E114: 사라 스트레밍(Sarah Stremming) - 질풍노도의 청소년기 개들 훈련하기

The puppy behaviors in an adult body, because I think that gives everybody kind of a really good picture of what you're talking about. I think we often hear that part of those behaviors or that the dog is being kind of rebellious when they become a teenager. Has that kind of held true in your experience? What's that about? So I really don't think of them as being rebellious. I know that people do think like that, and it's easy to kind of read them that way. And I think we read them that way because when they hit this age, they prove what we have and have not adequately trained, or what we have and have not adequately reinforced. So if we haven't actually reinforced kind of that nice natural recall that puppies have, it's gone now. And if we haven't actually built in a reinforcement history for things like loose leash walking or calmly greeting humans and dogs, all of that stuff that we took for granted goes out the window. We look at them sometimes as rebellious because in our mind, their behavior has changed drastically from when they were babies. But in reality, their behavior changes naturally as all of our behaviors change as we mature. And we just find out what foundation we actually laid and what we didn't. And I think we just take for granted that the puppy is going to follow us on the trail and that the puppy is going to say hi nicely to humans and dogs, hopefully, usually when they're tiny babies. And we just kind of take that stuff for granted. They also don't pull super hard on the leash until they are around five or six months of age, kind of depending on breed. And then we suddenly think they're rebelling because they're dragging us down the street and they are kangarooing up and down when they see another dog or they are no longer listening when we call them out on the trail. I don't think any of that's rebellion, but I think it's easy to read it that way for sure. So for folks with puppies who are kind of heading for that stage, they're not quite in the six month period yet, but they're heading that way. Are there things that it makes sense to do with that little puppy that kind of smooths the way for a better adolescence? Absolutely. And basically everything in the course kind of could and should be done before the puppy's a teenager. But generally speaking, it's all about deciding what kind of dog we want to have and then setting about laying a strong foundation of positive reinforcement for the behaviors that we are after. So thinking about how our tiny baby puppy is behaving and if those behaviors would be acceptable

a year from now or 30 to 40 pounds from now is very important. And I think with little puppies, we really think about just providing them with a lot of good social exposure to dogs and people and places and things like that. And I think that's really important to do. But then we start to shift into a time when they get to be basically when they are right about done with teething. So kind of five-ish months of age, five and a half months. We then really want to stop thinking so hard about, I'm just going to do all this positive exposure. That's still important. But then we start to want to pay very close attention to what behaviors are also happening in those contexts. And that's a lot of what the course is about. Can you just give me an example? Yes. So for instance, I might let my little baby puppy jump all over every person that he meets because I really want him to... I'm really excited that he likes people and I want him to like people. And I don't want anybody, quote unquote, correcting or anything like that for jumping. And I encourage people to sit on the floor and be at the puppy's level and have the puppy crawl all over them and be ridiculous. And then kind of... And this is just how I do it. Some people certainly don't allow that from the beginning. I do. I want the puppy to think people are wonderful. And it's people that I trust because I've certainly had experiences where the person might push the puppy off of them kind of rudely because they think they're helping you. Everybody thinks they're helping you. So... And then when they get to be about four and a half months, five months, I start to go, okay, now let's talk about how you can actually still get attention from people by not clamoring all over them. And then I also around that age, start to talk to them about how we're not actually going to say hi to everyone. And sometimes I'm going to tell you, no, you don't get to say hi to that person. And other times I will tell you yes. And when I tell you yes, this is how I'd like you to do it. When they're puppies, I don't worry super hard about that stuff. I just worry about them liking everyone they meet. Then once I've kind of established that they like everybody they meet, I can start to talk to them about how not everybody's here for you. And the people who are here for you, you can say hi to kind of in this acceptable way with your four feet on the floor. I want to talk about some of the options, you know, for managing some of those bad behaviors. You know, well, relatively, you know what I mean? Once a young dog has kind of crossed that line to adolescence.

