Dog People Q&A: Daycare Advice, Vagus Nerve Facts & Fetch Troubles

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you. It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence.

Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice.

You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things.

Yeah.

Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck have I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet And I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It is the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, just a dog training enthusiast. But of course, as always, joined by the man in the know with everything to do with dogs and dog training. It is, of course, Max O'Neill from the Down Under Dog Trainer. We've got a doggy daycare going on at our place here at the moment. We've got— you brought along your latest rescue.

Yeah, latest addition. We've got Nelson comes. He's a frequent member here at the studio. But we've got Turtle here as our special guest today. We brought little Turtle along and Turtle's a greyhound we just adopted. She's 11. Some of our great friends had to move back to Germany and Turtle was a little bit too old and poor health to go with them, but also in good enough nick to You know, want to keep fighting on. So we'd looked after her a bunch of times and she's now come to live with us. And anyway, she's here at the studio today and—

Beautiful dog.

Great dog.

And actually, coming up in an episode very soon, we're going to be talking about suggestions for dog breeds. And I think greyhounds may be in one of your suggestions.

Oh yeah, they've slipped in there for sure.

But firstly, we want to do— in this episode, we're going to be doing some listener questions because of course we've got the Dog People Podcast Facebook group, which is open for you to join us right now and ask your questions. So we're going to kick it off with Stephen Wilson. He said, hey, Jack and Max, great podcast. Thank you, legend. I just listened to the episode where you guys poo-pooed off-leash dog parks. We did kind of poo-poo it. The question is, we don't use a dog park, but we do take Roxy to a doggy daycare about once a month. Roxy comes back absolutely exhausted after the day where they are, where there are a number of dogs of various size and breeds. They are typically separated by size in the run pen. Are these places good or similar to a dog park and recommended? We see pictures from the day and she looks very happy racing around and having Her rest periods? Thanks guys, and keep up the good work, Steve.

Cool. So thanks for the great question, Steve. That gives us a lot to break down. So short answer is, yeah, I think the way you're doing it sounds absolutely brilliant, but let's break it down and go into the long answer because dog daycares can be fantastic. They can also be pretty horrendous, if I'm really honest. So we'll break that down a little bit. So where I think doggy daycares can be a really great tool for your dog is if you use them infrequently. And if you use one that does do dog daycare well. And what I mean by that is doing it infrequently means your dog once a month has this huge, really intense experience with other dogs. But that's not the norm for them. It's not like every time they see a dog, it's this huge, intense bout of play. And then you form this like really strong conditioning where your dog goes, the only time I'm ever around dogs is I've got this massive adrenaline spike. I'm playing at 100 miles an hour. And then the reason that's pretty counterproductive is because then trying to walk them around, your dog sees another dog, goes, oh, I know what this means. And then it's, it's pretty tricky from there. But number one, the way you're doing it infrequently, once a month, I think it's really good for your dog to like blow the cobwebs out, have a really good burnout. And especially if your dog's enjoying it. And that's a, you know, key thing we've banged on about quite a lot here is not all dogs are cut out for that sort of thing. But if they are and it's going well, then, well, It sounds like it's great for them. The second part of what I meant by that is there are some dog daycares that we really, really, really like that do things really well. They manage it. And it sounds like your one's doing that one. It sounds like there's no incidents have ever happened. They segregate it. They keep the numbers down. They maybe keep it based on size and energy and things like that. All that stuff's really sensible. And on the contrary, there are those ones where there'll just literally be about 80 to 90 dogs in a shed in one big room, and they all just go whole— home with holes in them and shit at the end of the day. So if you're sending your dog to one like that 5 days a week and then wondering why he got behaviour problems, like maybe just repeat that sentence. That'll answer your question. But in terms of what you're doing, Stephen, I think it's absolutely brilliant. Sounds like your dog loves it. Sounds like you've got no issues from it. And it's a good way to keep him up.

As I always like to do, Max, I'm going to bring this back to having children as well. I almost said owning children, having children as well, and picking a daycare for them. Because I know in my experience, we took our kids to a number of different daycares before we found the perfect one. And the telltale signs for the bad ones were walking into, like you just explained, you explained a shed where the kids are just like, they're all like from, from, you know, toddler all the way up to however they are when they leave, 5 years old, are all in the one area, all running around, all going nuts, all screaming, all crashing and banging. And it's just like, what is— Was this in Australia? Yeah, it was. It's just insanity. You wait till you see some of these places. Honestly, there's some beautiful ones out there, but there are some ones where it's almost like just warehousing children. So I think it's similar when it comes to the doggy daycare. If you turn up and it's just utter chaos, walk around, walk away, don't come back. If you turn up and the place where my son still goes now that we found for both our kids, it's, you never turn up, there's never chaos when you turn up. It's all nice. All the kids are just, you know, playing with their ages and all the rest of it. There's plenty of people watching what's going on. It's no different again with the dogs. One other question. Is there any way of telling other than from that particular, like just seeing what's going on? Is there any other ways of telling whether or not it's going to be a good daycare or not? Yeah, that's actually a really good point. And

