Episode #32 Table Manners

Do you have a dog who begs at the table? Learn three things you can teach your puppy to do instead during mealtimes as well as meal prep and snack times. Basically when there's food in the kitchen, teach your puppy to do this! Problem solving tips are also discussed.

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speaker 0:   0:00
This is The Puppy Training Podcast Episode #32: Table Manners. This podcast is for those looking to train their own dog, whether as a family companion, a 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.  

speaker 0:   0:19
Hey, you guys, I hope you're having a good Monday. I'm excited to be back on the podcast today. I'm gonna try something a little differently today. Boots has decided that he wants to join me for the podcast recording and we just finished a round of Frisbee outside in the yard, so if you hear some panting in the background, that's our sweet Boots. I received a message through Instagram direct from Ali. I want to thank you, Ali, for listening to the podcast and thank you for your idea of today's topic. We're going to talk about table manners today. I'm going to give you three ideas today of things that you can have your puppy do instead of begging at the table, and I'm also going to go through a few problem solving ideas, tips and tricks, things that you can do to help eliminate or prevent things that your puppy might be doing in the kitchen that you don't like.   

speaker 0:   1:14
The very first thing that I want to mention when we talk about any kind of training is that I want you to think, 'What do I want my dog to do?' A lot of times in dog training. We think I don't want my dog to jump. I wish my dog would stop biting. I don't want my dog to do this or I wish you would stop that. That's kind of hard to train if you think about it. How do you stop someone from doing something? You actually create something for them to do. I want you to train your brain that when your dog training to think, 'What do I want my dog to do? What do I want this scenario to look like?' When you think of table manners or you think of your dog in the kitchen - and this is going to be probably some different times, maybe it's when you're making a meal or maybe it's when you're actually sitting down at the table to eat a meal - what do you want your dog to be doing? What do you want to look like? Be very specific. Write it out on paper if it helps and create a really specific picture of what you want your dog to do, and then you can make a training plan because you have a very clear idea of what you're wanting to train. The other way, you know what you want to stop, but you don't necessarily know what you're gonna replace it with or where you're going, so I always encourage my clients to think, 'What do I want my dog to do?' We're gonna start with that and I choose their several different things I choose, actually, and whether I'm training a puppy that's brand new or a dog that's older, or if I have a service dog puppy in training, I use different techniques. The very first technique that I'm going to present to you is crate time. It's very simple to set a crate near the kitchen area, so the puppy still feels like he's part of the family. He's included in the dinner time routine. However, he's going to be in a confined area so that he can't practice some of those unwanted behaviors like counter surfing or begging from members of the family while they're sitting at the table, or even just collecting the scraps of food along the floor. You get to decide what's okay with you and what's not okay with you, but a very simple way to handle table manners when your puppy is young or a brand new puppy, and they don't have a lot of a tools in their tool kit yet, maybe they don't know how to stay or go to bed or different things like that, a crate is a very great tool. You put the puppy in the crate, give them something really good to do. You can feed them their dinner in their crate. That's a great technique to help them want to keep that crate clean and dry and free from accidents. You can put their food on the floor and make them sniff it out and work for it. You can put it in a Kong. Sometimes I'll take their food and I'll add some water to it and make it kind of mushy and then I'll stuff it in a Kong, put it in a Ziploc bag and freeze it in my freezer for about 15-20 minutes. If you do that as you do your meal prep, then when meal time comes, you put the puppy in the crate, you give him his Kong from the freezer, he's got a nice cold thing to mouth and bite and work at while you're eating your meal. So use the crate, give your puppy something enticing and exciting. You don't want to just put him in the crate and shut the door or you're doing to have a very whiny puppy on your hands, but if you give him something good to do to use his time while he's in there, then it's a win win. 

