Ty the Dog Guy on the Daily

Owners frequently call us to say: “My dog is amazing, but he has one problem!” That problem might be something comparatively small, or it might be something bigger. It’s always bizarre to hear someone say “My dog’s perfect except for the fact that he attacks other dogs.”

Let’s dig deep into this. A dog’s nervous system controls its ability to process stress. Fear, anxiety, and aggression all come from a place of stress. Your dog’s nervous system dictates how well he or she will press that stress. A strong nervous system can handle a lot of stress, while a weak one can only handle stress for a shorter period of time.

Summer is on its way, and that means that everyone is going to be at the park with their dog. We’re going to be camping, hiking, and fishing . It’s fun to take our dogs along too! Many people want to take their dogs on these adventures off-leash, and unfortunately most of these people shouldn’t. Have you ever been out in public and had a dog run right up to you? Usually the owner is calling out “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” That doesn't matter. What if I were terrified of dogs or allergic to them? What if my dog wasn’t friendly?

The message I want to convey boils down to this: leave dogs alone when you’re in public! When you see a dog, especially a service dog, just leave it alone. I know that’s tough for a lot of people. I probably don’t understand this urge to interact with dogs, because I’m surrounded by dozens of them every day and usually fulfill my “dog quota” with no problem. But there is nothing more frustrating to a service dog’s trainer or handler than to be out in public teaching the dog and be constantly interrupted by folks who just want to chat.

Someone called into our Salt Lake City training center to ask me to come to their home and house train their dog. As I explained that we only train at the center, I realized that going to the house wouldn't even be necessary. In fact, I’ve house trained hundreds of dogs without ever once seeing the houses they lived in.

I have plenty of clients with dogs that are big and cute. Some of these dogs also, unfortunately, have aggression issues. Frequently the owner will be walking their dog on the street and have to deal with a difficult situation: a neighbor sees the dog, lights up with a smile, and runs across the road to get in the dog’s face and say hello.

Right now, it’s starting to feel a little bit like spring in Utah. It seemed like winter lasted forever! We had two inches of snow down here in the valley last week, and there’s still snow on the mountains. Utah Sometimes it feels like winter ends in May and spring only lasts a month until we’re into summer.

In this post, I want to ask you to do something. You don’t need to do it right now, especially if you're at school or in your office or at another public place. (In fact, if that’s the case, please save this task for later!) The next time you're getting dressed, put your pants on the other way: if you're used to putting in your left leg first, then try to put in your right leg and then your left.

This post might be out to burst your bubble, because in it I want to talk about selective hearing. Here’s why what I’m about to say might disappoint you: dogs don't have selective hearing in quite the way you think they do. Selective hearing is what most people blame when they say things like: “Sometimes I call my dog and he looks around and thinks about it, but decides not to come” or “I tell my dog to sit, but he’s pretty selective about whether he obeys.”

I love summer. I love not worrying about wearing shoes. I love leaving the house in shorts and no jacket without worrying about getting cold. I hate the rain and the snow and anything falling out of the sky. (Why do I live in Utah, you’re probably asking!) So the rain we’ve been getting recently has really dragged on me, but there is a bit of a silver lining.

In today’s post, I want to address the topic of weakness. Now, we like to believe that we’ve evolved to a level where we don't pick on the weak, at least as adults. As an adult, I know that . As a kid, I definitely picked on those who were weaker at times and got picked on for being weaker at others. But as we mature, we like to think that we’re beyond that. Hopefully we are!

When I was sixteen years old, I got my driver’s license. Like plenty of other sixteen-year-olds, that meant that I started ditching school and doing other stuff. I was determined to find fun stuff to do. On one of these days, I ditched school with a friend to check out the military surplus store, one of those places where you can buy tents and fishing supplies and other military supplies. We didn’t have one of them in our town, but the next town over—Livermore—did.

