There is nothing worse than trying to do right by your dog and making them overweight because of training. You can also actually make things worse by using treats. 

In today's episode, I want to show you exactly what it means to be rewarding too long and what happens when you take the treats out of your hand. AND how to fix when your dog only listens when you have treats. All of that and more in the Acknowledge Dogs Podcast.

Get started with training at https://www.matadork9.com/coaching

Free Training Guide on Resolving Bad Habits

https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

00;00;01;08 - 00;00;35;15
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael, etc.. I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Cheat Codes You're listening to the Acknowledge Dogs Podcast Drop the treats. Get rid of them. Get rid of all rewards. All treats. Get them out of the training picture. Get out of that mindset. Why would I say that? I'm a professional dog trainer who uses positive reinforcement daily.

00;00;36;02 - 00;00;56;14
Michael J. Accetta
Why would I tell you to get rid of the treats I'm your host. Michael is author of The Dog Training. She Codes. Host of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast and founder of Matador Canine Brilliance. Today we're talking about what happens when you hoard treats, you hold them in your hand. Your dog starts to learn where the treats coming from, when the treats are there, when they're not there.

00;00;56;14 - 00;01;14;27
Michael J. Accetta
We're going to guide a little bit more into it. But did you know that you can actually train your dog through positive reinforcement and still end some behaviors? You don't have to punish them. And to help you out I wrote a free PDF guide called Resolving Complicated Bad Habits Without Using Punishment. The link is in the description. You can download that.

00;01;14;29 - 00;01;38;02
Michael J. Accetta
Absolutely free. It's a nice short read, but it is packed with useful information, so make sure you take advantage of that. I have seen way too many times over the thousands of dogs that I've trained over the thousands of dogs I've trained away to many times where the owner has practiced for weeks. You're getting so much success. And then we take the treats away, or they don't have treats or they don't have the ball, whatever it is.

00;01;38;12 - 00;02;01;27
Michael J. Accetta
And the dog completely forgets what they should be doing. This happens way too much, and you've just wasted weeks of time that you've worked with your dog. Simply because they now know what the difference is between working and not working. So why does this happen? Why are dogs so smart Well, we don't want them to be. And they play dumb when we want them to be smart, and you're trying to teach about them.

00;02;02;09 - 00;02;29;08
Michael J. Accetta
And they're like, Nope, I'm just going to keep taking my treats. But of course, they can be really smart and they are very smart, so they pick up on these things. What happens is dogs learn what's called stimulus control. So people refer to it as generalization, becoming really specific. I like to label it under stimulus control. Stimulus control is when a behavior happens, when it's supposed to happen doesn't happen.

00;02;29;08 - 00;02;50;09
Michael J. Accetta
When it's not supposed to happen, it happens in response to a particular cue. Right. If I say sit, my dog will sit in. Does not happen when a different cue is presented. So I say downward dog wouldn't sit. Also, the behavior set wouldn't happen when I said the word down. So there's kind of four criteria there that lock in that stimulus control.

00;02;50;09 - 00;03;10;17
Michael J. Accetta
Now, the same thing goes for when our dogs are training just in general. Okay. We're going to train when I have the trip back, John. We're not training when I don't have the trip pouch. I'll see how very quickly our dogs can learn what the difference is right when a treat pouches on when my hand is in my pocket, when I have the ball sticking out of my back pocket.

00;03;11;07 - 00;03;33;18
Michael J. Accetta
All of those things tell our dog that there is opportunity for reinforcement. And when there is an opportunity for reinforcement, they forget what they're doing because it's not in the same context. Classic example I always give to my client is I want you to think about a kid in school. You ask them their timetable multiplication and you say six times five, they go, boom.

00;03;33;18 - 00;04;02;08
Michael J. Accetta
35 you go six times. Well, they do 72. I know what's up with today and six, but that's what I'm thinking about. So they can very quickly, boom, they got the math application. The math application the multiplication in math, because they are learning in the environment and being tested in the environment of which they learned to take the same kid, go to Disney land, ask him five time six guarantee it'll be longer, it'll take them more effort to get the number.

00;04;02;29 - 00;04;24;22
Michael J. Accetta
Now, if you practice in all these different environments, sure, they get really good at multiplication. And maybe that's a very specific, specific situation where kids wouldn't learn how to do it in Disneyland. But most of the time the kids are just too overstimulated and excited to be thinking about math. Asked them to do a Declaration of Independence, recited There's no way that's going to happen if they learned it in school.

00;04;24;22 - 00;04;48;12
Michael J. Accetta
Of course, if they haven't learned it, it's not going to help them either way. Getting on a little bit of a tangent here, boy being dogs learn specific situations mean one thing, and if the specific criteria isn't there, it means something else. If you don't have treats, I'm not going to listen if you're not going to guide me around, this is what a problem I have with lowering the tree in your hand.

00;04;49;12 - 00;05;05;29
Michael J. Accetta
This is the big point of today's episode. Don't lower your dog if you take nothing else away. This is the point that you should take. Stop lowering your dog. We're going to go over how to teach your dog and what to do so that they're not following treats and they're not creating this kind of problem now a little bit.

00;05;06;12 - 00;05;20;15
Michael J. Accetta
But what I need to get through to your head right now, stop lowering your dog Thank you for listening to the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Subscribe to this podcast, leave a review and connect with me on your favorite social media platform.

00;05;24;03 - 00;05;52;27
Michael J. Accetta
So every social media trainer that I see every single day is lowering their dog. One of the greatest social media marketers when it comes to dog training. And I will mention who it is. They teach classes in competition styled obedience, and they do a lot of lowering a ridiculous amount of long. And oftentimes that would be fine. I would be okay.

00;05;53;03 - 00;06;09;11
Michael J. Accetta
You don't do your little lowering, but then they teach more people how to do it, which means more people are going to have the problem that I'm talking about today where their dog does not do it if you don't lower them or does not do it if you don't have treats in their face my reactivity course that's available at training got mad at auction icon.

00;06;09;24 - 00;06;29;18
Michael J. Accetta
My reactivity course specifically goes against which so many clients are told about reactivity. Oh, your dog is staring at something. Put treats in front of their face and have them turn around. What happens when you don't have tricks? What happens when the dog doesn't like the treats? This is a classic example of people fighting against the positive reinforcement side.

00;06;29;18 - 00;06;47;02
Michael J. Accetta
The cookie pushers, as they say, Oh, you're just putting treats in front of their face or cookies. In front of their face. Actually, what we should be doing is rewarding the choice to have them turn towards us, which is what I do in the reactivity course. So if your dog is reactive, head over to training that Matador can ICOM sign up for the activity course.

00;06;47;09 - 00;07;08;23
Michael J. Accetta
You can also sign up with me to do some coaching that's training. That Matador can icon slash six week coaching and I'll actually walk you through the course one on one. But to look at the differences here, I want my dog to not become reliant on the treats do not become reliant on food or a toy or any other reward.

00;07;09;15 - 00;07;26;20
Michael J. Accetta
Yes, I'm going to use it. I'm going to use it to teach them the behavior I want and I'm not going to eliminate rewards and I have no way of telling them they did a good job, but I don't want them to become reliant on it. So the first thing you can do, the first thing you can do is start shaping behaviors instead of lowering them.

00;07;27;06 - 00;07;46;15
Michael J. Accetta
Now, shaping is just selecting behaviors that are slowly getting closer to the ultimate goal. Right? Successful approximation is what we call it. So if I want my dog to go sit on their bed, I'm going to mark with a clicker, a conditioned reinforcement, a mark for them getting their front paw on the bed. And I'm not boring at the same time.

00;07;46;16 - 00;08;10;18
Michael J. Accetta
This is a big confusion. Oh, well, I'll just mark when their front pockets on the bed, but I'm going to lure them there the condition reinforcer doesn't matter. At that point, a conditional reinforcer has to come before the primary reinforcer or the reward reinforce or you're trying to condition. So the clicker, a mark comes before the treat. They'll make the association.

00;08;11;04 - 00;08;31;13
Michael J. Accetta
If it doesn't, if they come at the same time or the treats first and then the conditioned reinforcer one, it's not really technically a conditioned reinforcer. And two, they don't make the association. They don't think that that click means anything, and you can damage a really strong, conditioned reinforcer if you do this. So if you're going to lure your dog, you have to lower your dog.

00;08;31;25 - 00;08;47;05
Michael J. Accetta
Really, the only situation I see in is if you need to teach a very complex maneuver, you have to manipulate their body or you're doing fitness equipment. So dogs aren't a fitness equipment and you're trying to get my new adjustments to work on fitness right there. They're small little muscles that we need to engage, that kind of thing.

00;08;47;14 - 00;09;11;29
Michael J. Accetta
That's when I'll use Lauren. But really, you should switch over to shaping. If you switch over to shaping, your dog is no longer becoming reliant on the treats. If you're going to use lowering get rid of the clicker. If you have to use Laurie for exercise, if you have to use layering for those tiny movements, get rid of the clicker and added in later.

00;09;12;08 - 00;09;32;04
Michael J. Accetta
But I guarantee you're going to run into the same problem. You're going to lower your dog a little bit, get the behavior that you want, and now you have no way of starting that unless you start phasing out the law. And that just add so much more time. Teach it through shaping first work your shaping muscle. It is a muscle to try to think about, okay, how can I take this giant behavior?

00;09;32;04 - 00;10;01;05
Michael J. Accetta
Break it down into a really manageable step so that my dog can get good at it. If they can get good at that good. Now we can move on to the next step. We can move on to the next one. If they can't get good at it, I can't move forward. But the more you do this, the more your dog does this, the faster you're going to learn Overall, one of my favorite stories it's in and one of Karen Pryor's books, she had done a seminar and the owner had a I'm a 16 week old puppy.

00;10;02;00 - 00;10;23;15
Michael J. Accetta
And after introducing clicker training, this puppy was able to do every single obedience command and multiple tricks in one night. The dog loved learning so much it could just keep going and it could do more things it because the owner was able to instruct the dog perfectly which sounds baffling to me. They just had such a good understanding right away.

00;10;23;23 - 00;10;58;24
Michael J. Accetta
This puppy learns so many things. Sit down, heel walking, nice on leash, spin jump bark, all of those things. This puppy was able to do so. And yet people who laud their dogs can take years and the dog still doesn't know what it should be doing. That's a problem for me. That's a problem. Why would why would I, as a professional dog trainer, recommend to you something that I've seen happen way too often where a dog is just lured for years and they never get the picture, they never understand what they're supposed to be doing.

00;10;59;12 - 00;11;29;22
Michael J. Accetta
Shape it. And you can do it all in one night. You can do it all in one session if you're really good, depending on the complexity of the behavior. So why does this happen this happens because dogs learn very quickly specific situations and scenarios in where they're going to get rewarded when they're not going to get rewarded. When you take the treat away, when you hide it, when you put it in different pockets, when you put it off to the side in a mason jar, mark over here, get your dog, do the right thing, Mark, then go get the treat.

00;11;30;09 - 00;11;52;23
Michael J. Accetta
You teach them that you are important. The mark is important, not the treat itself. And if you stop lowering if you completely get rid of luring, illusory and luring, if you get rid of that, where the treats in your hand guiding the dog around, get rid of that right now. And work out the training muscle in your brain of how to split behavior down in marker.

00;11;52;23 - 00;12;18;07
Michael J. Accetta
Reward those tiny steps. If you can do that, your dog will be much better off in the long term creativity wise when it comes to so problem-solving learning new skills picking better choices and options so you don't have to constantly intervene. All of that happens when your dog knows how to get reinforcement without being prompted otherwise. They just sit there.

00;12;18;29 - 00;12;37;19
Michael J. Accetta
I literally seen dogs just sit there and stare at you. You could say Sit all you want. They're not doing anything until you put your hand up and this is where some people say, Oh, well, my dog responds really well to hand signals. You're absolutely right because that's considered a prompt, just like a treat would be. We're prompting them into the right direction.

00;12;37;25 - 00;12;55;18
Michael J. Accetta
But once you take those prompts away, they've got nothing. It's as if you didn't see anything. And if if my cue is going to be a word, I say the word sit my dog sit. If my cue is going to be a word, and I want them to respond. If I don't say anything, they don't do anything It's the exact same thing.

00;12;55;18 - 00;13;18;20
Michael J. Accetta
And for whatever reason, we as human beings treat them as two separate things. They're not two separate entities. They are all together. A cue tells our dog what to do, and in many cases, the treat in your hand is the cue, so everything else doesn't matter. Some dogs get hyper fixated. They put blinders on, and they only focus on the treat like their eyes roll back in their head.

00;13;18;20 - 00;13;36;10
Michael J. Accetta
And they're just, I want the treat. Labs do this now and let's do it with toys. And it's good to have that kind of motivation. But I'd much rather switch that motivation to me, have them looking towards me, engaging with me, working with me, and then I magically produce treats afterwards, after they've done the thing that I want.

00;13;36;18 - 00;13;53;02
Michael J. Accetta
I'm not going to use treats to get them to do it. I'm going to mark the behavior they've done and I'm going to reward them afterwards. That's what you need to do. And that's what happens when you take the treat out of your hand. Your dog just stops. I don't want that to happen to you. I want to see your progress with your dog in a timely fashion.

00;13;53;02 - 00;14;15;10
Michael J. Accetta
You shouldn't be training for years unless you want to, but if you get through the fundamentals and I say this all the time, if you get through the fundamentals in an effective way, you've learned the skills and your dog is now prepared to teach anything else you want to teach, any trick, any environmental stimulus you want to work on, any competition you want to do becomes ten times easier if you start sooner.

00;14;15;22 - 00;14;35;00
Michael J. Accetta
I mean, if a dog has bad habits, they're going to stay bad habits longer. If you start sooner because you worked on the effectiveness in your fundamentals, you've worked on your skills, your dog knows the fundamentals really well. Then they're younger when they're learning these things, but really what ends up happening is you have a stronger relationship and your dog is more creative.

00;14;35;02 - 00;14;53;20
Michael J. Accetta
They can solve problems easier. That makes it much easier for you to do any competition work that you wanted to do. There's been a short episode today. I hope you appreciate it. I hope you take this information and go apply it to day. Go use it right now if you if you can, if you're driving or dissecting rats or something, then clearly don't use it.

00;14;54;11 - 00;15;12;01
Michael J. Accetta
But if you are going to use it today, make sure you take notes. I don't say this enough. You guys got to take notes. It's something that I struggled with in the beginning and I learned the hard way. It's actually the first chapter in the dog training Chico that's available at Mount Auction. Icon is the first chapter in Mad at Arcane Incan.

00;15;12;11 - 00;15;30;24
Michael J. Accetta
And I'm actually going to put in the description. I'm giving away the first chapter for free. So if you want to read the first chapter about keeping really good notes so you can progress faster with your dog, click the link in the description and go read it today when you have lunch, when you're having dinner, when you're kind of trying to calm down and cool off before bed.

00;15;31;09 - 00;15;34;12
Michael J. Accetta
Enjoy that and I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening.

00;15;42;17 - 00;15;50;05
Michael J. Accetta
Thank you for listening to the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Subscribe to this podcast, leave a review and connect with me on your favorite social media platform.

00;15;53;23 - 00;15;54;05
Michael J. Accetta
So

Reactive dog training is one of the most frustrating and rewarding types of training you can go through. Although you have regressions and obstacles to overcome you will feel amazing when you actually succeed. Let's get you started now!

This episode is a masterclass in reactivity training. If you master these 3 secrets you will be able to transform your dog's life and make it easier for you wherever you go.

 Free Gift!!! https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

Get reactive training anywhere anytime with our Reactivity Online course - https://www.matadork9.com/reactivity

00:01:41:04 - 00:01:59:04
Michael J. Accetta
I'm talking about reactivity. The three main things you need to do in order to have a successful training plan when it comes to reactivity and kind of set you up for success. You can have a training plan in general and you could start doing stuff with your dog. But if you don't have a system, if you don't have an organized way to do it, then it's not going to work.

00:01:59:14 - 00:02:15:04
Michael J. Accetta
So I want to talk about three main points here, and then I wanted to dove in a little bit more on some of those points. The first thing that I want to talk about is called threshold training. If you have a reactive dog if you have a dog that barks at people, they lunge at other dogs, they're dragging you down the street.

00:02:15:04 - 00:02:31:26
Michael J. Accetta
If you have a dog like that, then you need to understand threshold training. Whatever you're doing with your dog, no matter regardless of what kind of training you're doing. There is a fine line between stressing them out and continuing the progress and pushing them to where they fail. You don't want your dog to fail. You want them to succeed.

00:02:32:10 - 00:02:51:05
Michael J. Accetta
So we have to find that fine line. And there are three main ways that we can do this. We can control the threshold training. Number one is management. If you're going out with your dog, you need to manage their entire environment, their entire life, essentially, even if it's not reactive. If you're talking about something else, your dog's destroying the garbage.

00:02:52:01 - 00:03:11:24
Michael J. Accetta
Your dog is chewing up the couch, your dog's jumping up on people. You have to manage things. But when it comes to reactivity, you need to control the environment as best as you can. So that means having eagle eyes and looking out into the environment as far as you could possibly see and recognizing what might stimulate your dog and trigger them to become reactive.

00:03:12:13 - 00:03:30:15
Michael J. Accetta
Okay. Your dog is people-reactive. That might mean don't go into areas where there are a lot of people that's probably not the best place to go. Instead, go to a park where things are a little more relaxed, and a little calmer, and then you can reward your dog heavily there. Now, you cannot control everything so you also have to have a backup plan.

00:03:30:16 - 00:03:46:18
Michael J. Accetta
What happens when my dog loses their mind? Where could I go? Oftentimes I have my clients go to the park in their car and they can just jump right back into the car if something happens. Right. They stay right there. They don't go for a walk. They stay right near their car and they practice. And if they have to, they can jump back into the car.

00:03:47:09 - 00:04:09:18
Michael J. Accetta
But your goal is to observe the area as best as you can and stop your dog from being put in to situations where they're going to have problems, where they're going to freak out, where they're not going to be able to think clearly or progress in training efficiently. Now, number two, I want to talk about different variables just because we're talking about sight when it comes to managing the environment, right?

00:04:09:19 - 00:04:30:05
Michael J. Accetta
Your dog sees another dog, they lose its mind. We also have to consider, smell and sound. So when you're trying to keep your dog below the threshold you don't want your dog just be okay with seeing another dog or seeing a person or seeing a squirrel or a cat or whatever it may be. You need them to be okay. With hearing it as well as smelling it.

00:04:30:20 - 00:04:53:19
Michael J. Accetta
They need to become desensitized to all of those things. Oftentimes, I'll even have my clients work on those things separately. Right. So if a dog is way too stimulated by the sight of something, then we might just work on the sound. The dog is way too simulated, stimulated by the sound of something. We might just work on sight. See how we can kind of break that up and we can even control the different levels within that.

00:04:53:22 - 00:05:19:03
Michael J. Accetta
So sound. Is it lower or is it higher? Is it more in their brain like, oh, my God, I can't figure it out, right? Because of how loud it is? Or can we make it softer? Can we make it easier for them? Same thing with sight. Closer, further away movement is involved. There are a lot of variables you got to play with, and if you have a reactive dog, it's your job to kind of pinpoint all of the things that make your dog lose their mind.

