All right, Pet Chat time. Firstly, a big good afternoon. Haven't seen you for a while, Julie Talley. Good afternoon, Julie. Good afternoon. And your topic today, you'll be taking a look at crate training. Yes. Looking forward to that. And the bloke that's currently on his laptop trying to move as much space as he can away to answer your questions today is Dr. David Tabaret. Any questions? Any questions? Well, pet related, vet related. All right, and looking nice in a sports jacket today, mate. Thank you. And Maria Dora Creek, what is going on with your rescue dog there today?
Oh, well, we just got a rescue on Saturday, and she's from Paws and Claws, and she was from a puppy farm, and she's a Cocker Spaniel Cross Cavalier, and I had a previous rescue who was completely shut down, but this rescue is different, whereas she's not as completely shut down, but she's letting us pat her, which is a really good sign, but the other thing is whenever one of us leave... And even though someone's still at home, she'll run up the side and she'll try to jump fences and she'll howl. So I'm just not sure if that is separation anxiety or how do I help her? Well, they say, Marie, that...
One of the worst times for a rescue dog is when they've gone to the new situation because their life changed. And you've got a dog that's come from a puppy farm, so it's had no early, what we call socialisation, which doesn't mean playing with other dogs. It means knowing what the world's like and the world's not going to kill you. So your dog is just finding everything so strange at the moment. And your main thing now is to try to stop her practising the behaviours you don't want. So how do we do that? So we need to work out a way to maybe make her feel secure when you've left the home, but also when you're there. So I would start with an exercise.
And some people like blanch at this, but I'd start with an exercise where you tether her, like tie her with a lead nearer her bed and you sit just near her, but not so close that she can jump on you and try your very hardest not to interact with her at all until she... stumbles upon something effective like sitting down or lying down. And when she has, just drop her a treat. Now, if she can't settle at all on the tether, then tie her and give her something really delicious to chew and you still sit just a tiny bit out of reach. And what you're trying to do is to reassure her that lying down on your bed is a good thing to do. You can feel different when you do that. You're going to try to extend the time that she can lie down near you and not feel worried. And then you can move into the next phase. And this could be days, this could be a couple of weeks, but then you're going to try standing up as though you're going to go somewhere and then sitting back down again.
And then stand up and take half a step and then sit back down again so that you want to counteract that dog's feeling of panic that they think you're going away. Now, if the dog is extreme, then I would try a Kong with cream cheese. Cream cheese is usually the best. They find that really yummy. And you'd have her tethered and she's on a mat and she's quite settled. And you would drop the cheesy Kong and you'd move maybe just a couple of steps away. And then you come back while she's still happy and on the Kong and take the Kong away and sit down. So you're saying to the dog, it's the Kong or me.
Like, I'd like this dog to start saying to you, listen, would you like to go down to the shops for a while and give me one of those congs? Okay. And is it too soon to introduce a harness and walking to her for her? Look, I don't think... What breed is she? She's a...
They call them a cocklea. Oh, that's right. You did tell me. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, sure. But what you would do is even with that harness, you would do things like maybe just bring it out and have it in your hands and give her a treat. Maybe have it in your hands and just put it gently on her back, but don't do it up and give her a treat. Like make everything little steps of acceptance. And then a really, really easy one is once she's got that harness on, just in the lounge room, have the lead on her and just, it's hard to describe when you can't see me. I'm doing the actions. Like drop a treat on the floor and say to her, find it, just drop it near you. And then drop a little trail like Hansel and Gretel as you walk along. You've got the lead. She's got the harness.
harness on, and you're dropping, you know, pieces of caviar on the floor, and you're going, find it, find it, find it, and just do it in the lounge room. And then when she's really good in the lounge room, do it in the backyard. And then when she's really good in the backyard, do it on the front porch. Just do a little easier. Don't try to go for a walk. Marie, best of luck with that. David, we've got cream cheese, caviar. I mean, what's going on? I'm hungry. Thanks, Marie. We're all pretty hungry here. And Julie, we've kind of had our first call a couple of minutes ago from Marie. It was all about behaviour and some of the things we need to do. And this afternoon, we're going to take a look through crate training. So a bit of an overview. What does that actually mean?
Craig training, well, you see, some people think it's putting your dog in a cage because it looks like a cage. But then they get all carried away and they go, oh, that's lazy and that's cruel. It's not at all. It's a training tool that in the beginning is your toilet training method for your puppy. It's the best way to toilet train a puppy because you will put a puppy into a confined space with their bed. And even as little, little puppies, they don't want to mess in their bed because then they're going to have to lie in it. So if your crate is just the size of the bed, the puppy will learn to hold on as long as you're looking at the timing there. And so that you let them out, you take them into the yard, they do a wee, everybody's happy. You clap your hands and say, good dog, give him a treat. And you take them back inside. It's a puppy.
