Training Your Dog on Boundaries

Teaching your dog proper boundaries is important from a safety standpoint and it also makes life a lot more fun!

This ranges from teaching them not to leave the boundaries of your yard to things such as stairs, crates, the front door and other thresholds.

Enjoy the episode and let us know if you have questions!

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Sit, stay, press plan. Let's begin.
Welcome to the pack you are officially in.
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Mark your right, it's never the same.
Big dogs, small dogs, every kind.
If you love canines, TuneIn, rewind, laugh and learn level of
your game. Suburban canine remember the
name. Nelson, you ready to get into

(00:35):
it? Let's do it.
How are you buddy? I'm good.
It's no Voss. That's kind of weird, right?
I know that is weird. I don't like it.
What do you think he's doing? Something weird, I bet.
He's definitely, he's probably having like a World Wrestling
thumb wrestle competition. That's what I would think he's

(00:55):
doing. I was going to say, he's getting
T-shirts tailored. T-shirts tailored.
Couldn't you? I mean, how surprised?
Would you be surprised at all ifyou found out he got his
T-shirts tailored? No, no, not at all.
I could definitely see that. I'd be 0% surprised.
But like I've seen him also train a dog in almost a proper

(01:17):
suit, like he was really just missing a blazer so.
Some like some pleated khakis and some loafers.
Yes, so I could see it for sure.Well, today we're talking
boundaries, right? Yes, boundaries.
So there's a lot of ways we could go here.

(01:37):
You had thrown out some some thoughts and one was yard
boundaries, right? Yep, yard boundaries.
I guess that's, that is a good point, right?
Because we could be talking about like relationship
boundaries and stuff like that, but that's not what we're going
for today. Like when you're petting your
dog's belly, like make sure you don't put your hand too far

(01:58):
down. There's some.
There's some boundaries you shouldn't cross.
So yard boundaries we've got, we've got.
Front door, door, stairs, stairsis a good one for sure.
Gates, yeah, crates. Well look at that.
Just rhymes. I should just come up.
I should've. I should've had like 3 rhyming

(02:19):
ones that would've. Been like Doctor Seuss, I'll
tell you what, we we better get into the episode because some
asshole just gave us a one star review on Apple.
And at first I was like, what a Dick as I was reading it.
And then I'm like, you know what, they've got a good point.
He's like, he said like something like I can't get down
with this. I listened to the episode and it
basically sounded like 3 trainers talking shop like

(02:41):
sitting in a bar talking shop like, well, that's probably a
fairpoint. Probably there's a good chance
it sounded like that. So boundaries, yes, I think all
open with clients trust us. So when we start this with a
client, I very rarely get like, I certainly don't get pushed

(03:02):
back. I don't get many questions, but
I I know when I talk to people online that don't know us,
people have trouble. I think understanding they're
like, how would a dog learn it without a command or without a
word? And this is a hard thing to type
to people, but the best way I can explain it is dogs use
spatial pressure or whatever youwant to call it.

(03:23):
They use it on each other all the time.
And picture like a dog with a bone.
And another dog walks by and they're like, oh crap, they've
got a bone. And they circle around and they
give him a lot of space. Or a dog barks at another dog.
And the other dog then gives himsome space and goes around him.
And he didn't say, here's your, here's your distance, dude.

(03:44):
It's 2 feet, right? They just communicate.
And he watches the other dog to see what the other dog saying,
right? Like they try to be on the safe
side, keeping a little more distance than is needed,
assuming they care. And then if that's too close,
they'd watch the other dog. The other dog stares at them.
They back up a little bit. So I, I encourage clients like
we don't need to overthink this and turn this into an obedience

(04:06):
command because you already havethose commands and if you want
to use the stay cool, do it. If you want to use he'll come,
you can do that, but you can also teach them boundaries and
it doesn't require a ton of words.
And once people understand that,I think this makes a lot more
sense to them. Like there's a communication
aspect to this that's not a big part of.
It's non verbal and you have to be comfortable with that.

(04:28):
I think a, a big point that you hit there too is assuming they
care, right? That could be a puppy who cares
about nothing, right? They just care about about
playing. But that could also be, you
know, a really pushy dog who doesn't care about what you were
saying specifically. You know, maybe there's someone
in your house that the dog listens to way better and would

(04:49):
have picked it up, you know, super quickly with them.
And it's just a little bit more of a of a task, you know, for
you. So I think that that is a
really, really good point of do they actually care enough to
read the social cues, whatever they are, whatever it is that
we're using and actually like actually do a good job of, of

(05:10):
being mindful. For sure.
And the short answer, someone listening who's thinking like,
well, how do I make them care through training them?
Your dogs don't lie and they don't trick you.
So and they don't connive and plan and sneak around like they
do. They're very clear in how
they're feeling and what they'rethinking.
So if you train your dog and it listens well in the yard to come

(05:32):
and it pays attention to you, well, the and it like it heals
well and holds a down stain. All of those things.
Well, now boundary work in the yard is going to be pretty easy.
It's not going to be hard at all, and if your dog heals
through the front door and can hold a down stay when people
come over, well, now as we startboundary work, it's not going to
be hard. If your dog can't do any of
those things, start with the obedience, make him care, and
then move on to this. Yeah, at risk of sounding like a

