How To Fix (And Not To Fix) Your Dog’s Destructive Behavior

00:00 — Kati introduces the show and frames the episode around direct, unfiltered dog-training advice.

Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered Trigger Warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the Truth in Dog Training.

Hey everybody, this is your host, Kati Peppe. Before we jump in, I just wanted to take a quick second and remind you to hit the subscribe button because that helps us so, so, so much. We appreciate every subscribe and follow and we have so much valuable information we wanna share with you. So we don't want you to miss an episode. Without further ado, let's jump in. Hey everybody, thanks for joining me today. We're back again with another episode of Off Leash and Unfiltered and I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to get back here.

Um, but I'm here now. It's been chaos and you know, most of the chaos has been like vacations, so I guess I can't complain. <laugh> complain too much, um, but it just throws everything off. And things of course have just been, um, crazy. We've had lots of dogs and Mildred just went home poopy pants and I'm happy to say we made a ton of progress.

Um, but I'm sad to say she's not cured. So we always hope, um, when a dog comes in with issues like that, that we can send them home with like a sure plan to succeed, right? If the owner sticks with it. And unfortunately with her, we never fully cracked the code. And every once in a while that happens. Um, and it can happen with any behavior, but when you have a dog that just potties in their kennel and they're okay with pottying in their kennel, like it doesn't bother them, that's the hardest. And um, I think really she's the, I think she might be the first one where we really just didn't get her to a place where we were able to completely stop it.

We have had a few others, but they were either very, very young, right, like young, young puppy, like not fully developed, or they had a UTI, right?

And with her, it's not just pee, it's also poop. So it's probably not a UTI, although her owner is going to have her checked, um, to make sure she doesn't have any infections. Um, but we did get her to a much better place and we found that most of the time, if I got up at the right time, uh, before she got moving around, um, and got to her before she soiled her kennel in the morning, we did pretty good. And most days we would be fairly accident free, at least with poop. Um, and that's new.

That's not something that they've ever been able to do before, so that's great. Um, we did not have issues with her eating poop at all, so that's great. Um, she didn't go outside and scour for it. She didn't have accidents in the house. Of course, her freedom was absolutely limited, but she was in my house plenty.

She lived there for three weeks. Um, so those are all new things and those are all success. Um, stories with Mildred, uh, she will still have accidents. I, you know, she's still young and her owners still have lots of time to go home and implement the stuff we covered and, and even continue to try some different things. So there's still hope, um, that they might get to a place where this is a totally a just a thing of the past. But right now that just isn't the case for Mildred. It looks to me like she's probably always going to have accidents, although my hope is that they become fewer and fewer, um, they're just not fully eliminated because sometimes that's just the breaks.

So we tried everything, uh, adjusting feeding schedules. We tried high structure of course, and we did that the whole time she was with me.

Um, frequent trips outside, having a designated area outside to encourage going. When we were out there, uh, we all the stuff, all the stuff I, I lowered her ceiling temporarily in her kennel, um, overnight thinking. 'cause mostly it was like early in the morning if you didn't get there in time, she would go. And I didn't really know what time it was happening. I did get that figured out later. But, so we tried lowering the ceiling for a few days just to see when she was in her kennel at night, if not being able to fully stand up would um, help prevent her from having a bowel movement or pee while she was in there.

And it just didn't do anything at all. So we put her kennel back to normal 'cause there's no point in, you know, I did. I don't like to do that.

That's like my last protocol to try when nothing else is working. Um, and it just didn't work. <laugh> so is what it is. Um, and I would often put her in the kennel if she's in the kennel out in the main living area of the house. And there's people home and present. She doesn't soil her kennel. I don't think she ever had an accident in that situation. Um, but if she's in the dog room where you can't see her, especially if you leave the house, she goes in her kennel. Um, and if you don't get her to poop outside like right before you leave, she's almost certainly going to do it.

And I did try putting her in there and watching her on the camera. Um, but I can't stare at the camera forever. <laugh>, you know, so I couldn't catch her going in her kennel. And, and so, you know, it's hard when that happens because of course you feel badly.

Um, you hope for the best people pay you money to hopefully get results. And I mean, we did deliver results, but um, they're just not a hundred percent, which we always hope for. But that's the breaks, that's the real world. The truth is you can't fix them all. You can't save them all. Um, this could be not even behavioral, it could be biological. Um, so, but we're still rooting for them and rooting for them to go home and implement all this stuff and see how things, um, turn out as the dust starts to settle. And I'm hopeful that things continue to get better and better and better as time goes on.

