프로젝트 캄 독: 지나치게 열정적인 인사 예방하기 #109

your dog will learn this is not dog time. Now think about a part of your daily routine that absolutely is dog time. Maybe it's when you take them for a walk. Now there are things that will tip your dog off that this is dog time. Maybe it's a certain time of day, part of a routine that happens at the same time of day. And maybe it's you sitting down to lace up your shoes, you get your coat. And what happens is your dog thing before the thing, they're figuring out this is dog time. And then they start singing the songs of the people so that everybody knows this is dog time. And then they start maybe spinning and bouncing off you. It's dog time. It's dog time. Because they're anticipating, this is dog time. And by the time you grab the leash and get to the door, you know, they're like super excited because it's dog time. Right? Now, what has happened when you have a dog that has inappropriate greetings at the front door? They think when a door opens that this is dog time. And it happens innocently enough because when we get a dog, a brand new dog, it might be when we get a new puppy. It could be when you get a new rescue dog. Come on, we're excited. We are so excited. And so, our first day home, we might rush home and like, Oh my gosh, I love you so much. I love you so much. And then you got to tell your friends, I got a new dog. I got a new puppy. I got a new rescue dog. You got to come see him. Oh, I'm going to come see him. So, they come through the door. Where is he? Let me see him. I want to meet the new dog. And then you call your family. I got a new dog. Can you bring the kids? It'd be really good for the dog to meet kids. Can you bring the kids? So, then the kids come through the door. And then it doesn't take many visits because already we're at three, four times the dog learns there's a car door slam. There's footfalls on the sidewalk. The doors open and then it's dog time. It's dog time. Oh my gosh. It's dog time. I'm going to sing this song to my people. I'm going to jump up and down. I'm going to bounce off of you. It's dog time. And so, that gets reinforced over and over and over again when our dogs are new or we have our new puppy and then we don't like it. Now, some of you may say, Oh Susan, it's okay. Like this is all fun. I love listening to this, but I like when my dog greets me at the door. Like, you know, I love my dog and I want him to know I love him. But here's the thing. Here's what happens during dog time. It's part of our routine that the dog can predict. And so, if you always take your dog walking within

a few minutes of the same time of day every day, which by the way, I don't think is a great idea. But if you do, your dog's going to start, you know, nosing you. It's almost dog time. Excuse me. Why are you still sleeping? It's almost dog time. It's almost dog time. And so, what happens is if that schedule gets bumped off, then the dog gets more and more anxious. It's dog time. Where are they? It's dog time. They should be here right now. And so, the dog might then start extrapolating that I hear a card going down the road. Or if you live in a condo, somebody's walking by the condo door. It could be dog time. They might be stopping. It could be dog time. And so, what you're doing by creating or allowing this kind of front door greeting to carry on is you are actually contributing to the anxiety of your dog. And none of us wants our dogs to live with anxiety. None of us. We want our dogs to be calm, right? We love our dogs and we want them to live their best life ever. And so, we want it to be really clear that it is us intentionally triggering dog time, right? My dogs know when it's dog time. I mean, Tater Salad is just a crack up. I've mentioned this on podcast before. He knows in the morning if I'm going in the car or if I'm going to the building versus if I'm going to walk around the field. Walking around the field, not high on his fun to do list. Going to the building or going in the car any time of day. He could be sound asleep in the middle of the night. And if you pick up a set of gears, oh, it's dog time. We're going in the car. It's dog time. He just, he loves dog time. He loves going in the car. He loves those things. So, we want to be the ones that trigger to our dogs, this is dog time. And by picking up the leash or by picking up if you take your dogs in the car, my dogs know, like we may pick up the set of keys and go in the car routinely during the day. But if we pick up a dog bag, that's a signal that we're going somewhere with a dog. The dog training bag that's got like leashes and dog treats and dog toys in it. We pick that up and put it over our shoulder and then go to grab the car keys. Oh, game on. It is dog time. And they know it. Right? So, the goal is that we trigger dog time. That falls on the sidewalk leading up to the front door can't be what triggered dog time. And so, that's what you've got. And we've got to change it. Now, when John and I, before we moved to this property, we really didn't have many people visit us. And so, we were in control of our coming and goings. And the routine that we

