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Have Dinner in Peace with These 3 Tips: Episode 140
Once you get a dog you realize how much they really love food. One of the hardest things to do is keep your dog away from your plate when eating.
In today's episode, I give you 3 tips on how to train your dog to give you more space while you're eating and end the constant chaos that comes with food and dogs.
Get started with 14 days free of Matador University below!
https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial
00;00;01;08 - 00;00;29;14
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael Accetta. I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Chico's. You're listening to the acknowledged dogs podcast Hey guys, my name is Michael Accetta. Thank you for tuning in today. I want to tell you a quick little story. When I was in college, I had my dog with me. 90% of the time We were constantly training.
00;00;29;14 - 00;00;51;21
Michael J. Accetta
We were constantly working on things. And yes, I had to go to the cafeteria. I had to go to classes. I had to go to a club meeting with my dog that came with me. And one of the greatest things that I'm going to talk about in today's episode is exactly what I did to get rid of all that anxious stress and oh my God, my dogs are going to do something or they're going to pick something up or they're going to jump up on the counter and steal food while I'm having lunch with friends.
00;00;52;16 - 00;01;09;15
Michael J. Accetta
That is insanely stressful, not only for you but for your dog. And if you've done any amount of training, someone probably told you, Okay, you're going to keep your entire focus and your attention on your dog the entire time, and you're going to reward them heavily. Just keep giving them treats for staying in that position. That is insanely stressful.
00;01;09;23 - 00;01;30;02
Michael J. Accetta
You don't even get to sit and enjoy your lunch because you're thinking about your dog 100%. That is not the goal of the training that I do I like to think that I have the most effective training on the planet, and it's because I intentionally think about being effective. I think about the situations I was in and the tools I wish I had when I started training my dog.
00;01;30;02 - 00;01;51;13
Michael J. Accetta
So I'm going to go over a couple of things today that you can use if your dog is, one, stealing food or having things off the floor and just being all over the place when you really just need them to settle and relax and lay in one spot. My name is Michael Accetta I've trained over 12,000 dogs and I care about how you train your dog because I want it to be as efficient as possible.
00;01;51;21 - 00;02;20;02
Michael J. Accetta
And the author of the dog training cheat codes and host of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast The first thing you have to consider, the first thing you have to consider whenever you want to teach your dog how to behave and be a well-trained individual is management. I talk about it time and time again, but it's all management. If you broke your leg, if you broke your leg, shattered in half, you would not go right back to doing whatever you were doing.
00;02;20;18 - 00;02;41;12
Michael J. Accetta
You'd have to put a cast on. You would have to use crutches. You couldn't be running the next day. You could barely be walking, let alone standing. So why do we expect our dog to learn something in 5 minutes and immediately start implementing what they were previously doing wrong into their daily life? It would make no sense.
00;02;41;29 - 00;03;05;15
Michael J. Accetta
So the first thing you have to do is manage as much as you can of their situation, of their life as an individual, and in a big-picture grand scheme of things, right? So when I had my dog with me in college, he was attached to my hip. I didn't just hold the leash. No, he was literally tied to my belt so that everywhere I went, he was glued to my side and I could practice all the time.
00;03;05;15 - 00;03;20;22
Michael J. Accetta
That was kind of the point of having my dog with me and training and doing all of those types of things. But I needed to have my dog directly next to me so we could work on stuff and this is how it should be for you, especially if you got a puppy or a dog that seriously needs some work.
00;03;21;17 - 00;03;42;12
Michael J. Accetta
They should not have free roam of the house to do their own thing. You wouldn't have free roam of your leg if you broke it. You would be forced to have a structured cast on your leg. To increase the likelihood of success. Right. If your legs are all jacked and crooked, you wouldn't just go, Okay, we're just going to wait and see what happens.
00;03;42;13 - 00;04;01;27
Michael J. Accetta
No, no, no. You got to straighten it out. You got to make sure that it's perfect. And that's what management does with your dog. We don't leave anything to chance. I'm not going to put the turkey on the counter and leave the room with my dog in there. No, my dog's going to come with me. I'm going to put them in another room and put them in the crate or I'm not going to leave the turkey on the counter.