So we'll see. And we'll keep you posted. And then Callie goes home tomorrow. We're wicked excited for that. Can't wait to show her owners everything she's learned. She's been doing stellar. Um, she's still kind of a nervous gal, but boy she does a great job, um, prioritizing her handler over all those nervy impulses.

So I'm super impressed with how she's done and we've just been taking her everywhere, everywhere, everywhere that we can. So, uh, her go homes tomorrow and then we have Pearl, um, who is the great Pyrenees puppy and they're very independent and not usually super food driven. I'm happy to report. We have really built up her food drive a lot and she's super into her training and she's learning everything and doing great. And she'll come back for her eco training leader, which is exciting. Um, because I know her owners, they really didn't even expect much 'cause they're familiar with the breed and, and they just kind of thought that, um, you know, they can't be trained to a high level of reliability, but they absolutely can.

So we're super excited to show them that after she comes back for her big girl training in a few months, it's gonna be awesome.

And that's where we are with all the dogs. And then I'm gonna be away again for another week. Um, but I'm gonna try to get some episodes scheduled so that we don't have another big gap. So fingers crossed, <laugh>, we'll get that done. Let's get down to business today guys. We're gonna talk about destructive behavior, um, and all the silly, purely positive methods that absolutely won't work. They won't work, they won't work for you. Um, I feel very confident in that. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about destructive behavior, what that means, um, how they suggest you fix it, quote unquote, and why it doesn't work and how we do fix it.

08:00 — The episode turns to destructive behavior and challenges purely positive methods for stopping it.

Lastly, and at the very end, I will give some specific examples of destructive behaviors and exactly what our process is for changing those behaviors. So stay tuned for that.

So a lot of my material comes from the silly stuff I see on social media. Um, there's just no end to it. Like, there's just so much comical stuff you guys online about dog behavior and dog training and, and all this stuff. And so it's just, it's an endless, endless plethora of just stupid stuff. People say <laugh>. So gives me lots to talk about. Um, so destructive behavior, obviously a super, super common. And before we jump into, um, what you should do and what you shouldn't do, let's differentiate just kind of some different types of destructive behavior.

And what I mean by that is, um, different types of dogs, right? So one of the things you'll, well, I'm not even gonna get into that right now. We're, we're gonna wait, I save that for later. You have puppies, right? Like young puppies. Now young puppies are often destructive.

They're, especially if they're teething, right? They wanna grab your shoes, they wanna grab the rug, they wanna chew on the chair, whatever it is, that's pretty normal and you can absolutely correct that behavior, but we usually don't do that with young puppies, um, because we don't wanna walk around having to correct our puppy constantly. Um, so we pick and choose the things we correct them for. And destructive behavior isn't one of them. So normally I would say if your young puppy is chewing on your furniture or your shoes or any of that, that's a you problem.

Like you are doing something wrong. You're giving your puppy too much freedom. Not enough supervision, not enough engagement. Like they should probably be in their kennel when you catch them chewing on stuff, right? They shouldn't be out there. Um, puppies should be in their kennel a lot more than people realize.

And you can take them out as much as you want, but when you take them out, you are with them, you're doing something right, you're taking them for a walk, you're taking them out to potty, you're playing with them, you're training them, all these things. And when you're not doing that, they go back in their kennel. So your puppy's laying around chewing on your dining room chair or your sneakers, that's a problem with your, um, daily routine, okay? Uh, but you know, if you're doing something with the puppy or you're just standing there for a second, your puppy starts to chew on something, we would normally just interrupt that, right?

11:00 — When puppies are not supervised for activities, they should return to their kennel to…

We might give them a firm, hey or something like that. Um, but really when they're that young, and when I say that young, I mean like under four months or so of age, certainly under, you know, three months you get bring home an eight week old puppy.

Like we're not gonna walk around correcting them for everything. Um, especially chewing on stuff like that's our fault. Um, eventually, yes, if your dog is still doing that as they get older, you have to have that conversation with them a hundred percent, right? But you don't have to have all those conversations immediately when you bring home a baby puppy, right? It's like they're just, they're hell on wheels. They're, you know, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks old, they're always into trouble, right? So it's up to you to really control that situation and use your structure and use your panel.