(05:56):
broken record, right, If you can't heal your dog around,
especially any kind of distraction, you know, like
there's, there's homework right to to do before you get this
preliminary homework I guess would be a be a good way of
putting that. Yeah, so let's assume they did
the homework. Either their dog respects them.
This is maybe a client of yours.You know, this was your idea for

(06:18):
the episode, I'm assuming. Were you thinking mainly about
the yard, teaching boundaries inthe yard?
Is that where you wanted to start?
So I was thinking two things that the yard is a good one and
one that I feel like just not a lot of people are are doing too
much anymore. But the ones that come into mind
of, you know, like my client specifically are always the

(06:38):
crate and the front door, right?I mean, those are just two
problem areas that a lot of people typically will struggle
with. But the yard is, I don't know, I
always feel like when we start working on boundaries with the
yard, like especially for talking in front yard and the
dogs not breaking, you know, thegrass line or something like
that. There's it always seems like

(06:59):
more of an advanced step just because there were other
boundaries that you know, that we needed to work on 1st.
So you're saying you want to talk about one of the easier
ones first? I don't care.
I mean, realistically, you know,realistically that a lot of it
is the same. But I guess let's start off with
front door seems to be the most common one.

(07:20):
Now the front door is where I will get that question that you
were talking about of hey, how come we don't use a command?
How come we don't just tell the dog down and or stay or, you
know, this or that and be able to leave or whatever, right?
Whatever it is, grab the food, anything.
To me, the front door makes the most sense.
If I'm actually leaving, there'sno way I'm going to put my dog

(07:43):
in a down stay because one of two things is going to happen.
Either one, the dog holds it, which, yeah, depending on how
long I'm actually gone would could be impossible.
But the second one, which is more likely is that the dog
doesn't hold it right. He might hold it for 5 minutes
and like, I don't think he's coming back and then moves off.

(08:04):
And all I'm teaching my dog to do at that point is to, you
know, wait a little bit and thendisregard what I say for
something more comfortable or more entertaining, whatever it
is in, in my mind, kind of both of those are bad.
So there's that. One of the reasons why I don't
want to use it like especially astate command or something like
that is is because at some pointthe dogs are going to learn to

(08:25):
disregard it or I feel like a big jerk because they held it
the entire time. The second thing is, especially
in, in my case, and, and for a lot of my clients kids, right?
I mean, I, I even as good as my kids are with other dogs, I
don't think I ever hear them tryand say sit, stay and then open
the door and leave or open the door and grab some.

(08:46):
They just open the door and go and that is one of those things
where I don't want my dogs to belike, well, they didn't say it.
So looks like I'm free and loosenow.
And you know, obviously like my own personal dogs, I could get
back no problem. But with a client's dog or
anything like that, if I'm, you know, if I have my B&T out, I, I
want to make sure that nothing goofy happens there, obviously.

(09:12):
So how to actually do it? You know, how would I in start
this, especially like in, in a house call or something, I would
start on a leash. I would walk up to the door,
open the door, make sure that the dog does not cross out.
Either I have to give a quick little tug there 'cause they
tried to bolt out or they're really, really good at just not

(09:37):
doing anything. You know, they're waiting for me
'cause we've practiced heel withthe clients and stuff like that.
So, you know, that part probablywould have already been
established, but what I do from there is actually pivot directly
in front of them. I want to square myself up to
the dog and apply some social pressure as I start to cross out

(09:59):
of that boundary again, the little little stairway or the
doorway right there. Any time that the dog tries to
move forward to kind of follow me, because again, I'm facing
the dog, I will walk into the dog, backing it up quite a, you
know, quite a ways, a couple of feet, couple of steps, whatever,
and then start making my way out.
But I, I always make sure that there's some kind of visible,

(10:22):
visible barrier there that they can see so that they can index
off of something. You know, where, what is this
imaginary line that I'm not allowed to cross?
Sometimes we'll go from tile to carpet.
In this case, the front door, there's usually that metal strip
right there for right under the door.
I'll, I'll utilize that quite a bit.
Sometimes it's a step, but whatever it is, as long as you

(10:45):
know what that line is, you can teach it to your dog.
If you're making one up in your head, it gets much, much tougher
to be able to conceptualize thatfor the dogs.
So anytime that they cross that,that visible barrier, I will
walk into them and back them up.And usually I'll just say like,
hey, get or get back, you know, one of those and practice it

(11:08):
until I can get a couple of feetaway and the dog doesn't follow
me. And then either I will walk back
in, close the door and praise them, or I might say free, let
him finally come out because there was some kind of word
given and praise the heck out ofthe dog.
Then at that point, it's just a a ton of repetition, right?
And getting further, maybe distractions down the line.

