Welcome to the show

30 Dec

Welcome to the show, and thank you for choosing to join me on this podcasting journey! I'm absolutely stoked to have this platform to share the knowledge and experiences I've gained about dogs and life with them through dog-sitting, training my own dog, and a bucket load of research—maybe too much, but that's the point. I want to help you by doing the "too much" so you can get a condensed version. In our launch episode, I'll let you know a little bit about myself and my beautiful boy Jasper, the Brittany. He has an Instagram page linked to this website if you want to visualize this beauty. Thanks for joining on this day 1 episode one and remember communication is key! reach out through the ‘contact’ page or email me directly cole@raisingjasper.com I can’t wait to hear from you!

Transcript

Welcome to this, the first episode of the Raising Jasper Podcast. I'm your host Cole, and this is Jasper (Jasper says hello).

Thank you for choosing to listen in on this podcast. I'm excited to share with you the knowledge and experience I've gained over the course of raising Jasper. I'll be going through the research that I've done. I'll be sharing with you the results of that research. The outcomes will hopefully save your time with the ultimate goal of improving your dog's quality of life.

Because if man's best friend has a better life than they can be a better friend to man.

On today's episode, I will run through some introductions, tell you a bit about me, a bit about Jasper and a bit about where I plan to go with this podcast. The initial episode being the inaugural event, the pilot, if you will, will be slightly shorter than future episodes.

However, I'll still try to make it interesting and worth your time.

On the topic at hand, I would like to talk about Jasper first because after all, he is the inspiration for this podcast, so it only makes sense that I tell you a bit about him first.

Jasper at the time of this recording is a three and a half year old Brittany spaniel.

A Brittany spaniel is a type of hunting breed that I will tell you about in more detail in an incoming episode. Right now, I have a confession to make. A Brittany spaniel is not actually called a Brittany spaniel. That's misinformation on my part. Knowingly, I do it out of habit and I will do it again but just know that a Brittany spaniel is just a Brittany. They haven't been called a spaniel since the eighties. Jasper however is unique to Brittany’s in that he is nothing like a Brittany spaniel.

Jasper is a dog that conforms to his breed in looks alone. The Brittany has been developed and refined for centuries, to be a very efficient and generalised hunting dog. Yet Jasper doesn't like going outside when it rains, he sleeps inside in the bed and he is not real fond of birds. I wouldn't say he's scared of them well some he's scared of. Not all of them though.

He got swooped by Indian miners when he was a puppy and so now he's scared of those birds and Magpies and anything that are flies overhead, which is most birds, as you can imagine, he is not scared of Bush turkeys though he will go a Bush Turkey if he gets the chance. He can delaminate between flying, and flightless which is something.

I'm not sure that Bush turkeys are actually flightless. That might be a bit of misinformation again on my part, I'm not going to bother researching that though, but if you know, let me know. For now, let's go back to Jasper. He's a great dog. He's very emotional and will expresses his disdain for things as well as his pleasure about things. He'll let you know if he's happy, sad, angry, mad, or anything in between. He will be very communicative about it, which is pretty cool. It's really nice being able to have a relationship with your dog where he understands what you're saying and reacts in a way that you can get what he's trying to tell you as well. It is a fantastic place to be and makes for a really smooth pet/parent – parent/pet relationship. I hope that throughout this podcasting journey, I can I help get you there with your dog.

At the very least, maybe the relationships a bit better off for some of my tips. So that's Jasper, an emotional and precious prince of a dog that makes a great pet and a terrible hunter. It just goes to show that nurture is stronger that nature in some cases. Over hundreds of years the Brittany was developed to be the pinnacle of poaching and in 6 months we undone all of that and created a lap dog in a hunters suit.

If you want to see what he looks like, I've got a couple of photos on the website. On the home page that's him at a dog park and the about page also has a small feature of Jasper, otherwise his Instagram is littered with photos of him, which is what it's for, right? That's kind of the point of that platform.

Onto the second part, which is the me part. Cole, as I let you know in the first few seconds of this podcast, which I'm sure you remember very vividly, and if not, then you can just listen to it again. Now what can I tell you about me what would reassure you that I can help you or I can give you something of value?. Why I can teach you about dogs in any way, shape or form?.

Well it is simply because I've done the research, I have put in the effort to read and study and talk to specialists. And going forward whatever topic I'll talk to you about I'll do more research and talk to more specialists. I’ll make a commitment to you that I’ll do my best to bring you the most recent and relevant information that is available and condense that in to an easy to digest episode of concentrated and valuable information for your auditory pleasure.

Over the last three and a half years of raising Jasper. I've had many, many occasions where I've needed to research specific issues for him and over the last five years I have been dog sitting where were I’ve looked after many, many, many dogs and all with very similar issues and problems, which leads me to believe that everybody's got similar issues and problems with their beloved fur friends?

