The Place Command For Dummies—Get The Most Out Of Your Dog Training

00:00 — The episode examines why the Place command is popular and what it should accomplish…

Speaker 1: No doubt you've heard about the place command, including from me. But what is all the rage about? Why do we like it so much? And what is it that it's really supposed to be doing for you? Do you do this with your dog? Should you be doing this with your dog? Are you doing it the right way? We are gonna touch on all of that coming up. Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered Trigger Warning. I'm Kati Peppe delivering the Truth in Dog Training.

Speaker 1: Hey, this is your host, Kati Peppe, owner of Diamond Canine Dog Training in Biddeford, Maine. For those of you that are new here, we specialize in e-collar training. So we help dogs listen off leash and around distractions. Or if your dog's being an absolute total jerk, well we can help with that too. We do it all and we do puppy training too. This podcast is just my way of sharing. Well, everything with you guys, the good, the bad, the ugly. And I will always be honest about how to fix the problems you might be dealing with with your dog.

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Speaker 1: We appreciate you and without further ado, let's jump in. Oh, the Beloved Place Command. Everybody loves the place Command me included <laugh>. For those of you who don't know, I can't imagine that there are any of you out there. But let's just say somebody doesn't know what the police command is. The police command is usually a command where we tell the dog to go lie on a bed and they are required to stay there until you tell them they can get off the bed. Um, and this is often an elevated cot, but it can really be anything.

Speaker 1: It doesn't even have to be a bed. Um, a lot of people will teach their dog to place on various objects and have fun with it, like picnic tables, tree stumps, large rocks. Uh, you can use, you know, a bath mat, a towel, a blanket, anything. But generally speaking, most trainers are teaching this with an elevated cot. Uh, and that makes it a little easier usually for the dog to learn the command because it is slightly elevated off from the floor, um, which just sort of makes the boundary a little more obvious.

Speaker 1: So why do we love the Place Command so much? Like why has this become such a thing? Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but the reason we love the place command so much is because most of the dogs we meet need help learning to settle and calm down and be patient and learn to be inconvenienced and just develop some coping skills and all of these things, <laugh> and the Place Command can help with all of them. Another reason that it's so wonderful is because it's sort of a passive training tool. Once your dog knows it, right, you can put the dog on place and you don't have to sit there and stare at them like you can go about your business, go about your day, do the things you need to do, and meanwhile your dog is actually training, right?

03:00 — Place teaches dogs to settle, tolerate inconvenience, wait patiently, and develop coping skills.

Speaker 1: Because they have to stay there even if they don't feel like it, even if they don't want to, even if they see something they wanna go get, they wanna go check out.

Speaker 1: Even if someone comes to the door, even if they hear a noise, you know, no matter what happens, they have to fight that impulse and stay there. And that's training and that's kind of why we like you to leave the dog there for long periods of time. Sometimes it doesn't have to be all the time, right? I guess it depends on the dog, what your individual plan would be. Um, but you know, putting your dog there for 10 minutes, well, it's pretty easy for the dog in most cases, right? But if you ask the dog to stay there for an hour, two hours, three hours, now we're talking about something that's a little bit harder.

Speaker 1: Your dog is almost certainly at some point going to want to leave and go do something else and they can't. They have to respect the boundary. And so that's training and that's super valuable and we find that it's a great way for our customers to continue to instill in their dogs that there's leadership in the home.

Speaker 1: There's humans that set rules, that set boundaries and that enforce them. Um, and that is a relationship that needs to be built and that's how it's built, right? It's not built by letting your dog do whatever they want all the time, even if that means jumping on you, even if that means barking their foolish head off, you know, the dog has no rules, no boundaries. And like most people when we meet them, that's kind of where they are. Um, even if they're trying to have rules and boundaries, they just don't because they don't know how to properly enforce them.

Speaker 1: They need help with that. Um, and it sort of makes the relationship very, very lopsided, right? You become kind of a doormat for the dog, right? You're just a pez dispenser. Um, you give, give, give, but you never expect anything from them and that's no good.

