Lauren Langman: 0:09

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. Ditch the walk, karen. You ditch the walk with your lovely dog rupert, and in so many ways it's really, really necessary. And yet I know for owners it's a really hard concept. Why do you ditch the walk? What is ditch the walk? What's ditch the walk about for you and your naughty but nice dog, rupert?

Karen Scott: 0:46

um, so really for Rupert.

Lauren Langman: 0:50

It is about not taking him out when his headspace is not in a place where that is going to be a good experience and what might happen if he goes out when his headspace is not in the right place, and it might not be a good experience. Tell us more about it so he might be.

Karen Scott: 1:06

He might have had um a lot of stuff filling his stress bucket. I his his ability to handle things might be slightly compromised. And then I take him out on a walk and a dog looks at him funny and he has a meltdown now.

Lauren Langman: 1:20

How does that feel for rupert good or bad, bad? How does it feel for karen good or bad? How does it feel for the other dog good or bad? How does it feel for Rupert good or bad, Bad? How does it feel for Karen good or bad, Bad? How does it feel for the other dog good or bad, Bad? How does it feel for the other dog owner good or bad, Bad? How does it feel for anybody looking and on looking on that situation Bad and what the heck's going on over there. And so actually is there any benefit to walking a dog in that headspace?

Karen Scott: 1:38

No, no, and I think you could kind of get pulled into that mindset of he needs exercise, he needs to be going out, he can't live in the house all the time. He's got to have different experiences and different environments and he needs to be exercised. But there are so many other ways of doing it. And if it's not going to be an enjoyable experience for him, regardless of me because there are things I would potentially do with him if they were in his interests that I wouldn't necessarily enjoy I can't think of one right now, but I mean potentially but if he's not enjoying it either, what is the point?

Lauren Langman: 2:17

Absolutely, absolutely. I think that's massive, I think that's really huge. Now I'm thinking about my lovely granddad. He's in his 80s, late, late 80s, and he would say but you have to walk a dog at 6 am and 6 pm and they have to be walked for an hour a day, twice a day. So you're going to walk in the morning, you're going to walk in the evening, and that, lauren, is the reason I can't have a dog, because it just, it just doesn't budge.

Karen Scott: 2:46

I can't have those rules, but I do have a similar kind of parallel situation. So I know how Rupert would be if I did have those rules. He has medication that he takes and he knows when it's time for his medication. If he had regular walks, he would absolutely know when it was time for his regular walks and he would be telling me in no uncertain terms that it is time to be going out. And that wouldn't be fun, because I can't always go out at the same time I work. Sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's wet, sometimes there's something else happening. Sometimes he's done something stupid, like held himself up a path and screamed for five minutes and then, even though there's nothing actually wrong with him, I don't think a walk's that good for him that day.

Lauren Langman: 3:20

So an inflexible dog who feels like a walk has to happen at a particular time every day would be quite tricky and when I've been speaking to my granddad he's like but it's a dog's right to have a walk, it's a dog's right to be exercised. And my granddad's also deaf, which makes it particularly tricky to discuss anything with him and I love him to bits. But he's very, very inflexible himself, very, very regimented policeman, policeman, ex-policeman, and he will tell you what he has on a Monday for dinner, on a Tuesday for dinner on a Wednesday as cottage pie, and a Thursday does this, and a Friday has sandwiches and a pickled onion. And on Saturday and Sunday he goes to the local cafe and you know what you mess up with that plan and he's going to tell you about it. You won't gonna know about it and I find that interesting. What's in the dog is in the person and there's similarities going across there because obviously he's the one that drives that relationship.

Lauren Langman: 4:09

Now, when I think about that, I do think there is a space for exercise and I do think there's a space for enrichment, and even my goat has enrichment. At our house. Our goat has enrichment. Our super chickens have enrichment. You've seen them like pecking out there. They have a great, great day where we hang things up and they go investigating and finding and foraging and I'm a massive believer in that. Our horses have enrichment. A jolly ball just arrived for our ponies where they grab it and they throw it at each other and have a great time and we've got hay balls and all the fun.

Lauren Langman: 4:35

What do you do for Rupert that replaces that walk? Because obviously what we're talking to you about, listeners, is ditching the walk and what things we can do today Currently ditching the walk and what things we can do today currently. If you haven't already jumped into games club, you know what games club we go through, so many things you can do. What's the link for games club karen? Absolute dogs, dot me forward, slash, join the club. And once more, just so everyone can hear it absolute dogs dot me forward, slash, join the club. So what do you do to replace games?

