Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Absolute Dog Sex in a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most exciting part of their world. Oh, my goodness, it can be tough. We hear you. I'm joined by the wonderful Sam, and Sam and I are talking what to do with naughty but nice dogs, what are our favourite games, what are our favourite things to do and how are we going to work our days with them. So, sam, I'm heading to you. We're gonna do a bit of tips tennis. What are our favorite things to train? What are our favorite games to play with naughty but nice dogs? And I'm gonna hear it straight away from you. I bet you're going disengagement something. Go on, what are our favorite?

Speaker 2: 0:55

things to do welcome well, I feel like I need to say it. I feel like I need to say it before you get in there, because it's my favorite. It's my favorite, yeah, absolutely. Disengagement pattern um, anybody that's been taught by me absolutely has has heard of this game. Uh, anybody that's watched any of our content with me on it really has probably heard of this game to some extent. Um, what a cool game and you can get so much out of it. So, for me, um, disengagement pattern it it's. It's really simple.

Speaker 2: 1:23

For those that maybe don't know about this game, you're essentially orientating your dog toward a distraction of some sort. It could be really low level. It doesn't have to be anything mega um, it could be, I don't know, um, a flower on the floor who knows right, it could be. It can literally be anything, um. And then when they turn to you, they're getting more value than they would towards the flower. So let let's say I threw one piece of food toward a flower. When they come back to me, I don't have to say anything. I'm waiting for them to come back to me. They're going to get like four, five, six pieces and like loads of fun as well, and like I'm going to be really excited about it. So we're looking at showing our dogs that there's more value toward me than there is out into the environment.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Now, if now, if you think about where that can go, oh man, you could just use. You could use it for anything, you know. You could use it for distractions out in the, in the, in the environment. You could use it house guests. You can use it for not picking up chicken off the floor that you've dropped, you know, ah, it's brilliant. And for naughty but nice dogs particularly. They struggle with disengagement, you know. So, for me this game is massive and I've got huge success in so many different areas, as well as my own dogs, but also with my students, um, and I'm a massive advocate for this game for naughty much nice dog disengagement pattern. For the win, what's yours?

Speaker 1: 2:33

I love it.

Speaker 1: 2:33

I love it and I love it because I know how much you've demonstrated. You've shown it. You've shown it in different presentations and you really live it with your dogs. You really live it with your dogs. Your next one has to with your dogs. Your next one has to be talking about your suitcase. But I'm just going to head you up before I go for the next one. Mine would definitely be tricks. If you haven't already got the Absolute Dogs tricks book, head to the store. It's absolute-dogscom.

Speaker 1: 2:56

And I love tricks with my dogs. I love tricks. I love seeing the dogs develop. I love seeing their behaviours develop. I love seeing their behaviors develop. I love seeing their mindset grow. I love seeing them get a little bit bigger through playing tricks, like they grow in playing tricks.

Speaker 1: 3:10

And I wouldn't say I've even got any favorite tricks. I think it depends on the dog. So for some of my dogs it might be very movement-based tricks. For other dogs it might be quite still tricks. It would really depend on the individual. That I'm working with Skittles right now. I would say one of her favourites is like chin targeting, whereas Katie, I would say, is always involving jumping and moving and I really love how you can bring out the dog's character. You can help assess their personality, but you can also really enhance who they are in new environments through them having almost power poses in their tricks. So I love trick training. I really love trick training and most of all, with trick training, I also think that I enjoy seeing them just grow from little people right through to as big as it gets like you can turn them into giants, and I love seeing the enthusiasm. You can like it can roar, and you might have been working with a mouse and suddenly you're working with a lion, like I really enjoy. I really enjoy watching that.

Speaker 1: 4:09

So if you haven't got the tricks book, grab the tricks book. It's just a gorgeous book, really well put together, gorgeous, like spiral bound book, real chunk of a book. If you're in america, the shipping costs us almost as much as the book does, so the company actually makes zero money when we ship it. But I I still want people to have it because it's just a great, great book and gorgeous diagrams, all of it.

Speaker 1: 4:29

And if you can't afford the book, then the other thing you can do is head to the Facebook page, give us a like, give us a share. Definitely, let people know about the Facebook page and any of the social media spaces, and we actually do quite a lot of tricks posts on there so you look back through. I think there's like 40 tricks posts so you can look right back through there. They're most Tuesdays, so so that's really nice as well. So, yeah, tricks for the win Sam, heading to you and you're going to tell us what you do with your naughty but nice suitcase and we're talking if you just joined in, we're talking naughty but nice dogs. What games are our favorite games to play?

