- We all want to have a
dog that listens reliably, and a great way to get that is by showing your dog that
you're a great leader. Now, in this video, I'm gonna talk about some leadership training tips. I've actually pulled seven examples of great leadership training opportunities from our Thursday night
Livestreams for you, so if you're looking to have that dog who learns things faster
and makes less mistakes, then this is the video for you. I'm Ken Steepe, and welcome
back to McCann Dogs. (guitar strum)
(dog barking) Dan and Ellen say, is indoor freedom the same as outdoor freedom? That's a great question.
- That's a fabulous question, and absolutely for sure,
I find that sometimes even when you give your dog
a lot of freedom outdoors, maybe without you being
involved, it's very self-rewarding because there's
like, outside's tons of fun, there's lots of things to
dig and chew and chase, and get into and... if you're
giving them a lot of off leash or outside freedom without
you, some dogs can develop barking issues, your recall,
your come command can go up the tubes really quickly,
they can get into digging and things like that so to
answer your question, yes, so what we do to manage the dog
outside because we obviously want them to go outside and have some fun, is when they're babies
we'll go outside with them and we'll often attach a
really, really long line, so I'm talking like, we have
a fairly decent sized yard so we have about a 20 foot
long, it's sort of like a lunge-line almost, but it's
like a long cotton web, and the puppy, initially
when they're first learning we would keep it in our hand for safety. But once the dog has a little
bit of skills where they can respond to their name and
maybe they have a few little verbal commands under their belt, we would just let them
drag that line around, and we would only use it if we needed to, so if they started to dig
or started to bark at people walking, you know, past our driveway, then we could address the dog
if they weren't listening, we just have a bit of
a backup, and then when we're inside and we're
controlling the freedom, we would take the long line off
because that would be a pain of course, and we would
put a leash on instead, or if you have a really
young puppy you could even use like a long piece of rope. And what we usually do
is cut the handle off, or cut the loop out so that
it doesn't get caught on things, and it still does
get caught on things. I'm not gonna lie there.
- Yeah. - It is a pain in the
butt, but it's a pain in the butt like 5% of the time, and it's like a lifesaver 95% of the time. So it like outweighs the annoying parts, but that's sort of what
we do with our leashes, and again we're not pulling
and dragging dogs around, we're enhancing our verbal control, but the line and the
leash is there to back up if we ask our dogs to listen
to us and they choose not to, which they will do,
- Sure. - When they're young and adolescent. - They're learning
- They're trying to figure it out. - Let's see Kathy's question,
'cause that's a good one, she says I have a puppy
that steals and runs with everything, I use
a leash in the house, but when she does get
something how do I get her to drop the stolen object
without using a treat? And she's from Indianapolis,
Indiana. So, that's a really, really important question, and we don't want to be training our dogs for us to reward them... I guess that's probably confusing sounding. We don't want to teach our
dogs that every time they do something wrong we're
- Mhm. - going to bring out food, so
you need to be really careful about these types of situations - I really like that you were able to... - I know...
- pinpoint that. - It's really great Kathy
that you could identify that, this is where the house
slang comes in handy, you can reel your puppy
in and all you've gotta do in this situation is
gently take their collar and remove the object, but knowing that you have this problem, you
definitely wanna be working on your out, this is something
that we teach our puppies very early on and we do use
treats, when we're teaching our puppy out, you know, with
a puppy that offers up the food in a separate event,
you know, aside from these situations where your
puppy's stealing toys and going for a run with it,
you wanted to say something? - Yeah, if my dog was to do
that I would slip my hand underneath the collar and I
would actually roll the collar up a little bit so I'd
have more of a secure grip. The other thing you
wanna be really careful that you try not to do is whatever object is in their mouth, try not to pull it out, because a lot of the times when you pull something out of a dog's mouth, they work against that and
they'll actually grip much harder, so what you
actually wanna do is just keep your hand in the
collar and have your hand on whatever's in their mouth but
let it be really still and sort of dull and boring
- Yeah. - So that the dog isn't really
interested in continuing to hold it and basically you're
just gonna wait the dog out because eventually the
game of grabbing the toy and running away with it or pulling on it, it's not really fun anymore,
because you're immobilizing the whole game from stopping,
and as soon as they finally go ugh, this is a bore and
they spit the thing out, then you can say yay, good puppy! And then you can play from there, sometimes what I'll do
depending on what the object is of course, sometimes I'll
let them have the object back for a second and I'll
tug and then I'll practice my out, and then I'll have
the dog release it to me, and I'll give it back
and then I'll release it so we'll practice back and forth. Obviously, there's certain items that you don't do that with, but
I would try to make sure you get your hand on
that leash and then slide your hand down the leash
right to the collar, slip your hands right underneath it, it's best if your fingers
are underneath the collar pointing towards the head, you don't wanna be holding like this. So underhand grip, you'll have
way more control and power, and you're just going to
immobilize the dog but do not pull on that item, because
your dog's gonna think there's a whole...
