Puppy Culture Potluck: Ep32 - Puppies Who Can't Settle Down in the Evening: The Arsenic Hour

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I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.

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And this is a Puppy Culture
Potluck podcast.

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You bring the topics,

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we bring the conversation.

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Today's question comes from our puppy

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owner, a discussion group
from our puppy owner course.

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And it's about what
we call the arsenic hour.

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And here's the question.

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What are your best tips

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for, quote, witching hour, unquote.

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We have an 11.5 weeks Spinone Italiano

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that we brought home
just over two weeks ago.

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He settles down for naps during the day
after some play and training.

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But after his early evening nap,

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some play, dinner, potty,

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he gets over aroused and overtired.

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And we cannot, for the life of us,
redirect

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his mouthing to a toy or chew

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and he cries in his
X pen and jumps at the sides.

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We are

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trying to establish a routine
with a licking mat, Kong,

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or other soothing activity to transit him
and bring down his arousal,

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but it is a nightly struggle.

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Wow. Yeah, I feel you.

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It's what we call the arsenic hour.

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You don't know whether to give it
or to take it,

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but somebody is going to die.

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And I just want to say this is true.

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Not just of puppies.

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Although it's worse with puppies,
of course, because they're worse.

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But it's true of adult dogs as well.

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Frequently my adult dogs will become just

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restless and annoying
and just unable to settle.

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Right around that 7 p.m.

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hour.

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It is often tied

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to that time
just on the cusp of day and night.

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Okay, so it's just maybe just past dusk.

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I think that part

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of the vigilance
and the hyperactivity that we see around

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that time is a natural response
to the changing of the guard, so to speak,

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because what you have is your daytime
animals are all going to sleep

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and your crepuscular animals
are coming out.

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Those animals that come out right around
dusk, things like deer, rabbits,

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skunks, coyotes, bears,

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bobcats, foxes, and even bats.

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These are a lot of the natural
predators of wild canids,

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so it's not surprising

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that this sort of transition
from day into night, when these animals

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all become active,
can be a time of sort of hyper

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arousal for dogs in general.

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It doesn't make it
any more pleasant for us,

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but maybe it makes it
a little bit easier to bear

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just knowing that there is possibly
an evolutionary basis for this.

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Okay,
so what can what can we do about her,

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how can we help this woman with the 11.5

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week old Spinone?

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First of all,

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your puppy needs to learn cues

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for when their opportunity
for interaction is open or closed.

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For me, 7:30pm at night

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I've already played with my puppy.

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I've fed my puppy.

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I pottyed my puppy.

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I'm going to start
getting that puppy into a routine where

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at that time they're going into bed
because she is correct

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that they do become over
aroused at that hour,

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but they're kind of building
on all their insanity

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of the day, and by the end they just
they got nothing left.

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And again, we talk about this
in the course with self-regulation

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that they got
a tiny little prefrontal cortex

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just dangling out there
not connected to the back of their brain,

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and they don't
really have a lot of self-control.

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And they probably use it up in the first
15 minutes of their day.

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By the time you get to the end of the day,
they've got zero self-control.

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They're not going to be able
to self-regulate.

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They are going to bite you.

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So at best,
you're in a management situation.

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For me,

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I want to start getting my puppy
into a routine at night.

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By this time where you're going
to get a bone, you're going to go to bed.

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No matter what you do.

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I am not taking you out. You're done.

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Your day is over.

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Now again, I can't really do this

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topic justice here
because I it's what the course is about.

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You do have to make sure
that you've been fair to your dog

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that you've met all their needs, that
they've had enough time out, etc., etc.

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but assuming that the puppy legitimately
has had a good day

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and it's time to go to bed, it's
time to go to bed.

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The end of story.

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Okay,
so we're going to start teaching the puppy

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that we're going to ignore them
if they really mug to get out,

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when you've given them a chew toy
and they've had enough time out

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and it's time to go to bed.

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It's difficult for me to

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answer this in a vacuum also,
but I'm assuming that

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they didn't just get home at 7:30pm
and then the puppy's out of control.

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I'm assuming they've been home either
all day or for a while,

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and this is the end of, again,
a good day for this puppy.

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So that's my first piece of advice,
is that you do have to develop

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a non-negotiable bedtime
routine for your puppy.

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Now, some people wrote

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in with great advice
about managing this behavior

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because honestly,

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sometimes you are going to be sort of
working in that hot zone with your puppy.

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Sometimes it's really not time

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for your puppy to go to bed,
and it is the arsenic hour

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or close to it,
or the puppy is just over aroused.

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So, one

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woman wrote in,
which was a great observation

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that she sits on the floor
and plays with long toys.

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So not toys where you're holding it

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in your hand, where the puppy could
potentially grab your hand.

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So like a flirt pole
or a long octopus toy or something

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like that, just to have the puppies mouth
away from you as you're playing with him.

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The other thing that people

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mentioned
about the crying in the X-pen in the area

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P, as we call it, is that sometimes
distance can be an issue.

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In other words,
if you have your puppy with you,

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you're
probably should be with you, close to you.

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And if you have your puppy in their X-pen,
it can be difficult.

