Episode #182 Small Apartment Living with Your Dog

In this episode, we'll guide you through helping your dog stay calm amidst the usual apartment hustle and bustle. By creating a familiar auditory environment with specific sound playlists and using engaging activities like play and toys, you'll learn to ease your dog's anxiety and adapt seamlessly to apartment life. Enhance your training journey with our online resources designed to ensure a harmonious living environment for both you and your dog. Join us and make small apartment living a joy for you and your canine companion!

Chapters

• 0:00 Apartment Dog Training Tips
• 6:55 Managing Apartment Living With a Dog

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Puppy Training Podcast, episode 182, small Apartment Living. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning, as you train your own dog from home, 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. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to the podcast today. Did you know we have a YouTube channel and on that YouTube channel we provide free information, free tips that you can go check out when training your dog. So today for the podcast, I am bringing in one of our YouTube clips and you're going to hear the audio for it. Enjoy.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Today we're going to talk about the top three things you need to know if you live in a small space, like an apartment, and you have a dog. Today I'm in an apartment 500 square feet with Indy, a dog with a little bit of energy and excitement, and we're going to talk about things that you can do to help your dog be successful living in a smaller space. So we're going to talk about house training. We're going to talk about manners inside a building, including hallways, elevators, just even exiting your own apartment, and then other tips to be successful with things that you can't control, like sounds from your neighbors, right? What do you do if your dog hears something and maybe wants to react to it? How do you handle that? My name is Amy. I'm the owner of Baxter and Bella, the online puppy school. If you're looking for help training your own dog from home, check out all of the resources that we've created for you for you to be successful in getting your dog to do things that you want them to do.

Speaker 1: 1:36

If you're about to bring a new puppy home or a dog to an apartment, it's important that we have a bathroom spot picked out for them when we talk about house training. So if you are bringing a puppy home that's too young to be fully vaccinated, we want to be careful about where we take them to the bathroom. We don't want them to be on the city streets before they have those vaccinations. So I like to set up a potty area either in my apartment or on my balcony. I can just use a pen in both spaces. I'd probably set up a pen so that they're not just having free rain on my balcony, but they go in a certain spot. So I'll set up a pen with either pee pads or a litter box with pellets, maybe artificial turf, or they even make grass patches. That is real live sod that can be swapped out every so often. But you'll want to pick a spot and then we're going to treat it just like we would with a family home and at their own private backyard. The bathroom area is that pen that we've set up.

Speaker 1: 2:29

If you don't want to use the pen inside your apartment and you don't have a balcony, then a small bathroom is a great option. I keep the door closed and then I teach my puppy to signal at the door that they need to get into that space to go to the bathroom. It actually works out really quite well to then transition to going on the street once they are fully vaccinated. So if you're not bringing a puppy on, maybe you have an adult dog that you've adopted any new dog coming into a new space. I would treat them like an eight-week-old puppy with house training, so I would make sure that they know that this space is their living space and that we potty elsewhere. But with an adult dog that's fully vaccinated, I can now pick a location that's outside my apartment. It's safe to take them down on the city streets, so I would navigate my building, look for a good grassy patch that's out of the way of other people and that is freely accessible to dogs in the building, and let your dog go to the bathroom there.

Speaker 1: 3:21

To set you up for success, I like to keep several things by my door so that when we're ready to head out of the apartment, I have what I need. So I keep a jacket in case it's cold outside. I keep a treat bag and it has some food rewards in there at all times. I also just hang my leash there. My leash already has poop bags attached in case I need them. And we're ready to go out. Indy right, are you ready? Should we go outside? One of the first things you need to decide when bringing a dog home and you live in a city is where are they going to go to the bathroom? So I like to scour just the area around my apartment building and try to find a place that's out of the way from people. Grass is often what dogs like, but you can't always find that either, so we can train dogs to different surfaces. But if I can find a grassy patch, that's what we're going to do. Indy you ready, let's go.

