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Female Announcer 1: OK class, take your seats.  I said take your seats.  Class!  Sit!  I swear you’re all acting like a bunch of animals.

Female Announcer 2:  Pet Life radio presents “Teacher’s Pet”, where you’ll learn how to understand and communicate with your pet, and train them to be the best pet they can be.  It’s time to see the world from your pet’s point of view, so give a tail-wagging welcome to your “Teacher’s Pet” host, Sarah Wilson.

Sarah Wilson: Welcome to “Teacher’s Pet” on Pet Life radio.  I’m Sarah Wilson.  Thank you for joining us here today.  I’m going to be talking about the five ways you communicate with your dog, whether you want to or not, you use these things, and knowing how to use them effectively and with awareness will make your training better and more effective.  So before we go on with that, let’s talk to our sponsors.

Female Announcer 1: OK Class, grab your tuna flakes, biscuits and bones.  “Teacher’s Pet” will be back in two shakes of a tail, right after recess.

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Male Announcer 1: Let’s talk pets, on Pet Life radio dot com.

Female Announcer 1: OK class, hang up your collars and leashes.  “Teacher’s Pet” is back in session.  Now park yourselves on the floor.  I said “park”, not “bark”.  Oh.  OK, “Teacher’s Pet”, with pet expert and author Sarah Wilson.  Pay attention, there may be a quiz later.

Sarah Wilson: Welcome back.  So we’re going to talk about the five ways you interact with your dog.  We’re going to start with sound.  That’s easy right?  You’re thinking about voice, “sit down”, “good dog”, all those things.  But there are a lot of other things your dog responds to as well.  How about your car keys?  A clicker?  Whistle?  A door bell?  I always say that almost every dog in America has a great recall.  It’s just called a door bell.  You ring a door bell and the dogs come running.

How you use your voice impacts how your dog responds to you.  If you are unsure, as most novices are, you’re learning something new, you’re not quite sure.  So you start with “Bosco sit, sit?” and your dog hears that as you’re not sure, so they’re not that responsive.  Other people err to the other side, they think “OK this is about control” and they go “Bosco sit!” and that also isn’t the way to go.  Because you’re going to intimidate some dogs and even if the dog listens you’re now teaching your dog to only listen when you sound like a drill sergeant.  And who wants to live like that?

So we normally tell people sound as if you’re giving a stranger directions.  Go down three blocks, take a right.  Bosco, sit.  It is calm, it is clear, it is confident.  Would you take directions from somebody who said “Go down three blocks and…take a right?”  Or “Go down three blocks! Take a right!”  Both of them you’d drive away thinking “Oof!  That person is a little off!”  So nice, calm and clear.

Praise should be more enthusiastic and warmer … for you.  You do not have to sound like someone in the boy’s choir to make this work.  So it’s not “Oh what a good dog!”  If you normally say “Bosco, sit” then your praise can be “Oh what a good boy!  You are so good!”  It’s much more about warmth and sincerity than hitting the high notes.  And also you have to vary your praise to your dog.  Right?  I mean if I take my dog Pip who’s a high-energy little bean and I gave her really excited praise, she’d be swinging from the chandelier.  But PJ, who’s a much more laid-back dog, needs a more enthusiastic praise for her to be really excited.  So I say I have a goal of a responsive happy dog, and I use whatever tone I need to get that.  With Pip I tone it down a bit, with PJ I kick it up a notch, and that’s fine.  There is no one way.  You need to read your dog at every moment.

The next way we interact with our dogs is by sight.  Right?  We use hand signals in training.  It is usually easier for dogs to understand hand signals and body movements than it is our words.  The words are very difficult, it is not their natural way of communicating.  But hand signals and movement – they read that very quickly.  But it’s not just that.  Say you stand up after turning off your computer?  Alright, most dogs are going to get up and stretch, although my dogs also go by the sound signal when they hear AOL say “Goodbye!” all my dogs get up and stretch and look at me hopefully.

