free dog training questions and answer

Episode 82 | BONUS EPISODE Q and A! 10/8/2020

Here, Annie takes the following questions: 
How can you train a dog to not freak out if strange dogs, off leash, appear out of no where?  
What work-to-eat toys can you use with wet or fresh food? 
Can you train a dog to stay away from the litter box and the cat food? 
A dog likes playing fetch but doesn't like going on walks. Is fetch going to be enough exercise for him? 
A new rescue dog barks all night at nothing in particular. Why? And how can you get him to stop barking? 
How can you get a dog to pee on a curb instead of on trees? 

Join Annie Grossman for a live Q and A most Thursdays.
Have a question? Visit AnnieGrossman.com/ask or upload a recording at anchor.fm/dogs.
Transcript:

Hi, my name is Annie Grossman and I'm a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by school for the dogs, a Manhattan based facility I own and operate along with some of the city's finest dog trainers. During this podcast, we'll be answering your questions, geeking out on animal behavior, discussing pet trends and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to School for the Dogs podcast.

Hey everyone. This is a bonus Q and A episode. I try and answer questions live every Thursday. You can sign up to come to my free live Q and A at schoolforthedogs.com/qanda. And you will see the next one I'm doing. I then am trying to take recordings of those Q and A's and post them here to the podcast feed. If you have a question, you can email me directly at annie@school for the dogs. You can also go to anchor.fm/dogs and record your question there. Thanks for being here.

You know, I was just thinking about how, when, when I used to work at an office, which was not for very long, but in my early twenties, it was so wonderful to have like an IT person, like just someone there, like when something doesn't work, you can be like, excuse me. I remember this one great IT guy's name was Ramon would just be like, Ramon, my mouse won't click won't make the right clicky sound, or whatever, like whatever little thing, and Ramon would be there and he would fix it or he'd like, go to get me like another computer or whatever. Like, don't you like, I mean, I haven't had that for a long time because I've been, I was just thinking that I bet right now in the, in the moment of COVID everybody working from home, that a lot of people are missing their… people are missing their IT people. That's the moment of greatest appreciation for IT people.

I say that because every time I have to do anything, I feel like I need a friking IT person. It's like, it's see right now, I'm trying to like record on in Audacity, which is what I record the podcast in while recording on whatever else, this thing is that I'm recording in. And, and it's like, doesn't want me to do it. Like it's….I mean, the amount of stuff you have to figure out as an adult person is just beyond, like, there's just like, like life involves so much paperwork and so much figuring things out. All right.

Hi, Annie Grossman here I am answering dog training questions. I have a few lined up. This went well last week. So it went well. I mean, getting some questions in the chat area here I'm doing this on Instagram live at the same time and you…if you want to ask the question, do it through the computer  at schoolforthedogs.com/qanda.

And I'm going to try taking if anybody wants to ask a live call and do a little screen share with me, we can do that too. Just in the webinar jam thing, you need to click speak and that will form a queue. And then I will try to let you in from the queue. I think you should do it from a computer, not from not from a tablet or your phone or whatever. I don't think it's gonna work that well.

So hello. Hey Cooper. Nice to see you there. Hey, Yolanda. Yolanda, just before I started recording, she and I, she and I were talking about how or I was talking and she was saying, “yes,” That's sounds this conversation works right now, Yolanda, about how under appreciated tech people, IT people, must be because we all have to fix our own tech stuff at this point. Unless you're blessed to live with someone who's like really into tech and good at figuring these things out, which I'm not. I'm not living with anyone who's particularly helpful. Okay.

And I had an update from last week from Denise who wrote me about her sister's dog, who would not walk with her. And long story short, I said, you know, there might be any number of reasons why the dog doesn't want to walk with your sister, but want to walk with other people in the household and Denise listened to, and she wrote back:

Hi, Annie, I really enjoyed your ….wait, hold on. Okay. Wait, let's see. I need my tech person.

Hi, Annie. I really enjoyed your webinar. Great to hear your ideas about my sister's dog. Very useful. It's interesting. It's funny. But the reason she thought of why the dog won't walk with her is because she went on huge walks, like two hours. My sister really likes walking. The particular day of the last walk. She remembers it was a long walk and the dog was knackered. This is when he started refusing to go with her. I mean, I hear you. It could have been a siren or a skateboard, but a year or two on, it's hard to remember that, but she sort of jokes that the dog won't go with her because she tires him out. Then we laugh because we think surely a dog would rather long walks than short walks or no walks. What do you say to that?

