Episode #29 The Toddler Stage

When was the last time you were around a toddler? This past weekend I spent time with my niece who is almost two and realized toddlers and puppies have a whole lot in common. Join me for a few minutes of enlightenment on just how similar these two groups are and get a better understanding of why your puppy does what he does in this stage of life.

Transcript

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This is the puppy training podcast episode number 29 The Toddler Stage. This podcast is for those looking to train their own dog, whether as a family companions service or a therapy dog. And I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the puppy training podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen. Hello. Hello? Right, you guys, Over the weekend I had somewhat of an epiphany, and I've had this thought before, but the one that I'm going to present today, it really was clear in my mind. And I'm like, I've got to share this with my listeners. So I'm excited for today's topic. As you heard. It's the toddler stage and we're gonna talk all about toddlers, which is kind of weird because it's a puppy training podcast. But you'll see what I'm talking about in a minute before we get going, I want to give a shout out to Brenna. Brenna is one of my new members in my program. Thank you for listening. She joined my puppy prep program this past week, and we've been going back and forth with puppy questions, and it's been so fun to meet you. Brenna so thank you for joining me. All right. I hope you guys are doing well. I hope your puppies air succeeding. I hope you are having fun training them, that you're finding success and that you're also building those relationships with your dog. I think it's the best part of puppy training is that we can have that relationship with our dog where they're excited and happy to train. There's nothing better than a happy puppy, right? I woke up the other day to snow on the ground, and I'm not that excited about it because it's only October. I'm a skier, so I like to I like to ski and I like the snow, but I just I'm not quite ready for it yet. Anyway, Boots is here, and he's never seen snow before, and it fell the other day. I opened the door, you know, somewhat shocked because I wasn't planning on snow and boots was so excited. He ran out of my house, did laps around it with diving and rolling in the snow, and then he jumped right back up and start running and frolicking again. Frolicking is a good word for that. Anyway, it made me happy. And you know, I'm like, You know what? I'm happy that it snowed. I'm fine with it, because look how happy this baby is. Disease. No. So I tell you, have puppies make everything better. All right, let's get into this. So the epiphany that I had over the weekend is, you know, or this thought that I had and I've had this thought before, like I said, but it just was so clear over the weekend. So I had this thought before that, you know, puppies are essentially toddlers. Sometimes we get that brand new puppy, and we think of it like a brand new baby. So we think of the baby stage where they just eat and sleep and cry and poop. And and we think kind of that's what we're getting with a brand new puppy. But really, we're not really our puppies already been through that stage, and we're getting a toddler. So I want to talk about the things that toddlers do and the qualities and behaviors that toddlers exhibit. And then you're going to see, I think, just like I did over the weekend, how closely they parallel and you'll recognize. Oh, my goodness, I am in the toddler stage of puppy Hood and we'll answer some questions for you in relation to training. So first of all, I'm just going to kind of go through this list and we'll talk about it. But toddlers are growing. Your puppy is growing at a very rapid pace right now. As we go through this list, I do want you to recognize that your puppies on Lee going to be a toddler for a few months because about month five on into six and some a little later for larger breed dogs, they're gonna be an adolescent. So we've moved so quickly from that baby stage. That's while your puppy was with his breeder. And now that he's home with you, he's in the toddler child, that kind of stage, and in a few months he's going to be in the teenage face. So thes phases for the puppy do move much more quickly than with humans. But as we go through this list, you'll see that it's, um, quite humorous, actually, how closely they parallel. So yeah, growing toddlers air growing, they're trying to figure out their body, and their movements are a little bit awkward. Puppies are exactly the same. Have you seen a puppy that kind of starts to run? And then he's running so fast that his feet can't keep up and he kind of does a little somersault or a tumble or things like that. That's a toddler. Mood swings. If you've been around a toddler lately, they don't have a really effective way to communicate yet. So when they want something, they cry or they wine or they shout. Or they do something to try to get you to figure out what it is they want. You guys, that's a puppy. They don't yet have the communication skills to tell us what