04 SepEpisode 23 | Ask Annie: Navigating dog runs and managing elevator manners
In this Q+A episode, Annie discusses how to deal with dogs in elevators, and how to navigate dog parks. She also talks about what to do if your dog gets off leash, and how to help a dog who attacks her brother whenever they pass another dog.
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Episode 23: Navigating dog runs and managing elevator manners
Transcript:
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Annie:
Hey podcast, listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is a Q and A episode. This is my second Q and A episode. It's also our back to school episode, and I don't know about you, but I hated school, pretty much. I pretty much hated school all through all of my formal schooling to be totally honest. And I feel like September always felt like a sad time where there was sort of, dread, which I think, this song conveys. But now as an adult and as the owner of a school, School for the Dogs, I don't feel that way at all. I love the weather and I love that my dog students are all coming back from their vacations and they're psyched to be back. I'm really glad to see their owners. So many of whom have become really good friends.
And it feels like it feels like school is, is a good thing and it's revving up. And actually we just signed a lease on a new space for School for the Dogs, our second space, we're going to be operating in both locations for at least a few months, if not longer. The new space is on East Seventh street. We're hoping to it open by next month. So that's another reason that I'm excited about this back to school season. But for me when I was younger, I think the only thing that made going back to school slightly manageable was the back to school shopping. To be honest, I liked getting books and pens and I liked getting a new backpack and I liked that part of it. So I thought in that spirit, I would mention before I start answering some of the great questions that have come in, I thought I would mention a few of the cool new products that we have, uh, at storeforthedogs.com and maybe a couple of ones that we've had for awhile.
We’re really excited about these new activity mats that have come in, they're made of fleece. They're kind of like snuffle mats, which is something that we've carried for a while. Different kinds of snuffle mats, snuffle mats are basically fabric kind of like rugs that you can hide things in, you can hide dry food or treats and they're like really, really super plushy stringy bathmats. But these new activity mats have even more, sort of like, fabric obstacles on them, where you can hide things, tuck things in flaps and such. And they're cool because they're portable, they're washable and the dogs are super into them. So I will link to those in the show notes, but you can find them at storeforthedogs.com. If you just look up fleece activity mat.
We also are now carrying what we're calling wall mounted slow feeders. They attach to pretty much any surface with suction cups. They're these like little rubber, silicone triangle shaped thingamajigs that you can smear peanut butter in even just wet food or cream cheese, and basically your dog licks it out. But it's especially cool because we have a lot of clients who are using it when they're giving their dogs baths because you can section it to the wall of the bathtub and keep your dog very occupied while you wash them off, shampoo them down.
The last product that I wanted to mention is something that we've carried for a long time, but I think kind of is… reminds me of buying a backpack, I guess, because it's something your dog is going to use all the time, but it comes in lots of different colors, so you can change it up every year if you feel like it without too much of an expense. But this is the Freedom Harness, which is a really wonderful harness that you can clip your dog's leash to it, either in the front, at the chest or in the back. We tend to recommend front clip harnesses at School for the Dogs because they can generally reduce pulling, but it's nice to have the option to have a back clip harness too. And I especially like the freedom harness because you can also get a leash that goes with it that has a double attachment, so you can attach it at the front and the back with just one handle on the leash, although we also have clients who have who use both clips with one leash attached to both. Of course you don't have to use two leashes, you can just use one leash. I also love that the colors that it comes in a really wide array of beautiful shades. And it has this nice velvety, Swiss velvet, I think they call it, straps that go under the dogs armpits, which is especially good for dogs who have short hair, like pit bull type dogs, terrier, a lot of terrier type dogs because it doesn't chafe, uh, so badly under their armpits. And I find it to be a very secure harness. Very comfortable comes in a wide array of sizes. So that is certainly one of my favorite harnesses. And if you're looking for a little back to school splurge for your dog, it's definitely a harness I would recommend. Or if you have one already go ahead and get a new color. I really like the teal color. I think they have like the burgundy, which I also really like.
