Hello, doodle parents. This is Corinne, The Doodle Pro, and I am thrilled to be having a really fantastic guest with us today. Her name is Emily Martin, and she's the head trainer and owner of Pawsitively Pets Training in Denver, Colorado. She has some unique experience to bring to us. She's not a hobbyist. She actually has over a decade of experience working in zoos including the famous San Diego zoo and working on care for exotic and zoo pets and animals and their training. And now she is specialized in dog training, although she still works with different breeds and species as well. 

So we're really looking forward to having Emily join us today and our members of the doodle pro society, our private membership all voted on what they wanted to hear Emily discuss, and they voted on getting help with their doodles, stopping jumping on their guests, or when they're out and about some doodles. Jump on everybody. Some are just super excited when somebody enters the room. So I'm excited to introduce Emily Martin to you today. Hello Emily. Hi. Hi. How are you guys? Thank you for joining us. We are happy to have you.

We're going to have some guests or some members join us live and ask some questions, but we'll also have people watch the replay and then this will be aired on our podcast, The Doodle Pro Podcast as well. So we're happy to have you. I know. Good. I know I undersold your experience and background, so I would love if you could share with our listeners, what brought you to the point you are today? 

Yeah, I definitely have a pretty unique background and I think that captures the eyes of a lot of my clients. And so like if she can train, you know, a mountain lion and a monkey, she can train my doodle. Right. And I always laugh because I say sometimes our doodles are harder than that monkey in that lion because we live with them and we have everyday behavior happening.

So a little bit of my background is yeah, I was in the zoo field for almost 20 years, so quite a long time and I love it and I miss it. But dogs, stubs bring me so much joy as well. I'm most of my career. So I actually have a degree in exotic animal training and management. So very specific to that field.

I went to a school that specialized in zookeeping animal training education, all that good stuff. And from there, most of my career was spent in two different departments. So one was education with animals. So I did worked for some nonprofits. I've also worked for a few big zoos and traveling around with animals, doing shows, doing education, doing school programs.

I've been on Jay Leno. I've been on Letterman. That's what those guys were running, all kinds of fun stuff with animals. And then also I was a primate keeper for a couple of years. Primates are my favorite. I love working with new world monkeys. Capuchins are absolutely one of my favorites. They're so smart. They're such little stinkers, but I like, I like a good challenge. Hence why I think I like dog training. And then I also took a few years off.

 So took a few years off for my other passion, which is snowboarding, which is why I love living in Denver because I have best of both worlds for animals and snow. And I was a dog musher for a few years. So I have a senior Malamute Husky. Who's almost 14. And she came from mammoth sled dog team. So I was with her since she was born. And she was my first adult dog and has taught me so much. And I've learned from her and I still am learning from her. Yeah. And then positively pet started in 2010 as a full-time gig. And then it was part-time for a long time.

As I was a zookeeper, I would try, you know, zoo animals during the day and then dogs in the evenings and on my weekends. And then in 2019, I decided the hard decision to leave the zoo field and focus on dogs full time. I felt my clients pulling me there and it was needed and just time for a change. So now it's dogs all day,every day. Awesome. Well, we are lucky to have you working with our dogs.

 And I wanted to ask you, we have been working on using treats with our doodles and as we're working on different training areas, I felt like that was a good place to start. And we have been identifying what the, our personal doodles, low, medium, and high value treats are. Would you mind sharing what you like to use for each when you're training and what times do you find it appropriate to go higher value, more expensive treats. And when you might find that over stimulating for a dog that you're working with and you might bump it down, et cetera, can you mind, do you mind sharing about that a little?

Yeah. That's a good question. And I laugh because everybody, when I show up to clients, they're like, my dog loves you so much and you always have the best treats often. I don't, I do have good treats, but it's not always the best. It's just different than what you have. So sometimes, you know, I say just first off, mixing it up, I always have a trail mix. So I have sometimes a trail mix of low value to high value, low values, like Cheerios and kibble, dry, crunchy treats. What I'm not a huge fan of unless they're real small and they can just eat them in one though. And then medium value treats are more like jerky based treats, a little chewier.

And then up from, there are a little stinkier treats. So like salmon tree, salmon based treats or some smellier fish, things like that. And then I really like the freeze dried treats are probably my favorite there. One ingredient freeze dried you're at my only natural pet and they have some really good stuff there. So I'm dehydrated beef, liver, dehydrated salmon, dehydrated chicken, that's kind of that next level. And then the high, high valued, again, depending on each dog is different cheese, hot dogs, spam, which is really gross. But peanut butter, Who those humans who have cat food even, or baby food like chicken, baby food, things like that. 

