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Help! My Dog: The Podcast. Dog Behaviour & Training Strategies that Work!
Ep 130 Playtime Gone Wrong: Top Tips for Over the Top, Crazy Play With Your Dog!
00:14:40
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But after a few minutes of tug or fetch, or any game for that matter, he gets really mouthy, jumps up, zooms around, and won't calm down, and has ripped my clothes. 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 a 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're doing a listener's podcast question, and the question is. Help. Playtime always ends with my dog going completely wild. He starts off having fun, but after a few minutes of tug or fetch, or any game for that matter, he gets really mouthy, jumps up, zooms around and won't calm down and has ripped my clothes. I want him to enjoy playing, but it often feels like I'm winding him up instead of enriching him. What am I getting wrong here? And what do I do? I. All right, so this is a really interesting one. It's a really common one. The. The fact is that for a dog to be able to navigate this experience of play with their owner, what they need is a functioning, what we call dimmer switch. In other words, they need to be able to adjust their arousal level in line with the game. Sometimes it's a little bit exciting, sometimes it maybe just calms down a little bit and is a little bit. Is a little bit slower, but then it might peak and go a little more exciting again, and then it might slow down again. Right. And a nice way to think about this is almost thinking about your dog's life and their arousal level throughout their life. Should be a little bit like an ECG trace, right? You know, like the heartbeat trace where it's up and down and up a little bit and down a little bit, and then up and down and so on, right? And the problem is, is that often those. There's a lot of dogs out there that don't really have that kind of gentle up and down and variation in their arousal level. And instead they're either down or they're up, right? Or they're down or they're up and there's no in between. And effectively they're either level 0 or level 100. They don't have a dimmer switch with all those little variations of arousal level. Instead, what they've got to navigate life with is a light switch. Now, this can show up in a lot of different struggles. It can show up in this struggle of responding to the owner, playing or training, and it can escalate quite quickly, and they can't kind of match a lower energy even when it's offered. But it can also show up when they're interacting with other individuals, right? Other species, for example, when they're interacting with other dogs effectively. Some dogs go through life not being able to have great interactions or conversations with other dogs because they're either horizontal, asleep, or like level psychopath. And there's no in between, and it freaks other dogs out. Right? And so there's that side of things, the other side, the other type of kind of animal interaction that can make dogs struggle in their conversations is if there's other species of animal in the household. For example, if you've got a dog and a cat, and maybe the dog and the cat got on really well, but increasingly the dog actually isn't able to navigate conversations with the cat. And that's because the dog can only go to level 100. And what level 100 looks like is chasing the cat, barking at the cat, snapping at the cat, jumping up at the cat, and being way too boisterous, right? And then the final kind of interaction where this can show up, because I'll just focus on dimmer switch and its influences around interactions for this episode, is your dog's interaction with if you've got children or grandchildren, right? Often so, interestingly, human children, until they get to a certain age, they often don't really have a dimmer switch themselves. And it's something that has to be practiced in a human child as well to get to so that they can learn that there are different energy levels and arousal levels. And so you can imagine if you've got a human child and a dog, both of whom have a light switch, right? And they're engaging with each other. That interaction is only going to go one way and it's only going to go extreme. Right. And it's only going to go extreme and it's not setting the dog or the child up for success because either dog is going to get too boisterous and a little bit dangerous or child is going to get too boisterous and a little bit dangerous. The other thing that tends to happen in high arousal is, is when you're in really high arousal, you're more likely to get offended by the other person. Yeah. So we see this all the time when we're kind of out and about and we see dogs and children interacting where child will get dog very, very, very, very excited because child is very, very, very excited and everyone's very, very excited. Very, very, very, very excited until child goes ah, I'm scared and starts crying. And we've all seen this and it's purely because they both don't have a functioning dimmer switch. So you know, arguably giving your dog the gift of a dimmer switch, yeah, it's going to fix your struggle with playing with them and interacting with them, but also it's going to facilitate and enable better conversations generally and stop your dog from being vulnerable in those kinds of interactions. The final thing that I want to say on a dimmer switch that I think is really important here is 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 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. The final thing that I want to say on a dimmer