Outlets – Giving Your Dog a Purpose

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.

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It is the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a— sorry, I forgot my own strapline. 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, Oh my God, that's awesome! And then I 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'd 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's 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, uh, not a dog trainer in any form at all. Simply something I enjoy since I got my dog, which is a cattle cross something called Kira Foster, who we then decided to keep. And of course, Max from Down Under Dog Trainers. Max, you're obviously a certified in all shapes and forms dog trainer, and you have a purebred Rottweiler named Nelson.

Yes, we do. And we'll be talking about both of our dogs today in regards to outlets. Outlets are things our dogs obviously need to displace and disperse their energy, displace and disperse their stress, and ultimately feel fulfilled. So, I guess let's take it back a bit. So, I remember when we got our first dog as a family when I was 5, 6, something like that. And I remember that we knew, okay, that dog definitely needs a walk every day. And that was something that we're pretty good at and stuck with from memory. And we're very focused on giving our dog a good physical outlet every day. But in terms of things like mental stimulation or something we're going to really dive into today, genetic fulfilment, that was not something that was on our radar whatsoever. And I think that was pretty— Typical and standard for people of that time. People understood, all right, dogs need to walk every day. That was really good. But none of the other stuff came. I guess if we go back even earlier than that, and I wasn't alive then, so I'm kind of test tube, but speaking to other trainers before then, quite often they were hard pressed even getting people to walk their dog. So as a dog world, we came a long way to understanding that our dogs need a physical outlet every day. And we understand those physical outlets even better today. And we're going to dive into that. And then some point over the next 10, 15 years, I You know, I, when we had our family dogs following on from that and now, and then seeing with clients, we really started to understand that dogs also needed mental stimulation and outlets for their brain and their mind and problem solving and tasks and things for them to concentrate and focus on in order to burn that mental energy. And that's something I'm really seeing clients getting a lot better with now as they go, well, when I say, what do you do with your dog every day? They say, well, we walk them or we take them for a run to burn some you know, energy, but also we give them mental stimulation and things for their mind as well. And that's something that I think people are getting really, really good at. But what we're here to really educate you today on is, uh, how you can address both those things even better than you probably already are. But the, the third one, and probably the most important, which is our genetic fulfillment of your dog. And genetic fulfillment of your dog is those things our dogs were designed to do, because all dogs were designed to do something. We didn't— you know, very few dogs were bred purely just based on their looks. Most dogs were bred with a purpose in mind of, you know, someone at some point went, hey, I want to selectively breed for this exaggerated character trait so that this dog can perform this task. Now, even though quite often most of our pet dogs today are pretty far removed from that, they've still got those underlying instincts in there that need to be dealt with and need to be fulfilled in order for our dog to live a happy and fulfilled life, but also to prevent issues. And we're going to really dive into that today.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, you talk about obviously the The dogs that were bred for specific things and they don't really do those things anymore. You see so many people that have got working style dogs that maybe they're hunting breeds that were meant to flush game and things like that. And people might be sitting there and going, well, I'm never going to go out and flush game, or I don't have a property with a stack of sheep for my herding dog and that sort of stuff. There are so many different ways you can fulfil that need in your dog without actually physically having to do what they were bred to do.

Exactly. And on our social pages, I'm a big advocate for, you know, providing good homes for working dogs and how to properly look after these dogs. But that doesn't mean that if you've gone and bought a Border Collie or a cattle dog, I'm demanding you to go and buy 6 sheep and a plot of land and wander around all day. Or if you've got a Labrador, you don't— I certainly don't want you to go down to the local lake and start firing off at the ducks and pheasants. But what we're going to help you with today is giving you some ideas and some surrogate activities. So, the first thing I want you to imagine is that your dog has 3 completely separate batteries or fuel tanks inside of them. And that's our dog's body battery, our dog's mental battery, and our dog's genetic battery. Okay. Body, mind, genetics. And those 3 things for the most part operate pretty independently. And we have to give them certain things and certain tasks and certain activities that can help to drain those batteries. Because I know for me personally, if I just gave Nelson a walk every day and nothing else, his mental battery would be overloaded and spilling over with energy. And certainly his genetic battery, his Rottweiler battery, so to speak, would just be brimming with energy and we'd likely see behavioural problems.

