Tag: dog training

Your Pet is Not Like Your Car

Posted on by Allie Bender

A few months ago my car was intermittently making a strange noise. I had to take it in for an oil change anyway so I set up an appointment for a couple weeks from then. The morning of the appointment my husband reminded me to tell them about the noise (which I hadn’t heard since I scheduled with the mechanic). I responded, “With my luck, it won’t make any noise and they won’t be able to figure out what’s wrong with it.” I then told him a story about a similar incident where I intermittently smelled something akin to burning rubber when I drove but when I took it in, the mechanic couldn’t smell it and wasn’t able to diagnose the issue. 

And then it hit me. This is why people want to show me their dog’s undesirable behavior. I hear on an almost daily basis statements like:

I want you to come to my house to see the behavior. 

I hope we see dogs on our walk so you can see what he does. 

I’m worried she’s going to act perfectly when you’re here. 

Let me show you what he does.

All of these boil down to the desire that people have for me to see their pet doing the behavior that they want to change. And, on an almost daily basis, I respond with:

I don’t need to see your pet’s behavior in order for us to work on it. Actually, we’re going to manage the situation so that we hopefully don’t see it! 

That statement is usually met with skepticism and a look that says, “What do you mean you don’t want to see the behavior?” And while I’ve always understood that it’s a foreign concept for most in our society to address behavior issues before they happen instead of relying on consequences, I didn’t understand why it was truly so difficult to overcome the desire for me to see the behavior. That is, I didn’t understand until I said the exact same thing about my car. 

It dawned on me at that moment that there are issues that truly can’t be diagnosed without the problem happening in front of the expert. An optometrist needs to administer a vision test. The IT person asks to remote into the computer to poke around. The mechanic says that they can’t diagnose an intermittent smell because everything else looks okay. Most of us have a long learning history that reinforces this thought process that the expert needs to see the problem in order to develop the solution. We also have a learning history that says that when an expert doesn’t see the problem, we’re stuck with it. 

So why doesn’t your behavior professional need to see the behavior in order to modify it? Here are 5 reasons for us at Pet Harmony:

  1. We’ve seen it before, and we believe you. Because we have spent years studying the behavior sciences and their practical application, we understand the underlying causes of various behavior issues without needing to see them happening. We’ve worked with thousands of animals with maladaptive behavior over many years and assign our consultants based on what they’ve experienced and worked with. We know what questions to ask in order to develop a behavior modification plan for individual pets and can “see” the behavior in our heads. Only once in a blue moon do we get asked about something that none of us have seen before. In those cases we’ll often ask our clients to video the behavior, if it’s safe to do so, and/or refer them to a Veterinary Behaviorist. 
  2. Safety. We work primarily with aggression, reactivity, anxiety, and fear. In order to keep you, your pet, the public, and ourselves safe, we need to manage the environment so the animal can’t perform unsafe behaviors. If the pet’s problem is biting people then we definitely don’t want to see that!
  3. Mitigating stress levels. Once your pet passes a certain point, their brain is not receptive to learning. This is why people tell us that nothing works when their dog is reacting or they’ve tried using food in training and it didn’t work. If we want to start teaching the animal different exercises in our session then we need to keep them calm enough that they will be capable of learning. 
  4. Practice makes perfect. The more an animal (ourselves included) practices a behavior, the better they get at performing it. If our goal is to decrease the unwanted behavior, we don’t want them to continue practicing and perfecting it. This is why management (arranging the environment so the animal doesn’t perform the unwanted behavior) is so critical to behavior modification. 
  5. We can change unwanted behavior before it happens. There are several options to changing behavior and many of them can be implemented before the animal does the undesirable action! For example: if you don’t want your dog jumping on you, you don’t have to wait for him to jump on you to start training; you can train before he jumps and save yourself the frustration. 

Now what?

  • Take a few minutes to let this concept soak in: we don’t need to see your pet behaving badly to change their behavior. How do you feel about that? Relief? Skepticism? Email us at info@petharmonytraining.com if you’re still unsure! 
  • Consider the plethora of service options that open up knowing that we can help without being there in person. Is there actually a service that makes more sense for you than in-home sessions?
  • Are you struggling with other dog behavior problems? Learn about behavior modification and how you can get relief here.

Happy training!

Allie

January 2020 Training Challenge: Draft and Enrichment Plan for Your Pet – Part 2

Posted on by Allie Bender

Last week we started in our our first training challenge of 2020: Draft an enrichment plan for your pet. We had just finished filling out the first two columns for Winter Oso and were about to start in on the “Priority” and “Plan of Action” columns. Let’s pick up where we left off!