led, we never had any kind of barking or chaos at the door for anybody. Even if somebody did knock on the door, they would be like, Hey, someone's at the door. And then they were quiet because that was never dog time. And how did we get there is you've heard this before. You've heard this on this podcast. I bet you you've heard this from other trainers. What you may not have registered is the true meaning of what it means when somebody says, you should always have calm arrivals and departure with your puppy or dog. What does that exactly mean? I want to just share the details of it. It means back when I used to leave the house to go to work, when I would come back home, I mean, I would love to say, Oh my gosh, I missed you too. But I didn't. I would come home. The first thing I would do is go to the bathroom because you know, I had to do that. And then I would come out and my dog would always come to the bathroom with me and I would then come out and I'd let the dog out to go to the bathroom. Then they come in, the dog or dogs would come in if I had more than one. And then I'd pick up the mail and just quickly sort through, is anything exciting? Nothing exciting. At this point now I would go and get changed. So maybe five minutes has gone by. Once I got changed, then I would get their leashes and gather them and be going for a walk. And so it was dog time. And that was okay because it was triggered by my activities. So I really didn't, you know, Susan, you didn't say hello. You did nothing. That was kind of rude. No, it wasn't. You know, I just walked in and I just went about my business. It wasn't dog time. It was just like, Oh, she's having a shower. Oh, she's going to work on the computer. Oh, she's going to read a book. Those aren't dog times. No need to start singing the songs of your people. It's not dog time. All right. Now it's easy for me to say, yeah, you can control your comings and going, but what about the other people? And this is where we have a problem living in this house because there's a lot of people who come to visit here. And there's a lot of people who particularly are crazy about tater salad. And tater salad is a rescue dog. And he learned that anytime somebody came through a front door, it was dog time. And so, he came with this built-in wiggle and jump and making these bizarre bulldoggy terrier kind of screaming noises when anybody came to the door. And so recently what I did is I said, I can't have this because Swagger was starting to join in on tater salad singing the songs of the people. And the girls knew that it

wasn't dog time, but the boys seemed to, you know, think it was dog time. And so, here's what I did. And now I'm going to make it super easy for you to do this too, is I made up signs that look like lost dog signs. All right. So, when I was making them, I was debating, would somebody think that I lost my dog? And I thought, well, maybe I should just put a sign, but here's the thing. If I put a sign on my door that looks like a lost dog sign, that people are going to read it. When I just put a sign on my door, the first three people that came through the house, only two of them read it. But when I put up a sign that looked like a lost dog sign, people read it. And here's what it says. It says, Project Calm Dog on the top. And then it says, please ignore all of the dogs. Don't look at them or talk to them. And I had to add that piece because people would come into my house and they're going, okay, I got to ignore the dog. And they'd be staring at them and, oh, I got to get, well, eye contact. Dogs, dogs, they love eye contact. So, please ignore the dog wasn't good enough. I had to explain. Please ignore the dog in brackets or comma. Don't look at them or talk to them when you come into the house. And then I had to remind them at the bottom, you know, that's all of them. And maybe give them a time in it, 10 minutes, that's it. And then you can talk to them and then you can greet them. And so, the dogs after five or 10 minutes, I make it 10 because to be on the safe side, there is no pattern that every single person coming into my house is going to do the same that will trigger when dog time is. And so, it took like a week to change the chaos that happened at our front door when people came to the front door. Now, if I don't happen to be out in the house and like a delivery truck comes, guess what? Those boys still come to bark at the front door. But as soon as I show up, it's over. Now, what used to happen before I put up the signs is people would come into the house, even people they knew, and they'd still be wiggling and jumping and singing the songs of the people. And it just went on and on and on. It didn't stop. Just by posting those signs, it kind of went away. So, not kind of, it did. It went away. Calm arrival and departures. Everybody that comes in the house, just come in and start talking to me. The dogs know that's not dog time. That's not dog time. Okay. So, that's what we're looking for is to be intentional with the triggers, the thing before the thing, episode number 16, to be intentional with the triggers

that you set up to indicate to your dog that it's dog time. And that includes like dogs that wake you up in the morning. Shouldn't happen, right? I've mentioned this before on our podcast. I get up and I have two and a half to three hours. My dogs just sleep in bed and I go through my routine and they learn it's not dog time. All right. If you would like a copy of the sign that I've got posted on the front door, I actually made an extra, well, let me tell the truth. Sharon on the team made an extra copy of the sign I originally made it so that it's appropriate for those of you who have a single dog or those of you who live in a multi-dog household. If you'd like to download a copy of that, I'll put the link in the show notes. So, that's it for today's Shaped by Dog. Please, for your dog's sake, make an effort to just hold off telling them how much you love them for at least five to ten minutes when you get home every day. I'll see you next time here on Shaped by Dog. This poor dog's turning herself in circles trying to get you to hit that subscribe button. Could you please do it? And while you're there, go ahead, hit the notification bell as well. And if you're already a subscriber, that's for you. Go grab yourself a great reinforcement. You're such a goof.