Intro
This entry is a little confused. The headline says “my dog has suddenly started chewing things” but that’s not quite right. What I meant to say was “my dog has suddenly started chewing and eating things I’m not sure what they are.”
I know, it sounds weird to say “um, my dog has suddenly started chewing things…” but if you try it out, you will find that it works.
However, if you try this on your blog or website, the headline will get a little weird: “my dog has suddenly started chewing…?” Even if your site does not have anything to do with dogs and/or dogs doing things (and most people would never presume to say something like this), the name of your site might be taken from that one word: “zoeblogging.com.” In which case, I want to remind you that you need a name for your blog series and newsletter too: Zoops (pronounced zo-ohs).
My Dog Has Suddenly Started Chewing Things
This is the most common question I get asked by people new to Lean Startup.
Question: “Ok, my dog has suddenly started chewing things. How do I stop him? What should I do?”
Answer: We know that your dog has started chewing things. It’s not a big deal in and of itself, but what’s more important is that you aren’t doing anything to keep it from happening. So…
If your dog is chewing on something he can’t chew on because he’s a dog, it doesn’t mean that there’s a problem with that thing. It means that he isn’t interested in chewing on it, so you have to stop him from chewing on it (which is never fun).
Now the first thing you need to do is figure out why your dog can’t chew on something without biting into it. He probably can chew on something without biting into it, but his mouth isn’t trained at doing this yet. Luckily for us, the answer is pretty simple: he’s training himself to do this through experience and repetition. He’ll learn when something tastes good (or bad) and when his mouth doesn’t like the taste or texture of something (or how much of something he wants or needs), he’ll adjust his behavior accordingly until he gets what works for him at that moment — and then will continue until he stops trying in order to learn about different foods/tastes/textures/etc., etc.
The second thing we need to do if you want your dog to stop chewing objects is be consistent with verbal cues (“That looks good!”), rather than just relying on rewards (“Good boy!”). This will take some time, but if you’re consistent with rewarding your dog for not chewing objects, then eventually your dog will stop trying not to chew them because they’re so exciting! But if you reward for everything, then after a while your dog won’t be able to differentiate between what’s exciting and what’s boring — so eventually you’re going to have a very boring household! (But don’t worry; we all go through this!)
The third thing that needs doing if you want your dog not to start chewing things is be consistent with physical attention and encouragement (i.e., praise). You don’t need lots of praise or special treats — just enough attention and reinforcement so that your dog knows they’re important in front of the camera or in front of someone else who
Problem #1 – Chewing The Power Lead
We’ve all been there, at least once in our lives:
My dog has suddenly started chewing things.
My husband and I are both busy people, with lots of freelance projects to pursue. Thankfully, one of the projects we will be working on during the coming months is a very high-value one, so that hasn’t interrupted my dog’s chewing activities. However, as it turned out, the problem isn’t that my dog has suddenly started chewing things (although he has). The problem is that my husband and I have given him access to a power lead that allows him to charge our phone when plugged into it—but this means he can chew up our laptop too!
This may seem like an absurd example, but I assure you it is not. We could have bought a replacement power lead for him—for around $50—but we opted not to do so because we didn’t want to give him access to the charger when there were other devices still charging in different rooms (it might also distract him from his own sessions too). At any rate, someone else was kind enough to offer us a replacement power lead for free: rather than potentially giving him access to other devices when we leave them plugged in during our sessions on weekends, this meant he didn’t need access to our laptop at all when we weren’t using it (and hopefully wouldn’t chew anything up!).
The solution is simple: keep the power lead out of reach when your dog isn’t using it. One of many reasons why wearing your phone near your mouth at all times could be a bad idea: if he sees you typing away on your phone while holding something valuable like a tablet or laptop in your hands (or even if you are sitting down while they’re around), they tend to start chewing what they see you holding!
Problem #2 – Destructive Chewing
If you’ve started following me on Twitter, you might have seen a few tweets in the last month or so about something called “destructive chewing.” These are not your typical dog stories, but rather a series of posts on Medium with titles like “My dog has suddenly started chewing things.” The posts include pictures of the messes my dog creates as he gnaws at an object (or more accurately, what becomes of it), and then follow up with various comments about the issues he is causing for me. They are not helpful (and may even be offensive to some readers), but they are part of a larger trend: people have noticed that so-called “destructive chewing” is becoming a common problem for canines everywhere.
The problem is that we humans never realize the extent to which our actions affect our pets. All we see is an attack or an accident, when in fact our dogs do not want to destroy things at all. For example:
A few years ago I had bought some new Dog Biscuits from Amazon Prime (and they were delicious!). Then I put them in my house and left them alone for awhile to let the newness wear off; when I came back two days later they were gone! What happened? Not even a trace was left behind! When I went to look, there was just a little bit of crumpled cardboard and some ruined cookies on the ground (together with a huge hole where the biscuits used to be). It took me several minutes before I realized what had happened: My dog had chewed up one of those biscuits and thrown them away!