they're wanting or feeling. So as we start to train them and teach them cues, we start to build their ability to communicate with us, and they'll start offering us behaviors like a sit aura down for things that they're wanting. But right now, their communication is very limited. So when they want something or if they can't have something, they might throw a little fit or a tantrum. I know we've all experienced this. If you have a puppy and your crate training, if we put that puppy in the crate during the day because I need to go get something done for two minutes and that puppy is not happy about it. They're gonna let me know they might start to cry or wind or whimper a little bit and throw that little fit or tantrum like Hey, let me out, you know? But we teach them that it's okay to be in there by yourself for a few minutes. I'm gonna be right back. But you guys, that's a toddler, right? How about this one? I've heard it said before that toddlers are long on will, but short on skill. So, yeah, I kind of going back to that idea of mood swings that our puppy's gonna have times when they might cry and cry and cry to try to get their way. There Will is very long and very strong, but they're very sure unskilled. They lack the skills to calm themselves effectively. They lack the skills to handle frustration. But those are the kinds of things are puppy needs toe learn in order to be a well mannered calm dog for the rest of his life. So if we always give in to our puppy or were always giving our puppy whatever they want. Then we're gonna have a spoiled child on her hands, right? We're gonna have a spoiled dog that just gets whatever he wants whenever he wants. And he's not able to calm himself or keep himself settled. When frustration comes along, let me give you a picture of what this might look like. Let's say that your puppies always gotten whatever he wants, and now you head out on the street because he has all of his vaccinations and you're in the public park somewhere on a walk and he's now unleashed because you no longer have to carry him to keep him safe. So he's walking along on a leash and you guys see another family with their dog on a leash, and suddenly your dog is very excited and he wants to go say hi to the dog. What's he gonna do? He's on a leash so he can't just run over to the docks, who's gonna experience a little bit of frustration here because he sees something and he wants it and he's gonna want it now. So he takes off, barking and pulling and trying to get to the other dog. Have you seen this before? That sound familiar? So these air dogs, who aren't very good at handling frustration or being able to keep themselves calm when they see something they want, So they maybe haven't been taught patients or impulse control. Or maybe they have. But they just haven't strengthened that category yet, and they need some more work on it. So the you know, if you have a dog like this, don't fret. I can totally help you with that scenario and get your dog past that. But this is a common thing. If we don't teach our puppies howto wait for something and that good things come to those who wait, then the puppy just wants what they want. They want it right now. So that's a toddler behavior, right? We see that with toddlers. They see you take him to the grocery store on the season candy. They want it, and if they don't get it, what do they do? They throw a fit, they try to cry the throw themselves on the floor. Even I've seen before. So they just try to get what they want because they want it right now, right? Toddlers don't have that concept, really, Of I can wait for things and good things will happen. Puppies come that way as well. They don't know that they can wait for things and good things will happen. That's our job to teach them that. All right, so in the toddler stage, their character starts to take shape. They're more coordinated, and they need time every day to go outside and explore and to just be a kid. But they need constant supervision. And this would hit me over the weekend like a ton of bricks. Oh, my goodness. Puppies go home to these families and they are a toddler. So yes, we must supervise their every move. We want them to be able to go outside and explore, but they're going to try to put every plant, twig, branch, pine cone, rock in their mouth. They're gonna be exploring and into things. And what's this? And they do that with their mouth. So, you know, constant supervision of Hey, you can't eat that or that's not good for you. Or he Let's replace that stick with a bone kind of things. It takes constant supervision. Same thing in our homes. If we let a toddler run around our home and don't supervise them, you know what kind of messes they can make from everything to like being in the pantry and dumping out the flower bull to getting batter spilled on their heads. Thio. You know, getting into the makeup and smearing it all over because they look so beautiful. I mean, there are a lot of things that all their conducing a home when left unsupervised right puppies. They're no different if we leave them in our home and supervised. We've got pillows that are being shredded in socks that are being stolen, and they're peeing on the carpet