E433: Ashley Escobar, Erin Lynes, and Irith Bloom on Puppyhood & Adolescence

Transcript

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports podcast, brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I'll be talking to Irith Bloom, Erin Lynes and Ashley Escobar about puppy and adolescent sports dogs. Hi, all. Welcome back to the podcast. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Awesome. All right, so to start us out, just give everybody a little bit of an idea. Whose voice is whose? Can everybody kind of take a turn, tell us a little bit about you and maybe share what you're talking about at the upcoming one day conference, life Stages, where we're talking about puppies and adolescents. Ashley, want to start us off?

Ashley Escobar: Sure. I'm Ashley and I will be covering fitness with relation to young dogs, puppies and adolescent dogs, and how to build in a thoughtful puppy young dog with regards to mental thinking and physical movement.

Irith Bloom: I'm Irith Bloom. I'm going to be talking about socialization for puppies and what it is and what it isn't because I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about how to best socialize puppies. I will delve a little bit into the differences between socializing puppies, socializing adolescents, and there will be a little bit in there even about socializing adults. So feel free to come and join us even if you don't necessarily have a puppy just at this moment.

Erin Lynes: I'm Erin Lynes and my topic for this conference is connection and confidence. So I'll be talking a little bit about how building confidence in your puppy helps improve your relationship with them and vice versa.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, so to get us started, obviously we're talking about different life stages from puppy to adolescent. So how does the life stage of a young sports dog actually impact your training with them?

Irith Bloom: I'll jump in. I'm going to say that I'm always extra careful. This is Irith, by the way, in case you don't recognize my voice. I'm extra careful with puppies because whatever happens to them is going to have a pretty profound impact. And that's true both physically, although that's not actually my area of expertise. So I'm going to leave the physical topic to the person here who does have that expertise.

But it's true both physically and mentally and emotionally, if you will. So things to consider. For example, adolescent animals are much more sensitive to negative experiences than adults or babies. When your puppy hits that adolescent stage, you want to make extra sure that they don't have a lot of negative experiences, which is a little harder to do because they also get into risk taking behavior around that time of their life.

And yet they're more sensitive when things go wrong. So that's, for example, something that I might consider a baby puppy. I'm going to be a little bit more comfortable if something unexpected happens. They're a little more resilient. They're a little more likely to be able to get through that and do well with the support that I can offer and sometimes even without my support. But once I hit that adolescent stage, when something bad happens, I have to make sure that I work extra hard to minimize the long term effects that might have emotionally and mentally on the dog.

Melissa Breau: Ashley, you want to go next?

Ashley Escobar: Yes. The age and life stage of the dog that we're working with with regards to fitness and conditioning and just proprioception and getting them to use their bodies, it's such a different approach when you're dealing with puppies or adolescent dogs because they still just don't understand how their bodies can move and how things can be incorporated and how weight shifting, sometimes just the subtlest weight shifting and they almost topple over.

It's like they just. Their minds and their bodies are just on two different wavelengths. So really dealing and working with the dog that's in front of you because every one of them is different. I've got some puppies that just at eight weeks old, they are, they get it. Like their bodies and their mind, they move as one like they're adults. Right. And then most of them don't. So we have to really meet the puppy where they're at and just set up scenarios and situations for them that allow them to have the biggest gains and that criteria so that they're not being asked to do things that they mentally or physically cannot do in unison together.

Erin Lynes: Yeah, I think those are, those are all really good points. So when I'm thinking about little baby puppies and how they are, they're often quite good at generalization. So during that window, I want to give them opportunities to learn little bits and pieces of their future world in a, in a way that's going to boost their confidence and they can see all the positive aspects of what's, what's out there.

Right. When they become adolescents, we do have a little bit of a different approach because they already have feelings about things, they have more experience. Sometimes they have very big feelings about things and we aren't seeing such easy generalizations at that time. So it's. It definitely is a little different approach, especially coming from the perspective that I'm thinking about right now with regards to building confidence. And, of course, adults are a whole different ball game.

But, gosh, I love those little guys when. When they show us that they can transfer skills, the tiny little baby skills they've already learned really easily to new environments. And you think, wow, how can you do that already? You're super special. And then two months later, they're like, what was that? What was that all about? I can't do that anymore. I never can do that. So I think we brought up some interesting points, right? Which is, you know, there are different aspects to those life stages.

Melissa Breau: So talk a little bit about, like, physical stuff. We've got some brain maturity happening, right? Maybe some emotional development. How do those things kind of interact in your mind for young dogs? What changes do we. You know, if you guys want to elaborate a little more kind of on the changes that we see as they go from puppy to adolescent.

