Whether you are trying to stop your dog from jumping on you, leaving you alone while you are eating, or relaxing when guests come over, you need to teach your dog boundaries. 

Many dog owners still rely on constantly being "alpha" over their dogs in order to get them to listen even though there is a better way that takes a fraction of the time. 

Learn how to stop destructive behaviors without punishment with this free PDF download

https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits

00;00;19;28 - 00;00;42;13
Michael J. Accetta
The first dog I ever got was when I was 16 years old her name was Breezy. She is still alive today and she was the most patient dog you could possibly ask for. For someone who really didn't know what they were doing with the dog. Now, I had studied for two years to get enough information against my parents that I was allowed to have a dog, but I knew enough to own one and take care of one and train one.

00;00;42;19 - 00;01;03;05
Michael J. Accetta
But when I got it it was very different than what I had read in the books. Now, what I was constantly told is that your dog needs discipline first. They need structure first, and then you can give them all the love in the world. If they didn't have the discipline, if they didn't have the theory of, Well, I'm in charge and I'm the leader and you have to do what I say, I couldn't give them affection.

00;01;03;14 - 00;01;20;22
Michael J. Accetta
I hated this mentality, by the way, and I did not want to implement it, which is why I failed. Right. The consistency of implementing it probably would have led me to succeed and be reinforced for it, but because I didn't want to do it, I didn't feel like it was the proper way to train my dog. I didn't follow through with it.

00;01;21;21 - 00;01;40;03
Michael J. Accetta
Now, today, I'm going to be talking about boundaries, and I want to tell you what we did with my first dog. And what I do currently with my dogs has completely changed. Now, if you're thinking of how to teach your dog boundaries and how to limit them from doing the things you don't want them to do. It all comes down to teaching them the right thing.

00;01;40;23 - 00;01;56;12
Michael J. Accetta
Now for Breezy, when we brought her home, she was a black lab pointer. We got her when she was nine months old from shelter when we brought her home, she was crate trained immediately. Put her into the crate. You're going to get used to the crate. You're not allowed on the couch, not allowed on the bed. You're not allowed to sit in areas during dinner.

00;01;56;12 - 00;02;29;10
Michael J. Accetta
Or breakfast or mealtime, whatever. You got to wait for your food. You got to be patient with things. You can't go outside the door first. We did everything right. Everything right. As it relates to what we knew at the time, I have to create boundaries with my dog, but boundaries typically have a gate right? If there was a fence and you were inside the fence, there's going to be a gate to let you outside of the fence and perhaps you have the key and perhaps you don't have the key to outside.

00;02;29;29 - 00;02;55;19
Michael J. Accetta
How do you get the key outside? How do you get the freedom to do what you want to do? Is it through repetitions or if I listen enough, I'll get the key outside? Is it breaking out like a prison breakout? I'm just going to do it. I'm going to break out. Or is it while I learn how to exist outside of the gate and I know what the expectations are and now you can be let outside the gate, right?

00;02;56;09 - 00;03;23;28
Michael J. Accetta
Think about your dog in the backyard. They're confined inside your house. They're confined. And maybe they listen a lot better than when you're going outside into the real world. So that boundary, that gate is created as a means of teaching our dog in a structured way so that when we do take them out into the outside world or do give them the freedom to do what they want, they know what the expectation is, but usually, we don't teach it that way.

00;03;23;28 - 00;03;41;10
Michael J. Accetta
Fabrizi we certainly didn't in the beginning. It was just structure. We knew yes and no, black and white. You either are on the couch or you're not on the couch. Then it started to develop we started to learn that, yeah, you can have your dog on the couch as long as you ask or they ask you for permission.

00;03;42;12 - 00;03;59;02
Michael J. Accetta
Well, my dog's not going to be allowed under the couch. Unless they sit and wait and they look at me and then I can invite them on up. And if I decide they don't have the privilege to be on the couch anymore, I could kick them off. That's what we learned. Now, we never let her back on the couch because we had a very nice white couch, and she loved going in the mud outside.

