Jacob Morgan shows how to build resilience in anxious dogs instead of comforting them. Using a 9-month-old named Daisy, he demonstrates a training routine that raises a dog's stress tolerance through marker positioning, leash pressure, and precise cues like "good," "yes," and "break."
Chapters
So a couple of weeks ago, posted a video talking about how your dog is not anxious, they lack robustness, e.g., they don't have a backbone. And I got loads of comments, as always, some good, some bad. But one of the big questions that kept coming up, okay, fine, but how do I make my dog more robust? And in today's video, I'm going to give you just one way we can start looking at trying to build some resilience in our dog. It's probably more simple than you think. Um, it's a real-life case example through Daisy, this little tiny cute dog here. And yeah, hopefully if you've got a dog that is anxious, this video will be super helpful.
Let's see if you can get her excited over that. I don't know whether you will.
Come on, baby, come here. She's terrified. Come on, come on, come on, come on. This is her first big outing. Come on, let's go, let's go.
Okay, ditch the toy. Let's get some food in action. Uh, we're going to just teach her to stay on this marker board. Take the leash and some food, put it in front of her nose, and see if we can lure her onto there. Once she gets on there with all four paws, say yes. 2 seconds.
Yep, let me just move up there.
She's, uh, 9 months, did you say?
Yeah.
Daisy needs a little bit of a backbone, right? So Daisy has to start getting comfortable with doing tough shit. That's okay, and if that means on the marker board, that's okay. If it means coming 3 inches off the ground, that's fine.
Come on, good, good, good.
Yeah, I'll do good.
Break.
Nice. Okay, let's get 10 reps done. Let's keep going. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, until this is second nature to her.
Okay, come on, come on.
So for Daisy, little daily life challenges. It's all good. Just slowly growing our backbone. That's all right. Build a little bit of resilience. It's all good.
Come.
Good girl. Your dog has like an aversion threshold, right? So in their head, they've got like a level of pressure or stress that they can tolerate. And once they pass that level, they'll go into some sort of reaction, fight, flight, freeze, and all the rest of it.. And so getting the dog to do hard things in general theoretically improves that aversion threshold. And so although Daisy isn't reactive, I hope she might have had a little bark here and there. Doing things like this tickles up her aversion threshold and makes her less likely to be reactive cuz she's better at dealing and coping with stress. Some dogs here today, quite a low aversion threshold. Some much higher. Our golden retriever, very high aversion threshold. EG, not gonna be upset by much, right? And so she's less likely to go into like a defensive type activity. A couple of our Malis and Dutchies though that we've saw today, lower aversion threshold. There's a genetic component there. There'll probably be a socialization component. And so when we see that in dogs, we want to make sure we're getting them, we're challenging them to do hard things and overcoming little obstacles in life in order to tickle that aversion threshold up. Keep going until it's no longer a stressor.
While you're here, guys, uh, in case you didn't know, we have a free program, free community, free resources. I appreciate how difficult it can be trying to put all the puzzle pieces together from different YouTube videos. So we've actually done that for you in a comprehensive free course. It's called the Behaviour Bible. And we even go live in there once a week to answer all your questions. The whole intention behind it is to give you free value. Then should you want to pay us to help you continue your journey and speed up the process of solving your dog's reactivity, then that option's there too. So yeah, if you want that, the link's in the description. Other than that, enjoy the rest of the video. And I'll either see you in the next video or I'll see you in the Behavior Bible Live.
Good day. Good.
Break. Cool. Now I want you to use the lead to get her on, and then when she is on, pressure off the lead and then feed her. All right, lead on. Yeah, on with only the leads. Feed her when she is on and then break off. She just gets used to following that lead and following the pressure. No food for now. Food away.
No.
Okay.
Yeah, good.
Yeah, feed her on, break off. Yeah, it's great. Good girl, Daisy.
Yep, that's good, Daisy. Good, good. Break. Good girl. Is he on? Good. Break.
Good girl. Good job.
Good job. Keep going, keep going.
Yeah, Daisy's doing hard things all week. Hey girl, that's good. Cool. We'll talk about markers a little bit when we're here. Typically, when we want the dog to keep doing what they're doing and not break them off the command, but yet we want to reward them, we're going to use what we call a duration marker. For a lot of you, that's going to be good. Good means 'Keep doing what you're doing,' e.g., room service. 'I'm gonna come to you and pay you. You're not finished what you're doing, but I like what you're currently doing.' And what we've seen today is a yes marker a lot. 'Stop doing what you're doing. Your job's done. Come and get paid from me.' Both have a time and a place. So we're gonna work on a little bit of marker discrimination. You're gonna place her on there. You're gonna say, 'Good.' Pay her in position 2 or 3 times. Good. Pay in position. Good. Pay in position. And then to break her off, you're going to say yes, move away from her, and she has to come to you to get payment. Good. Say good. Don't move your hand.
Good.
Good. Yeah. Nice. Mark. And then we need a space, then movement, even if that movement is us going to the dog or us away from the dog. As we know now, a dog will always prioritize a visual cue over an audible cue. And so if we move at all ever before giving our other— our marker itself, the marker will become the movement. And we will never discriminate between either marker because movement is both of them. So if I say good, or I move and say good and then pay Daisy, or I move and say yes and then pay Daisy, if I do that enough, any sort of movement is going to trigger my dog off the bed. So I'm good. Pay. Or I'm yes, move, and pay. You can say break to say you're finished, do what you want within reason. Or you can say yes, you're finished, but come to me and get payment. You pay her at the yes, you pay her at the good. At the break, she's just dismissed, no payment. All right, let's go. Good, good. And I'm quite fussy about these, so I'll pick on, pick on you all with these throughout the week. So nope, put it back on.
Nope. Yep, that's it.
Good obedience, this. Look, you like this, right? She's rubbing like, now we're talking. Say yes, move away, and she comes to you and gets paid. Yes. There you go. Nice. We want a yes and a break. We want yes to mean come to me and get payment because of, let's say we're here with our dog and we say break, which is do what you want for most dogs. And she's like, okay, break means I can go eat the muffin, or break means I can now go bark at the dog because you just said to me I can do what I want. So we want to discriminate between the markers. Good means keep doing what you're doing, but don't leave it. Yes means finish doing what you're doing. Come to me and you have to get paid. It's not optional. You have to come and get paid. And break is you're free. You're at liberty. That make sense? Couple more for me.
Good. Good. Do I always do 3? Good. Do I always do 3?
However many you want. As long as you wanna stay there for. Dum tikkli ma. Yes. Nice. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Now payment. That's great. Good job. Okay. Put her up. That's good.
Good girl, Daisy.
We'll just start teaching Daisy some life lessons. She's a real good girl. Good job. I appreciate you spending time with us. If you wanna join our free private community, click the link in the description, or you can listen to YouTube's very sophisticated algorithm. It thinks you'll love this video right here. Otherwise, have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.
