A Comedic Comparison (E-Collar vs. Positive Only)

00:00 — Kati Peppe introduces Diamond K9 Dog Training’s focus on e-collar training for off-leash obedience…

Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered. Trigger warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the truth in dog training.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Off Leash and Unfiltered. I'm Kati Peppe, owner of Diamond K9 Dog Training in Biddeford, Maine. We specialize in e-collar training for both off-leash obedience and behavior modifications. So helping people eliminate behaviors that they don't like. Whether it is simple behaviors like jumping on people, barking, getting into the trash, or more complicated stuff, more severe stuff like leash reactivity, aggression, resource guarding, separation issues, all that stuff. Um, we also do puppy training, so that's who we are and what we do. And this podcast is here for us to share all that we know with you.

And we tend to talk about, um, the stuff that we're dealing with with our hands-on clients every day. So, uh, we know if that's what they need. It might be what a lot of other people out there need as well.

And the information's really hard to find. So, so we like to talk about it and, and put it out there for those who, uh, who want it. And, uh, <laugh> today I think is pretty humorous. Not today, but the material we're covering today I find pretty humorous. Um, so I <laugh>, no matter how much I tell Facebook, you guys, to stop showing me these ridiculous, purely positive dog training posts, there's just, there are so many of them out there. It's just a constant flood on my stream or stream on my feed, you know what I mean?

<laugh>, it's been a very long day. Um, but so I see them whether I want to or not, and every once in a while I gotta look at it because it's hilarious. Like if I am to be honest, it's in, it's infuriating and hilarious at the same time, right? It's funny because it's real <laugh>, that's why it's so funny.

Um, and so what I wanted to do today, I thought this would be kind of a good time, is I'm gonna break down for you. This is, these are, okay, there's this one in particular that has come up on my feed more than once. Um, and this time she has what she call, and I'm not gonna mention her name <laugh>, but she has what she calls Free Advice Fridays. It's not a bad idea, it's pretty catchy. Um, but so she's got some followers that asked her some questions on that Free Advice Friday and she gave her free advice.

And so <laugh>, I wanna kind of <laugh>, sorry, I wanna

<laugh>,

Hold on. I need, I just need a second.

<laugh>.

Whew. I'm not even drinking yet. You know what? But that's a good idea. I'm gonna go get a drink. I'm gonna be right back.

Alright,

Let's get this started. It. So I'm back. I've got my André Bellini. Uh, if you've never had it before, stuff is delicious. Okay, so the first question that she was posed. Best way to get dogs used to their mom suddenly having to go into an office five days a week when they have never been left alone. Valid concern, right? Um, <laugh> here is her response. This is her free answer on Free Advice Fridays: Are they showing signs of anxiety from it? The key is that you work on your own anxiety, whatever that may look like, different for everyone.

04:00 — Kati criticizes advice suggesting therapy or medication for an owner asking about leaving dogs…

But I do suggest therapy and/or meds if that's necessary so that you aren't letting it spill over to them. She then carries on a little bit about how dogs can definitely be more anxious if the owner is anxious and blah blah blah <laugh>. But you cannot make this up. Okay? So this woman says, I suddenly have to start going into the office five days a week when I've been working from home the entirety of the time I've had my dogs, and I don't know how they're gonna react to this, and how do I get them used to it?

And her advice is that the owner herself should get therapy and medication.

<laugh>

Even though the person didn't mention anything about having any kind of personal anxiety. That was the answer. Now we will delve into my free advice <laugh>. If you have to suddenly start going into the office, you should just go. There it is, folks. Why? Because that's life. And like that's what you have to do. Put your dogs in a kennel. Separate kennels if you have more than one dog, 'cause that is the safest thing to do.

Alright? You can have the kennels next to each other. They can keep each other company, blah, blah, whatever. But they should have their own kennels in their own space. Uh, and be safely secured in there, and you should go to work, and there it is. Now, if they react poorly in some way, then you'll have to deal with that. Um, if it's just minor separation stuff, like you probably should just start using the kennel sometimes when you're home, practicing some separation when you're home, um, and requiring them to be calm in their kennel. So if they start fussing and acting up, then just disagree with that.

Say no, go over, kind of rap on the side of the kennel. Um, different dogs are, are different levels of intensity, right? So if you have a dog that's absolutely nuts when you put 'em in the kennel or when you leave them alone, then you're gonna need a more in-depth approach. Um, probably an e-collar to disagree with all that fussing. Uh, and you wanna do that before it escalates, right? 'cause it can get to a point where they can hurt themselves. Um, I don't get the sense that anything like that is going on here with this woman <laugh> and her dogs.

Um, but, so yeah, there are some cases where you're gonna need a more in-depth approach, um, to settle the dogs, right? But generally speaking, if you suddenly have to start going into the office, you just go and that's that.