Speaker 1: And that results in everything being harder, uh, across the board. This is an amazing tool even for the best behaved dogs, right? This isn't just for bad dogs, but even for the dogs we get in that really are well behaved and they're just there for like their basic obedience training, we want people to go home and develop a more balanced relationship with the dog. Because if they can do that and they can set standards and expectations with their dog, guess what? Their whole world opens up. Like everything just gets easier, everything gets better, even if it was already good, it goes from good to great.

06:00 — Place helps owners establish standards and expectations, creating a more balanced, manageable relationship with…

Speaker 1: Um, and so this is a command that we give to everybody. Now, to be clear, do you necessarily need quote unquote the place command? No. You could do the same exact thing with just a down command. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but we find the place Command works well because I think people actually view it differently.

Speaker 1: Um, and so it tends to stick better and get used more often. I think, you know, if you're just downing your dog on the floor, they tend to be more comfortable on the place. Cot tends to be a actually a little bit easier for them in a sense. So, uh, we really like it. I mean we find if you just ask dogs to down, that's actually harder for them. And don't get me wrong, we like to practice hard, um, but we have found our customers to be very, very successful with using the Place Command with their dogs.

Speaker 1: Now, the reason our customers like it is because it's functional, right? So it gets the dog out from under your feet. So if you're trying to cook dinner and you've got a dog that likes to kind of hang around and see if you drop anything, right, they're kind of in your way all the time or maybe just have one of those dogs that's always pacing back and forth, um, it's nice to be able to get them out of the way.

Speaker 1: Another big one that we hear is uh, when company comes over, right? So people are like, oh yeah, I wanna be able to put my dog on place when people are coming through the door so the dog doesn't jump on them. We're gonna talk more about that in a minute, <laugh>. Uh, but that's a really common one too, of course. Like you wanna have people over and you wanna have your dog be well behaved and under control. Uh, and so people find that it's very, very useful for that as well. Uh, so I could come up with a thousand scenarios why we like it and why our customers like it.

Speaker 1: Um, but you know, normally the reasons are very different and I wanna talk about why that is. Um, so the scenarios I just mentioned, right? What we find a lot of the time is that people are using the place command to fix unwanted behaviors, right? So it's not necessarily that they want their dog to be on place, it's just that their dog will do things that annoy them if they're not on place. And so that's not great.

Speaker 1: Yeah, if you have a dog that's just generally anxious and paces around, um, or just gets like a little too happy go lucky, too friendly when people are over and you just kind of want him on the place, like that's fine. I'm not saying you can't do that, but if you have a dog that jumps on people, just putting 'em on place isn't fixing that problem. It's managing the problem. If you have a dog that gets extremely reactive to the door barks when someone comes up the driveway charges the door when somebody comes in and you're using place to try to avoid that scenario, that's not great.

09:00 — Putting an excitable dog on Place does not eliminate jumping or other unwanted behaviors.

Speaker 1: And I wanna talk about why that is. And the reason being is because you're not actually fixing the problem, right? So people think they are, but really they're just finding a way to sweep it under the rug skirt around it and avoid fixing the real issue.

Speaker 1: And it's, again, it's totally fine to put your dog on place in those scenarios. But here's the thing, A trained dog is a trained dog. So if your dog is trained, they shouldn't really do those things in those scenarios, right? And again, if we're dealing with like a, a nervous system thing, if you have a dog that you're chipping away at anxiety and they're just pacing around and that bothers you, sure like put them on place, okay? But simple behaviors like jumping, you know, barking at people charging the door, those are things that you know, you can have that conversation with the dog directly and eliminate those behaviors, right?

Speaker 1: Because we want our dogs to choose to do the right thing on their own <laugh>, or maybe it would be more accurate to say not choose to do the wrong thing. So we tell all of our clients, yes, you have a place command, yes, it's amazing and you should use it, you should use it every day.

