- As professional dog trainers, we get asked
lots of questions in classes,
and this week we thought we would answer
some of the questions that you guys are asking us
in our videos, and that's what we're gonna do.
So I'm Ken.
- I'm Kayl.
- And welcome back to McCann Dogs.
(guitar strumming) (puppy barking)
Thanks for joining us here at McCann Dogs,
where every single week, we help you
enrich your dog's life, and help your dog
to become a well-behaved, four-legged family member.
Let's get right into the first question,
so the first question comes to us
from Ruff House Dog Training & Behavior Modification,
and they ask, "How do you fix the curving
"when they start to back up?"
And that's from one of our walk backwards videos.
So what do you think, Kayl, do you wanna answer?
- Yeah, I've actually had that problem with my own dogs
a couple times, they seem to curve one way just naturally,
so one of the things that I have done to correct that,
or to help them, is when I'm initially teaching them
to back up, I use almost like a channel or a shoot,
so with my last puppy, when I was working on it,
I had worked in the hallway, and I just put
a couple chairs up along the side,
so I left a little bit wider of a space than her body width,
so that when she backed up, it sort of channeled her
to back up straight in the correct direction,
and then I would yes and reward and throw the food to her,
so that she would be reinforced for going straight,
and then I sort of gradually moved the chairs away,
and then another method that I also used
was teaching the dog to back up
until they could put their feet on something,
whether it be linoleum to a mat, or something
to a little raised plank or something like that,
and then I could place that behind the dog
so they'd have to back up and almost reach behind them
to find it, and that would also control
their direction of the back up.
Of course, the dog needs to know the back up
quite well to do this, but both methods
seem to be successful.
- There we go!
Alright, next question,
actually, we're gonna put two questions together.
Our Teach Your Puppy to Love Retrieving
and Teach Your Puppy to Love Bringing the Toy
Back to You, yeah, Beeline's really cute in this video,
but we had a couple of questions on,
and they're kind of along the same lines,
so we're gonna bring them together.
So the first question from redsherbet,
"Will any dog enjoy fetch?"
- I would've said redsherbert,
only because I love sherbert,
but it is definitely sherbet. - I think it's sherbet,
or is it sorbet?
- I don't know. - Yeah, I think the name
is redshertbet.
They also have a very cute profile picture, but,
so, "Will any dog enjoy fetch?"
And secondly from EssieGirl85,
"When my Border Collie was a pup,
"he loved toilet roll tubes.
"He didn't seem to like any other toys much,
"but he loved these.
"He's now into frisbee, but he ends up
"biting his tongue quite often,"
so these are strangely related, these two questions,
so why don't we talk about that a little bit?
- So first off, will any dog enjoy fetch?
No, actually, not all dogs enjoy fetch,
some dogs naturally are born with a lot of food drive,
or a lot of toy drive, and sometimes,
depending on how they are raised,
a dog that had a lot of toy drive to begin with,
if that's not sort of nourished and encouraged
from their owners and their family,
that toy drive can diminish and can go away,
or the opposite can happen,
if you have a dog that doesn't have a lot of natural drive
for toys, there are lots of techniques that you can do
to build that drive for dogs,
but there's certainly some dogs
that are just crazy in love with toys,
and love to play fetch, and they could just do it
all day long, and other dogs that do it
for the sake of pleasing their owner,
or just because it's a trained trick,
but they don't necessarily find it as internally rewarding,
so it comes down to a bit of training
and some different strategic things,
which sounds like a great video.
- Absolutely, it's something that we'll cover
in the future, but I think you can teach any dog to fetch.
Whether they will enjoy fetching or not
is all about the currency of reward,
if you can find something that they really love
as a reward, or for fetching,
or that they love to fetch, I think it's perfect.
And when we talk about, I see Girl85's comment
that her Border Collie puppy loved to fetch
toilet roll tubes, that's really part of finding that thing,
finding that high-currency reward,
or valuable thing for your dog to retrieve.
Now, going onto the second part of EssieGirl85's question,
"He's now into frisbee, but he ends up
"biting his tongue quite often,"
it's something that I know both Kayl and I love
as a fetch toy, or as a retrieve toy,
is the soft frisbees, or the fabric frisbees.
Love them! - Yeah,
I really like them, I find that they stay,
throw quite nicely, and the dogs
can grab them really easily, I always teach my dogs
to play frisbee initially with a soft frisbee,
because it's really easy for them to catch,
it's not as difficult as something
that's a bit harder plastic, or harder material,
and no biting tongues, it's much, much safer for them,
I mean, if you're into disc dog,
they have really good quality frisbees
that fly really nice, they go a long distance,
and the dogs can catch those really well,
but you wanna stay away from the promo-type frisbees
that they often hand out, they're great,
they're cute, but they're not really super great
for your dog's mouth.
