말썽꾸러기 반려견의 행동과 대처 방법 #104

All that's relevant is trying to create safety for that dog at that moment. Okay. So, what we've got is what appears to be dogs behaving badly. But let's think of this in terms of like kids, adolescents growing up. They want two things. They want belonging and community, and they want reinforcement. And they can get that in two general directions. Maybe by hanging out in gangs and getting into trouble or by being guided in a constructive belonging and seeking reinforcement by maybe joining some community teams, joining a basketball team, a baseball team, getting reinforcement and acknowledgement and belonging that way. All right. So, what our dogs are doing, they're sometimes just looking for reinforcement, occasionally belonging. And we've got to provide that in an obvious constructive way for them. So, you got your behavior and maybe you've got a few in your brain now. What do I do when my dog does this, Susan? So, think of the one or two or three behaviors that your dog's got going on. Now, if it happens once a year, let me just tell you that frequency is normal. If it's happening once a month, let me suggest you need to seek out a good mentor to help you with that problem. If it's happening once a week, then you've either got to examine your execution of your mentor's plan, or you've got to get a different mentor. All right. So, examine how often it's happening and then decide to take action. So, I'm going to ask you a few questions. Number one, can you stop or redirect the reinforcement that the dog is getting right now for the behavior that they're doing? For example, question number seven on my list. What do I do when my dog digs up the water bowl? Okay. So, you can, you have the ability to stop and redirect that reinforcement right now. All they have to do is pick up the water bowl, right? It stops the behavior. It doesn't change the dog's desire to dig in the water bowl. You've got to then ask yourself the next question, where's the value for the dog? Well, it must be fun splashing water all over the place. And so, what you're going to have to do is teach the dog an incompatible behavior when there's water down or when they're at this stage of their life, just pick up the water and manage it. Put it down several times a day for the dog to have a drink and then pick it up. This is something they may outgrow, but they will not outgrow it if they continuously have access to that water bowl. So, that's an easy one. Can you stop, redirect the behavior and where's the value? And the next question is, what's your plan? What's your plan? Sit down, think about what's your plan.

Do you want to write out a plan, how to teach your dog to ignore water bowls, or do you just want to manage that until that dog grows up a little bit and guess what? 99% of the time they just stop wanting to dig in water bowls. Okay. So, that is the first question. Can you stop, interrupt or redirect the behavior? If the answer is yes, then do it and then come up with a plan. If the answer is no, then I would like you to think of three categories that I've created to put behaviors into. The first one is just in the flow of dog training, in the flow of everyday life. So, a question like number nine here might be in the flow of dog training or everyday life. What do I do when everyone who knows my dog's name says it over and over and I want to use it for a recall? Okay. This probably could be category number one, right? You could stop or redirect the reinforcement. In this case, it's not the dogs, it's the people that you can stop or redirect. Can you control everybody? No. But what you can do is come up with a nickname for your dog, something only you know, and you won't tell those other people. You build value for that. Boom, chakalaka, boom. Your dog just listens to you and ignores the rest of them. Okay. So, those are easy ones. So, behaviors that are in the flow of training or everyday life. The subsection of this is, is the dog on leash or are they off leash? If they're on leash, it's easy that you can just turn towards the dog, get them out of the environment, or you can go back and start your behavior again. That is like question number four. What do I do when my dog breaks position for a stay in obedience? You're going to stop, ask yourself that number one question. Where's the value? Where's the value for the dog? Clearly it isn't in holding position. So, dogs are always doing the best they can. With the education you've given them in the environment that we're asking them to perform. If they aren't holding that stay, either the education is incomplete, even though you may think it is, the dog's the one who's in charge of the learning, right? They're the one who's telling you with their responses, that education is incomplete. Or it's just incomplete in the environment that you've put them in today. So, all that I do when my dog breaks a stay is I just walk back, I might turn them in a circle, put them back in the position, and I'll go back and make that test again. Was it the duration? Was it the distance? Was it the distraction that I gave them? I'll give them the same test. If they fail again, they're giving me a very clear signal. You better

