Do you have a stubborn dog who just wants to pull on the leash or do their own
thing even when you're using treats to train them. In this video,
we're going to talk to you about a dog training checklist that's going to help
you to get more focus from your dog.
And we're going to let you in on a couple of secrets that we've learned from the
more than 90,000 dogs that have been trained at our training facility.
I'm Ken Steepe. I'm Kayl McCann, welcome back to McCann Dogs. Ken and
I just got back from teaching classes today and it was a pretty exciting day
because it was the students very first time at our school with their dogs.
And it's an exciting time because the dogs are highly distracted.
And one of the most common things that we hear from people in their early stages
of training is my dog. So stubborn and he doesn't want to take the food,
you know, what else can I do?
So we wanted to take some time to talk to you today about why that happens,
why some dogs are deemed as stubborn and some tips that we can do to help sort
of move around that, that barrier for sure.
And this is definitely something that I've heard from a lot of students and I
know it's in the comment section of our videos.
It's something that I hear mentioned quite often.
So we're going to outline a few tips that you need to sort of be aware of while
you're training your dog that you can check things off and you're going to very
quickly discover the that it isn't necessarily the treats that your dog that's
making your dog stubborn.
There's a few other things that you really need to be aware of.
If you find that you're not getting some focus from your four legged family
member.
One of the most common complaints I get from my students or frustrations is that
when they go for a walk, they could say, you know,
I can put the biggest steak in front of my dog's face.
And they still don't want food. They just want to pull and drag me to the park.
And I've been there. So I know that, that that can happen.
It's not uncommon. So one of the things that, that we will suggest to,
to help work on that is, you know,
if you can't control the dog with the food that you have and you're not having
success in that certain environment that you're practicing in, for example,
you know, walking to the park or whatever it might be,
the only other option that you have is to change your dog's environment.
And build the success in something that's a little bit less challenging with
less distractions. So, you know, it's a good idea to rate the distraction level,
you know, out of 10.
So if you're going for a walk to the park and there's a bunch of other people
and dogs and kids and excitement going around,
that's probably a level 10 distraction for a lot of dogs. You know, Ken,
your dog give you the focus that you need when you're in the house and there's
nothing going on that would be like, you know, a level one.
So what people often make the mistake of doing is they think they have things
perfected in a level one or two distracted environment and then they hit it with
a 10 and try to walk in the park and then everything unravels very quickly.
So we want to do is blend in distractions more gradually.
Teaching your dog to be able to function and focus on you without having things
around you that are, are quite so difficult to compete against.
It could mean that maybe in your house you start to incorporate more
distractions. You know, put some of your dog's favorite toys on the ground.
You know,
we will use food containers that have a lid on them and little hole holes poked
in the tops of the Dunkin, smelled the food, but they can't get it.
And we'll scatter that everywhere and we'll work on our exercises.
So it's not just nothing going on. The dog has some choices to make.
And then we might practice in the driveway for 30 minutes instead of walking,
you know, in the neighborhood for 30 minutes.
So it's the same amount of time but you're just not exposing to the dog to so
much stuff. In the beginning.
And then of course you can work into making things a little bit more
challenging. But everything,
everything about the way we train dogs here at McKinsey is about building on
success and what they learn first, they learn best.
So you want to start off easy and then as dog showing some, some improvement,
then slowly start to make it a little bit more challenging.
And it, these really brings up the point when people will say,
my dog is so stubborn. He always pulls when we go on walks.
He's not the one making the choice to go out for the same long walks and pulling
down the street. You need to break down that challenge for him.
You need to show him how to be right. We talked a little bit about, you know,
using the right kind of food that maybe that's part of it,
but that environment is such a really, really important one.
The other thing you may not be aware of is maybe your dog is worried about the
environment. Maybe you're in a, in a location environment,
exactly that's too overstimulating or concerning to them and they just,
they won't take food in that situation.
So really you know take stock of what's going on around you,
the response that your dog has and maybe reduce the challenge for them a little
bit. It's not them that's stubborn.
It's then you that stubborn insisting that you try the same things over and over
again without any sort of affecting any change.