00;04;01;28 - 00;04;34;19
Michael J. Accetta
See how that works? You have to be hyper-vigilant about everything, super aware of everything. And this is a difficult habit to have. It's insanely difficult for you to have the reason it's so difficult because you're rewarded for how your life used to be. There is really no need for you to change. And in most cases, individuals don't change unless there is a very high level of reward involved or they were punished so dramatically, they may say like, Well, yeah, I get punished all the time when I leave my dog to their own devices.
00;04;34;19 - 00;04;54;24
Michael J. Accetta
I just don't know what to do. That's the other aspect of it. If you are unsure, you will go back to old habits, and the same thing happens with your dog. It's interesting how that philosophy works, doesn't it? Right. So if you got heavily reinforced, good, you're going to be motivated to move into action towards whatever got the reward.
00;04;55;07 - 00;05;13;04
Michael J. Accetta
If you got heavily punished, you're never going to do that thing again. However, if you got rewarded and you got punished but don't know what caused it, you can't do it again. So if your dog with perfect all day didn't have a single problem. You're like, Oh my God, my dog's fantastic. But you don't know what caused that.
00;05;13;21 - 00;05;40;10
Michael J. Accetta
You don't remember that you took your dog for a 45-minute walk and then gave them enrichment exercises to mentally tire them out. If you don't know that you're like, Oh, my dog was just perfect today. Must have been a fluke. And you can't repeat it. You can't replicate it. Same thing with punishment. If your dog jumps up onto the counter and eats the Thanksgiving dinner and you don't know why that happened and you don't know how to fix it, then the next time you leave something on the counter, your dog's going to go for it again.
00;05;41;20 - 00;05;59;00
Michael J. Accetta
You don't know how to stop that punishment from happening. And so some people just give up and then they blame the dog. They say That's just my dog. My dog is conniving they're spiteful. It's because I left them in the room alone that they jumped up on the counter and ate the turkey because I didn't feed them at exactly 503 in the evening.
00;06;01;08 - 00;06;21;14
Michael J. Accetta
It's not that your dog is spiteful. Dogs are very intelligent and very smart, and they know when you're around and when you're not around, but it's simply because the management, and the structure were not in place. And maybe it's because you were unsure or unaware of what was being reinforced and what was being punished. So let's get concrete on that.
00;06;21;23 - 00;06;44;17
Michael J. Accetta
Let's get sure of that. Your dog does things that they enjoy doing because it produces reinforcement. They're opportunists. Your dog will avoid things that they don't enjoy doing and that cause punishment, but they need to know what they should be doing. They need to know what they should be doing. So after the management, we move into teaching our dogs what we want them to do.
00;06;45;01 - 00;07;05;14
Michael J. Accetta
You can teach them to relax. You could teach them to settle on a placemat and you can even teach them that when you sit down. This is what I did with my dog in college. When you sit down, they should automatically relax. It's one of my favorite exercises to do with your dog. The second you put your butt on that chair, they go, Oh, I know what that means.
00;07;05;14 - 00;07;23;26
Michael J. Accetta
I should lay down and relax and then you can start rewarding and if you intentionally teach that, you intentionally teach that and then go through the process of training, your dog will go, Okay, I know exactly what I should be doing for the amount of time around distractions, even at a distance if you're going to send them to place.
00;07;24;09 - 00;07;47;11
Michael J. Accetta
And we can maintain that behavior for a very long period of time. If you want to learn the system that I use to teach all of those behaviors, head over to Matador Kain, Icon, Slash, Matador University, Matador, CNET.com, Slash Matador University. I lay out the entire training process for you, the entire training process for you on how to teach those skills in more depth so you can actually have success with them.
00;07;48;08 - 00;08;04;04
Michael J. Accetta
But after the management, right, let's say. Right, you broke your leg. We'll go back to that now. You broke yourself like you got a cast on it. You don't go back to running. You don't go back to walking. You go to physical therapy. That's the teaching aspect. You go to physical therapy and you learn how to move those muscles again.