Speaker 1: But if your dog charges the door, if your dog jumps on people, if your dog has any of those annoying behaviors, you want to keep your dog off place. And we want you to set them up for those scenarios so that you can have that conversation directly with your dog and you can say, Hey, you're not allowed to charge the door. Hey, you're not allowed to jump on people. Hey, you're not allowed to lose your mind when someone rings the doorbell. Whatever the thing is that your dog does, right? You'll have people putting their dog on place so that they can mow the lawn because the dog likes to attack the lawnmower, things of that nature.

Speaker 1: It's like, no, you gotta have that conversation with your dog and tell them not to chase the lawnmower, right? And it comes from this narrative out there that you can just teach alternate behaviors that are incompatible with the behavior you don't like and that will fix your problem, but it usually doesn't.

12:00 — Avoiding corrections leaves behaviors such as jumping or attacking equipment intact for future repetition.

Speaker 1: And even if it does, it never does fully because you're leaving that annoying behavior that you don't like. You're leaving that behavior intact to be performed again at the dog's earliest convenience, right? So if you never correct your dog for jumping on people, if you never correct your dog for attacking the lawnmower or the vacuum or whatever it is, then what's gonna happen is the first time they're not on place, they're going to do that stuff. Or even more likely they're going to break place because they're going to be sitting on there so overwhelmed by the impulse to charge the door to charge the lawnmower that they're going to make mistakes and you're going to have to correct them and put them back and it's going to be still frustrating you.

Speaker 1: So don't we always say this, don't use commands to try to fix your problems, right?

Speaker 1: You can use them as part of your plan, but commands are never a substitute for properly correcting and eliminating a behavior. If your dog does something that you don't like, that's a behavior that needs to be corrected and eliminated, right? And that's not to say your dog will be perfect after, um, but for the most part, if you know how to do it, you provide a correction, uh, maybe twice, maybe three times and then your dog's gonna start to go, Hey, I probably shouldn't do this thing anymore, right? And now you have a dog that will choose better behaviors all on their own and you won't have to keep managing them all the time, right?

Speaker 1: And you won't have to keep them stuck on the cod all the time. We still want you to use it, but you'll be able to include them more and give them a little more freedom, which most people really like, uh, because your dog is just going to be better behaved, right?

Speaker 1: But if you try to avoid having that conversation with your dog, if you try to avoid doing those corrections, um, then the problem is those behaviors stay intact and your dog's going to do them again when they get the chance. Uh, and also the place command or the down command or whatever you're using is going to be much, much more difficult for your dog, right? So a good example is the door. We have lots and lots of clients who dogs get totally worked up about the door. So the second they hear someone knock or even before they knock, the dogs are reacting, they're going crazy.

Speaker 1: And here's the thing, if you try to fix that by putting your dog on place, even if you can get them on place, <laugh>, it's probably gonna be hard. But even if you do get them on place, they're gonna be sitting there fully aroused level 10 excitement just shaking away, spring loaded, and they're gonna, they're gonna screw up guys.

Speaker 1: They're gonna fly off there 'cause they can't handle it. Now scenario B, nevermind place. Have someone come to the door, dog starts to go crazy, you say no and you provide a high correction. Now you've had the conversation with your dog that says, Hey, you are not allowed to do that. You are not allowed to get all crazy when someone comes to the door. I don't want you barking your head off. I don't want you growling. I don't want you charging up to the door and jumping all over people. That's a no. And it's a high correction and usually it's quite high because dogs are in such an escalated state when it comes to the door.

Speaker 1: Um, now once you've had that conversation and your dog doesn't do that anymore, or at least you know, doesn't do it so intensely, right? Maybe they still notice someone comes to the door, maybe they let out a little boof.

Speaker 1: And if you're okay with that, fine, right? But you tell your dog to zip it, they should zip it. Um, but you can't have dogs going off a cliff with that kind of arousal once you've had that conversation and you've changed their response to the door. Now if you wanna use place, use it, that's fine because now you have the best of both worlds. You have a dog that's going to be better behaved all on their own by default. And if you put them on place, it's gonna be easier now for them to do it and for them to stay there because they're not gonna be sitting on there loaded with arousal like they were before.

