간식을 거부하는 반려견을 위한 도움: 훈련 계획이 포함된 사례 연구 #179

sick. We've ruled out that it is a habit. It's now all about value. Let's say you take a dog out to a bunny farm and you've got kibble as your reinforcement. The dog is highly unlikely going to take that kibble because they want to see the bunnies. They want to chase the bunnies. It's so excited. And that's probably what every other dog trainer has told you. Get a bigger meatball. Get something that's more valuable. So, I'm sure you've heard people say, get higher value food and you just want to pull out your hair. There is no high value food that my dog will take when I'm outside. So, what happens is food that may work in the house suddenly lowers in value outside. It could be the dog is afraid. It could be the dog is overexcited. All right. And so, it doesn't really matter the reason, but what we've got to do is bump the value up when the dog's outside. Okay. You're probably going, yeah, Susan, you got an amazing grasp of the obvious there, Einstein. And that's what I'm going to share with you, how you're going to do it. All right. We've got to be diagnosticians first of all. And so, what I want you to do is I want you to make a list of 10 reinforcers that your dog will take or that your dog should take. If your dog just won't eat food anywhere, then we've got to look at experience. So, number one, let's rule out. If your dog is free choice fed, meaning you put their food down and you leave it there for the day, you've got to stop that behavior because you're teaching dog to ignore food, right? Oh, it's there. I can come back anytime I want. If there were chocolate chip cookies all around me 24 hours a day. Okay. That might be a really bad example. Okay. If there was like food everywhere, you might lose your appetite for that food. And a lot of times that happens when dogs are free choice fed. So, feeding your dog is an event. You present them with food. You give them a period of time, five minutes, whatever they don't eat in five minutes, you take it away. It's done. I don't know why I made those sound effects. I really don't. Okay. If you are offering your dog food all the time, it should go down twice a day. They eat what they want and then you take it away because we want it to be an event. Now, if your dog is overweight, you should be able to see your dog's last two ribs. Again, if they have a big heavy coat, maybe, but so many people tell me, oh, my dog's just fluffy. No, you can feel the skin and you can roll it. Then there's like fat under there. Guys, that's another reason why your dog may not be that hungry.

So, free choice foods got to go get your dog into a healthy weight. And the other thing is the random treats that you give your dog throughout the day, we're going to just put a curb on those. You're still going to be able to give them, but we're going to turn them into an event for you. All right. So, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to make a list of 10 reinforcements. So, ask your friends, put comments, come on over to YouTube, put your list over here so that other people can read your list. From things that are just okay, like dry, if you're feeding kibble, kibble might be something that is, yeah, that's okay. Or any kind of a dry store-bought treat that's just boring. You know, there's not much flavoring in that. The next step up might be a store-bought treat that is a little bit more robust. Like it might be freeze-dried liver or something that you can buy that most dogs would like. You can ask them at the store, what would be great for any dog. And you're going to go up. So, then you're going to try homemade salmon treats. We'll leave a link to a recipe here for you. If you're buying store-bought, try and buy something with tripe in it. And I apologize. Don't put it in your pocket. It's going to stink. But that is something that most dogs really, really like. All right. And then cheese. Do you want to try different kinds of cheese? I'm not a fan of feeding a dog hot dogs. And I really would discourage you from doing that because there's so much crap, salts, nitrates. No, let's keep dogs healthy. Stay away from hot dogs. But you can buy some chicken in, cook up some chicken or some beef. And we're going to go up the ladder. I'm going to tell you my dogs love, love, love cooked salmon, cooked venison, cooked bison. And you're going, holy smoke, Susan. This is going to cost me a fortune. I'm just giving you suggestions of things that might be outrageous, high value. But let me tell you, one of the highest value food for most dogs is what's different. So, whatever you've been trying, put that away. Don't bring that out right now. Let's get 10 things low to high of things that are different. Once you've got the value, your 10 from outrageous to, yeah, they like them. Then we're going to go locations in your home. I'd like you to find at least five. If you've got a one bedroom apartment, we can still get probably close to five. And that your bedroom, wherever you sleep, that would be one location. Your bathroom, there's a second location. Your kitchen or wherever your hot plate is, that's another location. The door you go in and out of,

