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Thanksgiving Prep for You and Your Dog: Episode 157
The thanksgiving feast is almost upon us and that means that there are also bad behavior problems looming in the corner.
Stealing food, jumping on guests, barking at strangers in the neighborhood and so many more
Don't let your dog ruin this holiday season with their bad behavior. In today's episode, I go over how you can prepare yourself and your dog for the best Thanksgiving dinner you have ever had. No chaos, no stress, and certainly no visits to the hospital.
Here is the download I mentioned in the episode Thanksgiving Dog Etiquette E-book
https://www.matadork9.com/thanksgivingmanners
If you want to get started training before the big day, give me a call right away, and let's get started before it is too late!! https://www.matadork9.com/coaching
Episode Transcript
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:18:08
Michael J. Accetta
If you're nervous about your dog and what they're going to do during dinner, when guests come over and there's food all over the place and there's good smell in Turkey all over the place. What are you going to do That's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to go over the four things that you must have in place in order to have a successful and enjoyable Thanksgiving with the dog.
00:00:18:13 - 00:00:39:02
Michael J. Accetta
Okay. Now, the first thing we're going to talk about is management. This is crucial to have any type of enjoyment during the holiday season. If you cannot manage your dog's behavior, nothing is going to go right. If your dog is already well behaved, then you kind of already did management. You've you've done all the management ahead of time.
00:00:39:02 - 00:00:54:02
Michael J. Accetta
And that's led to a successful time right now. But we only got a couple of days until the big feast. If you want to call the big feast, we only got a couple of days until the big feast. And so right now is not necessarily the time to teach your dog anything new. Maybe you don't have the time for it.
00:00:54:03 - 00:01:11:08
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe your dog has never done any training and it's way too much to be putting on yourself and overwhelming yourself with right now. Instead, what we need to do is set up parameters and where a dog can be successful. What does that look like when people are coming into the house? We don't want to have the dog in the living room by the front door.
00:01:11:12 - 00:01:30:02
Michael J. Accetta
It's just going to create more chaos and more excitement. Someone's coming in. They're all over the place. And then our dog loses it and they run into the person. And now we have all this chaos over. Excitement leads to sometimes biting, sometimes playing too rough and nipping the person. Sometimes it can lead to urination and having our dog all over the floor.
00:01:30:09 - 00:01:50:03
Michael J. Accetta
That's not what you want when you're having guests come into your house for Thanksgiving. It's just not. You're adding more chaos. It'd be easier to say, Okay, I'm going to put my dog into the bedroom or into the bathroom. I'm going to wait for everyone to come over, and then I'm going to have my dog come out. Once everyone's there, the excitement of having them come through the door has now been eliminated.
00:01:50:13 - 00:02:05:14
Michael J. Accetta
Your dog is still going to be excited when they see the people that they miss and they love and they want to hang out with. But the level of excitement has changed. It's gone down simply because we haven't had them introduced right at the exciting point of coming into the door. So that's one way you could manage it.
00:02:06:08 - 00:02:20:00
Michael J. Accetta
The other way you can manage it is having gates up. So maybe your U.S. of a party house where the dog hangs out. And if people want to go hang out with the dog and they're good with them and they can be relaxed, then they can go play with the dog. Otherwise, the dog stays out of the picture while you have guests over.
00:02:20:14 - 00:02:35:05
Michael J. Accetta
Now, what about dinner when you actually sit down and you're trying to enjoy a meal? Well, I would either do it in one of two ways. One is kind of like having guests come over. We're going to put them to the side. Maybe we put them in the bedroom. We have gates set up, maybe we put them in the kitchen, whatever it may be.
00:02:35:12 - 00:02:54:08
Michael J. Accetta
I want to create some space and distance so that they can go relax over there. The alternative is to have one person. Usually the person who's the best with the dog was done training, maybe takes them out for walks the most, has the better relationship. They're going to be solely responsible for training the dog in that moment. Okay.
00:02:54:09 - 00:03:10:01
Michael J. Accetta
So when you sit down to eat, their focus is really on the dog. They're not going to converse with everybody as much. They're not going to be getting up and getting, you know, people's food or more drinks or whatever. They're going to sit in their spot and they're going to just focus on the dog. That's one of the best things you can do.