16:00 — After changing a dog’s response to the door, Place provides additional management and calmness.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for your support, enjoy the rest of the show. Um, so that's always our advice as far as using the command. It's like don't use it to fix problems, just use it as one layer of basically making everything as easy and convenient for both of you as possible. But it's one layer. Don't avoid the tough conversations about the things you don't want your dog to do. Um, because it actually just makes everything harder and perpetuates the problem, um, because it's just a form of management and not actually great management most of the time.

Speaker 1: So like I said, the reason we love the place command so much is that we feel it just really helps our dog develop so many valuable skills as far as calming down and settling and just tuning out the environment a little bit. And you know, like if you have one of those dogs that are always pacing around, they get to practice something different, which is just being still just being comfortable, just not really doing anything. Uh, if you have a an extreme chew, it's like this is another way for them to learn. Like I can be still and I don't have to be chewing all the time.

Speaker 1: Um, coping skills, coping skills. If you have a dog that's super attached to you, like they have to stay there and they have to tolerate you walking away and going into different rooms or upstairs or outside or whatever it is, and they can't follow you and they can't be your shadow, they don't have to go to the bathroom with you.

Speaker 1: Um, so it just does a lot, a lot of wonderful things. If you have a dog that likes to look out the window and scan and bark, this gives them something different to rehearse. And again, that's a situation where it's like we'll have that conversation with the dog that says you're not allowed to go to the windows and look out there and bark, but after we do that now we'll put them on place, right? So both, and that's how you get the best results is you both have the conversations about what you don't want and then you show your dog, Hey, how about you do this instead?

Speaker 1: And you develop all these wonderful skills that are gonna help you learn how to relax. To that point though, if you then put your dog on place and you give them a bone to chew on, you're missing the point <laugh>.

Speaker 1: So we have a lot of folks that will ask us, is it okay for my dog to have a toy or to have a bone when they're on place? And it's like, as humans, we just do everything we can to sabotage ourselves, <laugh>, um, you're just working against yourself if you do that. The whole point is to teach your dog calm, still settle coping, right? Don't make the mistake of keeping your dog busy, keeping your dog stimulated. That is the problem in the first place most of the time, right? So you have a dog that's always going around, getting into things, getting into trouble, finding things to chew on, barking out the window, chewing up your furniture, and you put 'em on place and you give them stuff to do.

20:00 — Constantly keeping dogs busy or stimulated can perpetuate troublemaking instead of teaching them to…

Speaker 1: What is your dog learning? Practically nothing, right? So I'm not gonna say there's no value in doing the place if they're respecting the place boundary.

Speaker 1: Um, but you are losing tons and tons and tons of value by avoiding having your dog do the hard stuff. That's what it's for, right? And they don't have to be there forever necessarily. I suppose some dogs spend a lot of their time there. Um, but you know, most dogs, you strike a balance with what works for you and you just use place, um, kind of sporadically throughout the day and try to do long ones here and there where you can. But every case is different. Just depends on the dog you have and the behaviors they might be struggling with and you know what's up with their nervous system.

Speaker 1: If you have a dog that's really anxious or really fearful or really pushy, like you might need to do more and that's okay. It's different for everybody. But if you put them there and you keep them busy, you're just not getting the value from it. So it's really important that it is still time and calm time and that doesn't mean you can't go over and like give your dog a pet or even a little treat if you want to sometimes, right? You just don't want the whole place to be that way. It's like no, again, stillness calmness.

Speaker 1: So yeah, it's fine to interact with the dog as long as they can handle it. Um, but really place time is for that shutting

Speaker 2: Off.

Speaker 1: And that's also why when we have dogs on place, we expect them to stay laying down, right? So we don't allow them to be standing up and wiggling head to toe and going crazy. 'cause what's happening is they're just climbing that arousal ladder guys and then they're gonna mess up and jump off. And also that's not practicing stillness, that's not practicing calmness. So no, we don't necessarily expect them to be like completely flat, right? They're gonna notice things going on around them, especially when they're alert and they're awake, they're gonna get excited when you come home and they're gonna, you know, maybe wiggle a little bit.