So, you know, kind of starting big picture, when you look at the things that a young dog needs to have a good life as a young dog where we can live with them, you know, what factors are you looking at? What do you consider? So freedom is huge for adolescents of, I think, any species. Um, I think that, you know, like in all of my classes, I'm going to have a strong emphasis on behavioral wellness. Um, but you hit the nail on the head when you talked about meeting their needs in order for them to be good dogs. And an adolescent's dog's needs are, um, they're different from both puppies and adults. And again, this is what makes them difficult. And this is why people struggle because they need a lot more exercise than a puppy. Um, and oftentimes they need a lot more exercise than an adult, kind of depending on your breed. They need more mental stimulation than both puppies and adults. And just generally speaking, they need more of everything during this time. So we think of puppies as really high needs and they are in a very different way because they're infants basically. So they need close care every few hours and then they kind of sleep until the next care point kind of comes out. The adolescent is no longer needing as much sleep, um, and is needing a lot more stimulation, a lot more exercise. And when they look at them, they see an adult dog and they're like, you know, they just kind of expect them to act like the other adult dogs when they're not actually grown up yet. So what's hard about it is they can look like an adult. They can weigh what they're going to weigh. Um, as you know, an 11 month old, they might be done actually physically growing, but they just need so much more than they will when they're three or four years of age. And they need a lot more than they did up until about five months of age. So it's basically more, more, more. So it's more exercise and more mental stimulation. And we, we think that's about when we get to, you know, not pay as much attention to them because maybe they're house trained now. So we're not breathing down their neck constantly to make sure they don't use the house as a toilet. But actually they need more of our attention than they just need a different kind. So they're not, I want people to not think of them as less work than the puppy, but different, but a different kind of work, um, that they really, that they really require. I want to talk about boys and then we'll talk about girls. Do you have any tips for listeners who's, you know, that little boy dog has suddenly discovered

they have hormones and they're starting to hump things or mark things, you know, how do you kind of manage those behaviors? Oh yeah. Super fun. Um, the class is full of these things. I even have a specific assignment pertaining to marking or inappropriate urination of any kind. Um, I like to obviously start this conversation with my boy dogs, preferably before the hormones hit, but of course, you know, you can always start training anytime. Um, I like to have this conversation with my boy dogs about where and when they are actually allowed to mark. Because when I, a hundred percent of the time when I was doing in-home behavior work and I got called in for quote unquote marking behaviors, if we went outside for a walk, the dog peed on every single vertical surface that we walked past with no, you know, thought about it. And so of course he also pees on your curtains and your couch and your table because they're vertical surfaces too. And so I just like to have the conversation. I call it here, not there. Um, and that's, that's a full assignment in the class. And it's basically teaching them, um, teaching humans to see the precursors, to see the dog starting to walk up to the vertical surface and sniff it and ask the dog to actually go urinate on something else. Even if it's an acceptable surface, we should be able to say to them, not there, do it here and then reinforce them for that. Um, we are going to talk about humping too, but my quick tip for everybody is the only time I would ever intervene on that is if they are hurting or really irritating one of my older dogs or someone else's older dog. It generally fizzles out. If you let it, people just don't let it fizzle out because it bothers us. You know, it's kind of like embarrassing when your dog is humping. Um, it's, it's a toy in the corner or, um, one of the other dogs, but speaking from experience, Felix was a big, big humper as a puppy. And I have been telling people to ignore it my whole career up to that point. And I went, well, put your money where your mouth is stremming. And I ignored it. And I even gave him stuff he could hump in his X-pen. Like I would give him a giant stuffed animal in there and just generally speaking, ignored it. And it absolutely fizzled out because it is just a juvenile behavior that is not meant to last forever, but we put a lot of attention on it. And then it becomes a, then it becomes a problem. Um, but we are going to talk about that in the class more as well. So what about, what about girls? I think generally we just kind of get the sense that they get a little more bitchy as they

kind of go through those years, but you know, what? I mean, I can relate. There's nothing wrong with a little bitchiness. Um, but usually, usually when people start to describe their girls as being bitchy or snarky, it's because the bitch has reached a maturity point, especially if you leave them intact, they reach a maturity point where they just don't take anybody's crap anymore. And I'm really talking mostly about this, the behaviors that are directed at other dogs that bitches tend to be famous for. Um, especially in my breed border collies, they're known as being very snappy. Um, and you know, I seem to recall also being described as bitchy when I stopped taking people's BS. So I'm not sure. Um, so basically if the behavior is appropriate, which it often is, I ignore it. And so an example of when it's appropriate, if Iggy, um, my kind of matriarch in my house, if she air snaps at another dog that is being overly friendly, that's fine with me. An air snap is clear dog communication. It is not a bite. It is not a fight. Um, and it's perfectly acceptable. So one of the things we need to talk about in T in this class and teenage tyrants is reading what behaviors are a normal part of maturity and which behaviors are not, um, and which things we need to really dive in on. So something that might not be appropriate, but is normal through maturity is dog directed resource guarding or even human directed resource guarding. These are things that we don't always see when they're babies that do tend to crop up in people's homes around this quote unquote teenage age. Um, so I'm going to talk about prevention on, for, on both of those fronts on the dog directed and the human directed. Um, and again, it's all about reinforcing what you actually want and setting the dog up to be right. And that prevention should be done in every dog. Even if you just, even if you can't envision your perfect angel ever resource guarding, know that that's a natural, normal set of dog behaviors. So probably there's a case in which they would, and you should do the prevention anyway. I wanted to talk to you about this idea that sometimes dogs at their teenage years and they start to act a little reactive about stuff. They're just barky at stuff or they startle or whatever. If that crops up, you know, what should be done about that other than clearly panic? Because now, oh my God, you have a dog that's reactive. Oh, I panicked when Idgy, uh, bark lunged at her first dog when she was five months old, pretty much on the dot. Um, it's extremely, it's extremely common. No panic necessary. These are growing brains.