00:05:19:19 - 00:05:38:09
Michael J. Accetta
Right. So if you've found out what makes them lose their mind, you can then dial it back and make it just a little bit easier for them. That is the finesse of really good reactive dog training and trainers. That's what they get paid a lot of money for. It's that ability to break it down and keep your dog successful that whole time.

00:05:38:11 - 00:05:53:14
Michael J. Accetta
So if you can do that, you're going to save yourself thousands of dollars in training as well as hundreds of hours in training. Right. Like you're not going to spend as much time because they're progressing faster. The faster your dog progresses. The faster they can move on to the next thing. And we can encourage them more with build more confidence.

00:05:53:20 - 00:06:11:21
Michael J. Accetta
And it keeps going like that. We kind of just build on everything as they go now. Now that you understand the different variables and how to manage everything, you can start dancing with pressure. This is what I call dancing with a cha cha cha. Right? Act little. Was it? I don't even know. I do a little dance, make a little move.

00:06:11:21 - 00:06:35:16
Michael J. Accetta
Get down tonight. So you want to dance under pressure? If I can add a little bit of pressure and I can make it just that much more stressful. Just a little bit. And then I can take the pressure back off. Instead of my dog getting used to working at one level, I can stress them out, create a little bit more of a challenge for them, and then reward them by taking the pressure off.

00:06:35:22 - 00:06:55:04
Michael J. Accetta
And encouragement with rewards, toys, treats, that kind of thing. Praise. They'll actually progress that much faster. I did not push them to the point where they freak out and they fail, but I pushed them just past what they are comfortable doing. It's like people, right? If you want to learn how to play the piano, yes, you have to learn the scales.

00:06:55:04 - 00:07:12:25
Michael J. Accetta
You have to learn all the mechanics of it. But then if you want to get good, you kind of have to play faster. You have to play without looking. You have to create these challenges that make it easier when you don't have those challenges. Think about someone in a sport, right? They play football instead of pushing against a £300 guy in football.

00:07:13:02 - 00:07:33:28
Michael J. Accetta
You practice pushing against a £500 thing in practice. That way, when you're in the game, it's easier for you to push against the £300 person. That's what you need to do for your dog. Just in a controlled way. You're going to add a little bit just enough to where they're stressed. They didn't freak out yet, and then you bring them back, you relieve them, and then in real life, things become easier.

00:07:34:14 - 00:07:51:21
Michael J. Accetta
Now that's just the first secret, that threshold training. That's the first secret when it comes to reactive dog training. I'm going to go over the next two in just a minute. But if you're excited about this, you're like, Oh, wow, this guy's got a lot of information. I made it super, super easy for you to learn how to do all of this, and I'm actually going to demonstrate it for you.

00:07:51:21 - 00:08:14:07
Michael J. Accetta
If you just go to Matador canine dot com forward slash reactivity, I created an entire course, and if you just put rescue in the coupon section, you get 10% off. That's my gift for you, man. Barking uncommon slash reactivity get 10% off by using the coupon code. Rescue all caps in that. Now, the second secret is a solid foundation.

00:08:14:27 - 00:08:35:01
Michael J. Accetta
Solid foundation. I mean, you have to have such a strong fundamental understanding and your dog has to have that fundamental understanding of what they should be doing. Doesn't need to be everything, doesn't need to be everything. But you should at least have one thing and that's going to be a recall or name recognition. Recall, right? Say my dog's name.

00:08:35:01 - 00:08:50:28
Michael J. Accetta
They come to me. Name recognition is just saying your dog's name and having them respond to you. Since we're working on reactivity, maybe you're going for a walk, or maybe you're going to the park. You're probably still going to have your dog on a leash, which means you don't need as far of a distance for a good recall. But it will help when your dog is closer.

00:08:51:01 - 00:09:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
Right. Just like I just talked about with that challenge, if your dog is able to do a 100-foot recall and you get them two feet away from you, the odds of them responding to you are much higher Name recognition is the exact same thing we're just not doing at a distance. So I say my dog's name HAWK turns towards me.

00:09:06:12 - 00:09:28:01
Michael J. Accetta
Good. I can reward him if your dog understands name recognition and recall when you need to use it, that means you're out for a walk and they see something else and you say their name. They should turn back and you should be able to reward them. That is going to start becoming an automatic response for them. They see the thing that triggers them and they turn towards you expecting a treat.

00:09:28:13 - 00:09:47:24
Michael J. Accetta
Super simple, right? But if they don't know that first, then you can never use it in that heightened state of awareness. When your dog is stressed, they're not thinking as clearly as they usually do. If you take them out to go do something and they're stressed by a dog, they're stressed by a person, they're trying to chase the squirrel up the tree and you call their name.

00:09:47:25 - 00:10:05:08
Michael J. Accetta
Odds are they aren't going to turn to you. That's a problem, right? That's a whole it's whole emphasis of reactive dog training. We want our dog to engage with us as opposed to everything else. And so if they don't even know what the fundamentals are, then how am I going to be able to do it in a stressful situation?

00:10:05:08 - 00:10:28:00
Michael J. Accetta
It's just not going to happen. Now, the other things you might want to teach before you jump into reactive training are obedience and manners to a certain level. Right. I want my dog to be able to sit now at my dog, able to relax and maybe walk on a leash without anything else going on. Again, it's going to make it easier for me to transition from a less stressful environment to this new stressful environment.

00:10:29:11 - 00:10:46:25
Michael J. Accetta
Right? There's no way for my dog to know those things in this stressful environment unless I've taught them somewhere else. It's like getting into the pilot's seat of a plane. There's no way you can fly a plane. I mean, people do it all the time and it does happen. But there's a school to learn how to become a pilot.

00:10:46:25 - 00:11:08:06
Michael J. Accetta
There's a reason you have to go through all this training in these hours of practice because when you're in the actual seat, holding the steering wheel, steering wheel of a pilot, I guess the steering wheel, it's not a wheel I don't know what it's called. The steering wheel of a pilot. When you have the steering wheel as the pilot, there's a certain amount of stress that overcomes you.

00:11:08:17 - 00:11:22:14
Michael J. Accetta
And you can't necessarily be thinking about learning all of this new stuff. You just have to do it. Same thing with your dog. If you teach them obedience in the manners that they should know, eventually they're going to have to know. They're going to have to know how to stay. They're going to have to know how to down.

00:11:22:17 - 00:11:44:18
Michael J. Accetta
They're going to have to know how to walk on a leash. If you can teach those things and get a pretty good amount of success when you do add in these stressful situations like people like dogs, like cats and squirrels and bicycles and noises, and once you start to add those things in you have something, at least something maybe it's not perfect, but you at least have something to kind of bounce back off of.

00:11:44:25 - 00:12:02:02
Michael J. Accetta
You have something to go off of and fall back on in case your dog freaks out. My dog's freaking out. I get their attention. Good. Now I got to tell them to do something because if I get my dog's attention, they've recalled to me, I've said their name, they turn and then they go right back to reacting. I'm just having them practice doing circles, and that's no good.

00:12:02:13 - 00:12:20:13
Michael J. Accetta
I want them to react, turn to me, and now engage again. So maybe I asked them to sit. Maybe I start teaching them tricks. Maybe I get them to settle. Maybe we then walk in another direction. All of that is what you need to do in reactive training to help guide your dog through the process of being like, Okay, it's fine, everything's going to be okay.

00:12:20:13 - 00:12:48:13
Michael J. Accetta
I don't need to worry about them. I just need to focus on whoever's walking me. Right? So we call name recognition. Those solid fundamentals are what's required. And then the last secret, the last secret to perfectly training your dog through reactive training is repetition and reward schedules. The 2 hours repetition of reward schedules, repetition. You've got to practice every single day over and over and over every single day.

00:12:48:13 - 00:13:08:13
Michael J. Accetta
You've got to practice when you go for a walk, when you go outside, you go to the backyard, the front yard. You got to be practicing something related to reactive training. Whether it's sharpening up the solid fundamentals, whether it's practicing more of the recall at a distance. So it's easier when they're closer or starting to implement all those sounds and smells and sites we discussed.

00:13:10:01 - 00:13:38:24
Michael J. Accetta
That's the whole point of reactive training. Your goal is to then get more people into the circle, right? Either people or dogs, more people involved, too, where your dog goes, Okay, I can be around more people, I can be around more stressful situations, and that's that repetition. And then we move into reward schedules. So reward schedules essentially say, if my dog is doing well, every single time they see somebody at 100 feet, now I'm going to wait.

00:13:39:00 - 00:14:05:02
Michael J. Accetta
They're going to have to see somebody three times at 100 feet in order to get the same reward. We're going to stretch their capabilities of how much they're willing to work in order to get the same level of reinforcement that that is what's going to create longevity in the training, not just success, but longevity, because then your dog goes, Okay, I can look at that person three times and not be accustomed to getting a treat every time.

00:14:05:20 - 00:14:26:09
Michael J. Accetta
You're going to cut down on treats. Your dog's not going to get fat. It's going to make it easier for you. And secretly, if you miss an opportunity to reward your dog it's okay if I don't see that my dog saw somebody and then turns towards me. It's okay because I can still reward them for the second or third, fifth, or 10th time they saw somebody, and then again that becomes easier.

00:14:26:09 - 00:14:49:14
Michael J. Accetta
So if that was 100 feet becomes easier. Now I can jump two to 75 feet, and 50 feet and make it easier that way. Every single time you train your dog, you have to be focused on one of these reactivity kinds of methods, one of these kinds broken down into those three secrets. Which 1 a.m. Am I going to focus on today as the only way to be successful when it comes to training your dog?

00:14:49:14 - 00:15:10:05
Michael J. Accetta
Number one, threshold training management, different variables and then dancing with pressure. Number two, is solid foundations. Does your dog have a recall? Do they know their name? Do they have any level of manners in obedience? You need that and then number three, repetition, and reward schedules. I need something that I can rep out over and over and over again.

00:15:10:21 - 00:15:31:18
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe I have a friend come and they guide me right at a distance. Rather, I'd guide them at a distance and make sure that they stay still. I control the environment. I get to practice what my dog needs to practice those solid fundamentals around the person that maybe makes my dog reactive. That's a perfect training plan right there.

00:15:31:18 - 00:15:55:19
Michael J. Accetta
There's a perfect training schedule, and you just ripped that out over and over and over until your dog's not expecting a reward anymore. And then you increase the pressure. You increase how difficult it is for your dog to get a reward. That is the secret to effective reactivity training. If you want all of this laid out for you made it completely simple for you.

00:15:56:01 - 00:16:12:17
Michael J. Accetta
Everything's laid out. You get a video demonstration, you get a workbook to guide you along the process. Head over to Matador Canine e-Comm Forward slash reactivity and you can get 10% off by putting in the code rescue Matador Cain Icon Forward Slash Reactivity Coupon Code Rescue

Before you can start focusing on obedience, adventures, or fixing problem behaviors you must teach these three things. Once you spend the time to teach your dog these fundamentals you might find that you do not need to fix every tiny behavior. You can rely on these three skills for almost everything.

In today's episode, you will learn how to teach your dog to settle, build engagement, and a solid recall; the fundamentals of a well-behaved dog and reliable companion. 

Free Gift - Resolving Complicated Bad Habits without Punishment

https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

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Leave a review here - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/acknowledge-dogs-matador-canine/id1584049404

Podcast Transcript

00;00;18;13 - 00;00;41;25
Michael J. Accetta
What skills did you teach your dog? The first engagement, solid recall, and settling calming them down. Those three things are the first things you should focus on. Whenever you get a new puppy, whether you're getting an older dog or you finally decided to start training your dog. I'm Michael Aceto, founder of Matador Canine. Brilliant author of The Dog Training Chico and host of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast.

00;00;41;26 - 00;01;01;03
Michael J. Accetta
Thank you for being here. Before we dove in a little bit more about those three things, I want to offer a free gift to you. Click the link in the description and get the free PDF download for resolving complicated bad habits without having to use punishment. It's a very short read, but it is packed with useful information, so please take advantage of it.

00;01;01;06 - 00;01;20;28
Michael J. Accetta
It is my gift to you. Okay, so the first one is engagement. Engagement is huge. This is where Lucy's walking can be fixed. This is where a solid recall can be built. And that's why it's before the solid recall. Engagement comes first. If you go out into an environment and your dog is not focused on you, there's no way you can teach them to do anything else.

00;01;22;15 - 00;01;40;06
Michael J. Accetta
You have to teach them engagement. First, they have to be engaged. Or do they have to be focused on you? They have to want to learn with you over all of the other stimuli in any environment. Right. You go out for a walk, they're going to be looking at the squirrels and be looking at the cats. They're going to be looking at the dogs, and everything else besides you.

00;01;40;22 - 00;02;05;00
Michael J. Accetta
You can't start teaching basic obedience or manners or nice loose leash walking, or any of that If your dog is not engaged with you. So how do we build engagement? Well, my favorite way is to wait. What would I wait for exactly? Go sit on a park bench. Hold your dog's leash and wait. At some point, they will get bored with the outside world and they will look toward you.

00;02;05;22 - 00;02;29;06
Michael J. Accetta
When they look toward you. You're going to mark and reward. That is my favorite way to do it. Shaping engagement. The more they turn toward you, the more you mark the reward. Sounds super simple. But when done effectively, your dog becomes insanely responsive, and they're actually looking to you more than everywhere else. Once they start looking at you, we can start to ask for more things, right?

00;02;30;04 - 00;02;50;11
Michael J. Accetta
But we can't ask for more things if they're not looking at us. So take the time today. This is my action plan for you today. Go outside, sit on your front stoop, sit in your car, or sit on a park bench. Hold the leash with the clicker and some treats They're going to turn around eventually when they do mark and reward the second they make the decision to turn.

00;02;51;13 - 00;03;15;08
Michael J. Accetta
If they start to go, you click and they don't come all the way to you. That's okay. Don't worry about it. At least toss a treat out to them. Eventually, they'll get it. Practice this over and over and you start to do these in different environments. That way your dog is engaged no matter where you are. We know dogs don't generalize well, and they're very specific about what criteria are important in a scenario.

00;03;15;21 - 00;03;34;20
Michael J. Accetta
Criteria in this scenario are when you're with me, you should be engaging with me. Everything else doesn't matter whether you're wearing the leash or are you wearing a harness collar whether you have a halting on you got booties on, whether we're out of the park or we're in a parking lot, no matter where we are, you should try to engage with me more.

00;03;34;20 - 00;03;54;23
Michael J. Accetta
You engage with me, and the more I'll reward you for the next step, that solid recall we're going to hold off on for just a second. I want to focus more on settling. Many dog owners struggle with their dogs not being able to settle and relaxed all over the place. They're having a grand old time just running around the jumping off the couch.

00;03;55;20 - 00;04;15;15
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe they're tearing down your blinds. My dog Tommy is a very big boy, and he gets very excited last night. He was very excited because we were playing with him and he gets excited and we can stop him by saying, go lay down, go settle. So if you have a puppy or you're deciding to teach your dog something new, they're going to get excited to work with you.

00;04;15;26 - 00;04;39;01
Michael J. Accetta
We're building engagements. They're going to get excited to work with you. But you also have to teach them how to sell, how to relax. When you sit down on the couch, they should sit down. They should be nice and calm. You can do that by teaching a place command, right? Have a nice bed for him, walk them on over, get them to offer to go on the place multiple times for a reward, and then have them come off, say place before they jump back on when they jump back on the market board.

00;04;39;01 - 00;05;08;16
Michael J. Accetta
Now, you've taught them the word place we chose to say go lay down is just the phrase that we use. You can say anything. Go take a chill pill. Go take five. All right. You could say anything. I would not say down because that's an obedience routine command or cue writing down is a very specific behavior. I don't want to ruin the down or my settling Q by cross-contaminating them if you will.

00;05;09;12 - 00;05;28;05
Michael J. Accetta
Right. If I say down, I expect my dog to stay focused on me in a fit any active down, which means they're primed and ready to get up and do the next thing. Go lay down or go settle or go on. The place is a passive type of down. They're actually laying. Maybe they roll their hip. Maybe they lay like a pancake, completely flat.

00;05;29;09 - 00;05;37;10
Michael J. Accetta
I want to have differences there, and I want my dog to know the difference. I'm going to use a different word to signify different behavior. So that's important.

00;05;41;27 - 00;06;02;02
Michael J. Accetta
I want to take a moment and thank all of our loyal followers. This podcast would not be possible without you. Leave a review and let us know what you like and want to learn on the next episode of the Acknowledged Dog podcast. Now back to the show now you can teach this without saying anything, and that's how I would prefer to do it.

00;06;02;06 - 00;06;18;07
Michael J. Accetta
That's what we did with my other dog when I sat down in a chair when I was first teaching him, he was attached to me by a leash. When I sat down in a chair, I immediately started putting treats on the ground. You learned whenever Dad sits down, I should lay right next to him and I'll get my treats.

00;06;18;23 - 00;06;32;13
Michael J. Accetta
Now, this might not be what you want. You don't want your dog constantly sitting next to you. In the situations I was in and I was training in, I was in college I was in class, and he was laying right next to me. And that was totally fine. Nowadays, when I lay down, he lies right next to me.

00;06;32;17 - 00;06;50;00
Michael J. Accetta
And it's wonderful until I go to move the chair and then he moves and that's right. But I've taught him the action of me sitting down, telling him to go settle. We don't play when I'm sitting down. We play what I'm standing up and we're running around. When I sit down, everything stops and we should relax and settle.

00;06;50;12 - 00;07;07;01
Michael J. Accetta
Insanely useful, insanely, insanely useful for so many things. You go to a friend's house. You want them to relax in your own house. You want them to relax. You got kids, you want them to relax. You got other dogs. You want them to relax. You're in a zoom meeting and your dog's pestering you. You said, go lay down and they go lay down.

00;07;07;01 - 00;07;28;27
Michael J. Accetta
Now, everyone in the Zoom meeting is impressed, right? Moving on to the third one, recall this is huge. And if you've listened to the other episodes, you know that I think a recall is one of the greatest things you can teach your dog. If you teach your dog a solid recall, you can prevent them from running away. You can prevent loose leash walking be a problem.

00;07;29;06 - 00;07;50;29
Michael J. Accetta
You can prevent them from running up to people when they're not supposed to. You can prevent resource gardening, stealing food, jumping up on so many things, chasing animals, chasing other dogs, and playing too rough, fix all of those things with a solid recall. Solid, solid. But you can't have a solid recall until you have one of two things.

00;07;50;29 - 00;08;13;16
Michael J. Accetta
One, really good engagement. So that when you say your dog's name, they actually want to engage with you and you can't have a solid recall until your dog can settle in a lot of places. Why is that? Well, what ends up happening is most dog owners don't work with their dogs in distracting environments until they're told to, so they never bring their dog out to Lowe's.

00;08;13;16 - 00;08;35;00
Michael J. Accetta
Home Depot, Dog Park just to train, right? They just go to the dog park to run around. But if you head to all these places and worked with your dog, they would learn that being engaged with you and settling with you is important, despite where we are when it comes to the recall. If they can't be calm and engaged with you in these areas, there's no way they can do the recall.