because we don't have diapers for puppies. I mean, they actually do have them, but we don't use them like that. We just house trained them, and luckily they learn much faster than a toddler does. But those kinds of things, it's constant supervision. Here's another big one that I hear because I coach a lot of people. That's what I do is I help people through these puppy stages and I'll hear my puppy was mouthing me, and I told him no, but he just keeps doing it. He just keeps trying to initiate play by mouthing me. You know, what can I do? And I tell them it's a lot like a toddler. We're gonna have to probably tell them more than once about this behavior. So, for example, a toddler who sees another child playing with a toy, that toddler, maybe he runs over and grabs the other toy from the child. And I see it happening and I go over and I say, Hey, you know, let's ask before we take something from someone. And just because I did that in that one scenario in that one moment, does that mean that my toddler has now learned his lesson? And he's never going to grab another toy away from another child? Probably not. It's going to take a few repetitions of that for our toddler toe, learn and to just reach the point of maturity that he knows better, or that he's able to ask someone before he takes a toy. Right now, he doesn't have that skill set so back to that puppy who's mouthing Thio, you know, initiate play or to say, Hey, I want some attention. That's the skills that he currently has is. This is how I know to request that I want you to play with me and it's going to take a few repetitions and a few, you know, swapping out with a toy or hate you this instead or hey, you know, fetch this instead for him to realize that we don't like to play that way. So with puppies, it does take a lot of patients for them tow, learn how we play and how to interact appropriately with us. And just like a toddler, telling them once is probably not sufficient. They're going to have to learn and, as I mentioned, grow and develop to be able to do those kinds of things. So sometimes our expectations are just a little too high for these puppies who come into our homes. We expect a little too much out of them, and as I mentioned in the beginning, it's it is going to happen faster. They're going to grow and mature faster than, say, a human child. But they do take time to, you know, be able to have the patients and the the ability just to simply control themselves and to learn right. It takes time to learn what we expect of them. So be patient with your brand new puppies. All right, going on the list that I made, there's more. There's probably 10 more things, honestly, on similarities between the two. So we talked about their attention spans. They're just short toddlers. You give him a page to color and they're done in five seconds and they want something else to color or hey, we're done coloring. Now let's go play with Plato, Okay, now we're done with the Plato. Let's go play with toys and it's just creating a mess as they go right from this activity to that activity. In its constant movement, we're constantly moving, so very similarly. When we bring these puppies home, they are busybodies. They are playing fetch, and then they're playing Tug and then they want to sleep a little bit, and then they're up and they want you to play with them, and then they want to go explore and find a sock or find a pillow. Or, I mean, they're really busy little creatures that we must supervise, and that's just toddlerhood. It's not gonna be like that forever, but It's kind of the stage that you're in when you have a brand new puppy. All right. When I was at my appearance house for the weekend, we get together on the weekends occasionally and have family dinners, and my brother and his wife were there with their toddler. She's so cute. She's about 18 months old right now, and the vacuum turned on and her eyes got really big. And she paused for a minute like, Hey, what's that noise? And again, I was giggling because I'm like that is exactly what a puppy does. I see a lot of puppies, and so my kids are grown. They're older now, and so I don't see as much of the toddler stage anymore. But it's funny to correlate the two that, you know. My little niece reminded me so much of a puppy reaction when they hear a new noise or a new sound that they're not used to. The eyes get kind of big and the kind of freeze a little bit like Hey, what is that? And then they either want to go check it out or they want to retreat and hide. So I thought that was kind of funny. The other thing that toddlers do is when they see kids, just any kids. They get so excited just to see other kids. People that air their height and their age and puppies are the same way when they see other puppies where other dogs around the same sizes them, they just get excited. They want to go play, they want to go say hi. It's fun for them to see, you know, other creatures that look just like they dio. Um Okay, so I'm gonna end on a couple of these. They need downtime and sleep. Puppies are the same way. So just like a toddler can use a quiet time during the day. You know, oftentimes they'll go on. Go on, go on, Go. And what happens when