What makes this problem so hard to solve is that we don’t usually notice that stuff isn’t there anymore until it has been destroyed — because we don’t care. We just know it ain’t right when it happens, and then quickly forget about it. So how do we deal with this strange new phenomenon?
Developing awareness around this behavior change would be one thing — but as many owners will tell you, making sure your dog stops doing it once you notice isn’t always easy either! And what does “stop doing it once you notice” actually mean? Can you just slap him if he doesn’t stop? Nope — because given that most dogs have high prey drive and very little self-control (which puts them in danger if they try to escape
Why is My Dog Chewing So Much?
I have a dog and he picks up things, I’m not sure why.
This is a very common question that comes up in my workshops. The gist of this post is to try to explain why my dog chews things.
If you don’t have a dog, that’s ok — dogs are just like us: they chew things with gusto. But if you do have a dog, it’s important to know why your dog chews so much.
The answer is that it’s probably because your dog is bored . Boredom is something we often associate with the human condition, but it doesn’t actually get any better when we think about it from the perspective of our own dogs. We would probably describe the animal kingdom as being filled with boredom-inducing situations — and that includes humans. Our brains are wired for survival, so we want to find out what will keep us alive for as long as possible (which means finding something interesting to do). When you look at our behavior towards our own pets, it really looks like they are trying out some new approach on us — and they are doing so because they need to stay alive.
So let’s start there: there is no doubt that both animals and humans know boredom. And when we say “boredom” we mean something different than your average word meant by “boredom” (which would be more technical than life-affirming). Boredom in an animal is not just a state of mind; it also has physical consequences: muscles tense up; breathing speed changes; heart rate can increase; blood pressure can go up or down depending on the situation (it can be elevated if you aren’t necessarily interested in what was just started); and some behaviors can even be triggered by lightening (as well as by sleep deprivation). Boredom also affects how we feel about ourselves: when you think about how bored you are, usually your first reaction would be positive — when you think about how bored someone else might be instead of yourself, your first reaction would probably be negative . Boredom isn’t only subjective either: studies have shown that people who spend long periods in confined spaces tend to decrease their levels of self-esteem more than those who spend time outside , even though there’s no evidence of any difference between them in terms of other measures such as physical health or mental health . That brings
A Possible Solution – Getting Your Dog a Friend
This is a problem that has been around for over a decade, but I’ll try to make it as simple as possible.
First, the bad news: your dog has suddenly started chewing things. The good news: it’s OK.
There’s no reason to panic. This is absolutely normal behavior for your dog when it feels threatened or bored by something or someone else. It doesn’t mean you should change your behavior, but it does mean you might have a few options on how to handle this situation.
Let’s start with an obvious one: don’t engage your dog in this behavior at all. First, simply ignoring him will not work and will only amplify his stress level and make him more likely to attack other things in the household (or worse). Secondly, if he does continue to do this thing (which he may), then instead of trying to get him to stop chewing things that don’t matter, you could try distracting yourself until he leaves them alone (this will often work better if you use food instead of objects).
This approach won’t work for every situation because some dogs are more easily distracted than others; but it should certainly work if the distraction is something like a food treat – they’re hungry so they’ll probably be distracted enough by the treat itself that they won’t be able to focus on chewing anything else. For other situations though, this approach won’t work at all and you should probably just accept that your dog might chew things when he’s bored or stressed out or wants attention (there are many other examples I could give). But if you can keep yourself occupied while he chews things, chances are he’ll stop eventually even without your help or his own independent desire to help himself — which is a good thing!
That being said…
If you want him to stop chewing things that don’t matter, here’s what we need and what we can do about it:
1) his owner/handler/caretaker needs to focus on removing distractions from around him so that he’s not distracted from his beloved task (and avoid any opportunities for further contact with those distractions)
2) we need something else around our dog that distracts him from his task (like toys or even just people)
3) we need something else in our household that distracts our dog from his task (like lights off timers or playing with toys)
Conclusion
This is a joke, but it’s also a point of view.
Let me be clear: I am not saying that you should never write about your company. I think that you should write about your company as often as possible (the best topics for this are usually things which you have no business writing about at all, or things which are actually quite boring). But if you’re serious about getting people to care, there is a better way to go about it.
You need to talk up the product itself, so that users will have a reason to engage with it. You need to talk up the value of the product itself, so that users will have a reason to pay for it. You can make this much more difficult by making assumptions and creating false impressions in your customers’ minds first — and then trying hard to deliver on them later on. This is what “marketing from both ends” is all about: talking up the value proposition before (and often during) launch day and then talking up the product once it launches in order to keep people engaged enough until they get used to it and want more.
