Do you wish you had a magic wand to control your dog and get him to stop doing all the annoying things he does? Well, in this week’s episode Alex finds out how he can use wine, pizza and football tickets to get Dom to do whatever he wants and how if you find your dog’s Kryptonite you can get him to do whatever you want to also. Dom and Alex the video guy are also joined by a special guest, Zero the Boston Terrier.
Timestamps
[59.00] Meet todays guest in the van, Zero the Boston Terrier [1.50]Why finding the Kryptonite is the easiest way for you to influence and train your dog [2.55] How Zero is a black and white Mackam! [5.25] The Story of the magic feather, How I taught a pug to swim using a feather [8.29] This weeks challenge for you, find your dogs Kryptonite [9.57] Where you can find a shortcut to help you find your dogs Kryptonite [10.53] Where to go to get a free dog training [11.44] How to ask me a question we can answer in the podcast [12.57] What’s coming up next week when we set Alex the video guy a doggie challenge…
Mentioned in this episode
Buy Dom’s book on Amazon
Click here to get the kindle or paperback version of How to Be Your Dog’s Superhero.
Click here to get the Kindle or paperback version of Dom’s new book Worry Free Walks
Click here to get the kindle or paperback version of the dog walkers business bible Walk Yourself Wealthy
Get the audio book here http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Health-Personal-Development/How-to-Be-Your-Dogs-Superhero-Audiobook/B01L2FBFAK
Full Transcript
Dominic: Hello, me Bonny bairns and welcome to episode two of The Super Hero Dog Owner Show. This is the show that helps you have more fun and less stress with your pet dog. I’m joined today by another very special guest.
Alex: It’s me.
Dominic: No. It’s not. Two very special guests. I’ve got Alex, the video guy, here as always, who helps us set up the podcast in the van. This is the first podcast in a van, as far as we’re aware.
Alex: So we believe.
Dominic: So we believe. We’re also joined by, today, this is Zero, the Boston Terrier. Zero is a very good friend of mine. He’s been a regular on our adventures for about three years now. He’s a super cool, little guy. He’s less fiddly than Stuey. He’s also lighter than Stuey, so my arm won’t be hurting quite as much as it was last week. Today, we’re going to be talking about the kryptonite. Alex, do you know what the kryptonite is?
Alex: I do know what the kryptonite is. Now. Yes. It’s the thing that gets your dog’s tail wagging.
Dominic: It is, indeed. Finding the kryptonite is very important because it’s finding the thing that makes your dog’s tail wag. The thing that gets your dog excited, that turns him from a sleepy hound into a fun-loving dog. In my opinion, finding the kryptonite is the easiest way for you to influence and control and play and train your dog, really. For pet dog owners, who, they don’t want to learn how to be a dog whisperer, or they don’t want to go to college and learn, have a degree in canine psychology. We don’t need to do all those things just to have a fairly well-behaved dog, who comes back to us in the park and isn’t a complete pain in the butt. We can do all those things, by just finding out what our dogs like and then, we can use those things to help us to control our dog and get our dog looking at us and doing what we want him to do.
Alex, you’re probably wondering why I’m wearing this shirt today.
Alex: Yes, I am. It’s not your usual uniform.
Dominic: It’s not my usual garb, you’re quite right. No, no. There’s an important message here. We’ve got the red and whites of Sunderland. Obviously, the podcast is shot in Sunderland. This is where we live. I’ve very proud of my hometown, my home city. Zero, even though he’s a black and white, he is also a Sunderland lad. Black and white by colour, but not by nature, I assure you. This is a little football analogy, that I’ve got for you now, this is a thing about the kryptonite. I like football. I quite like watching football. We have season tickets, me and Toby. We go to the match every week. Obviously, I don’t like just any football, okay. If Alex, for example, you came to me and you’ve said, “Dom, I’ve got you an awesome football gift. There’s two season tickets in the box at St. James’ Park, to go see Newcastle United, every week.” Not going to be the kind of thing that I’m going to be very interested in.
Alex: Not really, no.
