Acknowledge Dogs

From using punishment-based methods to not being consistent, these pitfalls can derail your progress and harm your relationship with your furry friend. Join us as we discuss these obstacles and offer practical tips and advice to ensure a positive and successful training experience for both you and your dog If you enjoyed today's episode you will love my new book -  The Dog Training Booklet; How To Teach Your Dog Anything Get your copy instantly here - https://www.matadork9.com/booklet

Transform your pup's training with this essential podcast episode on the five golden rules of dog training. Learn how to get to know your pup better, make training sessions enjoyable, and use positive reinforcement and consistency to help them learn. Plus, we'll provide helpful tips and resources to ensure you and your pup get the most out of each session. Tune in to become an expert dog trainer and strengthen your bond with your furry companion.   If you want to learn more about the way professionals train dogs, check out The Dog Training Cheat Codes here - https://www.matadork9.com/cheatcodes

Tired of your hyperactive dog? In episode 163 of my podcast, I use AI to explore 10 ways to burn off your pup's energy. With in-depth advice ranging from the basics of daily walks to the mischievous fun of doggie dancing, this episode has something for everyone. I provide insights on how to get the most out of AI and avoid potential problems, making it the perfect resource for professional dog trainers. Don't miss this episode and don't forget to check out my book, "The Dog Training Cheat Codes" for even more tips and tricks to help train your furry friend!   00:02:10:20 - 00:02:34:13Michael AccettaIt has been a while since I've recorded a podcast episode. We went on a little hiatus there with the holidays and everything going on just kind of slowed down my production a little bit. But you will be happy to know that things are going to pick up. And I am debating starting a second podcast, more in-depth science business related for professional dog trainers. 00:02:34:13 - 00:02:53:14Michael AccettaIf you're a professional dog trainer who listens to my podcast and that sounds like something you'd really want to listen to and maybe be a guest on, please let me know as I might start doing it. If a lot of people are interested in it. If not, then I'll stick to my acknowledged dogs. Otherwise, we'll have two podcasts with my wonderful voices, people say. 00:02:54:12 - 00:03:14:13Michael AccettaSo today I want to talk about and this is actually pretty interesting. I asked I because I is this big thing right now. I said, Okay, if I if I got a hyper active dog, a really excited dog, and I want it to tire them out, what should I do? Now understand? I gives you just blanket information. It's very general. 00:03:14:20 - 00:03:30:05Michael AccettaIt's not very specific. So what I did was I looked at the ten that it gave me and I said, okay, that's not too shabby. That's not too bad. But what I wanted to do is expand on it, give you what I is advices in the event that you went and you said, Oh, I don't know what to do with my dog today. 00:03:30:05 - 00:03:48:05Michael AccettaLet me, you know, type in, hey, I act as my dog trainer and tell me what I should do, because that's often what I do. When I don't have something for dinner. Like, Hey, what should I have for dinner? These are the ingredients and it'll spew out a good recipe. So if you're deciding to do that or you haven't thought of it, now you're like, Wow, Michael, that's a that's amazing idea. 00:03:48:05 - 00:04:10:15Michael AccettaI'm going to try that out. Here are some things you got to watch out for. Number one, it's generic. Okay. It gives you very blanket statements. Number two, there's detail, but it's not in-depth detail. And number three, it does not account for some of the things that could happen or your particular goals unless you strategically put them into your prompt for the A.I.. 00:04:11:00 - 00:04:30:19Michael AccettaFor example, in one of the things that we're going to talk about. It talks about doggie dances, like dancing with your dog to music, which is cute. It's great. It's fun. However, if you have a hyperactive dog, it does not account for the fact that you're teaching your dog to be overstimulated whenever you start to dance. What happens when you go to dance with your spouse? 00:04:30:29 - 00:04:46:19Michael AccettaWhat happens when you got to go to the bathroom and you do that silly dance and now your dog jumps in and knocks you down and you've made a mess, right? So I'm going to go over some of those things that maybe the I didn't think about or we could probably change if we strategically put in a specific prompt. 00:04:47:08 - 00:05:12:12Michael AccettaOkay. So number one, it says, right? And I just asked it very simply. I said, Hey, give me ten easy ways to exercise my dog. Number one, going for a daily walk. This is this is, you know, the bare bones of exercising your dog. Go for a daily walk. It says this is the most basic and easy way to exercise your dog not only provides a mental and physical exercise, but it allows them to explore new sights and smells. 00:05:12:13 - 00:05:39:17Michael AccettaThat's absolutely right. Taking your dog for a walk is remarkable for their physical and mental stimulation. They're sniffing things. They're they're bringing in new stimuli. Right. Just the environment itself is producing excitement for them. So they're getting something new. Stuck in the house, stuck in the crate. You know, maybe you work all day, so you don't really get to do much with your dog. 00:05:39:17 - 00:05:55:14Michael AccettaJust getting them out into the world just like people. Right. You go take a 30 minute daily walk. You're probably going to feel better by the end of the walk because you've got some sunlight. You got some vitamin D in your system. You got some fresh air, some good oxygen, not that circulated stuff in the office or in your house. 00:05:56:09 - 00:06:15:00Michael AccettaSo taking your dog for a daily walk not only is good for your dog, but actually good for you as long as two things. Number one, it doesn't cause more stress for you and your dog based off your dog's reactivity or overstimulation. Then we're not looking at improving our dog's physical exercise and mental stimulation. Instead, we're actually going the opposite. 00:06:15:09 - 00:06:34:18Michael AccettaWe're going back. We're creating more stress. An increase in cortisol in your dog, which means they're going to be stressed for a longer. It's going to take. And, you know, depending on the level of severity of stress they have, it could take until tomorrow for them to feel better So if you're doing three walks a day and each time they're getting stressed and stressed and stressed, that's what's called trigger stacking. 00:06:34:25 - 00:06:51:19Michael AccettaWe're stacking on the amount of cortisol that your dog can handle. And so each time they get confronted with this new stimulus that stresses them out more could be a car, could be a dog, it could be a person wearing a hat, has that stuff, gets pushed on to them. They become more and more stressed, which means they are less likely to listen to you. 00:06:51:24 - 00:07:10:26Michael AccettaThey're more likely to get hurt. They're more likely to overreact. And of course, I'm talking about reactive dogs here, but in general, the more stress you put on your dog, the more stress they will acquire over time because they don't have enough time to decompress. They have to decompress first. So that's number one, going for a daily walk. 00:07:12:00 - 00:07:46:07Michael AccettaAnd number two, right where I think I said that this was you had to this is great. If you have these two things. Number one, you don't create more stress. Number two, it's structured. I'm a guy who like structure. I like to know where I'm going based off where I've been and where I am right now. So if I'm just going to go for a 45 minute walk and I'm going to wander around and do nothing, that's not as productive to me as starting my walk off with obedience, walking perfectly to a park, doing some exciting fun playing kind of stuff, still with obedience mixed in here and there. 00:07:46:13 - 00:08:09:22Michael AccettaBut more or less sniffing around free form and then obedience on the way back. I love the sandwich, the obedience play, obedience sandwich, especially if you're doing what we're going to talk about a little bit. Oh, don't worry, we're going to get there. But you know, so, so those kinds of things are great if you can structure them so go for a daily walk with your dog, whether it's once or twice, three times. 00:08:09:28 - 00:08:30:02Michael AccettaThey don't have to be very long walks. And in fact, I don't recommend insanely long walks, especially if you're in the beginning of your training journey. You don't want to have a perfect ten minute walk. And then you've been told to do 45 minutes and instead of just sticking to your 10 minutes, you end up doing 45 minutes of anxiety and stress and chaos do 10 minutes three times, right? 00:08:30:02 - 00:08:49:01Michael AccettaTake a five minute break in between. That's going to be better for you and your dog long term than a 45 minute walk straight out All right, number two, playing fetch if your dog doesn't know fetch. It's a very, very simple I actually talk about it in my book, my new book coming out. I'm not going to talk about that yet, but I break down playing fetch for you. 00:08:49:01 - 00:09:11:11Michael AccettaSo I'll break it down very simply here. It's all about back chaining. Have your dog pick something up off the floor and just hand it to you or have your dog pick something out of your hand and then create distance from picking it up and bringing it to you or right if they're picking it up out of your hand first, depending on where you start, they pick up the object from your hand and they take a step back or you take a step back. 00:09:11:11 - 00:09:34:05Michael AccettaRather, they have to follow you. And when you click, when they follow you, they will drop the object accidentally or coincidentally into your hand. Super simple, right? All I've done is created a system, a successful repetition of them carrying an object 4.5 seconds and accidentally dropping it in my hand. I will then repeat this over and over until they start to pair. 00:09:34:05 - 00:09:51:06Michael AccettaOh, if I come to them and I drop them in their hand, then they click and I get my tree clicking is just conditioned to reinforce it. Right? You could say the word yes. You could use a click. You could make the click sound with your mouth right All I'm doing is marking the behavior that I like. I want my dog to bring the object to me and drop it in my hand. 00:09:51:09 - 00:10:12:15Michael AccettaThen I will create distance. How far do they have to travel in order to bring it to me now? That is before I teach them to go get the item. This is back training. I've taught the retrieve the the fetch backwards. So now they go get the object and they know exactly what to do. They I tell them to go get it. 00:10:12:15 - 00:10:32:07Michael AccettaThey get it. They run back to me. Perfect. Super simple, right? Super simple in words. But playing Fetch Air says is an easy and fun way to exercise your dog, especially if you have a park or backyard. Now, you don't need a park or a backyard, although they might help, especially if you're able to do really long fetch, right? 00:10:32:07 - 00:10:54:13Michael AccettaYou have one of those launchers that let you launch the ball like 100 yards and your dog is trusted off leash or it's an enclosed park. If that's the case, then great. We are awesome. But you can just teach fetch as a mental and physical exercise. If your dog doesn't know fetch, don't worry about it. Just teach them fetch and that will be good because you're teaching them a new skill they're having to acquire and absorb knowledge. 00:10:54:28 - 00:11:13:10Michael AccettaThey're having to test out problems, creative problem solving, all this kind of stuff. They have to go through that in order to find out how to get the reward how to get to play the game again, how to experience joy and a stronger relationship with you. So playing fetch with you is going to be a wonderful bonding experience. 00:11:13:10 - 00:11:27:24Michael AccettaEven if you don't have a backyard, even if you don't go to the park to do it, do it in your hallway, do it in your living room. Just try to keep everything calm and structured, not all over the place and crazy And here's a bonus tip. If your dog is way too excited about the object you want to play fetch with. 00:11:28:02 - 00:11:45:09Michael AccettaDon't start with that object. My dog Hawk loves a tennis ball but when we play fetch with the tennis ball, it's a very relaxed and it's not as structured. If I do it with a different object, I can get a lot more structure out of it. Whether it's a dumbbell, whether it's a PVC pipe that he doesn't chew on. 00:11:45:22 - 00:12:07:22Michael AccettaYou know, Kong, something that bounces very different than a tennis ball. Tennis ball. He loses his mind because his previous owner just played fetch in a casual way. So when he sees the tennis ball, he associates it to this crazy kind of wild interpretation of fetch as opposed to a nice structured sit next to me. I release you to go get the object, you grab it, you come back, sit in front of me, and I take the object and we repeat. 00:12:08:07 - 00:12:24:25Michael AccettaOkay, moving on to number three, hiking if you live near hiking trails, take your dog with you for a challenging and rewarding workout. And again, not only is this good for your dog, but it's good for you. This is what I was talking about. I give you kind of that general blanket statement to your going for a daily walk versus hiking. 00:12:24:25 - 00:12:50:03Michael AccettaIs there a difference? Absolutely. Especially depending on where you live. If you live in the city, going for a walk is going to have a lot different stimuli, different environmental factors than going for hiking. Right now, if you live in an area where hiking is very prevalent and you're very close to a park, something like that, maybe you don't live near the city, but on the outskirts or in a rural area, hiking might be very normal for your dog. 00:12:50:10 - 00:13:06:20Michael AccettaAnd I know plenty of people who take their dogs hiking and love doing, especially if their dog gets to be off leash in the particular area they're hiking. Now, I will warn you that things happen, dangerous things happen. Anything could happen in any given moment. Your dog could get lost. There could be a wild animal. They could eat something that's no good. 00:13:06:28 - 00:13:26:24Michael AccettaSo I wouldn't recommend doing that too often unless you are 100% confident in your dog's abilities. And you have an amazing recall case that hiking number four. This is fantastic. If you live in a warm area, if you're in the southern part of the state or you live somewhere else in the world which shout out to all my international listeners. 00:13:26:24 - 00:13:53:25Michael AccettaThank you for tuning in. I appreciate you So number four is swimming and I actually get this right. So swimming is a low impact exercise that's great for dogs of all ages and sizes. That's absolutely right. Swimming does not have the impact force that hiking or jogging or playing fetch will have on your dog. So I used to work at a facility where we would routinely swim puppies to get them used to the water. 00:13:53:25 - 00:14:14:25Michael AccettaHow to be handled had to be manipulated. But really specifically older dogs you know, they're they're above eight, ten years old, sometimes 16, sometimes 17 years old. They could barely walk on their own. But when you got them in the water, they can immediately swim arthritic dogs. This is great for and this is not medical advice, by the way, but it's great for older dogs if you know how to do it. 00:14:14:25 - 00:14:33:19Michael AccettaI do not recommend just throwing your old dog into the water and saying, I'll figure it out. No, you want to hold on to them. You want to encourage them to paddle. You can tickle their paws to get them to kick back, especially if they've never done this before. But it is a stressful experience. So you want to be there to make it as easy as possible for them to succeed and feel comfortable. 00:14:34:09 - 00:14:58:26Michael AccettaNow, confidence only comes from successful repetition. So you have to do it over and over and over. Keeping your dogs successful. Don't let them fail, don't let them drown. Don't let them dip their head below because you weren't paying attention. You've got to be 100% with them during this process, at least until they build up the strength. Or if they're older, they might never build up to strength just because the regenerative capabilities of their muscle cells aren't as good as they are when they're younger puppies. 00:14:58:26 - 00:15:22:11Michael AccettaDefinitely they will build up the strength. But older dogs? No. And so what you want to do is just encourage them, keep them, keep them moving. Keep them kicking their legs. Now, in swimming dogs, power stroke comes from the front legs. So if you notice their back legs tucked behind them, that's okay. That's fine. What you should do is, again, tickle their their pads of their feet and get them to kick their back legs out. 00:15:22:11 - 00:15:39:11Michael AccettaSometimes they'll just give up on their back legs because they don't need them. They just kind of float transversely if you have a dog that's starting to go vertical, that's because dogs think they can climb out of the water, especially hyperactive dogs. They want to climb up and out. So they're trying to get their paws on some type of footing that doesn't exist because they're in the water. 00:15:39:28 - 00:16:02:03Michael AccettaSo you want to hold their back, end up and try to keep them level. Just the top of their back should be peering over the water so that was number four swimming. Number five, agility training. They have amazing, you know, very inexpensive. You can get them on Amazon you get a target, PetSmart, Petco, that kind of thing. Wonderful agility training sets for indoors and outdoors. 00:16:02:03 - 00:16:19:11Michael AccettaIf you don't want to spend the thousands of dollars getting professional sets or pay for a membership to go to a facility. Now, ACE has set up an obstacle course in your backyard and teach your dog to navigate it. This is great for both physical and mental exercise. Exactly. Right. Okay. If your dog is nervous, they lack confidence. 00:16:19:11 - 00:16:37:24Michael AccettaThey're anxious. Getting them to do some of these kind of obstacles are going to bring up their confidence, success or confidence. Is built through successful repetition. Each time you put your dog into a situation where they have to think creatively and problem solve the situation in order to get a reward or what they want you are teaching them to be more confident. 00:16:38:03 - 00:16:57:16Michael AccettaSo the A-frame, right? The A-frame is that big frame that the dog goes up one side and down the other side. The amount of dogs that have had fear issues that love the A-frame, after a 20 minute session of just having them go up, it get a treat, come back off. Right. And repeat that process over and over through shaping and teaching them that, oh, if you investigate this, I'll give you a treat. 00:16:58:02 - 00:17:18:08Michael AccettaThey love the A-frame. They might not like everything else until we eventually teach it. But that's the first step. So if you have an anxious dog, I highly recommend agility training at a low, low level. Don't go crazy with your dog. Right? And on the advance side, this is actually something that I used to do to tire my dogs out because I didn't want to run. 00:17:18:08 - 00:17:39:02Michael AccettaRight. When I was working at this facility, I trained 30 dogs a day or so. I was walking about ten to 15 miles and we were running, doing agility. I was getting in and out of the pool, swimming. It was a lot, right? And so sometimes you just get lazy. And so when you're training your own dogs, you cheat a little bit, especially because your dogs are at a certain level when you're in this kind of facility and you're a professional trainer. 00:17:39:14 - 00:18:00:23Michael AccettaSo what I recommend to my professional or more experienced dog owners here is if you're going to do agility, do what's called a send off, you stand in one spot after teaching this, right? This is the ultimate goal. You stand in one spot and you have a jump that's ten feet away. You send your dog to the jump, we call them back and then turn to another obstacle and send them to that once. 00:18:00:23 - 00:18:24:13Michael AccettaMaybe it's the tunnel and you can add distance to this. It helps burn their energy a little faster because they're running more than you are. And to it helps them what's called obstacle recognition. So when you say jump, they run directly to the jump, even though you might be facing something different. It's a very advanced agility technique, but it's a wonderful, wonderful way to burn their energy and mental exercise for them because they have to think about which obstacle they're doing. 