Erin Lynes: So I'll. I'll jump in on this one. Ashley mentioned how puppies are, and they're kind of operating on two different wavelengths, and I totally see that a lot. Like, when you're thinking about building skills with young dogs, and one day they get it, and the next day those legs are, like, half an inch longer. You know, when you take your puppy out of their bedtime crate and you look at them and you're like, how did you get so tall overnight?

Well, when they're growing at that rate, all their proportions are changing, and every little skill that they learn must feel different than it did the day before. And it's just. It shouldn't be so surprising to us that there's these fluctuations in how they learn things, because their body is a different shape, their coordination changes every time they go to rehearse a new behavior. So from a physical point of view, we have to have a little bit of grace with our growing young dogs, because those.

Those skills are, like, almost being relearned every time we work on them. It's crazy like that. And there's brain changes that happen during those things that aren't as easy for us to see as well. But you can see, one day your puppy is really confident meeting a stranger, and the next day they're like, people, Ah. And you think, like, is my baby broken? But there's those natural fluctuations and dealing with what our puppy gives us on that day, or adolescent dogs give us on that day.

And being really adaptable is something we kind of have to get used to during those stages because they're. They're not very often the exact same dog two days in a row, whether it's emotionally or from, like, being able to execute physical skills as well.

Irith Bloom: Those are all such excellent points. And I think that one of the things that Erin just brought up that everyone needs to keep in mind with a puppy.

And by the way, I wish you could all see, right now, Ashley has the most adorable puppy in her arms anyway. So one thing to bear in mind is there are going to be changes and there are going to be fluctuations. And you know that thing they show where, like, you think progress is going to be a straight line, but it's this squiggly line that, on steroids, is what it's like when an animal is growing through puppyhood and adolescence.

And so I think one of the things that we as humans really need to do is take a breath, kind of exhale, and know that your puppy, who was perfect yesterday and is a terror for some reason this morning, will probably be perfect again tomorrow. And a lot of times, things that we worry about are, I don't really want to say temporary, because that's the wrong word, but they're transitional.

So, for example, puppies, babies tend to be really mouthy, very sharky, you might say, and they'll also tend to chew on everything. And so one of the things to consider as you're working with a baby puppy is just limiting their access to the stuff you don't want them to chew on. Because even though it feels like you're going to have to hide your Manolo Blahniks, if anybody listening to this owns any, which I doubt is true.

But anyway, even though it feels like you're going to need to hide those expensive shoes or keep the puppy away from the rug or whatever it is forever, in fact, what's going to happen is in a few months, they are no longer going to have that urge to explore as much with their mouth. And so that's an example of how there's these developmental stages where it is appropriate for the puppy to put everything in their mouth.

And if you just remove access to the stuff you don't want them to get really into, you don't want to build a reinforcement history for chewing on your expensive rug, again, assuming anyone on this call has one. But you don't want to build that reinforcement history. So if you just keep the rug out of their reach until they're seven or eight months old, in most cases, they're never going to try to chew on it again.

So sometimes if you just sort of acknowledge, well, this is a natural phase right now. It is natural for my adolescent dog to be a little bit more wary about new things. It is natural for my baby puppy to be chewing on everything and just adjust around that and then exhale, wait patiently, they'll usually get through that phase. Some things they're not going to get through. But there's a lot of stuff that is natural, normal development.

And if you just kind of know where it's going, you can usually mentally, you as a human can mentally survive it a little better. And if you're really not sure that's what the alumni list is there for. Is this normal? That's right, yes. In fact, the fact that they're hanging off your clothes is probably pretty normal if you have a Malinois. Anyway.

Melissa Breau: Ashley, did you have thoughts to add?

Ashley Escobar: I just that the physical component of puppies, when they're growing, it's so hard for people to not have measurable success. But it's so normal. Like both of the other ladies have said, it's just you have to take it with stride. And really I don't. Some people, I have to tell them, right. Have loose criteria. But I don't mean that in a negative sense, right. I just mean that they're babies and some, some days when they walk over some of the obstacle equipment that we have, right, Very low inflation and just getting them on different surfaces to stimulate neurological sensors, they're able to do it very sure footedly.

And then like Erin said, the next day they've grown a little bit and maybe their rear end has grown a little bit more than their front so they're really off balance. And when they go to walk over it and they stumble off and some puppies, the stumble affects them. Other puppies, they're like, yeah, that was great, let me do it again. So just really being patient and not having unreal expectations for the puppies and really I don't, I don't have expectations at all other than I'm just going to play with the puppy.

So I like for everything when they're puppies just to be play if they get on the fit bones or they get on the stacking box or they get on the thing, it's great, right? It looks really cool and it looks amazing. But that's really not the goal of the three minutes that we're playing with the equipment, right. It's just to get them to move their bodies and to Recover.