07:00 — Kati introduces a visitor-barking question and reviews advice to remove the dog from view…

Okay. Let's see. What do we have next? How to best, this is another one of her followers on Free Advice Friday here. How to best stop a young dog from barking at new people coming into the house. Really common problem, right? Probably a lot of you can relate with this. Um, you got a young dog. I don't know if that's a puppy, an adult dog. Doesn't matter. Barking at new people when they come into the house. Very common and also annoying and something most people would like to stop. Okay, what is, drum roll please, what is the free advice on Free Advice Friday?

Here it is. I'd stop the behavior from being practiced first. That's actually very good advice. But let's see, let's let her, let's let her elaborate. Let's give her a chance to screw this up. So put the dog away where he can't bark at the door when people walk in, whether that's in another room or outside or somewhere where he can't see people coming into your home. After stopping the behavior, then you could start a training plan. I would hire someone to help you for desensitization to whatever the reason is why he's barking. Okay? So her answer really is put the dog away where he can't see people coming in <laugh>.

Well, that's one way to go. Uh, and then of course, if you actually want help, just hire someone to help. But she recommends they hire someone who's not actually going to help. She thinks you should hire someone who will dig into the reason why and desensitize them to that. Well, that sounds like a whole lot of freaking research <laugh> and a whole lot of time and effort. Um, pleading, begging, bribing your dog not to bark, 'cause that's exactly what that is. Um, so now let's compare that to what my advice would be. If someone said, hey, my dog barks.

When new people come into the house, here's my answer. You don't need to put your dog away and hide them from the stimulus. You don't need to put a blindfold on them or lock them in the bedroom. You don't even really need to hire someone to help you. This is like pretty freaking easy. Um, and they don't need to be desensitized. So what you're gonna do is the second your dog starts barking, you're going to say no. And then after you've said no, that part's important, you're going to go over to your dog and you're going to deliver a meaningful correction.

Rinse and repeat. Then when somebody comes in and your dog doesn't bark, you can say, "Good," shove treats in his mouth. Okay? That's it. So if you have questions on how to deliver a, how to deliver a correction, I have all kinds of material on that. I talk about it here, it's all over my social media. Um, but it can be anything as long as it's safe and the dog doesn't like it, right? So usually it's a firm leash pop. Uh, preferably on a prong collar. It could be an e-collar correction, it could be a bonk with a simple rolled-up cotton towel.

You just bonk the dog on the head with it firmly. Okay? So that's it. You say no, you go over, you provide a correction. You might have to do that a few times. And then your dog is going to stop barking when people come in. Once they make a better decision, you can reward them and that's it. You are done. Most dogs, you can accomplish this in one day. It doesn't mean they'll be perfect forever. Doesn't mean they'll never make a mistake.

But

Really more or less you can teach most dogs in a single day not to bark at people when they come in the house. And that's it. You're all done, my friend. And practice it frequently because that really is the key to changing behavior and cementing it, is to do it frequently, right? If you go another week before someone walks in, you're much more likely to have regression. So in the beginning, you wanna try to rehearse it daily or even multiple times a day if you can. Uh, that's helpful. So that's it, that's <laugh>, that's our comparison and advice there.

12:00 — Kati reads a question about a dog lying down near walk’s end and ignoring…

Alright, next. Free Advice Fridays. Drum roll. Here's the question. All right, hold on. I gotta, I gotta take a sip here. Hm, so good. Towards the very end of our daily two-mile walk, my dog likes to just plop down and take a break. Sometimes a treat will get her to get up and start walking again. But sometimes she ignores the treat and just wants to stay laying down. I'm just going to, uh, inject myself here and say, that's why these methods don't work. <laugh>. Okay? So she ignores the treat and she stays laying down.

When she does this, she doesn't respond to my verbal commands or her name and pretty much ignores me. She looks away and will not make eye contact.

And what is the answer? What's the free advice here? Free advice is, what do you do when the walk is over? Like when you finally get home? So she has a follow-up question to which the woman says. So this might be, oh, the woman says she is crated so I can take our other dog for a walk. She gets treats to eat in her crate while we are gone for about 45 minutes to an hour. Then when I get back from that walk, both dogs take a nap, to which our free advice trainer here says, that might be it.

She knows what's going to happen when you get home. So on the walk, she prolongs it. So you can start by doing your normal routine prior to your walk, then walk down your sidewalk, walk back in your house and do something she loves. Do not put her in her crate. Play with her, give her treats. Something she loves a lot. Make her think coming home is fabulous. On the surface, this might sound like decent advice, but it's not. It's truly shitty advice. And I'm gonna tell you why. Number one, maybe you don't have all goddamn day to do that.

Like maybe you actually have stuff to do, like places to go and appointments and crap, right? Maybe I don't have all day to play with my dog to persuade her that coming home is cool.