Oh my God. Like, duh, I say like, I don't know why you're asking a dog trainer. This question. No, clearly that sounds like what it is. I mean, you have a lot more information than I do, and this is the conclusion you're coming up with. And it certainly makes sense to me. I mean, you say surely a dog would rather long walks  than short walks or no walks. What do you say to that? I mean, lots of people don't want to take long walks. Lots of people don't want to exercise at all. So if you think about it in those terms, like, would you just assume like a long run is going to be more interesting to all people then along than a short one or a long walk? I mean, look, that's my approach to dog training is like, think about in like the roughest terms, how this would make sense to a human  in a similar human situation and go from there.

And I certainly think, I mean, if somebody was making me exercise more than I felt like exercising, I wouldn't want to hang out with that person. Right. I mean, exercising of any kind really is just like a shaping process. Like you, you need to start out with what you like, what's short and enjoyable. And and build up from there. And you know, and in building up, you might find some limits and it sounds like this dog has a limit. So I suggest your sister take the dog for shorter walks. If the dog really refuses to go out with her at all, have her go out with the other person who's walking the dog so that maybe the dog can start to associate being outside in some way with your sister even if it's with your sister and someone else. And, let me know how that goes and yeah, stop with these, like death march for this dog who doesn't want to take long walks

It's funny. I think it's funny.

Yolanda, it's funny. Right. All right. Yolanda is asking questions too. Yolanda, ‘cause you were here first, I'm going to take your question before I look at anyone else's question.

And also Yolanda, last week you were here last week you were asking about your dog, Cody, who is going crazy because the neighbor's dog is in heat. And Cody is intact, is that PC? Intact? And I don't know.  Is a non neutered male and is going bananas because he wants to get it on with the neighbor's dog. And I asked, the other School for the Dogs trainers about this ‘cause I told you, I didn't know very much about dog sex problems. I told my husband and he was like puppies? Which is not what I would recommend.

But anyway, Anna Ostroff said, “this is really tricky, especially since it's a neighbor's dog. From what I do know about this separation and management is key. Truly the main solution is to keep them as far away from each other as possible. That might mean having a polite discussion with the neighbor about not having the dogs out at the same time, setting up a strict schedule and having the male dog on the far opposite side of the house from the neighbor's home and maybe request the same of the neighbor. Female dogs can attract male dogs as far as I understand from really far distances. So even these measures may not solve it. I have read various articles on this and they all seem to point in the same direction. There are smaller things you can do, try to mask the smell, ask them to put the female in diapers to assist with this if she is not already. And of course as much physical and mental enrichment as possible for the male dog to tire him out. But still management separation are number one. If anybody else has a better suggestion, let Annie know for sure.”

Yes, please. I would be curious to learn more about this. So if you are someone who knows more than I do about non neutered dogs and how they behave around female dogs in heat, let me know.

As anyone who might've listened to this week's podcast might know, I am not afraid to discuss animal sex parts. There was a lot of  bovine penis talk in this last episode.

All right, Yolanda has another question says long question:

Lately, once a month, on average, we find ourselves head on with approaching dog in unexpected circumstances and Cody reacts massively. Last months it was a dog that turned the corner a while walking by a baseball field. Two off-leash dogs ran up to the fence. Cody reacts to the point where I have to pull him away while he lunges and barks uncontrollably, because the other dogs come even closer. I worry this damages, his perception of me being able to protect him or handle threats as we have a history of leash reactivity. I feel like I'm doing my best, but I wonder if there are any drills or practices I can prepare for such surprise situations.

