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Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 129 Help! My Dog Won't Leave Me Alone
00:15:30
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He'll nap if I leave the house. But when I'm in, he seems constantly on. Is he bored, anxious, or have I accidentally taught him that I'm entertainment?
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All 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 listen on at your own peril. As a veterinarian, dog behaviorist, best selling author and trainer over the past decade 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.
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I'm Dr. Tom. This is the Help My Dog podcast.
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And this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you, and having a few laughs along the way.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog podcast. Today we're doing a listener's question, and it's one that I think is going to benefit so many of you. So it's. It is. Let me find it. Help My dog just cannot relax when I'm home. The minute I sit down, he's pacing, staring at me, following me from room to room or bringing me toys. He'll nap if I leave the house. But when I'm in, he seems constantly on. Is he bored, anxious, or have I accidentally taught him that I'm entertainment? All right, there's a lot to unpack here and I think first thing to say is it is a really common struggle and it's really important that we do something about this, even if it does not bother you. And the reason why it's really important to do something about this, even if you don't find it, you know, an inconvenience, is because if you spend a lot of time at home, then actually your dog is not settled, is not being calm, and therefore is not emptying their stress bucket. And so their stress bucket can remain constantly full even though you're giving them lots of, in theory, opportunity to rest. But actually they can't switch off from you. And so they're not able to access that rest. And what that can mean is that they Have a constantly full stress bucket, so that when something happens like the doorbell rings or you go out for a walk and they see another dog or a person or whatever else, well, they're so close to threshold that actually they spill into overwhelm and they bark and they lunge and whatever else. And it's not necessarily because they feel so strongly about that specific trigger. It's because of all of the residual stress in their stress bucket that they were coming to that situation with. So that gives context into why we need to do something about this. Now, then, we've got to think, why is your dog behaving the way they are behaving? Well, it tends to be through a combination of three things. Okay. The first thing is that your dog clearly thinks you are very important. Yeah, they think your movement is very important. They think your presence in the house is very important. And probably the reason why they think your movement and your presence and you are important is because, well, they're smart and you lead to important things. Right? When you move, sometimes you move to get the lead to go for a walk. Sometimes you move to get the food out of the cupboard and give them some food in their food bowl. Sometimes you move and play with them or interact with them. So of course they're going to think that your movement is important. And then what can happen is that they can kind of spill into this, like, vicious cycle of when you move, they get involved and they make it important. Right. If every time you move or sit down or whatever else, they bring you a toy, they're now making you important because they're making it happen, does that make sense? And so that's kind of one side of this you're important coin. The second side of the you're important coin, though, is that of course they're going to think you being present in the house is important. If they always have access to you when you are at home, if they always can access you and bring you the toy and follow you around and jump on you and whatever else, they're going to find you being home important. You leave the house, you're not there, well, guess what? They can switch off because the important thing isn't there. Right. And so what can we do about this first kind of issue of them finding your movement important? Well, the biggest thing that we can do is implement something called presence doesn't mean access. And what that means is we need to start having portions of the day initially just, you know, small portions to build it, to build up to this, where your dog, you're home, but your dog doesn't have direct access to you. They are behind a baby gate, they are in a puppy pen, they are in a crate, they're just in a room of the house that is safe and you're happy to leave them in so that they can start to learn that you being home isn't this big important thing. Okay? That would be the first thing that we're going to do. The second thing that we're going to do is we need to start establishing with our dogs that sometimes we are none of their business. Right. And so what that means is I would be setting up situations in which your dog can be engaging in something else in, in your presence that is not engaging with you. That might be a long lasting chew, that might be a stuffed Kong, that might be, I don't know, some. If you're out in the garden, like, you know, it's a sunny day here today, it could be scatter some food in the garden for them to search out while you're doing the gardening. They're doing something independent of you, engaging in something independent of you. And therefore they're learning that your movement is not important because your movement is happening when you. While they're engaging with something else, which is effectively desensitizing them to your movement. Right. Every time you move and they don't get involved with you, every time you're present and they don't get involved with you, that is one coin in the bank account of making you not important in that setting. And it's so important because that's going to allow them to then switch off. So underlying driver number one, they think you and your movement are important and they were two tips that you can do to change that. Underlying driver number two is. Underlying driver number two is that your dog is really struggling to disengage from you. Okay? They are. You know, I imagine often these dogs that struggle to disengage from their owners in the house, they struggle to disengage from other things in the world as well, like other dogs or squirrels or rabbits or scents on the ground or whatever it might be, right? And so we need to teach your dog that there's actually way more value elsewhere than with you in the house. Okay? Now some of you might be thinking, but I need my dog to not disengage from me on walks. Well, think about it, think about it, think about it. Their inability to disengage is driving both their obsession with you in the house and their disregard for you outside. Right? Because as soon as there's something better to engage with a like outside. Right. What do they do? They engage with that thing and you can't get them to disengage from it. To engage with you in the home, maybe you're the most engaging thing most of the time and they're applying that same lack of disengagement to you there. So my advice would be to grow their ability to disengage generally. Right. And the way to grow their ability to disengage generally is by working on disengagement games that you can find in the Help My Dog Hub, which is like the, the members area with all of the skill building games and strategies, practical videos that show you