할리우드가 반려견의 삶을 힘들게 만든 이유 #3

dogs I've ever owned, I've shared that magical relationship with. People define their heart dogs, their once-in-a-lifetime dogs. I've been blessed to have had that 10 times. Because I don't leave it to chance. Here's the thing about dogs. They develop great relationships with dogs. So, if you have another dog in the house and you bring in one dog in, they'll develop a great relationship with them at the expense of the great relationship with you. You want a great relationship with that dog, you're going to have to put in the work. My mentor, Bob Bailey, he has this great quote. He says, the challenge and why training fails is because people expect way too much of their dog and way too little of themselves. You need to create an environment of success for your dog. You know, so how it works is you know what your dog wants. I've talked about that in a past podcast episode. You know exactly what your dog wants, what he loves, what's reinforcing to him, what is high value reinforcement. You can predict what he's going to want at any time during your training or when he's at home or when he's away at a park, when there's other distractions. And you create an environment of success. Know what he loves, predict what he wants, create an environment of success. That kind of sounds like a great recipe for any successful relationship, right? Whether it be with a kid, whether it be with a partner, whether it be with a coworker, that's not a bad recipe for creating a great, great relationship. And it goes back to success in dog training, right? Is that statement that I've said in every podcast, our dogs are always doing the best they can with the education we give them in the environment that we are expecting to perform. Let me give you an example. My late husband was a neat freak. When we met our first date, when I went to his house, I knew probably only going to last six weeks tops once he sees my house, because I was not a neat freak. I have definitely grown to be more of a neat freak over the years. And I thought this was going to be, because obviously this was something that was super important to him. When we built our current house, we were together for over 22 years before he passed away. When we built this current house, what we did was we changed the environment so I could be a neat freak. We had a walk-in closet that had laundry, washer, dryer, right in the closet, and all of the clothing, like the dresser, the drawers, and everything was in the closet. So, I would take off my clothes and put on clean clothes in the same place. The bedroom never got

untidy because I didn't have any tools to get untidy with. It was all in that closet. And so, you can manipulate your dog's environment as well so that they can have success. And it means using things like a crate or an exercise pen. And people say, well, I put him in a room. Well, if you put him in a room and he didn't have great exercise before you put him in there, you didn't do mentally stimulating games to kind of wear out his brain a little bit, and you didn't give him access to things like bones to chew on, then it's probably not a surprise to me that you came back and your doorframe was missing because your dog destroyed it. And putting your hands on your hips and saying things like, what did you do? If you ever hear yourself saying that, you need to rephrase it to, what did I do? Did I miss out on an educational piece for that dog? Did I miss out on setting him up in an environment of success? What did I do? It's not what did you do? Because here's something that I've been saying for 20 years in teaching seminars all over the world. I've said this, and sometimes it brings people to tears. And I don't mean this to make you feel bad about yourself. I mean this to inspire you. Our dogs are a reflection of our understanding of how to train dogs. So, my dogs, I think are phenomenal family pets. I can take them off leash and walk them and know they'll come back anytime I call. If I throw a toy, they immediately will run out as fast as they can and run back and put it right in my hand. They play when I ask. They chill when I ask. Right? We have developed this great relationship. Right now, I've got dogs at my feet while I'm doing this podcast because they love hanging out with me. Actually, there's one under the desk pawing at me as I said that. That's hysterical. How does that great relationship happens? It happens by creating an environment where choice is out in front. So, I mentioned in the last podcast that when our dogs make a choice and that choice gets reinforced, the choice point gives a dopamine release to the dog. So, they want to make that choice. So, your training should set the dog up so that they make a choice and then that good choice gets a reinforcement. And a great place to start is my game, It's Your Choice. And it's kind of all one word. It's a word I made up. It's your choice. I know it should be, it's your choice. Better English. However, the game's called It's Your Choice or IYC. You can go to my website, dogsthat.com, scroll down to our blog and it's highlighted right there. It's