Oh yes. That is a long question. And I am giving quick answers here. You know, my quick answer here, Yolanda, is that really going to be that I think you should do our Sidewalks Psychos class which we offer in person and I believe we're doing it virtually now too. And you know, I know from talking to you and working with you, Yolanda, you know, you're very tuned in to Cody's behavior. I know that you do a lot of training with him. I know that you, you understand, you know, classical conditioning and operant conditioning. And so I think, you know, there's a lot of the pieces of the puzzle that you I'm sure are already putting together. Like, you know, first of all, you need to manage his environment as much as possible. And I mean, you're saying this is happening once a month. I'm wondering if it's happens, you know, usually by this baseball field, is there a certain spot? I mean  you're never gonna be able to a hundred percent protect, unfortunately, your dog from off-leash dogs who shouldn't be off leash. And you're smart to be thinking about all the things you can do to preemptively deal with this and management, you know, being the number one, like try and make sure it doesn't happen. When it does happen. If he's reacting massively to me, that means you need to introduce him to those stimuli at  a greater difference at less of an intensity and practice that over and over and over until it's nothing.

And that's the kind of thing that like I do think, you know, I think there's so much learning people can do on their own, but I also think there's a great value to taking a class where you're… especially at class for something that feels kind of hard, like, you know, working leash reactivity, like, you know, slams, you need the accountability, you need the community of talking to other people who are dealing with reactivity, and that's where you're going to be able to practice those kinds of exercises where you're going to help him, not only, you know, feel better about these attacks, but know like exactly what you can do in those moments to put him where you want him to be, where he's going to be least stressed out. And, you know our Sidewalk Psychos instructors are just so awesome at that kind of stuff. And it's not, not my specialty,  but I have seen how owners can learn to you know, with, with the guidance of our  instructors really learn to transform the lives of their dog  living, you know, in the city.

And by the way, like, I think this is something that's coming up more and more. I mean, I hope not the off-leash stuff. Anecdotally. I think there are more dogs off leash now then than before, actually in the podcast episode I did about the the Amy Campbell and oh gosh, I forget the guy's name, that incident in Central pPark that happened where the dog was off leash and the man was asking her, asking the owner to put the dog on leash and it just erupted into this huge you know, racially charged ridiculous thing. In that episode I talked about, I think it was a couple incidents, I know my friend Bailey, whose dog got attacked by a dog off leash. I think because like, you know, the world is on its head right now. I think that there are people who are, who have been, you know, developing new, perhaps not good habits with their dogs, letting their dogs go off leash, you know, especially like in New York City, when so much stuff was shut down, I'm sure other places were like that too. It probably felt more like, you know, why not?

Anyway, also, you know, for a while the dog parks were closed. And so I think people were letting their dogs off leash in order to get them some more exercise. So yes, there are things you can do to help Cody learn where to be, how to be, how to feel that in the presence of other dogs, even other dogs that are coming out of the blue. Hope that is helpful.

So many good questions here. I had all these questions prepared, but you're all asking questions. So I don't know what to do. I think I should address those of you who are here, then we can go to some of these prepared questions I had, but this is not prepared. This is me on the fly. So this is like improv dog training answers.

Leah says:

I am having a hard time finding enrichment toys, ideas for George's new, fresh food. As I have mostly kibble-friendly work to eat toys.

Oh, good question. I love talking about dog toys. My favorite thing. I mean, I love slow food bowls. There it's really no harder than feeding a dog and a regular bowl. I think I have… I did do a whole podcast episode about slow food bowls. My dog gets most of his food in slow, food bowls. Actually I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna run and get them..hold,

Okay. These are just the ones that I grabbed and like my husband and I have a whole thing, like, he's always like, why do you have to have all these toys? Can't you throw some of them out? Like, no, no, they have to be on hand for moments like this.

Isn't this cute little pineapple slow food bowl, this one's great for raw food. We just started carrying these there from Zippy Paws. I think you said raw food, fresh food, basically anything that's you know, not dry food, but you can use these for dry food too. You can freeze food in this kind of thing. I do that all the time. Here's another slow food bowl from Amos's library of slow food bowls. Another one, we have all these at Store for the Dogs, if you look up slow food bowls there.. This is like probably my fav. It's called the Northmate green feeder. You can use this with wet food, dry food. What's nice about it is it has this like little lip. So the it's not like liquid it's going to run out. Like, I don't know, like some, I don't know some of them, food  gets out of it more. But this one's great, super durable. This one's like five years old, I think. It's from this Scandinavian company. They also make like a pink one, that has like spikier bits.

And what else we have here? Nina Ottosson toys are the sheez. This one has, this one has lost some of its bits.

