The Bitey End of the Dog
A podcast dedicated to helping dogs with aggression issues. Michael Shikashio CDBC chats with experts from around the world on the topic of aggression in dogs!
The Bitey End of the Dog
Puppies! Puppies! Puppies! A Deep Dive into Socialization and Building Resiliency with Kathy Callahan
Kathy Callahan joins us for this episode to chat about the enriching world of puppy fostering, focusing on the critical aspects of puppy socialization and building resiliency. Her personal stories are filled with practical advice on setting up a positive environment to ensure puppies grow into well-adjusted dogs, making this episode a must-listen for anyone eager to foster and socialize a puppy effectively.
About Kathy:
Certified as a dog trainer (CPDT-KA) and a family dog mediator (FDM), Kathy Callahan specializes in puppies. She and her family have fostered more than 200 of them in the past decade, and her business, PupStart, is focused on puppyhood coaching.
Kathy’s the author of two books: the forthcoming Welcoming Your Puppy from Planet Dog (April 2024) and 101 Rescue Puppies: One Family’s Story of Fostering Dogs, Love, and Trust (2020). In addition, she writes monthly on training and behavior for the industry-leading publication Whole Dog Journal.
She recently released her latest book:
Old Dog, New Dog: A Guide to Supporting Your Aging Best Friend and Welcoming a New One.
A collaborative guide with respected trainer and behavior consultant, Helen St. Pierre!
Kathy lives in Alexandria, VA with her husband Tom. They’re technically in the empty-nest phase of parenting, but the house is still active and joyful thanks to the furry foster-fails: Mojo the German Shepherd mix, George the Great Pyrenees mix, Kreacher the Chow mix, and Mr. Bojangles, the tuxedo cat.
https://www.puppypicks.com/about-kathy
Limited time offer! The Aggression in Dogs Master Course and Expert Webinar Bundle! Only 50 will be made available.
https://aggressivedog.thinkific.com/bundles/the-aggression-in-dogs-master-course-and-expert-webinar-bundle-2024
Learn more about options for help for dogs with aggression here:
AggressiveDog.com
Learn more about our annual Aggression in Dogs Conference here:
The Aggression in Dogs Conference
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The Bitey End of the Dog Bonus Episodes
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Webinars, courses, and more!
I receive a ton of questions about puppies and aggression, so I thought what better way to dive into many of these puppy topics than with an expert? Kathy Callahan, a CPDT-KA and a family dog mediator, joins us for this episode. We talk about everything from proper socialization and I emphasize the word proper there to building resiliency and how we can work to avoid aggression. She and her family have fostered more than 200 puppies in the past decade and her business, pupstart, is focused on puppyhood coaching. Kathy is the author of two books Welcoming your Puppy from Planet Dog and 101 Rescue Puppies One Family's Story of Fostering Dogs Love and Trust. In addition, she writes monthly on training and behavior for the industry-leading publication Hall Dog Journal, and if you are enjoying the bitey end of the dog, you can support the podcast by going to aggressivedogcom, where there'sa variety of resources to learn more about helping dogs with aggression issues, including the upcoming Aggression and Dogs Conference happening from October 11th to 13th 2024 in Scottsdale, arizona, with both in-person and online options. You can also learn more about the Aggression and Dogs Master Course, which is the most comprehensive course available anywhere in the world for learning how to work with and help dogs with aggression issues. I also have a wide variety of webinars, upcoming courses, videos and articles, all from the foremost experts in training and behavior. We are your one-stop shop for all things related to aggression in dogs.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, welcome back to the Bitey End of the Dog. This week, we're going to be talking about puppies, everything puppies, and I've got a puppy expert with me this week. Kathy Callahan is joining us, and you know I like to have a lot of mix of both practitioners and scientists and academics on this show, and so Kathy is definitely in that practitioner side, with hands-on experience and well, more than 200 puppies in and out of her home over the years. So welcome to the show, kathy. Thank you, I'm delighted to be here, so I want to first jump in and ask you know, what got you into having all of these puppies come to your home? How do you end up with so many puppies in and out?
Speaker 2:Right, you're a crazy hoarder. What's going on? So these are foster puppies. These are through a rescue organization and we started about a decade ago and, like so many people who get into fostering, we did it because we had lost a dog and we weren't ready to add. You know, we've always had dogs and we weren't ready to add another one to our pack because we were too heartbroken. So somebody suggested fostering and of course we had the normal fears that every dog lover does. How do you foster? How would you give them up? I could never do that. Blah, blah, blah. So I asked my contact for dogs. I wouldn't like so, since we are a family of at the time the kids were 15 and 12, and we are a family of big dog people and so they gave us two little Boston Terrier nine-week-old type puppies and we loved them, and so that turns out that that isn't the trick.
Speaker 2:It turns out what we've learned 225 puppies in is that we love them all, but we have learned to happily say goodbye. In the beginning I used to cry all the time the night before just thinking what a betrayal They've come in here. They were unsettled on their way here and they went through trauma. Then they got to our house, they got all healed and now we're going to hand them over. Now I'm so fine with it, because what happens is three days later you start to get the photos from the people and this puppy is ensconced in their family, looking for all the world like that's absolutely where they're supposed to be. So it occurs to you ah, you really are just the way station. So it's very rewarding work.
Speaker 2:We did it to get us through a little hard, emotional moment, but as soon as we started doing it we just realized it's incredibly rewarding, both from I mean, I think in the beginning we were in it for the dogs. We wanted to help these dogs who were in a rough spot. But after working with all these families who had then adopt the dogs, and you see how happy they get and what it brings to their lives, and you see stuff unfolding that you couldn't have imagined, you start to do it for the people too. The whole thing has become tremendously rewarding and it's also just an incredibly positive window on the world. You know, when you're raising kids, it's really nice to have a little avenue in your very household to seeing good happening in the world, and so that's really what's been happening for a decade here, and it did lead to me becoming a dog trainer, but it all did start with just taking in these puppies.
Speaker 1:Your story is very similar to mine, because that's how I started fostering and I was going to ask you what your setup looks like your house and your home area because when you foster that many your house starts to take on a different life. No, it really does.
Speaker 2:And I think what you're really thinking when you ask that is your house starts to take on a different smell. Is that what you're thinking?
Speaker 2:But, I promise you it's not true. I have systems, and so I do feel like this house is incredibly well designed for this very thing. So we always have our own dogs, two or three adults that are a giant part of our fostering. They are incredible. With the fosters, there's a grounded group that just takes these dogs and communicates in five minutes no, no, no, it's good, you're good here. Something that would have taken me a week. But my dogs are so good, they know what this is and they pull them in, and I know that that's why it's so easy for us to be successful with this.
Speaker 2:But originally, our puppy setup because I quickly found that my sweet spot was the moms, the nursing moms and litters. I definitely didn't know what I was doing when I took the first one in, but, boy, we loved it so much. And so we have a rec room. It's a finished rec room with a nice gas fireplace and a big TV and a door out to the backyard.
