- Whether you are a new
puppy owner who is trying to give your dog the best information, or you have an adult dog and you're trying to stop some unwanted behaviors, it's really important that you understand how to establish leadership with your dog. If you do a search on YouTube
or a quick search on Google, it seems like a pretty polarizing topic. Everything from doing
alpha roles with your dog and never allowing them
to walk in front of you, all the way to it completely ignoring some of these unwanted behaviors, but I want you to think
about maybe a teacher in your life that you really liked, or a sports coach who
is able to, you know, motivate you to work a little bit harder. These people were great leaders. Those people were able to
bring out the best in you, and you didn't have to listen
to them, you wanted to. After training thousands
of dogs as a professional dog trainer, the one
thing that I've noticed is the people who get success the fastest with their dogs are the same
people that can overcome unusual training challenges along the way. These people really understand how to be a great leader for their dogs. They know when to give their dogs a little bit more freedom. They know when to allow their
dogs to make some choices on their own, but they're
there to set them up to be successful, and if
they make the wrong choice, then they're there to guide
them through the process. This is really a video I wish I had before I was a first time dog owner. I made all the wrong
choices, that's why I felt it was so important to
share this with you today. We recently did a livestream
for some subscribers that talked about when to allow your puppy to make their own choices, when to allow them a
little bit more freedom. We talk about puppyhood, indoor freedoms, some outdoor freedoms. In essence, it is a textbook
about how to be a good leader for your dog, and this is the thing that I wish I knew before
I was a puppy owner. So past Ken Steepe, this
is future Ken Steepe, this video is for you, and
welcome back to McCANN DOGS. (lighthearted guitar strum) (dog barking) - When we talk about leadership, we have a great video on the channel, it's actually linked in
one of the cards above, but we have a great video that talks about being a great leader for your dog and setting them up to be successful, and not having to tell
them, "No, not that." "No, this way. No, this,
you can't do that." It's really important that we set our dogs up to be successful. It's also really important
that we follow through and show them how to be
successful if they make a mistake, that we have a leash or, you know, a line, a house line on them,
or something like that, and I wanted to talk starting off with a little bit of freedom
in the home, you know. When do you know? So let's talk maybe how you
and I will bring a puppy sort of into more areas of freedom, giving them more opportunities,
more access to rooms. - Yeah, one of the things that
we'll do when we have a young dog is we will control where
they can go with some of the things that I talked about before, whether it's baby gates, leashes, crates, that type of thing, and typically what we'll
do is when we're ready to give them a bit of
freedom, we might start off by keeping them in the same room as us, but maybe we don't watch them
quite as closely anymore. - Right. - So maybe like we're
cooking dinner for example. We'll barricade the puppy
in the kitchen with us, and you know, we might make dinner, chat, you know, we're sort of
thinking about each other, and we'll just glance down
at the dog from time to time, and maybe give them something to do, and that would be like
their first little taste of freedom where I'm not
like literally following them around and watching their every move and every decision,
which is what I would do with the first little bit
that I have the puppy. - Yup. - And then from there I
might open the opportunity up if they can have like the
kitchen and the hallway, for example, and they can roam in and out of those two places and
I'm not really gonna worry too much about it, and when I feel comfortable
giving the dog the freedom, I know that my dog already knows how to ask me to go outside, so if I'm giving my dog a bit of freedom and they do need to go out, we've already worked through that thing. I also know before I give my dog freedom, if I can trust whether
they're gonna chew things in my house or not. So if I feel pretty good
that they understand what they're allowed to
chew and what they are not, then again I might feel more comfortable giving them a bit more freedom. And then lastly, how well do they listen? Do they respond to me
when I say, "Leave it"? Do they get off the
couch when I ask them to? Do they stop barking when I ask them to? Do they come to me when I ask them to? Can they sit? Can they down? When I'm getting good listening skills, and they can sorta say okay, you know, I feel confident that I'm
in pretty good control. My dog's, you know, responsible,
making good choices. Now I'm gonna maybe give the
dog a little bit more freedom, so, what we don't recommend
that you do is give the dog freedom and then see what happens. - Right. - We recommend giving
your dog freedom when you feel pretty darn confident that your dog is gonna knock it out of the park and do a great, great job. You know and for some dogs it takes time. And for our dogs, it hasn't been the same amount of time for each dog. It hasn't been like,
"Okay, they're six months, let's just let 'em have free range." Some dogs earned it a bit quicker, just based on their training
or their personality, and other dogs needed to be monitored a lot longer than others, again, based on how they were
doing with their training. We had a nine-year-old. We adopted a nine-year old dog. - Yeah. - And we had to go back
and do things with him that, you know, we did with our puppies because he had never
lived in a house before. - Yeah. - He lived in a barn. - Right. - So, it just depends.
- And just to interrupt really quickly, maybe
you have a rehome dog. - Yeah. - Maybe you gotten a dog from a shelter. You're gonna go back to the first steps because it's all about
introducing your puppy, your dog, to the space
with good information. It's all about really
letting them know that, you know, you're worth listening to. So using something like a
crate is such a valuable tool when it comes to in your home, when it comes to sort of
managing their interactions, when it comes to, you know, making them see so much value in you, because every time they
come out of that crate, they get to do something with you. It really builds that drive. - Yeah. - And that understanding,
and desire to like, be right.
