He Didn’t Know How to Play… Until We Did This

If you spent at least 5 minutes on YouTube or our channel, you'll realize by now just how important it is to play with your dog. Not only is it a means to fulfill their needs, to tire them out, to give them an ability to express themselves in that higher state of drive whilst having a constructive conversation, it's single-handedly the most underused behavioral change tool that you could ever apply to your arsenal. But what happens when your dog doesn't want to play?. So you know how important it is, but what happens when you flap the toy in their face and they're just not taking the biscuit? Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you how we take a dog that doesn't give two shits about playing to a dog that wants to play. So if you've got a dog that isn't interested in playing with you or toys, then I guarantee you're gonna take a lot out of this.

If we got a dog that doesn't really want the toy, we bring the dog out, we bring the toy out, and we pretend they're not allowed to have the toy, right? So one of my friends, to get his dog to eat tablets, he'll walk through the kitchen, throw it on the floor, and then go, oh no, don't eat that! And then the dog will pick it up, run away, eat it, and he goes, ha, gotcha! You know, we've all had a puppy that goes and steals the tea towel and then they get chased around the house. Or we've had a client, and the harder we're trying to get it off them and the more we act like they're not supposed to have it, the more they want it, right? As opposed to, hey, don't you want this? Like I said, we could do 2 weeks just on play alone, but if we look at low-hanging fruit in order to improve the games we're playing with our dog. Couple of things: we're always going to start with the leash. We keep the toy away from the dog so they feel like they're not allowed to have it. We're going to let fumble it, let it slip out of our hands instead of like, there, you can have it. I want the dog to genuinely work for it. So it's away, it's away, the dog makes some sort of effort, he knocks it out of my hands. I'm going to then go like, oh shit, I want it. Hopefully the dog picks it up and then we're gonna start adding another layer to the game when the dog does have the toy. And so when the dog has the toy, I play a little bit of keep away with the dog where I'm gonna run away from the dog. In that time he can parade, but he's gotta parade within a certain boundary. When the dog is trying to avoid my boundary, so he goes over there, I say, hey, look, we're playing this way. He'll start orientating towards the center of that boundary, which is gonna be me. Waiting there. I present my hand, hopefully he finds my hands, we go into tug. Some really common mistakes owners are making. Again, easy stuff we can avoid.