Improv. I didn't, it didn't have these ready to go for, I don't have these camera ready. I'm just showing you what’s in my personal cupboard, but what's great about then, you know, about Nina Ottosson toys this one, this one is not my fave. This one I think is called the Brick because these things do fall off. But, overall I do love Nina Ottosson  toys, like  lately, I like the Hide N Slide, most like it doesn't have like the same kind of removable pieces. This is actually an old Nina Ottosson toy. It has these pegs that go there that lock it in. So then you have to…the dog has to get the peg out and get these out. This is the old version of the Nina Ottosson toys before they started being sold by Outward Hound. And we carry the Nina Ottosson toys from Outward Hound, and I liked them and they're like relatively affordable. Like they're, I think they're $25. These ones that they used to sell, those were like 40 or 50 bucks. And they were super sturdy. The new ones, I like, it's just like, like honestly this is what they ended up looking like, I know you don't maybe know what normal looks like. So if you don't understand my Nina Ottosson feelings, but this one's just like so super sturdy, even I did, I guess when I did lose one of the drawers, I don't think it actually broke up. But anyway, these are all great toys that you can use with wet food, fresh food, whatever. Lastly at the Toppl — love the Toppl. It's kind of like a Kong, but with these like little, stalag… or are they stalagtites… whatever mites or tites, whatever  little sort of fingers to hold the food.

You can actually put two Toppls together, a small and a large one, and then you can like bang it around and then dry food can come out of there, but you can also just fill it with wet food. And you know, what some people do is, of you're like alternating different proteins or whatever, you can stuff these with each like color coded. And I know our trainer Sandra does that, like blue is Turkey and cause they come in three colors and oranges is beef or whatever. And then I think she freezes them. So I give my dog Amos also a lot of meals in here. You can also just smear peanut butter in it. Anyway, I really, really liked the Toppl, I like all of the West Paws stuff. All right.

Sarah Lulu says: How do I prevent my dog from going up the stairs and invading my cat's litter box and food without compromising my cat’s space. I already have a gate on the stairs, but worried about my cat’s knees. So how do I teach my puppy that upstairs is off limits?

Yeah. this is management. I wouldn't worry about teaching the dog upstairs is off limits. I would, you know, perhaps you could…perhaps you could teach just not let them have access to upstairs, like you're saying with a gate or whatever, but honestly I would just keep your cat’s food high up somewhere where where your dog isn't going to get it. You know, cats can eat off tables, shelves. I'm sure you can find a place where it can belong just to the cat. And litter box, there's this litter box that has a top to it offhand, I can't remember what it's called.

I will find it though. And I will tell you, but I'm sure if you just Google like litter box with top, my cat learned to go in there and no pro with no problem and the dog really can't get into it. So I would say get one of those cat litter box things.

Or teach your cat to go in the toilet. I am a big fan of teaching cats to go in the toilet. Although I haven't lived in with a cat in a long time and I never worked that much with my old cat Sylvia on this. But its more  I'm like fascinated with cat toilet training as a concept, partially because Charles Mingus, the jazz musician, was obsessed toilet training for cats and actually wrote a book or like a booklet called the Charles Mingus Catalog for a toilet training your cat. And he wrote like beat poetry about cat toilet training. And for that odd reason, I am very interested in cat toilet training as a subject.

Okay, I'm going to take some of these questions that I prepared. I prepared it's going to make it, that puts the pressure on… that I looked at 10 minutes before starting this Q and A but still, if you're here and you have a question, either click the speak button, don't do it from your phone, do it from a computer. And/or put your question in chat and I will try to get to it.

Okay. Mary has a Shiba Inu who is about a year old. And Mary says: Hi, Annie, Keeba is extremely uncomfortable and potentially anxious on his walks. He's very comfortable in the house with us, but whenever we go to put the leash on to take him for his walks, he runs away and we have to chase him to put it on. While out on walks, he will just stop walking. We've tried waiting until he's ready to continue moving, but he will just sit and lie down. We've been using lots of treats and positive reinforcement, but sometimes it feels like we have to bribe him to keep walking. Because he's not getting enough exercise on walks, he is becoming destructive in the house. He's ripped through bedsheets, chewed the baseboards and he tries to dig in the floors. When he starts being destructive, we give them toys and try to redirect his attention, but he's not interested in them. The only exercise size he seems to enjoy is playing fetch in the backyard, but I'm worried that not going for walks will have a negative impact on his physical health. We would love to be able to get Kebba to become braver and more comfortable on his walks.