Another point of absorption I have is from going to the dog park with Jasper every day for last few years which Led me to talking to hundreds of dog owners about their problems and again it's all similar stuff which really served to encourage me to create this podcast.

All this lends to my theory that all dog issues are issues that people and dogs have experienced before and after all as a species we have been living with dogs for over ten thousand years.

Theres an episode in that alone. We’ll call it the evolution of canine cohabitation. That's exciting, that's one to look forward to canine cohabitation - the evolution.

Back to my theory over these thousands of years, people have had all the possible problems with dogs and come up with their own unique solutions and we will dig those out and share them with you. Because dogs have always been dogs, and people have always been people.

Over these centuries we've learned to cohabitate together seamlessly, even though some days it doesn't seem like that. But really realistically, it is just look at other animals that live next to humans like pasture animals, your sheep, horses and cows and goats and that type of thing, they don't relate to us in any way like dogs do.

It serves to be a very interesting topic, a very deep topic which I really look forward to covering. Back to the point at hand and why I can talk to you about dogs. I'll simply spend and have spent a lot of time reading, researching and reaching out to find out about anything and everything canine.

I’m about five years down the journey of looking after dogs and three and a half years down the journey with Jasper himself and I've learnt so much more having Jasper and having responsibility for my own dog then I have from looking after other dogs.

It's been very challenging at times, and it's been very rewarding as well. Dogs like most things in life, you get out what you put in and I'm here to help you put more in so you can get more out so that your dog is happy, you are happy, everybody lives better and happier.

That's enough about me. Let's focus on what we'll be doing in the future. I want to bring to you some episodes on all sorts of different topics and feature a plethora of useful information and handy hints. Anything from diet and lifestyle through health and safety all the way to theoretical topics. The canine cohabitation evolution topic for example I would categorise as a theory topic.

In that same vein I have planned an episode where I’ll tell you about the Alpha Dog theory and heads up, even the guy who made it doesn't believe in it.

Another category that I'm especially looking forward to is breed spotlights. So very first breed spotlight I'm going to do is a breed spotlight on Britney Spaniels. I am a tad bit biased being a Britney Spaniel owner. I'll tell you in that episode why we don't call them Britney Spaniels anymore or at least shouldn’t.

For that episode I will bring on a guest who's been a Britney breeder for over 50 years and has a wealth of knowledge and experience. We'll talk about the suitability of that dog for a first dog, for a family dog, for a working dog, all manner of things as well as what it's like to care for and live with the Brittany dog. This is something I'm really looking forward to.

We'll do the same spotlight for other breeds with the same passion, well at least mostly the same passion I am only human and I do have my subjective truths like all dogs are great but Brittany’s are greater. Some breeds I plan to cover in the short term are German Shepherds, Siberian Huskies, Border Collies, Schnauzers and Poodles.

I will cover any other dog that comes up, Hey on that note, if you've got a dog and you want me to do an episode on your breed of dog, shoot me a message, Tell me a little bit about your dog and why it is the best. Go to the website and use the contact page or just send me an email. Tell me anything about your dog anything that makes your dog special? Because I know every dog is special. If you reach out I will feature your breed.

I'll do everything I can to find a breeder or talk to a specialist, and I will do an interview and a breed introduction. I'm really excited specifically about this category because it's going to give me lots of opportunity to talk to lots of different people.

I can’t wait to talk to people about the things they're passionate about, because if you go to a German Shepherd club and talk to them about German shepherds, they're going to be excited to tell you about them. So please suggestions and I will cover it.

OK, that's about enough for introductions. Now that you know a bit about me and a bit about Jasper and a bit about what to expect from the show, let's focus on the topic at hand.

For today I want to talk to you about toxic or poison words.

Toxic words are one of the things that come up far too often when I'm talking to people about training. Mostly when I talk to people at the dog park and mostly it is about recall. Now there’s another episode to look forward to “Whistle, Click, Come”. Expect that in the next few weeks, recall is one of the biggest struggles I've had with Jasper's training especially the elusive effective recall.

But I digress

A toxic word is a word that no longer holds any meaning to your dog due to being repeated so many times that now they ignore it. That word means nothing to them.

When you repeat a word to a dog, and that is not cognitively associated to any action or any behaviour, they eventually just ignore that word on the assumption that you're not talking to them.

For me, it was Jasper's name and this happens a lot of the time. People poison the dog's name by repeating it too frequently. When Jasper was young I poisoned his name by repetition.

Jasper, Jasper, Jasper, Jasper, Jasper getting more exaggerated and frantic as each call progresses and getting no action with each call, not giving him a chance to react to each call and thereby creating a word that means nothing to him or a toxic word.

To fix a poisoned word, you just need to stop using the word. for a name I understand that is difficult, but essential.

