January 16, 2025 • 55 mins
We get a lot of questions revolving around dogs and wheels. A lot of dogs like to chase bikes, skateboards etc and we see it all!
In this episode we answer a number of questions from our YouTube channel on this topic. Learn how our trainers work to solve wheel related issues with their clients' dogs.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome to the show everybody. We have my main man, Matthew
Vloss here today. Welcome.
To the show Matthew on Excited to be Here.
You look excited and you sound excited, so that's good.
How do you feel about being called Matthew I?
I did that for a little formality.
I like the full name. OK.
Oh, do you have any problem withit?
Do you wish? What do you prefer?
(00:28):
So only my grandma called me Matthew when like, especially if
she was unhappy. So it's odd to be called
Matthew. Do you wish that people called
you Matthew in real life more often?
No. And I think it's weird when
people ask that question of a Matthew.
I feel like most Matthews go by Matthew really easily and it's
like not a big deal, but I don'tknow, maybe that maybe.
(00:50):
Maybe I'm wrong, I've only knownone person that went by Matthew
and was kind of stripped on it and was annoyed when people
would shorten it to Matt. So I don't like.
At our age group I had three maths in every class, so I knew
a lot of maths growing up. There's a lot of maths in our
age range. You know, let's talk about that
for a second. So I was telling the kids the
(01:10):
other day how we used to call you fancy, and they had never
heard that I said something. And they're like, what?
What are you talking about? And I just realized and time
goes quick because Sienna's 14 and she had no idea we used to
call you fancy. Yeah, she wasn't even born when
Fancy was a nickname for me. I think that's the thing.
I don't know that it fits anymore.
(01:31):
I mean, I'm wearing a hoodie. It's not very fancy anymore.
It doesn't seem to fit, but you know, for listeners, we used to
train in a lot of kennels and wetrained at a kennel where there
were multiple mats. And if I get any of this wrong,
Matt, or you disagree, jump in. There were four, at least 4,
right? Because I was the first one and
(01:51):
there was Quattro and you who were called fancy and you were
called fancy, I guess because you were like Andy from the
office. You would come there and, and
you have your chance to jump in if you disagree, but you'd show
up with like penny loafers on and a sweater vest and like you
look like a GQ model or Abercrombie.
(02:13):
Like you just left your like estate in the Hamptons when
you'd come to the kennel to train dogs.
And I was wearing my shirts fromKohl's that I got 30% off and my
cargo pants. And that's.
All pretty accurate. I mean, I think my clothes were
probably still from Kohl's. Like I don't think they were
from anywhere fancier than that.But yeah, I work, I was working
(02:33):
a corporate job, right? So I was working 2 full time
jobs, doing the corporate gig and then dog training.
So I would constantly do appointments, come to the kennel
basically dressed like I just left the workplace.
So lots of khakis, slacks, full button down shirts, that kind of
stuff. So yeah, I was pretty fancy at
(02:55):
that point. It was crazy fancy.
So who was there? Hadn't have been another.
So who was Matt? Two or three?
I remember Quattro obviously. So it was you there was I, I
forget the guy's name who workedthere, who was the the second
Matt before me. I mean, I, I remember him, but I
don't remember much about him. And.
(03:15):
Then I remember, I don't know ifwe can say his nickname on the
air. I I don't even know.
For the record, I didn't get it.Yeah, I think that is a story
best left for off the air because this is a family
friendly. It's I believe it's a drug
reference. And just for the record, we did
(03:35):
not employ this person and he was just at the kennel.
He was a kennel worker. So it was Quattro.
Quattro was also just a kennel worker.
Yeah. OK, well, let's get into the
show. So we're going to do question
and answer today, right? And you're asking questions.
Can you tell us like what's happening here?
You've got you've got a plan on it.
(03:56):
These are questions that we've gotten from different places
online, but I did come up with atheme for today's online
questions. So they're all within the same
theme, which is dogs and wheels.I did not see that coming, Dogs
and Wheels. So that's gonna be the the
episode, I guess. Dogs and Wheels.
(04:17):
Yeah, I would think people wouldbe excited by that.
Like dogs and wheels. That's that's the thing, right?
Dogs are excited by wheels, so hopefully people are excited by
dogs being excited by wheels. Let's do it.
So I think you already you've basically started with the first
question already, which is just why do dogs love wheels?
What is This is why do they likeit?
(04:38):
This is fun. So English Bulldogs love
skateboards, right? That's just a thing.
Yeah. I mean, dogs love wheels, right?
They get excited by it. And we see this a lot.
Skateboards, of course, kids on scooters.
We see so much leash reactivity where dogs are fixated on the
wheels. And I think it's the perfect
storm of dogs. Obviously many of them are prey,
(05:01):
you know, driven, right, They want to chase prey or maybe
they're hurting dogs and they, you know, they want to hurt
animals. So they're drawn to that motion,
that excitement. And then sometimes those wheels
make a noise which seems to justget them going even more.
And then it's also coupled with something exciting, like there's
someone on it. I wonder if they would be so
excited if that thing just went by, like if, if it was just a
(05:24):
robot that went by, no noise andjust slowly went down the road.
If they hadn't learned this habit, if they would care.
But it's coupled with like kids pushing their leg like to get
the skateboard going. There's like, there's a lot that
goes into it. What kind of robot are you
picturing there? Like the the whole robot is just
a wheel? Because I think any robot I'm
picturing would also be somewhatexciting going back.
(05:47):
I don't know, like I'm picturing.
So when I go to Phoenix for work, we often end up training
in the Tempe area and they've, we've got these little like food
delivery robots that drive by and it's freaking weird.
We're like, the first time you see it, you're like, what?
Because they're quiet and they don't like, they're slow.
They just like slowly just go byyou with taking food to people.
(06:09):
I mean, that still sounds prettyexciting to a dog.
They're going to smell that food.
They're going to be like, oh, dog or food delivery robot, I
got to get me that. Yeah, I I just think that if a
dog hadn't learned wheel issues yet from other things and A food
delivery robot went by, the oddsof them starting with that are
pretty slim because it doesn't have the kid kicking their feet
to get moving. Is the food in like an airtight
(06:33):
container? I guess it needs to stay dry so
it can't be like out out right? Yeah.
And I would assume it, I mean itlooks, I'm assume it's insulated
like it's just a big box on wheels basically that drives to
you. Interesting.
So you think it's it's largely based on excitement, the fact
that other things are happening,maybe a little bit of movement.
(06:53):
Why do you think some dogs then still love just like a wheel
toy? Like they sell a rubber wheel
right? That's just for a dog to chew
on. Why do you think a dog might
love that? When you say a rubber wheel like
like a tire, like those black tires?
They sell like a tire, yeah. I think humans like dogs to like
(07:13):
that versus I feel like if she gave the dog a thing that was
the same consistency and it looked like a watermelon, they'd
be like, oh, cool. And if it looked like the shape
of a like phone, they'd be like,that's great too.
And then I think they're, they, they could care less the shape
of it. But really, you don't think they
love that more than other things?
(07:34):
There's clients over the years that have sworn that dogs love
wheels cuz it's a wheel, right? So you don't think there's
something specifically to that? It's got to be the motion, the
excitement. I've never heard anyone say
that. That's news to me that people
think that they like the wheel more than other stuff.
Now I can see why they would like it for tug of war purposes
(07:55):
because they can grab half of itbecause it's hollow in the
middle and the owner or another dog can grab the other half.
So I'm sure if I gave my dogs a tire shaped toy they'd be fired
up because they could grab half and growl and pull and get after
it. OK so do you recommend tire
shaped toys or don't recommend? I have never Can I be agnostic
(08:18):
on this I. No, you got to choose One
Direction or the other. I I'm pro tire shaped tools
toys. Yeah, I, I don't know if I'm pro
or con. I'm just like ambivalent, like
they're, they're a thing and I'mhappy for people to have them or
not, whatever they want. OK, I'm going to be super non
(08:38):
committal today. Everything.
I'm like, I don't know. I just, I can't.
I listened to a podcast the other day and I'm not going to
name the people, but they had a guest on that was the CEO of a
public company and he just wouldn't answer anything because
the other people are not CEO's of public companies.
And they're asking him stuff that he clearly didn't want to
answer and be on the record. And it got to a point where
(09:00):
like, why are you even on the show, dude?
If you're going to be like, Oh, you know, that's, that's good.
But I'll let, I'll just defer toyou guys on that.
He'd like, he deferred on everything and he was just like,
well, you know, I kind of ambivalent on that.
And like, you can't be ambivalent on everything, buddy.
So he didn't do like a politician though and talk in
circles. No, he just would anything that
(09:20):
was even could be controversial,he would just like back away
from me like, well, that's not the the kind of area of that
debate that I'm interested in. So I'll let you guys take that.
I'm more interested in other areas of that debate.
That sounds like a really boring.
Podcast he shouldn't have been aguest and don't do.
That on here. I won't actually.
I just said I was gonna so I don't know, but he and it was
(09:43):
just like, I want to hear your real opinion, dude.
Say it right, Like just you're on there because you're
obviously smart and worldly and know a lot.
So it was a it made him way lessgood of a guest than he should
have been. OK, well let's jump into the
next question. I think you're going to be
really ready for this one with what you've already said.
So this person says I live rightnext to a bike path and used to
(10:06):
walk on it daily. The problem is that my dog goes
crazy every time a bike goes by.Help me.
OK, people. And if you've listened to all of
our episodes or many of them, you've heard of variety.
You know this in a variety of fashions, but people often start
at the end versus the beginning when it comes to training.
(10:28):
Like they start with their end result and they try to create
that right away. So if I show up at that owner's
house and they're like, look, he's going insane and trying to
attack every bicyclist, I'm not going to say like, cool, let's
walk by bikes and let's fix it. Because if that works, it's
going to be too hard on the dog.And if it, there's a good chance
it doesn't work. So we wouldn't start there.
(10:50):
We'd start with the heel commandand make sure it's like that.
We master it. So we, I don't care where we
start, living room, backyard, somewhere calm and we're going
to work on left and right turns.And for anyone who's in, you
know, new to the show, we've gotvideos showing this, but I'm
going to do left and right turnsuntil I can do them with either
a loose leash or a drop leash. Then I don't mean like true off
(11:11):
leash heel like that. That'd be good, but it's not
needed. But I want to make sure that
when I turn right and pat my leg, the dog turns, assuming
he's on the left side, that he turns right with me and like he
knows to turn and follow me. And then same with the left
turn. So we're going to master that
and then we're going to start working with the bikes.
I and this goes for any sort of reactivity issue on leash.
(11:33):
I love having a captive audience, like something you can
create. So although a bike path is your
end goal, if you start there, you're making your job harder
because like you're going to a bicyclist, zoom by and maybe
your dog's good and maybe they're not.
And then now another one comes 10 minutes later, maybe they're
good, maybe they're not. And that can be a problem.
(11:54):
So I'd much prefer having someone on a bike there so that
we can practice with. So now we can set it up at the
right distance. And that is so dog dependent.
I don't know if we want that bike riding by 10 feet away or
75 feet away. And we'll do that.
And, you know, let's say we start at 50 feet, have the dog
pass and you didn't see, you know, see how it goes.
(12:16):
We're going to use the heel command, keep him under control.
And if it's just, like, just terrible and it goes horrible,
well, then we either have to be farther away or just spend some
more time there. If it's easy and it's pointless,
then we're going to say, OK, come, you know, hey Jimmy,
whoever's on the bike, come by again.
But you know, come 10 feet closer and we're going to keep
working closer and closer until we get what, you know, the end
(12:38):
result that we want. And that could be one lesson.
That could be 3. It just depends on, it's often
one. But if you've got a dog who's
really intent on getting that bike and they're just crazy
about it might take 3 or 4 really good sessions before you
feel good about it. But we make it a little harder
each and every time. And you know, there's a lot of
things, little tricks we'll use,you know, 1 is this goes for
(13:02):
anything in dog training. And this is a big point when
you're healing, if you're using heal to calm the dog down and
fix something, always turn the opposite way that the dog wants
to go. And So what I mean by that is if
you're healing and you pass the bike and now the bike is behind
you and your dog's like looking over their left shoulder, like,
you know, kind of wanting to seeit.
