dog training q and a annie grossman

Episode 80 | BONUS EPISODE Q and A 10/1/2020

In this Q and A, Annie takes the following questions: A new young rescue dog seems to be nervous about some men but not others. Why? A dog is barking: Do you need to say "quiet" and do you reward even if the dog is barking? What do you do when a Shih Tzu won't go to the bathroom in the yard? Why didn't an adolescent male become less aggressive after being neutered? My dog is going crazy because the neighbor's dog is in heat! This puppy will not stop biting my feet! Why! How do I teach my Pomsky not to pull?

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Have a question? Upload a recording, submit it at AnnieGrossman.com/ask at http://anchor.fm/dogs

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Ruffwear Front Range Harness
Freedom Harness
Liquid Treat Dispenser
K9 Sport Sack
Flirt Poles

Featured photo by BowieShoots.


Transcript:

Annie:

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 annie@schoolforthedogs. You can also go to anchor.fm/dogs and record your question there. Thanks for being here.

 

**intro**

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.

 

Annie:

Hey guys, Annie Grossman here. I am live answering dog training questions today, and we're starting with this one from Rachel.

“So my husband and I had just started listening to your podcast. When we adopted our puppy, Penny. She's a total sweetheart and very passive. When you go to get her, she just rolls over and wants belly rubs. We brought her home a few days ago and she met our neighbor and loved him. However, after a day of settling in, she began barking at him whenever we were outside or going for walks. Also on our walk, she started barking at all older men. She met another neighbor who was a younger man, and she did not bark at all. She's only six months and we are hopeful we can get her comfortable with some training, any advice or guidance with this. Thank you, Rachel.”

 

Annie:

So great question, Rachel, and I'm glad that you're dealing with this on the sooner side because you know, so many behaviors that can develop into, you know, behaviors that are really difficult and dangerous stem from fear. And it sounds like you're noticing that Penny is a little bit fearful of your neighbor. Now, you know, it's possible that, you know, it looks like you're noticing a pattern that it's men. It's possible she had some kind of bad experience with a man in the past and that's causing this behavior. It's possible also that she just wasn't really exposed to that many men before this who knows, but rather than worrying too much about what's causing her to be this way, I would just really focus on how you can help her feel good about whatever men are around her. So, you know, the easiest thing, of course, is I would try and make sure that your husband is the one giving her a lot of her meals and doing a lot of training with her, giving her treats, just like having good times with your husband will probably help help her create, you know, new and good associations with different men.

 

You know, you could also try and have your husband literally put on different hats, have him dressed differently, have him, you know, if he has a beard, have him shave a beard, if he doesn't have them grow one, like, you know, given that we're living in a time where it might be hard to have every guy you know come over and hang out with Penny so that she can feel good about every, every guy you want her to feel good about. You know, you might need to have your husband do a little bit of extra work and in kind of putting on costumes as it were to get her used to people who look a little bit a little bit different than him.

 

But certainly when you're out, as soon as you see a man I would try and forge a good association for her by giving her something delicious. Ideally before she starts to bark, but even if she is barking I would still try and, you know, give her that yummy piece of sausage or bacon or whatever. And you can give it like in the opposite direction from the scary thing to try and take her attention away while also creating that good association, you know, neighbor equals treat. And I like using stuff like peanut butter, other things that are in tubes for this kind of thing, when you're outside, especially cause your hands won't get gross, which is important when it comes to you know, wearing gloves, which is going to be soon. But also like something like peanut butter in a tube is going to keep her mouth really busy. So she's not going to have like a lot of, you know, use of her mouth for more barking.

 

You were saying, you know, it's, is it younger men, older men? It sounds like maybe it could be one or the other. I would just make all men a signal for you that Penny should get something really, really delicious. And you know, don't push it. You know, it doesn't have to mean the man is giving her the delicious thing. It doesn't mean she has to interact with a man in order to get the delicious thing.  I want the first step to be the presence of a man, even if it's, you know, 10 feet away equals something good. And when you start to notice that her body language is showing you, like she's a little bit more comfortable when new men are around, then you might start seeing if the man will toss the treat to her or if you can approach a little bit closer. So Rachel, hope that helps.