00;03;59;13 - 00;04;26;09
Michael J. Accetta
So although we cleaned her paws, we just didn't want a dirty white couch. Well, for my personal dogs, after I left and went to college, Breezy stayed with my parents, and I got a new dog in college. I followed those same rules at least for a little bit until I started to learn other ways to do this. That alpha mentality was still in the back of my brain, even though I knew it wasn't necessary You do not need to be domineering over your dog.

00;04;26;28 - 00;04;59;07
Michael J. Accetta
You do not need to be the leader of the pack. You need to be a leader. But you don't need to be the leader of their pack. There's a difference there. A leader guides and informs the followers by being a part of a larger group they are leading them or guiding them and educating them so that everyone can get to an objective or a goal or a target a boss just tells them what to do and is not thoroughly involved, does not guide them and does not teach them.

00;04;59;07 - 00;05;19;06
Michael J. Accetta
They just tell them what they need to do and want to be the boss of my dog. I want to be the leader of my dog, but I don't need to be the leader of the pack to do that. I do not need to be the alpha senior, you know, front-of-the-line kind of thing. What I do need to do, however, is teach my dog what they should be doing and convince them that that's the best possible thing they could do.

00;05;19;27 - 00;05;34;25
Michael J. Accetta
So when I was in college, I didn't want them on the bed. I didn't want them on the couch right now. I had a chair. I didn't really have a couch, but my initial thought was, okay, he's not going to go on those things because I don't want to in some people even do this. I don't want to give them the idea that they're in charge of me.

00;05;35;25 - 00;05;54;17
Michael J. Accetta
Now, if you have a dog that gets onto the couch and becomes aggressive, they are not being alpha over you. That's just not true. Okay. They've learned that snapping at you stops you from getting them off the couch. So the alpha theory is you can just take out of your brain and throw it away in a vacuum, suck the idea out of your brain, and put it in the trash.

00;05;54;24 - 00;06;21;10
Michael J. Accetta
The alpha theory is not going to help you when you're trying to teach your dog boundaries when you're trying to teach them that you can do this and you can't do this. You can hang out with me when I'm sitting watching Netflix, but you can't be on the couch now. There has been a tonal shift in the industry of dog training in the minds of dog owners and another dog could be on the couch all the time.

00;06;21;19 - 00;06;37;23
Michael J. Accetta
My dog could be on my bed all the time. And sometimes this creates behavior problems, not because of the alpha theory, not because the alpha theory, but it does create problems because maybe our dog just wants to relax all day and we want to get them up so we can make the bed or they take up too much space in the bed.

00;06;39;08 - 00;06;59;01
Michael J. Accetta
And instead of teaching the dog how to respond to us when they're not excited and stimulated through rewards right when we get our dogs excited, they'll listen because we have something to offer them. If we don't have anything to offer them and we're trying to take something away from them, dogs can react in order to keep what they have.

00;06;59;08 - 00;07;16;26
Michael J. Accetta
They want to stay in bed. You tell them to get off the bed like that ain't happening. Then we escalate. We get angry, and frustrated, with our dog, and we try to push them off the bed. Now they go, Hey, I don't like that. You gave me one opportunity. This is my bed. I want to hang out. I want to lay here.

00;07;16;26 - 00;07;22;15
Michael J. Accetta
And they become aggressive. Because that aggression works at getting you to leave them alone.

00;07;24;21 - 00;07;44;18
Michael J. Accetta
If it works, it will repeat. So you can have your dog hang out on the couch. You can have them hang out on the bed, but you cannot You cannot have a dog that is aggressive because of those things. Right? You're sitting at the dining room table and you want your dog to sit with you or sit in their place.

00;07;44;22 - 00;08;03;00
Michael J. Accetta
They cannot become aggressive and try to steal your food. That's no good. We don't want that. So this is where boundaries can really help. But you cannot teach these boundaries by shushing your dog and moving into them and personal pressure. And that's all the old stuff we have to teach in a new way. You have to teach your dog how to do these things.