00;08;04;11 - 00;08;30;18
Michael J. Accetta
Get the range of motion back I broke my elbow when I was younger. I still get this weird clicking when I do push-ups. It's gotten better over time, but there's always going to be that weird, that weird little thing. And in some cases, there's management that will always happen with management that will always happen. You'll just get into the habit of not leaving food on the counter, because once in a blue moon, when your dog jumps up and gets the food, they go, Awesome.
00;08;30;29 - 00;08;51;26
Michael J. Accetta
All I got to do is wait six months and then I can get the food off the counter. I just got to keep trying every day, and six months will eventually come. That's not what we want. We want the opposite. We want them to be so dedicated to relaxing and laying down and being calm. I want them so dedicated to that that they'll be rewarded at random intervals.
00;08;52;06 - 00;09;12;23
Michael J. Accetta
And they never think about jumping on the counter. They never think about begging for food. They know that in the position they are in, whether it's on a place, whether it's on a mat, whether they're relaxing next to you, that is where they should exist. That is where they should exist. Now, everyone on board is the only way to do this.
00;09;13;17 - 00;09;34;23
Michael J. Accetta
What I mean by everyone on board is if you're in your family, in your family, you are the one training and your husband or your wife is not, or your kid's aunt or your grandparents, aunt or whoever is involved with the dog is not doing the training. You will not see the same success simply because of what I mentioned a little while ago.
00;09;35;14 - 00;09;52;22
Michael J. Accetta
If once in a blue moon they get rewarded and it's easier for them to do the old habit that they know how to do, they're going to continuously do that behavior. Think about any time you've tried to develop a habit, any time, right? I'm going to go on a diet. I'm going to start going to the gym more.
00;09;53;14 - 00;10;10;11
Michael J. Accetta
This is exactly what happens at the beginning of the year after New Year's resolutions. Oh, I got my New Year's resolution. I'm going to get fit. I'm going to train for a marathon. You do? For two weeks you were really solid. You were good. And then what happened? You resort back to the old habit because it's easier.
00;10;10;19 - 00;10;36;27
Michael J. Accetta
Why is it so easy? Our brain will wire and make those connections and they become solid over a very long period of time. They become solid and it becomes easier for you to jump back to that habit. Developing a new habit, whether it's in yourself or your dog, requires time, requires patience. It requires a high rate of reinforcement and very long reinforcement history.
00;10;37;04 - 00;10;58;17
Michael J. Accetta
That means you have to be rewarded constantly over and over and over again. And then we have to expand on that and get rewarded at random intervals. That's how we basically get addicted to doing behaviors that no longer serve us like, I love donuts, I love donuts. In fact, I just had some glazed donuts yesterday. I love donuts.
00;10;59;19 - 00;11;22;04
Michael J. Accetta
I love donuts because they're delicious. They make me feel good for a moment. But if I have four donuts and yes, I eat about four donuts, if I have four donuts at the end, I no longer want the donuts because I don't feel well. So I got punished by the end of it, but I still got rewarded during the moment of eating the donuts that happen contest early.
00;11;23;08 - 00;11;44;01
Michael J. Accetta
And that's what's going to happen with your dog. If they beg and steal food, they're going to get the food and feel good for a moment. Go, great. I got my food and then they'll feel punished afterward because you're mad at them. Am I going to stop eating donuts now? Right. I'm not going to stop eating my donuts because of how rewarding it is at that moment.
00;11;44;01 - 00;12;05;27
Michael J. Accetta
And that's exactly what's going to happen to your dog. You don't necessarily want to say, hey, you know, I'm mad at you now because you stole the turkey. They don't care, I promise you. Although they look like they care, they feel punished at that moment. They are not being punished for the action they did. They're being punished for you walking in the room and seeing them.
00;12;06;15 - 00;12;27;15
Michael J. Accetta
This is what creates really sneaky dogs. They steal food and then they're out we don't want dogs that are sneaky. We want dogs that trust us and engage with us. And if they did find something they're not supposed to have, they can bring it to us. I'd much rather have a dog bring me something as odd as it may be a box, a screwdriver, a water bottle, whatever it is, I want him to bring it to me instead of having them run away.