Here’s where we left off:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits    
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate    
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate    
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed    
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate    
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

Oftentimes when people fill out an enrichment chart for the first time they’re overwhelmed with how much there is to work on and even feel a little guilty. We all want to meet our pet’s needs as best as possible and many times seeing everything in one place lets us know that we have more work to do than we were expecting. That’s okay! Oso’s enrichment chart definitely did not look like this when I first started on his enrichment plan; you’re looking at something that’s a few years in the making. It’s okay if there’s a lot to work on! We all have to start somewhere.

To help with the overwhelm, we put the “Priority” column next. It’s unrealistic and usually unproductive to tackle everything all at once. Additionally, if you add a bunch of things at the same time you don’t necessarily which is helping to change your pet’s behavior. The systematic approach is better in the long run.

When looking at prioritizing Winter Oso’s plan, I specifically want to pay attention to the new winter behaviors that I put on his list earlier (from Part 1). The other things that we’re already working on are built into his schedule, for the most part, and are a part of our routine. I can stay at a maintenance level with those for now and mark them as lower priorities.

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits   Low  
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate   Low  
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High  
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate   Med.  
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed   Med.  
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate   Low  
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High  
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

You’ll see that while destuffing his bed was on our “Undesirable Behaviors” list earlier, I marked it as a lower priority here. That’s because I believed the behavior to be a result of a different category (either mental or physical activity) instead of this one. If addressing the high-level priorities didn’t change this behavior then I would address this category. [Note about prioritization: Emily and I are working on a specific Prioritization Protocol at the time of writing this but it’s not quite ready for release nor did it greatly impact this post’s content. Stay tuned!]

Finally, we can get to our plan of action. What are we going to do to address those high priority categories? Those of you who’ve recently read the Winter Oso blog post, you’ll remember that I first tried increasing how frequently we played “find it” to address mental exercise. Here’s what the chart looks like with that added in:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits   Low  
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate   Low  
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High  
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate   Med.  
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed   Med.  
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate   Low  
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High   “Find it” with all dinners
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

However, I didn’t see as much of a change in his behavior. Remember: activities must serve a function to be classified as enrichment! Even those “find it” and foraging are absolutely great exercises, do meet his needs in several categories, and theoretically could address the behaviors I didn’t actually see a significant decrease in his undesirable behaviors. That means that it’s not the activity he needs at the moment. With that in mind we increased his physical activity:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits   Low  
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate   Low  
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate   High   Fetch outside daily, tug inside daily
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate   Med.  
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed   Med.  
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate   Low  
Mental Exercise Likely   Appropriate    
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

Eureka! That worked! We started with a hybrid game outside (we’ve since taught him to play fetch) and tug inside each day and that has significantly decreased his undesirable behaviors and increased the desirable ones. It was physical exercise that he was lacking!

There you have it: a full example from start to finish of creating an enrichment plan. In our experience, it takes quite a bit of practice to look at behaviors in relation to their needs, so take it slow and go easy on yourself. And remember, we’re here to help!

Now what?

  • Time to finish up your enrichment plan for your pet!
  • An enrichment plan is fine and well, but the more important part is implementing it to see if your plan is beneficial. Have fun and experiment with some new activities! Check out our book if you need some ideas for the different categories.
  • Does this seem like a lot of work? Or overwhelming? Email Emily at emily@petharmonytraining.com for an enrichment consultation and let her create your plan for you!

January 2020 Training Challenge: Draft an Enrichment Plan for Your Pet – Part 1

Posted on by Allie Bender

Happy New Year everyone! I can’t believe we’re already into our 2nd year of training challenges. Thank you to everyone who has participated thus far and posted your progress on social media. I’m excited to get this year started! 

A little debrief about training challenges this year: they’re all enrichment-focused! Most of you know by now that our book, Canine Enrichment for the Real World, came out a few months ago (a huge thank you to everyone who’s purchased!) In honor of that, we decided to go through the book and set a training challenge based on the different categories of enrichment. So if you find yourself needing a little extra help in completing challenges in addition to the FB Live videos and these blog posts, there is plenty more info in the book. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of enrichment, the simple definition is: meeting all of an animal’s needs. We can expand that to a full definition: enrichment means meeting all of an animal’s needs in order to empower them to perform species-typical behavior in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways. One of the challenging things about working on enrichment with our pets is that there are several species-typical behaviors that we don’t like: chewing, digging, barking, scratching, etc. But just because we don’t like a particular behavior doesn’t mean that we don’t have to meet that need. It means that we often need to think outside of the box on how we can meet our pet’s needs in a way that we also enjoy or at least don’t mind. 