And what I always tell owners too, is if your dog is not taking treats outside, there's two issues. Either one, they don't like the treat. If they'll eat it, you know, never eat it. Or two, the environment is too challenging and they're a little bit over what we call threshold. So they're a little overstressed to be comfortable to eat. And so when we are training like dog activity and some of those more challenging things, we always want to make sure we're starting farther away, making sure dog is comfortable eating and teaching them. Sometimes we have to teach a dog to eat outside. And that's kind of when we start to play around with a different value too, but yeah, the value. Yes. And we often use treats to gauge when we're working with doodles. If they're overstressed, if they're over threshold or too stressed out, cause that's one of the easiest ways to see if they're too stressed to eat or take a treat, even though that's a calming mechanism, then we need to know what I need to dial back on. Awesome. A lot of people worry that if they're using treats with their doodles, that there'll be dependent upon using treats forever or that they're bribing their doodle.

Do you mind sharing a little of your philosophy on that? Yeah. So that word bribing is kind of a good, good little button to talk about. You should never really be bribing our dogs. We should be training and reinforcing behavior. And I think that there are owners that say, you know, my dog won't do anything unless I have a treat.

And sometimes if it's not trained correctly, that can happen. And there's a difference between bribery luring and paying out our dogs. So for always having a treat in our hand and showing them and luring them yet, we can get definitely stuck down that kind of rabbit hole. So that's something I work on my clients is to fading out that lure. And I like to use a marker where either clicker and that tells them, yeah, good job of reward is coming. You can also trade out treats for different, depending on the dog toys, pets, things like that, play time fetch. And so, you know, once our dog knows something, they don't need a treat every time and we don't want to get super dependent on that. But I also believe that our dogs reward or deserve to be paid out their entire life.

I don't work for free. You guys probably don't work for free. I don't expect my dogs to work for free. You know, I, I mix it up with my dogs and sometimes we'd go out with cheese and sometimes we'd go out with Cheerios and those Tuesdays they're on it. They're like, this is the best work day ever. Thanks mom for the pay raise.

And then I change it up. So there is that fine line, but my philosophy is that dogs deserve to be paid when they're doing good. You can also think of treats or payment as feedback. The more feedback you give in the beginning, the better that behavior is going to occur as they're doing better. We slowed down that feedback. So they get a little bit less.

Yep. I completely agree what gets reinforced gets repeated. I, Yes, some doodle parents have been taught when they've gone to puppy school or worked with different trainers to use some aversives. So that could be called corrections using tools like a slip lead or prong or e-collar. And I was curious with your zoo background, we work with doodles who have been trained in all backgrounds.

We have a really empathetic, supportive approach to working with all pet parents. We all are doing the best that we can. We personally only use force free and fear-free approaches. But I'm curious when you worked with exotic species, I imagine some people might suppose that those might be harder to train than dogs. So I was curious if zoos use aversives or force or anything like that when they're working with their animals. Good question. And you know, that's a hard question to answer in a way of like, as far as I look at the dog training industry, as well as like things have changed, things have changed luckily for the better, but, you know, I started in the zoo industry in early 2000.

So gosh, 22 years ago, and things were different than they are now. And you know, the school I went to focus on positive reinforcement, but even the words, positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement training, that is a different scope of what it used to be as far as like consent and force free and really breaking that down. So, you know,

I would love to say all zoos use positive reinforcement and force free. Unfortunately that's not the case. And I think it's just more, maybe a lack of resources, a lack of education. It can be a lack of time. I've seen where like, well, we need the animal to do this, so we're just going to make them do it.

So yeah, unfortunately it's not across the board. It's become more popular though in certain zoos that are their philosophies. I think what's interesting is I've seen it. I'll also also different in different species. We'll just say gorillas like gorillas, right? Great apes, really intelligent, really smart, easier to train than say a snake. And so we might injection train a gorilla or chain them to shift from, you know, enclosure, one enclosure to, but yet a snake or a lizard. We're just going to pick up and hold them, make them do it where we could spend that time to train them. So every species is trainable. And I think that's kind of where I've seen the shift of like trying to get more push for it across the board and not just the intelligence species per se.

I have a background working with a special needs kids and in schools. And I see the trends with pet training and care following human parenting trends. So there's a lot less spanking or pinching of the ear of kids, but a lot of people do things cause that's how I was raised. And that's how I was taught. And I see the same with our pet care and pet training.

There's a lot of things passed down and then as more science comes, the things evolve, but it takes resources and time. Yeah. And I think people, yeah, do what they know. I have a lot of clients that have come to me and they were using aversives, and they said, you know, something didn't feel right or behavior got worse.

And then we found it found you, but we had no idea positive reinforcement. We didn't know there was a difference in these types of training. And personally, like I grew up with Cesar Milan, right? And he's not somebody I would promote or follow his policies. But so many of us grew up with that and that's still what we think is up to date.

And so it is, it's getting that word out there, getting that education out there and, and also sharing the why. I'm very passionate about teaching the owners of why I choose positive reinforcement. Why I think this philosophy is the best for our pets and can change behavior for the better and things like that. Wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing a bit of your background.

