← Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 123 Top Tips for the First 24 Hours With Your New Dog or Puppy! Welcome Home!
00:13:50
Loading summary
Transcript9 lines
- [00:00]
A
We must teach our dogs that novelty and new things in the environment are nothing to worry about. As soon as you reframe it in that way, you start to realize, well, this room is new to this puppy, that room is new to the puppy, that every corner and square meter of the back garden is new to the puppy. So that is what exposure to novelty looks like in the first few days. Yeah.
- [00:25]
B
Before we dive in, a warning. The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some, 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, 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.
- [01:32]
A
Hello and welcome to this episod of the Help My Dog podcast. And today we're covering off a listener's question that is quite an important one. It's really cool that this listener has asked this question because I think often we don't think to ask this question because we're just so excited about what is about to happen. And that is my new puppy. I'm collecting my new puppy in two weeks time and I was wondering what I should do in that first 24 hours. Right. Which is awesome. I would love to say that I would think like this, but I'd just be thinking about, oh my God, I'm so excited. Anyway, so what do you do in the first 24 hours when you are bringing a dog into your home, regardless of whether they're a puppy or an older dog. Right. And so let's do a few tips, three to five, depending on how deep we go. So tip number one, what I want you to be aware of is that the act of moving from one environment to another environment is very, very stressful. Right. Isn't it? Something like moving house is like top three human stressors. Yeah, but we forget that when it comes to a dog. And so definitely be aware that your puppy's little stress bucket is going to be very, very full. And so we need to be careful that we don't add unnecessary things to that bucket. Okay, so what is that going to look like? Well, first of all, just giving them opportunity to decompress and just be in that home environment. Second thing would be not to impose yourself too much on them. Check that you know they're wanting to engage with you, and don't make it, like, super, super exciting. Even though their little personalities might want it to be super, super exciting. There's enough stress in that bucket without adding some excitement in there as.
- [03:27]
B
As well. So that would be.
- [03:30]
A
That would be the second one. Third one. That also means don't be in a rush to get them out for a walk. Get them visiting family or whatever else. Get rid of this idea that there's this closing window where you've got to do all these things, otherwise they're never going to be cool about them. It's not accurate. Okay. Let them decompress. All right, Tip number one. Tip number two, be aware of how much is new to that puppy. Okay. There's this whole, like, push that owners feel of, you must socialize them, you must get them out, you must get them seeing things. Flip that around and think about it as we must teach our dogs that novelty and new things in the environment are nothing to worry about. As soon as you reframe it in that way, you start to realize, well, this room is new to this puppy, that room is new to the puppy, that every corner and square meter of the back garden is new to the puppy. So that is what exposure to novelty looks like in the first few days. Yeah. And it quite simply looks like being in the environment, noticing things and pairing it with positive outcome, AKA their daily food allowance. Right. Tip number three, start to think about what. This is such a powerful question for new dog owners. What arousal level do I want my dog to experience in this space for the rest of their life? Yeah. And what I mean by that is, let's take the living room, for example. Yeah. What do you do in the living room? Maybe watch tv. Maybe you sit with visitors coming to the house and chat to them. Yeah. That is what that room is for. And I think sometimes what happens when we get a new puppy is we're like, oh, my God, cute puppy. And we can do all these things with them, and it's like, they're so much fun, and it's all, you know, really, really cool. And what we do is we do lots of exciting things with them in the space that ultimately we want that to be a calm space. And then what we've got to do when they get to 6, 8, 9, 9, 10, 12 months, we've got to start to re, we've got to start to unwind. What we created, which was we set the arousal level, we set the tone to high excitement in that space. And so ask yourself the question, what arousal level do I want my dog to experience in this room in the future and forevermore? And that is the arousal level that we want to start to aim for from day one. We want to not do things that are going to push them into too high arousal in that space. And we want to try and do things that are appropriate and conducive to that level of calmness that we're wanting to achieve. That might look like long lasting chews, passive calming activities like stuffed kongs. Right? That is, you know, that is, that is just so, so powerful. And we call it rehearse the room. Right, or rehearse the space. Rehearse what we want in the future. So that would be tip number three. I think we're on tip number three. All right.
