이 긍정적 인터럽터를 사용하여 반려견의 원치 않는 행동 멈추기 #158 #팟캐스트

because that is the topic of today's podcast. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to condition a new cue. The term positive interrupter. I first heard when somebody was talking about Emily Larlam who runs a great YouTube channel called Kiko Pop. So, it's a positive interrupter in that it stops the dog. But what it does is it gets the dog to do something. So, for many, many years I've used the word enough. Enough, or sometimes I use the word thank you. But recently, thank you has kind of morphed into my retrieve cue, the release cue. So, I use enough as my cue. The challenge with using enough is for many people when I've taught this, it has escalated. There has been judgment in it. Enough, enough, enough. And what we want is it to be a positive experience. When a dog hears the positive interrupter, they know to come and find you. Stop what you're doing. Come and find me. So, it could be a puppy's chewing something. It could be your dog's out on a walk and they're about to roll on something. It could be they're jumping on your guests or whatever inappropriate thing that they may be doing. You would use a positive interrupter, which gives them a different behavior to do. And what we want them to do is come back and find us. So, is this a recall cue? It's different than a recall cue. Now, the dog is coming to you, but it is not your recall cue. Your recall cue is sacred. There needs to be cherubs singing whenever we talk about the recall cue. It's sacred and it only gets used when we really, really, really want our dogs to come when called. Okay. So, positive interrupter. You could have the same reliability as your recall cue as long as you practice it the way I'm going to show you in just a minute. So, many people start the positive interrupter with a sound like, but personally for me, that's not salient enough that if my dog's about to roll in something in the field, it's hard to make that loud. You know what, maybe you're a better kisser than me. Maybe you can be a loud kisser. I don't have that skill. But I love the idea of using a sound as a positive interrupter. Why? Because it's so darn difficult for that to escalate into something that is a judgment. So, when I have a litter of puppies, I introduce a positive interrupter and it's kind of a melodic sound. It's wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And it actually is a cue. My dogs are coming up the stairs now. It's actually a cue that I use in agility as well, which means stop what you're doing and come into me. Do not take any obstacles. Come into me. It's a positive interrupter. Enough. And

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You can also use a cue. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Now, if you can sing that in a way that you can never say it, no matter what's going on, you can't be angry about it. That's a great positive interrupter. Now we get asked this question a lot in our online courses. How can I teach leave it? Well, of course, if you've been raised with it's your choice, you ideally would never need a leave it cue. Guess what? Your positive interrupter. You could use the word, leave it. Leave it means don't roll in whatever you're about to roll in. Leave it means don't bark at whoever's at the door. Leave it could mean don't eat what you're about to eat. So, leave it could be your positive interrupter. But let's just agree right now. If you're driving, I want you to pull over. I want you to put one hand in the air and you're going to swear. If I use the word leave it, I'm never going to say it in an angry tone. If you can't say that, then go with something that is nonsensical. Like, or something that's melodic and different. And just the sound. Like you might want to just experiment with sounds because there are some sounds without any conditioning at all, you're going to get your dogs coming over and going like, what is that? That sounded really fun. All right. So, a positive interrupter. First thing you have to do is pick the sound or the word. If you do sports, you could borrow one with the cue ready. Now, a lot of people when they do sports, they say ready and that will get the dogs. My dogs are running. I can hear them coming now. That will get the dogs excited and come and focused on you. That could be your positive interrupter. I wouldn't advise you to do it if you're also using it to get your dog jacked up for different sports. Okay. Because what if, and this is a great place where I use my positive interrupter. If my dog, I see them locking on a distraction in the distance, maybe we're out walking and they see a deer. And I just say enough, or I'll say, wit, wit, wit. And they'll just come off of it. But if I use a cue, that means get jacked up, get engaged and get ready to chase, then there might be a conflict for the dog. So, I've seen people use the cue ready as a way to get their dogs to come off of things, but that's a slippery slope. So, pick a word. All right. Wit, wit. Let's all go with wit, wit. I'll know you listened to this podcast or you're a member of one of my online classes. If I hear you saying the word wit, wit. All right. Is it a word? It's a hyphenated word. Is it,

it's a phrase. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, my dogs are going crazy right now. Okay. So, let's teach our positive interrupter. First thing you're going to do super easy. You're going to get high, high value rewards. Put them in like ideally if you've got a kangaroo pouch or somewhere where the dog, you know, bait pouch is just so obvious. So, if you want to use a bait pouch, sure, but do some sessions without it. You're going to have your dog on a leash. So, they're going to be nice and close. And you're going to say the word and immediately drop a cookie in front of the dog. All right. They're going to eat it. You're going to keep moving. So, as they're eating it, they're going to be on a leash. You're not going to jerk them or anything. Wait till they eat it and then they're going to come with. I don't want them snarfelling and sniffing because wit, wit, wit doesn't mean start sniffing the ground. All right. It means turn and find me fast. You're going to repeat this until the dog is ready for you to say the, wit, wit, wit, wit cue. And then what you're going to do is you're going to add some motion. So, it's going to be give the cue and then turn and run. The dog catches up and then you drop the cookie on the floor. Now here we can hand the dog the cookie as well, but I want you to alternate. Sometimes drop it on the floor. Sometimes you're going to hand it to the dog. Eventually, if you're doing this like in your living room or your kitchen, you can throw it into the corner so you can run across in the opposite direction. Why do I want movement? Because it adds to the reinforcement value. You can stand still, but our dogs love to chase. They love to chase. So, eventually we want to be able to say the wit, wit, wit, cue without moving at all. But initially I would say we're going to move 80% of the time. 10% of the time practicing it just standing still. 80% of the time you are at least. Now if you can't move that great, you can turn and like walk fast or walk at whatever speed is your fast. Just turn away from the dog, keeping contact with them with one eye over your shoulder. But we want them to see you turning and leaving because the wit, wit means engage with me. All right. Engage with me. So, we say the cue that they come. Now, three weeks. Let's put up our hand again. Susan, I solemnly swear. I will not try to use this cue to interrupt a undesired behavior before three weeks. Now that's an arbitrary number. It might take you four or five weeks,

