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the dogs or any of the pets in your home and definitely will be a multiplier for the dysregulation that you're seeing. Things like trigger stacking, which I spoke about in podcast episode number 112, where the dog has had so many triggers in that day that the dysregulation is just going to explode at some point. As a dog owner, as a pet owner, your expectation of your dog, your expectation of yourself. Super important that you keep the two of them distinct. That what are you expecting of your dog's behavior at this moment? What are you expecting of yourself to help your dog achieve the ability to give you that behavior? Now, when dog training goes wrong, it's always one of three things. Number one, it's the skill. And it's going to start with your skill. Your skill as a dog trainer to convey to your dog how to do exactly what you want them to do without having any kind of bribery or reinforcement on them. Can they do what you expect them to do? And in order for them to be brilliant, I'm sorry, my friend, you have to be brilliant. You really have to start to learn more about not just how to train to sit down and come, but the understanding of what motivates a dog, of how a dog's fears impact their behavior. Number two is environment. And that is, is the environment that you're asking your dog to do whatever behavior it is, an environment that you've trained in and hasn't changed for the dog. Is this a fair environment? Because keep this in mind, environment always wins. It doesn't matter who the dog is, if there's nothing to compete against the environment, AKA the skill level that you've put in, environment always wins. So, environment is going to produce some surprise for the dog that is going to have them say, yeah, there's more value over here than there is over there. Unless you have put in the skill to have that dog change their mind. Now, what is the third factor? And the third factor is will. And this one is a little bit controversial because to me, my dog's will to do what I ask them to do is all dependent on my ability to inspire that dog through motivational games, to want to have a relationship with me, to want to be my teammate, to want to hang out with me. And so, that isn't a given. Now, for some of you, maybe it has been and bravo to you, but I don't believe the expectation should be. Now, some people say, if the dog chooses to not do something, they're being willful. Their will is saying, I'm not choosing that. Therefore, I need to go to coercion. I don't believe that's necessary. I believe we can use whatever

that dog loves, even something from the environment as a reinforcer to build the will to want to work with you. Dysregulation is the inability to manage emotions. And that's to be expected, especially with young puppies or with puppies or dogs who are in your home and haven't had clarity of expectations played out in a way that they want to do what you want them to do. And it is possible to get there. So, dysregulation can show up in any number of ways. Often it's an outward physical representation of an inward mental or emotional struggle. So, it could be a dog spinning or barking or lunging or humping or digging, or yes, even biting. Here's the thing that I want you to be clear about. Dysregulation is not the same as reactivity. Although when a dog shares their emotions with you and you don't do anything about it, that dysregulation can escalate to a place of reactivity or even aggression. And that's why there's two things that I need you to be really clear about. Number one, manage your expectations. Remind yourself of the stage and the age of your puppy. And remind yourself of how much you understand about what I'm talking about. How much education have you sought out for yourself? Because remember I've said this many times, the more educated you become about how dogs learn and how you can engage them, the more brilliant your dog will appear. So, number one, manage your expectations. Number two, learn to become aware of your dog's emotions. Now, I'm not saying for you to be able to identify, he's angry, he's happy, he's sad. Because I mean, there are times when it's obvious that our dog is really happy, but a lot of times we can't. We can't know what our dog's feeling. But what we can do is describe the behavior. We can describe our dog's temp, what their body looks like, and what are they doing. They're spinning in a circle on leash, barking hysterically, as a big tall man walks by, or a bicycle goes by, or a skateboarder goes by. We can describe that behavior. And by describing that behavior and keeping in mind behavior is communication, we can then say, wow, this isn't what I'd like to see from my dog. Here's where I think it could be different. And the gap between what your dog is doing, what you'd like to see is the training that needs to be happening. And this is my dog, this, who was completely dysregulated if she saw another dog out on a walk. It didn't matter how close or how far, she lost her mind. All of the hackles on the back of her neck would come up. She would scream, not just bark, scream. She would try to get in behind me.