00:03:10:01 - 00:03:31:14
Michael J. Accetta
Have one person focused on the dog because not only do you stop the dog from doing bad behaviors, you're using that as an opportunity to train. You're having an opportunity to train the dog. Now, not everybody wants to do this. Some people are just, Okay, I'm gonna put the dog away, and that's totally fine. If you are not in the mode of training and you just want to enjoy having guests over, there's no problem with putting the dog in a space where they can enjoy themselves.
00:03:31:14 - 00:03:49:06
Michael J. Accetta
You give them something to do a puzzle, maybe put a movie on. And I know that sounds silly, but that's a little secret pack. Many dogs enjoy watching something, even if it's, you know, the National Geographic, where there's not much going on, and it's just nature going by as long as your dog is not barking and freaking out about it.
00:03:49:14 - 00:04:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
But if you give your dog something to do after the side, not only does it distract your dog for a little bit, but it gives you a little bit more peace. In many cases, you're like, Okay, my dog is completely excluded from the picture. They're just not in the picture. Right now. Okay, so that's the first thing you need to do to have a successful Thanksgiving.
00:04:07:06 - 00:04:31:05
Michael J. Accetta
You have to manage as much as you possibly can whenever your dog is in a situation where there's a potential for bad behavior to come up. We end up punishing them, which isn't good, right? So if I put my dog in a situation where guests are coming over and the guest walks in the door, my dog freaks out and they start jumping up on the person and I start yelling at him or the person starts yelling at him, I've just I've created this big problem.
00:04:32:00 - 00:04:54:05
Michael J. Accetta
Why not put my dog away when guests come over, make it easier for my guests to come in, for me to greet my guests, and easier for my dog to learn the right skills at the right time. This might just not be the right time. Okay, so we're moving on to number two. How would we actually introduce our dog to guests, whether you want to do it in the beginning, when people come over or you want to do it after the fact.
00:04:54:08 - 00:05:10:12
Michael J. Accetta
Let's talk about after the fact first. So we've managed the situation. We put our dog in the back room or off to, you know, the bedroom or the bathroom where maybe people come in, maybe ten, 15 minutes go by, maybe you wait an hour. Either way, depends on the dog. You've waited some time. Things have kind of settled down.
00:05:10:12 - 00:05:29:02
Michael J. Accetta
People are sitting chatting. You can either do it one of two ways you can bring the dog out. Just let them sniff and interact with people. Depends on your dog. If your dog is very high level of excitement, and they love these people, maybe it would be beneficial to have them on a leash and actually work through how you would want them to interact with people.
00:05:29:02 - 00:05:44:08
Michael J. Accetta
Do you want to walk your dog up? Have them sit patiently and then be told to go say hi? Depends on what your level of training is and what your objective is, what your goals are going to look like. So that might be the way you do it or you just ain't got the leash. Let them go out, sniff around many dogs.
00:05:44:08 - 00:06:06:01
Michael J. Accetta
That's totally fine. They come out, they go, Oh, there's people here, whatever. It doesn't really matter. I'm just going to sniff them and do my own thing. I have done both. My first dog Breezy, we ended up just letting her come out and she would sniff my other dog, Tommy, who loves people. We'd have him on a leash because we needed to control how he greeted somebody, especially during that training phase of teaching him, Hey, you cannot go up to everybody.
00:06:06:09 - 00:06:26:03
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to stop you before we get to people. And when you do get to the person, then I'll let you go say hi. So it depends on the situation you're in, depend on what your goals are. But greeting people is going to be a very, very large portion of having guests over and the biggest potential problems. Okay.
00:06:27:06 - 00:06:47:12
Michael J. Accetta
Now, number three manners. During dinner, as I mentioned before, having somebody 100% locked in on your dog is going to be the easiest way. But what do they do? What does that person do at that time? Well, one, they should have treats to the dog, should be on a leash, doesn't have to be a collar or maybe just a harness and maybe you put a bed next to the person sitting down.
00:06:47:12 - 00:07:05:14
Michael J. Accetta
So if I'm sitting here, I'd have my dog right next to me. I would get to eat my food and maybe I have a mason jar on the table of treats like. Right. I don't have to give them food scraps. And in fact, one of the big parts of Thanksgiving, the fourth thing we talk about is the foods that are safe and not safe to eat.