What about the sight of you picking up a pair of nail-clippers?  A lot of dogs will exit stage left when they see that happen.  So your dog is very visually aware.
Where we tend to see stationery objects really clearly, and movement is a little blurry, it seems with dogs it’s stationery objects are hard to make out but movement is crystal clear.  Which is why sometimes your dog will come round a corner and see you sitting or standing there and be surprised and they might sort of growl at you, a questioning growl, kind of “Rrrrrrrrr” as they back up and cock their head.  But the minute you move, or say something, they go “Oh it’s you, it’s you OK OK OK”.  So don’t be surprised if your dog doesn’t have really great recognition visually, which is why hand signals need to be large and consistent for a dog to pick it up readily.

The next way you communicate - you’ve got sound, you’ve got sight - now we’re going to work on sensation.  And by sensation I mean touch.  How we praise, where we praise, and also how we touch our dogs during training.  This is a controversial area.  There are people who say you shouldn’t touch your dog at all in training – that just confuses and distracts the dog.  And I say “Oh come on, these are pets, these are companions first, they need to get used to being handled”.  And if petting or handling the dog, placing them gently into a position, moving them gently into position, is that distracting, then I say touch them more, because they need to get over that.  That becomes an issue in training in and of itself.  Alright?  So if your dog is a squirmy wormy when you pet him, work that through, and I work that through with puppies by having my hand in their collar, a nice slack collar.  I put my hand in their collar, I put them against my leg, and I stroke them on the outside with my other hand.  So they’re sort of a sandwich between my leg and my hand, and I can work that calmly and consistently.  The minute they are still I stop, I wait a few seconds, I calmly praise them, and then continue.  I do not stop when they’re squirming.  If you stop when they’re squirming, it rewards squirming, and that’s how you got here in the first place.  So, one hand on the collar, other hand on the outside, slow, long, firm stroking.  Do not rough around the face, or use fast back and forth hand motions.  Often people do that when they’ve praised the dog, they go “Oh good boy, rough rough rough rough rough”, and they rub around the face.  That is a sure way to get puppies mouthing you and other dogs all really excited, and that just isn’t helpful, and the more excitable your dog is, the more calmly you need to handle them.  Alright?  So, no roughing up.

So we have sound, we have sight, we have sensation, next we have situation.  Situation.  This is one of the most useful things you can use in training.  I teach the dogs “if you see a food bowl in my hand”, you should sit.  And I do this from puppyhood, and I lure them with the food bowl, so I’m not telling them to sit, I’m letting the situation remind them to sit.  When I come to the door and I reach my hand out, I want them to sit automatically.  If you make all those things dependent on your command, then you have to spend your whole life walking up to the door saying “sit, wait” and then going out the door and that’s great, if it works for you that’s great, but it can be even simpler than that.  I want the cue for them to sit and wait to be the door opening.  And what’s great about that, is then when you have guests over, you’ve got kids in the house, and someone just goes to open the door, the dog is still going to be cued to sit and wait.  It’s not dependent on the word.  And for all the people out there that do rescue work, having things situationally cued makes it much more readily transferable to the new home.  Because a new home is going to have doors, and a new home is going to have food bowls.  And don’t try to teach the people how to say “sit down, come” because they always mess that up, right?  That’s a learning curve thing and one session, two sessions, isn’t going to teach it.  Try to show them how to notice and support the good behavior that you’ve already been able to start through your rescue group, by doing situational work.  Situational work is fabulous and once you’ve started you’ll think “Oh why didn’t I do this earlier?”

OK, so we’ve got sight, and we’ve got sound.  We have sensation, situation, the last one is space.  Space, the final frontier, as they say.  Alright, why space?  Well space is actually the first language you ever learned.  Long before you were speaking coherent sentences, you were learning the rules of space.  Meaning, toddlers have access to running up to people and climbing on their lap, but by the time you’re 4 or 5 you’re usually being told to sit next to you on the couch, to be polite, to ask if someone wants to be hugged, to be a little bit more restrained.  We also teach our children early not to run up to strangers, not to shove people out of the way, not to butt in front in line.  We have all of these rules of space, and if you ever want to test just how stringent these rules are, move two inches closer to somebody in line.  Or put your plate down two inches closer to the next guy in the cafeteria.  Or lean two inches more into somebody’s space in a movie theater.  And you will see them look at you like “Have you lost your bloody mind!”  We don’t think about the rules of space much, because we all adhere to them so well.  And anyone who doesn’t is seen as a problem.

