by Gabriel Riesco | Aug 30, 2021 | Dog Problems. Behavior Modification, Dog Training, Mindfulness & Psychology with Dogs
This is a big one!!
There are many different ways to calm your dog down. In my sessions I show different techniques and ways to calm dogs down, but no technique will work if you either overuse it or you are not in control of the energy behind it. On this blog I´ll focus on the concept behind it.
One of the most important and gentle ways to calm your dog down is to use boundaries and limits with things your pup gets really excited or have fixations with. This could be food, a ball, a specific toy, a person, another dog or animal, a bone, the tv, a rock, a moving light or simply a shadow. Dogs can get really creative here and sometimes the things which they get excited or fixated with can make no sense to you. This is because they are not humans, they´re dogs. So don’t worry, your dog is not crazy. 😉
I´ll start by being very clear on something: ¨when you establish a boundary you are taking control of situation so your pup can relax.¨
A boundary is not about imposing your way and taking it personal because you want to let your dog know who’s boss. A boundary is about putting your dog at ease. It´s a change of state of mind where your dog becomes your sate of mind instead of you becoming your dog´s state of mind or ignoring it because you can’t cope with it. Which is usually the case when I get 911
calls.
This is a very powerful tool/skill and it works like magic, but it´s not magic, there is knowledge behind it. Doing this will teach your dog self control, calm state of mind plus he or she will listen to you not to the food, treat or toy.
Below is an example of what this can look like so you can have a better understanding. And please bare with me here because this is the opposite of what most dog trainers do. Also very important, DO NOT do this if you don’t know what you are doing or without a professional. I use this blog to explain my concepts not for you to try my techniques. This would be like trying to learn to play tennis by reading a manual.
So here: Get some food or a tasty treat. Put it on the floor or a chair where your pup has access to it. Block your pup if she tries to get it and say the sound sht! or aah! aahh! in a calm but confident manner. Make sure she doesn´t get the treat or food on the table. Keep blocking her until she relaxes and gives it up. Only remove the treat when she is calm and when she is OK with giving it up. The sound sht! will soon mean: look at me and calm down. You are establishing a boundary where you take control of situation and you put your dog at ease.
I know what you are going to ask now: ¨But when do I give my dog the treat????¨ Well, take a couple of breaths, relax, keep calm and keep going. The answer is: you don’t. Yes, I know that this doesn’t fulfill your needs, but this is not about your needs, it´s about your dog´s needs. It´s also not about conditioning and training your pup to do commands or tricks. I will write about how to do that too, I promise. I love doing that too and it´s a lot of fun, but people usually don’t call me because they want their dogs to do things, quite the opposite. They call me because they need their dogs not to do things.
So please go back to the part where you take a couple of breaths, you relax, you keep calm and keep going.
There are many other situations where you can reward your dog with a treat. What you need to understand here is that the boundary is the reward. There is no bigger reward than putting your dog at ease and teaching him or her self control. This has to do with ¨letting go¨ which I talked about in my previous Blog.
When you put boundaries and you really follow through, your pup will gravitate towards you. It might seem anti intuitive to you, but that’s how it works.
When you do this the more physical you get, the harder your pup will fight back. So don’t restrain or get physical. Dogs don’t listen to you because you are stronger. They listen to you because you are in control, so they can trust you. No dog will trust someone that is out of control, frustrated, angry, hesitant or with lack of confidence. Think about it, would you?
I´ll finish reinforcing that the purpose of a boundary is not to impose your way with force but to calm your pup down and following through with determination and confidence. It´s never a fight. It´s a calming exercise and process. Kind of like YOGA 😉
© Gabriel Riesco, Brooklyn, NY Jan 2018
by Gabriel Riesco | Aug 23, 2021 | Dog Problems. Behavior Modification, Dog Training, Mindfulness & Psychology with Dogs
“Difference between Training/Conditioning and Behavior”
Your dog can know 100 “cues”, “commands” and tricks and yet still have a lot of behavioral issues. This is an example of how all my clients emails start: “My dog is very sweet and smart, but ….”)
There is a big difference between Training/Conditioning and behavior. These two concepts are usually misunderstood or completely unknown even among some professional dog trainers.
Let’s start defining them:
1.- Training / conditioning means teaching your dog human language and cues to condition your dog to do certain commands like sit, stay, down etc – usually with treats and positive reinforcement or sometimes with harsh punishment, which I do not recommend or support.