- Absolutely, so keep that in mind.
- Okay, this next question is Rachel Batta,
I'm hoping I'm saying her last name correctly,
it's more of a comment, actually, rather than a question,
and it's in reference to the thunderstorm video
that we put out on ways and suggestions
to help your dog be calm, or be less stressed
during that moment, and she said some of the things
that she's done with her dogs, which are excellent,
so she says, "We let our puppy hear sounds
"off YouTube off our TV,
"very low, then gradually increase sound level,
"things like thunderstorm, traffic, fireworks,
"barking dogs, crowds of people, musical instruments,
"beach water store, shore, excuse me,
"even Halloween scary sounds,"
she really covers all bases, I think,
"even helped with kids at the door," which is awesome.
"Daisy has no issues with any of these now,
"she is three years old and still sleeps
"through night storms," so, they're great suggestions.
- Yeah, that's a really great way to help your,
to desensitize your dog through any of these problems,
and one of our suggestions that we made actually
in the video, so from any sort of environmental sounds,
taking music, again, these sounds,
playing them while you're gone,
really, really great ways to help your dogs
through any of these scenarios,
so that was a great job by you, Rachel,
for helping your dog through these environment sound issues.
'Kay, next is actually a comment,
comes from Davis Tran after watching
How to Stop Using Food in Training.
And he says, "I already understood the sequence
"of saying the command right before the action
"of luring in order to get the dog
"to predict the action after it hears the verbal cue,
"but I never thought having food in front of the dog's face
"as you say the verbal cue as a distraction,"
and it really would slow down that aspect of training,
but why don't we talk about why we do that,
like how there is a distraction,
if you have food in front of your dog's face,
why you say the command.
- Yeah, I think two things happen,
number one, if the food is in front of the dog's face,
some dogs, especially if they're highly food motivated,
they tend to focus on the food so much
that they go through the motions of what you're luring them,
or showing them to do, but they're not actually
comprehending the word that you're putting with it,
because they're so focused on getting the food,
where other dogs sometimes become
very dependent on that step,
so unless you show your hand with the food
before giving them a command,
you can tell them, "Sit, sit, sit,"
or whatever you're saying all day long,
and they just sort of wait and anticipate
for the hand and the food to come forward,
so those are the two most important reasons
why we try to eliminate that step,
so give the command clearly,
and then within that one-second timeframe,
add the signal and the food one second later
to show the dog what we want.
- Yeah, which is why timing is so important.
- You bet!
- Next question comes from, Is Tugging With Your Dog
a Bad Idea?, from the video there,
it comes from The Light Up North,
and why don't you read the question for us, Kayl?
- "Thanks for the tips.
"If your dog's teeth do touch your hand,
"what is the best way to teach them that that's not okay?"
So this is during playing tug with your dog.
"Will they connect pausing or stopping the game
"with the action of their teeth or mouth
"contacting your hand or skin?"
And yes, they absolutely will,
especially if your dog finds playing
and interacting with you very motivating and rewarding,
so if you're having a game, and your dog does anything
that you don't like, and it could be something
more than biting your hands, it could be jumping up
or scratching you, or whatever it might be,
anything that you don't like, you can basically let your dog
know that by stopping the game altogether.
I will say one common error I see people do
is when they go to stop the game,
they often try to pull the dog's toy out of the dog's mouth,
and that actually, for a lot of dogs,
is like the most fun thing that you can do,
almost as, like, you're continuing to play the game,
so one of the better strategies
is to actually make the toy go completely still
and very, very boring, you can even brace it
against your leg, and stop all of the fun,
so your dog's not so stimulated anymore,
so that they sorta go, "Oh, this is really boring,
"whatever I just did didn't really seem
"to make the game very engaging,"
and when the dog sort of stops and settles,
then you can start the game again, as if to say,
"I like that behavior better, now let's try it again,"
so that can often be a good way to stop it,
provided that the dog's pretty cooperative.
- Yeah, for sure, and marking the behavior with your voice,
like that oops or ouch or something,
but rather than pulling the toy again,
just making it much less interesting.
- Absolutely.
- The next one's actually a comment rather than a question,
it comes from K9crazy.
- And it's from our video that had to do
with how to deal with a lost dog emergency,
so her question was, "When we rescued our dog,
"the RSPCA told us that we shouldn't put her name
"on the tag because she responds to her name so well,
"so it would make it easier for someone to steal her
"because they would respond to them as well."
