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The Everyday Trainer Podcast
The Everyday Trainer Podcast
How To Speak Dog: Decoding the Language Between Human and Dog
Have you ever felt like you and your dog are speaking completely different languages? You're not alone. Communication barriers are the root cause of most training frustrations, but there's a solution that transforms even the most challenging relationships.
In this illuminating episode, I break down the five essential communication systems that create crystal-clear understanding between dogs and humans. Drawing from years of experience with both everyday pets and complex behavioral cases, I reveal how mastering these systems creates a shared language that eliminates confusion and builds trust.
You'll discover why consistent marker words matter more than you think, how leash pressure becomes a sophisticated guidance system rather than just control, and the subtle ways your body language might be sending mixed signals to your dog. We explore how to identify truly motivating rewards for your unique dog, and when appropriate, how e-collar conditioning provides wireless communication for reliable off-leash behaviors.
This isn't about dominance or force—it's about fairness. Dogs can't meet expectations they don't understand, and training failures usually stem from communication gaps, not stubborn or "bad" dogs. With practical examples and real-world applications, I show how these five languages work together to create a nuanced conversation with your dog that respects their natural learning process.
Whether you're struggling with basic commands or advanced behaviors, this episode offers a paradigm shift in how you approach dog training. Stop the frustration of miscommunication and start speaking your dog's language fluently. Your relationship—and your results—will never be the same.
Ready to transform how you communicate with your dog? Join our supportive online community where we share videos, hold weekly calls, and build better human-dog relationships together.
Hello and welcome back to the Everyday Trainer podcast. My name is Meg and I am a dog trainer. Today's episode we're going to cover how to speak dog. So one of my favorite ways of breaking down dog training is by our communication systems. This is what I go over with new dog trainers that I'm training or people who do my virtual shadow program. I want us to get super, super clear and consistent in our languages with our dogs, because that is going to allow us to create very clear expectations and minimize frustration. So you know the drill Grab yourself a tasty drink and meet me back here. Hey guys, welcome back.
Speaker 1:I am currently recording this podcast episode from my van. I am solo. Today. I feel like it's been a while since I've done a solo van podcast. This is how I recorded so many and it's late night. You guys probably don't know, but most of the podcasts are recorded like in the middle of the night because I feel like it's the only time where the world is kind of quiet. And I've never been much of a night owl, but as I've gotten older and I've kind of you know, retreated into my shell a little bit, I really appreciate the stillness and quiet of like being up late and you know nothing's going on, nobody can bother me, so I can just kind of like sit in my little van in my little podcast studio and chat with you guys.
Speaker 1:So something has come up recently in conversations with my friends who are dog trainers. We've kind of been talking about the role of dog training in severe behavioral mod, and this is a topic that I talk a lot with, about new trainers, people who do my virtual shadow program. What is our role as dog trainers as far as aggressive dogs go? So myself and my friend who is also a dog trainer, we're speaking with one of our other friends who is a dog trainer and he had a very different mentality mentality than she did. So she has rescue background. She, you know, has taken a lot of behavioral dogs that people maybe not have, wouldn't have given an opportunity, and she trains them and, you know, fosters them and then finds homes for them. And you know my other friend doesn't have that type of experience and so he was speaking on well, if a dog is dangerous, like I don't think that it's worth it to rehab that dog, and you know my other friend is like well, that's not giving these dogs a fair opportunity, like what is our role as dog trainers then, if it's not to help the dogs that have these severe behavioral issues? And for the people who are in my virtual shadow program, I always, always encourage them to not take on human aggressive dogs or not take on dogs that are severely reactive or dog aggressive. Those are just very advanced cases and for a lot of the folks that are doing my virtual shadow program to become trainers, they're very new dog trainers and things get a little dicey, they get a little bit messy whenever we're taking on aggression cases and for a time in my business that's all I was getting was dogs that had a bite history, who have bitten people before, and we're giving them a second opportunity through training.
Speaker 1:My perspective on the topic has changed a lot because just after, you know, completing training, we see a huge transformation in the dog. The owner is super happy and almost always down the line. It could be a couple months after training, it could be a couple years after training, but there's typically some sort of incident and I've heard other dog trainers talk about this before talking about. You know, taking on aggressive cases is really just blood money because at some point you know, a human, aggressive dog could possibly hurt somebody else, you know.
Speaker 1:So where does that leave us as dog trainers? What is our job and what is our duty to the dogs and to the people that we work with? So it literally it really left me thinking. What is my why? You know, if I'm telling people that you shouldn't be taking on these cases and even I'm kind of hesitant to take them on now, where does that leave us in dog training? How am I to help dogs, literally? What's the point? Why are we doing this if it's not to help behavioral dogs? So over the past couple days I've been really asking myself what is my role? What's the point?
Speaker 1:And, I think, a common trend in dog training. If you are a dog trainer or a dog walker or you're in grooming just in the animal industry, it leads to a lot of burnout and so it puts people in that position where we're like, oh my gosh, like why am I doing this? Sometimes it can feel like a very thankless job where you know you bust your butt all day long to train a dog and put in all of this effort for the dog to go back home and for the owner to not do the things that that dog needs to succeed, and so when we have that time and time again, it can feel very you know hopeless. So the conclusion that I have come to and this is again something that I work with is our job is to teach the dogs a language and teach the owners that same language, to then have clear communication between the two. So a lot of problem behaviors are developing from there's just a communication barrier between dogs and people. A lot of people don't know how to properly communicate expectations to dogs. They don't know how to live with dogs. They don't know how to feed dogs. There's a lot that goes into coexisting with these animals, into coexisting with these animals, and I believe that it's our job as dog trainers to teach folks how to live with their dogs better, and part of that is our communication systems.