Anyway, this ends the product portion of this episode. I will put these links in the show notes, but you can find all of the, all of these fun things and more at storeforthedogs.com
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Annie:
All right. Our first question comes from Penny who lives in Manhattan and Penny is a former dog walker, and this is sort of a long anecdote/question. But I think it's a worthwhile run. She writes…
At 11:00 PM on a recent Saturday night while walking with a friend and his three dogs. We watched a dog without a harness, or leash run north along Riverside drive near the park entrance, but on the street side. Two full minutes later, as we wondered what humans were with this dog, we saw and heard five people following behind yelling, but softly, “stop him.” Unfortunately for us, all the dog passed us very quickly before we could get his attention with our own dogs or a stick or by just standing in front of him. Two police cars soon followed asking if anyone had seen a dog. It seemed as if the dog ran into the park at 95th street, but it was tough to tell in the dark, the five humans trailing behind seemed like they'd been running for blocks and therefore tired, outsmarted and unsure what to do next. Calling his name and running behind him didn't look like it had any effect thus far.
All of this was hard to watch and got me to thinking about how this happened. And more importantly, wondering once a dog is off leash and starts to run, what can we as mere humans who are much slower than dogs do to stop them. We can't outrun them. Doesn't that invite a game of chase, any way, that we humans don't want to play since we can't win it. We can call the police, I suppose, I actually didn't know this until I saw the police cars on this particular occasion. Is there a cue that we can train and practice, practice practice in order to recall our dogs? Should they begin running the other way? Do we double clip the leash to both the collar and the harness? What if both pieces of equipment break, then what? Do we bring high value treats like cut up turkey, cheese, turkey slices to guarantee a dog's recall to us.
Ironically and most, unfortunately my same friend had one of his dogs wiggle out of her harness just a week later and dart across Riverside drive herself. She was caught by a doorman, but not before several cars slammed on their brakes to avoid her in the street. This was needless to say anxiety laden for my friend and we were both reminded of the dog from the week before. Making sure the equipment on your dog is properly fitted to them is paramount and avoiding these kinds of situations when you're out on a walk. But how do you avoid a literal dog run during off-leash time? Do we avoid off-leash times altogether, unless it's in an enclosed environment? In other words, do we not go to Central Park during the off-leash hours of 9:00 PM to 9:00 AM?
I'm not a trainer. So this is really not clear to me. What is clear is that there probably isn't one definitive answer.
Okay. So there are several questions within this question, and I think it touches on both choices that we need to make as dog owners, touches also on equipment that I think can help and also certain training protocols. And I'd like to address the last part of the question first- what are we going to do about choosing whether or not to bring our dogs to off leash dog runs where there isn't a fixed barrier. So those of you who live in New York City might be aware that I believe most parks or maybe all parks that don't have a designated dog run, it might be the rule, allow dogs to be off leash between the hours of 9:00 PM and 9:00 AM. And certainly as there is a large community of dogs and dog owners who frequent the off-leash hours at Prospect Park in Brooklyn and in Central Park in Manhattan.
Now, I generally feel that all public dog parks are risky and that the safest thing is to avoid them altogether. Now I know this sounds like a bummer bit of news to a lot of dog owners, but from a safety standpoint, I think that we are taking a lot of risks by letting our dogs be off-leash in situations with a lot of dogs that we don't know who are being managed by people we don't know.
