19 NovEpisode 97 | Dog Training Q and A! 11/19/2020: Handmade gifts, dealing with a dog who bites the leash & dog training tips for a toddler mom
In this episode: Annie talks about some of the awesome handmade products for sale at StoreForTheDogs.com and answers questions about a young dog who "submissive pees" and bites the leash on walks. She also talks about a friend who was receptive to Annie's dog training advice when it came to her kid throwing tantrums when it was time to get dressed.
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You can email questions directly to annie@schoolforthedogs.com, or go to anchor.fm/dogs and record your question there.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Handmade dog toys and accessories at Store for the Dogs
VirChewLy Indestructable Leash
Transcript:
Annie:
So today I thought I would show you guys some of the really cool handmade things that we sell at School for the Dogs as as a lot of you know we really try and have items that are, first of all, things that we really like that we recommend. We have like a pretty limited amount of space. So we want to fill it with things that we truly think are great.
We also try and support other small businesses, particularly small local businesses. And we have quite a few people who make really lovely goods by hand, and I wanted to show you just a couple of them. These are all available at storeforthedogs.com and also in our East Village shop.
This is a toy that just came in. It's pretty hilarious. I think it's like a tomato with a baby tomato, I guess. I don't know what's going on here. It's made by the company at the furry folks, we carry their whole line on our online store. But what's cool about this is, you pull out the tiny, tiny baby tomato and this, I don't know, yellow pulp stuff comes out, and you can hide treats in the pulpy part, in this like yellow fabric thing with holes in it.
I'm trying to figure out how I would describe this to someone who can't see it. It's kind of like a big, weird stocking that comes out of this tomato. That's like crackling. [crinkling sound] And we all know dogs like things that crackle. It has this really sturdy fabric on the outside. So anyway, you put dry food, treats, kibble, whatever in the yellow pull-out part and then stuff it in here. If you have the kind of dog who really loves to pull things apart, really nice toy that comes in this very cute little like tomato style box, like you would see at green market.
Also by DogNMat, is this sushi snuffle toy. I'm a big fan of this because I think it's just so cute. it comes like this rolled up like a sushi, totally made of fleece, machine washable. You unroll it and it has like avocado in it. What is this? The egg stuff? I never liked that stuff in my sushi rolls. Salmon. And, again, you just hide treats in the little bits here, roll it up, has a little Velcro closure, and you have a sushi snuffle roll!
Also by DogNMat is the taco toy, which is a similar idea for taco lovers, open this one up here DogNMat is located in New Jersey. And you know, we've been carrying snuffle mats for years, like these fleece snuffle mats. But most of them, we order from China. So I was really psyched to find DogNMat, cause they're making these things by hand and they do such a beautiful job. And it's one less thing to be ordering from the other side of the world right now. So you pull this little taco or burrito out of its shell, has a little lime thing, opens up, isn’t that cute?
Lastly from DogNMat is this brand new square fleece, just very simple snuffle mat that we just started stocking. She actually made it especially for us because one of the most popular scuffling mats that we were ordering from China was about this size and shape. So I said, well, maybe you could make something similar. Lots of nice pockets here. Cute colors. Has this like nubby material on the back. So it won’t slip around too much.
Alright, now in the category of accessories. This is my all time favorite leash. It's by Found My Animal. They're made in upstate New York, really cool company. Each one has a unique number on it, I guess, to show your unique relationship with your dog. They're made of this super, super sturdy like nautical nylon rope, and it has a ring — It's quite long. I think it's, I think it's six feet long.
It has this ring on it that is adjustable. You can easily pull it up and down, and using this ring, you can wear the leash around your waist which is really nice if you want to go hands free, and I really like actually walking dogs that way. You can also throw it over your shoulder. You could attach, it has attachments on both ends. So you can actually attach to both the collar and the harness just to have like two extra points of safety, or even just attach both of them to the collar just to double up.
They have these leashes in a bunch of colors. We have them all at storeforthedogs.com. Also a couple of different widths. They also make one in cotton and the cotton colors are really beautiful, but I have found that the cotton ones, they just don't hold up as much. So my preference is the nylon.
And lastly, the Woof mask, which we have in a couple of colors on our website with this embroidered patch on it.
So if you're interested in shopping small, shopping handmade, supporting School for the Dogs and dog lovers out there who are making cool things, check these out@storeforthedogs.com. Take care.
Alright. Thank you for being here for my Instagram live portion of the Q and A. Let's move on to the Q’s. Okay. So Rachel says:
My dog's name is Penny. She is eight months old. We adopted her back in September. I have two questions this week. It turns out Penny submissively pees a lot when meeting strangers, anything we can do to help her with that?
Also, we have been leash training her for the past two months and she knows how to walk on leash, but sometimes during her walk, she gets crazy and starts to bite the leash and nips our heels and/or our legs. I usually have her sit and I wait for a treat to distract her, and usually she comes down after, but I don't want her to think that it is some sort of game. Any advice on how to curb this? She walks well for 90% of the time. It's just that 5% that she is super naughty.
