Calmness As A Lifesaver

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Calmness. Now, calmness, Alice, this saved Bonnie's life. This single concept, simple concept, simple but not always easy concept. And tell me about that, because that's massive.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

This calmness was literally the turning point for Bonnie. When we got her, things quickly unraveled and we realized she had some pretty severe behavioural struggles and that she was very reactive and really struggled to sleep and to settle. She really did not have any calmness whatsoever.

Bonnie’s Backstory And Risks

SPEAKER_01 0:42

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. Calmness. Now, calmness, Alice, this saved Bonnie's life. This single concept. Simple concept, simple but not always easy concept. And tell me about that, because that's massive. Like this changed a dog who's a potential put-to-sleep dog, a dog who has killed another dog, a dog who's been in rehome and rescue, and they've decided it is appropriate to home because of the situation the owner put that dog into and left that dog in inappropriately. Yes, she's killed a dog. At the same time, we think this dog is still got capacity to be a nice dog, just need to manage the scenarios. You get hold of this dog from rehome, from rescue, possibly at times thinking, oh my god, I've bitten off more than I can chew. And at the same time, calmness, bang, we feel like we've got somewhere. Tell me about it.

What Lack Of Calm Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 1:50

This calmness was literally the turning point for Bonnie. When we got her, things quickly unraveled and we realized she had some pretty severe behavioural struggles, and that she was very reactive and really struggled to sleep and to settle. She really did not have any calmness whatsoever. What breed is she? Oh, she's a sort of Mastiff Megamutt. So she's she's part German Shepherd, but you wouldn't be able to tell. She looked very canicorso, mastiff-y, sort of brindle, big sort of Shetland pony-sized. Yeah. So she's a lot of dog. And that's a lot of dog when it's not calm as well. So not only did Bonnie have some pretty tricky behavioural struggles that we needed to figure out, but also physical struggles as well. So she required some pretty serious orthopaedic surgeries if we were gonna be able to provide her with a sort of happy, healthy life. And crucially, she needed to be able to rest calmly during recovery or risk doing further injury, which might have just put an end to everything. So calmness was so crucial for us and was really the foundation on all of the training that we've done since then as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Now, we say calmness, and we're definitely going to dive into calmness uh today together. What does it look like when your dog isn't calm? Like what sorts of struggles can you have? And I can obviously tell you my perspective from running a huge training center here in the UK in Devon, that obviously all of our listeners are welcome to come and visit uh with their own dogs. So many people won't come here because they're scared of how their dog isn't calm and is reactive and is difficult. And actually, we're the home of uh dogs like that. We we we train dogs like that day in, day out. However, a lot of people are scared to bring their dog to a new place because of the lack of calmness. What does a lack of calmness look like for you? And I'm gonna go into what it looks like at the training centre. And also, I'm a multi-dog owner, I have a multi-dog household. Owning 10 dogs means that you do have sometimes organized chaos. Uh so I'm gonna tell you about my household and and our training center. But how about for you, Alice? Owning a reactive, um, like you said, mastiff megam, Kane Corso, who really the potential for dog fights is big in the breed mixes that you have. What did that look like when it went wrong? What did it look like when Bonnie wasn't calm? What could it look like if she wasn't in a calmhead space?

Multi‑Dog Mayhem And Real‑World Triggers

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, when Bonnie is not able to be in a calmhead space, first of all, it would look like really sort of like a hyper-vigilance, watching everything, paying attention to everything, really sort of focusing and fixating very stiff body language, that would very, very quickly escalate to pulling, barking, lunging, you know, kind of really quite difficult to manage behaviour, potential safety risk behavior. That was outside the home. Inside the home, she really struggled to sleep. Any little noise from outside would be again jumping around, barking, panicking, sort of like very, you know, it was quite upsetting to see her in that sort of state. So we knew that really we needed to be able to sort of train her and sort of and help her sort of achieve a better way of of just taking on life, really.