(13:24):
And you turn left to the dog. That's kind of like he turned
you and he's going back to the bike.
So I'm going to turn right. And that might be hard right
because he's looking to his leftand I'm, I'm going to make a
right turn and then head back tothe bike.
And then if I'm passing him thatway and he's like looking ahead
of my leg, you know, to the right to get, you know, and he
wants to see it and I need to make a turn.
I'm making a left turn. And this isn't just about the
(13:45):
bike. This would be the front door if
your dog is reactive there or other dogs.
But there's a lot of little tricks that go into it.
But the key is, you know, set yourself up for SEC success,
make it easy and then slowly make it harder and harder.
So I think you hit on, to me twoof the most important points
with bike paths. And just to throw this out there
(14:06):
that it's not just bikes, right?I mean, it could be other dogs
on the bike path, it could be roller bladers on the bike path.
There's all sorts of distractions that go by on a
bike path. And your advice would work for
pretty much any of them. But to me, bike paths are really
difficult places because there'sgenerally not a ton of room on
each side. So it's usually the path.
(14:28):
And then there could be like 1:00 to 2:00, 2 feet of mowed
grass, and then it's like trees or brush or stuff that you don't
really want to be walking in next to it.
So there's not a ton of room to give yourself the space to work
on things. And then the other big point
that you mentioned is the stuff goes by you and then it's gone.
And it might be another 15 to 20minutes before you see anything
(14:49):
else on that bike path. So to me, I always think the
most important thing is work somewhere else on the issue
first, then go back to the bike path once your dog's doing
better with those things. And that way you, you can
actually get some success in those few minutes where you have
where you actually see somethingotherwise you're, you're
probably not going to get there.You know, there were times when
(15:11):
I saw a lot more, you know, you know how it is.
I used to see basically all aggression issues.
And there were times where I just had a bike in the bed of my
truck for weeks on end, like an old piece of crap bike that
could get rained on. And you know, because it made it
so much easier, could work with the client and pull it out if
they didn't have, you know, a neighbor kid or somebody around.
Because trying to fix it on the bike path is asking for trouble.
(15:33):
Unless it's a, unless your dog is a minor version of this
issue, it's going to make your job way too hard.
For sure. If you remember back when we
used to do a lot of that type oftraining, I had the HHR so it
was enclosed and I would always have to choose between having
dogs with me or having the bike in the back.
I couldn't take both. Sure, tough choice.
(15:54):
You got to choose one or the other.
All right, you ready for the next one?
Yeah, is this about English Bulldogs riding a skateboard?
It isn't. Do you want to talk about that?
If you do, now would be a great time to Why do you think English
Bulldogs are so great on skateboards?
You know, I don't know, I, I it's insane how driven that
breed is for wheels there. I mean, so I mean, I guess the
(16:18):
reason they are good at riding skateboards is because they're
fixated on wheels and they want to go after it.
So they have that desire to be biting it and touching it.
So I mean, that's why they're good on it.
But I don't understand why that breed is so fixated on wheels.
It's insane but. I think the low center of
gravity makes them easier to do like a skateboard than bigger
(16:41):
dogs. I think it helps.
Yeah, I would agree with that for sure.
They just have such a desire, though, to be by wheels.
Like that breed has more desire to chase wheeled things than I
feel like every other breed combined.
I I feel like every English bulldog I train as the clients
list in their goals. If they don't say wheels, I I
bring it up like any issue with wheels and they're like, Oh
(17:03):
yeah, skateboards. He goes crazy.
It's it's every time. Have you seen the American Bully
that does the one wheel by itself?
What's a one wheel like a wheelie?
So it's like the the single electric wheel in the middle
with the things on both sides and then it's electric and you
ride it around. So there's a.
Overboard kind of thing. I mean, I, I guess it's, I think
(17:28):
it's just called the one wheel. OK, for the record, I guess no,
I've not seen that and I've never even heard of A1 wheel, so
I'll have to look it up. It's pretty crazy.
He'll just go cruising through apark on it.
And it's a big dog. Yeah, good sized dog.
Like I've never seen, I've neverseen a dog like that on a
skateboard, let alone an electronic skate.
I mean, it's just crazy to watchso and he like makes decisions
(17:52):
about like stopping and backing up.
I feel like they might have a remote and they're doing it for
him, but I don't think they do. I think he just does it.
OK, Nope, never seen it. All right, well, look it up.
No, the next question is following the same sort of train
of thought. We're talking about bikes still.
(18:13):
This person says that they'd like their dog to run next to
them while they ride their bike.They're not sure if that's safe.
They want to know if that's a safe thing to do, and then how
would they even go about that? Good question.
So I have a lot of clients who do that with their dog.
And what I would say is if they say is that safe?
(18:34):
I'd say there's obviously risks involved.
So things to think about are if your dogs not incredible at
listening kind of in all regards.
Obviously if they see if they'rereactive, even if they just like
to chase squirrels, if they dartahead of you and you run into
them, you know, you know, both of you are potentially really
hurt really quickly. Or if they just run off,
(18:58):
obviously again, you're on a bike and all of a sudden they,
you know, peel off and go the other direction like that, they
can get into a dogfighter, get hit by a car.
So no question it there's risk involved there.
What the way I go about this with a client is we start with
off leash heel when walking and make sure that is absolutely
perfect in bulletproof. And to start off late shield.
(19:21):
We've got videos showing this. We've actually got one with a
border collie from, I don't know, four or five months ago
that the owner now rides bikes with the dog in an awfully
shield and they ride like miles and miles all the time.
And so we started with awfully shield.
We get that incredible, make sure the dog's not chasing other
dog, squirrels, whatever that you can awfully shield past
(19:42):
other dogs, awfully shield past people by bikes, all of you know
all that stuff. And then we start, we introduce
the bike and we make sure of theright temperament.
If your dog scared to bikes, well then you've got a lot of
ground work to do. But if your dogs not, then we
just go for a bike ride in a really quiet place with no one
around, ready at a moments notice to stop.
(20:03):
And we go slow because you're the dog might all of a sudden
try to like. Run underneath the bike between
the two wheels. There's a lot of crazy stuff
they could do and you just buildthe trust that way.
And after a couple sessions riding in a quiet park, when you
say you know what, I think they've got it, then we start
going for real bike rides. And I think it's not all that
hard when you actually start going for real bike rides
(20:25):
because of all the training thatled up to it.
And then I would definitely recommend making sure they know
how to stop and sit and stay so when you stop at a crossing, you
know they stop with you. And I guess with all of that, I
was assuming the dog would startdoing this off leash.
You could you could have them doit on leash permanently as well.
But most of my clients that do this, they get the dog to where
(20:48):
they can do it in on an off leash heel.
And you feel like this is a goodform of exercise for people to
have with their dogs? That's a good question.
I'm pretty risk averse when it comes to running long distances
with dogs. So if it's a young dog, like
anything under six months, I wouldn't even consider it.
(21:09):
And obviously this is not, you know, medical advice because I'm
obviously not a vet, but the bigger the breed, the more I
worry and the more I worry that I want to wait until they're
older. So if the dog is 6 months old
and they're a border terrier andthey're like, you know, I don't
know, 12 lbs go, you know, goingfor like a two mile bike ride,
(21:30):
I'm not going to be very worriedabout if they're a mastiff.
They're probably never going to be great bike ride companions.
But like a German Shepherd, let's say I wouldn't be going 2
miles in hard pavement at six months, I'd be waiting until at
least a year. And I'd be chatting, you know,
with your vet about that. And then if you can, mountain
bike on the grass or dirt would be way better than on concrete
(21:53):
for hours. And you're going with mountain
bike as opposed to like BMX? Oh, wow, I didn't know we were
going to get into bike stuff. So all I know is we bought bikes
for our family like, I don't know, a year ago and we went to
a bike store and it's since we laughed because it was insane.
(22:16):
They were like, what kind of bike do you want?
I'm like just like a cheap bike,you know, like for five of us
just to like ride around. And they're like, all right, if
you want something like inexpensive, try this.
And it was like 2 grand. Like that's for one, right?
That's not inexpensive. I was looking for like, I don't
know, 80 bucks, 100, and they'relike, yeah, we don't have
anything like that. Bike prices get crazy.
(22:38):
I mean you're not getting. I don't even think you could get
an $80.00 bike at Walmart at this.
Point yeah, it turns out you can't.
So we got ours at Academy and itwas like, I'd have to look now
at maybe like 120 each or something like that for like a
sale price on I'm sure a very cheap, cheaply made bike.
But you know, when you ride it like one hour a month, I think,
(23:03):
I think it's the right level forus.
But I'd say we got mountain bikes is what I would call
those. There's no pegs for people to
ride just. Do you have do you have
suspension? Like no suspension.
Yeah. Are there shocks?
No, OK, there's like there's like a shock built into the
frame like more like what you would see that's.
(23:25):
Something. Yeah, like a like a spring
basically, but it doesn't do very much.
It's pretty firm, or maybe it does a lot, I don't know, but it
doesn't feel like it does a lot.What we can, we can move on from
bikes, that's for sure. I mean, I think a bigger bikes
probably easier to run with a dog with.
But anyways. So the next thing I mean, it's
(23:50):
sort of similar but different. It's what are your thoughts on
urban mushing? And for people who don't know
what that is, think, you know, dogs pulling a sled, but the
rails of the sled have been replaced with wheels and they
have meetups, competitions, races, the whole 9 yards.
(24:12):
I have 0 experience in that, butit's sounds awesome.
I love that people do that. So as far as opinions go, I
mean, I could see lots of problems.
I could see two dogs that are like hooked together that
haven't been trained well. Like 2 Huskies all of a sudden
(24:32):
fighting each other while they're hooked to the front of
one of those things. So I can my dog trainer brain
sees all these like fights and issues that could happen.
But it sounds awesome. So yeah, very pro that.
From what I've seen of it, there's people who take it as
seriously as like full dog sled teams, just like what they do up
(24:53):
in Alaska I guess is probably the most common place for it.
Maybe Canada too. But what I think is really cool
is it looks like there's a lot of people who just buy a little
cart for their their single dog and just have them pull it
around. And to me that looks really
cool. I don't think I'd ever get into
like the racing part of it, but I do feel like it could be fun
(25:14):
to like, I don't know, go to a bike path and and have your dog
pull you. I think that could be.
A really cool thing. They're in the cart, the single
cart they get in. Yep.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, Would you?
That's awesome. Would you Would you go to a bike
path and let your dog pull you? I don't see myself ever doing
(25:34):
that, but if a client said I want to do that, I'd be super
supportive of them doing that. I think that'd be awesome.
I don't think it's something I'minterested in doing.
I think I like now if I lived inCanada or Alaska I think it'd be
super cool, like instead of snowmobiling to be out with your
dogs and doing something. So that sounds awesome.
(25:55):
I don't know about it a forest preserved if I'm that intrigued
by it, but I'd love to help a client.
Would you just do it in your yard?
Well, we keep saying we're goingto get wagons for our little
horses and we just haven't done it and I need to start there.
I mean, it seems like if you have that, you basically have
(26:17):
everything you need for urban mushing I would think.
OK, maybe a future episode will be me describing how the urban
mushing has gone. OK, that'd be pretty cool.
Yeah, I'd like to. I'd like to hear updates on
that. I need to watch more YouTube
videos and urban mushing becauseit sounds awesome.
Yeah, I the races look pretty crazy, so if you haven't seen
(26:38):
them, check them out for sure. I would see, I've seen videos of
people like a setup and like go in a little bit, but I've never
seen pictures or anything of a of a race.
So yeah, that sounds pretty interesting, and that sounds
wild. Check it out.
Do the dogs bark while they do it?
I don't. I don't really have an answer to
that. I'm gonna.
(26:58):
I haven't heard barking in there, but I feel like when you
watch like the Iditarod dogs, they're sort of barking as they
go. So I'm going to guess barking as
possible so. What I would like to do is train
like 30 beagles to pull. Can you imagine that just like
(27:21):
this 30 beagles pulling and justbaying and barking the whole
time? You know, I can't imagine that,
but for some reason, I can imagine our trainer Lenny doing
it with Corgis. Like, sorry, corgis pulling him
around. If he had enough corgis for
sure. Yeah, I could see that.