I have found that with my sport puppies, if I start them right away with getting on equipment, walking over different surfaces, letting them feel their own body, right, there's no manipulation to help the physical component of it. If they trip or they kind of twist up like a pretzel and fall, and then we get back on and we try again because it's all, all play based, then those dogs seem to recover quicker when they have a late lead change or they have a late approach to a jump, or they have a poor approach to a contact.

And so they just have such a better understanding of their body and how to maneuver their bodies when they grow up and they've been allowed to just explore, right? They're just really exploring, exploring how to move their bodies on things, off of things, sideways on things, right? Tugging on things like just being able to be comfortable and have that second nature muscle memory of proprioception for them, I think is just huge.

Erin Lynes: I'd like to add a note, just sort of spinning off of that two things. First thing I'll say is everything that Ashley just said is, is like 100 times bigger in giant breed dogs because they, I mean, they really will literally grow an inch overnight. I, it's, it's. And the other thing to remember about giant breed dogs that I just want to say, and then I have another comment to make about resilience, Ashley, because everything you just described is so important to that.

But the other thing about giant breed dogs is they also need more sleep because they're growing so fast. So, so your training sessions are probably going to be shorter. And if you're looking at someone who has, you know, a border collie puppy or something, you're going to be like, they're doing three training sessions a day and they're getting all this progress and meanwhile I can barely get my dog to focus on me for five treats.

And that's normal with a giant breed puppy. They just, they're like, oh, that was so hard. I have to take a nap now. And that's totally fine. So that's one thing I want to say. And the other thing is, Ashley, everything you just said is so important to building resilience. And it's one of the reasons, I'm just going to add, adolescent play is super important. Just as a side note, it's one of the reasons that play is so important is because it gives the animal practice of literally like falling down and getting back up, which helps them learn that resilience.

And what Ashley was just describing is another beautiful way of teaching them. And it's okay if you stumble, it's okay if you fall, literally fall or stumble, you can get back up. And that builds a resilient mindset, a resilient coping skill set that will serve the animal really well for life. Based on that, I'm going to reorder my questions on you guys on the fly here a little bit and I wanted to talk about kind of how you think about the role of play versus structure in those kind of formative years.

Melissa Breau: So I'm thinking like, you know, we talked a little bit about play and what you were both saying, but then we've also talked a little bit about, you know, managing their access to certain things or not allowing them to have access to certain things. Right. When we talk about structure. So how do you kind of balance those two? How do you think about those two things? Do you think about balancing those two things? I mean, anybody want to go first?

Ashley Escobar: I'll go first. I am. My whole house is feral. My kids are feral. My dogs are feral. We play. I am a firm believer in things. For me, they have to be fun or I'm out. And I feel that with my dogs so much so there's really not. I can manipulate situations in such a way that I can get some structure.

But. But everything with my dogs is play based. It's fun. We, you know, we sneak in some structure here and there and as they grow and develop, the structure gets a little more. But every single session that I do with my dog starts with play. Some kind of whatever the dog finds valuable. I mean, I have one border collie that thinks toys are the dumbest thing in the world, if you can imagine that.

But we play treat tosses and it is the most. She loves it. She knows exactly what's about to happen. She's. It's a pattern game for her. So everything starts with play. Now I do have specific toys that are used for different things as they start to grow up. But as their puppies, we try all the toys. Like, I want to know exactly which toy makes you go nuts and which one you can maintain some thought while you're playing and which one you're like, eh, I don't really care if I play with that at all.

And I am a big fan of interactive play. So I don't necessarily start with the toys that I'm throwing and having them fetch and bring back. Like, I want to be at the other end of the toy for the dogs. Granted, I do have herding breeds, so I work with a lot of clients who have retrievers and that is slightly different. They don't always like to play with you at the other end of it.

They want to go get the thing and then bring it back. So I think again, just working the dog and the puppy that you have in front of you, but play, it's, it's probably a hundred percent play.

Erin Lynes: For me for the first several, many weeks, like weird, we just play. So I don't know if I really think about it in the same way. I also love play for sure, lots of play.

And all my training is fun and feral is my favorite word. So that was very exciting to hear about Ashley's household sounds like a fun place to be. But I do kind of sneak some structure into some things fairly early on. So I have retrievers and we like to use toy play as reinforcement at some point. But I don't like to use it as reinforcement right away if until there are some, there is some understanding about how the games are played.

So we can either adjust what I use for reinforcement in training when they're little to not use toys or sneak it in as those skills develop. So in that way, I guess I do kind of consider structure in a training perspective that way. But it's not serious at all. It's not like you have to do this or else that. It's like what can, how does your brain work in this moment and can you handle this and do you see the value in releasing that toy to play with this toy and how can we make that worthwhile?