So, the good news is dogs have the same sorts of rules.  And the same sorts of rules apply, so once you start applying the same rules to them, you’re going to find them calming down and being most respectful overall.  It doesn’t matter how much someone tells you to respect them, if they allow you to shove them out of the way, um, take their space, make them step around you, and that’s what happens with dogs all the time.  People work on “sit down, come”, but when the dog blocks the doorway they just walk around them.  And when they go to open the back door they laugh when the dog barrels through and clips them.  And every time your dog makes disrespectful contact with you, or forces you to move out of the way, he can’t help but think that you are less important than he is.  You are telling him in every way, shape or form, that you are less important than he is.  So why is he going to listen to you later when you “sit”, or “down”, or “come”?

Whenever I have a problem with a client, I always start with the basics.  Let’s see what’s going on with space.  Let’s see what your daily interactions are.  Let’s see what your situational cues are.  Get that straightened out, and other behavior problems fall right into place.  If you leave that running amok, then it doesn’t matter how much desensitisation you do, or how much this, that, and the other thing you do.  You’re still going to have trouble. 

So, space is the most important thing you’ve got with your dog.  I don’t care what commands you teach, if your space is worked out with your dog, you are not going to have major problems with him.

So we all clear now?  I want you to start thinking at home about how you use sound, how you use sight, how you use sensation.  How many situations can you make automatic?  And what’s happening with your space?  Oh and lastly, with space, your dog is aware of your location, and that they’re bumping into you.  Certain breeds don’t mind bumping into you as much as others.  Say, Labradors, Golden Retrievers tend to be really high contact dogs, and while they don’t necessarily mean anything by clipping you, they can take your knee out, so you need to teach them to respect your space.  With other dogs, more high-powered dogs, you can see them starting to control people.  I’ve had people come to me with say, um, German Shepherds that are out of control, and I’ll have them walk across the room, and the dog is angling in front of them, and by the time they get to the other side, the person is fifteen feet to the right than where they started.  Because the dog is controlling their space.  Herding dogs in particular love to play space games.  They will block you, they will move you, and every time they do that they say “Hah!”  Turns out, I’m in control of this person.  Now, are they really thinking that?  No.  But they can’t help, with dogs cause and effect is everything, they won’t cut you slack because you’re tired, or you don’t know.  They assume you know, they assume you understand the same rules they understand.  So when you break those rules, or you make those rules not important to you, the dog figures that you’re just incompetent, they don’t figure you’re uninformed.  Alright?

So, these things are important.  So next we’re going to answer some questions from people that have written in to our website at MySmartPuppy, and see how we can apply some of these concepts to giving them some answers.  So, we’re going to go and talk to our sponsors and look forward to seeing you in just a few minutes.

Female Announcer 1: OK Class, grab your tuna flakes, biscuits and bones.  “Teacher’s Pet” will be back in two shakes of a tail, right after recess.

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Male Announcer 1: Let’s talk pets, on Pet Life radio dot com.

Female Announcer 1: OK class, hang up your collars and leashes.  “Teacher’s Pet” is back in session.  Now park yourselves on the floor.  I said “park”, not “bark”.  Oh.  OK, “Teacher’s Pet”, with pet expert and author Sarah Wilson.  Pay attention, there may be a quiz later.

Sarah Wilson: Hi, welcome back, this is “Teacher’s Pet” with Sarah Wilson, on Pet Life radio.  Now we’re going to take some questions that were written into me at MySmartPuppy.com

The first one is from Judy, she has a five week old wheaten terrier named Jake.  And what she wants to know is “When I start walking my puppy, what do you do when they lay down and no longer want to walk?  Do you pick them up, wait for them to rest and then continue walking?”

