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Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 128 Teach Your Dog This ONE Skill for Consistently Calm Walks
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And dogs are really good at anticipating. And it's this anticipation that is causing this behavior. 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, 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 today we are doing a listener's question. And I think it's a common one, actually. We've had this a couple of times and I thought, you know what, we should, we should do it, we should talk about it. And that is my dog pulls like a train, barks at everything. And it's a bit of a nightmare on the first half of the walk. And as soon as we turn to go home, they behave perfectly. And actually they don't pull on lead and they're focused and responsive and looking up at me. Okay, now this is really, really common. And the nice thing is this gives us a bit of a clue as to how we need to transpire form your dog's behavior. Okay, so the way to think about this is that in the first half of the walk, the reason why your dog is not behaving the way you know, they can behave because they do it on the second half of the walk is because quite literally their brain is not in their skull. Yeah. They are in a state of anticipation of the walk. In a state of anticipation of maybe there's a park destination halfway and then you go home after the park and effectively their brain has left their head and it is already in that final destination and their body is like trying to catch up. Yeah. So they're literally pulling on the end of the lead, trying to get their brain back in there to Catch up with where their brain is. And dogs are really good at anticipating and it's this anticipation that is causing this behavior. Now why does anticipation come about? Well, it's actually really simple when you boil it down. Predictable events create anticipation. Yeah. Anticipation creates arousal. Yeah. Increased arousal. So how can we never, ever forget that? Well, let's think about, I don't know, predictable events in our lives. Christmas, for example, for many of you, right, it's the same date every year and there is this big build up and it's very predictable. And because it's predictable, you start to anticipate it the closer it gets. And anticipation, that anticipation then triggers the emotional response associated with that event. Now, for some of you, that's going to be a positive emotional response to Christmas excitement. For some of you, it could be a negative emotional response because you're thinking, oh God, like 24 hours with family, how will I survive? Right. And you start to have this negative anticipation. But it's still, you know, it still increases your arousal level. And so it's exactly the same with our dogs. Now what happens with that arousal level in our dogs? Well, as arousal increases, well, they are less responsive. They're less able to deploy the skills that we know that they have. They're less able to make the right choices because they're in a higher state of arousal. And often when we're talking about this level of behavior deterioration on the first half of the walk, they're in very, very high arousal over arousal. Right. And so that explains why the first half of the walk and the second half of the walk can often be different. It actually doesn't often relate to, oh, they've burnt some energy and now they're better. Yeah. Because think about it, they're actually more responsive on that second half of the walk. They're not, you know, dragging their back legs along the street. Like, I've not got another step left in me. They're actually more responsive, more focused and calmer. Right. There's a difference in quality there. So what do we do about it? Well, imagine if for the entire walk, your dog could have their brain firmly in their skull and they can do, they could do all these things that you know, that they're capable of for the entire walk. Well, we can do that and we can do it in a couple of different ways. The first way is, I alluded to earlier, predictability creates anticipation, which creates arousal. If we remove the predictability of what a walk looks like and where it goes, we can find that actually they're more Responsive in the moment because their brain is now in the moment. Okay, so that might look like very, very short walks where you go out, walk 10 metres and then go home again. Yeah, it might look like 20 metres. It might look like slightly different routes. If there's a particular space in the walk where you are going to and from, for example a field or a park or some open space, you might want to skip that and not go there and try and remove that predictability. That can sometimes work by itself, but it always works when you pair it with what I'm about to talk about next. Okay, and that is that the reason why your dog's brain is not in the moment? The reason why your dog's brain is in the park is because there's no benefit to it being in the moment. Right. There's no. If there was benefit to their brain being in the moment and them not being in a state of anticipation, they would not be in a state of anticipation and their brain would be in the moment. So how can we anchor the brain back in the moment? Yeah, what brain anchor could we use? 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 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 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, where we normally can accommodate it within a week. Right. So that you can be getting to your dream asap. So how can we anchor the brain back in the moment? Yeah, what brain anchor could we use? Well, what we like to do with dogs is teach them a very simple behavior that acts as a brain anchor. And that is we get a small portable object like a little yoga block or some little, like foot target, something they can fit both front feet on. Okay. And we teach them to put their front feet on this object. Now this is really simple. All you're going to do is lure them with a piece of food onto the object so their front feet are on the object. And as soon as their front feet hit that object, you're going to go, yes, and feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. And then you're going to throw a piece of food away so that they leave the object as they turn around after eating that piece of food and turn back to you. You're going to greet them with a lured piece of food in your hand and lure their front feet back onto the object and feed fe. Feed, feed, feed, feed. After saying yes, and throw a piece of food away again. Right? Until you get to the point where actually you don't need to lure them because they've realized that the object is the vending machine of life. Right? Their front paws go on and it's feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. Like jackpot, right? And so at that point, what you can start to do is pick the object up and move around with it and place it down their feet. Go on, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. Pick the object up, move somewhere else. They're following you, going, when are they going to put that object down? You put the object down, their feet go on, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. You pick the object up, you walk somewhere else. They're following you and thinking, when is that object going to go down? You put the object down, their feet go on, you feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. You get the idea, right? And you start to build that into these little unpredictable short walks that you're doing. You pop their lead on, you put the object down. If their feet go on, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. Awesome. You open the front door, you walk out the front door, you pop the object down, feet go on, feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. And what starts to happen is it's way more beneficial for them to keep their brain in the moment and thinking, I wonder when that object's going to come out. And I wonder when it's going to go down. Right now the good news is you don't need to do. You'll get to the point where you don't need to be doing the object. Putting the object down every three meters. That's no fun for anyone's walk or back. Right. Just simply having it there and periodically anchoring your dog's brain back in the moment. Maybe every, you know, 10 minutes. Yeah. Soon you have to do it at all, because their brain will just be in the moment because they've learned it's way more efficient and calmer and more enjoyable for your brain to be in the moment. But right now, we've got to have these anchors to keep it in the moment. Right. As well as making their walks unpredictable. When you do that, you fix the actual underlying driver. Yeah. Of their brain is not in their skull. And ultimately that's going to be way more effective than trying to drill them on loose lead walking and drill them on. Focus on that first half of the walk, because how on earth are you going to drill a dog? How on earth are you going to train a dog or teach a dog something new when their brain is not in their skull? Which is why a lot of conventional advice on reshaping and transforming your dog's behavior on walks doesn't work, because it's all based on the assumption that they have a brain in that moment. And until we get their brain back in. In their head in that moment, none of those things are going to work. And what you find is as soon as you implement what I've just described and what I've just gone through, you find that actually, often you don't have to do any of the training because you've already done it. They knew it all along, but their arousal level wasn't conducive to them being able to actually implement what they already knew. Now, I hope that that has been a bit of a light bulb for many of you and also quite energizing in thinking you're going to, you know, jump out your seat and grab an object and start training this right now. I highly recommend you do, because this is really transformational for your dog walks. And ultimately the learning is one thing, but the thing that gets the real life results is actually you implementing that learning. And so go forth, implement it. That was this episode of the Help My Dog podcast, and we will see you next week.