In our
Last video, you saw this. In today's video, You're gonna see Amy come to a really
great realization about her leadership and Her puppy training. That could
really change everything. And I think it's gonna help you too. Because I haven't established consistency, I haven't been doing any of these
things. There's no plan to it. Okay. If that makes sense. Right. You
were talking about the crate, That's something I should
do every time. Yes. But it would just be a
one-off if I did it. I see. Or yesterday I was cooking in the kitchen
and I kept telling her to go, Okay. But I wasn't really
paying attention to her, So I should've put her in the crate. Okay. This is brilliant that
this is coming up because This is where the lack of
structure is coming in, And this is where we're getting a
lot of the excited stuff because she Needs a little bit more rules.
And that she needs to, If you are Doing dinner, what's
your plan with the dog? If people come to the door, What's your puppy plan when you
wanna sit down and watch tv? What's your puppy plan when you
go to bed? What's your puppy plan? So your whole day sort of has to have a
bit of structure to it, <affirmative>. And sometimes when people look at it
that way, they think like, Oh my gosh, This is so much work and it is a
lot of work, but it's temporary. Because what happens is when
they're smart as she is, And we start to provide
structure, here bud, get this, We start to provide structure.
The dog starts to go, Oh, This is our routine. When
it gets to the point, Now I can open the stove and Five
Alive, our puppy will go onto the bed. I didn't teach him that,
but he put together, Because I have rehearsed so
many times being at the stove, Having him go to the bed, that
he's just put two and two together. But now it's really great because it's
like we have a bit of a flow together Because there's been structure.
So I definitely think that's something
you need to think about at home with her About structure, because if the second
you find yourself being, No Penny, Stop Penny, do this, do that. And
it's pretty much what it does, Which pretty happens all the time. It's lowering your leadership
because she's sort of saying, You don't know what you're talking
about because you tell me do a hundred Million things. And also the
information that she's getting is, You're making a wrong choice.
You're making your wrong choice, You're making your wrong
choice, <affirmative>. And
what we wanna do is say, Oh my gosh, look, Could you go on your bed because
I've just helped her on her bed. Or good girl for picking
up your bone, or whatever. So I wanna change how
I'm interacting with her So that I'm kind of setting
her up to make the good choice. And if I don't have time
to do that at the moment, Because I have a young daughter and I'm
cooking dinner and I'm trying to get out The door and all those
things, she goes in her crate. Because when she's in her crate,
she's not learning the bad stuff. And then when she's out, You gotta put a little bit of time into
teaching her some of these things. And Then over time, It's just the balance changes to
tons of crate time with training. You're trying to fit in. She
starts to get more training, And all of a sudden you're like, Okay, Well I don't actually have to put her
away because she knows to go and lie down On her bed. She knows to go and get her
bone, or she knows to do those things. But right now, you're in the super
awkward stage where she's a baby, She's a puppy. She doesn't
have those skills yet. But what we wanna do is they're
learning all of the time. If she is doing a lot of
rehearsal of learning, Dinner time or night, You are kind of distracted because you're
doing your own thing and she can kind Of get away with stuff, then
that's what she's learning. So we need to change the narrative in
those situations. In our last video we
Talked about nipping and biting, And we worked through that and
she did really great with that. But we also wanna talk a little bit about
just overall leadership and control. Because sometimes when puppies are nipping
and biting or they're being wild and Crazy or whatever they're doing
that we don't like discipline Isn't necessarily the only answer. It could just be changing our management
tactics. Good. That was really good. Good girl. Good. Settle. And then make
sure you acknowledge when she's being, Good girl. Good girl. Good.
Settle. That's better. So first question for you is,
are you using a crate at home? Yes. And how is she with the crate? She's
great. Oh, good. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. So she's happy to go in the crate. She's
good. Is she fairly quiet in the crate? Yep. The first 48 hours she cried nonstop. And after that she stopped. Good. So she goes on
her own. Now sometimes. To relax, That is fantastic because when you have
a dog that has not such great emotional Control, again, like I said
before mm-hmm. <affirmative>, It's not because she's a bad dog at all.
