How to Raise the Perfect Dog (24 page)

At four months of age, I began introducing Angel to a more difficult challenge—sniffing out and identifying something that doesn’t have the obvious food reward attached. I came up with the idea for this exercise after watching a television documentary about how dogs are trained to sniff out cancer, and decided to take advantage of Angel’s recent habit of sniffing out cigarette butts at the park or other locations where I’ve been bringing him. I wanted to go with the flow of what he’d already been doing to condition him to single out and alert me to a specific scent.

Angel and the baby food jars

After cleaning out six baby food jars, I laid them upside down, side by side, about two inches apart, and put a cigarette butt under one of them. Then I brought Angel in and held onto him until I could see that his snout was already in searching mode and he was craning his neck toward the jars. The first time, six jars proved to be too much, as Angel became overwhelmed and distracted, so I reduced the number of the jars to four. I watched as Angel sniffed all the jars but nudged and lingered at the one containing the cigarette butt. We repeated the exercise three times, until Angel looked up at me after finding the butt, as if to ask, “So what do I get for finding this?” I rewarded him with a lot of affection, for a very long time. He got the message, “Hey, it only took me a second to find this thing, yet I get all this affection as a reward!” Right away, after the affection, he went right back to the jars, nudged the one with the cigarette butt, and looked right up at me again.

At four months of age, more than ten minutes of an exercise like this will max out any puppy’s attention span. But if I continue to challenge Angel with exercises like these, who knows, someday he may be hired by the City of Los Angeles to clean up all the cigarette butts from the beach at Malibu! By nurturing Angel’s nose, I both challenge him as a dog and honor his breed as a terrier.

BATTLING BREED

Sometimes you want to do the opposite of nurturing a breed-specific trait in your puppy. With certain breeds, such as bulldogs, Rottweilers, pit bulls, and other powerful breeds, you don’t want to nurture the activity that the dog was originally genetically engineered to perform. For example, you don’t want your adorable puppy to bring down bears or bulls or fight another dog to the death, yet you do have to be aware of his breed-related needs and find creative ways to exercise them.

Junior is a pit bull, but his energies have been channeled into other productive activities—“dog” activities such as running, retrieving, swimming (he loves to swim more than any water dog I’ve ever met!), and, like Daddy, helping me to rehabilitate unstable dogs with his calm-submissive energy. I started challenging my slate gray pit bull this way when he was just a puppy, bringing him on
Dog Whisperer
shoots at three and four months of age, and showing him that we don’t respond to aggressive dogs, anxious dogs, or overexcited dogs. The last and most important of Junior’s jobs is very unnatural for him—or for any dog—as a dog’s inclination when faced with an unstable animal is to physically correct it, and if it doesn’t straighten out its attitude right away, to attack it. But the mental energy and concentration it takes for Junior to do his job is incredibly fulfilling for him.

COMMUNICATING
Learning to Leave It

Being able to set and communicate boundaries is one of the most important roles that you play as your puppy’s pack leader. Communication, to me, first is intent, then energy, then body language, and last, sound. Martin Deeley agrees. “The most important part of a dog’s life is to learn limits and boundaries: what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. Without knowing commands, a dog may not always be able to know exactly what you want, but he will quickly get to read your body language and your actions if they are consistent and he finds himself being rewarded in some way by doing what is acceptable to that owner.”

From the time Mr. President first arrived at our house at just over two months of age, he would gaze enviously at Junior and Blizzard as they tugged and cavorted with their plush and rope toys. Much more than for his “brother” Angel, his bulldog breed attracted him to their tough, competitive style of playing. When Mr. President was four months old, I allowed him to start getting involved with the “big boys” and their activities, so that I could observe and guide his reactions. I would choose a toy—a plush squirrel with some vanilla scent—and throw it into the fray so that Mr. President would be the first to get it. Even at four months, Mr. President’s belligerent bulldog nature would kick right in. He would puff up his body, hunch over the toy like a football center readying for a hike, and fiercely take possession. Then he’d start wandering around with the toy in his mouth, glancing back at the older dogs as they followed him—actually seeking out a challenge.

To many owners, such a tiny bulldog trying to look tough to a huge pit bull and lanky Labrador might look incredibly cute—a subject for some funny home videos, perhaps. The danger is that if you allow the intensity of this kind of play to escalate too much or too often, you will be nurturing the very worst side of the bulldog genes—the stubborn side that I’m usually called in to rehabilitate. That’s why it’s important to start supervision and setting limits early, so that your puppy is “programmed” not to play so intensely that it gets out of control. If you hear a low growl or see the dog dominating the toy with his whole body, or if he’s ripping at it as if he wants to kill it, it is time for you to step in.