Speaker 2: 4:59

tricks for the win suitcase for thecase, and we're talking a magic suitcase here, not just any suitcase, okay, and it's a suitcase. You know, if you're me, then it's a suitcase of unicorns and rainbows on it Essentially, a magic suitcase, very cool game. It's essentially you're taking you're almost taking loads of games in your suitcase with you out on the road, and the main thing for the suitcase is that the suitcase becomes this really cool, um, this really cool object, this really cool that symbolizes like fun and joy and security and safety for your dog. Okay, so it's something that you grow at home first and then you can take it on the road for your dog.

Speaker 2: 5:44

Now, for naughty but nice dogs, um, what you tend to find sometimes is that novelty can be a really scary place, right, and so we're talking things that maybe me and you don't seem novel, you know, like that person walking down the street or that dog, or that flappy, um dustbin, uh, wrapper, wrapper, bin bag, the bin, the flappy bin bag, or the guy in the high vis vest, right, so all of these things that to us are completely normal, to your dog might be absolutely terrifying. So imagine if you could give them a security blanket, you know. So imagine that you could give them something that makes them feel safe, that makes them feel loved, that reminds them that they're in a safe place, that it's okay, and that's basically what the magic suitcase is, and I remember actually thinking, when I was kind of like, looking at this game and thinking about growing this game place, that it's okay and that's basically what the magic suitcase is, and I remember actually thinking, when I was kind of like, looking at this game and thinking about growing this game um, it really made me think of my, uh, my teddy, back in the day, when I had a teddy called teddy Joe Mansell and I used to take him absolutely everywhere with me. Now, sadly, I lost him when I joined the RAF, um, which I'm really I'm'm really sad about. I cried about it.

Speaker 2: 6:44

However, that teddy used to go everywhere with me and it just used to bring a bit of home wherever I was, you know. So, whenever I was somewhere like somewhere scary or somewhere new or somewhere like that I wasn't sure about, that's what made me feel better, that's what made me just cuddle up to. It felt better about things, and that's essentially what we're looking at for Magic Suitcase, for our dog central game, because you can do so much with it. It's very flexible.

Speaker 1: 7:11

I love it nice, nice and nice. And what I really like about that, sam, is that you, like you said you're a bit of mixing and mashing and a bit of like DJing to kind of create something that turned into not just any old suitcase but a unicorn suitcase. Now, what adventures has your suitcase been on? Because I think it's worth sharing, like you and Siri's adventures here, because I think you've had some quite cool adventures with the suitcase and how has it grown her?

Speaker 2: 7:35

so talk about what you've actually seen with her in particular and why you used it for her in the first place so Siri, sirius is my um NBN Jack Russell Terrier, so she's now, I think, five or six years, six this year, I think um and she's she's she's very working dog. So you know she's come from um, she came from a farm um, where they were very much bred as ratters, you know, and so she's got this really switched on. Smart, smart mind, um, and the kind of mind you know where you're like you're too smart, you're so smart that you get up to mischief and you get into trouble. You know she's that sort of dog, um, and essentially she just started finding the world really, really scary and maybe a little bit of you know, inexperience at the early stages of her life from myself, you know, still on my dog training learning journey um, and she essentially became very, very, very reactive. She's very scared of the world. A lot of it comes through um her just kind of going I see something, I bark, that's what I do.

Speaker 2: 8:33

So a large part of trying to take the suitcase um out on the road with her was trying to. We had to really build it and build this um, this relationship with the suitcase of her, absolutely adoring the suitcase. So it actually started at home, um, and we started lots and lots of games of playing. I got her to wrap around it. She's putting two ports on it and you know we were we're still trying to work on chin target with it. Um, she gets in it. She uses it as a boundary or as a bed. Um, she does like, um, like cardboard and stuff in there. She like snuffle for her food. Anything that I could literally anything I could think of to do with this suitcase is is what we were trying to do with it, so anything that I could do that she loved doing with it. Oh, we got her to pull it as well. That's pretty cool. Now. We got it to pull along, so she looked really cute pulling the suitcase along. So we did loads and loads and loads of stuff with it, and the idea being that she just loves interacting with this suitcase.

Speaker 2: 9:25

Now, when I felt that she was in a really good place with the suitcase, we started taking it on the road, um, and actually it just started in my garden, um, and it started, you know, just out the front door. Um, and I used it in my van because I'm doing up my van to be a camper van, so we want her to be really cool in there and like, have it as a really cool space. Um, I take it. If I go to the supermarket for shopping you know we go shopping there once a week um, I'll take her with me and I'll take the suitcase and we'll do it. I'll park in different parts of the uh of the supermarket car park so I can either be like close to the chaos or I can be further away from the chaos, and so we're just trying to grow her being in an environment and rather than seeing the environment as a super, super scary place.