Additionally, we need to actually see a change in our pet’s behavior to count that activity as enriching. If we provide our pets with activities or items that don’t elicit them performing species-typical behavior in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways then those activities or items are not enriching. If your dog is afraid of going on walks, then walks are not enriching. If your cat doesn’t use the scratching post, then the post is not enriching (without some training to teach her how!) We need to see the results to determine if what we’re doing is working. 

What I love about enrichment is that it helps improve behavior! There are many times where clients come to me for help with their pet’s behavior and it’s the simpler enrichment activities that give them the desired outcome instead of complicated training activities. When animals’ needs are being met they behave better. 

All of that leads us into our January 2020 challenge: 

Draft an enrichment plan for your pet 

Specifically, I want you to look at one or two undesirable behaviors that your pet does, consider what needs those behaviors are meeting (because all behavior serves a function to the individual performing it), and figure out how you can meet that need in a more desirable way. While the materials we’re providing are dog-centric, you can do this challenge with any species! I’m considering drafting an enrichment plan for my turtle, Zorro. 

I talked a bit about using enrichment to mediate frustrating behaviors in a fairly recent blog post about my nemesis: Winter Oso. Check out that post here if you haven’t read it already. “Winter Oso” is what we call our dog when it starts getting cold out and he starts getting squirrely. I knew that this behavior change was because I wasn’t meeting his needs well in the winter, but I wasn’t sure exactly which was deficient. Let’s go through creating an enrichment plan for Winter Oso. I’ll use our enrichment chart (pages 195-196 of the book) to make it easier to plan:

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary        
Hygiene        
Diet/Nutrition        
Physical Exercise        
Sensory Stimulation        
Safety        
Security        
Instinctual Behaviors        
Foraging        
Social Interaction        
Mental Exercise        
Independence        
Environment        
Calming        

The first step is listing out the undesirable behaviors you’d like to see less of and the desirable behaviors you’d like to see more of. For Winter Oso, it looks like this:

Undesirable behaviors:

  • Increased activity at night
  • Destuffing his bed
  • Inappropriate investigation of household items within his reach

Desirable behaviors:

  • Sleeping in the evenings

After you have your desirable and undesirable behaviors, fill out the first column “Is This Need Being Met?” based on the behaviors you previously listed. What categories of needs do those undesirable behaviors likely fall in? What function do they serve? Here’s what that looks like for Winter Oso (I threw in other things we’re working on not listed above as well to give you a full picture):

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely      
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails      
Diet/Nutrition   Likely      
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior      
Sensory Stimulation   Likely      
Safety   Likely      
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace      
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter      
Foraging   Likely      
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people      
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior      
Independence   Likely      
Environment   Likely      
Calming   Likely      

The categories that his undesirable behaviors might be meeting include: Physical Exercise, Mental Exercise, and Instinctual Behaviors (specifically chewing/gutting). We now go to the next category: Agency. Agency can be defined as: the ability to have some level of control in our environment and be able to make choices that will result in a desirable outcome. If an animal doesn’t have agency within a category then that category doesn’t meet the definition of enrichment either.

Aspect of Enrichment Is this need being met? Agency? Priority Plan of Action
Health/Veterinary   Likely  IP: cooperative care & happy vet visits    
Hygiene   IP: working on back nails   Appropriate    
Diet/Nutrition   Likely   Appropriate    
Physical Exercise Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Sensory Stimulation   Likely   Appropriate    
Safety   Likely   Appropriate    
Security   IP: counterconditioning to fireplace   Appropriate    
Instinctual Behaviors  Potential Room for Growth: destuffing bed in winter   Inappropriate: destuffing bed    
Foraging   Likely   Appropriate    
Social Interaction   IP: meeting more people   Appropriate    
Mental Exercise   Potential Room for Growth: winter behavior   Appropriate    
Independence   Likely   Appropriate    
Environment   Likely   Appropriate    
Calming   Likely   Appropriate    

Oso has a lot of agency in his daily life and we’ve spent a good deal of time teaching him that he has choices in difficult situations. We’re still working on medical handling but you can also see that one area that he has too much agency in is having access to his bed so as to destuff it. Last winter we put one of them away before he destroyed it completely. This year we’ve been working on teaching him more appropriate choices.

Phew! If you’re following along with your own enrichment plan these two columns alone probably took quite a while to complete. Let’s put a pin in this here and get into the second two columns next week.

Now what?

Happy training!

Allie

Let’s Get Rid of “Should”

Posted on by Allie Bender

I love when people are committed to doing right by their pets. Hearing how much people love for and strive for the best with their pets is one of the things that keeps me going as a consultant. Along with that commitment, though, I see a lot of doubt and worry creep in. Those are the times that I get questions like:

Is it okay that he sleeps in bed with me? 

