Praise - 057 Dog Leads

So if you've been watching this podcast for a while, you know that I talk a lot about development.

Children go through the stranger danger and the night terrors and dogs can have several fear periods.

I've heard of some as late as two years, although that's really, really rare.

But we are all geared to notice bad things.

These are the things that are going to keep us safe, going to protect us.

It's a matter of survival.

Now how this applies to our training is we wanna make sure we're not just disciplining the dog when they do something wrong.

We're not getting onto them about you know, the jumping up or chewing on something they're not supposed to.

We want to make sure we're also noticing those times when they are doing what's expected.

I don't know how many times I see my dog just laying quietly, hanging out, you know, enjoying being in proximity to the family.

And I say something like, Oh, Malcolm's such a good boy.

And you just see that tail start to go and he knows I'm not causing any problems.

I'm not getting into trouble.

And you know, this is a good thing when I just kind of hang out to be with the family.

He comes up and he asks for pets, wanna make sure we're noticing that and we're giving him that attention when he wants it, as long as it's appropriate.

And I've talked about before when I was working on my degree duncan would come and want attention want to spend time with me and i couldn't really focus on giving him that attention because i was working on something but i didn't reprimand him for that i would pet him for a second you're a good boy you need to down or something like that and he would just hang out a lot of times you'd crawl under the desk and lay at my feet for a 40 pound dog that was kind of squished, but he liked it in there.

It was cozy.

He was close to me and I didn't mind it because he wasn't bothering me.

So I wanted to make sure we captured that.

And every once in a while I'd reach down and I'd give him a little scratch or a pet or something.

So another good example, I talked a couple of episodes about when I'm working in the kitchen and the dog is getting in the way, I say out of the kitchen and he has a space where he's supposed to go to.

If I see him already there, Duncan used to do this all the time when I was in the kitchen.

He would come up to that transition that was kind of the border where I expected him to be.

And he'd just lay down and hang out there and watch me while I worked in the kitchen.

And I would praise him for that.