Probably about, I don't know, over 20 years ago now, but I had a German Shepherd cross Kelpie. I was just so naive and so stupid when it came to this stuff. I was, I was really, I just knew nothing. And I was just like, oh, that'd be a cool dog. Not realising that what I was letting into the home was a crack addict. Destructiveness, escaping from the backyard, reactivity, all of those things started happening. And I'm like, I am giving you like a 6K walk every day. You know what? And then we go to the dog park and I throw balls for you. Why are you still destroying things?

Yeah.

Because I wasn't giving this dog any mental stimulation in any form or giving it a job or anything like that that I now know about. I look back and I was, I mean, I say stupid. I think stupid is probably harsh because a lot of people don't understand it. Because I think it comes back to that whole thing of like you get a dog and people don't realise that there is a lot more to owning a dog than, as you say, just taking it on an hour-long walk or a 2-hour-long walk. I mean, I saw a post recently in one of these groups that allows people to post when they can't handle their dog anymore, they want to rehome it. This lady had a Border Collie.

Yeah.

And she's like, I just can't give the dog what it needs. I'm taking on 2-hour-long walks every day and it's just not enough. I privately messaged her. I said, hey, 2-hour-long walks, you don't need to do that. You're doing more than you actually need to do. You actually only need to do 20 to 30-minute sessions like this to engage that dog's mind. And that's all you'll need to do.

I mean, you could walk for 8 hours with that dog and you'd likely still encounter the same problem. And To help people understand it, you know, if you want to know how often I walk my own dog per week, it's probably only twice per week.

Yeah.

Because reality is he finds it so unfulfilling and unstimulating. He goes, Dad, that was kind of boring. Like, I want to do more. I want to do Rottweiler stuff.

Yeah.

That's what we really want to help you with today. So let's imagine your dog's body battery for a sec. Your dog's using their body battery when they are doing physical things— walking, swimming, running— things that don't require any mental thing whatsoever, but your dog is just moving their body. They're draining their body battery. Now, I could take Nelson for a 30-minute or a 60-minute walk, and he'd come back and he'd go, my body battery's drained. But really, I've only done one-third of the job. I've got 2 other things that I need to address and need to address every single day. Okay. So rather than going for a 2-hour walk, because as we just said then, is you're barking up the wrong tree, no pun intended, is you could—

Pun very much intended.

Is you could walk— I could walk Nelson for hours and hours and hours, and he would still get home. His mind would still be busy. And he would have this little nagging feeling at the back of his mind that is also telling him, hey, you need to be doing something else right now. So, giving your dogs a physical outlet every day is great. So, walking, running, swimming is fantastic for that. That's pretty easy. Now, let's move on to our mental battery or our dog's mental tank. And that's when our dogs, we're doing things like mental stimulation to adequately tire out their mind. And again, that's something I'm seeing. People do, yeah, a lot better these days, which is fantastic. And we know our dog's experiencing mental stimulation when they're doing things like using the words, I guess we'd use words like concentrating, problem solving, focusing, thinking, things like that. Whenever we'd say we're using those words, that's when we'd say, okay, our dog's actively engaging and using their brain. And every breed is going to be a little bit different here, like the Border Collie or like your Kelpie Shepherd you described earlier. Both breeds are noted problem solvers. That dog would definitely require and crave a large portion of the day where it is thinking and actively using their brain.

An escape artist he was. Absolute escape artist. Doesn't matter what I blocked or where I blocked it, he would get out and he would be gone.

