My Dog’s Obsessed with the Cat! Plus: Cobberdog Enrichment Tips

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.

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

You're either all in on this model, or maybe you're building with another. You're either speed, or is it security? You're either custom, or are you ready to use? Or your AWS AI. With hundreds of models, ready-to-use agents, speed, and security built in, you don't have to pick a side. You can have them all. How will AI revolutionize your business? AWS AI is how.

I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited when football season rolls around. That's why I always make a stop at Total Wine& More before kickoff. Whether it's craft bourbon, cold beer, or ready-to-drink cocktails, it's easy to build a lineup that keeps everyone happy. And when I'm getting everything ready for game day, it's nice knowing I'm getting the lowest prices. Make Total Wine and More part of your game day tradition. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21.

Uh, testing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There we go. Good to go? Yep, good to go. It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this Podcasts 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 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.

Hey, it's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast bringing 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, Max O'Neill from the Down Under Dog Trainer is our man who knows what he's talking about. We're going to do listener questions, Max, this episode. If you've got any questions for Max, you can drop them on the Facebook group. Just search the Dog People Podcast, which is growing by the day, which is fantastic to see. We've almost got 200 people that have joined us in there now. So nice and healthy. Emma Jones, though, Max, has asked a question. Hi, Jack and Max. I listened to all your podcasts in a row today. Thank you, Emma.

Appreciate that.

Don't forget to like and review and all that sort of stuff for us as well if you're enjoying it. Uh, we have a cobbler dog. She turns 12 months in May. Enrichment suggestions for her, please. Before you answer this question, I have a question.

Sure.

What the fuck is a cobbler dog?

So a cobbler dog is a newly recognized breed. Uh, essentially they are a retriever and poodle mix. Um, so Yeah, you can be forgiven if you get them mistaken for a Labradoodle or Groodle, as I often do.

Now, would the owner forgive you for thinking that? No. Dog owners are very passionate, especially about their breeds, Max.

Oh, yeah. It's, yeah, when you get misbreeded, it's often a bit annoying for some people.

How dare you misbreed my dog.

Funnily enough, people thought Nelson was a Dachshund. So when I say people, we had like one person who was like, oh, he's such a cute sausage dog. We're like, Are you serious? He's a Rottweiler.

He's always been reasonably big, even when he was a puppy.

Yeah, he's a chunky little monkey. So it's always funny. But yeah, if you get cobra dogs wrong, in my eyes, you are forgiven. They are essentially a retriever-poodle mix, but they are a newly recognised breed. So it's funny. I think people see cobra dog and it sounds so Aussie.

It does.

What is it? Is it like a cattle dog? Yeah, it's a labradoodle-y sort of thing, essentially.

Okay.

That's a cobra dog. Well, happy birthday to your cobra dog, Emma. We're in May now, so I'm guessing she's just about to turn 12 months. So that's a very tricky age. So please push through. You're at the peak of difficulty, you're about to come back down the other side. But let's chat some enrichment suggestions. So my number one thing for enrichment is DIY enrichment, things you can do where you don't have to go out and purchase anything in particular. You can use their meals in creative ways. What I mean by going out and purchasing things in particular, I love Kongs. They're probably my favorite brand for things like that. But treat puzzles, I'm not a huge fan of. We posted a reel on this the other week. Yeah, I saw that down at Dog Trainer page. Yeah. But you tend to just get diminishing returns across the Usable life of those things. The first time you get one, it might take your dog 30 minutes, second time 20, and within a couple of weeks that dog's just going click, clack, clap.

