Security blankets have great value—just ask Linus Van Pelt of Peanuts cartoon fame. His blanket gave him enough confidence to handle whatever life threw at him, especially out in the great big, wide world.

A blanket can help your dog handle adventures away from home, too. If your dog learns that a certain blanket is his, and often lies on it no matter where it is placed around the house, he will likely be more comfortable away from home if the blanket goes, too. It provides many of the advantages of bringing his crate with you wherever you go, but it is more portable. Blankets are lighter, easier to carry and can be taken lots of places that a crate can’t go.

If your dog is used to a particular blanket, it is so much easier to help him feel comfortable in a new place. You can bring it with you to friends’ houses, when you travel, to the park, to the vet, or anywhere else your dog goes. Just place it on the floor where you want your dog to lie down, and it will let your dog know that he has a spot to call his own. That helps your dog relax, and also indicates to him where you want him to go.

Blankets are commonly used in this way with service dogs. Service dogs are regularly asked to lie down and stay in a particular spot, both at home and when out and about. Blankets provide an easy way to show a service dog where you want him to lie down, whether it’s at a restaurant, in an airplane, in a meeting at work, at a conference, on a bus or at any social gathering.

The first step in training a dog to happily lie down and stay on a blanket no matter where you put it is to teach the dog to associate good things with the blanket. Put the blanket on the floor at home, put treats on it and encourage your dog to go get the treats. (Most dogs will need no encouragement.) Move the blanket around to new places in your house and repeat. Once your dog happily goes to the blanket, start asking him to sit and then to lie down on it, frequently moving it to new places in your home and giving lots of treats when he does what you want him to do.

The next step is to ask your dog to do some stays on the blanket, and reinforce that behavior with treats. Again, make sure to move the blanket around to various places so that your dog is learning to stay on the blanket rather than on one particular spot on the floor.

Once your dog is comfortable doing stays on the blanket at home and has learned that his blanket is the place to be, work on teaching him to do the same behavior when he is elsewhere. In a new place, start by tossing treats on the blanket, then ask for sits and downs, and finally stays. Some dogs transfer their knowledge of staying on the blanket easily to new places. Other dogs may seem to be starting over in the learning process when you are away from home.

Always help your dog to succeed by not asking him to do more than he is capable of doing. It may seem odd that your dog sees the blanket at home and immediately heads over to it, but becomes utterly confused about what you want him to do with the blanket at someone else’s house. Some dogs are nervous in a new environment, which affects their performance, and other dogs simply don’t understand that the task is the same even though it’s in a new place. It’s common for dogs to progress through the steps of the process faster in each new place than they did at home when they were first learning about the blanket, no matter how confused they seem the first time you take the blanket on the road.

Once a dogs has been to multiple places and happily goes to lie down and stay on his blanket, it’s typical to be able to put that blanket anywhere and have him feel comfortable. Most dogs who are used to lying down on a particular blanket will immediately feel quite relaxed on it no matter where you are and where on the floor you place it. That’s really the great value of a security blanket for dogs—being able to help your dog feel at home anywhere.

Dogs add a lot to our lives, but they may take some of it back each morning when we are trying to get ready to go to work. Often, dogs make it even harder than it would otherwise be to get to work on time. There are oh-so-many ways that dogs regularly interfere with their guardian’s good intentions to be punctual. Do any of the following scenarios seem familiar to you?

He messed with your sleep by hogging the bed and the covers or by bumping into you as he was dreaming. You end up oversleeping.

You take him out for his walk and he just won’t poop, causing you to make the walk longer than your schedule can accommodate.

He won’t take his medication, and you absolutely have to get it in him before your leave.

You have trouble getting your dog into the crate. The resistance means that this is more time consuming than you had figured it would be. (Corollary—the dog is hiding to avoid being put in the crate.)

Your walk with your dog was so enjoyable that you took too much extra time. You enjoyed the early morning peacefulness, but now you’re going to have to rush to stay on schedule.

Your dog is in the yard but instead of coming in when you call, he starts a not-so-fun game of catch-me-if-you-can. By the time he decided to come in, it’s too late for you to make it to work on time.

You had to clean up a huge mess that he made. The two most likely messes are a potty accident or the vestiges of a trash party. Few of us ever add in a safety factor to our morning routine to account for these kinds of events.

Your dog was on the receiving end of a skunk’s spraying, and in order to save your house, you have to clean him up before you can leave him there. (Also, he will likely be a lot happier when he has been de-skunked.)

Along the same lines, he found a way to collect every burr on the property in his fur, and you have to remove them before leaving the house for his comfort and safety as well as to prevent a huge mess in your house.

You just don’t want to leave him for the day, and who can blame you? You prolong the inevitable to spend a bit more time together, and then you end up being late for work.

No matter how much we love our dogs, it can be frustrating when they make it extra challenging to get to work on time. How has your dog made you late for work?