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If they're in their X-pen
and they can see you

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and they want to get to you,
and it's not so much

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see you with their eyes as see you like
you're within ten feet of them.

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And they're like, hey, you know,
I really I have a shot at this.

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This is something I wrote an article
on this called Attention Monsters

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that we hope that breeders have worked on,
because it is

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one of the three kinds of alone
that we want to teach our puppies.

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We want to teach our puppies to be alone.

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Alone, like in another room.

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We want to teach our puppies to be alone
with you

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just sitting there and them in an X pen
right near to them.

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And then we want to teach the puppies
to be alone, like with you

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doing stuff in the room
and the puppy in the X pen.

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But it sounds like this puppy
might not know those three kinds of alone.

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So yes, you you should teach those
three kinds of alone.

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But right now, for expediency,
you might try just moving the X pen

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to a place where the puppy can't see you,

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because this woman said that she did
have it set up so the puppy could see her.

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Probably not seeing you would help.

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I also just want to draw up here
that I'm not throwing

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the breeder under the bus
and saying that the breeder didn't

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teach the three kinds of alone,
because it is possible

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that the breeder taught
those three kinds of alone,

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because puppies
are very opportunistic creatures

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and even if they've learned,

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basic separation conditioning

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when they get to their new homes,
it does not take them long

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to figure out
that their owners are a soft touch.

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Okay.

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So they'll get in there, they'll whimper,
they'll cry once they're going

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to get the attention, and they're like,
hey, you know, I'm off to the races.

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I know how to work this game.

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I just want to clarify
that I'm not giving you

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a blanket edict
to let your puppy cry it out.

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I think you have to do a balancing act.

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You have to talk to your breeder
about how much crate

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and confinement conditioning
the puppy has had.

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So you know what your baseline is.

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Again, this is stuff
we all talk about in the course.

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But for this woman, right now,
what she's telling me,

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I think maybe just moving that

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enclosure further away

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from where she is
so the puppy can't see her,

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and letting the puppy

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work it out with the
with the chew bone or something over there

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where the puppy does
not feel like they have

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an immediate opportunity
to be let out by the owner,

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I think that's going to be
the best course of action here.

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So Rebecca, one of our moderators,
said, you're on the right track.

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The witching hour is due to fatigue.

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I put mine away a bit
before the time they start witching

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and give them high value chew projects
or food puzzles to do and self-soothe.

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But there's likely to be protesting
early on.

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Yeah, this is a great point,
which is what is your antecedent?

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It's predictable.

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If you start tracking it,
it's very predictable.

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When your puppy's
going to start getting out of control.

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So you want to just get ahead of that.

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And if you know, it's always,
you know, right after it gets dark,

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you know, maybe they just eat dinner
a little bit earlier

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and maybe they go in
just 15 minutes before it gets dark.

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Then one of the other

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puppy owners in the group wrote this in,
and I thought it was really sweet.

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She said: Hi
Lisa, we're in a similar spot.

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When Willy gets that way, usually

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at about the exact time
we're trying to wind down for the day.

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We put him in his area,
which happens to also

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be my home office
and is adjacent to the living room.

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At first
he really didn't like being separated,

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but we always made it a good thing
and gave him a Kong, bully stick

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or something similar to distract him
from the stress of being separated.

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Now we just say something
like “time for a timeout”,

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and he usually goes running for the office
for his special treat.

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I just put him in there
a couple minutes ago and he was asleep

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in less than five minutes.

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I struggled
with it at first because I'm a huge softy,

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but it's worked out best for all of us
now that I've accepted

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that he just can't settle sometimes
without the separation.

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Wow. You know, that's just that
really warms my heart to hear that kind

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of personal growth in a puppy owner that,
you know, that realization that

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it's a knife in your heart.

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You feel bad when they cry,
but sometimes they just need a nap.

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So I liked this assortment of suggestions
because again,

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we got some management suggestions
about how to play with a puppy that maybe

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is in a little bit of over arousal
because you really

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you're not going to manage
or train out the puppy.

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They're going to be puppies
to some extent,

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and there is going to be some over
arousal, especially as the day goes on

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and you're going to have to work
a little bit in that hot zone, right?

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I mean, I think a lot of puppy owners
think that with the right

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training methods, they're never going to
have to experience a puppy.

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So those management things

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for when the puppy is being
a real full on puppy are great.

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A bigger toy, a longer toy, avoiding

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getting getting bitten
by the way that you play with the puppy.

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These are all great suggestions.

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If your puppy is food motivated enough,

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what I will do
is give them a very high value bone

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so that they'll
they'll be in the room with me.

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But self-soothing by chewing.

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So if I feel like I still really want
to have that puppy out with me

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longer and also be shaping calm behaviors,
be sort of conditioning the puppy

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to have a feeling of calmness in the house
when they're with me.

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I will then sometimes give them that high

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value chew that I might have otherwise
given them in the pen.

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I'll give that
to them in the room with me.

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So I hope that those

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are some good selections
that will help you listeners

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when you're dealing with a puppy
at the arsenic hour.

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If you liked this podcast,
you'll love our puppy owner bundles.

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We have bundles with courses,
books, and films.

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Check them all out at puppyculture.com.

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Well, that's it for this time.

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Thanks for listening. Bye bye.