Speaker 1:If you know me at all, you've probably heard me rant on about marker words and the importance of timing of our marker words and consistency in our marker words. Like for me, marker words and the importance of timing of our marker words and consistency in our marker words, like for me, marker words, is a piece of that language. So I break things down by we have our marker words, which are simply just words that we can use to mark behaviors and tell the dog what we want them to do next, which I'll get into that a little more in depth, if you haven't heard me rant about that. The next one is leash pressure. That is a skill that we have to teach our dogs. Our dogs don't come out the womb knowing how to walk nicely on leash. It's actually a bit of the opposite. They are predisposed to put a lot of pressure on the leash and pull forward and get what they want. So we have to teach our dogs how to give in to leash pressure, and it's also a really excellent tool whenever we're shaping super specific behaviors. Let's say obedience, a sit, a down. Can we use our leash to guide our dog into those positions? Can we pull the dog in towards heel? Will they give into that leash pressure? Are they going to push against it? So we have to teach our dogs that language.
Speaker 1:Another language is our body language. This, I think, is one of the most important parts of dog training, but on the flip side, it is also the hardest to teach people. So with our body language, it's the same type of pressure on, pressure off that our leash can be Moving into a dog is going to apply pressure. That could be a correction. It could be directional guidance. We can move away from a dog to kind of build motivation to come get a treat, to follow our hand, to lure with us or to recall back to us. But how we move our body in correlation to our dog communicates something and most owners don't realize that. They don't realize that you know how they're postured next to their dog matters that when they're walking their dog and you, you know the dog is about to be reactive if you're positioned a little, just slightly ahead, like that communicates a big message to our dogs. So that's another one of our languages.
Speaker 1:The next one is and this is kind of like on if it's a language or not, but it's something important in our communication system is rewards. A lot of us want to train our dogs. You know, I know the camps are like force free or with positive reinforcement. Right, that sounds really nice, you know, yeah, I definitely want to use positive reinforcement, but we have to know how to use it properly and with good timing and with a clear picture, or it's just going to add to confusion for our dogs. You know, if you don't know what you're rewarding. Your dog doesn't know what they just did to get a reward. So we want to make sure that we really understand how we're using our rewards and our timeliness with our rewards and our position of our rewards.
Speaker 1:And, you know, determining if food is a reward for a dog or if play is a reward for a dog. You know every single dog is different, but it's our job as dog owners and as dog trainers to figure out what is rewarding to that dog, something that I ask a lot of people when I'm working with them and their dogs. And you know they'll be like I. Just you know I can't get my dog to do this, or you know we're struggling with this, to do this, or you know we're struggling with this. One of the first questions I ask people is well, what is your dog like? What is your dog like? What is your dog like to do? Does your dog like food? Does your dog like to play? Does your dog like fetch? Each of my dogs likes something different. Zoe is a fiend for food. She loves food. Lucy, on the other hand, loves when I throw the ball. She'll take her leave food. You know, even when she was a puppy. She was like whatever I'll take it, it wasn't a reward for her, you know. So just because we throw food in our training doesn't mean that it's necessarily positive reinforcement. That's not always, you know, rewarding for our dogs. We have to figure out what our dogs like.
Speaker 1:And then the last piece of the puzzle and this is just me completely oversimplifying dog training, but that's just how I like to do things is our e-collar so similar to know our leash pressure, similar to our body language. E-collar stim can be pressure on, pressure off. So I like to use my e-collar pretty much exactly how I use my leash, in that if you're out of position, or I need to give you a bit of extra guidance, or I need to give you a bit of extra guidance Stim. The stim on my e-collar goes on until you're doing the thing that I want you to, and then it turns off right, just like my leash pressure. Let's say my dog is pulling on leash. I don't want them to pull forward on leash, so I'm going to stop, I'm going to move backwards, I'm going to pull them to me. That leash pressure is on, that leash pressure is tight, they give in, they move with me, they move towards me, that leash pressure goes off and then I can follow it up with a food reward. So same thing with our e-collar right.
Speaker 1:When we're in the beginning stages of e-collar conditioning, we can layer it on top of things that our dogs already know. So all of these pieces of the puzzle, our marker words, is our verbal communication. We have body language, we have food rewards, we have leash pressure and we have e-collar. Those are kind of my five main points when it comes. And I say food rewards, pretty much any rewards doesn't have to be food, but those are my five main points of communication with my dog, and so I can use all of these things together in one training session to create a very clear picture for my dog of what I want them to do in any given moment. And that clear communication you know, marking yes, that's what I want you to do, telling the dog no, that's not what I want you to do. Giving meaning to my dog, you know, correcting after I say no is teaching my dog what I want them to do and what I don't want them to do.
