonna be having challenges with your dog. Is that when the doorbell rings, is it when strangers come over? Is it when you're coming through the back door or the garage door with groceries in your hand, is it when your young children are eating at the table, you got, you have to start thinking about the challenges and start saying, as Jordan was saying, what would I like my dog to do? Other than these behaviors? I don't want my dog. Exactly. And you need to proactively work on these behaviors. Jordan was talking about a great thing. You capture a dog, being relaxed, capture a dog, offering the behavior of laying down on its own. Exactly. And making that a valuable behavior that a dog wants to repeat by being very consistent in having good timing and rewarding the dog. Every time the dog lays down. Now, as you're capturing the dog, offering the behavior of lying down label,
Speaker 3:Label. It exactly
Speaker 2:Label the behavior down. Yes. You know what? You got a brand new dog that doesn't have training. You ever watch anybody go sit,
Speaker 5:Sit, sit, max, sit, sit, sit, no,
Speaker 2:Sit down. And then they go sit down and I'm like, which one? Sit her down, sit her down.<laugh> and stay the same. You know? But, but the thing about it is the dog has no association. They don't know that sit means butt on the ground. Yeah. And there's no motivation exactly. Why should I do it? What's in it for me. Exactly. Okay. As we see dogs do behaviors as they offer lying down, if we would label it down and quickly reward that behavior and we're consistent with it, eventually at some point we can kind of turn things around and say yeah, down. Exactly. And guess what? That little light bulb goes off. Ding,
Speaker 3:Dog's gonna go wait a minute. I've I've heard this
Speaker 2:Before. And when I heard it, it was when I was lying down it. Guess what I got in trouble, chicken. I got chicken for that. Hey, let's do that
Speaker 3:Again. So now, um, basically what we're getting at is make sure that you are building muscle memory with your dogs. Kind of like with our collar. Um, this takes time, practice, practice does not make perfection practice makes permanence. Um, we have another question here. So Bonnie Bonnie says that my dog, that I just rescued is afraid of everything. Do I force him to do things like go out for a walk or et cetera? He is about two years old. It breaks my heart to see him walk around with his tail between his
Speaker 2:Legs. So you've got a dog that is panicking. You've got a dog that is suffering. Okay. Now I want you to think about, um, if you had a six year old daughter that you wanted to take to gymnastics and she was crying and she was trembling and begging and trying to fight and get away from you, bringing her into the gymnastics building, you would never force your child to do that. You know, this whole idea of, of let's just flood the dog with everything and, and you know, they'll grow out of it. No, they're not gonna grow out of it. Yeah. Okay. And one of the first things that needs to happen, if you want a dog, that's afraid of everything to get better is you need to manage and control the environment and the situation first and foremost, to keep your dog protected and keep your dog away from whatever these triggers are that your dog's afraid of. Now, I realize you said your dog's afraid of everything. It might be afraid of you. It might be afraid of, um, other people in the home, um, literally might be afraid of everything. You know, most dogs might startle. I startle if I hear a loud noise, but I recover quickly. Yeah. And yeah, I might have certain things that, you know, I'm a little bit anxious about. I don't like snakes, but it's not like every species out there I'm, I'm scared to death about worried about, you know, I'm gonna get attacked. Right. Right. So when you look at the intense severity of what's going on with your dog, and then you, you take a look at the wide range of items that your dog is really afraid of. Um, we can, you know, very easily say that's not normal. Yeah. That is not normal. That is pathological.
Speaker 3:It is not relative to the threat.