00:18:24:13 - 00:18:46:01Michael AccettaRight. Okay. Number six, I says hide and seek, hide treats or toys around the house and have your dog find them. This is great for mental stimulation. This is more of, you know, search or detection. So we're going to hide a object or treats this very simply. You could just take a tennis ball and leave it in your dog's food or hide your dog's food, breakfast and dinner. 00:18:46:01 - 00:19:01:14Michael AccettaThis is perfect with this is what I used to do with my first dog, Breezy. We would put her food bowl in the car. She hated the car. So I wanted her to explore the car and getting the food. So hide and seek. Just hide it. You tell your dog to go find it. Boom. They go and find it super, super simple. 00:19:01:22 - 00:19:23:19Michael AccettaThe amount of sniffing that's involved to find the reward at the end is what to giving them such great mental stimulation. Sniffing is wonderful for your dog, not only to reduce their stress but burn their exercise, energy and mental stimulation. They're going to be tired afterwards because of the amount of exercise I'm sorry, the amount of energy required to search something. 00:19:24:01 - 00:19:43:01Michael AccettaThat's why police dogs, when they do training, they don't do back to back to back to back searches unless that's specifically what they're targeting. They're trying to work on their dogs. Endurance. How long will they search for? They'll typically do one solid search and then they'll pause, give that dog a break, take out the next dog and do the next search like that so a dog doesn't get 15 takes in a row not they maybe get one. 00:19:43:07 - 00:19:57:20Michael AccettaThen they go back to the kennel for 10 minutes, then they get to go again. So you got to give them time to kind of digest the information here. All right. Number seven, tug of war tug of war does not cause aggression in your dog. Okay. I says tug of war is a fun and easy way to exercise your dog. 00:19:57:20 - 00:20:23:25Michael AccettaIt can be played indoors or outdoors. It's absolutely true. Tug of war is a great way to build up your dog's motivation. I will not say drive cause drives don't exist, but their motivation, their speed, their enthusiasm and training with you. And it's a great way to move away from treats. So I always teach the complex behaviors. I teach everything with treats because it's easier to control my dog's excitement levels once we start implementing toys the excitement level goes up, which means we need to have optimal focus. 00:20:23:25 - 00:20:42:22Michael AccettaAt the same time, I can't have more excitement and a less focused dog. I need to have both the need to be excited, and they need to be focused, which means they need to know the behaviors to begin with. Then I can start to use tug of war in an obedient sense. Okay, this is as you know, I just says it's a fun and easy way to exercise your dog. 00:20:43:11 - 00:21:01:27Michael AccettaI say it's a great way to train your dog. Tug of war is in a remarkable way to teach what's called on and off, on and off, like a light switch, not on and off, as in behaviors of on a place mat and off a place mat, but on and off or start and stop red light, green light, whatever you want to call it, essential. 00:21:01:27 - 00:21:19:15Michael AccettaYou're going to play with your dog. Tug of war. Da da da da da da da. Keep going, keep going and going. And then stop. Wait for them to relax for a moment and then go back to plan the faster they relax, the faster they get to play. You're teaching them to think critically, to think smoothly when in a heightened state of awareness, which is going to translate to everything else you do with your dog. 00:21:20:06 - 00:21:38:16Michael AccettaWonderful, wonderful way to bring your dog's energy. No. Eight training sessions you had, you know, it had to be in there. It's a dog training podcast. You know, it had to be in there. Just straight up training sessions. Teach your dog something to work on the behaviors that you've taught them already. It go the extra mile, right? If it's worth training, it's worth over training. 00:21:38:25 - 00:21:59:00Michael AccettaIf you're going to teach them a set, you might as well teach them to sit at ten feet away for three and a half minutes while you turn your back and look at something else. Go above and beyond, because that one time you really need them to listen. Could be the difference between life and death. Training sessions are a great way, great way, depending on what you're doing to burn their physical energy, but always a great way to burn their mental energy. 00:21:59:20 - 00:22:14:15Michael AccettaNumber nine is what I said earlier. Those doggie dances is a fun and easy way to exercise your dog. You can dance with your dog to music or just have a little fun. That's what the air says. It's a great way to have fun. I did have a client I was working with once and I told her to do this right. 00:22:14:15 - 00:22:34:17Michael AccettaI said, Dance with your dog and then stop. Just like I mentioned with Tug of War, we're going to do start and stop. Dance with your dog, stop. Wait for them to calm down and then go back to dancing. And she took it rather literally. And what ended up happening was the dog wasn't learning to relax, but whenever Mom got excited and started dancing, she wanted to run away. 00:22:35:02 - 00:22:50:10Michael AccettaIt was because she was forcing her dog to dance. She'd grab her dog's paws and she would, like, shimmy her around. And then she'd stop for a moment and be like, Oh, she's good. She doesn't want to dance anymore. That's fantastic. And then tried to go back to dancing so the dog didn't like it, which means it was no longer effective. 00:22:50:10 - 00:23:09:09Michael AccettaThe dog wasn't having fun. The whole point is to get them excited and having fun, overstimulated almost, and then bringing them back down to focus. So we ditched that idea rather, rather quickly. And I recommend only do the things that your dog loves. If you really want to do something particularly try to make it as enjoyable, possible for your dog. 00:23:09:09 - 00:23:32:26Michael AccettaAnd if it's not their cup of tea, don't force them right. As a trainer, one of my mentors once said I am asking the dog to do this. They didn't ask for this, so I'm going to do my absolute best to make it as enjoyable as possible. He was a service dog trainer. This dog did not ask to be a service dog trainer, so I'm going to do my absolute best to make this as enjoyable as possible for them. 00:23:33:27 - 00:23:51:11Michael AccettaSo if you're going to do doggy dances with your dog, if you already do them fantastic. Dance, dance, dance. What's that? What's that? Gain, freeze, tag, freeze, dance, play, freeze, dance, play, play, play. Run around, have a grand old time dance in the music paws. Wait for them to relax and then go back to plan. And number ten, number ten. 00:23:51:11 - 00:24:11:18Michael AccettaThis is what I told me is number ten, okay? And this is what I did with my first dog. This is what a lot of people do in the United States in its backyard playtime. Let your dog run around your backyard for a few minutes each day to get some good exercise I think on average, dog trainers would tell you this is a terrible idea to terrible, terrible piece of advice. 00:24:11:28 - 00:24:39:14Michael AccettaSure, they burn their exercise, but there's lawlessness there's no structure. They get to practice whatever they want to practice. Right. And the potential for getting injured is rather high, especially if you have a crazy, out-of-control dog that barks at everybody in the neighborhood. Now, if you don't have a dog that naturally wants to express all of this energy, they're just going to lay around outside, which means you're not burning their physical and mental exercise or their energy because there's nothing to stimulate them to move. 00:24:40:02 - 00:24:53:07Michael AccettaRight. Like think about you. Sure. If you have a goal coming up, you're trying to run a marathon or something, then you're going to work out every day. If you don't have a goal, you're not going to work out every day. Even the goal of working out every day is the motivator to go get you to work out it. 00:24:53:21 - 00:25:08:09Michael AccettaIf you don't have that, you're not going to work out. There's no reason for your dog to get up and run around unless they have a lot of energy and they just feel like they need to or they're trying to chase the squirrels in the back area. That's what my first dog did. She ended up just chasing the squirrels in the backyard and developing some bad behavior. 00:25:08:09 - 00:25:29:00Michael AccettaShe'd bark at every single squirrel, and then that translated to coming into the house and barking. Everybody is about nine years ago or so. And so what did we end up doing? When I'm there, I reward her for relaxing in the backyard and then they do other exercise my she lives with my parents now. They do other exercise like the daily walks and the training and that kind of stuff. 00:25:29:11 - 00:25:49:22Michael AccettaBut when she's in the backyard, there's constant interruptions to any bad behavior using positive interrupters. Right? I say my dog's name, I get their attention back on me, you know, self redirection, marking good behavior, that kind of stuff. But backyard playtime unsupervised is probably going to get you into more trouble than it's worth. Don't just let your dog run around the backyard. 00:25:50:14 - 00:26:08:06Michael AccettaThey're going to eat. Things are not supposed to eat. They're going to dig where they're not supposed to dig. They're going to develop bad behaviors. They're not supposed to develop. You want to have complete control over your dog. Minimum six months when you first start training, minimum six months when you first start training. If you do everything right for six months, then you're pretty good. 00:26:08:20 - 00:26:35:06Michael AccettaYou can probably relax a little bit and continue training, but not to the same level of severity. Right? So it's not about getting your dog's energy burned as fast as humanly possible, but rather, how do we get it burned long term? And this goes for everything I just talked about. How do we get their energy learn burned long term so we don't have the zoom is at the end of the day and they go to sleep a lot easier. 00:26:36:04 - 00:26:59:02Michael AccettaSleep is where your dog deals with stress, absorbs new information just like human beings. So if you're if you're trying to keep them awake or you're not intentionally keeping them awake, but you're not giving them the opportunity to sleep, well, then they are going to be more stressed they're going to not deal with situations as effectively. And training's actually going to be harder because they're not learning as fast. 00:27:00:07 - 00:27:18:05Michael AccettaSo let's go run through all ten of them again, just to give you a little overview, if you stayed this long. Thank you. I appreciate it. Going for a daily walks, number one. No. Two, Playing fetch. No. Three, Hiking, No. Four Swimming No. Five Agility Training. No. Six Hide and Seek. No. Seven Tug of War. No. Eight Training Sessions, No. 00:27:18:05 - 00:27:47:04Michael AccettaNine Doggie Dances and ten backyard playtime. Although I don't highly recommend Backyard Playtime, instead, you should be doing some type of obedience or training in a casual fashion in your backyard. Guys, thank you for listening to this. Today's episode of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. My book, The Dog Training Chico's, is on sale right now. If you want to get a copy of it, head over to Matador Canine Dotcom Forward Slash Chico's Matador Canine dot com forward slash Chico's. 00:27:47:08 - 00:28:00:20Michael AccettaIt is the nine professional trainer secrets to fast results and reliable dogs. I guarantee you will not be disappointed with that book. It teaches you so much that I wish I knew ten years ago when I started training. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.

I am often asked whether or not to use the command 'stay' when training dogs. In my experience, there are different schools of thought on this topic. I believe that there is a difference between using the command and not using it, similar to the difference between driving a manual and automatic car Tune in to my podcast to discover the difference it can make in your dog's behavior.   If you are looking for a way to get your dog to behave at home, look no further. Click the link below to check out my training on Daily Life Skills - https://www.matadork9.com/dailylifeskills         00;00;01;08 - 00;00;32;01Michael J. AccettaWelcome. My name is Michael, etc.. I'm the founder of Matador Canine Brilliance and author of The Dog Training Chico's. You're listening to the Acknowledge Dogs Podcast To my professors in college had very different opinions on telling dogs stay or not to say the word stay. We even joked about making T-shirts about it where we would say, I believe in stay where I don't believe in stay. 00;00;32;15 - 00;00;50;21Michael J. AccettaSo which is the correct school of thought? Should we be telling our dogs stay after we tell them to do something right as they stay or should sit just by itself? Tell my dog what they're doing should be continued until I tell them to do something else. Well, I'll give you my quick answer. I prefer not to say the word stay. 00;00;51;11 - 00;01;07;10Michael J. AccettaThat may be so. I understand why people say stay and why people don't say stay. So I'm going to show you both sides of it today. We're going to discuss why it would be important to say the word stay. Maybe change to not saying the word stay or stay with saying a word stay. How many times can I say the word stay? 00;01;07;10 - 00;01;25;18Michael J. AccettaAt any given moment, right. So we're going to go over whether you should be saying stay to your dog or not. Number one, the first thing you have to understand that there is a difference between saying the word stay and not saying it. And I want you to think about that as the difference between a manual car and an automatic car. 00;01;26;06 - 00;01;40;20Michael J. AccettaWe're going to get more in-depth about this as we talk about stay. So stay tuned because although that might seem confusing, like, okay, yeah, I understand Emanuel and I are staying in automatic, but how the hell does that apply to dog training? And telling our dog a steak? Stay tuned. I'm going to go over it. First things first. 00;01;40;20 - 00;02;01;03Michael J. AccettaIf you're already saying the word stay, it would probably behoove you to continue using it. At least for a little while, unless you fully understand the concept of teaching your dog something new. If you don't fully understand that concept, trying to teach them something new at this point, by completely demolishing everything you've worked on is not going to be beneficial to you or your dog. 00;02;02;15 - 00;02;22;16Michael J. AccettaInstead, keep doing what you're doing and eventually change it. Maybe on the next behavior teaching. So if you're saying sit, stay, you're not going to just completely forego that because you're essentially starting all over with the word sit. I'll explain that in a minute. If we're now teaching our dog down, stay. Maybe we only teach them the word down instead of down. 00;02;22;16 - 00;02;46;14Michael J. AccettaStay. Understand? Right. So it's a little different. If I'm already using the word stay, I might as well continue using it. It's what my dog is accustomed to. It's what they're used to. And if I change it, they're going to get slightly confused. Now, the reason they get confused and this is one of the pitfalls and people say, well, you shouldn't be telling your dog stay is because of I say the word stay that becomes content agent on my dog staying. 00;02;47;01 - 00;03;04;26Michael J. AccettaIf I don't say the word stay, then they can do whatever they want. Okay. We break that down a little bit. If I say sit, stay and my dog stays for 3 minutes, it's only because I said the word stay because that's what they're used to, as opposed to me saying sit and then my dog doing whatever they want in 30 seconds. 00;03;05;08 - 00;03;24;26Michael J. AccettaSee, the difference is not a huge difference, but it can make the difference if you want what's called an implied stay. That's not saying the word stay. When I say sit, it's implied. They should continue to do the behavior for an extended period of time without me having to say or do anything else. I've already told them to sit. 00;03;25;02 - 00;03;47;09Michael J. AccettaThey should continue to sit until I tell them to do something else. Here's the big difference between saying stay and not saying stay. And this is what you need to discern for yourself. Do you want to have manual or automatic? Do you want to have an automatic stay that when you say behavior, your order, your dog automatically does the stay or do you want to have to manually tell them to stay? 00;03;47;12 - 00;04;03;01Michael J. AccettaIt's like putting your car park. Would you rather have a handbrake? You have to manually do it? Or would you rather have the car automatically put the brake on? Which would you rather do it? Because this is how the sequence is going to play out. You tell your dog to down and we're going to say, stay so down. 00;04;03;01 - 00;04;26;04Michael J. AccettaStay now. I've waited a period of time and then I'm going to have to release my dog. So down, stay, release word, whatever that is for my dogs. It's okay. The alternative is down. Don't have to say stay. And then I release my dog with the word. Now, at both of those situations, there is a beginning to the behavior and an end to the behavior that is clearly defined. 00;04;26;26 - 00;04;49;04Michael J. AccettaThe stay indicates whether a dog should continue doing it or the alternative in that dog's mind is, well, I was told to sit and I could get up whenever I want. Or I was told to down and I could get up whenever I want. I could do whatever I want because stay wasn't there I want to take a moment and thank all of our loyal followers. 00;04;49;15 - 00;05;10;27Michael J. AccettaThis podcast would not be possible without you Leave review and let us know what you like and want to learn on the next episode of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Now back to the show you can only really run into problems when you need your dog to stay. And you didn't say it. Emergencies, things happen. You get distracted or you just forget. 00;05;11;06 - 00;05;30;21Michael J. AccettaYou say down, but you don't say stay and your dog gets up and does something else. Then what often happens, and I've seen a whole lot, is yell at the dog and go down. I told you to down. Why aren't you staying? Well, if we just look at the behavior of what you did, not what your dog did and what you did, you've put a dependency on the word stay for your dog. 00;05;31;06 - 00;06;07;19Michael J. AccettaAnd therefore, when you remove the word, they think everything's fine. I could get up, I could go do something else. And then they're confused when you bark at them. Happens all the time. All the time. Your consistency will determine your dog's success. Now, the only time I would say there is kind of an opportunity where you should say the word stay is if you're going to be doing a really big difference between your everyday life with your dog in competitions So if you're going to be having a regular dog, they live in your backyard, they live in your house, you don't really do much with them. 00;06;07;19 - 00;06;30;21Michael J. AccettaBesides competition, wise, you might have different words mean different things, sometimes even in different languages. So the casual sit might just be sit, but the perform and sit for competition might be seats, right, or down might be plots, those kinds of things. You have different words form to tell your dog that there's a different level of the behavior I want you to do. 00;06;31;19 - 00;06;51;28Michael J. AccettaSame thing goes for stay. So if I tell my dog down casually, they can get up when they walk because there's no competition. I don't get any points off of my dog getting up randomly. Of course, there could be dangerous situations, which is why I opt for the implied stay, the automatic stay. I don't say the word stay, but if I were say, down stay, that would be a competition version. 00;06;51;28 - 00;07;12;06Michael J. AccettaAnd they go, Oh, okay, now I need to stay here a little bit longer and kind of ingrain it in my mind. Competitions over here, real life is over here. So we're differentiating simply because we're doing competitions and we want everything to be perfect. That is not training for real life. I think training for real life, the better way to do it is an automatic, implied stay. 00;07;12;26 - 00;07;33;20Michael J. AccettaMy dog breaks the leash. I've had this happen when I was a novice trainer. I got whatever treat leash I could get because I didn't have a lot of money. I got any leash that I could get or I made my own out of power cord, ended up breaking my dog, panicked I panicked. I said down and I forgot to say the word stay because I was so stressed about trying to figure out what I should do with my dog. 00;07;34;04 - 00;07;50;19Michael J. AccettaI was able to refashion the leash in an interesting kind of way. And put it on my dog so we could get home. But at the end of the day, in that stressful moment, I forgot to say the word stay. I don't want my dog to get injured. Because of my lack of initiative in training in the proper way. 00;07;51;15 - 00;08;11;23Michael J. AccettaSo if I can set them up for the potential dangerous situation simply by removing the word stay and intentionally teaching it differently, I can make it easier for myself in those stressful situations. Now, I also follow and if you've listen to the other episodes of the Acknowledged Dog podcast, I follow the philosophy of the six fluency is of a behavior. 