Chris:
Hi, welcome to Canine Master Radio on the Pet Life Radio station. And I'm your host, Chris Anang. And today I'm joined with Jamie Kelsey, the director of training at my canine center, Dog Gone Smart in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Jaimee:
Hi everyone.
Chris:
Hi. Hi Jamie. How are you doing today?
Jaimee:
Doing great.
Chris:
So Jamie, let's talk about some of the things that are on the mind of many people as springtime approach as people start to get outside with their dogs. Tell me the issue that you are seeing a lot of that maybe we should talk about. I know you had mentioned it, but I just want to make sure I'm on the right track as you are.
Jaimee:
Sure. And it's interesting because one of our recent shows, we talked about reactivity with dogs on leash. However, the alternative, having dogs off leash is not really realistic or responsible. So this time of year many clients reach out asking me, alright, it's spring, it's nice out. How can I get my dog to behave reliably off leash? Please train my dog to be off leash, get it all the time every day. And so it's something I thought would be really helpful to navigate for our listeners.
Chris:
That's interesting. So I don't know if our listeners know, but we do have an 11,000 square foot indoor facility for dogs where we are a training center. And many people will drop their dogs off to us when they go on vacation and say, we want our dog to be off leash and have off leash control with our dogs. Well, the problem with that is there's a very sort of basic issue is that when dogs perform off leash with their owners, it's about what gives that owner sort of control, I hate to say that word, but feeling that off leash control is it's the relationship that that owner has with the dog. That's the most important thing. So if our relationship is wrong, you will have no off leash control. And what do I mean by that? If your dog sees you as the person to follow, if your dog sees you as the person to lead them to lead what we call the hunt, which is that walk that you take every morning, the hunt in the dog's mind, we're going on a hunt.
If the dog has the right relationship with you, then off leash is much easier. If the dog is in the decision making process, if he's in the driver's seat, you're going to have a really, really hard time controlling that dog off leash. So one of the first things that we do is we get our clients to establish the correct relationship. So where this fall short, if you drop off your dog for training at doggone Smart and I have great control with your dog off leash because my relationship has been built correctly, that's great. But then if I hand the dog back to you and you don't have that relationship correct, all that training just went to waste. So we must start with the relationship between the owner and the dog. Get that absolutely in the right way. The dog's seeing you in the right way, and then it becomes much easier for that off leash control.
Jaimee:
I tell people, anytime your dog is off leash, it's a calculated risk. But what we can do is teach you many techniques and tools to up the chance that it's going to be safe and reliable, but it's always a calculated risk. And like you say, the more you can build that PAC drive and accountability to you, the greater chance for success you'll have.
Chris:
Yeah. So some of the things that you should do at home, let's go through some of the things that I would recommend doing at home. First is we had talked about this before in our reactivity, but it all melds together with the right relationship. If you're always going first, let's say the dog's with you going through a doorway in the house or the dog's going upstairs. If the dog is always following you inside the house and staying behind you and not running out the doorway in front of you, then what you'll find is that your dog is in that sort of role that, oh, I'm going to take his or her lead and I'm going to follow my pack leader. Let's see how we would do that. So sometimes I will stick a leash, take an inexpensive nylon leash. I can go to Walmart and pick one up or Petco or PetSmart somewhere that just get an inexpensive nylon leash and attach that to your dog's, flat collar, nothing that would choke them.
You must always leave what we call this a house line. I would keep this on the dog when you're home and supervising the dog, not you're going to put it on your dog and then leave and go to the Soar. We don't want any strangling issues happening, but we attach the nylon leash to the dog and sometimes I'll leave and I'll leave her hold it as I'm walking around the house or if the dog tries to pass me when he's going through a doorway, I'll step on the leash to stop him. And then what I'll do is I'll give him a guttural tone and then some body pressure where I'm leaning forward into the dog to get him back. And then I'll step through the doorway and say, okay, come on chuckles, let's go. And then chuckles follows me. Pretty soon you're going to start to see that your dog is going to acquiesce through all doorways, letting you go first upstairs, downstairs. That's the first step. I go first. And then the other thing is, as we talked about in the reactivity segment last week, is that you greet first. So greet people at the door first. You're always greeting strangers to the territory first. Once that's established inside the house, now we take it to outside the house.
