You are listening to your new puppies podcast. Starting you and your dog off on the right paw. Here's your

host Debbie Salento. Hello and welcome to episode 68 of your new puppies podcast. I'm Debbie and today we are going to talk about

the power of practice. So this is one of those topics where it's kind of sprinkled throughout the

podcast but it's so important yet overlooked a lot that I figured it warranted an

entire episode. So what I'm talking about is intentional practice

specifically when we want to change a dog's behavior. So it's the difference between just addressing a behavior and

actually changing it. So for example, when I get asked, how do I stop my dog from

barking? Most of the time, what's actually going on

in my client's head is, when my dog starts barking, what do I do to stop it? It's a very, very subtle difference, but it's the difference

between changing the habit and just managing it when it's happening.

Now you're probably like, well, duh, it's called Training Your Dog,

that's why we're here.

But hear me out because a lot of us resist this and we don't even realize we're

resisting it. One, it's because it's where the work is. Of course we're going

to resist it. And two, a lot of times we're not thinking about the

behavior that we want to change until the behavior is actually happening. So we

know that maybe there's some exercises we can do to stop our dog from barking or countersurfing or pulling on the leash

But we don't think about it until they are

Jumping up on the counter barking out the window and pulling us down the road.

And the thing is, sometimes management is just fine.

For example, if you have a dog that countersurfs in the kitchen and you have the ability to just

lock your dog out of the kitchen and you're okay with doing that forever, then fine.

...