right at the threshold with the door closed is one location. Open that door up to the outside. That's another. So, now we have 10 values, five locations. The last category is different times of day. So, they could be times of day near an event, like if you're coming or going to work, or when the dog's being fed, or when the dog's being walked, or when something gets happening. Different times of day. And what I want you to do is cross-reference all these lists. What is a zero? Dog won't touch it on your list. In what location? During different times of the day. Now your dog may or may not change at different times of day. So, that one isn't as important. Just stick with the locations to begin with, but do them all at the same time of day. So, what is a zero? Dog doesn't want it. What is a one? Yeah, that's okay. Dog will eat it. What is a two? Yep, that's good. And how can you tell? Because if the dog, if you present it and the dog looks away, that's a zero. If they won't take it or they take it and put it back on the ground, that's a zero. The one, they might take it and look away while they're chewing it and take a long time to chew it. The good might be they take it and they swallow it right away. So, that is good as a two and outrageous. You can see the ears go up, they grab it, they go, what was that? And then their tail starts like going. They're like, I want more of that. That is outrageous. Now you might own a dog that has got threes all across the board. Chances are that dog will take treats outside. If not, stick with me. Because the next thing we're going to do is we're going to create intentional triggers. So, the things that are going to lower the value of food for the dog when you're outside is events like maybe just putting on the leash or things that scare the dog or things that excite the dog. And so, what we need to do is create triggers that are more powerful than those things, right? So, we're going to intentionally create triggers. I would encourage you to go to episode number 107, where I share how to create value for nail trimmers in my pedicure please episode. And we're going to do the same thing with things you need to go training with. So, if your dog wears a collar all the time, you don't need to do this with a collar, but definitely do it with a leash. And if you use a harness, do it with a harness. You're going to, exactly as outlined in 107, your first training session, you're going to go to what's a three outrageous treats for your dog somewhere in the location that is the highest value for that dog.

And what you're going to do is you're just going to pull the leash out and give your dog the outrageous treat. Put the leash back in. Pull out like a hairbrush, meaningless. Pull out, roll of paper towels, meaningless. And then pull out the leash again. Give the dog outrageous treats, right? Do that three or four times and then put that away. End of one session. You're going to do this so that the dog sees the side of the leash and they're going to go crazy and do the same thing for whatever it is you take with you walking. When I was a pharmaceutical sales rep, I used to take my dogs with me on all my calls. And my older Jack Russell, as she got older, she decided she didn't like to go. And so, she knew when I was putting on the more posh going to prayer meeting kind of shoes that I was going to work and she would go and hop it up in the bed and she didn't want to come. And when I was putting on running shoes or boots in the winter, she knew we're going walking and she was all in. So, boots or shoes might be a trigger for your dog. And so, do the same thing. We want to create, oh my gosh, this is exciting. We want that trigger. You're going to do the same thing so that the dog sees it and you're going to go down to lower value locations all the way until you can go at the front door. Because that's probably going to be the one that's going to be the lowest. You're just going to stick with the high ones until the dog gets super excited when they see the leash in all your other environments. You're going to go to the one that's the toughest environment, the one that dog gets the most. Well, I don't really want to do this. You're going to do that one last. And if the dog will take the treats at the front door, then try to open the front door. If they won't take them with the door open, then close it and open it a crack. Work back and forth until you've worked through all those locations. You're going to do the same thing with your harness. And then you're going to go to a lower value treats. You're going to mix in some good treats, some number twos with some number threes. And so, the dog is going, oh, well, I like number twos as much as I like number threes. Because the value of the number three is going to go into the value of number two. Now that we've got that, you're going to start pretend walking in your living room. Clip on the leash, get the dog beside you, give them a treat in what we call reinforcement zone, take it off. That's it. You're going to just go through this routine in all five of those