 

Another question here, this one is from Julia. Not sure if Julia is in the room. Julia wrote:

“Thanks, Annie. I'm trying to reshape my dog's brain. He is reactive to dogs and people walking past. So we sit at our front door or a gate and I feed high quality treats as they walk past. My question is if he growls or barks, do I continue to feed him or do I wait until he settles? And should I put a mark with a “quiet” and if he stops- treat, I think she means if he stops barking, should I use the word quiet? Same with, if he runs to the fence and barks at neighbors, he's only outside if I'm with him, but sometimes I'm not quick enough to stop him. Any advice would be really appreciated.”

 

Okay. Well, I think there's sort of two questions here. One is, do you keep, if you're trying to, you know, use classical conditioning to help your dog, you know, create a new association with something like the neighbors or dogs walking past and your dog starts engaging in the behavior that you're trying to change like barking, do you still shove something delicious in your dog's mouth? And the answer is yes, but the “but” is ideally you should be getting the good stuff to your dog before they're engaging in that behavior. You know, we don't want to encourage dogs to engage in behaviors that we're trying to get rid of, like every time the dog is barking at the other dogs were barking at the neighbor it’'s like he's working out that muscle and you know, we want that muscle to atrophy. So ideally, you know, you are creating working on forging that new association thinking about classical conditioning, getting the yummy stuff into your dog's mouth before they start to bark.

 

However sometimes you might be late or your dog takes you by surprise. I would still shove the food in your dog's mouth or throw a bunch of really great food, again, throw it away from whatever the trigger is. Because you're trying to change the conversation. You're trying to create a new association. You know, when I first started doing the Karen Pryor Academy, my very first weekend workshop, you know, it's mostly it's remote, but they do-you do four weekend long workshops. And two of the people that were in the class with me, there, one of the dogs, a big dog, like a Rottweiler went and attacked the other person's dog who was like a Springer spaniel. And our instructor, Steve Benjamin, took the bigger dog. I think he was like a Rottweiler, I said and shove the dogs, shoved the dog's face into a big bowl of food, like grabbed him and shoved his face into the food. And it was like, what I remember just thinking like, this doesn't make any sense, like you're rewarding this like bad behavior of one dog attacking the other dog and that it seemed completely crazy to me. And he said, you know, we're, we're changing the situation. And you know, it took me a while to fully understand that. I think honestly. like, it took me really thinking pretty hard about how classical conditioning affects our emotions, how it's so important to create associations in order to change behaviors. But that was a real sort of like light bulb moment for me seeing him do that.

 

You know, the, the example I often give and I have an illustrated version of this in the Good Dog Training course: the example I always give it's like, imagine you were in a room quietly reading a book and a monster bursts into the room and you scream and then he hands you a hundred dollars and then five minutes later, monster bursts into the room, you scream, he hands you a hundred dollars. You know, after like three or four repetitions, you're not going to be screaming when he comes into the room, you're going to be like, Oh, that's my friend, the monster, like, come sit down and like have a drink with me. But if somebody was watching the whole thing from outside, it would look like he was paying you to scream. Right. So it's this kind of a funny thing where by ignoring the behavior and just focusing on the association, you can actually change the behavior.

 

So the second part of the question was should I put a mark, like use a marker or use a word like “quiet?” I would first not worry about using a marker. I wouldn't worry about using a word. I would first just focus on getting this behavior. And then you can start thinking about using a marker to really, like, pinpoint the moment that he's quiet. You can use a word like “quiet,” you can add that cue. But I think you know, the simplest, most effective thing is going to be working at creating the new association, ‘cause ideally your dog is going to be quiet and then stay quiet. You don't want your dog barking. And then you asking your dog to be quiet because then that become sort of like its own behavior train. Like I bark. And then she says quiet. And then she gives me a treat, right? I'd rather your dog just like not start barking to begin with. So work on that and then come back to me and we'll talk about using a marker and putting the whole thing on cue.

 

And then the last part of Julia's question was if he runs to the fence and barks at the neighbors, he's only outside by himself sometimes it sounds like usually she's with him outside. You know, if running up to the fence and barking at the neighbors as a behavior, you want to get rid of, I would just make sure that you are at this point, not letting him be outside, unless he's on leash with you so that you can actually work on changing that behavior. If he's off-leash and has a chance to do it again, it's like, you know, it's like putting money into that bank account that you don't want him to have. So that my suggestion is to, you know, be careful about using… letting him be outside unattended, however, you know, running up to the fence and barking at the neighbors. I don't know some people want their dogs to park at the neighbor. So I'm a little unclear the way you wrote this about whether it's a behavior you want to get rid of or not.