go back and make a better plan for my education because it's a little incomplete right now. All right. So, if they're on leash, it's easy. If they're off leash, then there's a list, a checklist that I might go down. If it's in the flow of training or everyday life and they're off leash, chances are it's not a, what I call a code red. So, the first one is family life. Code red is, this is danger. We need something done immediately. It might not be like immediately life or death, but it could be like danger. This is about to embarrass me in front of my entire in-laws or my sister's wedding is going to get ruined because the dog just ran off and is, you know, running towards the chocolate cake. Save the chocolate cake. Okay. So, code red is, I need this stopped immediately. In the flow of training, is this something that you want to take note of? And the other is that third category I'll call it, and it's a little bit of fun for the dog. And you know what? It's not obvious which category any behavior belongs in. Some of these are obvious, some of them not so obvious, but then you go through the checklist of what your options are. So, your options I said you can, you know, can you redirect the behavior? Maybe, maybe not. Next is, can you engage the dog? So, for example, what do I do when my dog gets the zoomies in class? Can you redirect the dog? Lie down, come here, sit. Can you redirect the dog? Now, remember if this is happening once a year, no big deal. It's normal. Something went on. If it's happening once a month, you need some help. If it's happening once a week, you need some different help. Okay. So, can you redirect? This is the checklist you're going through. Can you redirect? No. Can you engage the dog by asking them? Engagement might be asking them to do a behavior. Engagement might be like in episode number 22 where my husband used the invisible bubble of pressure and made a shrill noise and ran the opposite way when our puppy got loose when we were on vacation and she just turned and chased him. That was him engaging her. So, can you engage your dog to get them to come back to you in a fun way? Sometimes like lying on, just like collapsing on the floor or laughing or rolling around or just being something that the dog's going, I was running off here, but like, what are you doing? Okay. You're embarrassing me in front of my friends. Can you get off the floor now? So, engagement might be just you acting goofy or doing something like when I go to work out in the mornings and I start rolling, everybody wants to jump on my head. I don't know. It's crazy. Like,

you know, it's something about that is really engaging to dogs. So, can you engage them? Number two, can you bribe them? Hey, mama got a cookie. Susan Garrett saying bribe them. Oh, heck yes. But that's reinforcing the dog for what they're doing. Oh, heck yes. We're trying to stop something and then we're going to come up with a plan so it never happens again. Right? So, bribing them this one time, remember it's only going to happen once a year, bribing them this one time. I'm okay with that because we need to stop the behavior. So, can you engage them? Can you bribe them? And it might be like throwing cookies on the floor. It might be squeaking a squeaky. It might be slamming a toy that they like. You know, bribery takes different forms. Now, the next one is can you ignore them? Now you're not going to do this if the behavior the dog is doing is dangerous or it's getting reinforcement for it. For example, if your dog, you're in the backyard and you say, come on, it's time to go in and your dog just starts like play bowing and running circles and going, no, I'm not going in. You could just sit down in the chair and open your book. Again, I'm ignoring you. Like I don't really have to go in, but I'm not going to say anything to you to reinforce this behavior. I'm reading a book or pretending to read a book, but what I'm really doing is I'm planning to listen to a few more episodes of Shaped by Dog and figure out what my next move is here. That's what I'm doing. All right. I've got to come up with a better plan because anytime your dog does something you don't like, you've got to say, where's the value? And what did I learn from this? What's my next plan? All right. So, ignoring the behavior only if it's not being reinforced by doing it. For example, I was in a class one time and it was an obedience class. And think about this, typically obedience classes happen after supper. So, this woman rushes home from work, grabs something, wolf's down dinner, runs out to class, and she's waiting to go into the next class. Meanwhile, there's another class and they're doing retreats and her dog is barking outside the ring, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff at the dogs as they're running back and forth retrieving. And she's turning her back. And I said, what are you doing? She said, oh, I'm ignoring the behavior. I said, it's a border collie. The reinforcement is I get to bark and lunge at dogs as they're retrieving. It's getting reinforcement. It doesn't have to, because reinforcement can come from the environment.

It's just as good reinforcement, right? Doesn't always have to come from you. Sometimes the better reinforcement comes from the environment. And when I say the environment, it could be family members, it could be a squirrel that's running, it could be shredding the couch. The couch could give reinforcement. It could be knocking over the garbage. The garbage gives reinforcement. Anything that doesn't come from you. I'm calling it the environment. All right. So, ignoring the behavior might be an option. So, we've got, can you stop or redirect? Can you engage? Can you bribe? And can you ignore? Now we're getting into the serious stuff. Can you surprise the dog? So, surprising the dog might be making a goofy noise. It might be this, I've done this one time. I took a throw comforter off of my couch and as my puppy ran by, I just threw it on the puppy because the puppy was running around with something that she could damage. I honestly don't remember what it was. Piece of jewelry or something. Yeah, my bad. And so, I just threw that and it surprised her and she stopped running. Well, yeah, she got tangled up in my throw blanket. All right. So, can you surprise them? That's one thing. Another way to surprise is like clapping your hands or making a loud noise. Surprising, like startling them, saying like, Hey! Something that is out of the norm for the dog, right? Whistling. Oh, my whistle startles a lot of dogs. I'm not, I'm going to save your ears. I am not going to whistle into this microphone, but think of like a packed hundred thousand person, uh, stadium and a college football games going on. You will hear my whistle above everybody else's. It's that good. So, I can startle, right? To stop the behavior. I'm going to do all those other things first. Generally, one of those will happen. And I'll, I'll dial through all those other ones in a matter of a minute or so. Now, if it's a code red, I'm not going through any, it's unlikely I'm going through any of the others. If the dog is heading towards danger, I may try the engagement of shrill noise, run the opposite direction. But then I'll go into surprise, startle, scare. Scare would be like, you know, screaming. It's a last resort because sometimes screaming will cause the dog to go in the opposite direction, right? But we are code red. We have a dog who is in danger and we need to help them, right? But you've got to ask yourself, how did you get in that situation to begin with? You put too much faith in what you thought was your dog's natural affinity to do what you want. And, you know,