As I shared with you before we have our private membership, The Doodle Pro Society, and those members voted on what their hottest topic is that they would love professional trainer help with. And the thing that they're having the most difficulty with is stopping their doodles from jumping. I have a couple stats for you. We pulled them 100% of the respondents said that their doodles jump on people.

And none of them said that they like it. The humans 66% said that their doodles jumped on people. Anytime they see them. And then 33% said they, their doodle jumps on people when they enter the house. Again, this is a wide range of sizes. So having an eight pound mix versus an 80 pound mix is different. Just like when you're house training, great Danes don't have accidents in the house for long, but a maltipoo might. And when they have worked on stopping their doodle from jumping, there were three things out of a list of many that people had tried, 50% had tried saying down or off to their doodle, a 33% either put their knee out or tried the knee to the chest. And 16% stepped on a leash trying to manually keep the doodle down.

So that's where we're coming from right now. And I would love to hear what your advice is on approaches to stopping doodles from jumping on people. Yeah. I think jumping is definitely one of the most common behaviors jumping and leash manners, I think are two really popular ones that I get all the time and jumping of course like any behavior there's tiers. And multilevels of looking at training and looking at the behavior.

One question, and I don't know if you know this answer, did you ask if, so we talk about jumping on guests to these dogs also jump on the owners. So as let's see, 66% said, anytime they see a person. So I would assume. Including  themselves. That would include including themselves walks, et cetera. And what I see from the hundreds of doodle clients that I work with, it's almost always including family members and owners and then confession. I'm the only one who cares in my house. If our 18 pound cavapoo jumps on anyone. So it's been positively reinforced by everyone else in my home for No that's that, that's a good point too. I always tell people, you know, I work on dogs on jumping and I laugh because my senior dog is 70 pounds and she's a big girl and she does not jump on people.

She's never been allowed. And now I have, now I have two smaller dogs that are 25 pounds. And I joke that they totally have made me go soft. And maybe it's because I trained dogs all day. So I come home and I'm like, really like keen manners. I've let them slip it off with their 25 pounds. And so with them,

I decided I don't mind if they jump, but let's look at that bigger picture. And this is why I asked if they're jumping on the owners. If you don't mind, they're jumping on you. That means they are allowed to jump on to Joe. Whoever comes over because it is very hard for a dog to distinguish. I can jump on a, but not B. And it, it, you know, we can break that down, but it's a lot more complex training. And so that's something. If somebody comes over and tries to punish my dog for jumping out, I actually tell them, sorry, I do allow them to jump. You know, if you don't want them to jump, go ahead and sit down and he'll jump up on the couch next to you.

And you can pet them that way. So I always like to share that little bit, cause I think people are, Oh! The trainer lets her dog jump?! But thinking about that too. So if the dog jumps on you, they're going to jump on other people. Reinforcement drives behavior, just like you mentioned earlier. Now when we say reinforcement drives behavior, that can be good behavior or bad behavior. So if the bad behavior is reinforced, if we are reinforcing jumping, which we're going to talk about here more than that behavior will continue. So if somebody in your house, cause they don't care. If you jump, hi puppy puppy, he's reinforcing that bad behavior and the dog goes cool. I'm going to keep doing that.

So let's break this down a little bit. I'm gonna pull up my notes here. So first off, I'm going to ask, ask you a question. Why do you think dogs jump on people? Well, it can be reinforcing. So it's coming up to eye level where we are. If we're on the ground, usually like if we're on bended knee, that's usually not. They're not still jumping over us. It can be a very kind of submissive behavior with like the lizard tongue. But more often it's extra excitement and management of that. And when they're little puppies, we often reinforce it with, oh, you're so cute, et cetera. And then poodle mixes are more positive in general. So, and we see that with the Doodles who are poodle mixes.

They're more positive in their play. What would be considered rude by other dogs is appropriate and doodle play with the bouncy paws up. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of times I love that you bring breed traits because that's very important. I have Huskies and Northern breeds are my jam and their play is very, also very different than poodle play.

And some people are very standoffish. I'm like, they're vocal. It's what they do. They're vocal players and they make sounds but so jumping. Yeah, most of the time when dogs are jumping up, they're trying to get attention and you're spot on about puppies. And so this is something to start from the beginning. I teach my puppy clients that our dogs don't get to say hi to everybody from day one, we talk about, you know, socialization, that's a whole other conversation, but I dog's going to say, puppy's going to say hi to some people and not others. And teaching them right off the bat, everybody isn't at your disposal to go jump on and say hi to. So that's kind of from like step one. And then when we look at dogs, you know, guests and people out there usually jumping on them to be like, Hey, Hey, I want your attention. Hey, you, Hey, you look at me or pet me. Right. So you mentioned a couple of things that owners are trying. So let's talk about that. We've talked about positive attention already. So it'll get reinforced.

