In our Last video, you saw this.
In today's video,
you're gonna see Amy come to a really great realization about her leadership and
her puppy training. That could really change everything.
And I think it's gonna help you too.
Because I haven't established consistency,
I haven't been doing any of these things. There's no plan to it. Okay.
If that makes sense. Right. You were talking about the crate,
That's something I should do every time. Yes.
But it would just be a one-off if I did it. I see.
Or yesterday I was cooking in the kitchen and I kept telling her to go, Okay.
But I wasn't really paying attention to her,
so I should've put her in the crate.
Okay. This is brilliant that this is coming up because
this is where the lack of structure is coming in,
and this is where we're getting a lot of the excited stuff because she
needs a little bit more rules. And that she needs to, If you are
doing dinner, what's your plan with the dog?
If people come to the door,
what's your puppy plan when you wanna sit down and watch tv?
What's your puppy plan when you go to bed? What's your puppy plan?
So your whole day sort of has to have a bit of structure to it, .
And sometimes when people look at it that way, they think like, Oh my gosh,
this is so much work and it is a lot of work, but it's temporary.
Because what happens is when they're smart as she is,
and we start to provide structure, here bud, get this,
we start to provide structure. The dog starts to go, Oh,
this is our routine. When it gets to the point,
now I can open the stove and Five Alive, our puppy will go onto the bed.
I didn't teach him that, but he put together,
because I have rehearsed so many times being at the stove,
having him go to the bed, that he's just put two and two together.
But now it's really great because it's like we have a bit of a flow together
because there's been structure.
So I definitely think that's something you need to think about at home with her
about structure, because if the second you find yourself being, No Penny,
stop Penny, do this, do that. And it's pretty much what it does,
which pretty happens all the time.
It's lowering your leadership because she's sort of saying,
You don't know what you're talking about because you tell me do a hundred
million things. And also the information that she's getting is,
you're making a wrong choice. You're making your wrong choice,
you're making your wrong choice, . And what we wanna do is say,
Oh my gosh, look,
could you go on your bed because I've just helped her on her bed.
Or good girl for picking up your bone, or whatever.
So I wanna change how I'm interacting with her
so that I'm kind of setting her up to make the good choice.
And if I don't have time to do that at the moment,
because I have a young daughter and I'm cooking dinner and I'm trying to get out
the door and all those things, she goes in her crate.
Because when she's in her crate, she's not learning the bad stuff.
And then when she's out,
you gotta put a little bit of time into teaching her some of these things. And
then over time,
it's just the balance changes to tons of crate time with training.
You're trying to fit in. She starts to get more training,
and all of a sudden you're like, Okay,
well I don't actually have to put her away because she knows to go and lie down
on her bed. She knows to go and get her bone, or she knows to do those things.
But right now, you're in the super awkward stage where she's a baby,
she's a puppy. She doesn't have those skills yet.
But what we wanna do is they're learning all of the time.
If she is doing a lot of rehearsal of learning,
dinner time or night,
you are kind of distracted because you're doing your own thing and she can kind
of get away with stuff, then that's what she's learning.
So we need to change the narrative in those situations. In our last video we
talked about nipping and biting,
and we worked through that and she did really great with that.
But we also wanna talk a little bit about just overall leadership and control.
Because sometimes when puppies are nipping and biting or they're being wild and
crazy or whatever they're doing that we don't like discipline
isn't necessarily the only answer.
It could just be changing our management tactics. Good. That was really good.
Good girl. Good. Settle. And then make sure you acknowledge when she's being,
Good girl. Good girl. Good. Settle. That's better.
So first question for you is, are you using a crate at home?
Yes. And how is she with the crate? She's great. Oh, good. Okay. Perfect. Yeah.
So she's happy to go in the crate. She's good. Is she fairly quiet in the crate?
Yep. The first 48 hours she cried nonstop.
And after that she stopped.
Good. So she goes on her own. Now sometimes.
To relax,
that is fantastic because when you have a dog that has not such great emotional
control, again, like I said before mm-hmm. ,
it's not because she's a bad dog at all. She is like just she's ready to PARTY!