Jaimee:
And I think that's important with the greeting because if the dog feels they're the greeter in chief when they're outside off leash, they may take it upon themselves to go greet every person, every dog they see because they think it's their job. So getting that under control inside without distractions is really important so that you can transfer that dynamic to outside when it's more challenging.
Chris:
I love that Jamie, the greeter in chief. That's a good one. I'll have to remember that one for my next lesson. Okay, so what I'm going to say is that now we've established that it's taken a few weeks. The dog's acquiescing through doorways upstairs, staying behind us. When somebody comes to the door, and again, one of your best techniques is using body pressure from you leaning into the dog and even using your legs to shove them back a little bit. No, nothing rough here. Nothing rough. We never want to do anything rough to our dogs, but we are using body pressure, which is something that dogs read very, very easily. Now we take that dog and we can use a harness, a no pull harness or a flat collar, and we start to, or a gentle leader or a halt or something like that. We start going outside and we start walking with our dogs and we are going to put them into what we call, I call it a let's walk position.
It's not heal. Heal is a very specific position that obedience trainers and hunters use. But many of us aren't hunting with our dogs and many of us aren't competing in competition. Obedience heel is a manmade position that was made up by hunters, I don't know, back in the early twenties, and they carried their rifle in their right hand, which is, and I'm going hunting. And the hunters would hold because most people were right-handed and are right-handed. And then they would hold the leash of their dog next to them in their left hand. And this is where actually originated. So heal is a manmade position and it makes no sense to a dog. It's a conflict position. I see Jamie and I, as we work with our clients, we'll see that dogs inevitably start out in to heal and then before you know it, they're pulling you down the street.
So we don't teach heal for pet ownership, we teach a follow cue, which we call Let's walk and let's walk means stay behind me, walk with me, follow me. When I stop, you stay behind me. When I greet somebody, you stay behind me and I control, I'm going to call it the hunt. I control the direction of the pack being the leader of my dog, teaching my dog to follow me. Now you'd say, gosh, that's impossible. I would never be able to do that. I hear people saying that. And what happens is if you have that attitude, you're right, it's not going to work. But let me just tell you something. Go show me an eight week old puppy. I was
Jaimee:
Just going to say that. Any
Chris:
Puppy? Yeah. That walks out in front.
Jaimee:
Yep. In puppy class. Well, in puppy class, I'll say, all right everyone, let me show you. We talk about we want our dogs to follow off leash. I'll pick a puppy, I'll bring it up to the front of the class. It's safe, it's secure, we're inside. I take off the leash and I walk with confidence. The puppy follows me around the room, I go left, it stays behind me, I stop, it stops. I go near dogs. It watches me because at that age, it's instinctual for the dog to follow. And so we just want to build upon that instinct.
Chris:
Yeah. So starting out when the puppies are young is the easiest. When I get a puppy, I never let them pass me. I always make sure they're following me. And they've learned this from mom, really, if you see dogs go up and greet a mother with its pu, and what you'll see is the mother will greet you first and the puppies will stay behind. And if the puppies try to pass the mother to greet that stranger to your kennel, many times the mother will correct the puppies to stay behind her because she's in the decision making process. So this comes programs when we get a puppy, and then what happens is we tend to screw it up. I can't tell you how many times I've seen owners, my dog won't go outside. And I said, you got to walk through the doorway first and then they'll follow. Oh, but instead what they do is they push the dog out in front of them out through the doorway, come on out, you go. And they push 'em out and the dog goes, no, no, no, I don't want to be the leader. In other words, you're putting a dog in a bad position. So just keep that activated instinct and continue it as Jamie just instructed. So really important.
Chris:
Well, we're going to come back. I want to hear from some of our sponsors, and we're going to be right back talking about how to get your dog off leash and the techniques to do so. We'll be right back.
