Celebrity dog trainer Joel Silverman

Celebrity dog trainer Joel Silverman shares tips for training dogs and making the most out of the spring weather. He emphasizes the importance of socializing and desensitizing dogs to people, places, and things. Silverman recommends using play and tugging as redirection during training, and suggests using treats as positive reinforcement. He also discusses the benefits of dog parks and pet-friendly cities in promoting socialization and reducing the likelihood of dogs being returned to shelters. Silverman provides resources such as Bill Jack Dog Food and his website for further information. Additionally, he mentions that cats can also be trained to perform basic commands. celebrity dog trainer Joel Silverman joining me with some some good information this morning. If you want to get outside and celebrate and maybe get the spring weather going and take your dog out and do some training and just have some fun. And Joel, good morning. Welcome back. Great to have you on RNJ Radio again. Hey, good morning. Thanks for having me. You know, maybe that's the thing. You know, people are going to the shelters which adopt pets, Joel, which I really like to see. You know, shelter pets, of course, just make magnificent pets and they're looking for those forever homes, of course. When someone adopts that pet, the first thing you want to do is you want to get outside, you want to get some exercise, maybe have your pet learn the perimeter of your property and be able to have a nice fun time outdoors. What's the first thing that you would tell someone who maybe just adopt maybe a puppy with a lot of energy, a little bit on the rambunctious side? What's the best way to kind of get the training underway so that the person and the pet can have the most enjoyment? Well, I think the big thing is people have to remember that, you know, during this, if you have adopted your pet somewhere in November, December, January, something like that, and you most likely have not had a chance to get your dog out and to socialize your dog. And what happens is if that continues, the dog never gets a chance to be around people, places, and things, and they lose that chance for desensitization to be desensitized. And desensitization and socialization is a huge part of the training process. And so, you know, it's really, really essential that people now, as the weather starts getting nicer, you know, start getting your dog out, getting around people, getting around other dogs, you know, socializing your dog, which isn't to say, you know, I'm not a big fan of just all the, every dog just meet each other, you know, that type of thing. But you want to be able to allow the dog to, you know, see other dogs and stuff like that, and to just, you know, make, you know, see how the dog reacts to other dogs and things like that, and just to be around other people and just let people become, let people become a positive thing in your dog's life, other people. And that's going to help you a lot. But if you don't do that, you know, if people do not do that, and what ends up happening is you build this thing where the dog doesn't get around people and, you know, socialize around people, you know, a good example is just, is things, we talk about things that have wheels, you know, skateboards, bicycles, cars, anything that moves like that, they're not a chance to, they don't have a chance to be around. We could look at those and go, oh yeah, that's just a normal thing. Well, that's a very weird thing for them, especially a skateboard that makes noise and has those wheels. So, you know, again, getting your dog around those types of things is absolutely huge. Yeah, that's very interesting. And it seems like patience also plays a key role in this, Joel. I recently had some in-studio visitors from the Seeing Eye, which operates here in New Jersey. They do amazing work, of course. I know you're familiar with their organization. Yeah. Oh my gosh, those people are amazing. I know very little about what they do because that's not my lifestyle, but I have an absolute ton of respect for anybody that trains dogs, you know, to help people in any way, whether it's Seeing Eye dogs or hearing. I tell people all the time, you know, I grew up as a movie animal trainer and as a Hollywood animal trainer, you know, we always get a second take, you know, and when the world they live in, they don't get a second take. Yeah, just watching the trainers and the dogs interact and eventually they become this this very focused and very aware animal that the safety, of course, of the person that they're walking with becomes paramount. To watch that transition is just so interesting to me. No, those people are amazing. I mean, I tell people all the time. I can't tell you the amount of respect I have for those people. Yeah, really amazing people. What's the best toys? Is it just throwing the tennis ball and having the dog grab it and bring it back? What do you like to do in terms of toys and training toys for your pets? You know, that is a great question because I actually tour. I do a training workshop tour now. I started touring about two and a half years ago with two other guys. We're three probably the top draws in America. I created this tour. We have three different styles of training. One of the guys that I started, that I met like about five years ago, he uses play and tugging as redirection. He redirects animals that way and he uses that for almost all his types of training. Tugging, allowing your dog to tug and to play and to win and to create that biologically fulfilled type of thing is absolutely huge for a dog. I think play is a big, big deal. Balls are great. A tug toy, having something the dog can tug on, tug, tug, tug, letting the dog win. You always want to tug and let that dog win, let him shake it, let him run around, let him prance around with it, celebrate it, and then you come back again and just really, really build that play relationship. That's huge. Whether you're training your dog, whatever you're doing, after you're done training your dog, I'm a huge fan of allowing your dog to play and allowing your dog to tug and teaching your dog how to do that. Excellent. Celebrity dog trainer Joel Silverman is my guest this morning at the RNJ Morning Program, talking about springtime safety