Welcome back to McCann
Dogs, I'm Kayl McCann. Because we train over 600 dogs a week, we end up seeing a lot
of the same problems. People often come in and they feel so
bad that their puppy's doing this one thing wrong, but we've seen
it hundreds of times before. We have over 40 instructors that teach
here in our school and also online. And I thought it would be really fun
to ask them all the same question. And that is, what is the biggest
mistake that new puppy owners make? Let's go see what they have to say. I would say the biggest mistake
is giving a dog too much freedom. Too much freedom, too. Much freedom. Too. Much freedom. Too much freedom.
Too much freedom Too soon. What is too much freedom? Too much
freedom is not enough supervision. Now, as you would imagine, supervision means you need to actually
watch your puppy all of the time, but I don't know anybody that could
actually watch their puppy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So today we're gonna talk to you about
two tools that are gonna make a massive difference in your ability to
successfully train your puppy. Now, before we get to that, I wanna spell
out what supervision actually means. Cuz although a lot of people think
that they're supervising their puppy, supervision doesn't count if you're in
the kitchen and you're making dinner or you're in your office and you're typing
an email and your puppy's just hanging out with you. That's not
actually supervision. I can tell you all kinds of times where
people are distracted and behind them, the puppy's chewing on the table leg
or they've had an accident. Supervision means you have two eyeballs on the
puppy and you're actively watching and engaging with them. And if
you're not able to do that, there's where these two tools
are gonna come in handy. The first tool I wanna talk to you
about is this ratty looking thing here. And this is a very well used
house line or long line. And this is something that we use to
control our puppy's freedom in the house. So if our puppies are out and about, they're having some play
time or doing some training, we always have some type of leash
or line attached to their collar always 100% of the time. I
can't drive that home enough. And this is really important because
it's going to allow me to very easily and calmly get control of my
puppy in any moment's notice. Now what I usually will
do is grab a, a leash, could just be a cheap leash.
We cut off the end of the leash, so that the handle doesn't get caught on
things and they will sort of drag this around the house. Um, where we are
now, we often will restrict them to, you know, certain areas with us, but this line is gonna be used
for all kinds of situations where our puppies are gonna
make normal puppy choices. Things like chewing things
or going behind the couch. Maybe they have an accident or jumping,
nipping, biting, whatever it might be. Having a line on our puppy
allows us to easily get control. Now some people think when they get a
line that they're just gonna hook it onto their puppy and boom, it just happens
to train the dog perfectly on their own. But the line is just sort of that, that halfway point between them and
you giving them good information. So it's not really the line
that does all of the work, it's what you do with the line.
When the puppies, you know, go to make a mistake. They're
babies. They're puppies, they are going to make those mistakes.
But if you're supervising them, you're able to catch them right in the
moment of them making that poor choice. And now I can, can easily stop them by
immobilizing them, stepping on the line, using the line to take the puppy away
from wherever they're getting into mischief, and then I can redirect them
to something that they should be doing. And by having really great, uh, supervision during that time where
I'm giving them a bit more freedom, even though they're not
actually completely free yet, it allows me to make sure that I'm
teaching my puppy the rules of the house. And I'm able to do that in a
really calm and positive manner. With anything in dog training, there's lots of nuances you need to
know about using different tools, but I wanna answer two of the most common
questions we get about using the house line. The first is, how long do
I need to use a house line for? And really that's dog dependent.
It really depends on, uh, how well you do at supervising. It depends on the relationship you have
with your puppy, how consistent you are. But basically the golden rule is you're
going to use it until you can't remember the last time you had to use it. So if it's attached to your puppy
and you don't have to step on it, you don't have to pick it up to
follow through with anything, then you might start thinking about
graduating to, uh, lessening the line. For most puppies, this takes months
to do because as your puppy goes, grows from baby puppy to, you know,
middle aged puppy to adolescent, they're gonna go through lots of little,
you know, bumps and, and and, um, hiccups along the way. And you may
need to use the line, remove the line, use the line, remove the line depending on what that
particular puppy needs in the moment. And the second question we get asked a
lot is, I would love to use the line, but my puppy just wants to eat
it. And this is really common. If you can imagine, you know, it looks sort of like a dangly tug toy
attached to the puppy's collar all of the time. But I assure you, if
you use the line religiously, the novelty of the line quickly wears
off. You know, when I got my new puppy, I put the line on the first day he came
home and he was interested in the first couple days, but because it was there all
of the time and I was supervising him, I don't just put the line on
and let him go do his thing. Every time you went to
put the line in his mouth, I would address that and I would show
him something else to chew. Instead, through a few days of great,
uh, information and consistency, he learned that that was just
an extra line on his body. So you have to work through it. It's
very common. A lot of puppies do it. Um, it's just as something that
you have to work through, just like many other things that you'll
come across with your puppy training. Now I wanna tell you another thing that
is really important about using a house line. And that is the
house line is not a leash. And what I mean by that is that you're
not really supposed to be having it in your hand and walking your
puppy around the house. This is actually gonna be used as
like an extra appendage on your puppy. It's gonna just drag around on the floor. And if you need to stop your
puppy from doing something, you're going to be better off just going
up and stepping on the line to stop your puppy from wherever, wherever they're going. If they go to
boot down the hallway with socks in the mouth or whatever the situation
is, you can stop your puppy, uh, with your foot on the line and then
you can pick the line up and, you know, follow through with whatever
you need to at that point. But it's not intended for you to hold
it and walk them around the house. It's just supposed to give you a nice
bridge between having complete off-leash freedom, which is the ultimate goal down the road
to being able to get control whenever you need to very easily. The second tool that we're gonna talk
about in order to easily control your puppy's freedom is the use,
the proper use of a crate. When I talk about the use of the crate, I'm not talking about the puppy being
in the crate all day long because our puppies do need to be out and being
given freedom to play and explore and be trained.