Chris:
Well, we're talking about getting our pup off leash if possible. And I want to bring up one point that we were just talking. Jamie and I were just talking about during the intermission here, and it's that you better get a good recall before you start going outside and even considering taking the dog off leash, the recall calling the dog to you coming when called. And that is so vitally important before we would even think of getting the dog off leash. So getting a reliable come when called is really, really important. So a couple of key points I've brought up in previous shows, but we want to start this inside and we play what we call the recall game. We can start this at any age, treats, dogs, love to come, treats in our pocket, one, two or three people in the house getting your dog to come to you, kneeling down, encouraging them to come to you, walking backwards, encouraging them to come to you, calling them in a repetitive tone. Remember repetitive tones create movement in dogs. So if I go chuckles, come, that's a singular tone, and that actually halts movement. How do I get a horse to stop? Whoa, how do I get a horse to move repetitive sounds? How do I get a cat to come to me here? Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. Repetitive sounds create movement in animals. So we want to use a repetitive tone. So at Dog un smart, we use Come, come, come, come, come. And it works really, really well.
Jaimee:
Chris, one thing I want to point out here is that having that command is really important. The dog's name is not a command. So many times we'll see dog park, they call their name and the dog isn't coming. So the name's an attention getter, but you have to have a call to action and an actual command that the dog knows and has practiced many times, not just the dog's name.
Chris:
So that has to be imprinted.
So this recall game can get really fun. We can play it inside the house and then we can go outside into the backyard, all fenced in, or even a tennis court, somebody who's not playing tennis, tennis, go take your dog to a tennis court. I do that all the time and call the dog and play the recall game there. Pretty soon the dog's going to start to realize every time I come to you, there's a good chance of me getting a treat. So when the dog gets to you, I tell people, grab the collar, reach into your pocket and give it a treat. Make sure you're not calling the dog with a treat in your hand because then the dog will only come to you with a treat in your hand. Okay, so let's go to the next step. So now we have a good recall.
We're getting the dog to follow us outside. And now I want to start working on let's walk, which means follow me. So we are going to start off with a dog sitting behind us, and I'd like to do this in enclosed area or a distraction sort of free environment. So what we're going to do is we're going to say let's walk. And as we start walking, that dog's going to start to try to pass me. I am then going to go, ah, I'm going to turn, going to turn, face the dog, put body pressure on the dog that's leaning into the dog a little bit, and I might even use my legs to shove him back and then turn around and say, let's walk. And as the dog is walking in the right position, if I have imprinted a conditioned reinforcer, which is a marker that if I say this sound or click a clicker that a treat is coming, I can start marking the position as correct.
So if I had a clicker in my hand and the dog knew that the click meant a treat is coming and mark the behavior is correct, I would start walking. If the dog is walking behind me and I slowed down and I saw him change his pace, I'd hit the clicker and give him a treat behind me. You can do that. If you don't want to use a clicker, you can use a marker word yes or whatever word that you want to use. That means a treat is coming and marks the position as correct. So you can use that if the dog tries to pass you guttural tone forward body pressure. So we're basically using operant conditioning. We're sort of hot cold, hot cold. When you get too close to me or you try to pass me, I give a guttural tone and it's some body pressure which you don't like so much.
And if you stay in that position, you get a click and a treat or a yes and a treat. So this works really, really well. You really want to have your let's walk queue and a position really, really well. I like to speed up, slow down, take turns, make it exciting inside a fenced in area. And then if I can get outside, neighbors aren't around and I can start doing it on a road on a sidewalk, and I find a distraction proof kind of not too many distractions going on, I find that kind of environment and I start that out and it starts to work pretty well.
Jaimee:
One other tool to use as a long line. So if you're coming out of that fenced in area and you're ready to test not holding the leash, should you need to have that safety net, a nice long line will give you the advantage if your dog does break command.
Chris:
Yeah, and what we do is with the long line, it works really well. We get the dog used to dragging the long line so it's not in our hands so that the dog starts to take off. I can step on the long line and I can grab it. So when I say a long line, you can get 15 foot long leashes. That's probably a good length of a long line, 10 to 15 feet that your dog can drag. It depends on the size of the dog. And if it's a really small dog, then you might try something even thinner to do because you don't want it to weight down the dog. But pretty soon the dogs will get used to dragging a leash. That's the next step. So again, following you getting a good let's walk position, and then if the dog tries to pass you forward body pressure, maybe step on the leash that's dragging and use body pressure to push him back, that starts to work. Well.