dogs are going to drift towards what's reinforcing. It's up to us as their protector and owner and, you know, leader to set up the reinforcement for them. So, they will look towards you for everything and anything. My puppy will be a year old in two days. And I would be willing to bet a good sum of money. There is nothing I couldn't call her away from. That she would come to me and more often than not, she would come to me just with one call. And it doesn't matter how far away she is, I wouldn't really have to raise my voice very much to get her to come to me. So, a normal, this, she's going to come running. All right. So, why do I have that? Because it was important to me. All right. So, knowing we've got our code red, our bit of fun, in the flow of training and family, those are our three categories of behaviors other than stress. So, you could categorize what you've got, look at, is it on leash or off, and then go through here's what you're going to do to stop them. So, if you have chasing wildlife, well, to me, that's a code red. You shouldn't be scaring wildlife. Now, if the wildlife's got a good head start and it's a safe environment, I might ignore the dog and go back in the house. I've done that with Tater Salad. And then while I'm in the house, I'm planning how for this to never happen again. And I would say it's probably been, Tater's been with us for about two and a half years. It's been close to a year since he's ever left me on a walk to go and chase wildlife. All right. So, it can be reversed. Absolutely. It can be reversed. So, I want my dog to come in from the backyard because I have to go to work. Well, you're bad, right? So, number one thought is where's the value? Well, if they're running around the backyard, there's really not much you can do. Go through my list. Can you engage them? Can you bribe them? Can you… You can't ignore them because they might be having fun in the backyard. Plus, you've got to get to work. Can you surprise them or startle them? Like, and then you've got to have a plan for this never to happen again. You've got to have a way. Like I said, I live here on 28 acres and my puppy can be the furthest corner of our property and I call her and she will come flying on one call. Right? So, you've got to have a plan to get that kind of reliability. Or you should be managing behavior, not trusting that your dog naturally will want to. Remember, just like teenagers, they're naturally going to gravitate to reinforcement, whether it be gang related or structured, really constructive reinforcement,

like playing basketball. So, our dogs will do the same thing. They're just going to gravitate to what's reinforcing. It's up to us to make sure we funnel it in a direction we want. Okay. So, my dog has the kids' toys and they're playing keep away. That's family manners, bit of fun. And I would just scroll through those lists as I said, what do I do when my dog won't get into the car when I want to go home from the park? I would say that would be the flow of training. It could be either, if it's in a dangerous environment, it really could be code red. But I would say your dog's telling you where the value is. And so, you need to make a routine habit of building value for getting into the car. You get to the park, you release them, you call them back, you put them back in the car, you give them a high value reward, you let them out again. Maybe two or three times before you really want to go home, you put them back in the car, give them high value reward, say, hey, go play some more. Don't always make getting in the car being the end of all that is fun. Right? Keep them guessing. Right? Just like your love life. Okay. My dog goes crazy when I'm working my older dog. So, go to episode number 88, Barrier Frustration. And when I'm raising a puppy, my number one focus, well obviously is recall, but a really big focus is I want my dogs to be comfortable and quiet when I'm training other dogs. So, I put a lot of work into that. It requires a lot of patience or you manage it. I don't like a young dog barking when I'm training another dog. So, I don't allow them to rehearse that. And why they're doing it is probably barrier frustration. And number 10, I've got a nine-month-old husky, one trainer who bites, who still puppy bites. One trainer told us to whack him on the nose that made it worse. Another one said, yelp and say that hurts, that made it worse. Now he's practically an adult and he's still biting, especially when it's bedtime and he's tired and cranky. So, what's a safe way to get him under control? First of all, let me just say I've got a YouTube series on puppy biting and how to stop it. And I will tell you that avoiding a dog getting cranky is a big part of it. But I believe my puppies really don't get into a bitey stage because I use the game of tug to teach where it's appropriate to bite and when it's appropriate to bite and when you should let go. So, check out on our YouTube page, I'll put the link in the show notes, the whole series on why your puppy's biting, what you should and shouldn't be doing about it.

Okay. So, hopefully now I've given you the tools that you can look at what you've got, how to categorize it, how to look for where the value, how to come up with a different plan and how to know if the frequency is appropriate or you need to go in a different direction. That's it for me. I'll see you next time on Shaped by Dog. This poor dog's turning herself in circles trying to get you to hit that subscribe button. Could you please do it? And while you're there, go ahead, hit the notification bell as well. And if you're already a subscriber, that's for you. Go grab yourself a great reinforcement. Of course. Thank you.