So I want to address the part of this question not about his feelings about going on walks because there's too many things I just don't know here. Was he feeling okay about going on walks and then that stopped? Did something happen? What are the triggers that cause him to stop walking? And because we're having only a one-way conversation here, like, there's too many unknowns to talk to all of that stuff, but but I want to pick up on what Mary is asking here about playing fetch in the backyard, because, you know, we think of like fetch as like one thing, like you throw the ball, the dog gets the ball, but like, there's so many things you could do with fetch that could be fun for him. I mean, the game of fetch could become the reward to some training exercises. And I think getting into doing some training with him could be a really great way to help him build confidence and to help exercise him, give him like something to do, give him purpose.

You know, that's like one of the things that I really love about dog training is it's like, you know, it's a way that you can, you know, we think about dog training is like, there's a problem and then there's a solution, but so much of dog training that's happening, you know, on the best levels are people who are basically like playing with their dogs, teaching their dogs, giving their dogs confidence and enjoying spending time with their dog.  Whether that's people who work, you know, do scent work with dogs, whether that's people who are doing agility, or just, you know, like how many doctors and lawyers do we work with, who like at night are teaching their dogs to roll over in their living rooms.  Like whatever it is, it's not always like, you know, here's the problem and let's fix it.

Sometimes it's just about spending time with your dog in such a way that like, your dog is going to just feel more comfortable in the world because they've like you're helping them figure out how the world works. Like whether you're teaching a dog to, you know, find a bomb or you're teaching a dog to play dead in your living room either way, like you're building your dog's ability to understand you, to understand like the things that are going on and in the world, how things work, you know? And you're building your ability to communicate with your dog, like when things you know, when things are okay. And if nothing else, like, even if you don't end up teaching your dog, anything, you know, particularly great, your dog is going to be, you know, making associations with being with you. You know, great things happen when I'm with my person ‘cause I just get like tons of tiny little treats all the time, you know, for no reason or, I mean, ideally it's because you're teaching something specific, but like I'm saying,  I put up the other day, like a picture of a little video of my daughter, basically just like dropping treats for my dog, Amos, like kind of rewarding him for sitting. But honestly, like I just want him to feel good about like being in the room with her. So if all she's doing is dropping treats on the floor and that's what training looks like.

And you know, some adults might, that might be what training is looking like too. But if nothing else, like it's developing good feelings with being around these people and that is going to pay off with dividends, I think once, you know, like I always think about it like a teabag it's like I want to be the, the teabag in the water of my dog's world. So that like wherever I am, there's just like, you know, around me sort of like liquid feelings of comfort and happiness, because like we've developed that confidence in general.

Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Anyway, so my long short answer part of that question, part of it is, Hey, let's, let's do a training session. Let's talk about some of the things maybe going on walks and how you can how you can help with a walks, but let's also let's also look at how you can just do training with your dog in general to boost his confidence a bit.

Alright. Stacy who has a Chihuahua mix, maybe a beagle, she says who is about five years old in San Francisco. We recently adopted a five-year-old Chihuahua mix. Cookie has settled into our family nicely, but we're having potty issues. We live in an apartment and take her out on walks to go potty. Her usual routine is to pee at two separate trees and then poop at a third one, but she will not pee or poop at any tree she already used recently. She ends up wanting to  walk for two blocks before she finds an acceptable tree. This is probably not sustainable when it gets cold and rainy. I’d like to start training her now to pee and poop at the curb as I've seen other dogs do. I asked a couple of dog owners how they did it, and those dogs were trained that way from puppyhood. I've heard the best way to get a doctor potty in a particular space is to leave a pile of their poop there but obviously I can't leave my dog's poop on the curb. Can you please help me teach Cookie how to go potty at the curb.