She is like just she's ready to PARTY! Right. You're a party girl. But that can be hard sometimes because
they're wild and crazy and they're Jumping and they're pulling
and they're being obnoxious. Just because she has all this energy,
she doesn't know what to do with herself. The crate is gonna be a
good way to calm her down. But it's important that
we're not using it in a way. We don't wanna use the crate
as a form of discipline. We wanna use it as a form of
prevention so that we can stop her From nipping and biting. So can
you tell me in what scenarios, What scenarios is she normally a
bit out of control? Would you say? Maybe outta controls isn't the right
phrase, but more nippy and bitey, Or making more poor choices
or a little bit more. Wild. We're trying to relax with. Her. So if we're sitting watching
tv, even if she's on her bed,
She'll come up and if I'm sitting
there with my legs crossed, she'll nip. My toes. She's not at the same level. I
pet her she nips. Okay. Exactly. Okay. Similar to what's happening right
now. You just pet her and she nips. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, take her collar
and then loosen the leash. Tell her, Knock that off. No, settle. Good. And just keep holding her for
a second. Good. Okay. Now break. Good girl. Okay. And
actually don't feed her. No. And the reason why I don't want you to
feed her is because she's very smart. And I don't want her to think that if
she's told not to nip and bite that There'll be a cookie at the end. So
in those circumstances, <affirmative>, I would use praise and affection as
her reward. So praise her. Genuinely. Good girl. That's better. Use affection,
praise and touch her. Good girl. That's better. Good. We don't always have
to use the food. Good girl. Good girl. Okay, so let's talk about that
nighttime leadership thing, Because I actually think this is a
super common time. Lots of puppies, <affirmative>. I'm sure
people watching at home, That's a very common thing because
often we're ready to die down. We're ready to chill out.
The puppies are like, I still have two more hours of excitement. So there's a couple things
you can do. Number one, Before you go into chill
out time <affirmative>, Make sure that any pent
up energy that she has, You've gotten rid of that. So maybe before you sit down to watch
TV or hang out with her, you go outside, Take five minutes and do some
restraint recalls with her, Or you do a minute or so of tug, Do something that actually
lets her get that stuff out. But it's something that is
productive. So by playing tug and out, She's having a lot of energy, but
she is, there's still control there. Or if you're playing restraint recalls, Whereas your husband holds her and you
call her and call her to a tug toy and Play tug or something like that. Again, It gets that energy out. Now she's
got the edge off of her a little bit.
Right now you can go and do something
a bit calmer. Will she be perfect? Probably not. But be a
little bit less energetic. The other thing you can do is when you
have her out, give her something to do. So if you have a bed or something,
<affirmative>. Oh good, good, good. Oh. Or you can lie on the bed and chew
a bone like an angel <affirmative>. Very good choice. Pen. She said maybe,
Or maybe I'll chew on it. Good girl. That was a nice choice. I thought
you were gonna lie down there. You can give that a try here. Good.
Get your bone there. So if she <laugh>, She's showing me what you have having
her have a bed nearby with something to Chew would be great. Okay. One of the tactics that I would do with
my puppy is a bone like this. I love for Her crate and stuff like that. But I personally found that if I
wanted to do some chill out time, This bone wasn't high value enough.
Okay. So I would actually use Yak cheese bone or something
like that is a bit higher value. The only time my puppy got
it was in those moments. So because I could have him up on my
lap, or sometimes I have a big dog bed, I would pull it and I would literally
sit on it with him with my back against The couch and I'd have a leash on. I'd have him lie down and I would just
hold the bone and he'd lie here and he'd Chew away on it. But because it was
higher value, it kept him engaged longer. And then if he decided, eh, I'm
gonna go and do my own thing, I wouldn't let him, I would have him on the leash and I'd
just make him come over and lay with me And be calm. I could only do that
for so long before I was like, I actually wanna watch the
show and you're annoying. So I would do it for a little bit, And then I would very happily go and
put him in the crate and then we would Watch tv. So you don't have to
do it for long periods of time. You could do it for short periods of time. But what will start to happen is that
scenario, well, she'll start to say, Okay, This is what we do. Mom holds my
bone, we lie together, we chew, And then it starts to
get a little bit easier. And that's my question about the crate.
