Stories by Lauren

hi, could you explain for the unfamiliar (me) the purpose of the trampoline of doom and other baby torture implements in the backyard?

Hello! The Baby Torture is what's called Early Exposure and is part of the puppies' socialization program.

You can learn more here: https://thedogjournal.net/2023/03/early-exposure-for-puppies/

Or, honestly, you can just google "early exposure for puppies" and you'll get lots of resources.

Essentially, all the whacky shit in their pen, in the yard, and on their field trips is meant to give them positive experiences with novel situations and stimuli before they go to their new homes. Studies show that early (positive) exposure to different textures, materials, smells, and experiences help puppies cope with stressors later in life. A common misconception is that you need to expose puppies to as many things as you can throw at them, but it's far more important to make sure every new experience is a good time. You should avoid causing any negative feelings while a puppy is experiencing something new. My goal is that by the time puppies are 12 weeks old, they understand a very simple equation: novelty = good.

At the same time, a puppy's life should not be without frustration. Offering puppies puzzles and challenges can also be valuable in teaching pups to cope with stress and delayed gratification.

So, it's not actually baby torture at all! It's Baby Adventure Land, carefully curated to mimic or prepare puppies for real world experiences later on.

I am not a dog whisperer. I know each is an individual but I cannot “understand “ dog. How do you train dogs to stay in the van? Mine wants out before I have even one foot on the ground when we stop.

i've been thinking about this all day. I do want to help people with their dogs, but. Can I?

For everyone else, this is in response to my post about how all dog walkers are also dog trainers if they are doing their job right, where i mention my van full of dogs waiting until each one is leashed and invited out of the van individually.

I did also, as referenced above, say that the real trick to training dogs is to get to know the dogs individually, and that this is the reason dog trainers can't take a simple question about how to train a dog and give a simple answer.

Which is true.

And does make this a tricky ask to answer well. It's sort of like asking how do you help a kid who's having trouble understanding math. There's no one answer.

So. With that in mind, i want to talk about training in general mostly, instead of training any one dog for any one thing.

There is a nice basic thing you can do to set yourself up to be able to communicate something to your dog:

Take a treat, ask your dog to sit, move the treat toward their mouth at a quite slow but steady pace. When they bounce up out of the sit to try to get the treat, make a disapproving noise (I usually make kind of an "ach" sound) and either stop moving the treat or take it back to it's starting position.

Tell them to sit again. When they sit, start moving the treat slowly down toward them again. If they stop sitting the treat stops, if they move toward the treat it goes away. Ideally there will come a moment when they juuust start to lift their butt and you juust stop moving the treat and they think about it and sit back down and you keep moving the treat toward them.

This exercise communicates an expectation, a situation, a course of action. Like, just by my describing the exercise to you, you understand what is being communicated too, even if you might struggle to put it exactly into words

once you know they understand the concept, try to pace the treat movement so they succeed a few times. Like, you can speed it up a little to be sure you get it to them before they get too excited and come up out of their sit. You want a chance to prove to them a few times that if they stay sitting they do get the treat. Then slow it way down and make them prove they will stay in a sit until the treat gets there even if it takes a while. And hey, even though the treat stays the same, the praise gets better the longer they wait! right? good.

That's communication, baybee!

Of course, not every dog will have the right mentality for this sit/treat exercise to work, but if you understand the basics of what it is trying to communicate, it can still be your template for trying to communicate that thing to your dog. And once they understand it about one thing, it starts to be easier to tell it to them about other things.

I don't work with treats because i walk three large packs of dogs (often as many as ten at once) and the roster changes, sometimes a tues/thurs dog needs to bump to a wednesday or whatever, so the dogs aren't always super used to each other. If there's a sudden discovery of food aggression or resource guarding or just plain "i don't trust or like you" behavior that can come out around high value food items like treats, well, i can't work on any training about that without risking injury to the other dogs. I have good friends who walk dogs who work with treats and who are excellent dog trainers and that works for them in their situations, so i'm not saying it's wrong to work with treats as a dog walker, i'm just saying it's wrong for me.

So i do all my professional training without treats. And that means I have to identify what the dogs want and show them i control it and then demand specific behavior to access it.

So, lets say i'm getting a dog ready to go and this dog wants to rush out the gate at full speed as soon as it's open enough for them to squeeze through. And i don't want them to.

I identify what they really want. They really want to get through the gate. So getting through the gate is the treat. Actually, the way a dog works, getting closer to getting out the gate is a treat. I make that conditional on a behavior i want, and then i'll play out the scenario in slow motion and play hotter/colder with it until they do the thing i want. Looks like this:

I'll initiate the situation (put my hand on the latch) and then when they rush right up to the gate i'll make a disapproving noise and move my hand off the latch. I'll wait a beat (this is to give them just a moment to figure it out or make a decision, and i try to build these moments into as much of my training as possible) Then i'll use my entire body to move them back from the gate, sort of the way i'd open a door with my butt if my hands were full (this is a version of a thing called body blocking that doesn't always involve touching but is physical communication based on what you are doing with your body) I'll wait until i can get them to just stand there without me touching them before i start over and reach for the latch again.