Okay. So isn't that a great question. Peeing, like I think it's a great idea to work on teaching a dog to pee and poop on cue, but the truth is like, and you're just kind of asking, like, how can we give like a new cue to Cookie So right now her cue to pee is a tree specifically, a tree that smells novel. We'd like the cue to be the curb. Now peeing, you know, whenever there's a behavior, there's like the thing that comes before and the thing that comes after, right? The antecedent behavior consequence, we call it ABC. The consequence to peeing is that, I think, peeing just feels good, right? Like you don't have to be there necessarily feeding her sausages for the behavior to be rewarded. So when she's peeing on the, on the trees, like peeing on the tree feels good, the likelihood that she's going to pee on the trees in the future, you know, goes up. So, you know, you could keep her from peeing on the trees and that probably will in some way eventually make her less interested in peeing on trees. But I'm a little confused why peeing on trees is a problem again? Oh, because you have to walk her like a longer way. Yeah,I would just, you know, work at giving a new cue to the behavior of peeing. So right now she sees a tree and she's like, oh, I need to pee here. Well, you could just add a cue basically before the tree, before you get to the tree. And it could be whatever. I mean, it should be something probably, you know, short, easily perceptible. It could be, you know, “potty.”  It could be, whistle noise, you know, it doesn't really matter just pick something. And as long as she's able to perceive it, you're able to, you know, give that cue right before you get to the tree, which is her current cue. Then let her pee. And then, you know, like I said, peeing is going to just probably feel good, but I would reward those pees with something delish right away.

So again, what it's gonna look like is you give your new cue. Sometimes with clients, I joke that you could actually, you could say your least a favorite political person, or we had a client who would say oh gosh, I'm gonna forget. It was the British football team that he liked the least. But I can't remember what the team was. Shoot, I'm going to have to ask them now. And anyway say, “Trump,” say, “go potty.” You say whatever as you get to that tree and you know, she's going to go and then follow it right away with something good. You don't really even have to use a clicker. I think, I mean, you could click right after she goes. You don't want to talk and try and distract her while she's going, which is something, you know, often when people try and do this, you see them standing over their dogs going, you know, Go potty, Mabel, go potty, go potty, go potty, go potty.

Like, no you're going to say at once otherwise what your, what your dog is learning is that the cue is called “potty, go potty, go potty”, which is unnecessary. Yeah. So once you are pairing the, the new cue with the old cue you know, she ideally will start to anticipate that the new cue always follows the old cue. And then the old cue is not going to become necessary, ideally. I would also couple this with giving her a lot of opportunities to get her to pee and poop on the curb, if that's ideally where you want her to go, I don't think you need to leave her poop there. So that's, so that's good news. You know, curbs already, like you've mentioned are frequently peed and pooped upon you know, it's funny that there used to be the signs that maybe there still aren't, it just like, I don't see them like “curb your dog.” And I always wondered, like, does that mean like curb your dog, like, like reign in your dog, like curb your enthusiasm, or does it mean like your dog should go on the curb of the street, like is being on the curb, like a verb? Like, I don't know. I really don't know. I still don't know. I also, now that I think about it, it's funny that like, you see those signs, but nobody says that the signs don't explain how they just assume that like, people are going to curb their dog. Like we all, like, that's a baked in thing that everybody knows how to do. Whereas actually people need to ask dog trainers these questions, and I'm so glad I'm here to answer the question, how to curb your dog. Yeah.

So you're going to encourage you know, with walks on the curb. In fact, I would probably go to the curb before you go to the tree, because you want to up the chances that she's going to pee and poop on that curb and not on the tree. But then again, like I said, you know, dogs pee and poop on trees, I think you know, given the number of trees and the number of dogs that are out there I think the trees are going to survive, although there's certainly I've been yelled at for having my dog pee on trees in my life. And I maybe that really is killing the trees in which case I will come out against peeing on trees if you're a dog, but I mean, haven't like all animals peed on all plants for like a really, really long, really long time.

One time I was out with my dog and my friend, Krista, and we were outside this nice building nearby my apartment and my dog or her dog, one of our dogs, I forget whose dog was there, lifted his leg and peed on this building. Anyway, this guy came up to us and was like, excuse me, I'd appreciate it if your dog didn't pee on this building, this is my building. It's like everything like good luck, good luck policing dogs from peeing on your building. I think if you, if you have your own building in New York City, you have to live with the fact that someone is going to probably pee on their building. And if you're, if it's just a dog, you're probably lucky.

