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Speaker Key
SG Susan Garrett
Transcript
00:00:00
Because the one thing you do not want to have as a 1-year-old puppy is a long list of regrets because
of things you didn't do. Most puppy challenges do not start out as problems. Things like greeting the
dog by letting them jump all over you. When they're an adult dog, is that okay for them to greet other
people like that? So, what is a better solution?
00:00:26
Hi, I’m Susan Garrett and this is Shaped by Dog, where dog training finally makes sense at both ends
of the leash. Today, I want to tell you a story about friends of mine who live here on the property with
their brand-new Golden Doodle.
They've had Poet for about 10 days, and it's really given me a fresh perspective because although I
know many of the people listening to our podcast are first time pet owners, I rarely get to see the
activity of first-time pet owners upfront.
00:00:57
Now, to be honest, Michelle owned a dog with her partner about 10 years ago. Brandon, brand new to
pet ownership. And guess what? They're doing a lot of really good things. They're doing a lot of things
well. And there's things that they just don't know that experience is going to bring them. Experience and
yours truly, of course.
But this gives me a great opportunity to help those of you who have a puppy for the very first time, or
those of you who know somebody who has a puppy for the very first time, or those of you who might be
struggling with a puppy or a dog, because you might see yourself in some of the mistakes that Brandon
and Michelle have made.
00:01:37
Let me just set the stage. Brandon and Michelle live in a large room. They have access to a kitchen.
The puppy is raised in an upper loft with a flight of stairs. That's really important because if you've
listened to Shaped by Dog in the past, you know, we don't want puppies doing stairs.
Brandon and Michelle are super kind people, and they are leading their training with kindness, which is
so nice to see. In this episode, it's not about pointing fingers or showing fault. It's about sharing how
you could accidentally be growing behaviors that you don't want to see when you're not focused on the
right things as your puppy is growing and developing.
00:02:12
Before Poet arrived, Brandon and Michelle did a deep dive into Shaped by Dog to get a background of
what they might expect and how they should prepare the environment for the puppy. So, they did a lot
of great things. They set up a gated environment in their living quarters. They had a crate in that gated
environment.
I gave them two critical lessons. Number one, because they both work from home, I knew how
important it would be that we set the stage right away for preventing separation anxiety because
separation anxiety isn't something you want to train out of. You want to train to prevent it.
00:02:50
The second lesson that I gave them was how to carry a puppy up and down stairs, because it's super
important that you secure that puppy. Gather the leash in one hand, put that hand under the puppy's
bum. Now the leash is attached to a collar or a harness, the other free hand loops under the collar,
holds the puppy by the chest.
This gives you three safety belts, as it were, if that puppy happens to squirm as you're going down the
stairs. We don't want any accidents. And of course, my advice is we don't let that puppy walk
downstairs until they are, I don't know, five months old. So, it's a long flight of stairs. We've got to
prepare that puppy to be handled as they're going down that flight of stairs.
00:03:32
Some puppies just don't like being carried up and down stairs. I don't know if it's a visual thing, but they
might get upset. You want to condition them to being held and carried before you make the trip up and
down stairs. Yes, this is management but think of management not as restrictive but rather as
proactive.
Because the one thing you do not want to have as a 1-year-old puppy is a long list of regrets because
of things you didn't do. Regrets can be minor, from now you've got a problem behavior, to major, now
you've got a lifelong injury or worse.
00:04:08
So, I said they did a lot of things right. And one of the things they did right was this gated community.
They went on Marketplace. They got this beautiful pen that has clear panels so they can see that
puppy when they're lying in bed or working at their desk. The one mistake they didn't do, though, is
they never, ever closed the door of the crate for the puppy.
So, he chose to sleep in that crate every night, but after the first night, he chose to come out and pee
on the floor. So how did they deal with that? Rather than acting on Crate Games and conditioning the
puppy to being okay with the crate door closed, what they did is they set alarms, so they'd get up
during the night to take the puppy out.
00:04:49
10 days later, I asked how everything was going, and that's when I learned that they were still taking
the puppy out in the middle of the night, and their defense was “His little wee bladder, he can't hold
that. So, he had to pee.”
And I said, “Listen, if someone was to wake me up at two o'clock in the morning, I promise you I would
have a pee. But if they'd let me sleep till 8:00 AM, would that be glorious for me! If they let me sleep till
6:00 AM I would be 100% fine.”
00:05:19
So, the misunderstanding was believing that the puppy woke up and peed once he roamed around in
his big pen meant he had a small bladder and couldn't hold his pee. And that just wasn't the case.
Being proactive would've made this easier when I told them in 40 years of owning a puppy after the first
night, I have never been woke up by a puppy who needed to go out.
