Ricker's Kay9 Dog Training, LLC

Find It can be used as an enrichment game and is one of many strategies to help your dog feel more comfortable in their environment. During walks in low traffic... areas, owners can throw treats on the ground and ask the dog to find it. This encourages the dog to disengage from the stressful stimuli they are focused on and helps move the dog along as they start walking and sniffing to find the treats. See more

Muzzles can be a dog’s best friend, and in this episode, we focus on all things muzzle related. Sarah McManaman, my trusty sidekick and social media manager fo...r The MuzzleUp! Project is my very special guest, and we have a fun troubleshooting session based on questions from MuzzleUp! fans. We discuss solutions on things like what to do if you’re not sure if the muzzle is the right fit, or your dog resource guards the muzzle, or your dog simply hates muzzles, and many other helpful tips to comfortably and safely acclimate dogs to muzzles. Direct download link: https://www.buzzsprout.com//8347317-sarah-mcmanaman-the-mu Or listen in on any of your favorite podcasting platforms. Shout out to Dale Buchanan of ProPodServices.com for his stellar editing once again!

Control is an illusion, management is a solution.

Does your dog become aggressive when they are on your bed? Here are five common reasons: 1) Resource guarding - Much like hotdogs, a juicy bone, or shiny new to...y that a dog may guard, the bed can become a "resource." 2) Resource guarding - There could be that shiny new toy, or an errant crumb that the dog is guarding...which happens to be on the bed and we might not see it at that time. 3) Pain or discomfort - perhaps after a long day of romping around with his dog pals, your dog is sore and resting comfortably on your bed. Your approach might be associated with making him move from the comfortable spot. Ouch! 4) Guarding your significant other - Bob gets up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and his dog becomes aggressive upon his return to the bed. In some cases, the dog may be guarding his wife Susie...from Bob. 5) Startle response - this is basically an unconscious defensive response to a sudden stimulus. A little restless leg syndrome from the owner can be problematic with a dog that displays aggressive behavior when startled easily. Here are some tips: - Never try to force your dog off the bed. Doing so can often escalate the situation. - Ask your vet to rule out or treat any underlying medical causes. - Management - Provide your dog their own comfy bed inside a crate or sectioned off with an ex-pen. If you just can't go without cuddling with Fluffy, you will need to manage the behavior while working towards your goal of allowing her on your Tempurpedic. - Behavior change - Start by teaching your dog to come off the bed by using a high value treat to reinforce that behavior. This also has the nice effect of "good things happen when I get off the bed...away from the comfy spot...or away from the resource...or away from the significant other." See how the same technique can work for most of the reasons! Then add in approaching the bed and tossing treats while the dog is on the bed. This layers in an additional "when people approach, good things happen" aspect to the behavior change. The goal is to see your dog get super happy about someone approaching the bed, and not the other way around. #dogtraining #dogtrainer #dogaggression