And Ken and I have a little bit of a difference
of opinion on this one, I agree with this,
when I travel, I purposely do not put my dog's names
on their collars, on their tags,
I just have my email address and I have my telephone number,
just because my dogs are really well-trained,
and if somebody was to start calling their name,
they would probably go right along with them perfectly well,
but they would also respond to normal commands
like come or here as well, so, I don't know.
- So it provides more backup to my opinion,
which is that, I mean, it depends on where you live,
but I feel like I wanna have my dog's name on their tag
because what's the likelihood that someone
is going to find him?
I think it's more valuable to have their name on their tag
so that if they were lost, someone were to know their name
and be able to better assist them, and you,
in getting them back, but it's so unlikely
that someone would want to steal your dog
and would be close enough, if they're close enough
to read their tag, they've already got them,
so that's my opinion-- - This is true.
Yeah, so I think the moral of the story is
that it doesn't really matter what you do,
you can put whatever you want on your dog's collar,
but hopefully you're not in a scenario or a situation
where something that terrible would happen,
but I think it's good if the dog will respond to somebody,
because if that somebody can get ahold of them
and get them safe, then that's your best bet,
and I'm hopeful that whoever gets the dog
will check their microchip,
and then that's gonna lead them back to me as well,
which is why it's important to microchip your dogs.
- For sure, and I have no further comment,
because I feel like I actually won.
Next question, or comment comes from World Towning,
and I actually subscribed, we actually subscribed
to these guys, World Towning, they have a very cool
family vlog that teaches families
how to travel all over the world,
and live in a different time, it's very cool.
And it comes in our How To Stop Your Dog
From Jumping Up video.
World Towning says, "Is it normal to have a dog
"on the leash all the time?
"I've not had a dog in a while,
"but that is not a practice that I usually did,"
and this is a great point.
- Yeah, this is something that we do normally do,
we sort of do the opposite, so when we have a young puppy,
we start out with them on a leash,
or even just a light line so it's not quite so invasive
in the house, and then we started that on
so that when the puppy is bound to make mistakes
when they're young and they don't have much life experience,
we can redirect them really easily
and help them to not learn bad behaviors in the house,
and this particular one was stopping them
from jumping on people when they come in the house,
so the leash is a really, really great way
to prevent a problem from developing
into something that happens and becomes a habit,
versus waiting longer for the dog,
and giving them a chance to jump on people,
or chew things in your house, or whatever it might be,
and then you're trying to run around and catch them
and get control because you don't have a leash on,
so basically what we do with our dogs is,
when they're young, if we sort of see
that they're starting to listen well
to their basic commands, then we might graduate
to like a shorter leash or something really small,
and then eventually, we work to being able to be off-leash,
but then we're also ready to put the leash back on
if they go through like a little terrible two stage,
where they sort of become a bit of a adolescent,
like six, seven, eight months.
Luckily, (knocks on table)
knock on plastic, Beeline is at that exact age,
and she's been really good lately, so.
- Yeah, she's been really great,
but again, if you start taking care of any problems,
you can always take a step back
and put the dog back on a long line, or a leash,
just for safety's sake.
- The next question we have is from our other back up video
that we made, a little bit different one,
Teach Your Dog to Back Up, and it's from Macy Lundin,
"What do you do if your dog doesn't back up
"when you walk towards them?
"My dog will sit when I walk towards her,
"and I don't know how to change that."
- Yeah, and that's a pretty common problem
that people encounter when they're training
the back up trick, and there's sort of a couple steps
that you can do, and probably one of the most important
is your hand position, where your hand is
as you're backing up with your dog.
A lot of times, if you increase the social pressure,
allow your dog out of that sudden increase
of social pressure by moving a little bit closer,
your dog will naturally back up,
but if you encounter the situation
where they sit and it looks like a hard seat,
and you can't get them out of the sit,
then watch where your hands are.
It's helpful if you get your hands down
to sort of their spine level,
and in line with their neck as you step into them,
they're less likely to feel like it's a sit lure,
and feel like you're trying to get 'em
into that sitting position, so watch your hands,
keep them at the same line as their collar or their neck,
and step into them to encourage them to back up.
- Yeah, which means if you have a small dog,
and I can see a picture of a CKC Spaniel
on her little profile here, which means
that dog's that like, need love are the sweetest dogs ever,
so you would need to bend right over
in order to get that dog to keep its head straight.