Should I go first through the door?

Does it matter what side he walks on? 

Her reactivity on leash makes me not want to take her on walks anymore but I feel like I should…

What cues should I teach him?

All of these boil down to just one question:

What should I do with/for my pet? 

My answer, in a nutshell, is: whatever you’d like to.  Of course there’s a bit more to it than that. Really the answer is, “Whatever works for you, your family, your situation and keeps the animal and others happy, safe, and physically, mentally, and behaviorally healthy.” There’s quite a bit of stuff that we do as pet owners that doesn’t necessarily keep our pets mentally and behaviorally healthy but that’s a discussion for another time. 

In an effort to do the best for our pets we fall into this thinking that there’s one right and proper way to go about meeting this goal. Our society encourages this viewpoint that there’s one right way. The truth is that there are a lot of ways that we can keep our animals happy, safe, and physically, mentally, and behaviorally healthy and what works for one household doesn’t always work for another. 

Let’s take dogs jumping up on the furniture, for example. Many people sheepishly tell me that they let their dog onto the furniture, usually quickly followed by, “I know I probably shouldn’t let him.” To which I tell them that I don’t mind either way! The look of relief on their face always makes me smile. 

I then tell them that Oso has very specific furniture rules that work for our family. He’s always allowed on the couch at our house but never at my mom’s. He’s allowed on our bed any time during the day or if we invite him up at night but never when we go to sleep. He is then allowed to get on the bed in the morning regardless of whether we invite him or not. It’s what makes sense for us but those specific rules likely don’t make sense for everybody.

How could I not want him on the couch when he’s this cute?!

Another example is training basic cues. I often get people telling me (again, sheepishly) that they’ve never trained their previous dogs. They want to train their new dog and want to know what to work on. My question is always, “What do you want the dog to do?” That question usually elicits some blank looks because they knew that they *should* get their dog trained but didn’t really know what they wanted out of that. 

We then discuss that training helps teach animals how to live in our world (and is good for mental exercise) so there’s no set rule of what we teach. Again, it’s dependent on the animal and the household. If you don’t want to go into formal obedience or rally then there’s not really a point to devoting effort on teaching a proper “heel”. If the dog doesn’t grab items willy nilly then they might not need to learn “leave it”. All of those cues are helpful to getting a behavior that you want but aren’t imperative to living a healthy and happy life. 

My challenge to you is to get rid of “should”. Ignore what everyone (except your vet and behavior consultant) is saying you should do with your pet and look at what you and your pet actually need. Hate walking with your pet but both of you love playing fetch in the fenced-in yard? Go for it. Fetch is often better than walking for physical exercise. Love cuddling on the couch with your pet? Go for it. Unless your pet is guarding the couch from you then there’s no harm done. Figure out what makes you and your pet happy together and do that. 

Now what?

  • Think about one thing that you do in relation to your pet that you don’t particularly enjoy. Is it not letting them jump up to greet you when you come home? Is it taking your reactive dog for long walks? 
  • Consider if that activity is actually beneficial. If you’re not letting them jump up on you when you come home and they haven’t been jumping on guests then that might be beneficial. If you’ve been taking your reactive dog for long walks for months and their reactivity is still not better then it’s not likely beneficial. 
  • Figure out a more beneficial and attractive solution. For jumping, you could teach your dog to jump up on a cue. That way you get your coming home snuggles and your guests get a polite greeting. For reactivity, contact a behavior consultant to help with the issue and play in the yard or in the house for physical exercise in the meantime. 
  • Reevaluate after you’ve implemented your more attractive solution: is it beneficial? Are you and your pet happier and physically, mentally, and behaviorally healthier? If so, huzzah! Keep at it. If not, repeat the above steps. 

Happy Training & Happy Holidays!

Allie

Why is There So Much Conflicting Information?

Posted on by Allie Bender

We live in an age of conflicting information. It’s something that surrounds us from all angles and reminds us that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. But even before this dilemma ran rampant, there was already a lot of conflicting information about animal behavior, especially dog training. That leads to a question that we hear almost every day from frustrated pet owners:

Why is there so much conflicting information about animal behavior and training out there?

Trust me, it’s frustrating for us, too. A joke in the dog training world is that the only thing two trainers can agree on is that a third trainer is wrong. Different camps are pitted against each other. Oftentimes we read of two completely opposite approaches that say the other is detrimental. It’s no wonder that the average pet owner struggles to find appropriate help for their pet. How can they know who to trust?! Let’s dive into a few reasons why you might see conflicting information about how to train your pet.