Karen Scott: 4:59

so all not replace games, replace walks, all sorts of stuff. And that is the beauty of games and games club and games-based training, isn't it? You don't have to do the same stuff every day. So I think, first off, a walk. What is a walk? Even? It's not necessarily that I don't take him out, but what I don't do is take him out the front door, walk down the road, go around in a circuit and end up back at the house.

Karen Scott: 5:30

So actually it's like redefined what a walk actually is for a dog, even so sometimes I might drive him somewhere, get him out of the car, play some games in a car park obviously away from cars and then come home again and then he's learning skills that he's learned at home and taking them somewhere else and that's building all sorts of skills that serve him well in other areas of his life. Or sometimes we might do some kind of confidence circuit type games in the house. I even moved my dining table out of the way so that I've got a big space so that we can set out cones and he can do kind of running around cones and going between bowls and over platforms and that's brilliant for his fitness and his body awareness and all sorts of things.

Lauren Langman: 6:14

I think one thing to remember everybody who's listening is fitness is movement, and movement is fitness, and so many people forget that. So actually, if your dog's moving, it is fitness. For me that's, that's a massive part of it.

Karen Scott: 6:25

Carry on, um, we do stuff in the garden. So even if I take him for maybe a five, ten minute walk around the corner so he can go to the toilet somewhere different, then we'll come back and we'll play some games in the garden, um, and he'll do some kind of food bowling games, and he'll do middle and we'll do middle bowling and we'll run around and he uses energy, but he uses it in a productive way and that's such a nice way to look at it.

Lauren Langman: 6:50

Now, how about play Karen?

Karen Scott: 6:52

Play. We play all sorts of things. We play games with his food, we play games with toys. He's less toy motivated typically, but there are lots of games that we do play with toys and we play tricks and all of those things are brilliant ways to exercise his mind as well as his body.

Lauren Langman: 7:11

Now I know rupert is a trick. Like maestro, he loves his tricks.

Karen Scott: 7:15

Give me some of his favorite tricks um, he enjoys putting things in things he enjoys. We're trying desperately to get him to enjoy putting rings on a. What are those things?

Lauren Langman: 7:27

called little like child game, isn't it those little like where?

Lauren Langman: 7:30

they collect them on and he does love to put things away and grab things and move them. How has that helped you in his everyday life? Because I always think if you're teaching tricks, you may as well teach something that's going to help you in your everyday life. Like get good bang for your buck. So my dad used to say to me, but you're just teaching them party tricks. And I'd be like no, actually I'm. I'm teaching them how to to find an object that I've lost out on a walk, or I'm teaching them how to do a stay when there's a bicycle going by, or I'm teaching them how to do an instant behavior because there's trouble ahead, or I'm teaching them how to do a sit, pretty as a back strengthening exercise. So everything I did always had a future purpose or a purpose in mind, even if I didn't know the purpose at that time. How about you?

Karen Scott: 8:11

yeah, definitely so. First off, it's teaching all the skills and concepts that he needs to grow in every area of his life. So any, any trick where he's picking stuff up and putting stuff down is teaching him disengagement and why does he need disengagement?

Lauren Langman: 8:27

so what sort of struggles does he have that makes you think, oh, this dog needs disengagement?

Karen Scott: 8:29

So what sort of struggles does he have that makes you think, oh, this dog needs disengagement Because he barks at things out of windows and if he's given the opportunity, he will fence, run and bark at people walking past and he doesn't like noises and he can't come away from things that worry him.

Lauren Langman: 8:43

So all of the above are vital, really important, key and essential for him. So how about some of his um favorite tricks? We've obviously talked about putting things in. How about things like middle toes? How is that a good exercise for? For ditching the walk? What does that help you with? It helps with, well, flexibility for a start, because there's there's middle and there's middle toes and I should probably explain middle dog coming into proximity, coming into spaces, middle toes, your dog coming into middle and then putting their feet on your toes and you said they're two very distinct, yeah uh, yeah, because he needs to learn which one he's been asked to do and not do the other one, just because he fancies it more.

Lauren Langman: 9:25

Um, actually, one of his absolute favorite tricks is orbit or reversing around me to the, to the point that he literally must have done it about 20 times off cue today like is it orbit's? Turn and you're like no, no, no, orbit's not happening. Yet how about orbit karen?

Karen Scott: 9:40

is orbit happening and you could see him like now he loves it, he really loves it, and the good thing about that is, if he's offering that, then I do know he's in a fairly relaxed headspace. It's a good kind of temperature check of his how relaxed and comfortable he is.

