YNP #040: How to Be Your Dog’s Pack Leader
Your New Puppy: Dog Training and Dog Behavior Lessons to Help You Turn Your New Puppy into a Well-Behaved Dog
Debbie Cilento: Dog Trainer | Dog Behavior Consultant | Owner of Playtime Paws | Belly Rub Specialist
4.8 • 917 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2019
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There is only one thing that you need to know about dog behavior to teach or stop any behavior! Yup, when it comes down to it, our dogs are very simple creatures.
In this episode, I am revealing my secret. This is what I use to solve 90% of my client’s training issues.
I have centered my life around dog behavior. And everything I have learned and observed comes down to this one thing.
SPOILER ALERT…
The one thing you need to know about dog behavior
***Dogs do what works for them…always; and they don’t feel guilty about it.***
That’s it. If your dog is exhibiting some behavior then it is working for them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing it. The trick is to understand what’s working.
We can use it to our advantage to teach a behavior. For example, you want to teach your dog to sit, you give them a treat every time their butt hits the floor when you say “sit”. Now, that behavior works for them so they are going to repeat it.
Or we want to stop a behavior. For example, your dog barks at you and you give them attention by looking at them or even telling them “no.” That behavior now works for them and they will repeat it. To change the behavior we have to take the attention away.
The top 4 most common things your dog is looking for is
- Attention
- Food
- Release extra energy
- Relieve boredom
These are not the only things but they are the place to start.
The concept is easy, it’s applying that gets tricky. Sometimes it’s super obvious (your dog jumps on the counter and gets to the food) or not so obvious (your puppy is whining in the crate for attention, not to go potty). This episode is chock full of examples on how to apply this.
Now you know my secret. This is the same place I always start when trying to teach or stop a behavior. It takes practice, but if we take a hard look at our dog’s behavior (and ours) you will see the pattern.
Press play to listen to the full episode with more details and examples. Enjoy!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to your new puppies podcast. |
| 0:07.0 | Starting you and your dog Off on the Right Paw. |
| 0:15.0 | Here's your host, Debbie Salento. Hello and |
| 0:29.0 | welcome to episode 40 of your new puppies podcast I I'm Debbie and today we're going to talk about |
| 0:35.8 | how to be a good pack leader for your dog and it has nothing to do with |
| 0:41.4 | alpha or dominance. So leadership isn't something I talk about |
| 0:46.3 | directly often but by the end of this episode if you're a frequent listener you're |
| 0:52.0 | going to realize that I actually do talk about it all the time. |
| 0:55.4 | Because at some point, almost every trainer will in some way talk about leadership. But not all of them really explain how to do it. |
| 1:07.6 | So when I talk about leadership, I don't mean alpha, I don't mean dominance, I believe both of those terms are overused and greatly misunderstood and |
| 1:17.8 | leads us to the wrong type of relationship with our dog. So our dogs don't come into our house knowing how to live in our world. |
| 1:26.4 | And they don't know how to communicate that with us and understand what we're trying to communicate with them yet. I've mentioned that before and it always |
| 1:34.7 | seems like I'm stating the obvious but we always forget that. We really do. So |
| 1:39.0 | without our guidance, our dogs are going to act the only way they know how. Like a dog. They're |
| 1:46.9 | going to pee in the house, they're going to bite and nip when they're |
| 1:49.8 | over-excited, they're going to chew on things that are inappropriate. So make no mistake, you |
| 1:55.8 | do need to be your dog's pack leader, but I want you to think of it as more of a parent or a teacher because you're going to |
| 2:05.8 | set rules and boundaries and then guide them and teach them how to be the dog you want them to be. |
| 2:16.0 | Sometimes it's going to take a lot of patience, sometimes it's going to take a little tough love, |
| 2:21.0 | sometimes it's going to take looking at what we are doing in our own actions |
| 2:26.0 | because you can make all the rules you want and they can go from formal rules like no dog on the couch to implied rules like no chewing on my slipper. |
| 2:35.8 | But the only way our dogs learn them is if we make a very clear picture of what we want. |
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