There are a lot of ways to do something right.

One of the amazing things about training is that there are many techniques and tips that can help your pet in an empathetic and empowering way. There are a lot of ways to do something “right”. The caveat to that, though, is that different camps and factions form from those different techniques. As a professional, it’s easy to get stuck in what we normally do and dismiss other equally appropriate techniques. It happens to me occasionally, too. 

For the average pet owner who isn’t familiar with those techniques and the science behind them, it can be quite difficult to see how similar they are. Many are actually using the same underlying approach but look different in the execution. Unfortunately, the only way to know all of that is by having a thorough understanding of behavior science and learning theory which is not something we expect from most people. 

The lingo is cumbersome and not always used in the same way. 

Recently, Emily was telling me some takeaways from a seminar she attended. I couldn’t get past one of the points she was saying and I explained why I didn’t agree. After a minute of back and forth she said, “Oh! We’re using this term differently. This is the way it was used in the seminar which is different than how it’s used in the book you’re thinking of.” With that new piece of the puzzle I was able to easily agree with her and we moved on. 

Here we were disagreeing about a training technique simply because we were defining the term differently; and this happened with someone that I talk with almost every single day. Imagine how much miscommunication happens amongst trainers in general then! One of the difficult things about the lingo is that it often means different things to different professionals and oftentimes the science lingo gets warped when it enters the animal training world. I’ve seen some funky definitions for “counterconditioning” out there and some even funkier applications that would make Pavlov roll in his grave. 

Many of the techniques have the same or similar sounding names, too. For instance, you can use LAT, BAT, or CAT for reactivity. And, yes, they are all different. Did your trainer recommend teaching a relaxation protocol? Which one? Dr. Overall’s or Suzanne Clothier’s? Many pet owners get tripped up on the lingo because many professionals use them differently. 

There’s no regulation in the animal training field. 

This one is probably the biggest reason I see diametrically opposing recommendations. There is no regulation in the animal training field. Anyone is able to start a training business and start charging clients, regardless of their skill-level or knowledge-base. The only even mildly regulatory thing is that you need an upper-level degree in one of the animal behavior fields to call yourself a behaviorist; however, most people and many professionals are unaware of that stipulation as well which means the term is misused (this is why we refer to ourselves as behavior consultants). The only title that is well-established and regulated is “Veterinary Behaviorist”: vets who’ve gone through additional schooling and graduated from a VB program. 

One of the most frustrating parts of an unregulated field, in my eyes, is that it makes it seem as though all training philosophies are valid and viable options. The very notion of “training philosophies” comes about because it’s unregulated! In truth, behavior science is comprised of several well-established scientific fields. There are options like ethology, learning theory, applied behavior analysis, and more. There are decades of studies that look into different training and learning techniques and time and again show similar results. Unfortunately, trainers and consultants are not required to study behavior science (no matter how popular or well-known they are) before entering the field. This is a very large reason for conflicting information. 

Now what?

  • Do your research on trainers. Look for those who’ve gone through additional schooling, routinely attend continuing education options, and have completed certifications. Ask for studies that they routinely reference. None of this is a guarantee but you’ll be a bit closer!
  • Look at the resources for trusted professionals, like Patrica McConnell, Jean Donaldson, Karen Pryor, Dr. Karen Overall, Dr. Sophia Yin, Suzanne Clothier, and Victoria Stilwell. Resources that are trusted by professionals like these are likely a safe bet. You can check out our resources section, too!
  • If you can’t find what you’re looking for them reach out to a trusted professional. They’ll likely be able to point you in the right direction. 

Happy training!

Allie

A large brindle dog laying on top of a person.

Winter Oso

Posted on by Allie Bender (she/her)

Winter Oso

A large brindle dog laying on top of a person.

If you’ve followed Pet Harmony for probably any length of time you’ve heard me talk about the four-legged love of my life, Oso.

But let me introduce you to my four-legged nemesis: Winter Oso. 

I first met Winter Oso in the winter of 2018. I wish I could blame it on the polar vortex but he arrived prior to that. Winter Oso is squirrely. He cruises around in the evenings looking for mischief and driving us crazy. He destroys his bed. He decides to bark at the birds on the feeder for the first time ever. He gets into things he’s left alone for years. He’s such a nuisance that my husband and I actually, truly call him “Winter Oso” when he’s like that. And the worst part? Winter Oso is our fault.

Oso generally gets a lot of enrichment: playtime in the yard, training sessions, daily food puzzles, regular scent work, lots of toys, chews, and destructible items, and lots of snuggle time. He’s 7 years old and pretty happy to lounge on the couch with us in the evenings. This enrichment routine was enough to keep him calm and even keel for a year and a half after we adopted him.