Speaker 2:Right. It's
Speaker 3:Not, or relative is not the right word. It is not reflective of, I'm not serving the
Speaker 2:Word I'm looking for here. I mean, reflective. I, I like that. Yeah. Because how is the dog reflecting its experience? And if there's no real threat and the dog is acting like it's life and death either wants to run away because it's scared to death or it needs, it feels like it's gotta fight an attack. Yeah. Cause they're scared to death and there's no real threat. Um, it's not just about what's going on in the external world, the external environment. Usually we're talking about dogs that, um, have some kind of medical issues, right. Um, typically, maybe a neurochemical imbalance. And so the first thing that we're gonna tell you when it's this severe and this pervasive, you need to make an appointment with your veterinarian. Um, have the dog have a full physical exam, make sure that there's no underlying medical issues that are contributing factors and then perhaps discuss with your veterinarian, uh, behavior medicine. Now we've done shows on behavior meds before. And you know, there's always a lot of emotion behind that. You know, a lot of people are like afraid to death of giving their dog meds. Yeah. Um, they're afraid their dog's gonna be a zombie looking well,
Speaker 3:Let's be specific. They're afraid to death of giving medications for mental
Speaker 2:Things. Right. They'll give medication for the dog's arthritis. They'll give the insulin for the diabetes. Yeah. But they discriminate against that one organ of the body called the brain. That can be also sick, just like any other organ of the body, like your heart, your liver, your pancreas. And we need to treat that if that is a contributing factor. Yeah. And a lot of people will be like, well, that's a last resort. No, it's not a last resort. The research is showing us the quicker we begin to help these dogs, not just with medication, cuz medication is not gonna cure anything. But what it's gonna do is it's gonna make the dog, have the ability to actually tolerate the training and the work, help the dog to be able to learn, help the dog's memory.
Speaker 3:Exposure therapy only works. If you can tolerate the
Speaker 2:Exposure. And if we have a dog that is so scared of everything, we can't get the triggers far enough away. If there's sound phobias, we can't get'em quiet enough. Yeah. Um, we need a combination of medication in conjunction with behavior modification. Now let me preface this by saying Jordan and myself are not veterinarians. No, we're not giving out medical advice. This is just what we work with. What we see, this is the experience that we have. Um, and when we're dealing with this serious population, um, the golden standard is a combination of medication and behavior modification. Um, and most likely a lot of these dogs do not need to stay on the medication. Right. But you wait until they're really, really old. And you say, okay, now as a last resort, well it's too late by then. You're not gonna have the ability to create new neuro pathways and absolutely the neurogenesis factor that we get from these medications, especially flu Satine. Um, we're not gonna have that happen.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Absolutely. So, um, basically what we're saying here is when you have a dog that's scared of everything. First step, get in contact with your veterinarian. That's the very
Speaker 2:First thing. And then you need to find yourself a really skilled, really qualified behavior consultant. Yeah. That is a positive reinforcement trainer. Exactly. Okay. Now let me talk a little bit about that positive reinforcement. You know, there's a lot of schools of thought. There's a lot of ways to train dogs out there. Um, we've got balance trainers that use corrections and rewards. Yep. We've got positive reinforcement trainers that really try to stay in the total positive reinforcement camp. Um, here's the thing, when it comes to an aversive, it's easy to use pain, fear and intimidation to stop a dog from doing a behavior.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:The problem is is that underlying that behavior, there's an emotional state. And if you don't deal with that emotional state, all you're doing when you use an aversive, you're fooling yourself, you think you've corrected the problem. No, you've interrupted the problem. You've suppressed the behavior temporarily. You've suppressed the behavior. You've done nothing to change. The dog's perceptions, the dog's feelings, the dog's emotions. And so what happens is those negative emotions start to build and build, build. Yeah, the dog's not reacting. The dog's not displaying the behavior because you used aversive. You corrected the dog, whether it be yelling at the dog and the dog got nervous, whether it be giving a leash pop, okay. Whether it be using an electronic collar, um, something that causes pain, discomfort, fear, intimidation. You're fooling yourself. If you think that this is really going to help with the problem, it will shut that problem down temporarily. And that's why, you know, we get so many calls from people that would love to just send their dogs away to training for a week, two weeks, three weeks, Hey, I'm going on vacation for two weeks. Take care of it for me. Can I send my fearful aggressive dog to you? So when I come back in two weeks, everything's good to go. No, it's not gonna happen in two weeks. It's not gonna happen in two weeks. And if somebody's going to make an effective change in your dog in two weeks, trust me, they're punishing the hell outta your dog.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's not gonna work in the long run. Oh, you get a dog that comes back and it seems like, oh my God, my dog's no longer barking and lunging and snapping at people. My dog's no longer barking. Lunging snapping at other dogs. Everything is wonderful. You think the dog's cured three months later, the dog's, you know, biting people, biting dogs, and this is escalated, you know, 20% more intense. And that's what happens. It takes longer to do the real work of change, but you either do it or you don't either get the results that you're looking for or you don't. There's no quick fixes for this.