Speaker 2: 10:05

She's actually gone. Oh, it's okay, my suitcase is here. Yeah, it's okay, the, the unicorns and the rainbows are with me and so I do not need to worry. So that's essentially what we've got, and we're actually um. In August this year we're doing the North Coast 500 around Scotland for my um 40th and so, no, I know so, uh, we're gonna take it properly on the road and it's actually gonna. It's gonna really go, go the miles. And for Christmas we were down um, we were down Cornwall as well. So Christmas I was visiting family and I came to um, came around sort of like Devon and Cornwall area. So, yeah, we took it quite a few places up on the moors and you know out in the streets taking it, taking it on the road and actually making it a really adaptable resource.

Speaker 1: 10:53

That's massive. Yeah, like it's massive. So I I just think really resourceful, really brilliant, really fantastic, and I love the magic suitcase. So I'm going to do one more for naughty but nice dogs, and my one more is actually scatter feeding, and I know it's really simple and I know it's really easy, but I use it all the time with a, a naughty but nice dog.

Speaker 1: 11:12

I scatter so often and whereas I used to think I had to have their attention, I had to have their focus, I had to have like a tight lead, I had to have like you will be with me. And this is when I was a novice in dog training really. Now I'm kind of like I've been there, done that, and I find scatter feeding so entirely brilliant for a dog because it takes all the pressure and responsibility off us both. All I have to do is throw food and all they have to do is eat it and if anything like me, seafood, eat it and so you're just going to eat it and I love that. I love scatter feeding, I love the chill, I love the, the dog who doesn't have to do anything but eat and the person that doesn't have to do anything but throw and if you can't even eat, it gives you information and when my dogs can't eat, it tells me the level of of where we are, and I think that's important too. So that's me.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Tricks, scatter feeding. I love the suitcase and I absolutely love disengagement pattern and Sam and her mish-mashing. What's your last one, sam?

Speaker 2: 12:06

or my last one, I think, would be uh, disengagement square.

Speaker 1: 12:13

I feel like, I feel like you're gonna get it I know, say sam, talk it through in every stage for the people that are listening, because if you're part of games club guys, um, you got it, you get. Get in there, get hold of your learning, have a watch of of sam in in. Maybe, if you're a pro dog trainer, watch sam in some of her pro dog trainer videos and um, watch us in games club as well, because you guys have got a library rich full of games, like so many games there. If you're not part of Games Club, if you're not part of PDT Club, go and join if you can. It's over on the Absolute Dog Store.

Speaker 1: 12:44

And also, sam, maybe for those people who really can't join and not in the position that they can get involved right now. And it's super, mega, mega reasonable, especially if you do the yearlies. So the yearlies really do allow you to to keep it that bit sort of cheaper and but go on, sam, how about someone who's new to this and hasn't ever um done this? What are you going to do? How are you going to explain it?

Speaker 2: 13:05

easy peasy, easy peasy. So, uh, literally, disengagement square. Imagine a square, okay, and now your square can be as big or as small as you like. I would probably start off relatively small, and if you've ever walked your dog and you just see that the further you go, the more that you walk, the more wound up they get, the more excited they get, the the more um, disengaged from you they get. So you know, the less attention they're paying to you. That's really. This is where this could be massive for them, all right and and really any naughty but nice, where they're really struggling to take their eyes off the whole world, for whatever reason that might be, whether they're scared, whether they're overexcited they can't bring their heads away from everything that is going on. Sometimes that's because we're just constantly adding more and more right. So as we walk, there's more stuff right. There's more grass to smell, there's more people to see, there's more buildings that you're going around the next corner, you've changed from grass to gravel. You've changed from gravel to the road. You've stepped off the curb, there's a car that's just gone past. So you're having all of this stimulus, all of this stuff all the time going at your dog's brain, and so it's constantly being sort of topped up in terms of excitement or in terms of fear.

Speaker 2: 14:16

Now, what we do with the square is we anchor them, all right. So we're going to think of, we're going to take four objects, right, and that could just be. It could be four bowls, all right. So four dog bowls, all right, ditch the bowl, take your dog bowls out on the road with you. We're going to put them out in a square and all we're going to do is walk from bowl to bowl. We're going to put a bit of food in there, so we're going to put one piece, maybe two pieces, a bit of food and then we're going to walk to the next square, to the next corner. We're going to place a few bits of food, then we're going to go to the next one, and that's as simple, as simple as it gets.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Now, if you're a member of games club, if you're a member of Games Club, if you're a member of PDT Club, then you could really mix it up and add some of your normal games in there, so you could get them to do two paws up. You could probably do this even if you're not a member of Games Club. You could add putting their paws up or paws in, maybe into the bowl, right? So instead of just feeding a piece of food in there, they're going to put their paws in there and then you're going to move on to the next one. Now what this creates is a nice controlled environment that they can settle into. No more stimulus, no extra things that are coming into your dog's brain, just something for them to settle into. They're like okay, yeah, I know what I'm doing. I understand, I just got to go from bowl to bowl and what you'll find is that your dog's energy levels slowly start to come down and they slowly start to settle into the walk, and that's kind of what we want. And you, eventually, you can expand this and you can take it on your walks and it becomes just normality as part of your normal daily walks. But to begin with, we're just going to create this nice controlled environment where we can control the kind of the stimulus that our dogs are getting. In that moment, in that area they've run out of sniffs because it's the same square, right. All you're doing is starting to get that engagement with you playing with you, taking food off you. Suddenly you've got a different dog, so it's a really really, really cool game.

