개 훈련에서의 압도감: 난관에 대처하는 방법 #97

awesome content. I'm really grateful to have found you, your content and not to forget your team. And that's, I just love shout outs to the team because you know what? I have got a fabulous team behind me. So, thank you, IonicMermaid. Who finishes by saying my dogs and I have improved in less than two weeks more than in the last several months. Can't wait to see more. Thank you for leaving these reviews. I read each and every one of them and we share them as a team. We actually share them in our Slack channel. That's our technology for talking to each other. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay. Let's fix some challenges in dog training today. Now, I'm going to start this with a story. I was today out cycling with my family. So, two of my brothers and my one sister, we went cycling on the trails. Now here in Southern Ontario, they used to have a lot of electronic trains and they, obviously when the diesels came in, their electronic trains went out and they took out the electronic train tracks and they put in these amazing cycling trails. So, we have the radial trails and the rail trails that go all through Southern Ontario. Okay. You don't need to know all that, but it's fun. Wherever the trail intersects with a road, no matter how minor, there will be a big gate across the trail. Now this I'm assuming is to prevent any kind of motorized vehicles from going on the trail, but there's two small pillars off to the side, big enough for one cyclist to get through and maybe a few inches to spare on either side. If you are listening to this podcast, I'll put some actual video of what I shot on the trail today. So, you get a real image of what this looks like. Now, I had this epiphany about dog training out on the trails today because I watched people go through these gates, these big metal gates, and many people would slow down almost to a stop and then they would have to accelerate through again. And I've seen my friends do this over and over. Now they don't come to a stop, but they really slow down. And all along I've thought, well, it's the fear of hitting one of these. They're metal, they're in the ground, they're going to hurt you if you hit one. And I always assumed that people slowed down to almost a stop because they didn't want to get hurt. They didn't want to hit these uprights. I believe what actually is going on is people are putting too much focus on the uprights and not enough focus on the path. Now I just wheel through these uprights and it's not that I'm not afraid of getting hurt. I don't want to get hurt. But I know that if I'm traveling on the path with

a big open area, my wheels don't really move that far. So, why all of a sudden going through a gate would they suddenly start, you know, randomly going two feet one direction or another causing me to get into trouble and possibly hit an upright? They won't. I focus on the path. I don't focus on the obstacles, the things that might hurt me. And my big epiphany was, I think that's potentially what's causing people a lot of challenges in dog trainings, whether you have a brand new puppy or you have a rescue dog, or even if you're in your own dog, you get wrapped up in focusing on the things that you don't like. And that doesn't give you the opportunity to focus as much on what you want. And the other thing is it changes your emotional state. I'm going to share with you this quote. So, we've gone from bicycles. We're going to basketball now. Right now, for those of you who aren't basketball fans, I'm a massive basketball fan. We are now in the midst of a best of seven series to crown the new NBA world champion. And the two teams involved, the Phoenix Suns, who I'm secretly voting for, but that's another story, and the Milwaukee Bucks, who I'm still a fan of. So, it's win-win for whoever wins. Now, they've played five games in this series. After the fourth game, the leading scorer from the Milwaukee Bucks, he's a fellow from Greek by the name of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Now, I admire this man because he's a phenomenal basketball player, but I think he's also a great human being for a number of reasons. I kind of wished he'd play for my Raptors, but that's another story. So, Giannis has scored 40 points a game almost every game in the playoffs. And somebody was interviewing him after the last game and they said like, hey, you must really get excited about all these points you're scoring and how easy it is for you to score. He had the most gracious answer. And I really believe this is going to help dog owners to focus where they need to focus. And what he said was, if I focus on all the points I scored in the past, that's my ego speaking. That's me being boastful. That's me just thinking about how great I am. And if I think about how many points I might score in the future, that's my pride. That's me getting built up about myself. And so, what I do is focus on the present and that puts me in a place of humility, which allows me to be the best I can be and have fun at a job that I love. Right? And so, I thought of this immediately. And I mean, I didn't want to do a podcast just on that little thing, but it fits so well with what I want to talk about

today. Because it's so easy to allow ego to come into dog training. Why isn't this puppy as good as my last puppy? And why can't he just get this? And what happens is it's ego speaking. It can't be me. I'm a great dog trainer. My last dog was amazing. It must be this dog. He must be stupid or something. And what it does is it changes our emotional state. It puts us into a place of being disappointed. And disappointment is not a great basis to have an amazing relationship. And at the end of the day, whether your dog is trained to the maximum potential he could be or not, having the greatest relationship possible is really the most important thing. So, ego gets in the way. And when you feel triggered, ask yourself, is this ego thinking? Am I comparing my dog to a dog I used to have? Am I comparing my dog to some imaginary standard that I think that this dog should be achieving? Now, if you're focused on the future, what's happening is maybe you have a training goal. I need this puppy house trained before I go back to work. I need this dog's agility skills done so I can enter the national championship. My version of who this dog needs to be in this timeframe will tend to have you make poor dog training decisions. You'll be making decisions about outcomes you believe you have to have. And you might approach your training more frantic. You definitely will be more inclined to take shortcuts in the training just to get outcomes. So, like Giannis Antetokounmpo, I really would love for you to focus in the present. I, one of my favorite words is the word surrender. And I've mentioned this on the podcast before. You think surrender is something of weakness. You know, somebody on a battlefield waving a white flag, oh, they gave up. They're losers. I think of surrender as a place of strength that I'm surrendering any outcomes to whenever they happen. But it allows me to come from a place of great humility and focus on what does this dog need from me now? Here's the behaviors that I don't want. These are the obstacles. My puppy is peeing and pooping on the floor. My puppy is nipping at my kids. My puppy is destroying my furniture. My puppy doesn't listen or pulls or is reactive towards other dogs, right? Whatever you don't want, those are your obstacles. And the more you focus on them, it's your ego getting mad at why isn't this fixed. Trust me when I say it's going to get further away. It's going to take you even longer to get there when you're focusing on ego, from a place of ego. Why isn't this? There's a great quote. I was listening to a podcast. I'm going random

