Episode Transcript
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This is the perfect pup podcast.Helping you build a better
relationship with your pup presented, by pop forward.
Hello pup parents and welcome totoday's episode of The Perfect
pop podcast. My name is Devon.
I'm excited for this episode, like most things in life, we are
often looking for ways to improve how fast, we learn, how
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fast, we accomplish things. And it's similar with our dogs
training and learning. So, in this episode, we're going
to go over 55. Things that you can do to make
your dog learn more quickly. And I will say, training takes
time. It's a lifelong Endeavor for
your dog. But there are things you can do
to speed up the process and helpyour dog.
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Learn more efficiently. And I'm also going to give you a
little insight, some tips on to how to train in your daily life
because really that's going to make the biggest difference for
us with busy schedules. So let's get right into it.
I'm going to say this again. Training takes time.
Raising a well-mannered pop training them to be responsive
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and listen to you. It takes time.
It takes, patience, it takes energy, it takes focus.
It takes all those things. And so I don't want you to have
unrealistic expectations. That you're gonna be able to
train your dog overnight, or fixa behavior in a week.
Like, it's not really how it works.
But if you as the teacher think about ways that you can more
efficiently and effectively, teach your dog, they're going to
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learn quickly and you're going to overcome those challenging
behaviors more quickly and be able to give your dog more
freedom and more ability to do fun.
Things like being off leash going on Hikes, you know, being
around other dogs, all that fun stuff.
So the first tip we've talked about this before but you need
to maximize your dogs mealtime training a dog is so much about
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Focus. If you don't have your dog's
attention you are not going to be able to teach them and so
finding opportunities every single day.
Where you do have your dog's focus and attention.
And then using those moments to incorporate training is going to
really speed up your dog's learning because again, you've
got their Focus use it. So here are some things you can
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do to take advantage of your dog's meal time.
It's simple. It doesn't have to be these
complex training sessions, and you don't have to use your dog's
entire meal for training, but here's some things you can do.
For example, you can teach your dog and work on the place
Behavior while you're preparing your Dogs meal, guiding them to
their place, giving them a pieceof their food while they wait
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reinforcing. As you continue to prep the rest
of their meal, whatever it mightbe, you could also use puzzles
or snuffle feeders. The way that's going to help is
that as you work your dog's brain, it's just going to get
get that brain flowing and get them more mentally exercise and
enriched. And so, when you do other
training or when you're working on other behaviors, you'll be
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more likely to have more InTune dog.
You can also, On desensitizing your dog to sounds, whether it
be vacuums or the dishwasher, whatever it is, that your dog
might be afraid of, you can use meal time to do some.
Decisive desensitization, you can also work on recall in the
home. You know, even if you just take
a handful, if you feed your dog,a kibble, take a handful of the
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kibble. And instead of just, you know,
giving them their meal, do some quick recalls inside your house
with their kibble and then give them the rest of their meal.
Again, it doesn't have to be an entire session, it doesn't have
to be Be this big drawn out thing, but it's using meal time
to take advantage of your dog's focus.
And that kind of leads to point number 2, which is to do many
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training sessions. Every single day, we are all
busy. We have different schedules,
there's work their school, there's family, there's friends,
there's activities. There's so much to do and
finding time to train our dogs. It can feel difficult and what
I've seen for myself and a lot of parents who I've talked to
and in online communities, Is, you know, Monday through Friday,
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while they're working? It's hard to carve out, time to
train and then they think, oh, Saturday Sunday.
I'll do these big, long trainingsession.
That's not the best way. Doing these Long drawn-out
training sessions for a lot of dogs.
It gets overwhelming and you lose their focus.
So really, what is more advantageous than, you know, a
long, dedicated training sessionon the weekend would be even
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five minutes. Five to 10 minutes on a daily
basis. And we're going to talk about
ways to incorporate, you know, your routine in.
To into training. So, shoot for three to five
minutes, even if that's all it is.
If you can do three to five minutes every day, you know,
think about it as a numbers game.
I'm very Analytical in my brain and and there's a lot that I do
with diving into data and numbers.