Lauren Langman: 9:55

It's a nice indicator, isn't it? It's an indicator of this is where your head is right now.

Karen Scott: 9:58

Yeah, but it was definitely off cue.

Lauren Langman: 10:02

And that's good to know. This is off cue, dead cue and still off cue. So it's like being a little bit mindful of this is off cue. And when you think about something like middle toes or when you think about something like orbit, why are they nice things that you could maybe transfer to? You're out and about, we, we walk, or you're out and about, we're going to need to do this walk, because actually, for me, those things really really help me, because when I do then get outside I can hear that we've just started dog training here at the center.

Lauren Langman: 10:27

So if you hear any dogs barking, we're authentic. We are a dog training centre. It's one of the biggest centres in the UK, possibly the world, and I absolutely know there may be some dog noise happening they're doing agility, but it's not fly balls, it's not quite as loud now. Now, why do they help you? For me, they really help me when I'm out on a walk with Katie, for example, I know that we had it recently. A dog ran into her space and she coped with it really, really well, but quite quickly after, when that dog had gone, I did a few of her favorite tricks so I could almost bring her level back up again, even though you could see she'd almost had her feathers ruffled a bit. She was a bit like oh, I wasn't expecting that.

Karen Scott: 11:01

He enjoys them. So they put him in a good headspace for a start, middle and middle toes, as you were saying. It's a great way to kind of protect him from the world a little bit, bring him into a safe space where I've got a bit of control over what comes into his space no-transcript and and then, as I said before as well, they're also a good kind of just check, temperature check of where his brain's at. If he can do tricks then I know he's feeling fairly comfortable in an environment, particularly ones like orbit, where he has to take his, his vision. He can be quite visually aware. So if he's willing to kind of reverse around me and not be fixated on something, then I know he's relaxed enough to not need to be vigilant about what's going on potentially, and that's massive, and I completely agree that these are nice temperature checks, pulse checks.

Lauren Langman: 11:57

Now a couple of things to think about. When I'm competing at big events like crafts, or when I'm training and traveling at like big pressure events, I sometimes get off my food completely. Now, as you know, I'm a I'm a foodie. I really like my food, and if I don't have food at a certain point, I'm like done now, like I will get hungry to the point I won't function. And yet if I'm a big competition like crafts or one of the biggies, I cannot eat. And I don't eat until way after the event, like later, later, later, like my appetite for food, food is gone.

Lauren Langman: 12:27

And I also take things like orbit and middle toes and all of those things as indicators actually to whether the dog can even work for food or is the doggy able to take food. And I'm not worried too much if the dog can't. It's information and I need to change something. So don't feel bad or like a terrible owner. Actually just realize that you maybe need to change something now. With that in mind, do you feel like a terrible owner when you can't always walk your dog and has there been any mental battles there to get to this place? Or actually are you very content with the space you're in and can you explain why?

Karen Scott: 12:58

I think, if I step back and think about it rationally, I am content with the space I'm in because I'm doing what's best for him. If I was not walking him because I couldn't really be bothered and I've got a dog but he wants to walk a dog, it's raining, nah, let's not bother then yes, there would be room for me to be feeling bad about that. But I'm doing it because it's in his best interests and I'm replacing a walk with way more exciting, fun things that he enjoys way more and it's enrichment.

Lauren Langman: 13:24

Right, and I love your answer. Your answer is gorgeous. I actually think we need to redefine the walk. So I actually think this isn't a ditch the walk podcast. This is redefine the walk. And when we think about redefining the walk, what is the walk? Let's go back to where we started. The walk is movement. The walk is potentially enrichment. The walk is potentially exercise. The walk is potentially simulation. The walk is potentially change of habitat. The walk is potentially change of habitat. The walk is potentially change of state, change of mind. But the walk doesn't have to be, like you said, going out of the front door, walking, doing a circuit and coming back. In fact, I can't think of anything more dull. It is dull, guys, let's not do that to our dogs. Things like chuck it ball throws we throw over and over and over and over and over again no, that's not what our dogs need. And things like taking them to the same spot each day that's not enriching, actually, that's. That is quite dull. So let's redefine the walk. What do you?

Karen Scott: 14:12

think yeah, definitely. And also on that, and thinking of rufus and how inflexible he is and knowing that that will probably get worse as he gets, older because cognitive decline it does, it absolutely does, even on dogs as brilliant as blink.