When we're talking about the crate, we're talking about when to use it during
the day that's gonna help you control their freedom and allow you to be
a better supervisor. Unfortunately, when people are crate
changing their puppy, they tend to only use it in
two different places. One, when they're going out and two
when they're going to sleep, and then they're letting the puppy be
free out of their crate all day long. And that's when most
of the problems happen. That's when most of the puppies
are making their poor mistakes. What we wanna suggest to you is that
you are gonna use the crate many times during the day, sometimes
longer periods of time, sometimes shorter periods of time,
you're gonna use them every time. You don't have the ability to keep
those two eyeballs on the puppy. They might be very simple situations like
when you have to have a shower or when you're cooking dinner or you're
helping kids with a homework, or you have to write that email, that's gonna take you a half an hour when
your mind has to be and your focus has to be on something else. Those are perfect
times to put your puppy in the crate With our suggestion of increasing
crate time with your puppy. We certainly don't want you to
be spending less time with them. So one of the things I might recommend
is moving the crate to a really localized place in your house so that you probably
could be hanging out in their crate, chewing a bone or doing something
that's, you know, fun, uh, but they're with you. Maybe they're in the kitchen with you
or they're up in your office or wherever it might be. So you're still spending
time together, but at the same time, you're not constantly worried about what
they're doing. Now with is increased, uh, crate time, some of you may fall into the trap of
the dogs barking or maybe being a little bit unsettled. We actually have a
ton of videos about crate location, about how to deal with barking and the
crate. So I definitely suggest that you check those out. Crates are used
for prevention, not correction. So what I mean by this is we don't want
you to wait for your puppy to make a poor choice and then banish them to their
crate as a discipline for making that that poor error. That's not really clear information and
that certainly doesn't teach your puppy to love their crate, which is
the ultimate goal. Instead, you're better off using the crate to
prevent your dog from making poor choices so that when you take them outta their
crate and you're ready to give them a bit of freedom, you're doing that at a time where you
actually can pay close attention to what they're doing. So if
they make a poor choice, you're there to help them through it. The crate needs to be a way to prevent
those things from happening with repetition.
Um, and in the meantime, you need to make special effort to
make the crate a special place for your puppy. We instill this in our
puppies from a very, very young age, so that they feel safe and calm and
relaxed in their little den area so that they're happily, uh, able to go there and chill out
when we're busy doing other things. It's not uncommon for people to ask us
how long they need to keep using a crate in their house with their
puppy. And, um, you know, the answer is sort of however
long your dog needs it. You know, as long as your training is going well,
your puppy's no longer chewing things, they have a really strong understanding
of house training, they're respectful, um, they're learning how to
behave outside of their crate, um, then you can slowly start to wean off
of it. And if later on down the road you don't wanna use it anymore,
that's totally up to you. But it is something that we would
encourage you to transition away from very gradually. Again, dogs are gonna go through
lots of different periods
in their life in terms of their success and how well
they're doing. And then, you know, sometimes they have a bit of regression. So being able to utilize the crate
during those moments are gonna help you navigate that much more easily. The importance of these two tools are
to allow you to have more control over your puppy, um, when you are giving
them a bit of free time. And remember, the ultimate goal here is that we're
trying to provide a lot of clarity and consistency in the setup of our dogs
learning when they're at home. Um, this is also important for your family
members to be on board as well. You wanna make sure that everybody sort of has
the same goals and the same ideas and expectations, um, that they
want for their puppies. Because consistency with the different
people in the household, with the rules, with your follow through, they're gonna
allow your puppy to feel more at peace. They're going to be less
confused, and that leads to a, a happier and more well rounded
puppy. In the end today, the things we've talked about is just
the tip of the iceberg in terms of all of the things we wanna work on
with the puppy. So if you
wanna learn more about it, check out our online Puppy Essentials
program where we're gonna walk you through the entire process step by step. The link
for that is in the description below. Great supervision only works
if you are a great leader. So to make sure that you're not
being a bad leader for your dog, check out the video right there on
that note, I'm Kayl Happy training.
