Episode #7 "Did you know...?"

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Hi, I'm Amy Jensen, and this is the puppy training podcast. Episode number seven this'll Podcast is for those looking to train their own dog. Whether it's a companion therapy or service dog, I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcasts, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen. Today we're gonna start out a little differently, but you'll see how this connects in just a little bit. So have you ever heard of the dancer Gillian Lynne? She's an amazing story, and I'm gonna just briefly share that with you today. So she ultimately became the choreographer behind Cats and Phantom of the Opera. She's a professional dancer, but her story began when she was seven years old and she was an elementary school. She had a hard time sitting still in her seat, and her teacher noticed this and struggle day after day. He's getting her to sit still and pay attention in class. So finally the teacher called the parents and said, You know, we need to have a meeting. This is not working, and she said, Really, I think your daughter needs to go see a doctor. So the mom took the daughter to a doctor, and the daughter sat in this office. Well, the mom and the doctor spoke for about 20 minutes, and she just kept bound seeing, and she was sitting on her hands trying to stay as still as she could. But she just couldn't sit still. And the doctor took note and, you know, turned on some music, actually. And then she said, he said to the mom, You know, let's go outside in the hallway and I want you to observe your daughter from out here. So they stepped out into the hallway and they were watching through the glass door as his daughter just began to move to the music that was playing in the office, and the doctor turned to the mom and said, Your daughter is not ill. She doesn't need medication. What she needs is to be enrolled in dance school. Your daughter is a dancer, and so they did. They moved her from the a traditional school into a dance school, where she excelled. She just thrived because naturally her body needed to move in order to think so. This relates to dog training, believe it or not, and That's what we're gonna talk about today. So a lot of times I get asked this question, Why does my dog do that? Why does he do this? Why does he do that? And I want you to know that hunting instincts are part of every single duck. It doesn't matter what breed they are, what size they are color. They are how tall or small they are. Literally every dog has hunting instincts that are part of them. It's part of their genetic makeup. So six things that relate to this they air the search, the stock, the rush, the chase, the bite holder shake that dissect and the eat. If we are able to incorporate these behaviors into our dogs everyday life, we will actually observe fewer behavior problems. So you wanna try it out? You want to test out this theory. I challenge you this week. See if you can figure out games that you can play with your puppy that involved the search, the stock, the rush, the chase, the bite, the hole to shake the dissect or the heat and see how your puppies behavior improves. Here's a few ideas for you, so let's just take the search. For example, search means that they're finding prey using mainly their noses. So what kinds of games could you create for your puppy, where he could use his nose? One example would be hiding. Seek. It's a really fun game. If you have kids in your family, they'll absolutely love this one. Let's face it, I'm in adult and I still like this one. So to do this, you take your puppy out into an open space, safely enclosed. Of course, I like to get a toy that squeaky or makes noise. And then I hide behind something while my puppies off busy, you know, sniffing a bush. And then I'll squeak the toy several times, or whatever gets your puppy excited. It might just be clapping your hands. It might be saying, Hey, but be puppy or squeaking that toy and letting your puppy search you out, I promise. When they get to you, they're going to be super excited, tell wagging puppy kisses galore. And then once my puppy gets to me, I actually take off running in another direction and I go hide somewhere else, and then my puppy gets to come find me again. So there's an example of the search behavior that all Doug's love to do some more than others. I will say that not all of these air super strength and every dog you'll notice that your dog has more strength for is one or the other. But a search game would be hide and seek. I'm sure you can think of lots more. I'll give you one other example. You could take a muffin tin with 12 muffin cups and then put some treats in random ones, not in all of them, but in a few. And then take tennis balls and put a tennis ball in each muffin cup and then set it down in front of your dog and let him search out where the treats are. They're not under every ball. And so that's the fun of the game is that he gets to figure out under which ball will get him a treat. The rush, the chase them. The bite is literally moving quickly towards prey and catching the prey. So a game of fetch would be a great one to play with your dog in orderto let these instincts come out in him simply find a toy that he likes. I like to get a couple toys that my puppy likes, and then I toss one several feet away, depending on how old your puppy is and how well trained he has to play. Fetch. You could go further, of course, but I throw the toy my puppy chases after it grabs the toy. And then I head off in the opposite direction with the new toy waving around in my hand. So I look super exciting when my puppy catches up to me. I simply asked him to drop the toy. He has showing him the new toy, and when he dropped the I Mark, yes, and then I tossed the new toy. And then again, I repeat that process. I take off running in the opposite direction with the other toy, making myself look super exciting. So we actually get the chase in there. We get the Russian, then we get the bite. When he bites onto that, toying comes back to me. Okay, so I challenge you this week to see if you can find some other games that you can play with your dog again to get those hunting instincts as part of your daily routine. Let him do naturally what he does as a dog or what he needs to do. Her feels like doing her loves to do. Incorporate that into your day and watch as his behavior improves. All right, along with these hunting instincts, The last topic that I wanted to just bring up briefly today is food guarding. This is also an extinction all behavior in our dogs, because once they've done all