00;08;12;08 - 00;08;32;17Michael J. AccettaA behavior to me is not fluent. It's not complete without going through all six of these behaviors. One of those is duration. So if I tell my dog to sit and it's a very short duration, of course there's still duration there, but it's too short for me, really consider it have been trained. It's just a natural occurrence in the behavior. 00;08;32;21 - 00;08;54;24Michael J. AccettaI want to expand on it because I want to overprepare myself again for those dangerous situations or any particular in a predicament, that predicament, predicament that I might get in with my dogs. So I'm going to put them particularly in a situation. Now, if I train the duration and make it a lot better, I can I can space it out. 00;08;54;24 - 00;09;27;19Michael J. AccettaI can make it longer there's no need for the word stay. They they've intentionally learned to do the behavior longer until I release them with a release word like, okay, there's no need where the word study isn't. Okay. So that's the kind of differentiating that you need to do. Do I want to have to say the word stay because I'm intentionally trying to teach two different things or am I teaching the word stay within applied with implied with being applied in the behavior itself? 00;09;28;06 - 00;09;54;16Michael J. AccettaThat way I don't have to say it. Situations come up, distractions, emergencies I don't want to fall short or potentially hurt my dog because I forgot to do something in real life. That's why we set up training so well, right? Like you map everything out and training, we make it really systematic so that everything gets covered. And that's where a good dog trainer will provide you with the skill set. 00;09;54;16 - 00;10;17;22Michael J. AccettaThat you need. I delay everything out for you. So when you do that, it becomes really easy. Then go, Oh, this, this, this, this, this, and this. You will then be prepared for real life okay? Now, if you're interested in all this and you're like, Man, I wish I had a outlined list of everything, I'm going to show you something that I've provided for so many on this exact kind of topic. 00;10;17;22 - 00;10;40;20Michael J. AccettaOkay, so if you go to Matt or canine dot com, you can take this course test here. It would find the right course for you. But what I want to more specifically talk about is my daily life skills course. The daily life skills course covers things like leave it the perfect training process, teaching, the stay crate training, walking on leash, name recognition, teaching your dog how to settle. 00;10;41;06 - 00;11;04;18Michael J. AccettaIf you're interested in that, just go to Matador Canine Icon, Forward Slash Daily Life Skills, Matador Canine, Dot-Com Forward Slash Daily Life Skills. You're going to get 20 47 access to the training material. You're going to get a guiding workbook to help you through the process. You're going to get 20 47 training support. It's a wonderful, wonderful program to jumpstart your training, start to teach your dog how to make it easier for you in everyday life. 00;11;05;15 - 00;11;28;05Michael J. AccettaOkay, that's what that skills for. That's why it's called the daily life skills. It's the things that make it easier for you to enjoy life just on a natural level, not your going out crazy. You don't have to be going to the hiking or climbing a mountain or kayaking or anything like that. This is why I want to lay on the couch and watch TV and I don't want my dog to be all over the place and destroying stuff. 00;11;28;24 - 00;11;51;02Michael J. AccettaOkay, that's what this course is about. Matador canine dot com forward slash daily life skills, matador canine dot.com warrior slash daily life skills. That's the difference between today and not saying stay do you want an automatic behavior? Where do you want to manual behavior? Do you want to have to initiate it by saying the word stay? Or do you want it to automatically be there? 00;11;51;20 - 00;12;07;08Michael J. AccettaIf you don't want to have to say it, you can teach it. Many people think you have to have the word stay involved. Your dog has to hear the word stay for them to stay. That's not true. It becomes true after a very long amount of training that way. Thank you guys for listening to the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. 00;12;07;11 - 00;12;27;00Michael J. AccettaIf you missed our live, you can catch it on Tick Tock. Just follow us on Social Media and you'll get notified when we go live right now to open it up. Questions Q&A for my live members here. I mean, you're listening to this after the fact and you'd like to ask questions, make sure you message me with the question so I can talk about it on the next episode of the Acknowledge Dogs podcast. 00;12;27;00 - 00;12;27;21Michael J. AccettaThanks for listening. 00;12;31;08 - 00;12;38;25Michael J. AccettaThank you for listening to the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Subscribe to this podcast. Leave a review and connect with me on your favorite social media platform. 00;12;41;29 - 00;12;42;10Michael J. AccettaSo

In today's episode of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast, we're exploring the concept of reward placement and how it can affect your dog's training. Reward placement refers to the location in which a reward is given during a training session. When used correctly, reward placement can accelerate your dog's learning and improve its behavior. However, if used incorrectly, it can lead to disobedience and further problems. Train with me by heading over to https://www.matadork9.com/coaching   Episode Transcript 00:00:00:02 - 00:00:21:07Michael J. AccettaTo the Acknowledged Dogs podcast. Today's episode is all about exploring the concepts of reward placement. What is reward placement? How does it affect our dogs? Learning, how does it affect our dogs training and how if we use it effectively, we can accelerate everything that our dog is trying to learn everything. We're trying to teach them the skills that they need to know to adapt to everyday life. 00:00:21:12 - 00:00:42:02Michael J. AccettaOr if you're trying to do competition to try to fix problem behaviors. Reward placement is huge. When working with your dog and trying to do anything of value. We're also going to talk to the concept of why reward placement could have negative effects, how it could create disobedience, it could create more problems than good if we do it incorrectly. 00:00:42:11 - 00:00:57:13Michael J. AccettaOkay, we're going to go over the science of reward places. We're going to go over positive reinforcement and how it influences your dog. We're going to talk about some of the common mistakes and the techniques that you're going to be able to use right after listening to this episode with your own dog and accelerating your training. So let's jump into it first. 00:00:57:19 - 00:01:21:29Michael J. AccettaWhat is reward placements? To understand reward placements, you have to understand what's called the reward event. Whenever you give your dog a treat, whenever you give them a toy, whenever you give them praise the big picture is what's called a reward event. Now, professionals will use a reward event in different locations to prompt their dog to do something different in the next repetition. 00:01:22:13 - 00:01:43:01Michael J. AccettaFor example, if I want my dog a little forward and whatever behavior I'm trying to do, I might reward them in front of them. If I want them to back up, I will reward them behind. The best example I can give to this is if you're having your dog recall to you. Of course, if your dog's running directly at you, you would not toss a toy behind them, right? 00:01:43:02 - 00:01:57:09Michael J. AccettaThat might seem normal when my dog's running to me. Maybe I want to reward them with a toy, so I'm going to toss the toy behind them and they're going to chase after the toy and then they're going to come back. What actually happens more often than not is instead of our dog running all the way to us, they'll stop further and further away. 00:01:57:22 - 00:02:16:28Michael J. AccettaEvery single repetition, they are rewarded further and further away from us. They're going to stop further and further away. Instead of coming all the way to us, they're like, Oh, well, you're going to toss it behind me. I might as well back up. I might as well get ready for it. That is reward placement. The reward event is happening further away from you, and so they are actively looking to go further away from you. 00:02:16:28 - 00:02:33:21Michael J. AccettaProfessionals know this, and instead they'll toss the toy behind them, their dogs running directly to them. If you can get your dog to run between your legs, that's fantastic. Your dog's running to you, toss the toy behind you. They'll run straight through your legs. They get the toy, you turn around, you recall them again, they run back to you. 00:02:33:26 - 00:02:51:09Michael J. AccettaYou tell them to drop the toy. They drop the toy. You throw a second toy. Behind you. You're teaching them to run through you in order to get the toy order to get the reward. The reward event is happening behind you, which means we're motivating them to push through us. That's just one technique we're going to go over a couple later on. 00:02:52:00 - 00:03:08:02Michael J. AccettaBut I want you to understand that the reward placement can be very, very useful. When you use it correctly. If you use it incorrectly, if you toss the toy behind them, then we're creating problems, right? We're creating disobedience. I call I recalled them. I want them to come all the way to me. And instead they want to go that way. 00:03:09:26 - 00:03:32:14Michael J. AccettaNow, the science behind this is that dogs are very simply opportunists. They're opportunists. They are looking for the opportunity for and worse, reinforce That is why positive reinforcement works so well. Our dogs are actively seeking reinforcement. They want to find the thing that's going to bring them joy, give them extra value and get this dopamine hit in their brain. 00:03:32:14 - 00:03:50:23Michael J. AccettaWhen they solve problems, they get a dopamine spike, the chemical dopamine, which is good feelings and elation. They get that in their brain and they want to do it again. The more they do it, the more dopamine they get, the more they want to do it. This is the power of positive reinforcement. All right. If you've trained your dog for any length of time using treats or toys, or praise, then you know this. 00:03:51:02 - 00:04:09:06Michael J. AccettaOnce you pull out the toy, once you pull out the treat bag, they get excited. They want to do stuff with you. So when they're looking for that opportunity, they're engaged with you. They're trying to get the reinforcement. If we give them the opportunity to go to a specific spot to do it, they will beat us there. They will run straight there. 00:04:09:06 - 00:04:24:09Michael J. AccettaThat's why dogs run to the back door when you grab the leash. They know outside is exciting and the reward placement is outside. So they're going to be opportunist. They're going to get ahead they're going to cheat the system and they're going to get to the back door. So that won't put the leash on where that much closer to going outside. 00:04:25:20 - 00:04:43:14Michael J. AccettaImagine you put the leash on at the front door and then took them out the back door. Where would they go? They're probably going to go to the back door. That was a trick question. You might say, Oh, well, they'll go to the front door. No, because the reward placement is at the back door. It doesn't matter what happens before the reward placement. 00:04:43:14 - 00:05:03:17Michael J. AccettaWhat happens is where is the reward placement? Now, this is very commonly used in heal or competition work. We want our dog to be further behind us. Right. If they're glued to our leg and they're forging forward a little bit, maybe you want them to back up. You're going to reward behind them so that they back up. They're intentionally holding themselves back instead of coming forward. 00:05:03:22 - 00:05:20:29Michael J. AccettaIf we want them to come forward a little bit, we can reward them in front. Now, there is some complication to this. Okay. Now that you understand the science, let's talk about technique. Technique where we place the treat or where we place the toy or where we place the praise. Can be manipulated by using one of two things? 00:05:21:00 - 00:05:41:00Michael J. AccettaNumber one, a conditioned reinforcer, the clicker, right? I use the clicker in the moment where my dog is in the perfect position that I want them. Then the reward event can happen anywhere. Okay. So so if I'm doing a recall, like the example from before, I recall my dog all the way to me, they sit in front of me, I click the treat can go anywhere, the toy can go anywhere, I can toss it behind them. 00:05:41:14 - 00:06:13:14Michael J. AccettaBecause they finish the behavior. The conditioned reinforcer that click or the word yes indicates to my dog that it is over. We are done over with. Okay? The behavior is completely done. You've earned your reinforcement. Wherever that reinforcement goes is totally fine. However, you can use reinforcement placement to encourage them to do the next repetition. For example, if I want my dog to look at me, right, I'm practicing having them give me eye contact instead of giving them a treat directly in their mouth while they're already looking at me, I might toss the treat over there. 00:06:13:24 - 00:06:29:20Michael J. AccettaIt gets them to turn away from me so that I can have them practice turning back towards me. As they turn back towards me, I mark and toss another tree. They're going back and forth. I'm setting them up for the next repetition. If I don't set them up, then we're in this weird loop. I do this with obedience constantly. 00:06:29:27 - 00:06:46:20Michael J. AccettaMy dog puts their butt down in a sit. I will click, run backwards and give them a treat for standing up. Does this encourage them to stand after I click? Yes. And that's okay because the click indicates that the behavior is done. It doesn't mean that all of our training is done, but it does mean that the set is done right. 00:06:46:20 - 00:07:06:16Michael J. AccettaI said, Sit my dog, but there, sit down. I could say Good boy, I could keep them going, right? I could release them with the release word. Okay, free. Or I could click. And when they click, they're allowed to stand up and get their treat. I'm essentially teaching them to break the command by a terminal markers, what it's called a conditioned reinforcer that ends the behavior is called a terminal marker. 00:07:07:05 - 00:07:21:04Michael J. AccettaSo once I get them up good, I give him a treat. Now I can ask them to sit again because they're standing. Same thing with doubt. Same thing with standing, actually. Right. So they're standing. If I tell them to stand, I might push them back into a sit with a treat. Or I might ask them for a sit and then have them stand. 00:07:21:11 - 00:07:37:15Michael J. AccettaYou have that flexibility when you understand these concepts and these principles and you can put them in to where you need them. Okay. Now, the other way, right? I mentioned there was two there's kind of two ways to do this. The other way is to add words for all of the different reward placements that you're going to use. 00:07:38:11 - 00:07:55:22Michael J. AccettaWhat do I mean by that? First, there's indirect, indirect rewarding. Some people call this the pre-match theory. I call it indirect, indirect rewarding. If I'm going to directly give my dog a treat, I'm going to take it from my hand and put it in their mouth. That is direct if I'm going to send them to go do something that is indirect. 00:07:56:06 - 00:08:18:26Michael J. AccettaSo instead of giving them the treat, I'm sending them to a bowl of food or I'm tossing a toy and having them go get that's indirect, rewarding. They go, they get it, they come back all great. Right? So first you need to determine that. And what I can do is I can have a clicker for direct rewarding. I click, they come directly to my center and I give them a treat and I can say, go and they'll run off and I can toss the toy. 00:08:18:26 - 00:08:46:18Michael J. AccettaThat would be an indirect conditioned reinforcer. What they've learned is that word go means run off until you find the thing that I sent you to go get. But it's not a command, it's not a cue. It's not telling them to do something. It's relieving them from what they've done by indicating what they just did. Earned them reinforcement go because they sat patiently means now you can go and get a toy or go eat the food in the bowl. 00:08:47:18 - 00:09:02:13Michael J. AccettaNow, there's even another level to this, an advanced level to this. If let's say we have heel is the best way to describe it because of all the different complexities in that one moment. So if we have our dog heel right next to us, they're glued to our side. They're following along with the theme of our pants, right? 00:09:03:10 - 00:09:20:28Michael J. AccettaAnd they're looking up at us. I can do a couple of things. And again, we're going to pick different conditioned reinforcers, these different sounds that mean different things. And you'd have to find that out for yourself. But if I had my dog in a heel I might put a toy right on my shoulder so that they're looking up at my face. 00:09:20:28 - 00:09:35:29Michael J. AccettaNow, I don't like this too much simply because they're looking at the toy, not my face. And that's a clear indication, right? If I were to hold the toy away from me, they're probably going to still look at the toy. If I can teach that separately, then fantastic. I can have them look into my eyes. But let's say I put the toy maybe in my armpit or on my shoulder. 00:09:36:18 - 00:09:56:27Michael J. AccettaThey make magnetic toys that fit with vests. So you can do this. And when they are looking at me, I can flick it off my shoulder or I can have my dog jump up and get it. Now I'm going to need a conditioned reinforcer that's clear to do that as opposed to have my dog go behind me. And I'm going to toss a toy off to the side away from me. 00:09:57:19 - 00:10:31:22Michael J. AccettaThat way they're learning to be closer and closer to me again. Reinforcement placement teachers. Our dog to go forward in a position or retreat in a position to get closer to where the reward placement is. So if I if I have my dog on my left side and I want them to hug on to me and be closer to my right side, I will toss the toy or the tree onto my right side, which means they're going to be pushing into me in the hopes that I will let them slip behind my leg or slip in front of me and go get the toy over there if they're on my left and they're really pushing into 00:10:31:22 - 00:10:46:23Michael J. Accettame and I need them to relax a little bit, but I still want them right next to me. I might reward them right next to me, or I might toss the toy to the left. So they're going to peel off to the left and go get it. I can also have them peel off to the left and go behind me, peel off to the left and go forward, peel off to the right and go behind me. 00:10:46:23 - 00:11:03:14Michael J. AccettaPeel off to the right and go forward right. I have all these different directions that I could have my dog go into and when we really get into the nitty gritty of competition or training and that kind of thing, you want to have conditioned reinforcers for all of these different aspects. You want them to go on from the left leg. 00:11:03:14 - 00:11:21:29Michael J. AccettaYou want them to spin in a circle and go behind you. You want them to spin in the circle and then go forward, right? Because maybe you want them to learn how to tuck there, but more behind you, they're flailing out with their butt, meaning instead of being parallel to you, they're flailing out. Their hind legs are further away from you than their four limbs. 00:11:22:05 - 00:11:47:25Michael J. AccettaRight? So instead of having that happen, I'm going to teach them to turn to the left that tucks their button. So why? Why would I then use a conditional reinforcer instead of just using a lure or using a toy and just tossing it in a random direction? This is why it creates clarity with your dog. The clearer training will be, the faster your dog will learn. 00:11:48:23 - 00:12:07:23Michael J. AccettaIt's just like in school, right? If you remember back to grade school or high school or even college, when you went to a class, the outline was laid out for you was clear what you were going to learn. It was clear what the topic was. That way your brain was in the right mindset to learn that information. If you went into English class and started talking about math, you'd make no sense. 00:12:08:04 - 00:12:33:27Michael J. AccettaAnd that's why a lot of people struggled with science because we're talking about science and we start tossing in math. Yes, they go together. They absolutely go together. But you're prepped for science. Lengthy text, difficult words like proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, right? Those difficult words your brain is prepared for, not numbers. Once you start throwing numbers in there or algebra a lot of people hate algebra because there's letters in there. 