00:07:06:02 - 00:07:25:10
Michael J. Accetta
Okay, so there are plenty of foods that your dog can eat from Thanksgiving, but there's a lot of foods that they really should not be eating. And I've actually created a PDF on all of those things. Which you can get at Matador Canine dot com forward slash Thanksgiving manners. It goes over all of this in more depth as well as that list of food your dog can and cannot eat.
00:07:25:11 - 00:07:52:02
Michael J. Accetta
Matador Canine Dot com forward slash Thanksgiving manners. Now back to what I was that you got a a jar mason jar of kibble or cheese or hotdog slices something super high value and all you do is slowly slip your dog a treat for laying down and being patient and waiting while you're having dinner. This is much easier said than done, especially if you've never done it before.
00:07:52:02 - 00:08:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
There's a lot of trading going on over and over and over and your dog's like, oh my God, this is fantastic. I love this. But you're like, I just want to eat my turkey. I just want to have some stuffing. And you run into this problem where you then just go to eat and you forget that you're supposed to be ruining your dog.
00:08:07:03 - 00:08:26:08
Michael J. Accetta
What happens then? Our dog gets up and they do something bad in order to remind you. They say, Hey, hey, hey, you were rewarding me. What happened right now, they don't actually say that in their brain. They're just trying something new. But that's how we can conceptualize it. We say, Hey, you know, you were rewarding me and you stop and I kind of want what you had, so I'm going to try something new.
00:08:26:10 - 00:08:42:09
Michael J. Accetta
But if you forget about me again, I'm going to get back up and I'm going to do something that you don't want me to do. And so we want to do is have this internal clock going, and at first it might be over 5 seconds, then we might expanding after five, ten treats to every 10 seconds. Then we might expand it a little again.
00:08:42:11 - 00:09:02:06
Michael J. Accetta
15 seconds 20 seconds. Then we might go back to 3 seconds. Why would I do that? Why would I go back and make it easier if my dog's getting better at it? Because I don't want my dog to think that it's always going to get harder. If we're constantly pushing the abilities of our dogs, they end up thinking that, Okay, well, I got it, and you're just making it more difficult.
00:09:02:09 - 00:09:20:01
Michael J. Accetta
That's no fun. It's kind of like a video game. If you defeat a level and the next level was always more difficult, you're eventually going to not want to continue playing that game because there is no enjoyment in beating that level because you're just going to get hit with something harder unless you're the type of person who really likes the challenge.
00:09:20:01 - 00:09:36:04
Michael J. Accetta
And there are dogs like that. But at the end of the day, what we want to do is actually pull back and make it easier. If you've ever played a video game and you've done like four or five levels and then the six level, is this really easy thing? And you're like, Oh, okay. And then you go to level seven and it's ten times harder.
00:09:36:04 - 00:10:07:03
Michael J. Accetta
That's exactly what they're doing. They're making it easier that boosting up your confidence and then they make it harder so you can definitely do that with your dog. And that is something you should emulate with your dog, especially in this exercise. My dog's lying next to me. I'm going to reward them a whole bunch. Then I'm going to stop for a second add some time, reward them at some time, reward them, add some time, reward them, then immediately reward them again and then add more time I want to slowly build up how long they're willing to wait in order to get the reward.
00:10:08:04 - 00:10:28:01
Michael J. Accetta
If I can do that, I make it easier for myself to enjoy my dinner and easier for my dog to be relaxed. Right? The harder it is for them to understand what they're doing, the less likely they're going to do it longer. What I mean by that, the confidence goes down. They go, Okay, and understand why I'm still here.
00:10:28:05 - 00:10:46:11
Michael J. Accetta
But someone dropped chicken on the floor or turkey on the floor, so I'm going to go get that. Now, if that happens, what's your backup plan? Right. You've got to be able to get your dog back. That's why I mentioned the leash earlier. Whether it's on a harness or a collar, at least you have something to control them in the event that they jump toward something.