It’s hard for almost everybody to leave a dog behind for travel, whether it is business related or purely recreational. We miss our dogs when we go, even if we are headed off on a grand adventure. Beyond the emotional strain of taking off while our best friend stays behind, there are many roadblocks to feeling comfortable about it. No matter how caring the person is who is taking care of your dog, there is often at least one concern about what the people will (or won’t) do.

They will let dogs develop bad habits. It’s common to worry that other people will let them develop bad habits. Perhaps you do not tolerate begging, but you know that the people watching your dog will offer him a tidbit or two from the dinner table. Even though this will not likely cause immediate harm to your dog, you know that you will have to work extra hard to teach your dog that begging is still not going to work in your house, even if the dog sitter gave in to it. The same goes for allowing your dog up on the furniture. It’s a hassle if other people allow your dog to sleep on the bed or rest on the couch and then they try to do this when you are home. Even if your dogs have been forbidden to get on the furniture for years, a few days with a dog sitter can undo a lot of your efforts. (Confession: I have done this as the dog sitter—let a dog up on the furniture at my house when he isn’t allowed to do it at home. What can I say? I was weak and gave in to temptation. I fessed up to the guardian, who was a sport about it.)

They won’t be giving enough. Will they give my dog enough love? Will they give my dog enough exercise? Will they give my dog enough attention? It’s hard for many people to imagine that another person can do enough for their dog. It’s hard to leave your dog for any reason, but especially so if you have doubts that someone else will care enough about them to make sure that they are happy, whether that means lots of time playing fetch, having a variety of things to chew on or going outside enough to let them burn off some energy.

They won’t manage potential mischief by removing temptation. A lot of people are completely used to making sure the trash can is covered, out of sight, or otherwise dog-proofed. Likewise, it becomes second nature for many guardians to keep the counters clear of food. If the people watching a dog are not accustomed to these basic habits, there is risk of both trash parties and counter surfing incidents. It’s especially important to make sure that the dog can’t get access to things that are certainly dangerous such as medicines or household cleaning products. Many people are used to managing these situations, but know that their friends who take care of the dog are not.

They won’t be cautious enough about bolting out the door. Perhaps the most serious concern for many guardians when others people watch their dogs is making sure that the dog does not run out the door. This is an extremely important issue because a dog who gets out is a dog who may be in danger. The scariest risk in many areas is that the dog will get hit by a car, but lost dogs or dogs who are taken in as a pet by someone else are often dogs who escaped a house. Many guardians are used to minding the door to keep a dog who likes to make a break for it safely inside. However, sometimes dog sitters are not as vigilant about it, especially if they are not used to dogs who try to sneak out the door.

What’s your biggest worry when other people take care of your dog?

All dogs come equipped with powerful jaws and teeth capable of inflicting injury, but they vary in their willingness to use them as weapons. Most save them for marrow bones, chews or Kongs, a quality that makes for good pets and great friends. The degree to which dogs learn not to use the full force of their mouths on people and other dogs is called “bite inhibition,” and it is the most important part of a dog’s education.

Unfortunately, all dogs are likely to experience unpleasant or stressful incidents, but those with proper bite inhibition will not cause much (if any) damage in response. That’s why bite inhibition is so valuable. If an injured or terrified dog air-snaps or inhibits his bite so effectively that contact with another dog or person causes no pain or injury, that’s a manageable problem by most people’s standards. If a dog with poor bite inhibition is in the same situation and inflicts serious damage, it’s a potentially disastrous problem from a physical, emotional and even legal standpoint.

Consider the following incidents from my own case files.

A visiting child loses his temper when the family dog distracts him during a game of ping pong by yawning and whining. The child hits the dog in the face with the ping-pong paddle, and the dog runs away yelping. A teenager tries to dress up her dog to match her own outfit, and the dog resists. As she continues forcing the clothes on him, he whines and struggles. After several minutes, the dog growls and snaps at her face but makes no contact. An elderly man trips and falls onto his dog while the dog is eating. The dog bites the man on the leg, leaving no mark. A toddler tries to climb on her sleeping dog to ride him like a horse. The dog stands up and begins to walk away, but when she tries once again to get on his back, he bites her on the shoulder, causing a bruise. When a man reaches to pet his friend’s dog, his watch catches on the dog’s collar. He gently tries to disentangle himself, and the dog bites him on the leg, leaving two puncture marks and some bruising. A woman walks into her dining room, sees a dog toy under the table and reaches down to get it. Her dog races in from the living room and bites her arm repeatedly, resulting in multiple punctures along with fractures to her wrist and arm that require several surgeries to fix.

In each instance, it’s easy to see why the dog was distressed. Yet, the seriousness of the responses was not directly related to the injustice or pain suffered by the dog, but rather, to the dog’s ability to exercise proper bite inhibition. It’s no exaggeration to say that bite inhibition can be the difference between success and failure in treating behavior problems, and even between life and death for the dog.