In this post, I want to talk about insurance. The other day, I started to think about investing in dog training kind of reminds me of the way that people . When I say “investing,” I am talking partially about money, but I’m also talking about effort and time and engagement—everything that goes into the process of training a dog.

In this post, I want to address some of the challenges of the electric training collar. Those of you who know a little about my company know that we use these collars with most of our clients. We do this because, done correctly, the collar allows us to get to an advanced level of off-leash obedience quickly, while being very humane and easy on both the dog and the owner.

In this post, I want to address what dog training really is. I have a very linear mindset, and I’m always trying to fit things into a logical, “A-to-B” framework. When I do reduce dog training to its core, I come up with one concept: controlling outcomes. If you can manage that for a long enough time, then you’ve trained your dog.

I went over to the house and put together a big list of what I wanted them to do regularly. I wanted them to sneak up on him and correct him with the e-collar anytime they saw him chewing, to make sure he had plenty of toys to chew on, to create something called a surrogate (which I’ll address in another post.) The last thing I told them to do was take him on focused walks. They were already walking him every day for 30—40 minutes, but he pulled. We taught him how to walk properly in that session, and I made sure they understood to walk him in a focused manner—right next to their side—from that point on.

In today’s post, I’d like to talk about our expectations for our dogs. We train a lot of service dogs, but this advice applies to any dog. Many people say that they want their dog to watch over them or their kids. When I ask them what this specifically means, they say that they want their dog to “keep them safe.” What does that mean? “Just make sure that we don’t get hurt.”

In this short post, I’d like to talk specifically to people who treat their dogs as if they’re kids. Now, I love both my dogs and my kids. Sometimes even I feel that I love my dogs as much as my kids. But even if you do, there has to be a distinction drawn between them. The reason? Knives.

Right now I’m in Savannah, Georgia for my bother’s wedding. I never bring a razor with me when I travel, so I really needed to shave and my hair was getting long. Now, I’ve been shaving my head by myself for about twenty years. I’m a pretty utilitarian guy. I wear Carhartt shirts every day and try to keep everything simple without fuss or maintenance, so I hadn’t been in a barber’s chair in twenty years.

In this post, I’d like to share a few of my thoughts about dominance. There is a preconception out there among dog trainers that dominance doesn’t exist, founded on the idea that dogs aren’t actually pack animals (which may or may not be true). This idea has gained a lot of traction during the last few years.

It’s gorgeous here in Utah—75 degrees, clear sky, no wind—and easily the nicest day we’ve had all year. Up in the Northeast, though, they have a huge storm coming in. Some places are getting upwards of three feet of snow.

It’s Saturday evening. I’m dirty, sore, tired—and fulfilled! That’s unusual. If you know me at all, you know that I despise manual labor. I always joke that I’m the hardest working lazy man you’ll ever meet. I don’t mind getting a leash in my hand and working with dogs, but other manual tasks like mowing the lawn and fixing stuff around the house just aren’t my cup of tea. But that’s what I’ve been doing all day.

I opened up my email today and saw a question from a person looking for advice. “My dog is six months old and he’s starting to get aggressive. Do you think he’ll grow out of it?” My very frank response was “No, he’ll probably grow into it.” My experience suggests that he’ll start to do it more frequently.

One thing I’m fond of telling people is that calmness is a skill set. A big pet peeve of mine is when people say: “Oh, just wait until the dog gets older. He’ll calm down.” What they’re saying is that calmness is a product of age, and that a dog just needs to get older to naturally calm down. There are two problems with this logic, the first being that it’s just wrong. Plenty of ten-year-old dogs are still very hyper.However, even if this logic is correct, it means that you have to wait years to really enjoy your dog. That’s why I try to help people understand that calmness is a skill, and that it can be learned and taught.