Speaker 2:So for the first many years that has been the puppy den, and so what's lovely is all of that can stay down there, and then, when it's time to mix everybody up, we can do that as we wish to, but it isn't just all together, but what's interesting is right now, as we speak, I have seven four-week-olds who were born here and their mama, and we have switched things up and I now have them in the dining room, and that's because the girls are gone. Now the girls are in their 20s, they're not here anymore. We have more space and I want these puppies to have more exposure to daily life now, and the more I've learned, of course, over time, the more important I know that really is, and it's just easier for me if we are all on the same level. So, frankly, these guys were born in my dining room, they still are in my dining room and now it's time for field trips, so we go to the family room and today we might even go outside later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you were just talking about that back door to the yard. That's probably the most important asset you can have when fostering Critical that open door to the fenced-in backyard you could just pop open and then I'll go here 10 or 12 wasters. You got it. You got it. That's really it.
Speaker 2:That's really a quick access to the outdoors is going to lessen your trauma and this is partly what I love to talk about with puppies is that you set yourself up right. With the right setup, everything is easier, even having an extra seven dogs in your house.
Speaker 1:Definitely, definitely. Now you mentioned, some of these puppies are born in your home and some, I I'm assuming, come in as litters already. So tell me more about that in terms of so in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yep, what the process is. So in the beginning I wasn't brave enough yet, and so I would just take maybe two at a time or one at a time, and then I started to learn how to do all this, and typically so. I experimented a little bit in the early years and I would kind of foster for different groups, but that process is slightly different with different groups, and so I'm really quite settled in with Homer Trails Animal Rescue, which is the group that I like to work with here, because we just know each other really well. We know how the system works. We evaluate the homes, the potential homes, the same way, and all that kind of stuff. I did foster the potential homes the same way, and all that kind of stuff I did foster.
Speaker 2:My first litter was actually for our local animal shelter, and they are wonderful.
Speaker 2:Except it's a public shelter and they have kind of a different rule about how all this works, and so I could not.
Speaker 2:I had to drop the puppies off there and then they adopted them out, which was just devastating for me. Instead, I love to have people come to my home, meet the puppies, we talk about the right fit, and then there's an application we talk about and then we hand them off and I can look them in the eye and then I'm also set up to help them through that transition, because I know this puppy really well and I can help them assess what's going on in their home as that puppy transitions, whereas the one with the shelter wasn't able to do that because that's just their rule. But that's when my husband talked me off the ledge and was like you know what you got? To trust the puppy. And that is really the truth. If you do a great job with that puppy in your house, take a deep breath and trust the puppy, because that puppy is going to wiggle their way in to the heart of that owner and good things are going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in your book you talk about this concept or this label of the kidnapped puppy and it kind of made me thinking about just what you're talking about there is helping them transition. You know because I talk about that same concept a lot, where somebody rescues a dog, like from a shelter or another country, and they're flying them back just how foreign that can be. So talk more about that and some of the things you can help these puppies transition over to different environments.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I think part of the reason that I can see just how foreign the new home is for that puppy when that puppy's eight weeks old and he goes into the new owner. The reason I'm so aware of just how shocking it is is because I've just been living with that puppy for eight weeks and I know that 24 seven that puppy has been snuggling with its litter mates, doing all this doggy stuff biting, chewing, jumping, digging, if they can, within a leap of their mom and all their litter mates. Then someone is very excited, someone who's been possibly planning this for six months. You know the puppy doesn't know this is going to happen. They come in, they swoop him in, they take him home, pop him in a crate. He's alone for the first time he's ever been alone in his life and now sometimes that his days are filled with no's because people are so worried about doing things the right way and we can't let the puppy learn all this bad stuff. So the puppy has left this warm scrum of his litter mates and suddenly is in this new world where he's in trouble all the time. So I work with people at the beginning of their puppy journey and often they come to me and part of what I want to do with this new book is put the beginning of their puppy journey, and often they come to me and part of what I want to do with this new book is put the joy back in puppyhood, because so often an alarming percentage of new puppy owners are miserable within a few weeks and it just doesn't have to be that way. And they call me and they will say, sometimes in a whisper, I think this is a mistake. And they will talk about the peeing and the chewing and the biting and everyone's miserable and fighting in their house. So they'll call me over for a consult and they will you know this. They get out their notebook and their pen and they're ready to write down all the expert tips and tricks that are going to it's going to make puppyhood exactly how it was supposed to be.
Speaker 2:And I do have tips and tricks, but I tell them none of them will work for you right now because you have to have the right mindset first. So I tell them there's only one thing I want you to write down and that is this is a baby I kidnapped from another planet and nobody likes to hear that because that sounds super sad. But the reason I use that metaphor is because once you ponder it, you can't unthink it and if you keep the empathy that stems from that thought with you as you deal with that puppy every day, you're going to automatically start doing the right stuff. And yes, it helps to have all the official tips and tricks and approaches and techniques and I've got them in my book and everybody else has them in their book. But if you don't also carry with you that empathy, nothing's going to work right. And, conversely, if you actually only have that empathy, you're going to be pretty empowered to make a lot of the right decisions as you go through this.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I don't love about a lot of the books on the market is how prescriptive and directive they are. You have to do it this way. This is the only way you have to do this. But I mean, after working with all these puppies, you know purebreds and not purebreds, and all ages and all these families and all different kinds of dynamic and different households. Guess what it's going to look different in every household. Each puppy's an individual. All these people are different and I feel like when they struggle to follow the directions in somebody's book, they're going to feel overwhelmed and like they're behind the eight ball all the time and it's not looking like that in my house. And what I want to do is have a lighter touch on all this and trust them to think about.
Speaker 2:Just step back for a sec. Why is that puppy crying? So you know the puppy's crying in the crate and if you read the books it says, you know it might say all these things to do about that. You know, maybe you're going to shake the can of pennies to shut them up. Maybe you're going to, you know, leave them in there. You better leave them in there.
Speaker 2:If you let them out, you're just going to teach them to dominate you and tell you what to do all day. And instead, if you just think about oh hang on, he's never been alone before, what are you going to do? And I don't have a number one answer, but I have about five different answers that you could do. You could bring him in bed with you. You could put a carrier in bed with you. You could put the crate to the side of your bed. You could sleep out on the couch with your puppy in the pen right next to you. I mean you could do a million different things and you have to do what works for you. But if you are working from the concept of empathy and just wonder, I want you to wonder what your puppy is thinking and feeling, and if you wonder enough, you're going to get to a good answer.
Speaker 1:That is such an excellent analogy because it also has me thinking about. You know, if we're looking at genetics and epigenetics and we're looking at dogs that might be your puppies that are maybe more fearful and a person's not, they don't have the right information. Maybe that dog is fearful and having issues, maybe they're in their crate, they're screaming and that somebody is attributing that to something else you know, like dominance, or you know all these really awful myths that can happen. Is that the treatment that that poor puppy is going to get and how detrimental it can be at that critical developmental stage is so, so important to talk about, I think, and so I love that you use that analogy.