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We're kind of passive in the game. We're disingenuous in the game at times. So when the dog tugs, he puts in real effort, we ignore it, because in our head we're like, I'm going to let it go 5 seconds from now. The dog tugs again, we ignore it. But we want the dog to feel a sense of legitimate victory. And if we tug, and, or if the dog tugs, we want to try— and this is the hard bit— time it so we feel like, or the dog feels like, they've legitimately won it and it's slipping out of our fingers. And the difference in playing with your dog of this versus this is massive. This feels like you faked it and the dog will know. This feels like the dog has actually won it and allow him to stay in the game. If you need to kind of like handicap yourself by playing with two fingers when you're playing with tug with your dog, then so be it. If not, make sure the dog has felt the slip of the toy coming out the hands. And then a lot of people straight away are trying to reinstate the game. The dog has to have moments where they have won the game, they parade it around, and then there's different things we can do here. We can go in, test the dog's grip, they get to keep it. If they slip, we can go back into frustration. And again, when you bring your dogs out, I'll coach you through this as we go. If they come back into us, we can go back into tug. A lot of people are being too heavy when they play tug with their dogs, and they're just like walking their dogs around. And, and I see people with these big strong breeds that are pulling in, putting in like 110% effort into reactivity. But whilst they're playing, because if we've dominated the game too much with our body weight, they're just super passive dog, just like holding on and doing this. But whereas our dog has to like, we have to have some give. Like we're all heavier than our dogs, even if you're a light person. Really heavy dog, chances are you can just pull your dog's body weight around. It's easy. But we have to have some give. So when I say like, be light, be light and go with the dog and make it feel like there is a legitimate hard-fought win on, on their side of things. And there's a difference between keeping a dog invested in the game and having a 20-minute game versus a dog that's like, oh, this is too easy, or this is too hard, because we're just like frog marching our dog around on the end of this toy, right? But yeah, that's a very quick overview. Today we're just gonna play on the slip or the prong or whatever. Couple of reasons I can start adding penalties into the game with my working tool on the dog. And the penalties are quite often the difference between it being a game and a competition where there's actual rules and consequences. We're all told like consequences are innately bad and there's an argument that they are. But also they can be reinforced into the dog when the dog beats the consequence and avoids the consequence. So a lot of pet dog people, they create a lot of problems for themselves inside the home. And the dog goes and counter-surfs and they go, oh hey, get off! And they go to reach the lead or grab the collar, the dog avoids it, and we go, well, I can't punish you after the fact, so you got away with that one. And the dog goes, huh, that was fun. Like, this is a bit of a game now. If I get off before you get to me, I avoid the punishment, which is reinforcing to dogs. And then couple that with, I might get something pleasurable by eating something on the side. Very quickly we can build the dog that loves the counter surf. We can take that same concept and integrate it into play. And so with the out, and so with the keep away element of the game, I can start making the avoidance of penalties reinforcing, which accentuates the game to the dog. So with my sport dog all the way to my sausage dogs, which couldn't be further from him. When we're playing with each other, if the out is slow, there's a penalty. If they leave the toy away, there's a penalty. I'm not talking penalty in like full punishment protocol, but there's a penalty in like, hey, you lost. Pat describes it as like hot hands or happy slap hands or whatever. And we have to remember the avoidance of consequence is reinforcing, and we can slip that into the game to accentuate the game. Remember, there's an element of negative reinforcement within our dog's reaction. And if we want to take all the components of the reactivity and make sure our dog has an ability to express them during the game, then we need a little bit of negative reinforcement in there if we want to be able to channel that over here.

Does that make sense?

And I'm gonna need a working collar on the dog to do that. And again, for a lot of dogs, I'll play with two collars, uh, one collar to assert control over the game and then another collar to wind the dog up in the game. So I'll do lots of dragons and things like that. That's what the flat collar's there for. But if I want to speedy out or I want to add a bit of control and a sit and then drop the toy over here, I'm gonna use my second tool. I know I'm waffling on a little bit, but it can also familiarize my dog with penalties ready for when I'm dealing with the reactivity too. If I come using the prong to deal with reactivity and I want to teach my dog, they need, you need to calm down really quickly and go into a drop, then I want to be able to familiarize my dog with that concept of going really high to really low. And I want the conditions with my game, my redirects to be very much the same as when they're in the presence of a dog. And that might mean the tool needs to be consistent within those 3 drills as well.

Does that make sense?

Cool. Let's bring him over. Show me what you got. Pedro. Yep.

Nice.

Nice. Good boy. If you have a reactive dog and you feel like you've tried absolutely everything, then I've just put together a free training that hopefully will be able to help you and maybe the confusion you're experiencing right now surfing the internet looking for magic wand, looking for the golden goose, looking for the solution, the be-all and end-all solution. I think I've got it. The reason I think I've got it is because it's been tried and tested over thousands of dogs over the last couple of years, and I've just put it together in a free training for you guys. So if you click the link in the description, you'll be able to hop on, watch the video, and if you got any questions, you let me know. I'll see you in there. Nice, cool. Out. Oh boy, don't ask for the out again. So there's not enough engine to put control in yet. For a dog like this, I want to be building the fun. Add in too much control, he's gonna be like, uh, this is work, not play. Nice, cool. Okay, and same again for me, but when he does get hold of the toy, don't drop the leash to kill, kill the toy. Let the toy come to life a little bit and play a bit of tug. Yeah, go. Yeah, nice. Good. That rabbit that he's caught is gonna try and get out of his mouth. It's not gonna give up straight away. And so we'll make sure we can try and like flick it outta the dog's mouth so he has to work to keep hold of the rabbit. Is he, was he social with people or no? Yeah, you'll be all right with me? Yeah, yeah. Can I play with him? Hey, hey, hey! Oh, good boy! Boy, so there's two ways I can reward him and keep the toy here. By either testing his grip and he keeps it— yeah, good boy— or by getting into the fight with him, the tug, and then he wins because he puts effort in. Hey, good lad, good lad. Now he's not trying really hard here, but I'm gonna act like he is.