I reckon, We'll add that to the episode list and we'll do a whole breakdown of that one day. But for now, like, short answer is number one, you want some structure and rhythm throughout the day. You don't just want your dog to go there and spend 8 to 10 hours on complete high level of arousal. Your dog might do it, but it doesn't mean it's good for them. So you want to ask them, hey, do you guys do nap times and rest times? And a lot of people go, well, if I'm sending my dog there for the day, I want them tired and they shouldn't be spending a couple of hours in a crate. But it's actually quite the, you know, Yeah. Quite the opposite to that. You want your dog having some Some downtime so they learn to sort of downregulate and downshift. It's good for them, but it's important they learn how to do that around other dogs. You want the areas sort of segregated. You don't want like this mass cluster of 40 dogs, because if 40 dogs decide to punch on, it can go pretty wrong, and 1 or 2 daycare staff can't break that up. So it should be segregated based on size and energy, and there should be staff members present in every area, not just, hey, we've got 1 person on today watching 4 different yards. There should be at least 1 person per yard. And if you've got a doggy daycare, you can absolutely say to people, hey, can I just stick around for half an hour? Like, and just watch. If they've got nothing to hide, they'll say yes. If they're a bit like, oh no, you know, then you go maybe another dog daycare.

I actually shout out to an old work colleague and friend of mine, Dave Hughes, because he took his latest dog to a daycare the other day and the daycare, after he picked the dog up, said, I'm afraid your dog can't come back. So that's probably a good daycare. So they're like, you know what, if your dog's not well behaved enough, it's not staying here. Spot on.

The new Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer is now at McDonald's. Made to lock in.

It's purple. It's teal. It's your new favorite flavor at McDonald's, for real. Blue raspberry syrup topped off with freeze-dried dragon fruit, which is especially fire with some fries. Get the new Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer only at McDonald's. Energizers contain caffeine. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

All right, Stacy Dempster has asked us a question. Oh, here we go. I love this one.

Here we go.

My question is about belly rubs, which my 3-year-old Groodle totally loves. In my social feeds, I'm seeing ads about vagus nerves and that it's not good to give belly rubs. It contributes to dogs being reactive. True or false?

Same thing. I think I already commented. You did comment.

Absolute bullshit.

Absolute bullshit. Yeah. It's just one of those things you see it in every, whether it's, you know, the fitness and weight loss world. world, dog training world, whatever, is people will, you know, find your biggest problem you're dealing with and just try and sell you yet another solution that just doesn't work. They'll do their little cash grab when it doesn't work. There's zero accountability. And by the time everyone figured— has figured out that it's all a bit of a con, um, by then they've made their million and walked off. And, you know, well done to them. But let's talk a little bit about the vagus nerve. So yeah, the vagus nerve is a part of what's called the parasympathetic nervous system in our dogs. That, uh, parasympathetic nervous system, uh, deals with all the sort of involuntary actions in our dog's body, the heart rate, breathing, bowel, all that sort of stuff. So it is also to do with our, you know, rest and digest system and helps to bring our dog down. So after you've got your dogs had a big stressful event or a big stressful day or a reactivity episode, whatever, is absolutely getting them home and giving a bit of a rubdown and looking for this vagus nerve or trying to stimulate it. And that You know, the vagus nerve, honestly, pretty much anywhere you touch your dog on your body, like it stems off into their ears, it runs down their chest and neck through, you know, across their abdomen and, you know, et cetera. So yeah, if you give your dog just like a good calming rub, it might help them go, oh, and sort of de-stress and come back down. But it's not like it's this thing that's been loaded up for years that needs to be released, and that's why your dog's reactive. So these people selling these courses about doing, you know, vagus nerve resets, like I haven't bought one, but I guarantee if I do, and maybe I do it just for the sake of content, is you'll go in there and you'll just be like, okay, I just paid somebody $100 to get them to show me how to touch my dog, which I've been doing anyway.

Okay, I think, I think we have to do this. We've got to do this. I'm going to— it's a tax write-off. I'm going to sign up for a Vegas nerve reset course.

Yeah, let's do

it and see and see what they're selling in this. But essentially it's hocus pocus bullshit.

Yeah, it is. It's never been a part of my Studies? Training, you know, or anything with dogs. It's something I've heard, I've been aware of, and go, yeah, cool. And, you know, it's something I'll occasionally tell clients like, hey, if you've had a big day, like, you know, help your dog wind down, give them some stress displacement behaviour thing to do. And sometimes that does include a good rub and a massage, but it's not something we focus on specifically, and it's certainly not the cause of or the solution to your dog's reactivity. So save your money, put that one in the pass basket.

Okay. Thank you very much indeed for your question.