 

You know, I always encourage people to not assume, you know, certain behaviors are just bad because there are lots of situations where people have dogs because they want them to bark at the neighbors. So it's not an inherently bad behavior. It just depends on, you know, what you want in your life with your dog. My dog barks at when the doorbell rings. And it doesn't really bother me. I've had people say to me like, you know, you must not be a very good dog trainer if your dog barks at the doorbell. But I think it's actually pretty useful to have an auxiliary doorbell to let me know when someone is here. And, but that's me, that's my dog. That's my situation.

 

All right. A couple more questions that I printed out, and then I'm going to do a couple of the ones that are people are asking here. Thank you for these good questions and thank you everyone. Who's joining on Instagram. If you want to ask a question I'm going to put this in the Instagram. You can come join the actual webinar.

 

Kristen writes, “I just read your article about training a dog to go potty on command. I have a two year old Shih Tzu rescue that I got in April. She refuses to pee or poop in my yard. I have a small backyard, so not a lot of space to run, but I want to get her trained to go in the yard because winter is inevitably coming and I live in Wisconsin and I don't want to have to go on long walks every time she needs to go. She will pee in the backyard at night, but that seems to be the only time when she goes in the yard I always say, “go potty.” When she's in the act of going and I reward her on occasion, I can get her to pee in the backyard before walks, but not consistently. Today I was determined to get her to go before our walk and we've been outside four times without luck. I stand there, I give her the potty cue. She won't go. Now we’re to the point where she's also annoyed and is barking because I won't move and I won't move because she won't go. And it's a vicious circle. Mind you, she hasn't gone potty since about 11:00 PM last night. So she should have to go by now looking for any tips you have. I've asked my neighbor to bring his dog over and have her pee in the backyard. So there are other scents back there. He's going to start doing that this week. I'm at my wits end with this. Thank you in advance for your suggestions. Kristin.”

 

Kristen, I like that idea of having the neighbor’s dog come over. I'm not sure I would have suggested that, but I think it's it's actually, that's pretty clever. All right. So a couple of questions here. First of all, it wouldn't bother saying “go potty” at this point as she's doing it. I mean, you can if you are going to do that, make sure to just say at once the guide that she's referring to here, I think we, you can find it. If you go to schoolforthedogs.com/house. You can download our potty training guide, which does go over how to get a dog to potty on cue, school for the dogs.com/house. But kind of like in the question I was just talking about, I wouldn't worry too much about getting the behavior on cue at this point, as far as using a word, because when you think about it, like all of it is acute, right?

 

Like being outside on the street for your dog is a cue. And you are changing that cue now by asking her to go in an absolutely new place which is your backyard. First of all, I would suggest that you leash your dog when you take her to your backyard. I'm not clear from what you've written here, if you're doing that. Because it's probably one of the cues for peeing and pooping is you putting your dog on the leash and going out your front door, I don't know the way your house was set up, but even if there's a way to put your dog on a leash, go out the front door and then go to your backyard. I would do that too. I want the backyard to sort of be as much part of the, sort of, going out on the street routine as possible.

 

You know, something else you could try to kind of bring your outside, I'm imagining like a sidewalk situation to the backyard. And this is an idea from my friend, who's a trainer on New York city, Jay Andors- he sometimes has his clients go get like a little block of poured cement, which I think you can probably have made for you, if you go to Home Depot, pick up some cement. And make like a little, a little sort of sidewalk-y area. You know, we teach dogs to go and pee and poop outside on the sidewalk. And then we ask them to go in our yards which are grass. And we can make it a little bit more like the sidewalk that way. But yeah, I would say put your leash on your Shih Tzu, bring her out to your yard and have really no more outside street walks from now on if the goal is to really get her to go in the yard.

 

And that might mean taking her out a lot. It might mean trying something like a cement block. I think the idea of having your neighbor's dog pee there is probably smart because part of the reason dogs, you know, like going out on the street is so that they can smell other dog’s pee, check pee-mail, as we say you know, you could even get some other dogs to pee out there. You can actually buy all kinds of animal urine online, if you try. I haven't personally experimented with doing that kind of thing very much, but it sounds like you're at, you're interested in experimenting and figuring this out. So those are my best suggestions. And I would suggest that all outside time, that's, off-leash only happen at this time in your…, I'm sorry, all like yard a time that's off-leash at this point should only happen after she pees or poops.

