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Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 120 Three Things Every New Dog Owner NEEDS To Know
00:12:16
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Top three tips when you just get a dog, right, and you know, if they're a rescue dog, especially, especially if you know, they're from abroad. So they've had lots of turmoil and what would I be thinking about and what would I be doing in that, in that time? 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 grateful. 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, 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 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 once again, we're doing a listener's question and it goes like this. Hi Tom, I have started listening to your podcast and seen some of your videos on Facebook and wondered if any of your courses or if you have any specific podcasts on new rescue dogs. My dog is a rescue from abroad. I have only had him 10 days, so very early, but is obviously very stressed, so. So I'm not sure what I can do with him at this stage, but I am unable to take him outside the garden and really get him to engage with me in the garden and can't really get him to engage with me in the garden. So I want to try and start to form good habits. Now, do you have any advice and any of your training programs you would recommend, or am I best to wait for now until he's more settled? All right, Helen, great question. So there's loads to cover off here and I think what I want to do is I want to dedicate this episode to being almost like top three tips when you just get a dog, right? And if they're a rescue dog, especially, especially if you know they're from abroad. So they've had lots of turmoil and what would I be thinking about and what would I be doing in that time. So the first thing that I would be doing is I would not be putting any pressure on myself or them to get out or behave in a particular. Okay. I think there's a lot of misinformation, bad information in dog training and behavior around, you know, like starting as we mean to go on. Consistency is key, like that sort of thing. And what it does is it puts some necessary pressure on you and you kind of feel like you've got some kind of like ticking timeframe closing window whereby you can establish the behavior that you want. Otherwise it's good gone forever. And it's just simply untrue. The reality is that your dog has arrived probably with a very full stress bucket. And that stress bucket is gonna take time to empty. And in the meantime, the reality is that being in a new home is stressful. So it's gonna be getting topped up a little bit anyway. So it's probably gonna take a good couple of weeks just to actually start to decompress, get an understanding of what is normal in this space and when things happen and, and at that point then it can really start to empty and we can start to see like their true little personality coming out. Right. So my first tip for you would be actually just take a break. Just like you go about your normal day, they can go about their normal day. And then what I would do is I would infiltrate my next tip for you, which is, if you think about it, they've come through a journey of a journey that they basically have zero control over. They have had things happening to them rather than happening by them. Yeah. And so what I would like to think about in these first two weeks is how can we get stuff happening by them? Right. How can we give them an opportunity to learn that they can influence the world for the better and they have control of the world. Yeah. Ultimately teaching them that they have agency. Right. Which in turn is that, like, seed of confidence that then can grow. And ultimately, to be honest, it's the seed of training. Yeah. The way reward based training works is that the dog learns that they can influence the outcome of whether the reward happens or not based on their choices. In order to do any kind of training of that sort, we're going to need to teach them that they can influence outcomes in the world full stop. And your lovely new rescue dog has kind of had the opposite spell out to them through that journey potentially. And so how do we do this? Well, the first thing that I would do is I Like to do something called random acts of kindness with these dogs where basically part of their daily food allowance is just randomly going to be delivered to them. Yeah. So I don't know, I get up out of my office chair and I walk across the room. Well, I'm going to fire a piece of food to towards them and they're going to eat that piece of food. Right. But then what I quickly start to change that into is when they walk across the room, I'm going to fire a piece of food as a reward to that so that they're like, oh, so when I walk across the room, food appears and I made that happen. That's really cool. Or when they get back in their bed. Well, I got back in my bed and a positive outcome happened. I think I made that happen because maybe I have some influence over this world. Right. It's just one of the biggest gifts that we can biggest gifts that we can do them. So that random acts of kindness would be the first way that I would do that. Second way that I would do that is I would. 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 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 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. Second way that I would do that is I would get some very, very easy enrichment toys. Right. So like food dispensers, treat dispensers, very easy ones. Okay. And then you might want to make them even easier. Right. And again what they do is they just start to infiltrate into the day and throughout the day, oh, I can influence whether this thing gives me a piece of food. I can influence the world. Maybe the world is not so scary. Yeah. So that would be my second tip for you and then my third tip for you would be that you could start doing our help My Dog walks A stressful 10 day plan. Okay. And that would be a great starting point for you to do it at home. Because basically what we now need to think is we've got, we're cool with home, but your dog is going to need certain skills out and about. We get the opportunity to assume they're a clean slate, blank slate, and teach those skills from scratch. That 10 day plan course will achieve that. And the nice thing about that is all of those games, a very nice kind of next step from the random acts of kindness. You've now got a dog that over the course of two weeks realizes they can influence the world and, and change the world. And the other. I'm just going to add on the random acts of kindness. If they come over to you and give you a sniff, right. The temptation is like to go, oh my God, they love me. They finally love me. I'm going to give them a hug. You know what I do? I'd fire a piece of food away. So they, they, yeah, they came and they realized that I'm a good thing. But then I reset them and pressure release. They don't, they don't feel, they don't get Overwhelmed. And then they can choose to return to interact with me, if they choose right. And then again, I might throw a piece of food away. Yeah, there's a lifetime for touching. We do not need to touch right now. We need to make sure that we've got this foundation of them thinking that you're, you know, you're a great thing and that their environment is a great thing. So, yeah, 10 day plan. And ultimately what that is going to do is teach them grow effectively the skills that they are going to need when you go out and about. And the cool thing about that plan is it also then explains how we're going to rebuild that walk, how we're going to take those skills that we've got now got at home and how we're going to map them out into a walk. Okay. So that that point you can start to build the great habits. But when I hear habits, what I hear are skills. Yeah. Because skills create appropriate choices without our input. Right. Versus what a lot of training might have you do is set up a situation where you're constantly having to tell your dog what to do. My ideal is that actually my dog's just made great independent choices because they've got the skills required for the situation. And I think from your use of the word habits, I get the feeling, Helen, that you are of the same thought process. So that would be my three tips. Hope you got tons of value, guys. That applies to all rescue dogs and to be honest, all puppies. And what I would say is don't feel the urge to get them out and expose them to things. Also, because you've got to realize every corner of your house, every object in your house, every time of day in your house, in every room, in every corner and area of your garden is novel. Right now, it is all new. That is exposure in itself. And pairing random acts of kindness with all that novelty is the training that is needed now to get them cool about being out and about as well. I will see you next time.