00:12:34:15 - 00:13:04:18Michael J. AccettaWhy are there letters in there? I'm talking about math right now. On a rudimentary level, we all understand math is math, science or science. And they co-mingle together because they have to. But it's much easier for you to digest new information when you understand the rules and the outline of the information of the context. So when I use a condition reinforcer and I tell my dog spin right there in the heel position, I say spin and I want them to spin off to the right and maybe twirl a spin off to the left. 00:13:04:28 - 00:13:24:04Michael J. AccettaI say spin. They are already looking to where the reward is. They know what to expect but it is clear to them what they should be doing. Okay. If I were to say spin and I tossed the toy in front of us and spin meant turn around and go behind me, now he's going to be lost, it disrupts the flow of training. 00:13:24:16 - 00:13:43:20Michael J. AccettaIt makes him second guess what he's doing and he doesn't become as enthusiastic or creative in the process. Because he's constantly worried about what's happening next. All right. If we look at the back training principle, essentially my dog should always know what's coming next. What my dog knows least comes first. For example, the word right. My dog needs to know the behavior first. 00:13:43:20 - 00:13:59:26Michael J. AccettaThey need to know that we reinforcements are available actually first, right? First they need to know reinforcements. Are available. Then they need to know what a to reinforcer is. The clicker means. Yes, you've got a treat. Then my dog needs to know what behavior to do. And then they need to know when to do it, when not to do it. 00:13:59:26 - 00:14:25:00Michael J. AccettaThat's the word when you say sit. Everything I just mentioned happens afterwards. Sit. My dog does the behavior. They hear the conditioned reinforcer, and then they get the treat. They have to know the treat, then the condition reinforcer, then the behavior and then the word. That's how the process should go. And so at the end of day, if you're struggling with your dog's behavior, break it down like that and make it clear for them on what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing. 00:14:26:10 - 00:14:45:16Michael J. AccettaOkay, we got a lot there's a lot to digest. There are a lot to unpack. Now, I want to talk about the common mistakes that people make when they have a plan to start implementing reinforce ment policeman. Right. This is a very deep concept. It goes very, very deep down the rabbit hole of training and theory and techniques and all of that. 00:14:45:16 - 00:15:05:11Michael J. AccettaYou really have to know what you're doing to implement it correctly. Now, the common mistakes kind of go like this. Number one, you either don't know what you're doing and you're just kind of messing with it. Number two, you don't spend enough time conditioning the reinforcement appropriately, right? You have to teach your dog what you want them to do first. 00:15:06:07 - 00:15:27:22Michael J. AccettaNumber three, you're overcomplicating it. Or number four, you're setting them up for failing by testing them. Okay, you're testing them so let's do it like this first one. You just don't know how to do it. It's over. Complicated. Right it out. I want you to write it out. Write everything out. Get everything that's in your brain out on paper first. 00:15:28:14 - 00:15:47:29Michael J. AccettaWrite down what you want to see. Right. I want my dog to down ten feet away from me. Okay. That's what we want to see. I want my dog to down ten feet away from me. Well, where could I reward them? I could reward them where they stopped. I could reward them behind them. Or I could reward them for in front of me, which would be more likely to improve the performance of the behavior. 00:15:49:06 - 00:16:07:05Michael J. AccettaNow, if you're writing this down, fantastic. Because these are the questions that are going to be perfect. If you're struggling with this, what do I want? My dog to do? List out where you could reward them and then pick which one is going to be more likely to improve the quality of the behavior. I want my dog to stop at ten feet and they're stopping at six feet. 00:16:07:13 - 00:16:23:10Michael J. AccettaAnd this, of course, I'm talking about a recall down halfway there, 100 feet or 50 feet away. You recall them and you want them to stop ten feet in front of you. When you say the word down. So when they're running, I say the word down. I want them to drop immediately. Do I reward behind them? Do I reward them where they are? 00:16:23:10 - 00:16:43:11Michael J. AccettaDo I reward them in front of me? It depends. If they are closer than ten feet, I'm going to reward them behind them because it's going to improve the likelihood that they stopped sooner or maybe they slowed down their run to listen better. That's oftentimes what happens if they're right on the money, they're right at ten feet. I might reward them in their spot. 00:16:43:11 - 00:16:58:29Michael J. AccettaOr maybe I might reward them behind if I want to ensure that they slow down, maybe I reward in front because I want them to speed up, but continue to stop at that same spot. If they're 20 feet when they're supposed to be ten feet, then I definitely want to reward them in front of them so that they come forward more. 00:16:59:25 - 00:17:19:21Michael J. AccettaOkay. This is the kind of difference. So right out your training plan, right out what you want to see right out where you could reward them in the different spaces. You could reward them and then ask yourself what will be more likely to increase the likelihood that this happens. Okay, now overcomplicating it, overcomplicating it, it does not need to be difficult. 00:17:19:24 - 00:17:36:17Michael J. AccettaYou do not need to have 15 different conditioned reinforcers, like with heel, with advanced competitions. They got behind them, they got to the right, they got to the left, they got in front of them, they got jumping up and getting a train over here. They got jumping up and getting a toy over their right on different shoulders and different armpits. 00:17:36:17 - 00:17:55:05Michael J. AccettaThey got the toy in between their legs. They got the doing the, the toy in their pocket like all these crazy stuff. You don't need to have 15 different conditioned reinforcers. If anything, you really only need three. Okay, here are the three conditioned reinforcers that you need to have with your dog. Number one, a terminal marker. What you just did is over. 00:17:55:11 - 00:18:14:23Michael J. AccettaYou can now have the reward. The second one is what called Keep going signal. What you're doing is fantastic. I want you to continue doing it until I give you the terminal marker. Fantastic. And the last one you need is an indirect reward. So instead of directly rewarding your dog, you need to have something that tells them they're allowed to go do something or get something. 00:18:15:03 - 00:18:32:12Michael J. AccettaThey're allowed to go say hi to somebody. They're allowed to go take food off the counter. They're allowed to go eat the food on the floor that your three year old son dropped for my dogs. It's okay. Clean up, right? That tells them that there are it's a terminal marker. They stop doing the behavior, which is relaxing and waiting. 00:18:32:22 - 00:18:52:13Michael J. AccettaAnd then I say, go clean up. And that is their condition to reinforce. I say the exact same way every time. Go clean up. And now they're allowed to go and take the food off the floor that my son dropped. Those are the three that you need. Terminal marker keep going signal and an indirect reward marker. Essentially, go and get the thing that you want that is as overly complicated as you need. 00:18:53:00 - 00:19:12:22Michael J. AccettaYou could just do two. I would pick either the direct reward or the indirect reward, right? I would eliminate the keep going signal because that's really just to motivate your dog to continue doing what they're doing, but they should do it anyway based off the training that you're doing. Okay. But bare minimum would be one bare minimum. You need a conditioned reinforcer. 00:19:12:23 - 00:19:34:14Michael J. AccettaThat's the only way you're going to be able to select. What your dog did in that moment is what's deserving of the treat or the reward. Okay. Now, not teaching at first is a big mistake. Number three, if I want my dog to go get food off the floor, I cannot ask them to do a whole obedience routine and then send them confused as all hell to go get a treat off the floor. 00:19:34:14 - 00:19:47:12Michael J. AccettaYou're going to be like, Okay, what? What? They're going to come up to me expecting a treat and I'm not going to have one again. This goes back to before it's going to create a level of or a lack of clarity. But and we were confused. I thought I was getting a treat. Why didn't I get a treat now? 00:19:47:12 - 00:20:09:01Michael J. AccettaIt's dishonest, and we're getting into all this chaos. Instead, I have to teach them first the treat over there, you're allowed to go get this automatically happens if we're doing an A, leave it right. My dog sits in wait patiently. I tell them to go get it. Now they can go get the treat. Once you implement that and you start to pepper it into all your other training, it becomes very clear to your dog, Okay, go get it means go get the treat that's over there. 00:20:09:01 - 00:20:24:18Michael J. AccettaThat's super simple. But let's say you're teaching something different I want my dog to go from a down position, get up and turn around to get a treat or a toy. I have to teach that first. How might I do that? I might have my dog down next to me, I was facing the same direction. Show them the toy. 00:20:24:19 - 00:20:39:20Michael J. AccettaTell them to go get it and toss it away from them. That way they can clearly see where it should be going. Or maybe I break the behavior down so that instead of rewarding behind them, I rewarded a 90 degree angle to them, a perpendicular line to them so they can see it out of their peripheral. And then they go and get it. 00:20:39:20 - 00:20:54:23Michael J. AccettaAnd then I slowly work that back and back and back. Depends on how you want to do it. Depends on your dog's level of skill, your level of skill, and the amount of patience that you might have or what you're already used to. I personally would break it down unless I'm talking about a leave it, which I've already done right. 00:20:55:21 - 00:21:10:22Michael J. AccettaYou have to teach at first. You want your dog to spin off to the side and go get something. Then you have to teach them first to spin. Right? And this is where the fancy lowering comes from. When someone has a lot of treats in their hand and they're getting their dog to spin in a circle to the right, spin to the left, they're trying to put them in the right position and rewarding them accordingly. 00:21:11:12 - 00:21:34:22Michael J. AccettaBut in actuality, they're also teaching them a spin so they could just remove the treat, tell them a different condition to reinforce or have them spin in that direction. Mark and treat. And then they wouldn't need to mark a second time. Right? So that conditioned reinforcer leads to the other conditioned reinforcement. I'm getting confusing here. The condition reinforcement that tells them to spin, meaning what you did, where you were, is exactly where I want you to be. 00:21:34:25 - 00:21:54:26Michael J. AccettaYou're now done. You can go do something else that would then be followed by a click and treat because they're accustomed to the click and they know what they did was right. Again, we're teaching behaviors intentionally used to reward our dog accordingly. It's a very deep concept. Very deep concept. I don't want you to get muddled up in the mechanics of it. 00:21:54:26 - 00:22:11:19Michael J. AccettaUnderstand the principles. The mechanics will come a lot easier. And then the last one is setting your dog up to fail. And this is what I call testing. There's three levels to teaching your dog anything teaching, training and testing. A lot of people spend more time in the testing area than they do in the training or the teaching area. 00:22:12:17 - 00:22:31:26Michael J. AccettaOkay. Testing should probably be 20 to 10% of all of the training and work that you do with your dog. Essentially, when you're doing something with them and you go, I don't know if they can do it, let's find out. That's a test. You are testing them to see if they can do it and you end up setting them up for failure because they don't know what your expectation is. 00:22:31:26 - 00:22:44:23Michael J. AccettaThey don't know how to do it. And you're you're you're just struggling at that point. This is what I unfortunately did when I started working in college. When I started working with dogs in college, we everybody was so excited about working with dogs were like, Okay, well, I wonder if this dog could do this. And we tested it out. 00:22:44:23 - 00:23:14:03Michael J. AccettaThe dog failed. We were like, Oh, okay, well, you know, let's move on to the next thing instead of learning how to do it. And my professors pointed it out. They said, You're not teaching these dogs. You're expecting them to do things that they cannot do, teach them. And then let's talk about it afterwards. And we were all given the assignment, whatever it was, that we had our dogs testing, jumping over something or whatever, it's like, Okay, break it down, split the behavior back, change it condition reinforce or positive reinforcement reward schedules, all the good stuff I always talk about and those doctor able to do it much easier, much more competently and with a certain 00:23:14:03 - 00:23:33:15Michael J. Accettalevel of confidence that made it look easy, right? It wasn't easy before because they were struggling, because we were testing that, we were pushing the limits of what they could not do, did not know how to do and wouldn't do in a natural situation. And so if you're having your dog heel next to you or you're having your dog recalled to you and you're just you decide to do something that they've never done before, they're going to be confused. 00:23:34:16 - 00:23:57:19Michael J. AccettaAnd again, lack of clarity leads to a lack of effectiveness in training, too. Simple as that. Lack of clarity leads to a lack of effectiveness and training. This episode was jam packed. A lot of information here. So I want to go over a little bit just as a summary so you can start to understand everything we talked about and make sure you look up the information if you don't have it. 00:23:57:25 - 00:24:27:09Michael J. AccettaOr maybe you write down questions after I've saying what I'm saying and you go listen to the Acknowledged Logs podcast again. Okay, so what is reward placement? The effectiveness of rewarding our dog in a particular area with the reward event, whether it be a toy treat or praise to encourage the likelihood of that level of performance in a particular area, whether forging ahead, moving back off to the side, closer or further away, we're controlling how our dog performs the behavior by rewarding them in a particular location. 00:24:28:13 - 00:24:46:22Michael J. AccettaThis works because our dogs are opportunists. They are looking for the advantage. They want to be closer to the reward of when they don't want to wait. They are cheaters like dogs are cheaters. They want to find the best way to do something, the most effective way to do something. And if they are eager for reinforcement it, they will do this ten times better. 00:24:46:26 - 00:25:05:19Michael J. AccettaWorking dogs are amazing at this. That's why they have behavior problems like going through trash or ripping someone's pants off. I knew a dog that did this didn't get the reward fast enough, the ball. And so it ripped the guy's cargo shorts off to get the ball. They were not waiting. They are opportunist. They want what they want and they will go get it one way or another. 00:25:06:07 - 00:25:32:18Michael J. AccettaOkay. Now science behind it. The dopamine in the brain tells them to do this. It's so it's such a such it's such a powerful chemical in the brain for people. It's a powerful chemical. That's why TikTok is so addictive. That's why social media was addictive or is addictive. Still right. And when the next thing comes along and gives us more dopamine faster at a higher rate of reinforcement, talk about higher rates of reinforcement all the time. 00:25:33:07 - 00:25:55:24Michael J. AccettaTick tock gave us a dump of dopamine at a high rate of reinforcement. So much so that Instagram is kind of far to the side. Facebook is far to the side, unless you're not on TikTok. But if you're on TikTok, then this is what's influencing a lot of people's emotions and struggles right now, because they're getting such a overload of dopamine and a dump at one point that once they're off, tick tock, there's no more dopamine. 00:25:55:25 - 00:26:12:27Michael J. AccettaThey don't know what to do. And so when the dogs are looking for dopamine, once they get it, they feel great. They want to do it again. Okay. Don't create a dog that's addicted to tick tock in that way or dopamine. And that way it's bad for people, it's bad for dogs. It should be regulated. But the best type of dopamine is those that solve problems. 00:26:12:27 - 00:26:29:21Michael J. AccettaWhen we solve problems, we get a hit of dopamine that makes us feel better, makes our dogs know better, more creative, more excited, more engaging in the techniques you can use. We got to use indirect rewards. We got to use direct rewards. We have to challenge our dogs, but also create a lot of clarity for them. Teach them what you want them to know. 00:26:30:08 - 00:26:51:29Michael J. AccettaDon't overcomplicate it. Make it as simple as possible for them. Do not set them up for success by testing them and spend time really learning and understanding how to do it right. Everything down. Make it really easy for yourself. It doesn't need to be complicated again, those three basic ones that you should implement a terminal marker, meaning it's over, it's done with it. 00:26:51:29 - 00:27:17:19Michael J. AccettaKeep going. Signal mean, continue doing what you're doing. It's fantastic. I love it. And then an indirect reward. Go forth and go get the item Thank you guys for listening to the acknowledged podcast. If you have questions, please let me know either on social media or leave a review on the Acknowledge Dogs podcast. Thanks for listening. If you're interested in training with me, head over to Matador Canine dot com forward slash coaching Matador Canine dot com forward slash coaching. 00:27:17:19 - 00:27:34:14Michael J. AccettaI have one on one private virtual training. It's the most effective training in the world. You're going to get not only one on one instruction through Zoom lessons, you're also going to get the complete video library, audio library and workbooks to supplement all the training that we're doing as well as 24 sevenths support and mobile access on your phone to the courses. 00:27:34:14 - 00:27:51:17Michael J. AccettaIt's an absolute onslaught of information and content to help keep you successful and reliable in your dog's training. So that the next 15 years of your dog's life is effortless. Thank you guys for listening. I'm going to open up the live for questions if you have any, and if you haven't tuned into our live events, you're listening to this after the fact. 00:27:51:25 - 00:28:10:16Michael J. AccettaMake sure you check it out. We go live almost every single day at noon around time. Follow us on social media so you can get the notifications when we do go live. I'll see you then. All right. Open it up here. What do we got? Questions, comments, concerns. What did you like about the episode? If you were here for the whole time, What did you miss? 00:28:10:16 - 00:28:18:13Michael J. AccettaWhat would you like me to go back over? What problems are you struggling with? Your dog? What's going on? Dogs Anonymous. 00:28:20:15 - 00:28:46:05Michael J. AccettaYes, I'm recording a podcast. The Acknowledged Dogs podcast. The best podcast. People just don't know it yet. It's the best one out there. We have over 160 episodes of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast, which is an absolutely absurd amount. Not a single dog training podcast that I have found has that many episodes. I'm proud of it. If you haven't checked it out, Apple, iTunes or Apple Podcasts, I think it's called the Apple App. 00:28:46:05 - 00:29:11:19Michael J. AccettaApple Podcasts. I always say iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Now that just happened last week. Amazon Music now it is now available because if there's no other questions, no worries. I know it's been a lot, so take all that information in, absorb it, use it to ask questions. Either in the comments section of my videos, or you can send me a message. 00:29:11:19 - 00:29:21:09Michael J. AccettaIf you're like, I don't understand what this guy was talking about, I'd love to answer them. I'd love to make more videos about reward placements because it is such an in-depth topic. Thank you guys for listening and I'll talk to you next time.  

