Week 2: I ‘Chews’ YOU!
This week I repeated to myself: You can always go! I guess you wonder: go where? It’s a reference to how Tristan explains the rules of the card game called Dobble. There are matching symbols on cards and every card will have one matching symbol with another card meaning every card is playable if you focus and find the match. It’s a very similar rationale good dog trainers use when trying to find a solution to a training or behaviour challenge. If something is not working, you need to step back and think: what do I need to change? In real puppy world it can mean shifting feeding or toilet times, adding new safety measures so puppy cannot chew furniture or what food to exclude when they are having stomach issues.
This has been a true ‘stay on our toes’ kind of week. Please let me begin by welcoming a new painfully slow arrival on the scene: lower jaw molar! We have been expecting you and your 41 remaining sharp colleagues. Cody has been not enjoying the teething process one bit. His teeth seem to be on schedule with the witching hour, so our bedtime features zoomies combined with attention barks, and trying to get his teeth on anything that is within reach. We acquired a selection of chews that easily matches SJP’s collection of shoes on Sex and the City and like chew ninjas replace the contraband in his jaws with one of the legal chews. Sadly, not everything has a ‘legal equal’ and chews that involve textures like wire, metal or cables are not easy to come by (Found one? Let me know!)
Sometimes you just have to offer the puppy the next best thing you have available, hoping it’s not your arm. Cody really likes our heads and if we’re on his level, he tries to bite our skulls open with the commitment of the squirrel from Ice Age. Teething is frustrating for everyone involved, not just the puppy. Seeing it once more from the dog owner perspective and as a trainer, it is worrying to imagine how many people think their puppies are just being naughty during these stages. With that in mind, I blame outdated books and dog programs which have created lots of harmful stereotypes which exceedingly anthropomorphise what our dogs do. If people were not fed this line at their dog is trying to “dominate”, “pay back” or is “being stubborn,” they would probably be a lot less hard on themselves and their puppy in those early weeks.
We keep checking ourselves, whenever Cody runs off with something we would prefer not to have puppy teeth indentations on, to remember he is only trying to relieve the pain he is in from all those pesky teeth pushing through. If he is given a chew in place of something ‘illegal’ and he reverts to the forbidden fruit, we go back to: what can we change? We also look at things like the time of day, as I said above witching hour is when all the teeth seem to come out to play and look at the toys he is tugging on. We had two incisors come out in one evening and have a bloodied toy shark and an incisor smaller than tic tac to show for it. When Cody gets overtired, he gets a lot nippier, so we make sure (as much as we can) to provide activities for him to power down with, like sniffing or little crate training sessions.
The most important question you always ask is, if something is not going right: are the puppy’s needs being met? You do not have to be a trainer to ask that question, and I would encourage you to write it somewhere where you can see it when your puppy is zooming up and down the corridor. What could a puppy need? Wee or poo? Is he teething or frustrated? Does he need sleep or more mental stimulation? Company? Food? Does he want to meet someone or to be taken away from something that he feels unsafe about? The way dogs learn is amazing. They quickly connect to you if you’re tuned into their frequency.
If you listen, watch and respond to their needs appropriately, they are most likely to perform the same behaviour to signal their need again. Toilet training is the best example. If you watch for them circling the floor, being restless and whiny or even going towards the door and then act on it, successfully taking them to do their business outside - they’ll notice too. Dogs learn from very early on: ‘this works, I’ll do it again’, and follow this rationale for the rest of their lives. Understanding this in the early stages can help prevent future unwanted behaviours but also builds a great foundation for dog to human communication.
Cody proved it to us already throughout last week by having his accidents closer and closer to the door. It’s fascinating seeing him tell us: I have been telling you I need to go! Toilet training is basically a few weeks of human hindsight babble: we should have gone when he did this or I knew he got too excited when we played. The bottom line is, it’s never the puppy’s fault. Our puppy has no hindsight. He has THE NEED and the informed picture he built from all the previous toileting experiences that have mostly happened outside. Going as close to the door as possible is as good as he can do when we do not give him access to the permitted area.
Case is closed, humans are guilty. Right now, it appears that Cody would have liked to have two wees in one potty break. He can go all night without a wee and then daytime he can have a wee and then an accident forty minutes later. We started tracking the accidents a bit more closely so we can find a pattern. Remember, what I said in the beginning: you can always go! There is always a move or change we can make to advance the training or improve the situation. We’ve had two solid days without a single accident and then we broke the streak. We must go back to the drawing board and think again: what can we change? I hope you stick around to find out next week!