Episode #203 How To Help Your Puppy Settle While Playing or Interacting With Others

Ever wondered how to turn your puppy's energy into calm, positive behavior, especially during the chaos of the holiday season? Join me, as we unpack techniques to manage your puppy's excitement through structured play and training. We'll explore the art of alternating between fun and focus, utilizing cues like "sit" and "down" to guide your puppy's energy in a positive direction. Discover how food rewards can make training time both effective and enjoyable, and why implementing timeouts can be a game-changer for overly enthusiastic puppies. Our goal is to help you cultivate a peaceful atmosphere in your home, even amidst the holiday hustle.

Chapters

• 0:00 Helping Your Puppy Settle During Play
• 8:20 Successful Puppy Socialization and Guest Preparation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

As the holidays approach, our puppies tend to get overwhelmed or overly excited, especially when new people are around or other dogs that they're excited to meet. So on today's episode, we are discussing how to help your puppy settle while playing and interacting with others. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the Puppy Training Podcast. I'm Amy Jensen, founder of Baxter Bella, the online puppy school. Here we are all about helping you create the best possible experience raising a puppy, from training tips to practical tricks, all aimed at fostering a happy, well-behaved dog who truly feels like part of the family. So if you are ready to enjoy the journey and strengthen the bond with your dog, let's get started. To enjoy the journey and strengthen the bond with your dog, let's get started. Whether you're preparing for guests during the holidays or you're trying to manage your puppy's energy when you're at the park, it's important to lay the foundation for good behavior early. Here at Baxter Bella, we are all about coaching you and your dog on achieving the best behavior possible, and we start early. We start while these puppies are young or when they first come to you, at whatever age they are. Now here are some tips for managing your puppy's energy and helping them settle during playtime, as well as strategies for introducing them to new situations like socializing with other dogs and having people over in your home. Tip number one how to help your puppy settle during playtime with people. Puppies are naturally excitable and they tend to express this excitement through play. However, teaching them to calm down during play sessions is really important. This can prevent overly rough or chaotic behavior, especially as they get older and bigger. So a lot of this will depend on the size of your dog. For example, a five pound puppy is probably not that annoying if they were to jump up on you or get that excited. But if you have a puppy that's 30, 40, 50 pounds, or a dog that's going to be that big, imagine how big they're going to be when they're full grown right 80 pounds. Some of you, I know this will be more important for you, because we need to teach these dogs how to have body awareness and to be able to live with humans without knocking them over, for example. So here are some steps. I'm going to give you three steps to help your puppy play nicely with people.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Step number one we want to establish boundaries and teach them cues. From the moment my puppy starts playing, I'll introduce simple things like sit down or even gentle if they are taking their treats too roughly meaning I can feel their teeth, not their tongue. This will help them regulate their excitement. So we might play a little, train a little, and then we settle with again that sit or that down and then we play a little, we train a little and then we settle. So we're going back and forth, helping my dog learn to manage their own play levels by getting excited and then bringing it back down, and then getting excited and having fun and then bringing it back down. So this will again help them regulate their own excitement. So, using these cues, we want to redirect their energy when play gets too rough. For example, if they start jumping on people or they're mouthing their hands, I can redirect with a sit and reward my puppy for doing that Now. I can praise them. I can give them a food reward. We want to give them something that they like Now. This will teach my puppy that calm behavior is the key to continuing the fun. Make sure we are consistent with the cues and always reward positive behavior. So a lot of this is going to also be management.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Your puppy might not know these cues yet when you first bring them home, we'll eventually teach them these cues for the. In the meantime, you can use a little food reward to guide them into these positions. So you're going to put a little piece of food on their nose, lure them into a sit or lure them into a down and then pay them for remaining in that position for longer and longer periods of time. Now they won't be able to hold it super long in the recognize. They'll probably go right back to trying to jump or mouth on the people. So we use some management at that point or even before they do that. Ideally right, we have our puppy on a leash so they can't get to the person to jump on them, or maybe the puppy's in the pen so that they have their own play toys and chew toys so they can't go mouth people while they're excited. Now you'll notice when people first come it's really the exciting time. But after a few minutes have passed, most dogs can start to regulate themselves. So use management to create those boundaries in the beginning.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Now step number two is to use timeouts to calm down. So if your puppy gets overly excited or they start to nip or bite during play, just a simple timeout can be effective. We simply remove them from the situation by using a leash to lead them to a quiet area, or they can go in their crate for a brief period, maybe two to three minutes. Again, they have their favorite toys in the crate or in the tethered area so they can choose to do appropriate activities. We're just minimizing their ability to do the inappropriate activities. Now. We want to wait until our puppy settles themselves. So this will you know, they get to really decide how long they're over here.