Whether you have a puppy, are getting one, or adding a member to the family you will want to listen to today's episode. It is important to do these three fundamental steps in order to ensure you have the best companion for the next fifteen years.  If you have a younger dog, the information will still help you learn why your dog might be the way that they are and what you need to do in order to jumpstart your training and gain some momentum.  To build your dog's confidence check out this free e-book on Building Confidence https://www.matadork9.com/confidence   Want to work with me? My private training gives you everything you need to succeed and more!! Schedule a call with me here https://www.matadork9.com/coaching   Episode Transcript: 00:00:18:07 - 00:00:34:14Michael J. AccettaYou just got a puppy or you're getting a puppy and you want to know, how do I socialize my dog? How do I build their confidence in one of the first three things I need to be able to teach my dog first to really have a good, long lasting relationship for the next 15 years. Then this is the episode for you. 00:00:34:14 - 00:01:01:07Michael J. AccettaStay tuned on this. All right. So first the socialization period. You just got your puppy. Now they're not allowed to leave their mom until after eight weeks. You are already most of the way through a socialization period. What does that mean? When your dog is born, their brain starts to develop a lot faster than an adult dogwood. And so they're taking in all of this information what essentially happens is between three to 12 weeks of age. 00:01:01:07 - 00:01:27:02Michael J. AccettaAnd that does depend based on the breed and the size of the dog between three to 12 weeks of age. They take in everything that they need to know is normal. That's the key phrase that I want you to take away from this. They need to know that is normal. Now, if a dog grows up on a farm and they're never exposed to busses or trains or subway stations, they have never been on a plane, that's what they think is normal. 00:01:27:10 - 00:01:44:10Michael J. AccettaSo if you were to remove a dog and teleport them from a farm into the city, they would freak out. Vice versa. If you got a dog that grows up in the city and you take them to the farm, they might seem actually stressed because there isn't a lot of interactions. There isn't a lot of noise going on all the time. 00:01:45:06 - 00:02:03:14Michael J. AccettaSo whatever your dog needs to know is normal should be exposed to them between three to 12 weeks of age. Now, again, if you're getting a puppy or you got a puppy and they're eight weeks old, you only have a couple of weeks to do this. So before you get the puppy or right now write down everything your dog needs to know is normal. 00:02:03:14 - 00:02:16:14Michael J. AccettaDo they need to know how to get into the car? Do they need to know how to be picked up and handled, manipulated, put into the trunk of the car? If you're going to have a, you know, a big car with a crate? Maybe they need to be able to go into the trunk. Maybe you want them to sit in the front with you. 00:02:17:11 - 00:02:33:07Michael J. AccettaOkay. I don't do that because I think it's a little dangerous, but many people do it. And if you do that, then you need to teach your dog that sitting in the front is normal. You need to teach your dog around kids, socialize them to kids, socialism to other dogs, socialize them to the family members in your house. 00:02:33:07 - 00:03:00:11Michael J. AccettaThose things need to become normal. If you are going to be someone who grooms your own dog, then you're going to want to teach your dog that all of the equipment in grooming is normal. The Clippers the brush, the shampoos, the scrubbers, everything, towels, even different textures, all of the things that you are going to use in your daily life and maybe even above that should be exposed to your dog. 00:03:01:08 - 00:03:20:00Michael J. AccettaOkay, three to 12 weeks, you get your dog at eight weeks. You only got four weeks to do that. You got a month to do this. Now there is something to be said about doing too much. If we overexpose our dogs to these things that we want to socialize them to, what can end up happening is actually stressing them out more. 00:03:20:01 - 00:03:38:08Michael J. AccettaYou've overexposed them and they become afraid of it. So throughout the entire training process, the socialization process, the exposure to these new things, you don't want to be pushing them to the point where they're freaking out or panicking or and this is the old method, what's called flooding you're forcing them to get over it. You got to you got to know how to do this for the rest of your life. 00:03:38:10 - 00:03:56:12Michael J. AccettaI don't care how you feel. I'm going to put you in this situation. You're going to get over it eventually. This is not the way to go. About it. This is what I first did with my first dog, Breezy, plus her soul. I was learning so much back then, and now the experience I have with my other two dogs have been 100 times better simply because I learn from Breezy. 00:03:56:12 - 00:04:14:02Michael J. AccettaSo I thank her for being a guinea pig in the beginning. I had done flooding to teach her how to go to the baths now I was very patient. I wasn't going to throw her in there, but it took about three to 5 hours. I don't remember exactly three or 5 hours where we just sat in the tub together. And we did nothing. 00:04:14:05 - 00:04:31:00Michael J. AccettaShe was shaking. She was shivering. She was terrified, and I hated doing it. But that's what I thought was the best method. That's what I thought was going to work. Of course, now I know different. Slow exposure, increasing the level of difficulty over time, building up their confidence, playing games with them. I didn't know that at the time. 00:04:31:00 - 00:04:48:00Michael J. AccettaAnd so I just brought her into the tub with me. 3 hours later, she finally felt relaxed and I took her out of the tub. That happened day after day after day. She still doesn't like the tub, but she tolerates it. That's the difference. You get a dog that tolerates what we asked him to do, but doesn't particularly enjoy it. 00:04:49:02 - 00:05:05:08Michael J. AccettaSo when I got my next dog, I went really slow. I expose them to the bath, calmly getting into the water. Out of the water. Into the water. Out of the water. Sure. I did a lot of things that didn't actually require taking the full bath. Right. We just went into the bathroom and then we left the bathroom. 00:05:05:13 - 00:05:19:14Michael J. AccettaI jumped into the tub with them. They jumped out of the tub. That was it for the day. Right. Like those tiny little steps every single day made it so much easier for me to be able to give my dog a 20 minute bath in comparison to a three hour long bath with my first dog. A 20 minute bath. 00:05:19:14 - 00:05:42:14Michael J. AccettaIs it astronomical difference? And that's what can happen when you take the time to expose them correctly. Okay, so you got your dog at eight weeks, maybe they're nine weeks, maybe they're ten weeks, maybe they're 11 weeks. You only got one week left. What should you start doing? Make a list of three important things that you should be doing Car outside and people. 00:05:42:14 - 00:05:57:09Michael J. AccettaSounds and noises. Okay. Sounds and noises are kind of the same thing, but people and experiences out in the world. So first is the car if there's an emergency, you're going to have to get into the car. If you're going somewhere, you're going to have to get into the car. And if you have an expose them to the car already, this is the time to do it again. 00:05:57:09 - 00:06:14:06Michael J. AccettaYou want them to think that this is normal getting into the car is normal. You don't need to get sick. They don't need be panting. They don't need be freaking out. Again, my first dog, Breezy, she was found in the woods. I got her as a rescue. The only time she'd ever been in a car, to my knowledge, was on the van ride from Kentucky all the way to New York. 00:06:14:12 - 00:06:28:02Michael J. AccettaIt was a straight trip. So when I put her in the car for the first time, she was panicking. She's like, Oh, my God, I'm being taken away again. I'm going to be in this car for so long. That's not what happened. Over time, she started to get better at it, but she would pant, she would draw, she pace around. 00:06:28:04 - 00:06:40:14Michael J. AccettaShe couldn't get her footing was also for her. So when I got my next dog and then my third dog, that was something we were heavily, heavily focused on. They're going to get in the car, they're going to sit in the front to get used to it. They're going to sit in the back and get used to it. 00:06:40:14 - 00:06:59:05Michael J. AccettaThey're going to sit in kennels and get used to a different kennels, wire kennels and taxi crates, plastic and fabric kennels. Okay. I'm going to get them used to going on the hood, going under the car to get a ball. I'm going to get them used to the car. I'm thinking it's a great thing because I don't want them to be stressed the way my first dog was and then we also went on the train. 00:06:59:09 - 00:07:18:06Michael J. AccettaI went into the city with them. We went on the subway, went on the train. They have yet to be on a plane. One of them has, the other one has not. But we still went in the area where there were planes and they could hear it. They could see it. Maybe we didn't get to go on them, but they're used to the noises, and that knocks out two out of the three perceptive variables that our dogs have. 00:07:19:03 - 00:07:39:05Michael J. AccettaRight. Clearly touches different, but sight, sound and smell. So they're used to the sight, the sound and the smell. I'm sorry. They're used to all three. So they're used to the sight, sound and smell. Getting on it is just that much easier because they're used to it. Okay, now how do we build our dogs? Confidence let's say maybe you're past this point. 00:07:39:11 - 00:08:00:02Michael J. AccettaYou've got a couple of month old dog, and they're starting to either show some bad behaviors because they're afraid or they're just shutting down This often happens around the four to five month mark. It's called a fear period. Okay? When ends up happening is they've been over socialized, they're out in the world, and that's important for their biology so that they can learn about the environment. 00:08:00:14 - 00:08:21:13Michael J. AccettaWhat ends up happening is right after that, they go, Okay, now let's retreat. We figured out what was normal. We've explored now let's retreat to preserve our life, keep and keep ourselves alive, right? That's a biological necessity. And so they retreat in order to protect themselves, but often they can overdo it, especially if we then coddle them and say, Hey, it's okay, everything's fine now. 00:08:21:13 - 00:08:46:13Michael J. AccettaI don't want to necessarily push my dog and punish them for feeling that way, but I do want to express and bring out their confidence, and we can do that through reinforcement I want to take a moment and thank all of our loyal followers. This podcast would not be possible without you. Leave, review and let us know what you like and want to learn on the next episode of the Acknowledge Dogs podcast. 00:08:47:03 - 00:09:08:00Michael J. AccettaNow back to the show so what do I mean by that? Essentially, I'm going to put my dog in a situation that might be slightly stressful, and you'll have to gauge and it's slightly stressful I'm not going to throw him into a lake. I might just take them to the shore, especially if they're afraid of water. That's another thing. 00:09:08:03 - 00:09:35:01Michael J. AccettaIf you have a young puppy, you should take them to the lake, you should take them to water, get them used to swimming around it to do absolutely wonderful exercise, burns calories, keeps them healthy, low impact on the joints. As they get older, they won't be beating up their legs right in their hips. Wonderful, wonderful exercises. So as a puppy, you want to get them used to that it's going to prolong the legality of exercise and activities you guys get to do together and make it easier. 00:09:35:01 - 00:09:54:05Michael J. AccettaIf you ever had to do rehab at some point because they use water very often so you're not afraid of something. You want to break it up into manageable pieces, make it easy for them to build up their confidence. So I might go to the shore not to the point where they're backing away from the water, but instead just rewarding them around the shore. 00:09:54:05 - 00:10:09:09Michael J. AccettaMaybe we play the favorite game that they have tug, snatch, search, whatever it may be. I want to play and build up their confidence, making them think that the shore is the best place to be, and then we're going to slowly move into the water. I did this when I started teaching my dogs how to kayak with me. 00:10:10:05 - 00:10:25:00Michael J. AccettaI got into the kayak and they were going to go behind me. The kayak was big enough behind me, so I said, Okay, they're going to go behind you. They're going to sit behind me. First thing I did was get them used to going on to the kayak on dry land. Now I stabilized it. I held it so that they didn't wobble around because that would have thrown them off. 00:10:26:02 - 00:10:44:08Michael J. AccettaThey would have been more nervous about it. Now they're on balance equipment all the time, sit, pause and bosu balls and all that thing, so they know what it's like to balance and maneuver. But this was something new. So I wanted to make it easy for the I stabilize it, they get on awesome. We're good. Then I'd have them jump off prematurely before they got nervous. 00:10:44:14 - 00:11:01:02Michael J. AccettaI'd have them jump off, reward them with a treat or praise and get them back on over and over and over. We did that. I slowly brought the kayak into the water, had them do the exact same thing on the shore while half the kayak was in the water and then had them do it in the water on to the kayak. 00:11:01:02 - 00:11:19:06Michael J. AccettaThat was it. Just in case they fell off while we were kayaking, they could climb back up. See what I'm doing I'm breaking down every single aspect of it to build up their confidence, their competency, and their confidence in it. That way, they can be reliable. When I asked them to do something, they're not hesitating because of how nervous they are now. 00:11:19:06 - 00:11:43:00Michael J. AccettaI go in way more depth about building up confidence in this free resource that I want to give you. The link is in the bio. If you're watching this right now, but if you're listening to this after the fact, you can go to Matador Canine dot com forward slash confidence, matador canine dot com forward slash confidence. It's a free PDF on step by step on how to build your dog's confidence that they can enjoy the life that you want to provide for it. 00:11:43:13 - 00:12:04:08Michael J. AccettaNow, the last thing I want to talk about is the bond the fundamental building blocks on what you should be teaching your dog. First, you've got a puppy. You've socialized them to the environments, to people, to other dogs, to the car, to swimming. You've, you've socialized them with those things. Maybe you had to build up some of their confidence or maybe they didn't have that bad of a fear period. 00:12:04:10 - 00:12:22:00Michael J. AccettaFantastic. Now you can really get into the nitty gritty of training. Now, many people think, Okay, I'm going to jump right into obedience. I'm going to join an obedience class. I'm going to sit down, stay. He'll come. That is not the first thing you should be doing since you've already done a little bit of training with the socialization and the fear period. 00:12:22:11 - 00:12:42:05Michael J. AccettaThis first step should be relatively easy. You're just going to build engagement when you go outside. Your dog should only be thinking about you. This is going to help prevent reactivity when they bark at other people and dogs. Socialization will also help prevent reactivity. It's going to help make recall easier and all other behaviors easier. In any environment. 00:12:42:12 - 00:13:01:04Michael J. AccettaIf your dog is engaging with you, they're interacting with you. They're looking to be with you. It's easier to get their attention excuse me, easier to get their attention and ask them to do something. So I can say sit. If they're not looking at me, they're not paying attention. When I say sit, they're not going to do it simply because they've checked out. 00:13:01:07 - 00:13:28:11Michael J. AccettaThey're looking at something else. But when I do say sit and they actually do it, then I can reward them. So by building engagement, I'm setting my dog up for success. I'm preventing reactivity and I'm making sure that I have their focus. I have their attention. When I ask them to do something, they're ten times more likely to do it now that the first thing that's the first thing, okay, you've got to have engagement down solid. 00:13:29:08 - 00:13:51:05Michael J. AccettaNow, the second thing is shaping games. The second thing you want to do, you just games that involve your dog. Learning how to learn is the best way I can describe it. If you give your dog all the answers, right, you're like Okay, I'm going to lure them with a treat or I'm going to mold them, actually take their body and physically push it into positions. 00:13:52:00 - 00:14:11:02Michael J. AccettaIf I do that, one ends up happening as my dog becomes reliant on the food lure, moving them around, right? It put it in front of their nose and I bring them over here and I try to get them to sit down and become reliant on the food law. There are ways to phase it out, but if you can actually teach your dog to start shaping the behavior by themselves using successful approximation, that's what it's called. 00:14:11:11 - 00:14:32:03Michael J. AccettaEssentially, my dog offers some version of the behavior, a small little step of it. I'm going to let them know that that's exactly what I wanted. You can say, yes, you can use a clicker, and then I'm going to reinforce them with their preferred reinforcement, whether it's a treat, whether it's a toy, whether it's praise, whether it's access to something, and then they're more likely to start performing that behavior again. 00:14:32:08 - 00:14:47:01Michael J. AccettaSo they you know, pick up their right shoulder. I'm going to mark that. I'm going to give them a treat. They pick up their shoulder and their elbow mark that give them a treat. Now they're paw comes fully off the ground. I'm Mark that can mature and I'm teaching them how to lift up their arm to maybe give me pause. 00:14:48:05 - 00:15:12:07Michael J. AccettaTeaching your dog that way, builds their creativity, builds their confidence and helps them have more problem solving skills. Everything. We just talked about socialization. Excuse me. I got something in my throat here. I'm so sorry. Socialization and that fear period. Trying to build their confidence. This is the best way to incorporate all of it. Because now that they know how to learn, you can teach them things a lot faster. 00:15:13:06 - 00:15:35:07Michael J. AccettaAs well as put them in stressful situations and have them solve problems solved by themselves. So if I put my dog in a kayak and I let it go into the water, my dog knows there's a few things that he could try. One, he could sit, he could lay down to stabilize the kayak. He knows that because of all the balance equipment practice, we do him laying down becomes easier because it's not as wobbly center of gravity. 00:15:35:07 - 00:15:59:14Michael J. AccettaNow, he's not thinking of that. He's just knowing I well, lay down, it becomes easier. He can jump off and swim back to me. Why? Because we practice swimming but he has a skill set simply because we've done so many things. So when you're teaching your dog anything, start off with engagement. Make sure that you're engaged with you wherever you go outside front yard, backyard, down at the park, down at the cafe, whatever it is, and then move into shaping games, essentially standstill. 00:16:00:02 - 00:16:18:09Michael J. AccettaWait for your dog to offer anything they look somewhere, they paw at you, they sit anything you're going to market. Reward that in the never mark and reward that one again during that session. So you want them to try something different this is called 101 Things to Do with a Box. It's a classic, classic shaping game, but it's one of my favorites for puppies to do. 00:16:19:08 - 00:16:55:05Michael J. AccettaAnd then the last thing you have to master is management. I talk about management all the time. I'm going to call extreme management. When you have a puppy, everything they do, everything that you do is going to shape the next 15 years of their life. If you can manage the first six months of your dog's life while training them how to live in your world the way you want them to live, the next 15 years is going to be so much easier if you don't manage it and they develop problematic behaviors or they do things so-so or they kind of listen. 00:16:55:05 - 00:17:13:08Michael J. AccettaBut more often than not they're just doing it to get a treat and they're becoming dependent. What ends up happening is the next 15 years of your life, you're playing catch up. Maybe you do three years of solid training. You're never going to get to exactly what you want or what could have been if you did training early on. 00:17:13:12 - 00:17:37:08Michael J. AccettaSo be proactive about it. You just got your puppy or you're getting a puppy, have everything laid out. First thing I'm going to do between three to 16 weeks. First thing I'm going to do, socialize my dog to everything they need to know is normal. Number two, I'm going to build up their confidence that way. We have the ability to do the fun adventures that we want to do together, as well as just make life easier. 00:17:37:12 - 00:18:03:09Michael J. AccettaEven if you're not looking to do fun adventures it's going to make it easier for you. Fireworks aren't going to bother them, are getting into the car stressful situations. That's not going to bother them going to the that's not going to bother them. Those kinds of things. And then you're going to move into teaching the fundamentals. First thing I'm going to do, I'm going to I'm sorry if the old engagement fundamentals build engagement game and games and you're going to manage everything at the same time. 00:18:05:06 - 00:18:28:09Michael J. AccettaIt's that simple. I know it sounds simple, like now that I'm saying it, but it's that simple. Break it down like that. When you do that the next 15 years that promise, you are going to be so much easier. Thank you guys for listening to the now Dr. Podcast. I'm going to open it up to Q&A. If you're here live, if you're listening to this afterwards, feel free to message me your questions and I'll talk about it on a future episode of the podcast. 00:18:28:13 - 00:18:29:12Michael J. AccettaThanks, guys, for listening.

