Rethinking the Big 4 Myths of Departure Cue Training

Welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast. I'm your host Julie Naismith

and this week we're looking at triggers, pre-departure cues and tip-offs. All the things that signal

to your dog that you are about to leave. Now, you wouldn't think that it's possible to make

an episode all about something so simple, would you? Well, I'm a little bit obsessed

about this topic and I'll tell you why. We've been making it far too complicated for far

too long. There's a ton of internet advice about desensitizing to departure cues and

I'm going to explain to you today what that means. I think, as I said, that we've been

over-complicating it and making it too difficult for us and too difficult for our dog. In this

episode, I am going to unpack the topic and I'm going to tell you about the big four myths

that pervade when it comes to looking at working with pre-departure cues.

Hello and welcome to the Be Right Back Separation Anxiety Podcast. Hi, I'm Julie Naismith, dog

trainer, author and full-on separation anxiety geek. I've helped thousands of dogs overcome

separation anxiety with my books, my online programs, my trainer certification and my

Separation Anxiety Training App. And this podcast is all about sharing my tips and tricks

to help you teach your dog how to be happy at home alone too.

Today I'm talking about cues because they come up all the time in training, right? And

they're a really important part of our training. But I see so many people tying themselves

unnecessarily in knots about how to work with cues. And by cues, I mean departure cues,

the things that you do before you leave that tell your dog you're about to leave. I see

so many people tying themselves in knots when it comes to working through cues in their

training. So I thought I wanted to jump on here today and bust a few myths about the

do's and don'ts of working with cues in separation anxiety training.

A quick definition of what we're talking about. A cue is just something that says to a dog,

this is about to happen. So a cue is information. It tells our dogs about an event or a behavior

or something that's about to happen in its world. Dogs are really, really good in case

you hadn't noticed at picking up on cues. They are experts at it because they don't

speak our language. So cues give them data that they need to make sense of their world.

So they're constantly, constantly scanning for connections and associations. A really

good example and an obvious one to all of us is how many dogs get excited when we go

to the cupboard or go to the hook and we pick up a leash. Many dogs, most of our dogs probably

get excited when they see us pick up a leash. But a leash isn't something that dogs were

born loving and getting excited about. Leashes actually are pretty meaningless. That six

foot length of leather or nylon doesn't mean anything to your dog unless it starts to predict

going out for fun and that's why your dog gets excited about it. So that's what cues

are. Cues are there to tell the dog what's about to happen in its world because otherwise

it's hard for the dog to make sense of it. In separation anxiety training, departure cues

are the things that say to your dog, we're about to leave. We're about to go and we're

about to leave you behind. I'm about to do this exercise or I'm about to do this departure.

Before you started training, there would have been a ton of these departure cues that would

have said, okay, I'm going to work now or okay, we're going to pick the kids up from

school now and your dog starts to pick up on those. And every dog picks up on different

things. The common ones are things like keys and picking up bags or purses, picking up

mobile phones. But the range of cues that dogs pick up on is huge. So don't be surprised

if your dog doesn't fit the mold and in fact reacts to things that you wouldn't expect

the dog to react to. Maybe like having your breakfast. The things that your dog is getting

information from, these cues, don't always worry your dog. But when they do worry your

dog, when they do make your dog concerned that you're about to leave, then we tend to

call them triggers. So the triggers that upset your dog, not because they worry about keys,

not because they look at keys and think keys are really scary, but because keys can start

to say, oh no, she's going out again and I hate it when she goes out. So they can start

to trigger our dog. And you've probably seen it with your own dog, your dog getting upset

even before you think about going out because your dog's worked out your pattern. However,

there are a lot of myths around cues and separation anxiety, so let's tackle the big four.

Myth number one, people will tell you that we have to start working with cues before we do

anything else. That's where we start with training, with separation anxiety training.

It's not true. Let me give you an example. In other forms of training that we do with dogs,

when we're trying to change how they feel about stuff, we do very similar training. We gradually

expose them to the things that they were formerly scared of. And we increase that exposure with

dogs who don't like being left alone. That's time. With dogs who don't like the vet, we might

have a gradual plan that starts with a vet visit with no handling and then a small amount of

handling and an increasing amount of handling. So we can use the same principles for any type

of learning with a dog. But in separation anxiety training, we tend to spend a lot of time working

on cues which aren't, remember, intrinsically scary to the dog. But in lots of other types of

fear-based training, if we can, we start with the thing that the dog's frightened of,

albeit turned down to an intensity that the dog's okay with. Let me give you an example.