(11:32):
Anything add? Hi everyone.
This is Jason Ferguson and I'm the President of the
International Association of Canine Professionals.
Our organization is focused on three pillars, education,
certification and legislation. What that means is we help
educate our members to ensure that they're the best dog
trainers they can be. We also offer certifications so

(11:53):
that clients know that the trainers are true professional.
Our legislative efforts are focused on ensuring that
trainers have the freedom to choose the tools and techniques
that work best for the dogs and clients that they work with.
Join the ICP today for yourself and to protect the industry.
Our friends on the Balanced Dog Training Podcast support the ICP

(12:14):
and we hope you will as well. Well, to to sum it up, overall,
the idea is that you can open the front door and not have to
say anything and your dog doesn't leave.
So for anyone wondering why do we go through all of this,
That's why it's awesome. You can open the front door and
the dog doesn't go out. You don't say a word, you just
open the door and the dog knows not to go out.

(12:34):
So that's awesome. And everything you described I
agree with on using body language.
We have a video showing exactly this.
You shot it actually, Nelson, I was in it and you shot it with
a, a golden retriever. It's on our YouTube channel.
So anyone who wants to see it inaction.
And this was a fresh dog. I I had like just met the dog
that day and like a golden that was wild.

(12:55):
Nice. She was kind of wild, yeah, But
she was, she was pushy. And we worked on and you get to
see it like, you know, in real life exactly what we're doing.
And it goes pretty darn quick. And I encourage everyone to do
this with their dogs. It just makes life much easier.
And earlier we'd said that this doesn't need a command, but it
doesn't mean you can't talk to the dog and it doesn't mean you

(13:17):
can't give them verbal guidance.And this is more important when
you're not in front of them. So if you're turning in front, a
word's not super important. But if you're 10 feet away and
not in front of them, they startto go through the door or when
we get to the yard in a moment and talk about that.
It's nice for them to learn a word.
And there's so many ways I use get back and get, you know, get

(13:38):
back and you could say literallyanything.
I say that because it sounds normal to me, but I could care
less what a client says. I think it's important that you
think through that and you have a way to communicate with the
dog from a distance. Definitely.
Yeah, absolutely crucial. And you can start it at the
beginning if you want as you're going, pushing them back and

(13:59):
using that pressure get, get, get as you back them up or you
know, whatever you like. I think we could probably move
to another, another alternate oranother location now, just six.
You have to make sure your rulesare clear.
And with the front door, usuallypeople are better at it being

(14:20):
clear because they never want their dog to go out out of the
front door unattended. So that's usually a pretty easy
one to be clear on. Don't mess this up though, by
you know, then having different rules where like let's say
you're doing the back door and sometimes you leave the back
door open and you don't care if your dog comes and goes into
yard. Well, that's going to get really
confusing if sometimes you expect it to be open and the dog

(14:43):
can't go through and sometimes they can.
So don't do that. You need to be clear.
My rule is that if the back dooris open, dogs are welcome to
come and go as much as they want.
They just can't push past a person and they can't race
through there. So I stop that and I do that by
open the door. If they go to push through, I
just physically stop them and then free and I let them go
through and then through time they quit trying to push

(15:05):
through. You open the door and they just
walk out and they realize, OK, front door is super different
than back door. Where I see people have problems
is the steps going like upstairs.
People might say, well, I don't really like the dog upstairs.
Can we stop him from going up? Absolutely.
But you have to determine what are your house rules.
And if you start making it messywhere you invite them up,

(15:26):
sometimes you're going to ruin everything.
So like I, we let our dogs upstairs because I just, I don't
know, I have no reason to not want them up there.
But I have a lot of clients who don't like their dogs up.
But if that's the case, I encourage them to never, ever,
ever let them up the steps. Do the same thing.
And if the dog gets upstairs andyou find them, say, hey, get
downstairs. And even if you've never used

(15:48):
the word downstairs and they don't know what it means, they
can tell your body language. And I would walk them down and
then I would go back up myself just as a quick test.
And you just, you have to be consistent and that's.
A good point that I, that I loveto kind of point out one of the
big reasons as to why do we start using or why did we start
this process with obedience commands first or heal first or

(16:10):
anything like that is because atsome point we're going to be
saying words that these dogs don't know, you know, and, and
they're not they're not indexingoff of the English word that
they studied. They're reading our voice, our
body language, all of that stuff.
And when you're working through obedience commands,
particularly, but he'll also that's, that's a big part of the

(16:33):
communication process. Again, when we did our episode
on obedience commands, right? Are they important or not?
To me, this is one of the biggest reasons as to why
they're important, Not so much the command itself, but just a
shared language learning to workwith each other.
Because in that case where you're like, hey, get
downstairs. You know, My dogs have no idea

(16:54):
what that means, but they know I'm probably not supposed to be
up here. He certainly looks like I'm in
trouble. I need to get out of here.
And this works when they care and they know that they're not
supposed to be upstairs. So if you did this like the
first day and the dog is upstairs and you tell him get
downstairs and you look stern, they might run the other
direction, right? And like over here, you don't

(17:16):
seem happy with me. That's not fair to the dog.
And it's not going to go well for anybody or lay down.
Immediately and not want to moveright exactly.
So yeah, so you have. To you have to know your dog and
it just depends on how consistent you are and how much
you work on this. It might be a couple weeks
before you get good enough and the dog gets good enough that if
they broke it when you say get downstairs, they're like OK and