Alright, this is a very good question.  First of all, a five week old puppy is way too young to come home Judy.  And he really shouldn’t be out on the street at all.  He hasn’t had enough vaccinations, nor is he old enough to have built up any resistance, so needs to be at home.  He’s a baby baby baby.  Also you need to teach him what to do when he feels any pressure on that lead, and with a five week old puppy boy I’d do this for thirty seconds at a time maybe, and you’re going to play it like a game.  You’re going to go into the kitchen, you’re going to take some treats your puppy really loves, you’re going to do it at a time when he’s awake, you’re going to put him on a leash, you’re going to step away and put very light pressure on the collar with the leash, alright?  Very light.  You’re going to wait.  He may bark, he may sit back, he may do all kinds of things, you’re going to wait.  If you need to, if he really gets confused, say his name, pat your leg, whatever.  But the minute he takes even half a step toward you, reach your hand toward him so he gets slack on the lead.  Praise him to high heavens and he’ll try to run over to you and you’re going to give him a couple of treats and tell him what a good boy he is, and then you’re going to do it again.  The reason you’re going to do this is dogs, and people by the way, naturally respond to feeling caught with fighting for their freedom, alright?  How many of you have ever had a Chinese finger puzzle game used on you, where you put your two fingers in either end and you pull out and your fingers are caught, and people struggle, and all you have to do is move the fingers toward each other for it to release.  Well the reason that’s been funny for about two thousand years is that all of our natural reaction is to fight when we feel caught and your puppy’s no different.  So your job is to teach him, when you feel pressure on this lead, if you come to me all is well.  This is going to serve you well in the future.

So, to recap Judy, five weeks old is too young for this puppy to be out in the street.  And too young to take any kind of long walks at all, he’s just a baby.  But he’s a good age to start teaching him what to do when he feels pressure on the leash, and once he learns that your leash-walking in the future is going to be a whole lot easier.  Alright?  So if you have any other questions you can email me at sarah@petliferadio.com and I will do my best to answer as many as I can.

Alright, next is Selma Tyler with Tiki, a Shih Tzu Lhasa cross who’s eight months old.  Alright, about a month ago, while walking my puppy, she was spooked by the noise of a garbage truck.  Now she refuses to leave the yard for a walk.  Alright, poor little pup.  But what we’re going to do is, again, we’re going to play this like a game.  Whenever you’re working something through with your pup, you want to have the attitude you want your puppy to have.  And if you want her to be happy and relaxed, you need to be happy and relaxed.  If you show concern or worry, she’s going to think this really is trouble and get even more concerned and worried.  Now, I want you to do this when she’s hungry, and I want you to get the best treats you can possibly find.  Something she just loves.  Maybe little cubes of chicken or something, and keep it small because she’s a Shih Tzu Lhasa Apso cross, and I don’t want you to get into a tummy upset issue.  And you’re going to take her to the gate area where you leave the yard, and all you’re going to do, you’re going to start inside the yard where she’s comfortable.  You’re going to take a couple of steps towards the gate, you’re going to laugh, you’re going to praise her, “what a good girl, come on Tiki, yay!”, you’re going to give her a treat, and then you’re going to turn and quietly walk back to start.  Alright?

So, you take a couple of steps towards the gate, “good girl, here we go Tiki, yay!”, feed feed feed, and then walk back to where you start, nice and calm.  Really neutral.  What’s our goal here?  Our goal is to convince Tiki that when you head in that direction you are happy and the world is great!  And when you head back into the yard, ah, not so special.  So, once she’s doing this game really well, and she’s bouncing next to you toward the gate going “yay!” you’re going to open the gate, and you’re going to play it again.  You’re just this time going to take a step out the gate.  You’re going to open up the gate and say “Tiki let’s go!  Good girl!”  Just take one step out the gate.  Feed her.  Turn around and come back in.  Do this over and over.  OK, for those of you hearing the squeak, this is Pip my dog telling me “Too much time on the radio.  I want to play!”, so erm, yeah haha.  So you may be hearing a squeaking in the background because she really likes her squeakers.  Alright?  But anyway that’s the game you’re going to play.  One step out of the yard is fun and then right back to safety.  One step out … right back to safety.  Do not try to go farther, and do not try to linger out there.  What we’re doing actually is going over her comfort zone a tiny amount, and then bringing her back in to where she feels safe.  Out a tiny amount where it’s fun and treats, and in where she feels safe.  And what’s going to happen very shortly if you play this for two or three minutes a day for a few days in a row is number one, she’s going to love the gate, and number two, she’s going to happily bounce out.  As soon as she’s happily bouncing out with you, then you’re going to start taking a few more steps, but make haste slowly here.  The other thing you can do is pop her in the car, and drive her some place completely different, and walk her around there.  And lastly, you need to be really careful to be happy around sounds, no matter what she does, you need to be happy, because you can’t help her feel more safe or confident, but you sounding worried or concerned or upset.  She looks to you to tell her how to feel.  So lots of things are going to frighten puppies, and they need to look at you and say “oh oh OK, that’s OK”.  Alright? 