If somebody in the whole of and saying, hi puppy, you know, high Fido, how are you? That's us giving positive attention. And that behavior will occur. Now your owners said some things they tried. So we're going to start there. The one thing they said is telling their dogs no, or off or down, right? Yes. Pretty common.

Now the catches with that say, I'm going to use moose, my little one. So moose runs over. He jumps up on me and I tell him no. And I maybe give them a little hand to the chest or something of that sort. Yeah. Right. Push them off or whatever. Am I still giving them attention? Yes. Yeah.

And often in our dog's eyes. So we call this negative attention, right? We're telling them no down off, maybe pushing them up. That is negative attention in our eyes. But often our dogs do not view it as negative attention. They go, well, she still looked at me. She still talked to me. She still touched me. I got what I wanted.

And so if that's occurring, we need to pay attention and we need to stop that. We need to reroute that because it's still reinforcing to your dog. I use the example to I'm, I'm the baby in my family. And we'd go on long road trips. And you know, I loved, annoying my siblings. Right. So if I wanted to know him, my brother I'd sit there and poke at him until he scream at me. It works the Same with our dogs. It works. I got what I wanted. It wasn't positive, but I got a rise out of him. So that's something I want you guys to think about. We're going to talk about what to do instead. Right? Cause it's not all just about that.

But you were telling no. And off I want, I want us to stop that. If it, if the behavior is still occurring, it's still being reinforced. The other ones. And I, us going like this pushing is kind of us doing plays up right back. Yep. It's play. It's fun dogs are like, "HekcYes. That's great.

Let's do this. Yeah. Not that often. The dogs just feed off that and then like, all right, cool. I got, I got, I got attention that works. And then your other one you mentioned was like a knee honey to the chest. That one is a little bit more it's negative, but it's more aversive-negative and it's not something again.

I would practice with my business philosophies and techniques. I just simply explain, Hey, if I wanted to come, if you wanted to come hug me and I don't like to be hugged. And so you came in to me and I punched you right in the gut. What would you think? Not enjoyable. So I just, I personally am not a person to apply pain or pressure to decrease a behavior that is called positive punishment.

So it'd be adding some, adding an adversive to decrease the behavior. And it's just not a philosophy I choose to practice. Yeah. It can work. It can not work again. What I always tell people with punishment, so there's, we can get nerdy and get into some of the quadrants, but with positive punishment, it can work. But you're also suppressing behavior.

You're suppressing feelings. So again, you're not teaching the dog what to do instead. You're just teaching them and say, stop it. You're going to get paid. But the dog's like, well, what should I do instead? I don't know. Right. And so you might get a dog that gets shy of humans. I mean, like every time I go, no, you're human. I get like, that's not enjoyable. So I'm just, I'm just going to stay over here on the corner and, and maybe even park at that human, because I don't want to get hurt. And you can actually have some aversive feelings then towards people. And that's definitely not Softer dogs that it could go really far. Yeah.

Yep. Absolutely. I'm working with some doodles right now who have a lot of stranger danger and that would just take them to the other direction. And then we have, so that's positive. Punishment would be afflicting pain. I mean things. And then we have negative punishment now in the training industry, again, there's quadrants, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative pressure. I'm not going to dive too deep, but I do like to talk about, I Know, right science, but negative punishment sounds scary, right? It has the word negative. 

I think this is owners often. You didn't mention this, which I was kind of surprised. This is one. I get a lot when I say my dogs jump and I say, what do you do? So usually I hear I tell them off or no. And then I hear, I ignore the behavior. So turning your back and ignore the dog and that, you know what? Back when I started learning, that's what I used to teach. That's what I had learned. I don't anymore. And we'll go into the why, but negative punishment is ignoring your dog. So it's actually taking something away that your dog wants to increase, decreased the behavior, and it can be a decent tool. And it is a tool I will use still for certain behaviors, leash walking. I'll use it for that. I don't love it for jumping because here's what you get. Sometimes if you, ignore your dog, you turn your back, turned around. And one of my dogs back up in the air lounging back there, oh, the dog life. It must be nice. You turn your back, we'll jump harder. Some dogs will nip you on the butt. Some dogs will grab your pant leg, herding. So you can create some frustration by ignoring and frustrated dogs.

Again, that can escalate to them trying harder and harder and be like, this always worked. Why I'm jumping on you? Why aren't you telling me no. Why aren't you telling me off? Why aren't you giving me? And so that's also an undesired behavior we want from our dogs. Right? We don't want to build that perspiration in them. And we see that a lot.