Dominic: Even though I like football, obviously, I’m not a huge Newcastle fan, is put as a bit of an understatement. I’m a Sunderland fan. I want to go see Sutherland play, yeah? Going to see Sunderland play, especially at Wembley or something like that, which wouldn’t happen very often, but something like that, that’s going to be kryptonite for me. Going to see my hometown, who I love, that’s my kryptonite. That’s the type of thing that I want to do. That’s the thing that I’m prepared to spend money on. The thing that I’m prepared to give up time to go and do and make time to go and do, because it’s, God knows why, but it’s a very rewarding thing to me to go and spend some time with my son, watching my hometown team play football, every week.
Alex: If I wanted to influence you, Dom or I had a favour to ask or something like that, then you would say the best way for me to win over you, would be to get you the thing that you liked. To let you have the thing that you liked.
Dominic: Exactly, exactly. Obviously, I don’t just like football. I like pizza and red wine and chocolate and various other things, as well. Certainly, one way to influence me would be to provide me with the things that I quite like and use those things to get me to do whatever you wanted me to do, without a doubt. That’s a very similar thing, in fact, it’s exactly the same as what we do when we’re trying to find the kryptonite that we need, to help us to influence our dog and to get our dog wanting to do stuff for us, so that they can get the things that they find rewarding.
Alex: Yeah.
Dominic: There’s a nice little story that, quite neatly, demonstrates what I’m talking about with the kryptonite. This is something that happened to us a couple of years ago, when we’re out on a dog adventure, it involved a pug and a feather. This isn’t a rude joke. Don’t start thinking that. Zero’s brother Stuey, who was a guest on the show last week, he plays a key part in this story. What happened was, it was a really hot summer, with that, obviously, came the problem of trying to keep the dogs cool on the adventure because we like to keep them nice and safe and nice and cool. I found a nice lake where we used to go. I set myself a little challenge of getting all the dogs in the water and getting them swimming, because not all of the dogs like swimming. I thought it would be good for their own safety, if they knew they could at least learn how to swim to the shore. We had the dogs in the water. We were having a great time.
One day out on our adventure, we had Stuey and Zero out. They had been at the side of the lake, what can only be described as a swan massacre. Obviously, a fox or something had got to one of the swans, the day before and there was blood and guts and various feathers strewn all over the side of the river. Stuey, being a pug, was much more interested in the feathers and the guts than he was in spending time with us, learning how to swim. Stuey not a big swimmer anyway, not many pugs are. He kept going back to where the feathers were and I was keep leading him away and leading him away. “Stuey, come on. Stuey, come back. Come back.”
Eventually, it was starting to get on my nerves because, obviously, I wanted to get on with the walk. I went to go to put him on a lead. That was when the penny dropped. What popped into my head was something that my good friend, David Davies always says, is that, “You need to find something that is rewarding for the dog at that time.” I thought, “If Stuey’s really interested in the feathers, he’d been picking them up. Could I use a feather to get him to be more interested in me?”
I found the biggest feather that you could find. I waved it in front of Stuey and sure enough, Stuey started to walk towards me. He started to follow me and leave the rest of the feathers and come towards me. I backed away and backed away and Stuey followed me and then I thought, “I wonder what I can make this pug do for this feather?” I started to step into the water and, sure enough, Stuey came in as well. I got a little bit deeper, went up to my ankles. Then, up to my knees. Stuey kept on following me. When he lost interest, I just waved the feather in his face a little bit. Eventually, I step back a little bit further and, sure enough, Stuey pushed off the side and Stuey the pug, started to swim through the lake, just following me to get the feather, of which I let him have a little sniff and a little nibble of every now and again, as a reward.
I call that story “The Magic Feather” for the obvious reasons. It just goes to show that, if you can find something that your dog really, really likes even though it may not be, what you could describe as a traditional dog toy, then you can get your dog to do things for you, like, if I can get Stuey to swim in the lake, when he doesn’t like swimming, then I’m sure you get your dog to do a “sit” or a “down” or a “stop barking” or a “stop pulling on the lead”, using something that your dog particularly likes playing with. There’s a little challenge for you for this week. I would like you to, to kind of mentally walk a day in your dogs paw’s and think about all of the things that get your dog excited, get him up and about and wagging his tail and make his eyes go wide. What are the things that he picks up in the house that I said. Also, they may not be things that are traditional dog toys. Could be socks, slippers, plastic bottles, bits of pipe, whatever, tea towels. These are the type of things that you can use as kyrptonite, to get your dog to look at you and to start doing what you want him to do.