00:10:47:02 - 00:11:05:12
Michael J. Accetta
You might even want to position yourself far enough away from everybody so that if they drop food, it doesn't become a problem. No notice when, say, when they drop food, you could be perfect. You could be perfect. But in the situation we're talking about, we're having Thanksgiving dinner. People get messy, people get sloppy, they're all over the place, right?
00:11:06:02 - 00:11:26:01
Michael J. Accetta
You go to eat and you just drop it on your lap and then you kind of brush up on the floor because maybe you don't have a dog or maybe you do have a dog in your dog or that person's dog we're talking about. They're used to letting their dog eat all of the food. But as I mentioned earlier, there are foods that your dog cannot eat that are very popular during Thanksgiving very popular.
00:11:26:01 - 00:11:50:03
Michael J. Accetta
And there are foods at your dog, Kenny. Okay. Again, there's a whole list of I'm not going to go over there now, but mad at our canine dot com forward slash Thanksgiving manners has that list. It's a PDF Download. It has that list for you because there's a whole bunch of I mean, there's quite a lot that you would not think are unsafe or are safe to have so big takeaways here.
00:11:50:04 - 00:12:10:03
Michael J. Accetta
Big big takeaways. Number one, manage everything that you can if you can put your dog in a space where they can be more successful long term, do that. If you want to go through the process of training perfect this is might be the time to train I say might because it might be too much for your dog to handle and if it's too much, we want to have them put away.
00:12:10:11 - 00:12:29:11
Michael J. Accetta
If it's not too much and you're working on these things actively before we get to Thanksgiving dinner, then yeah, this is perfect. This is the time to train. Your dog has worked all this much, all this much. So your dog has worked this much for this moment. Okay, this is the moment that you need and you're probably not going to have unless you really have people over every weekend.
00:12:29:11 - 00:12:53:02
Michael J. Accetta
You're not going to have this many reps to play with. Okay, this is a perfect opportunity to do it. And then when you're having dinner, actively having dinner, you're going to be as relaxed as possible. You're going to reward your dog for being nice and relaxed. You can give them breaks by having them get up, or you can even do place and you mentioned this, you could have them go to a place if they know, please just understand the likelihood of them breaking the position.
00:12:53:02 - 00:13:16:14
Michael J. Accetta
If you haven't really practiced place that much with that level of distraction is very high. They are going to break place in order to get something that maybe they don't you don't see and they're going to go sneak and get it. And then you realize they're not on place anymore because you've been distracted, engaging in conversation with people and then they win, not necessarily win because they're not malicious, but they took the opportunity to go get a reward and it wasn't from you.
00:13:17:12 - 00:13:38:10
Michael J. Accetta
So what you might want to do is put them on place and then recall them to you every couple of minutes and send them back to place. You recall them to you, they get a treat, they go back to place. You toss a treat over to them, make it as easy as possible for them to succeed. A lot of rewards, a lot of praise, a lot of encouragement, because the situation that you're working in, depending on how many people you have, is very distracting.
00:13:39:05 - 00:13:59:09
Michael J. Accetta
The more distracting environment is the less likely our dog is to perform, unless they are used to working at that level. Of distraction. Okay. And then with guests, same thing when you're having them come over, if you can put them away, great. When it does come time to reintroduce them to the party, you got two options. Have a leash on them and control the way they're meeting.
00:13:59:09 - 00:14:18:01
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe they have to give PA first. Maybe they have to lay down and rollover first. Whatever it is to try to slow them down. You have to do that before they get to meet the person. And the alternative is to just let your dog go and see what happens. Now, if you're nervous that your dog is a big dog and going to take out grandma, then option two is not for you.
00:14:18:05 - 00:14:41:14
Michael J. Accetta
Option one is have them on a leash, have them controlled. If you have a tiny dog, nobody's going to step on the dog. And they're used to running up to people and just being happy and sniffing. Then you can just let them go. I would say a dog over £60 you should have on leash and have control over even though they might be wonderful now they've never jumped on anybody, especially if this is the first time you're having this many people over to your house.
00:14:42:03 - 00:14:52:06
Michael J. Accetta
This is the time to set them up for success. Don't wait for them to fail and then try to fix it later. Set them up to do everything right now and will make it ten times easier for you next time.