00;12;27;15 - 00;12;56;22
Michael J. Accetta
I just did an episode about that the other day. So the bottom line, bottom line, if your dog is stealing food or they're begging for food, the first thing you need to do is manage them. If you sit down at the dining room table, you don't want your dog near you. Put them in another room, put them in their crate, teach them a place, command so that they can see and hang out with you, but they're not directly underneath your feet or teach your dog to lay next to you without jumping up and trying to steal food.
00;12;57;14 - 00;13;13;04
Michael J. Accetta
If you sit on the couch and watch TV for dinner, it's a great opportunity to have your dog sit on the couch with you. If they get up, you would remove them from the couch right there. Still can be positive and punished there. I'm rewarding you for hanging out on the couch with me. I'm going to give you a couple of treats.
00;13;13;08 - 00;13;31;26
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe I'll even slide you some of my dinners depending on what you're eating. You can reward them with that. You just want to reward the right thing. And then if they get up or they get too close and they want your food still, you can punish them. They lose access to the couch. They don't get to hang out in the environment with you.
00;13;32;02 - 00;13;50;14
Michael J. Accetta
They don't get the rewards anymore. This does not mean yelling at them, and it does not mean letting them have a treat and then getting mad at them. That's exactly the opposite of what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you want to control everything in their universe. They should just exist where they are. The second they stopped doing what you wanted them to do.
00;13;50;25 - 00;14;14;15
Michael J. Accetta
We have to reset. You have to reset the management. Teach them what you want them to do. And then and only then you can start to extrapolate on all of it and make it insanely powerful through reward schedules, which you talk about all the time. So if you want your dog to stop doing those things, you have to teach them what you do want them to do.
00;14;14;15 - 00;14;37;11
Michael J. Accetta
Don't leave them in confusion. Don't leave them in uncertainty. Again, if you are struggling with how to do that, you know you're supposed to and you're struggling with how Matador came, that slash Matador University, not an auction icon slash Matador University. That's what you need to go check out to learn the system, and the skills in the order that they need to be taught to have a really powerful doc.
00;14;38;06 - 00;14;42;14
Michael J. Accetta
Thank you guys for listening. Tune in next time. Follow us on social media and I'll see you later.
View all episodes
By Matador Canine Brilliance
5
88 ratings
Once you get a dog you realize how much they really love food. One of the hardest things to do is keep your dog away from your plate when eating.
In today's episode, I give you 3 tips on how to train your dog to give you more space while you're eating and end the constant chaos that comes with food and dogs.
Get started with 14 days free of Matador University below!
https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial
00;00;01;08 - 00;00;29;14
Michael J. Accetta
Welcome. My name is Michael Accetta. I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Chico's. You're listening to the acknowledged dogs podcast Hey guys, my name is Michael Accetta. Thank you for tuning in today. I want to tell you a quick little story. When I was in college, I had my dog with me. 90% of the time We were constantly training.
00;00;29;14 - 00;00;51;21
Michael J. Accetta
We were constantly working on things. And yes, I had to go to the cafeteria. I had to go to classes. I had to go to a club meeting with my dog that came with me. And one of the greatest things that I'm going to talk about in today's episode is exactly what I did to get rid of all that anxious stress and oh my God, my dogs are going to do something or they're going to pick something up or they're going to jump up on the counter and steal food while I'm having lunch with friends.
00;00;52;16 - 00;01;09;15
Michael J. Accetta
That is insanely stressful, not only for you but for your dog. And if you've done any amount of training, someone probably told you, Okay, you're going to keep your entire focus and your attention on your dog the entire time, and you're going to reward them heavily. Just keep giving them treats for staying in that position. That is insanely stressful.
00;01;09;23 - 00;01;30;02
Michael J. Accetta
You don't even get to sit and enjoy your lunch because you're thinking about your dog 100%. That is not the goal of the training that I do I like to think that I have the most effective training on the planet, and it's because I intentionally think about being effective. I think about the situations I was in and the tools I wish I had when I started training my dog.
00;01;30;02 - 00;01;51;13
Michael J. Accetta
So I'm going to go over a couple of things today that you can use if your dog is, one, stealing food or having things off the floor and just being all over the place when you really just need them to settle and relax and lay in one spot. My name is Michael Accetta I've trained over 12,000 dogs and I care about how you train your dog because I want it to be as efficient as possible.