Barking their little heads off. All right.
(27:44):
So next question, this is back to sort of a more serious
training note. OK, my puppy loved car rides
when we first got him after his first trip to the vet he now
cowers and hides when I try and get him in the car.
Why is he so afraid now and how can I get him to enjoy car
rides? Again, OK, can we see a
(28:07):
douchebag on the show? Is that we need to edit that or
is that OK? I don't know if you can say that
so. A lot of vets act like such
douchebags lately and take dogs in the back and refuse to
examine them in front of owners and I hate that trend.
I just absolutely hate it with apassion because I've seen so
(28:30):
many dogs that end up messed up because of that and they're
taken away from their owner. And like, I get why the vets
doing it. They're not doing it because
they're bad people. They're doing it because it's
the dogs less likely to bite them away from the owner and
it's easier and quicker and theycan restrain them better.
I just, it drives me nuts. I hate that trend.
So if your puppy was taken away from you at the vet and examined
(28:52):
and given shots and blood drawn and three people holding this
dog while they quickly do, you know, do all that, like that's
part of the problem. So don't do that again.
Have it done in the room with you.
Maybe that's that's a little bitof an aside, but how do we fix?
This good point though. We can prevent a lot of it by
having good vet experiences. So I would want to go to a vet
(29:13):
that takes their time with you, that hangs out, that spends time
in the room because there's so many incredible vets out there
that when your dog leaves, they're not sad.
And then this issue never would have happened and your dog, the
dog would leave and go like thatwas cool.
But I know that's not helpful toyou in the scenario now.
So I guess we can answer this tosome to this person, do we have
(29:34):
a username? No.
Dang it. OK, I didn't.
I didn't write those down. Sometimes they're fun to say, I
don't know, I like, it's more personal, but sometimes it's
like I like it. YouTube sometimes changes them
like in the e-mail, like what it'll do.
You'll get in like the e-mail, it'll have their name, like a
notification of it. But then sometimes like on the
(29:55):
video, it'll have like. Username or something?
Well, yeah, it just makes it different.
I'm not sure what their deal is,but anyways, for that person, I
would go for fun car rides starting today and I'd go for
short ones and I'd give them really fun stuff to do in the
car. So get in there and give them a
new antler or have someone in the back seat with them and pet
(30:16):
them and talk to them. Or you know, if they're if they
don't get carsick, feed them in the car.
You know, whatever you can do todo some fun car rides and start
really short. I mean, it could be as simple as
like you get in the car and you hand feed them food and you
drive to the end of the block and then you circle around, you
keep hand feeding them food and you get home and you get out and
it was 2 minutes and then you doit again and again and you start
(30:39):
making it more normal. So what I would say is anything
your dog likes, because if you say, well, my dog when he's
scared he's not going to eat, OK, well then, you know, maybe
you don't try that. Maybe you just hang out with
them and just go for short, non scary car rides.
And then of course, start takingthem fun places.
Take them to your friend's houseto play with their dog, take
them to the neighborhood park and have a bunch of kids pet
(30:59):
them, you know, do something they would like.
And then for a dog just to go back to the vet thing for a
moment. For a dog that's kind of scared
of the vet, I would recommend doing fun vet visits where you
go to the vet, take them in there and the, you know, as long
as they're not busy, the staff at the vet sees this a lot.
And there's like any event I go to, they're super happy to help
(31:22):
because nobody likes dealing with a scared or a great, you
know, dog that potentially becomes aggressive.
So show up and just say, hey, I was bringing them in just to say
hi. So the vet's not a scary place.
And if you go to a good vet office, they're going to be
like, that's awesome, what can Ido?
Let me bring some treats over and whoever's at the front desk
will come over, give them some treats, pet them, and then you
leave and then come back. You know, do that once a week.
(31:44):
And pretty soon, you know, six months from now, when you go to
your next vet visit, you show up, your dogs can be fired up.
They're not going to be terrified because you've done it
enough. How much how much thought would
you have a client put into figuring out what caused the
issue versus just fixing it? So I mean, you talked about
making sure that you're there for what the vets doing and all
(32:07):
that. And I think that's all really
important. I feel like a lot of customers
end up getting caught up in whatwas it that actually caused the
issue. And at the end of the day, we
don't know if it was the vet or the dog saw a cockroach next to
the car when it was going to getinto it and is now scared,
right? How much stock do you put on
finding the actual reason versusjust working on it and fixing
(32:29):
it? That's a good question.
Would I tell a lot of clients and scenarios like that because,
you know, I could be wrong about, you know, maybe the vet
didn't take the dog away, right?And maybe the vet did everything
perfectly and maybe it wasn't even a bad exam, and maybe it's
just like you said, something else.
What I'll tell them is if we canfigure out the reason, that's
always better. If we know exactly what caused
(32:51):
it, obviously that's better. Sometimes we won't, and it only
makes a big difference if it changes the fix.
So if it doesn't change the fix,it's not that big of a deal.
So was it what the vet did when they took him in the back?
Maybe. Did they have a vet tech that
was huge and had a beard and thedog was scared of that?
Maybe. Was there a dog in the back that
(33:13):
was yelping in pain from like a previous surgery and that
freaked your dog out? You know, maybe.
So, yeah, there's all these things that could happen.
Most likely the fix is going to be the same and you just take
them them there have good experiences.
So I would only think it'd be different if you if you felt
like the fix is not going to be the same.
(33:34):
Well, I guess if we said it was a bearded dude, then you know
the fix would be we need to see more bearded people as well.
But that'd be a hard one to figure out.
So in any issue you have with your dog, if you're worried
about do you need to know exactly what caused it?
Just think through what are the options that could have caused
it and does it change your training program drastically?
(33:54):
And if the answer is yes, then you have to figure it out.
But that's most of the time that's not the case.
Yeah. And at the end of the day, if
you work on one thing and it wasn't necessarily that exact
thing, it's still a good experience to have worked on
that. And if you've noticed that it
was something else in the future, then you just know you
have to work on that as well. But it, you know, at least you
got started, at least you did something.
(34:16):
Absolutely and completely unrelated, but I'll give you an
example of a time. It really does matter and it's a
very different issue. I'm working with a client right
now that's got 3 pits and pit mixes.
And they brought, got a new one into the house and within a week
had a really bad fight where theone, the new 1 ended up, you
know, attached to the other one's head.
(34:37):
And yeah, and like, you know, had to have diving drains put in
and, you know, after they, you know, took him to the vet.
Like it was a bad fight and no one saw the start of it.
And they are pretty confident itwas over, that they had new
treats that they had just been given.
But we have no idea which dog did it.
So that that matters, right? Because we know that the one dog
(35:00):
is willing to finish a fight, but we have no idea if that dog
started it or not. So we that we have to figure out
we can't, you know, yes, there was a big fight and we know
which one won the fight, but we have no idea who started it.
So there's times that it's crucial to figure out.
And that one we can only figure out through time.
We're doing a lot of work with food and toys and bones and
Unleash. One of them is now muzzle
(35:22):
trained and we're running tests to figure out which one is the
problem. Makes sense.
All right, moving on, I think this question might have come
from somebody who lives in The Villages.
How do I get my dog to ride nicely in an Open Golf golf
cart? You know, we work with that in
(35:44):
my area as well. There's a couple of golf course
neighborhoods that are like really popular, but people don't
even, most people don't even golf.
They just have golf carts because it's like the thing to
do in the families. It's a, it's the opposite of the
Villages, though. It's like that neighborhood is
like young, fairly wealthy families and it's like
everyone's got their tricked outgolf cart like to go for trick
(36:05):
or treating purposes and to taketo the neighbor's house and to
go to the pool, so. So you don't think it's a
Villages only thing? How you think the golf cart
thing is more widespread than that?
Well, for sure, because I've gone on house calls with Remy, a
Nashville trainer here, and it was for that exact issue where
(36:26):
the Remy's client is like as a dog that is possessive of the
golf cart and I think will bite people that approach the golf
cart. Oh, wow.
So. Well, let's let's hear it.
Maybe. It's them.
Do we have a username? OK, So what did this question
say specifically? How?
To get the dog to ride nicely inan Open Golf cart, to me that
(36:50):
means not jumping out and stuff.I didn't think of biting people
who come up to it, but I assume jumping out to see other dogs
and that kind of thing. Okay, I everything starts with
proper leash training in my opinion.
So if you get that, if you have that dog on leash and they're
acting like a knucklehead, well,you're not ready to have them be
(37:13):
called in a golf cart like how'sthat going?
It's just not so you got to start somewhere.
So I would start with proper leash training and if you can't
walk by other dogs or kids without your dog pulling like a
maniac, then you like when you're walking, they've got a
job and you're doing stuff to control them in the golf cart.
They don't. So whatever they're whatever
(37:33):
you're worried about them chasing after or jumping up to
see while they're in the golf cart, make sure you can heal
past that perfectly first. If you do that, once you start
with a golf cart, the odds of you having issues are super
slim. And then I would just go for a
ride. I'd put them in a sit, stay or
down stay, you know, wherever you think is, you know, safe.
(37:54):
If it's just you, then I'd put them in shotgun right next to
you so you can, you know, heavily shot them and keep
control. And I would just drive around.
And if you start to lose control, like they jump up and
they're excitable and you can't get them to sit, I would pull
over, get out and I would heal until they chill out.
Left turn, right turn. And of course, you could do sit
down, stay whatever training your dog has and then get back
(38:16):
in, put them back into their stay and go for a drive again.
And if you start from the beginning, easy fix.
If you do the proper lease training, that's going to be, I
usually tell clients when we have something like that, that
issue is you're not even going to need me by the time we get to
that. You think you do, but we're
going to do the other stuff. By the time we get to that, that
problem's gone. And that's going to work for a
(38:38):
golf cart, a side by side a 57 Chevy that looks like a golf
cart. Or wait, no, a golf cart that
looks like a 57 Chevy. Like all those options.
All right. Tell me more about a golf cart
that looks like a 57 Chevy. This is a golf cart that's been
modified to look like a pickup. Yeah, well, not look like a
pickup necessarily, but just a 57 Chevy like a Bel Air Chevy.
(39:03):
OK, you so living where I live, driving through the Villages
quite frequently, you would be, I don't want to say shocked, but
it's crazy. Like when you were saying
tricked out golf carts. I'm assuming that you're
thinking like rims, maybe speakers, that type of thing.
In the Villages they have, they have golf carts that look like
(39:25):
old cars, look like rolled Royces, look like Hummers.
I mean. It's.
It's absolutely insane the amount of stuff that you'll see.
OK. I don't see that around here.
I see. Like you said, nice rims, little
lift kit on them and a stereo, maybe a light bar with LED
lights, things like that. Yeah, yeah, They have that and
(39:45):
then they just have so much more.
I mean, it's only, it's about 15minutes from me to the closest
section of the villages and it'slike a whole different world
there. Yeah, so one of my uncle's has a
place there and then he also hasa place up north as well, like
they spend in the summer, but. He and my one of my cousins for
a while tricked out golf carts and sold them and I think they
(40:08):
did pretty well financial. Imagine they would.
I mean, I think there's, I looked it up, I think there's
something like 20 golf cart places like, you know, selling
parts and selling golf carts. It's crazy.
They didn't do that. I think theirs is more like lift
kit rims like stereos and stuff.But he was an executive at an
(40:28):
oil company, smart guy and did really well for himself.
And then my cousin was had been working at a bank like both
coming from good jobs and it wasstill worth their time to trick
out and sell golf carts. I think it was a pretty, pretty
lucrative deal. Sure.
OK, so that's all the questions I could come up with with
wheels. However, I got two other things
(40:52):
that I want to cover, so these are bonus.
Round. These aren't online submitted
questions. The 1st is a real world
customer. OK.
They have a farm and they own a trucking company that the trucks
leave from their farm. So there's a driveway that runs
through the property. He has three dogs that are loose
(41:14):
on that farm at all times. One of those dogs has taken to
chasing after the trucks, and he's worried that the dog is
going to get hit and injured by a truck.