So we have a crate on our main floor.
Yeah, we have a crate upstairs. Good.
Perfect. But in the basement, we don't. Okay. Which is kind of, I. Mean, definitely. What do you
spend most of your time there? It depends. In our evenings there's a play area
for my daughter and we'll watch TV and Stuff. So we do spend a
considerable amount of time. Just lift up on your leash now cuz.
So I don't wanna interrupt you, But when she does that, just lift
up on the leash for a second. Yes. Just tell her. Settle. Settle. So what's happening here is she's been
sitting here for a long time cuz we're Talking, and now she's getting a
little bit, I'm a little bit over this, So I'm just gonna put some
cheese on her bone here, And we're just gonna see if we can give
her a little bit of something to do. Okay. I love where your head's at here
with your crate location things. So okay, Go look at. That. So I guess my question is, Should we just take her upstairs to the
main floor and put her in her crate? Or should we? Yeah. Instead of, I think it's important that she has
time in the crate when you're there, And it's equally as important that she
can be upstairs in her crate while you're Downstairs and that she's okay
with that. Okay. All right. So there's a balance between it because
if she is just everywhere you are all of The time, she won't necessarily learn
that it's okay for you to be apart. So I think it's good to have a
balanced approach in that situation. So play with the high-value toy
while we're doing tv, do whatever, And then when it's done, take
her upstairs and go back down. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
When we are settling, When my puppies are
younger her age, I will, Before I'm ready to chill
out myself for the night, I will do a quick training
session with a puppy. Typically, I find if I do a balance between something
that's physical <affirmative> and Something that's mental,
that's like the perfect recipe. So I'll do something
physical, the tug in the play,
And then I might do five or six minutes
of tricks or sits and downs or something Where the puppy has to use their brain. Then we'll go outside for our pee
and our poop or whatever it might be, And then go into the crate.
And when they're baby puppies, I will usually bring the
crate to where I'm sitting. But when we get to Penny's
age, that's when I <laugh>, That's when I start to
say, Okay, we've had our, It's quality over quantity.
I've had my quality time with you. I know you have all your
needs met <affirmative>. Now you can go away for a couple hours
where I sit with the family and I watch TV. At the end, I take the
puppy out for a quick pee again. And I don't usually do
a lot at that point, Cuz I don't really want the puppy
to get up again. Go out again? Yeah. So I go out for a quick pee,
and then up to the crate, Our puppy sleeps in a crate in
a room, they can sleep anywhere, It doesn't matter. Perfect. And then
into the crate we go for the night. And that's sort of the
normal nightly routine. And then now that's
transferred into, instead of, I'll do something with him
sometimes. Sometimes I don't now. And then it's just he
can come and lie down in. The room, go in the crate. At all. Oh no. Yeah. So it'll be a natural transition. And you'll start to see it happen because
you'll see her in situations where she May have gone to make a
poor choice. <affirmative>. I remember our puppy went from doing
that to all of a sudden he would grab the Bone and he'd go and lie
down on his own and chew. And I would look at Ken and
be like, Look at the puppy. It's like it's starting to happen.
You can see it start to happen. And when you see that, when
you start to think like, Gosh, I'm not on her right now, or
I'm not picking up her leisure, Or I'm not getting after her, And she's starting to kind of just
be a bit more chill, then okay, Maybe she's ready for a
little bit more freedom,
Or she's ready for a
little bit more time out. And then you also go through bumps and
hiccups along the way where it's like she Gets a bit adolescent
and you're like, Gosh, She's just a pain in the butt now. So you
up the crate time a little bit more or Whatever. You just make adjustments
based on what's happening in the moment. Okay, great. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> leadership
is such an important aspect
of your puppy training and It can really help diminish
the nipping and biting. But if you wanna learn more about how
to work through nipping and biting with Your puppy, check out
the video right here. Leadership is a really popular topic
that we cover in our Puppy Essentials Online program. So if you wanna work
with me and the rest of the McCann team, Make sure you check out the link in
the description below. On that note, I'm Kayl. This is Amy and
Penny. Happy training.