00;01;51;21 - 00;02;20;02
Michael J. Accetta
And the author of the dog training cheat codes and host of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast The first thing you have to consider, the first thing you have to consider whenever you want to teach your dog how to behave and be a well-trained individual is management. I talk about it time and time again, but it's all management. If you broke your leg, if you broke your leg, shattered in half, you would not go right back to doing whatever you were doing.
00;02;20;18 - 00;02;41;12
Michael J. Accetta
You'd have to put a cast on. You would have to use crutches. You couldn't be running the next day. You could barely be walking, let alone standing. So why do we expect our dog to learn something in 5 minutes and immediately start implementing what they were previously doing wrong into their daily life? It would make no sense.
00;02;41;29 - 00;03;05;15
Michael J. Accetta
So the first thing you have to do is manage as much as you can of their situation, of their life as an individual, and in a big-picture grand scheme of things, right? So when I had my dog with me in college, he was attached to my hip. I didn't just hold the leash. No, he was literally tied to my belt so that everywhere I went, he was glued to my side and I could practice all the time.
00;03;05;15 - 00;03;20;22
Michael J. Accetta
That was kind of the point of having my dog with me and training and doing all of those types of things. But I needed to have my dog directly next to me so we could work on stuff and this is how it should be for you, especially if you got a puppy or a dog that seriously needs some work.
00;03;21;17 - 00;03;42;12
Michael J. Accetta
They should not have free roam of the house to do their own thing. You wouldn't have free roam of your leg if you broke it. You would be forced to have a structured cast on your leg. To increase the likelihood of success. Right. If your legs are all jacked and crooked, you wouldn't just go, Okay, we're just going to wait and see what happens.
00;03;42;13 - 00;04;01;27
Michael J. Accetta
No, no, no. You got to straighten it out. You got to make sure that it's perfect. And that's what management does with your dog. We don't leave anything to chance. I'm not going to put the turkey on the counter and leave the room with my dog in there. No, my dog's going to come with me. I'm going to put them in another room and put them in the crate or I'm not going to leave the turkey on the counter.
00;04;01;28 - 00;04;34;19
Michael J. Accetta
See how that works? You have to be hyper-vigilant about everything, super aware of everything. And this is a difficult habit to have. It's insanely difficult for you to have the reason it's so difficult because you're rewarded for how your life used to be. There is really no need for you to change. And in most cases, individuals don't change unless there is a very high level of reward involved or they were punished so dramatically, they may say like, Well, yeah, I get punished all the time when I leave my dog to their own devices.
00;04;34;19 - 00;04;54;24
Michael J. Accetta
I just don't know what to do. That's the other aspect of it. If you are unsure, you will go back to old habits, and the same thing happens with your dog. It's interesting how that philosophy works, doesn't it? Right. So if you got heavily reinforced, good, you're going to be motivated to move into action towards whatever got the reward.
00;04;55;07 - 00;05;13;04
Michael J. Accetta
If you got heavily punished, you're never going to do that thing again. However, if you got rewarded and you got punished but don't know what caused it, you can't do it again. So if your dog with perfect all day didn't have a single problem. You're like, Oh my God, my dog's fantastic. But you don't know what caused that.
00;05;13;21 - 00;05;40;10
Michael J. Accetta
You don't remember that you took your dog for a 45-minute walk and then gave them enrichment exercises to mentally tire them out. If you don't know that you're like, Oh, my dog was just perfect today. Must have been a fluke. And you can't repeat it. You can't replicate it. Same thing with punishment. If your dog jumps up onto the counter and eats the Thanksgiving dinner and you don't know why that happened and you don't know how to fix it, then the next time you leave something on the counter, your dog's going to go for it again.
00;05;41;20 - 00;05;59;00
Michael J. Accetta
You don't know how to stop that punishment from happening. And so some people just give up and then they blame the dog. They say That's just my dog. My dog is conniving they're spiteful. It's because I left them in the room alone that they jumped up on the counter and ate the turkey because I didn't feed them at exactly 503 in the evening.