Right. You're a party girl.
But that can be hard sometimes because they're wild and crazy and they're
jumping and they're pulling and they're being obnoxious.
Just because she has all this energy, she doesn't know what to do with herself.
The crate is gonna be a good way to calm her down.
But it's important that we're not using it in a way.
We don't wanna use the crate as a form of discipline.
We wanna use it as a form of prevention so that we can stop her
from nipping and biting. So can you tell me in what scenarios,
what scenarios is she normally a bit out of control? Would you say?
Maybe outta controls isn't the right phrase, but more nippy and bitey,
or making more poor choices or a little bit more.
Wild. We're trying to relax with.
Her.
So if we're sitting watching tv, even if she's on her bed,
she'll come up and if I'm sitting there with my legs crossed, she'll nip.
My toes. She's not at the same level. I pet her she nips. Okay. Exactly. Okay.
Similar to what's happening right now. You just pet her and she nips.
Yeah. Okay. So yeah, take her collar and then loosen the leash. Tell her,
knock that off.
No, settle.
Good. And just keep holding her for a second. Good. Okay. Now break.
Good girl. Okay. And actually don't feed her. No.
And the reason why I don't want you to feed her is because she's very smart.
And I don't want her to think that if she's told not to nip and bite that
there'll be a cookie at the end. So in those circumstances, ,
I would use praise and affection as her reward. So praise her. Genuinely.
Good girl. That's better. Use affection, praise and touch her. Good girl.
That's better. Good. We don't always have to use the food. Good girl. Good girl.
Okay, so let's talk about that nighttime leadership thing,
because I actually think this is a super common time. Lots of puppies,
. I'm sure people watching at home,
that's a very common thing because often we're ready to die down.
We're ready to chill out. The puppies are like,
I still have two more hours of excitement.
So there's a couple things you can do. Number one,
before you go into chill out time ,
make sure that any pent up energy that she has,
you've gotten rid of that.
So maybe before you sit down to watch TV or hang out with her, you go outside,
take five minutes and do some restraint recalls with her,
or you do a minute or so of tug,
do something that actually lets her get that stuff out.
But it's something that is productive. So by playing tug and out,
she's having a lot of energy, but she is, there's still control there.
Or if you're playing restraint recalls,
whereas your husband holds her and you call her and call her to a tug toy and
play tug or something like that. Again,
it gets that energy out. Now she's got the edge off of her a little bit.
Right now you can go and do something a bit calmer. Will she be perfect?
Probably not. But be a little bit less energetic.
The other thing you can do is when you have her out, give her something to do.
So if you have a bed or something, . Oh good, good, good. Oh.
Or you can lie on the bed and chew a bone like an angel .
Very good choice. Pen. She said maybe, Or maybe I'll chew on it. Good girl.
That was a nice choice. I thought you were gonna lie down there.
You can give that a try here. Good. Get your bone there. So if she ,
she's showing me what you have having her have a bed nearby with something to
chew would be great. Okay.
One of the tactics that I would do with my puppy is a bone like this. I love for
her crate and stuff like that.
But I personally found that if I wanted to do some chill out time,
this bone wasn't high value enough. Okay. So I would actually use
yak cheese bone or something like that is a bit higher value.
The only time my puppy got it was in those moments.
So because I could have him up on my lap, or sometimes I have a big dog bed,
I would pull it and I would literally sit on it with him with my back against
the couch and I'd have a leash on.
I'd have him lie down and I would just hold the bone and he'd lie here and he'd
chew away on it. But because it was higher value, it kept him engaged longer.
And then if he decided, eh, I'm gonna go and do my own thing,
I wouldn't let him,
I would have him on the leash and I'd just make him come over and lay with me
and be calm. I could only do that for so long before I was like,
I actually wanna watch the show and you're annoying.
So I would do it for a little bit,
and then I would very happily go and put him in the crate and then we would
watch tv. So you don't have to do it for long periods of time.
You could do it for short periods of time.
But what will start to happen is that scenario, well, she'll start to say, Okay,
this is what we do. Mom holds my bone, we lie together, we chew,
and then it starts to get a little bit easier.