Uh, okay, so that's one type, right? You, you've got puppies, they're obviously gonna be destructive a lot of the time. Um, then we have like the extremely drivey working dogs. So for those of you who don't know what I mean by that, um, this can be any breed, right?

But we often see it in breeds like German shepherds, uh, the Belgian dogs, meise, Dutchess, um, VLAs are crazy <laugh>, they go on the list. Um, so these are dogs that have a lot of people refer to their dog as high energy and they really just aren't always. But these are dogs that do have a very high energy level and a very high drive. Uh, meaning they can get very hyper-focused on something in a way that kind of gives them, um, tunnel vision and makes them extremely driven for that thing, right? And then if they're genes are such that they're bred to be driven for a certain thing and they're not getting to do that at all, you'll see it start to just pour out in like this frantic mess of behavior where they're just anxious and whiny and pacing and chewing and getting into stuff, right?

Because like they don't have direction, those dogs really need it. Um, and so a lot of people turn to exercise and I do think that that is an important piece of the equation. We'll get there, but I don't like it when people become highly reliant on exercise alone. 'cause it doesn't really fix things. So if you have one of these, um, really high energy, very high drive working type of dog and they're destructive, yes, I want you to make exercise a regular part of your routine. But the fact is, there are gonna be days where your dog might not get it right, the weather's bad, or you are sick, or they're sick or whatever it is.

14:00 — Exercise matters, but relying on physical activity alone does not resolve destructive behavior.

Or they've had surgery or things happen, you know, things go off the rail sometimes, not every day. Is your routine gonna work out normally? So yes, make exercise part of your routine.

But here's the thing too. Most people, their exercise with their dog is like just totally frantic exercise. There's no rules. There's no boundaries, there's no expectations. So there's no mental, mental focus happening, right? It's like exer, it's physical exercise where the brain goes frantic, it's chaos inside the brain. And that type of exercise is the least valuable type of exercise. I'm not saying you can't ever do it and just go have some wacky fun and not ask your dog to do work. But I'm saying structured play that actually does include some rules and boundaries, generally speaking, is more effective at draining your dog's energy because it drains them mentally and physically.

Um, and it's a great way to just continue building your relationship and building on um, the nature of your relationship and the structure and, and the rules and the relevance that you want, right?

Most games when we play games have rules. Um, so I think that's a great way, um, to play with your dog too, is to keep rules. So an example of that would be like they have to drop your toy, their toy when you tell them to, they have to come back when called. They have to hold it down, um, when you throw the ball or whatever it is, right? So whatever you wanna do, but it includes some kind of rules and boundaries like you have to do X, y, and Z when we're playing. Um, and I think that's great and that's going to be more effective than just running around like an idiot.

Um, you know, just frantic and, and no rules or boundaries or no mental work happening at all, especially if we do have a working dog. 'cause they're bred and wired to use their brain as well as their body.

And that's usually missing, right? So that's another kind of destructive behavior is when you have that high drive working dog who just has nowhere to direct, um, their physical energy or their mental energy and it just kind of pours outta them in a mess of destruction, <laugh>. And that can be really ugly. And then we have the dogs that are just plain anxious, which there's a little bit of overlap there, right? Again, these are usually dogs that just have no direction. They have no instruction, they have no clear path to walk, they have nowhere to direct that brain.

17:00 — Anxious, destructive dogs often lack direction, instruction, and a clear path for their behavior.

Um, and I think those dogs, that tends to be more the brain than the body, right? It's not necessarily a lack of exercise as much as it is just a lack of direction and a place to direct that brain. So they're anxious, they don't have any direction, they don't know what they're supposed to be doing.

They're, you know, they tend to be the dogs that kind of pace around and whine. And so then when they finally do lay down, they're like gnawing on the rug or like the door jam or, you know what I mean? Because it's like, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Um, and that's why training helps so much with all these things because, and you can tell your dog what they should be doing and they listen <laugh> and they have somewhere else to direct their brain 'cause they know it's important.

Um, so yes, make exercise part of your daily routine, but don't rely solely on that. You're still missing a piece. Um, if it's just draining the body and not the brain. Now most dogs can be pretty well cured of chewing on stuff they're not supposed to.