A side view of a brindle dog calmly looking over the back of a couch (out a window)
Regular Oso
A brindle dog with an excited expression, eyes wide with his mouth open.
Winter Oso

It Was Enough...Until It Wasn't

When Winter Oso arrived, I went through the same thing that a lot of my clients go through: But I do so much for my pet. Are you saying that it’s not enough?

I was in denial that Winter Oso was a product of me not meeting his needs. “I do all this stuff for him! It should be enough!” While I thought that I was doing enough, Winter Oso was clearly telling me through his behavior that his needs weren’t being met. If I were meeting his needs better, he would be acting like his normal self instead of this new, squirrely beast.

It took a couple weeks of being annoyed and angry with him (hello, prelearning dip) for me to accept that I had to change course. If this were a client, I would tell them to increase or explore different options for mental and physical exercise. I was letting ideology—what it should be– get in the way of observation—what it actually is.

Solving Winter Oso

Increasing mental and physical exercise is just what we did. We played “find it” with every dinner spanning two floors of the house and getting in a lot of time up and down the stairs. It took 45 minutes. Every. Night. But it worked. Winter Oso was held at bay as long as we did this exercise.

We’ve now reached the one-year anniversary of meeting our four-legged nemesis. But this year, we were prepared. Winter Oso arrived during that cold spell we had in October: early but recognizable nonetheless. He started being more active in the evenings. He started destroying his bed: something we only saw during winter of last year.

We knew what to do, but… we moved into a new house this spring and no longer have the option of the exact same exercise that I was doing before (no stairs). That meant that I had to figure out exactly what was different about his enrichment schedule now vs. in warmer months and what the previous dinner exercise was actually doing to meet his needs.

We tried “find it” in the yard with his entire dinner a few days in a row. It took a little of the edge off but he was still squirrely. That meant it wasn’t a mental exercise problem. Aha! It was specifically going up and down the stairs during that dinner exercise that improved his behavior. He needed more physical exercise. But, why then, did we not need to worry about his physical exercise needs in the warmer months but did in the winter even if he spent the same amount of time in the yard on a warmer winter day?

It took me a few days to figure it out, but I realized two components that were different about his summer and winter yard times. 1) He’s more active in general when we’re outside too and we’re outside with him quite a bit when it’s warm out but not when it’s cold. 2) The reason we can get away with yard time as his primary form of physical exercise (besides age) is the wildlife.

Oso is a hunter and a threat to all things cute and fuzzy. He chases the squirrels, digs for voles, and gives birds a run for their money. We don’t mind it as long as he’s not incessantly barking; he’s a dog after all and it’s all normal dog behavior. In short, he gets a ton of exercise by just being a dog hunting for critters. In the winter, there are far fewer critters for him to antagonize and that means we need to step up our game and be the ones to provide him with his physical exercise needs.

We now play together in the yard almost every day for at least 5-10 minutes. We’ve invented a yard game that has him running for a large part of that time and that often does the trick. If he still needs more exercise a hardcore tug session with him and the husband will take care of the rest of his energy. The best part of this new routine is that its far more sustainable than our previous exercise. Winter Oso is no more and I have the four-legged love of my life back.

Here’s to harmony,

Allie

Now What?

Are there times where your pet is squirrely and you wished they’d just calm down? That is often a result of not meeting all their needs, like with Winter Oso. Take a step back and truly evaluate your pet’s behavior. Don’t let what you think it should be cloud your view of what it really is. For example:

    • If your pet is like Oso in that their behavior changes with the seasons, evaluate what is different. It might be something that’s not as easy to notice, like a change in critter density!
    • If your pet has undesirable behaviors regularly, evaluate what the function of their behavior is. What do they get out of doing it? What needs are the undesirable behaviors meeting?

Start experimenting with different activities and track the outcome. Here are some ideas:

  • Play with duration, time of day, and type of activity. It’s not necessarily about adding “more.” Often, it’s just about “different.” For example, instead of a 10-minute walk try a 10-minute flirt pole session if your pet needs more physical exercise. 
  • Keep track of what works and doesn’t work to address your pet’s behavior. That way the next time you see the change in behavior start you know exactly what to do and when!

Check out our book Canine Enrichment for the Real World for ideas and information on meeting your pet’s needs. Do you recognize that you have a Winter Oso on your hands but want professional help with addressing it? We got you.

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Results are not guaranteed because behavior, human, canine, or otherwise, are not guaranteeable.

