Blog – Page 6 – Delightful Dogs

Pet Safety: Halloween

1. Do NOT leave your dog in your yard on Halloween- Many pets are injured or killed by vicious pranksters. So please keep your dogs (and cats) indoors.

2. Keep your dog (and cat) confined and away from front door. A bedroom or a crate will be good to keep your pets safe this Halloween. Keeping your pets away from the constant opening and closing of the front door will help reduce their stress as well.

3. Keep all treats away from your pets. All chocolate can be dangerous for all pets. Symptoms of chocolate poisoning may include vomiting, diarrhea, rapid breathing, increased heart rate, and seizures.

4. Keep Halloween plants such as pumpkins and corn out of reach. While small amounts of pumpkin can be fed safely to your pets, uncooked and potentially moldy pumpkins and corn can cause gastrointestinal upset or even a blockage can occur.

5. Keep glow sticks away from pets.

6. Keep a ID tag with all your current information, just in case your pets escape your home. I recommend this for the WHOLE year, not just Halloween.

7. Don’t lite your pumpkins around your pets. Real candles are dangerous, so please make sure your pets does not have access to a lit candle.

8. Keep electric and battery operated Halloween decorations out of reach. Pets who are big chewers (puppies fall in the category) are more likely to chew on power cords and battery operated decoration. Batteries can cause chemical burns if chewed open and gastrointestinal blockage if swallowed.

9. Don’t dress your pet up in a costume, unless you know they’ll love it. If you chose to dress up your pet, make it a positive experience with lots of treats (dog approved treats). Always have an adult supervision when you have dressed up your dog. Dress your pet in their costume before Halloween to allow them to adjust to having it on. If at anytime your dog seems distressed by his or her costume, please consider just a bandana or his “birthday suit”.

You can give your dog plain canned pumpkin as a special treat. Do not use the pumpkin pie mix. 1-2 tablespoon is plenty, less if you have a small dog.

Bonding Tip: Training Twice a Day

Training Twice a Day

Have a quick 5 min training session at least 2 times daily. Using your dog’s kibble to help teach them behaviors that will help them calm down (tossing food to them while they are resting on their bed while you watch TV or cooking dinner, etc), or refresh on the basics (sit, down, stay, come, etc).

Or you can use real life rewards (going for a walk, playing games, getting into the car or getting out of the car, etc) to refresh or teach something new.

Training twice a day will help you have a more relaxed and happy dog and will provide great bonding moments for you both.

Bonding Tip: Get Eye Contact Twice a Day From Your Pup

Dogs find eye contact as a challenge, but by teaching them to look at us, we are teaching them that focusing on us brings them great things. If you start doing this on a consistent basis, you will find your dog looking at you more and more. It makes calling them to you easier as well, because you have shown them that every time you call their name and they will look at you they get a tasty treat or a fun game of tug/fetch.

Ask for this at least twice a day and reward. A good time to do this is with his or her meal (2 meals a day=great training opportunity).

How to get the behavior:

Look at me:
⦁ Keep a leash on your dog for this training session to keep your dog from wandering off (at least in the beginning). For this lesson, we want to achieve eye contact. Count out 10 treats. Wait for your dog to look in your direction, click/treat (C/T). Each time wait for the dog to look closer towards your face before you C/T. Once your dog starts looking at your eyes, C/T. Once they know looking at your eyes brings them good things, they’ll start doing it more and more, then you know it’s time to move to the next step.
⦁ Test: Count out 10 treats. Wait for eye contact and C/T. Can you get 10 C/T for eye contacts in 40 seconds? Ready to move on.

Give it a name:
⦁ Get 10 treats ready. Wait for your dog to look at your face, say his name, THEN C/T. Do NOT keep calling his name, just 1 time will do. If you say his name multiple times “Rover, Rover, Rover” he will learn that his name is “Rover, Rover, Rover” instead of “Rover”. Repeat this several times through out the day.
⦁ You can give this behavior a cue “Watch Me”. I use both cues, their names and “watch me”.
⦁ Test: Count out 10 treats. Say your dogs name FIRST. Does he look at your face? GREAT, C/T. Do this 10 times. If your dog does NOT look at your face, then back up to the previous step.

Moving On:
⦁ Goal: Get your dog to STARE at you. Wait for your dog to look at your face. Now delay your Click/Treat (C/T) for a count of A-B-C. Then C/T. Now call his name and he’ll look at your face at this point, wait A-B-C-D-E-F before C/T. Gradually fluctuate between “A” and “A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L”.
⦁ From here you can build on it until you can get from A-Z. IF he fails at this point, shorten the length of time the next time you ask. ALWAYS, C/T for successful stares.
⦁ Distractions: Try working with your dog in new locations (different rooms in your house, backyard, front yard, parks, etc) and in different body positions. When you change locations or body positions, you’ll want to lower criteria (don’t expect your dog to STARE at you for 10 seconds when another dog is 10 feet away at the park).

Keep in mind: with dogs, you need to start low and work your way up… if you work in a way that your dog always succeeds your dog will have a GREAT attention and FOCUS on you!

Bonding Tip: Building a Relationship with an Umbilical Cord

Keep your dog with you when you are home as much as possible. Use the leash as a tie down (see tie down pamphlet) or attach to your waist as an umbilical cord. It’s easy to build a relationship with someone you are with all the time.

Clicker Training

At Delightful Dogs we use positive reinforcement using a clicker and highly valued (by the dog) treat or reinforcer. I recommend teaching/training your dog with a clicker (for deaf dogs- a penlight works good). Clicker training is a system of teaching that uses positive reinforcement in combination with an event marker. Benefits to training this way includes: Training is enjoyable by both dog and owner, the dog will remember the behavior for long term, accelerates learning, fearful dogs will overcome their fears, strengthens human and animal bond, encourages creativity and initiative. If you have any questions about clicker training or how to get started, we would love to help you out!