SPEAKER_00: 0:00

It's about teaching them where the value is, right? So the value is not out there, the value is with you, come back to you. Then you can take it out on the road. And we're literally doing it with like really low-level distractions, but you're essentially teaching your dog that there's more value, it's a better deal, it's better for them if they come away from whatever it is that they're interested in and come back to you.

SPEAKER_01: 0:28

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. Disengagement. Disengagement. Loads of dogs don't have it.

unknown: 0:50

No.

SPEAKER_01: 0:50

Big problem. They really don't, they really don't. As a concept, let's take it base level, someone brand new here, who hears the word disengagement, it goes, uh not your dog training.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Sounds a bit odd. You know when you get like you buy a cake for your house and you put it like on your dining room table.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06

I've never bought a cake for my house. I've only ever bought a cake for myself or someone else. What on earth? Is this like a new house cake thing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:13

Yeah, it's called sharing, Lauren. Come on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17

Cake for the house. I mean like for the house.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

I always put someone. Okay, house means the people in the house. Come on. Right. We buy we buy a cake for the people in the house. Is that better? Happy house. Happy house. Got it. Thank you for keeping me warm and safe. House. Put it on the dining room table and for the rest of the day. You keep going back and nibbling. Doesn't it call you out? I just nibble it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42

I actually eat it off it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43

This is what I mean. Like, yeah, you're like, wow, it's a trunk missing. That's Lawrence.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46

I'm like, buttercream.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47

Yeah, I'm the same. I like that part as well. Mine. Um, forget the rest of the cake, just the butter icing. Oh, delicious. But it's really hard. But it's really hard to disengage from it. Massively hard.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01

I know it's there. So I'm like, you're there. I want you.

SPEAKER_00: 2:04

Another good example. I'll give you one more example of this in the way that I like to explain it to my students is uh, you know, so I'm really scared of spiders, right? So insert whatever fear you have here, right? You see a spider on your wall, and then you go and try and get for me, it would be the Hoover because can't get near it. You go get your Hoover ready to go and get it, and it's gone, right? For the rest of the day, I can't sit around. I can't even sleep in my room. Like that's I can't even disengage my brain from a thought of a spider in my room that it's there somewhere, and I know it's there because I saw it, and it's huge, and it's there, and it's gonna get me. It's gonna crawl on me when I least expect it. It's probably gonna crawl in my mouth whilst I'm asleep.

SPEAKER_01: 2:40

I have my brain going everywhere in the world. I don't know if people don't like this, but I remember being very young, probably 11. And I went, I was I remember I was in bed, and I remember feeling this thing crawl across me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like shouted at my mum, and I was like, Mum, mum, and I was a floor up on mum. We had a four-floor house, um, townhouse, middle of Plymouth Centre. And she came up and checked and went away again. Anyway, she told me as an adult there was a spider, but she didn't know what to do about it, so she couldn't do anything, so she decided to go back to bed because she couldn't actually bear. Was there a spider on my face? Like, there was a spider in my bed. And she told me it was and told me I was screaming, but she couldn't bear it. She was like, My my dad was away and he was working in London. Probably the best thing she could have done, though.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

But would you would you not have then consistently thought of that spider crawling your mouth?

SPEAKER_01: 3:23

Oh my god, horrific. Because spider did crawl in my mouth. Anyway, disengage me. But dog training.

SPEAKER_00: 3:27

You can't bring your brain away from it. So our dogs, they often can do that too. They see something that they don't like, or they see something that they really, really, really like, and they can't bring their brain away from it. They can't disengage their brain, they can't bring their bodies away from it. You're trying to be like, come on, let's go this way. Give some real examples.

SPEAKER_01: 3:43

I'm out in the paddocks and a squirrel hops across trees. Yeah, dogs are done. Dogs are on the end of the lead, pulling Pleasant Pheasant down the lane.

SPEAKER_00: 3:51

This is your nemesis right now.