Some dogs it's harder. Like it's just so hard wired in there. Or maybe if you have a dog that just really doesn't generalize things as well, right? Then it's like you might inhibit chewing on your shoes, but then the next thing you know, they're chewing on your daughter's teddy bear or the rug or the chair or you know, something like that. And it's like you have to keep telling them, Nope, not that. Nope, not that. Nope, not that. Um, because they just don't make the generalization. Well, across the board or very, very common dogs learn to make the discrimination between when someone's around and will intervene and when someone's not around, right?

So even if your dog can be trusted, when you're around, you're in the room, you're in the house, um, if you absolutely get in the car and you leave, the dog goes out, I'm free to chew now because there's nobody here to do anything about it. So they'll learn that dogs will learn any discrimination that you lay out in a pattern for them. So some dogs easy to fix, some dogs not so much, right? And for those dogs, your kennel is the safest place for your dog. So when people drop a dog off here and they're like destructive, chewing, it's a problem.

I'm like, alright, we're gonna fix that. And you're still gonna put your dog in a kennel when you leave.

Why? 'cause why not? Why wouldn't you wanna do that? Right? Because when you are not there guys, you are not there. And so you have to believe 100% that your dog is never going to get the desire to chew on something strong enough to try it again when you are not there because you can't do anything about it. If they do, you're not there to see it, right? You're just there to see the aftermath when you get home. And that could cost you a lot of money depending on what they destroyed, depending on what gets stuck in their tummy, all those things.

So why just put your dog in the kennel? It is the safest place for your dog. So I never wanna tell people to just rely on management. It's both. And guys, it's like, let's be smart about this. So all of our training, we take that approach, right? It's like we're gonna make the dog make the best possible decisions and we're not gonna put them in a position intentionally where they're likely to make a bad decision and to have to deal with those consequences. Both. You don't have to choose one or the other. Do the training, but then also be smart about the positions you put your dog in.

21:00 — Effective behavior change combines training with careful management that prevents repeated bad decisions.

Do both.

So looking at this Facebook post, this person fosters dogs. She has quite a few of them at a time, which to me seems like a lot. Um, you know, they're using gates, they're putting them in certain rooms, but the complaint is that there's access to plush dog beds, office chairs, bookshelves, wooden furniture, paper cans, long curtains, blah, blah, blah. Um, and sometimes crimes occur. Well, you already know one problem with this, right? It's like, okay, you've got like a dozen foster dogs or something and they're just loose in your house, which is nuts. So, absolutely nuts.

So, so again, structure. Structure. But if we're talking about changing the behavior, um, the recommendation that was posted as a comment here is, how much time do you spend? How much one-on-one training and play lessons with you. Okay? Who cares?

Who cares? Because spending more time with them is not going to inhibit the behavior of chewing the curtains or the beds or the paper cans or whatever. It has nothing to do with that. So there's a saying that a tired dog is a good dog. And that's often true, but that's not a trained dog. It's a tired dog, right? If your dog is just too tired to chew your chair, well what happens when they're not fucking tired anymore, guys? They're going to chew. Okay? It's, you cannot rely on exercise. That's why it's like, yes, we want you to use exercise.

We want you to fulfill your dog with the exercise that they need to be healthy, okay?

We don't want you to use it as a crutch to manage behavior. 'cause most of the time what ends up happening is people just train their dog, physically train their dog to be more of a nuisance because you're building up their energy, their muscle, their stamina, and you're not providing what's necessary to actually teach them not to do the behaviors. So you get a dog that's potentially more destructive, right? Once they're not tired anymore, they take a power nap, then they get up and now they're twice as ready to go, <laugh>. All right? Next comment was, in order to stop destructive chewing, you need to understand why they are doing it.

24:00 — Overreliance on exhaustion can leave dogs more destructive after they recover from a nap.

Are they bored? Are they anxious? Are they frustrated? Okay, so let's just say that we agree we don't, um, that we need to figure out why and how the dog, we apparently we need to put the dog through therapy and figure out how they feel to fix this behavior.

We need to find out if they're bored. We need to find out if they're anxious. We need to find out if they're frustrated. How do we do that? I, uh, that's all I wanna know. Like, how in the hell would you even do that? Because they're not going to tell you. So how do you do? Like this is what they'll all say, right? You gotta find out why the dog's doing it. Okay? I asked him, and I still don't know, but I have a feeling if the dog could talk, they would say, because it's fucking fun.