your choice. You can start today and create this amazing TV-like relationship with your dog all through choice. And it's kind of like it snowballs that, you know, people say relationships 50-50. 50-50 relationships I found don't work. They need to be 100%, 100%. You can't have expectations that that person is going to do things for you. And they can't, they, I mean, if you have expectations of yourself that you're going to do everything you can, and that person you're in a relationship has the same expectations, that's what makes a great relationship. All right. So, you need to grow your understanding. If you, if you want this amazing relationship with your dog, you need to grow your understanding of how to create that great relationship because we can't have critical conversations with the dog. Although some people do try in the, what did you do? And I, you know better. These are things that if they come out of your mouth in a conversation with your dog, come back and listen to this podcast and let's get inspired to learn more how to create that great relationship with your dog by learning how to create a dog who wants to do what you want to do. Because the dogs are all doing the best they can. It's our job to inspire them to, you know, let's take something really difficult, like a dog getting their nails cut. It is possible to create a dog who wants to get their nails cut. It is possible. It's possible to create a, and it's all done, through manipulating environment, creating good choices and being patient along the way. But you, you need a starting point. So, we start with the dog making a choice and learning that when you make good choices, I'm going to reward you. And then we grow, it's your choice to a bigger choice. And it's, and that's where our, our game, Crate Games comes in. And while you're on the blog, you can, you can do a little search for Crate Games. Knowing what your dog loves, that list of food, toys, and activities that I spoke about in our last podcast. Predicting what will be his favorite in any different environment. Creating an environment for success. So, what does an environment for success look like? If I'm going to leave my dog and go to work, I'm going to make sure that dog has at least an hour walk. I know it's going to mean you getting up a little earlier in the morning. But if you can't do that hour walk before work, here's what you can do. You can do two five-minute games. That's all. Two five-minute games. Then when you come home, you're going to do one more

five-minute game before you make supper. And then after supper, you're going to go on that hour-long walk with your dog. You both will thank me for that. And then sometime in the evening, you can do another five-minute game. You have now exercised your dog, got them exhausted, and an hour would be a minimum. My dogs get two hours of exercise every day. So, an hour of exercise, you've done mental stimulation. And these games, games aren't just mindlessly throwing a ball. These are games of choice that helps lead you to an outcome you desire. So, it might be you want your dog to come when you're called. Well, our Recallers online course, which I'm not suggesting that you jump into that right now, is that you just explore. We've got a lot of free things you can look at on my blog. But our Recallers, it teaches dogs to come when they're called along with other things. It's 40 games. You play these daily games with your dog and you create a dog who wants to do what you want to do. Right? Like, is it easier to get a kid to do something when they want to do it? Or is it, you know, they have to because I said so. When you have, you know, I have to, because you said so, you're going to get not the best work. You're going to get a little bit of animosity, possibly some bitterness or resentment as time goes on. And when you aren't on top of it as the Sergeant Major, the job's not going to get done probably at all. But it's definitely not going to get done well. If you inspire a kid, and I don't, another tact you could say is, if you do your bed, I'll give you a quarter. And then you are walking into a relationship of negotiation with that child. And I have seen that happen. I have seen when kids get asked to do something and they go, well, what if I do this instead? No, I want you to do that. Okay. Well, what if, can I, if I do that, can I have a cookie? Can I have a snack? Or can I have my allowance two days early? If I do, I have seen relationships of negotiations with children. And I got to tell you, that is an energy drain as well. What I've seen as super effective relationships is creating an inspired kid who wants to do something and then gets reinforced for it without the expectation. And they soon, like me, I have learned to appreciate and like having a neat environment. In a million years, I wouldn't have thought it possible. But when I started dating John, I was 35 years old. I loved a clean environment. I had a cleaning lady that came every week, but I had to tidy up for like an hour and a half before she got there. And now I kind of like having a tidy

environment. I don't know, it's somewhere over the 20, 22 past years it happened, right? So, the, it, it, it, it, it's thinking outside the box. I get that. It's stepping outside of a comfort zone. But my point is, dogs aren't little human beings. They are animals that we can have phenomenal relationships with. Relationships that bring you joy every day. Relationships where your dog 100% understands what's expected of them. And they want to do that every time. Somebody wrote a review about my first book. My first book is called, no, the second book I wrote is called Shaping Success. And what she wrote, um, has stuck with me because it was, it was like, wow, she gets it. And she said, I envy the clarity to which Susan's dogs live their lives. And that is my wish for every dog on this planet. To have the ability to live their lives with such clarity that they want to do what we want them to do. And they're not feeling intimidated to have to do something. Or they're not worried. They live a life where every day they get more and more confidence that they're doing the right thing. And that confidence comes through the reinforcement. And that is what develops that amazing, a better relationship than you see in Hollywood. It is possible. It all develops by starting with a common ground and putting in the effort. Make their expectations of yourself far greater than your expectations of your dog. Make your expectations of how you're going to create a successful environment, of how you're going to deep dive into choice-based, game-based, reinforcement-based dog training, so that you can be the leader in creating this phenomenal relationship. And I promise you, it will spill over into the rest of your life. That it will spill over into how you look at relationships with the people in your life. And that is where we have a life shaped by dogs. I'll see you next time.