Serving Central and Northern Connecticut LEDRdogtraining@gmail.com
Hello Dog Lovers!
We are excited to announce our brand new YouTube Channel, DoggyU! Here we will be posting training tips and ideas, enrichment games, product reviews, and doggy related travel tips. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel to get all the latest videos! Click HERE to watch and subscribe!
Happy Training!
LEDR Dog Training and DoggyU
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Last month was National Train Your Dog Month. As part of the effort to educate others on positive reinforcement I was asked to write an article for VitaBone on helpful tips to get started training your dog. You can find that article HERE. The winter is a great time to start training your dog because better weather is right around the corner. Show off your dogs skills this spring by starting training today! It only takes a few minutes a day to get a better behaved dog!
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Green fuzzy stuffing. Green fuzzy stuffing has been the bane of my existence for the last couple of days. But let me rewind a little. About a month ago we brought home an energetic 8 week-old puppy. She’s a typical puppy in that she will get into anything and everything!
Before we brought her home we had a nice dog bed in the corner of the living room. It had a hole in one corner, but had served Jake well for the last 3 years. Well, last week the puppy found the hole in the bed and started pulling the fuzzy green stuffing out of it. Every time I turned around she was at that bed, searching for the hole, trying to pull some stuffing out to chew on. I didn’t want to get rid of the bed because Jake loved to sleep in it and our hard wood floors are way less comfortable. But alas, it was causing me more anxiety than one inanimate object should!
I spent a few days redirecting her behavior to appropriate things to chew, restricting access to the area with the bed in it, and teaching her to lie in the bed instead of chewing on it. After a few days of some successes, some failures, and still green fuzz in my puppy’s mouth, I had an epiphany; this was not a training problem, this was a management problem.
So off I went to grab my needle and thread. In 10 minutes I had sewn up the hole. And guess what? No more green stuffing in puppy’s mouth or on my floor. Happy human!
Sometimes a problem doesn’t need training, it just needs some simple management.
With dogs we are always tempted to want to “train” the behavior out of a dog when a simple environmental change or change in our behavior will fix the problem in minutes. If we work on setting our dogs up for success by not leaving things around that they shouldn’t be chewing or getting into, we can also lessen the frustration in our lives and focus on training behaviors we actually need. The puppy was never going to stop pulling the stuffing out of the bed. It was way too much fun! So with a simple management strategy on my part, there is peace in my house again. Well at least peace in relation to the dog bed; she is after all a 13 week old puppy! 🙂
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With summer in full swing with high humidity and soaring temperatures, keeping your dog cool while getting them proper exercise is a serious concern. Today’s blog is on a couple different ways to keep your dog cool when you venture outside.
Last weekend I was at a clinic with my dog. Temperatures were close to 90 degrees, but he was happy as a clam out under a tree with his swamp cooler, frozen cooling pad to lie on, and bowl of water. If you are going to be in direct sun (especially if you have a dark colored dog whose coat heats up quickly) I recommend a swamp cooler like the one Jake is wearing below made by Ruffwear. The vest works by using natural evaporative cooling to lower the dog’s temperature while reflecting the sun’s rays.
If you are going outside for some exercise with your pup remember to try to bring them out early in the morning or later in the evening when temperatures are low. And remember brachiophalic dogs (those with shortened snouts) may have a harder time cooling off and breathing, so be extra careful in the heat!
If you are hanging out in the backyard a plastic kiddie pool can be an awesome and inexpensive addition to your doggy equipment. If your dog is timid about going in the water, make sure you introduce them slowly to just an inch or two of water. Give them lots of treats for exploring this new obstacle and you can even build them a small dirt ramp to get inside if they are nervous about jumping in. Toss a couple pieces of hotdog in the water and now you’ve created your own doggy “bobbing for hotdogs” game!
Another simple but occasionally overlooked part of the cooling equation is properly grooming your dog. If your dog has lots of dead hair trapped in his coat, the coat wont be able to efficiently regulate heat, so make sure you are brushing them frequently to remove trapped hair.
Additionally, make sure you are monitoring their exercise in the summer. Some dogs just don’t know when to quit and will play until they succumb to heat exhaustion, especially those with high drive. Give your dog plenty of breaks in the shade, even if he grumbles about it.
And remember, CHECK THE PAVEMENT! If you can’t place your palm on the pavement for 5 seconds comfortably, it is too hot for your dog to walk on it!
Finally, if you’re looking to offer your dog a cool treat, try making homemade pupcicles! These are probably best enjoyed outside or in a crate and not on your favorite rug, but your dog will have a blast. I typically make them by freezing a mix of yogurt, pumpkin, peanut butter and other dog friendly snacks inside a plastic cup. Once frozen, I run it under hot water and pop it out when it’s time to give it to the dog. Another fun idea is to fill a kids sand bucket with water flavored with chicken broth and put a toy at the middle and freeze it. Once popped out of the bucket, your dog has to figure out how to release the toy from the ice. This can be a fun mental and physical game for them as you watch them roll your ice creation around the yard.
Summer can be an awesome time for you and your pup, full of lots of adventures and lazy evenings in the yard. With these tips you can keep your dog safe and healthy in the hot summer weather!
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One of the first questions I tend to get from potential clients is “how long is it going to take to train my dog?” The answer is, it depends on your goals but you can get a better-behaved dog with a daily commitment of simply watching your favorite half-hour TV show. Not too bad right? That’s because training should never take very long! We think we need big blocks of time to practice training with our dogs but in reality our dogs learn best in very short training sessions. Here’s what I mean:
The average television show is 30 minutes long with 3-4 commercial breaks around 2 minutes each. That gives around 8 minutes of training time while you watch your favorite show.
8 minutes??? But that doesn’t sound like enough time! Well it can be, if you are CONSISTANT. Consistency is the name of the game in dog training. You are much better off training 4 times a day for 2 minutes at a time than training for an hour once a week. Your dog will learn more, be excited to train with you, and your lessons will be reinforced daily. The idea of these short sessions is to leave your dog wanting more of the game you are playing together. If you end a training session while your disinterested dog is ambling away, he isn’t going to think it is very fun to train with you. But if he ONLY gets to train with you for 2 minutes before you take a break, he is going to be excited when he gets to train with you because he was having fun when it ended last time!
Additionally, television training puts a built-in restriction on your training. Humans can fall into the trap of “that one was good, but let’s get one more good one before we quit.” Instead, you end up suffering from diminishing returns where each successive attempt gets sloppier than the last. Eventually you end the session on a less successful attempt because you trained that one task for too long. Television training forces you to stop once your show comes back on (I know I’m not missing any Big Bang Theory Bazinga moments), creating a built in system for limiting your attempts.
But Laura, I don’t watch TV! Okay fine, I don’t watch much either anymore (except Big Bang Theory, seriously, that show is great) but I love my podcasts. I suggest downloading an episode of “Stuff you Missed in History Class” and use this same technique. This also gives you the added benefit of allowing you to take your daily walk while you train. Go out for your walk and every time there is a commercial break in the podcast, stop and work on a skill. Those skills can be eye-contact, sits, downs, stays, surprise recalls, leave-its, whatever you are working on that day. Plus, you get the added bonus of having the distraction of the natural world built in. So no excuses if you don’t watch TV!
Takeaways: Whenever you set out to train your dog, whether it be a puppy or an adult dog, make sure your sessions are short and fun! Pick one or two skills to work on for a short session and then leave them wanting more! Consistency is the key, so train every day for just a few minutes at a time and you will be well on your way to a better-behaved dog!
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