Of course, I would take them out if they needed to. They just don't wake up. But if you give them
access for free roaming with toys in their pen, yes, they will. And when they're moving around, they go, “Hey, I got to pee. I think I will.” I know Brandon and Michelle were just extending that kindness to their
puppy.
00:06:00
But the truth is, structure builds confidence and behaviors much faster than kindness alone ever could.
Probably 30 years ago when I started introducing reinforcement-based dog training to the people who
followed me, I coined the phrase ‘Positive is not permissive.’ Meaning just because we aim to train with
positive reinforcement doesn't mean that we allow the puppy or the dog to do what they want when
they want.
That kind of goes back to the last point. The puppy has the right to be in their pen, be in their crate,
play with the toys, do what they want when they want. So, whenever there's any kind of restriction on
the puppy who's had this free reign, there will be hesitation and resistance to a restriction to freedom.
00:06:47
That may show up in trying to walk a puppy on a leash before they have any relationship to
Reinforcement Zone or following you, or how much fun you could be. Your intentions of having this
amazing puppy who loves you is a relationship that needs to be grown.
But being permissive means there'll be more friction, there'll be more hesitation, and when that
hesitation in the puppy is meant by you allowing them the freedom to do what they want when they
want, then that hesitation creates the friction, which often will create the puppy disengaging.
00:07:18
And so, the kinder you are, the more disengaging that puppy will become as they look for
reinforcement in their environment. Giving a puppy agency doesn't mean they have free roam to lead
you wherever they want to go; they have free roaming rights to decide.
Do they want to be in a crate or not? They have free roaming rights to say, “I'm going to eat now,” “No,
I'm not going to eat now,” “You will play with me now,” “No, you won't play with me now.” That's not
what agency looks like because sometimes leadership involves picking a puppy up and moving them
away from a distraction.
Leadership understands that a relationship has to take time to develop. Therefore, giving the kid the
keys to the Lamborghini is going to mean there's likely going to be poor choices made somewhere
down the road that's going to lead to horrible outcomes.
00:08:06
Good leadership guides decisions in a way that the puppy thinks it was their idea. And look forward to
making another good choice with you in the future. So, to be clear, positive is not permissive. Positive
training still requires leadership, but good leadership does not require accompanying intimidation or
punishment.
Another great decision that Brandon and Michelle made was enrolling in Recallers and starting to play
Recaller games with their puppy right from the start. That was so cool to see. But then what I saw was
them taking the puppy off leash in big environments where the puppy once again had the freedom to
disengage to say, “You could be fun but let me just check out what else might be more fun.” “And if I
decide this isn't as fun, I'll come back to you, and you can give me the fun that you have.”
00:08:57
That was met with Brandon and Michelle saying his name, “Poet. Poet. Poet.” I heard his name before
they would say, “Poet, here,” “Poet, sit,” “Poet, down.” Lots of things with the word Poet involved. And
what was happening was we were teaching Poet that his name is kind of meaningless.
00:09:17
And a puppy ignoring his name is potentially dangerous. We want the name to have what I call a head
whip reaction. It's sacred. It could save a puppy's life. And if you have kids, you only allow the kids to
use it if there's an obvious path to certain reinforcement. Because every ignored recall or every “Poet”
ignored is a deposit into more ignoring in the future.
So, what is a better solution? When we're playing games, maybe have a leash dragging for the first
week until we could be certain of the puppy's responses. Crisp behaviors, lots of fun, money in the
relationship bank. No withdrawals into the environment bank. Building a future together.
00:10:08
Brandon and Michelle are so close to being right there. Just a few little tweaks that I'm sure many of
you listening to this could use as well. Now, I slipped in another little human mechanical error that I'd
like to see cleaned up, and that was, I said they said, “Poet, sit,” “Poet, down,” “Poet, here.” And what
that means is they were naming behavior with a puppy they'd only had for a week.
Do you believe that the behavior they were naming was crisp and well understood? Highly unlikely. If
we remember that behavior is built by the ABC's - Antecedent Behavior Consequence, the Antecedent
the cue sit should only be added when there's certainty and clarity with what the puppy will do and how
happily they do it.
00:11:00
I want joy when I say sit, I want joy in that, what that puppy's choosing to do. I don't want them to look
around. I don't want it to be slow. I don't want it to be on the second or third time I say it. How do we get
that? We don't name behaviors early. So, giving a puppy all these words in the first week is going to
dilute their understanding of any words.
Fluency of behavior in a puppy comes long before vocabulary. You want to condition the behavior you
want. So of course, when we're playing Crate Games, I will feed my puppy for sitting in the crate, high
and at the back, under the distraction of the door opening. But I don't tell them that to sit. I condition a
position that they love to be in it.