This is where they get focused, because the gate isn't even close to open yet, so they aren't too excited to pay attention. You need them to give you the behavior you want before you start doing the thing that makes them excited. The more excited they are the harder it is for you to communicate or intervene, and it's easier for them to just maintain a current behavior than to change an excited behavior. In this case we'll say the behavior you want is staying calmly behind you until you tell them they can come out the gate, so you make them stay calmly behind you before you even start opening the gate.

The dog wants the gate to be open. The gate opens slowly. The dog starts moving toward it, the gate starts closing. The dog goes back to what it was doing when the gate was opening, and the gate starts opening once more.

Dogs understand this situation pretty quickly.

Then, when it's open, before i tell them they can go, if they start to move toward the gate i will physically move my body to block them from getting out the open gate. If they try hard enough to make this difficult for me, i simply close the gate again.

You can't do this for all the things you want to train for, and it doesn't work for every dog, but it is pretty likely you can do some variation of this basic communication with most dogs to accomplish many situational behaviors.

Like, for example, not leaping out of your car.

Or take jumping up on people. What the dog wants is to put its face near your face. You can let that happen without them jumping by slowly crouching down to let them sniff your ear and lick your cheek or whatever (my dogs aren't allowed to lick my mouth, but they can lick my face, unless they are like the twin beagles i walk, who are disgusting poop eaters and aren't allowed to lick me at all). Anyway, if they sit calmly you continue to crouch toward them slowly, if they come out of a sit, you stand back up. If they stay calmly sitting what they want gets closer to happening, if they try to jump or anything, what they want goes away. This is the kind of communication dogs understand very fast.

And let me also say, you have to show them you are paying very close attention to them. If you want them calmly standing still and they even LEAN forward, you want to let them know you saw that, you want to acknowledge that, whether with a little noise or a look, or pausing the activity for a second, or whatever. That lean forward is communication from them, and responding to it shows you are participating fully, that you are paying attention to them. This will usually automatically make them pay more attention to you back.

and it's communication you do understand. A lot of people think it's some kind of secret dog code. True, there are a few things to know that are like dog language but MOST of it is like, if the dog sees something she wants to eat or fight, and she leans toward it, she is (literally) getting closer to trying to eat or fight it. You can tell what's going on pretty easy if you see it. Like, if every part of a dog's face (nose, eyes, ears) is pointed at a single thing with laser focus, it is highly interested in, or even having strong feelings about, that thing. Your dog is telling you this clear as day, and all you have to do is notice, there's really not that much deciphering.

That early intervention / close attention thing is huge in any training situation. I work with my dogs to not bark at other dogs, and so when i see a dog a block away, i'm already looking at my problem dogs, and when i see that they see the other dog, i say their name, not mad, just, i see you, i'm watching you. I'm aware of both you and that other dog, and i have my eye on you about it. If they stand very tense with their ears and tail hard up, that's already too much, that's already breaking the rules, and I'll let them know i disapprove. That's as rude as walking right up to someone and silently staring hard at them in their face. Imagine if some one did that to you in public?

See, a lot of times when two leashed dogs cross paths and one of them starts barking, it was actually the OTHER dog that started shit, really. And if i have an easily offended dog, i have to convince them to not go off about it. And the way i do that is, I Am In Charge of Public Interactions when the pack is with me. Other dogs other people, they are not allowed to interact with the dogs, all interactions come through me. And the same goes for my pack, they do not interact with dogs or bikers or people. That is my job. They are not allowed to. And my other job is making sure everybody in the pack maintains behavior standards. So.

Anyway, the earlier you start the dialogue, the easier it is to get them to listen. By the time they are already standing on their hind legs against the leash barking, it is far too late to communicate anything to them, they are lost in the sauce of adrenalized action.

What i think of as "getting in early" allows for a full range of communication. When i get in early i can say "Bubba, i see you" in a very lightly disapproving tone and it's usually quite effective because Bubba isn't overly excited yet and knows i am paying attention. When it's not effective, and now he's at step 2 out of 5 in the escalation toward the thing he's not allowed to do, I can give the leash a tiny tug and put just the smallest edge to my voice when I say, still pretty lightly, "don't do it Bubba." See, we're just having a conversation, neither of us is barking or growling yet. And believe me, your shout is a bark and your angry voice is a growl to them just as much as we understand a growl to be their angry voice. Give yourself as much space as possible to talk before the two of you get to that point

That said, there have been a few dogs that superman-leapt from the van a couple of times, and those are dogs i had to catch mid jump and sort of toss back in the van, and then stand blocking the van door staring full at them until i was sure they weren't getting ready to try again. You do have to control the situation.

hope that helps!