And especially in New York City, we have a kind of “bad dog park culture”. That's a term I got from Sue Sternberg, who is an extremely well respected trainer who lectures all over the world about dog-dog interactions and has surveyed dog parks all around the world. And she is the one who pointed out to me how, if you go to a dog park in New York city, you're likely to see kind of like a ring of people on the perimeter of the dog park, maybe drinking their coffee, talking to each other, looking at their phones. And the dogs are kind of in the middle of the dog park. And,you know, were anything to go wrong, people aren't right there to stop things. And when things do go wrong, at least in my experience, people tend to have conversations with their dogs about what's going on rather than actually going in and breaking things up or making sure that things don't go bad to begin with. What you want to see at a dog park is people standing right near their dogs. I like to tell people, you know, if you're going to go to a dog park with your dog, don't think of it as a place where your dog gets to be off leash and he can do whatever he wants to do with all the other dogs. Think about it as a place where your dog and you get to hang out and he gets to be off leash, but you are still very much there together.
And this is because you want your dog to be checking in with you all the time. You want to be checking in with your dog all the time. The best kind of dog-dog play is between two dogs. Ideally two dogs who know each other and have a good history of playing. And most times at the dog park, we don't see these kinds of coordinated play dates. It's just, you know, you show up with your dog and your dog is going to play with whoever's there. And if you start to think about it, you know, it's requiring your dog to do a lot of reconnaissance on the ground, figuring out who is cool to play with who isn't cool to play with, who they want to play with. And it's just a lot, it's having to navigate a whole new social situation and structure, every time you go.
So I think ideally if you're bringing your dog to a dog park, you should be coordinating with another dog owner who, you know, has a dog that your dog plays really well with so that you can be there at the same time. You should be really not far from your dog the whole time. And you really need to be tuned into dog body language to figure out which dogs are appropriate for your dog to be playing with, which dogs are inappropriate and how, you know, be tuned into dog body language enough that you can figure out when your dog is or isn't uncomfortable himself.
I just wanted to mention that we run a dog run at School for the Dogs, we call it School Yard, and we kind of try and run it like our ideal version of what a dog park should be. We approve all the dogs that are there. All the dogs are, most of the dogs know each other just because they've all been approved and have all been coming. Dog owners try and coordinate to be there when they know their dog's friends are going to be there. And perhaps most importantly, we have a trainer who's always there to supervise and help people kind of learn to be better dog park goers. The trainer helps make sure everybody's having fun. Everybody's staying safe, but is also always trying to sort of educate dog owners about what good play looks like. And I honestly think every dog park should have a trainer there just like every pool has a lifeguard. I think having someone in charge makes a really big difference.
So the other thing Penny was asking about what, well, not only, you know, should you, or should you not bring your dog to a dog park, but what about dog parks that have off-leash hours, but are not necessarily fenced in?
I really think, you know, you should go to dog parks that aren't fenced in with a lot of caution. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but I think that there is a certain degree of risk involved and you need to accept that you're taking that risk which, of course, we all take risks all the time. We cross the street against the light. Sometimes we don't wear our seatbelts, right? Like life is full of risks.
But some things that you can do, if you are going to bring your dog to a park that isn't fenced in… first of all, um, you can bring a long leash. I would get a nice, thin, very, very long dog lead. I will link to one in the show notes, but you can get them at any pet store at Amazon. Um, it should be something lightweight so it's not like weighing on your dog, but that you can hold onto so you can be certain your dog is not going to run off.
Certainly also a good idea to practice a really good recall. And the recall is going to come up when I talk about Penny’s next question about what do you do when a dog runs away? And I don't want to go too much into the topic of come because I have an episode in the works all about teaching come, but there is something called the whistle recall, which I think is a great thing to practice, it's kind of an emergency recall and all you really need to do to practice it is blow a whistle and give your dog a treat. Anyway, like I said, in the future episode on teaching come, I will go into more detail on this, but I will link to a great DVD in the show notes. It's all about teaching the whistle recall.
But you know, attach a whistle to your leash and blow it, give a treat, blow it and give a treat. Now, the important thing, however, is that this should be something that you're practicing all the time. You should be practicing this every day and you should be practicing it in low distraction environments, like your kitchen, your living room, your hallway. You want your dog to learn every time my human makes that whistle noise treats fall on the ground so I better be near her feet the moment I hear that sound. It's just pure classical conditioning. You're creating that association between the whistle and good stuff. And when I say good stuff, it should be a really high value treat. You should be practicing this in the dog run but not only in the dog run, like I said, it should be practiced in a lot of situations that aren't as challenging.