What you're going to need to do is create some nicknames, use some temporary associated names. For Jasper that became Jas, Ja-Sama or Jap-Chi just a small modification on Jasper. In order to create a different word that he could associate with an action or behaviour.

After time passes, three months, six months, maybe longer, depending on your dog's retention.

I can assure you without a doubt, your doggo will forget the original poisoned word, thereby cleansing it and letting you go back to it without the repetition.

For Jasper I've progressed his training from using associated words instead of his name that he used to ignore, back to using his name and he mostly pays attention to his name now.

The timeline for Jasper took about 6 months to cleanse the poisoned word.

For dogs, when we have created toxic words they're not ignoring you or misbehaving. They just think that word doesn't mean anything, as it’s something you repeat all the time. You always say it and they do nothing so it reinforces that the word doesn't mean anything.

On the opposite side of the coin you have effective commands when for example you use the command sit your dog will sit straight away. You say sit once then wait till they sit, and as soon as they sit you give them a treat. Now the behaviour of sitting down is associated with the word sit.

whereas if you say, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, you're not giving them time to do anything. What behaviours associated with the word, there's nothing because they've done nothing in between each repetition of the word. So that word means nothing.

The good news is a toxic word is not permanent. It's not like for the rest of your life, your dog's going to ignore its name. It just means you need to take a hiatus from using their name and use their nickname for a while and then go back to using their name, implementing an effective usage of said name or whichever word you have inadvertently poisoned.

Moving on to how we need to handle the reintroduction of the toxic word.

Firstly, you need to decide what the action or behaviour is that needs to be associated to the word and it cant be loose it needs to be precise and consistent.

For me, Jasper’s name is associated to his attention. All I use his name for is to get his attention, so all he needs to do when I call his name is look at me, in the reintroduction of the word this meant saying “Jasper” once followed by him looking at me immediately followed by a treat.

I really mean Immediately here, the behaviour you want to lock in needs to be awarded within a few seconds of action for the association to work, so have your treats ready before you start!

After I get Jasper’s attention, I will follow with a command like come or sit or stay or speak or wait or something else. The name is just there to mark that it's time to pay attention for me I find this works best as his name doesn’t need to have the urgency of a strong come or the playfulness of a speak, just pay attention to me and what I’m about to do.

You can use your dog’s name as a recall if you really want to though I’d recommend leaving recall to something a bit unique.

The point is that you really need to associate that name to something. You don’t want to be that person at the dog park trying to get their dog to come back to them because it's getting itself in a precarious situation yelling your dog’s name in an ever-increasing panicked tone and your dog just completely ignores you.

It doesn't matter how much you panic. It doesn't matter how frantic you get about it. If the word means nothing, it means nothing. You're just being a panicked, frantic human over in the corner, and your pup just won’t acknowledge you.

My assignment to you is get away from poisoning your words. Any time you find yourself repeating words in training. Take a break. Take 5 minutes. Think about the situation. What's going on? What's happening in the environment? Is there something that's distracting your dog that's causing them not to focus on the training?

Is there something that's distracting you that's causing you not to focus on your dog, is there something else going on that's making the training ineffective? Whatever the case may be don't repeat the word. If you get to the point where you're repeating a word, just take a break maybe even call it for the day.

Maybe you've been training for an hour and your dog's tired of it, doesn’t want to have a bar of it anymore. Maybe you've been training for 10 minutes, but there's other stuff going on that's distracting you and your dog from focusing on the task at hand.

Just don't poison the words, because once they're poisoned, that's it. They're done for quite some time. They will no longer be effective.

With all that being said, I want to hear from you. Tell me what your experience has been with poisoned words, what words do you find your dog ignores? What’s breed do you have, what breeds do you maybe want to have? Reach out and let me know!

Follow along with me on the podcasting journey and leave reviews, tell your friends lets share our experiences and improve the lives of our furry friends together.

To contact me is easy, I’ll leave the details in the description. And it is all linked through the website too. www.raisingjasper.com, that is r a i s i n g j a s p e r .com. for insta you can slide in my DM’s @jasperthebrittany1. On twitter, sorry x you can tweet or x at me @raisingjas cos sometimes nicknames stick or the full name is taken. You can email me direct to cole@raisingjasper.com that is c o l e @raisingjasper.com or finally and probably the easiest just use the websites contact page!

This has been episode one on the Raising Jasper podcast. coming up next I have a special treat and that is the very first breed spotlight, if you guessed on Brittany’s then you are a clever cookie and you listened well. Other episodes to look forward to include canine cohabitation and the alpha myth plus many more, anything you want me to cover reach out and maybe I can add your experience to the next episode.

It has been my absolute pleasure and until next time say it once, get an action make traction I’ll talk to you again soon, Bye!

Cole Peart