I often used to wait to greet until a dog had four on the floor and I have lots of treats and goodies and I bring fun and other doodles. And instead of saying what I want them to do instead, and I saw the same reaction. Yep. Yeah. Because they don't know. And especially if they haven't been taught, right. They're like, this has always worked for the past. Like, you know, whatever how many months it is, why isn't it all of a sudden working. So those, those are kind of the, the basics of when we talk about philosophies or things we're doing, those are the most common and why maybe those aren't working. So I definitely want to share the why I'm a big part of training is looking at what is the function, right? So if I'm showing the wire dogs are jumping for attention and then looking at, okay, we've tried these things, why are they not actually working? And what is actually, what is truly occurring underneath the surface? And that's something, again, with training as we have to, we have to dig into it. It's not just all, you know, rainbows and butterflies on, on top. We have to dig into that underlayer and get into some of those feelings. Wonderful. So those are the things that people are trying, that aren't working feel free to touch on and stepping on the lead as well. And I would love to hear what you'd like them to do instead, what you find works. Yeah.

So stepping on the lead again you're in the right direction, you're in the right direction there. So that is a management technique. However, stepping on the leash, you're still using some, a little bit more correction because the dog goes up and jerk back down. So if you are going to use leash, definitely as one of my management ways, and we're going to go over management versus training, having them on a leash, having some cookies, having some treats and feeding them next to you for staying next to you, calm, maybe creating some space between you and the guest. And once they have been like, oh, hi mom, hi mom. Oh, cool. Okay. Then they can go say hi.

So again, a lot of times when we're greeting people, maybe we're so focused on the person and I safe to stay focused on your dog for a little bit or tell the person, Hey, we're in training. Can you give me just a minute? Let him calm down. Let me get them to a better, you know, a little bit, if they're a 10 excitement to a six excitement, and then you can say hi, I think we forget to advocate for our dogs. And if you tell somebody, Hey, we're in training, can you give me just a minute? 99% of people are going to respect that and say, okay, cool. I get it right. I feel embarrassing and stressful.

Sorry to, oh yes. It can feel embarrassing and stressful when your dog is jumping and feel free to send your guests a text ahead of time with that heads up. Like, I can't wait to catch up. We're in training. If you don't mind, you know, being patient while I help him. I'd so appreciate it. And that could take your anxiety and stress down a bit as well.

And your guests are gonna appreciate it. Think about the bigger picture, right? Like you're telling your guests, I am trying to make your experience better. When you come in the door. I also recommend putting a note on your door and I've had some really creative signs made that clients have done that say, you know, give us a minute dogs and training and things like that.

So definitely prepare yourself for success and your guests for success as well. They will get it. So, yeah. So when we talk about what to do, there's two different routes. There's management, and then there's training. And these two do pair hand in hand and we are going to use both well, we are implementing training. We are going to use management when we can't be in training mode, because let's be honest. We can't be training all the time, right. Real life. Right. So management mode would be options. As far as, you know, somebody is coming over and maybe they're just coming over and dropping something off. And like, you don't even want to deal with the dog. Right? You just be like, you know, this was going to be a two second conversation, pop your dog outside, put him in a bedroom, put them somewhere else, put them where they can't be at the door and be running to jump on that guest. So that's one option. And if you're having guests come over or like a big party, things like that, I often say putting them outside with a high value to something of that, letting the everybody come in, letting your dog settle a little bit and then bringing them into the party. Again, we're looking to kind of lower our dog's emotions before they come in hot. Right? So outside or in a bedroom on a leash, which we mentioned on a leash with you again, make yourself more rewarding than that. Human have some yummy treats or dogs with you.

They're like, oh, that person's boring. Now I'd rather sit here and get to use with mom. Okay. And then a high-value chew is another good option. So if your dog learns, if say you have, I don't know, lots of visitors coming over and you know, every, you have, I had a client who had a Bible study every Thursday, right? So this was a big, a big training night. So we worked on every Thursday evening. He got a really special chew or a stuffed Kong or frozen bone. And so as people arrived, he'd be like, hi, oh, I got to get back to my bone high. I gotta get back to, and that bone was way better than him jumping and being all over guests for the first hour.

So those are some management strategies. Any questions or add on to that? When you talk about coming in hot, I think that's just like departure cues. When a dog has separation anxiety, the door knocking and doorbell ringing can also amplify where their, where they are when they're greeting the guests. So you could pair, we've done pairing with desensitation DS.

I can de sensitization. I can never say I know with a doorbell and knocking. And then we ask guests not to ring our doorbell and we use our ring and we meet them outside just so we can lower that excitement level. I'm certainly not as amped up. And when you, It can be another management strategy depending on the dog and how jumpy is meeting them outside and going for a walk again, you might have to keep some distance for a little bit, but going out, going for a walk that can be another kind of management and be like, okay, we're going to meet you out there. And we're just going to go four houses down and turn around and then come back and get some of that energy out. But yeah. Putting a note on your doorbell saying, don't bring that or yes, you said you set them up for success. And when you mentioned giving them something delicious instead of jumping on the guests, or even if they have some anxiety and it's pairing wonderful things, come when people walk in the door, I don't see that as paying them for poor behavior. I see that as offering what you want them to do instead.