Speaker 1: 4:53

For I look for a downshift in behavior, meaning, uh, I see them lay down, I see them sit, I see them settle, they start to chew on a toy I'm really looking for, you know they're able to settle themselves and choose appropriate behavior and then, once they're calm, we can bring them back over and have them interact again. So it goes back to step number one of creating those boundaries with. You know we don't allow this, we do allow this. And when they start to get overly excited or nippy or bitey during play, then we can just simply remove them from that exciting spot, take them to a more quiet spot and let them settle. Then we can reintroduce them, and it's going to go back and forth. It's a little bit like a roller coaster, but we want to be very consistent with. We remove them and they get to calm down if they're getting too overly excited.

Speaker 1: 5:42

Okay, step number three is to provide plenty of mental and physical stimulation. So if you know people are coming over before the people arrive, take your puppy outside, let them run around. If you don't have an outdoor area to do that, then find a long hallway where you can toss a ball, play a little tug with them, do some scent games, hide some things around your apartment or your house and let your dog go find them. Those are all really good mental, physical exercises that can help get out some of that excess energy so that they're more able to focus once the people come. Now don't overdo it, because if you get them overly tired then they're just irrational, right. So there is a balance there and you'll learn what your dog's thresholds are. But it is important to give them these outlets for the energy that they have. So make sure your puppy has plenty of opportunities for structured play and exercise.

Speaker 1: 6:31

I love to give my dogs interactive toys. You know, puzzle feeders, going on walks where they it's just a go, sniff, walk. They get to just smell whatever they want to smell, and I follow them around. They decide where we go. Now I'm not following any pulling. If they happen to pull, we just stop or change directions so that they're not rewarded for pulling, but they get to decide where we go and what they smell. That's an excellent exercise to get out again both mental and physical energy. So the more you do this, the less likely they are to be excessively hyper during play. Now again, like I said, your dog's going to have thresholds. You don't want to just wear them out physically, because then mentally they're tired as well, and when they come back and then you're asking them to do a sit or a down, they might be too tired to listen. So there's some balance there, but you definitely need both.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Next let's talk about the dog to dog interaction, so teaching your puppy to behave calmly around other dogs. Socialization is one of the most important aspects of raising a well-adjusted puppy. When our puppy sees another dog, especially in a public place like a park, it can be tempting for them to react out of excitement, fear or territorial instinct. So here's how to teach our puppies to remain calm when they encounter other dogs. Step one would be start with controlled socialization. This means when we introduce our puppy to other dogs. Step one would be start with controlled socialization. This means when we introduce our puppy to other dogs, it's important that we kind of assess the environment. If possible. We want to find a calm dog with good social manners who can teach our puppy more, act as a role model for them, keep the initial interactions short and positive. We want to reward our puppy for calm behavior around the other dog. If we need to, we can put both dogs on leashes and separate them until there's calm, and then we can let them go sniff one, two, three and then separate them and let the dogs calm down, and we can do that several times until we feel like the dogs are ready to interact together.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Now it's important that we don't overwhelm our puppy with too many new dogs at once, so I love to set up one-on-one play dates. Wellmar puppy with too many new dogs at once, so I love to set up one-on-one play dates. If you do have a group of puppies coming over, I like to have maybe a pen set out there so that maybe two of them can start in a pen and then the others can start outside of the pen and again, you don't want too many, so I would definitely keep it under four if you can. But set up some spaces so that you can separate puppies. Maybe even just one puppy needs to go inside the pen where they have a little break, and then the other dogs might be playing great together, and then you can always use that separate space if needed to help a puppy calm down that needs to calm down.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Step two would be to teach a look at me cue. So this could be your dog's name, it could be look at me, it could be watch me, it could be focus, whatever your word is, but it means give me your attention. This is a really powerful tool to redirect our puppy's attention when they see another dog. I like to start this training in a distraction-free environment. So before I've introduced other dogs, I want to make sure when I say this cue, my dog looks at me. We teach you how to do this in our program if you need help with that, and then we can start to use it once we've put it on cue at the park. So I keep a fair distance away from other dogs, but when my dog notices another dog I can then give the cue, help them be successful with that, reward them for it. We can even create some space or distance if we need to to help my dog be able to do that. But I'm rewarding them for they see another dog, dog. They look at me, they see another dog. They look at me and they start to recognize. Oh, this is the pattern of behavior when I see another dog. I just look at Amy and she rewards me. So, again, distance is going to be your best friend as you start training this type of behavior. But that look at me cue is super valuable. It can also prevent any kind of reactive behavior from cropping up.