00;06;01;08 - 00;06;21;14
Michael J. Accetta
It's not that your dog is spiteful. Dogs are very intelligent and very smart, and they know when you're around and when you're not around, but it's simply because the management, and the structure were not in place. And maybe it's because you were unsure or unaware of what was being reinforced and what was being punished. So let's get concrete on that.
00;06;21;23 - 00;06;44;17
Michael J. Accetta
Let's get sure of that. Your dog does things that they enjoy doing because it produces reinforcement. They're opportunists. Your dog will avoid things that they don't enjoy doing and that cause punishment, but they need to know what they should be doing. They need to know what they should be doing. So after the management, we move into teaching our dogs what we want them to do.
00;06;45;01 - 00;07;05;14
Michael J. Accetta
You can teach them to relax. You could teach them to settle on a placemat and you can even teach them that when you sit down. This is what I did with my dog in college. When you sit down, they should automatically relax. It's one of my favorite exercises to do with your dog. The second you put your butt on that chair, they go, Oh, I know what that means.
00;07;05;14 - 00;07;23;26
Michael J. Accetta
I should lay down and relax and then you can start rewarding and if you intentionally teach that, you intentionally teach that and then go through the process of training, your dog will go, Okay, I know exactly what I should be doing for the amount of time around distractions, even at a distance if you're going to send them to place.
00;07;24;09 - 00;07;47;11
Michael J. Accetta
And we can maintain that behavior for a very long period of time. If you want to learn the system that I use to teach all of those behaviors, head over to Matador Kain, Icon, Slash, Matador University, Matador, CNET.com, Slash Matador University. I lay out the entire training process for you, the entire training process for you on how to teach those skills in more depth so you can actually have success with them.
00;07;48;08 - 00;08;04;04
Michael J. Accetta
But after the management, right, let's say. Right, you broke your leg. We'll go back to that now. You broke yourself like you got a cast on it. You don't go back to running. You don't go back to walking. You go to physical therapy. That's the teaching aspect. You go to physical therapy and you learn how to move those muscles again.
00;08;04;11 - 00;08;30;18
Michael J. Accetta
Get the range of motion back I broke my elbow when I was younger. I still get this weird clicking when I do push-ups. It's gotten better over time, but there's always going to be that weird, that weird little thing. And in some cases, there's management that will always happen with management that will always happen. You'll just get into the habit of not leaving food on the counter, because once in a blue moon, when your dog jumps up and gets the food, they go, Awesome.
00;08;30;29 - 00;08;51;26
Michael J. Accetta
All I got to do is wait six months and then I can get the food off the counter. I just got to keep trying every day, and six months will eventually come. That's not what we want. We want the opposite. We want them to be so dedicated to relaxing and laying down and being calm. I want them so dedicated to that that they'll be rewarded at random intervals.
00;08;52;06 - 00;09;12;23
Michael J. Accetta
And they never think about jumping on the counter. They never think about begging for food. They know that in the position they are in, whether it's on a place, whether it's on a mat, whether they're relaxing next to you, that is where they should exist. That is where they should exist. Now, everyone on board is the only way to do this.
00;09;13;17 - 00;09;34;23
Michael J. Accetta
What I mean by everyone on board is if you're in your family, in your family, you are the one training and your husband or your wife is not, or your kid's aunt or your grandparents, aunt or whoever is involved with the dog is not doing the training. You will not see the same success simply because of what I mentioned a little while ago.
00;09;35;14 - 00;09;52;22
Michael J. Accetta
If once in a blue moon they get rewarded and it's easier for them to do the old habit that they know how to do, they're going to continuously do that behavior. Think about any time you've tried to develop a habit, any time, right? I'm going to go on a diet. I'm going to start going to the gym more.
00;09;53;14 - 00;10;10;11
Michael J. Accetta
This is exactly what happens at the beginning of the year after New Year's resolutions. Oh, I got my New Year's resolution. I'm going to get fit. I'm going to train for a marathon. You do? For two weeks you were really solid. You were good. And then what happened? You resort back to the old habit because it's easier.
00;10;10;19 - 00;10;36;27
Michael J. Accetta
Why is it so easy? Our brain will wire and make those connections and they become solid over a very long period of time. They become solid and it becomes easier for you to jump back to that habit. Developing a new habit, whether it's in yourself or your dog, requires time, requires patience. It requires a high rate of reinforcement and very long reinforcement history.