00;08;35;05 - 00;08;58;20
Michael J. Accetta
There just isn't unless you resort to punishing them, which in that case, you're really getting their attention through punishment. You're not rewarding them for recalling them. See the difference, which sounds nicer in my opinion, getting their attention and recalling because they're going to get a reward is much stronger and more beneficial for our relationship. It makes me feel better, right?

00;08;59;08 - 00;09;24;17
Michael J. Accetta
But positive behaviors, which positively reinforce behaviors are much stronger than punishing behaviors. That's why punishment always has to happen again and again. And the race to be a refresher course. You reinforce behavior enough and you could stop reinforcing it. It'll still work, especially if you use reward schedules. Think about the time when you were punished for something let's say your job, right?

00;09;24;18 - 00;09;44;21
Michael J. Accetta
You got scolded at your job for doing something. Yeah. It might not have been as severe as anything else, but you got punished and you still came back the next day. Maybe because your job is really reinforcing because of money. It's a good job that you really enjoy or the people you really enjoy, whatever it may be. That's not another example.

00;09;45;02 - 00;10;10;02
Michael J. Accetta
Friends and family. Someone could say something negative to you and it hurt your feelings, but because you like that person, and it's positively reinforcing to hang out with them, it outweighs that negative. Someone would have to do something insanely, insanely punishing to you for you to completely disregard their existence for the rest of their life. And I don't even think that's true, although people do terrible, terrible things right.

00;10;10;03 - 00;10;35;10
Michael J. Accetta
Their stories of murderers eventually being given forgiveness. And I have watched a movie recently. It was called The Professor and the Crazy Man or something like that wonderful movie. Mel Gibson's in it. And this man went crazy and he killed his father. Of a couple of children, didn't kill the children, but killed the father. He ends up going to an insane asylum.

00;10;36;03 - 00;11;04;07
Michael J. Accetta
And the wife of the husband that was dead fell in love with him. What a plot twist there. Fell in love with the man who murdered her husband. Sure. It's a story, right? Although I'm pretty sure it's actually accurate. I believe it wasn't a documentary, but I'm sure it was based on true events because it was about the writing of death, not the Declaration of Human Rights about writing in Webster's Dictionary.

00;11;04;29 - 00;11;22;11
Michael J. Accetta
I think it's Webster's Dictionary. Yeah, the dictionary. But writing the dictionary. This professor had written the dictionary I'm going on a very sad tangent, but you get my point. If you could positively reinforce your dog for settling and engaging in these distracting environments, you can have a really solid recall that is based on rewards and want to be with you.

00;11;23;06 - 00;11;45;27
Michael J. Accetta
The recall becomes very strong at that point. They're running to you, they're engaging with you, they're having a great old time. Every time you call their name, they light up with excitement and they run straight to you. Regardless of what else is going on. You got to work on the settlement and the engagement first. Now when it comes to the recall because you already did the engagement, it should be fairly easy and you don't already want to come to you.

00;11;46;10 - 00;12;14;12
Michael J. Accetta
So you're just going to mark with a clicker or a verbal marker when they're running toward you and give them a treat when they start doing that consistently. Right? Just choosing to run towards you. Then you could add in the word right before they do it. So you'd say come, they run towards you, click treat. And I'd always click right before they get to you until you know if you're working on having them sit perfectly in front of you for a, you know, competition or something like that.

00;12;15;15 - 00;12;36;07
Michael J. Accetta
I would mark them as they're running to build that motivation because running is the most amount of effort they're putting forth. So we can make a really strong recall, really strong recall by marking as they're running. And then the treat becomes the end goal for them, right? They're running all the way to the tree. Eventually, you can have them run, grab a hold of them first and then mark and reward them.

00;12;36;18 - 00;12;55;12
Michael J. Accetta
But in the beginning stages, you really want that motivation. You want them running to your mark as they're running. You should be practicing this in all different scenarios too, not just because you did the engagement in settling in those different scenarios, but the recall should be practiced in different scenarios. Go to Home Depot, go to Lowe's, go to the park, go to a friend.

00;12;55;12 - 00;13;22;11
Michael J. Accetta
Now, put up my words this morning. Go to a friend's house or a family member's house and just practice a recall in their house or in their backyard. Say, Hey, can I buy you some pizza? You know, whatever it is, I'll take you out to dinner. Can I just practice my knowledge? Recall in your house hopefully they're nice enough to let you do it because it's important that your dog can do these things all the time, no matter where you are.

00;13;22;26 - 00;13;41;01
Michael J. Accetta
If they can't do them. What was the point of training? In my opinion, if it's worth training, it's worth overtraining. And some people say, Oh, you shouldn't overtrain. You know, I want my dog to be as best as they possibly can, just like I want to be as best as I possibly can. That's not the right word. I want to be as good as I possibly can the best I can.

00;13;41;29 - 00;13;57;07
Michael J. Accetta
I don't know what's going on with my words today. I want to be the best that I can be. There we go. I want to be the best that I can be. I want my dog to be the best that they can be. So if I'm going to train, I'm going to overtrain I'm going to work through all of these problems, all these problem behaviors that so many dog owners suffer through.

00;13;57;19 - 00;14;18;17
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to work through all of that so my dog can have a nice, freedom-filled life. And I can't go hiking with my dogs. If they can't recall, then they don't have any engagement. I can't bring my dogs to an outdoor cafe. If my dog can't settle right. I gain a certain level of freedom and adventure simply because I work with my dogs.

00;14;18;26 - 00;14;39;06
Michael J. Accetta
I train them and I get them the exercise that they need and the skills required to live in our society. We needed to learn skills. That's why kindergarten exists. That's why parents have to teach you things you have to learn the skills before you can move up into, you know, first grade, let's say. Right? You got to be potty trained before you can go to kindergarten.

00;14;39;06 - 00;14;56;05
Michael J. Accetta
I think that's why pre-K exists I got a two-year-old now who's trying to be potty trained and he's got to learn that skill before we get to those upper grades. No, they're not upper grades. They're low-grade. But for him, they'd be upgraded. So he's got to be potty trained before we can do that. He's got to learn the skills just like a dog.

00;14;56;17 - 00;15;14;27
Michael J. Accetta
You got to learn the skills of engagement, settling in a solid recall for you to have any chance of an adventurous, freedom-filled life. And I hope you work on that so you can have the same freedom that I get with my dogs. Thank you guys for listening today. Again, please take that free pdf download in the description.

00;15;14;27 - 00;15;32;05
Michael J. Accetta
It's absolutely free. It's ten pages. It's a nice little short read, but it'll help you understand how to resolve the bad habits of your dog are the problems that they have without using punishment, yelling at them, correcting them, without making a whole big fuss out of it, just teaching them what they should be doing. Take advantage of that.

00;15;32;13 - 00;15;44;23
Michael J. Accetta
Also, if you are interested in training your dog with me through one on one coaching, click the link in the description as well, or head over to training at matador canine for six-week coaching, and I'll see you guys in our first session.

What happens when rewards don't work? What do you do when your dog is not food motivated and willing to work with you every day? You are supposed to be teaching and training them and they want nothing to do with you. 

In today's episode, I break down the 3 reasons your dog isn't responding to reward-based training and what you need to do about it today!! 

Download the Training Planner Template with the link below

https://www.matadork9.com/planner

Join Matador University for free - https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial

Train with my - https://www.matadork9.com/coaching

Want me to answer your dog training questions? Leave a review with your question, and I will ask in the next episode!

00:00:19:02 - 00:00:43:27
Michael J. Accetta
I've got a great show for you today. Oh, boy, oh, boy. If you guys stick around until the end of this, you are going to have so much in your tool belt now. We're going over so much today. The question that started this was what happens when rewards don't work? What happens when my dog is smart enough to know when I have a treat or when I don't have a treat?

00:00:45:04 - 00:01:12:11
Michael J. Accetta
Right. My dog is a master of deception. They're not food motivated. How am I supposed to reward them if I can't give them food, they don't care. They're wicked smart and are way too smart for their own good. They know when something's available and when it isn't right. We say the dog collar savvy or training savvy. Essentially, it's a layman's term for, well, my dog understands that there's a criterion involved in training.

00:01:12:11 - 00:01:26:16
Michael J. Accetta
And if the criteria aren't there, then I don't need to perform. I don't need to listen I don't need to respond when you tell me to come to you. I don't need to sit when you ask me to sit. I can do whatever I want because you don't have anything on me. You don't have a way to keep me accountable.

00:01:26:20 - 00:01:49:25
Michael J. Accetta
And you don't have a way to reward me. This happens constantly. It's a lot of what my job entails when my dog listens inside, but they don't listen outside. My dog listens when no one's around. But the second there's a person involved, my dog loses their mind. If you are dealing with this, you need to stay tuned for the entire episode because I'm going over so much today on why this happens and how we can fix it.

00:01:51:04 - 00:02:14:09
Michael J. Accetta
Okay, now there are only three reasons as to why rewards don't work There are only three. So I want you to find out while you're listening to this, whether you're driving or whether you're doing something else. Maybe you're sitting down and taking notes. I want you to just think, which one do I fall into? There are only three. The first one is you do not have the preferred reward.

00:02:15:08 - 00:02:35:28
Michael J. Accetta
This is one of the easiest ways to solve your problems. Now, the next two or a little more complicated. But if you can just rule this one out, at least you know that you didn't waste a lot of time. The number of dogs that I've worked with and the owners that I've helped change their lives was as simple as, let's just find out what your dog likes.

00:02:37:17 - 00:02:56:16
Michael J. Accetta
Like, if you've never done that, you're wasting time in training. If you've never spent the time to figure out what your dog actually likes, then you are adding time to training as opposed to succeeding in training that you're just it's making it harder for you to get the same results as if you were to just have the treats that your dog preferred.

00:02:56:29 - 00:03:15:20
Michael J. Accetta
Let me give you an example. My dogs usually use kibble for their reward every morning and night. When we have breakfast and dinner, I train my dogs with kibble. However, I know that if we need to do something quickly, I need to teach a behavior very fast, and I want my dog to be motivated to learn and engaged.

00:03:16:02 - 00:03:42:23
Michael J. Accetta
I can use cheese. I could use hot dogs, and they are on it. Okay. They are light lit up there, ready to go because of the fact that I have something that they actually prefer. Yes, they love their kibble. They eat their kibble every day, though. But if I have something you know, higher up in their hierarchy of rewards, I can get that much more motivation, that much more excitement, that much more involvement.

00:03:43:29 - 00:04:00:06
Michael J. Accetta
And then as long as I don't mess up the next to which we're going to talk for a second, so long as I don't mess up, the next to my dog will not become dependent on that preferred reinforcement. What do I mean by that? I mean, my dog won't be looking for the reward and going, Oh, well, you don't have the cheese.

00:04:00:06 - 00:04:21:07
Michael J. Accetta
I'm not going to listen. And I've had that happen to one. Husky comes to mind right now when every single session they had to change treats. They ended up getting a subscription box and they would just buy treats from the subscription box and then figure out what the dog liked. But the dog always changed it because it wanted to know what else you got, what else you got?

00:04:21:24 - 00:04:47:01
Michael J. Accetta
Oh, you got, you got jerky. You got a hot dog. She got cheese, you got cheddar cheese, you got mozzarella cheese. This dog became picky because the owners kept changing it. They didn't set forth a goal of finding the preferred reinforcement and using it. Instead, they just kept guessing to the dog, said Well, if I don't take the treat, maybe they'll pull something else out and they'll try to get me to do it.

00:04:47:15 - 00:05:05:28
Michael J. Accetta
And then, of course, when they did pull something else out, the dog went, Oh, cool, all I got to do is wait. And then you'll find something better to give me. I don't want that to happen with you and your dog, because if that happens now, you're just getting into a competition well, who can wait longer? Can your dog wait longer to get something they really want?

00:05:06:12 - 00:05:35:10
Michael J. Accetta
Or do you have to wait for your dog to then go, Okay, this is all I'm getting? It's no good. Do a preference test first. Figure out what they prefer. What is their favorite treat? And then market and go, Okay. Cheese is the ultimate goal. Cheese is the ultimate goal. If I need to teach anything quickly if I need to teach serious behaviors like recall or say I'm going to use cheese I want to take a moment and thank all of our loyal followers.

00:05:35:21 - 00:06:02:13
Michael J. Accetta
This podcast would not be possible without you. Leave, a review and let us know what you like and want to learn on the next episode of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Now back to the show But that's only the first reason that a reward might not work. You just don't have the right reward. But if you rule that out now, we can move on to the second and third reasons why your dog might not respond as effectively to reward-based training.

00:06:04:01 - 00:06:29:00
Michael J. Accetta
The second reason is sloppy mechanics, sloppy mechanics. This kind of goes back to what I was mentioning earlier about getting dependent on treats If your dog knows that you have something to reward them with and you only ever have something to reward them with when you're doing training they will learn, Oh, he's got treats or she's got treats.

00:06:29:02 - 00:06:58:28
Michael J. Accetta
Let me listen. She doesn't have treats. He doesn't have treats. I'm not going to listen. That is sloppy mechanics. That essentially means your dog should think. You just exude treats all the time. You always have the opportunity to make rewards come out of thin air. Right. If you can just make them appear, then you can always get your dog to do something and you can always get them to listen because there is no opportunity in life where there isn't a reward.

00:07:00:22 - 00:07:21:07
Michael J. Accetta
Think about having to listen when you go to an event somebody important gets on stage. Everybody quiets down. Right. If there's nobody on stage, then everybody does what they want. Right. You're not quite waiting for someone to go on stage. Someone goes on stage. They say, Attention, everyone. And then everyone quiets down. They start to pay attention. That's what happens with your dog.

00:07:21:07 - 00:07:42:03
Michael J. Accetta
They see you and they go, Oh, he's on stage. He's ready to perform. This might be with a training vest. This might be with a training pouch. But when you take all of those things off, your dog goes, Oh, I don't have to listen. We're not training anymore. This is very common. If you use collars or harnesses on your dog, they become a collar or harness savvy equipment savvy.

00:07:42:21 - 00:08:05:21
Michael J. Accetta
They know that that means we're going to work now. We're going to go do something very, very common in police dog work. And they actually use this to their advantage. They want the dogs to listen exceptionally well during police work and relax when they're not doing police work. So that works. But if you're just having your dog go out normally, then you want them to listen all the time, no matter what.

00:08:06:19 - 00:08:32:23
Michael J. Accetta
It should not be contingent upon wearing a harness or a collar or anything else. Now, the last reason, the last possible reason as to why the rewards aren't working is timing. Your timing is off. Something is getting in between what your dog did and what should have rewarded the behavior that could go for literally anything. But I'll give you a couple of examples here.

00:08:33:11 - 00:08:55:27
Michael J. Accetta
Let's say I want to reward my dog for recalling me and on the way to recalling me they might go off to the side, divert to something else, and then finally come back to me and I reward that. In that case, I did not reward a perfect recall. I ended up rewarding a diversion and then coming back.

00:08:56:19 - 00:09:18:20
Michael J. Accetta
Anything you reward will increase the likelihood of it happening. That's, you know, the definition of reinforcement increases the likelihood of it happening, which means that behavior is now going to happen again. My dog is going to divert and if they divert more and more and more, eventually they're going to divert so much off the central line of recalling to me that they're going to be five blocks away.

00:09:19:21 - 00:09:38:10
Michael J. Accetta
And, you know, why is my dog not recalling? Well, you rewarded them just for the wrong thing. The timing was off there. The same thing goes for leaving the park. Let's say you have your dog running around everything's great. And as they're running to you, instead of marking and rewarding them for running to you, they get all the way to you.

00:09:38:10 - 00:09:55:08
Michael J. Accetta
And then they start to move away from you and you use the clicker to get their attention again. I've seen this happen over and over again. Right. The dog gets to you. They realize we're leaving. Oh, no, I don't want to leave. So they go to book it. And you remember to click at that moment, and then you've clicked your dog for running away.

00:09:56:06 - 00:10:13:16
Michael J. Accetta
And now they think, Oh, I got rewarded. I was supposed to run away. Especially if you did a good job of conditioning the clicker or the marker signal. If you say yes, you've done a good job of conditioning that to the point where they don't need the secondary reward, rather the first reward that they don't need the primary reward.

00:10:13:16 - 00:10:39:16
Michael J. Accetta
The treat, right? They just need the secondary reward, which is the clicker That's a timing issue. You have a timing issue. Your dog thinks one thing because you've accidentally marked and rewarded the wrong thing. So record your sessions, actually pull out your phone, and record what you're doing with your dog. And then review it later. Is my timing right?

00:10:39:16 - 00:10:59:26
Michael J. Accetta
You can see frame by frame, frame by frame. My dog is moving away from me as I click. Wow, that's a problem. I'm late my dog is moving towards me as I click. That's perfect. My dog is not doing anything. As I click. Well, they're always doing something, but if they're stationary, let's say they're sitting. And you wanted them to move toward you, right?

00:10:59:28 - 00:11:18:06
Michael J. Accetta
They ran all the way to you. They're sitting in front of you and then you click. You're not rewarding the recall anymore. You're rewarding them for stopping and sitting, which very often happens when we have dogs run towards us and they stop a few feet away. We reward them because we go, Oh, well, I want them to encourage me to keep coming to me.

00:11:18:22 - 00:11:41:18
Michael J. Accetta
But that's the wrong timing. We have to encourage them while they're running towards us to continue running through all the way to us. Okay. So those are three reasons. The only three reasons. Positive reinforcement not working. Number one, you do not have the preferred reinforcement you do not have there their absolute magnet. The thing that they are so drawn to, they could ignore everything else in the world.

00:11:41:18 - 00:12:02:03
Michael J. Accetta
Find out what that is and training will be ten times easier to you just have sloppy mechanics. Either you intentionally have sloppy mechanics or you don't know what the right mechanics are supposed to be. And that's totally fine if you don't know what the mechanics are then clearly you're not doing it out of malicious intent. But if you do know what the mechanics are, you're just lazy, which have seen a lot in trainers.

00:12:02:12 - 00:12:24:05
Michael J. Accetta
They just get lazy. They get, you know, oh, I could still get a result by doing it with less effort. That's not good. You got to do 100% all the time in order to get 100% success. 100% reliability. And then the last one is timing. Is your timing off? Is your timing off? Are you actually rewarding the right thing?

00:12:24:05 - 00:12:48:15
Michael J. Accetta
Now, here are the three solutions. I told you was going to be good if you stayed for the podcast. Three solutions. Number one, get the behavior first offered reliably and then add the queue. If your dog's not listening, it might not be that they're distracted by the environment. It might not be that they're having an off day. It might not be that they just don't like you.

00:12:49:10 - 00:13:16:06
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe they just don't fully understand the association between the word and the behavior so if you spend time focusing on the behavior itself, don't ask them to do it. Have them love doing it so much that then you can reward them for it. They're offering up the behavior on their own. This happens a lot when you do shopping with your dog and with a lot of positive reinforcement your dog starts to offer these behaviors, and that's what we want.

00:13:16:06 - 00:13:41:29
Michael J. Accetta
They're engaged. They're motivated to get you to release treats to them. Remember what I said earlier about convincing your dog? You just exude treats all the time. That's how you do it. Get them to offer the behavior to you so that you can then reward them if they're offering the behavior all of the time they are convinced that you have rewards, then you can start to add in the word, whatever that word may be.