What do we do? That seems like a pretty
reasonable worry. I would say the dog is going to
get hit and injured by a truck. I guess I'd have so many
(41:36):
questions. You know, obviously we need to
stop them from chasing trucks. But on top of that, I just
wonder are there solutions wherelike is that the same driveway
the owner uses or is this like? Yeah, it it like splits off at
some point. OK.
(41:57):
But it'll be coming down the driveway that presumably is
running through the middle of the property.
Yep. And the reason I'm asking is if
we could just teach the dog to never go on that driveway would
be ideal, but that's probably not workable here I'm assuming.
You know, I think it would have been a potentially workable
(42:17):
solution if the customer had been interested in it and they
weren't. So I.
Guess that's what I meant. From a training standpoint, of
course that would be workable. But if they've got a farm and
they want their dog to have access to it and you're like,
well, the dog now can't go to that side of the farm unless
they circle around behind your house and get to the other side.
Yeah, this was, this was honestly sort of a really tricky
(42:39):
situation where the customer didn't want to do any work.
And then so that's what led me to talk about like an invisible
fence that would keep the dog onone side of that driveway
basically because I mean, it wasa huge property we're.
Talking. Probably 100 acres.
So if the dog had access to everything on one side of the
(43:00):
driveway, it probably would havebeen 50 acres and then it would
have never come anywhere close to a truck.
But the owner didn't didn't wantto play with that either.
And if the owner doesn't want todo any work, like it's just not
going to work, right? But if we had an owner, I get
the idea of saying I don't. If I was in that scenario, if I
had 100 acres or something and semis were coming and going, I
(43:22):
wouldn't want my dogs to have tolive their life put up or on one
side of the farm and couldn't goto the other.
So I can understand that, you know, it's crucial.
Obviously, we stopped the dog from chasing him.
So what I would say to that is we start on leash, make sure you
can heal back and forth past thesemi.
Maybe it's easy, maybe it's not.And for you know, those of you,
you know, hearing this, especially if you're new to the
(43:42):
show, sometimes that's a 10 second process in 20 seconds.
I don't know, you put the leash on and you heal and like, oh,
this is easy, dogs not doing it,so that's fine.
Then we move on, we're going to teach the come command, make
sure that is rock solid and thatI can call the dog no matter
what's happening. And I don't start with the
semis. I would practice like doorbell
rings. I call the dog, throw their
(44:03):
ball, they're running after it, call them off the ball.
If you can't call them off of like their prey drive or their
chase game, then that's an issuebecause obviously it won't work
with a semi. Throw a ball for your other dog,
let them RIP after it and call this first one when they're
halfway. I'd work on all of that until
it's, you know, going really well and then when they start
(44:23):
going after the the semi, I would pair a correction with
that plus calling them. So for like for chasing the
ball, just to play this out for people listening.
I throw the ball dogs running and I say Ralph come and I call
him off of it. And obviously I don't say no
because it's not being bad. He's just chasing his ball, but
I want to make sure I can call him away from something he's
(44:44):
chasing. But the first time he chases a
truck that I'm around, we need ahard, loud, intense verbal no to
stop the dog. So the dog knows that's bad and
that's not allowed. And you need some way to back it
up if your verbal is not enough.And those two ways are going to
be a long rope or line that they're dragging or an E collar,
(45:07):
you know, to me, you're going toneed one of those two and then
you need some way. So the dog goes after it.
They get penalized for going after it.
They know my the owner really, really doesn't like this because
obviously if your dog keeps doing it, he's probably going to
die. So you show them this is bad and
then you call them to you and ifthey come, obviously you praise
them for doing it. Well, I said obvious that
(45:27):
sometimes people have trouble going from Hey, I'm mad like you
did something bad to you did something good.
So you should you need to make aquick switch because your dog
just did. If they were running after and
you corrected them and they stopped and then you call them
and they're listening, you need to switch into praise mode
instantly. So they realize, wow, chasing
semis is really bad. And coming to my owner obviously
is really good. So the big thing would be some
(45:49):
sort of control. And if I had an owner who said I
don't want to do much work and I'm not going to use any E
collar, I don't like those and the long line sounds like a
pain. I'm not really going to do that.
I would tell them I I don't see how I'm going to be able to help
you and I worry about your dog getting killed and we need to
figure out some solution here and.
Yeah, I think that all makes a lot of sense.
(46:13):
So the the final, the end to that scenario is I suggested to
him it was it was a wealthy individual, right, who was also
very frugal. He didn't want to pay us to do a
bunch of sessions. I told him to to get the high
school kid that lives next door.Let's teach him how to heal with
the dog. And then you can have him do 50
sessions over the next 50 days with the dog and just pay him
(46:37):
minimum wage to do that. And it should fix the problem
pretty well. Never heard back.
Agreed. But I would I would think that
that would that would solve the problem of him not wanting to do
it and also not wanting to pay abunch of money for it.
That would solve it. For the record, I'm going to bet
they never did it. Who knows that?
I mean, who knows? You do never know.
(46:57):
Maybe he did it, everything's great and he just refers clients
to you left and right and he's like, that guy gave me advice
and the neighbor kid trained my dog.
Maybe he refers the neighbor kidnow.
He's like your dog chases stuff.My neighbor kid is legit I felt.
Like it was a really good solution.
It was at the end of the day, like I felt like it was a lot of
(47:18):
work to come up with something that he was willing to do.
So I felt good that through, youknow, probably like a 2 hour
time frame of, of working with him that I was able to come up
with something that it seemed like he was willing to do.
So I hear some weird clicking going on over there.
I don't know if it's like your hands together or your feet, but
(47:38):
it's like your mic's picking up something like I think.
It was. Oh my gosh, I hit my mic.
I think it was like this. It was OK.
I know. I think that was great advice
and I've given similar advice toI've had multiple times.
You have an elder client that doesn't have a lot of money and
they're like, I can't not not having to do with chasing semis,
(48:00):
but I've never had an elderly client without much money with a
dog that chase semis. That's that that has not come up
yet, but you know, they'll have a dog who's like, you know,
whatever reactive with new dogs or some issue and they don't
have the money to pay someone like to pay us to come a bunch.
They don't have the energy or the physical ability to do a lot
of work. So I've done a lot of times had
(48:20):
like helped train a neighbor kid, you know, appropriate age
obviously to come over and work with the dog once the dog's at a
point that a non professional can do it.
For sure. I'd say that's good advice.
OK, so Are you ready for the last thing that I could find
that is dog and wheel related for today?
(48:41):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna share my screen.
And for the people who can't seewhat I'm sharing, it's a product
that I see on Amazon and basically just picture a giant
hamster wheel that they say thatup to a 25 LB dog can run on.
(49:02):
I'm shocked that this is a real product.
Even so, I wanted to see what you thought of it, if you can
believe that it's real, and if you think anyone in their right
mind should buy this. So while we're on here, I feel
like we could all learn so much about you if we go through your
Amazon history together and see what you've bought over the last
(49:25):
year. This is nuts.
This is CAPS. OK, I'm already annoyed.
Third bullet point, off leash exercise and off is not
capitalized. Yeah, You know, that's an issue
with me. And I'll tell you what, I had
three. I think I can think of three
(49:46):
friends that sent holiday cards this year that didn't capitalize
a single word including their family's name.
Like what is with this trend of not this is like this is a typo
on this page but. Well, you know, I would do the
opposite. And I would have capitalized
off. I would have capitalized leash
and exercise, and then you wouldhave yelled at me about that.
(50:07):
Yell's a strong word, but have you seen So like we'll get a
like a holiday card like from the Johnsons and it's from the
Johnsons, not a single capital. And then they'll have each of
their names like all their. I don't know anything about
this. You're saying this is a trend,
not? Capitalizing stuff, Yeah,
because Brams are doing it now too and it drives me nuts.
(50:28):
Like I feel like an old fuddy Duddy.
I'm like when? Since when is bad grammar cool?
But I feel that way, Since when is bad grammar cool?
Like. And same with that trend of
having one word sentences like this is awesome.
But like a period after each onelike this is not a sentence,
neither is is and neither is awesome.
(50:49):
I feel like you're just making stuff up.
You haven't seen that. No.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe in your urban mushing stuff that
you watch. You haven't seen this.
It's a trend and it's I can't stand it.
Well, you got to remember the trends by me are like at least
20 years behind. The people in the villages
aren't not capitalizing sentences.
(51:10):
That's true. So it's a trend and I bet our
listeners know and if you do it and you love it, I'm sorry.
I don't mean to offend you, but I don't like it.
I don't like it one bit. OK, so this toy thing, this is
crazy. I cannot imagine putting a dog
on this hamster wheel. I've never seen this before.
(51:30):
I've. Never seen it.
I've never heard of it. I can't even believe it's a
thing. Yeah, and I mean, I there's no
way I would ever recommend it ifa client had one and they said
my dog likes it and he's not fixated and crazy.
He's not barking. Everything's cool, then more
power to you. But I just cannot imagine.
(51:51):
And you know, dogs should be outside, so let's get them
outside to run. It's not.
Cheap either $1100. Yeah, it seems like a lot of
money because it's made for small dogs.
It's not even. Well, I guess I mean it's like
it's almost 4 feet high. Right.
But that I think that sounds taller than it is when you
(52:12):
figure like a dog gets long, butit's only 19 inches long.
So it's I I don't know, I could see it like a gerbil riding a
little motorcycle in that, you know, like in doing loopy loops.
That's cool, but this is crazy. I can't believe now only 15
reviews. So I'm assuming not a lot of
people buying these things, but do you?
(52:34):
Think they're real? Perfect for cats.
Are you kidding me? You're telling me your cat's
running? They lied.
Don't love it? They lied when they said all
dogs love it. Oh no they don't.
Well, obviously not all dogs love it.
That's just marketing fluff. I think you would like I.
Believe this is a real review and I just who?
(52:58):
I can't believe somebody bought this.
An Aussie doodle, 12 LB. They hated it.
Yeah. Wait, Joan Moore and George
Moore and Joan liked it? Oh wait, but she has Bengals?
(53:19):
Wow. OK, that seems odd.
She likes it, but George did notfor his Aussie doodle.
Look at this one Amazon customer.
I've never seen a review like that.
Neither. Three stars up to your pet, I'd
say it's human powered so he hasto turn it.
Not approved by experts. Warning, do not buy this thing
(53:41):
and it's completely unbalanced and will damage your dog's
backbone. It is completely not approved by
my vet. Yeah.
I don't have an opinion on the health aspect of it.
That makes sense that if they'rein a weird position that could
be an issue. That's crazy.
They need to make one for GermanShepherds.
(54:01):
So even bigger. You want an even bigger.
Wheel like A10 footer just like it's becomes your living room
and for people listening, treadmills are a much in my
opinion better option where they're like you can help the
dog, you can be right next to them.
They're not locked in a crazy little wheel.
Yeah, and if they, I mean if they stop running on the wheel,
(54:24):
they're going to go up it and then fall down, which to me
seems really bad. Yeah, that is something you
learn something new every day. I'm shocked.
It's, I mean, I'm shocked that there's a product on Amazon for
this. But I guess there's a product on
Amazon for everything, right? Should we order one?
(54:44):
I don't want to spend $1100 on it.
I wonder if my cat would go in it.
I'll tell you what, my cat lovesthose toys.
Well, you don't have cats. You probably never seen one.
Like a little circular piece of plastic with cardboard in the
middle and a ball and a track that goes in a circle and the
cat like hits it and then it goes in a circle and spins and
then stops it with her paw and flicks it again.
(55:06):
And the cat seems to dig that. That's exciting.
Yeah, but that movement a lot like wheels.
I've got some French Bulldogs that I'm training that are
pretty excited by that thing. They see the wheel or the ball
spinning, they run over and likethey want to jump and like bite
it and they can't get it and it's frustrating to them.
(55:27):
So is that it? That's.
All I could find for dogs and wheels.
Is there anything else you want to talk about wheel related?
No, but if anyone has questions,you know, or things we didn't
talk about or things you'd like to hear us cover, let us know
and we could do a little wheel segment as part of another
episode. And cover some stuff more in
(55:47):
depth. Awesome.