Think of it like kids in a playground.  One falls down.  They’re a little hurt but not really.  They look up, and their parent goes “don’t worry about it, you look great, go play”, and they go “alright, I guess that was alright”.  Next one falls down, and they see the parent coming going “oh honey, are you OK?  That must have been terrible!”  And they burst into tears.  What’s the difference?  The difference is the parent.  Alright?  It’s your response.  Now some kids are different, blah blah blah, but you get the idea.  That your tone sets the stage for your kid’s response, and your dog’s response, so in this case you, Tiki needs you to be happy, happy, happy.  Alright?  So pop her into the car, take her different places, play this game around the gate, and then let me know how it goes, at sarah@petliferadio.com.

OK, our next question is from Takesha Rice, with her puppy Runt, who’s eight weeks old and five days.  Now that’s a proud momma, who knows how many days old her puppy is.  And here’s her question.  Runt is about eight weeks old and yet he doesn’t respond to his name.  What should I do?  This is a great question, because here’s the deal.  Runt doesn’t know that words mean anything yet.  He has no idea.  So when he hears his name he ignores it, like he hears every other sound in his environment, because it just doesn’t make sense to him yet.  So here’s the game you’re going to play.  When you go to feed him, every time you go to feed him, take a little handful of his food first, and you’re just going to say “Runt” happily, with him standing right next to you OK?  He doesn’t have to come, nothing.  Just say “Runt!” and give him a treat.  “Runt!” Give him a treat. “Runt!” Give him a treat.  And pretty soon, when he hears the word “Runt” his head’s going to whip around, he’s going to wag that adorable little tail, he’s going to go “Hi! I bet you want me!”  And then, he’s going to understand that that word means something special between him and you.  Now, if you really want your dog to know his name and respond to it, don’t use it in casual conversation with people.  Don’t say “Runt this”, “Runt that”, “Runt this”, “Runt that”, and then say “Runt” and expect your puppy to respond because he just ignored four other uses because they didn’t mean anything to him.  So, I try to, around the house, I use nicknames for my dogs if I’m talking to my husband.  And then when I want my dog, I use their name.  And each of them will whip their head around and look at me go “Oh?” Because that word is sacred between me and the dog.  Alright?  So, that’s the way to get him to start recognizing his name, and that’s the way also to keep him recognizing it and sharp on it, instead of starting to learn to ignore it.  Alright?  So, let me know how Runt’s doing!  And we’ll go to the next person now.

Alright, our next question is from June, about her Lab-Dobi puppy Duncan, who’s five months old.  And she says, my problem is when I tell him to go to his bed, he’ll talk back to me.  Sometimes barking, maybe a little aggressive, but he doesn’t seem threatening.  I try to correct him by pushing his nose to his chest, the way I try to correct biting, and tell him “No!”  This sometimes works.  Alright, here’s the problem.  If anybody in the house is playing wrestling games with Duncan, and if they start those games by giving him a little shove, then what probably is happening is he is getting confused when you press his nose back to his chest.  This is not a method I particularly like, because it does confuse some puppies.  And also they can start grabbing at your hand when you move towards their face, and I don’t want that to start, alright?  So I’d rather have you handle it some other way, and I’ll give you some ideas. 

So my guess is, that he’s not sure whether this is a game or not, he’s getting confused, and that’s causing him to bark, and sort of start to elicit some play, and then you guys get into a loop.  You tell him “No!” and you shove his nose, and he gets confused, and he bounces and barks, and you tell him “No!”  And here we are, thinking that he’s quote unquote “talking back”.  He’s not, he just hasn’t got a clue.  So what I want you to do instead, is leave a leash on him when you’re home.  So that when you tell him to go to bed, you can pick up the leash and help him understand what you want, and then praise him.  Everything you’re doing is about getting to good.  Alright?  So any time you find yourself telling him “No!”, “No!”, “No!”, “Stop!” take a deep breath.  And say how can I get to “good puppy!”  Alright?  So that’s your job, “how do I get to good?”  So, if you have the leash on him, you can take him over to his bed, put him into a guided down, which you teach separately, and then praise him.  And voila, you’ve got a puppy who’s going to the bed, he’s not confused, there’s no barking and bouncing and biting, and you’re happy and proud owner.  Voila.