Oh, good boy!

Because, you know, he's a big male working line shepherd, he should be invested in this game like his life fucking counts on it, right? Lad. And again, I don't mind he's gonna bite the handles at this stage. I'm not going to get too fucking upset with placement and all the rest of it. Prefer you didn't bite that.

Good boy.

Good lad. Ow. Good boy. Good boy. Good lad. Good boy. I do not want to make the mistake of killing the toy now because he'll be like, oh, I've got it, it's dead, I win, too easy. Now I can start adding layers of pressure in if I wanted to, but he's not involved in the game enough for me to think about adding in pressure, whether that's fighting him in the game or adding control with the leash. All I want him to do is really just like satiate or get a lot of prey out of this. Good boy! Good boy!

Good lad!

Yeah, she doesn't want to fight. Every time my hips even square up towards him, he's like, oh, I'm not sure I want to play, lad. And again, I'm teasing him back in the game a little bit when he goes too far. And yeah, good boy, good lad. But you know, this dog has— should theoretically Lad. Have all the drive in the world given the dog that he is, but we probably need a question like, how are we playing with him? What's he getting out of the game? You know, because I bet he puts in 10 times more effort reacting to a dog than he does playing this game, right? Good boy.

Good lad.

Let's try something else. Good lad. When he has the toy, I want to keep moving. My hips, when I restart the game, are going to be away from him. Ah, he doesn't really like it when I square up. Good boy. I'm just waiting for any sort of little amount of effort, right? And I'm putting the theatrics on.

Wow.

Again, you can see there I'm squaring up my hips. He's got a lower aversion threshold, doesn't like the pressure, so that means we play side on.

Good lad.

Good boy, lad. Boy, boy. We've got a, um, a foster dog. His name's Kobe. He was rehomed to us because he bit someone in the face. He's a really angry boy. You might have seen a YouTube video I did recently with him. Such an angry, angry man in terms of like, if anything doesn't go his way, he'll just attack it. Like, if a crate door gets in his way, he's like, 'I'm gonna just smash you up.' And like, that's his first action with everything. Now, up until this point of being with us, he's not put teeth on human skin. He's not even tried to be aggressive. That's been done through management, but all the training that's been done with him up until this point have been exclusively through play in terms of other people playing with him me playing with him, doing a lot of drive channeling. Does anyone see the video on YouTube with Kobe? Go and watch it. It's like one we've done a couple of weeks ago, and you can see the difference when we're playing the game versus when we're not playing the game. Him being really expressionate with, with aggression, to then coming completely out of it. And like, if we're talking about 80/20 input versus output. For a dog like this dog, I'd be putting a lot of input in trying to cultivate play with him. I'm gonna give you this. Like, do a little bit away from him, see how you go. Yeah, nice. That's it. And when I'm playing with the dog, I imagine I've got like a COVID bubble around me. The dog's not allowed to leave that bubble. So if he's sniffing piss over there, I've got the toy here. I'm trying to get away from him, and if he breaks that boundary, I'm utilizing the leash to give that penalty for leaving the game. Yep. Keep moving. Keep moving. Yeah. Nice. Cool. Next effort. Let him have it. Don't let him work too hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will punish puppies for biting, but only once I've taught them how to use their mouth through play. And I would even go as far to say I'm going to be reluctant to punish a dog's reactivity unless I've shown them how to express themselves through play. I will on occasion, and of course there are exceptions to all these rules that we've mentioned, but if we're looking, looking for optimal solutions, I really want to show the dog, hey, here's how you express yourself, before I then say, hey, we're not going to do that. And that's just me trying to emphasize the importance of playing with our dogs and allowing them to appropriate, appropriately release all that kind of drive, arousal, whatever you wanna call it.