Speaker 1:And when it comes down to it, clear communication is what's fair in any type of relationship, in friendships, in work relationships, in our relationships with our dogs. They don't know what is expected of them until we communicate that to them. And I do correct dogs, and the reason why I do correct dogs is because I value feedback, even if it's negative, right? How am I going to learn from my mistakes if something is not communicated to me? You know? So I very much live by the belief that if you don't communicate it to me, it's not my problem, right? I don't know, I don't know that there's a problem. Until it's communicated to me, I am like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I value clear communication so much that I find it's important for me in my dog training as well. Right, like I don't get frustrated at dogs, I look at the picture. Ok, why is the dog doing the thing that I don't want them to do? Either, I haven't set the expectation. I haven't taught them what I want them to do. I haven't taught them what I don't want them to do. I haven't marked, you know, the don't jump up on the counter, don't run away from me. I haven't marked those things with a no either. So they don't know. Oh, she doesn't want me to do that. So it just.
Speaker 1:It always comes down to clear communication. And when I'm working with folks, most people will go oh yeah, great, you know, that totally makes sense. And then when we go to practice it, it's very, very difficult. And then when we go to practice it, it's very, very difficult. I suck at my timing and my rewards and I do it every single day. So I guarantee unless, like and don't get me wrong there are definitely people who are, you know, better dog trainers, more skilled dog trainers, more timely dog trainers than me. But for the average folks out there, and if you're a dog owner who you know is diving into dog training, here's kind of my you know all of my languages that I teach the dogs as a dog trainer and then, once the dog understands those languages, I teach the owner and then the owner is able to practice those languages and use them efficiently, in a timely way and create really clear expectations long after the training is done, right. So that is my job as a dog trainer. That's my why is, you know, teaching the dog language and teaching the owners to be able to communicate to their dogs and live with their dogs, so that, no matter what problems come up in the future, you're able to navigate those and you're able to manage your dog, no matter what stage of training you're in or no matter what type of dog they are.
Speaker 1:We still go back to our language, our clear communication with our dog. So let's dive into marker words. I have an entire podcast that I've dedicated to marker words, so I'm not going to go too in-depth here. I always say that and then I get like crazy on marker words. I feel very, very strongly about the importance of consistent marker words because that is our verbal communication with our dogs, and we as human beings are, you know, predominant verbal communicators and we talk full sentences to our dogs and we're like well, I don't understand why they don't know what I'm saying, but we need to use our verbal communication in a way that's simple and that is paired with things that the dogs understand. So that's what our marker words are.
Speaker 1:If you ever hear me say mark a behavior, I'm essentially saying say what word you want and what you want the dog to do, and that's the value of our marker words. It also tells the dog what to do next. Now we can go super simple with it and we could just have two marker words. We could just have a marker word that means like, oh, I'm going to reward you. And we can have a marker word that means I'm going to correct you. There are some people who just use one marker word and it's the reward marker word, and they never tell their dog no or never correct their dog. I personally don't do that.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to go over my marker words for a balanced approach and essentially balanced training is we use positive reinforcement and also positive punishment. So positive punishment is just adding a punisher. A punisher could be even something as simple as moving into your dog. Right, spatial pressure could be a punishment. A firm no, you know, using your mean voice could be a punisher. A tap on your e-collar, a pop on your leash you know those things are punishments and they're determined by the dog. So some dogs do great with a pop on a prong collar, others they don't care about that. Right, I would need, like, stronger e-collar. Your dog is always going to tell you what is a punishment to them and also what a reward is. So my marker word system for a terminal.
Speaker 1:So what that means is when I mark a behavior with yes, the dog is expected to break that position and come and get the reward or move into the reward. So a good example of this is let's say I tell my dog to go to place. I say, zoe, place. Zoe goes to place. As soon as all four paws are on place, I'm going to mark. So I'm going to say yes, she's going to come back to me. Or let's say she doesn't understand that in the beginning I'm going to shuffle backwards, you know, have her, move with me and I'm going to reward her on me off of place. So there was no duration to that behavior. I say place four paws, get on place. She's completed the behavior of place, which in that moment is just going to place. It's not staying on place, it's just going to place. Dog touches place yes, comes back to me, reward Place. They go to place, reward Place. They go to place, yes, pay.
Speaker 1:So in the beginning stages of teaching behaviors I'm not going to add duration to the behaviors. Duration is something that we can add on later and that is why I like to have a terminal marker. So that means that there's no duration. I just ask you to do the thing, you the thing, amazing, come back to me and get your reward. Yes means that the reward is on me. So when the dog hears that they come back, they get the reward they know when they hear that, yes to come back to me. That is also really valuable if we want to do things like counter conditioning. So counter conditioning is essentially us disrupting behaviors with positive reinforcement.
Speaker 1:A good example of this is let's say I have a dog who is barking at the door. I can kind of take two different routes. One could be okay, I can correct the dog for barking at the door, right. So the dog goes to bark at the door. No, I follow it up with a pop on the leash. Somebody knocks on the door. Dog barks no, pop on the leash. The dog's going to get discomfort from that pop on the leash. We're marking that barking at the door with the no. They go oh okay, this is the behavior that she doesn't like. A punishment is coming. I'm going to avoid that correction in the future by not doing that behavior.
Speaker 1:Another way that we can disrupt this is through counter conditioning. So I personally like to have a really strong yes marker, meaning that the dog is very conditioned to when they hear that they come rushing back to me. So you know, dog is barking at the door or sorry, we have somebody knock on the door before the dog gets the opportunity to bark, I'm going to disrupt it with that yes. So that dog is going to hear that, yes, they go, oh, come back to mom and get paid. But I'm doing it before the dog has the opportunity to do the behavior that I don't want them to do. So I'm teaching them that like, hey, that barking or that barking, that knocking on the door, is actually a good thing, right, I'm counter conditioning, maybe something that has caused like fear in the dog to mean something good through that marker word yes. So I like, I like a big, strong emotion from the dog with a terminal marker word.