00:13:42:03 - 00:13:59:18
Michael J. Accetta
I tell my dog to sit spin, recall whatever it is you can then get them to do it after, you know, 100% that they are wanting to do the behavior, not forced to do the behavior. They want to do it so badly. And you're just saying, hey, this is the word that means go for it.

00:14:01:19 - 00:14:27:24
Michael J. Accetta
Right? You're essentially saying this word that I'm saying that's coming out of my mouth means if you do that behavior that you love to do already, I'm going to give you a reward Now, the second solution is to use what your dog already finds rewarding. I know. I said to use the preferred reinforcement and you absolutely should but if there's something in the environment that's really rewarding to your dog, it might be the preferred reinforcement in that environment.

00:14:28:15 - 00:14:56:10
Michael J. Accetta
My dog Tommy was like this. He loves people. He still loves people. He will take you to the ground if you let him. Is a Great Dane. Border Collie has all his energy, but he's goofy as hell. So when he used to run up to people and literally take their knees out, we had to work on it. Now, the preferred reinforcement would be playing Tug with a person he loves playing Tug but when there's somebody new around, the preferred reinforcement that worked had to change.

00:14:57:13 - 00:15:16:03
Michael J. Accetta
And in this case, right. Use what your dog already finds rewarding it, saying hi to that person so I can use that to my advantage. All I had to do is get a little bit of control at first and look, I go right back to it, get the behavior first offered, then add the Q So I wasn't going to tell my dog.

00:15:16:03 - 00:15:35:01
Michael J. Accetta
Sit, sit, stay. Right. I'm not commanding him to stay. I would just wait at a far enough distance from my dog was successful. He'd start to put his butt down because we had practice set a whole bunch. And then once his butt goes down, I send him to say hi to the individual, and boom runs down, and goes to say hi.

00:15:35:06 - 00:15:57:26
Michael J. Accetta
Great. I've just rewarded him with what he already found. Rewarding without having to say anything. I didn't have to add a Q verbally because the person became the Q. We're getting a little technical here and a little advanced but essentially don't spend time adding the word if your dog doesn't know the behavior first and then use what your dog already finds rewarding in the environment.

00:15:59:14 - 00:16:19:10
Michael J. Accetta
Oh, my dog really loves chewing on the garbage. Okay. Is there any way you could possibly control that to the point where you can actually send them to maybe put something in the garbage? And that's an advanced training technique, but. Right, you could do that if my dog loves the garbage. Okay. The first thing I'm going to do is get my dog to leave the garbage alone.

00:16:20:15 - 00:16:33:18
Michael J. Accetta
Then I'm actually going to teach my dog to put something in the garbage intentionally. For me, this is what I did with my son, not a dog, but my son. He's three years old and he just he was interested in the garbage pail. So I taught him how to go over, unlock it and throw out a piece of garbage.

00:16:34:04 - 00:16:49:21
Michael J. Accetta
Now he cleans up my living room all the time. We have a garbage truck like he loves cleaning up garbage. Maybe he'll be a garbage man when he grows up, but he loves that kind of cleaning mentality and keeping everything orderly. And maybe that's a little bit of our family dynamic and trying to keep everything clean all the time.

00:16:49:21 - 00:17:06:22
Michael J. Accetta
But right. I didn't say, Hey, clean up your room first. The first thing I did was show him. I demonstrated that when I pick stuff up and throw him out, he wants to do it. And then I said, Hey, thanks for cleaning up, buddy. That's awesome. I rewarded him and then I use what he already found rewarding.

00:17:06:22 - 00:17:31:27
Michael J. Accetta
He wants to clean up. He wants to be involved in the garbage pail. Okay, what can we do those things together? Boom. Perfect. And then the third solution is to set your dog up for success. Constantly, constantly set your dog up for success. A lot of people say reward-based training does not work, and they've had personal experience with it not working simply because they're putting their dog in a situation that their dog is not ready for.

00:17:33:01 - 00:18:02:22
Michael J. Accetta
If your dog is not ready to be around a thousand people at a packed stadium because they've never been in that situation before and you're trying to teach them something new, it is way too stressful. We have to remove them from that environment, set them up for success by eliminating distractions, using their preferred reinforcer, breaking down the behavior into manageable pieces that they can digest, and then rewarding them heavily so they can build their confidence in that behavior.

00:18:04:11 - 00:18:27:09
Michael J. Accetta
You cannot do that in a stressful environment. You personally imagine trying to learn something new. Imagine the first day of work. You might be excited, you might be nervous, you might be anxious. You try and do everything right trying to impress the boss, and you mess up the classic movie, classic life, right? You mess up your first day, you get the coffee wrong, or you spill something or you drop the papers or whatever's going on.

00:18:27:11 - 00:18:40:02
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe you had an amazing first day, but odds are at some point you were in a nervous situation. I want you to think about it for a second. You were in a nervous or stressful situation and you did not think as perfectly as you usually do.

00:18:42:26 - 00:19:09:03
Michael J. Accetta
Why would you intentionally put your dog in a situation where it's harder for them to learn and then punish them for not doing as well of a job? Set them up for success and reward them heavily so that you can build their confidence in what your expectation of them is Now, I want to give you something to make this ten times easier and to keep you organized so that you can teach your dog the behavior first.

00:19:09:17 - 00:19:37:19
Michael J. Accetta
So that you know what? Q You're going to add to the behavior what your dog is finding rewarding so you can actually kind of pair it together and then how set your dog up for success and get long-term success in training. I'm going to give you my training template, my actual planner that I use on every single client, and every single dog so that I stay organized and know what I've done, what I need to do, and where I'm going in my training so I can stay accountable and organized.

00:19:38:02 - 00:19:57:16
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to put a link in the description, or you can just head over to https://www.matadork9.com/planner. I want to thank you guys for listening today. If you have questions comments or concerns about dog training, make sure you let me know either on social media or leave a review on this podcast.

00:19:57:26 - 00:19:59:18
Michael J. Accetta
Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time.

Learning how to build up your dog's confidence and your own is vital in order to build your relationship and make it easier on you for everyday life. With confidence in being able to handle your dog, you will make vet visits, traveling, and emergencies less stressful for both you and your dog. 

In today's episode, I talk about how you can use the techniques that police dog handlers use to teach their dogs to be confident when carried, manipulated, and handled roughly in extreme situations. You will also learn how to avoid the #1 reason resource guarding happens in young dogs and how to curb body sensitivity for good. 

To learn how to make your life easier with your dog click the link below. 

https://www.matadork9.com/dailylifeskills

Show Transcript

00;00;01;08 - 00;00;36;25
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael Accetta I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Cheat Codes. You're listening to the Acknowledged Dogs Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about body sensitivity on the podcast, as well as how protection training uses body sensitivity and how you could implement what they do to make it easier for you to handle your dog and manipulate them without the fear of getting beat or causing your dog more stress.

00;00;37;04 - 00;00;56;09
Michael J. Accetta
So stay tuned till the end of the episode. We're going to be talking about protection training. But first, you got to understand what body sensitivity is and how we traditionally teach our dog to be comfortable with being handled Now it's a hell of a lot easier to do this with a young dog, with a puppy, and actually a lot of kennels and professional trainers if they're breeding dogs to use for work.

00;00;56;21 - 00;01;14;04
Michael J. Accetta
Service dog police work, military work, that kind of thing. They have systems in place. They actually have procedures written out on what you need to do with a puppy from eight weeks old until they start training week by week up, sometimes day by day. What they're going to do with those puppies to get them used to being handled?

00;01;14;24 - 00;01;36;09
Michael J. Accetta
This could include spinning them, flipping them upside down, and holding them on their back for an extended period of time. All of those things are going to get used to being handled and manipulated by human beings so that they don't really care As they get older, they don't mind going to the vet. They don't mind being thrown into a car, they don't mind being picked up for whatever reason, and it makes it a hell of a lot easier for them.

00;01;36;25 - 00;02;02;26
Michael J. Accetta
They can take that piece out of the training as an adult ride, the adult learning part. They can take out the body sensitivity part because the dog already knows what's going on. And like, okay, whatever they handle, their feet, their nails, they pick up their legs randomly. They play with their tail. They do very, very simple versions. Veterinarians, exams to make sure that that dog is comfortable and confident whenever it goes somewhere new and gets handled by somebody new.

00;02;04;06 - 00;02;33;04
Michael J. Accetta
You have a puppy. You should be doing this with your dog every single day. Every day. Now, that used to be amazing advice and it is still amazing advice. You should be working with your dog every day, but we're going to go over how to teach this appropriately in modern-day terms. The old way to get your dog to be comfortable with being handled was to have your dog eat breakfast and dinner and you're going to touch them while they're eating.

00;02;34;10 - 00;02;51;22
Michael J. Accetta
I want to talk about this early on in today's episode because it is vital for you to stop doing that if you're doing it, if your new dog owner, if you have a puppy or a young dog and you were told, oh, just touch your dog while they're eating. I'm telling you right now, that is not a good idea and is not a good idea.

00;02;51;22 - 00;03;08;25
Michael J. Accetta
And some of you were like, well, everything's been fine so far. That's totally fine. You can do it your way or you can do it my way, or you can do it someone else's way. That's totally fine. But I would go with the person who's worked with 12,000 dogs, and we've seen a little bit more than maybe your friend who's giving your advice.

00;03;09;10 - 00;03;27;05
Michael J. Accetta
And I know that sounds pretty harsh. It's meant to be harsh because at the end of the day if you do that and it doesn't go perfectly well, you are going to get bit, your dog is going to develop aggression with resource guarding and you're going to get bit when you even get close to your dog. That is the potential.

00;03;28;12 - 00;03;47;08
Michael J. Accetta
And the rise of resource guarding dogs has gone exponentially up because that was a form of advice. Touch your dog while they're eating. When ends up happening is you touch their you touch your dog, they become tense and then you stop touching them because you're told to do it very short in the beginning. Right. So my dog's eating.

00;03;48;12 - 00;04;04;23
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to touch them for 2 seconds. Then I'm going to pull my hand away and then they can go back to eating. Then I'm going to touch them for 2 seconds and then they're going to eat. And we're touching for 2 seconds. Every time you touch them, they become tense and tense and tense. And then you pull away and they go, Oh, great, becoming tense gets mom and dad to take their hand away.

00;04;05;01 - 00;04;26;17
Michael J. Accetta
And then the next day you do 3 seconds and they build up the tolerance to becoming tenser. They go, Okay, I'm gonna be tense for 3 seconds instead of two, then become tense for 5 seconds. Then I'm going to become tense for 20 seconds a minute. And you might have a dog that's resource-guarding, just becoming stiff and tense for 15 minutes.

00;04;26;17 - 00;04;44;09
Michael J. Accetta
I've seen that happen where dogs just stand there very, you know, grin face to the showing and they're just tense for a very long period of time. If you were going to go to the training ground or just wait them out until they get comfortable, it's going to take a while. This is not what we recommend to owners anymore.

00;04;44;15 - 00;05;08;20
Michael J. Accetta
This is not the recommendation by veterinarians, at least educated veterinarians on behavioral training. Not every veterinarian is trained on behavior to see you know, not every veterinarian knows what they're talking about when they say behavioral recommendations so if they're trained and they're up to date on behavioral recommendations, then they would know this is not the way to do it anymore.

00;05;09;09 - 00;05;30;23
Michael J. Accetta
We do not put our dogs in a situation to stress them out intentionally like this, accidentally creating resource guarding. So how do you do it? Well, there are two main ways to teach your dog to be okay with being touched. There are two main ways, of course, and there are 800 ways. There are more ways to train a dog than there are trainers to think them up.

00;05;31;15 - 00;05;57;25
Michael J. Accetta
I love that quote by Karen Pryor. There are more ways or there are as many ways to train a dog as there are trainers to think about. But the two main ways are either to reward your dog with food while you touch them, to build a positive association, or to shape the behavior. I personally prefer the shaping of the behavior, but sometimes that can be challenging if you don't have practice in shaping if using a clicker or a marker.

00;05;58;20 - 00;06;19;03
Michael J. Accetta
So the first way let's talk about the first way. Just take a handful of food and feed your dog. That's step one. Get your dog comfortable eating from your hand. That's the easiest way to do it. They're eating from your hand. They're not tense. They don't already have resource gardening issues. If you already have research gardening issues, call my office at 5166596287.

00;06;19;04 - 00;06;42;13
Michael J. Accetta
Let's talk about it. We can figure out what we need to do to get you and your family on the right page. If your dog already has resource gardening issues, call my office If your dog does not have resource gardening issues and give them treats, they're eating them. And then you touch them and then pull the hand away that's touching them before you pull the treats away.

00;06;42;14 - 00;06;56;27
Michael J. Accetta
This is going to make a positive association. I put my right hand out with treats. They're eating it. I touch them. With the left hand. I pull the left hand away, then I pull the treats away and they go, Oh, I only get treats when I'm being touched. And you're going to slowly build up the time that way.

00;06;58;13 - 00;07;28;28
Michael J. Accetta
Now, it's not my favorite method of doing it like that is not my favorite method, although it is very effective if you are uneducated on marker and clicker training. If you have a good set of techniques and experience and skills behind you on marker training and clicker training, and you can do this technique much faster with your dog, you're simply going to shape the behavior of them choosing for you to touch them.

00;07;29;29 - 00;07;46;18
Michael J. Accetta
So you put your left hand out, they're going to rub up against it, you're going to march and give them a treat. It's that simple, and you're going to build on that. So maybe they rub their head against your hand Mark before reporting. This is completely their choice. So what does that mean? They are choosing to interact with you.

00;07;46;18 - 00;08;09;14
Michael J. Accetta
There's no force put on it. And some of you might say, Well, my dog's got to get used to it. You're absolutely right. But whose responsibility is it to teach my dog or me Whose responsibility is it to learn in college? Is it the teacher's responsibility to teach? Or is it the student's responsibility to learn? Which is it depends on what side you're on.

00;08;10;19 - 00;08;32;09
Michael J. Accetta
Many people say, well, the student has to learn whether the teacher teaches it or not. They have to go home. They got to get their textbook. Then why are they paying the teachers? It's just paying moderators to take tests. It's the responsibility of a teacher to make the information digestible. For the learner, because that's what the teacher's job is, literally what the teacher's job is.

00;08;32;24 - 00;08;59;07
Michael J. Accetta
Take the information that is complex and dynamic. Break it down into something that's digestible and easy to understand, and then develop it to where it can be understood at a complex and dynamic level. That is the responsibility of a teacher, and that's the responsibility of you as a dog owner. When you take on the responsibility of having a dog, you're going to teach your dog how to exist in the complex world that we live in.

00;09;00;23 - 00;09;23;08
Michael J. Accetta
And so when your dog chooses to come up and accept affection in rubbing and touching on their own accord, then you reward that they're going to be more likely to want to engage in that type of interaction, in that type of affection. If you are forcing them one way or another to accept you touching them, they have the opportunity to want to back away.

00;09;24;07 - 00;09;41;05
Michael J. Accetta
Now, we go back to the first example if I'm feeding them from my right hand and I go to touch them with my left and they back away, but somehow still get a piece of food, let's say they're still eating it still in their mouth, they get rewarded for backing away. I don't have as much control even though I'm not forcing my dog to do something.

00;09;41;05 - 00;10;04;13
Michael J. Accetta
I still have control over the situation. Those are not opposing, right? I can have control over the situation. Even though I release a little bit of that control and that free will to my dog choosing to come up and be pet the very, very dynamic way of thinking. So I recommend that way for you and your dog. I want my dog to learn how to be comfortable with me holding them.

00;10;04;22 - 00;10;26;27
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to have them come up to me. I'm going to mark and reward them when I pet them, and then I'm going to move on from there and practice more Now there are three different levels to body sensitivity and body handling. Now, body sensitivity does not just mean being comfortable being touched. Body sensitivity could be fear-based. It could be aggressive-based.

00;10;27;07 - 00;10;46;27
Michael J. Accetta
It could be pain-induced, pain-induced aggression. If you go to touch your dog and they went away and they run away, it could be because they have a sore spot, right? Maybe they have an underlying condition internally. Maybe they have a bone structure problem you'd have to get this checked out. Is it's fear-based? It could be because of strangers.

00;10;46;28 - 00;11;16;22
Michael J. Accetta
It could pass experiences or early experiences in their life. Or could be chemistry. Your dog just could be a little jittery, a little more anxious. So sometimes behavioral medication could take a big advance on your body. Sensitivity training but there are also three levels on how you train this. There's doing it yourself. There's familial, and then there are complete strangers so doing it yourself is what I've just described.

00;11;16;22 - 00;11;38;29
Michael J. Accetta
You are the one touching your dog. You are also the one rewarding your dog. They came up, you rubbed them, and then you gave them a treat. Super simple. The second way is with family and friends. These are people that your dog most likely knows but perhaps does not have the same level of trust as they do with you.

00;11;39;26 - 00;12;05;08
Michael J. Accetta
So this might be a friend that comes over once or twice a week regularly dog friendly with, but doesn't really care about, right? Doesn't feel one way or the other, doesn't get too excited, and doesn't shy away. But if your friend went to go reach for the dog, they might be more sensitive about it. So what you can do is either have your friend replicate what you've done, hold the clicker, they hold the treats, they're in charge of the process, and they would be doing it by themselves.

00;12;05;08 - 00;12;32;00
Michael J. Accetta
Right? The DIY version is them doing it by themselves or this is a little more advanced. You can have your dog go up to them, get touched, and then you'd mark and have them come over to you to give him a treat. And I think this is wonderful. If you can do this if your dog outright, it gives them the opportunity to leave the individual to take the stress of being touched off because in this case, our dog does not want to be touched right.

00;12;32;06 - 00;12;46;09
Michael J. Accetta
That's why we're working on body sensitivity in the first place. A dog doesn't want to be touched. And so we're going to move them away and I'm going to give them a treat. Side note, because I don't think I mentioned it before, if your dog has pain-induced aggression or you think it's an underlining health issue, go see a veterinarian.

00;12;46;28 - 00;13;08;26
Michael J. Accetta
Do not try to do body sensitivity training. If you think it's a medical health issue, you need to go see a veterinarian and get that handled first because you could make it ten times worse. If your dog has pain-induced aggression which means something on their body hurts, and when you touch it, they become aggressive. No amount of sensitivity training is going to make that pain go away.

00;13;09;29 - 00;13;27;07
Michael J. Accetta
Go get the pain fixed, and most likely you won't have to do any body sensitivity training. You just get the pain handled, and boom, you're done. You don't have to do training, maybe have to do a little bit of training afterward. But in most cases, the dog doesn't feel pain and therefore they're okay with it. If you do it too long.

00;13;27;16 - 00;13;42;11
Michael J. Accetta
You're right. Your dog has a lot of pain for a long period. Of time. They're going to develop the habit of accidentally getting touched there and becoming aggressive, and they're conditioned to it. So the next time it happens when there is no pain after you get it fixed, they're going to wince when you touch them, even though there is no pain.