speaker 0:   4:22
The next thing that I love to train my dogs to do is go-to-bed. Some of you call this mat work, some of you call it place work, some of you call it go-to-bed. Whatever your cue is for your dog, I train my puppies from day one that if they go and lay on their dog bed, then treats rain from heaven. They learn very early on that whenever I'm in the kitchen, if they go find their little dog bed and lay on it, I'm gonna come over and drop them a good, yummy reward. I'll do that quite often when they're little. The smaller your puppy or the new or your puppy is, you're going to have to reward them were frequently, but we want to get them on that reinforcement schedule where, as they get older, the time is increasing in between when they're getting that next food reward. That's another good tip with training. Even if you're not worried about table manners or such just a really good training tip for the week would be, make sure you're rewarding your puppy intermittently and that you're changing up that reinforcement schedule. You want them to always be guessing what they're going to get next and when they're going to get it. I like to provide a hierarchy of training rewards from kibble on up to string cheese or something that's a little bit more tempting for a puppy. I'll have a variety of things and he might get a little Cheerio, he might get a piece of kibble, he might get a piece of string cheese, he might get a piece of turkey, he never knows. That keeps your puppy playing the game longer. I'm also mixing up the time in between when my puppy's getting a treat. My puppy goes and lays on his bed and I drop him a Cheerio, I might count to 10-20 seconds and then drop another one and I might count to 30 seconds and then drop something better. Then I might go back to five seconds and he gets a treat, so he's never gonna know when that next treat is coming. It might be short, it might be longer, and it might be kind of good, and it might be really good. That guessing game creates drive in our puppy to want to keep playing these training games with us. The go-to-bed one is simply that. You can start by free shaping that, or you can lower your puppy onto the bed and mark and reward when he gets all four paws on. I like to lure my puppy on and put them in the down position - I'm not touching them, they're doing this all on their own - and when he lies down on the bed, I give him a food reward. I'll just be walking around, and if I go stand by the bed, I'll wait. The free shaping part of it is I'm just gonna wait and see if he'll offer me anything or figure out what it is I'm wanting him to do, and if he comes over and he puts one paw on the bed, I'm gonna mark and reward that. If he puts two paws on the bed, I'm in a mark and reward that. Eventually he's gonna lie down, jackpot him. Give him four or five treats like hip, hip hooray! You figured out this this thing I'm wanting you to do! Those are the two different methods you can use. You can free shape it, you can lure your puppy into position, however you want to go about starting this behavior, once they catch on that when they lie down on the bed, food gets dropped, they'll play this quite often, and you'll notice that they get really fast at it. They'll run over to their bed and lay down, and they just figured out that that gets them food. I train my puppies that that's the only way they get food in or near my kitchen. However, your house is set up or wherever you can strategically place this dog bed so you can do that, so that you could be cooking and prepping and occasionally dropping treats for your puppy, it works really well because then they learn that if I lie down on this bed and I just stay here calmly, I get rewards and whatever gets rewarded gets repeated. Puppies are always doing what works for them. They're doing what serve them best. If lying down on the bed is getting them that food that they're wanting them, they're going to keep lying down on that bed. You can then put that on cue. When I first teach things, I like to get the behavior first, and then when the puppies doing the behavior, I can name it. I call it go-to-bed, some of the service dog puppies I train, their word is place. Whatever you choose to call it, you can cue your puppy to go to place or go-to-bed, and then when they're lying down, then you can reward them. Again, you're going to gradually build that out longer and longer until they're able to stay on that bed the entire meal time. If they get up and get off the bed, you simply put them right back on. You're not touching them necessarily, you're just going to lure them back on with a food reward, but you're not going to give it to them. If they break, you can use that reward to lure them back into position, and then you're gonna wait for a success. Them staying there on the bed, then they can get the next reward. If you reward them for going back on after they break, they're going to start breaking so that you'll reward them, so don't start that behavior chain. Be really careful about what you're rewarding, and remember that dogs are very instantaneous. If your dog breaks gets off the bed, you just say, 'Hey, uh uh', you try to catch him before they can get off. If they break too early, you lure them right back on, get them into the down position, mark 'Yes', but don't give them a food reward until they've stayed there for several seconds. Then they'll get the game and you can make it longer and longer. Eventually, by the time they're a year, they could essentially stand their bed for an hour. You just have to practice that and be calm, clear, and consistent with your expectations for that one.  

speaker 0:   9:43
The third option is a go-in. For the service dog puppies, when we take them to restaurants, we cue them to go-in, and that tells them to go under the table, lie down, and they can stand up and turn around, that's okay, they just can't leave from under the table until we release them. That's another good option for you. You can cue your dog to go-in, he is going to lay under the table, and he can patiently just lie down and chill out while you eat your meal. It's very similar to the go-to-bed behavior, but we don't have an actual bed that were wanting our dog to stay on. He just has to stay under the table. Under the table becomes his area or his space now that were wanting him to stay in until released. I like to start these behaviors, the go-to-bed and then go-in, when it's very quiet. It's harder to start these behaviors if you have a family of six and the kids are talking and the noise level is loud and the energy level is high, so I like to start these behaviors with brand new puppies when it's just me eating breakfast after my kids have gone to school. Or maybe it's just me eating my lunch when the house is super quiet. Start these behaviors at a time when it's not going to be a super long meal, it's gonna be fairly short, and then also the energy level in your house and the noise level in your house is much smaller. Your puppy will find much more success that way, and then you can work your way up to the meal times that are a little crazier.  