- Tug time! - Tug-of-war game about to
start and then sometimes... - Dogs love that game. - The game is like, even more
exciting so keep that item limp and boring and dull,
and then it's a waiting game and you're gonna wait longer than the dog. - Yeah. When should a crate stop
being used for overnights? - This is totally dog-dependent
so I don't wanna throw an age out there, because
all dogs are so different it really depends on how
well their house training is going, how well their
obedience and listening is going, you know, are
they doing a good job with not chewing things in your house, that's probably the big thing. So it's hard to really say but you know, when your dog you know, can be trusted when you're not there, uh... To not do bad behaviors,
that I would say that would be a similar time where
you can start letting them sleep out of their crate at night. Bee-Line was pretty young
when she started to sleep out of her crate at night.
- Yeah. - But she also was really quick to not... she wasn't really a dog that like chewed a lot of things
- No, no. - But also keep in mind we're
dog trainers and we don't give the dogs many opportunities
to make those errors. - Right.
- So we were able to give her freedom overnight very quickly,
I would say under a year she was already sleeping out of her crate, but it was definitely after
the point where I completely felt she was ready, it wasn't
like okay, let's try this out and see if still have a
baseboard in the morning. - Right.
- It was, you know, I felt very confident about what
we were doing, so that would be sort of my best answer,
I don't wanna give an age, it's more about behavior
and the dog's ability to make a choice by that point. - So Lindy Smith mentions Hi I'm new here, I follow you always my
dog is crate trained but when he's out he likes
to run around the house. How do I make him listen
and to stay in one place? So that's sort of a multi-tiered
question but certainly Kayl talked about using
a house line or a leash, so there's a video on the
channel that is linked above if you wanna check it
out but having a leash on your dog when they're in the house, so that you can have a
little bit of control of them if they start to make a bad decision. Actually a story that we
heard from a student was that she was getting her
pill out for the morning and her puppy was
meandering about the kitchen and she dropped the pill,
and because she had a line on the dog, she had the
house line on the dog, which is just a leash, you
know, with the loop cut off. Her puppy made a beeline for
the pill and she was able to step on that line
- Mmm... - So it's a real safety issue,
but there's all sorts of things you can do to have your
dog want to listen to you. But being sure that they're
safe and supervised well is the most important thing Lindy, and using that houseline is
going to be really helpful. Check out our video on
teaching your dog to go lie on their bed
- I was just thinking that. - Yeah, that'll be a great one
for you and then you can ask your puppy to go lie down on
their bed and they can rest there and they're rewarded by it. Steven said I let my 1 year
old lab allow me to let him set the training scheduling,
one day he just stopped. After that it was his
choice if he wanted to, he's past it but very few
manners, back to square one? Yeah, I love where your head is at, you do understand that you need... Here's the best training
schedule, all different times of the day, you know, don't set
up like at 10:30 we're gonna train or don't, you know,
if your dog comes to you looking like oh, take advantage
of those times to train them but also make sure that you're
integrating it into your making lunch, or maybe it's
you know, after dinner, or something but make sure
it's throughout the day, and it needs to be on your terms. It's really, really
important that both the... Your dog's understanding that
he needs to listen at all times of the day, but he
does need to listen to you and it's not up to him
when you guys train. So, Brandon mentions how do
we stop our little Boston Terrier from pooping on the rug? We try to keep him on a schedule but we have to sleep sometime.