directions here on this, on today's podcast. I was listening to a podcast, business podcast, actually. Her name is Alexander Horowitz. Rather than she studied humans, cognitive ability, and then she transferred to dogs. And she had this great quote that I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get it. And her quote was, when you're dog training and you're doing it right, it will literally change you. And that's what I'm talking about. It changes you from being emotional and ego-driven to being humble and present and giving yourself grace for things that you may have done that weren't correct. And it's giving the dog grace by meeting the dog where they are and just observing them from a place of complete neutrality. What do you need now? What is the best thing I can do right now? And you know, I can't say this often enough. Every interaction with our dogs is a conversation. And every conversation with people is a relationship building or a relationship tearing down event. So, every time we interact with our dog, you might not think you're training, but every interaction is training. Every moment of training is our conversation, is our daily conversation with our dogs. It's an opportunity for connection, for growth, and for trust and confidence to grow. And when you do it right, it literally will change you. Absolutely will change you. And so, what are those things that you can focus on? I'm going to give you five things that if you have a new puppy or a rescue dog, and three of them really apply to all dogs. But if you're frustrated or you're overwhelmed, focus on the present. And these are the five things. Number one, daily exercise. Now, if you have a puppy that would be age appropriate, of course, little wee puppies, we're not taking them out on 15 mile hikes. So, exercise, fresh air, letting them get out there and, you know, smell and frolic and just have a great time. Daily exercise, huge. Number two, engaging strategic games that create behavior change in your dog. And of course, I'm talking like things like our Recallers program, homeschool the dog. Like our training is changing behaviors, which changes who the dog is. And it's changing the people because you can't help but when you're having a great fun game with a dog, and then you see outcomes like the dog is actually becoming more of who you want. It's changing you, right? As Alexander Horowitz said, when you do it right, it changes you. So, we've got age appropriate exercise. We've got engaging strategic games. Number two. Number three, puppies need downtime. And they need

downtime in confinement. Now you may have to grow this. So, the first puppy I've ever had, my youngest puppy, this, who is now getting close to being a year old. When she was a puppy, I had to grow her confinement time strategically because she whined a lot. She didn't want to, there was some anxiety. Whining is anxiety. Barking, well, barking can be a number of things, but you know, depending on what you've done, you may have created it, but it's a sign of anxiety. And so, with this, I had to grow her time in confinement till the point where she was okay with it. We're doing our dogs a favor because we're going to have to go to the grocery store at one point. They have to be left alone. So, it's a trifecta here. Number three, it's downtime or confinement, downtime alone. Puppies need to nap. So many puppies get in trouble when people don't give them downtime to nap. And they're too young to self-regulate. Like my dogs now, they'll just sleep for hours on end anywhere. If I'm getting in the middle of teaching, they're just, they're like out. But puppies won't do that on their own. Not many of them anyway. And so, exercise, training, back outside to have a pee or a poop, and then downtime. I need you to go in an X-pen or a crate to nap. And so, the trifecta is they get their rest, they learn to be comfortable with being in confinement, and they learn they don't always have to be next to you. So important to grow that confidence in the puppy that they're fine when you have to go out without them. And it starts with just getting that routine, that routine in order. We've done some training, we've done a little exercise, and then we have some downtime, right? Number four on the list is socializing. So, socializing with people, with new environments, socializing with puppies, with all sorts of things. So, socializing, super important. Number five is enrichment. And this really needs to be a podcast all on its own, Puppy Enrichment, because people have the wrong idea of what Puppy Enrichment is. But, you know, Puppy Enrichment is maybe some brain games for the puppy, maybe some smells for the puppy to send out, Puppy Enrichment is not giving your puppy a stuffed Kong. In my books, that's just a different feeding muscle, right? That's all it is. All right. So, we've got the obstacles. And it doesn't matter if you don't have a puppy. What are the obstacles for your training? Maybe it's the obstacles of trying to be a more reinforcement-based dog trainer. That, oh, Susan, that requires a lot of time. I don't know what to do. If you don't know what to do, just check out these podcasts.

We're getting really close to having a hundred podcasts here. And I make every single one of them a little masterclass for you because I want to help you. Do something. Take action. Stop focusing on the obstacles and start focusing on the path. Because when you focus on the path, things happen faster. You don't have to slow down. Things start to accelerate. You start to get results. The outcomes happen for you without you being the one to push for them. They organically just appear for you. Focus on what you can do. Sure, acknowledge the things that are troubling you, but focus on what you can do and then ask yourself, what does this puppy or what does this dog need from me today? You know what? Your brain knows. It'll give you an answer. Trust me on this. I'll see you next time here on Shaped by Dog.