Speaker 1:What I see a lot of and this is not necessarily wrong, I just think that we could do better and I'll get into that in a sec but I think that we can do better is people just use yes as a reward and sometimes the dog is rewarded in position and sometimes the dog is rewarded out of position and there's not really clarity in what the dog needs to do when they hear that word. Like sometimes they're expected to keep doing what they're doing and then sometimes we want them to come back to us and it just leads to a lot of confusion. And I think our dogs are way smarter than that. There are people who have marker systems that are like so in depth and I'm starting to kind of get into this a little bit, especially more into sport work with my dogs. I'm getting into like, okay, I do need different markers for food and different markers for a ball. But the very basics of it is some folks are just using yes, as I'll pay you in position or I'll pay you out, to confusion. And the whole point of our marker system and our language is to add clarity. Places like that, I would say don't even use a marker. Like what's the point of using a marker? You might as well just reward the dog right Instead of marking, and sometimes rewarding in position and sometimes rewarding out of position. So that's where our good marker comes in. Good is duration.
Speaker 1:If I mark a behavior with good, it's essentially an implied stay. That means I want you to stay there and I'm going to come to you and I'm going to reward you in position. So I teach the dogs the difference between yes and good. One of my favorite drills to do this with is with the place command and essentially what I'll do. I'll tell the dog place as soon as all four paws touch. Yes, the dog comes rushing back to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we play. Or you know, I reward with food, place Dog gets to place as soon as all four paws touch. I say good For me. What I do is I teach the dog if I mark place with good, I want you to lay down right, get comfy, stay there, because I'm going to come to you and I'm going to reward you in position. And when I have a dog that really understands that, there's a lot of clarity right, and so they're like oh okay, yeah, good means I'm always paid in position. So when I hear that good, I'm always paid in position. So when I hear that good, I'm always going to stay.
Speaker 1:And it creates our really sticky behaviors. And where we're in the process of training our dogs, we want our down stays to be really sticky, right, I want the dog to want to stay in a down. So when they hear that good, they go oh, my gosh, I better lock in because she's going to come to me and she's going to reward me here. So I better stay here. Or, you know, in the later stages of place when we're doing duration place work. I want that position to be really sticky. So I'm going to mark that a lot with good because I want the dog to want to stay there. I don't want them jumping off of place all the time.
Speaker 1:But in the early stages of me teaching this language I'm doing a lot of toggling between our yes and good with behaviors, seeing if the dog actually understands. When you hear yes, come back to me, and when you hear good, stay where you're at. But it's essentially an implied stay. So I'm a stickler on having these two markers. I know that not everybody is, but I just see how much clarity it provides to the dogs. And that's the whole point in everything that I do is creating clarity in our language. I saw this a little bit with Muffin. So I'm in the process of training Muffin obviously my little Malinois puppy, and I'm teaching her how to differentiate between these markers.
Speaker 1:And while I was training her I'm also practicing switching between reward with a ball and reward with food. And so I started our training session off with rewarding with food. So I would say yes, with rewarding with food. So I would say yes, she would shoot back to me come to my hands, I would walk backwards, reward, walk backwards, reward, walk backwards, reward. So I'm continuing to walk backwards and I'm rewarding her with food and I'm just practicing, you know, our heel or down or sit, whatever it is, but I'm teaching her that like yes, when I mark a behavior with yes, shoot back to me and I'll pay, pay, pay. You know, as I'm kind of shuffling backwards, so I was doing that, and then I was like, all right, I'm going to switch to my ball. I've been practicing training her with the ball as a reward, so she does the behavior that I want. I think it's like a sit or something. I say yes, my ball is out, but she doesn't go to my ball, she goes to my hand. That's down by my side, because I've been saying yes and paying with food. This is the first time that I'm saying yes and paying with the ball.
Speaker 1:And so in that moment I was like, oh, there's a bit of conflict here, right, because there's confusion, because in Muffin's mind, when I say yes, she's expecting food. So I need to mark the reward on the ball with a separate marker so I don't create frustration around my markers, and so I don't create conflict around my markers because, let's say, muffin likes biting the ball way more than taking food. If, down the line, I'm training her and I say, yes, and I am expecting her to take food from my hand, but she's expecting a ball, that's going to cause a lot of conflict in that training session right there. So I saw that I go, oh, I need to have a different marker for my ball, right. So now what we practice is, yes, is always going to be, come back to me, get food, and yep, is going to be get the ball or get the tug. Just, you know, bite the, the thing that you're playing with, but it's still going to be reward on me and a release from position. So I could also this is another little fun one I can also, you know, tell Muffin down. She goes into a down, good, I walk into her, I hold the ball in front of her, yep, she releases that position and gets the ball. Now, that is like a little bit advanced and I don't want to like confuse anybody. It's one of those things that once you start practicing it, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:But you know, if you're new to marker training, you're like, oh my gosh, what the heck are you talking about Essentially, the more markers that we have? Well, not the more, but we want markers to be clear, right? So at least have a terminal and a duration marker. That way your dog knows where they need to be to get the reward. That's, that's all I ask with my markers. All right, now our other markers. So we have our yes and our good. Our other markers are going to be no, which no is always going to be followed up with a punisher.