Yup. Yup. When, yeah, basically we're trying to stop the behavior from occurring. And so if they have something yummy and they're doing that, the behavior is not occurring and that's, that's what we're looking at. How can we get that? Not to happen. So, yeah, you're not rewarding for bad behavior unless, you know, they run over and jump eight, eight times, and then you give them the high value. Two. We want to give them the high value to prior to the guests coming over, or right as that guest comes in the door, depending on your dog and the situation, you know, your timing might vary. And then they're like, oh cool. She came in and I got a bully said awesome.

Things like that. And the door doorbell training is something that's kind of part of our training on trying to talk to, I love putting that doorbell on cue. So the doorbell means whatever these behaviors that we're going to focus on and you can actually train that doorbell cue to do other things as well. All right. So training side. So we've got our management.

Let me know too. If you guys have questions, I know we're going to take some questions at the end. So then we talk about training. So again, this is actually teaching our dog what we want them to do. Instead of jumping often, I hear all four on the floor and that's a very good philosophy and our dogs can eventually get there.

But in the beginning, all four on the floor is hard. It's hard for them. So there's a couple different ways we go about this. You can teach a place, so go to your place. So they go to a mat, they go to a, a little spots. I like to make sure it's in view of the door. This is really great for guests.

Greetings, not as good if you're out and about, but you know, you send them to their place. The guest comes in and you have two options. The guests can go greet the dog on their place, or you can release the dog to go say hi , which is a whole nother, separate behavior. And we end up chaining these behaviors together.

So place is really great. That's one that, yeah, they hear the doorbell and they run over there. Like come on my, so my dogs all know that it's at the top of the stairs. They have to wait at the top of the stairs. We'll have guests come up. So place is great for a lot of reasons, but really like it for guest greetings.

And then go say hi. So this is for really great for the out and about dogs, dogs. After you release them from the place, how do you teach them a properly to go say hi and not jump it's to break it down short. It's if we're working this with you, I would say, go say hi, my dog would come over and say hi to you for two to three seconds.

And then I'm going to call them back to me and I'm going to reward them. I'm essentially looking for a drive by hello. So they're going quick driving by and coming back to me and they get the extra good stuff from me. So again, owner is better sometimes than guests. If your dog knows a hand target behavior, I know I like to teach this as a touch.

I added this touch because how do a lot of people greet dogs? If they put their whoops, there we go. Keep their handout flat. And so if a lot of people do that, but I was like, Ooh, I'm going to go nose, move her hand and then go back to mom and get a cookie for it. Cause I did,

I did the behavior. That's probably one of my favorites. It can be a little bit harder, but once I love it, when that, when we're teaching it and then they start doing them, they're like, cool, Emily's really boring. Like this, go say hi. I'm just going to go hang out with mom instead. And all of this takes more time than using corrections, you need, as you mentioned, chaining the behavior, they need to have a solid place and separately training the go say hi, it takes time. But it also preserves a relationship and preserves their positive feelings about guests coming in the door. Yeah. And again, it's going to transfer to other places. You go to a brewery, you take a place. So like, oh, I know what this, I know if I go to this place, but things happen. So it definitely, it again, it looking at the big picture, it's the best for everybody. And then the other one I do have, so all four on the floor or sit, you can train them with a sit where I kind of like the other two a little bit more because again, for dogs that are just like this, like that wiggly, like I just can't control myself. And then just to like hone it all in and sit is really hard. Think about a 2 year old Behavior. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't have kids, but I I'm a, I'm an aunt. And like, you know, my two year old nephew to get him to sit still is hard.

And I'm like, again, they just, they need to move their body and they need to do things. And so same with our dogs, depending on our age, that sits still is very hard. So what I will teach is I will teach a treat toss. So if the dog comes running towards me and I see them coming in hot before they can jump again, this capturing before the behavior happens, before they jump, I show them a treat right at their nose and I throw it across the room and they take off and they go and get the treat. And then they come back and I do the same thing and I'll do that a couple times. And then they start coming back. And I like, what if I sit?

What if I stop? Because you took some of that energy and you gave them an outlet for it. You let them zoom across for a treat. And so this is a good example. Recently I have a client with two boxers and one of our goals is jumping. And I came in and I did that. I did two treat tosses, and then he came and sat and the owner was like, what did you just do? That was magical. She goes, I've never seen him stop jumping on somebody so quickly. Awesome. But again, I gave him an outlet and then he was like, oh, whoa, okay. This is what I got to do. I can do that. So there's, you know, I always say there's not one fit for every dog.