If you think that you have a stubborn dog or a dog that's not really interested
in working for food,
the most obvious suggestion that we would make is look at the food that you're
using and make sure it's valuable. But what you also need to consider is do,
does your dog actually find food to be a valuable thing to work for in the first
place?
And I'm a very common question that we will ask our students is what their
feeding schedule is.
Because sometimes changing your dog's feeding schedule can make all the
difference in your dog's drive to
Work for food. Yeah.
And this isn't just limited to what time of day that you're feeding them,
but there's some people that will free feed their dog and if you're not sure
free feeding is free feeding is when you put down a certain amount of food and
then you just leave it out all day and your dog is able to sort of move around
and choose on their own when they eat from there.
And one thing that we've discovered is that it decreases the value of food for
your dog. I know some of this, sometimes you'll suggest that to a student,
you'll say, are you meal feeding or free feeding? And the,
you'll suggest them change to meal feeding and you'll see 180 degree turn from
that by the next week because you've increased the value of the food.
So if you're free feeding your dog where you placed down food in the morning and
there's, you know, half full bowl of food all day long,
then you want to switch to meal feeding.
And let's talk just for a moment about what meal feeding is exactly
Thing is when your dog has a, you know,
a amount of food that they get at the at breakfast and then again in the evening
for dinner. And for little baby puppies,
we sometimes even suggest giving them a lunch once they get about four months
though old though, we feed just twice a day. So we put their food down,
we give them a few minutes to eat and then we will remove the goal from there.
And if you're switching a dog from free feeding, do meal feeding,
you may find you put the food down and they don't eat as much as you'd like
right away.
You're simply just going to lift the bowl up and then put it back down at the
next feeding time that you'd like to do. And within a couple of days,
the dog will start to eat much more consistently. Now,
the beautiful thing about this is rather than putting the food down for them,
for the dog to eat, you also can then start to use the food for training times.
So I might, you know, take a handful of their food and have, you know, my dog,
do some exercises, some sits and look at me as things like that.
And then I might allow them to eat the rest of the food out of the bowl so I can
start to tie my practice sessions for the same time that my dog is used to
eating their breakfast or dinner when they're already,
their body already tells them that they're hungry.
And and as an added bonus to meal feeding,
you're also going to have an early indication if your dog isn't feeling well.
You know,
oftentimes the first sign of your dog not feeling great is that they aren't
eating their food as they normally would. And if you're free feeding,
you might not notice something like that.
So the added benefit of increasing the value of your dogs food by meal feeding
is is having that awareness of their intake and sometimes their output can be
really, really valuable. So meal feeding, we suggest that for any dog owner,
The last thing that I want to add about meal feeding is your dog's weight.
We see a lot of dogs that are very,
very overweight and typically those dogs are free fed.
It's hard to control if your dog is overweight.
That also can lead to your dog not being that interested in working for food
while they're already fall.
So really look at your dog's weight and make sure that they're not overweight.
Obviously for health reasons, that's the most important thing,
but also of you're looking to train your dog and get them motivated to work for
you.
You want them to be a little bit hungry when they're excited to work for food
because it makes it a more enjoyable experience when they get to eat that tree.
One thing that people often do and something I want you to be very conscious of
is what are you rewarding your dog for?
Think about why you're giving them the foods.
What we want is for our puppies or our young dogs to really understand that food
reward is something that's earned,
that they put in a little bit of effort and that they're being rewarded for
that. And this is something that we talked with with our students a lot about,
Yeah,
people often just sort of feed because it sort of seems like the right thing to
do, but they're not actually looking to see what the dog is doing at the time.
Are they, you know, on a loose leash,
are they paying attention and looking at you and you're offering a reward?
And rewards need to mean it need to mean that you know what you're doing at this
exact moment. I love and I want you to keep doing again. So be really,
really aware of that you're not just feeding for, you know,
them being cute or doing nothing really at all.
We want your dog to understand that rewards are special and they are given
through great behavior.
I was actually talking to a student just the other day,
he just signed up for grade one training and he just found us not long before I
think here on the youtube channel, but he mentioned that he didn't,
he was worried about using human food,
like cooked steak or cooked chicken with his dog because he didn't want to
encourage the dog to beg or hover around the table when they were having their
meals.