 

And you know, try also when you have her on leash outside, walking briskly, even if you're walking in circles, you know, part, it sounds like part of what's happening is she's getting frustrated. Well, she's going to be less frustrated if she is focused on keeping up with you, if she's getting some like physical exertion, which is probably part of the reason also that she likes going outside on the sidewalk. So hope that's helpful, Kristin.

 

Had a couple more printed out questions here. But I'm gonna see if I can address some of the ones that you guys are asking. Let's see. Maggie says, “my puppy has a seven month old Pomsky who recently got neutered. He always barks at other dogs during our walks, even before he got neutered. I thought he would calm down after the surgery, but he is still aggressive. Any tips on how to train him to be less aggressive.”

 

So, you know, it's interesting because a lot of the time people assume behavior changes are going to happen when a dog gets neutered. And sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but you know, a lot of the time they're getting neutered, like during adolescence, which is a time of great change for all animals so sometimes I think changes that we attribute to neutering are actually due to just like normal changes that have to do with with age. And also it's interesting that you say the word “aggressive,” you'll notice a lot of the time trainers use the word “reactive” rather than “aggressive.” Why? Because, you know, your dog is clearly reacting to something, but, you know, it's very likely because of fear, not necessarily because, you know, he's like, you know, angry and violent, which are kind of like words that more associated with something like a dog being aggressive.

 

A lot of the times, especially, you know, if a dog is on leash barking is the best way that a scared dog has to tell the other dog, like, Hey, get away from me. I'm not comfortable, right? If your dogs on leash, they can't run away in the other direction. What can they do that while they can say with their voices? Hey, I'm big and scary. I'm a big and scary Pomsky, I don't want you near me. So honestly, I, you know, like we've been talking about with some of these other questions, I would suggest focusing on trying to help your dog make some good associations with other dogs approaching.

 

This is a kind of thing that we do a lot in our studio. It's one of the really nice things about having, you know, a dog training facility with some space is because we can set up these kinds of scenarios where a dog…where we can have, you know a demo dog or which is sometimes actually a stuffed dog at a distance and we can coach our human clients to give their puppies or Pomky,whateve… good stuff, deliver the good stuff to create that good association before the dog goes bananas. And part of that is sort of you starting to recognize signs that your dog is feeling more comfortable around other dogs. Part of it is you figuring out what kind of distance your dog can handle. And then working at that distance, you know, is 12 feet fine, but 10 feet, you start to notice, he's get stressed out. Then, you know, then let's work at 14 feet. We're always trying to set them up for success in that way.

 

So New York City can be hard to set up situations. But if you are working with a trainer or even if you have some friends who have dogs who will work with you, try and find sort of like as open a spot as possible and put that friend with a helper dog at a distance that your dog can handle. And every time your dog looks at that other dog, I want your dog to get some delicious thing. And again that delicious thing you can deliver it behind you, away from the other dog. I mean, there are all kinds of things you can do to help dogs who are reactive on the street with other dogs. I'm giving you kind of like a very condensed, short answer.

 

Now they're going to be dogs that you pass on the street, of course. And in those situations, again, I would try and get something good into your dog's mouth, if possible, before he starts to bark. I love again, using our liquid treat dispenser for this kind of thing. We have all kinds of really good lickable treats at storeforthedogs.com. One of them being the liquid treat dispenser that you can fill with peanut butter, cream, cheese, whatever. Great for this kind of thing.

 

But, you know, you can also work on training your dog to go to the other side. You can train, train a position cue so that if there's a dog coming on your right, you can train your dog to go on the left. But again, ideally you want to try and like set up some situations where you can practice working on this stuff at a distance that your dog can handle.

 

Maggie has a second question. “My dog keeps pulling his leash when we're on walks. How do I stop him from doing that? I tried teaching him he'll so he walks near my feet, but he only does it after the walk.”