My current puppy, Velveeta, is a four month old Labrador and she was born with very big feelings about possessing toys. Like not negatively, she just always wants to have something in her mouth. And if you see any picture I ever post of her, she's probably carrying a slipper or a stick or a toy and she's just like, it's very satisfying to have this thing in my mouth. So as I would like her to grow up to retrieve things and play tug with me and stuff, I have to be aware of the fact that for her, holding onto the thing is like that's, that's what the part she likes, right?

So building our play sessions up so that she's like, well, I could let it go if I get to bite another one. And building her expectations, like trusting that I'm not just going to take things away from her. That's all taught through play, but it is, I'm doing it with, with like structure in mind. And I'm thinking about how Can I communicate that, like, I'm not here to steal your toys.

I'm not here to ruin your fun. I'm actually kind of fun, and I've got more toys. So that's all part of the. How I. I introduced that early on. And depending on the puppy, not all puppies have that specific feeling that we have to work with. Some of them will come out of the womb delivering toys to your hand, and they're like, throw it again or tug. So there's.

There's definitely the individual puppy aspect that goes into how that is exactly balanced out. But it's something that I'm kind of thinking about long term, because one of the things that I don't love if I have the benefit of starting training puppies from a young age, is I don't want to have to fix things later on that I accidentally broke when they were little. And I try to take responsibility that I'm probably, definitely, certainly going to break something.

I'm. It's. I'm not going to get it. All right. But the things that I can observe early on, like, okay, Velveeta, you really love that toy. We're gonna. We're gonna make this as fun as possible for this to be a cooperative game and build it up in tiny steps. And at first, it always feels like I just. I wish I could tug with her. I wish I could do this with her as part of our training reward, because I can see that that is, like, she's got big toy feelings.

But when I play the long game, and suddenly the long game doesn't become that much of a long game. She's only four months old, and I can do retrieves with her now, and I can play tugging with her and stuff. And she's like, yeah, human. You are so fun. And there's not. Like, I don't have to chase her around the field because she got the toy, and now I.

Now it's all over. So I'm. Yay me for figuring that out with this puppy. But also, I think that's. That's maybe how structure and play are not enemies of each other. They can be. They can work together to make things more fun and more available. Like, her world with toy play now is much bigger because it doesn't just end when she gets the toy. So there's lots of back and forth.

And her training stamina is excellent. And I know exactly what makes her excited in certain situations because of all the. All these little, little fun steps that we've done along the way. So for me, play and structure kind of can go together. And yeah, that's what I think.

Irith Bloom: So it's interesting because, you know, this question started out as the. But if I'm going to limit your access to the, you know, the rug on the ground or whatever, like how does that balance with the play?

And so for me, I think exploration, I'm going to count exploration in play. I'm just going to lump that in for the purposes of this discussion. Having that free choice to wander around and do what they want, even if it's not necessarily interactive play with a human is super, super important. And I really love the concept of the household being feral. If you think about, for those of you who are old enough to remember this 35 or 40 years ago, there were a lot fewer fences, there were a lot fewer leash laws and dogs tended to sort of wander around.

And we generally had a lot less trouble with adult dogs and behavior concerns. There were a lot of things that we just didn't see as much of. I mean, I haven't been professionally training dogs for 40 years, just for the record, I'm not quite that old, but. But I remember those times and I remember the dogs we had and it was really a very different time. And part of that is because the dogs were allowed to be dogs.

I'm making quotation marks in the air. They were allowed to be dogs. Nobody expected them to be whatever it is that we seem to expect of them in many cases these days. And you just sort of chalked it up to I have a puppy. When they chewed on your couch, you just said, well, it's a puppy. That's kind of what's supposed to happen. And these days we've gotten much more structured and much more limiting.

And I think that that is really detrimental to the animal's behavioral and emotional well being, honestly. So my general attitude, I'm going to, again, I'm talking about like exploration, play, having control, having the ability to choose what you want to do is I'm going to make their life as choice rich as I possibly can. And only limit the tiny subset of things I need to limit. Like I can't have you running into a road that's full of traffic.

I can't have you eating, I don't know, something that's toxic, that's sitting on the ground. Like there, there. There do have to be certain limitations for health reasons, physical health reasons, but in general, if it's not hurting the dog, I'm like, I guess it's totally fine for you to do that. And if you want to sit over here instead of over there, you don't want to be in your crate.

You prefer to wander around the room. As long as we're not, you know, making a mess that I can't clean up. House training wise, I will only limit you as far as I need to for house training purposes. For me, that balance is about giving as much freedom and control as possible while making sure that I'm not. And this is something that Erin just brought up, teaching habits that I'm going to want to get rid of in the long term.