The classic mantra of Exercise, Discipline, and Affection has a new layout. Exercise, Education, and Affection  This is a more effective and appropriate mantra for you to be able to train your dog with positive methods that actually last. In today's episode, I go over why this is so important and how changing the word discipline to education makes all the difference in the world to you and your dog.  If you want to be able to have the dog of your dreams schedule a call with me with the link below.  https://www.matadork9.com/coaching Want to train your dog from the comfort of your home to be well-behaved and listen no matter what? Get access to Matador University with the link below! https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial     Episode Transcript 00:00:00:03 - 00:00:26:05Michael J. AccettaWhat we're going to be talking about today is the classic phrase exercise, discipline, affection, and what it should actually be, which is exercise education and affection. So if you have a dog and you've heard the phrase exercise, discipline, affection, I'm going to change your thought on that middle piece, that discipline aspect, because it doesn't give you everything you need in order to actually have success with your dog, in order to have a dog that is well trained, well behaved. 00:00:26:10 - 00:00:56:01Michael J. AccettaExercise, discipline and affection is not the right line up. It should be exercise, education and affection. So let's go through exercise. Why do we even care about exercise? Exercise. Make sure that our dog is healthy, happy and fulfilled long term. Okay. Yes. You want a dog that is well-behaved. You want a dog that listens however if they have all this pent up energy that zooms at 7:00 at night, if they have all that pent up energy, they're not going to be able to think clearly. 00:00:56:04 - 00:01:11:03Michael J. AccettaThis is what's called the Yorks docks and law. So if you think about a hill, the more excitement that your dog has, the less focus they are. If we get to the top of the hill, they can be really, really focused until we get too excited then we actually start to go down in the level of focus. Okay. 00:01:11:03 - 00:01:33:06Michael J. AccettaSo over here, we got a couch potato at the bottom of the hill on the side. There's no excitement. There's no energy. When we start to get energy, maybe we pull out a treat or a toy or we jazz our dog up, we get excited. Then we get to the middle of our hill, that top of the hill where our dog is perfectly focused, and then it goes back down to the bottom when our dog is too crazed, too much energy, too much excitement in the environment. 00:01:34:02 - 00:01:52:14Michael J. AccettaIf your dog has way too much energy, you have a high energy dog and you actually tire them out a little bit. They can think clearer. This means that you can teach them faster. They'll absorb new information faster, and you don't have to struggle trying to, you know, be more jazzed up with your dog. You can actually be at a more level playing field. 00:01:52:14 - 00:02:13:06Michael J. AccettaYou should do this with my clients all the time. If I have an individual who doesn't have a lot of energy, naturally they aren't all over the place and bouncing around or can kind of fake it till they make it. If they can't do that for whatever reason, we need to tire the dog out first. If I tire the dog out first, then I have them on a level playing field. 00:02:13:06 - 00:02:31:12Michael J. AccettaThey'll actually work together. If the dog is crazy and the individual has a low level of energy, they're not going to line up. Same thing if it's the opposite. If the owner has a high level of energy, they want to do a lot with their dog, but their dog doesn't. Their dog wants to be relaxed. Then we also don't have a nice line up. 00:02:31:12 - 00:02:49:04Michael J. AccettaOur dog gets like Drudge along with everything, and they don't like it. They don't enjoy it as much. So the first thing, if you're having problematic behaviors, is to burn your dog's energy just a little bit. Doesn't have to be crazy. Yes. The whole classic two 45 minute walks is perfect. However, there's some other things you can do to burn your dog's energy. 00:02:49:09 - 00:03:09:13Michael J. AccettaTeaching them different games, playing puzzles with them, teaching them to search stuff in your house or just teaching tricks for that mental engagement is going to burn their energy a lot faster than physical. The other aspect of working on physical energy a lot is that our dog would build a tolerance. If you go for two 45 minute walks a day in the span of three to six months, your dog is going to get used to it. 00:03:10:05 - 00:03:35:09Michael J. AccettaAnd then two 45 minute walks a day are no longer adequate. You actually have to do more. So we run into a problem when we try to chase this physical exercise, but if we do mental, it's not so much pressure on you, but it's a lot of good exercise for your dog. They're actually going to burn more energy and get tired because of the mental expenditure that goes on in solving problems, learning new behaviors, and the engagement exercises. 00:03:36:00 - 00:03:57:01Michael J. AccettaOkay, so that's step number one. Burn our energy. If you're having problem behaviors, burn their energy. Number two, I changed the phrase from exercise discipline to affection to exercise education and affection. Now, the education part is really important if you're going to discipline your dog, that kind of has the connotation that you're going to say they did something wrong. 00:03:57:07 - 00:04:16:14Michael J. AccettaRight. My dog jumped on the couch. I'm going to discipline them, going to tell them that was wrong. Get off the couch. That doesn't give them a clear understanding of what they should be doing. That's why I change to educate. You should be educating your dog on exactly what they need to know in the environment you want them to know it in to the extent you want them to know it. 00:04:17:06 - 00:04:37:14Michael J. AccettaSo we're hanging out right now. My dog, Tom, he's laying over here on the side when we're in the bedroom. Or in the office or just hanging out. I want him to relax. If we go outside or we go to a park and I take him off leash, I expect him to run around and have fun. But still listen when I need him to, the expectation is there, but I need to educate him on each one of those types of expectations. 00:04:38:14 - 00:04:54:12Michael J. AccettaSo in the office, I didn't just have him come in here and expect him to know everything I know. I took the time to teach him. When we're in the office, you have to relax. When we're in the bedroom, you have to relax when we're inside, essentially, you have to relax. And I sit down you should lay down next to me right when I sit on the couch. 00:04:54:12 - 00:05:16:06Michael J. AccettaIf I don't invite you up, just lay by my feet until I invite you up. So I have to go forth and teach him the actual expectation that I have. I can't expect him to know it. If he knows it, great. And this is what happens when you adopt an older dog. Some dogs just know certain well-behaved skill sets or habits if you got a puppy where you got an older dog, it doesn't have these skill sets. 00:05:16:12 - 00:05:30:13Michael J. AccettaOftentimes you struggle and this is where training comes in. So the first thing you're going to do is teach them what you want them to do and then use it constantly until it becomes a new habit where you no longer have to reward them. You no longer have to engage with them as much. They just naturally do it. 00:05:30:13 - 00:05:46:04Michael J. AccettaThat's what Tom is doing here. I came in to sit and chat with you guys and he just laid down next to me. He's nice and relaxed, super simple. That's what he understands is the habit. That's what I've educated him to do. If I didn't do that, he probably would be up in my lap. He'd be like, Hey, what are we doing? 00:05:46:04 - 00:06:07:14Michael J. AccettaAre we going outside? What are you doing? Talking to people on the Internet? What's going on here? So how do we how do we break this down? Okay. If you want to learn how to teach these kind of daily skills, I have an entire course on daily skills. She's got to go to Matador Canine dot com forward slash daily skills, Matador canine dot com, forward slash daily skills. 00:06:08:14 - 00:06:28:00Michael J. AccettaIt goes over everything you need to know in order to have a well-behaved dog on the day to day kind of skills. But you cannot just rely on those things. You also have to give your dog affection after exercise and education. So you exercise them. You got them nice and tired, right? We did something this morning to get Tommy nice and relaxed. 00:06:28:07 - 00:06:48:07Michael J. AccettaThen he knows the expectation and I have to then reward him or give him some type of affection. Now, Tommy loves people. He loves hanging out with people. He loves cuddling with people. So this in of itself is ring free enforcing. If he was crazed all over the place, I might kick him out of the bedroom or the office and he would go, Okay, well, that's no way to hang out with Dad. 00:06:48:07 - 00:07:08:03Michael J. AccettaI'm not getting reinforced for that crazy behavior. If I come back in and I relax, then maybe I will get reinforced, see how it works. So the affection is still important. We just put it last because of how much we already put affection on our dog, right? You you love your dog. It's easy to love your dogs, easy to give them affection and love and caress them and cuddle them and all that good stuff. 00:07:08:11 - 00:07:26:14Michael J. AccettaBut you have to do the education and the exercise first. You have to do those first before you go to the affection. If you do the affection first, we end up rewarding bad behaviors. So let's say my dog's crazy to run around having do and I grab a hold of him and I start rubbing their belly and I'm getting all crazy with them. 00:07:27:03 - 00:07:50:06Michael J. AccettaI just rewarded them for having zooming I've rewarded them for thinking that the best thing for them to do is run around like a crazy puppy or crazy dog being all over the place, having your dog jump up on guests if I reward them with praise and affection and love, then my dog thinks that jumping up on people or on me is the right thing to do and accidentally giving them affection or praise for the wrong behavior. 00:07:50:06 - 00:08:09:09Michael J. AccettaThe thing I didn't want them to do. And then we go into education. So if I'm trying to educate my dog, I can use affection. Certainly but it's much easier to use treats or a toy to get clarity on what you want them to do and then phase those things out with general praise. You can do that through reward schedules. 00:08:09:09 - 00:08:26:05Michael J. AccettaWhich kind of events? Technique. I talk about it on other episodes of the Acknowledged Dogs podcast, where instead of rewarding every single repetition I'm going to reward maybe every two repetitions and I'm going to praise in the middle. So I reward with a treat or a toy. Then I praise, then I reward with a treat or a toy. 00:08:26:05 - 00:08:43:09Michael J. AccettaThen I praise, then I reward with a treat. Or a toy. So I'm slowly weaning them away from becoming dependent on the treats. They're becoming more dependent on the praise. And then I might do treat praise. Praise treat for each repetition. I'm I don't mean I'm doing that in sequential order directly after one behavior I told them to set. 00:08:43:14 - 00:08:58:01Michael J. AccettaAnd then I give them a treat. Praise them, praise them, treat. That's not what I'm saying. Saying I asked them to sit. I give them a treat out of position so I can get them to move again. I ask them to sit again. Then I'll praise them for that repetition. Get them to move, ask them to set praise again. 00:08:58:06 - 00:09:27:13Michael J. AccettaGet them to move. Ask them to sit and then treat. Okay, treat, praise, praise, treat. And then I would just keep extending that treat. Praise, praise, praise. Treat. Or maybe I do praise first. Treat, treat praise. Alternating those is also good exercise. Educate, affection And here are some things that are going to go wrong along this cycle. If you do exercise every single day and you don't do education, what ends up happening is the exercise wise. 00:09:28:05 - 00:09:47:14Michael J. AccettaIt's become a management practice for or supplementing the education, actually replacing the education. You're relying on your dog being so exhausted that they can't do anything wrong. This is what the mistake I made with my first dog. I had the mantra exercise, discipline, affection in my head, as many of us do when we get a dog exercise first. 00:09:47:14 - 00:10:03:02Michael J. AccettaA tired dog is a good dog. Write all of those phrases. And so I used to run maybe six miles or bike with my dog for six miles a day, get them exhausted. They couldn't they couldn't do anything. They were so tired. They just slept the rest of the day. Now, at the time, I was nervous of my dog and kicked out. 00:10:03:02 - 00:10:19:10Michael J. AccettaI was young. I was a teenager. My parents said, if this dog does anything wrong, it's getting the boot. This is my first dog. And so we went for six mile bike rides two miles, three times a day. Morning, afternoon and evening. I wanted this dog exhausted because I didn't have the time to train it and I didn't know what I was doing yet. 00:10:20:01 - 00:10:37:05Michael J. AccettaI had all this information as a teenager, but I didn't know how to apply it effectively into it until I learned that, until I had practiced with my dog, I needed to manage it, and that's fine. But if I had kept doing that and never moved to the educational step of actually training and teaching, then my dog would not be as well behaved as she is. 00:10:38:00 - 00:10:59:01Michael J. AccettaWe wouldn't have been able to go on bike rides off leash. I wouldn't have been able to recall her when she ran out of the house towards a squirrel. So I had to move from the exercise into education, which means I had to reduce the exercise because she was way too tired to learn. I had to reduce the exercise in order to have her be motivated and eager to work with me, excited to have the energy to actually learn. 00:10:59:14 - 00:11:21:11Michael J. AccettaThen once she learned, we moved into affection and just daily life skills because she knew what to do and what my expectation of her was. It was much easier for us to reward her and engage with her and relax and and hang out. Okay, exercise first, education second, and then you move into affection. Thank you guys for listening to the acknowledged podcast. 00:11:22:02 - 00:11:36:11Michael J. AccettaIf you're watching this live, I'm going to open it up for Q&A. If you're listening to this after the fact, make sure you jump in on a live events so that you can ask questions based off the podcast in real time or other questions you may have I'm going to open it up for Q&A now. Thank you guys for listening.

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 - 00:00:18:08Michael J. AccettaIf 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 - 00:00:39:02Michael J. AccettaOkay. 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 - 00:00:54:02Michael J. AccettaAnd 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 - 00:01:11:08Michael J. AccettaMaybe 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 - 00:01:30:02Michael J. AccettaIt'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 - 00:01:50:03Michael J. AccettaThat'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 - 00:02:05:14Michael J. AccettaYour 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 - 00:02:20:00Michael J. AccettaThe 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 - 00:02:35:05Michael J. AccettaNow, 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 - 00:02:54:08Michael J. AccettaI 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 - 00:03:10:01Michael J. AccettaSo 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 - 00:03:31:14Michael J. AccettaHave 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 - 00:03:49:06Michael J. AccettaYou 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 - 00:04:06:12Michael J. AccettaBut 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 - 00:04:31:05Michael J. AccettaYou 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 - 00:04:54:05Michael J. AccettaWhy 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 - 00:05:10:12Michael J. AccettaLet'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 - 00:05:29:02Michael J. AccettaPeople 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 - 00:05:44:08Michael J. AccettaDo 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 - 00:06:06:01Michael J. AccettaThat'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 - 00:06:26:03Michael J. AccettaI'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 - 00:06:47:12Michael J. AccettaNow, 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 - 00:07:05:14Michael J. AccettaSo 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 - 00:07:25:10Michael J. AccettaOkay, 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 - 00:07:52:02Michael J. AccettaMatador 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 - 00:08:06:12Michael J. AccettaThere'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 - 00:08:26:08Michael J. AccettaWhat 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 - 00:08:42:09Michael J. AccettaBut 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 - 00:09:02:06Michael J. Accetta15 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 - 00:09:20:01Michael J. AccettaThat'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 - 00:09:36:04Michael J. AccettaAnd 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 - 00:10:07:03Michael J. AccettaThat'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 - 00:10:28:01Michael J. AccettaIf 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 - 00:10:46:11Michael J. AccettaBut 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 - 00:11:05:12Michael J. AccettaYou 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 - 00:11:26:01Michael J. AccettaYou 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 - 00:11:50:03Michael J. AccettaAnd 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 - 00:12:10:03Michael J. AccettaBig 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 - 00:12:29:11Michael J. AccettaIf 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 - 00:12:53:02Michael J. AccettaYou'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 - 00:13:16:14Michael J. AccettaIf 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 - 00:13:38:10Michael J. AccettaSo 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 - 00:13:59:09Michael J. AccettaThe 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 - 00:14:18:01Michael J. AccettaMaybe 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 - 00:14:41:14Michael J. AccettaOption 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 - 00:14:52:06Michael J. AccettaThis 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.