Well, thank you for listening everybody.
Appreciate you. All right.
Thanks. Have a great day.
Welcome to the show everybody. We have my main man, Matthew
Vloss here today. Welcome.
To the show Matthew on Excited to be Here.
You look excited and you sound excited, so that's good.
How do you feel about being called Matthew I?
I did that for a little formality.
I like the full name. OK.
Oh, do you have any problem withit?
Do you wish? What do you prefer?
(00:28):
So only my grandma called me Matthew when like, especially if
she was unhappy. So it's odd to be called
Matthew. Do you wish that people called
you Matthew in real life more often?
No. And I think it's weird when
people ask that question of a Matthew.
I feel like most Matthews go by Matthew really easily and it's
like not a big deal, but I don'tknow, maybe that maybe.
(00:50):
Maybe I'm wrong, I've only knownone person that went by Matthew
and was kind of stripped on it and was annoyed when people
would shorten it to Matt. So I don't like.
At our age group I had three maths in every class, so I knew
a lot of maths growing up. There's a lot of maths in our
age range. You know, let's talk about that
for a second. So I was telling the kids the
(01:10):
other day how we used to call you fancy, and they had never
heard that I said something. And they're like, what?
What are you talking about? And I just realized and time
goes quick because Sienna's 14 and she had no idea we used to
call you fancy. Yeah, she wasn't even born when
Fancy was a nickname for me. I think that's the thing.
I don't know that it fits anymore.
(01:31):
I mean, I'm wearing a hoodie. It's not very fancy anymore.
It doesn't seem to fit, but you know, for listeners, we used to
train in a lot of kennels and wetrained at a kennel where there
were multiple mats. And if I get any of this wrong,
Matt, or you disagree, jump in. There were four, at least 4,
right? Because I was the first one and
(01:51):
there was Quattro and you who were called fancy and you were
called fancy, I guess because you were like Andy from the
office. You would come there and, and
you have your chance to jump in if you disagree, but you'd show
up with like penny loafers on and a sweater vest and like you
look like a GQ model or Abercrombie.
(02:13):
Like you just left your like estate in the Hamptons when
you'd come to the kennel to train dogs.
And I was wearing my shirts fromKohl's that I got 30% off and my
cargo pants. And that's.
All pretty accurate. I mean, I think my clothes were
probably still from Kohl's. Like I don't think they were
from anywhere fancier than that.But yeah, I work, I was working
(02:33):
a corporate job, right? So I was working 2 full time
jobs, doing the corporate gig and then dog training.
So I would constantly do appointments, come to the kennel
basically dressed like I just left the workplace.
So lots of khakis, slacks, full button down shirts, that kind of
stuff. So yeah, I was pretty fancy at
(02:55):
that point. It was crazy fancy.
So who was there? Hadn't have been another.
So who was Matt? Two or three?
I remember Quattro obviously. So it was you there was I, I
forget the guy's name who workedthere, who was the the second
Matt before me. I mean, I, I remember him, but I
don't remember much about him. And.
(03:15):
Then I remember, I don't know ifwe can say his nickname on the
air. I I don't even know.
For the record, I didn't get it.Yeah, I think that is a story
best left for off the air because this is a family
friendly. It's I believe it's a drug
reference. And just for the record, we did
(03:35):
not employ this person and he was just at the kennel.
He was a kennel worker. So it was Quattro.
Quattro was also just a kennel worker.
Yeah. OK, well, let's get into the
show. So we're going to do question
and answer today, right? And you're asking questions.
Can you tell us like what's happening here?
You've got you've got a plan on it.
(03:56):
These are questions that we've gotten from different places
online, but I did come up with atheme for today's online
questions. So they're all within the same
theme, which is dogs and wheels.I did not see that coming, Dogs
and Wheels. So that's gonna be the the
episode, I guess. Dogs and Wheels.
(04:17):
Yeah, I would think people wouldbe excited by that.
Like dogs and wheels. That's that's the thing, right?
Dogs are excited by wheels, so hopefully people are excited by
dogs being excited by wheels. Let's do it.
So I think you already you've basically started with the first
question already, which is just why do dogs love wheels?
What is This is why do they likeit?
(04:38):
This is fun. So English Bulldogs love
skateboards, right? That's just a thing.
Yeah. I mean, dogs love wheels, right?
They get excited by it. And we see this a lot.
Skateboards, of course, kids on scooters.
We see so much leash reactivity where dogs are fixated on the
wheels. And I think it's the perfect
storm of dogs. Obviously many of them are prey,
(05:01):
you know, driven, right, They want to chase prey or maybe
they're hurting dogs and they, you know, they want to hurt
animals. So they're drawn to that motion,
that excitement. And then sometimes those wheels
make a noise which seems to justget them going even more.
And then it's also coupled with something exciting, like there's
someone on it. I wonder if they would be so
excited if that thing just went by, like if, if it was just a
(05:24):
robot that went by, no noise andjust slowly went down the road.
If they hadn't learned this habit, if they would care.
But it's coupled with like kids pushing their leg like to get
the skateboard going. There's like, there's a lot that
goes into it. What kind of robot are you
picturing there? Like the the whole robot is just
a wheel? Because I think any robot I'm
picturing would also be somewhatexciting going back.
(05:47):
I don't know, like I'm picturing.
So when I go to Phoenix for work, we often end up training
in the Tempe area and they've, we've got these little like food
delivery robots that drive by and it's freaking weird.
We're like, the first time you see it, you're like, what?
Because they're quiet and they don't like, they're slow.
They just like slowly just go byyou with taking food to people.
(06:09):
I mean, that still sounds prettyexciting to a dog.
They're going to smell that food.
They're going to be like, oh, dog or food delivery robot, I
got to get me that. Yeah, I I just think that if a
dog hadn't learned wheel issues yet from other things and A food
delivery robot went by, the oddsof them starting with that are
pretty slim because it doesn't have the kid kicking their feet
to get moving. Is the food in like an airtight
(06:33):
container? I guess it needs to stay dry so
it can't be like out out right? Yeah.
And I would assume it, I mean itlooks, I'm assume it's insulated
like it's just a big box on wheels basically that drives to
you. Interesting.
So you think it's it's largely based on excitement, the fact
that other things are happening,maybe a little bit of movement.
(06:53):
Why do you think some dogs then still love just like a wheel
toy? Like they sell a rubber wheel
right? That's just for a dog to chew
on. Why do you think a dog might
love that? When you say a rubber wheel like
like a tire, like those black tires?
They sell like a tire, yeah. I think humans like dogs to like
(07:13):
that versus I feel like if she gave the dog a thing that was
the same consistency and it looked like a watermelon, they'd
be like, oh, cool. And if it looked like the shape
of a like phone, they'd be like,that's great too.
And then I think they're, they, they could care less the shape
of it. But really, you don't think they
love that more than other things?
(07:34):
There's clients over the years that have sworn that dogs love
wheels cuz it's a wheel, right? So you don't think there's
something specifically to that? It's got to be the motion, the
excitement. I've never heard anyone say
that. That's news to me that people
think that they like the wheel more than other stuff.
Now I can see why they would like it for tug of war purposes
(07:55):
because they can grab half of itbecause it's hollow in the
middle and the owner or another dog can grab the other half.
So I'm sure if I gave my dogs a tire shaped toy they'd be fired
up because they could grab half and growl and pull and get after
it. OK so do you recommend tire
shaped toys or don't recommend? I have never Can I be agnostic
(08:18):
on this I. No, you got to choose One
Direction or the other. I I'm pro tire shaped tools
toys. Yeah, I, I don't know if I'm pro
or con. I'm just like ambivalent, like
they're, they're a thing and I'mhappy for people to have them or
not, whatever they want. OK, I'm going to be super non
(08:38):
committal today. Everything.
I'm like, I don't know. I just, I can't.
I listened to a podcast the other day and I'm not going to
name the people, but they had a guest on that was the CEO of a
public company and he just wouldn't answer anything because
the other people are not CEO's of public companies.
And they're asking him stuff that he clearly didn't want to
answer and be on the record. And it got to a point where
(09:00):
like, why are you even on the show, dude?
If you're going to be like, Oh, you know, that's, that's good.
But I'll let, I'll just defer toyou guys on that.
He'd like, he deferred on everything and he was just like,
well, you know, I kind of ambivalent on that.
And like, you can't be ambivalent on everything, buddy.
So he didn't do like a politician though and talk in
circles. No, he just would anything that
(09:20):
was even could be controversial,he would just like back away
from me like, well, that's not the the kind of area of that
debate that I'm interested in. So I'll let you guys take that.
I'm more interested in other areas of that debate.
That sounds like a really boring.
Podcast he shouldn't have been aguest and don't do.
That on here. I won't actually.
I just said I was gonna so I don't know, but he and it was
(09:43):
just like, I want to hear your real opinion, dude.
Say it right, Like just you're on there because you're
obviously smart and worldly and know a lot.
So it was a it made him way lessgood of a guest than he should
have been. OK, well let's jump into the
next question. I think you're going to be
really ready for this one with what you've already said.
So this person says I live rightnext to a bike path and used to
(10:06):
walk on it daily. The problem is that my dog goes
crazy every time a bike goes by.Help me.
OK, people. And if you've listened to all of
our episodes or many of them, you've heard of variety.
You know this in a variety of fashions, but people often start
at the end versus the beginning when it comes to training.
(10:28):
Like they start with their end result and they try to create
that right away. So if I show up at that owner's
house and they're like, look, he's going insane and trying to
attack every bicyclist, I'm not going to say like, cool, let's
walk by bikes and let's fix it. Because if that works, it's
going to be too hard on the dog.And if it, there's a good chance
it doesn't work. So we wouldn't start there.
(10:50):
We'd start with the heel commandand make sure it's like that.
We master it. So we, I don't care where we
start, living room, backyard, somewhere calm and we're going
to work on left and right turns.And for anyone who's in, you
know, new to the show, we've gotvideos showing this, but I'm
going to do left and right turnsuntil I can do them with either
a loose leash or a drop leash. Then I don't mean like true off
(11:11):
leash heel like that. That'd be good, but it's not
needed. But I want to make sure that
when I turn right and pat my leg, the dog turns, assuming
he's on the left side, that he turns right with me and like he
knows to turn and follow me. And then same with the left
turn. So we're going to master that
and then we're going to start working with the bikes.
I and this goes for any sort of reactivity issue on leash.
(11:33):
I love having a captive audience, like something you can
create. So although a bike path is your
end goal, if you start there, you're making your job harder
because like you're going to a bicyclist, zoom by and maybe
your dog's good and maybe they're not.
And then now another one comes 10 minutes later, maybe they're
good, maybe they're not. And that can be a problem.
(11:54):
So I'd much prefer having someone on a bike there so that
we can practice with. So now we can set it up at the
right distance. And that is so dog dependent.
I don't know if we want that bike riding by 10 feet away or
75 feet away. And we'll do that.
And, you know, let's say we start at 50 feet, have the dog
pass and you didn't see, you know, see how it goes.
(12:16):
We're going to use the heel command, keep him under control.
And if it's just, like, just terrible and it goes horrible,
well, then we either have to be farther away or just spend some
more time there. If it's easy and it's pointless,
then we're going to say, OK, come, you know, hey Jimmy,
whoever's on the bike, come by again.
But you know, come 10 feet closer and we're going to keep
working closer and closer until we get what, you know, the end
(12:38):
result that we want. And that could be one lesson.
That could be 3. It just depends on, it's often
one. But if you've got a dog who's
really intent on getting that bike and they're just crazy
about it might take 3 or 4 really good sessions before you
feel good about it. But we make it a little harder
each and every time. And you know, there's a lot of
things, little tricks we'll use,you know, 1 is this goes for
(13:02):
anything in dog training. And this is a big point when
you're healing, if you're using heal to calm the dog down and
fix something, always turn the opposite way that the dog wants
to go. And So what I mean by that is if
you're healing and you pass the bike and now the bike is behind
you and your dog's like looking over their left shoulder, like,
you know, kind of wanting to seeit.
(13:24):
And you turn left to the dog. That's kind of like he turned
you and he's going back to the bike.
