Five has been home for a couple days. And for the first couple days,
we didn't really have to do a whole lot, but pay attention to him. Today,
It's not really that way.
So I have a very short amount of time and my goal is to tire him out as much as
possible so that I can get back to work.
I know that many of you guys watching today probably have really busy lives as
well. So I'm gonna show you guys three things that I do with my puppies that
successfully tires them out in a really short period of time.
Also doesn't need a lot of space and you can work this in any time throughout
the day. Now we have several videos in this series,
but if this is your first time here, let me bring you up to speed.
This is our new puppy vlog. Now as a dog trainer, for more than 20 years,
I have raised and trained a lot of dogs already. In this series,
I'm gonna share with you some tips and tricks that I've learned along the way.
And I bet many of them you've never heard of I'm Kayl McCann.
This is eight week gold mixed breed puppy Five-Alive welcome
back to McCann Dogs. Okay.
So the first game that I'm gonna play is a little bit of game of tug,
but I have sort of put a bit of a spin on it so that I can work a little bit on
teaching him to be respectful with his mouth and to also give things up to me at
the same time. So what I'm gonna do is I need two toys for this.
I'm gonna start with this one, which he clearly loves,
and I'm just gonna start with a little bit of game of tug.
I'm gonna let him get really into it. Oh, tug, you get that thing tug.
And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make this tug still.
And I'm gonna make the second one. A little bit more exciting.
So I'm gonna hold it still. What's this one over here. Woo. Yay. Good boy.
And then when he drops that one for the new one, I'm gonna tug over here. Oh,
good boy. And you'll notice I'm hiding the original tug away,
so he doesn't see it. And I'm just gonna keep switching back and forth. Yay.
Good boy. Now, once I see he's going from tug to tug pretty easily.
Now this is literally the only sec,
the only the second time he's ever done this before I can start to put a drop it
or release command to it. Good boy.
Now what's great about this exercise is it tires, you get crazy.
He's getting really lots of energy out, which is great,
but he also is learning to keep mouth on the toy.
Instead of putting it on my hands.
He's learning to be respectful as he gets to have a bunch of fun. Out,
out. Yes. Good boy.
So I say the command and then get him excited with the other toy and you can
just work back and forth. Now, remember when you have a baby puppy,
you don't wanna do it too long, cuz there's some,
there's such thing as doing it too.
I might maybe do one more and then go on something else. Is he crazy?
He's crazy. He's crazy. And he's nuts. He's crazy. And he's nuts. Woo.
That's a cute little jump.
Something I wanna touch on from my first exercise is that when I play tug with
him, you'll notice I'm almost encouraging him to growl and be crazy.
And some people will think, oh my gosh,
is that aggression is not tugging making the dog a aggressive.
You can hear him growling a little bit.
I'm not worried about this in the slightest bit.
This is actually just telling me that he is having just a load of fun.
Remember this exercise, this game of tug.
I can establish leadership by making sure that I start it.
I'm initiating the play. I'm also controlling whether he lets go of the toy now,
right now I'm just using positive association by getting him encouraged to drop
something else. Eventually he'll need to drop it on my command,
but this is a great way to make sure that I'm building a relationship.
This is a far better way to have fun together, tiring him out,
than letting him go to on a bone off in the corner by himself.
And lastly it doesn't take very long. You know, he's just 10 weeks old.
I can't do this for a super long time or he'll start to fizzle out.
And my goal is that he's drivey and excited and really into the game.
So just before I'm ready to quit, I'm gonna take those toys. I might get.
'em Excited by them. Woo.
And then I'm gonna put them away and I'm gonna make sure that he doesn't have
access to those toys unless we're playing together. Instead,
maybe I could let him have a bone or something that would be okay for him to go
and chew on his own.
But I'm gonna save those special toys for when we have time together.
So when I bring them out automatically thinks Woohoo,
we're gonna do something great. And it involves me.
Some of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to tiring their
puppies out, is they choose things that take a lot of time to do,
but they don't actually accomplish the goal. Now,
some people will do things like let their puppies run around the house with a
bunch of toys or they'll let them run around in the backyard on their own.
Or some people will take their puppies for a walk,
which we shouldn't be doing when the puppies are, are this young.
And what happens is these things take number one, they take a long time to do.