View all episodes
By Matador Canine Brilliance
5
88 ratings
The thanksgiving feast is almost upon us and that means that there are also bad behavior problems looming in the corner.
Stealing food, jumping on guests, barking at strangers in the neighborhood and so many more
Don't let your dog ruin this holiday season with their bad behavior. In today's episode, I go over how you can prepare yourself and your dog for the best Thanksgiving dinner you have ever had. No chaos, no stress, and certainly no visits to the hospital.
Here is the download I mentioned in the episode Thanksgiving Dog Etiquette E-book
https://www.matadork9.com/thanksgivingmanners
If you want to get started training before the big day, give me a call right away, and let's get started before it is too late!! https://www.matadork9.com/coaching
Episode Transcript
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:18:08
Michael J. Accetta
If you're nervous about your dog and what they're going to do during dinner, when guests come over and there's food all over the place and there's good smell in Turkey all over the place. What are you going to do That's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to go over the four things that you must have in place in order to have a successful and enjoyable Thanksgiving with the dog.
00:00:18:13 - 00:00:39:02
Michael J. Accetta
Okay. Now, the first thing we're going to talk about is management. This is crucial to have any type of enjoyment during the holiday season. If you cannot manage your dog's behavior, nothing is going to go right. If your dog is already well behaved, then you kind of already did management. You've you've done all the management ahead of time.
00:00:39:02 - 00:00:54:02
Michael J. Accetta
And that's led to a successful time right now. But we only got a couple of days until the big feast. If you want to call the big feast, we only got a couple of days until the big feast. And so right now is not necessarily the time to teach your dog anything new. Maybe you don't have the time for it.
00:00:54:03 - 00:01:11:08
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe your dog has never done any training and it's way too much to be putting on yourself and overwhelming yourself with right now. Instead, what we need to do is set up parameters and where a dog can be successful. What does that look like when people are coming into the house? We don't want to have the dog in the living room by the front door.
00:01:11:12 - 00:01:30:02
Michael J. Accetta
It's just going to create more chaos and more excitement. Someone's coming in. They're all over the place. And then our dog loses it and they run into the person. And now we have all this chaos over. Excitement leads to sometimes biting, sometimes playing too rough and nipping the person. Sometimes it can lead to urination and having our dog all over the floor.
00:01:30:09 - 00:01:50:03
Michael J. Accetta
That's not what you want when you're having guests come into your house for Thanksgiving. It's just not. You're adding more chaos. It'd be easier to say, Okay, I'm going to put my dog into the bedroom or into the bathroom. I'm going to wait for everyone to come over, and then I'm going to have my dog come out. Once everyone's there, the excitement of having them come through the door has now been eliminated.
00:01:50:13 - 00:02:05:14
Michael J. Accetta
Your dog is still going to be excited when they see the people that they miss and they love and they want to hang out with. But the level of excitement has changed. It's gone down simply because we haven't had them introduced right at the exciting point of coming into the door. So that's one way you could manage it.
00:02:06:08 - 00:02:20:00
Michael J. Accetta
The other way you can manage it is having gates up. So maybe your U.S. of a party house where the dog hangs out. And if people want to go hang out with the dog and they're good with them and they can be relaxed, then they can go play with the dog. Otherwise, the dog stays out of the picture while you have guests over.
00:02:20:14 - 00:02:35:05
Michael J. Accetta
Now, what about dinner when you actually sit down and you're trying to enjoy a meal? Well, I would either do it in one of two ways. One is kind of like having guests come over. We're going to put them to the side. Maybe we put them in the bedroom. We have gates set up, maybe we put them in the kitchen, whatever it may be.
00:02:35:12 - 00:02:54:08
Michael J. Accetta
I want to create some space and distance so that they can go relax over there. The alternative is to have one person. Usually the person who's the best with the dog was done training, maybe takes them out for walks the most, has the better relationship. They're going to be solely responsible for training the dog in that moment. Okay.
00:02:54:09 - 00:03:10:01
Michael J. Accetta
So when you sit down to eat, their focus is really on the dog. They're not going to converse with everybody as much. They're not going to be getting up and getting, you know, people's food or more drinks or whatever. They're going to sit in their spot and they're going to just focus on the dog. That's one of the best things you can do.