I don't want to teach a bad house training habit. I am going to limit the puppy from a house training standpoint. And at the same time, I'm going to give them as much freedom as I can within that context. So hopefully that made sense. I feel like that rambled a little. But you want to give them as much control and freedom as you can only limit the things you absolutely have to.

And that structure is there to help prevent problems both in the sense of danger and problems in the sense of when the dog is two years old. I really don't want to be seeing that.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Do you guys prioritize different things, things with a puppy versus an adolescent versus your adult dogs?

Ashley Escobar: 100%. Yeah.

Melissa Breau: Elaborate.

Ashley Escobar: I puppies, again, we're. We're feral. We're playing. We're. We have structure that organically happens.

And as they start to age, I start to give them a little more responsibility. Right. A little more structure as they mature and are able to do so. I will tell you that my. I have a brand new puppy, but Teal is. She just turned two and we did not officially start training until she was probably 15 months old. Like agility training. She's my agility prospect. She didn't have the maturity to do it.

She. She literally did not have the maturity to handle. To do it. She. We played with some of the foundation flat work concepts, but that was as far as she could go. And so her structure was definitely not my ideal structure and agenda. But she's her own dog, so we just went with it. And you know, every day the play became a little more structured in the moment that I gave her more responsibility that she could handle or her threshold.

Then we took two steps back and it was just this kind of back and forth with her until she was mentally mature enough to handle the responsibility of more structure. Still play based, but you can just tell when they can handle a little bit more criteria. Right. Other puppies that I've had recently, they're able to, they're like, yes, give me the responsibility. Like let's, I'm, I can do that and more.

Oh, I can do that on a new location. I can, you know, you can start really adding in a little more responsibility as they grow. But again, I mean every puppy is so different and I think that's the hardest thing. When I work with clients who get new sport prospects, right. They get this 8 week old puppy and they have it all planned out, right. I want to do it too, right.

But I have two kids now, so I've learned that my plans don't matter. We're going to do whatever the feral want to do. But it's hard I think for people, right? They've put a lot into this new puppy and this is their sport prospect and they have these sport goals and career goals for the dog and then the dog doesn't have any mental maturity and it's like, okay, now we're six months old, now we're 10 months old.

And it can be very frustrating if you are hanging on to this concept of the dog has to fit in this box of being able to do these skill sets and have this structure by this age. So it, it does matter for me, age wise for the puppy, but it also, the bigger picture for that is going to be their mental capability of being able to handle the task at hand and the responsibility that I'm going to put on them.

And then also the physical component too. Like I said, I have some puppies that they're born balanced. I mean like I've, I've delivered litters and at two days old, just laying there, the puppy is balanced and the puppy grew in balance. And, and this puppy, you know, some puppies, they just never have an imbalanced step. Like everything they do, it's like they're an adult moving right. They just have that coordination innately.

It's not normal, but it does happen. I can tell you for sure it happens and definitely not with the bigger breeds. I have an 8 month old great Dane client right now and it's really, it's tough because he can, you know, one day he's got it, the next day he's like, I'm tired, I need more rest. So I think that a lot of it has to do, yes, with age, but also just their mental, that particular dog's mental capabilities of the task.

Irith Bloom: I think that's so well said, this sort of focus on the individual who's in front of you and we can say, oh, the puppy is 12 weeks old. So according to the research, which is really old research, but that's beside the point. According to the research, this is what the puppy should be doing right now, and so on and so forth. But in fact, the dog who's in front of you may be very different from what the dogs in that study looked like.

And I think that's a really important point to keep in mind. And this idea of observing what the dog is able to do, what are they capable of offering, and then adjusting yourself around that. And I think that it's also. This is one of these things, you know, you always say you get the dog you need, not necessarily the dog you want. You'll hear that phrase a lot.

I think that this is one of those things where they are teaching us, you, human, need to let go of your expectations. You, human need to adjust, because learning how to adjust and learning how to let go of your own expectations is an important skill for you as a human. So we get to practice that with our puppies. With that said, I definitely do have some different focuses when I'm dealing with puppies at different age or dogs at different ages with a young puppy, I'm going to be very conscious of am I giving them that opportunity to learn about the world, What I'm focused on at that stage, which I think is very much what Ashley was saying, saying, as well as sort of life skills, I just learn how to be a dog in the human world.

That's an important life skill. And if you can learn that, then that's the foundation that I then build the agility onto, or the obedience or the dock diving or whatever it is. But if they don't have that foundation of how to live in our very weird human world, everything else is going to be so much harder. So the younger they are, the more I'm thinking about that foundational stuff.