Yeah, it knows it. Yeah,

it knows it. So I don't like that. So DIY enrichment is things like setting up treasure hunts, setting up meal finds and things like that. So if your dog's on 1 or 2 meals a day, that's 1 or 2 opportunities where rather than give your dog food for free, you can either use it for obedience training or in terms of enrichment, start to set that up so that they have to really challenge themselves to get to that thing. So you could go and hide their bowl somewhere completely different around the house and make them find it that way. You could scatter feed in the backyard, or what I like to do with our DIY enrichment is actually hiding their food into hard-to-get sort of things. So if you go through your recycling bin, there's a million things you can hide food in, whether on dry food, wet food, or a bit of a mix, to make it a challenge for them. And again, rather than going out and buying this stuff, it's stuff you've got in the bin already. So for example, every time we get a box from Amazon, I'll chuck a bunch of treats inside that, put some tape back on and give it to Nelson. So his job is like crack open that box and rip and tear and pull the stuffing out and finally get the food. Might take him 10, 20 minutes. And again, it's cost me nothing. It's stuff that I had in my house anyway. Every time we finish our plastic 2-liter milk bottle, I'll put a bunch of food in the bottom, crease the thing in half, and then give that to the dog. And then they're going to try and figure out how to unbend it and tip it the right way so the food comes out. You've got toilet rolls you can put food in and A

lot of people will do these things that you're saying, sort of just chuck it in front of their dog and walk away. And your dog, and I mean, if they're anything like my dog Kira, she might, she'll sort of, she looks at it and she'll sort of move it around for a bit. And then she's like, well, what am I supposed to do here? Do you, do you have to kind of show them what the, you know, in a sense, okay, look, this is what you've got to try and do?

For sure. For some dogs that aren't as driven or maybe don't have problem solving as a one of their abilities in their skillset. For sure, it's kind of sitting down there and doing it a little bit and kind of showing them, hey, look, I'll show you the first couple, but then it's important to give it back to them. Otherwise they'll sit there and go, cool.

Yeah, you're doing this for me. Why should I do it?

But generally, if you leave it there long enough, their hunger will increase where they start to have more and more and more of a crack at it. They'll go like, initially they might go, I'll put that in the too hard basket, but soon you'll start to see the motivation and the hunger will outweigh the laziness. And they'll start to really have a crack at it. And it's so good for their brain, especially while they're puppies, while their brain is actively physically growing, giving them things like this and firing off different parts of it is just amazing for how, you know, much more clearer they can think and problem solve later. So if you've got a driven dog, they'll do it for you. If not, like I said, give them a bit of help, but not too much because they can become reliant on you very quickly.

You know, I know we're still speaking about things, you know, that you get around the house that don't cost you any money. But one thing I would invest in is a Kong. I think my, the Kong that I've got— Goat dog toy. I saw the other day how Kong, do you know how Kong came to be?

Yeah. From the Volkswagen with like the little brake thingy. Yeah. Yeah. And he gave it to his German Shepherd. Yeah. It was amazing. When someone first told me that origin story, I was like, I call bullshit on that. But it's completely accurate.

But yeah. So, so we've got, I got the Kong and I know they're not cheap, but there's a reason they're not cheap is because they are good quality and they're not going to destroy. Like I literally bought one Kong for Kira and I know if we're having one of those days where I'm rushing around, we maybe can't get out early in the morning. I just stuff that thing full of whatever, you know, mints and bits and pieces, stuff it all in there, give it to her. And that keeps her busy for a good, you know, 45 hours sometimes.

They're amazing. Yeah. Like with, with Nelson, at any one point, we've always got a freezer full of Kongs. We've got about 20 of them and just—

Someone's doing all right for themselves. 20 Kongs.

Marketplace. Yeah. Yeah. Same. We just like stuff them full of his raw mince and then freeze them. And those things take him hours. They're amazing. So yeah, Kongs are fantastic. We can all— you've also got the Kong rope dog toy. Nelson's got one that is like an orange one with a big foam in the rope and it's like a tug toy and retrieval. Kira would probably love that.