Exactly. And that's such a great example of something we want to lead into, which is you don't want to have a self-employed working dog. If you don't give your dog a task, and again, it doesn't have to be Completely breed-specific, as in, you know, Jack didn't need to go and get a house to guard or a bunch of sheep for the dog to shepherd and herd. But if that dog didn't have problems to solve and didn't have things to do, it looked for other problems. How can I get over that fence? How can I open that latch? And all as well as that, because they're being unfulfilled, it's going, I actually want to escape.

Yeah.

This is actually a problem I want to solve. This is fun. This is shit in here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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So we want to give our dogs chances every day to experience mental stimulation. Again, this is going to be a bit of a spectrum. Some dogs aren't noted thinkers and don't require too much of this. No offense, but your bulldog breeds, it's not that they'd have a lack of intelligence, they don't really just Have a high want or a high capacity for this sort of stuff. They don't need or want to do—

Like greyhounds as well. They're just like, yeah, greyhounds, give me one sprint a day and I'm sweet.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very large physical battery, smaller mental battery. And that's the thing, every breed will have different size tanks and batteries. But at some point throughout the day, no matter your breed, your dog needs to have a chance to concentrate, focus, and problem solve. And I think the best way, or the 2 best ways of doing this, is either with Working on something new in your obedience. So, if your dog can recall, practise doing it from further. If your dog can shake hands, try it with the other hand. If your dog can roll over, teach them to roll over another direction. Things like training is really good for using their brain. That's why if you do engage in any regular training sessions with a trainer, you'll notice that straight off your dog is absolutely gassed. And the other one is things like DIY enrichment. I'm not a huge fan of treat puzzles because quite often they're pretty expensive. Sometimes it could be $30. Sometimes I've seen some for like $80 or $90. But the problem is, is in a sense they're one-dimensional because the first time your dog, I guess, cracks a code or cracks a puzzle, so to speak, it might take them 30 to 60 minutes. But then after that, cracking the code, it's always the same formula. And in that sense, it's one-dimensional. So, if the first time it takes them 30 minutes, second time it's 20 minutes, third time it's 10 minutes, and then soon you can provide a highly complex treat puzzle to a dog. And if that dog's had 5 to 10 exposures to that thing, Often it's click, clack, clack, and it's open, and you've got 1 minute of stimulation out of it. So with treat puzzles, it's not that I'm not a fan of them, it's just a law of diminishing returns. So, uh, if you do have treat puzzles, rotate them with your friends. Like, hey, I'm gonna buy this one, you buy that one, you buy that one, and let's just rotate them every few weeks so our dogs kind of forget how to do it, so we still maximise the benefit. But I digress, sorry. The— I think the better thing is just DIY enrichment. If you jump on Instagram or Google and just type DIY enrichment ideas for dogs, You'll see people who are far more creative than ourselves who have come up with awesome ideas to go, oh, well, hang on, I've got a toilet roll and a hairband.

Cool.

I've got to give my dog an hour of entertainment. Or I've got a tea towel and some kibble. Yeah, I can do that. So, looking for things you've already got around the house, things that are probably going to end up in the recycling bin anyway half the time, and giving your dog different challenges like that, which means it's a problem-solving thing, something they've got to concentrate on going, how do I get that in there or that out of there? Like, what's going on? And because we mix it up and do DIY sort of stuff, it always looks a bit different. That's something we try and do with Nelson all the time as well as a, you know, pretty much every day or most days we'll try and give him something that will challenge his mind. We're like, hey, have fun with that. That's going to be tricky to figure out. And that sort of thing's really great for him. But again, even if we just walked him and just did that, we're only doing two-thirds of the job. And it's generally for, I would say most dogs I see, it's this last battery that we're going to dive into now, their genetic battery.

Okay.