Speaker 1: That's fine. Um, they're gonna perk up if they hear the food bowl getting filled. I'm not saying that your dog should lay there and be completely flat <laugh>, but they should be for the most part, staying laying down and not like begging you with body language to let them off, right?

Speaker 1: Because that's not acceptance, that's not resignation, that's not coping. And that's what we really need, um, to get out of this, to get the full value. So dogs that are standing up on all fours, wiggling all over, that's not place. Dogs that have three paws off the cot and just have that one back leg on there, that's not place. So some people will teach it and they'll say, oh, that's still place dogs. No, it's not, not even close. Um, so of course dogs can stand up and adjust themselves and get comfortable and and that sort of thing, right?

Speaker 1: But then they should just lay back down.

Speaker 1: They should lay back down, right? And you wanna watch them when they're on there too, especially if you do have a really anxious dog who is a real busy body. Don't let them lay on there and like frantically sniff around or start obsessively like licking at their paws or nibbling their paws or nibbling the edge of the cot. You have to watch for stuff like that. So when we see dogs start to do those kinds of behaviors, they're obviously usually wearing an e-collar. So we're able to just give them a low little tap. It's like a tap on the shoulder that says, Hey, don't forget.

24:00 — A low e-collar reminder can interrupt licking, nibbling, frantic sniffing, or other unsettled behavior…

Speaker 1: Like we're supposed to just be settled, right? Don't lick your paws, don't nibble anything, don't frantically sniff around. Uh, I want you to just chill out, just like practice being comfortable in your own skin, not doing much.

Speaker 1: Um, and we all know people like that, right? That just can't even sit with their own thoughts. And it's sort of the same, same thing. And unfortunately all the information out there tells you to just keep your dog super busy and it creates way more problems than solutions. Uh, you will never tire your dog out of being misbehaved, even if it feels like you do because they take a nap for a little bit. It is not a solution my friend, it makes the problem worse. So we love exercise and we love playing games with our dogs and all these things, and those things are fine, but your dog has to learn something else too.

Speaker 1: They need to learn how to be still. They need to learn how to shut off. They need to learn how to be okay when they're not doing those things right? And we owe it to our dogs to make them as functional and comfortable as possible in the real world, in real life, in our homes, in our lifestyles with our families, the way we live, right? Your dog has to fit into your home. And so it doesn't matter what your lifestyle is. If you like to have people over every day, then you need to be able to do that and your dog needs to deal with it.

Speaker 1: If you work 12 hours a day, your dog needs to learn to deal with that too. Um, it's not ideal, but it is what it is. Um,

Speaker 1: And so really, really important that we don't work against ourselves by doing all the wrong things because the narrative out there is keep your dog busy.

Speaker 1: Lastly, one of the things that happens a lot is people will teach their dog a place command, but they never really fully develop the reliability, meaning the dog will get on, but maybe they have to ask several times or the dog will get on the first time, but they don't stay there that long or they only stay there until there's a trigger. Uh, well guess what? That also kind of defeats the purpose of place. Like if you can just get off there whenever something happens or whenever you feel like it, then what good is it?

Speaker 1: And even if you're putting your dog back on place, they're not really learning anything <laugh>. So I think that's really, really important to touch on. Um, because for instance, I have a dog here right now who came in for boarding and honestly, he's probably the best behaved dog I have ever had in my history with board and train.

Speaker 1: I mean an absolute angel, very calm level-headed sweet dog, doesn't want any trouble, listens really, really well. Uh, but he went through the training program and we took him from great to like perfect <laugh>. Um, well he's back for boarding now. It's a couple years later. And I was shocked when I put him on place and he didn't stay there <laugh>. I was like, what? Wait a minute. No. Um, and so I corrected him and I put him back and then he broke again. So I corrected him higher and I put him back and then a few minutes later he broke again.

Speaker 1: So I corrected him much, much higher and put him back and that was it. He didn't make that mistake again. Um, the rest of the time that he's been here, he hasn't made that mistake again. But so my feeling is when he is at home, he can break place and they probably just put him back or maybe they correct him, but they correct him at something very, very low.

