Animal Trainer Mary Green Offers Advice For Your Dog's Behavior

Animal trainer Mary Green of K9 Manners stopped by to answer some behavioral questions from viewers.

She spoke with Autumn Bracey on News On 6 at noon.

Autumn: We're going to start with our first question. It's from Lisa. Lisa says, "My six-month-old Newfoundland is so excited to see me, but jumps up and nearly knocks me over. I don't want to scold him, but this could be dangerous." What do you have to say today?

Green: I know, and he's just so exuberant and happy and loving, and "Mom's home, I'm so excited.” But that's a big dog, and he's going to get bigger. So, my advice is to really reinforce that sit. Maybe even send him to get a toy. Don't pet him until he's sitting. Teach him a really solid sit for treats. Have some treats handy by your door, whichever door you come in. Have them handy so you can reward him. Most dogs early on, learn that they can sit and get a treat. So that's what you want for him. The treat is getting to be petted by mom, so just be really low key about your greetings when you come home, and just kind of make it not a big event. And hopefully, you can get that settled before he gets much older.

Autumn: You said they can weigh, like, 80 pounds.

Green: They can be big guys. They're lovely, sweet dogs, though.

Autumn: All right, we will go to our next question. It's from Pat. Pat says, "My dog is too big for me to lift into the tub, but he's afraid to get in, and I'm scared he's going to bite me. What are some of the options?"

Green: Yeah, that's kind of scary. Well, first of all, I would say maybe not take on grooming and bathing yourself. There are a lot of good mobile groomers that will come to your house, and they're very skilled at handling dogs without getting bitten, right? So, I would practice maybe teaching him to get up the stairs or a lot of little pet ramps and stairs that you can get to teach them how to walk on that. Sometimes you can start feeding them in the bathtub. I know it sounds weird, but if you put the dog bowl with food in the bathtub, then they have a really good incentive to figure out how to get in there on their own, and then it's not associated with a bath. So, you kind of want to maybe try and associate the bathtub without a bath before you go to that. But maybe consider your options and having someone else to do that, do that task for you.

Autumn: Can you put something over their mouths to deter them from biting?

Green: You can, yeah, you can muzzle them, but it is kind of a last resort. That adds a lot of fear and anxiety and stress to a dog, so we kind of like to muzzle as a last resort to keep everybody safe sometimes in that situation because I think you could train the dog to wear the muzzle. We teach them to wear a party hat. That's what we call the muzzle. And we make a big, you know, like a, like, a happy experience about it. But we don't like to just put a muzzle on a dog and then add to a stressful situation anyway. That just adds more.