Cool.

Let's put him up. So if we've got a dog that plays at home but won't play outside, couple of things we can do. If the game is a 7 outta 10 inside, we make sure we get it to a 10 outta 10 inside before we expect it to work outside. We add the leash in and all of the same components as we expect to play with the dog outside as we do inside. So what a lot of people do, and I teach 'em how to play with the leash and start adding in the penalties, start adding in that boundary, start adding in the, the parading, they go, well, inside I don't need to do that cuz the dog just brings the thing back and we play tug and the outs and all the different. And then we expect to play a different game outside and the dog's like, no, it's a different game. I dunno how to play that game. So even if you don't need the leash and things inside the house, use the leash and things inside the house. Put the e-collar on the dog, whatever, even if you're not using them. Right? We start the game inside. We open the door, the back door, front door, whatever. We take the game near the door. We take the game away from the door. We play the game. And we just graduate from there by then stepping up to the door threshold, playing, and we go back inside. And then we eventually, we wander outside one day. So we start the game where the dog is comfortable and potentially finish the game where the dog was once not comfortable. Because it's easier to maintain a dog's engagement than it is to cultivate and start a dog's engagement. And so that principle applies to a lot of things we can do with dogs. So we start the game where the dog's comfy and then transition the game there, and it might just be a couple of seconds. And if the dog, because they get outside, lose the toy, we might run back inside and then punish them by letting— having them have to work their ass off to get the toy back. And they go, shit, I shouldn't have let go. So So a general rule of thumb when we're trying to increase a dog's desire to play is we stop the game before they're bored. In an ideal world, optimal solution would be we want to stop the game at peak excitement. I'm gonna play with the dog, wait till peak excitement, there or thereabouts. You know, you're not gonna get it spot on because you only recognize peak excitement when you're past it. There or thereabouts. I allow the toy to slip. I say, whoa, look, I've got it. Wind him up, wind him up. Put the toy away. Theoretically, it'll be easier to start the game next time, and they'll go to peak excitement quicker if we're stopping. If we get to the point where they're satiated and they're like, oh, I'm a bit bored now, it's going to be longer before they want to play a game again. It's like, uh, Pat uses the ice cream analogy. You go to a nice restaurant, you ask for dessert, they give you a nice small bowl of ice cream, you eat it, and you go, gee, I want more of that. But when we go and buy a fucking litre of ice cream and we smash it back, we're like, oh, I don't want to look at ice cream for weeks. So we always want to stop anything we want to do to cultivate desire in our dog, even if that's just food, games, and training. We stop where they're still invested. If you've overcooked the dog and the dog's come out of the game, you might need to work your ass off one way or another to bring the dog back into the game to finish the game. Like, worst case scenario is The dog's not bothered and we put the toy away and, you know, mistakes happen and it's going to happen to every single person here with their dog. We gee the dog back up, we get them into the game, we fabricate a win somehow, and then we punish that loss, right? And for like nervous dogs and things like that, I'll often like put my hand over their eyes to create that loss and they go, oh shit, oh no, the game stopped. Oh, maybe I need to be braver next time. You know, and we can start putting the dog under pressure. If the dog is scared of the letterbox, I play, I take the dog near the letterbox, and they go, oh, letterbox! And I go, ha, you're an idiot! And I take the toy, and they're like, oh shit, maybe when we get near the letterbox, I need to be braver because the last time the game finished, or I went into the losing component of the game. And so we can build resilience in dogs by playing with them near or doing things to them that make them uncomfortable. Fear of people, um, dogs is going to be more difficult, but especially environmental kind of issues where the dog's scared of being under that cover or near that slide. And you start building a bit of a backbone in the dog via play by punishing them for relinquishing the toy. However, we can only use that as a tool if there's desire there in the first place.

So if you follow this video, you'll get your dog starting to want to play, but eventually we're going to have to add in some control to the game. And so this video right here, I'm going to show you the step-by-step solution to start adding in that control, teach a very reliable out, and really be able to tap into the benefits of playing with your dog.