When you have the food high, the dog often
will naturally lift their head to look up at the food,
and when you step into them, they will put
all of the weight into their back end,
that's actually a technique that we have used
to teach sit in front after a recall,
so keeping the head lower, and keeping the hand sort of
so that the spine and head line up
will often fix that right away.
- So good luck with your back up training.
- Cute dog.
- Alright, next question comes on How to Teach Your Dog
to Jump Up Into Your Arms, and it comes from kayxx,
it looks like, "My dog doesn't listen to words,
"they don't get words, if I say hup every time
"they do it right, I think they should get it,
"but when I say hup without helping them,
"they don't get, they don't understand me,"
I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but,
so let's talk a little bit about trick training,
and if you're moving head too quickly,
and you're using a command and it's not working,
what should our viewers do?
- Well, basically, any time with, whether it's tricks
or any skill that you're trying to train your dog,
if you're starting to use a verbal command
and you're not getting a response from your dog,
you need to consider why,
is it that the dog's being a bit of a brat
and they're not responding because they
would rather do something else, or is it confusion?
If it's confusion, then definitely what we wanna do
is go back a few steps, and help the dog to be successful
and go to whatever step the dog is responding reliably.
What I always like to say about training specifically,
though, is that tricks aren't a test, so,
if you use a verbal command and then have some body language
and some encouragement as well,
there's absolutely nothing wrong with that,
one of the things that we love about trick training
is that the way we do it is purely positive training,
so, if the dog's struggling, we just use more tools
to help the dog to be successful, to build their confidence,
and to let them have a lot of fun, so I think it's great
that she wants to have things just on a verbal command,
I think is what she's getting here,
but I also don't think it's the end of the world
to help the dog a little bit more,
and again, consider if the dog's struggling
because they're unsure, or maybe they're just distracted
and she needs to change the environment
that she's practicing in.
- For sure, all of these skills are built
on a solid foundation of success,
so you need to be successful before you move forward,
and if you encounter a situation where it's too hard,
then just take a step back, and help your dog
a little bit more. - Absolutely.
- Next question comes from GelderHooves
from our 8 Fun Tricks You Can Teach Your Dog to Do,
the video's got almost 1/2 a million views,
like 350,000 views or something, yeah.
- Mr. Hummer. - It features, yeah,
a Border Collie cross named Hummer,
and the other Border Collie cross,
a Canadian named Funky Monkey,
but GelderHooves asks, "Why is there a dog
"sitting in a chair in the background?"
(Kayl chuckles)
- I think this is really funny.
- Yeah, I don't know what else you do with chairs.
You want him to sit on the floor like an animal?
- I know, why on Earth would you ever leave a dog
on the floor? - Absolutely,
but Kayl's actually got a really great reason for that.
- Yeah, I, often if I'm training more than one dog,
I ask one of the dogs to sort of wait somewhere,
whether it's up on a chair,
it happens to be what's there and convenient,
which that, was the case at the time of that video,
or like a dog bed or something like that,
or sometimes I'll have them go in a crate,
but I'll leave the crate door open,
and the reason why I do that is,
I like that dog that's waiting its turn
to have to show some type of self-control
while I'm training another dog,
and then I'll often switch them, so,
my dogs are pretty funny, so if I'm working them in a group,
I can actually say to the dogs,
Grand Slam's turn, and he will leave the pack
and come and work, and everybody else knows that
that's not their name, and they have to wait
at whatever they're doing, and then I can send him back,
to a chair or to a table, and then I can call
another one out to do training.
It definitely allows me to train more dogs
in a much smaller amount of time,
but there is method to my madness,
and that is so that the other dogs
are sort of having to use their brains at the same time--
- Teaching them to be mindful.
It's really an impressive trick--
- Yeah, I actually didn't really realize
that it was that unique, 'cause I'm so used to doing it,
so I think it's really funny that someone watching the video
would notice that, so, pretty cool.
- And on that note, we're gonna wrap this up.
Wanna thank you guys for joining us,
if this is your first time with us,
make sure you hit that subscribe button,
we publish new videos every single Thursday
to help you enrich your dog's life,
and to help your dog to become a well-behaved
four-legged family member, and we're gonna be doing
these comment answer question things more frequently,
because I think it'd be good for our channel
to give back, and answer questions--
- Yeah, there was great, great questions and great comments,
so hopefully if we can clarify things,
or even come up with new ideas for more videos
and things that you guys wanna see,
we would love to hear it, that's perfect
- Absolutely, so post your questions
in the comment section below, and on that note,
I'm Ken Steepe. - I'm Kayl McCann.
- Happy training, bye for now.