depending on how often that you can practice this game. We want to move from just saying the word, dropping cookies. That's your first session. Like that's going to be over real quick. And then saying the word, moving away, and then handing the dog a cookie or dropping the cookie. And then for those of you whose dogs tug, we're playing another game. Now, if your dog doesn't tug, don't switch off. Don't cross your arms and get all pouty face on me because I got something for you. Just be patient. Okay. So, what I want you to do is I want you to start tugging with your dog. You're going to have your high value treat somewhere where you can grab it really quick. In the midst of tugging, you're going to give your cue, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The dog should disengage from the tug toy. If by chance they don't, you are going to just become limp and stop saying anything. Just wait until the dog disengages. If they don't disengage, then you can just do a collar grab because that should help them go, oh yeah, collar grab means I'm going to get a cookie. And then they're going to spit out the toy. You're going to drop the cookie, go back and do more without a tug. But what I want them, what the next stage of learning is, is the dog is doing an activity, maybe an activity they like. You give the positive interrupter and they learn, stop what I'm doing and chase. Stop what I'm doing and find mama. Stop what I'm doing and look. Right. So, the tug game is just an easy one to get them involved. Now, if you have higher value rewards or tugs that your dog loves, don't go to the highest one at first, go to the lowest one and work your way up so that they're crazy involved with tug and you give your wha-wha-wha and they drop that tug. They're learning. No matter what I'm doing, I hear wha-wha-wha and I turn and I come. My dogs might be giving an accompanying serenade to tonight's podcast because I'm talking dirty. I'm saying all their favorite words. Okay. So, for those of you whose dogs don't tug, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take a low value food, AKA something that they will not eat. A rock. Now, if there's a chance your dog is one of those dogs like tater salad, if you throw anything, he's going to eat first and ask questions later. Don't do this with a rock. I want you to throw a block of wood bigger than your dog's head. Okay. So, you're going to throw it to get their attention. You're going to say, wait, wait, wait, and go in the opposite direction. Eventually, I want you to get to a place where you

can roll a piece of kibble on the floor. Your dog goes to get it. You're going to say, wait, wait, wait, go in the opposite direction and give them a high value reward. Now, you will need somebody to help you with this because I want the dog not to be able to get to that kibble. If they do, no big deal. I don't want you to have them on a leash and like give them a kibble at the end of the leash. If they do, no big deal. We just know that wit, wit, wit is just not strong enough, high enough value for them at this moment. You could do this a couple of times and start throwing it further and further away. You could actually roll it under a door or an area where it's almost impossible for the dog to get that low value cookie. If they still start like scratching and, oh my gosh, I really have to get this dried up old piece of kibble. Then that tells me, you haven't done the two to three weeks or longer of the fun wit, wit, turn, run, array, fun, like high, high value rewards so that your dog just hears that noise and something amazing is going to happen. That's what we want. All right. Now your three or the five or whatever week introductory probation period is over. And now you're going to use your wit, wit cue just to interrupt low value activities. All right. So, something like here's when I use mine. Post swimming licking drives me crazy when I'm trying to focus on something. So, I will use that cue. My dogs will come over. I'll just, I'm just interrupting them. All right. Now, can you go do something else? Go lie down somewhere else. So then they're not right under my feet licking. All right. Now you're not going to wait till the UPS guy comes and all anarchy is going crazy because it's less likely to work. Use your positive interrupters only when you're willing to bet me a thousand dollars that your dog is going to give you that head whip and drive towards you. Okay. Now, Susan, I've been listening to your podcast quite a bit. And I know about podcast number 16, the thing before the thing. Am I not just rewarding my dog in a behavior chain? You've got to be bad to be good. I am so glad you asked that question because as a matter of fact, you potentially could be. So, the positive interrupters are things I use a ton when I have puppies. I see a puppy is about to squat to go to the bathroom. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's get outside. I see my puppy is chewing on something inappropriate. But as soon as that happens, the wheels start turning in my head. What am I going to do to make sure that doesn't happen again? Because if your puppy like loves

chewing on one corner of your sofa and you find four or five times a day, you're saying, wait, wait, wait, guess what? You are creating a lovely behavior chain for yourself. So, every time you do it, it's actually like you're breaking out into song to remind yourself of a training plan, right? It's like you're saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, oh, my puppy is chewing on the sofa and I've got to learn how not to teach that. So, I'm going to go and look at Susan Garrett's podcast and then I'm going to figure out a plan. So, yes, the answer is yes. If you rely on this practice as a regular form of management, you could be in fact rewarding the thing before the thing. And so, I use it for puppies. If you've been using it and your dog is no longer puppy and you're doing it for the same thing, that's just highlighting for you, you've got a flaw in your training plan. So, please adjust that training plan. Leave me a comment. Let me know what your positive interrupter word is, and let me know how the conditioning goes. I'll see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog. Tater's pretty good at hitting targets. Now it's your turn. If you're not a subscriber to this page, go ahead and hit that subscribe button now. Be sure to turn on the notification bell so you'll never miss another video. And if you are already a subscriber, that's for you. Go ahead and give yourself a really good cookie.