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Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 112 The REAL Reason Your Dog is Ignoring You!
00:15:37
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Is my dog ignoring me on purpose? He looks at me and then decides to go elsewhere. Before we dive in, a warning. The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners. This is real life and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic. So listen on at your own peril. As a veterinarian, dog behaviorist, best selling author and trainer over the past decade, I've had an obsession with transforming the behavior of dogs, their brains, and creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home. I know all too well when the dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality. In fact, out of the blue, a few months ago, my little dog, Gorse, was bitten by a dog 20 times her size. And suddenly our life of stress free walks, a calm and cuddly household, and being teammates was replaced with reactivity, anxiety, and worrying about what's around the next corner. I'm Dr. Tom. This is the Help My Dog podcast. And this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you, and having a few laughs along the way. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog podcast. And today we've got a listener's question. And the listener's question is quite a funny one, actually, that I'm sure many of you can relate to. And that is, is my dog ignoring me on purpose? He looks at me and then decides to go elsewhere, which really made me laugh how it was written. And I think it's probably worth breaking that down because I think to put, to say our human brains do do this because, you know, I imagine we have people in our lives that we do kind of ignore on purpose sometimes. And so if we put that narrative on our dogs, when it doesn't feel that inspiring, does it? And two, it, you know, it kind of puts judgment on the relationship when maybe, maybe that's not the case. Right. And so, you know, there are, there are a few different reasons why your dog might be looking at you when you call them or you try and interact with them and then they go elsewhere. Yeah, the first one is maybe it's not about you, but maybe it's about the consequence of interacting with you. Yeah. And that I think is a really important distinction because when we think it's about us, we think we almost take it personally, don't we? Almost like it's some reflection on how our dog feels about us. But when we look at it as actually how our dog feels about the consequence of approaching us or interacting with us, that's very Different. And you know, it's very plausible that, for example, if this was a situation on a walk where, where your dog has previously been called to you and then been put on lead, it's not you that they that is punishing, it's being put on lead that's punishing. Right. It just so happens that you are the step to doing that thing. And so it's not about you. It might be about the consequence of interacting with you or their perceived consequence of interacting with you. What do you do about it? Well, one nice thing to do about that, one nice thing to do with that is. And we've got an entire program on this. And the Help My Dog Hub, for those of you that are in there and those of you that aren't, you can check it out@helpmydog.com hub is to teach a dog that actually, instead of you being the jailkeeper, you know, the limiter of the world, instead what you are is the freedom giver in the world, right? You are the portal to amazing experiences. And so, you know, one quick strategy that we can do with that is you could call your dog over to you, right? And then fire a piece of food away from you. So you're basically saying, come close and you get to go out again. Not only do you get to go out again, but I've added something to the environment. I'm not a taker. Awayer. Yeah. I am an adder. Yeah. Not the scary snake kind. I am. When you involve me in the environment, I add to the environment. Right. You guys see how different that is to what most dogs learn? And so if we think about then what the consequence of you is in that? Well, the consequence of interacting with you is, oh, the environment gets better. Interact with mum. Environment gets better. Interact with dad, environment gets better. Right? And so now we've got a situation where your dog doesn't ignore you. They're actively like, how can I get them involved? And yeah, how can I approach them more? How can I recall more? How can I spend more time in their proximity? Because the more I do, the more the environment gets better. So that can be a really powerful little addition. And as I say, there's a whole host of things that we can do to rework that. The second thing that might explain why your dog's behaving the way they're behaving is it might simply be overwhelm, right? They might simply be in a state of I am so overstimulated or my stress bucket is so full, or the world is calling Me in all different directions that I feel a little bit stuck. I'm like, I want to go over there, but I can't go over there. I want to interact with my owner, but I also can't disengage from all of this other stuff that's going on. And they can get into a state of they struggle to disengage so much that they actually don't engage in all that much either because they're like, I can't disengage from that, can't disengage from that. Can't disengage from that, can't disengage from that. And it's ultimately a disengagement struggle. Now what can we do about that? Well, that would suggest that your dog's potentially got more freedom than they can navigate right now. Yeah, they, you know, it takes a lot of skill for them to be able to calmly and calm, calmly in a focused way, go through the world with you, like off lead. Yeah. And so what you might want to do is simplify that a little bit and practice, for example, some recall games or some focus games on lead. Yeah. Make that world a bit smaller. Right. And you could even incorporate. What I talked about in the first tip was make that world smaller. When they, you know, you could, for example, play the orientation game where there's one piece of food to your right. They eat the piece of food they orient to you because they're like, can I have another piece of food? You mark that moment with a yes. You throw the next piece of food to your left and they're kind of ping ponging either side. But then what you might occasionally do is go, actually, I'm going to throw a piece of food further away to say the more you engage with me. That isn't. It's not an either or. It's. You get to go out to the world and I am the portal to that. Yeah. Does that make sense, guys? And ultimately, simplifying what your dog should be doing in that situation will make overwhelm easier for them to navigate. Because if they're really clear that a desired outcome is orienting to you and focusing on you, the clearer we can make that choice, the more likely they are to choose that choice when they're presented with a billion different choices in a more complex environment. We've got to make the choice that we want really, really clear, which might mean making their world a little bit smaller for the minute. Makes sense. So reason number two, why you think your dog might be ignoring you on Purpose might actually be overwhelmed, them being overwhelmed. And the third, hey guys, I just want to take a moment