Speaker 1: 10:08

Now step three would be to reward calm behavior. So you might just notice. You can capture this behavior right, you're out at the park, your dog sees another dog and your dog's being calm about it. They're not overly excited or pulling on the leash or barking. You can just reward their calm behavior and keep walking. So, again, it's harder to notice the calm behavior because it's calm, it's quiet, it's good. We like it. It's not annoying, annoying behaviors we try to stop right. So immediately we give the dog attention, even if it's negative attention. Um, we, we do things that you know the dog's biting me or jumping on me. I react to that because it hurts, right? So if we notice our dog doing unwanted behavior, like barking at another dog or pulling on the leash, we kind of want to kick into gear and do something because we want that behavior to stop. On the reverse, if your dog's already giving you calm behavior, we want to reward that. But it's important that you notice it. So my challenge to you would be to start to look for the good behavior that your dog's doing and pay them for it. You might be surprised at how often throughout the day they're actually doing really good things, so you don't always have to feed them a food reward. Obviously we want to keep our dogs healthy, but praise them, give them a belly rub when you notice them just being calm and you know managing themselves. Or if you're again at the park and you see another dog and they simply just notice and keep walking with you. Yes, good dog, what a good girl, right? Be sure to notice the good and reinforce that, all right.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Lastly, let's just discuss really quickly guests coming over for the holidays. A few tips for you. One would be to prepare your puppy ahead of time, so doing some of those things that we've talked about, where, before the guests arrive, you're exercising them, giving them some mental and physical things that will get some of that energy out. But then also prepping like plant, have a plan in place, have the crate available, have a pen set up, have a leash you know, have your puppy on leash when the guests first walk in. Set your dog up for success. Think how do I want them to behave when my guest first walks in and how can I show my puppy how to do that? So again, we love coaching people through these types of things.

Speaker 1: 12:12

So step number two would be to have a safe space your puppy can retreat to when guests are over. Our houses are more chaotic, they're noisy, they're loud and a lot of times our dogs. It's too much for them, it's too much stimulation, it's not what they're used to on a day-to-day basis. So having a space, even that crater pen that maybe is in a separate room, where you can turn on a fan or some music, some white noise, and allow them to have a nap and decompress, that can be so helpful. And then the third tip I guess I would say be again, reward good behavior around the guests. So notice if your puppy goes up and does a sit to say please to someone and reward them for that. You can even teach people how to get the sit to say please if they're interested in being part of the training.

Speaker 1: 12:55

But some will want to help. Some are not interested and be respectful of that as well. But anytime your puppy offers good behavior, make sure that you reward that. All right, you guys? That's it for today. If you need puppy training help, please reach out to us. Check out our website, baxter and Bellacom, where we have an entire online training program for you and a team of trainers ready and waiting to help you with any puppy behavior that you're dealing with. Happy training. Thanks for tuning in to the puppy training podcast. I hope today's tips help you feel more confident and excited about raising your dog. Remember, with a little patience and consistency, you can create a loving bond and a well-behaved pup who's a joy to have in your family. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with fellow puppy parents. For more resources, visit Baxter and Bella online. Until next time, happy training.