Speaker 3:Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Now we have another question from Alicia. She asks if your pup is so afraid of noises, they have accidents. Is it helpful to play some noises in the home starting low and slowly increasing? Now here's the thing. If your dog is so scared of noises that we are having
Speaker 2:Eliminations elimination
Speaker 3:Problems. Mm-hmm<affirmative> that is severe. That's not, that is not a, that is not mild. That is not moderate. That is severe.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's imagine now. Yeah, this is Elise. Okay. Uh, Alicia. Alicia. Okay. So Alicia, um, you walk out the door one morning. Yeah. And you get in your car, you turn the corner and you pull into, um, a store parking lot and you get outta your car. And all of a sudden there's something that, uh, goes crazy.
Speaker 3:Looks like we have a caller. Thanks for calling in. Where are you calling from? Yeah.
Speaker 6:Calling from West Virginia. Now,
Speaker 3:How is this Russ?
Speaker 6:Yes, this is Russ.
Speaker 2:Hey Russ. I just wanna say something, Alicia. Don't think we're gonna forget about you, but we're gonna take the call because calls take prior to about Alicia. We're gonna talk about your dog.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So what's going on Russ?
Speaker 6:Oh, well last, last week my dog got bit by
Speaker 3:Head. Okay.
Speaker 6:And, and uh, I rushed him off to the vet and then everything's fine. But today I noticed places that he's gone to, since you're talking about this subject is he seems afraid of going into some places like, uh, he used to go into Lowe's all the time with me getting loving and attention, but he's seemed to be afraid.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this Russ. Um, how many different things are you seeing your dog? You know, in general, you don't have to gimme a hard count. How many different things are your, is your dog starting to become afraid of than it wasn't afraid of?
Speaker 6:Well, uh, I just noticed that, uh, today, now he goes to another place and he just goes in just fine. Mm-hmm<affirmative> uh, like a tractor supply. He goes into fine. And then he went into lows today and he hunkers down and he was really scared.
Speaker 2:Well, when
Speaker 6:He that's the only point
Speaker 2:When he got bit by the snake, where was, where was this? Where, where did he get bit by the snake?
Speaker 6:This, this was at home
Speaker 2:At home. Okay. So, you know, interesting thing about your dog being afraid, going into lows. Now there's a lot of things that, you know, we could guess at yeah. Absolut and that's what I'm doing. I'm guessing folks. Um,
Speaker 6:One, I he's gone in there all the time.
Speaker 2:Right. So there could have been a copperhead nearby. And what do I mean by nearby could have been a mile away. Yeah. And that scent could have went over to your dog and your dog could have identified that scent with the trauma that it had. Yeah. And all of a sudden, now it's fearful. Yeah. Now the other thing, and this is the one we want to watch for. And that is long term neurological damage from the venom and being bit by a snake, a poisonous snake. And there can be over time neurological damage. And that could mean that we start having some, um, behaviors that we haven't seen before. Odd, strange behaviors. So Russ, you're gonna have to keep your eye on that. And what you're gonna want to do, I am with lows is find the point where your dog begins to get nervous. You know, you're driving there. I'm assuming, I don't know if you're walking there, driving there, but at some point your dog begins to show slight anxiety. It's at that point, just before that, that you wanna bring your dog to that point, stop feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, take the dog away. Bring your dog to that point. Feed, feed, feed, feed feed, take the dog away. When you take the dog away, mm-hmm<affirmative> you stop feeding. So we're pairing high value food items, something your dog loves with a situation that's a little bit scary, but again, you gotta keep the dog below threshold. If you're so close to Lowe's that your dog is showing care and concern, and you're trying to feed the dog there. We're reinforcing absolutely care and concern.
Speaker 3:And then do us another favor, cuz I know that you're in here every week, um, over the next week, start paying really close attention to, and if you're noticing that your dog is getting fearful of more things, write it down, write it all down for us.
Speaker 2:Or if your dog seems to be confused.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Write all these things down and then give us another update on Saturday. Um, on next Saturday as to, uh, if you've noticed anything else going on, that'll give us a better idea of where, what may be happening here. But the, because right now, all that we know
Speaker 2:Is, and we're assuming you've taken the dog to the vet Russ.
Speaker 6:Yes. Took to the vet. Cause it happened late at
Speaker 2:Night. Yeah. Okay. All right. And, and that's the other thing, you know, make sure that you're, you know, staying in contact with your vet, that you're giving him reports about this as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So for now rush.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Now the emergency vet, the emergency event, I took all the paperwork and gave it to our regular vet. Perfect. It's always on file for them.