(17:38):
they trot off and go down. So make sure you're not asking
too much too quick. Yeah, good point.
Hey, we. Got our my favorite comment ever
on I think it was on Spotify theother day someone said yerba
mate tea is disgusting and it just made my day some.
Of them are disgusting for sure.I have to work myself up to like

(18:02):
so this one has sugar in it still and they have some that
are highly reduced sugar. And I mean, they they taste
putrid to me. They taste disgusting.
But I basically what that personsaid.
I also don't really like tea, you know, so they pumped this

(18:23):
one full of sugar so I can drinkit.
But at some point also I have to, you know, continue down the
journey and and start cutting out all sugars all together so.
If Vloss was here, he'd be cheering you on.
Yeah, in the Veloss way. He'd be like, oh, it took you
this long, huh? But.

(18:43):
For in Vloss speak, that means like, I'm really proud of you,
Nelson, for sure, life choice and to be honest, I'm very
impressed with you right now. Absolutely there's there's a
lexicon there. Between.
The lines. All right, should we get to the
yard because this is the hardestone and it's one we you know

(19:04):
that the front door you can showsomeone in 5 minutes and they
got it usually do you? Think it's worth explaining the
stairs in the opposite way. So again, just like you said,
you do allow your dogs up there,but you also have a rule for not
pushing past any person, right? Or or sometimes with clients

(19:26):
will make it easy and just they're not on the stairs at the
same time that a human is on thestairs.
I think it's it's kind of worth just a quick two-minute
explanation that those rules canexist and there is a way to do
it. Yeah, you doing that?
You want me to and I want you. To you're the one that works on
that way more than I do, so I. Mean to me that's a, a big thing

(19:48):
and it's something I try to do with every client.
I definitely do with my own dogs.
And the, the thought is you don't want your dog to knock you
down the stairs. That would suck, obviously.
So I, you know, I do this with, you know, with all my dogs and
you can determine the rule basedupon the dogs and based upon the
steps. And what I mean by that is when
there's a landing, you can have slightly different rules than if
you just had twenty straight steps going down.

(20:10):
If it's twenty straight steps going down, my rule is no dog is
on the steps when the humans are.
You wait at the bottom or the top as the human goes down.
And to do that you use, you know, I would call it spatial
pressure, but I'm not going to use a stay.
Preferably I'm going to get to the steps and I'm going to say,
hey, get back. And I kind of shoot them back a
little bit and I'm going to go down the steps.
But I'm going to watch them the entire time, you know, because

(20:32):
if you turn your back, they're going to be like, oh, OK, now
I'm not going to do whatever. So I'm going to watch them the
entire time. I'll get to the bottom and then
say OK or free and let them comedown.
I'll praise them and then I'll do it again.
And I do quite a few in a row. And I would just do the same
thing on the way back up. So they start to get it where
they're like, oh, this is easy. I just wait here and then one
she gets all the way down, I go and then they tell me I'm good.

(20:52):
Like it's, it's not a hard thingthat everybody's.
Happy, right? And if.
They get on the steps I like. Let's say you're going down the
steps and the dog comes down three steps.
I would say no and I would turn and walk to him and say hey,
get, get back and I would shoo them up the steps.
If you can't do that, if you have to have a leash in your
hand to clip them up, that's OK.But get to the point where you

(21:12):
can shoo them back and then you get all the way to the bottom
and you say free and you let them go.
That's the rule we have in our house because, you know, then
the dogs can come and go, but I don't want them ever passing me.
If we if you have a landing, I don't mind, especially a landing
with a bend in it. So we have that going to our
basement where the dog at the top of the steps can't see the

(21:34):
bottom of the steps. So what we allow our dogs to do
is go to the landing it so you can't get to the landing until
I'm off of it. So when I'm out of sight,
they'll trot down and then wait at the landing and they'll be
able to see me. And when I get all the way down
to the bottom, then they'll comedown.
It's really no harder to teach. It's just the same process and,
you know, stop them if they go past the landing.

(21:54):
You know, when you're not ready.It's not all that hard to work
on and it makes life to me a lotsafer and a lot easier.
The. Hardest part that I've noticed
is the people understanding the rule better than the dog, you
know, so a lot of the times you'll have where you just don't
think about it, right? The dog runs past you.

(22:15):
You didn't even think about it and say, oh man, they weren't,
you know, like they weren't supposed to be here.
So remembering to say no to get the dogs back up there, walk
down and up maybe once or twice just to kind of re, you know,
reset the, the rule. But a lot of the times that's,
that's the difficult part is that it's kind of for, for some
people, it just happens and theydidn't even catch it or realize

(22:37):
it. Yeah.
And to combat that, I usually share with clients.
I'm sure you remember the reasonI'm so into this is I used to
have an English mastiff mix thatwas a big dog and we had wooden
steps and it was one straight shot and he was a super chill
dog. But he was walking down the
steps behind me and he lost his footing and slid into me.
And luckily I caught him and like I didn't fall, which was

(22:59):
pretty lucky because he weighed about the same that I do.
And it was scary. And like I stopped him and he
was kind of freaking out becausehe was like dunk, dunk, dunk,
dunk neo down the steps, a big old dog.
And everything worked out OK. But when that happened, it was
eye openings to me was like wow,this dog is a really good dog.
He was basically like 3 steps behind me allowing me to go.
He had no intention of passing, but he slid.