00;13;43;28 - 00;14;07;19
Michael J. Accetta
Okay. Back to what I was talking about. So you could have an individual touch your dog, pet your dog, rub your dog, and then the dog moves away. Back to you. You mark and you give them a treat. So again, they're choosing to go get touched in order to get a treat. We're manipulating the situation to our advantage, keeping them successful by not pushing them too far.

00;14;08;14 - 00;14;40;02
Michael J. Accetta
But you're giving them the opportunity to earn reinforcement by letting someone else touch them. Now, that is familial, friends, family. It's going to be way easier for your dog to do this. Then the third step is strangers complete and utter strangers. Since you just worked on both versions of having your dog go get the treat from the individual that they're working with or getting touched and then coming back to you, you can do the exact same thing with a stranger.

00;14;40;29 - 00;14;54;16
Michael J. Accetta
You go for a walk, someone wants to say, Hi, you're friendly, with you. Trust them. You say, Hey, here's a couple of treats. Would you mind just rubbing my dog and giving him treats? This is after a lot of training and you trust that your dog is going to be okay with another individual. If your dog has some type of aggression.

00;14;54;16 - 00;15;01;04
Michael J. Accetta
I would not do this for a very long time, and you should definitely have a professional guide you through this process.

00;15;04;08 - 00;15;28;03
Michael J. Accetta
After you have the other individual interact with your dog and give them treats. Maybe go back to the version to have your dog go back up and recall them back. Give them a treat. Veterinarian Groomer. Strangers. Kids in some cases. Got to be you got to have good judgment with kids because kids will do the wackiest things. You are like, Oh, can they pet your dog?

00;15;28;03 - 00;15;52;16
Michael J. Accetta
Yeah, you let your dog go, and then they're pulling on the dog's ears. That's not what you want. But that does play into body sensitivity. You should teach your dog all of those things like a pull on your ears. I can grab your toes. I can do right. All of those things fall under body sensitivity. So if you do an amazing job and you've practiced a lot, I mean, a couple of months, then maybe you trust other kids to pet your dog and your dog will be fine with it.

00;15;52;27 - 00;16;22;17
Michael J. Accetta
Depends on your situation, depends on the dog, and depends on your level of trust with those individuals and your dog. But you want to do this with everybody. You could possibly find not to the point where your dog gets excited when they see other people and becomes reactive. Reactive doesn't necessarily mean aggression or fear. Could be they're overly excited about other people and other dogs, but you want your dog to be comfortable with other people touching them in the event you pass out for whatever reason or you trip and get hurt and you drop the leash.

00;16;22;22 - 00;16;41;16
Michael J. Accetta
You don't want your dog running away from other individuals. You'd want them to go, Ooh, a person. Maybe they come over here and they pick me up. I'll get a treat. That's what we want. So that's what you want to practice. Literally, in that scenario, you could practice over and over again. And when I used to hold in-person classes that's what we did.

00;16;41;20 - 00;17;16;16
Michael J. Accetta
We'd practice yelling at our dogs and having them be confident and actually excited to hear someone yelling at them because you never know when the real-life situation is going to hit you and you'd better have done all the training to prep for training for real life. Now, I mentioned earlier about protective training, and these are actually oppositions, body sensitivity training and protection training are completely opposite protection training is about creating distance between dogs barking to get you to go away.

00;17;16;17 - 00;17;36;27
Michael J. Accetta
That is the whole goal of them barking. They go to bite you to get you to go away. Clearly, protection training, serious protection training is a little sharper than that. It's a little cleaner than that. There's the intention behind certain things, but at the very, very recruitment level, I bark at you, and you walk away. I feel good. Great. That's the goal.

00;17;37;08 - 00;17;54;23
Michael J. Accetta
Body sensitivity is the complete opposite I want that individual to come closer and touch me so that I can get a treat. That's what your dog is thinking. That person, when they pet me, I get a treat. If I bark at them, they will go away. I don't get a treat. But if your dog's doing protection, I bark at them.

00;17;54;23 - 00;18;18;11
Michael J. Accetta
They leave. Good. I win. So how do they then use protection, training, and body sensitivity together? Well, the protection training says, Well, I'm going to bite you now. I have to hold on. Let's say you're apprehending somebody is a police dog. If that dog bites an individual, that dog has to hold on until help arrives, until another officer shows up.

00;18;18;26 - 00;18;43;14
Michael J. Accetta
Sometimes they send another dog. So that dog needs to be comfortable being touched all over their body, all over their body in order for that dog to be effective at its job. If that decoy, the individual who gets bitten by the dog, that decoy were to touch them in the right leg, the back leg, and that dog. Let's go with the bite to see what are you doing in my leg now.

00;18;43;14 - 00;19;15;05
Michael J. Accetta
We have a problem now. The dogs bite and then eat after rebate, which is a problem, or in a very dangerous situation, the individual has the opportunity to hurt the dog and that's no good. So you have to teach sensitivity to protection dogs and working dogs because they need to understand that their body is fine. They don't need to care about anything else, let alone just moving them around in the car, putting things on them, booties, vests, jackets, goggles, all of those things they have to be accustomed to.

00;19;16;01 - 00;19;43;02
Michael J. Accetta
And that's a form of body sensitivity if you put something on your dog and they freeze up, they can't move. They're sensitive. We don't want sensitive dogs in the working world. We need strong dogs that don't really care about their physical body, whatever. My limbs go sideways. Doesn't matter. Those are amazing working dogs. So one way to do this and replicate this in your own life if your dog is toy motivated, play tug with them and slowly start to touch the rest of their body.

00;19;43;24 - 00;20;00;17
Michael J. Accetta
If you touch them and they let go of the tug toy, that means that they're sensitive in that area. So you do need to go slower. This might mean you just bring your hands in the air instead of actually rubbing them. So bring your hand close to them while you're playing tug. And every time you touch them, play Tug a little bit harder.

00;20;01;27 - 00;20;30;18
Michael J. Accetta
Could this create resource-guarding tendencies? Absolutely. The same way that the beginning when I was talking about food could do it. So you have to do all those other behavioral body sensitivity training first. Then you can start to implement this style of training. If your dog is good with everything else, it shouldn't take that long to get to the stage but if your dog is struggling with everything else, then there's no way you should be doing this.

00;20;31;07 - 00;20;52;01
Michael J. Accetta
Playing tug with your dog and touching them is very exciting. There's a lot of stimulation your dog is over the moon thinking, right? They are so elated about playing Tug that they're not going to think clearly. And if you have a dog that's already very, very short in their temper and earn a snap at you at the slightest little thing, playing tug is going to exacerbate that problem.

00;20;54;09 - 00;21;13;00
Michael J. Accetta
The more excitement they have, the less focus they have. There is a balance. All right. If your dog has no excitement and they move up and they're like, Okay, I'm getting a little excited. I'm excited to work with that focus. We get too excited. We go back down the hill and there is no focus. That's the potential for playing tug with your dog and touching them.

00;21;13;17 - 00;21;30;22
Michael J. Accetta
So you need to do all that other training first, understand your dog personally, personal level, and how they handle that kind of stress, and then start to do it with a tug, and then that would relate to it. You're doing protection work, the decoy, so you might also want to do it with different equipment. Rub your dog with a stick.

00;21;31;28 - 00;22;01;18
Michael J. Accetta
Okay, rub your dog with a tarp. That's body sensitivity to all of those weird feelings. And things are going to help your dog understand that nothing touching them is a problem. Nothing at all. Touching them is a problem. If you want to learn more about the daily life skills that help guide our dogs through the complexities of our life and make it easier for you to take care of and enjoy your dog, head over to Matador Canine dot com slash daily life skills.

00;22;01;18 - 00;22;14;10
Michael J. Accetta
Matador Connection Slash Daily Life Skills. The link will be in the description. Thank you guys for listening today. If you have topics or questions that you want me to cover, make sure you let me know on social media or email me at Matador Canine.

Learning how to build your dog's confidence is going to grow your relationship in a whole new way. There are three main rules when it comes to building your dog's confidence and you need to know them if you are going to be successful in your dog training.

Confidence is Built Through Successful Repetition

It is harder to fix than it is to build

Confidence is relative

If you can understand these three rules your dog will become bulletproof (not actually but pretty close)

Do you want to train with Matador Canine? Try our 14 Day Free Trial with the link below https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial 

#dogtraining #matadorcanine.

00:00:01:02 - 00:00:21:13
Michael Accetta
Hey, guys. Welcome to today's episode. The topic is going to be about building your dog's confidence. We're going to go over the three rules of building your dog's components. And once you understand those, you're going be able to take your anxious, nervous all-over place scatterbrain kind of dog and have them be a hero. I want to tell you two quick stories before we jump into those three rules.

00:00:21:14 - 00:00:43:17
Michael Accetta
No. The first story, actually, I was gonna say number one, but the first story is about a dog, a train named Sky. And we called her Sky because her eyes were wide open all the time and had these beautiful blue eyes and her eyes were open because she was terrified. And that's a sign of a nervous dog. Dogs that have big, wide-open eyes, they're nervous, they're tense.

00:00:43:17 - 00:01:03:09
Michael Accetta
Everything's pulled back. Sometimes it looks like they're smiling because they're actually pulling their cheeks back, and their ears go back. Everything's, like, all tense and tight. We want to help a dog relax. But this dog Sky we ended up working with for maybe two or three months and the program we had in place was all about building up her confidence.

00:01:04:07 - 00:01:25:10
Michael Accetta
It was everything we did. We didn't do obedience. We didn't do manners. We didn't do walking unleash. The sole purpose of the training was to build their confidence. In about two to three months, this dog was then able to focus on obedience and engagement, and manners. And other skills and tricks and all those things. Some people will say obedience is going to boost your dog's confidence, and that is absolutely correct.

00:01:26:02 - 00:01:43:03
Michael Accetta
Manners can boost your dog's confidence and we're going to actually go over why that happens and how that works. But I want you to understand that if your dog is nervous, your sole purpose right now, just like with Sky, your sole purpose should be to build their confidence first if you do not have any confidence in your dog.

00:01:43:07 - 00:02:05:27
Michael Accetta
Your dog doesn't have any confidence. You can't do the fun things that you want to get to do. The second story I want to tell you is about a Dogo Argentino. This is a story I recently heard about that fought off a puma. A feline, a giant feline in the mountains of the woods, wherever they were. A family had gone out, you know, picking food, going on a hike, something like that.

00:02:07:06 - 00:02:33:13
Michael Accetta
And their dog followed them and a puma went to attack the dad and the two little girls, and the dog intervened. The dog won this dog. Argentina won the fight against a puma. A nervous dog cannot do that. A nervous dog cannot think clearly enough in order to enter into that situation, think critically, and react responsibly. Right. It just can't do it and everything.

00:02:33:13 - 00:02:56:02
Michael Accetta
It would run away. A nervous dog is going to flight. They're going to run. They're going to flee. They're going to get out of this situation. A confident dog will stand their ground fight, and defend its territory, just like human beings. A confident individual is going to puff up their chest and stand for what they or believe in. And a coward, a nervous, anxious person might run away in those situations.

00:02:56:03 - 00:03:20:06
Michael Accetta
And I don't mean coward in a negative context, although it does have a negative connotation. I mean coward as in someone who flees a situation. We usually call people cowards in a negative light. But it's not necessarily negative. Just you left a situation when you could have possibly done something different. So let's jump into those three rules and I'm going to break down Sky and the dog Argentina unfortunately, I don't remember the dog's name, but the first rule of confidence.

00:03:20:21 - 00:03:47:06
Michael Accetta
The first rule is confidence is built through successful repetition. It's the only way your dog can build confidence. They cannot do it by doing something once. They cannot do it by repeating something over and over and failing. That's not how confidence is built. Confidence is built through successful repetition. The more you do with your dog and they succeed, they more they're going to want to do and succeed just like your life.

00:03:47:11 - 00:04:03:25
Michael Accetta
If you do something and you're good at it, you're probably going to continue doing it. And that's how a lot of people get into art, music, acting, in that kind of creative style because they were good at it. Someone complimented them for it, and then they continued. They said, Wow, I really enjoy this. I'm going to continue doing it.

00:04:04:22 - 00:04:25:25
Michael Accetta
Super simple, right? Confidence is built through successful repetitions, buying things that your dog is good at, and then continuing to do it over and over and over again. This is where tricks, obedience and manners can have a place if your dog is really struggling and you can just get them to put their butt down and they can just sit, you can reward that.

00:04:26:29 - 00:04:52:19
Michael Accetta
They've now completed one successful repetition of an action, and then we can do it again and then again. And then they become confident in that action itself. They become confident in sitting right. If you want them to be confident about climbing on things, then you have to build that confidence through successful repetitions of their climbing on things. This is why agility is such a wonderful activity and exercise that you should do with your dog.

00:04:52:23 - 00:05:20:00
Michael Accetta
If they're nervous or anxious, the more they get over their fear and they're successful, their confidence will go up and it'll start to trickle into other areas of their life. As long as you then teach, that now moves on to the next. That moves on to rule number two, guys. Confidence is relative confidence is relative. This means that your dog is not going to become confident in one area of life and their entire life is fixed.

00:05:20:22 - 00:05:41:22
Michael Accetta
Think about your own life. If you're confident that you can write a skateboard, that doesn't mean you're confident you can go stand on a stage in front of 30,000 people and give a speech. Those are two very different things. Same thing with your dog. They might not be confident in going up to somebody. They might not be confident in greeting somebody.

00:05:41:22 - 00:06:04:09
Michael Accetta
Politely. They might be nervous about the person, but they have no problem greeting a person with a dog. Those are completely different things, right? Your dog might be so confident to rush up to another dog and say hello. And then there's a person attached to that dog. Cool. Awesome. I love it. But if there's one person by themselves or that person's wearing a hat or persons wearing a glass-like glasses wearing a glass wine glasses, what do I like to wear?

00:06:04:09 - 00:06:30:10
Michael Accetta
Monocle. They're wearing glasses that might instigate fear in your dog. Right? They don't have the confidence to go up to them because maybe they've never been introduced to somebody with glasses or a hat or on a bike. All of those things change the picture for your dog. Okay, not everything is the same, but the more you do with your dog, the easier it's going to be for them.

00:06:31:16 - 00:06:47:00
Michael Accetta
The more you expose them, the more confidence you build in every area of their life, and the easier it's going to be for them. They're there shouldn't be. Okay, well, we're just going to do agility. Let's say you just did that. You found an agility group. You said we're going to work on confidence, added Jody. Your dogs have become amazing at agility.

00:06:47:20 - 00:07:04:23
Michael Accetta
That doesn't mean they can jump up on your couch and not be afraid. That doesn't mean they can get into the car and not be afraid. That's up to you to practice separately. It's definitely going to make it easier, right? The more confident your dog builds, the more confidence they're going to be able to build. But you have to practice it in all of these different areas.

00:07:05:18 - 00:07:35:21
Michael Accetta
So rule number one, confidence is only built through successful repetition. Rule number two, confidence is relative. Rule number three, confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. Confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. If you have a puppy or a young dog, it is imperative right now that you build that dog's confidence. You build it up, you make them bulletproof, you make them a superhero from the beginning.

00:07:36:04 - 00:07:49:26
Michael Accetta
If you do that, it becomes so much easier for the rest of your dog's life. Anything you want to do with your dog, you can then go do. Both of my dogs are insanely confident dogs. They weren't in the beginning, but they are now because of all the work that we've done. And one day I decided, You know what?

00:07:49:26 - 00:08:08:27
Michael Accetta
I'm going to take them kayaking. They've never been on a kayak, right? They've never practiced it. Sure. I took my time and taught them what they should know. But the process was very smooth and very quick because of their confidence. Right. I can ask my dogs to do almost anything and are willing to try. I've had my dogs try to climb trees.

00:08:09:02 - 00:08:32:29
Michael Accetta
I've had my dogs hop over fences. They've had no problem attempting those things because of the confidence that we've practiced over and over and over again. And I never pushed them past what I know they were capable of doing. If I were to do that, I would damage their confidence. Now what? I mean, by it's easier to build than it is to fix is if you realize very early on, oh, my dog's nervous, my dog's anxious.

00:08:33:08 - 00:09:10:14
Michael Accetta
Let me build them up. That is much easier than saying, Oh, I don't know if they're anxious. Let's test it out. You damage your confidence, you destroy. Yeah, destroy their ability to quickly overcome problems and situations, and you've put them at a decent, advantageous position, a disadvantageous position simply because you rush the process. So if you have a dog that might be fearful of people might be fearful, and you introduce them to somebody and they are fearful, now you have to go back and fix that relationship with that person.

00:09:11:20 - 00:09:30:09
Michael Accetta
You're essentially starting backward. But not only do you have to build their confidence back up, you also have to build it past the point of zero, though. Zero was here, right? And we didn't know they were afraid, but now we made them more afraid. Now we have to cover new ground plus all the ground we would have had to cover in the beginning.

00:09:30:24 - 00:09:54:17
Michael Accetta
You're just making double work for yourself. That's why it takes longer and it is harder to fix a confidence issue than it is to build your dog's confidence. When you are training, do not push your dog to the point of failure. Build up their confidence slowly. That way they understand what they should be doing. They feel comfortable in it, and you can progress that much faster.

00:09:54:27 - 00:10:23:26
Michael Accetta
Confidence is only built through successful repetition. So if you are failing, you are not building confidence. That's rule number one. Rule number two, confidence is relative. And rule number three, confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. If you understand those three and you implement them every single day. Confidence is an everyday thing. Practice it every day with your dog morning, afternoon and night if you can, and introduce them to as many new things as you possibly can.

00:10:24:14 - 00:10:45:09
Michael Accetta
That's the secret. It takes a long time. It takes practice, it takes diligence, it takes determination, and discipline. And if you can do all of that, your dog is going to be an absolute superhero. Thank you guys for listening. If you have questions about dog training and want to hear more. Make sure you put it in the comments what problems you're having, and what questions you have for me.

00:10:45:09 - 00:10:56:04
Michael Accetta
I would absolutely love to talk about it on the podcast and on my YouTube channel. If you're not following us on social media, make sure you do that. Matador, Canine Matador. Cannot. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time.

Will playing tug with your dog cause aggression? Can you teach your dog to be more aggressive or bring out its wild side with such a simple game? 

in today's episode, we unpack this amazing game and how, when done effectively, will give you everything you need to train your dog as the pros do. 

Learn more about playing and training with your dog with our 14-day free trial of Matador University

Click here https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial

To solve your dog's problem behaviors read this free PDF

https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

#dogtraining #matadorcanine #acknowledgedogspodcast

00;00;18;16 - 00;00;43;16
Michael J. Accetta
What I want to talk to you about today is playing tug with your dog. It's not that difficult of a concept. Okay? You know, but I pull this way. My dog pulls back. But for whatever reason, so many individuals struggle with the concept of playing with their dog in an effective way. It's actually productive. For years, I was taught when I was younger, when I was growing up, I didn't grow up with dogs, but I grew up knowing a little bit about dogs.

00;00;43;16 - 00;01;04;28
Michael J. Accetta
People had their concepts, and, you know, you don't touch a dog. Don't look a dog in the eye. Never play with a dog's mouth, those kinds of things. And one of the things I always heard was "never play tug with dogs". And even as I started growing and learning and gaining more experience and knowledge about dog training and psychology, people kept saying, don't play tug with dogs.