A few years ago I had a client with a Doberman. We were talking about training and commands, and I gave it a “sit” command in English. They said, “Oh no, we’re going to train the dog in German.” I’ve trained hundreds of dogs in German over the years, so I had no problem with that. But when I asked them why they wanted to train in German, they just said “Well, she’s a Doberman.” By their tone of voice I could tell that they were surprised I was even asking. “She’s from Germany originally,” they told me, “which means she’ll understand German commands better naturally.”

I’ve been teaching dogs to heel on the left for twenty years, and if a dog is trained on the right I get awkward. I always joke that you get used to putting your pants on with the same leg first every single day. Try doing it the other way tomorrow! It feels weird. For me, that’s the same feeling I get when a dog heels to the right side.

In this post, I’d like to talk about the role that exercise plays in making sure your dog is well-trained. This stems from a question that I’ve received a lot over the years, thanks to a certain dog trainer named Cesar Milan.

Today I want to talk about dogs that take advantage of their owners. This has been on my mind because I’m working with an owner who has cancer and is physically weakened as a result. In a possible correlation, he’s seen behavior problems and boundary-pushing popping up in his dog.

Today, I spent some time in my backyard with my dog Chocolate Chip and a Belgian Malamute who’s staying at my house to be trained as a personal protection dog. Needless to say, there was a lot of growling involved. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about growling and what it means.

I’ve found that among dog trainers, as in any skill-based profession, there are a lot of disagreements. This arguments tend to revolve around methodology and identification of problems. Some trainers are adamant that one training method is the best, while others will swear that another is ideal. I’ve realized in the past few years that if a dog trainer is trying to achieve a certain goal with a dog, then the training program that they put together toward that goal is probably the correct one.

Lately I’ve been working a lot with Sword, a protection dog in training. Protection dogs are a big investment, usually around $20,000 to $50,000. Today we were working on Sword’s sit command. He often understands this command to mean sitting at someone’s side, but right now I want to train him to sit in front of me. Right now he gets confused and tries to sit at my side, so I’m teaching him to sit where I ask him to sit.

I want to talk to for a minute your about how your dog’s breed learns. Very frequently, dog owners will ask me, “Have you ever dealt with this breed before?” Sometimes I chuckle when it’s a very common breed. You’d be surprised at how many people have asked me if I’ve ever trained a German Shepherd, for instance. My response? “Well, not since twenty minutes ago!”

I flew back to Georgia last Thursday to buy some service and protection dogs for my clients. The trip was planned with very short notice. Now, I’m a planner who likes to plan things with as much notice as is possible, partially because I’m a big guy who likes to sit in an aisle or window seat. What I never, ever want is the middle seat.

training is just one component of your dog’s overall behavior. It might be the most important component at some times, but it isn’t always. I’ve never made an exhaustive list of every component that I can think of, but you need to consider things like nutrition, exercise, relationship with the owner, supervision, and the amount of affection the dog is getting. Some of these things are directly related to training quite a bit; the better a dog walks on a leash, for example, the easier it is to exercise them.

Today I’m going to talk about your dog playing you for a fool. It happens all the time, and there are a lot of dogs that are smart enough for it. Experts say that 90% of communication is nonverbal, and I totally believe that to be true. I think we as people learn nonverbal cues from others, and we don’t often recognize it. That’s still a big part of how we communicate. Dogs are the same: most of their communication, and most of their understanding of our communication, is nonverbal. They see patterns within our movements and words and interpret them. That allows us to train them, but it’s also what allows them to play us for fools sometimes.

I was truly fascinated by that. I know not everyone comes from a dog family—in fact, I didn’t come from a dog family—and that not everyone wants to be around dogs. But to meet someone who hadn’t touched a dog in so many years seemed strange and unique to me. Because this client was so allergic and hadn’t been able to be around dogs, she had developed a fear of them. She was from an area that is very dog-friendly, so there were always dogs everywhere. That was scary for her. So she overcome this fear with her dog had been tough. Her puppy was sweet, but very nippy. That just fed her fear even more.