And then when they're adolescents, I'm actually thinking about it even more because adolescence is when that stuff often falls apart because of all the neuronal pruning that's going on and the changes in the brain. And it's like. Like they literally lose things that they learned as puppies. They just get cut off in their brain so that they no longer have access to those pathways that they had built for whatever reason.

It's what the brain does. It does these massive pruning sort of tasks, and your puppy wakes up and overnight they just lost an entire set of skills. And you're like, what? What happened? So, again, in adolescence I'm like, okay, let's revisit those basics. Let's remember how to be a dog in a human world. And I'm just going to go back to play one more time. In adolescence, there is research in dozens of species that social play with conspecifics.

That means others of your species. So for dogs that means play with other dogs is one of the most important things for animals in that life stage. So when I have an adolescent dog, I am finding them play partners. I am looking for opportunities for play dates, I am looking for suitable partners and then maybe stretching the envelope a little so they learn how to play with other types of dogs as well.

And part of that is that stumble, fall down, get back up. But part of that is animals that interact appropriately during adolescence, that have that opportunity during adolescence, have fewer social issues with those others of their species when they grow up. So if you can get your dog to play with other dogs when they're between 6 and 10 months old, they're going to be much better with other dogs as adults. So that's another thing to focus on. That's very stage specific.

Melissa Breau: Interesting. Erin?

Eriin Lynes: I agree with all of it. The, especially when we're talking about assessing their individual needs in that moment, like for puppies it's, for me it's reasonably easy to meet like exercise needs. We do. I'm kind of glad that you mentioned that you consider exploration as part of play when you're talking about it because exploration is sort of our, our lifestyle.

We live on a big rural property and puppies get to walk off leash, explore. We're in the woods, we're kind of sniffing around, snooting around and I, I kind of take for granted and sometimes forget that that's not how all puppies live. But that is sort of the basics of their like day to day lifestyle here. So meeting exercise needs for puppies who get to explore a lot and have access to nature is pretty easy.

And I, if you live in an urban environment, you probably have to work a lot harder to get that than I do. But what I do notice with adolescent dogs is that alone is no longer enough in a lot of cases. I've got my 18 month old guy Ralphie right now, who is he? Suddenly in like the last couple of weeks, he's like, we gotta do stuff, we gotta, we gotta, I got a lot of big feelings.

I need somewhere to put all this arousal like let's train or let's play or let's do stuff. And now I'm okay, well, we have to plan for that a little bit more. We have to increase your training sessions. I need to make sure you're getting appropriate, like outlets for this. And it's, for him, it's a little complicated because he has, he has a condition in his front limb which limits what he can do physically.

So we're not going right into high end sport training or anything. But it is, I'm finding it really interesting how there's almost like this clear day where today he woke up and he's like, you know what? I need more from this world. So for me, the interesting things about how, how can I figure out how to meet those needs at these different life stages. And it feels a lot different.

Ralphie is an expert player, so I'm greatly relieved to hear that all the playing that he's doing is going to be treating him so well in the future. But it's, it is really interesting to see those needs shift and change as they grow. And totally with that brain pruning and losing skills, I see that in so many client dogs too. I'm sure everybody who's a professional trainer has had a call that said, like, he can do this.

I knew he could do this and today he won't do this anymore. And it's those, those skills that just need to be revisited. It's going back to the basics. Refreshing things sometimes feels like you're retraining them from scratch. That's very super normal in adolescent dogs. And it's not a setback, it's just part of the process.

Melissa Breau: I love that statement. It's not a setback, it's just a part of the process. Can we just frame that and put it up on the wall somewhere? I love that. Yeah. So we got into a little bit into socialization there and I want to talk more about that. So how do you think about how do you approach socialization? How do you approach exposure to novelty during puppyhood versus adolescence? Does it change? How does it change, you know, as the pup ages? Irith, since this is your topic for the conference, do you want to start us off?

Irith Bloom: Sure, I will kick us off with this. Socialization is such a big topic. And what I'll say is kind of everything is socialization. So that's the first place to start is you may not think you're doing socialization, but you are in fact doing socialization. If you are breathing and the puppy is breathing, you are doing socialization. So the first thing to keep in mind is that every little thing is part of that learning.

Process we tend to get really caught up in especially, especially here with a Fenzi Dog Sports Academy audience. You know, we've got a lot of people who do formal training a lot of the time, really regularly with their very, very happy and well engaged dogs. I mean, it's fantastic that we do so much with them, but we need to remember that all the in between stuff is also training.

It's just not formal training. And socialization very much falls into that where the way you sit around watching TV is a learning experience, a learning opportunity for your puppy. Oh, they watch TV and they're going to ignore me now for an hour while they're completely caught up in the latest episode of Name Binge Worthy show and I'm going to get nothing from them. That is part of the process of that puppy learning how to live and behave appropriately in your household.