they go on? Go on, go. Any of my mom's out there listening? What happens when you're toddlers? Just go, Go, go, go! What eventually happens, right? They get honoree and they get miserable and they just need sleep. They just need downtime. Puppies, air the same way they just go. Go, go, go, Go! Now some puppies are really good at naturally calming themselves, and they'll just lay down and take a nap. Other puppies will just get more and more amped up. They'll get crazier and crazier and crazier. And that's your signal to say, Hey, you know what? I think we could use some quiet time right now, and that's where the creek comes out. I love, create time. Create time is nothing different than putting your toddler in a crib or in a playpen so that he can settle down. And there's not a lot of distraction going on so that he's more likely to fall asleep. Same thing we're just gonna pull a crate out. We're gonna put our puppy in there with a toy or a Kong or a been a bone or something that he can non if he wants to. But also, it's not so overstimulating that he can't fall asleep. He might just realize, you know what? There's not a lot to do here. I'm gonna take a nap, and then finally, he is able to relax and fall asleep. And when they wake up, you guys, they're so much happier. I remember putting my kids down for quiet time, and when they woke up gorgeous smiles and happy they were ready to go, but not as crazy as they were prior to quiet time. I was a big proponent of know. We're gonna have quiet time today. So do that with your puppies. The crate is not a punishment. That crate is a tool. It's a training tool for us. It helps them learn how to calm themselves. It helps them learn how to deal with frustration, of not getting to what they want right away. So again, I'm going back to that Lee Shin Ariel that we talked about that great time helps build in them the ability to handle a little bit of frustration. And we start out slow if you want some really good tips on how to introduce your puppy to a great and how to get him to like his crate. That's in my program. I would love to have you join, and I would love to coach you through this puppy training process because it is involved, right? There's a lot to it, all right. The last one doesn't want to share, so toddlers don't love to share. When they have something, they want to keep it and they don't want anyone to touch it or play with it. Um, puppies can be the same way. They get a toy and or a bone, and they might not want you to touch it or take it away or play with it. So it's our job to teach them that it's okay to share. And we don't want them to necessarily, like, growl or get anxious or fearful when the child approaches and wants their toy that we call that resource guarding when the puppy gets, you know, possessive of his items. But all of that can be trained out and eliminated where I guess the better were to be prevented and, you know, by teaching your puppy to share. But again, it's something that they have to learn. Just like a toddler is not born wanting to share. And that's something that we teach them how to dio and puppies are the same. We have to teach them that it's important to share. Their resource is, and they're going to get more. Resource is that it's okay to share those with us and other members of the household. All right, so you guys convinced that puppies are a lot like toddlers I just have to share that with you today. I thought you know what? For the podcast. We're gonna talk about this because there are so many parallels. And I think it helps people realize what stage of life their dog is in so that they don't have those exceedingly high expectations for their dog there brought down to reality of Okay, this is the stage we're in. I'm in the stage of, you know, they have a low, you know, short attention span. They are busybodies, they're into everything. And so I'm gonna have to be on my toes supervising every second that they're out in my house and you know, ghosts by pretty quickly. I can say that because I'm past that stage with boots. We're now into a teenage phase, but when you're in it, it feels like it's gonna last forever. So if you are in that stage with your puppy, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is coming, but recognize that this is the stage you're in. And this is just what it looks like. We're gonna do our best to manage it. We're going to reward the good ignore the bad as much as possible. We're also gonna teach him some patients and howto wait for things and start to instill these really good manners in him. But just very basic manners, Right? Sit to say, please sit to get my food. I'm gonna wait. You know what? Doorways? All of these simple things They can start to learn, but we can't expect too much. You know too long of durations at this stage because they are little. They're just little toddlers, you guys, and they're pretty darn cute. So enjoy him. All right, That's what I have for you this week. I hope you enjoyed it. I will be back next week with another topic. Happy training. If you have a question about anything you've heard on this podcast or any other puppy training questions, visit my sight. Baxter and Bella dot com to contact me