Speaker 2:I think that's right and it's heartbreaking and my heart. Here's the thing. I have a lot of empathy for the humans going through this and the puppy going through this and I just feel like they get into a bad cycle sometimes and it just doesn't need to be that way and part of it is, I think, new puppy owners kind of like a lot of your aggression owner. Folks start to panic a little bit. Things aren't going quite the way they imagine. The puppy is peeing everywhere and biting the kids and seems crazy and all this kind of stuff and they start to panic and then they go to Dr Google and they find that they should be being more authoritative or doing all this stuff. Then that poor puppy just gets exactly the opposite of what he might have needed in that. So I really feel for the people who panic, thinking things are going wrong. The clock is ticking, things are going wrong, shoot, I want this to go right with my puppy. And then they reach for the wrong tools or the wrong professionals because they're panicking and it just doesn't have to be that way. It is so often with puppies and truly I don't care what your breed is, so really I have had all these breeds.
Speaker 2:Setup is everything. Setup and anticipation, you know, if you can. So there's two things. So we've got this puppy from who's been kidnapped, and so we need to think about planet dog and we need to think about planet human right. So I think about this a little bit like a third grade boy who's stuck behind a desk in school and he hasn't had recess, so he's struggling to. He doesn't want to listen to the teacher because this is unnatural, to be sitting still all day. Send him outside for recess, give him what he needs. Then he comes back in and in the afternoon he's a little better able to listen to what he's supposed to be absorbing. And I just want people to think about their life with a puppy the same way. So first set up the puppy so some planet dog needs are being met. Has your dog had a chance to be a dog today? I mean, so many puppies are just stuck in a crate and taken outside for a dumb 20-minute walk where they're not allowed to sniff and they're pulled along and then they're stuffed back in the crate and it's just they're not getting to be a dog, and so that shows up in all sorts of bitey behavior and whining and crying and all sorts of stuff, and if, instead, you make sure that that puppy gets some canine playtime and gets plenty of sniffing and maybe gets to be outside digging around a little bit, then you come in. So meet those planet dog needs first. Then set up your household so that the puppy is able to learn lessons, and what I find is you need a puppy apartment.
Speaker 2:What I find is people tend to go too big or too small when they do a puppy setup. I think that you need the Goldilocks solution right in the middle there, because what people tend to do is that they, I think, before they get the puppy, they picture they set up this little pen. It's a little circle and they love the idea that the puppy chaos will be contained to this little pen and so that's just going to be perfect. Well, they get the puppy and they put the puppy in the pen and what does the puppy do? The puppy is lonely and the puppy cries all the time and you humans don't feel like going into the pen because it's weird and small in there. And when you go in this puppy who has been lonely and has been taken from his littermates and is bored and isn't getting to play. The puppy is too much, is too aroused, does bite you, does jump all over you, so it's unpleasant. So you leave then the puppy's alone again. So that situation doesn't work great. The other situation is people don't limit the puppy space at all, which is a total disaster, because then of course you're peeing all over and you didn't. I can't tell you how many people have told me oh my gosh, yes, I think he's almost potty trained. We haven't had any accidents, and I'm like uh-huh, uh-huh, you just don't see it. It's right behind the couch and you have no idea Anyway. So what I love is when people will set up basically a room, get your kitchen, whether it's wherever you want to hang out, and you're going to have to commit, you know, for these months you're going to spend a lot of time in this space. But the thing is you don't want the puppy separated from you. That's a recipe for disaster. The puppy can't learn how to be with you in your life the way you want him if he is separated in a different pen and you just pull him out on occasion.
Speaker 2:I have a great client right now who has she has a new golden retriever. It's the first dog they've had as a family and there's like a seven-year-old boy, a five-year-old boy and a one-year-old boy, and so she was going to put the puppy in the corner in the little, in the little pen, and I was like, okay, that's just not, that's not. Puppy's going to cry all the time and the boys aren't going to be able to get in there. And she has a beautiful open plan kitchen or open plan whole house. So she's like I don't know how else we'd do it. I'm like, no, no, no, we can do it. You would be amazed, the products are on the market. And she was like, well, I don't know, definitely hesitating, didn't want her beautiful house ruined by you know gates and stuff. So I showed up at her house. I was like, look, we're just going to, I'll drop them off on your porch and you can use them or not use them for an hour or whatever. And so I showed up and just walked them into her house and put them up where I would put them, which essentially bisected her whole thing. And she's charming, I promise you we're friends. But she was like, okay, as soon as it was in operation for 48 hours, she was like, oh, my Lord, this is the answer Because what that management allows you to do is intentionally interact with your puppy, and so you've got that safety barrier there.
Speaker 2:So when the kids come home from school and barrel through the front door, the puppy doesn't get to run over in that very exciting moment and jump up on them and learn all sorts of bad patterns that we don't want. Instead, they come in, they can do their own chaos. Maybe the puppy is behind that gate, maybe that's exactly when they get a frozen topple, and so the kids dump their backpack, put the stuff away, say hi to mom, change their clothes. Now we're ready to interact with the puppy. Now they go over to the puppy and now the kids who we have taught to play, find it, and just a rudimentary, maybe a little sit. The kids go up to that gate and start doing find it, the puppy sits for them. Now we've got a controlled kind of pattern, sort of interaction. Now that there's been that moment of greeting, now they can go through the gate and the puppy isn't going to be all over them. So setup can make all the difference. And now, so they don't have this chaotic family life even though they have a one-year-old and a five-year-old and a seven-year-old boy, things are actually pretty routine.
Speaker 2:And here's the other huge thing about that kind of setup is that because that's in their kitchen, when they hang out there all the time, the puppy is with them all the time.
Speaker 2:So what that means is the puppy gets used to just hanging, and so if instead your puppy is behind a pen, then every time your puppy sees you it's a giant event, high arousal jumping biting all over you.
Speaker 2:If instead the puppy's just in the kitchen and you're often in the kitchen too and when you first come in you do that good little find it kind of pattern, sort of game thing, then you walk in, then he's ready, she, he is ready to chill out a little bit, gets used to lying on the floor while you're hanging around. This is what everyone wants of their dog. Everyone wants their dog to lie around at their feet while they're just. They just want them to keep them company, and if you don't set it up right, they can't practice that behavior of calmly lying around, where you can then reward them for that, so you can be sitting around. Kids are doing the homework at the table. The puppy starts to get you interact with them a little bit and then you stop. You do homework, puppy lies down. That's when you say, oh, good job, good job. It just sets you up for success if you just do that rudimentary little set up thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that because it's also providing the opportunities to give reinforcement to that puppy, you know, because it's what happens a lot and not a lot. But I've seen this in so many of my cases where the puppy is contained to the bedroom, let's have the crate in the bedroom and that's where the puppy's going to stay all day and they get let out to, like you were mentioning, and just that very limited schedule. So it's very restrictive. You know, and it also had me thinking too, as you had mentioned, like with your client or your friend, you know, is there's a market for really designer decorative gates and exercise sets, cause people don't want that black wire style or like the wood. Like you know, you go to Walmart and get a baby gate. They should be like a designer company because, trust me, people will buy that, because that's the one pushback you get.
Speaker 2:But there is. There is I mean, front gate has amazing stuff. I mean you can get beautiful stuff. It's going to cost you, but you can get beautiful stuff that you do not hate and also there's such a variety. I think this is one of the things that the service that we can provide with people is pushing them through that initial resistance, because, yeah, they're like, I don't want my house to be ugly and, first of all, it doesn't have to be ugly forever.