December 2019 Training Challenge: Focus on Completing Your Yearly Goals

Posted on by Allie Bender

It’s time for our last training challenge of 2019! Your December challenge is:

Last chance for 2019 goals

For those of you who’ve participated in our training challenges from the very beginning (before this blog existed!) you know that our January challenge was to create 1-3 2019 goals for your pet. With the end of the year rapidly approaching it’s now or never to complete those this year! If you joined us later in the year (welcome!) then your challenge is to come up with just one goal for this month and complete it. 

Here’s how Oso and I are doing on our goals:

Our 2019 training goals

As you can see, there are some things that we did well and some things that we didn’t do well. He’s done awesome with his vet visits this year but I definitely did not do one happy vet visit each month. Something we can aspire to next year! I still have time to finish his Western Hold Up trick so you know what we’ll be working on this month. 

If you’re like me and you know there’s a goal that you definitely won’t complete this year, here’s what I recommend doing with it:

  • Reevaluate how important it is. Do you want to try it for next year or scrap it altogether? There’s no shame in scrapping! 
  • Identify your barriers to performing that goal: the real reasons, not excuses. I could easily say that we moved this year and that’s why I didn’t do one happy vet visit per month, but the real reason is that it makes me anxious to take him because of his past behavioral history from years ago. Even though he’s made leaps and bounds of progress since we adopted him I need to work on that more for me, not him, and my comfort level. After that I can return to our happy vet visit goal.  
  • Think about your process instead of your goal. I’m currently reading a (so far) great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear(this is an affiliate link). One of the big points it makes is that if we focus on a process, like “train 5 minutes per day”, instead of a goal like “have a better trained dog” that we’ll be more successful. For those of you who participated in our October “Train 5 Minutes Every Day” challenge you know how true that is! 

Now what?

  • Get training and have fun! Don’t sweat it if you don’t finish everything on your list. There’s always next year!

Happy training!

Allie

Smaller Steps Make for Faster Progress: Splitting for Pets

Posted on by Allie Bender

I recently met with the cutest new puppy, Maddie, and her family. Maddie’s mom told me that she was having trouble teaching their new puppy some basic manners. During their training sessions Maddie would get frustrated, grumble, and walk away. That made it frustrating for the humans, too. 

I asked her mom to show me what she was doing and quickly discovered the problem: the steps were too big. I offered to work with Maddie and described the process I was using called “splitting”.  Maddie made quick progress and was learning enthusiastically. Her mom exclaimed:

“Ohhh, I was expecting too much!” 

Maddie’s mom started working with her again– this time splitting the steps– and Maddie learned enthusiastically for her as well. Hooray for Maddie and her family!

Splitting is the process of taking a task or larger step and breaking it down into smaller steps. It’s like teaching a child how to read: first we teach the letters, then how the letters sound together, then how to sound out parts of the word, then the whole word and so on. If we started teaching the word as a whole first the child would likely get frustrated and give up. We need to split it into smaller steps. 

Here’s an example of splitting while teaching a go-to-your-bed-and-lie-down behavior:

  1. Look at the bed 
  2. Lean towards the bed
  3. Take one step towards the bed
  4. Take two steps towards the bed, 3 steps,etc.
  5. Put one foot on the bed
  6. Put two feet on the bed, then 3, then 4
  7. Turn head over left shoulder
  8. Turn over left shoulder until facing human
  9. Bend elbows
  10. Lie down on bed

Even within this example there are several times that I lumped smaller steps together for the sake of convenience (which is usually why we lump instead of split in the first place!) However, you get the picture. There are a lot of steps that go into that single lie-down-on-bed behavior and we can and usually should be reinforcing our pet every step of the way. 

Splitting allows us to create easier wins for our learners (all species included!) That means less frustration and more success. Splitting also makes it easier for us to have a higher rate of reinforcement (aka how frequently we’re treating) which can do things like speed up learning, boost confidence, and improve our relationship. Splitting provides us and our pets with a ton of benefits. 

If there are so many benefits then why don’t we do it more? Well, splitting is a skill and like every skill we need to learn how to do it and practice it to become more efficient. Also, not only is it a skill that many people have yet to acquire, but it’s also a process that can seem counterintuitive. We need to take smaller steps to reach our goal faster? That doesn’t sound right. But, as we saw with Maddie, splitting into smaller steps usually does help us reach our goal faster. It’s like the old saying goes…

Slow and steady wins the race!

So the next time you and your pet are stuck take a moment and ask yourself, “How can I split this step?” Your pet will thank you for it! 

Now what?