Okay. Well, let's talk about your first question first, Rachel. If she is submissively peeing when meeting strangers you know, I would ask your vet about that. Sometimes submissive peeing can be related to urethra, urinary, bladder issues. But beyond that, my suggestion is to try and keep greetings as cool as possible, you know. Don't encourage a lot of excitement when, when people are coming and going, especially in situations where you really can control it.
Like in your home, have people approach her while she's in the crate, for example. And have people kind of ignore her when they first enter your home. You know, do whatever you can to make it just kind of a boring thing that people come in and come out.
You also could try switching up her food. I often find that dogs just pee a lot more when they're on kibble. It's like it's not as well absorbed into their body as something that's closer to a whole food. So I would go to the frozen section of your pet store, see what they have. I like lightly cooked foods. Evermore is the pet food that we recommend above all others at School for the Dogs. They deliver throughout the country. So you might want to experiment with food and just see if that makes any difference.
As far as your other question, her getting crazy on her walks, well, a couple things. I would notice what's going on when she's getting crazy around your walks. Is it at a certain point in the walk? Like if it's at the 10 minute mark, then keep your walks to five minutes. If it's, you know, when other dogs are passing by, maybe she's trying to redirect her excitement on to you. But it also might just be, you know, she has some energy to expend and on her walk is the best place for her to expend it right now.
So see what you can do to use up that energy in other ways, when you're not on the walk. You know, make sure she's getting some good playtime inside. That could be some basic training or a tug or whatever. Make sure that she's eating her food out of toys to help burn some energy and calories that way.
Outside also try and make the walks fun without her trying to get you to make them fun! I suggest, you know, switching directions a lot, changing your pace a lot. You want her to be like, God, Rachel is really unpredictable outside. I really need to pay attention to her and see what she's doing. You could even bring a toy outside, something like a tug toy outside. And you know, periodically when she's walking really nicely, like allow a moment of craziness where she's tugging.
If leash biting is its own issue, you can attach like a piece of chain link between the leash and her collar. So she's not going to bite on that. We also carry a leash called the VirChewLy Indestructable Leash, which is like a coated metal leash that some people use when they have real leash biters. Sometimes also dogs will get biting on the leash if the leash is attached to their front or near their face, rather than on their back by their harness.
But overall I suggest just trying to make, make your walks more fun. You know, training is happening all the time, as we always say, and training is happening on the walks but the reward could be a treat, you know, delivered at a place. You always want to think about where you're delivering the treat outside. You want to reward her where you actually want her to be hanging out. That might be by your knees or whatever, but, you know, the reward could also be, like I said, it could be a chance to walk faster, a chance to play with a toy.
You could also see how she does with a toy when you bring her outside. Some dogs behave very differently when they get to carry something in their mouths outside. Is that helpful, Rachel?
And then lastly, I wanted to share a question that actually came in my moms group. This is not a puppy question. It's a human question. But I thought I'd share it because my friend asked this to a bunch of us in this group, and I replied with what I see as like a dog training solution. She wrote:
Hey, mommas, I'm curious if anyone has gone through something similar to this. A week ago, we moved into a new house which was unfurnished in contrast to the many Airbnbs we've been in in the last six months. So something of a big transition. On night two, our toddler climbed out of her crib for the first time and bonked her face pretty bad. She had a big bruise.
So we switched to a toddler bed, another big transition. And since then, she just basically has refused to get dressed to leave the house. She says she wants to go outside or to the playground. But when it comes to putting clothes on, she just freaks out. It's technically possible to force her into clothes, but by the time we get to shoes and a jacket, I'm so emotionally exhausted, it's just not worth it.
[Inaudible] help were: have her put on clothes for meals, even if you're staying in or some part of an outfit at least. Or make a game of putting on clothes and then taking them off, get her used to putting them on and being inside. So anyway she followed through with this and started to put clothes on the little girl before meals and she's had that it's actually been really working well.
So I was pleased that you know, sometimes I feel like people are offended when I give advice that to me at least seems like obvious dog training applied to other areas of life. In this case she was not resistant and said that actually really worked well. And, you know, I think what my friend wrote was, was wise, like the girl was going through just a lot of different changes.
And this approach is creating a way to reward the behavior of getting dressed by giving her something that she's going to enjoy, which is her meal, creating an association in that way, you know between food and getting dressed. And if I get dressed, then I get my meal. Although I don't think my friend would have like withheld her food or anything if she hadn't actually put on her clothes.
But similar actually to the submission peeing question. You want to make things just very normal and boring sometimes, and not the predictor of something. So in this case, it's like, how can we help her feel like, I just put on clothes, I take clothes off. It has nothing to do with going outside. I mean, and who knows why going outside is scary to her right now? Again, my friend said she went through a lot of changes and for some reason going outside, maybe got linked with some of those changes in a way that's making her fearful.
But similarly with the submissive peeing, like how can you make this exciting (exciting whether it's good or bad) experience of people approaching into just like a non event. It’s have people approach a lot and have it not necessarily be meaningful each time.
Alright. I think I will leave it there. Thank you for being here. I will probably not actually be doing this directly. Bye.