Jaimee:
Just remember you're building on the reliability from a non distracted space. So until your dog can follow you inside the house without distractions reliably and can follow you inside a contained fenced in area reliably with minimal distractions, you're not going to be successful trying it off leash at the park and hoping that he listens. You have to build on a pattern of success.
Chris:
Yeah, exactly. So one of the shows that I want to do, Jamie, in one of our next few shows is talk about how to get my dog to walk nicely on a leash behind you. And I think we really could delve in a whole segment, a whole show just to that. And I think that that'd be a really good thing. But in the meantime, start trying to do things inside house in a distraction proof environment and then outside and see how you do.
Jaimee:
Chris, one question we get asked a lot is, you know what? I'm not at that point yet. I really want to get outside with my dog. Can you coach me on how to use one of those remote collars so that I can have control of my dog from a distance? How do we advise our clients?
Chris:
So we're talking about, I think what you're talking about is electric stimulation. So I'm not a fan of using electric. It's not that I don't think there's an appropriate time to use it in certain cases, but in general, using an electric collar on your dog could be very confusing and it could be very damaging. I have seen way too many dogs get messed up thinking that it's the land of zap, that they go out and they get shocked and they don't know where it came from and they don't understand it and they start to become fearful. I have seen several dogs that this has worked on. If you were to put an electric collar on a dog that's under a year old, you can really do damage, severe damage, you can do damage on any dog. So I'm not a big fan of it, but let's talk about if there are a lot of people that are using them.
The first thing I would do, if you're set on using this, I would probably seek out somebody who's a professional at using electric. But again, I am going to put a heavy warning here that using electric on a dog can be very damaging, especially lemme tell you, I'll give you another scenario, Amy, that I think I just had recently. I had a client who was having a dog. They wanted to do electric and they were going to use this other trainer. I said, I wouldn't be involved in that. But they had done underground fence training using electric, and then the next week they said, well, now we're going to do electric. They called me because I've helped them with some behavioral issues with this dog. They said, well now we're going to use this trainer to help us do off leash work with using electric.
And I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You must stop. I said, do not do that. Well, I don't understand. The trainer wants to start next week. And I said, so the electric means to your dog, don't go there. The electric means border boundary in your backyard and now the electric's going to mean what? Stay with me. So it can be very confusing. So now the electric means two things your dog is going to become so gosh darn confused as to what that electric shock means and why he's getting the electric shock. So again, bad idea, that would've been a disaster. I did stop our client from doing that.
Jaimee:
What we hear often and see often is that when it's used like that, the dog will associate that sensation with the dog they're approaching with the person they're approaching, and then that can start to build reactivity to those triggers. And so every time I run towards this dog, I get this sensation, this dog is causing it. And so that's really trading one set of problems for a bigger set of problems.
Chris:
Wow, Jamie, that is such a great point that I failed to mention. Thank you for that. Yeah, it's so true. Is that, so my dog sees another dog and I have the electric collar on my dog and as he starts to run towards that dog, he's off leash and I give him electric sense stimulation. He thinks that dog caused it or he runs up to a child and he thinks that dog comes in. Now my dog hates small children because he gets shocked as he approaches them. So again, dangerous situation. So what I think, and I always tell people is establish the right connection with your dog. And if you do that the right relationship and then you start your off lead work, it goes beautifully.
Begging to hear more of your favorite show. Full episodes of all our shows are available on demand. Go to pet life radio.com to fetch our entire lineup of Possum Pet Podcasts. Also dig us up in iHeartRadio and
Chris:
One of the things that I think you and I hear constantly is how do I get my dog when I'm off leash? What issues can I run into? And I think it's really important for people to know there are risks when we take our dog off leash, especially in a dog park or on a trail because it's not about my dog, but maybe it's about the other dog off leash. How do I control the interactions when there is an aggressive dog running up to my dog and my dog is off leash in the woods somewhere and I see him, I see another dog coming up to him or her, and what do I do?