- [06:40]
B
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 you, 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
- [08:30]
A
we can literally get you booked in for a consultation as soon as possible. We normally can accommodate it within a week.
- [08:36]
B
Right. So that you can be getting to your dream asap.
- [08:39]
A
Tip number four that I'm going to go for is on the first night, okay. I think we, we, we get told, or there's certain schools of thought that you should like have these boundaries from day one and you should, you know, they've got to, you've got to, they've got to get used to what, you know what you want to happen. And they've got to be in a crate downstairs and not in your bedroom. And the reality is they have just left probably some other litter mates left their mum left their environment that they're comfortable with. And so we need to find some compromise in between that and the scenario that you don't want and the scenario that you do want. Right. And so what I always think about is have them cratered, okay. But next to you in the bedroom and effectively so you're there, but they don't have direct access to you. And what you can do is you can pop your hand on their, you know, on their crate to let them know that you're there and just keep it nice and calm and as non event as possible. Right. And then what you can do over the subsequent days and weeks is move the crate further and further away. Yeah. So that you can start to transition the crate to where you want it to go. Now the other way of doing this, which is less comfortable is that actually they're in the final destination of where you want them to sleep and you sleep next to them on the floor or whatever. Right. Which I know is common for people to do. I just like my bed and so instead we do it the other way around. That fits with me. But don't think that you know, by you sleeping next to them or them sleeping next to you that then you're going to be stuck with that forever. It's not how it works. If anything, that's how you can make sure that isn't the scenario that you end up with. Okay. And then the fifth tip that I'm going to give you is I think it's got to be one around separation again and kind of sleeping, sleeping alone. Make sure that you know from early on in some form that is suitable for that individual, that they don't have access to you all the time when you're in the house. So that might look like you're sat on the sofa reading a book. They're in a crate next to you chilling, having a long lasting chew. They don't, yeah, you're next to them but they don't have access to you. Okay. And then that built, you know, that morphs into actually you've been able to move around the room, they're in their crate chilling and you can then start to build that out to them being in a separate room. Okay. This is what separation training should look like. Yeah. Not you leaving the house for a second and then building up to 5 seconds and 10 seconds. It needs to be a non event that you're in the house and you have to start to build that in from early on just in the form of utilising barriers and giving them something to engage with on the other side of the barrier by making your presence in the house not super exciting because they don't have access to you when you're in the house all the time. It means that your absence is not so important. Right. And that is how ultimately you set them up to just really not be bothered about whether they're home alone or not. Okay. Because they've already practiced approximations of it. So they're the five tips that I've got for you. Obviously there are tons more. I guess my sixth tip if I, if I can is if you join the Help My Dog hub, which is like the Help My Dog membership area where there are all the videos and step by steps of how to teach your dog to do this and how to teach your dog to do that. By doing that from day one and teaching them the skills to be cool about, you know, interacting with other dogs or visitors, coming to the house or whatever else that's really powerful because you're kind of just doing the right method from the word go. And I think sometimes what we can do is we can kind of go, oh, I'll figure it out. You know, I've had a dog before. And the challenge with that is that when your dog. When your dog rehearses choices and behaviors and emotions, that we don't want them spending their days, you know, rehearsing that emotion, choice, or behavior. What starts to happen is it starts to send them on a trajectory of heading in that behavioral direction. Whereas if we can get them rehearsing what we want in terms of choices, behaviors, and emotions from day one, well, it's just way easier, right? And so if you can jump into the help my dog hub, it's helpmydog.com hub, that's helpmydog.com hub. And you can be a member, you know, a month, two months, six months, basically, you can cancel anytime. So, you know, we just want to help you for as long as you want to be helped. Right? So hopefully you got value from that. Hopefully that's helped you and sorted that first 24 hours, and we will see you next time.