Dog Training Q and A! 6/3/2021: On keeping a puppy from attacking a cat, and using Harry Potter spell names as cues

This is a bonus episode: A recording of a live Q and A.

She also sometimes goes live to answer questions on Clubhouse. Find her there: @anniegrossman.

Today she answered a listener's question about keeping her young dog from attacking her cat.

Transcript

Annie

A quick Thursday Q and A for you, if you're here and you have a question, you're welcome to ask it. But I have a question that I got at Anniegrossman.com/ask that I really liked that I thought I'd share.

And I'm rocking a side ponytail today. What do you think of my...what do you think of this look? [laughs] It was the best quick hairdo I could come up with. If I was going to have to show my face. Does it look, does it look intentional? Hey there, Dustbin Terrier, great name. Hi, Bo...Uh, Pixel.

Okay. So, this question comes from Melissa and, did I lose it? Okay. Melissa, who is from, St. Louis, Missouri and has a corgi, right? Pachi is almost six months old. He and my two year old cat Covu love to play around together, but sometimes they get too rough. Anytime this happens, I use the touch cue with my fingers and give him a tasty treat, but then he turns around and runs right back to Kovu. Sometimes it's friendly, but it always escalates into a serious fight.

And then she has like a side note part, which I want to talk about in a second, but let's just talk about this part. So really great question. Actually I'm gonna read the second part now because I think it relates, so then she writes: I've also given a name to the touch cue, which is Revelio, I'm using Harry Potter spells as trick names, and he's brilliant.

Isn't that cute? He comes when I call almost every time, but I guess play time with Covu, is more fun. Sometimes I grabbed his favorite toy to distract him from Covu, but again, that only lasts for so long. Do you have any ideas? Thank you so much for your podcast. I'm amazed with how much I've been able to train Pachi within a short amount of time. And especially with three syllable trick names such as Expelliarmus for “drop it.” [laughs] I was told that it was impossible to do by a local trainer. Again, thank you.

So it's funny, you know, I've heard people do say dogs only understand like one or two syllables, but I think that's probably bullshit. So good for you, Melissa, for going the Harry Potter spell name route. I think that's very clever.

But to go back to the issue of what's going on here with the cat and the dog. I mean, Pachi is only six months old, so I would hope that you're able to get him some really good play time. I think puppies ideally need a really good jaunt with other puppies every day, if that's possible. It doesn't need to be a dog park.

In fact, my preference is like play dates. So if you know someone else who has a puppy, about your dog's age, it could even be the same dog every day. I don't think it has to be different. It could take place in your living room. You don't need to have like some massive yard, but puppies need to play with puppies. Ideally one-on-one. I firmly believe this and I believe it can help solve a lot of issues.

Short of playing with other puppies, make sure you have a flirt pole actually just talked about the flirt pole in the last episode I did. I think flirt poles are a genius genius way to exercise dogs, to help them get out some of their crazies. Because it sounds to me like Pachi wants Covu to be a dog. And of course Covu is not a dog, he's a cat.

But a couple of things that you can do to make use of the good training that you're doing. I think it's smart that you're doing the Touch cue, but it sounds like you are waiting until Pachi attacks Covu, to then give the touch cue, so that can become its own kind of loop, right? Where Pachi’s like, well, I'm going to go attack Covu -- sorry about the sound effect of Poppy eating a marrow bone here. Poppy, go do that over there.

-- ‘I'm going to go attack Covu and then Mom is going to give me the Touch cue, and then I'm going to get a treat.’ So in a way you might actually inadvertently be training him to go touch Covu because it's resulting in him getting this cue that he really likes followed by a treat. Well, he likes the cue because he knows the behavior because he gets a reward. Right.

So if you are going to try and use a Touch cue in that way, I would make sure you do it more frequently. And do it before he starts going after Covu. So if it's like, usually he goes after Covu after one minute, then be doing it every like 40, 30 seconds, you know. Set a timer if you need to. But you want to get his attention and you want to try and de-escalate the situation before he starts attacking the cat.