Speaker 3:Perfect. Perfect. So what I want you to do Russ is find that, identify that point where he starts becoming fearful and that's where you're gonna start pairing that high value food. And then additionally, over the next week, start taking notes on other ways that your dog is acting different or scared or just confused or you know, things out of the normal and then give us another update next Saturday so that we can really get to the bottom of this with you.
Speaker 6:Yeah. We'll, we'll be gone the next two weekends.
Speaker 3:Okay. All right. Well then when you get back, when we get back, all right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Russ, thanks for calling in. We will. Good one now.
Speaker 2:Appreciate
Speaker 6:Your
Speaker 2:Call. Thank you. You bet. Mm-hmm<affirmative> so let's go back to Alicia.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:What was I already forgot
Speaker 3:Her question. Yes. So her question was if your pup is so afraid of noises that they have accidents, and we were saying, when you, you were giving an example, a real life example.
Speaker 2:Yeah. All of a sudden you, you know, pull into this parking lot of a store, you get outta your car and you see something and um, you lose it. You're incontinent. You pee yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's pretty severe.
Speaker 2:That's severe.
Speaker 3:That is severe. I mean, just imagine will like when like it's I something that dog owners do all the time is we forget that these are living beings, right? If your child, if your young child
Speaker 2:And we don't mean to anthrop Mophies everything. Yeah, exactly. But there is some parallels to draw here.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So if your child walked into a room and saw a person that scared them so bad that
Speaker 2:They peed themselves, peed
Speaker 3:Themselves, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, I'm just gonna go ahead and, and bring my kid around there. Right. And just so I can hang out and get you exactly.
Speaker 3:See what, what we don't realize is that dogs are still mammals. They still have very, very similar neurochemistry to us as people it's, um, all across all mammalian species. It is extremely similar.
Speaker 2:You see, you've gotta, you've gotta separate behavior problems into two things. Yeah. Nuisance behaviors barking. And I'm not talking barking cuz they're afraid or they're wanting to be aggressive. Okay. Nuisance behaviors like jumping, digging, uh, stealing items. Yeah. Counter surfing, getting on the furniture completely different than when we're talking about dogs that have fears, anxieties, phobias, aggression towards people, aggression towards other dogs, resource guarding, um, these type of behavior problems that have these very intense emotional states.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a whole different ballgame, uh, dealing with those and you've gotta be careful, you know? Um, some D you know, every dog's gonna be different. You know, you take a dog like that and you play, this sounds very, very low. If the dog is having distress, chances are, that's not gonna help. If your dog is showing any signs of distress at that low volume. Absolutely. Especially if there's not any counter conditioning, meaning that you're not peering something positive with that.
Speaker 3:The idea is when you press play on those noises, you should be thinking to yourself, can they even hear it like it? Do they even notice it? I promise you. If you hear it, they hear it. Unless your dog has some sort of, you know, auditory deficit. Um, I guarantee they hear it, but they need to be aloof, not a care in the world. So when you're, when you press play, if your dog suddenly looks over in the direction of it, eyes wide ears perk up. And they're like, what is that? No, that's too loud. What I want is you press play. Maybe your dog, kind of the ear twitches a little because they heard something. But that's it. That's all that I want. And that's where you start. So you press play on those noises and you feed feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, pause, stop feeding. And then you'll do this over and over and over again for about five to 15 minutes. Now mind you, 15 minutes is a long counter conditioning session, especially if you're accidentally putting your dog over threshold.
Speaker 2:Okay. We don't want to do that. And again, what does over threshold mean? The dog is showing signs of distress.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Exactly. So, yes. To answer your question, Alicia. Yes. Starting out at low volumes and slowly increasing is the right direction, but
Speaker 2:You've gotta read your dogs. Exactly. Body language. And, and for those of you that have dogs with any level of anxiety, fears, phobias, reactivity, aggression, you need to become experts in canine body language because the dogs do not speak with their mouth. So absolutely not with language that way. So to speak it's yeah. Their body language is how they communicate. And if you don't understand in depth detail, their body language, you are not gonna know exactly what's going on internally with your dog. I can't tell you how many people that before they learned canine body language thought, there were situations that their dog was in. Oh my God. Where their dog was, was really happy and thrilled. The biggest one is that and tail. And then, and then they realize, oh my God, my dog is anxious. My dog was no, I think the biggest one is when they kiss their dog or, or go hug them. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because everybody thinks, oh, my dog loves it when I kiss it or when I hug it. And then all of a sudden we showed the recording and we showed the dog trying to turn its head away distance increasing mm-hmm<affirmative> yep. Right. Tongue flicks.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Different things. Ears, yawns ears going back. Going
Speaker 3:Wide.