Because I like to, it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that guys. They're dogs. They like to chew things.

I'm so <laugh>, I'm like the dog. Good whisper. Dogs like to chew guys. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Why'd my dog bite somebody? I don't know. 'cause the dog dogs bite. So this whole business about like, you have to figure out why and get to the root of the problem. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. <laugh>, okay? It doesn't matter. It really, really, really doesn't matter at the end of the day. You just need to know how to inhibit behaviors and then do it. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't work to fulfill your dog, okay?

If you have a drivey working dog, go do stuff with them.

Do the structured play, do the training, do the scent work, sign your dog up for rescue work, do dog diving, go swimming. What whatever it is that your dog likes to do is good at is born to do, is bred to do, do protection work. Whatever it is, do it. But you still have to inhibit the behavior of being destructive. And that's not gonna happen with a doggy therapy lesson. The way it happens is by just having that conversation with your dog. And when I say talk to your dog or have that conversation with your dog, I don't mean with your mouth, I don't mean with your words other than the word no.

27:00 — Drive fulfillment can help, but destructive behavior still requires direct inhibition.

What I mean is have a marker and mark that behavior. We use the word no, right? Dog grabs a shoe, you say no, then you are going to follow that up with a real tangible correction. Oh, I said the dirty word. I can make it even worse. You can make it even dirtier. You're gonna provide a punishment. God, people hate that word. They lose their fucking minds. Punishment, punishment, punishment. Okay, now when I do that, I'm not even mad guys. I'm not angry at the dog. The dog's just doing natural dog stuff. Yeah, I might be panicked about my shoe if it's a good shoe.

I'm not mad. I don't harm the dog in any way, but I point it out with a no. And then I follow up with a real tangible consequence that frankly the dog finds intolerable. It's very safe, but it's intolerable. They don't like it and they don't like it enough so that they're not gonna go back and chew that shoe again. And they're probably gonna say twice about chewing anything that doesn't belong to them. And that's what happens when you deliver a proper correction. And all this shaming on these stupid Facebook groups about corrections I've seen in these purely positive group, which by the way, I don't go to Facebook, just shows them to me.

'cause they know that I stopped scrolling and I read it. <laugh> be. And I read it though because it's funny and it, it's, it's not just funny, it's enlightening. Like it's eyeopening to see, 'cause people fascinate me too, not just dogs to see, see what people think and what they say and what they do.

But in these groups they will, or on these pages, they will complain these purely positive trainers, purely positive, right? As if there's any such fucking thing, they will complain about their clients or potential clients calling them or coming in for a consultation or whatever, meeting with them and saying, how do I correct this behavior? That was a complaint that I saw. They're sick and tired of their customers wanting to know how to correct their dogs and how to correct their dogs' behavior. Um, okay, that's kind of important. That's a great question. I wish more people would ask me that.

<laugh>.

Plenty of people do. But most people come in here saying, we've done this, we've done that. And really it's, you know, they've redirected the dog, they've tried food, they've tried giving him stuff to do and keeping him stimulated and exercised. Don't forget exercise, right? And they're just at a loss. They don't know what to do. It's less often that people come in here and they're like, what do I do to correct this? I love that question. That's a great question, <laugh>. But they'll complain that people wanna know how to correct their dog. And it's like, I have to tell you, if you don't know how to quote unquote correct a behavior, then you shouldn't be working in behavior modification.

Now, I hate it when people are saying, if you do this or you don't do that, then you shouldn't even be. Those statements annoy me to the end of the year.

But I don't think that there's any, I don't think there's any other way to see this. Like, if you're offering a service, you should know how to do it right? And I'm not gonna tell you how to do it, but you should be able to achieve results. And if you don't believe in quote unquote correcting a dog, if you don't believe in punishing a behavior, inhibiting a behavior, then you shouldn't offer the service of stopping behaviors because you dunno how to do it. Well, lucky for you, we do know how to do it here and we do it all the time.

And I would like to add that we do it, um, safely with no negative side effects pretty much all the time since the beginning of time. Um, and it's so simple. It's painful. It's so simple. Most of the time, yes, there is some stuff that's harder. Yes, some dogs are a lot harder. Um, the vast majority of dogs, right? Nine out of 10 dogs for sure, if they chew on things in your house, if they chew on your belongings, it is super easy to stop if you know how to do it. It doesn't take tons of patients, it doesn't take therapy.