(23:22):
And like, luckily it was not my 2 year old kid who was, you
know, young at the time. So that was a big kind of eye
opener for me. So I explained that to clients.
If they don't see the value and they're like, Oh yeah, that
makes a lot of sense. So it's not just that your dog
might be wild and crazy, they could lose their footing.
And one of the. Things I tell everybody, you
know, specifically with the stairs is, you know, labs and

(23:45):
Goldens are, are so common, you know, and kind of that size dog
even that you kind of forget that they're huge dogs, but you
know, they're £80. That's, that's a lot of weight
to hit the back of your knee while you're going down the
stairs. You know, things can turn crazy
really fast. Yep.
And then you're. Dead instead.

(24:07):
Instant death. There's really, hopefully,
hopefully it's instant death. All right, well, let's get to
the yard. What can we do there?
The yard is a little trickier, which is kind of why I like to
wait on it. Usually the reason I like the
doorway or even the stairs or especially the crate is because
there's only so much space that the dog can actually get

(24:29):
through. It's really easy to play goalie
in such a small space that my body physically can cover.
The yard gets a little bit harder because I'm not as wide
as my yard, luckily, and dogs can play goalie and like get
around and you know all that stuff.
So usually I work on a really solid recall by the time we're

(24:50):
doing the yard, to be honest. Hey Let.
Me throw out one thing for people to kind of chew on while
you're talking about all of this.
So there's a lot of products youcan use E collars, you know, can
be great for this. There's a lot of like spot on
fence is great. Halo makes one as well.
Dogtra recently released an A GPS based electronic fence.

(25:14):
So you don't need to, you know, run a wire.
You know, that's another good option as well.
What I would suggest is the dog trail one I wrote the manual for
over the last couple months. If you are listening when Nelson
explains this, you're going to see it's going, I'm sure going
to be similar to the manual. Anyone who wants something in
writing, just go look up the dogTrail GPS fence and just

(25:35):
download the manual. I mean, there's like a
frequently asked questions section that we put, you know, a
lot of work into. So it'll give you a lot of this
stuff in writing. And it's talking about how to
use the collar. Once you hear Nelson talk,
you're going to realize you justremove the the idea of the
collar and it's your voice or a long line.
It's going to be basically the same exact training.

(25:57):
So for, for the art, one of the things that I still tend to do
seems to be a little bit more ofa relic from past times is I
like to walk the, the actual boundary of the yard, you know,
and, and like, I guess whatever it is that I deem acceptable for
the dogs to be in because I, I, I don't know, I don't always

(26:19):
like the dogs to be in the driveway.
I guess it depends on where the driveway leads to.
Sometimes it like butts up rightnext to the next to the next
door neighbor. And I'm like, maybe we'll, maybe
we'll save ourselves like a little buffer space.
So I would cut that out as I'm walking around the entire space
that I'm, you know, kind of allowing the dog to be just so
they can get an idea of some significance.

(26:41):
You know, I say it's like a relic of pastimes because when I
was growing up, that was always the thing, especially when you
talk to German Shepherd people, right?
Of like, oh, I didn't need fences or anything.
We just walked the perimeter andthe dog knew from there, which
who knows, maybe they did, maybethey didn't.
After I do that though, a coupleof times, I feel pretty good
about it. I will actually start on a leash

(27:05):
if it's a pretty new dog or likea house collar or something like
that where I want to be kind of extra safe.
It's not my own personal dogs, Iguess is the way that I would
put it. And I will be very, very loose
leash because I don't want to apply any pressure to the dog
whatsoever one way or the other.I don't want them to stop
because I'm holding them back, but I also really don't want to

(27:25):
propel them forward because I applied that pressure to get
back to my side. So it is a very, very loose
leash. Long if I can, if I can get one,
like if I can get a 10 foot leash.
I have one here that I use all the time and then I'll, I'll use
that one and I will actually cross from the grass to the
sidewalk, which is generally my barrier.

(27:47):
Again, some kind of visible difference.
Grass meeting concrete to me is,is a very, very easy one for
dogs to understand and I will cross and I'll kind of, I mean,
essentially I'm baiting them. I'm waiting for them to try and
cross. If they don't, I praise the heck
out of them. That's awesome, but a lot of
dogs just won't be paying attention because they're on a

(28:08):
leash and they kind of blindly follow you wherever it is that
you're going. And I will be sure to turn on a
dime and and kind of say, hey, get back.
Get back and start walking into them so that they kind of rush
back into the grass 5 feet or so.
And then I will try walking out of the yard again and waiting
for them to kind of hold that line.