00:03:10:01 - 00:03:31:14
Michael J. Accetta
Have one person focused on the dog because not only do you stop the dog from doing bad behaviors, you're using that as an opportunity to train. You're having an opportunity to train the dog. Now, not everybody wants to do this. Some people are just, Okay, I'm gonna put the dog away, and that's totally fine. If you are not in the mode of training and you just want to enjoy having guests over, there's no problem with putting the dog in a space where they can enjoy themselves.
00:03:31:14 - 00:03:49:06
Michael J. Accetta
You give them something to do a puzzle, maybe put a movie on. And I know that sounds silly, but that's a little secret pack. Many dogs enjoy watching something, even if it's, you know, the National Geographic, where there's not much going on, and it's just nature going by as long as your dog is not barking and freaking out about it.
00:03:49:14 - 00:04:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
But if you give your dog something to do after the side, not only does it distract your dog for a little bit, but it gives you a little bit more peace. In many cases, you're like, Okay, my dog is completely excluded from the picture. They're just not in the picture. Right now. Okay, so that's the first thing you need to do to have a successful Thanksgiving.
00:04:07:06 - 00:04:31:05
Michael J. Accetta
You have to manage as much as you possibly can whenever your dog is in a situation where there's a potential for bad behavior to come up. We end up punishing them, which isn't good, right? So if I put my dog in a situation where guests are coming over and the guest walks in the door, my dog freaks out and they start jumping up on the person and I start yelling at him or the person starts yelling at him, I've just I've created this big problem.
00:04:32:00 - 00:04:54:05
Michael J. Accetta
Why not put my dog away when guests come over, make it easier for my guests to come in, for me to greet my guests, and easier for my dog to learn the right skills at the right time. This might just not be the right time. Okay, so we're moving on to number two. How would we actually introduce our dog to guests, whether you want to do it in the beginning, when people come over or you want to do it after the fact.
00:04:54:08 - 00:05:10:12
Michael J. Accetta
Let's talk about after the fact first. So we've managed the situation. We put our dog in the back room or off to, you know, the bedroom or the bathroom where maybe people come in, maybe ten, 15 minutes go by, maybe you wait an hour. Either way, depends on the dog. You've waited some time. Things have kind of settled down.
00:05:10:12 - 00:05:29:02
Michael J. Accetta
People are sitting chatting. You can either do it one of two ways you can bring the dog out. Just let them sniff and interact with people. Depends on your dog. If your dog is very high level of excitement, and they love these people, maybe it would be beneficial to have them on a leash and actually work through how you would want them to interact with people.
00:05:29:02 - 00:05:44:08
Michael J. Accetta
Do you want to walk your dog up? Have them sit patiently and then be told to go say hi? Depends on what your level of training is and what your objective is, what your goals are going to look like. So that might be the way you do it or you just ain't got the leash. Let them go out, sniff around many dogs.
00:05:44:08 - 00:06:06:01
Michael J. Accetta
That's totally fine. They come out, they go, Oh, there's people here, whatever. It doesn't really matter. I'm just going to sniff them and do my own thing. I have done both. My first dog Breezy, we ended up just letting her come out and she would sniff my other dog, Tommy, who loves people. We'd have him on a leash because we needed to control how he greeted somebody, especially during that training phase of teaching him, Hey, you cannot go up to everybody.
00:06:06:09 - 00:06:26:03
Michael J. Accetta
I'm going to stop you before we get to people. And when you do get to the person, then I'll let you go say hi. So it depends on the situation you're in, depend on what your goals are. But greeting people is going to be a very, very large portion of having guests over and the biggest potential problems. Okay.
00:06:27:06 - 00:06:47:12
Michael J. Accetta
Now, number three manners. During dinner, as I mentioned before, having somebody 100% locked in on your dog is going to be the easiest way. But what do they do? What does that person do at that time? Well, one, they should have treats to the dog, should be on a leash, doesn't have to be a collar or maybe just a harness and maybe you put a bed next to the person sitting down.