to answer a question that has been coming in literally 10 emails today and that is how can we help you with your dog's behavior struggle? Whether that be reactivity, separation anxiety, resource guarding, maybe you've got multi dog household struggle right now. Maybe your dog's just so over aroused on a walk that they just can't listen to you and they're chasing everything in sight. Like can I get Tom's help? And the answer is that actually you can. And you can do that by booking a behavet behavior consultation. That's where literally my team give you the plan on how to transform your struggle and get you to that dream that made you get a dog in the first place. Right? Your world's got smaller and smaller and smaller and actually it doesn't need to be that way. You just need to reach out for help. Couple of things to say on that. First of all, if you're insured, if your dog's insured with pet plan, Kennel Club, Agria or many pets, we actually do direct claims with them, which means that that's covered by your insurance. So you don't pay out of your pocket, your insurance covers that. And the second thing to say is that we have loads of options. If you're insured with another provider or if your dog's not insured at all, that's also totally fine. We have loads of options that we've developed to make this so accessible for you because we're aware that you've already invested a load of time and a load of in getting your dog, looking after your dog, caring for your dog. But the last thing we want is for you to have done all that and still not be living the life that you deserve with your dog. And we know we can get you there. So all you need to do is go to the BehaveVet website and the way to do that is go B E H A dot V E T that's beh vet and it will take you there. Or just Google behave vet. Right? And you can get scheduled in and we can literally get you booked in for a consultation as soon as possible. We normally can accommodate it within a week, right. So that you can be getting to your dream asap. And the third is that effectively this could just be an issue of value. Yeah. Does your dog have more value for proximity, being close or does your dog have more value for being further away? One thing that we like to imagine is imagine if I was looking at you from above on a walk and there were circles radiating from you at say, I don't know, two meter intervals. Right. So you've got a circle around you that's like 4 meters, 4 meters wide. And then you've got another one that's 6 meters wide, 8 meters wide, 10 meters and so on. Right. And these circles, imagine that we can place value into each of these circles. Yeah. So what I want you to think about is where, where is the, how is the value split? Okay. Is it that in that very outer circle that might be like 20 meters, 90% of the value sits there and only 10% everywhere else? And maybe only, you know, if it's 9% everywhere else, maybe only 1% in that, that 2 meters around you. Right. Or is it that there's 90% of the value around you and only 10% distributed everywhere else? Those two scenarios are going to get, create very different behavior, aren't they? The first scenario, the dog is going to spend most of their time on the outer edges of these circles. Yeah. Further away from you because that's where the value is. Whereas the second example, that dog is going to literally be glued at your side. And you might not want either of those. Yeah. Really important to say. You may not want either of them, but you've got to get intentional about what you want. So how do we get intentional about what we want? Well, think, where do we want our dog spending their time? We want, maybe for many of us, we want our dog spending our time really, really close to us or certainly, you know, within a quiet, a close area. That means we need to put loads of value there. How do we do that? Well, it's probably not going to look like calling your dog over and putting them on lead in that, that, that area. That's going to create a negative balance in that area. Right. We're devaluing that area. What it's probably going to look like is actually while ever they're in that circle, we're feeding them high value stuff. And then maybe we do one piece of food away to say, you know what, you're not trapped in this circle and, and there's a bit of value out there, but there's loads of value here. And one game that really exemplifies that perfectly is a game called Proximity Vortex. Okay. And what that game is, is you have two different values of food. Okay. And I would recommend playing this on lead to start with because that's, that's going to get you the most success. You've Got two different values of food. You've got, let's say chicken and you've got kibble. Right? Dried food, tasty chicken, dry food. Right. You know which one's going to be higher value? Most likely. Now what we're going to do is we're going to play a game. Well, while ever the dog is in the circle closest to you, they're getting the chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. But we want them to have some value out there. So what do we do? We throw a piece of dry food out of the circle, right? Maybe a few meters away, four meters, five meters away, they go and they get that piece of food and they're like, oh, it's food. Yeah, cool. Decent value. But the high value is back with my owner. And when they come back into that circle, you're going to go, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. And the key here is that we don't want our dogs to have no value away from us because we don't want them to be worried about the world and we want them to be dogs and explore the world. But we, you know, when we, when we set up and play games like that, what we do is we get to stipulate where the value sits. Now, there's in the Help My Dog Hub, there is an entire section on proximity games and proximity teaching to get this completely resolved for you so that your dog's not only not ignoring you, they're actively wanting to have a conversation with you, no matter the environment, no matter what distractions are going on, no matter how tempting other dogs or people are. Right? And that is in the proximity engagement section of the Help My Dog Hub, which many of you will be already in the Help My Dog Hub, something like well over 2,000 of you in the Help My Dog Hub and those of you that aren't in the Help My Dog Hub, where you can get into the Help My Dog Hub by going to helpmydog.com hub. Very creative. And then you can play through all the various games that are going to be really, really useful for, for you. The key takeaway that I want you to get from this is it's a. It's a matter of maths, not a matter of judgment, right? It's. It's not. This is not your dog saying they don't love you, they don't like you. Right? This is either that they, they are not a fan of the consequence of interacting with you. It is that potentially that they're overwhelmed by choices and feel a bit stuck on, or it could be that actually they're doing the value maths and they're going, well, all the values here, not there. So I spend more time here than there. Right. All of those things, we can do something about it. All those things, we just shift around and completely change their behavior. So I love that you asked this question. I love that you asked it in such a hilarious way because it made me laugh. And I'm excited to hear how you get on. And, everyone, we will see you next week.