00;10;37;04 - 00;10;58;17
Michael J. Accetta
That means you have to be rewarded constantly over and over and over again. And then we have to expand on that and get rewarded at random intervals. That's how we basically get addicted to doing behaviors that no longer serve us like, I love donuts, I love donuts. In fact, I just had some glazed donuts yesterday. I love donuts.
00;10;59;19 - 00;11;22;04
Michael J. Accetta
I love donuts because they're delicious. They make me feel good for a moment. But if I have four donuts and yes, I eat about four donuts, if I have four donuts at the end, I no longer want the donuts because I don't feel well. So I got punished by the end of it, but I still got rewarded during the moment of eating the donuts that happen contest early.
00;11;23;08 - 00;11;44;01
Michael J. Accetta
And that's what's going to happen with your dog. If they beg and steal food, they're going to get the food and feel good for a moment. Go, great. I got my food and then they'll feel punished afterward because you're mad at them. Am I going to stop eating donuts now? Right. I'm not going to stop eating my donuts because of how rewarding it is at that moment.
00;11;44;01 - 00;12;05;27
Michael J. Accetta
And that's exactly what's going to happen to your dog. You don't necessarily want to say, hey, you know, I'm mad at you now because you stole the turkey. They don't care, I promise you. Although they look like they care, they feel punished at that moment. They are not being punished for the action they did. They're being punished for you walking in the room and seeing them.
00;12;06;15 - 00;12;27;15
Michael J. Accetta
This is what creates really sneaky dogs. They steal food and then they're out we don't want dogs that are sneaky. We want dogs that trust us and engage with us. And if they did find something they're not supposed to have, they can bring it to us. I'd much rather have a dog bring me something as odd as it may be a box, a screwdriver, a water bottle, whatever it is, I want him to bring it to me instead of having them run away.
00;12;27;15 - 00;12;56;22
Michael J. Accetta
I just did an episode about that the other day. So the bottom line, bottom line, if your dog is stealing food or they're begging for food, the first thing you need to do is manage them. If you sit down at the dining room table, you don't want your dog near you. Put them in another room, put them in their crate, teach them a place, command so that they can see and hang out with you, but they're not directly underneath your feet or teach your dog to lay next to you without jumping up and trying to steal food.
00;12;57;14 - 00;13;13;04
Michael J. Accetta
If you sit on the couch and watch TV for dinner, it's a great opportunity to have your dog sit on the couch with you. If they get up, you would remove them from the couch right there. Still can be positive and punished there. I'm rewarding you for hanging out on the couch with me. I'm going to give you a couple of treats.
00;13;13;08 - 00;13;31;26
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe I'll even slide you some of my dinners depending on what you're eating. You can reward them with that. You just want to reward the right thing. And then if they get up or they get too close and they want your food still, you can punish them. They lose access to the couch. They don't get to hang out in the environment with you.
00;13;32;02 - 00;13;50;14
Michael J. Accetta
They don't get the rewards anymore. This does not mean yelling at them, and it does not mean letting them have a treat and then getting mad at them. That's exactly the opposite of what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you want to control everything in their universe. They should just exist where they are. The second they stopped doing what you wanted them to do.
00;13;50;25 - 00;14;14;15
Michael J. Accetta
We have to reset. You have to reset the management. Teach them what you want them to do. And then and only then you can start to extrapolate on all of it and make it insanely powerful through reward schedules, which you talk about all the time. So if you want your dog to stop doing those things, you have to teach them what you do want them to do.
00;14;14;15 - 00;14;37;11
Michael J. Accetta
Don't leave them in confusion. Don't leave them in uncertainty. Again, if you are struggling with how to do that, you know you're supposed to and you're struggling with how Matador came, that slash Matador University, not an auction icon slash Matador University. That's what you need to go check out to learn the system, and the skills in the order that they need to be taught to have a really powerful doc.
00;14;38;06 - 00;14;42;14
Michael J. Accetta
Thank you guys for listening. Tune in next time. Follow us on social media and I'll see you later.