00;01;05;21 - 00;01;25;26
Michael J. Accetta
Shelters were pushing this heavily Don't play tug with dogs. Don't play tug with dogs. You know, if you had a working dog, you had a German shepherd, a Belgian Malinois, a pit bull, an Australian shepherd. Don't play dog with your dog. Don't play tug with your dog. It's going to make them aggressive. That's what everyone said. The tug is going to make your dog aggressive, make your dog aggressive.

00;01;25;28 - 00;01;48;05
Michael J. Accetta
Aggression is behavior just like anything else. So playing Tug with your dog isn't going to make them aggressive. If anything, if they're already aggressive, playing Tug might bring it out. But it's not actually going to So what does Tug do? The tug is an insanely useful tool for building our dog's motivation and rewarding them with such a high level of excitement.

00;01;48;18 - 00;02;04;11
Michael J. Accetta
That's what Tug can do when done effectively, of course. Right. So if I'm going to work with my dog, let's say I'm going to teach them obedience yeah. I could use food, right? They said I could give them a treat, or I could say, sit. They do it. And then I pull up a tug toy. They jump up, they grab a hold of it.

00;02;04;11 - 00;02;24;08
Michael J. Accetta
Now I can control how much excitement and playing that my dog gets right. If they did an exceptional job of sitting, I can do an exceptional job of playing time. If they did a mediocre version of sitting, I can reward them lackadaisical, and then I can have them stop. I can have them sit. Not only can I reward with more motivation, right?

00;02;24;08 - 00;02;49;23
Michael J. Accetta
I can boost up their confidence at wanting to chase after something, and I can make them more excited, which means I can reward faster responses. The third, third pillar of dog training. We talking about speed and motivation so this is huge. Not only can I do that, but I can actually teach them how to have a level head and think clearly when they're excited if my dog is all over the place, the zoom is right.

00;02;49;23 - 00;03;06;19
Michael J. Accetta
The zoom is at 6:00. Dog starts chasing its own shadow. It's jumping off the couch. It's going into the kitchen, into the bathroom. It knocks into the water bowl. Those zoomies are because your dog is overstimulated. No matter how much you yell, no matter how much you try to get their attention, they just can't focus.

00;03;07;21 - 00;03;28;05
Michael J. Accetta
What have I told you playing Tug could fix that? Playing Tug with your dog, actually rewarding them by playing and getting excited and then stopping having them stop, drop the toy and sit because they know what will get excitement, right? What behavior do they have to do in order to get more excitement, more enjoyment, and more playing with you?

00;03;29;06 - 00;03;52;29
Michael J. Accetta
That's what Tug can do if you do it right now. If you do tug wrong, you do tug wrong. You can develop problem behaviors. Now, before I go into what problem behaviors can happen by playing Tug, I want to give you something for free. Absolutely free to gift for me to you, because way too many people are suffering from problem behaviors and they don't need to click the link in the description to free PDF Guide and resolving complicated bad habits.

00;03;53;10 - 00;04;19;29
Michael J. Accetta
Without having to punish your dog. It's a very short, simple read, but it is packed with useful information, so please take advantage of it. Click the link in the description and use it to the fullest extent. But what problem behaviors can result when you tug incorrectly? Number one resource guarding and your dog can take the tug and go hide it because you're constantly stealing it from them, especially if you're intentionally trying to steal it from them.

00;04;20;11 - 00;04;37;28
Michael J. Accetta
They could break down the trust between you guys, and now you have resource guarding. Resource guarding is all about trust. I can take things away from my dog because they trust me. I'm not going to do anything bad and I might give them something better. Or the thing back. Or if I came up to you and stole your wallet, you're going to be resource-guarding of your wallet.

00;04;37;28 - 00;04;53;04
Michael J. Accetta
You're going to become defensive, you're going to fight me, maybe punch me in the mouth but if I say, Hey, can I take your wallet? I do a magic trick and I give everything back to you. I didn't steal any money at a do. I gave everything back to you and I gave you some more right. Because I entertained you for a little bit.

00;04;53;13 - 00;05;08;02
Michael J. Accetta
And the magic trick is how we built trust. And you trusted me enough to give me your wallet so I can do this magic trick. So then I can give it back to you. And I'm not trying to trick you in any way. Besides, of course, the magic trick part, but not stealing anything. I'm not doing something like that.

00;05;09;19 - 00;05;28;25
Michael J. Accetta
So your dog can develop resource-guarding issues simply because you're stealing things from them all the time. On top of that, if it's not resource guarding they can learn to keep things away from you. So they'll bring a toy right up to you, and instead of giving it to you, they'll run away because they want you to chase them.

00;05;29;22 - 00;05;44;01
Michael J. Accetta
That becomes a problem. They want you to actually engage in the game of Chase instead of the game of Tug. So what I tell owners that struggle with that, have a couple of pieces of the tree. Have your dog come up to you, bring the toy, and drop some treats on the floor. They drop the toy in order to eat the treats.

00;05;44;08 - 00;05;59;05
Michael J. Accetta
You pick up the toy again and try to engage them in tug. You can let them have it, but then bring out the treats again or bring out a second toy. Get them re-engaging with you. If you play Tug and you stop, you let go of the tug. They should be shoving the tug back into you so you can play again.

00;05;59;05 - 00;06;21;22
Michael J. Accetta
If they're not doing that, then you're not being very playful in an overexuberant kind of way. And some people just aren't that way. You have to find an alternative for yourself. That's where treats come in. That's where some other techniques come in. The third thing I want to talk about when it comes to Tug and this is probably where people think, Oh, your dogs don't become aggressive if you don't work on your mouth.

00;06;21;22 - 00;06;40;15
Michael J. Accetta
Eye coordination is what I'm going to call it, right? Your dog jumps up and they're aiming for the toy but they get your hand right. They're aiming for right there, but they get your hand, mouth, and eye coordination. If your dog doesn't have that because they're moving too fast or they never practice, or they're a goofy puppy you're going to get bitten.

00;06;40;15 - 00;07;01;10
Michael J. Accetta
The hand teaches your dog where to aim. And odds are they're going to stop biting in the hand, right? If you never teach them, if you never deal with it, you never try to fix it. You never try to give them the right opportunity for success. If you never go forth and put forth the effort they are going to know what to do and they're gonna keep biting your hand.

00;07;02;00 - 00;07;23;25
Michael J. Accetta
So take a break, right? I had this big toe. I don't have it here in my office, but it was a wager. Oh, I remember why I don't have it. I could dog destroyed it. My dog destroyed one of my favorite toys. That's fine. It was a long tube, and I would hold the outsides of the toy, and he would be right in the middle, and then we could play Tug.

00;07;24;05 - 00;07;45;06
Michael J. Accetta
So I started doing was I bring my hand closer and closer and closer. As I got closer, the space between my hands got smaller, which means he has to aim for the space between my hands and get really good at it. Did he hit me a couple of times? Yeah. Was I expecting that? Absolutely. But when he did get a hold of the toy in the correct position, I can reward him by playing Tug.

00;07;46;00 - 00;08;00;09
Michael J. Accetta
If he completely missed and got my hand, I was prepared to stop holding the toy still and reset. I'm not going to get mad at him. I'm not going to yell at him. I'm not going to substitute with something else. I'm just going to tell him that that didn't work. And what he needs to do is try better next time.

00;08;00;09 - 00;08;28;02
Michael J. Accetta
When he does try better, I'm going to reward that heavily. So those three things are the things that could happen, right? You shouldn't do that with your dog. You shouldn't try to steal it. You're going to ruin your trust in your dog. You should expect to get nicked. You should expect that to happen. And third, you should have some kind of system in place so you can keep your dog with you and engage with you as opposed to fighting you for the tuck toy and then running away with it.

00;08;29;04 - 00;08;49;28
Michael J. Accetta
But when you're playing Tug correctly, those three things don't matter. One, you're not fighting the dog ever for the toy. So they shouldn't resource guarded. Number two, they should want to engage with you. So even if they did resource guard it in a weird kind of way, they would bring the toy to you, which is fantastic that they're running to you with the toy so that you can play.

00;08;49;28 - 00;09;12;18
Michael J. Accetta
They can't resource guarded at the same time. And number three, you're expecting them to get better and better at aiming, which means they're not going to bite your hands as much. If they're not biting your hands as much, they're going to learn not to put their teeth on you, which can stop puppy biting, which can stop, you know, oh, older dogs that have a tendency to nip because they're excited or they're playing and they just didn't learn as a puppy.

00;09;12;27 - 00;09;37;14
Michael J. Accetta
This can stop them from doing those things. So Tug is a wonderful, wonderful tool. When you use it correctly, you should be rewarding your dog for the excitement that they bring to training, to the motivation towards the tug toy. And you can even reward going off a little tangent here. You can reward their motivation towards the tug toy by playing more tug or by giving them treats.

00;09;37;14 - 00;09;55;11
Michael J. Accetta
You can build up how much tug they want to do by playing more tug when they show more motivation. I know that sounds kind of backward, right? If I were to do a push pole door, let's just say a jammed door push pole door kind of gets into some other things. But a jammed door, you get a jammed door.

00;09;55;22 - 00;10;15;04
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to push it. Nothing happens but push a little bit harder. Nothing happens if I shove through the door with a 110%, eventually I'm going to open up the door and a required 110% of my effort. The same thing goes for your dog. If they give 50%, they don't get the toy, but they're still motivated. They're still going to try again.

00;10;15;13 - 00;10;41;29
Michael J. Accetta
And they get 60% and they still miss the toy just by, just by the skin of their teeth. They miss the toy and they jump up to 100 and you reward that, right? They actually get the tug toy. Then they are rewarded for the motivation and effort required to get that toy. That is how you build a dog that loves playing and training and exercising and all of this stuff put together.

00;10;42;23 - 00;11;05;27
Michael J. Accetta
And to do that you need a little bit of practice. You have to kind of work on your skills before trying to do it with your dog. But once you do work with your dog and you get that level, the connection between the two of you, the engagement will be absolutely insane. I'll tell you a quick story. One of my favorite clients we talk about every three weeks now because she's been doing so well, she doesn't need to meet every week.

00;11;06;11 - 00;11;27;12
Michael J. Accetta
We talk about every couple of weeks and she plays tug with her German shepherd, her German shepherd loves playing tug with her, and loves playing fetch. And all of those types of games love it to the moon and back. So this dog is 100% focused on her when they go to the field to work. She knows exactly what the expectations are.

00;11;27;22 - 00;11;44;24
Michael J. Accetta
You know, it's exactly what she needs to do and how to get her reward. But when they go to do something else, let's say a hike, they still have to use tricks. And they've been trying to transition over to toys. But there's just a lot going on. Once they get into that toy realm. This dog and this owner are going to be unstoppable.

00;11;45;13 - 00;12;07;29
Michael J. Accetta
Absolutely unstoppable. But that's the harder it was, was the dog couldn't focus, couldn't pay attention, couldn't engage because they got to play so much together. They built such a strong relationship and their motivation was improved every single time they played. That's what you should be looking for. That's what you should be aiming toward every single training session with your dog.

00;12;08;27 - 00;12;30;01
Michael J. Accetta
Thank you guys for listening. If you have comments or questions, please leave them below in the comment section or you can ask me on any social media platform. We're on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. We're going to try to be on Twitter a little bit more. Twitter and Twitter have been evading me. So if you're interested in us talking on Twitter more, please, you know, let me know.

00;12;30;07 - 00;12;47;04
Michael J. Accetta
Let me know if you're on Twitter you're not on Twitter. And I won't go on Twitter, but I think I think some of you are on Twitter and you're missing out on all the good stuff that we post. Also, remember to take advantage of the free guide in the description, resolving complicated bad habits without having to punish your dog.

One of the scariest things you can experience as a dog owner is having your dog run away. In today's episode, I am going to go over exactly how you need to train your dog to keep them safe no matter what!

Your dog will thank you for teaching them how to live in our world without punishment or confusion. To learn how to train your dog in the most effective way click here: https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial

 Free Gift!!! https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

00:00:01:08 - 00:00:32:15
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael J. Accetta I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Cheat Codes. You're listening to the acknowledged dog's podcast The first time I ever experienced my dog running out, it was chasing after a rabbit. I was about 17 years old. My dog Breezy ran out of the front door after I had walked out and I just left the door open.

00:00:32:22 - 00:00:50:21
Michael J. Accetta
She sprinted out after me. She ran down the block. I turned around. I saw her sprinting and I recalled her back. Now, if I had not done the work that I'm about to tell you about, there is no chance that she would have stopped, turned around, and came right back to me. She would have gone straight onto the street.

00:00:50:21 - 00:01:14:13
Michael J. Accetta
She would have gone into the main highway, which was not very far. In an attempt to chase after this rabbit. I don't want this to happen to you. And in fact, every time I drive down the street and I'm in an urban area and I see people with their front doors wide open, it makes me panic. To this day, I still have an internal feeling about doors being propped open because I think dogs are going to run out and they're going to get hurt.

00:01:14:20 - 00:01:29:06
Michael J. Accetta
They're going to get hit by a car or they're not going to get home. Are going to get lost. They're going to end up in a shelter somewhere and the family is going to be heartbroken. All because they did not do what I'm about to tell you in today's episode, if you don't know who I am, my name is Michael Accetta

00:01:29:14 - 00:01:53:03
Michael J. Accetta
I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance, the author of The Dog Training Cheat Codes, and the host of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Thank you. For being here. What I want to talk about today is how to teach your dog to not run away. And I believe that every dog can do this. If you're in a situation where your dog is frequently getting out of the house or you're just trying to be proactive, then this is the episode for you.

00:01:53:20 - 00:02:23:10
Michael J. Accetta
The first thing we need to do is understand that you are responsible for everything that happens to your dog. You are responsible. It does not mean you have to be a boss. That does not mean you have to be an alpha. That means you are responsible. You have to hold yourself to that standard. If your dog does not know what to do because you did not teach them Now I want to drive that point home to you, but understand that your dog has a level of responsibility as well.

00:02:23:11 - 00:02:45:12
Michael J. Accetta
I cannot completely blame you and I cannot completely blame your dog. The important part here is to find the solution. But I want you to start thinking about how you can implement structure into your life and how you can be responsible for your dog's success. You can't put it on your dog and you can't put it just on you.

00:02:45:13 - 00:03:09:07
Michael J. Accetta
You guys have to be together as a team trying to solve the solution, but you are inevitably responsible for everything that happens to your dog and everything that your dog does. You have the intellect to learn more. You have the capacity to lock them in and manage their situation. They do not. They cannot go to YouTube and type in How do I not run away?

00:03:09:23 - 00:03:26:15
Michael J. Accetta
You have to say, How do I teach my dog not to run away? So you have to be responsible, and I hope you are taking that into consideration. Now that you are listening and watching this episode, you're kind of taking it okay. Yet it is a part of my responsibility. I have to be the one to teach my dog.

00:03:26:15 - 00:03:52:06
Michael J. Accetta
So how do we do that? Number one, you're going to control as much as you can. If you can have a gate in front of the door if you can lock the front door so that they don't go out. If you can have them on a leash and literally tie them to your hip, if you're going to be going in and out, that's a wonderful way to teach your dog not only to stick by you, to build engagement, have wonderful obedience and manners throughout the entire day, but it stops them from getting into bad practices.

00:03:52:21 - 00:04:09:05
Michael J. Accetta
Recently, I saw an ad for this tiny little gadget that attaches to your door. If you have a smaller dog, this might work. If you have a big dog. It definitely will not work. It's just, if not meant for that. It's meant for a smaller dog, but it connects to the door and it connects to the frame of the door.

00:04:09:05 - 00:04:33:22
Michael J. Accetta
And so when you open the door, it creates this fence or this net so that your dog doesn't rush out. In the process of teaching your dog what we want them to do. This might be a perfect solution for you. Now, it is not a long-term solution. It is just a simple solution to help you limit your dog to practicing the bad behavior of rushing out the door every time they rush out of the door.

00:04:33:23 - 00:04:50:01
Michael J. Accetta
They will get rewarded for the experience as long as nothing bad happens on the other side. If they were to rush out and everybody starts screaming at him and they get fearful they run back into the house, then no, they won't be reinforced for it. But if they ran out to go say hi to somebody, they ran out to go to the bathroom.

00:04:50:06 - 00:05:09:00
Michael J. Accetta
They ran out to go sniff the grass. They are going to get rewarded for running out in the first place. That's no good. That's not what we want. We want our dogs to be engaged with us and to listen when we need them to listen and not to run out of the front door or the back door or the side door or the garage or the car, whatever it may be.

00:05:10:02 - 00:05:32:05
Michael J. Accetta
So that's number one. Control as much as you can Number two, you're going to teach them when they can go out the door and when they can't. This is called stimulus control. Stimulus is the cue that sets off a behavior. When you get the green light, that means you can go. When you get the red light, that means you can't go.

00:05:33:04 - 00:05:51:07
Michael J. Accetta
When you get a phone call, that ringing tells you when to pick up your phone. If you don't get the phone call, you wouldn't pick up your phone and hold it here. Here at this very very clear communication between when you can do it and when you can't do it. Now, what does that mean? That means your communication has to be perfect.

00:05:52:05 - 00:06:14:15
Michael J. Accetta
Now, there are a few ways to go about doing this. One is my preferred way and one is an alternative. I understand that individuals' lifestyles are different and what is required of you might be different. So I want to give you some alternatives here. The first way you got to do it, the way I prefer to do it is to teach my dog that when the door opens, they should do some incompatible behavior.

00:06:15:07 - 00:06:39:08
Michael J. Accetta
What do I mean by this? If I'm going to open up the door, my dogs are going to sit. This does not mean they sit. And then I open the door. It's very simple confusion. The old method. Oh, well, I'll have my dog sit and then I'll open the door, and then we'll go out. Instead, I teach my dogs that the action of me putting my hand on the handle and opening the door tells them to go in the sit position.

00:06:39:14 - 00:06:58:18
Michael J. Accetta
Just like the words sit tell them to go on the set position. The door opening tells them to go in the set position. Now, the other thing I do is release them outside. I say, okay, they go outside and we've made it a habit to immediately turn back around and face me every single time. They go outside every single time.

00:06:59:12 - 00:07:32:05
Michael J. Accetta
This creates consistency, predictability, and certainty. They know what to expect and I know what to expect. So when they go out the door, muscle memory tells them, turn around and you're going to get a tree. Turn around and I'm going to engage with you. Turn around and I might call you back in. Now, the other way to do this, the other way to have your dog in that kind of situation is to have the door open and always let them out, but have them immediately turn back around.

00:07:33:04 - 00:07:53:04
Michael J. Accetta
So one is way more structured and the other is way more relaxed. The reason I like both but prefer the first is because if I open the door and I don't want my dogs running out I have the choice to do that with the first example, my dogs will stay inside. I can go outside and I can close the door behind me.

00:07:53:26 - 00:08:14:18
Michael J. Accetta
If you live in a more rural area, and you got plenty of space and you have some time that when your dog runs out, you can record them back, you're not right up against the street, you're not in the city, you're not in an apartment complex. That kind of thing. It might be more relaxing for you to let your dog go out the front door, turn back around, and if you have to call them in, you can.