So I'm going to turn right. And that might be hard right
because he's looking to his leftand I'm, I'm going to make a
right turn and then head back tothe bike.
And then if I'm passing him thatway and he's like looking ahead
of my leg, you know, to the right to get, you know, and he
wants to see it and I need to make a turn.
I'm making a left turn. And this isn't just about the
(13:45):
bike. This would be the front door if
your dog is reactive there or other dogs.
But there's a lot of little tricks that go into it.
But the key is, you know, set yourself up for SEC success,
make it easy and then slowly make it harder and harder.
So I think you hit on, to me twoof the most important points
with bike paths. And just to throw this out there
(14:06):
that it's not just bikes, right?I mean, it could be other dogs
on the bike path, it could be roller bladers on the bike path.
There's all sorts of distractions that go by on a
bike path. And your advice would work for
pretty much any of them. But to me, bike paths are really
difficult places because there'sgenerally not a ton of room on
each side. So it's usually the path.
(14:28):
And then there could be like 1:00 to 2:00, 2 feet of mowed
grass, and then it's like trees or brush or stuff that you don't
really want to be walking in next to it.
So there's not a ton of room to give yourself the space to work
on things. And then the other big point
that you mentioned is the stuff goes by you and then it's gone.
And it might be another 15 to 20minutes before you see anything
(14:49):
else on that bike path. So to me, I always think the
most important thing is work somewhere else on the issue
first, then go back to the bike path once your dog's doing
better with those things. And that way you, you can
actually get some success in those few minutes where you have
where you actually see somethingotherwise you're, you're
probably not going to get there.You know, there were times when
(15:11):
I saw a lot more, you know, you know how it is.
I used to see basically all aggression issues.
And there were times where I just had a bike in the bed of my
truck for weeks on end, like an old piece of crap bike that
could get rained on. And you know, because it made it
so much easier, could work with the client and pull it out if
they didn't have, you know, a neighbor kid or somebody around.
Because trying to fix it on the bike path is asking for trouble.
(15:33):
Unless it's a, unless your dog is a minor version of this
issue, it's going to make your job way too hard.
For sure. If you remember back when we
used to do a lot of that type oftraining, I had the HHR so it
was enclosed and I would always have to choose between having
dogs with me or having the bike in the back.
I couldn't take both. Sure, tough choice.
(15:54):
You got to choose one or the other.
All right, you ready for the next one?
Yeah, is this about English Bulldogs riding a skateboard?
It isn't. Do you want to talk about that?
If you do, now would be a great time to Why do you think English
Bulldogs are so great on skateboards?
You know, I don't know, I, I it's insane how driven that
breed is for wheels there. I mean, so I mean, I guess the
(16:18):
reason they are good at riding skateboards is because they're
fixated on wheels and they want to go after it.
So they have that desire to be biting it and touching it.
So I mean, that's why they're good on it.
But I don't understand why that breed is so fixated on wheels.
It's insane but. I think the low center of
gravity makes them easier to do like a skateboard than bigger
(16:41):
dogs. I think it helps.
Yeah, I would agree with that for sure.
They just have such a desire, though, to be by wheels.
Like that breed has more desire to chase wheeled things than I
feel like every other breed combined.
I I feel like every English bulldog I train as the clients
list in their goals. If they don't say wheels, I I
bring it up like any issue with wheels and they're like, Oh
(17:03):
yeah, skateboards. He goes crazy.
It's it's every time. Have you seen the American Bully
that does the one wheel by itself?
What's a one wheel like a wheelie?
So it's like the the single electric wheel in the middle
with the things on both sides and then it's electric and you
ride it around. So there's a.
Overboard kind of thing. I mean, I, I guess it's, I think
(17:28):
it's just called the one wheel. OK, for the record, I guess no,
I've not seen that and I've never even heard of A1 wheel, so
I'll have to look it up. It's pretty crazy.
He'll just go cruising through apark on it.
And it's a big dog. Yeah, good sized dog.
Like I've never seen, I've neverseen a dog like that on a
skateboard, let alone an electronic skate.
I mean, it's just crazy to watchso and he like makes decisions
(17:52):
about like stopping and backing up.
I feel like they might have a remote and they're doing it for
him, but I don't think they do. I think he just does it.
OK, Nope, never seen it. All right, well, look it up.
No, the next question is following the same sort of train
of thought. We're talking about bikes still.
(18:13):
This person says that they'd like their dog to run next to
them while they ride their bike.They're not sure if that's safe.
They want to know if that's a safe thing to do, and then how
would they even go about that? Good question.
So I have a lot of clients who do that with their dog.
And what I would say is if they say is that safe?
(18:34):
I'd say there's obviously risks involved.
So things to think about are if your dogs not incredible at
listening kind of in all regards.
Obviously if they see if they'rereactive, even if they just like
to chase squirrels, if they dartahead of you and you run into
them, you know, you know, both of you are potentially really
hurt really quickly. Or if they just run off,
(18:58):
obviously again, you're on a bike and all of a sudden they,
you know, peel off and go the other direction like that, they
can get into a dogfighter, get hit by a car.
So no question it there's risk involved there.
What the way I go about this with a client is we start with
off leash heel when walking and make sure that is absolutely
perfect in bulletproof. And to start off late shield.
(19:21):
We've got videos showing this. We've actually got one with a
border collie from, I don't know, four or five months ago
that the owner now rides bikes with the dog in an awfully
shield and they ride like miles and miles all the time.
And so we started with awfully shield.
We get that incredible, make sure the dog's not chasing other
dog, squirrels, whatever that you can awfully shield past
(19:42):
other dogs, awfully shield past people by bikes, all of you know
all that stuff. And then we start, we introduce
the bike and we make sure of theright temperament.
If your dog scared to bikes, well then you've got a lot of
ground work to do. But if your dogs not, then we
just go for a bike ride in a really quiet place with no one
around, ready at a moments notice to stop.
(20:03):
And we go slow because you're the dog might all of a sudden
try to like. Run underneath the bike between
the two wheels. There's a lot of crazy stuff
they could do and you just buildthe trust that way.
And after a couple sessions riding in a quiet park, when you
say you know what, I think they've got it, then we start
going for real bike rides. And I think it's not all that
hard when you actually start going for real bike rides
(20:25):
because of all the training thatled up to it.
And then I would definitely recommend making sure they know
how to stop and sit and stay so when you stop at a crossing, you
know they stop with you. And I guess with all of that, I
was assuming the dog would startdoing this off leash.
You could you could have them doit on leash permanently as well.
But most of my clients that do this, they get the dog to where
(20:48):
they can do it in on an off leash heel.
And you feel like this is a goodform of exercise for people to
have with their dogs? That's a good question.
I'm pretty risk averse when it comes to running long distances
with dogs. So if it's a young dog, like
anything under six months, I wouldn't even consider it.
(21:09):
And obviously this is not, you know, medical advice because I'm
obviously not a vet, but the bigger the breed, the more I
worry and the more I worry that I want to wait until they're
older. So if the dog is 6 months old
and they're a border terrier andthey're like, you know, I don't
know, 12 lbs go, you know, goingfor like a two mile bike ride,
(21:30):
I'm not going to be very worriedabout if they're a mastiff.
They're probably never going to be great bike ride companions.
But like a German Shepherd, let's say I wouldn't be going 2
miles in hard pavement at six months, I'd be waiting until at
least a year. And I'd be chatting, you know,
with your vet about that. And then if you can, mountain
bike on the grass or dirt would be way better than on concrete
(21:53):
for hours. And you're going with mountain
bike as opposed to like BMX? Oh, wow, I didn't know we were
going to get into bike stuff. So all I know is we bought bikes
for our family like, I don't know, a year ago and we went to
a bike store and it's since we laughed because it was insane.
(22:16):
They were like, what kind of bike do you want?
I'm like just like a cheap bike,you know, like for five of us
just to like ride around. And they're like, all right, if
you want something like inexpensive, try this.
And it was like 2 grand. Like that's for one, right?
That's not inexpensive. I was looking for like, I don't
know, 80 bucks, 100, and they'relike, yeah, we don't have
anything like that. Bike prices get crazy.
(22:38):
I mean you're not getting. I don't even think you could get
an $80.00 bike at Walmart at this.
Point yeah, it turns out you can't.
So we got ours at Academy and itwas like, I'd have to look now
at maybe like 120 each or something like that for like a
sale price on I'm sure a very cheap, cheaply made bike.
But you know, when you ride it like one hour a month, I think,
(23:03):
I think it's the right level forus.
But I'd say we got mountain bikes is what I would call
those. There's no pegs for people to
ride just. Do you have do you have
suspension? Like no suspension.
Yeah. Are there shocks?
No, OK, there's like there's like a shock built into the
frame like more like what you would see that's.
(23:25):
Something. Yeah, like a like a spring
basically, but it doesn't do very much.
It's pretty firm, or maybe it does a lot, I don't know, but it
doesn't feel like it does a lot.What we can, we can move on from
bikes, that's for sure. I mean, I think a bigger bikes
probably easier to run with a dog with.
But anyways. So the next thing I mean, it's
(23:50):
sort of similar but different. It's what are your thoughts on
urban mushing? And for people who don't know
what that is, think, you know, dogs pulling a sled, but the
rails of the sled have been replaced with wheels and they
have meetups, competitions, races, the whole 9 yards.
(24:12):
I have 0 experience in that, butit's sounds awesome.
I love that people do that. So as far as opinions go, I
mean, I could see lots of problems.
I could see two dogs that are like hooked together that
haven't been trained well. Like 2 Huskies all of a sudden
(24:32):
fighting each other while they're hooked to the front of
one of those things. So I can my dog trainer brain
sees all these like fights and issues that could happen.
But it sounds awesome. So yeah, very pro that.
From what I've seen of it, there's people who take it as
seriously as like full dog sled teams, just like what they do up
(24:53):
in Alaska I guess is probably the most common place for it.
Maybe Canada too. But what I think is really cool
is it looks like there's a lot of people who just buy a little
cart for their their single dog and just have them pull it
around. And to me that looks really
cool. I don't think I'd ever get into
like the racing part of it, but I do feel like it could be fun
(25:14):
to like, I don't know, go to a bike path and and have your dog
pull you. I think that could be.
A really cool thing. They're in the cart, the single
cart they get in. Yep.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, Would you?
That's awesome. Would you Would you go to a bike
path and let your dog pull you? I don't see myself ever doing
(25:34):
that, but if a client said I want to do that, I'd be super
supportive of them doing that. I think that'd be awesome.
I don't think it's something I'minterested in doing.
I think I like now if I lived inCanada or Alaska I think it'd be
super cool, like instead of snowmobiling to be out with your
dogs and doing something. So that sounds awesome.
(25:55):
I don't know about it a forest preserved if I'm that intrigued
by it, but I'd love to help a client.
Would you just do it in your yard?
Well, we keep saying we're goingto get wagons for our little
horses and we just haven't done it and I need to start there.
I mean, it seems like if you have that, you basically have
(26:17):
everything you need for urban mushing I would think.
OK, maybe a future episode will be me describing how the urban
mushing has gone. OK, that'd be pretty cool.
Yeah, I'd like to. I'd like to hear updates on
that. I need to watch more YouTube
videos and urban mushing becauseit sounds awesome.
Yeah, I the races look pretty crazy, so if you haven't seen
(26:38):
them, check them out for sure. I would see, I've seen videos of
people like a setup and like go in a little bit, but I've never
seen pictures or anything of a of a race.
So yeah, that sounds pretty interesting, and that sounds
wild. Check it out.
Do the dogs bark while they do it?
I don't. I don't really have an answer to
that. I'm gonna.
(26:58):
I haven't heard barking in there, but I feel like when you
watch like the Iditarod dogs, they're sort of barking as they
go. So I'm going to guess barking as
possible so. What I would like to do is train
like 30 beagles to pull. Can you imagine that just like
(27:21):
this 30 beagles pulling and justbaying and barking the whole
time? You know, I can't imagine that,
but for some reason, I can imagine our trainer Lenny doing
it with Corgis. Like, sorry, corgis pulling him
around. If he had enough corgis for
sure. Yeah, I could see that.