Speaker 1:And something that I ask people all the time is you know, how does your dog know what the word no means? And people are like well, they just know to stop. And I'm like do they Like, do they actually know what that word means? How have you taught them that? So, because our dogs don't predominantly speak English, we have to, you know, translate our verbal cues to something, and that means following it up with, either you know, a reward or a punishment. So, just like, yes doesn't have any meaning until we follow it up with a reward on me, and good doesn't have any meaning until we follow it up with a reward in position. No doesn't have any meaning until we follow it up with a correction. So it could be no. Pop on the leash, it could be no. Moving into the dog, it could be no, no, no.
Speaker 1:You know, just being using our voice or like voicel, voicel, pressure, our voice, pressure whatever it is, to stop the dog, to disrupt the dog from continuing that behavior, and we need to be really consistent with that, in my opinion. I think most people don't have a strong no. I don't think people, I don't think people's dogs take them very seriously. So my job as a dog trainer is to also teach dogs and owners a valuable no. So no is always going to be followed up with some sort of correction. The dog is going to determine the correction, but it needs to stop the behavior. If it does not stop the behavior, it's simply reinforcing the behavior. So a pop on the leash, if it doesn't disrupt your dog from pulling over to another dog, it then becomes a cue to pull over to the other dog, right? So we're popping on the leash and then our dog gets to pull up to another dog. That popping on the leash becomes a cue, you know. So if your punisher is not disrupting the behavior, it's not a punishment and we need to find something else. Maybe you need to e-collar train your dog. Maybe you need to get a stronger e-collar, you know, but your dog is going to determine that. We just have to add meaning to that verbal no by following it up with something physical, something that the dog understands.
Speaker 1:And then my last marker word that I use is uh-uh. So uh-uh is essentially a marker to give the dog feedback without punishment. So uh-uh is that's not what I asked Try again. And it's really good for when we're doing an active training session with our dogs and we're trying to teach them a new skill and they're just doing the wrong behavior again and again, we can say uh-uh, uh-uh and it basically just means no, try again, reset, try again, that's not it. That's not it. That's not it, because the feedback of what not to do as well is also very important.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to say no in a training session because I don't want the dog to be scared to make a mistake. Right, I want the dog to want to learn, to want to try new behaviors, to not be worried about messing up. So I don't want to use my no, which is my punishment marker, when we're in the learning stage and when I'm teaching them a new skill. So that's where that uh-uh comes in. That's also for less severe things. I want my no to be really meaningful. I always tell people my no is like hey, I don't want you to ever do that again. Like, do not do that. My uh-uh is like uh, no, like a little less severe, not going to punish you for it, but like I don't want you to do that. You know, or you're doing the wrong thing or you know, try again, reset. So those are my four main marker words and we're going to layer those on top of the other languages that we have.
Speaker 1:So the next thing that I teach dogs is leash pressure, and this is typically. I kind of went a little bit out of order. I'll start with leash pressure for a lot of dogs that I'm working with, because not too many dogs are real keen on taking food or, you know, playing with a ball right away, and I know that there's a lot of folks out there that you might be struggling with this with your dog if you're like okay, well, yeah, that's great, I want to. You know, practice marker words, but my dog doesn't really care about food. There's ways that we can build up motivation and drive to want to work with you and that's just going to be a podcast for another day. So if you have a dog who is not super motivated by food or play and is, you know, hard to reward, we're pretty much left with negative reinforcement. So negative reinforcement is taking away and I'm going to say this in quotations a punishment or what I think a better word is pressure, right In terms of leash pressure, negative reinforcement.
Speaker 1:So a good example of this is our walking drills. A lot of dogs that come to me for training are putting a lot of pressure on leash and that is the main reason why owners are reaching out to dog trainers is they're getting dragged down the street. It's becoming unsafe. They're dragging them out the door. They just don't have any respect for the leash and the person that's attached to the end of that leash, for the leash and the person that's attached to the end of that leash.
Speaker 1:So what I do is I start the dogs doing leash drills, just leash walking drills, and what that looks like is I'll put the dog we'll typically start on a slip lead. I want a leash that tightens up and loosens right, so something like a slip lead or a martingale or a prong collar. That's what I'm going to teach leash pressure on. So my go-to is my slip lead, obviously, but slip lead on the dog. We're going to walk, walk, walk. The dog is going to get out in front of me. As soon as the dog puts pressure on that leash, I'm going to act like I'm walking on a straight line and I'm going to turn over my right shoulder and walk in the other direction. So the dog is going to start walking with me again. They're going to get out in front, they're going to hit the end of the leash and we're going to change directions again. And I'm going to teach that dog that every single time there is pressure on the leash you have to move with me to turn the pressure off, so that turning that pressure off is that negative reinforcement. The dog puts pressure on the leash, there's pressure on, pressure on, pressure on. They start to move with us, pressure releases. I don't want to teach the dog that when you put pressure on the leash you get to continue to move forward, because that leash pressure becomes the cue to pull, cue to pull. So when we're in the process of training our dogs, we're doing a lot of work against probably what we've accidentally already taught our dogs Now, the value of teaching leash pressure is not just not having a dog that pulls you down the street.
