It’s important to remember in these early puppy weeks that so much of what we’re doing is foundation behaviors. We’re starting work on things that we’ll continue to work on for the remainder of the dog’s life – and that means they won’t be perfect yet… or possibly ever. But our job here is to help puppy think that learning is fun, building resilience, and forming our bond. By building these strong foundations now, we’ll be able to install upper levels more easily later in life!
We’re already seeing some nice benefits to these foundational efforts. It’s just our third week and Violet is starting to understand that biting isn’t how to get us to play, because we’ve been very consistent that when her teeth are on us with any pressure, she gets put down (it usually happens when she’s on our laps) or we move away from her. For her, teeth means people leave, and she *loves* people, so without any harshness, pain or intimidation, that’s quite impactful punishment. We’ve also been pretty consistent with putting her away for a nap when she gets too amped up, and she not only settles more quickly, but also is more likely to separate herself when she’s feeling punchy.
She’s not a fan of the car, so we’re continuing with shorter trips that lead to fun things. Her first car experience was very long, and she got carsick, so we’re making sure to have regular shorter drives that lead to someplace fun. Hopefully this will gradually change how she feels about the car – it’s gotten better each time!
One of the things we’ve done a lot of is what ethologist Kim Brophy calls the “Mr. Roger’s Hack” – narrate just about everything. Like we say to kids: Use your words! There’s a tale of how Mr. Rogers, the host of that well-loved children’s show, that gave this hack its name. Apparently, a young girl wrote in to his show and explained that because she was blind, she couldn’t see what he was doing in all the episodes, but she enjoyed listening to him. She was concerned, however, that he wasn’t remembering to feed his fish at the end of each day. After that, he made sure to speak out loud what he was doing – including that he was feeding the fish.
When we use the “Mr. Rogers Hack” with puppies, we do things like say “Okay, let’s go inside now, it’s time to go upstairs to bed” or “Let’s go outside and go potty. Oh, did you hear that car? Sounds like Daddy’s home!” Of course the puppy isn’t going to follow this conversation completely. But what they *are* going to do is start recognizing those frequently repeated words. We quickly noticed Violet racing us to the backdoor when we said “potty,” because she recognized the path we would be taking. Likewise, she knows her “bed” is upstairs and she starts to react appropriately to that word as well. We can keep using this hack forever, and it can help Violet start to recognize some words, and feel confident that even if she isn’t sure what something is, we are, so she’s safe. Talk to your puppy! It makes a difference.
And of course we’re continuing all the work we’ve started for the past few weeks, including finding all sorts of things Violet likes that can be used as reinforcers like games, affection, toys, and food. As we do this, we’re trying to keep a mental checklist of how she might order those things. She almost always loves food, and while she’s a very snuggly puppy, she sometimes would rather play tug than cuddle, for example. We want to get good at knowing what she wants and being able to give it to her for behavior we want!