Speaker 1: Like when they came in, their remote was on a five. I'm not saying that that's all they ever use, but I definitely get the sense in talking to them that they feel Cooper is very, very responsive to single digits. And when I corrected him that final time for breaking the place command, I was in the forties. So you have to understand when you have taught your dog and you have taken the time and you know that they know the expectation, you have to actually make it an expectation, which means you have to provide a consequence that the dog will respect, right?

Speaker 1: And we don't get to pick what that is guys. The dog chooses that. And if you don't do that and you just keep tapping your dog on the shoulder, then what happens is it just never changes.

Speaker 1: It just never changes. And the goal in that moment, and I think this confuses some people, the goal in that moment is not to get your dog to go back to place. If you tap on a five, on a 10 or even a 25 or whatever it is, and your dog goes back, that doesn't mean you've won. That doesn't mean that you did the right thing. The goal is that your dog stops getting off there and making that mistake. Your dog stopped violating that boundary. Your dog stops giving you the finger <laugh> and breaking the command, right?

29:00 — A dog returning after a correction is not success; success means stopping the violation…

Speaker 1: That's the goal. And so you have to listen to the dog and provide whatever consequence, whatever intensity of consequence it is that's going to make that happen.

Speaker 1: Because otherwise, those coping skills we're talking about, they don't get built. And it's funny because the dog I'm talking about right now, she usually boards him with her family. And the reason he came to me this time for boarding is because he's developed some issues recently where he's a little more aroused than normal, a little more stimulated than normal, and exhibiting a little more separation issues from the woman owner specifically in the house. And so he has a hard time when she leaves the room, like that'll actually make him cry and I assume he will break command <laugh>.

Speaker 1: So, um, but when I see what I saw with him, like there's really no mystery, right? Because the relationship is probably lopsided. We're taking it a little too easy on him. Um, we're not really setting any real expectations. We're not enforcing them in any real way.

Speaker 1: And so the dog only knows softness from us. They don't know boundary setting, they don't know that they enforce rules and they're able to break command and follow them right whenever he wants to. And the worst thing that ever happens to him is he just gets put back. Well, that's no big deal and it's worth trying that again and again and again because it isn't a big deal. Um, and so what happens is we see those coping skills and those abilities deteriorate and we see arousal and stimulation and separation issues. All that stuff increase. And that makes sense to me.

Speaker 1: Um, but so it's important if you're going to use place properly and get the most out of it that you actually enforce it, right? Once your dog knows it, you have to go through the process. I know I say that all the time, but it's important because if somebody doesn't listen to me regularly or hasn't seen our stuff on social media or whatnot, um, they might not know, right?

Speaker 1: They might just show their dog a place cot and put 'em on there and then blast them for getting off. And that's not what we do at all. There's definitely a process that we take the dog through, uh, so that they learn exactly what to do, um, and tons and tons of rehearsal before we really properly hold them accountable for it. But ultimately in the end, you have to just like any other command, you want to be reliable. And I think this one is the most important in a sense because that, like I said, it's such a valuable tool for that passive training and to teach your dog that you do enforce rules and boundaries.

Speaker 1: Um, and it's such an easy one for people to do and most people can do it every single day because um, they don't really have to be involved in it, right?

Speaker 1: They can just put the dog there, say, Hey, I want you to respect this boundary for a couple of hours, I'm gonna do some other stuff. Um, and it's just such an easy way for people to balance that relationship and help their dog learn calmness. Um, but it won't work if you don't enforce it <laugh>. So that's really important. If you are feeling inspired to teach your dog a place command and enforce it with an e-collar, we offer a fantastic online course for only $99. I think it's only $99 <laugh>, it's available on my website.

Speaker 1: I will put a link to that in the show notes. Just visit the shop and you can purchase that course right there and do that from the comfort of your own home and have an amazing place command in just 10 days. That course is also great if you've been thinking about training with an eco, but you're just a little nervous about it, it's a great way to get your feet wet with the eco and get really comfortable with it and gain some confidence. So hopefully you'll check that out and, uh, thank you guys for, uh, being here with me today.

Speaker 1: I'll see you next time.