  • Practice conceptualizing splitting. A good way to do this is to watch a video of an animal performing some behavior. Slow the video down and watch it frame-by-frame if needed. Write down each step the animal takes to perform the behavior; essentially, each new thing the animal does in each frame. If you’re looking for an extra challenge try to watch the muscles contract before the animal moves! Now that’s some serious splitting.
  • Consider a behavior you would like to teach your pet. Write down each step your pet will need to take to perform the behavior. 
  • With your steps in hand, start teaching your pet the new behavior and treat each step along the way. Phase out treats as your pet becomes proficient at performing the smaller steps. Did your pet learn the behavior faster when you treated for each step along the way? Were you and your pet more or less frustrated? Were there times that you had written down smaller steps than your pet needed? 

Happy training!

Allie

P.S. Next week we’re going to look at applying this concept to humans!

November 2019 Training Challenge: Teach Your Pet to Army Crawl

Posted on by Allie Bender

Since last month’s challenge was more involved (awesome job to everyone who participated!), I figured we should take it easy on you for November. So this month’s training challenge involves trick training:

Teach your pet to army crawl

Professional army crawler! GIF by Nebraska Humane Society.

There are a few different ways to teach this but I prefer to start out luring since it’s typically the easiest. Check out our Facebook Live video for a visual demo on how to teach an army crawl. Below are the steps:

  1. Ask your pet to lie down on a soft surface (it’ll be difficult on slippery surfaces). Put a treat in your fist and place your fist on the ground between your pet’s paws. They’re likely now smelling the treat!
  2. Slowly move your fist forward along the ground. Pretend there’s a magnet in both your fist and your pet’s nose: the two should stay connected. You can only accomplish that connection by moving slowly. 
  3. Frequently mark and treat your pet for following the treat. For many pets that means treating the stretch forward first, then working your way up to treating for one foot forward, then two feet forward, etc. 
  4. Lure your pet (steps 1-3) 5 times. If they do well at least 4 out of 5 times move to the next step. 
  5. Without a treat in your hand, move your hand along the ground as you did before. If your pet follows, great! Mark and treat then repeat this step 4 more times. If your pet does not follow, go back to step 4. 
  6. Congratulations! You’ve finished the fluency stage with a pronounced hand signal. You can either stop here, change the hand signal, add a verbal cue, or proof the behavior. That’s up to you! 

Now what?

  • Have fun training! The great thing about trick training is that there’s no pressure; it’s not a big deal if your pet doesn’t learn this particular trick. Just have fun with it!
  • Post your pet doing an army crawl on our Facebook page! We love to see videos of your pets doing fun stuff. 
  • Need help troubleshooting? Email us at info@petharmonytraining.com to set up a quick phone consult. These are just $1/minute.

Happy training!

Allie 

5 Tips for Your Pet’s Best Halloween

Posted on by Allie Bender

My favorite holiday, Halloween, is almost here! But while this holiday is often a favorite for humans it’s rarely a favorite for pets and that makes it stressful for their owners. The doorbell ringing all night often sends our pets into a loud tailspin. It’s a battle to get to the door when pets are crowding it. And let’s not forget the pets who get into the bowl of Halloween candy when no one is looking.

Let’s make this year different by following these 5 simple tips:

  1. Put your pets away. There’s no reason your pet absolutely needs to greet trick-or-treaters or attend your Halloween party (unless contraindicated for separation anxiety). If you’re worried about your pet running out the open door or how they’ll act around people in costumes then let them hang out in another room for the evening. Many will thank you for leaving them out of the commotion! 
  2. Drown out the doorbell. Some people go as far as to disconnect their doorbell or simply turn off their porch light and leave a bowl of candy out, but if you’d like to participate in trick-or-treating then leave the TV or music on for your pet so they can’t hear the doorbell.
  3. Update your pet’s ID tags and microchip info. Better safe than sorry! 
  4. Put candy bowls out of your pet’s reach. Pets are opportunistic and just because something is toxic to them doesn’t mean they won’t ingest it (like humans and alcohol). This might mean setting the bowl not right near the front door to keep it out of reach.
  5. Create an airlock around the door. Set up a freestanding gate around your front door to create an airlock that you can get in but your pet can’t. You can find some of our favorites on our Amazon storefront! (Disclosure: We receive a small commission for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. This helps us continue to put out free content to help you and your pets live more harmoniously!)

Happy Halloween!

Allie

A scruffy white and dark grey dog standing in front of a tree with yellow fall foliage. There is a deflated jackolantern next to him.
You don't have to feel as deflated as Petey's jack-o-lantern this Halloween!

Now What?

Want some more ideas for helping your pets during the chaos of holidays? Here are a few posts from our team:

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Copyright 2025 Pet Harmony, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy

Results are not guaranteed because behavior, human, canine, or otherwise, are not guaranteeable.