00;08;03;07 - 00;08;21;08
Michael J. Accetta
The new way. And in doing so, you actually convince your dog that they came up with the idea that they know what they should be doing because they know what they're doing. Even if they felt like they were above you. That's just humor. The idea of alpha theory, even if they felt like they were above you and they're like, Oh man, I got them.

00;08;22;03 - 00;08;46;13
Michael J. Accetta
I know exactly what I'm doing. Even though they feel like they're above you, they're still doing the thing that you want them to do. It's like reverse psychology when you do it on. People say Oh, I didn't really want to go to the concert. Oh, cool. All in all, take Jim with me. Oh, great. Wonderful. Right. Like, I don't think that was a great example of reverse psychology, but you know what I'm talking about?

00;08;46;16 - 00;09;12;23
Michael J. Accetta
Reverse psychology of ever heard about it? You tell someone the opposite of what you want them to do, and then they go do it just out of spite of you. So we're teaching our dog what we want them to do, and they go, Oh, I'm going to stick it to him. I'm going to do the thing that I know gets rewarded and because they become so dedicated to that new behavior, they end up doing it ten times stronger than if I were to just have to keep pressing into them because that's what you have to do constantly.

00;09;13;08 - 00;09;30;11
Michael J. Accetta
The rest of the dog's life is you pressing into them and forcing them into a corner and being knocked right there, trying to just keep them in one spot. It's not what we want. We want to teach our dogs what they need to do. I want to give you a PDF download on how to do this.

00;09;30;28 - 00;09;52;23
Michael J. Accetta
How to teach your dog to stop doing problem behaviors. Create boundaries without using punishment control, resolving complicated bad habits without using punishment. The link will be in the description if you want to learn how to do this effectively. Now with my dogs, now what I do with them now is not what I did with Brizzi when she was younger.

00;09;53;20 - 00;10;16;21
Michael J. Accetta
I did not structure everything so perfectly that you have to wait before I go outside the door. And you have to wait for breakfast and dinner instead. Those become just natural parts of life. It's very natural for them. I put my hand on the handle of the door and my dog since I go to grab the scooper for their food bowl and they automatically sit because I taught them to do so.

00;10;17;11 - 00;10;44;19
Michael J. Accetta
It is not a boundary thing. It just becomes a part of their life. And what most people will say is, Oh, well, didn't you start by using the boundary? No, actually it didn't. It comes from a different mindset. It's a completely different tonal shift in your brain and your thought process. And what historical training has taught you. If you've done any research about dog training, you know that the methods we used to use are no longer used today by professionals.

00;10;45;19 - 00;11;02;21
Michael J. Accetta
There's a lag time, and I don't know what that lag time is. I think it's ten to 15 years from what professionals do today and dog owners do today. There's like a ten to 15-year difference and every time a dog trainer learns a new thing, they have to go educate all of their clients on this new thing.

00;11;03;17 - 00;11;23;00
Michael J. Accetta
But we don't. I try to, but I can't possibly get to everybody and so we're constantly trying to put out new information. But because the old information stays out there, dog owners go to that old information and they go, Oh, well, this video is ten years old. Maybe it's the best. It's got a lot of use because it's ten years old.

00;11;24;02 - 00;11;49;01
Michael J. Accetta
Well, today, today is what you need right? Because we're constantly developing, we're constantly learning. We're constantly adding new skills to the repertoire, and doing new studies. Dog training does not have a lot of scientific studies back behind it. It has a lot of personal experience, and a lot of psychology in general. But the dog training industry really needs to expand the studies that we do use.

00;11;49;01 - 00;12;09;00
Michael J. Accetta
The more we understand about dogs, the faster we can train them and the more reliable the relationship of behavior could be. And the more enjoyment you get out of your dog, right? If you understand your dog more, you're going to enjoy it more. Think about your phone. If you don't understand how your phone works, you can enjoy all of the cool features one of my favorite features on my phone is double tapping and getting the camera up.