And if you do practice it in the dog run, you should practice it a lot of the time when it's not an emergency situation, when your dog is quite close to you, when you know they probably are going to come. But you want that whistle to be like a magnet to your dog as soon as he hears it, he knows he has to come to you. So whistle recall is one thing that you can do, but again, I would advise that if you have any doubt about your dog coming to you, when called whatever you're using to call your dog, I would go to a dog park with a very long leash.
Now, what do you do if a dog runs away from you? Well, first of all, just to go back to the equipment side of things, I think it's never a bad idea to use two leashes with your dog, one on their collar, one on a harness. If you're going to use a harness, or if you're using something like the Freedom Harness, you can connect two leashes to the harness. You can also get a carabiner and attach the harness to the collar so your dog is going to be much less likely to slip out of the collar. These are all relatively small investments, easy things you can do to keep your dog safe outside.
This is not the first horror story I've heard about dogs slipping out of their harnesses and running across huge avenues. Fortunately, Penny’s story has a relatively happy ending, and I'm sad to say that a lot of the stories I've heard like this don't, so I think investing in the right equipment is very smart, especially if you're not the one who's going to be walking your dog. If you have a neighbor walking the dog or a dog walker walking the dog where you're not sure they're going to be putting the harness and everything on right, you want to be as safe as possible. Write out instructions. If you need to take a video demonstrating how to use these things and insist that they use two leashes connected at two different places.
I also really like hands-free leashes. I think that they can certainly up the safety factor. I like to use a Found My Animal leash. There are these very nice nylon rope leashes that I can hook around my waist or I even have clients who use them strapped over their neck and shoulder kind of like somebody would wear a purse. There are lots of really good hands-free leashes out there, but a hands-free leash, you know, you're not going to accidentally let it out of your hand because it's attached at your waist.
Now, the whistle recall is also a really great thing to practice when you have a dog on a leash, just for this very reason. Should your dog get loose, you want to be able to have that magnet, like recall with a whistle that ideally you have on you and Penny asks, you know, should you always have high value treats like cheese or chicken or bacon or whatever on you?
I mean, I think it's a good idea to always have treats on you, but not just for those emergency situations. That's not the time that you want to first be pulling out the good stuff. You want to be giving that good stuff periodically on walks all the time, that's going to help keep your dog from running away from you to begin with. You want to be a source of excellent, yummy things whenever you're outside because, generally, when you're outside with your dog, you are the least interesting thing to your dog because your dog spends a whole lot of time with you and outside is full of lots of novel things. So whatever you can do to up your interesting factor to your dog is certainly wise and giving your dog good treats the whole time that you're outside is going to help towards that. You could even feed your dog’s meal regularly when you're walking outside.
If your dog does get loose, my best suggestion, other than having that excellent whistle recall that you're going to be practicing all the time is to run in the other direction. And I know this seems counterintuitive, but Penny is absolutely right-running towards your dog is encouraging a game of chase where as you want the chase game to be going in the other direction. So you want your dog thinking, “oh, I was running away from her. Now she's running away from me. I better go run towards her and get her.” And I can tell you this works. I worked at a place, years ago, where dogs got out of the facility, ran across the street to the other side of the street. And I did this. I ran away from the dogs and the dogs ran towards me. And thank God because otherwise I'm pretty sure they would have run into the street. It would not have been a happy scene. And there were people watching me on the street as this was happening. And I'm sure they were thinking, “why is this woman running away from these dogs if she's trying to get them,” but whatever it worked. You can practice this too, just when you have a dog on a leash, again, you can practice it with a long lead. But even just on a regular walk, I think it's always a good idea to practice changing directions a lot. You don't want your dog getting too comfortable with the notion of we always walk straight ahead. You want your dog always paying attention to where you are. And I like to say, you know, if you are an unreliable navigator, if you are a crazy driver, who's always switching directions, your dog's going to be much more tuned into you rather than just we're going ahead, we're going ahead,we're going ahead. So you can just practice turning directions all the time and make it kind of a game where your dog is like, “oh, I gotta turn and catch her again.”