33:00 — Chewing household belongings is usually straightforward to stop when the handler understands effective training.

It doesn't take finding out in conducting investigation about why the dog is doing it. Not required, no doggy therapy required.

All you have to do is provide a consequence. We like to use these. You can do it other ways guys. Eco is the most practical way to provide a negative consequence for behavior. Yes, we do a thousand other things with it. But you know what? Stopping behaviors is the easiest thing we do with it. If you watch our videos and you watch the obedience training and the laying down on command and going to place and walking in a heel, that stuff is different. That stuff is harder. That takes a lot more skill. You want your dog to stop chewing on your carpet.

You want your dog to stop chewing on his place cot. You want your dog to stop eating your shoes. Guys, I can tell you how to fix that today. There's still skill required. If you wanna be very effective and efficient, the process does matter. But it's so easy the moment your dog starts chewing, say no. You have to have an e-collar on the dog for this. Go get your remote, turn it way up, hold the button down for a couple seconds, you're done. Move on with your life. The timing of your no matters. You can't say no 30 seconds later.

The timing of your no is more important than the timing of your correction.

At least once your dog understands that, no predicts a correction in the beginning. If your dog doesn't know that no is going to predict a correction, then you should try to do them a little closer together. Okay? So the first couple times that we're correcting a behavior, we say no, and then we immediately follow it with the correction. But it's still very important that we say no before the correction. Not during before, but after. A couple of times guys, your dog starts to go, oh, she says no and then this really uncomfortable thing happens. That happens fast dogs are not silly, but that's it.

No, you don't have to spend the next four months redirecting your dog to a Nyla bone. It's almost like they just wanna see if you'll do it. <laugh>,

36:00 — Redirecting a dog to a bone or incompatible behavior does not itself fix destructive…

No. Teaching your dog an incompatible behavior will not fix the problem, right? Because that's what they do for jumping, which is also stupid. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. Especially since you have no way to enforce the alternative behavior because you're not allowed to use force, you're not allowed to use coercion, you're not allowed to use corrections. All right? So how do you enforce the alternative behavior? You can't. It's gaslighting 1 0 1. Destructive behavior is an unwanted behavior. And if you treat it as such and you tie a contingent negative consequence to that behavior, the behavior will be reduced and hopefully eliminated.

Right? Now, whether or not it's truly eliminated, it's like, okay, well it's gonna depend on a lot of factors. Like, first of all, the most important, like the most common problem we see is that people are too easy, they're too low, they're too gentle, right?

They're too afraid. So they don't correct the dog very high. It's like, okay, if my dog grabs my shoe and I correct him at a 17 for chewing on my shoes goes to a hundred, even if he stops in the moment, it's a 17. It's not that high. So if my dog loves chewing on shoes, I mean, just think about it. This is all common sense guys, and that's what I love about it. Like the real training, right? If we're being honest about it and we're really telling people the truth, you can think about it and you go, oh my God, that actually makes total sense, right?

It makes total sense. It's logical stuff. I correct my dog to 17. Even if he stops chewing the shoes, it's just a 17, it's not that high, right? It was a little uncomfortable. Maybe it was enough for him to go, Ugh, alright, I'm gonna put it down.

But the second I turn my back, the second I run to the store, the second anything, he's going to be back out there chewing my shoes again, right? Or tomorrow he's gonna be out there chewing my shoes again, right? And that's not because the dog is stupid. It's not because he's stubborn, it's not because it doesn't work. It's because we didn't have the gall to just tie a real correction to chewing the shoes. And then you set yourself up to have to do it constantly. All the time. All the time, all the time, which nobody wants to do.

And then people start talking about being consistent. It's like, sure, but you really shouldn't have to be like, no one's gonna be consistent if you have to do it a hundred times a day, or even if you do it five times a day or twice a day, right? Because the behavior should go away guys. And then consistency isn't an issue anymore because you don't have to correct it anymore because it's gone.

But you know, we wanna rely on investigating the dog's feelings and why they're doing it and if they're bored and why they're anxious and where they came from and what the root cause and how so and so probably kicked them down the stairs. It's like, okay, have fun with that. Your problem is never gonna go away. And the only way your shoes are gonna be okay is for you to keep your dog locked up or to stare at them so that you're with a hundred Nyla bones in your pocket, right? So you can just rip them away from the shoes every day, or put your shoes on the fridge, fine.