 

Okay. Again, this is like a question that could give a very long answer to, but my short answer to dealing with leash put pulling, especially, you know, with a young, energetic Pomsky… first of all you know, make sure that he's getting adequate exercise and playtime, you know, seven months old, he's still really young. Part of the reason he's barking at other dogs, I don't know, you know, your situation a hundred percent at all, but might be because he's not getting a lot of good off-leash time with other dogs. So every time he sees another dog, he sees it as sort of like a frustrating social opportunity. And the best he can do is, is bark. Pulling might be caused by something, you know, similar kind of like not getting enough chance to like get his crazies out. And so he's trying to like pull to the next thing, get you to go faster.

 

One thing I like to suggest, and this is like what I was saying about the person who's trying to get their dog to pee outside is switch directions, switch directions a lot, be a really be an unpredictable navigator. You want your dog outside to be like, God, you know, Maggie walks really fast and I can never tell where she's gonna go. So rather than just being out in front of her, I better really tune into what she's doing and where she's going so that I'm not left in lurch because, if you switch directions, now, the dog who was pulling in front of you is going to be behind you and is going to be a lot more focused on you.

 

So switch directions, walk really quickly, make sure he's getting a lot of good off-leash, you know good play time with other dogs. I'm a big fan of playtime that's just one-on-one I don't think dog parks are right for many dogs, especially like a young, small dog. I’d be a little bit worried about bringing your dog to a dog park, but can you arrange play dates with other dogs that. You know, one really awesome thing about like the School for the Dogs community is, I mean, we also have like our own …if you're in New York city, you should totally come.

 

We have our own off-leash trainer supervised play times. We call it School Yard. But it's a nice way for people to connect with each other so that they can have play dates. You know, with a seven month old Pomsky, you could probably arrange a play date in your apartment. You don't need a huge amount of room.

 

Beyond that. You know, there's certainly equipment that that can be helpful. I really like the Freedom Harness which we carry. It comes in small sizes. The Ruff Wear Front Range harness. I like it too.  Both of these are harnesses that you can attach the clip on the front and that can really help with to reduce pulling. But I try and think about, you know, equipment second to other stuff that you can do to change the dog's behavior.

 

All right, Yolanda write: “My question is this for a few days now, Cody is pining for my neighbor's young female. She has a few houses down across the street. Cody sits in the corner of our yard and cries facing their house. She isn't outside because they don't have a fenced yard. He also cried while inside the house last night and this morning, quite a bit showing signs he wanted to go out. I suspect she is in heat, Cody isn't neutered. I wonder how to help Cody cope, redirecting with toys or treats isn't going well.”

 

Ooof. You know, I have worked with so few dogs who've gone into heat or male dogs who've been around dogs in heat, who male dogs who aren't neutered that like, I actually feel like I'm ill-equipped to answer this question Yolanda, to be totally honest. Sexual frustration in dogs is not my specialty. I work mostly with castrated male dogs. I would suggest trying to arrange some play dates for Cody, with other dogs that he can play with. I hope that will help. I'm trying to think of what else you could possibly do to try and I don't know, mask the scent. I don't think there's very much that you can do. I would try and focus on getting his energy out. And as you know, the best possible ways, I am going to ask some other trainers about this though, Yolanda and get back to you. Cause I feel like I really don't have a good answer and I feel bad for Cody because it must be frustrating.

 

My father, who I've, I think I've mentioned his weird dog training ideas on the podcast a few times. He, when I was a kid, I remember he told me about his dog that he used to have when I was very little, who was a Doberman and when she would go into heat and they were living, he was living in the country with her and other dogs will come around. He would fill a squirt gun with Tabasco sauce and squirt it at the other dog. So not suggesting you do that, just sharing that, just sharing that weird kind of awful anecdote, right?

 

Bethany writes, “my 10 week old golden has been nipping and biting at me. She does this more with me than with my husband. She jumps up to bite at my legs and clothes when I'm walking, she's made a few holes and she humps my leg. How would you approach remedying this?”

 

Your puppy is trying to turn you into a puppy and she's trying to do this with her mouth. And it seems like it's not working. The cure is going to be puppy playtime. Puppies need to play with other puppies. So many puppy problems can be solved by good puppy play again, I wouldn't, this does not mean, you know, bringing your dog to a dog park and dropping them down there. It means finding like a, ideally a good playmate for your puppy and having some place time. Ideally every day, I would say like most puppies could benefit from like 15 or 20 minutes of play time every day. If you can arrange that again, it can just be in your kitchen. Doesn't need to be, you know some formal thing. Ideally, it should be with another puppy, a lot of adult dogs don't like other puppies or a lot of adult dogs don't like puppies. I should say. Occasionally there are adult dogs who are great with puppies. If you happen to know an adult dog, who's great with puppies and you want to have a playtime that way you could do that.