Speaker 2:It's just going to be a short time during puppyhood and it's going to make you, it's going to lessen the stress in your household. So much those gates. But there are great. I have every kind of gate. I have pressure treated gates that sit in doorways. I've got a bunch of the kind that you just lift up and move around. They're like an accordion fold. Those things are great for puppies because puppies can't quite knock them down yet.
Speaker 2:But allows you to do field trips Like. What I like people to do is treat the rest of the house as a field trip opportunity. So I do want them bringing their puppies all around the house to get used to the rest of the house. That's the beginning of making potty training a little more solid. Is that you first have to teach them. Well, we also live in this room. We also live in this room. But you got to time those visits and they happen right after they peed outside and then you do a field trip and you're going to go over to the dining room or the family room. But what makes that work is if you've got a little portable gate and you can settle. So now we're going to set on this room for a little while and that little gate, if you can move, it allows you to do that. So these little little things like having the right little gate in your house, oh my gosh, can make you. Your head doesn't have to spin like oh, where's he going now Shoot.
Speaker 2:He ran down the hallway and then he peed. You know Equipment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, equipment and the pushback we get as trainers, sometimes the same thing with, like muzzles people have. You know, when you use a standard black, you know rubber metal muzzle it can look ominous but you know it. Gates, I think, have the same, not the ominous effect, but people just don't like the. You know the look of it. So even if you can't buy it like if you, if you don't have the money to go get all these expensive, just get one, that's, you can paint yourself Non-toxic paint, but you know something you can get decorative, just like I suggest with muzzles.
Speaker 1:Go out and get the cheap duct tape at.
Speaker 2:Job Lot.
Speaker 1:And you can make a muzzle look really awesome with just colors and you know it's amazing.
Speaker 2:Do what you need to so that you will do the right thing for your dog. So if painting the thing does it for you, absolutely go do that have the kids paint it, there you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, just do it. Yeah, make it fun.
Speaker 2:And just understand this too shall pass Like. This is not the whole gate situation. This dramatic management situation doesn't have to be forever. Your house will get back to its previous glory at some point. But to lessen the stress in your household that can come with puppyhood, just accept it in the beginning. This is a transitory phase. It's going to be gone before you know it and you're going to miss it. And so roll up the carpets, put in the gates, be ready to manage, and then you can actually feel joyful about puppyhood because you've put a bunch of yeses in front of your dog.
Speaker 2:Kathy Sadeo talks about being a choice architect for your dog, and that just means you know design the situation so that the likelihood that your dog is going to do a thing you can then reward is very high. So if you do get those gates, get it all set up, guess what? Your puppy's going to chew on the bone instead of chewing on your carpet or the book that's on the table or whatever. Because you set it up right and you know so many people will come to me in the beginning of puppyhood because they want me to teach their dog the meaning of the word no, and they are very disappointed when I'm like, wow, you know what? I actually never say. No, I really don't. I set things up for a yes, and this is the biggest thing people can learn with puppies is it's all about you anticipating, so that's your job.
Speaker 2:Take those extra five minutes before you do a thing and think about okay, wait, how's the puppy probably gonna react to this? How can I set it up? Do I need to have something in the freezer? Do I have to have a top already? Do I have to just when people come in the door? Do I have to be putting behind the gate just for that? Do I need to be telling my daughter to take off that little fun ballet tutu that is screaming to be grabbed? I mean, think ahead. This is the thing, you know.
Speaker 2:Some things are really simple. As I'll walk in, I'll be like oh well, yeah, she can't wear dresses right now Because that dress as she's running through the room, that dress is a dangly toy. That is asking. And if she just had jeans on, that's not going to be happening is a dangly toy. That is asking. And if she just had Jean done, that's not going to be happening. Obviously, we want to work toward the puppy. Understanding that the kid has access to the ceramic jar that has the kibble in it and that that's the fastest way to get engagement is that the kid's going to run over there and then start playing find it and ping pong, and you got to teach that. But first is management, which means don't wear the jagged dress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the statement of how do you know somebody's fostered over 200 puppies without knowing they fostered over 200 puppies? That's just you know through experience, speaking to her.
Speaker 2:No, it's so true, there is so much stuff that I'll walk into a house and I'm like, and I'll just be like okay, we just need to do these 10 things and you're going to be totally fine, you know, but it's just, it's too much.
Speaker 2:I remember it reminds me of I went to college in New Hampshire and everyone else was an amazing skier and I had gone on like three stupid church ski trips in the Poconos and so when I would try to ski with them, they would be helpfully telling me all these things. You know what I'm supposed to be doing with my head and my shoulders and my, my poles and all stuff. And it was just too much stuff. It was just too much for me to absorb. But they, having been through all that experience, saw immediately oh wait, wait, wait. Here's your problem and that is puppyhood. There is so much stuff to absorb that way that can make it a whole bunch easier. And it is a lot to take in at first.
Speaker 2:And I would love it if people could, you know, take that in in a way that doesn't feel super stressful and understand that it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Here's the basic stuff we're going to do to set you up. Okay, you're going to be meeting planet dog needs and you're going to be teaching human ways and we're going to slowly move along together. But the number one thing is trust. You just pull this puppy in, this little kidnapped baby. You need to develop trust with this pup so this pup knows that you're his guide here and then you're going to be okay.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Now I want to talk more about the word trust and all the things we should be doing, but first we're going to hear a word from our sponsors and we'll be right back. Hey friends, it's me again and I hope you are enjoying this episode. Don't forget to join me for the fifth annual Aggression and Dogs Conference, either in person or online from Scottsdale, arizona, from October 11th to 13th 2024. This year's lineup includes many incredible speakers, including Dr Clive Wynn, dr Jessica Heckman, emma Parsons, sarah Colnice, dr Kelly Moffitt, dr Amy Cook and many more. Head on over to aggressivedogcom and click on the conference tab to learn more about the exciting agenda on everything from advanced concepts in dog body language to working with aggression in shelter environments, to genetic influences on behavior. Dr Aima Cook will be bringing her entertaining and energetic personality to the grand reception and cocktail party, which, by the way, will be live streamed as well as in person, and, as usual, you'll find a wonderful, kind, caring and supportive community at the conference, both in person and online. We also have some awesome conference swag for you to check out. This year's slogans that we have on all the sweatshirts, t-shirts, hats and more are Celebrating Dogs who Growl and new for this year. Muzzle Up Buttercup, which I really love.
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Speaker 1:All right, we're back here with Kathy Callahan. We've been chatting puppies and now we're going to get into some of the things we should be doing and continue on, and Kathy already gave us a bunch of great suggestions, and I want to talk more about the social aspects and avoiding the behavior problems we often see in so many of our cases. But first let's talk a little history here, because we've, as trainers and especially the trainers listening into the show right now probably have, especially if we've been around a long time have heard all kinds of different suggestions, and so let's talk about kind of the evolution of things. We, of course, see a lot of bad stuff out there on Dr Google, but what are some things that are still kind of pervasive, that you find maybe aren't as necessary anymore or could be even harmful? Let me give us some of the history on that.