(28:28):
If they break it, no big deal. I'd do the same thing.
Hey, get, get as I start to dropthe leash, this might be, you
know, 5 reps later or something like that.
Every dog is a little bit different.
That's where you start to see some dogs who are just kind of a
little bit more obstinate might try and run that way and get get

(28:50):
over the the sidewalk. So again, you, you want enough
respect out of your dog that like you were talking about
Covey, that I could do it with my voice and I can say, hey, no,
no, no, get back and slowly start walking over there so I
don't have to be everywhere at once.
That that plays a huge role whenit comes to the yard.
But having an A very, very clear, distinct line for where

(29:13):
they can go and where they can't.
Maybe if your yard meets up witha neighbor's yard.
I've used some flags, you know, in in that situation.
Again, just kind of a visible barrier I was going.
To ridicule you for not mentioning flags.
And now my first talking points gone.
Gone. Toss that right out.
But flags help out quite a bit. I don't, but I don't use them

(29:33):
unless it's that situation wheremy where the yard kind of meets
up with somebody else's yard. But they're man, are they super
helpful in that situation? For sure.
But essentially the same thing Again, it's very, very similar
to the front door. I'm just using a much wider
space this time and I tend to crush all of the distractions

(29:55):
while I'm, while I'm working on this.
Kids bikes, you know, scooters, that kind of stuff.
You never know what you're goingto come across in the front
yard. Yeah, a few thoughts.
I mean, you just mentioned distractions.
What I explained to clients in depth is your dog being able to
stay in this boundary when it's calm is not super indicative of

(30:16):
how they're going to be when there's a squirrel, assuming
they like squirrels or whatever.And you have to proof it and you
have to work on that. We could be out there together
for an hour, everything's great.You work on it for the next
three days, killing it, and thenthere's a squirrel and you're
not paying attention and your dog might just blast away after
that squirrel. So you need to keep an eye on
them. The, you know, you had mentioned

(30:38):
this, but the first thing is if your dog won't come when called
really well, you're not even close to being ready for this
for sure. And if your dog will come when
called, this is pretty easy. So when we get to this point
with a dog, it's like clients always think it's going to be
this crazy thing and really hard.
If I can already trust your dog in your front yard or wherever
we are, off leash boundaries is the least of our worries.

(30:59):
It's not going to be super hard because the worst case scenario
is they get a little bit too farand you if you tell them get
back and they don't seem to understand and you tell them
come and they'll do it. So the flag training I love and
it goes back to knowing like what is the setup?
So I'm thinking of the last dog I did this with was a golden who
one side was 1 boundary was the driveway.

(31:22):
Like you said, I didn't want herin the driveway because the
other side of that was the neighbor's driveway.
So just didn't make sense right then the front, they didn't have
sidewalks. It was all the way to the curb.
But we made the decision to let her get all the way to the curb,
even though it's close to the road.
But it's a very quiet Rd. The other side of the front yard
is shared with a neighbor, but it's a very big yard.

(31:43):
The neighbors don't have a dog or kids.
No one's ever really out in thatneighbor yard.
We kept it a little loosey goosey.
We didn't flag train. It just didn't seem worth it.
But if they said, yeah, my neighbors have kids and the dog
likes to jump on them and they hate that, then yeah, we're
going to flag train and make that line really clear.
Sometimes it's pretty easy whereneighbors have different grass.

(32:04):
You've got that neighbor who fertilizes really well and the
grass just like super thick and lush.
And then you've got your crab grass or whatever.
And sometimes you really can usethat as a boundary for.
Sure. That would be my my yard.
That would be the crab grass kind of kind of yard for sure.
We've all been there, so the flags can be helpful, but

(32:25):
they're just to create a visual barrier.
And anyone doing this, all you're really doing is walking
the boundary, letting the dog cross the boundary calmly and
sending them back in some way, shape or form.
To me, the easiest would be justlike the door.
You turn in front, you say hey, get, get back and you shoo them
back into the yard. And then you walk again.
And as they cross you shoo them back again.

(32:46):
And then you start dropping the leash and you walk across the
line yourself and make sure theystay.
And like I said, look at the dog.
Try the electronic fence manual.It's basically all of this in
writing. It'll be really helpful to
anyone who's thinking about doing this.
And then you start working with distractions.
You have a neighbor or whatever,you bring a dog yourself or get
another dog out and you walk that.
You walk the dog up the road andmake sure your dog knows not to

(33:09):
cross their line. And if they do, shoo them back
in. You can use an E collar for
this, but you need to really think through how you're
communicating with your dog thatyou're not muddying the waters.
So if you've trained your dog onstem for a correction, vibration
means come. If the collar has a tone like
some of the newer dog trails do,then that's great.