Speaker 1: 4:06

Let's talk about building manners. So in this building we have staircases, we have elevators, we have hallways, we have people coming and going, and so it's important that our dog knows how to behave in and around all of the things that are happening in an apartment building. As I get ready to head out the door, it's important that my dog doesn't just bolt out there. I don't actually know who's in the hallway currently or what I might find, so I like to teach my dog to wait and then I'll open the door and head out and I just use my body as a body blocker. I like to check out first what's out here and if it's all clear then I can say, okay, let's go indy. When navigating hallways or staircases in a city or an apartment building, I want to make sure I know what's on the other side of this door before my dog's just rushing out or bolting out. So for Indy, we're going to move her away from the doorway and then I'm going to go first and I'm just going to body block so she's not just bolting out and I'll just check on my surroundings. It looks clear. So now we can head on out. You ready, let's go.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Let's talk about elevator etiquette. So I want to make sure that I'm positioned between the elevator and my dog. I'm going to ask my dog to do a certain behavior, like a sit is good or a touch, anything that I can do to just capture their attention. I want to make sure I have their attention before we get on or off the elevator. I also don't know who's going to exit from the elevator. So, again, I want to make sure that I can be here so that my dog's not just rushing up to greet them or meet them or do something that I don't want them to do. So, again, I like to be here. I like to get my dog's attention. I'll ask for some good behavior. Can you sit? What? No, can you sit? Yes, good girl. And then we're ready to deal with the elevator. Oh, sit, stay. Ah, okay, sit, stay you ready? Let's go.

Speaker 1: 5:50

When it comes to hallways, make sure that your dog's on leash. It's important to have good manners around other people who might have their dogs out, also people who maybe don't want to interact with your dog. It's just important to have control of your dog. So I like to make sure that they're on a leash. If we are to pass somebody in a hallway, I'll make sure that I'm in between the person and my dog. So if you think of a sandwich, the dog's going to be on the outside, the stranger's on the outside, I'm in the middle. That way I can better control what my dog does and help them not interact with that person if, especially, that person doesn't want to interact with your dog. So it looks a little bit like this In addition to having a leash, I bring a little bit of food reward so that you can make sure you have your dog's attention and you can get them to do things if needed. So when I see another person or dog coming down a hallway, I might ask Indy for a sit. I might ask her just to follow this treat. Maybe I ask for her to do a little trick so that she's busy. Indy likes to move, so she might be moving in a spin, but at least she's paying attention to me, not who we're passing.

Speaker 1: 6:55

Lastly, let's talk about those things that you can't control in your apartment.

Speaker 1: 6:58

For example, I have zero control over what the people above me do with the people below me or the people on the sides of me. If they have a dog that's running around, maybe that excites my dog, or maybe they have dogs that are barking, maybe they have jingly keys as they walk down the hall past my door and my dog hears that. So anytime you live in an apartment setting, there's going to be lots of sounds in and around your apartment building or your apartment itself that your dog might alert to. First of all, I like to habituate my dogs to sounds to help them relax when they're hearing these random noises. Youtube has a lot of cool playlists on it that you can just hit play. You can control the volume, you can control when you start or stop it, and your dog's going to hear random things dogs barking, trucks honking, just all sorts of city sounds going off that your dog can just be. Oh, I hear that all the time. It's no big deal. As soon as they start to relax around all of these sounds happening, you'll notice that all of the little things in and around your apartment kind of just they stop caring about it, which is great.

Speaker 1: 7:58

If your dog appears nervous when they hear a sound, then I like to get them to play, if possible. So can you change rooms? Can you go into the bedroom instead of the kitchen? Can you get out their favorite toy? Can you start to play, tug or fetch with them and get them to relax around hearing those sounds, so that it becomes a positive interaction versus a negative one, so that it becomes a positive interaction versus a negative one? Living in an apartment can present challenges when you have a dog. So today we wanted to talk about those three things, three main things that will help set you up for success and your dog up for success as well. If you need more help with your dog in this apartment situation, check out our online program. We offer you a lot of resources to help you be successful in having a dog with you in the city. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site, baxter and Bellacom, to contact me.