Why Calm Enables Learning

How Calmness Was Trained Daily

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Massive, huge. And I'm going to talk to you about a multi-dog household for me. It could be letting your dog out and the whole household barks. So it can be like, yeah, from the minute that you let the first dog out. That was classic, by the way. And that's her sound when she's very excited. But it could be letting out multi-dogs and them all squealing, barking, whining, spinning, all of the silly things that they can do when they're not calm. It could be one having a pop at the other, so coming out of the room and one having like a bit of a go at the other dog or biting the ankles or grabbing. It could be um barking, it could be resourcy over food, it could be generally if they're not calm, not able to listen to a cue, not able to focus um on a recall, they're chasing pheasants and they're no longer able to respond to cue. It could be that typically in a multi-dog household, I'd say it's dog-dog kerfuffle. So there's like a bit of a like Tasmanian devil moment from someone that will kick in. And then dog calm at the center can be dogs lunging and reacting across the car park at each other, it could be doorway problems, could be a dog who's not able to be separated from their owner, so actually stressing the minute the owner's not in the space. Um, it could be a dog screaming or barking or lunging a person, it could be a dog reacting to movement, it could be uh someone struggling with dog dog interactions generally or dog people interactions generally, it could be a dog unable to respond to any cue because they're not in a calm head space. There are so many dog not able to recall, a dog not able to respond to a basic sit or down or come to hand or whatever it might be. Like the very basic level often when a dog isn't calm, vocalization, lunging, pulling, uh, barking, whining, squealing, spinning, over excitement, or the other way where they are withdrawn and actually it's because they've taken themselves into a sad place, staring at walls, not able to move so much, taking themselves into a corner. There really are extremes of both. And we see all of the above. And I find them personally either frustrating, irritating, or painful. I find it frustrating when I hear a lot of barking or irritating. I find it frustrating if one of my dogs runs into one of the others, and it's always because they're excited, like they're running against each other. And I actually find it upsetting and distress, distressing if I see a dog looking into a wall or trying to hide under something. I personally feel, I suppose it's being empathetic. I feel pain for them, like I don't like it. So those are some of the things we see, right, Alice.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Absolutely. And you're right, that like when the dog is displaying any of these kinds of you know, body language and all these kind of behaviours, that they're not really in their kind of happiest space and they're not really in the best space for learning. So when we implement calmness and when we do sort of teach them a kind of how to achieve that better kind of headspace, the the transformation is phenomenal, isn't it? Like we've we've we've both seen that with either our own dogs or or like you say with the dogs at the center, just what this concept can bring.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Huge, huge. And it's like you said, it saved Bonnie's life. Now, let's go into, I suppose, uh how it saved Bonnie's life. How did you train it? What did you train? When did you train it? How did it look on a day-to-day basis? And I can certainly run through a multi-dog household and how that looks for me, but how about you? Because I know that you are in quite an extreme place with her, a dog who's potentially going to be put to sleep, has killed another dog, and also has serious rehab that's needed because of her health problems. Like, you know what? When they say about bite off more than you can chew, you're like, oh my god, I took the whole hog. Like, I went for the chef and pony. So, yeah, how how did you do that?

Starting Small With DMT

SPEAKER_00 8:47

It really became a way of life. Like, like like lifestyle and calmness was so important for the whole household. So whilst Bonnie was in her surgery recoveries, we we all we we made sure any of Bonnie's food that she was going to eat that day anyway was very focused and was put into rewarding calmness or like you know, helping enable calmness, whether that might be like an enrichment bowl or a long-lasting chew that helps us again, like then put some value into a boundary space or a crate where she could rest. And that was really important for both behavior and her physical recovery. And DMT, distraction mark treat, one of my favourite games, that really just became just all day, everyday game that we would play with Bonnie.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

You became very intentional in how you were feeding.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Definitely. All of the value, everything. I mean, she's a really food-motivated dog, actually, anyway, and has becoming increasingly so sort of since we got her that kind of it wasn't an initial thing, but that has been taught as well. But all of the the food that she was gonna have anyway, so this wasn't like extra treats or kind of, you know, anything like that. This was just she was gonna have anyway. But rather than just dumping it in a bowl, we played games that were intentionally putting value into calm responses to day-to-day life distractions.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

I really love that you said this is food she was going to have anyway. And I think this is one of the misconceptions with people who are new to absolute dogs or people who are opposed to hand feeding or sort of contra-free loading or getting a dog to operate for some of their food. And my daughter's very like this with the horses. I'm like, well, surely you just use their food to teach this because she's got a horse, for example, at the moment that doesn't want to stand near a mountain block where you get on the horse. Well, I'm like, surely you just make it a good place. So you come and feed them every day you go up there, or a pony that we couldn't get on a horse box. Well, surely you take his dinner every day and put it in the horse box and get him having the um skill of getting in and out of new objects. And ultimately getting in and out of new objects comes down to confidence, which is another concept we can certainly talk on. However, from a calmness point of view, I love that you clarify she was having this anyway. I wanted to be intentional with how I used it. We had a dog used post-surgery, potential put sleep case, and we need to be really intentional about what we're going to do with our food. Like we need to be really thoughtful because food is probably one of our biggest ways to onboard her. So we're able to onboard her. It is reinforcement, and all of us are reinforced in some ways. I volunteer in multi-jobs and I also have paid jobs, but all of them are reinforcing just differently. Some are paid in money and some are paid in services in kind, and some are paid in the the enrichment of doing it. Like there are there are different things that make us tick, aren't there, from a point of view of reinforcement. So this became a bit of a way of life for you. And it wasn't just you though that had to be on board. Who else needed to be on board?