They're learning about appropriate and inappropriate social behaviors. There's also, you know, some evidence that they come kind of in and out of fearful types of development periods during this time. And so we're going to talk about two things to help kind of curb those natural kind of barky lungy behaviors. One of them is again, working through those hyper social behaviors regarding both people and dogs. So kind of, you can say hi to this person slash dog, and you can't say hi to this one. And just having that constant conversation with your teenager who you probably socialize to think that everybody is their friend, which is, that's not a bad route to go. Then the second round of conversations you have to have is actually not everybody's your friend. And I'm going to help you understand who is and who isn't. And then another thing we will talk about is something I call look and learn, which is essentially allowing the dog to observe its trigger peacefully in order to kind of soothe those reactive behaviors. And I want to be clear that the class alone is not going to heal any existing reactivity problem. That's really not what it's for. But it will give you tactics for prevention and kind of first steps of action if you see these really, really common behaviors come up. I mean, this is when it happens, right? They get barky lungy in this time span, usually, if they're going to be. And so it is good for us to know what those first steps of action are. Because panic, you know, you can panic if you want, but then you got to come back to action, right? And everybody operates better with a plan. So that's what we'll talk about is what is your plan if that starts to happen? Yeah, I certainly saw a little bit of that with Levi when he hit those teenage years. And now it's mostly gone. Now he only barks if somebody barks at him first. But yeah. Which is fair, I would say. Yes. Yes. But it's definitely scary for a little bit there. It's like, oh boy, am I going to have this life? Especially if you've dealt with stuff like that before and you don't want to deal with it again. It's so terrifying when your puppy does that for the first time because you just go down this memory lane of, you know, being in reactivity hell with your other dog or whatever. And that's definitely why I panicked when Iji did it for the first time. But I hear you. You mentioned recalls earlier and that, you know, that kind of disappears. I think a lot of the time teenage years are kind of associated with this idea of like selective hearing and kind of bouts of memory loss. Like we've trained. So what do we do about that? Like what?

Okay. Right. And it goes along with the rebellious question, which is, you know, this is the time that they prove what you have and have not trained. And usually we haven't adequately trained our recall because we relied on the fact that the puppy stays close or at least stays close to the other dogs. Um, and if they stop recalling and you thought your recall was good, it's not, it's time to boost your reinforcement for that behavior. But everybody's instinct is to put the dog on lockdown. Everyone's instinct here is to restrict freedom and what they need and crave more than anything during, especially during this time is freedom. So the more of it you take away, the worse all these things are actually going to be. So you have to teach them these behaviors like the recall behavior, um, in order to allow them the freedom that they're craving so desperately. And I mean, the number one way that I see people breaking their recall is by, you know, having their dog off leash in a space that maybe they don't feel totally safe about. And so they call the dog a lot so that the dog stays close to them because they're a little worried about the dog running off or whatever. Um, and you have to understand that every single time you call them, whether you're giving them the best food in the world for the recall, which you should be, you're asking them to give up their freedom for a second. And you have to understand what, how big of a deal that is to them. And so you want to not be doing it super often. And it's the same with any of our other behaviors that are kind of control types of behaviors that they start to get that, uh, people start to see or think that they have, that the dog has selective hearing about or bouts of memory loss about. Um, all of those things are probably about the fight between your reinforcement history and the dog's desire for freedom. And if you can just make sure that your reinforcement history is very strong and that you never fight the dog on that freedom front and you let them continue to have a lot of access to just freely moving their body, um, then you're going to be okay. But what people's kind of panic button is, well, I'll just keep them on a leash or I will just keep them always in the fenced yard or I, you know, that kind of, that's what people start doing. And that's kind of the opposite of what I'm going to encourage. To go back to kind of a bigger picture, I guess, for a moment, other than simply kind of surviving this phase, are there things that, you know, owners of teenage pups should