00:11:43
I will condition when I greet them that they sit, they'll get my praise, they'll get maybe a treat, they'll get
maybe a toy. Before everything that's fun, I will wait till I get a sit. I don't name the sit, but very quickly
the puppy will anticipate when this certain situation happens upon me, I'm in the crate and they touch
the door, or I'm in Reinforcement Zone, or somebody comes to greet me, I'm going to adopt to sit.
We're conditioning a location. We're conditioning a specific target. We're conditioning what we want
your body to do. Conditioning without confusing. Condition before you name. Do not be in a hurry to
name a behavior. And people I know, the next thing they say to me was, “Susan, how will the puppy
ever know what to do if I don't say sit, sit, sit.”
00:12:32
Do you think they're born knowing English? And if you're listening to this from Germany, do you think
they're born knowing German or, I mean that's a lot of different languages the puppy would have to be
born knowing because who knows who might adopt them.
They don't understand language. They understand behaviors that have been conditioned, where we
bring the value that is important to them.
00:12:53
And once we've got a great behavior, then we can name it with a label that's bright and shiny and
meaningful. Because as you go to greet your puppy and you know they're about to sit, you could then
add the cue. And you could start adding the cue in at different times when you can predict the behavior
is going to happen.
Now you've got efficiency of behavior without artifacts of needing two or three cues. You've got joy,
you've got bright eyes, you've got ears on top of the head. You've got expectancy of this is going to be
fun. That's when I name behaviors. My dogs, by the time they're 18 months old, probably know 100
cues. But they know them all with clarity, confidence, and joy.
00:13:36
Do not be in a hurry to name something that you should be conditioning. Likewise, you don't want to
dilute the effectiveness of those cues by using them as a word of praise. A little mistake that got slipped
in here several times is they would say, “Poet, sit,” and then they would repeat, “Good sit, good sit,
good sit.”
Now, I've talked about this on Shaped by Dog before. It's something that traditional dog training taught
us all. It's something that many dog trainers continue to teach. But think about it from the dog's point of
view. You've created a word that is a verb. It's an action. Take action, move from a stand to a sit, move
from a down to a sit, pop.
00:14:16
If I was to say ‘good sit’ to one of my dogs and they were already sitting, do you know what they would
do? They would put up their butt and they would sit again. Because sit is a verb. When you use it as a
word of praise, it doesn't help that puppy understand any better what they just did. All it does is dilute
the effectiveness of the cue.
When you say, ‘good sit’ or ‘good down,’ what you're doing is you're telling the dog, this is a cue that
you can ignore from time to time. I want you to do it with this criteria, with joy and expediency and
speed. But there are times, just ignore it and keep doing what you're doing. It's got to make sense to
the dog.
00:14:54
When we look at raising a puppy with a long lens on, you've got to consider that all of these are little
mistakes. None of them are life altering. All of them can be course corrected, but all of them added
together will create confusion where we want clarity. Brandon and Michelle are doing an amazing job
playing Recaller games, raising Poet with clarity.
They've gone through the puppy playlist on YouTube with all of our Shaped by Dog episodes. They're
growing their understanding of the science of behavior and how dogs learn going through those
podcasts. They're developing what I can see is an amazing relationship through their ongoing playing
of the Recaller games.
00:15:37
And they're helping to teach that puppy recovery, resiliency, regulation, through Crate Games. And yes,
closing the crate door, and yes, moving the crate and having the puppy in new environments alone. It's
tough when you're there 24/7, you're building this unhealthy attachment that when you do have to go
away, you've changed the world.
00:16:01
And that's the long lens of raising a puppy. What am I doing now with that puppy that might have to
change later? What am I doing now that potentially has repercussions I don't want to deal with later?
Things like greeting the dog by letting them jump all over you. When they're an adult dog, is that okay
for them to greet other people like that?
Use the long lens when you're evaluating what you're doing with your puppy. Listen, most puppy
challenges do not start out as problems. They start out as small kind decisions made every single day.
Multiple times throughout the day. The puppy is they're like sponges. They are constantly learning
through the experiment of choice and the outcomes of that choice.
00:16:48
Recallers exists to help pet owners make good decisions today with the future in mind so that they
aren't just hoping things are going to turn out all right down the road. They're confident. They see the
clarity changing every single week.
They don't see things getting worse. They don't see things staying the same and hoping the puppy will
outgrow it. They have confidence because every layer of certainty, confidence, and clarity that they're
adding to that relationship between them and their puppy changes the puppy.
00:17:22
They see the good choices made right before their eyes. And hey, if you're in the midst of raising a
puppy or rescue dog yourself, and you'd like that kind of clarity and certainty with your relationship with
your puppy, I'll leave a link to Recallers in the show notes.
Thanks for joining me today. And as always, stay curious, stay humble, and continue to make life better
at both ends of the leash. I'll see you next time, right here on Shaped by Dog.