Or their breed battery. That is actually quite often the largest. Okay. So when we look at a dog's genetic battery, what our dogs are born with and something that we don't have, something that we can't really empathise with, is our dogs have this innate desire and need to express these certain behaviours and characteristics. The only thing I think we can describe it might feel like is if we're going to bed at night and we were going, I really should have mowed the lawn today and I didn't, and it's really weighing on me and I feel guilty about not doing it. That's what they experience almost all the time unless we do it. If we have got a Kelpie and we don't give it a chance to run around and chase and bark and herd at something, it goes to bed every night going, I really needed to do that today. I can't believe I didn't. And I need to go looking for a way to do this. Or when we get that nagging feeling at the back of the head going, I forgot something, but I can't remember what it was. Like, oh, what is it? And it's almost frustrating. That's what our dogs experience. We can't empathise because thankfully humans have never been selectively bred. But for dogs that they have. And with our dogs, when we selectively breed, what we're really doing is we're taking a characteristic or behavioural pattern and we're repeatedly taking the dog with the most exaggerated form of that, breeding from them or pairing them with another dog who also shares that trait, and then repeating that for hundreds of generations. So, Nelson's dad was bred because he was the most Rottweiler Rottweiler that they knew. He likes to bite the hardest, bark the loudest. be the most confrontational. His grandpa was the same, his great-grandpa was the same, and rinse and repeat for the last 50 years. And that's the case for any pet dog. Even your Groodle that you've got, or your Labradoodle, your Cavoodle, whatever, is— if we look at Labradoodle, Groodle, Cavoodle, all those are examples of mixing one gun dog with another. Poodles are a gun dog. They're a retrieving dog. Golden Retrievers, Labradors, Cavaliers are all forms of gun dogs. So, when we look at even that, even your little fluffy Cavoodle as an example, Has a large genetic battery that needs fulfilling each and every day. And again, that doesn't mean you have to go and provide them with the exact thing. Again, if you've got a gun dog, so to speak, you don't have to go and get a shotgun and go down to your local lake. If you've got a herding breed, you don't have to go and buy 6 head of cattle. If I've got a Rottweiler, he doesn't have to bite people for real, but it's about giving them adequate or surrogate activities, sorry, to help them spin those dials in an appropriate manner that works for you. and works for them. And when you get those dials spun properly, you start to see a lot less naughty, quote unquote, behaviors, or what we're really seeing is a fulfillment-seeking behavior. For example, as Jack said, if it's a bit of a rainy week and he maybe doesn't give Kira enough chances to herd, all of a sudden he goes, oh, all right, well, the rain's died down, the lawn's long, I better go mow the grass. And what does Kira do?

Yeah, she starts herding the lawnmower straight away, biting it and herding it. She's just like attacking it and spinning around in circles. And I mean, that was For me, knowing that she was cattle, I mean, she's cattle crossed something, but the thing in her most is the herding and also not only that, her prey drive and the chasing stuff. So for me, it was a case of, well, I don't have sheep, how am I going to do this? And that's when you said, hey, have you thought about a Staffie Mole? She might enjoy that.

Yeah.

I mean, she does enjoy that and she loses her damn mind. So much so that I've had to stop using it at the house because we got complaints from the neighbors. And now we go across to the park, which you said, told me, which is probably a better thing than doing it at home anyway. So we take it across to the park. And nothing like, we don't go for a walk. We do not go for a walk. We literally go from here to the oval across the road and I get this ball out and I've paired the ball with obedience. So, trying to tackle 2 things at once. So, there's this sort of extra draining of the mental brain.

Mental, physical, genetic.

So, she's getting all of that and we can literally, we'll be over there for 25 minutes, half an hour, maybe. That's probably too much because she is absolutely smashed. Like by the end of it. And, you know, we haven't had to go for an hour-long walk or anything like that. Putting the ball down, we do a bit of obedience. I get her to, you know, I'm teaching her the left and right commands and she just absolutely loves it. And again, you don't have to do that long walks, the 2-hour-long walks. It's just over there. I mean, 20 minutes is enough and we can do that twice. Sometimes we just do it once a day and that's enough.

Yep.