00;12;09;20 - 00;12;31;08
Michael J. Accetta
If I don't understand that, double tapping the power button and getting the camera up, I got to unlock my phone, scroll to the camera, app, and click on the camera app. It just makes it so much more efficient when I understand the tool that I have now for your dog. I don't want you to call your dog a tool but you have to understand how they learn, how they process things, what stresses them out, and what excites them.

00;12;32;06 - 00;12;51;00
Michael J. Accetta
And we can do that. We can put all of that into the idea of teaching them boundaries. Right? All of that psychology. I just taught my dogs what they should be doing when they want something and they automatically do it. They go, boom, I got it. Awesome. Cool. Know exactly what I need to be doing. And when it comes to the couch, it's the same thing.

00;12;51;17 - 00;13;09;26
Michael J. Accetta
They hang out sometimes. They jump up on the couch and they know what the difference is. Right. And my significant other sitting on the couch, there's no space for my dog to look out. So they don't sit on the couch. If it's just one of us, they can come to sit on the couch. Now, if my son is running around and jumping up on the couch and doing all these other things, they don't jump on the couch.

00;13;10;11 - 00;13;27;18
Michael J. Accetta
And you might say, Oh, well, that's just a really smart dog that really tempered or I think they realize what's going on and they know that they don't fit in that space. You can teach it. That's what I'm trying to convince you of right now. You can teach these things, and that's what I did with my dogs. I didn't teach it to my first dog because I didn't know back then.

00;13;28;18 - 00;13;47;04
Michael J. Accetta
I did not know ten years ago what I know today. But because of what I know today, I can teach the things that I want to teach, and it makes it ten times easier if I sit on the couch, my dog could come up the second my significant other comes over my dog gets up. Now she can sit down super easily.

00;13;47;29 - 00;14;03;27
Michael J. Accetta
Wouldn't that be nice to have in your lifestyle right now? Think about it. Think about going through your day wouldn't it be easy if my dog knew what the boundaries are? They knew what they should and should not be doing. My dogs move out of the way when I walk in. They just get out of the way.

00;14;04;05 - 00;14;28;03
Michael J. Accetta
Not because of the alpha theory again. Right, has nothing to do with that. And people get rewarded for using the alpha theory simply because at some point, eventually, it will work, right? The consistency will follow through. But then you have to keep doing it. You have to stay the leader of the pack right And this is where it kind of falls apart at some point, some way.

00;14;28;03 - 00;14;49;16
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to be old, my dogs are going to be old. I'm not going to want to fight them. All the time. I'd much rather teach them what they should be doing and reward them so heavily and then maintain these behaviors over long periods of time. Makes it so much easier for them to do the right thing. And it looks like they just have a, well, even-tempered brain, like, Oh, I know exactly what to do.

00;14;49;16 - 00;15;03;08
Michael J. Accetta
I'll get out of the way. And some dogs are like that some dogs learn very quickly to stay out of the way when you're walking or if you've got groceries. But in the case of my dogs, I did not. They were very, very clumsy. I'm thinking back now to when I used to walk in, my dogs would be so excited.

00;15;03;08 - 00;15;26;13
Michael J. Accetta
They would get in front of my feet, I would trip and I would have the bag of groceries and spill the apples or something. Its a classic, classic nineties movie. But you can teach your dog to move out of the way. You can teach them not to go on the couch or when to go on the couch. You can teach them not to go on your bed or to get off your bed when you ask them to get off the bed to leave you alone when you're going to the bathroom and not to try to enjoy the shower with you.

00;15;27;13 - 00;15;42;16
Michael J. Accetta
All of those things can be taught and we can teach our dog when to do it, when we want them to do it, and when not to do it when we don't want them to do it. All you need is a system in place to know how to do it. Thank you guys for listening follow us on social media and I'll see you guys next time.