When the magic box is lit up, if I just lie here quietly or maybe crawl into their lap, things go well. If I start barking at them, everybody gets annoyed. That's a learning process, right? They might decide that annoying you because they get the attention and is worth it. By the way, they won't necessarily say, oh, annoying them is bad, because that's a value judgment we put on it.

We call it annoyance. But all of these experiences are part of that socialization picture. And so, especially with young puppies, just exposing them to as much as possible and really thinking about what is our future going to look like. Am I going to be spending every weekend at a trial? Maybe I should take my young puppy to a trial and watch from a distance so I'm not totally overwhelming them, but allow them to watch.

Have them on their own four paws or three paws if you happen to have a tripod or two paws for that matter. I've met dogs with only two, but have them on their own paws so they can choose whether they want to approach or retreat or how they want to behave and give them that opportunity. This is what a trial looks like. This is what a trial sounds like.

Here are the announcements going off. This is what the various flags waving in the wind look like. All of those things are going to help you when that dog is then a year old and you're ready to start your first trial experience. So especially with young puppies, think, what are all the things that my puppy is going to need to get used to? Sights, sounds, textures, smells. Get them used to the smell of rubbing alcohol.

They're going to have to go to the veterinarian. All of these kinds of things are things to start working on from a really early age. And then when they're adolescence or there is sometimes a fear period in babyhood, doesn't always happen. Sometimes it does. It's usually around nine weeks, but not always. Anyway, if you see that they're starting to get scared of everything, that's the appropriate time to wrap them in bubble wrap, make their world very small and very safe for just a couple of weeks, let their brain get through whatever phase that is and then start reintroducing things slowly.

But the most key point, I guess, because I've talked about a couple different phases, the most key point is socialization should be different. Dog led. The dog should always have control over the situation as long as you're not literally walking into danger. Because the puppy doesn't know better than to walk into danger. If you allow them to make the choice, approach, retreat, do something else, focus on the human, focus on that, they're going to do a lot better than if you sort of try to force them to interact or force, force them to get away or whatever else it might be. Letting them lead is the key.

Melissa Breau: Ashley, Erin, who wants to go next?

Ashley Escobar: I love that, letting them lead. I agree completely. And obviously all of the puppies, whether they're bred with me or purchased and brought into my home, right, they're exposed to a lot because I have two to small kids that participate in a lot of dog sports and we travel and we go and I teach all over.

So puppies get the opportunity to go with and do and see so many various places and things and smells and textures. And one of the biggest things that I do is let the puppy lead it, right? If we go to a new location and the puppy is apprehensive or the puppy clearly has questions or concerns about the new location, I'm not just going to say, nope, suck it up, we're going in here, right?

It's, we'll just go back to the RV. It's not ever a force or make to do thing. And I'm all about taking those opportunities to just put as much space until the puppy is comfortable. And then we just watch and observe and let them just smell. And it's so funny because most of the time when the puppies have a lot of questions like that they, they, once you get the right amount of space where they're not uncomfortable, they all will air, scent and start to smell as they're looking and just take, you just see it like registering in.

And so I, I try to encourage clients and folks to put as much space. And everyone's like well how much space is enough? And it's like, well it really depends on the dog. Like sometimes I even have to go on the other side of the RV. Like sometimes they need more space than others. But that has been just a very consistent tell for me that the puppy has enough space when they just, they kind of take a deep breath and then they just sort of start air scenting in the direction that we just were.

So I guess completely just letting it be puppy led. And it is different if it's a tiny, tiny puppy versus an adolescent dog because of the amount of experiences likely that that particular particular dog has had, right? My eight week old border collie puppy has not had a ton of experiences. She's had less than let's say a 10 month old puppy that I might have with me. So I would expect the eight week old to not be as bold and brave or curious as the 10 month old, right?

Just because she has not had those same experiences. So more questions arise. So just having that patience, right, like it's, you can't go on any kind of a, of a time frame or if you don't have a lot of time to invest.

Erin Lynes: I tell people, don't go like don't take your puppy to the trial, don't start at an agility trial for your agility prospect. Go to just a, a breed show where there's not a ton of excitement and screaming dogs and over arousal ness.

Don't go to a dock diving competition for your dock diving prospect. Find the lowest key dog venue that you can go to where there's massive control and take your puppy and let them observe and smell because the smells are similar and you can slowly start to build up to that level of intensity. But I love that, just letting it be dog led for sure. I think thinking about the future that your puppy will experience and looking for ways to incorporate those things in, in like a micro manner like Ashley mentioned.

Like don't go to the crazy dock diving event with your, your dock diving prospect because like that level of chaos is a lot, right? You can almost predict that that's not going to go ideally in one manner or another. But what if you went to the pool after the event shut down and like the tents are set up and things, it's quiet now. The atmosphere is similar but it's not all 65 dogs barking and lunging at the end of their leashes.