00:08:15:03 - 00:08:36:12
Michael J. Accetta
If you don't have to, then you can let them hang out outside. It really depends. But if you are struggling with your dog or running out the front door, I'm going to give you a hint here. Go with the first option. I'd much rather have my dog be reluctant to go outside than have them go outside consistently after having been reinforced for it.

00:08:37:07 - 00:08:58:14
Michael J. Accetta
And then try to get their attention. We're just we're competing when we should be succeeding. We want to succeed. You want to have complete control of the situation. Now you've managed everything you've taught them either to go ahead and stop before you open the door and then go out and turn around towards you, or you've taught them just to go out when you open the door and then turn around towards you.

00:08:59:00 - 00:09:22:14
Michael J. Accetta
That engagement is huge, and that's really where step three comes from. If you never want your dog to run away, you have to work on engagement. You must build a connection that's so strong that there is no question about leaving like with my son is two years old. When we start to walk away from the park, we don't have to say anything.

00:09:22:25 - 00:09:38:12
Michael J. Accetta
He just leaves the park and walks with me. And his mom like we just go, There isn't a fight. There isn't a Hey, we're going to leave now, buddy. Let's go. And he's like, No, I want to stay at the park. Sure. He wants to stay at the park. And I completely understand it. When I was a kid, I wanted to stay in the park.

00:09:38:23 - 00:09:57:08
Michael J. Accetta
But in the situations that we've practiced, every single time we walk away, he follows with us and then we engage with him again. We ask him how playing was. We ask him what he thinks of this. We start working with like and I mean working as in talking with him interacting with him like you'd be working with the dog.

00:09:58:00 - 00:10:26:29
Michael J. Accetta
Now, I don't treat my son like a dog, but I do teach him very similarly I use positive reinforcement. I build engagement first. I teach him what I want him to do and then tell him when to do it and when he's not allowed to do it. We just got him a nice little set where he can hammer some fake nails in, but he's got to learn when he can hammer, where he can hammer, and when he can't, you can't hammer the cat you can't hammer my office desk.

00:10:26:29 - 00:10:44:10
Michael J. Accetta
He can't hammer the door. So he can't hammer the window when he can hammer in this very specific spot. So you have to teach your dog when it's appropriate to leave and when it's not appropriate to leave. And you got to work on any of it because even if you miss everything else, even if you miss everything else, you don't do the management.

00:10:44:20 - 00:11:06:15
Michael J. Accetta
You don't have your dog stop before you go outside. You don't have them reengage when they go outside. If you have an engagement, they'll be glued to you regardless right there will be glued to you regardless. I'll tell you a short little story. I was interning at a guide dog facility where they train guide dogs for the Blind as well as veterans with PTSD service dogs.

00:11:07:21 - 00:11:25:14
Michael J. Accetta
And one thing I asked was, you know, are you ever afraid of these dogs running away? Because we were pretty close. The facility was very close to the main highway and they didn't really have many fences they did for a play area. But those dogs really didn't get to play much because they wanted them focused on work. They were too tired from playing.

00:11:25:14 - 00:11:38:17
Michael J. Accetta
They wouldn't focus on the work kind of thing. And so I asked, I said, hey, are you ever worried about them walking away? And running away and that kind of thing? And the trainer looked at me and said, Do you think this dog is going to run away? I was like, I don't I don't think so. I don't know.

00:11:38:17 - 00:11:53:03
Michael J. Accetta
This was a couple of years ago. I said I don't think so. But, you know, I would be nervous about it because I just don't know. And he would say, watch. And he just dropped the leash and walked away. Didn't call the dog, didn't try to engage with the dog. He didn't have treats with them, didn't have a toy with them.

00:11:53:18 - 00:12:13:05
Michael J. Accetta
And the dog just stuck by his side. And he said, Michael, this dog has been within six feet its entire life. It always has a leash on. It's always been reinforced ever since it was eight weeks old and it started learning everything it needs to know. And this was now the dog was about a year and a half.

00:12:13:24 - 00:12:42:08
Michael J. Accetta
Everything it needs to know. It has been on a leash consistently locked into six feet because that's the leash that the use of six-foot leases. There was no chance that this dog would run away or walk away. And in fact, they never even taught a recall because the engagement was so strong. It was so important to have the dog be engaged with the handler, especially doing service dog work that a recall was pointless to them.

00:12:42:16 - 00:13:01:08
Michael J. Accetta
Why are we going to spend the time to teach the dog how to recall at 100 feet if it will never, never be 100 feet away? They never taught fetch. They did if it was a service dog and they had to go get something and bring it back, but they never taught fetch as in playing right. The dogs really didn't get to play with each other.

00:13:01:23 - 00:13:25:00
Michael J. Accetta
It was all strict business and that's how you've got to be for at least a short period of time. You have to be business related, structured. Don't worry about necessarily teaching them or recalling them right now. Worry about the engagement, worry about having them focus around the door because the door is such an exciting event and every time you go to it, your dog gets excited, they get animated, they get Oh my goodness.

00:13:26:12 - 00:13:45:17
Michael J. Accetta
And so they can't think as clearly you've got to work on engagement in that space before you could ever hope to have your dog not run away. They're running away because they are engaged with something else. Not you. Thank you guys for listening to today's episode. If you want more, head over to Matador Canine e-Comm and I'll see you next time.

In today's episode, we talk about predatory aggression - more commonly called, prey drive. If your dog is obsessed with small animals and chasing things, you need to listen to this episode. 

I am going to cover

With any amount of dog training you can accidentally reward your dog for being aggressive which might be what is going on. 

If you're struggling with your dog's reactivity or aggression, get started with training here!

https://www.matadork9.com/reactivity

00;00;01;08 - 00;00;41;08
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael Accetta. I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and the author of The Dog Training Cheat Codes. You're listening to the acknowledged dogs podcast Welcome to today's show. We're talking about aggression, more specifically, predatory aggression. When you're dogs chasing, catch and try to dispatch to kill a small animal or prey-like creature. Before we jump into why that happens, how that happens, what predatory aggression is, and all that I want to tell you a quick little story about chasing down little birds.

00;00;42;07 - 00;00;59;04
Michael J. Accetta
It's going to be a saddle. But don't worry, the bird gets away. All right. So a sad story, but the bird does get away. So you have that much to look forward to. So I walked out into my backyard, walked out in my backyard, and I had both my dogs with me. Now, remember, this is a Great Dane Border Collie, and this is a retriever.

00;00;59;05 - 00;01;16;25
Michael J. Accetta
They both come outside with me. And we had this section that we fenced off. So our dogs go to the bathroom in that section and we could clean it more easily. So we had the rest of the yard to be nice and pristine and all that. So would I bring my dogs over to that area? And one of them had the ability to jump over the small fence that would create it.

00;01;16;25 - 00;01;35;29
Michael J. Accetta
So he jumps over and makes a beeline like a direct line for the corner. He doesn't do this, you know, usually go sniff around, maybe find a spot to go to the bathroom or whatever. No, no, no. He made a direct beeline for the corner. I know that something must be over there. So I recall him away as fast as I can.

00;01;36;04 - 00;02;07;18
Michael J. Accetta
Hawk turns. He runs towards me. Just as I did that. A bird flew up into the sky. My oh, boy bird flies up and gets out of range. And my Great Dane Border Collies behind me, he leaps up the air, leaps up into the air, trying to catch the bird and just misses. So now I recall Tommy, the Great Dane Border Collie, and I put him into the backyard, a fenced area so I can see that.

00;02;07;18 - 00;02;33;08
Unknown
Make sure that the bird got away safely. Well, the bird doesn't get very far. Something had happened with its wing or it was wet or something happened, and the bird was unable to fly very far. So it lands as I'm looking for the bird my retriever jumps back over the fence out of the fenced-in area into the main yard and chases after the bird again.

00;02;33;16 - 00;02;57;18
Michael J. Accetta
I don't see this because I'm looking around for the bird. Now he goes behind me as I look around to check the fenced-in area. He sneaks around and he pins the bird down by its wings, doesn't eat, it, doesn't bite, it doesn't lick, he just pins it down and is staring at it very intently. The second I see this, I recall him back.

00;02;58;01 - 00;03;20;06
Michael J. Accetta
He'd let go. The bird flies back. I put him back in the house. I grabbed my Great Dane. I put him in the house. And now I go see where the bird is. The bird was gone. I know my dog didn't need it. I don't know where the bird one, but the bird is gone. Completely gone. How was I able to recall both dogs away from a moving target?

00;03;20;06 - 00;03;41;12
Michael J. Accetta
A bird? One that almost caught it while it was jumping in the air. And the other one twice when it was on top of the dog. On top of the bird. Literally on top of the bird. Holding it down, looking directly at it. Could have decided to eat it. I could have just said, I'm not going to recall this time.

00;03;41;12 - 00;03;58;24
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to eat this bird. But it didn't stop what it was doing, and it came right back to me. The power of a recall is insanely important. I just talked about this on one of my social media platforms. We were talking about recording how important it is to get you to stop doing any bad behavior. Just recall them away and they will stop doing the bad behavior.

00;03;58;24 - 00;04;18;23
Michael J. Accetta
They cannot do both incompatible. They're chewing on the couch. We call they're chasing after bird recall. Okay. It doesn't help if they're already on top of you, but if they're at a distance and they're doing stuff they're not supposed to recall, it makes it ten times easier. So what is predatory aggression? Why did my dogs chase after this bird so much?

00;04;18;23 - 00;04;43;15
Michael J. Accetta
Why were they so invested in what the bird was doing? Predatory aggression is the biological purpose of your dog to chase, catch and dispatch that's it. Chase, catch, and dispatch. They want to chase something. They want to catch it, and then they want to dispatch or kill it. Now that can be a bird. That can be a bunny.

00;04;43;16 - 00;05;01;15
Michael J. Accetta
That could be a rabbit. That could be a squirrel. That could be a cat. That could be a smaller dog. And if you have a dog that's barking and reactive because of predatory aggression, you know exactly when that is, right? You see a tiny little fluffy dog and you got a German shepherd. If your dog's predatory aggression, they want to go eat that fluffy dog.

00;05;01;15 - 00;05;27;22
Michael J. Accetta
Now, there is a caveat to predatory aggression that most people forget about. If your dog is barking, they're not in predatory aggression. How do I know that? How do I have a level of certainty to say, I know that your dog is not in predatory aggression if they're barking because barking would push the prey away, why would your dog want to get the prey to go further away?

00;05;27;22 - 00;05;54;16
Michael J. Accetta
It makes zero sense. They could be overstimulated and excited and bark. They could be really friendly and want to get something and bark. They could be terrified and bark. But predatory aggression and barking do not go together. They do not mix unless your dog has learned to bark and is doing it intentionally. That goes into learned aggression. That's a little messy.

00;05;54;29 - 00;06;15;26
Michael J. Accetta
Learned aggression is a completely different animal. It's the same animal. It's just a different methodology, a different theory. That kind of thing is learned aggression that's completely different. But predatory aggression is true. Predatory aggression is to chase, catch and dispatch, period. I keep wanting to say dispatch an animal, but that's not true. Kate Chase, catch and dispatch. Anything could be a tug toy.

00;06;15;26 - 00;06;45;14
Michael J. Accetta
It could be a ball. That's my dog, love. Fetch, chase, catch and dispatch. Now, this is not a drive people talk about prey, drive, ball, drive, squirrel drive. So ridiculous. That gets very quickly. Rabbit Drive. They love Red Deer Drive. Love chasing deer makes no sense. A drive, although we've socially accepted it. Oh, drive success. Right? My dogs got a good ball drive.

00;06;45;14 - 00;07;26;00
Michael J. Accetta
They got a good food drive. It's not true because drive insinuates that it builds up in the animal and must be expressed it must be expressed. It's the wrong word. You cannot say driving is a behavior. Aggression is a behavior drive is not a drive. Oh, my dog has a lot of prey drive. The very prey-driven know they have predatory aggression, predatory aggression drive insinuates it builds up and must be expressed to the point where it'll keep building and building and building and building and building.

00;07;26;03 - 00;07;48;04
Michael J. Accetta
And at some point your dog's like, I can't hold it anymore. And then they got to go do it. It's not what happen if I had cookie drive okay. I love chocolate chip cookies. I love chocolate chip cookies, love chocolate chip cookies. If I have a food drive for cookies, cookie drive, at some point I would be satiated. That's not true.

00;07;49;09 - 00;08;05;06
Michael J. Accetta
It's not true. I don't know how I know it's not true. Because I've tested it. I want sat down with an entire box of cookies. I think it was the two boxes, but what will say is a box. So I don't doubt that it was an entire box of cookies. And I had ginger ale next to me. Why did I have the ginger ale?

00;08;05;09 - 00;08;24;07
Michael J. Accetta
Because I was determined to finish this box. And some of you might say, Oh, a box, a cookie. That's not a big box. And if a box of cookies is nothing to you, it's because drives don't exist. Because of a full box of cookies. We're like, Oh, yeah, I could eat a whole box of cookies. No problem. That's right.

00;08;25;02 - 00;08;54;22
Michael J. Accetta
And if you ate the box of cookies, you might want to go get another box of cookies for a couple more. You are not satiated simply because you ate a certain number of cookies. Your dog is not satiated simply because it caught and released all of its predatory drives. Now they are rewarded for catching and dispatching, chasing, catching and dispatching through predatory aggression because aggression is a behavior and it can be rewarded and punished accordingly.

00;08;56;05 - 00;09;21;08
Michael J. Accetta
So if your dog is increasingly increasing in the likelihood of performing predatory aggression, then they are being rewarded each time. Let me take that back. Let me take a step back there. If your dog is increasing in the likelihood of expressing predatory aggression, they're being rewarded for doing so. So they're nice and quiet. They're calm, they're staring down the bird.

00;09;21;11 - 00;09;43;19
Michael J. Accetta
They chase after it, they catch it. They did that. This dispatch that's the word I wanted to say, dismantled. That sounds terrible. Dispatch, right? They dispatch they get rewarded for the entire event. Now, break one of those things up. Chop one of those things up. I'm not going to let my dog chase the prey animal. Not going to let them chase.

00;09;44;03 - 00;10;03;21
Michael J. Accetta
Well, then they cannot catch and they cannot dispatch if I'm going to let them chase, but I don't let them catch then they can't dispatch. And if I'm going to have my dog chase and catch, but don't let them dispatch. I've broken up the sequence so for my dog Hawk, the first time I didn't let him chase him.

00;10;04;04 - 00;10;24;20
Michael J. Accetta
I interrupted him as he was chasing and called him back. So he did not catch and therefore dispatch. Now, the second time he did catch, but I did not let him dispatch, so I recalled him away. That way I do not reward predatory aggression. Do my dog still like to perk up? And they look around at the start of that?

00;10;24;29 - 00;10;43;02
Michael J. Accetta
Yeah. Can I immediately call them off of it? Absolutely. So now let's get into how do we stop our dog. How do we stop them from expressing this kind of predatory aggression? How do we stop them from chasing, catching, and dispatching? There are two ways to do it. I'll give you two ways. Maybe I'll give you a third way, but there are two ways to do it.

00;10;43;02 - 00;11;02;07
Michael J. Accetta
Actually, I'm going to give you three number one management. It's the easiest way to do it. Always, always, always. Always manage. Well, I can put a muzzle on my dogs. They do chase something, they don't kill it. I can put a nice tight leash on them. Never give them the freedom to go and try, or I can keep them inside my house all the time.

00;11;02;22 - 00;11;18;00
Michael J. Accetta
Those are your three management practices. I'm sure there's a whole bunch. And you could go on management practices for days, years even, and people do train management for years. That's what a lot of people get stuck at. I'm going to stay at that. I'm going to manage my dog's life just like we try to do with kids. All that.

00;11;18;04 - 00;11;52;12
Michael J. Accetta
I manage my kids. I'm not going to put them in dangerous situations instead of teaching them how to do those dangerous situations in a safe way. My son's two and a half years old. We go to the playground. Sure, there are some things I would much rather not have him climb on. Not because they're dangerous when he's touching them, but because he could fall after a few repetitions of teaching him how he knows exactly what he needs to do to get from point A to point B, and now I can sit back, talk with other parents and watch my son from afar and know that he can climb up ladders by himself.

00;11;52;12 - 00;12;16;03
Michael J. Accetta
That's right. Two and a half years old. He can climb up ladders. He can go up the slide, not down. So he can go down to the slide, but he can go up the slide. He knows how to communicate with his friends. He can't go down the fire pole yet, even though he really wants to. He just doesn't have the grip but he can do all of those other things, which means he knows how to exist in a dangerous situation, in a safe way.

00;12;16;08 - 00;12;40;00
Michael J. Accetta
That makes me more confident and comfortable with him playing, and it makes him more confident and comfortable. So managing your dog is always going to be the easiest way to do it, but you need to eventually move in to teach them. So the second way to do it is called stimulus control. Stimulus control is rewarding them for doing it on purpose and rewarding them for not doing it when they're not told to do it.

00;12;40;14 - 00;13;02;15
Michael J. Accetta
How does this look playing with your dog? The old way to do it is to hug you could use a flirt pole, or you could just use fetch, but you want to get their brain to that exciting level of predatory aggression and then teach them how to control it, how to channel it in a productive way. We want to get them actually thinking about doing it, but then go on.

00;13;02;15 - 00;13;14;15
Michael J. Accetta
Okay, we really want to go chase that ball. But I know I've got to listen first and I got to wait for the release cue to go get that ball. So I'm going to sit here nice and patiently, but stare at the ball, then going to look at my honor. Then we'll look back at the ball then or look back at my owner and they're going to tell me to go do it.

00;13;14;19 - 00;13;32;23
Michael J. Accetta
And now I can go chase the ball. One step above that is I'm going to teach them to go to the ball and I'm going to recall them away, just like I did with Hawk and Honey. I taught them in those high-stress situations. When I tell you to go do something, I can always call you back. I can stop you halfway.

00;13;33;00 - 00;13;50;28
Michael J. Accetta
That's the power of a really good recall and using indirect, rewarding, or rather the pre-Mach theory. In this case, they are slightly different. So I'm sending them to go do something like, Hey, go do this. Sure. Go chase the ball, go chase the flagpole. But before you get there, I'm going to tell you to do something else.

00;13;51;11 - 00;14;09;26
Michael J. Accetta
You might even have your dog chasing the flirt pole, right? You're moving around and you tell him to drop. You say down, boom, they plop down. You're still moving the floor. What's what is that teaching that it's not the chase, catch and dispatch that's important? It's engaging with you. It's playing with you, it's chasing. But I'm not going to let you catch it right now.

00;14;09;26 - 00;14;27;17
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe I'll let you catch it later tomorrow or next week. But right now, I'm not going to let you do that. But you have to teach your dogs that eventually they do succeed, and work on stimulus control. And then even the variable rewards schedule. This is all advanced up. When you have to go through the whole process, you cannot just go through one sliver.

00;14;29;00 - 00;14;46;13
Michael J. Accetta
One sliver isn't going to help you. You got to go through the whole process. That's why at Matador University, the courses that I've created don't give you 10%. I don't sell just the 10%. I don't want clients going, Okay, well, I got the 10%. I'm good. I can stop. No, no, no, no, no. You got all this way to go.