And number two, a lot of the time,
those actual things don't tire your puppy out enough.
The goal is to try to tire your puppy out because that leads to better behavior.
That leads to a calmer puppy. All of those things,
but the big key factor and the thing that I'm most focused on right now with my
puppy being so new is relationship.
If he is learning to run around in the living room or the backyard,
completely, you know, unaware of what I'm doing,
it really doesn't do much for our relationship.
So my goal is to do things with him that we can do together.
That tires him out that keeps him happy.
And that builds sort of a bond and a relationship at the same time.
So that when I start all my training, things are gonna be really easy.
This one is awesome because it really gets a,
a lot of energy out in a really short period of time.
But this is the hardest one because a lot of people actually mess this one up by
doing a couple things wrong. Number one,
a lot of people will give their puppies,
all these toys and they just let the puppy play with them whenever they want to.
And they give them an abundance of choices.
What we recommend that you do is have a few toys that you actually have selected
as your retrieve toys. Now this holy roller, for example,
this is one of his favorite toys.
So I make sure that he doesn't get access to this unless we're actually paying
fetch.
Now I can actually see that he's a little bit disconnected and a bit frantic to
leave, which tells me that he has to go to the washroom.
So we're gonna take a pause on this for a second.
We're gonna have a little potty break. Yes.
Good boy. Good.
Boy. You gotta remember that.
One of the signs that they have to go to the bathroom is when they really
disconnect. Normally he's super engaged to play with that ball.
So the fact that he was trying to leave makes me wonder that if he has to go to
the outside and we were right, we did,
it seems like it could be a pretty complicated thing to teach your puppy.
But a lot of puppies actually come naturally fetching.
And what happens is us humans ruin it. And I'll, I'll talk about how,
how that happens in just a second,
but basically what I'm gonna do to work on the fetch.
And now we have been working on this at home.
We've never done it here in the studio.
So it could be a little bit of learning curve, but I have two,
I'm gonna throw one and I'm gonna use the other one to encourage him to bring
the first toy back. Ready set. I can tease him with it set,
hi bye.
So he didn't do a very good job of bringing the toy back there,
but I wanna reward him anyways,
because I want him to learn that coming back to me,
he's all always a good thing. Okay. Let's try it again.
Maybe I won't call you so fast this time. Oh, oh, oh, okay. Let's get this.
Are you ready? Oh, what's this? What's this. Oh, he says,
I like that fuzzy one better. Yay.
That was better. That was better. I'm gonna keep wiggling it until we drop it.
There we go. Good boy. Her get that thing. Good boy.
I'm gonna show you another thing that I'll do. I'm gonna get rid of this.
And that is when you're trying to teach him to bring it back.
They need to learn that coming back is lots of fun.
So I'm actually gonna practice pushing him away a little bit.
And what usually happens is they have a natural response of coming back towards
you. So I'm gonna let, 'em have it. I'm gonna push 'em away. Whoops.
Don't you be selfish. Don't you be selfish. Okay.
So he didn't really bring it back. This is a really common thing.
Puppies will say, I wanna play with that and they wanna go do their own thing.
That's why I have this leash on so that if he decides to play selfishly,
I not allowed going to allow him to do that.
I'm just gonna encourage him to come back. Oh, are you ready?
I don't like that thing. Come on.
I don't like that thing. Okay.
Now I'm actually gonna switch toys because he finds this toy. Very high value.
So I'm gonna switch this something a little lower value.
Let's try it with this one. Okay. Okay. Ready?
Ready? Set. Ready?
So don't take it off them when they first come back. Make sure you play, play,
play, play, play. Good boy. Can't try and rip it out of his mouth a bit.
Keep the game going. Keep the game going. I can't get out of his mouth.
He's crazy. He's wild. He's crazy. He's wild. Ready?
Yes. Note on the ugly carpets,
we just put another carpet out because I don't want him running and,
and slipping on the hardwood floor and hurting himself.
So we've just brought another little area rug in here.
So he has a little bit of traction. Okay. We're gonna do one more. You ready?
You ready? Ready?
Yay.
Good one. Wow.
Good boy.
And again, lots of play. When they get back,
I'm actually getting just as tired as he is here.