All right. I think I'll take one more question. Dear Annie, this is Olivia from Georgia, who has Murphy, a pit bull mix who is about six years old. Olivia say:  hello, we just adopted Mr. Murphy. And he's a sweetie, but every night at three at night, I just hear him barking and whining. One other thing is I have to hear his toenails clip clap on the hardwood floor, but I guess I can't fix that. Oh yes, you can fix that. Wait, hold on. We'll talk about that. The other night I finally went to go see what was happening. He was just walking around the house at three in the morning barking at nothing. I hope you can help me figure out what's going on because I got to go to school and I’m missing hours of sleep.

Gosh you know, it sounds like Murphy is stressed out. I can't tell you what he's stressed out about, but you know, I think I'm all for adopting dogs, but the fact is, you know, we can never know what any dog’s life experiences were before. I mean, even dogs that we live with, we can't know all of their life experience and sadly, a lot of dogs when you adopt a dog have had life experiences that may have been, you know, a lot, you know, even if it's just, you know, going from one nice person's house to another nice person's house that could still be stressful for the dog who, who knows, what kind of stress he has maybe experienced and that could be leading  to this kind of behavior. You know, it could be some kind of stress, something stressing them out in your home.

This is a hard question to actually address one way because there's a lot of missing information. But I think that this is a situation where I would say, I think, you should call up a trainer. We are doing virtual sessions. If you're in Georgia, we'd love to work with you. And let's see if we can get to the bottom of this a little bit more. I mean, we certainly want to make sure he's getting enough exercise. He's getting enough enrichment, all of these things. And you know, you say he's barking at nothing. Well, he might be barking at something. It's just not that..not something that you're perceiving. Most behaviors have some kind of trigger, but it might not be a trigger that you are aware of.

I remember when, when I was a kid, my mom would get upset cause our dog would like, I dunno, pee on the rug or whatever. And she'd be like, and there was no reason. There was no reason for him to do it now. I think back I'm like, well, there was no reason, no reason that you saw.

Do you, we have time for one more question. All right, I'm gonna do last question. If you have one in your, in this chat, hr you'd like to speak now is your moment.

Last question here is from Kelly, whose dog is a setter named Willie Nelson. Kelly is in Winchester, Virginia, and Kelly says: our dog, Willie was adopted from a local shelter. The shelter told us the owner relinquished him because he couldn't afford to feed him. Willie is a very sweet dog with an almost boyish childlike nature. To him, life is fun and exciting. He would never hurt anyone and has been a good companion for our son. There are two very concerning behaviors. Number one, Willie barks a lot. It is almost like it's pathological. I know we're talking about a dog, but to give you the idea, we've tried to ignore the behavior and literally he never stops. Um tried the whistle. Nope. I tried a bark collar. Nope. Honestly, nothing works. It's obsessive and abnormal. To top it off, any rain or storms and I just know I'm going to be up all night. He usually crates fine, except during these time storms, then I keep him out. But he is prone to pooping at that time in the house, digging at the carpet and urinating on the carpet.

Okay. And then she has a second part of this question. Again, this is kind of ditto to the question before this. I think we need to get you working with a trainer because there's a lot going on here and, you know it might be a simple fix, you know, it could be some  things triggering him. Like I said, you know, there are things that maybe, you know, you're not perceiving sometimes, you know, I'm not saying this is the solution, because like I said, there are too many things I don't know here, but, you know, sometimes like clients see such success by doing something as simple as putting like a door sweep under the door, like to mute the noise from that's coming in the hallway or pulling down the shades of the windows, you know, for some dogs like the unpredictability of life outside those windows is a car going to come by, is a person going to come by or not as deer or whatever, it's like stressful and just like blocking those those things can be enough to keep a dog from barking.

But, you know, again, it could be any number of things and I think to get to the bottom of it he would be smart to work with a good dog trainer. Certainly would be happy to…we'd be happy to work with you remotely, but could also I'll help you find some trainers in your area. But and you know, a lot of dogs have have real stress about thunderstorms. It's not something I know very much about, although I've seen cases of it. I think that's a different, larger topic that I will report back. It is something that dogs are sometimes it's so bad, they have to be given medication for it. Thundershirts, if you're familiar with undershirts, that whole brand started because of dogs who are stressed out by whatever it is, the change in the barometric pressure or whatever that comes with under storm. And like that way of being like swaddled by a tight shirt actually can be really helpful for dogs. I, to bring it back to humans, you know, I think that's related something in us, like a way it feels good to be under a blanket like that heaviness, they make weighted blankets for people. Temple Grandin famously talks about her hug machine. So there's certainly something there. But for some dogs that can be really severe and a thunder shirt is not going to be enough. And if that is what's going on let me…well, I suggest you work with a trainer, you can also talk to your vet or in some cases you might, might even want to find a vet behaviorist.