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And I personally kind of look atthe dog training experience as a
little bit of a numbers game where you're just trying to get
as many opportunities to reinforce the good behaviors as
you can. And so if you can find two to
three minutes on a daily basis to do that, Your dog's going to
learn more quickly versus havingthese long breaks or gaps in
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multiple days without training or weeks or whatever it might
be. So one way to do that is with
the third tip which is routine based behaviors.
So what I mean is every single day you have your routine with
your dog and it looks different for everyone but there's food
involved, there's a walk involved, there's usually play
involved. There's all the different things
that we do with our dogs. There's a fantastic principal in
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a book called Atomic habits, where he talks about Out habits
stacking, I recommend you. Check out that book generally
Just For Life advice and how to,you know, get better at creating
and keeping habits. But he talks about habit
stacking, which is basically, you know, if you are really
wanting to add in a new Behavior, where you're going to
do one minute of meditation or mindfulness, he talks about
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stacking that habit with anotherhabit.
You already do, for example, brushing your teeth.
So if you got into the habit of knowing, okay, I'm going to
brush my teeth every morning when I'm done brushing my teeth,
I'm going to set a timer. And you 60 seconds of
mindfulness. It makes it easier to create
that new habit because you are pairing it with another habit,
you're stacking those habits together.
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And it's so similar with our dogs, there are things that you
do every single day where you could create a habit and say,
all right, every time I walk outthe front door, with my dog, I'm
going to do have them do a sit and a stay and then we're going
to go out the door. You know, there's the Habit.
You're alright, you're already going out the door.
Or so use that little Split Second to do some training.
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You could also have your dog to a look at me or a focus behavior
before you unclip them from their leash at the park.
You know, it's something you're going to do regardless but if
you get into the habit of sayingevery time I unclip my dog, I
want to get their eyes first reward or even the reward can be
letting them off leash and they go get to play.
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You can also for example, get into the habit of if you're
brewing your morning coffee, T or making your breakfast or
whatever it is. You know, if you throw something
in the microwave, or wait for water to warm up, take 60
seconds and practice one or two tricks while your coffee is
brewing. You can also, if you watch TV, I
like to watch sports, you've probably heard that annoying.
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Burger King, commercial jingle thousand times.
So instead of watching that again, mute your TV, stand up
and do a little bit of training during commercials like, there
are so many opportunities. It all comes down to creating
those habits and saying every day or in every instance that I
do X. I'm also going to add on why and
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you incorporate training on yourdaily routine with your dog, on
this podcast, I do my best to give you as much advice as
possible to help you raise a happy and well behaved dog.
But sometimes you need to hear it from other people and more
in-depth resources, and that's why you need to check out the
puffer tap and download it on iOS or Would you can get free
(08:01):
access to plenty of courses and different videos and even check
out pop furth Academy, for exclusive access to premium
content covering courses, like, impulse control separation,
anxiety, and more. The fourth tip plate.
I'm using it for training. We have talked before about how
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you can use things like recall to teach fetch.
You know, the principal there again it's similar to maximizing
your dog's mealtime. Is that When you're playing with
your dog, they're excited, they're having fun, they also
are going to give you their attention because they want to
play, you know, think about evenhow it was.
And, you know, first grade and you would play math games, and
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it would be like tic-tac-toe with math or whatever.
And as a kid, you're excited, you don't even really think
about how your learning but it'sa fun activity that incorporates
learning and you do learn math and you do improve your math
skills and it's the same thing with our dogs.
Even if you're saying I can do adedicated, you know, training
session. I'm going to play tug with my
dog for tagging 10 minutes. You can certainly incorporate
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practicing behaviors like Drop it or leave it or weight, or,
you know, other impulse control things.
We already talked about using fetch for recall using fetches.
A reward for different behaviors.