Speaker 1:The value is I am able to use my leash as directional guidance. So I don't know if you've ever tried to teach a dog to get into down with leash pressure. That doesn't want to give into leash pressure but they'll fight it, you know. So if you're like, oh, I want to teach my dog down, they're not food motivated. I can't lure them into a down. I can't, you know, like, coax them into a down. So I'm going to try to use leash pressure. So you know, we put our slip lead on our dog, we start guiding them down. Leash pressure goes down. If the dog doesn't know how to give into pressure in any capacity, that dog is going to whip its head up and it's going to fight the leash and it's going to fight going into the down because that's all they know as far as leash pressure goes. That's all they know. They don't know that. Oh, I moved down with the leash to turn that pressure off, because once the dog is in that down, pressure releases. So we teach the dogs pressure on. You're out of position, pressure off Once you give in to that leash pressure and move with me, whether it's in a sit, into a down, in a recall maybe.
Speaker 1:Just you know, guiding the dog closer to you, we can, you know, give them a little leash pressure to the side to guide them where we want to go. But our leash is our directional communication to our dogs. So if your dog is ever doing something that you're like, uh, I don't like what they're doing, I don't like that they're jumping up on people that are coming into my house, leash, because our leash is going to provide directional guidance in those moments. Right. So your dog goes to jump up, leash pressure goes on. You guide him back down. You could guide him into a sit, you could even correct your dog. You know, give them a pop on the leash when they go to jump. A little bit of firmer pressure, right, they put their paws down, pressure stops. So we're teaching them.
Speaker 1:Pressure goes on when you're doing something I don't like. Pressure goes off when you give into it them. Pressure goes on when you're doing something I don't like. Pressure goes off when you give into it. Or pressure goes on when I need you to listen to the guidance of the leash. Pressure goes off when you give into that leash guidance. Okay, so that's typically what I teach first because, you know, not a lot of dogs are super quick with a yes. If I have a really drivey, motivated dog like hell yeah, hell yeah, I'll definitely teach markers right away.
Speaker 1:But I find that the leash pressure drills establishes a relationship with the dog and that's where we kind of get into pack drive. I know I've talked about that in previous episodes, but when we're using food, we're working our dogs in prey drive and when we're doing, you know, negative reinforcement, walking drills, that sort of stuff, it's more pack drive. So we're, you know, using the dog's motivation to want to work with us. We're teaching them to follow our lead. We're not necessarily using food in those moments, but we can pair our leash pressure with our marker words if we have both of those skills. So we'll teach the skills separately and then we can bring them together, you know. So we can do our walking drills again, I can have my treat pouch on me. Drills again, I can have my treat pouch on me.
Speaker 1:We start going for a walk. Dog hits the end of the leash, they move back to me, leash pressure goes off and then I food reward. So we've gone negative reinforcement. The first reward is the release of that pressure. The second reward is that food reward. So the dog goes oh heck, yeah, I like this leash. When this leash goes on, I know what to do. I follow with that leash pressure. I turn it off. I get that reward, I get paid. I get paid for moving with the pressure of the leash. So that, you know, are our first two lines of communication with our dogs.
Speaker 1:Now the next one is body language, and this is it's very nuanced, so I'm going to keep it as simple as possible. Obviously, there's a lot of ways that we have micro movements in our body. That's communicating something to our dogs, whether that's tightening up on the leash when we see another dog, if we have a reactive dog, you know, tensing our shoulders up, maybe even the change in the pace of our breath. Like we're constantly giving our dogs these biological cues to help them read situations. And that's why you've probably also heard me say like our dogs are mirrors, because they are mirroring us in a lot of ways. If we're tense, they're going to be tense. They're going to pick up on all of those little you know cues and nuances that we just don't pick up on, you know, because we don't communicate the same way that they do.
Speaker 1:But to keep body language and, you know, spatial pressure very simple, we can think of the same type of pressure on pressure off system. So let's say I'm teaching or I'm practicing a duration. Place with my dog I put my dog on place. Place with my dog I put my dog on place. They break place. I stand up, I move into that dog, they put their paws back on place and they lay down. So me moving into the dog was a form of pressure to that dog.
Speaker 1:Now let's look at it from the other side of the coin. Let's say we have an aggressive dog and I need to get a leash on this dog. I'm probably not going to walk head on to that dog and you know be really big and tall and reach my hands over that dog's head. That's a ton of pressure to a dog who might not be able to handle it. So if we're working with behavioral dogs, we can also use our body language to release some pressure that might be there.
Speaker 1:Same thing with eye contact. Eye contact is also a form of pressure. The space that I see this a lot in is people would be like my dog is randomly reactive to some dogs and I'm like, okay, let's go ahead and go for a walk and, sure enough, their dog is reacting to dogs that are applying pressure to their dogs on the walk. But what's the pressure? Eye contact, a dog that doesn't break eye contact and stares at another dog, that dog is applying a lot of pressure, even if they're across the street. So no wonder your dog is barking because that dog is staring super intensely at your dog and not breaking eye contact and not releasing that pressure. So that pressure builds up, builds up and one of the dogs will explode. Okay, so that is how dogs are communicating. Dogs will rush up into each other. That's a lot of pressure immediately, if we have, you know, two dogs who don't like pressure, rush up into each other, it might lead to a fight.