Speaker 2:Yep, oh, it's so hard, because I do think people are trying their best when they run these classes, and sometimes, though, circumstances are such that what they are doing is not helping the puppies and is hurting them a little bit. I can go way back, though, and tell you about my first, when I was 12 and I got my first puppy. Of course, I begged for this puppy, and, as part of the deal, it was my job to take the dog to training class, and I was so excited. I was excited to have this dog, excited to go to class, and I went in there and there was this big man who basically tossed a choke chain on the dog and then told me to push down on his butt to get him to sit, and then stand on the leash to force him down into a down, and then, when we were doing recall, I was supposed to bellow and make my voice scarier and stuff. I was only 12, but I'm just looking at my puppy. He's not enjoying this, it's scary. He doesn't trust me anymore. He's like what happened to you? Oh, and the other thing was we were getting graded. Of course, we had to learn sit down, stay, come, heal, and it was very important that we learn these five things and that was going to mean we were going to succeed as owners. And I just remember the stress I felt during that class and I do think that that still happens sometimes is people go to class and they have this idea that they're going to okay, now the puppy's going to get trained. And they go to class and there's this big emphasis on learning these cues, you know, the sit down, stay, come, touch, whatever and that if you don't learn them perfectly, you guys are terrible together and you're doomed, you know, and there's just a lot of stress with that. So flash forward to now like an ideal class.
Speaker 2:Now I just feel like, yeah, I sure do teach sit, touch, downspin, all that kind of stuff I do, but I teach it. It's a fun bonding. But the whole point of that for me with puppies is developing that joint language that you have to use to get through your day and I want to teach that stuff to make the puppy's life easier here. Of course it makes my life easier as well if he's going to listen when I say sit, but it's also opening up that door to the puppy to have him understand. Oh wait, my behavior changes things. I can actually get good stuff, the stuff that I want, by behaving in a certain way, and that's what was missing from that long ago training class where it was kind of all get with the programmer else. Now I want the training to open that door for the puppy where he's like, oh, hang on, this whole thing of listening to words from my human, that's what works here on this planet, and I'm going to start doing that just this morning.
Speaker 2:So I've got these puppies who are on Thursday they'll be five weeks old, so they're in a pen. They're in the pen when they sleep and stuff, but now it's time for adventure. So they do get to go to the next room when they wake up. So this morning I went to the edge of the pen and it was time to take them out to their fun adventure, land in the next room and I wait for the sitting. And so here's the thing the normal dog thing to do is jumping, jumping, jumping, biting, biting, jumping, jumping.
Speaker 2:And if I didn't do the thing that I recommend to my clients, which is think about what's going to happen when I go to the edge of the pen, they're going to jump and try to get out. So I have to have a plan for that. What am I going to do? I'm going to grab the one who is jumping at me? Nope, so I sit there and I wait.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm not directive. I wait for them to figure it out. So somebody sits and makes eye contact. That's the one that gets the one, two, three wee. Here we go into the other room, and so what will happen if I talk to you a week from today? What will be happening by then is that all seven puppies the second I come to the edge of that pen will be sitting because they've learned the critical lesson that their behavior. There's some stuff that is prized in this human world and they can learn it and then they can get the good stuff. So I mean that to me, that's what I want training to feel like. I want a class to feel like teaching them that their behaviors can open doors for them and make their life great and consequently, obviously, it makes it great for the humans as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you mentioned something else in your book too, about the feeling of safety or making sure there's this safety aspect before actually doing any training. So talk more about that. But also, let's get back to the history a little bit, because there's some things that may still be done in puppy classes, like pass the puppy. So if we're focusing on social, like the socialization aspects we hear about socialization over and over and over with puppies and we try to do some things in the name of socialization, that actually could be problematic, which ties into the whole rule of making sure the puppy feels safer. So talk us through that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right, so truly the number one thing, and this is something that is just not taught at all, and it's crazy that this is an omission. But think about your kidnapped baby. What do they need to feel Safe? What are they doing here? They're mystified. What's happening here? They don't know anything. The most critical thing for you to establish is that you are that puppy's rock, or, as Kim Brophy says, they can hang their hat on you. But when I use that phrase, my kids who are in their 20s are like what does that mean?
Speaker 1:So I tend to not use Kim's phrase, even though Kim is totally right. We're all aging ourselves now, so anyway.
Speaker 2:Sorry, kim, I know. So it is about trust, though, the number one thing and this is if you gain your puppy's trust and your puppy feels confident near you, because just remember how unsettled your puppy is. This is the thing People don't think about, that People are so in their own heads when they get a puppy that all they're thinking is, oh my gosh, my life has been turned upside down, and they feel kind of irritated and they're like this crazy puppy, blah, blah, blah. Well, nope, sit back for a sec. Use your empathy. Think about how confused that puppy is. That puppy needs to feel OK. Confuse that puppy is, that puppy needs to feel okay. So that means you need to teach safety. So how do you teach safety? And it's felt safety. So this is.
Speaker 2:You know the ethologists will talk about the important. You know Patricia McConnell and Kim Brophy will talk about how important felt safety is versus actual safety. Of course, we know our puppy is safe, but our puppy does not. And a critical thing for all animals ask any ethologist is the feeling of safety. It's like the number one thing. Everything else comes after that, even food and water and stuff. Felt safety is number one. So you need to work hard at that, even though you don't think you have to and no one has told you that that is the number one thing you have to think about. So how do you do that? And that it's kind of a two-pronged thing. The first is body language. You need to know how to read your puppy. How's your puppy feeling? You don't know. You have to pay attention to that, to know how to keep your puppy feeling safe. Because if you don't even know enough to look about whether your puppy feels okay, then you can't do this very well. So study up on body language, figure out what that means. It's not brain surgery. It does take. Obviously you get much, much, much, much better at it as time goes on. But basically, is your puppy leaning into this experience or shrinking away? Pay attention, respect that.
Speaker 2:And that also means stopping with all the manhandling. You know we have a tendency to swooping. Pick up the puppy, dangle him in the air, look him in the eyes he's so cute. Hand him off to the other kid and then the other kid and pull him along. He's not walking on the leash. Why isn't he walking? Come on, all dogs like a walk. We pull him off. We do a lot of manhandling and that does not build your relationship. So you need to slow your roll. You need to stop.
Speaker 2:Sure, eventually your puppy's going to want to be in your lap and is going to want to be held by you, but right now you're just a weird stranger. So sit down on the floor. Learn how to entice your puppy, learn how to use toys, learn how to play. This is the other thing that like play, get down, be goofy, act like a puppy. You will see another side of your puppy emerge, the second you do that. So that's one way to do.
Speaker 2:Safety is body language and paying attention and respecting their autonomy. And the other part is being consistent and having patterns and stuff. Have a routine. Have the puppy understand how it's going to be when you come toward them. What's it going to be like when you feed them, what door do we go out? Make routines throughout your day. Have lots of patterns. Leslie McDevitt obviously has all those pattern games that I just live by. That stuff is great for building confidence.