So there's little things that you can look for that are going to be helpful. Splitting it up into tinier phases and you can think about what are the things that are easy and familiar in your home environment, in your day to day routine that you, you know, your puppy is getting just by the act of living with you, versus the things that you have to go and seek out.

And those are the ones that are trickier because you have to imagine them and you have to plan for them a little bit more. One of my favorite socialization strategies when I'm taking a baby puppy out is using a buddy system. And I'm lucky that I have access to like some pretty chill older dogs. So if we're going into a situation and it's brand new for the little guy, having grandma viper along to sort of moderate things and demonstrate this is cool.

So I love watching the little puppy go and say, oh, that was interesting. And then they look over at grandma and she's sort of like totally neutral. Like nothing phases her. Oh, that, I guess that was okay. And you can kind of see like a little bit of an extra bounce in their step after that. So it's not like a recipe for eliminating overwhelm, but having a little extra support, if it's available, can be, can be super helpful.

So that, that's one of the things that I love to take advantage of if there's an older, reliable dog in the home. On the flip side, because many of us do have multiple dogs, not all of the older dogs are good role models. I don't walk my baby puppies with Leroy the Beagle because he still sometimes yells at strangers and that's not the response that I hope the little ones pick up on.

So we will work on you separately, Leroy, but you don't get to be the role model when that behavior is a likely possibility. So just being a little bit predictive of what you think might happen and stacking the deck in favor of a positive experience. You know, there used to be those checklists that would go around for socialization and you'd be like, okay, we did the boat thing, we did the garbage truck thing, we did this.

And you think, oh, we don't do that anymore. Because just experiencing it to check it off doesn't mean it was a positive experience. The puppy, if we're going with puppy led socialization, you've got to really observe and see if they're ready to take steps forward towards those things. Maybe that day is not the right day to check that thing off the list. So those lists can maybe be inspiration and help you get ideas for things that you might not have Considered exposing your puppy to.

But exposure for the sake of exposure. If it's not going well, I wouldn't do that. So it really does take a little bit of extra patience and observation and start learning what your puppy will show you about their comfort level and respecting that.

Melissa Breau: All right, any final thoughts, guys? Anything you kind of want to hit home here or, like, drive home for folks, leave folks with.

Irith Bloom: As we wrap up, I want to say something that sort of spins off of what Erin just said.

Which is the most important skill for us as we raise a puppy is observing them and learning what their body language means, is telling us, bearing in mind that you can learn all you want to know about canine body language, but every individual is going to have a slightly different expression of it, Right? And sometimes it's a dramatically different expression. In most cases, it's only slight differences. But just observing your puppy, whether they're a baby or an adolescent or they're on that cusp of sexual maturity or social maturity, what is their behavior telling you?

What do you need to adjust based on what that communication is revealing? It might not be deliberate communication all of the time. Sometimes it is. Sometimes our dogs very clearly say things to us, and we're just too oblivious to notice. But a lot of the time, we can read their emotional and mental state based on how they behave. So pay attention to that behavior. When in doubt, take a step back and observe.

Ashley Escobar: I totally agree. And I love the. It's not a setback. It's just the process. Because all of our training, even with my seasoned, experienced adult dogs, right, like, we still take steps back and go to foundations, and it's truly not a setback. It is just part of the process and how they learn. So being able to embrace that early on, right from the beginning, I think is huge.

And just being present with your puppies and let go of expectations, let them be feral, Be feral with them. Have fun letting go of expectations.

Erin Lynes: I love. I think that's a good motto for puppies. We get wrapped up in what our future goals are. We get wrapped up in what the litter mates are doing or what so and so is doing with their puppy of a similar age.

And as a breeder myself who's had the experience of raising many related, closely related dogs of the same breed, I can tell you one of the biggest dog life lessons is every. Every little puppy is their own individual. The mistakes you want to fix from your last dog with this puppy will probably not apply. You can't. You. You can. You can plan to be a better trainer and you can have better skills yourself, but they're not gonna.

They're not gonna do the same things. They're not gonna need the same things. And it's really important to observe your own puppy in that moment and listen to what they're telling you because it's so endlessly fascinating. If you're open to, you know, exploring them as a little individual.

Melissa Breau: I like that. All right, well, thank you all so much for coming on the podcast. This is a good conversation.

All: Thanks. That was super fun. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks. Always fun. Always fun. And so nice to get to chat about this and have this topic, just explore it more and get more ideas for me as well.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Julie Simons to talk about how to tell what your nose work dog really knows.

If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice, they have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by Bensound.com the track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in and happy training!

Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!