Now this is something that I think a lot of people expect that they can't use
humor, human food with their dog cause they're worried about the dog
Begging for it. Yeah.
We often make that suggestion and then people cringe at us.
But what people don't realize is that what causes dogs to beg or you know,
feel like they deserve food when you're at the dinner table is if they're
actually fed in that situation.
So if you're hoping for your dog not to beg at the table,
don't feed them when you're at the table. Don't feed them from a, you know,
from your plate or from the table. Encourage your dog to go, you know,
and lie down and do something productive. So they're, you know,
not hanging around.
But we actually suggest that you use things like cooked chicken, chicken,
wieners leftover steak,
those types of things as your high value reward.
So one of our favorite things to do when we're training our dogs is,
is use a number of different rewards and then we rate them from like,
our dog's favorite. So like a number five,
treat all the way down to a number one treat.
And then we would utilize those different treats based on the exercise that we
were working on and how difficult it was. And B, you know,
where are we practicing in,
are we in a low distracting environment or are we in a really tough place?
Like walking the kids to the school, you know,
where there's kids and dogs and stuff everywhere.
I would be taking my greatest highest value tree in that moment. So using,
you know, food items like that that we eat. You know,
they're exciting for the dog. There's not,
they're not something that the dog gets all of the time. They're semi moist,
easy for the dog to eat.
There's a lot of pros to using that and you certainly don't need to be worried
about the dog starting to beg if you use them correctly.
Yeah. And you mentioned briefly some behaviors that you might think at home,
my dog is so stubborn, he's just not going to pay attention to the food.
W dogs are going to do what's rewarding. So what you need to keep in mind,
if you feel like your dog is not that interested in your food is Kale had
mentioned is this is when you're going to bring up that you need to unlock that
drive. So you need to figure out what's that thing.
They absolutely love more than going to visit another dog more than pulling you
on a leash or visiting another person. This is where you start to you know,
see the world from your dog's eyes. What's more valuable?
It's not your dog that's stubborn.
You just haven't discovered the way to you know, really encourage that focus.
I had attention,
I'm smiling because earlier today I was teaching a class and a woman was
teaching, we were towards the end of the class and the dog had done quite well,
but it was starting to fizzle out, wasn't as interested,
and she was trying to work on teaching the dog to come when it was called and it
was looking all over the place and the woman was trying so hard and she was
getting so frustrated.
So I just pulled some of my treats and I had dried liver at the time and I said,
why don't you try this? And she let her dog sniff it in her.
That dog's eyes just lit out, right. And we ended up getting, you know,
three or four fantastic repetitions of the recall and she was so excited.
She was taking pictures of the treats to making sure she could go get some from
her dog. But even just switching the treats to something higher value,
you can make your and your dogs experienced training together that much more fun
and positive
For sure. And I think that's the perfect segue in speaking of segues.
Something people often overlook when they're training their dog.
And we see this in classes a lot.
I know in talking to students when they go out and train in, you know,
their regular environments, whether it's on their street, in their house,
wherever something they overlook is the variety of reward and talk about the
benefit of, you know, changing it up a little bit.
Yeah.
Often you could have a really high value reward like steak or hotdog wieners or
whatever it might be. And you know,
it's not uncommon for dogs just to sort of get sick and tired of that particular
taste or flavor. So we find it extremely effective to use several tip,
a different types of rewards. You could have them separated and you know,
have a little baggy of hotdogs, have a little baggy of block cheese,
have a little Baggie of you know,
dried liver or whatever might be and switch it up depending on why you're
working on. Or You could go for the whole, you know,
trail mix routine where you put a whole bunch of treats and mix them together.
So each time you bring something out, it's something new for your dog.
And that can also be a much more effective way to keep the engagement from the
dog from a little lot for a little bit longer time.
We have talked a lot about food in your training,
but our ultimate goal is to have a dog that listens even when you don't have
food in your hand.
That video right there is going to show you how to have the perfect timing to
accomplish that. If this is your first time on the channel,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
We publish new videos every single week to help you to have a well behaved four
legged family member. On that note, I'm Ken. I'm Kale.
I be training [inaudible].