SPEAKER_01: 3:53

God, he does this noise. And he does. That's a great impression. Or she. I mean, sometimes mainly she's actually. No, it's both. Oh, is that? Yeah, it's both the the like mottledy, sort of browny, pretty ones, the boys. The pretty ones are boys. Well, the one with the really pretty ones, yeah. That's boy. That's the boy. No, I meant them. And the pretty like like ones like sort of like this dove colour. Yeah. They're kind of a dove colour. They're quite, they're quite dull compared to the bright boys. The boys are very attractive. Yeah. Then there's lots here, they're not clever, and they've all been let loose. Somebody's let like 800 loose on the like bridal path, basically, and likely to be shot at some point. And I'm not a massive, I'm not okay really with the with the idea that they're short, and I'm also not okay with the idea that they we have gunshot then all the time because of the dogs hearing it for a period of time. Either way, the pleasant pheasant is basically not that pleasant. Up and down the lane. Another one would be the fox, um, cats, and just dogs out the walk. You know what? Another one on a walk. Dogs yesterday morning, they were sick on my walk. No idea where. I live in the middle of nowhere. There was like sick on the walk. And so my dogs, I don't know, they didn't get that close. My dogs did, however, would they disengage from that spot? They were like, This spot is amazing, and yet my dogs who've got a good disengagement could leave. Brave didn't even think about it. Whereas the dogs like Skitel and Wild, who struggle with disengagement, they're just like in the sick. And you're like, this is actually foul, yeah, literally foul.

SPEAKER_00: 5:18

Who on a walk? Fox poo. Fox poo's the worst. Anyway, who when they want to eat poo? Like, yeah, just gross. In London, picnics is a big one in Hyde Park. We get a lot of students from London that come here and they're like, My dog keeps stealing people's food, yeah. I cannot get them away from it. And they just get it in their brains, they're like, That is mine, right?

SPEAKER_01: 5:37

And they're they just can't, they can't reactive dogs, dogs with other dogs, dogs with people, dogs with cyclists, dogs with joggers. Disengagement is a problem. What the hell are we gonna do about it? We're gonna play games.

SPEAKER_00: 5:47

We're gonna play games. Yeah, so this is uh when we say concept, it's like this is the skill that your dog is lacking. This is a struggle, or you know, so some dogs they've really got it really well, you know. So some of your dogs have got great disengagement, brave brilliance, yeah, breaker. And some dogs struggle with it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:01

And we're gonna call her off chickens, you can call her off sort of sheep, cattle, ponies, sick, um, other dogs. There's no problem. In fact, she normally disengages herself. Yes. Whereas you've got others like Skittle who really don't know when to say enough of a good time.

SPEAKER_00: 6:16

And sometimes that's just that they haven't been taught it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:20

And other times their wiring is different, yeah. They really are wired very differently. And other times, like Sam said, actually, just with a little education, yeah. What would be your go-to games? And of course, we're gonna say games club because games club is full of the games that you want. If you haven't already, one pound, one singular pound trial.

SPEAKER_00: 6:35

Yeah, why not? Seven days. If you don't like it, you can leave.

SPEAKER_01: 6:38

The best bit if you're in if you're in Games Club, if you're in Pro Dog Trainer, if you're in any of those spaces, the best thing about that right now is Blinkbot. Because when you use Blinkbot, Blink will actually go and it so she's bother she'll find you everything you need. So you can say to her, I'm struggling with disengagement, my dog doesn't re call help. She'll come up with a lesson plan for you. She'll come up with all the games you need, she'll come up with when to play them, how to play them, what to do with them. Like she's real smart. Yeah. Like real smart. She's AI. Yeah, she's she's AI and genius. And she's basically got like 15 years of the absolute dog's learning pumped into her, which realistically, no person can do. I've forgotten half of what I learned 15 years ago. Like we've all forgotten stuff. She's got all of it, she's AI, she's genius, she's literally made, and it's all of our own learning. So she's coming from our own learning, she's not grabbing it from anywhere else, all from the absolute dog's body school of thought for the last 10-15 years, which is amazing. So, yeah, obviously, all of that and and all of the stock courses, which effectively are all disengagement based. Pretty much. So stop barking, stop stealing, yeah, stop um sort of separation, yeah. There's so many different spaces there. But what are a couple of your let's let's go with your favourite disengagement game? So everyone at home here can grab a disengagement game.