If that's how you wanna live, do it. I don't live that way, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna put my shoes on the fridge.

40:00 — Kati rejects hiding shoes, spraying furniture, or wrapping chairs instead of teaching the dog…

I'm not gonna spray everything in my house with bitter apple as if it works anyway, right? I'm not gonna buy some kind of like Kevlar wrapping to put around my dining room chairs. No, don't chew the fucking chairs. This is easy. It's easy most of the time, but then when you can't be around, why take the risk? And yes, it can absolutely be done, right? So I tell the dog, not the dog food, I tell the the cat food story all the time, and my dog likes to eat the cat food, right? I can leave my dog loose now in the house.

He won't eat the cat food.

You can do it, it can be done. But unless you are sure that you've done it, or even if you are sure, it's like just put your dog in the cabin. Particularly if your dog eats dangerous stuff, if your dog has pica, if your dog likes to swallow things, they're not supposed to to put your dog in the kennel. There's nothing wrong with that. You're not failing. People feel like they're failing if they have to use a kennel. No, you're not. Especially if you've done the training and you've had the conversations and you've created the inhibitions.

But when you're gonna be leaving the house, it's like, we still just don't take the chance. We put the dog away. It's like, okay, great. That's the best of both worlds. And now, you know, if you accidentally don't latch the kennel, right, and your dog gets out or something, or you just forget one day to put them in there, it's probably gonna be fine, right? Because you did the work, but you just put 'em in there and it gives everybody peace of mind. And you're not avoiding doing the training. You still do the training. You're not relying on management, you're just being a smart dog owner.

But yeah, I'm not putting my shoes on the fridge. Um, I'm not, you know, picking dinner up off the table and putting it on the fridge if I need to walk outta the house or go upstairs. Our dogs know, we've taught them, like you don't take food off the table. You don't take food off our dinner plates. I can set my dinner plate on the couch and I can leave the room to go to the kitchen to get a drink to use the toilet. They're not going to touch my dinner. Why? Because we've had the conversations, because I have set it up because they know there's a tangible negative consequence associated with that behavior, unless I explicitly give it to you.

Don't go near it. <laugh>.

And your dog will make the appropriate discriminations based on what you've taught them. So if you want your dog to know, even when the dinner plate's on the floor, don't go near it. You have to set that up. You have to do that work on the table, same thing on the counter, same thing. And your dog will start to generalize all of this, right? But like we talked about earlier, some dogs are really good at generalization, some dogs are not. So you need to go through various scenarios with various triggers in various places and make it as clean as you want it to be.

43:00 — Dogs must be deliberately trained not to approach forbidden items on floors, counters, and…

And you can imagine like that's enough work. You can imagine having to just stare at the dogs all the time and redirect them with something all the time. And there's a risk too of that just being a reward, right? If your dog already starts the sequence of I'm gonna chew a shoe, and then you're like, here's a bone. Okay, well what are you really teaching the dog? Again? Beautiful common sense, perfect logic. Think it through guys. Dog grabs my shoe, here's a bone. <laugh>. Like, what are we really teaching? You want attention? You want food, you want a bone?

Why don't you chew my sneaker, then I'll give you a bone. No, just correct the behavior. But I think the part that burns my ass the most about it is taking people's money and giving them that kind of advice. What the heck?

And people will spend tons of money and weeks and months of their time trying to be consistent and follow through. It does work. It doesn't work, you know? And everything now is centered around, well, how does the dog feel? Well, how do I feel? He just chewed my shoes. It's just silly. It's just silly. But the good news is those behaviors are usually pretty easy to stop, right? And then we say, just don't trust the dog until, you know, right? Like if you're actually gonna leave and you're gonna leave your dog outta the kennel, you have to know that your dog is gonna make good choices.

And in my opinion, if your dog has a history of engaging in chewing on things, or especially swallowing things, they shouldn't, it just isn't worth the risk to me.

Do the training and use your kennel, right? But for instance, with the cat food, I set that up, I went outside with a camera, I fixed it with a correction, and then I set it up again and I set it up again and I set it up again and I just watched. So I could just see what does he do so I could make sure, right? Because one correction isn't always enough, especially since people usually are being so gentle, there's afraid of it. But I set it up many times and I could see we were done here, right?