If the dog came anywhere near us, she would lunge and snap. It was anarchy. And so, how often did I allow that to rehearse? Like maybe once? And then I went and journaled, this is the dysregulation I'm seeing. What can I do? Now back then we didn't realize the impact of her nutrition. She had great nutrition. She just didn't have great nutrition for her. So, that would have solved a lot of problems and would have taken me a lot faster to help her become more regulated around dogs. But here's what the co-regulation looked like. Number one, I never took her for a walk where there'd be any dogs. Around our property, yes. Did I take her where there were other dogs? Absolutely. But I never took her on a path or a street where she would have to see other dogs. What I would do, I would take her to a place where I knew there were dogs, but I also knew I could get like hundreds of meters away from them. So, I would go to a park on Lake Ontario and I would sit on a bench with a little dog bed and I'd bring a book and I would give her a big meaty bone. So, the dogs were a long way away and she was just learning and she was just chewing on her bone. Am I helping her to self-regulate? Trick question. No, I'm not. I'm co-regulating by the distance away from the other dogs. And by giving her something that's really amazing for her, would there be a little bit of classical conditioning? I'm chewing on this and dogs are walking by. I don't think so, because the dogs are really too far away. So, we would do that and eventually I could be closer to the path. So, I might be maybe five strides from the path. And instead of giving her a big meaty bone, I would give her like just drop cookies in her bed. I would teach her things like chin target behavior where she would rest her chin on my hand. I would just reinforce, we're now being operant. We are now allowing her to choose a behavior and it didn't have to do anything to do with the dogs. I was getting her nearer the dogs without her having to be forced to engage with the dogs or look at the dogs. When I could see she was more relaxed, then we went to a co-regulation that was leading me to a place where I could get out of the picture for her. And that was, we would do some tug games and then I would stop. I would use my chin target to help her see, orient to the dog down the path. And then I would move my chin target away. And when she looked back at me, I would either tug or I would give cookies. Now, if the dog was close, obviously I wasn't going to do this when the dog was super close, but I would never use tug when the

dog was, you know, within 30, 40 feet of us because I didn't want the chance of that other dog getting excited and coming and barking and lunging at her. So, I would use cookies. The closer the dog got, the more I would co-regulate by moving her further back off the path. Eventually she could just sit beside me in reinforcement zone. Her confidence had got to a place where she could look at the dog and look at me exactly as I wrote about in 2004 in my book, Shaping Success, where I talked about my dog, Buzzy, who was reactive to my then puppy Decaf. Look at what you're upset by. Look back at me for reinforcement. That whatever you're distracted by, you can look at it and then look back at me. Good choices get good rewards. All right. And we're giving high value reinforcement. Eventually I could not use the chin target. I could let this look at the dog and look at me, but I would never let a dog surprise her. So, if I saw a dog in a distance, maybe she was facing this way and a dog was coming, I would always orient her towards the dog. We got to a place where she was self-regulating in that she would look at the dog, look back at me. And then I could get to a place where I didn't reward every dog. It might just be every other dog, or I would reward three dogs, but not the fourth. So, we had gotten securely to a place of self-regulation. So, I could take this to different parks. I'd always start a little bit further away, but eventually she could be anywhere near dogs. Dogs actually would come up and sniff her. That's when I knew we were moving to a place of habituation. She's had dogs snarl at her, growl at her, lunge at her, and she has not reacted back. She has looked at me, heavily reinforced, and I've gotten her out of there. But that's what you can do when you make sure that your expectations are never higher than the training that you've put in with your dog. So, what can you do if you see that your dog is stressing? First thing is you're going to either remove the trigger that's causing the stress or remove the dog from the environment. That's the first thing. So, we need to eliminate the stress immediately and it's easy done. Remove the dog or remove the stressor by creating distance and giving them a new activity to play game. Okay. Now what we want to do is help that dog lower their cortisol. And you can do it by number one. What I love to do is play tug. Physical exercise helps to de-stress. So, if you took my dog when the dogs were barking and rushing towards her, there's no way she would have played tug

at that moment or the moment after. Likely would have been way too over threshold. But the dog coming towards her without barking and looking stiff, you know, she might've been excited. But once that dog left, I know for a fact she would have played tug. So, getting your dog to move physically is a really, really good thing that you can do. Second cousin to that would be a trick. So, getting the dog to jump up and hand target, getting the dog to weave between your legs, getting the dog physically moving. If you're a member of WAG Nation, that'll be easy because every month we add a new trick to WAG Nation. Sometimes you have a bad training session. You know, it might be a bad training session because things didn't go well. That can cause stress. Might be a bad training session because you inadvertently don't know about using games as a way of training, or you don't know about how reinforcement-based training really works. And so, every time you train, you are correcting and telling the dog they're wrong and giving them a collar correction. That adds stress. And then you need to de-stress. So, if I've had a training session where my dog didn't get as many rewards as I would have liked her to, I might then de-stress by going for a big walk or letting her go for a swim. The good news is the way that we train the cues that we use, sit down, stand, or do a trick. All of the cues actually help to de-stress a dog because they are triggers that create a positive conditioned emotional response. It's awesome!