- Yeah. - And do stuff with you, so, you know, don't overlook your crate. - When we're first starting
to give our dog freedom, I wouldn't necessarily do
that like for the first time and like go to work for eight hours. - I might, you know--
- Right. - Leave them loose in one room and I might go down to the driveway, end of the driveway, and
get like the recycling bin, or, you know, grab the mail
or whatever it might be, and then I come back in
and see what happened. - Yeah. - And if things are going really well, then I might, you know,
leave for them a few minutes when I like run down to the general store to get some milk or something, and then build in slowly from there, and when we first give our dogs freedom, especially if we're gonna
be leaving them alone, we don't give them free
range of the house. We might give them free range
of the house eventually, when they're older and we
are, you know, we're home, but when we leave-- - That's a good point. - Still really when we leave,
we don't give any of our dogs free range of our house.
- No. - We have an area that we sort of confine them in, it's very large, and they have their dog
beds, and they have water, and they have their bones and you know, so that's sort of what
we do when we leave. I think, Grand Slam would probably just plop himself on the couch. - I think so. - And sleep there for the whole time. - Yeah. - But again, the point
is not to try your luck, to, you know, test the waters a little bit before you jump in with two feet. - For sure, and I think
John Ciccone asks a really important question, "Is
there an age for that?" - Yeah and I sort of
touched on that before. No, not really. - Right. - I would say for us, generally, and again this is coming from
two professional dog trainers, I wouldn't dream of leaving
my dog loose on their own, and even really giving 'em a
lot of freedom in the house prior to like eight months to a year. - Right. - I would say. - And sort of what the litmus test is, is that they aren't making
mistakes when we're there. You know, they aren't making
bad choices when we're there. - Not chewing things.
- Right. - Not going to the bathroom in the house. - Yeah. - You know, listening well in the house, being respectful, making good choices, that's when we would say,
"Okay, I think you're ready "for a little bit more responsibility." But if you're still
getting yipping and biting and unwanted barking and you know, they're stealing stuff in your house that you're not supposed to, you better believe
they're gonna have a party when you're gone, or they might be barking when they're not supposed to. - Yeah. - So yeah, your dog is going
to be the best indicator to you as to whether
they're ready for that or not based on their behavior. - Let's talk about how we
allow our dogs more and more freedom when they're outside. Some of the common things
that we'll do with them, you know, how we'll start to
remove the training wheels and how we'll make sure
that they're maintaining great responses when
we're outside with them. - Yeah, so Ken and I often
walk our dogs out in the big fields out at our training school. It's about 22 acres of like open fields, so there is a lot of
opportunities for our dogs to take off and run. Run away from us-- - Yeah. - If they really wanted to. - Yup. - So when we're first working
on this with our younger dogs, when we go for big walks and
there's a lot of opportunity for our dogs to really possibly run away, we will put long, long lines on them. You know, up to 25 feet. - Right. - And we will let our
dogs have a bit of freedom and they drag that line to get around, and we might even start off by holding the line in our hands and
practicing our recall, practicing our response to name, practicing some random downs, you know. So we say, "Lie down." The dog will lay down. So we work on some training
skills and then once our dogs can do it with
the leash in our hand, or the line in our hand, then we'll let the line
drag around and the line is there so that if I call my dog back and my dog decides that chasing the cars down the fence line, or you know, digging in this hole over
here is more important than listening to me, I can pick the end of the line up and I can
give it a little tug-- - Right. - To encourage the dog to come to me. And then we can play games as well, so often I'll have, you know, some treats or some toys, and I'll,
know, sneak the toy and put it in the back of my pants-- - Yeah I love this one. - Or under my shirt, so
the dog can't see it. - Yup. - And then I'll call them
and they turn and look at me, I'll say, "yes," and then
I'll literally take off running the other
direction so that they race across the field, and when
they catch me, we'll play like a really awesome game
of tug, so that the dog, I have a lot of dogs that will run out, and they'll turn around
and they'll look at me, because they're like okay. - Right. - Are you gonna call me? - Yeah. - They almost don't even
want to go and investigate because they want to do the whole running and chasing and play thing, and that just conditions
the dog to really love to like look for me, and
pay attention to where I am, and then I can start to give them a little bit more freedom, and then eventually, once
the dog's doing a good job, I will start to shorten the
line over a series of months, until I can't remember
the last time I had to use the leash or redirect them,
and then I'll take them for off-leash runs from there, but it's a very slow process
depending on the dog. - And it's not necessarily
like you take one step forward, you take the next step forward. You may find that, you know,
when you shorten that leash to, or shorten that line to
like, you know, a third, and your dog makes a mistake, so you go back to half a leash,
or two-thirds of a leash. - Yeah just like I said earlier-- - Yeah exactly. - I put my 12 year old dog on a line today or yesterday. - Yeah, yeah, it's a dynamic process. And you may encounter
like new distractions, maybe there's something
that your dog's never seen. And it's, what's really important here is that you identify those challenges and that you know exactly what you're going to do
to train through them. So, putting your dog on a line
and working on that recall. - Now if you enjoyed this video you're really going to enjoy
our leadership play list, so click that card right there. 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 have a well-behaved
four legged family member. On that note, I'm Ken. See you in the next video. (lighthearted music)
