Does this look familiar?
Does your puppy have wild and crazy moments where they seem like they're totally
out of control? Well, in today's video,
instructor Shannon's gonna talk to you about puppy zoomies, what they are,
what they might be telling you and what you can actually do about them.
And you might be surprised at the answer I'm Ken Steepe and welcome back to
McCann Dogs. Here in our training facility,
we've helped more than a hundred thousand dog owners to overcome the same dog
training challenges that you have. So,
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well-behaved four-legged family member.
Hi, I'm instructor Shannon, and you probably recognize puppy Five Alive here.
And to do, we are here to talk a little bit about the zoomies.
You might know them as the zoomies,
or maybe you've heard of FRAP or puppy burns was a common
term.
When I first came into dogs and I had lots of puppies that did puppy burns.
Sometimes puppy burns will happen even with adult dogs too.
And today we are going to talk a lot about this, what the zoomies are,
why your puppies do them and what you can do to try to make sure that your
puppies have expended enough energy,
that they don't feel the need to do the zoomies.
Now you've probably seen the zoomies and you've probably thought, wow,
this is a lot of fun to watch with my puppy.
And it's not untrue that it's fun to watch a puppy kick up their heels and do
the zoomies,
but avoiding the zoomies is a much better tactic for working with your
puppy's energy.
Zoomies are often a product of a puppy who is either overstimulated or
understimulated,
which seems a little bit awkward because they're opposite ends of the spectrum,
but you get the zoomies as a product of both things.
If you have a puppy that's actually understimulated,
that means that they've got a lot of pent up energy.
They've got especially pent-up mental energy that they need to drain out in a
productive way in order to feel really good.
So what we can do with a Zoomies situation,
when we've got a puppy who we're worried about being understimulated,
we can add some training time and some tasks to their day.
And while it's really important that it's mainly focused on mental drain.
It's also important to get some physical drain out with our puppies as well.
Games like this can be fabulous for draining energy and taking some of the edge
off of our puppies. A little bit of tug will go a long way.
Look at how hard Five Alive is working here to get that toy and all the energy
that's gonna be drained out from that is really going to benefit.
Things like playing little retrieve games and chase games with our puppies,
where our puppies get to chase us, not where we get to chase our puppies,
are gonna be a really productive outlet for a puppy who's under stimulated and
therefore coming about the zoomies. Now first know that if you have a puppy or,
or an older dog even, that's doing the zoomies,
it doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong.
It just means that there are ways that you could probably help your puppy vent
their energy a little bit better.
So it's probably pretty easy to put into perspective that a puppy who's
understimulated might do the zoomies because they've got some pent up energy,
but how do we get to a puppy who's over stimulated and therefore ends up doing
the zoomies as well.
And that is a puppy who is maybe awake for a little bit longer
than they should be. Our puppies really need a lot of naps to feel good.
And what happens with young puppies is they don't self-regulate,
they won't put themselves down for a nap in order to conserve energy.
They basically go, go,
go until they're so exhausted that they just fall over and crash.
Or they're so exhausted that this energy that is flooding through them,
they just don't know what to do with.
And they end up being a little bit chaotic and the zoomies might end up
including things like nipping and jumping up,
or generally not showing very good, polite behavior from your puppies.
So there are often things that we do want to discourage with our pups.
When you're dealing with that puppy energy,
it is so important to use it to your advantage.
So rather than trying to drain it out, just Willy nilly,
what we wanna do with our puppies is use that energy to help build skills.
So while five alive is full of beans and raring to go here,
I'm going to use that energy to help build engagement with me,
build understanding of how to work for me and how to give me good
things that will result in good rewards coming for five alive.
What's up.
Have you guys shot the part about witching hour yet?
No, we're just about to.
Okay. Let me know. I'll be right back,
but I have a hilarious bit that I think will definitely make the final edit.
Okay. I'm excited to see.
Now, before we get into solutions for the zoomies,
I wanna talk a little bit about witching hour,
which you might have heard of as well.
And a lot of the times these things go hand in hand with our puppies,
because that is the point in the day,
where there is a little bit of a transition in them,
and we need to help weather that energy transition with something that's a
little bit more of a specific routine for that puppy. So witching hour is that,
uh, time at the end of the day where your puppy is,
is a little bit overstimulated or under stimulated,
there's something missing that we needed to do to make them a little bit more,
even in terms of their energy.
And if that thing happens and you end up with a dog that's sort of running
around and doing a little bit of the zoomies during witching hour,
your best bet is to do what you can to try to keep them safe,
make sure that they're not going to crash and bang.
Ideally you have a house-line on them so that you can try to take control if
things are going awry. And what you can do is just slowly move in.
I like to, as the line is dragging just slowly put my foot on it.
So it slows the puppy down. Think of like a compression brake coming together.
So you can just slow the puppy down and then gradually be able to stop up that
zoomie and witching hour and get your puppy to a,
a place where they'll be good and safe.
And there won't be any risk of them injuring themselves. Now,
did you notice what happened there with Five Alive?
He got a little bit disconnected from the Kong and from me as we were sitting.
And that gave me a good,
good idea to think he probably needs to go out to go to the bathroom.
So I rushed him outside.
Got that great opportunity in to reinforce him going to the bathroom in the
right place outside. If you're looking for help on your puppy potty training,
we've got some great help for you. Click this card.
Something that will really help you decide how to help your puppy through the
zoomies and how to avoid the zoomies is information.
So anytime your dog or your puppy does have a zoomie moment or a puppy burn
moment,
take note of it and start thinking about what happened directly before that
thing. You know, maybe your puppy was down for a really long nap.
Maybe they napped an extra long time that day,
maybe they just finished eating and they're really excited.
Maybe the kids in the house have been really excited and running around and the
puppy got over stimulated.
If you can take the little bits of information from each of those zoomies,
make note of them over time, over the period of a couple of days,
or even maybe a week,
you're gonna gain a lot of information about that and about your individual
puppy and what particular things put them into that over
understimulated puppy mode. Now I know what you're thinking.
A puppy journal that is a lot of work. It's actually not too much.
Just jot down a couple of quick thoughts and it will serve you so well.
And in fact,
I believe in this so strongly that we are going to include something to help you
track all of these little details for your puppy.
Check out the link in the description below to get yours. Now,
you know what they are and how you are going to start to deal with them.
If you'd like more help with a nighttime training routine so that you can have a
peaceful sleep, click this card. And on that note, I'm instructor Shannon.
This is Five Alive happy training.
Well, I think it's funny, but I guess we'll see what the editor says.