Speaker 1:It's very important to understand the role of you know, moving into a dog, moving away from a dog, applying eye contact pressure, taking away eye contact pressure with certain dogs, especially in behavioral cases. If we're working with our dog or somebody else's dog who struggles with behavioral issues, those little nuance in our body language is going to be very important. Now we can also use our body language to motivate our dog to move with us or come back to us. I mentioned earlier, when I say yes, I'm shuffling backwards and I'm paying the dog shuffling backwards. Paying the dog shuffling backwards, I'm continuing to reward the dog as I'm moving backwards, I'm pulling them towards me. This is really good for you know, things like recall, right, if I recall my dog, sometimes I'll run away. I'll run away super fast and they're like, oh my gosh, I better run and catch up to her. You know, we oftentimes make the mistake of recalling our dogs and walking into them. Recalling our dogs and walking into them. Recalling our dogs and walking into them? Well, you're just applying pressure, you're just pushing your dog across the field. We need to do the opposite. We need to move away from them, we need to pull them towards us. If I want to encourage a dog to move to me, I'm going to make myself really small and I'm going to crouch down and I'm going to move away from that dog. So there's a push and pull to dogs that we need to understand if we're going to shape behaviors without the use of, you know, simply just leash pressure. But we can use all of these things together, which is kind of you know that's the whole point of everything, things together, which is kind of you know that's the whole point of everything.
Speaker 1:Now, next we have rewards. Like I said, rewards are determined by the dog. So let's say, I have a dog who is not motivated by food. They're not motivated by play. Our reward then is the release of pressure. So pressure goes on until you do the thing. The reward is that the pressure goes off. That could be leash pressure, it could be e-collar stim, but pressure and release sometimes is all we have to work with with certain dogs.
Speaker 1:Now my goal for you is that you can find what your dog likes, or even build up your dog to take rewards from you, and I do think that most dogs can be taught to be a little bit more motivated to take rewards. It might take a really long time, but you can definitely get there and there's little exercises that you can do. So, for example, let's say I have a dog who doesn't really like food that much. I can do things like treat chasing. So I'll basically put food in my hand and lure the dog a certain way. I'll have them miss. I'll kind of like swipe my hand out of the way they're like oh my gosh, I'm playing this game of chase my hand, I'm tapping into that prey drive to get the dog chasing that food in my hand, or I can get the dog chasing a ball that's dragging on the ground. Those are the beginning stages of how we can build up motivation to get a reward, whether it's food or ball.
Speaker 1:Whether it's food or ball, not every dog is going to be motivated by food and for some dogs things like a ball or a tug is going to be a much higher reward than food. But ultimately I like to have as many different rewards as possible. Some are going to be higher value than others. For example, for Muffin, when I am in a training session with her with a ball, she doesn't like to switch back to food because she likes playing with the ball with me more than she likes playing with food. Now I am going to practice like switching between the two because I still want to be able to use a food reward in certain moments. I want her to be able to lure.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes food is just more convenient than playing, you know, tug with a ball, but for a lot of dogs, especially higher drive dogs, a ball on a string or a tug with handles on the side is a great reward. So we can use our toys just like how we use our food with our same marker words. So my example of the dog in a down. I say, good, I move into them. I have a ball on a string. I lower that in front of the dog's face. I say yep, the dog grabs the ball. We play tug, tug, tug, tug. Yay, good job. You know the reward is playing with me.
Speaker 1:So every dog is different. You know some dogs we can toss the reward across the field and they love that. They love the. You know chase, they love fetch. Some dogs love to play tug. Muffin loves to play tug with her ball on a string. That's just what she likes. I don't have any other dogs that like that, you know, but that's what Muffin likes. So we're going to use that in our training.
Speaker 1:So you have to play around with different rewards and see, you know which your dog likes and you know, try to build up the other ones, maybe with some treat, chasing, getting the dog, you know, pumped and all of those things. But I encourage you to try to find something that your dog likes because your dog's going to enjoy the process as well. And I think a lot of times when we're in the process of training our dogs it can feel very defeating because it's a lot of just don't do this, don't do this, don't do this right. So we want to make it fun, we want to make training rewarding for our dogs, and part of that is figuring out what that means to the dog that's in front of us. Now.
Speaker 1:The last piece of communication that I have for you guys is the e-caller. Not every dog needs an e-caller, not every owner needs an e-collar, but I'm a big advocate for e-collar training because it provides a ton of clarity, very precise clarity and accountability, which is pretty much everything in dog training. So an e-collar if you don't know what an e-collar is, it just an electric collar. The one that I use is similar to that of a tens unit. So if you've ever been to a chiropractor or a physical therapist and they've put those electrodes on you that stimulate your muscle, that is what the e-collar stem is. So it's a blunt stem. It's like it's muscle stimulation, all right. The e-collar stem is so it's a blunt stem. It's like it's muscle stimulation, all right. The e-collar is a physical sensation that we can use to maybe communicate pressure on and off. We can also use it as a correction right, when we dial up high enough, it's a meaningful correction. High enough, it's a meaningful correction. I really like the e-collar because it is just the press of a button.
Speaker 1:Not everybody wants to pop their dog on a leash. I think it is a lot more difficult for folks to be adequate with their timing and their handling of a leash and the e-collar is more user-friendly. It makes more sense to the dogs and the people. So why not use it? You know I'm so big on if it adds clarity to our language, if it adds clarity to our training, like hell yeah, let's use it, hell yeah, let's use it. So I teach e-collar pretty much the same way that I teach leash, but e-collar is the last thing that I layer on top of all of my stuff, right?
