드라이브가 높고 흥분하며 산만한 반려견의 훈련 좌절감을 없애는 셰이핑 팁 #262 #팟캐스트

behavioral and physiological correlates of K9 frustration questionnaire they actually had a questionnaire where they asked owners to evaluate their dogs level of frustration and they put the dogs through a number of testbook they describe frustration as an emotional respon response to the violation of a given expectation that's truly what it is and I'm not saying frustration is bad I think frustration is good for all animals including us I'll give you an example I was running an agility course here at home practicing and I made a silly Handler error and my dog went off course I went back and did the same thing again persistence but because I was frustrated by the outcome of what previously happened my persistence with what I was doing came along along with an extra degree of focus and connection to my dogs so that frustration for not getting the expected outcome I wanted resulted in me being more connected more persistent in handling my dog the best I could so I'm not saying frustration is bad I'm just saying that I believe it's the dog's response to frustration that has a massive impact on our dog's natural Drive States for example my dog this whether it be nature how she was genetically bred or it was nurture in that the first 18 months of her life she was fed a diet that made her feel unwell her response to frustration has always been suppression so I tried that it didn't work I think I'll just go and sit down now now I'm working very hard at changing that but I don't believe she will ever be a dog that has the natural response of invigoration when she's frustrated but I see that in a lot of dogs and I think that's the difference in my last few dogs that I've been able to keep them into a healthy level of drive and not have them turn into dogs like Buzzy who were overthe toop and high drive and I say that like it's a function of who he was and I believe it was me that was responsible for who that dog ended up being and I want to help you make sure you don't create those same responses in your own dogs that are showing drive now first before I get too far into this I really think you should go back and listen to shape by Dog episode number 110 and actually if you go over to YouTube there's a playlist a great playlist on highdrive dogs and how you can help your highdrive dog but in particular there's a series that I did shape by Dog episode number 136 137 and 138 all of them will help you make sense of how to train your highdrive dog but first the wrong assumptions people believe that hydrive dogs just need more exercise yeah once we get the edge off they'll be able to focus doesn't work no

what you'll get is a very fit highdrive dog who's still going to have that same level of frustration the same response to frustration but they're just going to be more fit that they can do it for longer so no I don't believe your hydri dog just needs more exercise I believe they absolutely do need daily exercise but they don't need an excessive amount of exercise in a day number two is the belief that these high drive dogs need a firmer hand and here's the truth a highdrive dog is a joy to train because they forgive when you make mistakes like I did this morning with my handling and they're willing and Keen to try again but the curse of that High Drive dog is they're willing to make mistakes and try and try again and so the perception is that they're being willful or on their own agenda and they need a firm hand and that is not the case I don't believe that a high drive dog needs a firm hand I think it's the opposite it I think the more you try to push against them the more frustrated they will be the more invigorated they will be the further you're pushing them away from what their expected response was and so no I don't think a high drive dog needs a firm hand at all there's also the myth that these highdrive dogs can take much longer training sessions the appearance is they can because they won't give up but what you're going to get is sloppier work and you're training that dog that we will do 500 repetitions until you get it right and when you get it right we quit but you're actually building in you don't have to get it right the first time so rather than working for longer times and getting sloppier less focused work what you really need to do is have a better plan and work for shorter periods of time and finally there's the myth that the highdrive dogs are stubborn are willful are strong willed just want to do what they want to do are on their own agenda that they're self- serving that they blow you off or any number of things and I I truly believe our dogs are always doing the best they can with the education we've given them and the environment we've put them in and so none of those boxes get checked for me and trust me when I say I have trained so many highdrive dogs I've trained them both incredibly badly and Incredibly well so mistakes that people make when they're trying to train a high drive dog and I think you might be surprised by one or two of these number one raising your voice so that goes along with a firm hand you get frustrated and you start sighing and what you're doing is you're actually putting more pressure on that dog to be right the next time when they are frantically they're getting

more and more stimulated to do what it is you want to do and in this paper they talked about the cortisol release that happens in response to this frustration and so now you've got a dog that's going to have a very difficult time working in a thoughtful space because of the stress hormones coursing through their body so the worst thing you can do is Raise Your Voice get get angry get frustrated put your hands on your hips stamp your feet let the dog know you're disappointed absolutely the worst thing you can do another thing is if you believe this dog is just going to do what he wants to do you may try to control the dog another horrible thing to do with these highdrive dogs yes they need to be in control but we need to give these dogs autonomy so that they can make those choices you will find the level of stress will really come way down one thing that I found that is something that I don't recommend people do is use a clicker when they're training a high drive dog the sound of that clicker I find stimulates highdrive dogs and they get more frantic especially for shaping exercises they get more frantic looking at waiting for the sound of that magical thing and so my Hallucination is a remote feeder is a second cousin to that so it is a predictable sound and even the gear change ing of a remote feeder so I'm not saying never use it I would say maybe at first when we're working on getting that dog's emotional state down to a more thoughtful level consider putting those things away at least for now okay how does a highdrive dog express himself in training with you how do they express that training now some of them might in their invigorated State they might run off um somebody might call it they're getting the Zoomies but they might run off and go and rehearse resp responses that previously had a history of reinforcement so in agility they might start running through tunnels or just doing obstacles they might go off and grab a toy and run around and have a party of one with their toy and what they're doing is they're decompressing it's an expression of the frustration that they're feeling from the training and they are just decompressing in the only way that they can right now you might see it in a bord Col with them just starting to do an outrun like you're a sheep you might see it in a dog by redirecting and biting either on your sleeve inside of your thigh is a great redirect for a highdrive dog I'm speaking from experience because I've had it you will see that the dog's intensity the frustration is growing because of the intensity at which they grab their food they might go from having a soft mouth