Barking their little heads off. All right.
(27:44):
So next question, this is back to sort of a more serious
training note. OK, my puppy loved car rides
when we first got him after his first trip to the vet he now
cowers and hides when I try and get him in the car.
Why is he so afraid now and how can I get him to enjoy car
rides? Again, OK, can we see a
(28:07):
douchebag on the show? Is that we need to edit that or
is that OK? I don't know if you can say that
so. A lot of vets act like such
douchebags lately and take dogs in the back and refuse to
examine them in front of owners and I hate that trend.
I just absolutely hate it with apassion because I've seen so
(28:30):
many dogs that end up messed up because of that and they're
taken away from their owner. And like, I get why the vets
doing it. They're not doing it because
they're bad people. They're doing it because it's
the dogs less likely to bite them away from the owner and
it's easier and quicker and theycan restrain them better.
I just, it drives me nuts. I hate that trend.
So if your puppy was taken away from you at the vet and examined
(28:52):
and given shots and blood drawn and three people holding this
dog while they quickly do, you know, do all that, like that's
part of the problem. So don't do that again.
Have it done in the room with you.
Maybe that's that's a little bitof an aside, but how do we fix?
This good point though. We can prevent a lot of it by
having good vet experiences. So I would want to go to a vet
(29:13):
that takes their time with you, that hangs out, that spends time
in the room because there's so many incredible vets out there
that when your dog leaves, they're not sad.
And then this issue never would have happened and your dog, the
dog would leave and go like thatwas cool.
But I know that's not helpful toyou in the scenario now.
So I guess we can answer this tosome to this person, do we have
(29:34):
a username? No.
Dang it. OK, I didn't.
I didn't write those down. Sometimes they're fun to say, I
don't know, I like, it's more personal, but sometimes it's
like I like it. YouTube sometimes changes them
like in the e-mail, like what it'll do.
You'll get in like the e-mail, it'll have their name, like a
notification of it. But then sometimes like on the
(29:55):
video, it'll have like. Username or something?
Well, yeah, it just makes it different.
I'm not sure what their deal is,but anyways, for that person, I
would go for fun car rides starting today and I'd go for
short ones and I'd give them really fun stuff to do in the
car. So get in there and give them a
new antler or have someone in the back seat with them and pet
(30:16):
them and talk to them. Or you know, if they're if they
don't get carsick, feed them in the car.
You know, whatever you can do todo some fun car rides and start
really short. I mean, it could be as simple as
like you get in the car and you hand feed them food and you
drive to the end of the block and then you circle around, you
keep hand feeding them food and you get home and you get out and
it was 2 minutes and then you doit again and again and you start
(30:39):
making it more normal. So what I would say is anything
your dog likes, because if you say, well, my dog when he's
scared he's not going to eat, OK, well then, you know, maybe
you don't try that. Maybe you just hang out with
them and just go for short, non scary car rides.
And then of course, start takingthem fun places.
Take them to your friend's houseto play with their dog, take
them to the neighborhood park and have a bunch of kids pet
(30:59):
them, you know, do something they would like.
And then for a dog just to go back to the vet thing for a
moment. For a dog that's kind of scared
of the vet, I would recommend doing fun vet visits where you
go to the vet, take them in there and the, you know, as long
as they're not busy, the staff at the vet sees this a lot.
And there's like any event I go to, they're super happy to help
(31:22):
because nobody likes dealing with a scared or a great, you
know, dog that potentially becomes aggressive.
So show up and just say, hey, I was bringing them in just to say
hi. So the vet's not a scary place.
And if you go to a good vet office, they're going to be
like, that's awesome, what can Ido?
Let me bring some treats over and whoever's at the front desk
will come over, give them some treats, pet them, and then you
leave and then come back. You know, do that once a week.
(31:44):
And pretty soon, you know, six months from now, when you go to
your next vet visit, you show up, your dogs can be fired up.
They're not going to be terrified because you've done it
enough. How much how much thought would
you have a client put into figuring out what caused the
issue versus just fixing it? So I mean, you talked about
making sure that you're there for what the vets doing and all
(32:07):
that. And I think that's all really
important. I feel like a lot of customers
end up getting caught up in whatwas it that actually caused the
issue. And at the end of the day, we
don't know if it was the vet or the dog saw a cockroach next to
the car when it was going to getinto it and is now scared,
right? How much stock do you put on
finding the actual reason versusjust working on it and fixing
(32:29):
it? That's a good question.
Would I tell a lot of clients and scenarios like that because,
you know, I could be wrong about, you know, maybe the vet
didn't take the dog away, right?And maybe the vet did everything
perfectly and maybe it wasn't even a bad exam, and maybe it's
just like you said, something else.
What I'll tell them is if we canfigure out the reason, that's
always better. If we know exactly what caused
(32:51):
it, obviously that's better. Sometimes we won't, and it only
makes a big difference if it changes the fix.
So if it doesn't change the fix,it's not that big of a deal.
So was it what the vet did when they took him in the back?
Maybe. Did they have a vet tech that
was huge and had a beard and thedog was scared of that?
Maybe. Was there a dog in the back that
(33:13):
was yelping in pain from like a previous surgery and that
freaked your dog out? You know, maybe.
So, yeah, there's all these things that could happen.
Most likely the fix is going to be the same and you just take
them them there have good experiences.
So I would only think it'd be different if you if you felt
like the fix is not going to be the same.
(33:34):
Well, I guess if we said it was a bearded dude, then you know
the fix would be we need to see more bearded people as well.
But that'd be a hard one to figure out.
So in any issue you have with your dog, if you're worried
about do you need to know exactly what caused it?
Just think through what are the options that could have caused
it and does it change your training program drastically?
(33:54):
And if the answer is yes, then you have to figure it out.
But that's most of the time that's not the case.
Yeah. And at the end of the day, if
you work on one thing and it wasn't necessarily that exact
thing, it's still a good experience to have worked on
that. And if you've noticed that it
was something else in the future, then you just know you
have to work on that as well. But it, you know, at least you
got started, at least you did something.
(34:16):
Absolutely and completely unrelated, but I'll give you an
example of a time. It really does matter and it's a
very different issue. I'm working with a client right
now that's got 3 pits and pit mixes.
And they brought, got a new one into the house and within a week
had a really bad fight where theone, the new 1 ended up, you
know, attached to the other one's head.
(34:37):
And yeah, and like, you know, had to have diving drains put in
and, you know, after they, you know, took him to the vet.
Like it was a bad fight and no one saw the start of it.
And they are pretty confident itwas over, that they had new
treats that they had just been given.
But we have no idea which dog did it.
So that that matters, right? Because we know that the one dog
(35:00):
is willing to finish a fight, but we have no idea if that dog
started it or not. So we that we have to figure out
we can't, you know, yes, there was a big fight and we know
which one won the fight, but we have no idea who started it.
So there's times that it's crucial to figure out.
And that one we can only figure out through time.
We're doing a lot of work with food and toys and bones and
Unleash. One of them is now muzzle
(35:22):
trained and we're running tests to figure out which one is the
problem. Makes sense.
All right, moving on, I think this question might have come
from somebody who lives in The Villages.
How do I get my dog to ride nicely in an Open Golf golf
cart? You know, we work with that in
(35:44):
my area as well. There's a couple of golf course
neighborhoods that are like really popular, but people don't
even, most people don't even golf.
They just have golf carts because it's like the thing to
do in the families. It's a, it's the opposite of the
Villages, though. It's like that neighborhood is
like young, fairly wealthy families and it's like
everyone's got their tricked outgolf cart like to go for trick
(36:05):
or treating purposes and to taketo the neighbor's house and to
go to the pool, so. So you don't think it's a
Villages only thing? How you think the golf cart
thing is more widespread than that?
Well, for sure, because I've gone on house calls with Remy, a
Nashville trainer here, and it was for that exact issue where
(36:26):
the Remy's client is like as a dog that is possessive of the
golf cart and I think will bite people that approach the golf
cart. Oh, wow.
So. Well, let's let's hear it.
Maybe. It's them.
Do we have a username? OK, So what did this question
say specifically? How?
To get the dog to ride nicely inan Open Golf cart, to me that
(36:50):
means not jumping out and stuff.I didn't think of biting people
who come up to it, but I assume jumping out to see other dogs
and that kind of thing. Okay, I everything starts with
proper leash training in my opinion.
So if you get that, if you have that dog on leash and they're
acting like a knucklehead, well,you're not ready to have them be
(37:13):
called in a golf cart like how'sthat going?
It's just not so you got to start somewhere.
So I would start with proper leash training and if you can't
walk by other dogs or kids without your dog pulling like a
maniac, then you like when you're walking, they've got a
job and you're doing stuff to control them in the golf cart.
They don't. So whatever they're whatever
(37:33):
you're worried about them chasing after or jumping up to
see while they're in the golf cart, make sure you can heal
past that perfectly first. If you do that, once you start
with a golf cart, the odds of you having issues are super
slim. And then I would just go for a
ride. I'd put them in a sit, stay or
down stay, you know, wherever you think is, you know, safe.
(37:54):
If it's just you, then I'd put them in shotgun right next to
you so you can, you know, heavily shot them and keep
control. And I would just drive around.
And if you start to lose control, like they jump up and
they're excitable and you can't get them to sit, I would pull
over, get out and I would heal until they chill out.
Left turn, right turn. And of course, you could do sit
down, stay whatever training your dog has and then get back
(38:16):
in, put them back into their stay and go for a drive again.
And if you start from the beginning, easy fix.
If you do the proper lease training, that's going to be, I
usually tell clients when we have something like that, that
issue is you're not even going to need me by the time we get to
that. You think you do, but we're
going to do the other stuff. By the time we get to that, that
problem's gone. And that's going to work for a
(38:38):
golf cart, a side by side a 57 Chevy that looks like a golf
cart. Or wait, no, a golf cart that
looks like a 57 Chevy. Like all those options.
All right. Tell me more about a golf cart
that looks like a 57 Chevy. This is a golf cart that's been
modified to look like a pickup. Yeah, well, not look like a
pickup necessarily, but just a 57 Chevy like a Bel Air Chevy.
(39:03):
OK, you so living where I live, driving through the Villages
quite frequently, you would be, I don't want to say shocked, but
it's crazy. Like when you were saying
tricked out golf carts. I'm assuming that you're
thinking like rims, maybe speakers, that type of thing.
In the Villages they have, they have golf carts that look like
(39:25):
old cars, look like rolled Royces, look like Hummers.
I mean. It's.
It's absolutely insane the amount of stuff that you'll see.
OK. I don't see that around here.
I see. Like you said, nice rims, little
lift kit on them and a stereo, maybe a light bar with LED
lights, things like that. Yeah, yeah, They have that and
(39:45):
then they just have so much more.
I mean, it's only, it's about 15minutes from me to the closest
section of the villages and it'slike a whole different world
there. Yeah, so one of my uncle's has a
place there and then he also hasa place up north as well, like
they spend in the summer, but. He and my one of my cousins for
a while tricked out golf carts and sold them and I think they
(40:08):
did pretty well financial. Imagine they would.
I mean, I think there's, I looked it up, I think there's
something like 20 golf cart places like, you know, selling
parts and selling golf carts. It's crazy.
They didn't do that. I think theirs is more like lift
kit rims like stereos and stuff.But he was an executive at an
(40:28):
oil company, smart guy and did really well for himself.
And then my cousin was had been working at a bank like both
coming from good jobs and it wasstill worth their time to trick
out and sell golf carts. I think it was a pretty, pretty
lucrative deal. Sure.
OK, so that's all the questions I could come up with with
wheels. However, I got two other things
(40:52):
that I want to cover, so these are bonus.
Round. These aren't online submitted
questions. The 1st is a real world
customer. OK.
They have a farm and they own a trucking company that the trucks
leave from their farm. So there's a driveway that runs
through the property. He has three dogs that are loose
(41:14):
on that farm at all times. One of those dogs has taken to
chasing after the trucks, and he's worried that the dog is
going to get hit and injured by a truck.