Her second part of her question of Kelly's question is I almost immediately, we discovered Willy as a serious counter story and he has gained his share of free dinners. He also seems a bit hypervigilant for awhile after eating food. He holds his head down and almost seems to sneak, lack of a better description around the house. He won't lay down. I'm not sure what to do with that. We have a miniature poodle as well, and he's Willy's buddy. His name is Harry. Harry, we raised as a puppy. He's almost the same age as Willie, Harry doesn't have these behaviors. Anyway, anything you can do to help us the behavior sometimes feel greater than what is healthy for our family, but we love Willie and would like to know if we can feel if he can feel better or if there's something we can do to make it better.

I think what I suggest here is that you, you know, again, try and do some fun training with this dog. It sounds like two things, one just some fun training, even if what you're doing is training, you know, silly stuff, but certainly could train, you know, “sit” “down” and “leave it”, “drop it,” all like the basics. You know, in a basic class, we're doing virtual classes, other places are doing virtual classes. You don't have to go somewhere. Some fun exercises with this dog are going to help him gain some confidence and also can maybe help make meal time more of a kind of like all day thing. Like you could use the dog's regular food and training so that you can maybe help break his memories of whatever happened with food in the past.

You know, it sounds like maybe there was some issue where he would get punished after eating or he would have to sneak food, or again, who knows there's some, you know, there are things we'll never know about what his life was like before, but probably the previous owner was not using food in training throughout the day, so you could build this new habit of using meals during training. Dry food can be used during training, just one piece at a time, if you want to spice it up, you could sort of make like a trail mix of like, you know, 10% treats and 90% his regular food. And so he doesn't know which piece is going to go get next, to use during training. You know, we tend to think of like, this is food and these are treats, but in the end they all kind of end up in the same place. You just want to use something that he's going to be able to chew quickly, swallow quickly. And yeah, you know, I would definitely suggest you check out the Good Dog Training course and also our Core Behavior course. The Core behavior course has some really nice just exercises that you can do at home, really sort of breaking things down in a way that I think might help you help Willie build some confidence.

And you know, the counter surfing stuff, again,  it sounds like this is probably a habit he came to you with, and this is going to involve some human training where at least for the, you know, an good period of time, I do not want Willie to have  the opportunity to surf on your counters. Please keep food off of the counters. Put up some signs to remind people if necessary and then make a place in the kitchen where Willie can get food. So he doesn't feel like, you know, he has to steal food and then he's going to be you know, smacked for it or whatever, or whatever it might've happened to him. So have like an allowable place that can be in the kitchen. It should be far from the counter. A mat on the ground or bed. I like using like a yoga mat because you can like clean it easily, wipe it down easily. Have that in the count in the corner. And you know, throughout the day you can give him food in that spot. You could even you know, use like a Treat and Train, which is like a remote controlled dispenser treat dispenser and like, you know, have that going, whether you're triggering it yourself or it's on a timer, have that going near his mat while you're eating dinner to help him be like, oh, this is where I hang out and good stuff that happens over here while they're eating their human food.

And again, I mean, I think toys would probably be, I suggest food toys for every dog. So that's a blanket statement, he should be eating his food and toys. And if you're interested in in toys I happened to have all these toys right here. Amos, so many toys. All right. Amos, can you say bye? My cute puppy, my 15 year old puppy.

All right. Thanks for being here guys. I will try and do this next week again. I was able to post this as a bonus episode for the podcast, and I will maybe do that again soon with this episode. You can email me questions at annie@schoolforthedogs.com or even better. You can go to Anniegrossman.com/ask. All right. See you guys soon. Bye.

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Links:

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Happy Bowls Pineapple by ZippyPaws

Northmate Green Feeder

Northmate Pink Feeder

Nina Ottosson Dog Brick – Treat dispensing toy

Nina Ottosson Dog Hide ‘N Slide

Toppl by West Paw

Good Dog Training Online Course

Core Behaviors Online Course

Treat and Train

Do you have a dog training question?

Annie Grossman
annie@schoolforthedogs.com