Zak George's Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog

by Zak George

  WHY DO ADULT DOGS CHEW?

  Incessant chewing doesn’t just automatically stop because a dog has all of her adult teeth. Puppy chewing can certainly evolve into recreational chewing, especially if a dog wasn’t properly taught not to chew whatever she pleased when she was a puppy.

  I see this a lot with shelter dogs. It’s common for many dogs to enter the shelter at a young age (many are even born there) and get adopted when they are, say, nine months to a year old. Since most of these dogs haven’t experienced regimented and regular training, some of them still chew anything in sight.

  Keep in mind that if a dog is new to living inside a house, as many rescue dogs are, the temptation to chew on stuff like your furniture and personal belongings might be very enticing as she’s never seen these things before. Remember, patience is key. Dogs just need to learn right from wrong.

  Dogs—especially those with a lot of energy—also might chew because they are bored. Try to see it from their perspective: their genetics are telling them to “Go! Go! Go!” so chewing on things is one way that these dogs like to occupy themselves if there’s little else to do.

  Another possible culprit: Excessive chewing could be a symptom of anxiety. Some dogs are more likely to chew when you leave them alone for a significant period of time (even if adequately exercised) or during thunderstorms or other events.

  WHAT TO DO ABOUT CHEWING

  First and most importantly, make sure your dog can’t chew something that can harm her. That’s why it’s critical that you pet proof your house as soon as you bring home your new dog, if not sooner. For instance, make sure all electrical cords are out of reach or unplugged, secure your garbage can, and keep baby latches on low cabinets that contain laundry detergent, pesticide, paint, antifreeze, or any other potentially toxic household items. Make sure your laundry basket is secure, too. My YouTube video Everything You Need to Be Prepared for Your New Puppy touches upon getting your home safe and ready for your pet. Here’s what else to do about chewing:

  1. Control your dog’s environment. If you do, then she won’t be able to sneak off and chew something off limits. Remember, every time you drop your guard and your dog chews something she shouldn’t, you’re only increasing the odds that the behavior will recur. In other words, to resolve an unwanted behavior, you need to make great efforts to prevent those behaviors from occurring at all. That means attaching your dog’s leash to your belt loop or making sure she’s in a pet-proofed area at times you can’t watch her, like in a crate or playpen or in a gated space such as a laundry room. This goes for young and untrained older dogs alike.

  2. Find acceptable, safe things for your dog to chew on. This is especially true for puppies. They really need to chew—teething can be painful, and they require that release. Provide your dog with plenty of safe bones, age-appropriate toys, and other items to chew on throughout the day.

  3. If you have an older dog who’s chewing things she’s not supposed to, there’s a high probability she’s bored and not getting enough exercise and extracurricular training. So, addressing chewing with dogs like this is more about addressing their boredom through general training and exercise than just about teaching them they can’t chew whatever they want. Ideal exercise is the kind that involves working with a person! Remember, fetch is one of the best options. See this page, chapter 17 for a step-by-step description of how to teach it.

  4. If you think your dog is chewing because she’s, say, fearful or experiencing separation anxiety, then you need to tackle those issues first. Remember, it’s critical to always treat the cause, not the symptoms. I address fear issues in chapter 15 and separation anxiety in chapter 16.

  5. Once you’ve taught a basic “leave it” (as I cover on this page, chapter 3), practice it dozens of times a day with many different objects. For example, pick up a sock, shoe, or any everyday object your dog might be interested in chewing and set it in front of her. Ask her to “leave it,” if she attempts to sniff it (which most curious dogs will). Reward her when she does leave it alone. The key is that you want your dog ignoring her temptation to act impulsively and pay attention to you instead. These “leave it” training exercises really enable dogs to broadly understand how to leave things alone in a variety of contexts. Eventually, you ought to be able to say, “Leave it” when you see your dog about to start chewing something that’s off limits, and she will readily comply. Bottom line: Your goal is to teach your dog to leave things alone by default. By practicing with a variety of items, she’ll come to generalize the concept to all objects.

  6. When you catch your dog red-handed, launch into a secondary training session. For instance, let’s say you see your dog chewing on a shoe. While your first instinct is probably to pull her away, refrain from doing so if possible (unless the object is very valuable to you or toxic to her, of course). Instead, first interrupt her, maybe by clapping your hands or calling her name. Next, get her attention on you and quickly substitute the item she was chewing with an acceptable object such as a bone or chew toy. Make sure it’s one that your dog really likes! This new bone or chew toy can be the reward itself. If this is unsuccessful, you may want to grab one of your nearby treats to lure her away from the object she was chewing and then offer the desirable and acceptable chew toy. You’ll need to be a master at redirecting your dog during this interim period. It might take dozens of attempts before your dog begins to make the connection, “Oh! I get it! I can chew this, but not that.”