One last thought on dogs getting off their leash and running away, make sure your dog has a collar that has his or her name on it. This can, of course, be a tag. Although, my preference is actually collars that have a name, a number actually embroidered on it, both because it cuts down on the jingle-jangly noise, which I think, bothers me, but I also think can bother some dogs who are sound sensitive. But also I'm much less likely, the collar is gonna fall off than a tag, which might fall off. So, you know, you can get really nice embroidered collars that say your dog's name and your phone number online, I think LL Bean makes them, but I'm sure you can type that into Google and find it, lots of places, they're not expensive.
The other thing, which almost feels like it's not worth mentioning because people have a million photos of their dogs anyway, but it's always considered a good idea to have a recent photo of your dog, should your dog get lost. Not only, you know, so that you can show the police what your dog looks like, but so that you can prove the dog is yours should it come to that?
Thanks a lot for that. Great question, Penny. And like Penny said, there isn't really one answer to any of these questions. I've given my thoughts on some of the subjects that she raised, but if you're a trainer or a dog owner who has had success catching a dog who's runaway or dealing with dogs during off-leash hours at a dog park I'd love to hear your thoughts on what kind of advice to give others. Make sure to go to our Facebook group, Facebook/groups/schoolforthedogs
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Our next question comes from Instagram user maxs008, Max writes…
My one dog attacks our other dog. If she sees another dog, it doesn't matter if the other dog is paying attention to them or not. She does this if they're on a leash or in our yard loose, she seems to get excited and not know what to do with herself, so she attacks her brother. Any suggestions to stop this?
So I would diagnose this as a kind of displacement aggression, kind of like, you know, your husband has a bad day at work and comes home and starts losing it at you for no reason and you later find out it's because he had an argument with Brenda in accounting. Now, I think that this behavior might be a hard one to change because it sounds like this is something your dog has been doing for quite a while and the more history your dog has at practicing a behavior the harder it can be to get rid of it. Doesn't mean it's impossible, it just means it might take a little bit more work.
I would say the first step would be to start doing some work with your dog when the other dog isn't around. You want to do what you can to take the dog who's being attacked out of the equation. In fact, I would like it, if your other dog never gets attacked again, I bet your other dog would like that too. So that might mean at least during this training period, not letting them out into the yard together at the same time, not necessarily walking at the same time. Maybe you even have a friend or family member who can take the other dog for a little while so you can really focus your attention on working with the dog that's causing this problem.
Now for your dog, who's having the issues, the attacking issues, I want you to figure out what kind of distance your dog can be at, where she's not reacting to other dogs. And that might take a little bit of experimenting, but what you can do is have a neighbor who has another dog, maybe try and figure this out with you. So you're gonna stand at one end of the block, your neighbor with his or her dog is going to come around the corner from the other side of the block. And you're going to watch your dog and try and figure out how close the other dog needs to be for your dog to start getting agitated and uncomfortable. I would suggest starting this exercise, not in your yard, doing it out on the street or somewhere ideally kind of neutral because I think it's likely that any dog your dog sees when your dog is in her yard is going to set her off no matter what the distance is because she probably sees that as like, kind of like, her territory.