(33:30):
You could, you know, use the tone would be a reminder they
got to the line that you know, you could certainly do that.
I would be hesitant to use the pager because if that means
come, then every time you push it, the dog's going to come to
you and like you could do it. It's not going to most likely
you're not going to have an issue.
But I don't like mixing things up.
I want that pager to the dog. When they feel that wherever

(33:51):
they are in the world, you're atthe park, they know it means run
to you. I don't want them thinking, is
this the boundary? Have I gone too far?
It's just it's too important to me that the pager works well.
So the E collar could then be used.
If you're just saying hey get back and the dog blows you off
then you could tell them no and correct them with the E collar
if needed. And if they've already been

(34:12):
acclimated of course. Definitely.
So with that doctor collar, can you correct normally with that
collar as well or does it is it only AGPS?
It's. AGPS OK and it's running through
an app. Got it.
So I think, I think it's Halo that has a collar that you can

(34:36):
also, I don't know, I've I've had two clients that that have
gotten one. I haven't actually worked with
it yet, but what they're tellingme is that you can use it as an
E collar and use it as a fence collar at the same time, which
is fascinating to me. My.
Issue with those always over theyears.
Any collar that has kind of doing both, if you're having to

(34:58):
use a phone app, you're not going to like it.
I agree like the. Like the Pathfinder, you know,
we played with that years ago and like, it's great for, for
certain uses, but if you have toget your phone out and unlock
your phone and swipe until you get to the app and then push a
button, it's way too late for sure.
And if you have that much time, your dog's probably good enough.

(35:18):
You don't even need an E collar.So I, I, I'm not a big fan of
that, you know, for that exact reason.
And I would stress to anyone, like play with it, pretend it's
an emergency, your dog's runningoff, even if your phone's in
your hand, unlock it, get that app and go to the right button
and it's going to take some time.
And it never reads your face right?

(35:40):
Like, well, in the first time. Then it's like put in your code
and yeah, there's just. So many things that could go
wrong. So I like those callers for the
right use. I've been demoing one.
I mean, they're now for sale, but I've been demoing one with a
friend who's got like, they havea farm hundreds of acres and
they have a Pyrenees that it's it's a farm dog.
It, you know, protects they theyhave a lot, you know, a lot of

(36:01):
animals. But it was also wandering too
far. So they're using it to teach the
Pyrenees the perimeter of the farm.
There you go, which is pretty. Awesome, that is.
Pretty awesome. So now.
The dog can still do its job, can still protect, but isn't
going to go too far. So, and everything has a pro and

(36:23):
con. The, those electronic collars,
the GPS ones, they're not going to work well in a small yard.
I, I, I can't remember, I want to say the dog treads like maybe
1/2 acre is kind of what they say is the minimum.
I can't remember exactly, but they're not that precise because
there's GPS drift. So if you've got a normal
suburban yard, you're probably going to be disappointed with

(36:43):
any of those GPS collars. And not that they're not good,
it's just not really the use case for when you need it to be
really accurate, and I think you'd be better off probably
just boundary training in that scenario.
But you get to an. Acre or bigger, they can be
pretty awesome. So what do you feel like we

(37:04):
didn't? Hit Nelson.
I guess one thing that I do liketo talk to clients a lot about
is not just the practical reasons for boundaries or for
for enforcing A boundary. I guess this one kind of Harkins
to a crate better than anything else but the front door.

(37:27):
Yeah, Harkins, you like that. And one of the one of the big
things is by having your dog's respect and care about a
boundary that is not physically there kind of keeps you in the
forefront of their mind more so than in kind of any other
context. And there's value to that.

(37:50):
I do this a ton with dogs who have separation anxiety, for
example. And we're trying to get them
comfortable with a crate. We're getting them comfortable
to be in a crate with that door wide open, but then still feel
as though they are contained, right?
That boundary is real and they can't just break it whenever
they want to really kind of changes it from if I panic, I

(38:12):
just need to bust out of this crate to the fact that it's a
command and they're supposed to be in there because I wanted
them in there. And it really does seem to make
a huge difference from what I'veseen in kind of the trajectory
of training, because by not having something that they have
to break, you know, it's, it's amental more of a mental workout,

(38:38):
I guess, right? Is staying in the crate and kind
of getting them tired and bettersuited for the crate as opposed
to, hey, there's just this physical door that's, you know,
scrap metal at best. And I can push and I can feel
the give. And if I just, you know, if I
just keep working at it, I'm going to break out and bust out,
you know, much sooner. So sometimes conceptualizing

(39:02):
that for for the clients really helps out.
So boundary work can do wonders,you know, especially if you have
a runner, if you have a dog thatyou know, sees an open front
door and open gate and just freaking bolts, you know,
getting them to understand that that boundary is not just
physical, but also, you know, your, your command really starts

(39:23):
to help out a ton with that stuff.
Yeah, and I think it's worth noting that we talked about this
from time to time. But you can have a dog.
It's a difference between obedience and behavioral work.
You can have a dog who's good atcommands and is still annoying
to live with, sure. And a lot of people do and and I
like to help them not live like that.

(39:44):
And a dog who knows their commands but smashes through the
crate door the second you open it, that quits being endearing
pretty quickly. And you know, another example
would be like getting them out of a car.
We travel with our dogs fairly often and when we open the back
hatch or the side door, like they know it's like ours right
in the back of a van, they know not to jump over the seats to

(40:05):
get into the middle row. Like this is not allowed.
And when we open the back, they wait and.
Until we get a leash and collar on or for, you know, my bigger
dog, I don't ever let jump out just I'm she's 90 something
pounds. I'm just worried about, you
know, injury. So she's really out.
You what? I can't believe she's 97 lbs.
It's been a while. 90 something okay. 90 something probably.