The Transformation And Handler Mindset

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, so both me and my partner Chris were both really on board with this, and we sort of really tag teamed sort of Bonnie care around our work commitments and stuff and made sure this was a 24-7 effort to just sort of uh enable her to sort of learn different responses. So, you know, and it starts really small, like with something like really starts smaller than I think people maybe realize. So Bonnie was very sound sensitive, like I mentioned, like a car door slamming in the street would be a kind of instant naught to a hundred kind of reaction from her. But me flicking the kettle on had no response. So actually, we started with the sounds or movements that she didn't really care about anyway, and we would just mark that with a nice or that's fine, and treat, so let's say food she was going to have anyway, calmly, you know, given to her, not throwing it about and making it an exciting game, making it a calm game, starting with things that she had a neutral response to anyway, a calm response to anyway. So she started to recognise a pattern, and then when that pattern's established, you can start just stretching that comfort zone. So then when a car door slammed in the street, and I go, Oh, that's fine, you could see that sort of slight second guessing, and and it really came that more and more things that she had previously reacted to and had not been able to be calm in response to, she could now be calm and neutral in response to. And it's just magic when you see it happen.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

And let's go to the extent of where where she is now, because actually calmness really has saved Bonnie's life, but probably Bonnie has she's developed in a way that people wouldn't maybe even recognise as achievable.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Definitely. So, you know, she she now is exactly the kind of sleepy, lazy, mastiff type dog you would expect, like of that kind of breed, like very, you know, happy to laze around at home and and she will sleep and she will rest and she will have noises at home when we go for a walk. She will walk by my side, she's got pretty good, nice sort of leads, lead skills now, and you know, we can she can observe things in her environment, but she's not on the lookout worried about what's around every corner. And it's worth saying, neither am I, because actually, calmness training is as as much about the handler as it is about the dog, because when Bonnie would have big reactions to things, it would obviously make Chris and I more tense or kind of more like it was it was a struggle for us to respond calmly when something like that happened, or if we were anticipating a big reaction from Bonnie. Whereas actually training ourselves to go, oh no, it's fine, you know, kind of and that even if she wasn't quite managing it, if we maintain that, no, you've misread the room, kid, it's actually fine. That helped as well. And that that was like us training ourselves as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Rightly so. I mean, if Bonnie goes, let's just remind everyone how big is she?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Oh, as big as I am. Like there's there's a negligible difference in our sort of um mass, really.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

So she's she's plenty of dog. And and I think that's really important. She's plenty of dog, she's enough dog, and her reaction when she does have a reaction, it's a big feeling, right? Like it can be pretty like explosive big feeling.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Definitely. We just called it going full Baskerville. That was our sort of name for like if something like that had happened. And like she was fully capable of like dragging me over without a thought, without even really realizing that that's what she'd done.

Calm Alternatives And Enrichment

SPEAKER_01 15:12

But a friend of mine yesterday was here walking, and Matt took her dogs, and he was really surprised at quite how strong they were. Two boxes, and they had actually she'd done her I can't remember what it was called, ACL, it something in her shoulder, um, had been completely ripped out by these two dogs and completely ripped, like from pulling over. And so for me, there's so much that needs rehearsing in just day-to-day calmness, isn't it? And when you said you had to train yourself, rightly so, because you can also see that a dog like that could make you quite worried or could make you quite like you can see how actually grounding yourself and training yourself and training her the skills and training you two together, there was a bit of a pattern to break and then remake, wasn't there?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Definitely, and just like you know, in introducing a pattern of of reward, you know, in response to a distraction starting small for Bonnie, I think we did that like kind of with training myself as well. So rather than just go, oh, we'll just carry on going for these walks, even though I'm like nerves are on it on end, it would be okay, well, let's go to a secure field, because then I know there are going to be no sort of unexpected distractions. So I know I can be calm and I could practice that and we can practice the skills we need, so then we can gradually actually grow our world and grow our walks again in a calm way, in a controlled and in a safe way.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Now, looking at sort of calm, safe and and how we grow things. Now, there are times that obviously maybe I don't know the day's wrong to go somewhere you can't get the secure field or something else is going on. And I know there are lots of things I can do with my dogs, and I know that that we've talked about these. For me, scent games, scattering, long-lasting chews, Tokyo enrichment bowls from AOK9, using my calm canine supplement to enhance my training. Like there are loads of things that you can do around feeding, around ditch the bowl, and how we use that concept to enhance the calmness concept, right?