That was a little bit of an unorthodox dog training lesson, Alex. That’s the kind of thing that we like to do on this show.
Alex: Exactly. Whatever works.
Dominic: Whatever works, indeed. That’s what it’s all about. You may want to go to Crufts and compete in obedience. If you do, this probably isn’t the podcast for you. If you want to just enjoy taking your dog to the park and not have him run off and be tearing your hair out and be racked with worry and dry mouth panic about your dog not coming back to you, then you should definitely try finding out what it is, that is your dog’s kryptonite. Then you can use that to play, influence, bond, control and just generally, get your dog looking at you. Make sure that you’re rewarding him with this kryptonite, as well. That’s the dog training lesson, dog training tip. I want you to go out and I want you to find your dog’s kryptonite. I have a full chapter of my book is dedicated to helping you find your dog’s kryptonite. I break it down into much more detail. If you want a much more fast track way to find out what it is that your dog likes, then you should go to www.mydogsuperhero.com and you should purchase the book. That’s going to help you to have more fun and have a better relationship with your dog.
I think that, quite nicely, wraps up this weeks episode.
Alex: I think so.
Dominic: I want to thank Zero for being a perfect guest.
Alex: He’s had a good adventure today.
Dominic: He has, hasn’t he? Yeah. We’ve worn him out, thoroughly, before the podcast. Thank goodness.
From the black and white, from the red and white and from Alex, the video guy, that’s good bye from us. Please don’t forget to subscribe to the show and if you would like a dog training tip to come flying into your inbox, once a day, then you should go to www.mydogsuperhero/dogdays and you can sign up to my free and famous, daily, dog training e-mails. They will help you have more fun and just generally, enjoy your dog a bit more. That’s why we all got a doggy. I hope you enjoyed that. If you have a question about the kyrptonite or about your dog being selfish or anything about your dog’s behaviour, then you need to ask it of us, so that we can answer it in the show. We want to make this interactive. I have a lot a good crack with my people who are subscribed to my daily e-mails and the people who by the book. They’re always getting in touch with me and telling me stuff. We go back and forth. I want the podcast to be exactly the same, as well. You should watch the next video. That is going to show you how you can be a star of this podcast, too, and your dog can, as well. It will tell you how exactly how I want you to send us the questions, so that we can answer them in this show and help you have more fun with your dog.
Take out your smart phone. Take it to video. Make sure the video is pointing at you. Then, get it arms length away, so it’s facing straight at you. Make sure that the light is in front of you, not behind you. Make sure you’re somewhere reasonably quiet. Speak into the phone and tell me the problem that you’re having with your dog. We’ll do our best to answer that on the show. You can bet your butt, that if you’re asking one question, that somebody else and other dog owners going to be suffering from the same problem, as well. We want to help as many dog owners as we can. I look forward to seeing your questions. You can e-mail them to me at dom@packleaderdogadventures.co.uk or you can post them on the Facebook page, which is Pack Leader Dog Adventures on Facebook. I’ll see you then.
Okay, thanks Dom. We’re back in the studio, again. That’s what you need to do if you would like us to feature you in an episode of the podcast. We want to help more people with their dogs. Please send us a question. Make sure your dog is in it, as well. We love dogs. We want to see more dogs in the show. That’s it for this week’s episode. Don’t forget to subscribe. If you’re enjoying the show, please leave us a review on iTunes, as well. In next week’s episode, I’m going to be setting a challenge of Alex, the video guy. Alex, tell us about the dog that you look after.
Alex: As I said, in an earlier episode, me and my partner, Naomi, are part-time dog owners because we sometimes look after Little Otis. Otis the Jack Russel. We get him on weekends and that kind of thing. I think it’s probably about time that I see if I can put everything that Dom’s saying into practice and see if we can get him a bit more interested in me, and a bit more looking at me like I’m a super hero.
Dominic: Super hero. I’m sure you can do it. That’s going to be next week’s episode. Alex is going to head out with Otis. We’ll see how gets on. I have complete faith in him. If he’s as good with the dog as he is with the videos, we’ll be laughing. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show. We’ll see you next week. If we don’t see you through the week, then we’ll see you through the window. Bye for now.