This is based on Classical Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov) and Operant Conditioning (B.F Skinner)
Classical conditioning is a type of learning that happens unconsciously. When you learn through classical conditioning, an automatic conditioned response (salivating) is paired with a specific stimulus (a “bell ring” followed by a tasty treat”)
Operant Conditioning is a method of learning that employs rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence (whether negative or positive) for that behavior.“If you do this : “sit”, you get this: “reward” or if you do this : ¨unwanted behavior¨ you get this: ¨punishment¨.
2.- Behavior Modification means to fade out or change unwanted behaviors. This is based on changing the state of mind of your dog. Using body language, energy and techniques that change the emotional response of your dog. What you accomplish here is basically three things:
1.A relationship with your dog. Who is the driver? Who is the parent?
2.The way you communicate with your dog: Body language and energy. Different from hand signals and treats.
3.The ability to change your pups state of mind or emotional response to triggers or environments.
I a nut shell Training/conditioning is great to teach your dog to DO things and behavior modification is best to teach your dog NOT to do things. The first is based on motivation and rewards the second is based on boundaries, self control and sound state of mind.
Any given human can have very sharpened skills or even be a genius at maths, law, or computer programming but still struggle with social behavior, boundaries, manners or simply adapting to an environment because they are not in a sound state of mind.
Acquiring a specific and sharpened skill doing something doesn´t mean you are social adaptable to an environment, in a healthy state of mind or emotionally sound.
A simpler way of seeing this is thinking of Behavior as social skills (Being in a controlled state of mind and emotionally sound) and thinking of training/conditioning as going to Harvard or MIT , where you can learn very specific skills.
You don´t need to be a genius to be successful with social behavior and you don´t need to be successful with social behavior to be a genius. You can have one, the other, both or none.
The one that will put you or your pup in trouble is the lack of social / behavioral skills. This has to do with Self Control, Respect and Boundaries.
In other words you are not going to go to jail because didn´t go to Yale, but you will go to jail if you destroy Yale.
Most of my clients have a done a lot of dog training/conditioning. They took their pups to obedience class or taught them a good amount of commands and skills like sit, stay, leave it, off, lay down, bring me etc you name it. Yet they’re dogs are still aggressive, anxious, overexcited, compulsive, fearful etc which tra
The fact is that even after being successful at training all those commands, the pup is still having behavioral issues. Why? Because the lack of Self Control, the lack of clear boundaries and being in an out of controlled state of mind
There are several reasons for this:
1.Your Relationship with your dog. If your pup doesn’t view you as someone they can trust or as a decision maker then he/she will expect you to listen to him or her. An example of this is when I hear the dog owner saying: ¨My dog only listens to me when he or she wants to¨ or ¨My dog only listens to me when I have a treat on my hand¨.
2. The fact that your dog learns the meaning of a certain human word (ex: sit) doesn’t mean that your pup is actually going to obey when you say so. The same way you can know the meaning of a Speed Limit Sign and yet you decide to drive faster 😉
3. Your pup learns to listen to your reward (treats, toys etc) not to you.
4. If your pup is in the wrong state of mind, no matter how much training and conditioning you´ve worked on, your pup wont´t listen. Any animal on fight/flight state of mind will not listen to anyone unless you force them. And forcing does not create acceptance it creates resistance.
Knowing when and how to use and integrate this two different approaches (Training/conditioning and Relationship / Bonding and Commnicating) is key in order to create and to maintain a harmonious relationship.
Usually when you want to add or teach a new behavior you use positive reinforcement (Conditioning and training) and when you want to remove a behavior you focus on changing the state of mind or emotional response of your dog with boundaries, limits and rules (Relationship, Bonding and Communicating).
© Gabriel Riesco, CT, re-edit November 2022
by Gabriel Riesco | Aug 16, 2021 | Dog Training
Separation anxiety is a fairly common problem in the city. Your dog will become stressed when you leave your house or when your about to leave. The photo above is how my dog is when I leave the house. As you can see he is not very concerned. And that´s how you want your dog to be when you leave the house: Nice and relaxed.
Some of the most common symptoms of separation anxiety are: excessive salivating, urinating/defecating, barking, howling, whining, scratching walls, digging, destructive behavior, escaping, pacing. Sometimes it can cause self injury.
Causes of dog separation anxiety.
This can happen because of a change in residence, change of parent or a sudden absence of a family member. It can also be developed through time with dogs that were never taught to be left alone.