WHY DO I ENCOURAGE CLASSICAL COUNTER CONDITIONING INSTEAD OF OPERANT CONDITIONING FOR NAIL TRIMS? When I see the mention of clickers, marker words or a dog that... gets a reward for nail trims, this tells me that these people are using Operant Conditioning. What that means is that the dog must perform a specific behavior in order to be given its reward. If it doesn’t do the behavior, it gets no reward. This works great for behaviors like sit, down, focus, etc, because it increases the frequency of those behaviors happening. For fear-based behaviors, like fear of loud Dremels, clippers, handling or restraint, (or even thunder, dogs, people!), we do not recommend using the above technique. Can it work? If you are very, very highly educated on dog body language, threshold, treat delivery placement, reinforcement zones, applied behavior analysis, reinforcement rates, etc, then yes, this could, in theory, work to an extent. However, what usually happens when people do OC instead of CC is the dog is asked to tolerate/be still for more exposure than he’s comfortable with. If he shows you his true feelings and pulls away, he gets no food. If he is able to swallow his feelings and stick it out, he gets the food, but his stress builds little by little and nail tools become a cue for conflicted, anxious feelings - because they are repeatedly asked to do a behavior that goes against what their natural inclinations are. This creates a dog that is fidgety, fast moving, jumps at the marker word, flinches and seems overly food motivated as they try to cope with the stress in their bodies. This is the opposite of the calm, sleepy dogs I see when CC is used. The reason is because when we use OC, we don’t change how the dog *feels*, we just change *how much they are able to tolerate* for the reward. They will still feel uncomfortable, but now instead of pulling away to indicate discomfort, they will suppress that and hold still for food. This creates conflict and conflict creates anxiety. Over time, your kibble bits aren’t good enough, and you’ll need increasing values of food to keep the dog still, until you end up placating them/distracting with nearly constant food, eventually needing to go back to some form of restraint. Some owners then go back to using corrections, saying that the treat thing didn’t work for them. People that use OC for fear-based behaviors tend to see their dogs plateau at some point, because their dog has reached the limit of what they will tolerate for food/a reward. At some point, safety and comfort wins out over food. Some dogs even start avoiding the entire process. Some dogs will hit that point fairly early. Some dogs hit that point fairly late and go from eating peanut butter to biting someone. Operant works for behaviors like sit because the dog is not inherently fearful of sitting. Operant doesn’t work well for nail trims because there are many pieces about nail trims that are scary - restraint, loud buzzing objects, off balance, pressure on the nail, human face very close to their face, pain in the past. To combat fear, we have to first change how they FEELwith CC, and THEN, once that is done, you can switch to Operant if you prefer. Though, some people choose to never switch to OC. When you switch to Operant, you chance the dog losing its +CER (conditioned positive emotional response) as you’ve changed the rules of the game. I recommend following the CC rules (food every exposure, stay underthreshold, stimulus is never scary) forever with your dog, because there will be no chance of regression like there is when you switch to OC. Examples of Operant -dog must stay still for one nail to earn a treat -dog must not growl to earn a treat -dog must stay on mat, laying on side for one nail touch to earn a treat. -your dog has to wait until he hears, Yes to get a treat *If there’s a specific thing your dog has to do during nail trims, you are accidentally using Operant Conditioning. If your dog is not afraid of nail trims, then this may work for you. Examples of Classical -you move your hand toward your dog, then give a treat -you touch the Dremel to your dog’s shoulder, then give a treat -you clip raw spaghetti in clippers behind your back and then give your dog a treat after the sound -you hold paw for 5 seconds duration, and then give a treat *If you give a treat regardless of your dog’s behavior, you’re doing a CC protocol. There is no criteria your dog must do to get food. Exposure = food. If the dog does a behavior we don’t like (ie growl, pull away), we still give a treat for exposure, but then lower the intensity of our repetitions (Desensitization). We care about associations, not behavior. In CC, behavior is a sign of comfort level, not something to be rewarded or punished. Classical: exposure food Operant: exposure behavior possible reward based on dog’s behavior Classical changes how a dog feels. Operant changes how a dog behaves. By doing classical conditioning and changing how a dog feels, we naturally change how a dog behaves without doing anything at all. If we focus on operant conditioning, we change some of how a dog behaves, but only to a certain point, as how he feels becomes more and more of a roadblock. The reason why I encourage CC over OC is because 95% of dogs are frightened by the nail trim process. A frightened dog asked to do behaviors in front of their trigger is either not going to work at all, or end up with an anxious, conflicted, overaroused dog, that still struggles with nail trims long term. Our first step for successful trims is to change how the dog feels about trims, and for people who are teaching themselves how to do this without trainer oversight, CC is going to be the most efficient way for this to happen. Reread this article for more information about respondent behaviors and why we use Classical Conditioning for fear-based behaviors: https://eileenanddogs.com//are-you-performing-classical-c/ And then, go join Nail Maintenance for Dogs on Facebook, or check out www.positivedoghusbandry.com. And then, message me if you need help - we can do a phone, video or in-person session to get you moving in the right direction. You do not need to fight, pin down, sedate or correct your dog during nails. It can be an easy, pleasant experience for *BOTH* of you. Promise.

https://wildewmn.wordpress.com//04/the-threat-of-stillness/

Puppy biting is normal. It comes with the territory. Remember this mantra to help mitigate the biting: interrupt and redirect. The checklist in the poster bel...ow lists different ways to redirect a puppy’s natural behavior. And most importantly, never punish puppy biting! You could actually make it worse because the puppy could become anxious and defensive. #BehaviorVets #InterruptRedirect #Puppies #PuppyBiting #RelationshipGoals #MeetingNeeds #TrustTheProcess