locations around your house until the dog thinks this is the best thing ever. Then we're going to try to walk a little bit. I want you to rehearse walking slow and then turn and run, depending on how big your house or apartment is, you're going to turn and you might like run in a circle and then give your dog a treat. Because that's another way to jack up value. Motion, changing the dog's physiology can change the value. Maybe tossing the treat, teaching your dog to catch, that can change the dog's physiology. A hand target. There's a video over on YouTube where I teach how to do a hand target. Get your dog to jump up in the air and touch your hand and then give them a cookie. So, when you get them to jump, that makes it more likely for them to take the treats. Simple in the house, you can kind of push the dog back with your hand, toss the treat and tell them get it and then you can run away. These are things that are just going to increase the value of treats and you're going to do it with the goods and the ones that are just okay. Eventually we want the ones that they just didn't want before. And so, we are increasing the value of the food. We're building triggers in the leash and in your position. We're building triggers in you walking and we're going to add new words. So, that's okay. It's okay. We're gone. We're in the house. We're going to use words like super when the dog's excited. So, that's a word that gets him even more excited because he knows a high value cookie is going to come. You say, super, give a cookie. Or you say, who's a good dog? Or whatever it is you want to say. I like to use the word cookie, which means a really high value cookie is going to come to my dog. All right. So, this is all about being intentional about, yeah, you're going to be a little kooky. You're not going outside for a bit. Of course, you've got to take your dog out to do their business, but you're going to be rehearsing, walking on leash in the house. And then when the dog is super excited, as soon as they see the leash and they start walking, you can go out the door, one step back in the door, close, take the leash off. That's it. Try to get like a couple of steps. Now, if you know there are triggers, cars, skateboards, other dogs, children, you're going to stay away from those guys. You need to counter-condition those separately. But first we got to get the dog taking food before any counter-conditioning can happen. So, walking up and down just a little bit in front of your house or your apartment,

two or three steps, that's a huge accomplishment. And when you do it, I really want you to come back here, come over to YouTube, write in the comments of this episode, guess what? We got the dog eating cookies outside. Three cookies first, and eventually you could mix in some number two cookies with the threes. And eventually one, two or threes. Before you know it, you will have no zero cookies because you've got that transfer of value. Just believe the dog. Watch the dog's body language. And if they're showing you that they are getting more worried, you've got to get them out of that environment. The goal is for them never to look at you and say, I'm worried. Because once they've got that, oh, I'm not sure about this look, it means they've already gone over threshold, one level of threshold. So, we want to prevent that by just doing short walks, lots of good triggers, forget your old triggers and have a dog who happily takes food outside. Now, if you live in an apartment and you have a balcony, you could just start doing this outside on the balcony. The most important thing is that there's fresh air. If you can't get to the balcony, open some windows and do it near an open window. So, the trigger of fresh air could be one that the dog's going, oh, fresh air. I get good cookies. I love this. Being intentional, putting in building blocks. And you're going to say, oh, Susan, this seems like a lot of work. It's not work. It's fun. It's having sessions with your dog that helps build their confidence. How can that ever be work? It's about a relationship. We're building a deeper relationship with our dog. And if you had a child who lacked confidence in some area, you wouldn't say, oh man, this is work. No, because you love to see that child flourish. You love to see the confidence grow. You love to see them say, hey, I can throw a baseball outside now. Hey, I want to be on a team. That's what your dog is showing you. I can go outside just like a normal dog. I can take treats in reinforcement zone. This is good. What are you doing? Running on the spot? That's fine. Have those games in your toolbox. So, when you go outside, you know you can change pace, walk normal, do a little bit of fast, do a little bit of plant your foot, pivot, turn the other way, and give your dog cookies. Do some hand targets, do some who's a good boy. I don't know where that came from, but whatever you want to do, and then come on back here and let me know how successful it's been for you. Outside the box thinking to a problem that isn't just,

just get higher value food. It's a lot more than that. And when you put in the extra layers, your dog's going to go, oh, thank you. Thank you. You got me. This is awesome. I'll see you next time right here on Shaped by Dog.