But you don't just wanna take it from them right away because he's not,
not gonna wanna give it up to me.
He needs to learn the most fun part of playing fetch is bringing it to me.
Oh, don't you do that? Okay. So I'm gonna get his line. Come.
Let's try that again. Ready?
Yay. There we go. Lucky that line's on.
Now what I was gonna mention before, how people ruin their,
their retrieves is that if he has access to these types of toys and I'm gonna do
something bad and I just let go and I let him just go and play with it on his
own and not involve me.
And he learns that playing with the toys by himself is actually more fun.
It's gonna really ruin my retreat. So what I have for him is this toy,
this toy in particular, hi, lala is a retrieve toy. We play FES together,
or I use it for training. He doesn't get access to this toy. Any other time,
he gets lots of chew toys to, to play with, believe me,
but he has bones or Kongs or things that are more to designed for self
self, you know, play that are not going to hurt him in Anyway.
Like if he was to eat this and swallow it, that would hurt him.
If he was to rip this apart and ingest stuff that would hurt him.
So these are just play toys.
And I keep that retrieve strong by making sure that whenever he interacts with
these, it's always included with me.
And when you have a young puppy before they know how to really do this reliably,
having the leash on now at home,
he actually retrieves very reliably because I'm in a new location.
He sort saying maybe the rules don't apply here.
And that's another reason why it's important that you get your puppy out to
different places. Yeah.
We're movin' a groovin' and he loves to do this for some silly reason.
He loves to lie on the side and then I pull him around.
I've never had a puppy if you like that before, but whatever. See,
You may have seen us do something called a retraint recall in past videos.
And normally what we do is show you with two people.
But today what I'm gonna do is show you how you,
how you can do this with just one person. Now it is lunchtime for Five-Alive.
So I'm actually gonna use some of his food for this. So to do this on your own,
you need some treats. You could certainly use a toy. If you wanted to,
you need your leash attached to your puppy and then you need something that you
can put the leash around.
So I'm just gonna use the little table like of this table here.
Now I'm gonna put the leash around.
So I'm creating a bit of like a pulley system, a little catapult for the puppy.
I'm gonna tease him with the food. Ready set.
I'm gonna say his name and then I'm gonna let go of the leash. Set five. Yay.
Good boy. Yes. And I can reward him for coming close.
Now the significance of just having the leash go around the table leg is to
create some resistance is to build the excitement up for the puppy.
If I was just to put the food on the nose and call his name and back away,
I'm sort of not getting him as excited as ramped up as I really could,
which makes the exercise more fun. And again,
what I'm trying to do here is tire him out. So I need to expend lots of energy.
Ooh. Except now he's sitting like a perfect angel. So I'm gonna reward him.
Okay. Let's try again. Can you, oh. Oh, that's not gonna work.
Hold on. Let's try it again. Okay. What's this? Oh,
five alive Lulu. Ready? Set five. Yes.
Oh, that's a good boy. I can draw. 'em In. Nice and close.
Good man. If you're using treats,
you'll actually be able to do lot more repetitions. If you're using a toy,
you'll find that they tire out even faster. Okay. Let's do one more.
Ready with this. Get set. Five.
Yes. Good boy.
Buddy puppies behavior will always be better when they are properly
exercised. If you think back when they were in a litter with their puppies,
their bombin' around playing,
doing all this energy and then they all flop on top of one another and they pass
out for hours.
So we need to make sure that our puppies are getting adequate exercise,
but it needs to be exercise. Number one,
that's safe for puppies to do is we're not hurting them in any way,
but also remember that you wanna do things that are gonna do something for your
relationship. Because at the end of the day,
we want our dogs to have a great bond with us. We them to learn,
to listen and to like listening.
So we can choose to do things with our dogs that are gonna develop that type of
rapport with them all while we're tiring them out at the same time.
It's time for me to get to work. It's time for sleepy.
Head to go in his crate for a little bit. Good boy. Yeah.
Now if you enjoy today's video and you wanna see more like it,
click that card right here, to see more.
If you're looking for some specific training,
that's tailored to you and your puppy and you wanna work with me and the rest of
the McCann Dogs instructors,
make sure you check out our Puppy Essentials online course.
The link for that is in the description below. On that note. I'm Kayl.
I'm late for class. Happy Training!