Also, not keeping him in a cage. So this really speaks
to the idea of a crate, now dogs are denning animals,
so they naturally want to do that kind of thing, they want to... You might see your little
Boston sleeping underneath the table, you know, he
might go and find a little corner to curl up in because
it's really comfortable and it has that sense of security for him. So, don't overlook the
opportunity to, even if it's not a cage, maybe it's a limited space area, if that makes you feel better, what's really important
here is not giving him the opportunity to make these mistakes, because unless you're
supervising him 100% of the time, because you do need to
sleep, then he needs to be somewhere where he's less likely
to make those bad choices. - Yeah, to make the long
story short you can't stop him from pooping on your rug unless
you put him in a crate or some type of confined
space, and it's probably it sounds like it's you that
has the issue with the crate not so much the dog, so educate
yourself a little bit more on crates and all the fun things
that you can do with them. Because you know, it really
will stop all kinds of bad behaviors and most importantly
it keeps your dog safe, you know if you have to go out
and you can't take the puppy with you, you know, I would
feel horrible if I went out and my dog ate something that
they shouldn't or you know, chewed on an electrical cord
or swallowed something and I just had no idea, so
number one it's for safety, and you know, secondly, it's
gonna solve a lot of unwanted problems because you know,
no one can supervise a dog 24 hours a day, there's just
no one has that kind of time. So that's why the crate is such a necessity in your training. - Dan and Ellen in Luton mentioned we find the hardest, oh we just lost... We find the hardest time
to keep that freedom under control is when friends
and family are over. - Oh yeah.
- Everyone loves a puppy, it's been hard sometimes to say no even if we know it's the right decision. - So true!
- It's so true, absolutely, but these are sort of
the things where you... - When people come over even
like walking down the street and you have a puppy people just get like, these squeaky high-pitched voices... - Yeah.
- The moment they see a puppy and it just makes our
life a lot harder but... - Absolutely and these are
sort of the things, and we've talked about this on previous
livestreams and in some videos, sometimes you've
gotta be just a little bit... What's the word I'm looking for? Gruff, I don't know? Abrasive?
- Direct? - Direct, I guess, yeah. When
you're working on this puppy stuff 'cause it's for
the good of your puppy. So there's been times when we
will be out for, maybe we're traveling or something and we
have a dog or a couple of dogs on leash and someone will say
oh, your dogs are adorable, are they friendly, can they
meet my dog or can my dog meet them, or whatever, and we
will 100% of the time say no. - Aah!
- No, it's just not good, especially for you guys with
a young puppy in training, it's just undoing all your hard work. Now, there will come a time
when they can go hang out and they can go visit
other dogs that you know, and all of these things
but that's long after you've established that when
you call they come to you. You know, that they will sit
and wait on a loose leash beside you, you know, you sort of have to have all these checks and
balances before you allow them that sort of freedom
or to make those kinds of decisions, because your puppy is going to find that really gratifying. - We find it a good idea
if you are having people come over with your dog is
have the puppy or the dog in their crate for the
first couple minutes until everybody gets in the house and like the excitement
of people arriving has sort of settled a little
bit, because that stimulation can sometimes be just too
hard of an environment initially for the dog to be able to make any good choices
because they're just so ramped that it's like, it's just not gonna be successful so,
you know, you always can control the dog's
environment by removing them from it if you need to or
getting them further away from it, so rather than
letting them get like, right at the door and getting
their head like poking in everywhere, you know, have somebody with the dog on the leash
like back away from the door a little bit, so that they
can see the excitement but they can't like, get right
in to the hustle and bustle. And then work some control exercises, - Right.
- We teach a controlled sit at our left hand side where
the dogs learn to be calm and to be well-minded,
and then once they're settled you could let them
go and greet from there, but greet on leash so if
they decide to jump up or nip at people's hands,
or whatever they do, when they're excited, you
have the leash to address those issues opposed to just sorta letting everything go
free willy and hope that it goes well, and you
know, if the situation is too overwhelming and your
dog is not making good choices, you need to be able to pull the plug, and say okay, this is not good rehearsal, I have been working my
butt off and I can see things unraveling before me, I need to address this and get the
puppy out of the situation. - Now if you haven't
stopped by already make sure you pop by one of our
Thursday night Trainstation livestreams, so that we
can answer your specific dog training questions, and
if this is your first time on this channel make sure you
hit that subscribe button, so that I can help you
have a well-behaved, four-legged family member.
On that note, I'm Ken. Happy training!