Speaker 2:Patterns we're all wired to all animals. Again, this is ethology. All animals are wired to learn by patterns because it's the most efficient way to go through your life. So if puppies can watch what's happening, understand oh wait, I know what happens now when they sit by the TV. That means I get to go sit on the floor here. Phew, okay, this is predictable Lessens their stress dramatically if they know what it's going to be.
Speaker 2:If you're having guests come over, if you have them all automatically go sit on this bench first and that they don't come over to the puppy, then your puppy can start feeling terrific about having guests over, because they're like I know how this goes. They go and they sit on that bench and then I come over to them and then, if I want to, I can get a treat. Like you have to set things up so that they can begin predicting this perplexing world for them. So that's the biggest part of safety, predictability and consistency, and of course, that also means that you aren't freaking out. So then this is difficult and I do have empathy for the owners as well, but, like, if you're going to be your puppy's rock, you need to think things through so that things go well from your point of view and you aren't erupting with oh no, oh, don't go over there.
Speaker 2:Because every time you're doing that kind of response to the chewed shoe which was your fault or the pee on the ground which was your fault, and I'm sorry. I don't mean I am empathetic about it, but it is our fault, like as a human, it is our fault. Of course they don't know how to do that. Of course a shoe is what they're going to chew, I mean. So if you let yourself erupt and be scary to your puppy, you have just taken your relationship back. And it does matter, felt, safety matters. You have to be your puppy's rock so that your puppy, once you establish that you can do anything. But once your puppy truly trusts you, boy, is everything else easy to teach.
Speaker 2:So back to the puppy lessons. So puppy classes tend to not talk about that at all. And a lot of puppy classes and I know it's hard, you know, if you're trying to have a business and you're trying to have a group class and people sign up, it's difficult to do this right because some puppies will come into that class and think it's super fun and other puppies will be terrified. And you know, old fashioned puppy classes didn't even bother with worrying about how the puppy's feeling about that and one of the things that we used to do in the name of socialization. So many terrible things happen in the name of socialization. So it was thought that it's a good idea to get your puppy exposed to different people, and so you'd sit around in a circle and play, pass the puppy. So you take your puppy and you pass it to the person next to you who holds on with an iron grip, and then passes it to the next stranger who holds it on with an iron grip and pass it around, and it's just all of that again is no agency for your puppy. Your puppy isn't making any of those choices, and so socialization to work has to feel positive for your puppy, and there's just this terrible thing that has happened where people have become aware that socialization is important. There is a bunch of science now that does show that there is that critical, sensitive period. Yo, is it 12 weeks? Is it 16 weeks? We don't know. Does it vary by breed? We don't know. But there certainly is enough research that shows it's worth it to think about exposing your puppy to novelty in that time, and so that is important.
Speaker 2:You want to teach your puppy? Hey, the world's filled with all sorts of stuff, but guess what it mostly turns out. Okay, that is what you want to teach your puppy, but unfortunately, what people have learned because it's complicated is it's really important. Here's the checklist. Here are all the things your puppy has to see. You have to do 100 people in 100 days and you have to make sure that you see a car and a bus and a truck and a scooter. And so what happens is people will be efficient and take their puppy to the parade, which is just a disaster. Because what happens is it's not just about exposure, it is about how the puppy is feeling about that thing. And so what you want to do is, yes, offer exposure, but again, you're looking at body language, the distance has to be right, the intensity has to be right, and then you're paying attention. Is your puppy leaning in? Did your puppy startle and recover?
Speaker 2:So if you're taking your puppy on a walk and you deliberately pick a time where you're going to see some stuff, you don't want to pick for that puppy's first walk 3 pm, when school just let out and all the kids are coming home and they're all going to swarm him and some are going to be on bikes and scooters and it's not true that. Oh great, now he's going to be okay with bikes and scooters and kids. Quite likely he is now not going to be okay with bikes and scooters and kids. Instead, you pick 10 am, where the preschooler next door is not in school, and then you get a little scooter out and you keep it far enough away that your puppy then takes a look, is interested and then maybe indicates that he's interested in walking over Great, walk on over and you can pair a treat with his choice to walk over. You are not going to lure him over with a treat.
Speaker 2:This is another thing that happens and it's so well-intentioned and my heart breaks for owners who feel the ticking clock of socialization and then just kind of have it half right. And this is why I really want trainers to jump in. The thing that trainers should offer is the first walk. Trainers should get up and running on how to do this right and help model for owners how to do that first walk. So go down your street. How's your puppy doing? Let the puppy sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. Then you be fun and you Get your puppy coming towards you. But with your little dancey steps and your little voice and fun little treats on the ground, find it, find it, find it that keeps you going forward and then a car's coming, so you make sure that you're not where the car's going to whoosh right by. Instead, maybe walk into the lawn about five feet, 10 feet, put your body between the puppy and the car and then use the Mr Rogers hack. Use Kim Burfrey's Mr Rogers hack. Oh, I see a car coming. I see a car coming.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile you're shielding a little bit, but you're allowing that puppy to gather data. This is what I think is wrong with a lot of the socialization approaches, is people feel like there has to be all this interaction. No, observation is fantastic. Let your puppy gather data. Remember, they don't read, they don't watch TV, they don't know anything, and so you need to put them in a position where they can see the world. But it just has to be right at the right spot and you have to do what you can to make the intensity level of that experience just fine for that puppy.
Speaker 2:And I know, as I'm talking, it's sounding really complicated and I hate that it's sounding complicated, but it's really not. Dial it back to empathy. Dial it back to your kidnapped puppy. How would you feel if you were that puppy? Make it simpler, make it not quite as scary, not as loud, not as close, not as overwhelming, and then watch the puppy's body language. Was he fine? Maybe he's fine, and the people with golden retrievers are probably listening to me like what is wrong with her? Because, you know, some puppies are just ready to roll with everything and others are not, and, of course, even in a litter you will see a giant variation sometimes with that kind of stuff. And so just stay with the puppy who's right in front of you and introduce new things right at their level.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is that's super easy. You know, this is what I lean into with families who are feeling really overwhelmed by the idea of this. You know, put on a hat in your house, put on a backpack, walk through the room, carry a duffel bag that's filled with something, drop a book, play different music, do some jumping jacks and all of this, by the way, without terrifying your puppy. It's great if you have two people there to do that, so one is sitting with the puppy gauging how they're doing with this and the other person is just kind of introducing these new things. It doesn't have to be that big of a deal and it can be three minutes, but it's going to make a powerful impact on your puppy's ability to roll with it later when they see new stuff, because you have built the ability of that puppy to see something new, hear something new, smell something new and think well, it's another one of those new things. It always turns out okay and also, maybe mom has a treat for me now.
Speaker 1:And again you want to follow up.