00:06:47:12 - 00:07:05:14
Michael J. Accetta
So if I'm sitting here, I'd have my dog right next to me. I would get to eat my food and maybe I have a mason jar on the table of treats like. Right. I don't have to give them food scraps. And in fact, one of the big parts of Thanksgiving, the fourth thing we talk about is the foods that are safe and not safe to eat.
00:07:06:02 - 00:07:25:10
Michael J. Accetta
Okay, so there are plenty of foods that your dog can eat from Thanksgiving, but there's a lot of foods that they really should not be eating. And I've actually created a PDF on all of those things. Which you can get at Matador Canine dot com forward slash Thanksgiving manners. It goes over all of this in more depth as well as that list of food your dog can and cannot eat.
00:07:25:11 - 00:07:52:02
Michael J. Accetta
Matador Canine Dot com forward slash Thanksgiving manners. Now back to what I was that you got a a jar mason jar of kibble or cheese or hotdog slices something super high value and all you do is slowly slip your dog a treat for laying down and being patient and waiting while you're having dinner. This is much easier said than done, especially if you've never done it before.
00:07:52:02 - 00:08:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
There's a lot of trading going on over and over and over and your dog's like, oh my God, this is fantastic. I love this. But you're like, I just want to eat my turkey. I just want to have some stuffing. And you run into this problem where you then just go to eat and you forget that you're supposed to be ruining your dog.
00:08:07:03 - 00:08:26:08
Michael J. Accetta
What happens then? Our dog gets up and they do something bad in order to remind you. They say, Hey, hey, hey, you were rewarding me. What happened right now, they don't actually say that in their brain. They're just trying something new. But that's how we can conceptualize it. We say, Hey, you know, you were rewarding me and you stop and I kind of want what you had, so I'm going to try something new.
00:08:26:10 - 00:08:42:09
Michael J. Accetta
But if you forget about me again, I'm going to get back up and I'm going to do something that you don't want me to do. And so we want to do is have this internal clock going, and at first it might be over 5 seconds, then we might expanding after five, ten treats to every 10 seconds. Then we might expand it a little again.
00:08:42:11 - 00:09:02:06
Michael J. Accetta
15 seconds 20 seconds. Then we might go back to 3 seconds. Why would I do that? Why would I go back and make it easier if my dog's getting better at it? Because I don't want my dog to think that it's always going to get harder. If we're constantly pushing the abilities of our dogs, they end up thinking that, Okay, well, I got it, and you're just making it more difficult.
00:09:02:09 - 00:09:20:01
Michael J. Accetta
That's no fun. It's kind of like a video game. If you defeat a level and the next level was always more difficult, you're eventually going to not want to continue playing that game because there is no enjoyment in beating that level because you're just going to get hit with something harder unless you're the type of person who really likes the challenge.
00:09:20:01 - 00:09:36:04
Michael J. Accetta
And there are dogs like that. But at the end of the day, what we want to do is actually pull back and make it easier. If you've ever played a video game and you've done like four or five levels and then the six level, is this really easy thing? And you're like, Oh, okay. And then you go to level seven and it's ten times harder.
00:09:36:04 - 00:10:07:03
Michael J. Accetta
That's exactly what they're doing. They're making it easier that boosting up your confidence and then they make it harder so you can definitely do that with your dog. And that is something you should emulate with your dog, especially in this exercise. My dog's lying next to me. I'm going to reward them a whole bunch. Then I'm going to stop for a second add some time, reward them at some time, reward them, add some time, reward them, then immediately reward them again and then add more time I want to slowly build up how long they're willing to wait in order to get the reward.
00:10:08:04 - 00:10:28:01
Michael J. Accetta
If I can do that, I make it easier for myself to enjoy my dinner and easier for my dog to be relaxed. Right? The harder it is for them to understand what they're doing, the less likely they're going to do it longer. What I mean by that, the confidence goes down. They go, Okay, and understand why I'm still here.
00:10:28:05 - 00:10:46:11
Michael J. Accetta
But someone dropped chicken on the floor or turkey on the floor, so I'm going to go get that. Now, if that happens, what's your backup plan? Right. You've got to be able to get your dog back. That's why I mentioned the leash earlier. Whether it's on a harness or a collar, at least you have something to control them in the event that they jump toward something.