that work to hunt down something and then they've caught it and they're about to eat it, they have a tendency to want to guard it in order to protect what's theirs and to protect their resource is that they have now acquired. So we want to make sure that since we have this puppy living in our home with us, we want to teach him that he doesn't need to protect his things. There's plenty of food for him. There are plenty of toys. There are plenty of bones. He doesn't need to growl or get feisty to protect what he thinks is hiss. The best way to teach your dog to do this is to start from a very young age, ideally, that critical socialization period between seven and 12 to 14 ish weeks. We want to make sure that we're doing what we call food, bull exercises or object exchanges daily with our puppies. So let's talk about those and what they look like. First of all, let's talk about like a food bull exercise. What can you do with your dog's food bowl to help him not guard his food? This is especially important if you have Children in your home and you don't want that to be walking by your dog eating his food and their dogs suddenly snapped at them or growl at them because they're too close to his food and he's getting nervous. That they're that close to. What he built is Hiss. So this could be a pretty simple and actually pretty fun if you have some Children in your home, so incorporate them into this. But make sure you're always supervising them, of course, So show your dog. Your presence around their food is never a threat. To do this, simply stand near the bull while your puppy eats, get him used to the fact that people will be standing by him while he's eating food from his dish, and that's no big deal. Ah, very young puppy will have no problem with you standing right by him while he eats. Let's say you start this with a dog who's two years old, that two year old dog. We don't know his history, and he might have a problem with you standing right next to him while he eats. So again. If you have a young puppy in your home or you're about to get a puppy, make it a point to do these food bull exercises on a daily basis so that your puppy grows up. Just realizing that people often stand next to him while he's eating, the next thing you can do is to randomly drop something yummy into your dog's food bowl. So this is where the kids come in, and you could get your dog to realize that young Children might be walking by, but they're gonna bring something super yummy with them and drop it into their bowl, making that a really good association. Little kids near my food bowl means yummy treats. So have somebody just walked by randomly drop ah, small piece of cheese in the bowl, you know, small piece of chicken. Whatever your puppy gets excited about and doesn't get very often do that on a daily basis. The next thing you can do is to take the bull away and add the yummy treat and then give the bull right back so I wouldn't do this to the point that your puppies frustrated with your taking his bowl away. But you know, every few minutes when he's taking a break from his bites of eating, you could pick up the bull, put a yummy piece of treated in it and then give it right back. This is just teaching your puppy that you might reach for that bull and take it away. But when it comes back, it's gonna be worth the wait, because something yummy will be in sight. All right, let's go on to object exchanges. So this is similar to the food bowl. We basically want to make sure that when our puppy has a toy or a bone or another object that he is playing with or he feels might be Hiss, we want him to realize that our presence is never a threat. In fact, it's likely to add more fun, much like the food bowl exchanges. When we take something away from our puppy, we want to exchange it for something better. So if I were to go to my puppy and take a bone that he's chewing, I would want to replace it with, like, a bully stick or something that's better than whatever he had. If you know he's chewing on a toy, maybe I replace it with a bone or a bully stick, depending on what your puppy likes or what he is into chewing. If you don't do the bones of the boy sticks, maybe it's a Kong. Your puppy is no chewing a toy, and you come along with a Kong with inside has some cream cheese or peanut butter and a biscuit in it. So I try to take something away in exchange it for something better. You could start with a neutral object that your puppy is not likely to guard. So if you have an older dog in your home and he does show some guarding behavior, try to start these exercises with something that's neutral to him, that he's not going to growl over. Maybe your puppies not super interested in Fetch, but he happens to be playing with a tennis ball, or you bring along a tennis ball to get him to play with you. But you replace that tennis ball with a Frisbee, and he goes absolutely nuts for a Frisbee. So things like that find out what is neutral to him. Start exchanging the neutral object for something better. If you have a puppy that's already showing some guarding behaviors, the benefit of starting again with those brand new puppies is that they shouldn't have the guardian behaviors at that point. And we want to make sure that we're doing this on a daily basis. You know, whenever my puppy is laying down chewing a bone, I make it a point to hate. Can you drop that for me? Thank you. Here's something better. And then the other thing that you can do is hey, you know, drop that and you take the bone away and then you give it right back with maybe a treat to go along with it. So that could be another way that you're exchanging for something better. Not only does he get that item right back, but you got a treat with it. So remember to always trade up if you can, even if it's the same item or the same object, you're just adding something yummy to it at the end, that is considered a trade up. So and then the idea of giving your puppy back what she had originally really helps your puppy realize, Oh, she might come and reach for it, but I'm going to get it right back, so it's not a big deal. I don't need to stress over this, all right. I know that was super quick this week, but hopefully that helps you make it a goal this week to play games with your puppy that will incorporate those hunting instincts such as chase or fetch, hide and go seek all of those games. You'll find that the more you play, those the better behaved. Your puppy will be happy training and have a great week. If you have a question about anything you've heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my sight. Baxter and Bella dot com to contact me