And that's my question about the crate. So we have a crate on our main floor.
Yeah, we have a crate upstairs. Good. Perfect. But in the basement, we don't.
Okay. Which is kind of, I.
Mean, definitely. What do you spend most of your time there?
It depends.
In our evenings there's a play area for my daughter and we'll watch TV and
stuff. So we do spend a considerable amount of time.
Just lift up on your leash now cuz. So I don't wanna interrupt you,
but when she does that, just lift up on the leash for a second. Yes.
Just tell her. Settle. Settle.
So what's happening here is she's been sitting here for a long time cuz we're
talking, and now she's getting a little bit, I'm a little bit over this,
so I'm just gonna put some cheese on her bone here,
and we're just gonna see if we can give her a little bit of something to do.
Okay. I love where your head's at here with your crate location things. So okay,
go look at.
That. So I guess my question is,
should we just take her upstairs to the main floor and put her in her crate?
Or should we? Yeah.
Instead of,
I think it's important that she has time in the crate when you're there,
and it's equally as important that she can be upstairs in her crate while you're
downstairs and that she's okay with that. Okay. All right.
So there's a balance between it because if she is just everywhere you are all of
the time, she won't necessarily learn that it's okay for you to be apart.
So I think it's good to have a balanced approach in that situation.
So play with the high-value toy while we're doing tv, do whatever,
and then when it's done, take her upstairs and go back down.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. When we are settling,
when my puppies are younger her age, I will,
before I'm ready to chill out myself for the night,
I will do a quick training session with a puppy. Typically,
I find if I do a balance between something that's physical and
something that's mental, that's like the perfect recipe.
So I'll do something physical, the tug in the play,
and then I might do five or six minutes of tricks or sits and downs or something
where the puppy has to use their brain.
Then we'll go outside for our pee and our poop or whatever it might be,
and then go into the crate. And when they're baby puppies,
I will usually bring the crate to where I'm sitting.
But when we get to Penny's age, that's when I ,
that's when I start to say, Okay, we've had our,
it's quality over quantity. I've had my quality time with you.
I know you have all your needs met .
Now you can go away for a couple hours where I sit with the family and I watch
TV. At the end, I take the puppy out for a quick pee again.
And I don't usually do a lot at that point,
cuz I don't really want the puppy to get up again. Go out again? Yeah.
So I go out for a quick pee, and then up to the crate,
our puppy sleeps in a crate in a room, they can sleep anywhere,
it doesn't matter. Perfect. And then into the crate we go for the night.
And that's sort of the normal nightly routine.
And then now that's transferred into, instead of,
I'll do something with him sometimes. Sometimes I don't now.
And then it's just he can come and lie down in.
The room, go in the crate.
At all. Oh no. Yeah.
So it'll be a natural transition.
And you'll start to see it happen because you'll see her in situations where she
may have gone to make a poor choice. .
I remember our puppy went from doing that to all of a sudden he would grab the
bone and he'd go and lie down on his own and chew.
And I would look at Ken and be like, Look at the puppy.
It's like it's starting to happen. You can see it start to happen.
And when you see that, when you start to think like, Gosh,
I'm not on her right now, or I'm not picking up her leisure,
or I'm not getting after her,
and she's starting to kind of just be a bit more chill, then okay,
maybe she's ready for a little bit more freedom,
or she's ready for a little bit more time out.
And then you also go through bumps and hiccups along the way where it's like she
gets a bit adolescent and you're like, Gosh,
she's just a pain in the butt now. So you up the crate time a little bit more or
whatever. You just make adjustments based on what's happening in the moment.
Okay, great. Mm-hmm.
leadership is such an important aspect of your puppy training and
it can really help diminish the nipping and biting.
But if you wanna learn more about how to work through nipping and biting with
your puppy, check out the video right here.
Leadership is a really popular topic that we cover in our Puppy Essentials
online program. So if you wanna work with me and the rest of the McCann team,
make sure you check out the link in the description below. On that note,
I'm Kayl. This is Amy and Penny. Happy training.