So you're out on the street, let's say your dog is able to stay relatively calm until the other dog is, I don't know, 20 feet away. I want you to instruct your friend to go a little farther than that, so say maybe 23 feet from you and you are going to click or say “yes,” or use some kind of marker the moment your dog looks at that other dog and is not freaking out. You're pinpointing the moment of a calm look. And then you're going to follow that up with something that is rewarding to your dog. So that could be a food reward, that could be a game of tug or tossing a toy. If you're playing tug or tossing a toy or giving a treat or whatever it should be in the other direction away from that other dog and whatever the reward that you're using is it should be really great so it should be like a really fun game of tug, or it should be the opportunity to play with a favorite toy. Or if you're using a treat, it should be like roast beef or bacon. And I think, for what you're describing a tug, a game of tug or a playing with a toy might be even more rewarding to your dog in that moment, than food, because it sounds like she has some energy she's trying to release, and we want to give her an appropriate way to release that energy rather than attacking her brother.
So what you're really doing is two things. One you're working to create a new association “every time I see another dog, my human offers me something really good.” And again, I know you're not always going to be in the equation, if your dog is in the yard, you might not be right there, but this is just where we're, we're taking baby steps. This is just the beginning of the training. So you're working on creating that association and for the association part of it, you don't even really need a clicker. You don't have to be pinpointing some specific moment that your dog is acting calmly and good, but it can help. It can help to sort of do the other thing we're trying to do, which is to,like, help your dog take a mental snapshot, a emotional snapshot, almost of what it's like to be, to be calm and collected when there's another dog around. And you're rewarding that behavior,clicking that behavior. I think of it like you're taking a picture of that behavior, so your dog can add it to her photo album of things the human likes.
But it's really important to find the distance where your dog can deal. I don't want you trying to do this kind of training at a distance where your dog is freaking out. So if that distance needs to be 50 feet, it should be 50 feet, but your dog's not going to be doing good learning if she's going bananas because they're because there's another dog around.
Anyway so you have the other dog at 20, 23 feet or whatever it is once your dog is able to calmly look at that dog. I bet, first of all, I bet what's going to happen quickly is your dog's going to learn. I look at that dog and then I look back at my human because when I look calmly at that dog, my human gives me something good, be it a trade or a toy or whatever. Once you have that happening, try moving a little bit closer.
Now the goal we're working towards is not necessarily your dog doing, like, a lovely greeting with some dog on the street. I just want your dog to be able to calmly exist and turn her attention towards you when there's another dog on the street. Once you've gotten really good at practicing this, you can try taking it to your yard. And when you feel really confident that with you in the yard with your dog, that your dog is going to turn her attention towards you, you might consider adding in your second dog, whether you're going to be practicing in the yard or on the street. Again, I would probably say practice on the street before you start practicing in the yard.
When you add in your other dog, I want you to go “back to kindergarten” as we call it. I want you to start from the beginning. So if you have been able to get your dog to the point of being three feet away from another dog without losing her mind, I want you to go back to 20 feet because your adding the other dog in which totally changes the situation you want to make everything else as easy as possible. If you're making one thing a little bit harder for her, you want to make everything else super, super easy.
So really great question. This is a lot of the kind of work we do in our Sidewalk Psychos class. And if he wants some more information on this kind of trainings, sort of helping reactive dogs be more socially adapt. I suggest picking up Grisha Stewart's book Behavior Adjustment Training, also called BAT which has lots of great protocols for helping dogs be more comfortable around other dogs.
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Annie:
Our last question comes from Instagram user olivethefluffy muffin, who’s human writes- I'm assuming it was the human who wrote the question,
How do you stop a dog from going bark crazy in an elevator when another dog comes in or when you're getting on and there's a dog there?
So this is kind of a two part question because there's two different scenarios. One you're already in the elevator and the dog comes in. The other is you're going into the elevator and there's already a dog there. I think it would be most wise to focus first on the situation where you're in an elevator and a dog comes on because you have a little bit more control in the other situation ‘cause, of course, you can always choose to let the elevator pass and get the next one whereas you're going to have to deal with the fact that sometimes you're going to be in an elevator and a dog is going to come on. So let's focus on that first.
I think what you basically want to do is to teach your dog to face away from the elevator door. You want your dog's job in that elevator to have his or her nose in the far corner of the elevator at all times.