Speaker 2:Okay. Sometimes whale eye too.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. No, sometimes. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I've seen baby. I've seen people on Facebook put their infant by the dog dog eye to get a good photograph. Oh, look how wonderful the dog and the baby and the dog's got its head turned and, and the lights of its eyes. Are there getting ready to kill the baby. Yeah. And everybody's, you know, giving all these likes and this and this
Speaker 3:And that. Yeah. And no, it's, it's crazy. I think that the biggest mistake that dog owners make dog owners, myself included myself included until I learned is the interpretation of that tale. I'm telling you so many times I hear it when I'm on the phone.
Speaker 2:Well, KA was wagging.
Speaker 3:His tail was wagging though. And then he bit me. Yeah. But his tail was wagging. I don't understand. He was happy. Well, how was his tail wagging?
Speaker 2:There's lots of different things to look at when a tail is wagging only
Speaker 3:One type of tail wa technically two, that means happy. And that is low and slow. It's gonna be sweeping.
Speaker 2:It's like a windmill. And
Speaker 3:Then, yeah. And that's the other one. If it goes all the way in a circle, like a windmill, that's
Speaker 2:The best
Speaker 3:One. But the one, when your dog's tail breaks that 90 degree plane and it starts going that tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I know everybody in here right now is going, oh my gosh, that's my dog all the time though. My dog's tail's always like that. You dog
Speaker 2:A little bit nervous.
Speaker 3:That's that's anxiety. That's nervousness. No. Now
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean doesn't mean it's horribly stressed. Doesn't mean like your dog needs meds precise. You know, you've got a pathological issue with your dog. All right. I get behind the wheel of the car and I gotta drive during rush hour or I'm stressed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. But
Speaker 2:I'll make it through that.
Speaker 3:You'll make it through. But what we're getting at is that that's not a happy tail wa that, that is, that is a stressed tail wa that's a dog going<laugh> okay. You know, that's, that's the
Speaker 2:Nervousness. And that's why when we have clients, when I take on clients that have dogs that have any level of fear, anxiety, phobias, aggression, reactivity, it is mandatory that they study in depth, canine, absolutely body language. You cannot help dogs if you don't understand their body language, because you will think they're happy as can be. And you'll put them in certain situations, you might be reinforcing the absolute wrong things. You need to understand the body language.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Now Ashley says, how can I get my dog to stop barking all the time, literally barks at anything and is also probably annoying my neighbors.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm<affirmative>. And, and let me just say this. Yeah, because I, I kind of wanted to talk about this, you know, um, in about a month, we've got Halloween coming up. Yeah. And there's gonna be a lot of doorbells ringing, a lot of door knocking. We're gonna have lots of dogs, just
Speaker 3:Dogs on the doorknob barking,
Speaker 2:Just out barking, barking, barking, barking. There's a lot of barking that's gonna happen. Yeah. In about a month. Absolutely. And you have an opportunity right now to make this Halloween a whole lot less stressful for you and you're four-legged friends. Absolutely. If you begin the process of counterconditioning and desensitizing door knocking doorbells just for Halloween. And I don't know, we, did she say what specifically the triggers
Speaker 3:Were? She said literally all the time at anything. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, your dog's hearing something. Yep. Your dog's smelling something. I would begin to take a look at patterns. Are these things happening at particular times of the day, right? Um, do they happen particular days? Are they happening all days? Yeah. Start finding the pattern and then what we
Speaker 3:Want them to do. So once you have, once you have the pattern identified of, okay. It happens every day between 1230 and two o'clock
Speaker 2:What's happening right before the, now I know everybody say, well, there's nothing happening. Oh yes, there is. I promise you it's impossible for nothing to happen. Pay.