 

But the other thing I've been suggesting you know, especially during quarantine where people are having a hard time arranging puppy play dates is to you know, get a really long tug toy and play some really good tug, you know, get some distance between your hands and your clothing and your puppy's mouth and that's going to help her, you know, get some of her puppy energy out and it's going to save your clothes, et cetera, et cetera. Why she's doing it more with you than with your husband? I don't know. Maybe you seem more puppy-like than your husband.

 

Another thing I've been suggesting to people during quarantine, which I don't normally suggest, you know, given the crazy times we're living in it's not the craziest thing I think is to actually like get down on the floor and have some time where you're actually playing with your puppy, like a puppy, during designated periods. So she, you know, I don't want her treating you like a puppy all the time, but if you're not able to arrange good puppy play times for your puppy, the best you can do is try and be a good puppy.

 

Go onto YouTube, look up some good puppy play videos.  Just Google puppy play-Google puppy, or look up on YouTube, like puppies playing with their moms. You'll find probably some nice footage of, of moms kind of like handicapping them themselves in a way that's sort of like what a human might need to do when playing with a puppy, like getting down on the ground putting your elbows kind of down on the ground, butt up in the air.  Puppies often do sort of light taps with each other. Puppies will do like a lot of taking turns. So set aside an hour to look up puppy playing videos on YouTube. This is your assignment. And then you can try and be the best possible puppy for your dog.

 

Rachel also has a second question. She says, “We noticed that all around Penny is insecure and lacks confidence. We are now almost three weeks into her being home with us. How do we help her build confidence? She is not aggressive with other dogs, but she jumps and bounces around them when they first meet. “

 

Again. I think that probably Penny needs some good play time with other dogs. This is probably gonna help her gain confidence. But also, you know, try and bring her to as many new places as possible. Have her meet new people. And while you're doing all of that, try and create these good associations, you want her to feel like, oh, you know, being in the car is an okay thing. Being in the bathroom is an okay thing being, you know, wherever, you know, you're, you want her to have as many good experiences in new places as possible and don't don't force it, you know.

 

Another thing that often happens that I think can chip away at a dog's confidence is we get too focused on the behaviors on what behaviors we think we want the dog to be performed before we start before we were thinking about like how we want the dog feeling. So, you know, it's good that you're noticing that she's maybe a little bit fearful, which is kind of like what a lack of confidence can be. So think about how you can change her emotions. And then you can worry about teaching her to “sit,” “lay down” all the behaviors that we want.

 

Too often, I think we put dogs into situations where they're not fully comfortable, and then we ask them to perform behaviors for us when we instead should really first sort of work on creating that really solid foundation of them feeling good and then ask them to perform behaviors. You know, I always give the example, like in puppy kindergarten, people come in with their puppy, they have this idea of like what a puppy in puppy kindergarten should look like. They want their dog sitting, paying attention, dah, dah, dah, and I'll walk and I'll hear them saying “sit” and the dog is like, you know, all over the place, you know, never been in a room with this many people and this many dogs. And there's so many new scents. And the person is saying, you know, “sit penny, sit, sit, sit,” and I'll come over. And I'll be like, Penny, be cute, good job. You know, it's like you, I call it like criteria zero. That's what you're doing when you're socializing any animal and socialization is a lifelong thing. It's not just about puppies criteria zero is you are rewarding them for simply existing. And then you're going to just slowly build that criteria. Okay. Now she's existing and she's sitting, now she gets the treat, but just start with rewarding by existing.

 

And you know, we go over a lot of the stuff in the Good Dog Training course, which you can find at schoolforthedogs.com/courses. Also you can find it at storeforthedogs.com.