Next one. But also, so just on the last part of that, I'm saying, is it not good to give my dog belly rubs? And that's kind of the thing. They suck you in and go, hey, there's this thing that you're doing that could be causing your dog's reactivity. So, oh my God. Like there's, it's kind of shit to think that there's people out there now thinking that because they give their dog a good belly scratch at the end of the day, they might be doing it in a wrong way that's causing their activity. Like for me, that's just, that's really shitty to do that to people.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Okay. Ignore it, guys. It's all BS.

Yep. Yep.

All right. Nell Plowman. Now this is an interesting one because Nell posted up a video and a question here, which I actually did respond to via video in the group. And now, so then you can now probably critique me on what I suggested. Because Nell's written here, hi guys, I got an issue I'm hoping you might be able to help me out with. I have an 11-month-old Kelpie named Rosie and she loves Frisbee.

Yep.

We go across the road to the park every day and she is so fixated on that Frisbee, but getting it back from her to throw again is the problem. When she does drop it, it's about 4 metres away from me, and then she backs off ready for me to throw it again. I've tried her favourite treats, but she's not interested when the Frisbee is round. Please help. So basically from the video, what you can see is that the dog's got a long line on and the Frisbee is being thrown and it's backward and forward. Now, what I said was the dog does have the long line on, but Nell doesn't have it in her hand. It's just free.

Yeah, it doesn't look like it's being used.

Yeah, it's being free. So basically what I said to Nell was, look, At the end of the day, the game for puppy at the moment is, I'm going to keep this away from you. You come and get it. You chasing her is kind of the game.

Yep, absolutely.

So what you need to do is get hold of that long line, keep her on the long line, throw the Frisbee out. She gets the Frisbee, call her back, say it once. If she doesn't come back, use that long line to reel her in and show her there's no option but to come back to me with that toy. When she brings it back to you, get hold of the Frisbee. If she wants to play a bit of tug, I said, that's fine. 'Cause then she gets to see, hold on, there's this new game that starts when I come back with the Frisbee, we're playing a bit of tug.

Yep.

But when you want it, game stops. Keep hold of it. Don't move. Just do nothing. Eventually she'll drop it. You can then pair that with the command of drop or out or whatever you want it to be. Throw it again instantly.

Yep.

So she sees that, hey, the game's not stopping. You're not taking this away from me. I'm throwing straight back out.

Spot on. No, I like that. That's, that's exactly how I do it. You've got the long lead there. You're halfway there. Just not using it. Just, just kind of just reeling the dog in and doing it like— I'd almost do it like really casually. Like if the dog really loves a possession and the what we call the parade. So if we kind of take like a little tangent so we can better understand the behavior is when we play pretty much any sort of game with the dog, we're mimicking what we call like the predatory behavior cycle or predatory behavior sequence or whatever you want to call it. There's a bunch of different names. Now, again, everyone's every sort of person and behaviorist and scientist out there is going to have a slightly different definition. But essentially, it's a it's a process where your dog will start by you know spotting prey or you know orienting prey, stalking prey, chasing prey, catching prey, killing prey, parading the prey like running around with it and doing that. You'll see the way you might see a lion dragging a deer around and then consuming the prey. So every breed is gonna have different sort of what am I trying to say? different sort of characteristics where certain parts of that process or cycle are going to be highlighted in them. For example, all your herding breeds are generally huge stalkers, but then they've kind of had like the killing sort of nature bred out of them. Otherwise they'd be pretty shit herders. Then you've got Labradors, which, you know, if you let one go, they probably wouldn't go and hunt their own thing, but they're great at consuming. Um, and you know, they bred out a lot of like the chase, catch, etc., but they're great at just like the parade and then the consume. So anyway, All these sort of things. So what you're sort of seeing here is the, is the Kelpie really loves that parade cycle. Hey, I got it! Like, yeah, show off! Like, I want to play it. So I'd like let him enjoy that for a little bit. Like, you throw it, and as they sort of reel it in, like, you let them sort of have a bit of a run. Like, if they want to run it around in a circle, I'd be sort of just standing in the middle of that circle, slowly shortening that leash, almost spiraling in towards you like they're circling a drain. And then, as Jack said, take it really casually, wait for him to release it, show him that the game starts again when you throw it. As simple as that. And sometimes people try and get too combative or worry that it's like a dominant bet, all this sort of stuff. Nah, it's just, that's what the dog finds fun. So just show them that, hey, we can do both those things. Like you can have a little fun game trotting around with it on your way back to me, but then we've got to throw it again. So yeah, I like what Jack said. I think it's good.

There you go. So I'm not completely full of shit.

Nah, you're doing good, mate. I think my gig's in jeopardy.

I'm learning. All right. Well, I think that's all the questions for today, but if you've got any questions that you need answered and you need some help with, please jump on the Facebook group. Just search the Dog People Podcast, chuck it in there. And we'll get them answered for you. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill, edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.