Also, by the way, you could be doing training with the cat too. I mean, you might as well, it sounds like you're having really good success with Paci. I would suggest, maybe just doing a hand touch for both of them. At School for the Dogs, we use the cue break. So when two dogs are playing we'll yell break, and then the humans at the playtime rush in and give the dog a treat. And what is the dog learning? Every time I hear that word break, my humans got something really good for me. So I better go pay attention to what she's doing.

Well, you could do that with a cat and a dog too. It doesn't even have to be as complicated as having your dog touch your hand and then clicking that and then giving a treat. You could just say break and give a treat. It's like classical conditioning. It's that simple.

But yeah, I encourage you to do some work with the cat too, because your cat might be feeling left out. You know, the big difference between training cats and dogs. It's not that dogs are smarter it's that, dogs are more interested, generally speaking, in food. And dogs also do more. So if dogs are, you know, if you have a lot of behavior that's happening, you can capture a lot more behaviors.

Speaking in grand generalizations, cats tend to -- well, I mean, look at the extremes in like popular culture, you know, you have like Garfield on one side and Lassie on the other. And, so if you have an animal who basically like naps a lot and can be finicky about food, it can be harder to train them. But some cats are super active. And some cats, you know, their appetite isn't finicky. And some, cats, you can also train with praise and play. So try seeing how things go if you work in some training for Covu.

Actually in like my favorite product roundup that I did last week, I also talked about the Treat and Train, which is a remote controlled treat dispenser that I love using for lots of different things. Oh, and someone's asking if they can join live. Can you write out what your question is first, please? Thank you. And in the future, if you have a question you can, go to Anniegrossman.com/ask and ask it in advance.

But yeah, I like using the Treat and Train sometimes for training two animals at once. Cause I feel like it can take some of the complexity out of it. So if I were using a Treat and Train for something like this, I would see which animal responds to it better. Some animals might be scared of it. It does make a kind of grinding noise and a beep, although you can turn the beep off, but it still makes a grinding noise.

But, you know, let's say your cat had had no problems with it. You could fill that with dry food or treats. And when you do your recall with Covu, whether it's asking for a touch cue or just giving break cue, you could simultaneously be triggering the Treat and Train like, in the other direction, to be giving Covu a break in the other direction.

Of course, if you have another human there to be doing this with you, you could both be doing it. You don't necessarily need the remote control treat dispenser, but I'm just thinking if you're doing it alone.

Yeah. Anyway, so those are my suggestions. And why doing it in a separate direction? Well, I think that that might help both animals sort of have a break, and reset, have a little space from each other.

Actually, you know, one last tip is make sure that when they are playing, again, I want you to be breaking it up very regularly before the dog has a chance to go after the cat. But, the other thing is make sure each animal has a place to go that's like a safe space. That could be your lap. It could be going under a table.

But that's something else that we really like to do in our puppy play times, the rule is if a puppy comes into your lap, even if it's not your puppy, if a puppy goes into your lap, your job is now to protect the puppy. You are going to push away the other dogs that come near. You want your animal to know that there is a safe base where they are not going to be bothered.

And, if that safe base can be you, or whatever human is around, all the better, because, you know, ideally your dog already has, associations -- or your cat -- has associations with you as a source of safety from whatever. So make sure that both the cat and the dog have somewhere to go. If it's not you, then some kind of place where they can go to escape. So they are not feeling forced, especially the cat. I don't want your cat to feel forced into the situation.

So summarized: Train both animals at once. Make sure that dog is getting some really good play time. Practice lots of breaks. Break things up before things get heated. And make sure both animals have a safe zone.

All right. Hope this was helpful. And thanks to you guys for being here. The couple of you who were asking about going live. I would let you go live, but I would like to know what your question is first to make sure that it's appropriate. So please, just next time type that in, or you can ask me in advance, again, Anniegrossman.com/ask, and I will invite you to come on. Thank you very much. Bye.