 

All right. I think I'm just going to take one more question here. This one is another one. I printed out like an old lady. This is from Denise who writes, “hi, I live in Australia. My sister is in the UK. She had a dog from a puppy. She toilet trained it, got up for it, et cetera. For a year,now the dog refuses to go on, walks with her. He goes with her husband or her daughters. She tries to lure him with treats, but once past the gate, he refuses to go with her. He will go in the car with her, but he won't get out to walk-refuses. He will lounge with her in the house. The girls have now left home. My sister wants the dog to exercise. What can she do? He's a long haired golden King Charles spaniel, I think, long floppy ears.”

 

Wow. Interesting question. So it sounds like the dog had some experience with the sister, right, that made him fearful about going out on walks with her. But and has associated this whatever scary thing it is with her and not with the husbands or the daughters. And, you know, that's interesting because this happens all the time that dogs can become fearful of something. And we like don't know what it is and they can become fearful of something that has nothing to do with what we think they're fearful about, right. What I mean is like maybe one time you were out walking,she was out walking with the dog and a police car went by with a siren blasting and the dog got scared and now associates, you know, being outside and feeling scared with your sister.

 

So, you know, made the connection like police, siren, sister or whatever. I mean, there's so many things happening in any given moment, that's it? We can't probably go back and figure out what happened.

 

I'm thinking about our trainer though. Anna Ostroff, her dog one time was out and a skateboard like skateboarder. She was already scared of skateboards. But a skateboarder like came like right up past her. And Ginger became, I think, fearful of that block, the block where the skateboarder approached her. Right. It didn't actually, I mean, it could have happened anywhere. The block is not actually like a dangerous place. If someone new had been walking Ginger at that time, rather than Anna who walks her, you know, 90% of the time she might've made that association with the new person.

 

So again, we maybe can't know why this happened, but my suggestion would be to go out with the dog in any way possible. So maybe get like a really big bag and start there, start having the dog just feel good about being outside with your sister at all. And see how that goes again. You know, if the dog, you know, if the dog is too fearful in any situation, the dog isn't gonna eat treats or anything. But if your dog is relaxed enough to be able to eat treats or, you know, meals or whatever, while in that bag outside with your sister, go for that, do that. You want your dog to be like, you know what, being outside with her actually isn't that bad. Even if he's in a bag and you might need to get a really big bag for this. K9 sports sack makes really nice big dog backpacks. We also have a lot of clients who use boat and tote bags, which are like those like big canvas bags you can get them at LL Bean. They're not actually made for dogs, but you can use them for dogs. You can particularly use them for big dogs.

 

The other thing I was going to suggest is that you start, or that she start walking the dog inside. So do everything as if she was going to take the dog out and then just walk around the apartment or walk around you know, the lobby of the building or wherever your, whatever the setup is. You know, kind of building the behavior of walking outside from the beginning. You know, I just wanted to mention a case that I dealt with a while ago now, but I remember it clearly where it was a similar thing, a little dog. I think it was like a Yorkie refuse to walk with the wife would only walk with the husband, couldn't figure it out. And, you know, and I explained to them kind of like I explained to you, you know, maybe something happened who knows, but then I had them both show me like their routines of what they did when they took the dog out. And I noticed that they each used a different leash. And one of the leashes, the leash set, the mom, the wife was using, had a really big clasp that was attached to the dog's neck and the other, the spouse, the husband was using a retractable leash, which had like a very small, lightweight clasp. And the big clasp,the woman did not like using the retractable leash was using this like a normal nylon leash with a big class was banging the dog's face while they were walking. And the moment that she switched to a new leash to using their retractable leash, the dog was totally happy to walk.

 

So that's a kind of, again, an example of like, it actually had nothing to do with the wife. Like they thought that the aversion was to you know, that the dog didn't want to walk with one person, only wanted to walk with the other person. Actually the dog was protesting cause he didn't like the leash that one of the people was using.

 

So you know, I mentioned that only because it might be worth dissecting everything that's going on with these walks, where is each person walking the dog? What equipment is each person using? Anyway, curious to see how that goes. Thank you so much for being here.

 

And I hope that you will check out my free masterclass. I will put it here in the comments you can get there at anniegrossman.com/masterclass. If you have not seen it already, it is I think really useful, actionable stuff. It's about an hour long. It talks about our new online classes, which are self paced. At the end, there is a coupon for a storeforthedogs.com. If you go through the class and I think you will get something out of it. I think that's all right. Thanks a lot for being here. And I will see you guys soon.

 

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Annie Grossman
annie@schoolforthedogs.com