With my own dog, India, and this is classic. If you've ever done this, you'll recognise

how this goes. My dog, India, used to have a problem with having her nails trimmed.

So this was way back, way before I knew how things like, big word alert, classical conditioning

worked. So I read online. I should have known better. I know better now, obviously. I read

online that if I gave her a treat before I clipped her nails, all would be good. Well,

it didn't work. It failed miserably. I mean, it failed so badly that what started to happen was,

when I got the liver treats out of the cupboard, because it was always liver treats, liver treats,

and I walked over to the sofa with my liver treats, my clippers in my pocket so she couldn't

see them, she would just start to go, oh no, oh no. When mum comes up to me and I'm sitting on

the sofa and she's got liver treats, I know what happens next. I know that she's going to clip my

nails and I hate it, and she'd run away. Oh my goodness, my poor girl. So if you've ever used a

Kong when you are leaving your dog, you'll have seen that happen too, right? Remember the advice,

give your dog a Kong, leave your dog for two hours, he'll be fine. Did you ever see that

reaction when you got the Kong out? Your dog started to go, oh no, no, no, no, no, no,

not having that. Mum's going out, not going to touch the Kong, all too scary.

So when I realised what I was doing wrong with India and I finally found a plan that would work

to help her to get her to be happy having her nails trimmed, I started by introducing the new

thing I was going to use, I used Dremel, by then gradually increasing the amount of paw handling

until I could handle her paws again really easily and I could handle her nails and I could manipulate

her nails and I worked for a plan. And then I put the two together and now she lets me happily,

happily Dremel her nails. Did I start by opening the cupboard where the liver treats were and

desensitising her to that? Did I start by approaching her with liver treats on me and

desensitising her to that? No, I didn't. Can I now walk up to her with liver treats in my hand

while she's sitting on the sofa? Yes, I can. Is she fine with it? Yes, she's fine with it.

I could have added that into the training process, but nobody will tell you to do that because it's

not efficient. She doesn't need to get comfortable with that, she needs to get comfortable with the

thing that that predicted. But for whatever reason, we've got really hung up with separation

anxiety whereby we say, oh yeah, you've got to desensitise to the things that scare, that predict

the scary thing, not just the scary thing. But it's not true. I'm all about efficiency because

if you don't have an efficient training plan, you are going to give up who much work as it is

without throwing everything at it. As somebody said the other day, throwing spaghetti at the

wall and expecting a training plan to come out of it. So I drop the cues. I drop the cues from

training and I'm going to talk about what that looks like. I drop the cues and I work on duration

first, so getting out the door, departure exercises. And there are two big reasons for that. One is

your dog learns the game. Your dog starts to learn that you going isn't scary. And then two,

you start to feel like it might be working because if you feel like the training is working, you get

rewarded and you're more likely to stick with it. And when your dog starts to get comfortable

being home alone, then we can think about reintroducing the cues. And sometimes we get the

same effect that I got with India and the liver treats whereby they go, I'm fine with that because

it no longer predicts something that they are frightened of. They're no longer frightened of

being home alone. So the cues don't always scare them. Now, it's not always the case. Sometimes

dogs will still react to cues because they might say, oh, when you get the keys and you're going

to leave me for three hours. And I hate that when you don't pick up keys. Oh, yeah, I'm fine. So

that can happen too. But sometimes it works that they don't react to the cue because they're now

no longer scared of being home alone. All right. Myth number two, we have to have the exact same

leaving routine when we're training separation anxiety. Otherwise it's cheating. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, how many times have I heard this? It's cheating. It is not cheating to change the

arrangements that we make before we leave. It is making it easier for you and your dog. It's

setting yourself up for success. If you work out that keys absolutely send your dog crazy and you,

even though plugging away at the departure training, you bring back the keys and your

dog just erupts. If you put your keys in your pocket and find that you're now doing 30 minutes

and then an hour and then two hours, it's not cheating. It's being successful. It's just

managing the environment, which we are 100 percent in control of because it's our house

and our leaving routine. Putting your keys in your pocket and keeping them there all day or

your mobile phone or putting your purse in the car, that's no different than taking a different

route when you walk your dog because he doesn't like skateboarders. So you no longer walk past

the skateboard park. It's the same thing. It's not cheating. It's making your dog and you

successful. Don't let anybody tell you it's cheating. It's not. Myth number three. Okay,

so say you progress with your duration, but you want to bring back the keys because frankly it

is a bit of a pain to walk around with keys all day long. And it could be any cues. Remember I

said dogs have all sorts of different reactions to different things when we leave. But say your

dog does react to keys. It is a bit of a pain walking around with keys all day. So you want

to reintroduce keys. Now you've got a nice length of duration, but your dog does erupt. So you know

that you need to desensitize. So you've read somewhere online that all you need to do is pick

up the keys and put them down and do that in front of the dog over and over and over. And that's

desensitization. No, it's not. Massive myth. Huge myth. I think one of the big reasons why

training on your own fails is that so much of the advice is about desensitizing to cues.