(40:27):
Right around 90, yeah. Crazy.
So I carry her out each time andso she just knows to wait,
right? And I don't have to tell her
stay and if the kids push the button and the door opens, like
the dogs don't leap out and go running through a gas station
parking lot and right. Yeah, exactly.
Even if your. Dog is trained if you're not
watching them and the kids open the door and the dogs jump out,

(40:48):
Even if they're trained, if no one said anything to them,
they're like, oh a person and they'd go over and say hi.
Why wouldn't they? It's the normal thing to want to
do if you didn't. Say wait fast enough if you
didn't say down fast enough or kind of any of those things.
Yeah, definitely. And then once you do this stuff
and you get good at the body language and your dog pays
attention to you, you realize stuff just works and you have a

(41:11):
connection with your dog. And sometimes it's hard to
explain. So like an example would be when
I go to put my dogs back in the vehicle from like if we were at
a gas station, like on a trip and I walked them while we
filled up the car. I take their leashes and collars
off on the ground just because Idon't like to reach into the
vehicle. It's just easier to me.
I take them off and I don't say anything to them.

(41:32):
They know to wait there. And if they were to walk off and
I said, hey, they would just stop.
And not because of some like magic training, right?
They're, they're connected and they, you know, we have a
connection and they look and they're like, he seems to not
want me to leave right now. And you don't need a word like
stay, come here. You know, when they're kind of
connect and they understand. And we also work on when collars

(41:53):
pop off, you don't leave. And that's something we practice
with our dogs when they're young.
If they're on a prong, you pop it off and let it fall on the
ground. And your dog's first instinct
needs to be to look at you, not to go away.
Definitely we have a video on that, or rather it's a short,
but still I'm still. Unhappy like I haven't folded my
arms to show unhappy I am that that short did not do better

(42:17):
because that's good content. And then I post the stupidest
thing and it'll do really, really well.
And I post one like that that I think is like actually really,
really useful for people. And it's like it gets like no
traction, not. Only was it really good, but it
was like epic. We were in the middle of a big
field, like you could see that like there's streets of stuff

(42:42):
super far off and everything like that.
Then the dog crushed it. I can't remember, it might have
been. Was it that same golden
retriever that we did the front door with I?
Was thinking it was a shepherd. Oh, we did have those shepherds
too. I think so.
You might be, but you know, that's something I would work
on. You did the.
E collar heel with with that dog, yeah.

(43:06):
A good I like that dog. That dog was cool.
So. That's something I would suggest
for everyone to work on. Pop in the collar off and like,
although this is different than boundaries, it all goes hand in
hand. If you've done all the
boundaries with your dog, this is going to be easy because
they're going to be tuned into you when you and like obviously
try it the first time in a safe area with a fence or whatever.

(43:28):
But you know, you can work up toa harder scenario and you're
going to realize what word worksfor you.
And I like to encourage my clients like I like free versus
OK simply because you don't say free in real life.
You say OK a lot. But other than that, I encourage
them like use the word that you like because I don't want you in
a moment of panic. Like what did Matt say?
I have to say, like, what word do you like, what makes sense to

(43:51):
you here? And use that because once you do
and you're comfortable with it, you pop the leash off, they go
to leave and you're like, if youuse that noise a lot, that's
going to mean something to your dog.
And it's no worse or better thanweight or back or whatever.
Definitely. Yeah, I've started doing a lot
of that stuff with my clients aswell as if that's your instinct

(44:13):
to say, then let's use it. We'll we'll enforce it like a
no, we'll enforce it just like we do with everything else.
It's just a different noise. No big deal.
And if it's their instinct, everything's going to be easier.
Exactly. All right.
I think we did it. I think we did.
Yeah, that was pretty good. That was smooth. 43 minutes See

(44:34):
Vloss gets us off track and makes us waste time tell.
Stories, yeah, and just. Really throws us off our game.
We'll see if he watches this. I'm just going to throw it out
there. You and I are kind of the dream
team here. No question.
Not as well dressed as Vloss butyes definitely the dream team.

(44:55):
But. In all seriousness, if we didn't
have Vloss, we would decide eachepisode's topic halfway through
the episode. So Vloss, if you're listening,
we love you and you are very much appreciated.
And this show wouldn't be a showwithout you.
You know the. The unsung hero to to some, let
me tell you, because I can't imagine how difficult it is for

(45:19):
him to have to deal with us all the time.
Well, of like, well, what's what's the topic?
We're pretty lovable. Though I think I think he likes
it. If we're all of losses, life
wouldn't be fun. You need a mixture.
You need the disciplinary and you need the goofball.
Got to have it all. I.
Agree. All right.

(45:39):
Well, thanks for tuning in everybody.
Appreciate you listening. See ya.
Sit, stay, press, play and let'sbegin Welcome to the pack you
are officially in Treats, leashes shaping the game.

(46:00):
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