SPEAKER_00: 7:45

My absolute favourite disengagement game is called Disengagement Pattern, and it's so easy to play because you just grab a handful of food, you throw one piece out, and you get like three, four, five pieces back. So it's it's really very, very, very easy to play. The idea is that you grow it in your house where you, you know, your dog really knows this pattern. You throw one piece out, they're gonna get lots more if they come back to you. That's the key there. Lots, lots more when they come back to you.

SPEAKER_01: 8:09

It might be they get more, it might be they get better. Yeah because actually, it could be that I don't know, we're out on a movie night and um you're eating like movies sort of snacks, but actually, maybe you get something really special at the end. There's maybe not a lot of it, yeah, but it's really special. Like the people do the end of a cornetto. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yes. Uh-huh. So it could be that you're giving chicken when they come back. Yes. So it might not be that you're giving them 10 pieces, it might be that you give them something really high value. So you've got the adaptation or the adaptation that you can do there for your dog. If your dog's not allowed a lot of food because the size, maybe I was training um a naughty chihuahua the other day. Oh my god, this dog was so naughty. Yeah, like on uh possibly on the dogs. The best thing about you ever get a chance to come to Devon Dogs, come to Bowerland, come and visit us. But the best thing is you're here in person, so you can really see the problem. And I wouldn't have understood the problem quite as much as when I saw the dog in person. This dog was real naughty, like real naughty. But yeah, absolutely, you can't feed the dog loads, but you could give the dog chicken for coming in, and you could have a little piece of puppy kibble for going out. Puppy kibble chicken, puppy kibble chicken, puppy kibble chicken, you play like that.

SPEAKER_00: 9:08

It's about teaching them where the value is, right? So the value is not out there, the value is with you, come back to you. Then you can take it out on the road. And we're literally doing it with like really low-level distractions, but you're essentially teaching your dog that there's more value, it's a better deal, it's better for them if they come away from whatever it is that they're interested in and come back to you, right? And it sounds a bit like a recall, but it's not really because we're trying to teach our dogs to make the choices themselves. You're not calling them back, you're giving them the opportunity and you're setting it up for them to make that decision themselves. The more they make their decision, the more they practice that decision, the better they will get at it. That is what we're doing with that game. And I love it. Like it's so versatile. Like you can take that game literally anywhere, and you can play it with any distraction, and it's so, so, so simple and so accessible to same, say you came across uh me in the car park, you could play that game with me, right?

SPEAKER_01: 9:54

Just explain it. I've got me in classic, let's say she's not interested in you and she's not interested in dogs or people. Yeah. So how would you play it?

SPEAKER_00: 10:00

Uh, I would literally throw one piece of food in the direction of the distraction. So that would be you and classic. Yeah. I'd give my dog a moment to make that decision, and then if they made that decision correctly, feed, feed, feed, feed. If they don't make that decision correctly, because let's be fair, sometimes that happens, then I would get distance because they're going to be on lead. We're going to be safe about this, you know. They'll be on lead. So we might need to do some of the other games that we've got, the other disengagement games, to get them out of dodge, create some distance to make it easier, and then we'll try again. Throw a piece in the direction of the distraction. Let's see if they can make a better choice now. So there's lots of kind of adaptations there where you can, if it's going wrong, you've got you've got solutions to that as well. And go-to's. But if you will find the the distance or like the situation that works, that's where you start. That's where you're going to grow it. And this is where your dog is now starting to learn what it is you do want instead of what you don't want. So it's it's really powerful, really, really powerful game. I use it with a lot of my students.

SPEAKER_01: 10:51

So the art of disengagement, if you haven't already, jump into Games Club. You're gonna love engaging in there and you're gonna find more about it. You're also gonna be able to type in disengagement into BlinkBot, give me the games. Blinkbot's gonna run through and give you all the games. You've heard Sam's game, it's her favorite. She absolutely loves it. We know this changes dogs' lives. Yeah, it's a concept. Absolutely. We teach it, it's a skill. We love it. We love it.