Yeah. She doesn't need any more toys. She's fine. My wife already has a go at me for the amount of money I spent on the dog. Okay. So that's it. We're actually getting a lot of questions from people in the Facebook group about enrichment. And, and cause I mean, it's a thing that, cause at the end of the day, I think for a lot of people it's still a new idea. And I think for most people they want to do that. They want to, okay, great. If you think this is going to make my dog's life happier, they want to do that. So a lot of people are actually reaching out to us saying, Can you give me suggestions on this and this and this? And I think the stuff we're talking about here works for pretty much all dogs, you know, as enrichment. Obviously we've spoken about breed-specific enrichment and for different, like herding breeds, et cetera, et cetera. But for, for pretty much, I'd say all dogs, what we're talking about with this food stuff, the puzzle stuff, the homemade stuff.

Problem solving, fossicking, foraging, searching, chewing, licking.

Anything using their nose is brilliant because it's working their brain hugely. Like I always, anyone who's said in the group, oh, what do I do with my dog? The first thing I say is like scatter feed. Let's just do scatter feeding because scatter feeding straight away is like— I do that again. I do it with Kira, like pretty much 90% of her feeds, they're thrown in the grass. I'm like, off you go. And she loves it. Or I'll hide food around the house, much to my wife's annoyance, because I might forget there's a piece sort of hidden somewhere. She'd be like, there's ants all of a sudden in this room. I wonder why.

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across The US offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are all ready. How do we keep data secure? When do we actually see ROI? All this talk about AI, but talk doesn't transform businesses. AWS AI cuts through the noise, making AI easier to securely deploy and scale with ready-to-use agents and the broadest set of AI tools and services You can build, buy, or partner your way. Stop overthinking. Start building. AWS AI is how. Between birds and nap times, it's hard to compete for your cat's attention. But Temptations Cat Treats will have them meowing for affection. Even the most fickle felines find Temptations Crunchy Cat Treats irresistible. Crunchy outside, soft inside, and under 2 calories per treat. For a fun, perfectly creamy treat, try Temptations Lickable Puree. Looking for a way to make bonding with your feline friend even better? Try America's number one cat treat brand, Temptations Cat Treats. Cats can't resist.

Okay. I hope that answered your question. Thank you for it. Any questions, don't forget the Dog People Podcast Facebook group. Francesca Vittoro.

Francesca.

Let's just go with that. Now, this is probably one that a lot of people deal with. She says, I have a 3 and a half year old American Staffie cross. Named Freya. We moved into our current home about 3 years ago. Our housemate has a cat. We would love for them to get along. I don't expect cuddles, but neutral would be amazing. Freya is obsessed with the cat in what seems to be a positive way, but it's not reciprocated from the cat, funnily enough. She drops her toys in front of him, bows in playful ways, and has never hurt him. However, she also loves chasing him, especially when he comes into the shared living areas. She's quite triggered by his bell. As soon as she hears that, she's off on a mission to find him and she whines until she does, even if she's dead asleep. Any tips for a more loving household where everyone is a bit more relaxed would be amazing.