Maybe it's shake it. You know, you can get creative,
you could also turn your game time and your playing time into
more training. Focus things like playing hide
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and seek. Seek it becomes a recall
practice for your dog. You can also use it in flirt
pole, you know, the flirt pole is a great training tool, but
it's also for play, and it's forfun, and getting your dog moving
around. It's, you know, again, kind of
rethinking in our own minds of, I've got to do this dedicated
training session and we're goingto work on recall and it's going
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to be. This is what we're going to do
in is rigid, just do it during play find Opportunities every
single day. And the fifth point and
potentially, the most important point for how you can speed up
your dog's learning and train them more quickly is to use
strong reinforcers and to avoid mixed signals.
So, let's break those two down strong reinforcers.
Again, we've talked about this, I've talked in depth about how
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my dog Scout her recall went from like a three or four to an
eight or a nine just by changingher reinforcers.
We stopped trying to use treats outside when she was distracted.
And we started using Which we used play as the reinforcement
for her, so that, you know, we'dcall her to us when she would
come, we'd get a hold of her harness.
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And then we would say, yes, Mark, Mark the behavior and
throw the ball and that was her reward.
You have to find your dogs currency.
What you think is going to be a strong reinforcer for your dog,
doesn't matter? Let me say that again.
It doesn't matter where you think it matters, what your dog
cares about. So it's on us as parents to say,
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I'm going to figure out what my dog, really really cares about
and it might be different in different instances.
You know. Outdoors versus indoors versus
around other dogs and not other dogs but you can use things like
praise and play and of course treats and food and mealtime to
reinforce your dog. Because what we reinforce is
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more likely to be repeated in the future.
And if you have strong reinforcers, your increasing
that likelihood of the reinforcement.
It happening again, if you're inschool and your teacher says
okay? Every time you turn in your
assignment on time you're going to get an extra point.
You're like, okay, that's exciting and all, but if it was,
hey, every time you turn your assignment in on time, you're
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going to get a full letter, grade Improvement.
You would definitely be more likely to turn your paper in, on
time and it's the same thing with our dogs.
You have to find what they care about and then use it and use
it, and use it, and use it, it takes trial and error, it takes
practice. Otis.
It takes trying different treats, different foods,
different play, be creative. Try new things with your dog and
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find what they care about. And while you're doing that, be
sure to avoid mixed signals. This isn't an episode about
dating. Although there seems like
there's a place here for a pun about high school dating
experiences and mixed signals but your dog needs Clarity from
you. They need to know what is okay,
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and they don't do a great. Job, our dogs at delineating
between oh I can jump on my human, my Dogma, my dog, dad.
But when other people come over,I can't jump and their mind.
They think jumping up on humans is okay.
They get praise, they get pets. It's all right.
And so they're going to if you let them jump on you they're
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going to be more likely to jump on Guess Who come to your home?
That's just one example if you sometimes let them on the couch
but then you don't want them on the couch when guests.
Come over again. It's hard for them to delineate
their brain. Says I go on the couch and it's
okay and so you have to be clearwith your dog.
You have to avoid mixed signals and you have to be consistent
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with what you are, okay with andwhat you reinforce, and what
you're not okay with. And what you don't allow them to
do these. Five tips are going to help you
train your dog faster. Keep in mind, I didn't go over
principles today. I didn't go over techniques, I
didn't go over shaping or lowering or, you know, the, the
3DS Distance duration, and distraction of recall, I didn't
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go over those things if you wantin-depth resources.
I highly. Highly recommend signing up for
30-day. Perfect, pup.
It's also available in the puffer dap.
It is a completely free course, and within the puffer tap, there
is a whole library of free content, arguably.
That's better than anything you can pay for from other
(13:49):
companies. And if you want additional
content like courses, specifically diving into Recall
or separation anxiety or trick training.
We have pup verdict, Adam e. Plus there's a wealth of
resources and a lot of them to you know, especially 21, impulse
control games which is super popular.
There are again these more ideasfor incorporating routine Based
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training and learning and practicing things that happen on
a daily basis. Versus just I'm gonna have these
dedicated training sessions. So I hope you found this episode
enjoyable. I have a very strong plea for
you. You.
If you're on YouTube, subscribe and leave a comment.
And if you are on Apple podcast,leave a review.
It's so so helpful for this podcast and if you're on
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Spotify, follow our show and other than that, we will catch
you on the next episode.