Speaker 2: 16:08

I used to use it an awful lot at the center with my students because that it can be a really like overwhelming environment for them, with lots of smells, lots of birds flying around, lots of dog smells because there's so many dogs at the centre as well and so disengagement square was a huge one for me.

Speaker 2: 16:26

To start our students with their dogs that maybe have never even been able to get them out of the car before, you know, have never been able to go on any walk before. This was how I got them to just be able to be in the environment with us and actually start getting some sort of engagement with you, you know, rather than engagement with the whole environment. So it's a huge, huge game and you can put disengagement pattern in there. Just just saying you can add disengagement pattern into your disengagement square at one of the corners. So it's really cool. It's a really cool game. It's uh, it's definitely one of those ones that I would have a look at. I definitely filmed it for PDT club, um, and maybe I should film it for games club at some point, I feel.

Speaker 1: 17:07

I definitely think you should.

Speaker 2: 17:08

I think we've got it in there, yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:10

I really think it's a nice one and I think that for me, the mega win here is that it allows a naughty but nice dog to feel very, very safe and very secure in the environment. You can do it in your garden, you can do it in your living room, you can do it out on a walk, you can do it in a car park, you can do it out and about. You really get to choose where you do it and you can mix it up every time, and no session is the same. They're always going to be different, but the dog gets the rhythm.

Speaker 1: 17:35

It's a rhythm sort of space it is rhythm a lot like you said, the dogs feel more and more comfortable as they play it and I think and I think that that's absolutely key that it's the eat, sleep, rave, repeat, eat, sleep, rave, repeat. So the dog at no point feels that they are being pushed beyond what they're capable of, and actually so many dogs, I think, in dog training classes and out and about and autobanized dogs, are pushed further than they're capable of. This game allows a dog to ground itself and I think that's really key. What do you think, sam?

Speaker 2: 18:10

Yeah, definitely, it's definitely a rhythm game and it's definitely. It is essentially that. I think the the magical thing is watching a dog's energy state change. So a dog that comes out of the car or out of out of your doorway or wherever that might be, out of your back gate, high as a kite, really, you know, they're like bouncing on the end of the lead or, you know, sometimes that's a sign of stress as well, you know, rather than just excitement.

Speaker 2: 18:34

Um, you can see that energy state change and that for me, was the uh, the kind of the catalyst really for me really loving this game, so much was you can, you can literally see the results because you can see your dogs change, you know, right there in front of your eyes, and if, um, if you are ever going to try it, if you can, if you have a chance to film it, because sometimes you don't realize it when you're in that moment but actually if you watch over it, you can see those subtle changes in your body, your dog's body language.

Speaker 2: 19:01

Um, you know, even just like little things, just how they, their gait changes. They just become more relaxed, they look like they're flowing more rather than they're like, oh, my god, I'm so excited and I'm so scared of the world. Um, yeah, it's, it's magic, it's a real magical, magical game to play um and you. It's so flexible, it's so much fun to play with. Like, the more stuff that you add into it, the more um, the more flexibility you get out the game, but actually the more fun it is, as well for you and your dog, you know. So it's really cool, really.

Speaker 1: 19:25

Love it, love, love, love, love it's definitely a game that sam love.

Speaker 1: 19:30

You can feel her love, you can feel her love shining through the screen, through your car or however. You're hearing this right now. So naughty but nice dogs. They can be complex and yet we've got our favourite games that we play with our naughty but nice dogs, from disengagement pattern to disengagement square, to the magic suitcase tricks and simply scatter feeding Like it really doesn't need to be hard to have wins with your Naughty but Nice dogs. Sam and I both love your Naughty but Nice dogs and if you haven't already, check out all of our Naughty but Nice products on the store, from Naughty but Nice courses, specifically, right through to Games Club and Pro Dog Trainer Club, which really is the hub of dog training. That was this episode of the Sex and Squirrel podcast. Thank you so much to the wonderful Sam, the disengagement queen, for being here with us on the podcast and we'll see you next week for more dog training adventures.