It's a puppy. So don't let them roam the house because dogs just wee and poo wherever they want. It's not because they've got bad manners. It's because that's what they do on Planet Dog. So on Planet Human, what we do is we like it to go in a certain place. They have to get used to that. And the best way to do it is confine them in the house and your crate is just the best thing in the world. As with everything, Julie, timing is everything. And how do we sort of factor all of that into, say, people coming into your home, like visitors, maybe kids, the grandkids are coming in, workmen, whatever it is. How does that factor into the training there? Well, once the dog is used to the crate, and this is a mistake that people can make, but once the dog is used to the crate, you can say to them, go to your crate.
go to your cubby house, go to your happy safe place. If you need to back that up with a Kong or a chewy thing, then you can. But it means the dog's not going to get worried about the workman. The workman can get on with his work instead of having a dog under its feet if the workman is in the bathroom, let's say. But the biggest mistake people can make with a crate is that they take it home, set it up, shove the dog in and shut the door. It doesn't work. Well, this kind of goes a little bit kind of hand in hand with what we're talking about with Marie before. I mean, the dog's coming into a new environment, new set of circumstances, and you're just overwhelmed the damn thing by having too much happen all at once. Absolutely. So some of the things that I like to do is I'll...
I'll put the new crate and the new puppy, which we happen to have at home, into a limited space so that the dog's got the choice of lying on the cold tiles or lying on a soft, lovely bed in the crate and making himself comfy. I tie the door open so that it won't accidentally hit them on the bum because then we're going to have the trouble of the dog thinking that thing bites me. Sometimes what I do is I will tie a chewy treat to the back wall of the crate. Puppy comes along, goes, oh, there's something in there. Goes in and goes, oh, I can't get it out. But gee, I might stay in here and have a chew of that.
You could be sitting on a chair nearby and puppy just wanders in, just drop some treats in the top and the dog will go, oh, my God, every time I go in here, it rains treats from the sky. Now, you've kind of alluded there, Julie, that placement of this thing is kind of important. So there's some of the good feel-good attachments. Are there some places that we should not look at crate training? Look, I firmly believe that the dog needs to be within, I'm going to say earshot, but I don't really mean earshot. I mean nearby to other living creatures. So both my dogs are crank trained and they go to the garage to sleep for the night. But the carriage is joined to our house and the garage is actually under our bedroom. So it's within the realms of other living creatures. It would be a bad idea to stick it up in the back shed.
Back veranda, you could do it as long as the puppies got used to it in that environment. If you're going to teach crates inside, then you need to do a slow transition to get the crate outside. But yeah, don't isolate your dog. What about a checklist of some of the things to make sure that this whole process is successful? To make sure it's successful? Yeah, some of the keys to success in this. Well, make it a positive experience. Make it a positive experience for the dog. As I said, tie the door open so they don't have the crate bite them on the first night.
What else can I say? Dropping treats in. You could play a game called Find It, which I just spoke to Marie about before. Throwing a treat on the ground and telling the dog to find it is the best tool you can have for your dog. So teaching the dog Find It means I just threw something on the ground. You could play Find It into the crate, then find it out of the crate. Have the dog jumping in and out of the crate going, I love this game. They'll be tired after a few goes and they'll want to go inside and settle down in there. Teach them that good things happen around the crate. Some people give them their dinner in the crate in the beginning just so that they think, wow, this place is just better than Luna Park, really. You can get music to calm your dog. Now, I know this sounds a bit hippie.
I've got a story for you about that. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I recently toured some hospitals in the Gold Coast, and one of them had a little portable Bluetooth speaker in their dog ward, and they just play calming music. Absolutely. So I bought two for our hospital the day I got back, and we just put it in the dog run, and Spotify have a playlist. I can't play too many of them because we do get the sponsors' messages through there, but it's just a playlist of calming music.
Calming music for dogs. And the way that you would sensitise the dogs to that is that you would play it first when they are calm. So you get a calm dog and the music overlays it. Calm dog, music overlays it until you get to the stage where you can put that music on and the dog goes, oh, that's my calm lying down, have a sweet music. That's your ideal way to bring it up. One of the original recordings was called Through a Dog's Ear.
And that woman actually studied the tempos and the pitches of certain instruments. And there's no strings on it because they figure that strings probably wouldn't be very calming for dogs. No, fair enough. Yeah. And you can also get calming sprays. There are, what do you call like, I can't think of the word. Or the DAP. Yeah, so you call that like a synthetic one. Dog-adaptive pheromone. Or you can get natural sprays that have got calming oils and bush saracens in them. And I like those because you can put them on the dog. You can put it in the crate. Just be careful with some of those around cats.