00:10:47:02 - 00:11:05:12
Michael J. Accetta
You might even want to position yourself far enough away from everybody so that if they drop food, it doesn't become a problem. No notice when, say, when they drop food, you could be perfect. You could be perfect. But in the situation we're talking about, we're having Thanksgiving dinner. People get messy, people get sloppy, they're all over the place, right?
00:11:06:02 - 00:11:26:01
Michael J. Accetta
You go to eat and you just drop it on your lap and then you kind of brush up on the floor because maybe you don't have a dog or maybe you do have a dog in your dog or that person's dog we're talking about. They're used to letting their dog eat all of the food. But as I mentioned earlier, there are foods that your dog cannot eat that are very popular during Thanksgiving very popular.
00:11:26:01 - 00:11:50:03
Michael J. Accetta
And there are foods at your dog, Kenny. Okay. Again, there's a whole list of I'm not going to go over there now, but mad at our canine dot com forward slash Thanksgiving manners has that list. It's a PDF Download. It has that list for you because there's a whole bunch of I mean, there's quite a lot that you would not think are unsafe or are safe to have so big takeaways here.
00:11:50:04 - 00:12:10:03
Michael J. Accetta
Big big takeaways. Number one, manage everything that you can if you can put your dog in a space where they can be more successful long term, do that. If you want to go through the process of training perfect this is might be the time to train I say might because it might be too much for your dog to handle and if it's too much, we want to have them put away.
00:12:10:11 - 00:12:29:11
Michael J. Accetta
If it's not too much and you're working on these things actively before we get to Thanksgiving dinner, then yeah, this is perfect. This is the time to train. Your dog has worked all this much, all this much. So your dog has worked this much for this moment. Okay, this is the moment that you need and you're probably not going to have unless you really have people over every weekend.
00:12:29:11 - 00:12:53:02
Michael J. Accetta
You're not going to have this many reps to play with. Okay, this is a perfect opportunity to do it. And then when you're having dinner, actively having dinner, you're going to be as relaxed as possible. You're going to reward your dog for being nice and relaxed. You can give them breaks by having them get up, or you can even do place and you mentioned this, you could have them go to a place if they know, please just understand the likelihood of them breaking the position.
00:12:53:02 - 00:13:16:14
Michael J. Accetta
If you haven't really practiced place that much with that level of distraction is very high. They are going to break place in order to get something that maybe they don't you don't see and they're going to go sneak and get it. And then you realize they're not on place anymore because you've been distracted, engaging in conversation with people and then they win, not necessarily win because they're not malicious, but they took the opportunity to go get a reward and it wasn't from you.
00:13:17:12 - 00:13:38:10
Michael J. Accetta
So what you might want to do is put them on place and then recall them to you every couple of minutes and send them back to place. You recall them to you, they get a treat, they go back to place. You toss a treat over to them, make it as easy as possible for them to succeed. A lot of rewards, a lot of praise, a lot of encouragement, because the situation that you're working in, depending on how many people you have, is very distracting.
00:13:39:05 - 00:13:59:09
Michael J. Accetta
The more distracting environment is the less likely our dog is to perform, unless they are used to working at that level. Of distraction. Okay. And then with guests, same thing when you're having them come over, if you can put them away, great. When it does come time to reintroduce them to the party, you got two options. Have a leash on them and control the way they're meeting.
00:13:59:09 - 00:14:18:01
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe they have to give PA first. Maybe they have to lay down and rollover first. Whatever it is to try to slow them down. You have to do that before they get to meet the person. And the alternative is to just let your dog go and see what happens. Now, if you're nervous that your dog is a big dog and going to take out grandma, then option two is not for you.
00:14:18:05 - 00:14:41:14
Michael J. Accetta
Option one is have them on a leash, have them controlled. If you have a tiny dog, nobody's going to step on the dog. And they're used to running up to people and just being happy and sniffing. Then you can just let them go. I would say a dog over £60 you should have on leash and have control over even though they might be wonderful now they've never jumped on anybody, especially if this is the first time you're having this many people over to your house.
00:14:42:03 - 00:14:52:06
Michael J. Accetta
This is the time to set them up for success. Don't wait for them to fail and then try to fix it later. Set them up to do everything right now and will make it ten times easier for you next time.