when they're taking food from you to having a very very hard mouth the same with a nose touch they might start nose touching with their teeth they may get more vocal whining barking also more agitated movement M more staccato kind of movements more frantic paw movement when you're trying to shape them so all of this I can just feel the frustration when you're trying to train that it's going to be hair pulling because you don't how am I going to get you to go around a cone when you like are have your open mouth breathing you're staring at me with with the whites of your eyes seeing and I just don't know how to deal with that highdrive dogs here's a list of needs I think are really great to meet number one a relaxation protocol if you go to podcast episode number one 991 I give you in great detail how to start a relaxation protocol start that at home just as a way to get the dog to accept lying down on their side and during that relaxation protocol is where we're going to build in some actual calm reinforcement that you can use in your training down the road but we've got to build it in a calm State at home so it could be watching TV it could be a purposeful time away in your bedroom or another quiet room room where you just get the dog to lie on their side and you work through the relaxation protocol as defined in that episode These dogs are served by having Ultra short training sessions so set a timer your first training session of the day should always be one minute and ideally you're stopping the timer before the timer goes off because you know I need to change some of the environmental stimulation for this dog to make the correct response the obvious response it's really important when you're training any dog but particularly a highdrive dog that you're aware of what is the goal is the goal learning for the dog or is the goal evaluating for you so if you truly focused on teaching something then you are not setting the dog up to be frustrated this highdrive dog needs Clarity your aned Arrangements need to be spoton once they've built up a reinforcement history for the right thing that highdrive dog is going to be able to repeat that for you forever now you can start adding distractions and the distractions at some point are going to be your emotions how you move how you squeal early on anytime I'm in a learning phase I am the Ying to my dog's Yang I am calm I am quiet I am very softspoken so that highdrive dog needs Ultra sharp Focus from you during the session another reason you need to keep those training sessions short we're humans we don't have the ability to have laser focus locked in for like 3 to 5

minutes so 1 to three minutes for the high drive dog put them up on a Hot Zone let them decompress you can look at the video give them a bone to chew on give them something to shred while they're on that cot that they can bring their emotions down a little bit while you're taking notes and then bring them back for another session that dog needs a very high rate of reinforcement especially in a learning phase of course once they learn it the behavior actually takes on the value of the reinforcement used in the training so these highdrive dogs are willing to work without the reinforcement not to say that we do that we actually do give reinforcement but maybe we stretch it out more that only happens after we've done our learning phase of training and our evaluation phase of training remember Jean Donaldson's push stick drop you're going to work this with your highdrive dog everything done in sets of five so you know where you are and what you should do next as I mentioned you're going to have a a very succinct training plan if you're using distractions use podcast episode number 24 with the distraction intensity index you know exactly what that dog is ready for do not overfat high drive dog because you know they're going from zero to 355 in the blink of an eye you want to give that dog a way they can decompress in the midst of training so if you have a dog who loves to chew I like to use beef cheeks rolled beef cheeks on hand for my dog get up in The Hot Zone I'll give them something to chew on or I might give them a puppy bomb to shred depending on what I'm doing if I'm just looking at my video my dogs actually will just relax on their own now they'll get up and lie on their side and as I'm taking nose or looking at my video I can just toss them or go over and give them a cookie occasionally to reinforce that or it might even just give them a long body stroke to reinforce yeah I'm doing my thing you you're doing your thing you are not on you don't have to be on right now and when you're done what are great ways to help your dog decompressed well taking them for a walk and just letting them sniff is a great thing to do some dogs they don't care to sniff and if that's your dog it might be giving them something to chew on when they get home that could be you doing some body work doing a five minute massage over their body could be putting them on a pemf mat it could be ending your session with something that is physical but easy for them to be successful I love little balanced low jump grids where I can put a bowl with a cookie on the end and it's not difficult for the dog it's so easy for them to be successful it a great