  7. Ignore quick fixes. There are some funny ways that people have attempted to resolve destructive chewing. For example, maybe you’ve heard that spraying something with a bad tasting spray is a viable way to stop chewing. First, just because something tastes bad doesn’t mean it’s immune to being chewed up by a dog. Second, this approach is outside-in training. Even in the best case, where your dog doesn’t chew the couch because it tastes bad, are you really expected to spray every single object in your house that you think your dog might chew? What happens when the spray wears off or when you are in a new place? That’s why when it comes to teaching dogs, always resist shortcuts and favor the more thorough approach instead.

  CHAPTER 6

  JUMPING UP

  Jumping up is one of the most common behavioral issues that I deal with. Some people might not mind this behavior at all, while others would do anything to make it stop. However, many people (like me!) are probably somewhere in the middle—they sometimes enjoy when their dog jumps on them, but not always. The way I see it, you can arrange it so your dog can jump on you if you’d like, but only with your permission!

  I first want to promise you that dogs can absolutely learn when it’s okay to jump and when it’s not. Having raised three world-class Frisbee dogs, I can tell you that I relied on my dogs spring-boarding off of my body into the air to catch discs on a daily basis. Did this mean that they’d jump on everyone else or even on me when I didn’t ask them to do so? Of course not! In fact, it was customary for me to bring my dogs out at the end of a show to let people pet them. Clearly, allowing a dog to jump on members of the public would not have been ideal. However, my dogs—the same ones who only moments earlier were jumping on my back and then leaping off of it and into the air—sat patiently while their fans adored them.

  In other words, I’ve got you covered. I’ll teach you how to allow your dog to jump on your terms, whether that means occasionally or not at all.

  WHY DO DOGS JUMP?

  Few behaviors are more natural to a dog than jumping. When a dog jumps on you, it just means he’s excited to see you and eager to interact with you! Also, he has likely been rewarded for this behavior in the past—you or your guests shower him with attention—and you haven’t taught him the proper way to greet people. It most certainly does not mean that he’s trying to dominate you in any way, as some dog trainers claim despite the mountain of information that suggests otherwise.1 That’s just a myth, which I discuss in more detail
in chapter 2.

  One of the things that makes stopping unwanted jumping challenging is that your dog is genuinely happy to see you or others and doesn’t know the proper way to express those feelings yet! See, it’s natural for dogs to want to greet us at our faces. Think about it—when dogs greet one another they do so by sniffing each other’s faces. Of course, they can’t easily do this with humans. Since they are close to the ground, they attempt to close that distance by jumping.2

  I recently filmed a video on jumping with Zeus, a giant Belgian Shepherd. Zeus is the kind of dog who is overflowing with energy and emotion. He was very happy—and he loved showing it! Zeus’s family sought my help to see how they could better get through to this not-so-gentle giant. When I first met him, my immediate thought was, “Wow! We really have to get this dog’s jumping under control.” When he would jump, he was as tall as me on his hind legs! I knew he could easily knock someone over and cause some harm. Zeus was an extreme case for sure, but he really started catching on like a prodigy by the end of the lesson. The video is called Does Your Dog Jump on Everyone? Here’s What to Do! Check it out to see the lesson in action. Of course, establishing proper jumping habits requires relentless consistency. But if Zeus learned when to jump appropriately, then probably any dog can.

  WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR DOG JUMPS ON YOU

  Now that you understand that most dogs jump because they are just lovingly trying to engage you, let’s take the mystery out of resolving this issue. Of course, a regularly exercised dog is going to be less likely to jump excessively. Also, exercising your dog just prior to these training sessions should help if your dog has a lot of energy (as many dogs who jump do!). Here’s what else to do:

  1. Don’t wait until your dog jumps to address the issue. Instead, teach your dog not to jump by planning primary training sessions. For the first several sessions, use something that really excites your dog so that you have a way to simulate an exciting real-life situation. For example, let’s say that your dog jumps relentlessly when you have a tug toy, squeaky toy, or treat in your hand. Chances are he does this because he really wants those items! Use this to your advantage by using those same objects as currencies during the training sessions.

  2. Start by asking your dog to sit and to stay. Then, hold the toy or treat completely still above your dog’s head. If your dog is super-hyper, reward for seemingly insignificant periods of time. For example, maybe your dog doesn’t jump or break his stay for 1.5 seconds. Good! Say, “Yes” and reward him! Now that a good baseline has been established, let’s improve on it. Work up to a ten-second stay and then maybe even a thirty-second stay over the next few training sessions.

  3. As you continue these sessions, your dog may jump on you at times. If this happens, redirect him into a sit. If you notice this happening in consecutive attempts, it’s best to take a step back and make the exercise easier or take a break so that you and your dog can reset and start fresh for your next training session.

  4. As your dog holds his stay more and more reliably, go ahead and bring a small amount of life to the toy. Maybe move it just a little bit. Reward instantly if your dog maintains his stay and keeps all four paws on the ground. Remember, things that move are generally more exciting to dogs than things that don’t. Gradually work up to being able to move the toy more vigorously. Reward for each incremental success. If at any point you see that your dog is becoming overwhelmed or having a hard time maintaining his stay, take a step back and either move the toy a little less or take a break from training.