When Mr. President would start getting into this state, I would approach him calmly and squat down next to him. The first few times, he would put his chin on top of the toy; his eye contact with me was intense. He was challenging me, using his bulldog side. If I had food, I could always use his nose at this low level of intensity to redirect and move him away from the toy, but what I really want is to be able to say to him—simply with my assertive presence, my energy, and my firm, focused eye contact—that it’s time for him to give
me
the toy,
now
. This is how another dog of higher status gets an object away from another dog in the pack—she doesn’t bribe him with food, and she certainly doesn’t yell “Leave it, leave it, leave it!” like a distraught human might. She’ll just “demand” the object by using eye contact and energy.

An example of this occurred while I was playing with Mr. President, Blizzard, and Junior in the garage. One of our visiting cases from the show, Memphis, a formerly dog-aggressive pit bull, walked into the middle of the game and did just that—told the younger boys to drop the toy, because she wanted it now. She did it with a look, her body language, and energy, and when she moved toward the toy, they didn’t hesitate to give it up to her. I know that some people have a hard time with the word
dominance
to describe this kind of behavior; for some, the words
dominance
and
submission
still seem to have negative connotations. Call it what you will. The point is, this is the strategy used across the board, throughout all social species in nature, so that most conflicts can be solved without fighting or bloodshed. There is a natural hierarchy and a silent negotiation going on, so that those with the stronger energy are able to set the rules and regulations for those with weaker energy. The stronger dog only follows through—first with a correction, last with a fight—if the other dog doesn’t agree with or abide by the rules. Among a pack of balanced dogs, this happens very infrequently.

In teaching Mr. President to give up toys to me, I want him to surrender exactly the way Junior and Blizzard did to Memphis—to just drop the toy and walk away. I could try to grab the toy away from him; I could distract him with food, then do a sneak attack by grabbing it when he wasn’t looking, but this would defeat my purpose of using play as a way to connect and communicate with my puppy. I don’t want to cheat him or tease him; I want him always to trust me to communicate clearly and directly with him, the way another dog would. Therefore, I wait calmly… one or two minutes, the first few times … until he sees that I am absolutely not going to give up. Voluntarily, he then gives me the toy and walks away.

Some people may want to add a command to the exercise, such as “Drop it,” or “Give,” or the noise I use, “Tssst,” which simply means “I disagree with what you are doing right now,” but it’s important to remember not to repeat that command over and over while the puppy is still figuring out what you want—he may come to associate those words and sounds with
holding on to
the toy.
Instead, say the command only at the moment the puppy releases the toy; then reward him with praise, affection, or a treat
. Your dog may test your resolve, but if you practice this exercise on a regular basis, he will come to understand that you are the one who controls all the objects in your household. Toys on the floor don’t necessarily mean he can play with the toys.

Setting limits in this way works as a preventive measure against creating a dog that snatches and destroys forbidden objects throughout your home. If Mr. President shows this much determination at such an early age, just imagine how much that will intensify as he reaches adolescence and really starts pushing those boundaries! With bulldogs or other powerful-breed dogs, you must start young, do this and other “ownership” exercises repeatedly, and have a lot of patience. By having the resolve to wait him out now, in puppyhood, I avoid having a power struggle with him when he’s an adult that’s capable of doing much more damage. This is exactly how I raised Daddy and Junior to be polite and respectful dogs that just happen to be wearing pit bull outfits.

Communicating “Leave It” Without Words:
The Concept of Owning Your Own Space

1. Claiming space means using your body, your mind, and your energy to “own” what you would like to control. You create an invisible circle of space around a person, place, or thing that belongs to you—a space that the puppy cannot enter without your permission.

2. When you want to claim space, commit 100 percent to projecting an invisible line around the space or object you do not want your dog to go near. Say to yourself, “This is my sofa,” or “This is my ball.” You are having a verbal conversation with yourself and a psychological/energy conversation with your puppy.

3. Never pull your hand or any object away from your puppy, and never pull your puppy away from a place, person, or object. When you pull things away from a puppy, you’re either inviting her to compete for it or you’re inviting her to play. This only increases the puppy’s prey drive and ups her excitement level. Instead, step calmly and assertively toward the puppy, making firm eye contact, until the puppy sits back or relaxes.

4. In order to get your puppy to drop an object, you must first claim it with your mind and your energy. You cannot be hesitant, and you must be totally clear about your intention. Don’t negotiate or plead with your puppy, either mentally or verbally. Do not repeat a command such as “Leave it!” if it is not heeded the first time. Your puppy will not take it personally. She shouldn’t have a problem giving you what she now knows belongs to you.

Tug-of-War