Speaker 3:Well, okay. Now obviously, if we, if we have a little bit of, you know, canine or doggy dementia going on, that may be a different story, but that's, that's different. Anyways. The point here is though, once you've identified the pattern, but I promise you it was doggy dementia. You're you're not gonna see a pattern like that. Once we've identified the pattern, now start paying really close attention to what happens right before that. And you're probably gonna notice, wow. My neighbor, Joe, uh, he goes out and he starts working on his car every day at 12 o'clock. And that's when my dog starts barking. Now we know, oh, it's neighbor, Joe. He's the problem. Alright. So what you gotta do, you're gonna go cross the street. You're gonna knock on the door and you're gonna be like, Joe, you gotta go. No, not really.<laugh> um, no, what you're going to do then is once you've identified the trigger we've we've now figured out, okay, my dog is hearing something. He's hearing the ups truck. He's he's seeing the mailman go deliver the packages across the street. He is, there's actually this guy who works on motorcycles behind me. And every day at this time he's turning on his bikes and it's triggering my dog. Whatever it is, the trigger is, we then now know, okay. At 12 o'clock I gotta be ready at 1150, I gotta be ready. 1159 rolls around. I'm sitting there. I'm ready to go. I've got my food on me. My dog is good. I've got him in a comfy spot, nice comfy bed. He's on leash so that he can't go trigger and run at different things. And then right before that trigger start or right after that trigger starts, I mean, almost simultaneously starts stuffing food into your dog's mouth. If your dog starts barking, growling, triggering, it's too late. You missed it. You have to make sure that the second it begins, you are ready to start. Just feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed,
Speaker 2:Feed, feed, feed. And, and here's the thing. If your dog can't or won't take the food, what are we dealing with
Speaker 3:At that point? If the dog won't take the food now what's happening is he's too far over threshold. He is flooded. So the way that it works is our prefrontal cortex. That's where executive functioning occurs. That's where future planning, rationalized decision making all of that fight or flight, or our survival instinct occurs in our amygdala. Very emotional. Now your brain, just like your car can only have one driver at a time. So if fight or flight turns on because too much cortisol and no epinephrine is being fired off by your dog's brain, the prefrontal cortex shuts off. And one of the very first things to go away is that is digestion. So you you'll know. You'll think about it, think about it. A lot of people see it. You try and give your dog a piece of food and they'll even take it in their mouth. Sometimes they won't, but then they just spit it right back out because they like the way it tastes. They want it. But their body is literally telling them we're not digesting food right now. It is not coming in. Digestive tract is turned off because his body, his or her body is reer power away from different parts of the brain and routing it into the amygdala so that they can focus on survival. So what that means is now that we've identified that your dog is too far over threshold, you've got a few options, find a way to lower the intensity of the trigger, whether that is creating more distance, turning down the volume. You may not be able to turn down the volume of your neighbor's motorcycles, but what if you find a centralized closet and you leave the clothes in there, sound dampening
Speaker 2:And turn it. And some dogs, some dogs are gonna have to learn. We're gonna have to teach them to wear sound canceling headphones. Absolutely. And I know you might sound, it's crazy, but we're teaching dogs to, you know, uh, relax comfortably in MRI machines. All right. It's just a training issue.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's a training issue.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. But I like this question once we're done with
Speaker 2:This. No, no. Are we,
Speaker 3:Um, no. I mean, I think that's about it for me. That's all that I want to talk about in regards to that question. I hope that answers your question there. Uh, Ashley, um, now Steven, this is a fantastic question. Can you talk a little bit about introducing a new cat into a home with an older cat? I've done all the traditional things, but the new female cat who is three years old, goes after the 10 year old male cat, they have been separated for a long time. And now my older cat is afraid of the younger one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's pretty much the situation. It's usually the younger pet that goes after the older pet. Now, when you say that you did all,
Speaker 3:That's what I wanted to
Speaker 2:Know. That's traditional things. I don't know what that means. Yeah. Um, so let me tell you what I do now. They do need to be separated. We don't want your cats to rehearse aggressive behavior. We don't want them to rehearse fearful behavior, which means we need to control the antecedence, which means we're controlling the environment. We're controlling what happens before the aggression and the fear. So right now it's avoidance until we've done the work. Absolutely. Now what I like to do is I like to get a couple socks. Okay. And what I like to do is I get one sock and I'm rubbing that sock all over the younger cat and I'm taking my second sock and I'm rubbing that all over the older cat. And I'm doing that once a day. And I'm bringing that sock with the scent of the older cat to the younger cat. And I am rubbing the scent of the older cat that's on that sock on the younger cat. And I'm doing the same thing with the sock that has the scent of the younger cat. And I'm rubbing that on the older cat. Absolutely. Okay. And then the other thing that I'm doing after I've done that for maybe a week or two, then what I start doing is I start bringing in, um, them in cat carriers. Okay. And what I like to do is I like to have their food ready to go. You gotta feed them. Hopefully you're feeding on a schedule and not free feeding. Yeah. The cats go into their carriers. They're far enough away where they are not in distress. Remember we've gotta keep them under threshold, just like dogs. It's no different and you feed them. And as soon as you're done, whichever cat is done eating first, you're gonna go ahead and remove them. Yep. Okay. Now
Speaker 3:I want to stress something here because um, a lot of people will be like, okay, cat carrier. If both cats are not in a cat carrier, you are going to set yourself up for failure.