Speaker 1:So there's two different stages of e-collar conditioning. There's the escape phase and the avoidance phase. Escape simply means that we're teaching the dog to escape the e-collar stim, identical to when we're teaching leash pressure. Right? So that dog is out in front of me on the walk. That pressure is on the leash. How does that dog escape that leash pressure. They move with the leash right. So same concept with my e-collar. We can even layer it on top of those same walking drills. So dog starts to get out in front, e-collar stim goes on. We move backwards, dog moves with us. When you move with us, that e-collar stim goes off. I reward. So same sort of pressure on, then pressure goes off. Then we reward with food or a ball or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Once the dog understands what the sensation is and what they need to do when they feel the sensation, then we can go into the second stage, which is avoidance. So avoidance means that the dog can avoid the e-collar stim entirely as long as they, you know, do what you ask or follow through with the thing. So a good example of this is recall, right. So I've conditioned my dog to the e-caller. They know that when they feel the stim they come back to me. I've reinforced that a million and two times Okay. Then we're going to go into the avoidance stage of training, where I recall you, I don't stim you, I just recall you, and if you do not come back to me, then stim goes on until my recall.
Speaker 1:So that's where that accountability comes into play, the reason why I like the e-caller so much is it can become just a part of your daily life for your dog. We can get in the habit of charging it at night. We just put it on our dog every day and we can use it to hold them accountable. Not everybody wants to let a leash drag all the time. Right, it's like our cordless leash. That's what our e-collar is. But if you're not proficient in those other forms of communication, of your timing, with your marker words, of your leash pressure, of you know holding the leash, even your handling in the leash or your body language, then the e-collar is not going to add any clarity because you don't have any clarity in the other areas.
Speaker 1:I know that a lot of times folks will be like okay, well, I just I want to use the e-collar, so I'm just going to put it on and start correcting my dog. We don't always have to condition our dog to the e-collar. I think that conditioning the e-collar is really really valuable, but in some cases we don't always have to. We can just use the e-collar as a correction. But if we're going to go down that route, we need to tackle one problem at a time or we're going to create a lot of suspicion in the dog, meaning the dog is not going to know where the correction is coming from or why they're being corrected, because it's seemingly coming from random things, right? So if I have a dog who jumps at people, that comes in the house and jumps up on the counters and digs holes in the backyard and I decide one day I'm just going to buy an e-collar and slap it on my dog and start correcting for all of those things the dog is going to be like, I don't really know what I can do and what I can't do and I'm going to start maybe associating this correction or this e-collar stim with the backyard or start associating it with people coming over, because I don't know what this is or where it's coming from or why it's happening or why it's happening.
Speaker 1:So if you choose to not condition your e-caller, you just have to pick something that you want to work on, fix that issue and then you can move on to something else. So let's say I just want to tackle my dog counter surfing. So I have the e-caller on their paws, go up on the counter, stim goes on. They learn okay, stim goes on. When I jump on the counter. Stem goes on. They learn. Okay, stem goes on when I jump on the counter. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to avoid that sensation entirely and then, once the dog is no longer doing that behavior, we can, you know, address other behaviors. But I typically don't have too many people not condition their e-collar.
Speaker 1:I think that conditioning the e-collar gives us a little more wiggle room in our timing and our mistakes, because the dog understands what the tool is and where it's coming from. And then it's not always a bad thing. We're using low level stim in the conditioning phase of e-collar training. But we do want to get out of that as quickly as possible because we don't want a dog who becomes overly desensitized to the e-collar and we just keep having to dial up and dial up and dial up because they're just used to the stim. I know that's a lot, I know that it's a lot, it's a lot to take in, but these are those basics that we really need to master, especially if we're dog trainers.
Speaker 1:I tell my virtual shadow students I'm like virtual shadow students, I'm like I'll be damned if I see you all out in the world using improper marker words or, you know, not having good timing, because it's our job as the professionals to be very, very good at our communication with our dogs, because that is our entire role as dog trainers. Whether you're a professional dog trainer, whether you're a hobbyist or you're just an owner who got a dog and you're doing the research and trying to figure out how do I communicate to my dog in the best way possible. Clarity is everything and it comes from clear communication systems. So that's kind of my breakdown of my communication systems. I like to use these five main things to create very clear pictures of what I want for the dogs and the owners that I work with.
Speaker 1:And whenever I speak with people about my training, that's kind of you know, the spiel that I give is well, I'm not going to promise that I can fix your dog. You know. I'm not going to promise that this aggressive dog is. You're never going to have to worry about them ever, ever again. But I will give you the tools to succeed and to be able to communicate with your dog in a way that, when something comes up, you know exactly how to speak to your dog and set those expectations.
Speaker 1:All right, y'all. It was great to be back. I don't have any notes for you or anything. So get out there, train your dogs. If you want more clarity on how to do all of this crazy stuff that I just you know dumped on you guys, I have an online community outside of the virtual shadow program, open to everybody, and I have videos on all of these topics. I would love to see you all in the community. We can train together. We do calls every Wednesday. It's an awesome group of people. They're so supportive. I love my people so much, so I would love for you guys to join, but we'll see you next week. Thanks for being here.