So how are you going to do this? Well like so many dog training problems, I would say the answer is peanut butter. In this kind of situation, I think the easiest solution to begin with is to get a liquid treat dispenser is what we call it at School for the Dogs- you can find it at Store for the Dogs. It's basically just a squeezy tube that has peanut butter. You can also get from the Kong company, they make squeezy tubes of cheese and peanut butter and other stuff. Or you can sort of hack something similar with like a travel shampoo bottle. But you want that good yummy stuff to be delivered in the far corner of the elevator, farthest as you can get, as far as you can get from the doors pretty much the whole elevator ride.
Now eventually you can choose to only have that delicious stuff coming out when the door opens and I would do it every time the door opens, even if there's not a dog on the other side of that door. And by the way, you know, I think doors can be very tricky for dogs in general, all doors, because they're unpredictable. They open at unpredictable times, certainly elevator doors open up rather unpredictable times. They don't know what's going to be behind that door. So the focus of your training should be amazing. Stuff happens when your butt is facing that door rather than your job is to be vigilant about everything that's coming onto the elevator.
Really good idea to practice this at hours of the day that are not going to be heavily trafficked by dogs. And one way that you can practice that is going on the elevator at a weird hour and just pushing every button. Probably better to do it at weird hours so you don't annoy your neighbors too much. But just every…you want your dog to get really used to those doors, opening and closing lots and lots of times while good stuff happens in that far corner.
A slightly more advanced bit of training that you could do in the same situation is to teach your dog to touch the wall of the elevator or something in that corner. You could do this with, like, a target stick. You could teach your dog to touch a Post It and have the Post It on the wall in that corner. You could teach your dog even just to target your fingers in the corner and targeting is just teaching a nose touch and then reward your dog for doing those touches to the point where you can cue the touch right after the elevator door opens. So what's going to happen is the sound of the elevator door is going to then become the cue. Your dog is going to learn “every time I hear the elevator doors open my human cues, me to touch that post-it that's in the corner or touch that target stick or whatever.”
And this is actually also something that you can practice by recording the sound of the elevator door opening and then playing it right before you cue your dog to touch whatever it is you're going to have him or her touch. This is something, if you have the recording of that sound, you can practice in your apartment. But interestingly, that's always the process of adding a cue, you're going to add a new cue in this case, the sound of the elevator door opening opening, and then you're going to give the known cue, which in this case should be a target cue or a touch cue.
Again, this is a little bit more advanced. You are also welcome to just give your dog peanut butter that whole time that your dog's nose is in the corner. And then start giving it, you know, only when the door opens. Your dog does not have to be doing some kind of touch. You can build up to that. If your dog doesn't like peanut butter, find whatever treat your dog does, like it doesn't have to be a treat that can be licked. But I find in these kinds of situations, it's nice to not have something crumbly, not have something that's going to get your hands dirty and also not have something that you're going to necessarily, like, drop on the floor, because if there's other dogs in the elevator, they might be interested in those treats too. So you want a kind of treat that you can deliver directly to your dog's mouth. And that's one reason that I like treats that can be licked.
So again, you want to do a lot of practice sessions of this at times when you're pretty sure the elevator is not going to be crowded with dogs, and you want your dog to get really good at touching that corner spot, whatever your spot is going to be in the elevator before you start bringing your dog into elevators, where there already is a dog that's there. But when you feel confident enough that your dog has made this connection of “gosh, when that door opens, good stuff happens in the corner of the elevator” you can start bringing your dog into elevators when a dog is already in the elevator, but you are going to bring your dog straight to that back corner. And you are going to then have that your dog do that job of touching that corner.