Speaker 2:You don't want to lure your puppy into the scary thing Like this is something that people often do is they're like well, he's supposed to meet men, but he's a little nervous about men. So then they put, you know, ham on the man's knee. No, because then you're setting up your puppies in conflict now because your puppy really doesn't want to go over there but they really do want the ham, so they're in conflict. The result of that interaction can be them feeling even more disturbed by the side of a man, because that was an unpleasant kind of situation. Instead, hang out and chat with the guy. Keep him five feet from you, keep the puppy on the other side. You're running interference. Puppy can listen to your conversation and ideally after a few minutes, decide you know what? I want to go smell that guy. And then he smells the guy. Then you toss the ham right behind the dog, your puppy. So that's the retreat thing Treat, retreat. Puppy gets to go the other way and get the ham. Guess what? Now he's going to choose to go back to the guy without having felt conflict and stress.
Speaker 2:So another thing about the classes, though. I think you want to just talk about the things we do wrong. So one of the things is puppy play. So puppy play is actually my thing. I love puppy play, but boy is it hard to get right. And this is why I'm concerned when generic puppy classes offer puppy play, because often it just doesn't go well and it ends up making puppies more scared of other dogs instead of feeling more confident. So five years ago, when my puppy foster families kept saying I was like you know, when they're climbing they're like oh, so mouthy, he's so mouthy, he's just, oh, he's all over us. I'm like you need a puppy friend Like he. That's a really normal behavior and he needs an appropriate legal channel to do that kind of play. Your life is going to be so much easier if you just give them that outlet. Find a puppy on your street and I'll come over and we'll get it going. And it was just too hard. It was too hard. People are so busy and it was too hard for them to find that friend. So finally I was exasperated and I started Puppy Pals, which is play and learn socialization in my own yard.
Speaker 2:I used to teach preschool. I taught the twos in preschool and that was Tuesdays, thursdays, nine to 12. This is basically the same thing, only it's puppies. So I take puppies. I know well these are my clients. I match them up and I'm lucky I live in a very populated area so this is pretty easy to do. So I always have maybe 12 to 15 on my list and I send out a note on Sunday. I look at the weather. I'm like, okay, we're going to do Tuesday and Thursday this week. It's nine to 12. Who's interested? Then I get a list back of who's interested which day. And here's the key part I pick who comes, I look and I decide who's going to work that day and I don't have to fill all those spots. Here's the thing. This is not my moneymaker, this is my. I want this. This has to work well for them. It's so important. So there will be days that I only have three because I didn't have the right group to make six. But what happens over time is when I do that right, then I'm quickly up to six because they have the skills. So they build the skills with actual friends. And this is what is huge.
Speaker 2:You know, when you do these puppy classes, you sign up and you go on the Saturday and you go for an hour. Again, this is like a, it's a am exhausted afterward, like this is, and I have the help of my older dogs, who are amazing too, and so, and my yard is set up, I've got two sides so they can say hi through the fence, so we can do slow, appropriate greetings. I watch that body language the whole time. I only have one new one every time. So I've got some regulars who know the drill. Then the newbie can come in and size things up for a little while, maybe come in. Then, when they come in, there's a lot of distraction, there's a lot of you know, things are getting a little, maybe off kilter. Somebody's a little concerned. We're calling, coming in and away, we're running across, we are sitting for treats and then we're doing a big perimeter walk, we're sniffing, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing. So anyway, that stuff is magic.
Speaker 2:I wish every single trainer who could would offer this, because I can't even tell you the teary conversations I have with people afterward because they're like oh my God, this has changed everything. They end up wanting two times a week and they want to, they want it to continue forever. But it can't, because it's really only appropriate. I kick them out at about six months or so, but it creates. What the feedback I get from everyone is that it creates dogs who are extraordinarily solid with other dogs because they develop. They learn how to play with the chasers and the wrestlers and they learn how to play with the pointy ears and the floppy ears and they just become comfortable with a whole lot of different kinds of dogs and how they play and they stop overreacting.
Speaker 2:And this is the thing. When they first come in, you will see that they get nervous real quick. You know somebody rushes up to them and they're going to react in kind of a panicky. It's going to look aggressive. You know some people are like, oh what? I had some terrible dog, you know, and obviously that was my fault. I should have seen that coming right that second before. So I'm going to fend off that moment and fix that and then we're going to go and we're going to have a great time. We're going to build that relationship. Stick with it. And 90 minutes later those two are playing so beautifully and they become best friends. But you have to stick with it. Anyway, oh, at the Dogs in the City conference, when Laura Donaldson got up and who obviously is amazing, and she got up and she's like well, I'm not a fan of puppy play and I was like shoot because that's a big part of what I do.
Speaker 2:But I agree with her. I agree with her that it's tricky. I still want everyone to seek it out and I want trainers to try to offer it and try to offer it in whatever way you can Like. If you don't have the property for it, can you get your current clients to get together and can you offer a supervised puppy play session where you are getting in the middle and ideally that can become routine, because the magic is when they know each other and their friends and again, it's predictability that builds safety. So this is a predictable experience. They know what it's going to be like, they know these people, they know the setup. It's going to make them more generous of spirit because they don't feel nervous Like you can see dogs who feel more confident because they've been here shaking stuff off, just everything's fine with them, whereas on their first day if someone had leapt on them that way they might've freaked out. Now they view it as play because they understand and they also just feel solid here. Anyway, that kind of puppy play, if you can seek it out and find it, do everything in your power and if you are a trainer, try to offer that. I think a lot of trainers are afraid of puppy play. It seems too hard but if you can get it going it ends up being a lifesaver for those people.
Speaker 2:And again, what I want to do is empower people out of needing me. So my winter people I don't offer it over the winter because I don't have the right weather for it, but I've developed a text group between all my clients who I've had private consults with. They are now best friends. I can't even tell you how busy that text group is. They did not know each other before but I pulled them together and we shared puppy stories. We have done little get togethers.
Speaker 2:You know I've supervised these two here and those three there. Now they are fully able to schedule their own dates with each other at their own houses, without me. They will send me a video and be like wait, this looks weird, is this okay? But that's my vision, for I just want people doing that. I want to get them started so they know how to do it, because they're much happier puppy people when they have dogs who have scratched that again, that planet dog. It's recess for the third grade boy. You give them a play date like that and they're going to come home and they are actually going to be ready to learn from you appropriately and to pay attention to your little training sessions and stuff.
Speaker 1:I love all of this because it's just, you know, because you're talking about community too. You're talking about, you know, bringing the community together and that's that also allows you to have this pool of resources for these puppies. And kind of on that note, I wanted to ask you about, you know, you mentioned your work with people, your former career, you know, and what do you do? This is kind of a two part question. So there's, you know, the people that are probably listening even maybe somebody's listening to the show right now and has a puppy and they're like, okay, this sounds great.
Speaker 1:But you know, we've avoided throughout the whole show, actually any kind of prescriptive like do this, do X, y and Z for all puppies? It's actually so unique to the puppy. So how do you like, when you have somebody that's like I don't know what to do, am I doing too much, am I doing too little? So that's kind of question one, somebody that's overwhelmed with all of this. And then they also get this additional we have these additional buzzwords and kind of give us your thoughts, building resiliency, or stress, inoculation, right, which are useful concepts absolutely. However, how does somebody know when to kind of push or pull back, or yes, they're looking at body language, but they're not an expert. It's their first puppy. They're overwhelmed, you know.