do to ensure that they are kind of building those skills to have a well-balanced adult? Yeah. So constantly, constantly reinforcing the behaviors that you want to see continue. Don't take anything for granted. Like I said, don't put them on lockdown right now. The more you restrict them, the longer this time is going to feel for both of you. So just kind of saying, even though this dog is two and in my sport of dog agility, people really consider dogs grown up at that age, which I think is a big mistake. But they'll just kind of say, well, he's two years old. He quote unquote should know better or something like that. And what's so important to do is just to continue to reinforce the behaviors that you want to see and continue to make sure that their needs are held as like as your priority one, because if their needs are not met, they cannot listen to you and they can't do these things that you're asking them to do. And also, this is the time to really prove to your dog that you are a worthwhile thing that they should care about and want to hang out with. And we're going to have specific assignments pertaining to that, pertaining to I call them mama's cool things. So the dog is kind of like, you know, even though the world is big and interesting and holds so many things for my dog self, mom is still really, really cool and knows a lot of things about the world that I don't know and provides a lot of reinforcement that's easy for me to get. And that's so important that you guys don't, that we don't put up a wall between us and our teenage puppy during this time because they're, because they're kind of obnoxious during this time and you have to just love them through it. Keep reinforcing, don't take anything for granted and you'll, you'll survive it and you'll love the dog that much more on the other side. We've kind of been, you know, talking about your class throughout, but can you just tell us a little more about that? You know, what else do you cover? Who should take it? Is there anything else that people really need to know if they're thinking about it? Yeah. So just kind of as a recap, recap, we go over hormone driven behaviors, inappropriate social behaviors, how to avoid these really common pitfalls that you talked about, like they stop listening to you or they get resource guardy or they get barky lungy, that kind of thing. And then each week I'm going to offer a different training project that I'm calling save your skin behaviors. And the save your skin behaviors are just these management behaviors that I want well-trained

so that I can effectively manage my teenage pup rather than restrict and punish. So it's kind of like if you teach your kid that seatbelts are not an option for any person in any car at any given time, then you can trust your teenager more to drive the car. But if you don't trust her to wear a seatbelt at a minimum, then you probably don't hinder the keys. And she needs the keys on like a fundamental level. We all actually need more freedom during this time. And your dog is the same. He craves freedom. He craves exploration. And so you have to teach him these save your skin behaviors like a collar give. So rather than I don't call it a collar grab because I don't want you reaching out the dog, I call it a collar give. So just asking the dog to come and put its collar in your hand and to yield to any pressure that you put on the collar is one example of the save your skin behaviors. Yielding to leash pressure is another one. Putting a muzzle on is another one. So we're just going to talk about all of these save your skin behaviors that might allow you to comfortably give your dog the freedom that he needs through this time so that you guys can kind of both survive this time. All right. One last question here, kind of the one I ask everybody at the end. What's something that you've learned recently or been reminded of when it comes to dog training? Oh, so many things. I had to pick one. Have been reminded to get all of the information up front about the dog that you're working with. I had a dog recently when I was teaching an in-person workshop who I knew was hypothyroid, so I knew that about him. But I did not know that he had elbow dysplasia as well. And we were training him to just return. We're really training as humans. So but the dog was getting up onto a platform and a low platform. None of the other dogs had any issues with the platform. And none, you know, about half of the dogs had never done any kind of platform work. So I chalked up his kind of slow return to the platform after reinforcement to just kind of the fact that he's a lethargic individual. He's hypothyroid. He's not appropriately treated yet for the thyroid. He looks hypothyroid. And he just had this. I just kind of said, that's OK. He's kind of, you know, he's a lethargic guy, but he's continuing to come back and get on the platform. So I said, let's just keep the pace slow. Um, but actually the platform was too high for him to lift his body with his elbow dysplasia up onto it. Um, and I didn't know that because I didn't know about his orthopedic illness, but it would have only taken one question. Right.

So I already got the thyroid information, um, because he looks hypothyroid. So I asked, but I should have just said, and does he have anything else that I need to know about any orthopedic concerns? Because they're not, the owners are not always going to give you all that information up front. So it's really important that you watch the learner and you don't assume that the dog is just a slow mover because he is a slow mover. He reminded me of the miniature donkeys at the ranch. Um, but you know, he's not, the reason the platform was hard for him wasn't as much. I don't think about the fact that he was a slow mover. It was probably about the fact that it hurt to lift himself onto it. So I was reminded by him to make sure that you get all the information up front. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Sarah. This has been fun. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Nancy Tucker to talk about getting better greetings. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.