I would rather you didn't involve cues at the start, but if you do want to, picking up and

putting down or putting on and taking off something that your dog is frightened of is not desensitization.

Some dogs will go over thresholds when you pick up your jacket. That might be enough to make them

escalate into panic. So picking up your jacket is not desensitizing your dog to your jacket.

Desensitization, remember, is gradual exposure to the thing that the dog's scared of, but we turn

down the intensity. So it might sound crazy, but instead of going and picking up your jacket from

the hook, you might walk to the coat hook, desensitize your dog to that. Then you might

go and touch the jacket, desensitize your dog to that. So it is not all or nothing. And

unfortunately, so much of the advice around cues is very all or nothing. So no wonder we get stuck

not getting past the cue part, because we're making our dogs worse. Please don't go around

the house picking up keys over and over, picking up bags over and over. If they freak your dog

out, you're going to make your dog sensitized, not desensitized. Okay, my last myth. Cues are

always a bad thing. So pre-departure cues, things that we do beforehand, anything that predicts we

are leaving, they are bad things as far as training and as far as our dogs are concerned.

No, again, another myth. Remember, cues are just information. They tell dogs about the world that

they're in. They tell dogs about events that are about to happen. They are not bad in themselves.

So yes, if you, like everybody, like all of us, including me, if you've left your dog

to go over threshold before you knew your dog had separation anxiety, your dog will be really

worried about the things you used to do before you used to leave your dog for longer than it

could handle. But now you're training, you do different things. And training, remember,

is always safe departures. So what can happen is the things that we do before training can

actually be a really beneficial cue. They can start to say to our dogs,

oh, this one's fine. Oh, when she opens the laptop and she, like with my clients,

they use an app that I've got for them. So they'll open up their phone, they'll get out

their training app, they'll look at the training app. Oh, when she does all of that, it's going

to be okay. So cues can actually be a good thing. And there's some research that says

it's better to be honest with dogs and tell them what's about to happen to them

than to fudge it and to lie. So predictability can really help. And sometimes even telling them

that this one's not going to be good can be helpful too. Sometimes if we're going to have

to leave our dogs for longer than they can cope and it's unavoidable, it's worth telling them that

this might not be a good experience. You might want to develop a cue for that. Dogs really

quickly pick up on training because they, the training that we do as being different,

because we do do different things. And so then I hear owners say, oh yes, but it's training and

it's not real life and he knows the difference. I promise you, your dog does not understand the

concept of training versus real life. Your dog understands the concepts of different.

Old leaving didn't involve laptops or apps or taking notes. New leaving does. New leaving is

safe. So of course, new leaving is you just standing on the other side of the door at the

start of training. But eventually you'll build up and you'll go further and further and you'll make

it more what we would call real life. But that's our invention. We can make our leaving routine as

yeah, we can change our routine however we want to. We can change what we do before we go out

the door. We can change what we do after we go out the door. The number one thing that's going

to get your dog comfortable with you being absent is you practicing going out of the door and being

absent. That's one final thing to say. There's a big cue, a big departure cue that we can't avoid

and that's the door. If you want to do departure exercises, then anything to do with the door,

whether it's turning the handle, approaching the door, anything like that, signals to your dog,

it sounds like a no brainer, signals to your dog that you're about to leave. So sometimes we do

start with the door. We might not be able to avoid desensitizing to the door. And if you lock

yourself out, you've got one of those doors where if you pull it closed, you'll lock yourself out,

you will have to use keys as well. But I always try and say what could you spare out, what could

you skinny down your leaving routine to, to make it easier for you and your dog. It's all about

setting you up for success. That's what my training attempts to do. That's it from me

for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I do so appreciate it, especially in a time when you

have so many listening options. I'm so grateful that you choose to listen to my podcast. Now,

if you do like the podcast, I'd be ever so grateful if you could head over to wherever you listen,

and review and rate. When you do that, other people get to know and you might be helping

another owner and another dog. Thank you again. And I look forward to you joining me on another

episode soon. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Be Right Back Separation

Anxiety podcast. If you want to find out more about how I can help you further,

head over to julie naismith.com. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed listening today, I would love it if

you would head over to wherever you listen to your podcasts and consider rating my show.

Thanks so much. Good luck with that training and bye for now.