Jaimee:
Or even if your dog is on leash and another dog is off leash and comes up to your dog, how can we prepare for that for ultimate safety?
Chris:
So I think let's touch on this a little bit, Jamie, and I think it's really an important thing because I think we hear so many times, well, an aggressive dog ran up to my dog and I didn't know what to do and he was on leash or my dog wasn't even off leash. So what do I do? Well, the first thing is I'd like to have that let's walk position. Get behind me. If you as the owner, the leader are in front of your dog and a dog walks up, that's a much better position. Don't put your dog in front of you, greeting the other dog. Try to get your dog behind you. Get your dog on a leash At that point. Now you would say, well get it on a leash, but dogs on leash sometimes become more reactive. But if the dog is behind you and your body's in front, chances are you're going to take that pressure off the dog and you can sort of shoo that other dog away.
That's one thing. The other thing is call out to the other owner, Hey, can you get your dog on a leash? Because two dogs greeting on leash is generally not a smart thing to do. And if you have your dog on leash and yet dog's off leash, again, your dog can be reactive unless the dog is behind you. So I want to be clear. If your dog is off leash and you can say, let's walk and the dog goes behind you, you're fine. If you can't do that, you get your dog on a leash, put 'em behind you, taking that pressure of greeting off where you have at least control over one dog and you shoo the other dog away. One other strategy that I have used myself is that I walk around with treats in my pocket. So if I have a dog that's coming up to me and I'm like, oh my gosh, this dog is not his hairs, his hackles are all up, the hair on his back is all raised, he looks like he's going into a dominant stance.
I'm concerned. What I'll do is I'll reach into my pocket, I'll grab 10 treats and I'll throw them towards him all over the ground, keeping that dog occupied, eating those treats, and then I skedaddle out of there. That works really well and I've had that happen to me gosh, many times that I've used that strategy when I can't control the other dog. The other thing is, again, getting out in front of your dog and using body pressure towards the dog that is coming up to you. Don't put on too much extreme body pressure as that could be dangerous, but just leaning a little bit forward and tell him, get out of here and beat it. And then trying to get the owner over to put their dog on a leash and pull that dog away. Those are great strategies that work incredibly well.
Jaimee:
Yeah, and I think we have to be mindful of local laws and regulations. There are usually strict clear markers of this is a leash only area or this is a designated off leash area. And be mindful and respectful of those because many of our clients with dogs who could be reactive definitely seek out the leash required spaces. And so many times there are people, oh my dog's fine off leash. And it's not about that, it's about the other dog. So be respectful, mind your local regulations and make sure you're in either the leash required or if you do feel your dog can be reliable off leash that you seek the appropriate public spaces to do so.
Chris:
Yeah, that's so true, Jamie. How many times am I taking a dog that I'm working with that is a bit reactive and we're trying to get them exposed to the outside and we go to leash only areas and there's a person coming through with their dog off leash and I say, excuse me, this is a leash only area. No, no, it's okay. My dog's fine. And I'm like, no, but my dog that I'm working with is not fine. So that's really an important thing. Alright, well I think we've really hit on a lot of important issues today. I want to thank you guys for joining us today.
Jaimee:
It's a great important, timely.
Chris:
Yeah, it is. So be sure to visit our website canine master.com. That's C-A-N-I-N-E master.com. Click on ask the canine master and leave your questions for me and we'll do our best to get right back to you. I may even call you onto the show with your questions. And if you do have any questions, you can always contact Dog Gone Smart as well, Jamie, J-A-I-M-E-E at doggonsmart.com. We're happy to help you. We're located in Norwalk, Connecticut and we always do help a lot of people in the tri-state area with training. And I just want to just tell you guys, I really appreciate it. Send us your videos and even your photos so we can even see what's going on with your dog. And we may even have you on the show. So Jamie and I say bye for now. Bye we for now. We'll see you next time on Canine Master on Pet Life Radio, where we will continue to help you master the relationship with your dog. Bye for now.