bodybuilder and it gives them something easy that they can do either at the beginning or the end of your training and if you're doing agility it can't help with their agility work either okay so what about the shaping we're shaping that highdrive dog as a trainer if you're in that teaching phase where you're teaching the dog and the dog is learning you need to be energetically neutral you're not going to go oh good boy good boy good boy you're just going to be nice and calm with your praise even your marker words need to be different so instead of saying cook because cook means cookie and cookie is exciting I might just go cook with those dogs really quiet cook or instead of saying bring me for my retrieve I might say bring me so your motions are slower your voice is calmer or and more neutral yes you're happy you're enjoying the training but you're not being crazed you're not trying to match that energy level the dog has their energy level you're going to be in opposition to that just neutral and calm and also remember to breathe your dog's going to be frantic and that might make you go get your shoulders away from your ears nice deep breaths and if you need to give yourself a moment just get your dog to hop up on their Hot Zone give them something to chew on take a few deep breaths and then go back to work okay one of the things I recommend you use sparingly as you're training this High Drive dog right now is the search queue the search queue which means go and find the food on the floor anything that involves a hunt and the food is bouncing in a weird way may stimulate that highdrive dog so what you can do is you can go to the Chow Cube I use the small dog dish I'll put a cookie in that I'll say chow and at first I'll just deliver it right to the dog then I'll say chow and I'll lower it you want to have a dog who knows it's your choice so you can go to put it on the ground but if they die for it just put your hand over it walk around with it a little bit more say chow and give it to them or walk by and say cook and give them a different cookie we want them to know the difference between chow and cook so rather than saying search and having the dog frantically you know going through walls trying to get the cookies I'm not saying we're never going to use search again but for now let's just go and use Chow Foods in a bowl cook I'm bringing you a cookie and if you're going to use tug you can use whatever your location specific marker word for take the toy is it's on the ground for me it's bring me if it's in my hand it strike but again with these dogs I keep the game of tug at the beginning and the end and maybe

I'll do something for a decompression in the middle of our game but I'll usually end that with them hopping up on The Hot Zone now remember I said when you're teaching your relaxation protocol I'd like you to build in some reinforcement triggers so I want you to do things like long body strokes and you might use another reinforcement word like gold which is a nice body stroke gold might take your thumb and go from just between their eyes all the way up between the dog's ears or a nice long pull stroke on the dog's ears find out what your dogs like they either like the long pulls from the base of the ear up to the tips profet loves to have his chest scratched or the back of his neck where his collar is scratched so those are things that you can add a nice calming cue so they're in the midst of work for if I want to reinforce a stationary behavior let's say they're standing on a plank I'll come in and just give a long body stroke and then say cook and give them their cookie so use a queue make up your own that it might just be a calm good means I'm coming in and giving you a body stroke good is going to be followed up by if your dog's in reinforcement Zone at your side it can just be a nice calming stroke on the back of the neck this isn't a dog that I'm going to be slamming in the ribs and getting them more excited and invigorated calm especially during the learning phase calm Strokes calm voice okay so what about the actual shaping the first thing we're going to do those location specific reinforcement markers right calm we want to reintroduce them in a calm way and you're going to use big pieces of food so that the dog doesn't get frantic about trying to grab it big pieces of food I know it might mean your sessions are going to be shorter because your dog's going to be full faster but big p pieces of food to introduce those new location specific reinforcement markers then what I want you to do is go to the blanket targeting exercise that I spoke about in episode number 261 but this time instead of saying search and throwing the cookie off the blanket I want you to put a cookie in a bowl and say Chow so when the dog comes on the blanket you could say cook and then to get them off you could say chiao and that's permission for the dog to turn around get off the blanket and grab the food from the board they can predict where the bowl is is they can predict where the food is so they're not going to get so frantic I would have higher value food coming into the mouth from your hand right now so they're not tempted to just go off and try and steal the cook from the bowl again you're going to be doing your

relaxation protocol at home and I would try and do it in more locations so the dog just learns to breathe deeply and be relaxed in all different environments now you're not going to try this like when there's other dogs running around but eventually you will get to a place where you can once you've got that Target blanket you can now put it in your crate it will help the dog with crate games the dog understands that there's value for going on that blanket so you can help build the dog's understanding of crate games the final thing that I want you to shape with this High Drive dog is a stand on a plank a plank I'll put a link to analy Saunders website where you can get the exact length that you need for your dog it can be either two nice big wide planks for one for the front paws one for the rear or one solid one what I want you to do with these frantic highdrive dogs I want them to learn to sit stand and down on a plank so duration where you can give them Strokes you can give them cookies you can give them quiet releases that is going to help you establish all right now we can work on things like hand targets because you've got a place for your feet they can be more successful because they know exactly how you want them to hold their body so I like a long plank I myself use two separate ones as well all of that you can be found at Analise Sanders website okay I know very long podcast but I think this one is super super important I've given you the step by- step to help bring down that frustration for your dog and once they learn to learn in a calmer State you my friend will be able to have a lot more fun training your dog and a lot less frustration because you know they're doing the best they can I hope this all makes sense to you I'll see you next time right here on shaped by dog I I think what he's saying is he can't reach your subscribe button from where he's sitting so could you please subscribe for him and while you're there turn on the notification Bell so you will never miss another video from us and if you're already a subscriber well hey that's for you go get yourself your favorite reinforcement [Music] hey