Boundaries, Household Design, Supplements

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Absolutely. There's as many ways to ditch the bowl as there are games, I think. And and it is really just train the dog in front of you and do it in the way that is best suiting their needs right now. So, yeah, for Bonnie, adding calm canine in with her enrichment bowls was a fantastic way to just get us off on the right track. And just it was such a perfect partner to the training games, just helping her to achieve that right headspace and help her to kind of become healthier and happier was just it was such a brilliant supplement.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

And just if anyone hasn't used it, calm canine, natural supplement, add to their food. You can use it up to twice a day. Uh so you can double dose in a time of stress or or where needed. It's definitely, definitely, definitely something that I've used with my own dogs around fireworks, around and difficult times, around hormones, around problematic behaviors, and also shroom canine. So using the power of the shroom as well, so have been fat. But the other thing I was going to add, household dynamics can be massive. So if you've got multiple dogs, actually, in my house, we've got gates, we've got pens, we've got crates, we've got different exits and entrances into gardens. Like really the limitation is your household space or your imagination or your rules around your household space. And what I mean by that is some people don't want gates in places or crates in places or pens in places. So that's the only limitation. But I for me, beds, boundaries, raised beds and spaces. And yeah, I think there's there's a lot to sort of be aware of to improve a multi-dog household.

Games Club Invitation And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Definitely. Yeah, boundary games are one of the cornerstones of calmness, I think. It is just such important fundamental learning. And yeah, I just I just hope everybody who's listening can can embrace that and can learn and kind of and see the difference in their dogs.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Now, anyone who's listening, we've got a one pound games club trial. So the one pound games club trial, you can try Games Club for a week for a pound. It's um membership space, it's an amazing space. What would you say to someone who wanted more calm about Games Club and why they should be part of it, Alice? Because you're here not as a colleague of mine, you're here as a student, as a someone who's done this and it's real life, and this has worked for your, let's say, crazy mass different at times, right? Like she was hard work, and yeah, you this has worked for you. So why should someone someone join the WhatPam Games Club trial and what could it mean for them?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Games Club has been so transformational for us, for sure. There's, I mean, jumping in for a pound is just a no-brainer. Like the the amount of resources that there are available in Games Club, whether that's karma, I mean, there's a there's a the new 10 days of a karma dog mini course in there, there's all your boundary games training is in there, and there's a huge library of games. Whatever concept you want to focus on, you can pick and choose what is going to work for you, for your dog, for you know, for what is you're gonna achieve and and what you're gonna enjoy. Like you can actually enjoy spending time with your dog, which there may be some listeners who go, surely not, if they're facing a real struggle right now. But yeah, I'd say jump in. I mean, for a pound that is just why wouldn't you? Just yeah, jump in and give it a go.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

It's the simplest place for me to say just search one pound games club, uh absolute dogs, it's gonna come up for you. Jump in over our Absolute Dogs and sort of website. There is an opportunity for you. It's just one pound. Last thing I'm gonna say before I head out of here there's a game called DMT, it's distraction mark tree. It's in the games club. I want to personally ask you, as our listeners, to go and re-watch and relearn and redo that game because it's a game changer, right, Alice?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

It is, it's a way of life, it's so applicable in every situation you could possibly want to be in with your dog and train your dog for. DMT is gonna help with that. It's one of our favorites.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Game changer, lifestyle changer. So if you haven't already, guys, go and check out the Games Club. It's just one pound. Calmness really, really rocks. In the Games Club, you'll find our 10 days to a calmer dog course. You'll also find all of our other 10-day courses, as well as a whole host and suite of games that are gonna enhance you and your dog's learning. You'll also find our amazing Blink Retriever bot. She'll go and find you any game for any skill that you're lacking. Most of all, make it an amazing day, and we will see you all real soon.