Lauren Langman: 14:27

Cognitive decline is there. If you haven't seen calm senior from aok9, head to wwwa-ok9.com. Go and get your aok9. Honestly, it's made such a big difference to blink in her senior years. Any dog over seven years old should be on calm canine senior mega, mega, mega, mega mega for cognitive decline. Her sister's dealing with massive cognitive decline and blink looks like a completely different dog and I'm sure that's a canines and credit really so.

Karen Scott: 14:57

So yeah, absolutely, as you head into that, you're looking at less flexibility or more inflexible right yeah, so he needs to be doing stuff which keep him flexible mentally as well as physically, and a huge variety of different things.

Lauren Langman: 15:08

now, when it comes to feeding and I know we're talking like redefine the walk here because we're not calling it ditch the walk, it's going to be redefine the walk when we're thinking about, um, his feeding, do you keep his feeding flexible as well, and does that enhance your ditch the walk? And other things you can do when, for example, you're feeling like this is a really busy day, I might not even have time to like race around the garden 100 times and play all the different games, other things you can do with his feeding as well that help with your enrichment, or even, maybe, when you go away.

Karen Scott: 16:15

Yes, and that is actually one area. He's very flexible. He'll happily eat anything, whether it's something he should eat or not. But he's very happy to have his food in snuffle mats and puzzle feeders. He's very happy to play games for his food. I can take it on a walk to pair it with experiences and make sure that he's kind of having his optimism protected if something a bit unexpected happens. We use it in all of those different ways. We use it if we're playing fitness games. He will work for cucumber. He will work for high value food.

Lauren Langman: 16:43

That's cool, isn't it? That is cool. Now one last question, Karen, and I think this is an important question if someone else is looking after reaper, how do you explain redefining the walk or ditch the walk? And I'm going to give the example of your parents. So your parents have looked after him for you. How do you explain that to them?

Karen Scott: 17:00

um, I would usually say something like he doesn't need to go for long walks. It, he can go outside, go outside for toilets, um, but he will be happy to do stuff in the house. Um, don't feel the need to walk him for hours. It's not what he needs. He's very happy. He's very flexible. Um, you will probably find he's harder to look after if you take him for a big, long walk, because he is going to end up being overwhelmed by all the experiences and let's think about it.

Lauren Langman: 17:28

the longer the dog walks, the more likely it is that they're going to come across something that either scares them or it happens.

Lauren Langman: 17:33

It's the same as I always think about this. I'm on the road a lot, so I always think, god, I'm on the road a lot, the more likely there is to be a chance of an accident or something going wrong, because you're there in that situation a lot, so you're putting yourself in the situation I was thinking this on a flight. The other guys go on the plane. There's a chance that they're up and down on those planes all day long, right? So it's like there's more chances of something going wrong. And I'm not going to go any further because this is getting morbid, but I really do believe that the more times you take your dog in certain situations, one of the reasons that I think my late dog Tokyo was so brilliant is actually he hadn't been overexposed, so the less he's been exposed to anything bad and the older he is when he has his first bad experience, and actually he's got such a whole like bank of good experience that there's not a big problem so.

Karen Scott: 18:19

So how do they receive that information? Um, my parents do like to take him for a walk, um, but I think rupert has actually told them that he doesn't need them. He's, he's decided he's not going for walks, um, and my last time my parents had him, my dad said so I took rupert to the end of the street, he planted his feet and then he wanted to come home. Is that normal? It's, it's not massively normal.

Lauren Langman: 18:39

It depends what I do with him and and what the route for that walk looks like rupert was basically saying this is a bad deal and I'm not up for it not happening. I'd much prefer to just chill in the sofa. Thanks, and that's great really, that the dog actually understands a level of the space and the stress and the place that is there. So for anyone out there thinking maybe I should ditch some of my walks or the walks, what would you say? I?

Karen Scott: 19:02

would say if your dog is telling you by their behaviour or by how you come back from a walk feeling because of the way it's gone, option or aren't always a good option, then definitely there's, there's definitely no guilt in ditching a walk if your dog is not having a good experience. You can do so many other things instead.

Lauren Langman: 19:26

So whether you ditch one walk, whether you ditch lots of walks, whether you ditch all the walks, it's a little bit like feeding for me. I say to people all the time well, how about if you went 10 fresh, 20 fresh, 30 fresh, when they're feeling, feeling maybe a commercial kibble, and I'm like, what about 30%, what about 10%, what about 5%, what about 1%? What about just like a little bit of edge in the week? There's so many things you can do that are edging that way. So it might be well, okay, I'm going to ditch 50% of my walks and use those for training sessions. Is your relationship with your dog going to be better if you use 50% of their exercise space for training sessions? Yes or no?