She's also a dog that likes to chase. So, as you speak about gundogs, I only learnt about gundogs when I got her. I noticed that she loved to chase and she loved playing fetch. I'm like, well, how can we turn that into something a bit more than just picking up a ball, throwing it, picking up a ball, throwing it? So, again, training in the style of a gundog. If you've got a dog that likes to retrieve, I cannot recommend gundog training more highly. It is just so good. It teaches so many things like impulse control.

Yeah.

And she loves it. So, there's 2 outlets now that we've got, which is the herding ball and the gundog retrieving stuff.

Absolutely. And all this stuff sounds so complex, guys, but once you really get into it, it's not, and it's actually more time efficient. So what we're not saying today is to go, oh well, I already walk my dog twice a day for an hour, and now I've got to provide him with this DIY stuff, now I've got to do this genetic battery stuff. And what we're saying is no, no, no, actually you can probably strip back some of those areas. And if you think you've seen your dog tired and satisfied before, wait till you see them after you've truly genetically fulfilled them. 100%. I'll give you an example with Nelson. So we just got back straight before this podcast, uh, we went and did a session Uh, with one of our trainers, Casey. Shout out to Casey from Lone Star Animal Behavior and our Big Show PSA Club. And Nelson went up there, we were there for 45 minutes, but he probably did 5 minutes of obedience tops. He then had a 10-minute break in the car, he did 5 more minutes of bite work, had a good break, came out and did 2 more minutes of bite work. I would say all up he was in the shed for 17 minutes, the rest he was resting, and he was absolutely gassed. He was spent. And I could have walked him for 2 hours and he would not be that level of tired because What we did then required a lot of thinking during his obedience. It was very physical when he's wrestling a 6-foot-5 crazy Texan man. And then when he's doing all the biting and the barking, he's using his Rottweiler battery. So, when I got him back in the car, all 3 batteries were drained, not just one. Okay. So, with this stuff, guys, is really do some research. It's a good chance for you to get to know your dog's breed and also get to know the individual in front. We always say with their outlets and whatnot, it If you don't know what your dog's needs, do some research, but also your dog's behaviour will leave clues. Quite often we think they're being naughty. What we're really seeing is fulfilment-seeking behaviour. And in the same way that Jack went, hang on, this dog's really starting to take a lot of interest in this lawnmower and really starting to hurt it, maybe need a provider to do something. And the same way that Jack said, well, hang on, my dog's got a really huge interest in fetch. How can we really formalise this to make this even better for her? You can do the same with your dog. You can look at the things they're getting up to naturally, do some research on their breeding, and you'll often find what they need just from that alone. But if you're still stuck and you don't know what to do with your dog, post it below in the comments or post it in our group, The Dog People Podcast, and I'll jump in there and answer every one of your comments and let you know, hey, if you've got this breed, this is what you need. Try this. And give you guys some ideas for that.

Another thing, if you have got a herding breed like I do, there are lots of places around that allow you to come along and get your dog to herding. I just went to recently one with Kira called Walkabout Working Dogs, took her there. We did a whole hour. But again, like with you and Nelson, it was a case of in, break, in, break. She was just absolutely— by the end of it, we got to the point where he's like, we've got to stop because actually we were getting into the sheep and she's so tired that she's now sort of just trotting around the sheep because her brain— he's like, let's cut it here. But yeah, it's just that fulfilment. And again, you know, these extra things we're talking about, like, you know, doing the gundog training, you know, playing with her with the— it's not a case I give her the herding ball and say, see you in half an hour. We're doing it together. And again, that helps build your engagement and that relationship between you and your dog so that when you do go out, they're always looking to you going, okay, what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? And not looking for something else to fulfill them. As you said, like that lady I bumped into the other day who couldn't get her Kelpie back because it was trying to herd every dog that was around her. So yeah, as Max said, jump into the Dog People Podcast Facebook group, ask any questions you've got about this. It's a big topic. It's another important one. I feel like all these topics are important. Jump in there, ask your questions. And we'll get them answered. 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.

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