00;14;47;11 - 00;15;06;27
Michael J. Accetta
If it's worth doing, it's worth completing. If it's worth doing, it's worth completing. If you're interested in any of that kinds of courses and having the whole story, not just the 10%, not the 1% that I get to talk to you on these episodes and stuff on social media, that half of 1%, if you want the whole story.

00;15;07;12 - 00;15;36;05
Michael J. Accetta
Matador Cain Icon Slash Matador University, Matador, Cain, NAICOM Slash Matador University. Get everything. The whole nine yards. The whole ten yards. Okay. And then the second option I remember is a biological purpose, a biological purpose to chase, catch and dispatch with that. You can counter condition, and teach them to do something else in the presence of a prey animal.

00;15;36;24 - 00;16;00;23
Michael J. Accetta
I can teach them incompatible behavior and I can counter conditions. Right. Condition is something that previously meant nothing. That now means something. We can counter that and say, okay, this thing that meant nothing but does mean Chase now means do this option A, B, or C, whatever it is, right? So when they see a squirrel, their first option is to lay out this is what farmers do with border collies.

00;16;01;18 - 00;16;23;25
Michael J. Accetta
When they see a sheep, they want to go chase it, want to do something right? Yeah. Get them all type together. But what's the first thing? A border collies you do? I see them, I lay down and I'm going to stare at I'm really intent and I'm going to wait to be told to do something. And once I get told to do something and I stop doing that thing, I'm going to lie down again.

00;16;25;05 - 00;16;51;12
Michael J. Accetta
And they say they stock they get so laser-focused on what they need to do. You can teach that. And in fact, it's one of the ways I taught Tommy how to say hello to people we counter-conditioned his initial response to see somebody like that person. I want to say that his initial response was to go chase because he wanted to go tackle you to the ground and give you all of his love and be all over the place.

00;16;51;23 - 00;17;11;18
Michael J. Accetta
But instead, we taught him when he sees somebody just sit back down, they will come to him. Now, when he sees somebody and he really wants to say hello, he's got all this pent-up energy, and his butt hits the ground so fast, leaving a crater in the air. That's what we want. That's the kind of conditioning you can do when you know how to do it.

00;17;13;16 - 00;17;41;22
Michael J. Accetta
Now, what happens if they're too strong? My dog's predatory aggression is way too powerful. They have such a high prey drive. What do we do? You have to set them up for success. Teach him stimulus control and counter-conditioning. You have to do all you can't pick. Got to do all of those things. I'm going to manage their life, their situations, and what they're capable of doing, what they're able to do.

00;17;42;06 - 00;17;58;18
Michael J. Accetta
All they're not going to go out in the front yard off leash anymore. They're not going to be in the backyard unsupervised. That's number one. Number two, I'm going to teach them through play through treats, through engagement, that you can only do things when I tell you to go do them. And you cannot do them when I don't tell you to do them on your own time.

00;17;58;18 - 00;18;14;06
Michael J. Accetta
Yeah. You can sit down with the stimulus controls. What I'm talking about is if I tell you to chase something, go get it. You can go do it. But until then, don't. And then three, you got a counter condition every time they see a squirrel and me, you know, get a little stuffed animal, put it in the corner, go for a walk.

00;18;14;06 - 00;18;33;09
Michael J. Accetta
And when you see the stuffed animal and your dog sees a stuffed animal, teach him to do something. Repetition over and over and over. If your dog is that strong-willed, that strong-willed, you need to at least do all three of these steps, if not more training. On top of that, you should be doing obedience socialization, and working around distractions.

00;18;33;17 - 00;18;56;02
Michael J. Accetta
Reward schedules are a must. All of that stuff comes together. And that's the only reason I was able to call Hawk and Tommy multiple times in a row without having to treat Tommy, without having a ball, without having toys is the only reason I was able to call them away from a bird that was on the ground, at their level, in their paws.

00;18;58;02 - 00;19;15;06
Michael J. Accetta
It's the only reason I was able to do that is that I did all of those things. I manage their life while I was teaching them. I taught them stimulus control. I counter-conditioned them to over-exciting things. We worked on reward schedules. Again, that's that whole journey. If you're not going to go through the whole journey, at least go through those three steps.

00;19;15;24 - 00;19;35;29
Michael J. Accetta
At least go through those three steps or give up and just manage your dog's entire life. I'll be honest with you, that's what a lot of people do. And that's fine. You can do that. I'm not saying you can't do that, and you are going to be stuck in a box. You do not have freedom. You do not have the enjoyment that you want to have with your dog.

00;19;35;29 - 00;19;58;05
Michael J. Accetta
You just you're not going to don't put yourself in a box. I beg you, do not put yourself in a box. At least do these three things management, stimulus control, counter conditioning, and be light years ahead of what you were yesterday. Yeah, start doing them right now. Thank you guys for listening. If this spoke to you personally, if it hit you, am I going to go work with my dog right now?

00;19;58;24 - 00;20;04;04
Michael J. Accetta
Good. Turn this off right now and go work with your dog. Thank you, guys. I'll see you next time.

Getting your dog to listen is one of the hardest things for new dog owners to do. But how are professionals so good at it? It seems as though the second they touch the leash the dog is completely different.

How do professional dog trainers get dogs to listen? In today's episode, I uncover exactly how to get your dog to listen like the pros in a fraction of the time.

To learn how to end your dog's bad behavior click the link below and download our free guide to Resolving Complicated Bad Habits

https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

00;00;01;08 - 00;00;31;01
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael J. Accetta I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Cheat Codes. You're listening to the acknowledged dog's podcast No matter where you go with your dog, you want them to be able to listen. When you're going outside. You go to the park, you go to a friend's house. You want your dog to be in a listen, and you want them to be able to listen the first time.

00;00;31;11 - 00;00;49;24
Michael J. Accetta
This isn't a preference for trainers. This isn't a preference of ego kind of thing. I want my dog to listen. Now, this is a serious issue, actually, about keeping your dog alive. That might be really dramatic, but it's true. If my dog runs out in the middle of the street. I need to be able to stop them. And I can't be yelling, stop, stop, stop, stop.

00;00;49;26 - 00;01;06;21
Michael J. Accetta
That's not going to help. And to be able to say, sit down and then call them back or just their name and get their attention to have them come back. There is no time for mistakes, which is why I'm so stressed. When people say that their dog doesn't listen, I'm like, oh, my God, we got to work right now.

00;01;06;21 - 00;01;28;26
Michael J. Accetta
We've got to do something right now, today, immediately, so that your dog is in a better position. You are in a better position in the event that emergencies happen. I have seen way too many people will be heartbroken because their dogs just couldn't listen. Such simple things like kids or my kids don't listen to me. You know, they end up doing bad things.

00;01;29;09 - 00;01;49;02
Michael J. Accetta
My dog doesn't listen to me. They end up getting hurt. You tell them to leave something. And now they swallowed a chicken bone and they got to go to the hospital. That's $40,000 just to get a chicken bone removed from your dog's throat. They're alive. Thank God. But you've wasted time. You've wasted energy and money. Regardless of the fact that your dog almost died.

00;01;49;15 - 00;02;13;13
Michael J. Accetta
Right. Catastrophic things happen when your dog doesn't listen. So let's go over how we can stop that from happening. And we can teach our dog to listen the first time. Number one, they must know what you're asking for. They have to know what the behavior is. I talk about this constantly. You have to get the precision down before you can move on to asking them when to do it, and when not to do it.

00;02;14;10 - 00;02;28;29
Michael J. Accetta
It's just like if you were learning literally anything in the world, I want you to think about the last time you learned something, right? Maybe even just this is about learning something. So you have to know what I'm talking about. You have to have a dog. We have to be on the same page before I can start telling you the mechanics.

00;02;28;29 - 00;02;45;01
Michael J. Accetta
Right. You got to get the principal down. So I want you to think about learning how to drive. You have to know where everything is in the car first before you can know when to turn the car on when to put the car into drive, and then when to put your foot on the gas. Right. There's a red light, green light kind of feeling.

00;02;45;10 - 00;03;08;09
Michael J. Accetta
I know when to do this, and I know when not to do it. But first I have to know what it is. Same thing with words, right? I have to have, you know what the word means before you can use it appropriately or before I can use it appropriately with you. If I said we're going to do something in sequester order, I think that's a word, a question.

00;03;09;16 - 00;03;31;02
Michael J. Accetta
Sequester your order, and it doesn't mean anything. You're like I don't even know what that means, but it's in a sequence. I hope sequester is a word. Otherwise, I just made it up. And Webster's Dictionary should contact me and credit me for making up sequester Pretty sure it's worth it, though. So I know a lot about dog training. So sometimes I met somewhere.

00;03;31;23 - 00;03;53;26
Michael J. Accetta
So you have to know what the word means, what it really means, the definition of it, when to use it, and when not to use it. And then we can start using it in different sentences. And with a different language and different meanings of the word literally, that definition has changed because people misused the word so much the word literally.

00;03;54;10 - 00;04;14;21
Michael J. Accetta
Oh, my gosh. I literally broke my leg and the definition is the opposite of what it was. There are two definitions and they contradict each other Literally means it actually happened and literally means it did not actually happen. I think it's baffling that words are like that. But I digress. Your dog has to know what the behavior is for them to listen.

00;04;15;28 - 00;04;30;26
Michael J. Accetta
That should be standard. But many times it's not the number of dog owners that I work with. Clients that I work with are asking their dogs to do things. And I said, Okay, well, let's go back to how you taught your dog to do it in the first place. And I said, Well, I never really taught him how to do it.

00;04;30;26 - 00;04;50;00
Michael J. Accetta
I just kind of expected them to do it. Dogs don't come preprogrammed or they're not like your phone, where you can talk to Siri and say, Hey, Siri, do this thing, or Hey, Alexa, do this thing right. It doesn't work like that. Someone didn't sit down with your dog and program it into them. They're not robots. They have to be taught what to do.

00;04;50;13 - 00;05;06;01
Michael J. Accetta
And then we tell them when to do it, and when not to do it. And I often find this happens when you're a dog owner who had kids first. There is a different mentality from a dog owner who did not have kids first. And who did have kids first? Kids will pick up on things as you naturally talk to them.

00;05;06;17 - 00;05;25;17
Michael J. Accetta
My two-year-old son is constantly picking up on new stuff, literally because I'm talking to him. I said something to him. He says it right back to me. I say, Good job. And now he knows the word. It is baffling to me. He knows the system. I say something, and he repeats it back. Now he knows what it means and he'll use it in the context correctly.

00;05;26;15 - 00;05;50;17
Michael J. Accetta
Absolutely. Wonderful. Dogs don't do that. We think they do that. If you're a person who had a child first because of your experiences with just saying stuff to your kid, they sent back home, my gosh, you're so smart. And we act as if the dog is the same way. Now, if you did not have kids first and you have a dog first, you're most likely going to teach them the way that a dog trainer would Okay?

00;05;50;18 - 00;06;10;15
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to teach them what I want them to do first, and then I'm going to tell them when to do it and when not to do it with the word. That's exactly how we should do it. So your dog has to know the behavior first. That's a given number two habit that habitual-wise can fall on to you.

00;06;11;17 - 00;06;35;19
Michael J. Accetta
So is it a habit that you are creating that tells your dog they don't have to listen the first time you have that habitual? Is it a habit that you have that tells your dog not to listen to you? What I mean by this is if you're saying a word over and over and over again. Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit.

00;06;35;28 - 00;07;01;19
Michael J. Accetta
Why aren't you sitting? Sit. I told you to sit down right Our dog goes. Okay, well, I'm not going to sit until you actually mean it or I'm not going to sit until you've said it a certain number of times. What we want to do is say it once one word for one action. If you say it once and they don't do it, they don't do the behavior you want them to do you have to go back to step one.

00;07;02;07 - 00;07;25;18
Michael J. Accetta
My dog doesn't fully know it because if they knew it and they made the association well, they would have done it so we're missing something. They're either missing clarity on what the behavior should be or we haven't effectively taught them the association between the word and the action. If you're saying it multiple times, there is a disconnect. They either think that multiple times is the word.

00;07;25;26 - 00;07;43;20
Michael J. Accetta
And I know that sounds confusing. Right. Sit. Sit. Sit is the phrase that means put your butt down instead of sitting means put your butt down. You have to be very clear about this. And you can only say it once if you say it multiple times, your dog will get used to it multiple times. There is no time to say sit, sit, sit.

00;07;43;28 - 00;08;05;05
Michael J. Accetta
When your dog is running towards the street or Bobby, come like there is no time for you to elongate everything. It's got to be sharp. It's got to be quick. It's got to be fast. They got to stop on a dime and turn back Let alone the behavior having to be fast. The response to the cue to the word that you're using must be fast.

00;08;05;21 - 00;08;35;25
Michael J. Accetta
They must be fast. In number three, you have to be consistent. If you are not consistent in what your expectation is, there are going to be variants that you can't control. So if you tell your dog to go down sometimes and lay down other times and go relax and Oh, go relax over there, and you're changing all these different ways, one ends up happening, well, our dog doesn't know what they should be doing exactly.

00;08;35;25 - 00;09;00;02
Michael J. Accetta
In relationship to a word. They're kind of guessing, right? If I used a different word every time I said hello to you, you're going to guess that I'm saying hello, and maybe in the beginning, you know what I'm saying, right? Hello, Joe. Hola. Konichiwa. I don't even know any other word, right? But if I got to the end of that and I don't know any more words, I'd just say, hey, pencil chicken nuggets, Bob.

00;09;00;12 - 00;09;23;22
Michael J. Accetta
Like, you don't really know what I'm talking about. At first, you could guess then I'm saying hello. You could guess what? You don't have some clarity. And the important part is to have clarity with our dogs. Everything has to be really clear. So that they are certain of what they should be doing. The clear you can get and the more consistent you can get, the easier it is for your dog to know what to do.

00;09;24;26 - 00;09;50;15
Michael J. Accetta
If I started speaking to you and giving you instructions, and in the middle there, there, I started talking gibberish. You pause about what's happening and immediately you're confused and probably right now, you're still thinking back on what I said so when I throw in a piece of confusion, you get stuck on that and you can't take in any more information, which is why I've just slowed down because you can't take in any more information.

00;09;50;15 - 00;10;15;29
Michael J. Accetta
I can't tell you what to do. And the same thing happens with their dogs for a second. They get confused, they disregard us completely. Second, they're confused. Their disregard is complete. Have you ever listened to a TED talk? And in the middle of the talk, they say something that maybe you don't understand right away. Now you either pause the TED talk, you go over to Google, you type in what they said you're trying to understand, and then you come back to it or you completely skip over it.

00;10;15;29 - 00;10;35;19
Michael J. Accetta
You go, All right, like I don't need to know that one piece of information, but now you're completely lost. For the rest of the TED talk, you're completely lost. Same thing. If you were in college or in high school, and the teacher said something and you're with it, everything's good. When you get distracted by something, it starts snowing outside or your friend passes you a note or something and now you feel like you're behind.

00;10;35;19 - 00;10;53;19
Michael J. Accetta
So you're trying to catch up and you really never catch up. In many cases, kids just give up paying attention. They got distracted by something. They look back, they missed a pivotal point of information they don't know what page they're on. They don't know what topic we're talking about, what chapter we're on, who did what, or what's going on.

00;10;53;19 - 00;11;19;13
Michael J. Accetta
And they just completely give up and they forget it. I'm like, I'm overwhelmed. There's too much information being thrown at me and I can't keep up with it because I got distracted for a moment. I was confused for a moment. That's all it takes. So if my dog's running towards the street and I tell them to come, but sometimes I say the word here and other times I say, Come on over, and other times I use their name.

00;11;20;16 - 00;11;41;23
Michael J. Accetta
That small bit of confusion stops them from responding you have to be consistent with what you want your dog to do. If I'm going to use the word here, I'm only going to use the word here for the immediate, important recalls I want my dog to stop on a dime, spin around, come straight to me and sit in front of me.

00;11;42;06 - 00;12;03;18
Michael J. Accetta
That could be your here. And then come on over could be more relaxed. You can do that, but you have to be very clear. That's where advanced training kind of comes into play, right? I can teach my dog a relaxed come-on over is very different from here. Here means you to stop exactly what you're doing in that moment.

00;12;03;21 - 00;12;32;12
Michael J. Accetta
Spin around and run straight to it. The same thing with my dogs down and relax and go lay down are completely different things. But I taught them completely separately. I taught the behaviors first. I see the command once and I made the association before asking for it in everyday life. That's the kind of order you need to go through. Teach them exactly what you want them to do, make the association with the word and teach them when to do it and when not to do it.

00;12;32;28 - 00;13;00;29
Michael J. Accetta
Be consistent and only say it once. If you do that, your dog will listen. Nine times out of ten they are not robots. I cannot say they will listen. 100% of the time. But I want to tell you a quick story, but a wonderful client of mine in this tiny little dog. But separation anxiety, we were able to work through it once we got past separation anxiety, the client wanted to work on some obedience, but the problem was her family was all on different pages.

00;13;01;08 - 00;13;19;00
Michael J. Accetta
Everyone was using different words the kids were using random words that they made up that they thought were fun. The dad was using more German obedience-type words, and the mom just wanted the standard sit-down. He'll write so I said, Okay, we're all going to get on the same page. And we went through each one and we became consistent.

00;13;19;00 - 00;13;33;06
Michael J. Accetta
What do we want said to be? What do we want down to be? What do we want he'll to be? What do we want recall to be? What do we want a place to be? And we broke it down everyone had to be on the same page now. They had to go through their own learning curve of stopping.

00;13;33;06 - 00;13;54;23
Michael J. Accetta
The old words of not using those words become because they became habitual. Any time you go to train your dog, understand that you are also training yourself on a new behavioral skill. We're getting rid of old habits and you're implementing new ones. Just understand that. So with their dog, they started to reteach all of these things. That was the first thing I had them do.

00;13;55;07 - 00;14;14;11
Michael J. Accetta
You're not going to say the words, you're not going to tell them when to do it. You're going to go back and teach all of the skills that you want to teach. Sit down. He'll come. Place. They taught all of that. Then we were able to add the words one by one because they were consistent and this was structured.

00;14;15;02 - 00;14;35;10
Michael J. Accetta
You could only say it once the dog had to do it. If they didn't do it, we had to reset and try again. Because we did that within two weeks. This dog that was riddled with separation anxiety couldn't listen. I was stressed out all the time, was listening perfectly, and eventually got into group classes with about 15 other dogs doing wonderful things.

00;14;35;10 - 00;14;51;24
Michael J. Accetta
When the owner was like, I never thought that could be possible. I couldn't even go for a walk with my dog. And pay attention. And then, of course, you wanted to do agility, you wanted to do all the fun stuff because her dog now had the listening skills and she had the freedom to do what she wanted to do with her dog.

00;14;52;13 - 00;15;12;22
Michael J. Accetta
If you guys are struggling with problem behaviors and you want to know how I go through the process. Click the link in the description for resolving complicated bad habits without using punishment. You can teach your dog how to listen. You can end problem behaviors with the techniques that I talk about in all of these different episodes. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time.