Separation anxiety is easy to understand and to solve if you understand some basic concepts of dog and human psychology. There are basically two main reasons why this can happen:
- Your relationship with your dog. This is the most important one. If your dog thinks he or she is in control of the household or of you, then you are in trouble. What your pup is telling you is not to leave the house, but you leave anyways. Imagine you tell your 5 year old not to leave the house, but she leaves anyways and manages to lock you in the house. Now she is running around the street with cars coming in and out. Who do you think is going to have anxiety? You or your 5 year old? Of course you. Why? Because you are the parent and you are in charge. If your relationship with your dog is upside down, basically what´s happening in your pup´s mind is that you are the rebellious teenager that is leaving the house without his or her consent. This causes anxiety. You can confine the body in a crate, in a room or in the garden, but if you don’t convince the mind your pup will go crazy. A lot of cases of separation anxiety they simply disappear when you change the relationship. It happens fast and the change is dramatic. It´s like taking a big heavy load out of your pup´s back.They simply relax and enjoy life. I´ve seen it many times myself.
- Your pup´s state of mind. Separation anxiety can still happen even when you know 100% sure that you are the one in control of the household or the parent in the relationship. What happens in this case is that your dog gets anxious because you are LEAVING. He/she escalates and gets out of control. In his/her mind when you LEAVE means you are not coming back. Wether you come back or not its not important at that moment, because dogs live in the present. There is a fine line where your pup will escalate or will calm down. Your ability to prevent your dog from escalating before he/she gets out of control or anxious is key. Success is NOT how long you can go out of your house until your pup barks or get anxious. Success is going out of your house with your dog being calm and coming back while your pup is calm. Even if it´s for 5 seconds. If your pup can be calm for 5 seconds he/she can be calm for 5 hours. It´s a matter of working on duration.
Note: It´s very important to know that if you don´t have your relationship with your pup clear nothing will work.
© Gabriel Riesco, Fairfield CT, November 2017
by Gabriel Riesco | Aug 2, 2021 | Dog Problems. Behavior Modification, Dog Training
As I mentioned in one of my previous blog, not mastering the walk with your pup can cause several problems. One of them is Leash Aggression.
Let me start by explaining what leash aggression is. Leash aggression means that your dog gets aggressive when on leash. The outcome could be excessive barking, lunging or attacking another dog or human.
An example for this is a dog that is well socialized and has no problems off leash, but as soon as you put the leash on, he or she starts getting aggressive with other dogs or humans.
Leash aggression is always caused by lack of leash communication between you and your pup. If you already adopted your pup with this problem, don´t worry it´s still on your hands to fix it.
There is no leash without humans, so you can kind of guess what´s the cause of the problem. When you remove the leash, you remove the human, you remove the problem.
Yes, this might be a little painful to hear, but if your pup has leash aggression there are good chances that you´ve created it. But dont´t worry if human created it, human can fix it. If you are reading this your are in the right path to find the solution.
What´s happening is that your dog is associating the leash with restraining and tension, so he or she starts building up frustration. When a trigger comes up, it becomes an explosion.
Remember this: TENSION ONLY CREATES TENSION
Often, dog parents have their pups on tight leash, “in case anything happens.” Unfortunately, the tight leash communicates tension to the dog, and it further increases their stress.
Be aware that the leash restricts your dog´s capacity to move freely. When you attached the leash to your pup he or she is in a weaker position which can make him/her vulnerable. In a way she is depending on you and you have to convince her that she can trust you. Pulling and restraining doesn’t´ communicate trust, quite the opposite. What you are telling your pup is to get ready for the battle.
It´s funny how humans focus their attention on the dogs instead of on themselves. I usually get comments like:
- “ My dog hates the leash” or
- “my dog hates going for a walk, she just wants to run” or
- “my dog is just a bad walker by nature”
Well, dogs are by nature good walkers. They love to walk, to explore and to go to places. And by nature they do it in a very calm manner. Leashes are created by humans not by nature, so it´s not a natural thing for them. They need proper guidance and we need to learn how to communicate properly.
A very common mistake people make is to tense up the leash to gain control of situation. “To play safe”.
I get it, you are taking care of liability, but that´s exactly what created the problem. “Liability” is a human problem not a dog problem.
Of course liability is something you want to take into consideration, but remember when you put tension, wether is physical or mental, your dog doesn´t know why. They only know you are getting tense and they react to it.
Teaching your dog that leash means “time for a nice and relaxed walk where no-one is going to pull or fight the leash” is entirely up to you.
It doesn’t come from liability thinking, it comes from self control, awareness and learning how to comunicate properly with the leash in a gentle manner.
Check out my blog on Leash Communication where I explain how to gently and effectively communicate if you are not already doing so. I will give you a couple of tips that will help the process.
Meanwhile I will give you something to consider if you are struggling with Leash Aggression: Success is measured by good behavior or the lack of a reaction, it is NOT a measure of how close you can get before a reaction. Maintaining a good state of mind is much more effective than trying to change it or punish it after it occur.
© Gabriel Riesco, Fairfield CT, October 2017