how to teach your dog these things. And you can, if you're not already in the Help My Dog Hub, then I believe the link is helpmydog.com hub and you can get into it that way. I would also be playing a very specific game with your dog that I'm going to describe for you. That I'm going to describe for you right now. Basically what I want you to do is I want you to get some kind of dog bed, okay. That isn't a towel, where like for example, it's not that obvious when they're on the towel or not on the towel because it's flat to the ground, but like either, you know, chunky cushioned dog bed or one of those raised dog beds with little feet so that it's really clearly, you know, a clear distinction between being on the bed and on the ground. And what I want you to do is I want you to start firing bits of food onto the bed. And of course your dog is going to go, it's raining food over there. I'm going to go and get on the bed, right? And then what I want you to do is I want you to say a word that is going to be your release word. Okay. Don't use your dog's name for this. Or it could be a little noise like, right. Just something to get them to come to you and come off the bed and they're going to bounce off the bed and they're going to come to you and you're going to give them one single piece of food. And then what you're going to do is you're going to start throwing multiple pieces of food at the bed again and then you're going to do your noise, one piece, single piece of food with you, multiple pieces of food on the bed. And what we're creating is a value differential Loads of value on the bed. Not so much value with you or following you around. Right. And what that does is means that they suction to the bed and the they're gonna spend more time on the bed than with you. Now, you can be really sneaky with this. And sometimes you might release them off the bed using your special noise or word or whatever you wanna use. And you might not give them a piece of food. Yeah. Or you might give them a tiny crumb of a piece of kibble. You kind of want. In a way, it's great if they're a little bit disappointed and you wanna get them to the point where they kind of get off the bed when they hear the noise, but they just get straight back on it. They're just like, no, this is the best place to be. And that is that they're going to start to get to practice this skill of disengaging from you. You can then start to play this game as you're moving around the room. I always like to describe this as why you're putting the washing away. Right. You're putting you washing in this drawer, putting washing away in the wardrobe. Dog on bed. And you're moving around and they're saying the value is on the bed, not with that moving human. Yeah. Now also think if you're putting washing away, your dog's on their bed, your movement is happening while they're still on their bed and they're not getting involved with you. What is that? Also teaching them about whether your movement is important or not? They start to go, that human's movement isn't important in the house and actually the value is elsewhere. So we're hitting underlying driver number one and underlying driver number two, which is very exciting. Now the underlying driver number three. And this is very common in puppies and young dogs or dogs that are new to a particular environment. Is sometimes dogs might overly get involved with their owners and engage a lot with their owners because they don't know what else to do and they don't know what choices they should be making in that environment and they don't know where they should be and they don't know what behavior to be doing there. And actually there's a little bit of almost underlying anxiety that is driving that where they're a little bit like, oh, I don't know what to do and therefore I'm going to mouth your arm or I'm going to bring you a toy or whatever else. Right. And. And this is really common if you ever take your dog to I Don't know a friend's house, they've never been to that environment. They don't know where to spend their time or what they should do. It's an unfamiliar environment. There are unfamiliar people. And you might find your dog doing this. And therefore, we need to make it really clear to them what should they be doing in that space? Because when they know what they should be doing in that space, they then do it. And they can feel confident doing that, doing it. And they're then not engaging with you and they're disengaging from you. Now, the cool thing is, is if you implemented the game that I gave you in the second underlying driver, that game with the bed, guess what? That is also teaching your dog and spelling it out to your dog what they should be doing in that context, how they should be behaving in that context. So we get this kind of calm, disengaged confidence that comes about when we play that game that effectively then is going to tick underlying driver number one, two and three, because it's working on all three at the same time. Right. So this is a really, really common struggle. Now, I'm going to end with a word of warning. Okay? The most common advice that people get about this when, when they go to a professional or just search online for this struggle. You know, my dog won't leave me alone. He's constantly following me around. He's really, really energetic and constantly bringing me a toy. He is. You will be told that's because they're bored or that's because they've got too much energy and you need to exercise them more. I just want to highlight, based on everything that you know now, engaging with them more, playing with them more, exercising them more is going to do a couple of things here, isn't it? One, it's going to fill their stress bucket, most likely. And it looks to me like their stress bucket is already quite full. And actually what it needs to do is empty. They just don't yet have the skills to empty it. Right. The second thing that it's probably going to do is, is teach them that your movement is especially important. I know I'll wear him out by playing with him in the house. I'll wear him out by playing with him in the garden. What is that teaching them about your movement? Oh, this, this human's movement leads to even more exciting things, right? That human's movement is especially important. Therefore, when they move, I'll find it even harder to disengage from them because I've still not learned this skill of disengagement, and the struggle gets worse and worse and worse. And where it might get better for a day or two or two, that might be because you somehow managed to wear them out. But guess what the. Guess what the mammalian body does. Guess what it does. It gets fitter. That's the nature of going to the gym. We go to the gym, and on day one, yeah, we. I don't know, we're on the treadmill for 10 minutes and we're exhausted. But then on day two, we can maybe do 15 minutes because the body's gone. Huh? There's more energy demand here, so I'll just make some more energy. And that is infinite. Right? Dogs can get so insanely fit that they could basically never sleep, Right? And they could constantly bring you that toy and bark at you. And that is not going to be the path to success. Instead, what we need to do is understand the three underlying drivers that I went through, tackle those, and you'll find that your dog makes the right choices. Now, that was this episode of the Help My Dog podcast. We will see you next time. I think we'll do another listener's question next week because you guys get tons of value from these. And if you have not already left a review for this podcast, please, please, please, please, please do so, because it gives context to others and means that they find the right answers right at the start.