Like particularly those eucalyptus and some of the potpourri things can be toxic. So if you've got a young dog and cats, you might need to just be a little bit strategic about that. Overall, this sounds like a pretty good approach, and I'm not sure about you. I know a few people that might actually benefit from such training. All the good stuff happens in the crate. Kelly at Elmore Vale, what's going on with your cavoodle? Chasing birds, I believe. Yes, that's right. Things that way.
Hi, Kelly. It's Julie here. So chasing birds, it's so annoying. I think the very first thing is we need to try to stop them practising that behaviour. I know that sounds almost so obvious. Why would I say it? But...
At our house, we've got two dogs that are barkers. We manage them when they're at home, and I'll tell you about that in a minute. But when we're not home, we actually secure them inside the house, just in a limited area where they can relax and not get stimulated by the birds. So sometimes it's a crate for us if we're away for a short period of time. Sometimes it's just within a couple of rooms in our house and we close it off. We don't ever give them full access to the whole house because that can be, particularly because your dog's nervy, that can be overwhelming for the dog running around within the house trying to take care of everything while you're not there. So limit them. Put them in a smaller area. And then...
There are specific skills you can use to try to work a little bit with the birds outside. So there's a strategy that we teach nearly everybody to do, which is getting the dog to focus on you when you give them the cue, watch or look. The way that you would start with that is get a delicious, be somewhere where there's no birds, just a really quiet place, put a yummy treat in front of the dog's nose, lift it up to your eye and point to your eye. And when the dog is looking at the treat, there's no secret, but they're also looking at where you're pointing, you're going to say, look or watch. And when you get eye contact, give them a treat. Now, you're going to work on that so that you can call your dog to look at you because there's a treat in your hand. And then you're going to start, you might start to take it like just outside the back door, but there's no birds there. And you'll have the dog on the lead so that they're within your care and your space. And then you're going to try to work towards them seeing a bird at a distance and you tell them to watch you. So see the bird, watch me. See the bird, watch me. Now, if you do that enough, dogs are very clever and they really get into like sequences. So after a while, the dog sees the bird and looks at you anyway, as if to say, I just saw a bird.
So you're helping them to learn an alternate behaviour. But, of course, if you're not in the yard with them, well, they haven't got you to look at, I guess. The other one that we love to do is see the bird and tell them to find the treat on the ground. See the bird, find it. See the bird, find it. Another thing that you can do is tether them near to the back door if there's a particular time that birds come in not too close. Tether them near the back door and give them something yummy to chew so that it's overriding their anxiety about wanting to go and bark at those birds and carry on. Got it. Yes, I understand what you're saying. I mean, I only caught the last bit of the music.
calming music for the dogs. But I wondered whether similarly there was an option of a nice treat, licky mat, something like that and playing a bird in the background. Oh, that's, yeah, look, you could try that. There is an app called Soundproof Puppy and it's got some bird noises on it. It's got quite a few noises on it and you could practice playing a few of those noises just to get your dog not to react to the noises as...
Bigly, no such word as bigly, as hugely, as largely. There is now. So, yeah, to use those noises. And the other thing is give them things to do within the day. So I pop outside the back door maybe for five minutes and I line my dogs up and I go, okay, we're going to do a puzzle. And I hide treats under things and then they take it in turns to have a go to find a puzzle. And what the heck has that got to do with birds? You'll tire your dog out if you do regular five-minute brain work and there's nothing wrong with them putting them in a quiet place and saying it's time for a rest now. Yep.
All right, best of luck with all of that, Kelly. Well, so far, Dr. David, we really haven't had anything for you, but thanks for coming in anyway. I'm just here to look good. It's all right. Well, we've got to change that around now. Judy at Ellamore Vale, your 11-year-old dog is on the cusp of cushing. So what's going on with your dog, Judy? Well, it's a mini-snauzer, and she went into a survey about 18 months ago, and it was for snauzers of all ages to test them for cushing. And the results come back that she was on the verge. Some bloods were elevated by age. They did not sort of recommend treatment.
But she's now turned 11. I'm getting paranoid about her. She's on medication for heart murmur. And the worst thing you can do is Google. But I did Google Cushing's. But she only sort of had one of the symptoms out of about eight. She's always drunk a lot of water, even when she was a baby. And she was tested for diabetes, you know, years ago. And she will eat as long as you can give her food. But if you don't, she's fine. Urinate just to mark a spot. She just does all the normal things.
I'm starting to get a little bit concerned because she is sleeping a little bit more during the day. Now, I take it that she is 11 and she gets three walks a day. But I'm just wondering, should I have the tests done or what? Well, going back to that survey, you said that was 18 months ago. Yes. And was that set up by the Breed Society or something? It was actually by, I think...