Karen Scott: 19:59

Yeah, absolutely, and it's not that you're not doing something, it's just that you're doing something different.

Lauren Langman: 20:05

Now, if you think about where your dog gets more of your time or more of your intention or more of your energy, are they going to get more of your intention, energy and time when you ditch the walk and you do intentional training sessions? Or when you just go on a walk and get on your mobile phone or get out and just like walk along and don't really think about the dog, or the dog runs off half the time and goes to meet another dog, which one gets more?

Karen Scott: 20:25

attention by miles, because you're actually building your relationship and you're having fun and you're teaching your dog things that it's valuable to teach them, um, and you're building all of the other things. You're giving them exercise, you're giving them mental stimulation, you're doing all of the other things, you're giving them exercise, you're giving them mental stimulation. You're doing all of those things as well, but you're doing it kind of as a team, whereas a walk I mean a walk can be a team team event. It can also be a thing where your dog just pulls you along and you kind of drag along behind, depending on what your walks look like and do you get pleasure from ditching the walk?

Lauren Langman: 20:57

Yes, absolutely.

Karen Scott: 20:59

I love ditching the walk. I love doing alternative things with Rupert. He loves it too. You can tell he loves it. He doesn't get to the end of the day and think, oi, what happened to my walk. He thinks, oh, I had a great game of going around those cones with cucumber and maybe we could do that again tomorrow please, I love that.

Lauren Langman: 21:15

I really, really love that. I really really love that. And when I think about it, when I think about all the different things that we could do, just a fast tips tennis. That's bounced a few ideas that you can do. I'm going to say you could do scent work and I've watched the dogs here at the training center Devon Dogs doing scent work. Oh my goodness, they're exhausted. They are literally on sniffaris all day long. They love it. They might do 10 minutes or an hour, it depends on the session, but ultimately an hour. It depends on the session, but ultimately they're exhausted and their mental energy is zapped.

Lauren Langman: 21:45

Go on over to you one thing people would do with a ditch the walk. Confidence circuits nice, confidence circuits is on the absolute dogs page. Go and have a look. It's one of our lessons learning badges. It's a really, really, really brilliant thing to do, great for flexibility, great for physical fitness, great for mental and sort of games, and you get a good bang for your buck. So you get a lot for a very short session. I'm going to back that up by saying cavaletti. Cavaletti is huge and cavaletti is one of those things that we've got in the games club in the games club. Go and have a look there. Games club link is absolute dogs dot me forward slash.

Lauren Langman: 22:14

Join the club and I'd love you to head over there and check that out. It's a mega, mega thing for dogs who are ditching the walk over to you. Another thing you could do with your ditch walk tricks, love tricks. You can go and get ahead and grab the tricks book. Tricks book, mega book, ring bound over a kilo in weight, can fly all over the world. So go grab your tricks copy. I'm gonna say you can scatter feed and you can do enrichment forms of feeding. My dogs have got some stuffed apples in the fridge ready to go for tomorrow and they're stuffed apples full of mincemeat. Not quite sure on the combo, but it's going to be great. I've heard venison and apple. It's a good flavour and I love the enrichment and all the different enrichment we can do, including scatter feeding Over to you.

Karen Scott: 22:55

One more that we could do I would say games, and then take them somewhere and play them different places. So car parks are brilliant, especially when the shop is closed and there's no people and there's no cars in the car park. Especially if you've got a reactive dog, because Rupert really doesn't like dogs. There's such a great space to train because there aren't other dogs there. There might be some people, there might be some trolleys, but you're not really going to find a lot of dogs going to Tesco. Can you imagine?

Lauren Langman: 23:20

Literally just off to Tesco, mum. I'll see you later, Karen. So, guys, that was this episode of the Sex and the Squirrel podcast. We have ditched the walks and we've redefined them. It's important you share this podcast, if you haven't already. Share it with your father, your mother, your sister, your, your brother, your long-lost lover. Share it with a friend. Share it with someone that needs to know this. Maybe it's a neighbor, maybe it's a whatsapp, maybe it's a quick message to someone that really, really, really needs to know a little bit more. Please share it. Get the world knowing about this, because it really does help the ripple effect that is games based dog training. Thank you, karen, for joining me. I so appreciate you being here and and I know that Reaper is in the very best space to have an owner like you I only wish that more owners knew about this. Join us next week for more Sex and the Squirrel. Well, you know what? I can't tell you too much, but you're gonna love it. Stay sexy.