Speaker 2:So talk us through that. I think that's a great question. So, again, just like every puppy is an individual, the people are individual too, and I think one of the things that surprises you when you become a dog professional like this and you go into people's homes is how much you are. It's kind of you're functioning as a counselor or a therapist, which I think maybe takes some people aback, and I have found out that I actually just love this because it gives you the ability to make people happier in their day within their house. How amazing is that? How rare is that that you get the ability to actually make people feel less stress every day? So that's just one of those things that you suss out while you're in there. First of all, I think you can model. I think it helps a lot when they say I'm not sure how's this puppy doing? Is this too much? You can so quickly go in and be like oh no, look, see, he's fine. Look at this. Do you see how wiggly his body is? See how he's moving toward me? Or the opposite. You can say see, you're trying to do that. Do you see how he's actually just ducking away a little bit and he's coming to me instead of you when you do that. That's just something to watch. So I think, sitting there and modeling with them and articulating every little thing you're seeing, I think it helps a lot to say not see how happy he is. You have to say look at his tail, look at his feet, look at where he's leaning, look at where his eyes are going and help them think about things to look for.
Speaker 2:In terms of being prescriptive, I think one of the simplest things I love to teach everybody to do is just ping pong Leslie McDevitt's ping pong. So if I feel I'm with someone who's kind of on the edge and isn't feeling okay, the simplest thing to start with is find it. And you have some treats and you're tossing a treat on the ground and you're saying find it. And then eventually that can develop into ping pong, which is something you can play. If you are overstressed and you're working too hard and you just don't have it in you to do the right thing, you can still sit on your couch and play ping pong and it's going to build your relationship and build your confidence with this dog. So that just means you're saying find it and you're throwing it to the right.
Speaker 2:Your puppy's running over there, grabbing that Puppy, swings his head around, looks back at you like what was that? And you say, yes, the second he meets your eyes you throw another one to the other side. They run after it. They grab it, look back at you. What is happening? Yes, as soon as they come in the middle and meet your eyes. So the puppy's getting exercise, the puppy's getting rewarded for returning to you and focusing on you.
Speaker 2:You have the opportunity right in the middle there to start turning that into not eye contact but sit or down or spin. And then suddenly you realize you're training your dog while you're sitting your butt on the couch and watching TV and it's actually feeling really easy. Anyway, I like to start with that. That works for little kids, that works for husbands who didn't want the dog, that works for everybody. And it ends up the week after you teach them ping pong everybody. And it ends up the week after you teach them ping pong. They feel much better about what's happening in their home. It's like the gateway to training is that simple little game that feels like a game, but it's actually teaching safety, predictability, connection, bonding and the beginnings of what people think of as training, which is the sit and stuff.
Speaker 1:And then building on that so they like get this foundational work. They're feeling better, but they still feel overwhelmed. They're still going back to Dr Google, right, and they're still getting all this information. They don't know what to do. They're like okay, I don't have a Kathy in front of me, I'm not in her area and I don't have any puppy specialists, but I am listening, feeling overwhelmed. What's your take-home message for them?
Speaker 2:So the take-home message is to stick with it Like. This is puppyhood and it's a journey, and I think what's happening? If you're feeling overwhelmed? I think it's because you have inappropriate messages swirling around in your head about a lot of shoulds. I think there are a lot of shoulds happening. I think that you're maybe worried about.
Speaker 2:You know, this time you were going to do it perfectly, whatever that means. You know, if you take a look at all the puppy books on the market, you're 10 steps to your perfect dog, perfect puppyhood. Stop it, stop it. The word perfect has nothing to do with dogs and particularly not with puppies. These are babies. You don't expect your kid to be perfect. This is a journey and you're gonna be happier if you enjoy the journey. And so you know, think about it, about yourself, to give yourself a break. This is a learning, this is an interspecies relationship is an incredible thing to get to have. And so if you're feeling overwhelmed, I think it's because you have messages in your head about what you wanted it to look like. It was supposed to look exactly like this. You're going to be so much happier if you open yourself up to huh, what's this going to be? And start with where the dog is. Pull yourself in there and you will find new ways to be with each other and you're not going to be quite as overwhelmed. But you've got to let go of the shoulds. You know the neighbor. You know Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving and your neighbor up the street who's like you know what worked for me? Or gosh, that's a lot of jumping. Just find something to say to those people, whether it's you know, we're good, we're learning, we're just. You know he's just a puppy. Check back in in a year, like find a way to get rid of those voices in your heads, because I have a feeling that if you settle down and listen to yourself and listen to your puppy, you're not gonna feel that same amount of overwhelm. You'll still have moments where you're like that didn't go well, but if you start with who this puppy is and meet those needs, your relationship is gonna pull you through.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I do think is and this is actually the last chapter in my book is I talk about being ready to raise the dog that you have. I do think everyone has a vision for how this is going to look, exactly what their puppy is going to turn out to be, and I think sometimes people wanted a dog. Guess that the dog park looked fun and they want to go to the dog park. Then they get a dog and the dog is absolutely not a dog park candidate. Or, you know, maybe they got a dog for the little boy in the family because the little girl is super bonded to the other dog.
Speaker 2:Well, guess what? This new puppy only likes dad, and you know you have to be ready to accept this individual who comes into your family, because they're not all the same. You can shape around the edges and stuff, but you have to sit back and be ready for the joy that's ready to come at you and don't block the joy that could be yours by insisting on a different vision, because that's just a shame. Puppies really are boy. If you just surrender to it, puppyhood really can be the dream that it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Excellent take homehome message and, I think, a great way to wrap up the show, but where can people find you? What are you up to next?
Speaker 2:So I am at puppypicscom W-W-W, puppypics, p-u-p-p-y P-I-C-K-Scom. My new book is called Welcoming your Puppy from Planet Dog how to go beyond training and raise your best friend. It comes out April 16th and I've just heard there's going to be an audio version too, so that's fun. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm hoping that it feels really easy to read through and that it gives people the feeling that they can really do this, and it's going to be great.
Speaker 1:Wonderful and, as usual, I will link to all those in the show notes. Kathy, thank you so much. It's been a brilliant conversation and I hope to see you again in the future.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate being here.
Speaker 1:Really fun to talk to you. I really enjoy chatting with Kathy about all things puppies and the work that I do with aggression cases. The information that Kathy shares is so crucial to help avoid having to work with someone like me in the first place. So many aggressive behaviors can be mitigated or avoided if puppies can have these positive experiences early in life. And don't forget to head on over to AggressiveDogcom for more information about helping dogs with aggression, from the Aggression in Dogs Master Course to webinars from world-renowned experts and even an annual conference.
Speaker 1:We have options for both pet pros and pet owners to learn more about aggression in dogs. We also have the Help for Dogs with Aggression bonus episodes that you can subscribe to. These are solo shows where I walk you through how to work with a variety of types of aggression, such as resource guarding, dog-to-dog aggression, territorial aggression, fear-based aggression and much, much more. You can find a link to subscribe in the show notes or by hitting the subscribe button if you're listening in on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening in and, as always, stay well, my friends.
Speaker 2:Ah no, oh, don't go over there. He's so cute. Phew, Okay, this is predictable.