Number two, because it still remains optional. So if the dog just feels like being outside, she can still just choose to plop down and ignore her owner, her handler. There's no good reason to get up and move if she doesn't feel like it. Number three, the easiest thing you could do, and there's really no good reason here not to do this, is just force the dog to go home with you, right? You've got a leash on the dog. People, use it. So I talk about passive leash handling a lot. This sounds like a pretty good example of that.

Dog plops down and that's it. You're done. There's no more walking because the dog said so. What does everyone have against pulling on their leash? Like, I don't get it. That's what it's there for, right? So if you decide you're going in, the dog has to go with you. Like, that's how that works. Okay? This one is too easy to fix. I almost don't even want to answer it. Like, it's just so incredibly easy to fix. I mean, I pretty much already answered it, right? You get a leash on the dog, use it.

16:00 — Kati describes teaching dogs to respond to prong-collar pressure by moving with the leash…

There you go. But honestly, if your dog was on a properly fitted prong collar and knew how to respond to the pressure, you could literally take two fingers and put a tiny bit of pressure and the dog would just move. And that would be the end of it. That would be it. So we have dogs all the time that put on the brakes. We were talking about this today. 'Cause Joyce has two English Labs, um, and English Labs are absolutely notorious for doing this. They like to pancake, they like to put on the brakes, all this stuff.

Um,

You put on a prong collar and you just teach them what it feels like when the collar engages and how to shut it off by moving with it. It's not harsh, it's not violent. Um, it's, it's a very quiet, easy exercise to do. And then you just go about your life with it and you put a leash on the dog. You should have a prong collar on there. And then if they decide to put on the brakes, all you do is apply a little pressure, 'cause you're gonna keep walking. The dog's not gonna stop you, right?

So you're gonna keep walking, the collar's gonna engage and the dog's just gonna go with you. And you're not even going to have to use any force, most likely very, very little, which is why we love this tool so much, right? You're literally gonna apply the tiniest bit of pressure. Dog's gonna go with you and you're just not gonna have a problem there. Problem fixed. Ta-da. Okay, last one, guys. Last one. Our Cavapoo, for those of you that don't know, that is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel mixed with a Poodle. It's a small dog.

Our Cavapoo barks aggressively and charges at the TV every time he sees a horse, dog, or any four-legged animal. It makes watching many shows impossible as he's with us in the evenings during quote-unquote TV time.

We love having him with us in the living room, but it's getting harder and harder to watch anything in peace. Okay? So that's annoying, right? This is a legitimate question. Um, who wouldn't wanna have their dog in the living room with them when they're trying to watch TV? But you can't enjoy the TV and you can't enjoy the dog because he's a nutcase. The free advice is, drum roll, please. Sorry, the questions were only answered until yesterday at 7:00 PM <laugh>. So I will answer this question. It's the same for people walking in the house that the dog barks at, right?

19:00 — For television reactivity, Kati suggests the place command and advocates marking unwanted behavior with…

So I like to use the place command. You can have your dog on place in the living room watching the TV, but you don't need it. The bottom line is the dog starts to go nutty at the TV. You're going to mark that with a no. And then after you say no, you're going to deliver a correction. Now why, why is that like my answer to everything? Because these are all questions about how do I get my dog to stop doing this or that? And the way you're going to do that is to inhibit the behavior with a correction.

Now, once you do that, you can reward your dog all day long for doing better stuff and that's fine. But you can't jump to that step. You have got to give the dog the information. So the purely positive group, like their whole goal seems to be, let's see if we can pretend to stop the dog from doing the behavior without telling him to stop doing the behavior, yay. Um, just tell the dog not to do it in a meaningful way, in a way that actually matters to them, that actually motivates them to change their behavior.

There is a right and wrong way to do it. I talk about the sequence all the time. Really important that you say no when the behavior is occurring. The timing of your no is important, but after you say no, then you just go deliver a consequence. And it's okay if it takes you a few seconds to do that, it's not a big deal. Okay? Once your dog knows that no predicts a correction, it's okay if it takes you a minute to do it,

But early on you probably wanna do it fairly quickly, 'cause your dog isn't familiar with what the word no really means yet. You say no and you correct them. Again, leash pop, bonk, e-collar correction, might be a spray bottle if that works. I find that not to really be effective long term with most dogs, but um, yeah, people wanna give their dogs half the information and, and create real change and it just doesn't work. Just doesn't work. Um, but that's, that's it. That's all. I <laugh>, that's all I got for you today, guys. This was, it was a fun one.

We should do this again sometime. Maybe I won't block all these people on my Facebook feed. Maybe, maybe some goodwill will come out of it. <laugh>, thanks for joining me today, guys, and I look forward to the next one.