That's why I like to share a couple options, finding what works. And I always encourage owners. You know, I, I kind of read the dogs to see like, okay, I think this way is going to be our best route. And maybe we do that treat toss for awhile, but that's not permanent. Once they are understanding training and getting concepts better, then we start to do the go say hi or the place. And the more advanced I say behaviors, but also it's not going to happen with one session. And I think that's something I get to, oh, we tried it. Well. How long did he try it for, did you set them up for success? Did you try it in a low distraction environment when you didn't have a guest there?

Cause that's key. We didn't talk about that. You need to be doing these things before you have guests arrive. You need to be training and teaching before you have somebody knocking at that door. Yes. Without those cues and without the novel person or the person they haven't seen in a while, or who gets the most excited, we have some toy driven dogs who love play.

And so we can sometimes use plushy sometimes balls. Then it goes on for a while with fetch. But we did this with our standard poodle where we'd have like a station by the door of some toys that were like medium value. And so we would toss those and then it was adorable if she just would bring a toy to greet us. And she would have that in her mouth every time.

And we would play with that when we walk in the door. But it was an alternative behavior to the jumping that she knew we liked. And it was a pleasing behavior to us. And it was a pleasant for her as well. Yep. I've got one of those that she'll do that. And whenever she does that, I make sure to really give her extra attention, reinforce it. Cause it's the behavior. Again, I let them jump, but it's a behavior she chooses to do that. I love it. And I make sure I, you know, she gets all the pets and all the reinforcement first I have three dogs. So they all all want their pets in there. Yeah. That's a good one too.

That one can be a little bit more advanced as far as teaching them to put something in their mouth again, if it's that it's great and we can capitalize on it. But if the dog is not, it's, it's a hard one. Another thing too to think about is again, setting your guests up for success. I have a client right now at a town and they're having some dog walkers come by and some new dog walkers.

And so there's a jar of treats on the front porch and they know they need to come in with treats ready and they greet them at their knees. And that's the other thing too, is thinking about where we're greeting our dogs. If we're not greeting them and they're trying to get to our hands, but maybe if we put our hands by our needs, they're like, oh, there's cookies down there. I'll just come to their knees with cookies. So that kind did a great job. Setting those people up for success to walk in the house. She has one dog who's kind of a, she's a softie, but she's got a big bark. And then she has a nervous Nellie dogs. So both those dogs now learn, oh my gosh, this person comes in and they're bearing cookies right away. This is fantastic. So that's great for nervous, nervous greeters. Yes. And a lot of these tips when it goes with the excitement with some reactivity or anxiety that still helps. Yeah, Absolutely. When We're, we're working on changing their conditioned, emotional response again, a little nerdy term there they're CER and we're training like the, one of the doodles  I'm working with right now, it has really severe stranger danger. We're doing virtual training. And then in person, once a month, they live up in Wyoming. And so last time they came down and we did our session on headphones and we were across the field and you know, we didn't, I didn't get closer until he could handle it, but changing. And he took a treat from me for the, we got to the point where he could take a treat from me and his mom started crying. She was like, this is amazing. But again, you have to work level. And hopefully next time I see him, he'd be like, oh my gosh, that girl had cheese. Like I would like to go see her quicker, you know? And we're changing his response to seeing people. Oh, that's wonderful. One of the questions our members had was the different philosophies of when you have the station of treats by the door with jumping and or if they're your dog is reactive, which do you prefer the guest offering treats or tossing treats or the owner tossing treats or delivering the treats?

What are your thoughts? Depends on depends. Right? That's always our depends on the situation. So with a jumpy dog. I don't mind the guests tossing the treats because I want them to realize like guests has goodies and there's other value to the guests then jumping on them for attention. So it was just an overexcited dog. I say the guests, if it's a dog that's like nervous has some fear, reactivity, things like that. I'll usually start with the owner. And then there's, I kind of have like a three-step way. I actually introduced nervous dogs to guests and it's not always coming the house. The biggest thing, what I share if you have a dog was a little bit nervous or barky or reactive is I want to make sure the dog understands.

They can go away and create space and then coming back and get treats. And I'm not going to hold my hand out and make you come over and get a cookie from me. And I think that's, that's something we see often is, oh my dog's nervous. Just give them a treat. And the dog was like, I really want that treat, but that person's, but I really want that treat. But that person's scary. What do I do? I'm going to grab a treat. I'm going to run away. And you know, It is, if you're scared of spiders and your husband puts your favorite dessert in a room, but you have to pass the big giant spider. You're going to sit there and be like, oh my gosh. Right? And you, you build up all these emotions and they're not necessarily the best emotion. So No, you might've gotten your treat. You did not get over that spider here. Absolutely like cool. I've got a great cupcake, but I still don't like spiders. It didn't didn't actually help. So I, I teach a exercise called treat retreat.

So they all, all toss treats to the dog. And then I'm going to toss a treat over their head or for that, not over their head, but like further away. And I let them go away. And if they are comfortable, they can come back and participate. If they're not comfortable, no problem. But I want to make sure the dog understands.