switch that I think is really important here is we're all taught that dogs are communicating with us all the time. And to try and, you know, to be a very diligent owner, we should notice little signs that our dog might be uncomfortable or scared or worried or anxious. And these little subtle clothes clues, like licking their lips or turning their head away or growling. Right. Less subtle. The thing is, your dog being able to demonstrate all of those different little escalations in communication are completely dependent on whether they have a dimmer switch or not. Because if you think about it, if they're going from level 0 to level 100, well, they're skipping, you know, licking their lips, showing the white of their eye, turning their head away, moving away, even growling. And they're going straight for barking, snapping, jumping up, lunging. Yeah. And so giving your dog the gift of a dimmer switch also unlocks the opportunity for them to communicate in a much more subtle way that keeps them safe and keeps everyone around them safe. So dimmer switch is key. So how do we grow a dimmer switch? Well, it all comes through practice. Yeah, Practice at a level that your dog can cope with. So right now we've established that. You mentioned tug and fetch. Was it tug and fetch? I think it was tug and fetch. Yeah, Tug and fetch. They send them into, you know, space. They send them into level 100 and there's no in between and they just show a light switch. Could we play games? Are there games that we could play with them that wouldn't test them quite so much, so that they can maybe go to a level 20 and then back down to a level 10? Or they could go to a level 30 and then back down to a level ten. And that might be, for example, food games, Having some food in your hand and rolling the food and getting them to chase the food and getting them to catch the food, and then you might slow it all down and maybe you're just placing the food, level 10 and maybe you're passing the food to their mouth. Level 15. Right. But then maybe you're rolling the food and It's a level 30 and then you're rolling it a bit faster and It's a level 40. And then you're throwing it up in the air and they're catching it and It's a level 60. And then we're going to go back to rolling it at a level 20 and rolling it again at a level 20. And then maybe we're placing it on the floor very calmly at level 10 and then we're going to roll it again. And so we're effectively creating the heartbeat, we're creating the ECG trace of our. And down a little bit, a little bit, and then up a bit higher and then down a bit. Yeah. And the more they practice this, the more able they will be to do this, right? The more they will be able to offer different arousal levels in different situations. And as you increase the challenge, they're going to be able to match that challenge. But you've got to get the, you know, you've got to get the repetitions in early at a level that they can cope with. Just like, you know, going to the gym on the first day, you're not going to be picking up, you're not going to be like, I don't know, whacking 150 kilos on the barbell, right? That's just not going to. That's just not going to be the way to go. You might be starting with just the bar at 20 kilos, right? That might be where that might be where it starts. But as you get those repetitions in, muscles grow, strength grows, skill grows, and you can add weight over time. And the challenge for our dogs is that life throws weights at them that are often too big for the different skills to be able to handle. And so what we have to do is actively create opportunities for them to grow those muscles in a controlled, achievable environment so that actually then they can start to handle the weights that life throws at them. Like incoming child on the field or dog appearing from nowhere or cats appearing out of a bush. Right. And so you've got an exciting road ahead where not only are you fixing this struggle, but you're also prepping your dog for their entire life. Now, I've got to do a shout out for a particular resource that basically is a step by step of all the different games and steps to play to get your dog to have the most amazing dimmer switch that is real life. Ready? Okay? It's a step by step program and it's in the Help My Dog hub. Okay. And the way that you can get into the Help My Dog hub, which is it's like our members area, it's super cheap, it's less than the cost of a Starbucks a day, and you can cancel anytime. So, you know, once you fix your dog's dimmer switch, then on you go and, you know, have a lovely life with them. Right? And that video step by step program is in there. All you need to do to get involved in the Help My Dog hub is go to helpmydog.com hub. That's helpmydog.com hub. That's H U B and enroll. Get in. You get access to a Facebook group where we do live teaching, like live teaching training with dogs. We get your questions answered. And so literally you can ask a question, I will answer it and show you with a dog, or one of the team will answer it and show you with the dog so that you can just replicate it at home. And there's that library of step by step courses, one of which is how to build a real life dimmer switch and do it properly. Right? Do it. You know how we do it in the behavior clinic at Behave Vet where we, you know, work with the full spectrum of dogs every single week and transform their behavior struggles. So Definitely go to helpmydog.com hub and start playing that. That is the reason why your dog is behaving the way that they're behaving. That's what to do about it. And we'll see you next time for another listener's question.