46:00 — Kati describes repeatedly setting up cat-food scenarios, correcting the behavior, and monitoring for reliable…

But it's always worth revisiting and just checking to see if your dog's still making the right choice. Um, because they are. It's true that you suppress a behavior, it may come back. That's true. I don't deny that, right? But there's a way to be very effective and really reduce the chance of that regeneration. And then there's a way to be ineffective and increase the risk of that regeneration.

So a correction with a proper ma marker, right? Proper timing of the marker or proper timing of the correction. If you're not using a marker, which we do sometimes, like with the cat food, I didn't use a marker for that. Could you don't have to. If your timing is perfect and the consequence that you tie to the behavior is high enough, that reduces the likelihood that the behavior will regenerate. Or if it does, it's going to be a lot longer before it does, right? Because dogs are living, breathing things with brains. They're autonomous, they make decisions, things change, the environment changes, behaviors change.

That's normal. Yes, your dog might do it again. Even if you fix it, they might do it again later. Which is why I say if you have a dog that actually just swallows stuff, it's super dangerous. Just put 'em in their cannel guys, do the training, put 'em in their cannel.

Why? Take the chance. Keep your dog safe, man. But you can be very effective with training protocols if you know how to do it. And I can tell you, it doesn't involve redirection. It doesn't involve an investigation into your dog's feelings. And this woman on Facebook said she basically had given up on having nice things. It's like, well, to a degree, if you have animals or kids, you might as well give up on having nice things. Um, but it doesn't have to be because they just chew on whatever they want whenever they want. It doesn't have to be because you have to stare at them 24 hours a day.

Gimme a break.

And people live that way. And I gotta tell you, that kills me. That's why I get so mad about this. You know, because I'm, I'm thinking about the people and they can't live their lives the way they wanna live their lives. They, they literally have to modify their lifestyle to fit the dog that's fucked up. Your dog guys needs to fit into your life, which is gonna make you happier, which in turn is going to transfer over to your dog, right? You're gonna bond better with your dog. You're gonna like your dog more. You're gonna do more with your dog.

You're gonna do more for your dog.

Your dog has to fit into your life and all the gates and doors and separation and giving up on having things. No, right? The reactive dogs where the trainer says, just keep your shades down, duh. It's like, what? I'm supposed to live with my shades down for the rest of the dog's life. I'm supposed to spend the next 12 years not being able to see out my fucking window. That's your advice, that's your training. No, no <laugh> guys. No. And it doesn't. Doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter why. Pretty much across the board guys, if your dog has a bad behavior, you need to inhibit that behavior with a tangible negative consequence, right?

It has to be contingent. You have to make sure you understand the process enough that your dog ties the consequence to the behavior, right? Can't seem like a random consequence. That's not gonna be helpful, but that's pretty easy to do.

Redirection not gonna get you there. So yes, sometimes people use redirection, especially with puppies, and eventually the behavior goes away. Let me tell you a secret. That's not because redirection worked, it's because the puppy just naturally outgrew it. Oftentimes it's because they were teething and then they were just done teething, okay? It's not because your fancy redirection was effective. And I'll take it a step further. Like if you wanna give your dog something to chew on that they can chew on, that's actually fine. But you can't skip the piece where you say, don't chew on that.

You have to have that conversation, right? Don't chew my shoe, don't chew the trim on the wall, don't chew the rug, don't chew the entertainment center. And then after the correction, after the conversation, after the contingent negative consequence, then you can say, why don't you chew on this?

52:00 — Kati closes by inviting listeners to submit future training topics through email or fan…

Probably still not my preference, to be honest, because I don't like to create a cycle with multiple consequences where it's like negative consequence, positive consequence. But at least that would still contain the critical piece, which is the inhibitor, right? The negative consequence for the behavior. And again, not 'cause we're mad, 'cause we're trying to change the behavior. You have to change the neurology guys. The brain's gonna keep making that same connection unless you give it a reason not to. And that's it. So if your dog is chewing on things or has any other bad behavior, I think our biggest moral to the story here is do not go on Facebook for advice because you'll get very crappy advice.

<laugh>. That's it for today guys. Thanks for being here and I look forward to the next one. Hey guys, thanks for joining us today. I really hope you enjoyed the show. If there's a specific topic you'd like to hear discussed, you can send that to me directly via email or fan mail. Just jump down into the show notes. That information will be there for you. I really look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for supporting the show and I look forward to next time.