There are 1000s of ways to train a dog and somehow, we fall into figuring out how to do it differently with our dogs. Whether you are trying to solve a problem behavior or work on training for the next sporting competition, there are some things about training that will always stay the same.  In today's episode I will be going over the nuances of dog training and how you can train without needing to focus on the differences, but on the similarities which will make it easier and more enjoyable for your dog.  Learn how to stop your dog's bad behaviors here - https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits Work with me - https://www.matadork9.com/coaching   Episode Transcript 01:15:33:20 - 01:15:53:21Michael J. AccettaThis is going to be an insanely controversial episode of the acknowledged dogs podcast. I'm going to make some people have said, especially if you are in the dog training world, whether you're a sport dog trainer, a working dog trainer or service dog trainer, I'm going to make you upset. I'm going to bruise your ego. And it's intentional because you need this kind of reality check. 01:15:54:17 - 01:16:12:10Michael J. AccettaI want to talk about the different nuances of dog training. Now, to fully understand this, I want to define what a nuance is. Okay. It's great to have these kind of definitions. You can fully wrap your head around what I'm talking about. If you don't fully understand something, I'm going to lose you. So I want you to understand what a nuance is. 01:16:13:06 - 01:16:45:12Michael J. AccettaNow, the definition of a nuance is a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression or sound, a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression or sound used in a sentence. The nuances of facial expression and body language. Some similar words or variation, degree, shade, graduation, refinement, overtone. You can use it as a verb, give nuances to the effect of the music is nuanced by the social situation or listeners. 01:16:45:12 - 01:17:06:17Michael J. AccettaThat means it's it's subtly changed a meaning simply because of the social situation of listeners. Now we're talking about the nuance of dog training. And what's really wonderful is, as I started to look up some information about today's episode and what I wanted to talk about finding a definition is a finite definition for dog training is rather difficult. 01:17:06:19 - 01:17:29:12Michael J. AccettaThere's a beautiful one that I'm going to read for you just in a second, but it is difficult to find a real clear definition on dog training. Now, of course, we could break those two words up dog. Canine familiarity as a family, right? Mammal and training is the act of going about educating yourself and working through particular problems to a certain level of competency. 01:17:29:21 - 01:17:46:10Michael J. AccettaOkay. But if we look at dog training, the definition, this is the best one that I could find. And I think it really lays out exactly what I'm talking about because it is a long definition, and that's exactly what we're talking about, the different nuances of dog training and the fact that this definition needs to be so long because of the nuances of doctrine. 01:17:46:11 - 01:18:16:06Michael J. AccettaHere we go. Dog training is the application of behavioral analysis which uses the environmental events of antecedents and consequences to modify the dog behavior. Now, you could stop right there, but that's not the nuance of dog training behavior. So after we have that part, either for it to assist in specific activities or undertake particular tasks or for it to participate effectively in contemporary domestic life. 01:18:17:05 - 01:18:41:14Michael J. AccettaI'm going to read the whole thing again here. Listen carefully. Dog training is the application of behavior analysis, which uses the environmental events of antecedents and consequences to modify the dog behavior. Either for it to assist in specific activities or undertake particular tasks, or for it to participate effectively in contemporary domestic life. 01:18:43:17 - 01:19:14:03Michael J. AccettaWe're talking about multiple things here. Dog trains the application of behavior analysis. That means the individual who's training the dog, whether it be an owner handler or a professional who's teaching a dog for somebody, for a client. The application of behavioral analysis, understanding how behavior works, analyzing it objectively and then force going in, using it in environmental events of antecedents and consequence to understanding why behavior happens and the positive punishment. 01:19:14:03 - 01:19:42:22Michael J. AccettaPositive reinforcement, negative punishment, negative reinforcement after the behavior happens in order to modify the dog's behavior either. Okay. Now, there's multiple reasons as to why we use behavior analysis in their environmental events of antecedents, the consequences to modify the dog behavior. It's either one for you to assist in specific activities that's a service dog or undertake particular tasks that might be a service dog or a working dog sport dog All right. 01:19:42:22 - 01:20:10:21Michael J. AccettaWe might have police dogs herding dogs, that kind of thing, or even more cause for it to participate effectively in contemporary domestic life. That is your everyday dog and how they live in our complex world. So there's a whole bunch of nuances here. And this is where it actually becomes difficult to understand, because if you're looking at this and saying, Okay, well, I'm either teaching a dog to be a service dog, I'm teaching a working dog, or I'm teaching a dog for contemporary domestic life. 01:20:11:08 - 01:20:37:09Michael J. AccettaDo I teach those things differently? No, you don't. Because dog training encompasses all of those. This is what I want to talk about today. When we're looking at dog training as a whole. The bigger picture, dog training is not different depending on what you're teaching. You might be teaching different behaviors. You might be teaching different behaviors. Your goal might be different. 01:20:37:22 - 01:20:58:13Michael J. AccettaBut the processes by which you go about it are exactly the same. This is where I said I was going to bruise your ego. If you're listening to this and you're a professional dog trainer, you're a service dog trainer, you're a sport dog trainer, don't get caught up in the fact that just because you teach those specific things means you have to be the best at something. 01:20:58:20 - 01:21:18:20Michael J. AccettaThis is oftentimes what happens with sport dog trainers or working dog trainers. I have heard countless times, Will, you don't know how to train my dog? My dogs are working dog. You don't know how to train this. I'll tell you right now. I do. And I'll tell you a quick little story. I was working at a facility who had other trainers at the time. 01:21:18:23 - 01:21:38:17Michael J. AccettaWell, they had other trainers they all left. It was me and another trainer. And this client had not come in for a while, which he had this beautiful Dutch shepherd whose name was Bear, and she came in and she was expecting to work with the other trainer who was my senior. She was the operations manager. And the operations manager had to work with another dog. 01:21:39:05 - 01:21:57:15Michael J. AccettaAnd so I had the lovely privilege of working with Bear. And the owner, she comes in and she said, Why aren't I working with the operations manager? And I said, she's busy at the moment. I'll be doing your session for the day. And she said, I'd like to cancel my session if that's the case. She had never worked with me before, so I'd like to cancel my session if that's the case. 01:21:58:03 - 01:22:20:12Michael J. AccettaAnd I said, We're already here. Why don't we start the session? If you're not happy with it, we can reschedule it, no problem. And she said, No, I'd really like to work with the operations manager, so I completely understand. Give me 5 minutes if you're not happy with it, we can reschedule your session. No works, she said. Fine. And as the operations manager walked by, she told the operations manager she was upset and she said, Michael's fantastic. 01:22:21:10 - 01:22:43:06Michael J. AccettaJust enjoy your session. Next session will be with me. Whatever. Now, as my personality as confronted with certain things, she had kept saying, you know, you don't know anything about my dog. And I said, I completely agree with you. I don't know anything about your dog. I was able to look over the notes of your past sessions, but it's been about a year and a half since you've been it, so please catch me up. 01:22:43:06 - 01:22:58:18Michael J. AccettaHow are things going? What's going on? What are you looking to do? And she started to tell me and she said, well, you know, he's he's a working line dog. He's a serious dog. We do agility, but he's a serious dog. So I don't want to you know, we're not going to play around rock and do it. I said, I completely understand I said, What is he like? 01:22:59:22 - 01:23:16:14Michael J. AccettaHe said, Did you guys bring treats? Does he like treats? She said, no, he's a working dog. He doesn't eat treats. Doesn't he treats? Does he like toys? Oh, yeah, he loves the ball. I said, Great, that's my favorite to do. She said, Yeah, but you don't know how he does it. I said, Great. I would love for you to show me and we'll see where we go from there. 01:23:16:23 - 01:23:32:05Michael J. AccettaI'm very open, okay? I'm not about shoving things down people's throat and saying, No, what you're doing is wrong. What you need to be doing is this. I'm not interested in that. If they already have something good going, great, I want to elevate it. I want to make it better. So I asked, Well, what do you have going for you? 01:23:32:05 - 01:23:48:18Michael J. AccettaWhat's going on? How things go? And so she showed me what the problem was. She was trying to do a recall, and what happened with the dog would turn around and it would run towards her and it would stop halfway to get her. And it's because she had the ball out in front of her. And I said, Okay, we're just going to change one thing, if you don't mind. 01:23:48:18 - 01:24:09:16Michael J. AccettaJust test it out for me. Now, I knew this was going to work, but I didn't want to put pressure on her for her to become defensive and so I'm thinking about how not only the dog's going to respond to the training that we're doing, but how my client's going to start to respond to what's going on. If I start challenging what's worked for her in the past, since she's already frustrated her is not listening. 01:24:09:20 - 01:24:29:00Michael J. AccettaI don't want to create more frustration, and I don't want to create more animosity between the two of us. Now, this is a nuance to how you go about training somebody and training the dog. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but essentially there was no difference between how I treated this situation and how I would treat any other situation. 01:24:29:00 - 01:24:49:14Michael J. AccettaA nervous dog. I might treat it slightly differently in mind, but my determination are demeanor, rather. My demeanor might be different, but the mechanics were still the same. The fact that the dog was turning around and looking back to her and not recalling simply because the ball was present or wasn't present. That's what was happening. The dog was turning around and didn't see the ball. 01:24:49:17 - 01:25:08:11Michael J. AccettaSo it said, Oh, well, I'm not getting anything. I'm not going to come to you. And so we did a few repetitions of changing. A very small mechanic always hide the ball when the dog comes to you, Mark, and then produce the ball. The ball isn't getting the dog to come. I get the dog to come and then I reward them afterwards. 01:25:08:11 - 01:25:36:16Michael J. AccettaThat mechanic is vital to any training. It doesn't matter whether you're teaching, you know, what was the definition here? What we got, whether you're teaching them for specific activities or undertaking particular tasks, service dog trainer should do this all the time. Why would you teach your dog to become dependent upon a reward or a toy? When we're teaching service dogs, that would be awful to try to do because at the end of the day, your dog cannot just listen when you have a treat. 01:25:36:16 - 01:25:57:13Michael J. AccettaThey have to listen all the time, even if you're unconscious or there's something going on where you can't get a tree out. That's very important for a service dog. We're talking about working dogs, police dogs. I don't have time to stop and pull out treats. I don't have time to stop and pull out the ball. My dog has to perform knowing that afterwards they're going to get their favorite thing and then we have contemporary domestic life. 01:25:58:05 - 01:26:15:22Michael J. AccettaThis is often where we let the mechanics slide because, oh, it's not that important. Many, many trainers chalk this up. Oh, well, we don't have to teach everything perfectly the way I would teach any other service dog or working dog. This is where that nuance comes in. This I'm going to change it simply because it's a domestic dog. 01:26:16:09 - 01:26:32:12Michael J. AccettaIt's a companion dog. It doesn't need to be that important. My client, I treat them as it's that important because it is. If my dog doesn't recall and they run out into the middle of the street, they're going to get hurt. If my dog jumps up on somebody and they're not prepared for it, they fall back. They hit their head on something. 01:26:32:18 - 01:26:55:18Michael J. AccettaNow, he got a rushed to the hospital my dog could become aggressive because they haven't been, well, socialized in the environment. These are very important things. And because of how the gravity of all of that, when you do actually train and you understand of that certain level, the world opens up for you. Everything becomes a hell of a lot easier when your dog is fully trained, when you don't have a fully trained dog and you chalk it up to, oh, well, they're just a lap dog. 01:26:56:01 - 01:27:16:09Michael J. AccettaThey don't need to know all of this stuff. Fine. When problems arise, it's going to be a bigger problem for you than the person who actually went forth and trained their dog. And then on the other side of things, if you're training your dog as a working line, police dog, service dog, whatever it is, and you hold them at a very high caliber, that's fantastic. 01:27:16:22 - 01:27:43:08Michael J. AccettaBut that does not mean you neglect the fact that they are still a companion animal. This is oftentimes what happens with high end working dogs, professionals and people alike will treat a high end working dog as a tool, and it is to an extent, but they forget that that dog is still a dog, it still wants to be loved, still wants to be taken care of and petted and rubbed and all that good stuff. 01:27:44:15 - 01:28:11:16Michael J. AccettaRight? It still needs a little bit of freedom. It cannot be a robot and we cannot switch the way we train a dog simply because there are working line or simply because they are a service dog or simply because they're a companion dog. The way you train the dog is exactly the same. We keep it fun. We use good mechanics we set our dogs up for success, and we maintain the behaviors over long periods of time with controlled practice and reward schedules. 01:28:13:01 - 01:28:31:22Michael J. AccettaThat's how you do it. No matter what you're trying to teach, that's how you do it. Service dog, police dog, companion, dog. You're doing sport work. You keep it fun, you keep them engaged, you keep them successful. You teach them everything they need to know in order to be successful. You don't just push them and say, Yeah, well, they better know how to do it. 01:28:33:00 - 01:28:48:20Michael J. AccettaSo how it works the methods for teaching are exactly the same. There is a little bit of nuance on how we might go about it. Now, if I have a nervous dog, I might be a little more gentle. If I have a really confident dog, I might push them a little faster. But I cannot say, Oh, well, it's a working dog. 01:28:49:04 - 01:29:15:21Michael J. AccettaI'm going to use punishment instead of rewards because it's a working dog. I hear that way too much. Oh, well, you can't train a working dog with positive reinforcement. Baloney. You absolutely can train a working dog with positive reinforcement. And in fact, if you did, the dog would be better. They'd be more willing to work, more willing to train faster at learning new material because they enjoyed it so much and they're so stubborn. 01:29:16:19 - 01:29:56:08Michael J. AccettaIf you have a strong, confident, stubborn, working, lined dog, positive reinforcement is perfect. Perfect for them because of how determined and dedicated they will be to doing that behavior because they know that it works. I'll get passionate here because it's a passionate topic for me. The nuance, different subtle manipulations of the dog training industry creates a division. It creates the divide if you don't want your dog to struggle in training, you have to play with them like a companion dog. 01:29:56:11 - 01:30:28:05Michael J. AccettaThat's their only job. And treat them and train them to level the high level of working dog status. That's the secret train them with excitement and joy and happiness, but to the level of a working line dog. That's what we did with Bear My goal was on making it as fun as possible for the dog, but understanding that this owner wanted the dog at such a high level I said, Great, we can do that. 01:30:29:03 - 01:30:48:12Michael J. AccettaAll we have to do is fix these mechanics. And by the way, at the end of the session, she said she was fantastic. She did not know that I knew as much as I knew about dogs in general. She didn't know me, but she didn't think the things that I knew would apply to working like dogs. And I didn't try to validate it by telling her that I had worked with 12,000 dogs. 01:30:48:18 - 01:31:07:11Michael J. AccettaI didn't try to validate it by saying I had an animal science degree and had worked with individuals who have 50 years of police dog training experience I didn't validate it by saying, I've been in a bite suit and I've done bite work and I've done detection work and I've worked with police dogs. I didn't validate any of that to her because honestly nothing was getting into her brain at that moment. 01:31:07:11 - 01:31:28:04Michael J. AccettaShe was just defensive, which is oftentimes what happens when you hear this kind of information, which is why I told you in the beginning of this episode that it was going to be an ego bump, it was going to hurt your feelings because it's supposed to. It has to wake you up if you're training a police dog or working like dog, a high energy dog. 01:31:28:05 - 01:31:47:06Michael J. AccettaI encourage you this week is my task for you this week. This week, all I want you to do is play with your dog in between all the obedience that you do. Obedience first playing and then obedience again. If you have a companion dog, same thing. Instead of just doing obedience, start to treat them like a high end working dog. 01:31:47:17 - 01:32:22:09Michael J. AccettaDo obedience. And it doesn't have to be aggressive obedience on either side. Obedience can still be fun obedience then play and then obedience again. Okay, if you're struggling with problematic behaviors, all of this still applies. And in fact I created a PDF for you to download on result in complicated bad habits without having to use punishment. Everything I talked about today on keeping things fun and exciting and keeping your dog successful is in this PDF, so I'm going to put the link in the description where you can head over to Matador Canine Ecom Forward Slash Resolving bad habits, matted, working uncommon, resolving bad habits. 01:32:22:17 - 01:32:45:10Michael J. AccettaIf you want to work with me and get one on one private coaching, head over to Matador Cain Uncommon Forward slash coaching Matador Cain Icon Forward slash coaching and we can schedule discovery call see if the training is right for you. I'm probably going to be doing a Black Friday sale. So if you're listening to this during Black Friday, make sure you schedule will call this week as soon as soon as you hear this schedule call. 01:32:45:15 - 01:32:52:17Michael J. AccettaLet's see if we can do something together so I can help you have the freedom that I get to have with my dogs. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time.