  5. Once your dog has shown that he’ll hold a stay while a toy excitedly moves around, it’s time to increase the difficulty even more. Instead of the toy, it’s now going to be you that gradually gets more exciting. So, after you ask your dog to stay, make a high-pitched sound and hop for a quick second or flap your arms. I know it sounds a bit silly, but the goal here is to work up to acting absolutely ridiculous and have your dog hold his stay. See, if your dog holds a stay while you make weird noises and jump off the ground, he’s more likely to hold a stay and not jump on you when you come home and walk through the door.

  6. Provided that your dedicated primary training sessions are going well, now set up training sessions that are more realistic but still controlled. Do this by initiating quick surprise primary training sessions. At first, grab a squeaky toy when your dog isn’t expecting it, give it a squeak or two, ask your dog to sit, and reward for his compliance. [Hint: It’s a good idea to have toys stashed in a place where you can quickly get to them.] At first, you may need to take a little time to ease your dog into this pop-quiz frame of mind, but as you repeat these surprise drills, your dog will likely catch on quickly and draw on his past training. Reward heavily when he does.

  7. Don’t limit surprise training exercises to just using toys as distractions. Work up to getting your dog to leave treats alone as you suddenly tell him to stay and start throwing treats everywhere, one at a time. What you’re doing is showing your dog how to stay in the face of unpredictable, distracting events. In other words, you are teaching him to hold a rock-solid stay no matter how excited he gets or how badly he wants to move. Basic impulse control exercises like this are what help your dog understand that he should sit and stay even in the most exciting situations.

  8. Now, put everything your dog has learned into practice. Since you know your dog is likely to jump on you whenever you come in the front door, be one step ahead of him. First, when you walk in the house, don’t act excited to see your dog. Instead, ignore him a bit so he can calm down and adjust to your being home. Do your best to get a brief sit and stay, and reward any success. (You might want to stash treats by the door for this very purpose.) The first many times you do this may yield minor results. This is normal. Continue to do this every time you don’t want your dog to jump. If you are consistent, you should notice that your dog is more likely to sit and stay than jump when you walk in the door. It does take practice, but when it clicks, it clicks!

  WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR DOG JUMPS ON OTHERS

  It’s one thing to stop your dog from jumping on you, but how do you keep him from jumping on others? You’ve already done the hard work and laid the groundwork. Now you just need to teach your dog that the same rules apply when a real-life visitor comes over. Here’s how:

  1. Ideally, before your guest comes over, exercise your dog in the backyard or take him on a sufficient walk so he is less likely to want to jump excessively. Also, give your guest a heads-up that you are going to spend about five minutes showing your dog how to behave and not jump. Explain that during this training session you will be 100 percent focused on your dog, not your visitor. Of course, you can’t always do this. In those cases, put your dog in another room while you let your guest in the house so that your pet can’t jump. This prevents the jumping, which is an important part of management. Remember, the more a dog jumps, the more ingrained the behavior becomes. Let your dog out once you and your guest are settled, and then do a brief training session (as I describe in the following points).

  2. Keep your dog on leash. Ask him to sit and stay. This may take a few attempts, but remain patient and calm. You might need to be several feet away from your guest or even in an adjoining room in more extreme cases. Also, know that a common mistake during these training sessions is to ask your guests to run through these steps. That’s not their job! Your dog should listen to you independent of what’s going on around him. You’ve worked hard to establish a dependable communication with your dog, so now use it.

  3. Once your dog is in a solid stay, give your guest permission to come over and pet him gently. For now, it’s best for your guest to remain calm and neutral. At this point, a large percentage of dogs attempt to jump out of excitement. If this happens, escort your dog away and have him sit. If your dog foreshadows that he is about to break his stay at any point, again increase the distance. Your dog must know that he will receive no affection or attenti
on from anyone unless he is honoring your request to stay. At first this may be slow going, but you’ll find that once your dog learns you’re going to enforce the rules, you should begin to see results here.

  4. Of course, at times you or your guests might be perfectly happy having your dog jump. You can teach your dog that sometimes the behavior is acceptable. When you do want to allow your dog to jump on you or others, simply invite him to do so and pet and play with him to convey that jumping is fine when requested. Then feel free to let him know when you don’t want him to jump anymore by following the steps we’ve outlined in this chapter.

  CHAPTER 7

  PLAY BITING

  Want to know the number one thing I’m asked about? It’s play biting! As precious as puppies are, anyone who has ever had one can attest—play biting hurts. A lot. Those puppy teeth might be small, but they are razor sharp!

  However, play biting doesn’t always end with puppyhood. In some cases, dogs well into adulthood continue this behavior. Since I work with so many untrained dogs, I film a lot of lessons with dogs who play bite excessively. As a general rule, if a dog has had little to no training, there’s an excellent chance that she will play bite because she hasn’t learned how to appropriately communicate with humans.