You can do this actually, this whole go to bed business, we call it “place”, it really doesn’t matter what word you use, just use the same word consistently.  The reason I don’t use “bed”, is if people use the word “bad”, bed/bad sounds a little close to me.  So, “place” isn’t like anything else we say to them.  So, in any case, whatever you use, you can teach it in many ways.  If you’ve used the space games that are taught in MySmartPuppy, such as “mine” and “go”, you can use space games, you can block him back towards his bed.  Ah, you can use a lead and guide him over.  You can use a signal.  You can point in that direction, and then guide him over and give him rewards, so he understands that when you point to the bed he goes.  You can teach him to go on a sound, you can say “go to place”, so whatever it is you use, you can use lots and lots of different things.  You can also do it as a situational cue, which is when you sit down to dinner, he needs to go over to his bed and lie down.  So this is ah, wonderful behavior, because you can play with it in lots of different ways, and you can use each of the five ways we communicate with dogs to start building that behavior.  Now, the fact that you’ve got a five month old puppy, going over to bed at all and lying down and staying there?  Awesome June, you’re doing great.  This is just a little confusion and you’re going to get it straightened out, and this is going to be smooth sailing.  It sounds like you really are well started on a great life with Duncan.

Alright, so Bethany writes about Max and Maggie, Labrador puppies who are eight weeks old.  And she says, are there any tips for training two puppies at the same time.  Yeah, sleep when you can.  Alright, two puppies at the same time are a ton of work.  And the reason they’re a ton of work, but they’re worth it, is that you need to raise them pretty much like they are separate individual puppies.  You need to take them out, by themselves, one at a time, one stays crated, the other one goes into another room with you, and you start teaching them the basics.  Sit, down, come, using treats, making it fun, doing your handling exercises that we talk about in MySmartPuppy, and just getting your puppy used to being a pet.  And also seeing you as a big source of fun and connection.  If you let them be with each other all the time and you don’t separate them, then they really become two dogs with one brain.  And they can really start to stress and panic when you try to separate them.  And that can be a hassle later on if one needs to go in for neutering, or if one gets sick and the other one’s left at home, they can be so upset, and that’s not the time to deal with it.  Deal with it now.  We want them to be confident individual puppies, and love each other, and that’s, that can be done.  It just means extra effort early on.  Now, with eight week old puppies, I love to do space work first, and by doing “mine”, where you toss something behind you and you step in front of them, and they learn that when a human being gets between them and something they want, they need to stop, look up, and sit.  And the minute they pause in any way you’re going to praise them “Good boy Maxy, attagirl Maggie” and you’re going to give them a treat.  But you have to do this one at a time.  If you’re taking puppy class, if you can invest in two classes, and take the time to take one one day, and one the other.  If you’re doing any sort of day-care later on, have the day-care run them in separate groups.  Do as much as you can in the first six to nine months, to get them separated and confident and comfortable in the world by themselves, and you will have a pair of dogs who adore each other and are really stable, um, confident dogs and they don’t have fears based on being together all the time. 

Alright Bethany, so give that a try, and write when you have more questions.  Thanks!
OK, so we’re out of time for tonight.  Oh!  Haha!  Racken’s got the squeaky now.  You want to go out for a walk, is that it?  She’s carrying a big orange and yellow cat in her mouth.  But we are out of time.  If you want more information on the show or transcript, go to Pet Life radio network, and click on “Teacher’s Pet”, and if you’ve any questions, comments, ideas then email me at sarah@petliferadio.com.  So until next time, have a great time training your dog, and know that any dog can be a teacher’s pet.

Female Announcer 2:  School’s in session on Pet Life radio with “Teacher’s Pet”.  Learn how to communicate with your pet, train your pet, and see the world from your pet’s point of view.  You may even learn a few tricks yourself.  “Teacher’s Pet”, with pet expert and author, Sarah Wilson.  Only on Pet Life radio dot com.