Speaker 2:Okay. You're not gonna catch both. Yeah. And here's the other thing. Once you get them closer and closer and closer over time, how long might this take? Well, it might take 72 counter conditioning and desensitization exercises over 96 days. Talked about the study. Yeah. Talked about the shelter dogs that had fears and had severe behavior problems. And it took 72 counterconditioning and desensitization exercises over 96 days to help them get significantly better. Um, once you have done that, one of the things you wanna do, I don't know if your cats like to play with toys. If you can get like a flirt pole for the cat, with a toy and get your cat really interested in that interested in you. Because one of the things that I would also then have you do after a few weeks is bring out one of the cats and the carrier have the other one out and play. But when you're playing with that one cat, the other cat is eating. Okay. And little by little, you would bring the cat. That's playing closer and closer and closer to the carrier with the cat that's eating. But again, you've gotta keep that cat under threshold. You have to do this slowly, gradually. You can't go any faster than your cat's pace. Now, if you've been doing this for about six to eight weeks, if you're not seeing any improvement, then you need to make an appointment with your vet. You may need to have some behavior medicine in conjunction with behavior modification. Um, when you begin to have them come out together, you don't wanna just let them be free. You're going to wanna have a helper. You're gonna want to have harnesses on the cats if the go ahead and just pick it up and, and we'll get them on the air in a second. Absolutely. I've got'em off the air. Now we'll get'em on in a second, but you could talk to him. Yeah, absolutely. Um, but when you are doing that with the cat and, and you're gonna have to condition them to be comfortable with a harness and have leashes on'em and keep them far enough away where they don't care about one another. If they spend enough time away from one another, they don't care. And you keep on doing this thing with the integrating sense, with the socks, um, you should probably be in good shape, but you can send us a message, let us know what you have been doing so that, um, I can take a look at that as well. Jordan, you said we've got a call online.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. We sure do. Welcome to the show. Where are you calling from? Oh, they just hung up. Uh, oh, okay. Nevermind.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you what, we just went to take that call. If you hung up and you want to give us another quick call back, you can, the number is 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0. That's 6 0 2 5 2 5 6 8 8 0. Uh, we do have a line open if you would like that's
Speaker 3:Right. Call
Speaker 2:Do us a favor. Hit that like button and hit that share button so that more people can benefit from pet talk today. Do we have another question? Cuz we've got about five minutes before we,
Speaker 3:So this is a question right here. Somebody said we are in regards to the, uh, the cat introduction. Yeah. Uh, Patty said, does this work the same with bringing in a new puppy? That's aggressive to the old dog. Here's the thing, Patty, not the idea is the, exactly the same. The, the similar, the principle, the principle here is the same, but it is, it is something that's gonna be a lot more in depth. Um, oh, looks like that. Unknown caller.
Speaker 2:Are we getting our caller back?
Speaker 3:Thanks for calling pet talk today. Where are you calling from?
Speaker 2:Alright.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Well we lost that caller as well. So we've got, we've got about five minutes left. We're not gonna take any calls. Yeah. What
Speaker 3:Do you mean? There we
Speaker 2:Go. No, we're not gonna take any calls.
Speaker 3:Um, so anyways, Patty, it's, it's, it's pretty in depth. It, it, it really is. The idea is the same, but it's you're not gonna be using socks. As soon as the dogs see each other at a distance where they are not becoming aggressive with each other, they're not being stressed out. They're not fearful of each other. They are just aware of each other's presence. That's where you're gonna start pairing high value food. And you're gonna practice that. Let's say you have to start at a
Speaker 2:Hundred feet. They can't see that. Bring your arms. Good.