Now, of course, the other dog might not be a dog that your dog knows. It might not be a polite dog. You might need to kind of body block your dog with your body. I would discourage you from letting your dog greet another dog in the elevator just because it's such a small space. I think there's a lot of things that could go wrong. And the other reason why I don't want your dog greeting another dog on the elevator is because I want your dog focusing on this one job, which is facing the corner. Like I said, though, you want to practice this at times of the day, when the chances of another dog walking into the elevator are low. That's something that ideally you want to work up to. So you might just find yourself having to explain to your doorman why you're riding the elevator with your dog at two in the morning, pushing every button, but it's only going to be when you feel really confident that your dog can keep facing that corner, the whole elevator ride, I suggest you take the stairs.
If you have a question for a Q and A episode, you can email podcast@schoolforthedogs.com or you can, uh, submit it at anniegrossman.com. You can direct message us on Instagram. If I don't answer it on the podcast, I will try to answer it on Instagram or else in my semi-monthly Q and A column at rover.com/blog
Fun Dog Fact of the Day is about dog parks. I actually learned this from Lindsay Merkham, who as an assistant professor at Monmouth University, and has done a lot of research on dog parks and came and did a great talk on dog parks a few years ago at School for the Dogs, we hope to have her back sometime soon. She told me that there are fewer incidents of a dog- dog aggression at large dog parks than at small dog parks, which seemed surprising to me ‘cause you would think at a small dog park, people would be close to their dogs. There would be less square footage, less chance of bad stuff happening, but actually it's the opposite, which is true. At small dog parks, people tend to, like I said, sort of sit on the perimeter and let their dogs do their thing. And by the time someone can actually get to their dog to get them out of a problem situation. It's often too late. Whereas at large dog parks, when you think of like, like off-leash time at Central Park or whatever, you don't let your dog get too far from you, you're generally always 5 or 10 or 15 feet at most away from your dog because it is large and you want to keep an eye on them. And because you are closer to your dog, you are more likely to be able to intervene quickly and to keep them out of trouble. So if you have a choice between going to a small dog park and a large dog park pick the bigger one.
Our Woof Shout Out of the day goes to Ellie, who is a toy Aussie, who has been coming to School for the Dogs since she was a tiny, tiny puff. She is on Instagram. You can follow her at tinyelliebean. Ellie is truly adorable. And is always showing off her excellent training on her Instagram. So, um, I'm endlessly impressed with her owner's Winnie's devotion to Ellie's training. Specifically because she is really interested in making sure that Ellie can behave nicely at her office. Winnie, her human, works at Ollie, the food company, and Ollie is a dog friendly office. And not only has Winnie put in a lot of effort to make sure that Ellie is a very well behaved office dog, but I know that she has also been a big help to some of her colleagues, helping them make their dogs more comfortable at the office and also making non-dog owners at the office feel more comfortable around all the dogs that are there and helping them be good dog trainers. Cause I think we're all training dogs when we are hanging out with them, helping the non dog owners, who are there interact in beneficial ways with the dogs who are present. So high five Winnie you're doing a great job and, and everyone at School for the Dogs is so happy to have you and Ellie as members.
And as always special, thanks to our sponsor SaneBox. SaneBox will get your email in order. You can try it out with a two week free trial and $15 off. If you go to schoolforthedogs.com/sane. You know how you sit down at your computer in the morning and you open up your email and you spend the first few minutes just going through and deleting things and sometimes we even delete things that maybe seem kind of interesting, but your inbox is just so overwhelming to look at that you want it to be as empty as possible. I don't do that. I used to, but thanks to Sane Box, I have this folder where all of those, like, non spam emails, things, things that I'm kind of interested in, but are not high priority. I have this special folder that all that stuff gets filtered to thanks to the sane box algorithm, which has figured which emails are important and which can wait for later. I'm a big fan. I've used it for years and, uh, you should definitely try it out unless you just have lots of time in the morning to delete emails and have nothing better to do, then definitely do not use SaneBox. Or if you've trained your dog to sort your email for you, uh, then you definitely also don't need it.
Special things to Jazz Banjo Rex for his awesome ukulele cover of Back to School. Again, thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another show.
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LL Bean embroidered dog collar