What do we do? That seems like a pretty
reasonable worry. I would say the dog is going to
get hit and injured by a truck. I guess I'd have so many
(41:36):
questions. You know, obviously we need to
stop them from chasing trucks. But on top of that, I just
wonder are there solutions wherelike is that the same driveway
the owner uses or is this like? Yeah, it it like splits off at
some point. OK.
(41:57):
But it'll be coming down the driveway that presumably is
running through the middle of the property.
Yep. And the reason I'm asking is if
we could just teach the dog to never go on that driveway would
be ideal, but that's probably not workable here I'm assuming.
You know, I think it would have been a potentially workable
(42:17):
solution if the customer had been interested in it and they
weren't. So I.
Guess that's what I meant. From a training standpoint, of
course that would be workable. But if they've got a farm and
they want their dog to have access to it and you're like,
well, the dog now can't go to that side of the farm unless
they circle around behind your house and get to the other side.
Yeah, this was, this was honestly sort of a really tricky
(42:39):
situation where the customer didn't want to do any work.
And then so that's what led me to talk about like an invisible
fence that would keep the dog onone side of that driveway
basically because I mean, it wasa huge property we're.
Talking. Probably 100 acres.
So if the dog had access to everything on one side of the
(43:00):
driveway, it probably would havebeen 50 acres and then it would
have never come anywhere close to a truck.
But the owner didn't didn't wantto play with that either.
And if the owner doesn't want todo any work, like it's just not
going to work, right? But if we had an owner, I get
the idea of saying I don't. If I was in that scenario, if I
had 100 acres or something and semis were coming and going, I
(43:22):
wouldn't want my dogs to have tolive their life put up or on one
side of the farm and couldn't goto the other.
So I can understand that, you know, it's crucial.
Obviously, we stopped the dog from chasing him.
So what I would say to that is we start on leash, make sure you
can heal back and forth past thesemi.
Maybe it's easy, maybe it's not.And for you know, those of you,
you know, hearing this, especially if you're new to the
(43:42):
show, sometimes that's a 10 second process in 20 seconds.
I don't know, you put the leash on and you heal and like, oh,
this is easy, dogs not doing it,so that's fine.
Then we move on, we're going to teach the come command, make
sure that is rock solid and thatI can call the dog no matter
what's happening. And I don't start with the
semis. I would practice like doorbell
rings. I call the dog, throw their
(44:03):
ball, they're running after it, call them off the ball.
If you can't call them off of like their prey drive or their
chase game, then that's an issuebecause obviously it won't work
with a semi. Throw a ball for your other dog,
let them RIP after it and call this first one when they're
halfway. I'd work on all of that until
it's, you know, going really well and then when they start
(44:23):
going after the the semi, I would pair a correction with
that plus calling them. So for like for chasing the
ball, just to play this out for people listening.
I throw the ball dogs running and I say Ralph come and I call
him off of it. And obviously I don't say no
because it's not being bad. He's just chasing his ball, but
I want to make sure I can call him away from something he's
(44:44):
chasing. But the first time he chases a
truck that I'm around, we need ahard, loud, intense verbal no to
stop the dog. So the dog knows that's bad and
that's not allowed. And you need some way to back it
up if your verbal is not enough.And those two ways are going to
be a long rope or line that they're dragging or an E collar,
(45:07):
you know, to me, you're going toneed one of those two and then
you need some way. So the dog goes after it.
They get penalized for going after it.
They know my the owner really, really doesn't like this because
obviously if your dog keeps doing it, he's probably going to
die. So you show them this is bad and
then you call them to you and ifthey come, obviously you praise
them for doing it. Well, I said obvious that
(45:27):
sometimes people have trouble going from Hey, I'm mad like you
did something bad to you did something good.
So you should you need to make aquick switch because your dog
just did. If they were running after and
you corrected them and they stopped and then you call them
and they're listening, you need to switch into praise mode
instantly. So they realize, wow, chasing
semis is really bad. And coming to my owner obviously
is really good. So the big thing would be some
(45:49):
sort of control. And if I had an owner who said I
don't want to do much work and I'm not going to use any E
collar, I don't like those and the long line sounds like a
pain. I'm not really going to do that.
I would tell them I I don't see how I'm going to be able to help
you and I worry about your dog getting killed and we need to
figure out some solution here and.
Yeah, I think that all makes a lot of sense.
(46:13):
So the the final, the end to that scenario is I suggested to
him it was it was a wealthy individual, right, who was also
very frugal. He didn't want to pay us to do a
bunch of sessions. I told him to to get the high
school kid that lives next door.Let's teach him how to heal with
the dog. And then you can have him do 50
sessions over the next 50 days with the dog and just pay him
(46:37):
minimum wage to do that. And it should fix the problem
pretty well. Never heard back.
Agreed. But I would I would think that
that would that would solve the problem of him not wanting to do
it and also not wanting to pay abunch of money for it.
That would solve it. For the record, I'm going to bet
they never did it. Who knows that?
I mean, who knows? You do never know.
(46:57):
Maybe he did it, everything's great and he just refers clients
to you left and right and he's like, that guy gave me advice
and the neighbor kid trained my dog.
Maybe he refers the neighbor kidnow.
He's like your dog chases stuff.My neighbor kid is legit I felt.
Like it was a really good solution.
It was at the end of the day, like I felt like it was a lot of
(47:18):
work to come up with something that he was willing to do.
So I felt good that through, youknow, probably like a 2 hour
time frame of, of working with him that I was able to come up
with something that it seemed like he was willing to do.
So I hear some weird clicking going on over there.
I don't know if it's like your hands together or your feet, but
(47:38):
it's like your mic's picking up something like I think.
It was. Oh my gosh, I hit my mic.
I think it was like this. It was OK.
I know. I think that was great advice
and I've given similar advice toI've had multiple times.
You have an elder client that doesn't have a lot of money and
they're like, I can't not not having to do with chasing semis,
(48:00):
but I've never had an elderly client without much money with a
dog that chase semis. That's that that has not come up
yet, but you know, they'll have a dog who's like, you know,
whatever reactive with new dogs or some issue and they don't
have the money to pay someone like to pay us to come a bunch.
They don't have the energy or the physical ability to do a lot
of work. So I've done a lot of times had
(48:20):
like helped train a neighbor kid, you know, appropriate age
obviously to come over and work with the dog once the dog's at a
point that a non professional can do it.
For sure. I'd say that's good advice.
OK, so Are you ready for the last thing that I could find
that is dog and wheel related for today?
(48:41):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna share my screen.
And for the people who can't seewhat I'm sharing, it's a product
that I see on Amazon and basically just picture a giant
hamster wheel that they say thatup to a 25 LB dog can run on.
(49:02):
I'm shocked that this is a real product.
Even so, I wanted to see what you thought of it, if you can
believe that it's real, and if you think anyone in their right
mind should buy this. So while we're on here, I feel
like we could all learn so much about you if we go through your
Amazon history together and see what you've bought over the last
(49:25):
year. This is nuts.
This is CAPS. OK, I'm already annoyed.
Third bullet point, off leash exercise and off is not
capitalized. Yeah, You know, that's an issue
with me. And I'll tell you what, I had
three. I think I can think of three
(49:46):
friends that sent holiday cards this year that didn't capitalize
a single word including their family's name.
Like what is with this trend of not this is like this is a typo
on this page but. Well, you know, I would do the
opposite. And I would have capitalized
off. I would have capitalized leash
and exercise, and then you wouldhave yelled at me about that.
(50:07):
Yell's a strong word, but have you seen So like we'll get a
like a holiday card like from the Johnsons and it's from the
Johnsons, not a single capital. And then they'll have each of
their names like all their. I don't know anything about
this. You're saying this is a trend,
not? Capitalizing stuff, Yeah,
because Brams are doing it now too and it drives me nuts.
(50:28):
Like I feel like an old fuddy Duddy.
I'm like when? Since when is bad grammar cool?
But I feel that way, Since when is bad grammar cool?
Like. And same with that trend of
having one word sentences like this is awesome.
But like a period after each onelike this is not a sentence,
neither is is and neither is awesome.
(50:49):
I feel like you're just making stuff up.
You haven't seen that. No.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe in your urban mushing stuff that
you watch. You haven't seen this.
It's a trend and it's I can't stand it.
Well, you got to remember the trends by me are like at least
20 years behind. The people in the villages
aren't not capitalizing sentences.
(51:10):
That's true. So it's a trend and I bet our
listeners know and if you do it and you love it, I'm sorry.
I don't mean to offend you, but I don't like it.
I don't like it one bit. OK, so this toy thing, this is
crazy. I cannot imagine putting a dog
on this hamster wheel. I've never seen this before.
(51:30):
I've. Never seen it.
I've never heard of it. I can't even believe it's a
thing. Yeah, and I mean, I there's no
way I would ever recommend it ifa client had one and they said
my dog likes it and he's not fixated and crazy.
He's not barking. Everything's cool, then more
power to you. But I just cannot imagine.
(51:51):
And you know, dogs should be outside, so let's get them
outside to run. It's not.
Cheap either $1100. Yeah, it seems like a lot of
money because it's made for small dogs.
It's not even. Well, I guess I mean it's like
it's almost 4 feet high. Right.
But that I think that sounds taller than it is when you
(52:12):
figure like a dog gets long, butit's only 19 inches long.
So it's I I don't know, I could see it like a gerbil riding a
little motorcycle in that, you know, like in doing loopy loops.
That's cool, but this is crazy. I can't believe now only 15
reviews. So I'm assuming not a lot of
people buying these things, but do you?
(52:34):
Think they're real? Perfect for cats.
Are you kidding me? You're telling me your cat's
running? They lied.
Don't love it? They lied when they said all
dogs love it. Oh no they don't.
Well, obviously not all dogs love it.
That's just marketing fluff. I think you would like I.
Believe this is a real review and I just who?
(52:58):
I can't believe somebody bought this.
An Aussie doodle, 12 LB. They hated it.
Yeah. Wait, Joan Moore and George
Moore and Joan liked it? Oh wait, but she has Bengals?
(53:19):
Wow. OK, that seems odd.
She likes it, but George did notfor his Aussie doodle.
Look at this one Amazon customer.
I've never seen a review like that.
Neither. Three stars up to your pet, I'd
say it's human powered so he hasto turn it.
Not approved by experts. Warning, do not buy this thing
(53:41):
and it's completely unbalanced and will damage your dog's
backbone. It is completely not approved by
my vet. Yeah.
I don't have an opinion on the health aspect of it.
That makes sense that if they'rein a weird position that could
be an issue. That's crazy.
They need to make one for GermanShepherds.
(54:01):
So even bigger. You want an even bigger.
Wheel like A10 footer just like it's becomes your living room
and for people listening, treadmills are a much in my
opinion better option where they're like you can help the
dog, you can be right next to them.
They're not locked in a crazy little wheel.
Yeah, and if they, I mean if they stop running on the wheel,
(54:24):
they're going to go up it and then fall down, which to me
seems really bad. Yeah, that is something you
learn something new every day. I'm shocked.
It's, I mean, I'm shocked that there's a product on Amazon for
this. But I guess there's a product on
Amazon for everything, right? Should we order one?
(54:44):
I don't want to spend $1100 on it.
I wonder if my cat would go in it.
I'll tell you what, my cat lovesthose toys.
Well, you don't have cats. You probably never seen one.
Like a little circular piece of plastic with cardboard in the
middle and a ball and a track that goes in a circle and the
cat like hits it and then it goes in a circle and spins and
then stops it with her paw and flicks it again.
(55:06):
And the cat seems to dig that. That's exciting.
Yeah, but that movement a lot like wheels.
I've got some French Bulldogs that I'm training that are
pretty excited by that thing. They see the wheel or the ball
spinning, they run over and likethey want to jump and like bite
it and they can't get it and it's frustrating to them.
(55:27):
So is that it? That's.
All I could find for dogs and wheels.
Is there anything else you want to talk about wheel related?
No, but if anyone has questions,you know, or things we didn't
talk about or things you'd like to hear us cover, let us know
and we could do a little wheel segment as part of another
episode. And cover some stuff more in
(55:47):
depth. Awesome.
Well, thank you for listening everybody.
Appreciate you. All right.
Thanks. Have a great day.
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