Macquarie University. Okay, someone was doing a study. Yes. Okay. So just quickly for everybody, Cushing's is actually the name for the human disease, but we use it in veterinary practices as well. And it's a disease called hyperadrenocorticism, which means there's an increase, hyperadrenal is...
next to the kidneys, glands that produce an excess of cortisol. And so the symptoms that we see is when we get this circulating cortisol. Now, cortisol production in the body is normal, and it's required for life, but there's a feedback loop. And what happens with this condition is we lose the feedback loop. So in other words, the body just pumps out more and more and more, and then it has these effects where it starts to cause, you mentioned a few things, increased drinking, urination, and increased appetite is another thing we see, weight gain. Some of the other things, I think, like thin skin, and it can also cause blood clots.
and it can certainly have a deleterious effect and shorten a dog's life. So, you know, it's wise to at least be concerned, or what do they say, alert but not alarmed, I think. So I would suggest, though, that a couple of things you mentioned, the heart murmur, that can also, when you're on medication for that, that can often cause an increase in water intake as well, and heart disease itself will cause an increase in... drinking. So you might find that some of that is an effective medication or the heart disease, just depending on how severe that is. Otherwise, the problem with Cushing's is that to diagnose it, we have to measure cortisol level after we stimulate or suppress the adrenal glands. So it's quite a complicated test. It's not something that we just rock in and go, well, my dog's 11. I want to get him tested for Cushing's. Now, there are some urine tests that can be done that increase our likelihood, but it doesn't actually diagnose it.
I would say just monitor for symptoms, and it's probably worthwhile, with the heart murmur at least and being on medication, to be having an annual blood test. And when you get that done, they're not going to be able to diagnose Cushing's, but they're going to be able to monitor things like liver enzymes, which will often increase if you have excess cortisol. You'll see an increase in a liver enzyme called alkaline phosphatase. So that's one of the markers that we tend to look at. And other than that, as I said, just monitor for symptoms and don't worry too much about whether we've got Cushing's or not. I think I'd just be worrying about heart disease and then getting a checkup.
And Leslie at Salamander Bay, your 15-year-old dog's got some problems. Hi. Hello, Dave. Thank you for taking the call. No worries. Thanks, Leslie. I'm feeling really guilty because I do realise this is my fault, but having done it, I kind of need some help. My little girl is just about 15. Everything that can go wrong with a dog is wrong with her. But if someone comes to the door that she likes, she's like a two-year-old, I can't really find a good enough reason to put her down yet. Oh, she could be 20 before you know it. Well, she acts like a two-year-old when she sees her. She's playing me like a fiddle, I can tell you.
I'm really concerned with what's happened with her eyes. For some reason, she's really, really feeling the cold. And she looks like a long-haired husky at the moment in a miniature sort of a way. But I've neglected to... She's always had problems with the stuff that comes out of her eyes. And it's always been a problem. And I've always, when I've been doing her face, used a really little ticker.
to do it, and she thought it'd been quite good. But I'd let her go because I've just brushed her. She hasn't had a groom for a while, but she's brushed and she looks great. So they've all gunked up, have they? My word, and it's like a rock. Yeah, I've seen a lot of dogs with this sort of problem, and one of the things is if it's left for any length of time, underneath the skin, underneath the hair around there, it just gets clumped together, and then you've got this protonaceous gunk that just sits there, and it's sitting against the skin. So what happens is now the skin starts to...
get excess moisture and it macerates and it gets really inflamed. So, you know, it's not just the appearance, at least. You've now got infection and yeast problems and things like that. One of the things about these little guy shih tzus and pugs and things like that is they've got, I'm not going to say deformed, but certainly their nasolacrimal duct, which is the tear duct that goes from the middle of the eye down to the nose. We've got them. They've got them. But in those guys, they often, those ducts will be blocked.
and so or they just don't take enough flow and the tears spill over the front of their eyelids and that's why you're always constantly having to bathe them so that look really the best thing to do is it just depends on how hard and severe these are a warm a warm yeah a warm cloth might be able to start to soften it up but a lot of time i've had them where we've had to anesthetize dogs that have had really severe crusting around the eyes, and particularly because we start to see that disease in the skin and they may need some other treatment. The other thing is you can also get an increase in conjunctivitis associated with that as well. So I'd certainly be having a chat to the vet and probably need a check-up because it is going to be painful otherwise. All right. Best of luck with all of that. Thank you so much, Leslie. It's one of those things, so you've just got to push through and get it fixed. All right. We've just about run out of time, so thank you, Dr. Dave. We've finally got a couple of calls for you.
I'm good for something. Next time we'll be bringing you a list of topics. We'll burn through about 10 of those. I'd love to. And Julie, everyone was giving you the love today. So thank you for your input. All your questions on behaviour. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this podcast from 2NURFM at the University of Newcastle. You'll find them all at 2NURFM.com.