speaker 0:   11:08
Those are your three options that I'm gonna teach you, or that I've taught you today, and you could mix these up as well. Maybe some days you're not in the mood to focus on your puppy staying on his mat or staying under the table, and you just want to put him in a crate for that meal time. That's totally fine. You can do that some days, you can teach him to go-to-bed, you can also teach him to go-in, and mix it up a little bit. I will say when you have a brand new puppy and you're just starting this out, the more consistent you are in not mixing up what you do, he'll probably learn these things faster, but by all means, if you need a break one day, then use the crate. It's there for you.  

speaker 0:   11:45
Let's jump into some problem solving in the kitchen. These are the things that I hear about the most from dog owners. How do I solve the begging issue? Well, teaching your puppy to do those three behaviors, any one of those three behaviors will eliminate the begging. I will say, though, if you reward the begging even once, your puppy will keep trying. The reason why is we use intermittent reinforcement in dog training because, if a puppy only gets something every once in a while, it becomes addicting to them. A good example would be Las Vegas and slot machines. You put a quarter in and you don't know if you're going to win or not, so you just keep putting the quarters in, and then sometimes you get a prize, but a lot of the times you don't, but people keep playing because they know that that prize is possible. It's kind of like that in dog training is, the dogs, if we reward them intermittently, or maybe every once in a while, they get a reward, they're going to keep trying because they remember getting that one reward so they will keep trying to get that one reward again. With begging, remember that principle and just never do it. Never give your dog something for sitting and looking at you with those big brown puppy dog eyes. It's hard, I know, because these guys, they're cute and they know howto work their eyes. They can give you that look that just melt your heart, but do not give them food for begging. The other thing about begging is if you feed them once or they get that once, they're going to escalate their behavior from sitting nicely and just looking at you with those big brown puppy dog eyes to pawing at you, nudging at you, possibly even barking at you, they're going to get a little bit pushy and a little bit demanding to try to get that food from you. Again, if you have a brand new puppy just never start this. Never feed them what you're eating or scraps from the table. I always have their separate treat rewards they're getting. It just prevents a lot of work down the road. Counter surfing, let's talk about that, because this comes up quite frequently once you have an adolescent dog. As soon as they get big enough and tall enough to kind of reach that counter top, they're going to try to get a reward. The best way to prevent counter surfing is, again, go back and teach these things during kitchen time or table time so that they are inappropriate behavior. The counter surfing principle is basically manage it as best as you can. In my house, we just have a rule: if there's dogs in the house, we keep all counters and table surface is clear. If we're gonna be getting out snacks, great, let's put the dog in a crate or put him to go-to-bed or tell him to go-in. We're going to prepare snacks, we're gonna eat our meals, we're gonna wipe all the counters off, put all the food back in the pantry, in the fridge, and then we can leave the kitchen and release the dog. When the dog is loose in the house and it's not dinnertime or meal time or snack time, there's nothing out there for him to steal or get. That's going to prevent counter surfing because again, if we leave a slice of pizza on the counter and nobody's watching the dog and he goes into the kitchen and figures out how to jump up on that counter and get that pizza, that's very rewarding to him, and he's going to continue to try to jump on the counters to get something. That's your best to strategy with counter serving is to keep everything off of counters and table surfaces. Be very clean. When you're done with meals, wipe the counters, don't even leave crumbs or scraps. Just wipe everything down. Train your puppy to do some crate time or the go-to-bed or the go-in while you are getting the food out in your kitchen and having snacks or meals.  

speaker 0:   15:10
That leads us into the stealing. We want to prevent our puppy from being able to steal things as much as possible. We don't want him to practice these unwanted behaviors, because again, the more a puppy practices something, the stronger that behavior gets. When it comes to stealing things, think of like backpacks, or purses, or sometimes we stash a granola bar, or a quick grab-and-go bite to eat, we want to make sure that our purses are our backpacks or not laying around where the dog can get into them and forage around and get something out of it because, again, that's going to reinforce that stealing behavior and our puppy will start scavenging through things to try to find that reward. Try to hang those items up or put them in lockers or closets as best as you can. Store things in the pantry behind a closed door so your dog's not able to steal things. Also, other pet foods. Cat food is very enticing to a dog, so if you have other pets in your home, hamsters, fish, whatever you have, keep their food in a tightly sealed container or in a cupboard behind closed doors where your dog can't get to it. Garbage cans are another big one. I have converted all my garbage cans to ones with lids. It's wonderful. The puppy never even learns to forage through garbage cans because they're just not available to him. I train enough puppies in my home that for me that was worth it, just to have garbage cans, that have lids on them. You do what works best for you in your home, but realize that management is a great way to start, especially when you have a new puppy who you are trying to train to do certain behaviors that they aren't quite there yet in their proficiency level, then management is a really helpful tool, so they are not practicing unwanted behavior while we're working to train better behavior.  

speaker 0:   16:54
All right, you guys, thanks for listening. I hope you have a wonderful week, happy training, and I'll talk to you next week. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site BaxterandBella.com to contact me.