and training for your pets. Maybe you just adopted a pet from a shelter, bringing them to their forever home, or maybe just you want to shake off the winter blues and get outside and get some exercise along with your pet. There's got to be some kind of reward for this, Joel. Do you have a treat? What treat would you have people use when it comes to training as a little reward for a job well done? Well, I tell people all the time when you're training your dog, you always want to make sure you're using positive reinforcement. I use treats to train behaviors, okay, and we'll use something the dog really, really goes crazy over. You know, you always want to remember when you're working with your dog, you know, we're talking about a short one to three minute session. Keep it short, make it fun, and as you're doing that, if you're giving your dog a treat that the dog really, really likes something, and you leave the session wanting more, that dog is going to look forward to that treat because the session was so short, and that's really what you want to do. Now, I tell people I've been, you know, I met Bob Kelly who's the president of Bill Jack Dog Food about, I've been in 30 years ago on a TV series, over 30 years ago, Empty Desk. I was doing that. We were spin-off of Golden Girls. I think maybe we talked about that before, and I trained drivers on the show, and I met Bob back then, and he explained to me about this, the food and the treats and things like that and the difference, you know, the difference in the food and how it's processed and things like that, and also the treats, and long story short, I started eating these treats, and to be honest with you, there's a lot of trainers in Hollywood that still use those treats, a lot of those treats, so Bill Jack's got these really, really great liver treats which I use, and I recommend these ones called Little Jacks. They have a, they're just about a third the size of the big treats that they have, so I can use a lot more of those ones because I like feeding small amounts of treats myself, and just really, really quick for people to remember, and when you are training your dog, use treats to train the behavior. Once the dog is trained, you can fade out the treat using tactile rewards, which is petting the dog, so if you used your treats to train the behavior, now maybe it's like 25% of the time you're going to give the dog a tactile reward, which is petting, 75% treat, then go to 50% treat, 50% tactile reward, then 75% tactile reward, 25% treat, but you want to start fading out that once the behavior is trained because if you don't fade out the treat, the dog is just going to be working for the food, you know, as kind of more or less a bribe, so that's the art to doing, to dog training, really, as well. Excellent advice. One last thing that I want to ask you, Joel, is it seems like we're getting our cities across New Jersey, maybe you've seen it across the country as well, a little bit more pet-friendly. We're seeing more and more big cities allocate parkland to things like dog parks and just more recreational activities. Encouraging to see? What do you think about when it comes to just making our cities more pet-friendly and dog parks and things like that? Are we on the right track? Is there more that maybe we could do to make our cities a little more pet-friendly? No, I think that's great. That's awesome. I love to see cities doing that. Anything they could do to really get people and their dogs together and to get their dogs and dogs out is huge because if people are creating dog parks or people are creating areas for people to bring their dogs to, whether it's, you know, pet-friendly coffee places or whatever, people are going to get their dogs out and like I mentioned at the very, very beginning, socialization is a very, very big part. So with whatever you're doing, you know, you have to bank on the app, you know, but remember that if somebody's taking their dogs out to socialize a dog, they have more of a chance of training their dog and the more your dog is trained, the less dog chance you have of your dog being returned back to the animal shelter and that really is what the message is all about is making sure when people adopt dogs that they keep that dog and they make, you know, they train that dog because more times than not dogs are returned back to shelters because they weren't trained and people didn't develop a relationship with their dog. So in answer to your question, yeah, getting your dog out is huge and everything that people are doing, I see a lot of that and I live in Florida, I see a lot of that here as well which is, and it's just great to see. Yeah, great catching up with you today, Joel. Do you have some social pages people can kind of see what you're up to? Yeah, you can actually go to BillJack.com, um, b-i-l-j-a-c.com if they could read about Bill Jack, read about the difference in the food, it's all done independent studies. We've got some videos there as well. You can go to my website which is JoelSilverman.net. It's free. I have free online videos right there. There's like six six-minute videos on like every behavior you can imagine and it's all free. All you do is just register, register for free and, um, and that's it. Yeah, so, um, just great. I really, really appreciate you having me. Anytime, my pleasure. And as far as training a cat goes, there's probably not enough years in my natural life to be able to train a cat to do something, is there? Well, you can actually, to be honest with you. Yeah, cats are a little different. I mean, you know, you've got to find the right cat. But, um, people go to my YouTube page. I did a TV series called, um, What Colors Your Dog? It was a syndicated TV series. It was my last show that I did about 10 years ago. And in that series, we actually, um, I had a cat training segment and I did stuff at the, at the Nevada Humane Society. We had shot right there working with different cats. So, um, train your cat to sit, to stay, to lie down, to come. But if they go to my YouTube page, they can get, they can, they can see all those videos right there. I'm going to take a look at that myself. Joel Silverman, celebrity dog trainer. Thank you for the time this morning and we'll talk again as the year moves on, my friend. Hey, thank you so much for having me.