When evaluating risk, it’s reasonable to ask what’s the worst that could happen if for example, a gate is left open, a leash breaks or a person barges in unannounced. If the answer is, “Someone could get really spooked and be furious with us because our dog may bark, lunge or snap,” many people would be willing to take that chance. If instead, the answer is, “Someone could be badly and even permanently injured, require medical care such as surgery or be deeply traumatized,” far fewer would be able to live with that risk. The answer is really important because it will generally determine how willing people are to live with the risk, which in turn influences how committed they are to their dog and working to improve his behavior.

Some dogs develop the bite inhibition so essential for navigating life’s tricky and unexpected events while others don’t. Both genetics and learning influence the process. Though there’s genetic variation among individual dogs, some types of dogs are famous for soft mouths. It’s not surprising, for example, that dogs bred to retrieve game use their mouths gently to avoid damaging that game. Retrievers are also well known for being “mouthy,” meaning that they use their mouth, including their teeth, often. Though there are cases of dogs who are gentle with their mouths while retrieving but do not have good bite inhibition in social situations, it is more common that dogs who are able to exercise control in one situation are able to behave similarly in others. That does not mean that dogs with good bite inhibition won’t kill squirrels or tear up their chew toys. Bite inhibition is all about exercising control in social situations, but that does not necessarily apply to predatory behavior or to play with objects.

Experience with play biting and mouthing often leads to better bite inhibition, and like anything else, those who practice become the most skilled. Littermates are a puppy’s first teachers, one of several reasons that it’s beneficial for puppies to stay with their litter for about two months. As the young dogs play, they use their mouths to tug or gnaw on their siblings’ ears, tails, paws and loose skin. If one puppy mouths another too hard, the puppy who got hurt will yelp, stop playing and move away. This teaches puppies that hard bites, even if not intended to cause pain, result in an interruption in play. Singleton puppies and those taken from their litter before the age of five or six weeks often lack proper bite inhibition. It seems that puppies need their littermates’ feedback to learn to control the pressure they exert with their mouths.

Once puppies head to new homes, their education needs to continue, and that includes socialization with other puppies and dogs. This does not mean throwing a puppy into the dog-park scrum and hoping it will all work out. In that setting, puppies are far too likely to be overwhelmed and to experience it as we might experience a gladiator pit. Rather, it means supervised play dates with carefully selected and well-behaved canines.

Lessons from people are also useful in teaching bite inhibition. Though using their mouths on our hands, arms, legs, hair and clothes is natural behavior for them, dogs must learn to interact in ways that are appropriate in our world. An effective technique, one based on puppies’ earlier experiences with their littermates, is to startle and then redirect the young offender. If a puppy mouths too hard, yelp with a puppy-like sound (Aaarp! is the closest description of this sound that can be spelled), which often interrupts the puppy’s biting. Take advantage of that pause in the behavior by immediately giving the puppy something appropriate to chew on. Good options include bones, chew toys, Kongs, squeaky toys and stuffed animals.

A common mistake when using this method is to make the yelping sound and then fail to redirect the puppy. In most cases, although the sound will startle the puppy into a break in the mouthing, he or she will go right back to it unless given another, more appropriate object to focus on. Many people begin by doing both steps (startle and redirect), but as time goes on, they switch to startling without bothering to redirect. They then report that the technique doesn’t work.

While more than 90 percent of puppies will respond to this method if it is used correctly and consistently, there are indeed dogs who seem to get worse in response to high-pitched yelps, becoming even mouthier and more revved up. For those dogs, it’s usually effective to startle the dog with a deep-voiced “Hey!” or “Ouch!” Otherwise, the technique of interrupting the behavior and then redirecting the dog to an appropriate object is the same. If the puppy fails to respond to either sound, walk away so that he learns that biting brings an end to the fun.

It’s important to begin by startling and redirecting the puppy only in response to the most forceful bites. Employing this approach with every instance of mouthing can be overwhelming to the puppy, who is, after all, doing what comes naturally and exploring the world by mouth. So, the first goal is to teach the puppy not to mouth so hard rather than not to mouth at all. When the hardest bites have been inhibited, the next step is to startle and redirect after medium-force bites. Finally, once the puppy has learned to mouth people with only the gentlest of pressure, teach him not to do this at all by employing the same technique in response to any occasion in which his teeth touch delicate human skin, hair or clothes.

There are many recommendations out there for stopping puppy mouthing and I advise against most of them because they are inhumane and generally ineffective. For example, do not hold the dog’s muzzle closed, yell at the dog, jam your fingers into the dog’s mouth or swat the dog. Basically, it comes down to one piece of general advice: Don’t do anything that involves any kind of physical punishment that causes pain or frightens the dog.

Proper bite inhibition is incredibly important, and developing it requires lessons early in life. The normal process of learning bite inhibition is linked with puppy development and it can’t usually be learned later in life with the same degree of success. Dogs without this essential skill may cause severe damage—punctures, painful bruising and even broken bones on occasion. Learning bite inhibition is one of the first and most essential lessons for puppies, because it is about safety as well as being a well-behaved, polite member of society.