If you are not comfortable, you can create space and go away. And I'm not going to force you to come over here. Nervous, nervous, nervous, and reactive dogs are definitely a different level of greetings and jumpy dogs. It's a different little bit of a different tactic. And a lot of owner, parent guardian embarrassment goes with it because, you know, we're, we want our guests or people we see on the street to feel like we're approachable. And if our dog is giving different signals or has different needs, it can feel embarrassing. And, and it can seem silly to be handing cookies and treats to a dog barking, but there's a reason. And so I appreciate all the work that you're doing on that.

Is there anything you wanted to add about jumping? I was going to well, to tack onto that real quick advocating again for your dog. If you have a dog that's nervous, fearful, there's so many great tags that say, you know, nervous dog, shy dog, do not pet. I have one that can be a little hit or miss, especially with kids. So we're in Winter Park this weekend and he's muzzle chains. And I just had, when we were walking through the visual village, I had his muzzle on and that's, you know, a choice and you know, things are changing now, but yeah, you get some looks like, oh, that dog's muzzle. He's not a mean dog.

It's just a little safety as a kid. If a toddler runs in front of him, he likes to chase a nip and I'm going to prevent that from happening. Now we're working on training of course, too, but it is again, I'm advocating and it creates a bubble for him too, that people aren't going to just run right up to him.

And that allows me then to have a conversation and let him go say hi and let him go say hi and appropriately how he needs it. So advocating for your dog, whether they're over excited or nervous or reactive is very, very important. Again, we need to spread the word that that's okay. It's you're not alone out there. We all have dogs that have problems.

No dog is perfect. So you're not, not alone on that. Yeah. He's been a good one. He's been with me for about seven, eight months and he's come a really long way, but you know, I've had to put some work into it and I'm like I said, putting a muzzle and it's just, I, it was interesting to see, you know, you always get a few rude remarks and then you get some really nice ones and it's can be a hard thing, but again, I'm doing what's best for him. And he got to greet people up there and it was lovely. Oh, good. Wonderful. And then I feel like you had one, one more question and I cut you off there.

Oh, no, I don't recall. Now. I think you addressed the questions that our members had a wonderfully, and you mentioned lots of other areas that you help dog owners work through. I know that you offer virtual work as well. So you're not limited just to the Denver area. If people wanted to work with you, Emily, how could they get in touch with you?

Yeah, absolutely. Virtual training. I actually like virtual training. It's a challenge for me because I can't show you in person with your dog. I can show you with my dog and I can walk you through, but it actually makes the owners and even stronger trainer because I have to walk you through every step versus showing. I like to, I learn best by like seeing and doing so.

That's why I think virtual training has been good because it's gotten me out of my comfort zone and I love it. It's great. I've had some great progress with a lot of, a lot of different behaviors. And then of course, if you are in the Denver area, I offer in-person for Denver and Lakewood. I do have a service area that's up on my website.

So you can find me a couple of different places on my website. It's pawsitivelypets.org. Again, that's pawsitivelypets.org, and then of course, social media, I'm most active on Instagram and that's @pawsitivelypetstraining on Instagram. So definitely let me know what you need help with. I'm also working on a puppy prep course. So if you or anybody else is getting a puppy in the near future, let me know I'm working on how to get ready for your puppy and how to choose the right puppy and learn about breeds, right? Knowing your breed is important and then surviving the first 10 days with your new puppy. Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, that's great. And having a great foundation makes a difference. Yeah. And then I know you have a freebie for our listeners.

Do you mind sharing how they can get that and what that is? Yeah. So you guys are the first to get this, which I'm really excited about. So I have a freebie and basically it's kind of a little bit about what we talked about today. So it's a greeting guests guide and it goes over again. Why dogs jump things we've tried and then things we can implement.

So it's just kind of a nice little graphic that goes over all of that. So if you guys want to join on, I don't know if we can put a link somewhere, but if not, we'll put it on my website. Okay, great. Yep. And in the show notes, you'll see a pop-up and it says, sign up for my newsletter and get the free guest jumping guide.

So you guys can check that out and I would love to hear your thoughts on things and love to hopefully work with some of you guys. Wonderful. And Emily, can you tell us the website as well? It'll be in the show notes and in our membership, but do you mind just telling it to our listeners? Yep. Yep. So it's pawsitivelypets.org/freetrainingtips

 And you'll get that. It'll ask you to sign up your email and then it'll give you that access to that guide. Thank you. We really appreciate your sharing your expertise and we adore doodles, loving them as easy, but parenting them can get hard sometimes. So we love having experts like you come in and answer our questions.

Thank you. Awesome. Absolutely. I'm happy to have you and like seeing The Doodle Pro out there, sharing such good advice and for supporting the positive reinforcement community. Again, we need to, we need to get that out there and share more and more and more and teach people that there is other alternatives over punishment. Thank you so much. And I'll talk to you soon.