Would you believe me if I told you that there are only 5 reasons your dog does anything? Only five. Although it might be hard to hear, dog training stems from understanding these 5 reasons your dog does (fill in here, hahaha).  Anything you can imagine is a result of these 5 influences and today I am going to go over each one of them and why they are so powerful over your dog's behavior.    Learn how to stop your dog's bad behavior with this free guide  https://www.matadork9.com/resolvingbadhabits Work with me! Schedule a discovery call here https://www.matadork9.com/coaching   Episode Transcription: Your dog only does certain behavior, certain things for five influences, five reasons Now I'm going to break down each one of those reasons, and it's going to help you start to take the actionable steps toward solving the problem with your dog. We're not necessarily going over those actionable steps today. However, once you understand how to diagnose the problem, you know where it stemmed from and what the reason is. 00:00:57:09 - 00:01:19:04Michael J. AccettaIt can help you move on the right path. So if you have a dog that has behavior problems, they are chewing on the couch, they're chasing after the kids, they're barking at strangers. There's a definite reason as to why that's happening, and it's going to fall into one of these five influences. That's it. It is super simple. It's not about this or that or all of that. 00:01:20:02 - 00:01:44:03Michael J. AccettaGet that out of your brain now. And I want you to start to absorb that. There's only five reasons why your dog does anything Are you ready? The first reason is going to be genetics. Now, this episode, this podcast that I'm recording here actually stemmed from somebody saying that if you get a dog, any breed of dog, of course, you should do your research. 00:01:44:03 - 00:02:02:06Michael J. AccettaOf course, I agree with that. But they were saying that if you got a breed of dog, you should understand that you are getting exactly what that breeds description is. And that is just not true. We put so much emphasis on genetics, actually an overemphasis on genetics, and then we say that there's nothing we can do about it. 00:02:02:09 - 00:02:35:01Michael J. AccettaSo I don't want you to put an overemphasis on the genetic breeding and selection of your dog. Yes, it's something to consider. Yes, it's something to look at when selecting the right dog. However, we cannot assume just because we got a German shepherd or just because we got an Australian shepherd or just because we got a bulldog, that they're going to act like all the other German shepherds, Australian shepherds and bulldogs that we've met, for example, I was working with a German shepherd once who was the complete opposite of a German shepherd, stereotypical. 00:02:35:09 - 00:02:54:13Michael J. AccettaOkay. It acted more like a golden retriever. It didn't want to do anything, but it was happy about seeing people. It didn't bark at other people. It didn't mouthy you at all, barely wanted to use its mouth. It was completely opposite to what most people would consider a German shepherd to act like another. An advanced breed would be a Belgian Malinois. 00:02:54:14 - 00:03:27:05Michael J. AccettaPeople get a Belgian male and what to do, bite sports work, agility, frisbee, really intense kind of stuff. And I was working with this beautiful Malinois and the gentleman wanted to do bite sports, wanted to do agility, wanted to do all this stuff. And we couldn't because the dog was terrified, terrified of the environment. Okay. Now that might stem into some of the other reasons for behavior, but I want to understand that just because you're looking at a specific breed doesn't mean you're going to get every single aspect of that breed. 00:03:27:14 - 00:03:56:09Michael J. AccettaOkay. I understand that. That's a possibility. Now, that being said, within genetics, there's two factors that we can control. Number one is the breed. And number two is the selection of the ancestry. Okay. So if you're looking for a dog or if you're looking for your second dog or you just want to have some fun with it, you can look at what your dog's stereotypical variables are or selection or behaviors that they do, and then see how close your dog fits that. 00:03:57:12 - 00:04:21:04Michael J. AccettaIf your dog does not fit and fit it very well, then there might be another reason All right. And we're going to go over those. There might be another reason as to why your dog's not fitting into the stereotypical breed behaviors However, if you're looking to get a dog, then you're going to need to talk to a breeder and find out what the ancestry of the dogs are. 00:04:21:12 - 00:04:41:11Michael J. AccettaOkay. The lineage that heavily influences the specific genetics of the dog that you get. This is where people who are doing bite sports work or police work, they're looking at sporting line versus working line dogs. It's a very big conversation, a very big topic. They want to know, are they getting a sporting line dog or are they getting a working line dog? 00:04:41:11 - 00:05:01:03Michael J. AccettaBecause they're going to behave differently? Not to say that they're going to be perfect, right? You could get a working loan dog that acts more like a sport dog and you can get a sport lined dog that acts more like a work dog, but you're getting as close as you could possibly get, roughly. Of course, there's variances in all of this stuff. 00:05:01:07 - 00:05:26:09Michael J. AccettaOkay. That's genetics. Why my dog does a specific thing might be contributed to genetics. They're breeding. They're hurting. Sorry, they're hurting. Their breed would determine that they hurt. Or maybe they point. Maybe they were tree really well. Okay. I know plenty of golden retrievers who do not retrieve, and I know plenty of pointers who have never pointed ever in some dogs do it naturally, and that is attributed to their genetics. 00:05:27:04 - 00:05:54:11Michael J. AccettaOkay. Don't get so hung up on the breed specifically. Just because it's a German shepherd. Just because it's an Australian shepherd, just because it's a Belgian Malinois doesn't mean it's going to act like that specific breed. It could act like a completely different one. Okay. So let's move on to two. The second one, after genetics, after we say, Okay, I've looked at the genetics, my dog is not acting the way they're acting right now because of the genetics, you know, chewing up the couch. 00:05:55:14 - 00:06:17:14Michael J. AccettaThey're not hurting, but they're are hurting dogs. So maybe that has nothing to do with the genetics. Let's move on to step two chemistry. The chemistry in your dog's brain, whether it's a naturally occurring or it's influenced by their diet, is going to contribute to the imbalance in their brain or hypervigilance in their brain, just like people. So there's a chemical imbalance in your dog's brain. 00:06:17:14 - 00:06:44:11Michael J. AccettaIt is going to influence how they act, whether they they're slow, whether they're jittery, whether they're nervous, whether they can't walk straight. Right. There's a chemical imbalance in your dog's brain. Oftentimes people ignore this because they don't want to accept it, just like human beings, right? If you have ADHD or you have something else Sometimes medication can help you on the road to learning the coping mechanisms. 00:06:45:12 - 00:07:03:13Michael J. AccettaIf you don't go through the process of learning how to cope with certain behaviors, you can never get any better. Same thing goes for your dog. If your dog is freaking out all of the time and losing their mind there is no way for you to give them new information to teach them how to cope with the world. 00:07:04:08 - 00:07:24:13Michael J. AccettaSo what we need to do is get us on a level playing field where they can start to interact with us and absorb the new information that we're trying to teach them, and then we can win them off medication. I was working with a dog named Piper to walk into the facility and immediately want to kill me. She would look at me, she would lunge at me, and this was the dog's problem. 00:07:24:13 - 00:07:49:02Michael J. AccettaIt was reactive towards men So after a few sessions, we started to say, Okay, we're not seeing as much progress as we typically do with these kind of cases. Why don't you bring the dog to the vet and see what the vet says? They did a screening test, whatever. And then they recommended some medication to lower the dog's threshold to make it easier for the dog to start to absorb information because of how worked up she was. 00:07:49:08 - 00:08:10:00Michael J. AccettaShe wasn't getting anything. Those training sessions. She wasn't absorbing the information. It would have taken years for her to get it, and then it might not have been possible because her brain wasn't in the right space. So they administered a very low dosage of medication. The dog then started to accept the new information of training, started to realize, Oh, this guy's nice. 00:08:10:00 - 00:08:25:04Michael J. AccettaThis guy wants to do fun stuff with me. I want to do fun stuff, like playing agility. And so now we were able to progress, and eventually we got the dog off of medication. We were able to wean the dog off medication because the dog had learned a coping skills of when it's stressed out and it doesn't like somebody and it wants to lash out at them. 00:08:25:08 - 00:08:49:11Michael J. AccettaIt can just walk away from the situation. He couldn't do that when its brain wasn't in the right mindset. The brain wasn't able to think clear enough because of how crazy it was. So if your dog is completely over the moon for something or there might be another neurological thing going on, whatever it may be when it over, the moon, whether they're completely lethargic, there might be a chemical imbalance. 00:08:49:11 - 00:09:19:11Michael J. AccettaAnd again, that could either be from a natural occurrence from the genetics. Okay, that's happened or it could be from diet. Okay, so you're feeding your dog something and it's causing a chemical imbalance. Now, that's one and two, genetics, chemistry. I'm going to move on to healthier. And personally, I had this happen with my own dog. Now I got Hawk when he was four years old, he had an abscess in his cheek that made him aggressive. 00:09:20:00 - 00:09:41:06Michael J. AccettaAnd I know that sounds ridiculous. Your dog's aggressive. Yes, he was simply because he had a pain in his cheek. And when you pressed it, he would react. Stands to reason. If I have a headache, I'm going to be a little more grumpy Right. And so once I solve the health problem, the behavior almost immediately went away. He's no longer aggressive. 00:09:42:10 - 00:10:14:06Michael J. AccettaThat's an influence of health That is because there's a health problem causing what's called pain induced aggression. But that's not only what it does, right. Health doesn't just cause aggression. It can cause a bunch of other things. But essentially what we're looking at is, okay, genetics checked off, chemistry checked up. Is there a health problem? My dog doesn't want to sit because their hip hurts My dog doesn't want to run quickly to me in a recall because they broke their toe okay. 00:10:14:08 - 00:10:37:08Michael J. AccettaMy dog doesn't want to go up the stairs because their shoulder hurts. There's a health reason involved. My dog doesn't want to keep running because they don't have any more cardiovascular capacity to continue running. They are beat. They're wiped out. They're tired. That's a health problem. Now, I know I've been talking a lot about behavior problems, but I also want to flip the script and talk about the positive side streets, right? 00:10:37:08 - 00:10:56:09Michael J. AccettaIf you're looking to do something with your dog and you also want to go through these checklists. Okay. I want my dog to be a sport dog. I want to agility with them. Great. Let's first look at genetics. I'm going to look at genetics. Find the breeds. Maybe I pick three or five that I'm willing to work with in order to have an agility title. 00:10:57:08 - 00:11:15:03Michael J. AccettaThen I'm going to look at the chemistry. So I want to look at the tests. If I'm getting from a breeder, I want to look at the lab results and see what's the chemistry of this dog. You know, if you understand chemistry, if you understand what you're looking at, great for you. That's fantastic. Or you can just ask your vet to kind of explain it to you or the breeder if they're a competent individual. 00:11:16:09 - 00:11:32:04Michael J. AccettaAnd then you want to look at health. So after you've looked at the chemistry, okay, the chemistry all looks normal, which is great. That means we're not going to run into any problems when we're doing agility. And I want to look at the health, I want to look at the parents of the dog genetics. They are going to influence the help, and my dog's health is going to influence their performance. 00:11:33:12 - 00:11:56:10Michael J. AccettaSee how it all trickles down like that? So then when the health is involved, I want to make sure that my dog has a long career in agility, a long career in spite sports. But then also I can influence the health by doing certain exercises, conditioning routines, strengthening certain muscles to make sure that my dog can perform at their absolute best. 00:11:57:01 - 00:12:22:08Michael J. AccettaGenetics. Chemistry helpful now. Still sticking to the good side of things. We're going to move on to the fourth influence of behavior. The fourth reason your dog does anything, and that's going to be early experiences, early experiences. This is between three to 12 weeks old. Sometimes it extends a little bit past that, depending on the breed it could go up to six weeks. 00:12:23:01 - 00:12:47:01Michael J. AccettaBut roughly we're looking at the first three to 12 weeks of age. Oftentimes this is going to be with the mom of the dog unless there's been some unnatural occurrence or this is going to be under the supervision of a breeder. So the breeders really responsible for the socialization period of what's called the three to 12 weeks of your dog's behavior. 00:12:47:01 - 00:13:06:07Michael J. AccettaAnd what they need to learn is everything that is normal to them. They need to learn what a car is, how to walk, how to have a leash on, how to have a harness on how to be handled, manipulated, groomed. All of that should happen before 12 weeks of age. Otherwise, you're moving into the next category. I want to talk about that in just a second. 00:13:07:07 - 00:13:24:02Michael J. AccettaSo that experience is huge. Think about a dog that grew up on a farm or in the city, vice versa. The dog grew up in the city and you've moved it to the farm. It's going to behave very differently as well as if you had a dog grown up in the farm and you brought it to the city. 00:13:24:02 - 00:13:43:06Michael J. AccettaIt's going to behave very differently. The early experiences that that dog had is trying to help guide it through the rest of its life. And so if we don't set them up for success between three to 12 weeks of age when they eventually get to where they're going to be for the rest of their life, they're going to struggle because they just don't know what to do. 00:13:44:09 - 00:14:05:13Michael J. AccettaSee the problem here? So the best thing that you can do is talk to your breeder or if you're rescuing a dog. Ask what the early experiences were that we have a better understanding, especially if you're going to be doing sports or something like that. You don't necessarily want to have behavior problems creeping up while you're trying to focus on getting titles and ribbons and awards and stuff. 00:14:06:09 - 00:14:23:14Michael J. AccettaSo depending on what your goal is now, if you already have a dog, then they have behavior problems. And you've looked at the genetics, chemistry and health. It could be from the early experience, but unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it, right? Chemistry can go see that. Genetics, you can't do anything about it. Health, you can go see of that and you can fix the problem. 00:14:23:14 - 00:14:42:06Michael J. AccettaMaybe you strengthened some muscles, maybe you do some rehab, that kind of thing. Early experiences. There's nothing you can do about it's already happened. We've moved on from it, and what we need to do is move into the last influence behavior, and that's adult learning. Why does your dog do blink? It's because they've learned it as an adult. 00:14:43:04 - 00:15:01:07Michael J. AccettaOkay, why does my dog jump up on people? They've learned that jumping on people gets them praise, gets them to say hello. So of course, they're going to jump on more people, right? Why does my dog sit patiently when I go out the front door? Because they've learned to sit patiently before I go out the front door. See the difference here? 00:15:01:07 - 00:15:22:10Michael J. AccettaSee how we can influence the rest of their lives through these five influences the behaviors that your dog does every single day are only influenced by these five things. So no matter what behavior problems you're having, no matter what your goals are with your dog, you have to look at these five things and start to understand where they stem from in order to move forward. 00:15:23:03 - 00:15:43:06Michael J. AccettaBut there's really only two that you can control. Three you can control sorry, chemistry health and adult learning. So if it's not, chemistry of chemistry is not the problem in health isn't the problem, then you need to do more training. If you've done a ridiculous amount of training and something's not clicking, go backward. Or maybe it's a health problem. 00:15:43:06 - 00:16:03:12Michael J. AccettaNo, it's not a health problem. Maybe it's a chemistry problem. So you can go back and forth between those three chemistry, health and adult learning or adult learning health and the chemistry. I'll give you a couple examples here. My dog's not sitting Is it their hip or just have I not done enough training? My dog is not recalling well, is it a health issue? 00:16:04:01 - 00:16:26:09Michael J. AccettaIs it a chemistry issue or is it adult learning? I just haven't done recall enough. I haven't practiced the behavior enough in able to warrant doing it in that environment. Now, a genetics could also play a role in that if my dog's not recalling because they're pointing at a rabbit. Well, the genetics would say that the dog should point at the rabbit and should continue to stare at it. 00:16:27:06 - 00:16:49:11Michael J. AccettaNow we need to do something else. We need to do more training to combat the genetic side of your dog's predisposition. Okay. Now, if you're struggling with any of these problem behaviors and understanding, okay, how does this work? How do I fix any of this? I made a guide for it. It's called the resolving complicated bad habits without using punishment. 00:16:49:12 - 00:17:15:03Michael J. AccettaThe links going to be in the description. Or you can just go to Matador, Canine Brilliance Forward Slash, resolving bad habits. Matador, Canine Brilliance. I'm sorry, matador, canada. Come forward. Let resolving bad habits matter lurking out of that, come forward. Slash resolving bad habits I'm going to leave you with this. Just because your dog's behavior stemmed from one of these places does not mean you have no control over it. 00:17:16:00 - 00:17:51:03Michael J. AccettaYou have complete control over your dog's behavior whether you think you do or not. And when you do train your dog, when you do work with them, when you do solve problems, not only does it build a stronger relationship, you get to have more freedom with your dog. But the world opens up. I promise you, no matter how difficult it is right now to work through these problem behaviors, to work through the the difficult training sessions, the obstacles you have in order to get to where you want to get to the world opens up when your dog is well-behaved, when they're well trained, when you get to experience new things with them for the first time 00:17:51:03 - 00:18:01:13Michael J. Accettaand have full confidence that they're going to be safe and respond and listen to you because you've done the work, because you've put the effort to get out there, go train. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next