Speaker 3:Let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say you have to start at a hundred feet. We need to get a wider lens. Um, but anyways, let's say you have to start at a hundred feet. You may have to practice at a hundred feet for weeks, maybe a month, maybe longer before you can even go down to 95 feet. Okay. Um, and I that's, that's something, please, please, please, please, please. We talk about it a lot. Go look at our old videos. We, we talk about counterconditioning dog on dog aggression quite often, and come back next week and ask that question again. I'd love to go in depth with that one. Now, uh, Jason says, how do you teach your puppy or your dog bite inhibition? If the dog's parents never taught them? Well, this is, and you know, this is one that, you know, some trainers might even get a little
Speaker 2:Off. This is a tough one, because typically that is something that is going to be learned between three and five weeks of age. Not just with the parents, the, the siren, the, but with the litter.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and here's the thing. I am a firm believer that all four quadrants of opera conditioning occur every single day to every single person, to every single animal, everything that lives experiences, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment in their natural habitat. Now we are firm believers and we utilize Lima in our training. Um, so when you have a dog that doesn't have that bite inhibition, every single time that your dog bites you. Now, if we're talking about a dog that's older than say 15 ish weeks, maybe even a little bit less than that, this might not be very beneficial to you. As soon as your dog bites and tries to bite you, you need to let out a yip sound like an injured dog. Yep. Literally just like that, just like your dog hurts you and your dog's gonna be like, whoa, what was that? What, what was that? I didn't like that. I didn't like hurting you and you do it every single time. Additionally, you can try this as you're playing with your dog, you're rolling around. Having fun with your dog, playing, playing, playing, playing, playing dog bites. You immediately like it was a push of a button. Get up, stop playing with your dog, walk away two minutes, then come back and play with your dog.
Speaker 2:You gotta think about a couple things folks. Yeah. Um, when it comes to behavior, there's the ABCs. Yeah. There's the antecedent. What happens right before the behavior that is a trigger. That's a motivating event or situation that motivates the behavior. That behavior then has a consequence. Either the dog is getting a reward as a result of that particular behavior. Or there is some type of punishment. Okay. Rewards and punishments are what dictate, um, behavior. So look and say to yourself, Hey, what is happening? Let's see, a lot of dogs are, are biting at their owners and their owners are trying to be gentle. It's a puppy. Yeah. And they're like, no, no, no. And they're positively reinforcing. They're engaged. They're giving the dog attention. Yep. Um, it's almost like they're petting the dog.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And pushing the dog away. Guess what? The
Speaker 2:Dog doesn not it's a game. Hey, come on. Let me push you too. Yeah. You push me. I push you. Look at my teeth. Can
Speaker 3:Exactly,
Speaker 2:You know, my teeth are how I communicate, but precisely. I like what you say about giving out the little yip. Yep. Okay. But the other thing too is look, puppies need lots of things to chew on. Yeah. Give them, they're going to be chewing until they're seven, eight months of age, because that's how long it takes until their adult teeth come in and they need a lot of things to chew on. So give them something appropriate to chew on. They're chewing on you. Get up and move and exactly. If
Speaker 3:They
Speaker 2:Continue to chew on you, but your timing's gotta be good as soon as they begin to chew on you. But you put'em in the crate for two minutes. Yep.
Speaker 3:That's another option.
Speaker 2:Give them attorneys. But do we always talk about teach them what we want them to do?
Speaker 3:Exactly. We are so good at telling our dogs. No, do me a favor. Everybody that's watching right now. Do me a favor. Go tell your dog. Yes. Go look at what your dog is
Speaker 2:Doing. No, they're all gonna have to give'em retrieved if they say yes. If they use that as a marker. So go
Speaker 3:Look at your dog and be like, you know what? You are doing something that I want you to right now today I'm telling you, reward your dog for something good. That's what I want you to get out of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, you know what that means. We are out of time. It's been a great show. I appreciate everybody that submitted your questions. Appreciate everybody that called in. Do us a favor, hit that like button and hit that share button. Be sure that other people can benefit from this. We'll see you next Saturday. Be good. Train your dogs. That's all folks. Yeah. We're outta here.
