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Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 118 Troublesome Toilet Walks: What To Do When Walks Are Unavoidable
00:13:23
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You need a way in, right? And the way in has to be responsiveness in this instance. And the level of responsiveness that you need generally needs to be 10 times higher than you really need, so that when a distraction appears, you've got half a chance. Right. 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. 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, understanding 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 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 it's, you know, it's a common one. Some of you won't have this challenge in your lives and yet you're going to be able to pull out some things that I'm saying to answer this, this listener for your own living situation. And that is I can't ditch the dog walks right now. We don't have a garden or outside space, so we have to walk our dog to toilet them. Can we make progress if we have to face these triggers every time we go outside side? And the answer is absolutely, yes, you can. Right? It's just going to require a slightly different approach, slightly different strategies. And it might be that this requires like a behavior clinician to come up with a plan for you because everybody's living situation when they don't have gardens is slightly different. And so we might need to tailor a plan specific to what you're coming up against. But my overarching like thoughts are on this. If I were to, I guess give you three tips that also would apply to other people's situations, even if they do have a garden, is we need to differentiate, potentially differentiate with your dog between training walks. In other words, Rebuilding walks. Right. We're building the perfect picture. And the fact that the picture sometimes isn't perfect because we have to go to the toilet outside. Right. And they can't constantly be engaging you outside on those walks because actually you need to go to the toilet. And so the way to do that and the way to get dogs to differentiate between a picture where you're really trying to build a great picture and a fresh start versus maybe where we can't avoid some unideal picture is thinking about how can we make it really obvious that these are completely different scenarios even though the location is the same. Now, one way that we might do that is having different walking equipment. We walk to go to the toilet on this particular harness and lead combination or whatever you walk your dog on. And yet when we're doing a trait, when we're rebuilding the picture through training and through. Through growing skills, then actually we are going to walk in a different kind of harness and lead. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is the entry and exit from the house. So we've had clients where we've said, right, we're going to rebuild the perfect walk from the back door out. Right. And we're going to keep the not so perfect walk out the front door. Yeah. And that in itself can just really help keep any bad experiences from the, you know, the toileting context. Keep that box there and it doesn't impact or set you back on the perfect picture that you want to build. Yeah. Now then, what we've got to think about is the, I guess, how do we go about rebuilding this perfect picture? And I think we've got, again, a number of different things, and I'm trying to kind of process, I'm trying to kind of distill them down into what's going to be most, like, meaningful to you. I think, I think my second tip would, would be for you that you're going to need a really, really, really strong marker word or marker noise or attention noise. Because ideally, what we need to be doing is being able to get in there early. When your dog sees one of their triggers, you haven't mentioned what, what, what they struggle with right now, but we're going to need to get in there really early. And so I like to do a bit of a marker test with my dog. So those of you that have listened to the podcast for any length of time, you're probably familiar with the fact that we teach our dogs that new events that are happening in the environment, like other dogs or People or birds or noises or cars, they actually are nothing to worry about. In fact, they're a predictor of something good, a positive outcome. And the way that we do that is by marking those events when they appear with a nice or a good or whatever, a marker word that is consistent and always the same, and then following up with a treatment. Okay, a piece of food. And you might need to use high value food in this instance. Now, I like to do a bit of a marker test in these situations where I'd love you to be, you know, walking and I'd love you to say your marker word and with your dog ahead of you, say your marker word. Do they do like a whiplash turnaround to you and say, where's my positive outcome? If they don't do that in the absence of a distraction, how on earth are we going to get them to do that when they see a distraction? Right. And so if they didn't pass the marker test, which, you know, often there are like, there are levels that we can get it to to make it make this even easier for you. And so I'd suggest potentially, you, do you want to do this anyway? You want kind of really whiplash turning in this, in this situation. And then what you need to do is you need to go back to building that as a really, as a really highly predicting marker word for that, for that positive outcome or that piece of food. Now, ways to do that one simply pairing it with very high value food. Yeah, I know sometimes people think, oh, we, you know, with dog reactivity, dog training, we shouldn't use high value food. I am not in that camp. Some people think, oh, high value food means that they're excited. I think that we. What we need first and foremost is responsiveness so that we can support them and help them and guide them to make different choices and emotional responses to the environment. So responsiveness is absolutely number one, especially in this scenario where triggers are unavoidable. So very, very high value food. Say you mark a word, deliver a piece of food. Say you mark a word, deliver a piece of food. Say you mark a word, deliver a piece of food. The other variation of this that I like to do that creates the whiplash turn. If your dog is comfortable with it, is almost have your dog. And if you're in the Help My Dog Hub, there's videos in the Help My Dog Hub of how to do this and build this. Have your dog on lead, on a harness and have your dog out in front of you, have the lead quite short. So they Actually can't turn around to you and they're sort of pointing away from you, out in front of you, right? And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna say your marker word and then you're gonna loosen the lead and they're going to then be able to turn and get that piece of chicken or whatever it is that you've got and you're going to repeat. And what you'll find is as you do that, they'll be really anticipating that marker word because that marker word becomes the predictor of them being able to spin round, get the high value piece of food. And so we're creating almost like scarcity around the marker word. So they're literally going, come on human, give me that marker word, right? And then what you can do is you can easily expand that out onto the walk where they're ahead of you and you say your marker word and ping. It's just become like this muscle memory, super conditioned response, right? And they're pinging back around to you. That would be my second tip for you because you need a way in, right? And the way in has to be responsiveness in this instance. And the level of responsiveness that you need generally needs to be 10 times higher than you really need. So that when a distraction appears, you've got half a chance, right? So that would be the second tip. Third tip that I've got for you is I'd be thinking, well, 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. Now a 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 money in getting your dog, looking after your dog, caring for your do. 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 Behave Vet 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 behavet. 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. Third tip that I've got for you is I'd be thinking, well, okay, we might be a little bit limited by what skills we can grow in the situation right now. Yeah, the skill of disengagement, the skill of optimism, whatever skills your dog is lacking. But there are infinite ways you could grow those skills for the situation. Yeah. And grow them at home so that you're walking into that environment with a head start of your dog having great skills right now. Best way to do that is to get involved in the Help My Dog Hub. If you're not already a member, that is like where all of the games are in the skill building, step by step sessions are so that you can build a dog to the level of disengaging from dogs, chasing Frisbees or whatever. You can build a dog to be super optimistic so that they don't find any dog or person or noise, anything to worry about. Right. And all of it is in the Help My Dog Hub. Right. And ultimately what that journey will take you on is the journey of going, okay, I can't control what goes on outside, but I can control what goes on inside the house and I can build these skills so that I'm literally walking out into that environment. Me and my dog, like superheroes navigating the world with the skills that are required for the world that we find ourselves in right now, which isn't ideal for. Right. We've established that. And yet we've also established that we can create separate pictures for the good walk that we're building and the bad walk that still potentially has to happen. We've got we're going to build super responsiveness so that we can support and help them in the situation. And before we pop back into the situation too much, we've got lots of opportunities to grow skills for that situation so that we've got even more of a head start. I'm super excited to hear how you get on. I, you know, this is this is by no means a roadblock to your progress. We work with this all of the time at Behave Vet, so do not worry about that. You know, this is many people have walked this path before you. And as always, listeners, we will see you next week.