In today’s post, I want to talk about something difficult: your stubborn dog! I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot because Facebook was kind enough to show me a memory of a quote that I shared three or four years ago: “In order for a dog to be considered stubborn, he must first know what the rule is and then actively choose to disobey it. There are very few stubborn dogs in this world, but there are a lot of untrained dogs.”

The other day I heard some barking in my backyard. I live in a very unique neighborhood. In the small block that I live on, there are about fifteen houses. Out of all those houses, my family is the only one that owns dogs. Nowhere else in America will you see fifteen houses in a row, only one of which has a dog! It’s crazy.

I want to talk about leadership. This is one of those concepts that a lot of people realize they need to do better, particularly in relation to their dogs. Unfortunately, some of these people end up practicing that only looks like leadership. Some of them just try to look tougher, some say things in a deeper voice, and some attempt to appear meaner or “more alpha.” These terms that come to mind when people think about leadership.

Today, I’d like to talk about a slightly unusual topic: laser pointers. Around the beginning of my business, I got a call from an owner who had three Boston terriers. They were one of the first clients that I had while working on my own. On the phone, they told me that their dogs chased lights, shadows, and other moving light disturbances. If cars driving down the road cast a shadow, for instance, the dogs would chase after it barking maniacally. When someone opened a door, the dogs would see the reflection on the wall and freak out.

which complaint do I hear the most? “My dog only listens when she wants to.” Oftentimes, people think of this as an issue with their dog. They think it means their dog is stubborn, unmotivated, stupid, or even too smart. But in reality, almost everyone teaches their dog to only be obedient when they feel like it. It usually starts from day one, whether they’ve bought a puppy or adopted an older dog. Let’s say, as an example, that you’ve just brought home your new puppy. You tell him: “Come here, puppy!” Being a curious puppy, he hears someone talking and immediately comes over. Tomorrow, you say the same thing twelve times. The puppy keeps listening, because frankly they’ll come to anything! You could say “zucchini” or “radish” and a puppy would respond to it. But the puppy isn’t really learning anything, other than that it’s a good thing to come when called. You’re just making a noise, and he’s responding to it. What tends to happen is an expansion. Now you say “sit,” “down,” and “stay,” but dogs don’t learn well through being told. They learn through being shown.

In today’s post, I want to talk about a nursery rhyme. An old lady who swallowed a fly, and then a spider to swallow the fly, and then a lizard to swallow the spider, and a bird to swallow the lizard, and a cat to swallow the bird, and a dog to swallow the cat—whew! Basically, this woman didn’t know how to solve the problem, so she kept sending other things out to solve it for her.

Today, I thought I’d write a post about a news item that’s been on my mind lately. If you hadn’t heard, it was recently in the news that the Obama family’s dog bit a teenage girl in the face. The story, as I’ve heard it, is that the girl got in the dog’s face and was trying to kiss it—and he bit her. I don’t ever like to condone a dog biting, but at the same time you can’t condone the behavior of this child.

In today’s post, I want to give you a few tips for keeping your dog close. Many clients find themselves using these methods in the front yard, when they’re gardening, chatting with neighbors, or working on their car. You want to be outside and you want your dog to be with you, but you don’t want to tie him down. The dog needs to be able to wander without running off. You can also use this tip when you’re out on the trail and want your dog to hang close without heeling or being on a leash. It comes in handy at picnics and the beach as well, or any situation where you want your dog to stick around without a command.

This morning, I was out with my dog Chocolate Chip, just running around. It’s a cold winter and she’s in heat, so I’m not letting her run around the house and make a mess. During this time I like to let her have some fun, because otherwise she’ll go nuts.

In today’s post, I want to talk about something that I’ve brushed on before and want to explain in more depth. It’s called the “collateral effect.” The “collateral effect” is a term that I use frequently. It simply refers to the common trend that when we satisfy one need in a dog, other behaviors that we weren’t trying to fix still tend to fall into line.