Cool. Alrighty. So we're going to chat 3 topics here, Francesca. Boundaries, outlets, and then desensitization or counterconditioning. So what we're going to do here is let's focus on first the outlets. Our dogs tend to get obsessed with things that really scratch their inherent breed-specific itches. So, you'd see a lot of dogs here, even though it's a one-way street, they wouldn't— probably wouldn't enjoy this type of relationship. But for a Staffie who are like really into pursuing things and having some level of conflict, is they actually quite enjoy that, the thrill of that chase and that pursuit. And like, where is she? Oh my God, play. Let me see if I can convince her. So, for that one, we want to start to look at, well, what outlets can we give her that maybe help to go, hey, look, We've got this whole other thing over here that's a way more fun and exciting option that she's like, actually, yeah, this is better than the cat. So our go-tos for Staffies are flirt poles, Staffie balls, tugs, things like that. If we can give her a thing to engage with that really scratches that inherent breed itch, you'll probably start to see lower interest in the cat anyway. The cat will go from being number one on her totem pole to going, you know what, actually, Staffie ball, flirt pole, tug are number 1, 2, 3. The cat's gone from like top of the podium to not even on it. So that already will help solve a lot of things. Uh, but number 2, you want to have boundaries. We tend to see addiction when there's no boundaries around certain things. So same, you might have a kid who might stay up till 4 AM playing Xbox if the parents don't really enforce boundaries. Where if you say, hey, no, you have to have like 1 hour a day max and it has to be off at this time and have boundaries, we can't really get addicted to something you don't have a crazy supply of. So that's another thing as well. We want to start to go, hey, you're not allowed to get up and go chase her. So that's either putting her in place, that's, you know, Just correcting the behaviour, putting her back down where she was, or if she's consistently harassing the dog and dropping the toy, dropping the toy, stopping her from doing things like that. If you're putting solid boundaries in place, that's really going to help prevent addiction. And then the last one was the jingling of the bell. So while we're on the topic, the difference between desensitisation and counterconditioning. Desensitisation is desensitising our dog to a stimulus, whether that's a sight, a sound, taste, whatever. That is inherently, you know, it could be inherently exciting, inherently uncomfortable, inherently antagonising, whatever. Our dog hasn't developed a conditioned response or an association per se, but as soon as they hear it, see it, encounter it, it's just instantly to them. Same like nails on a chalkboard. We probably don't have a negative association to that. Like, oh my God, nails on a chalkboard means this is about to happen. We just go, I have hated that noise from the first moment I've seen it. Things like that. So desensitization is something inherently uncomfortable we need to get our dogs used to. That's not the case here at all. Your dog didn't get out the womb going, oh my God, cat bells. They learned what a cat bell means through association. Hey, when I hear that bell, that means the cat's running away. So desensitize— or sorry, counterconditioning in this respect is about removing that association and just unchaining that. We want to show the dog, hey, the cat bell now no longer means The cat's about to start running. So, you could do this in a couple of different ways. You could keep them in a place or a down or whatever, keep them still, jingle the bell just like once or twice. Don't let them go and run, reward them for staying still. And you could also just start to jingle it throughout the day. And when they start to realise that, oh, the cat's actually nowhere to be found, that's so strange. A couple of different things like that, your dog will start to go, you know what, the cat bell used to be really predictive of this happening and now it no longer means that at all. An example would be the ice cream truck. We didn't come out the womb going, I know what an ice cream truck is, but we build an association every time we hear it. Oh my God, there's an offer of ice cream on the street. I want to go take me up on that. Right. But if you started like playing that sound and then, you know, haha, tricked you, there's no actual truck, you'd soon kind of get over hearing that sound pretty quickly. So

my parents counter-conditioned me as a child and told me that the ringing bell actually meant that he was out of ice cream. So I had a great childhood.

Jack says that as he's laying on the couch.

Yeah. Rocking in the corner. Yeah. So, so getting that bell and just start jingling it and put the dog in a place or a stay in, you know, a bed, jingle it. It stays there. Yes. Reward.

Yeah. Show them how to behave when they hear that noise. And also them seeing, hey, like I heard that jingle, but the cat's actually nowhere around here. The cat's not moving. They'll slowly start to go, oh, that doesn't mean that anymore. There's lots of different ways you can go about that, but they're the 3 things: boundaries, outlets, counterconditioning. That will solve all the problems you are having there.

All right. Any other questions? Don't forget the Dog People Podcast on Facebook. We're also on the Instagrams as well. So jump on there and follow us. And don't forget, if you are enjoying the show, please give us a follow and a review if it's a good review. If it's a bad review, just don't worry about it. Yeah, that's it. And we'll see you next time. 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.

Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are already— How do we keep data secure? When do we actually see ROI? All this talk about AI, but talk doesn't transform businesses. AWS AI cuts through the noise, making AI easier to securely deploy and scale with ready-to-use agents and the broadest set of AI tools and services you can build, buy, or partner your way. Stop overthinking. Start building. AWS AI is how.

When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want, like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today.

There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still? Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we're here to help you keep going Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.