Two Dogs or More? What to do When Your Non-Anxious Dog is the Trigger

Hi there, I'm your host Julie Naismith, trainer, author and self-professed separation anxiety

geek. Welcome to this episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety podcast. So what on earth

do you do if you have two or more dogs in the household, you've got one who's anxious

and you've got another who barks at every single thing outside. They're not anxious,

they don't suffer from separation anxiety, but they just like to bark. They bark and your

separation anxiety dog explodes and that's the end of things. Your separation anxiety dog can't

stop. So if that's you, that's your household, what on earth can you do about it? Well this

is a pretty common situation and that's why today in this episode I'm going to talk to you about the

three top things that you can do if this sounds like your setup at home.

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.

Happy at Home Alone 2. Having two or more dogs in the house is brilliant. As someone who has three dogs, I can swear by the fact that having two dogs, three dogs or however many you've got really does make for fun,

interesting times, but also sometimes challenges. But hey, we wouldn't be without those challenges, right?

Now one of the biggest challenges that comes from having two or more dogs in the house is when you

have one of those dogs have separation anxiety. So you've got a dog who struggles with being home alone

and then you've got another dog who doesn't have any issues with being left but they like to bark

at stuff that's going on outside. And your dog with separation anxiety might be fine. Maybe you've been

working on training or maybe your dog with separation anxiety has got a threshold which

allows them to be okay for a certain amount of time and that dog is fine until your barky reacts

at everything outside dog starts to kick off. This is a tough one because you need your dog with

separation anxiety not to be triggered. But if your other dog is doing the triggering, how on earth do

you manage it? Well take it from someone who's been through this personally. It is difficult, it

is a pain and it's really frustrating when you're doing your best to get your dog with separation

anxiety to be okay with being left and then your little barky troublemaker who likes to respond to

stuff outside just ruins everything, messes up a training absence, messes up an absence where

you've gone out for an hour because you think your dog with separation anxiety is solid for that

length of time, you've put in all the work, you've built up duration and then 15 minutes into an

absence your barky dog, the other one, the non-anxious one, lets rip. So I've been there. In our household

there are three dogs. Percy is the one that used to have separation anxiety. India is the one that

likes to bark at stuff outside. So it wasn't a great combination. Tex luckily was just a chill

dog, he still is, he doesn't bark at outside noises and in fact Percy doesn't bark at outside noises.

It's India that causes all the trouble. So this is something that I had to deal with firsthand.

There was no way we were going to make progress with Percy's separation anxiety if every time we

tried to move things on and increase duration we had little Miss India reacting to stuff that she

was hearing and seeing outside the house. So here are my three top interventions. There are three

things that you can do. You can try all three of these or you might find you only need to do one of

them and I'm going to do them in order of difficulty. I'm going to start with the two easiest

things first and then I'm going to finish with the harder thing. And I call these three things

the three Ms of multiple dog households. So let's start with the first M. The first M is you're going

to move. You're going to move, not house, don't worry. I don't mean move household, though sometimes

it can feel like you want to move to a house in the middle of nowhere where your barking dog doesn't

react. But no, I'm not talking about anything quite so drastic. I want you to think about moving one of

the dogs. So you can either move the dog who's got separation anxiety or you could move the

barky dog. What I'm trying to get you to think about is can you separate them out so that there's

enough distance between both of them that the one who's barking at stuff outside doesn't set off

your dog with anxiety. Now in most houses, let's be realistic, that is quite challenging. Not

necessarily the moving. We'll come on to some options for moving dogs around and putting them

in separate parts of the house in a second. But most of us don't live in big houses where a dog

can bark in one wing of the house and the anxious dog doesn't hear that. So the reality of it is

that most dogs, yeah, you know what, they will still hear the other dog even if you separated

them. However, moving can have some benefits for the dog who's reacting to outside noises.

Your dog who's reacting to say a bark or a car door or just any noise in the street,

moving them away from that thing that they're reacting to can be what makes most difference.

So maybe you can't separate your dogs far enough apart that the dog with separation anxiety doesn't

hear your barky dog but maybe moving your barky dog away from stuff that causes it to bark

could help stuff here. So you definitely want to think about moving the dog who's reacting to the

outside away from windows. Windows are the biggest source of noise coming into your house or into

your apartment. Sometimes with apartments it can be under the main door that can be the problem

and not so much windows. Although if you're in an apartment and you're on a lower level it will be

windows to the street that cause the problem. Why windows? Well, windows are really thin.

Windows are really thin and so they do allow a lot of noise to come in even when they are closed,

even if you've got double, triple glazing. They're usually the source of the biggest

amount of noise coming into your home. So try and move your dog away from the source of the

trigger which is going to be windows or doors. So think about how you can rearrange stuff.

Now if you have a setup where you can't necessarily put dogs in different rooms,

say your house is very open plan, you can think about using things like x-bends and also I would

consider for the dog that's really barky, are they okay in a crate? Because lots of dogs are fine in

crates, just lots of dogs with separation anxiety aren't. So that can be an option too. A crate,

away from windows, away from doors, maybe with something soft over the top of it like a

quilt or some a blanket that can absorb some sound. That might help stop the barky dog from

reacting to the triggers. So moving is definitely the first thing, the first M that I want you to

consider. And then the second M is we're going to manage the triggers. So we've tried moving

the barky dog away from the thing that triggers it. Maybe we can do that, maybe we can't. Maybe

there's not enough space in the house or maybe your dog is still hearing and seeing things.

And we've tried perhaps separating the dog so that there isn't a huge reaction from the anxious dog

but that might not be feasible because of the size of the house. And in fact, as I said,

for most houses it probably isn't going to be the solution. So what we want to do then is to

manage the outside triggers and essentially try to mute them. So I suppose there's two M's here,

manage and mute. How can we mute outside noises that we're not in control of? Well, there are

things that we can consider doing. For a start, just going back to the first M of moving, we

definitely want to have dogs have limited access to things like windows. So managing visual triggers,

the easiest way to do that is to block window views, block window access. You can do that with

amazing stuff like frosted film that you can get from most hardware stores, most hardware shops.

It's great stuff. It's temporary. It tends to block enough vision that the dog doesn't see the

triggers outside but you can still get light coming in. It's not that difficult to apply

and it's not that expensive. Is it a compromise blocking your window so you can't see out? Yeah,

absolutely it is. And it's permanent while you've got it on. So you're not going to be putting it

on and taking it off during the day. But if it helps this whole scenario, I'm guessing you

probably want to explore it. Of course, you can draw blinds, you can pull curtains across,

but that feels a bit more like you're just permanently living in the dark. So I like

frosting. Now, one really cool solution that I've seen for trying to mute those external triggers

is something called a window plug. It sounds weird, but I've attached a link to a video that

will show you more about that. It's a bit of work getting one set up and it will depend on the

nature of your windows as to whether you can set one up. But it is a piece of board essentially

with padding around it that you can make yourself really easily. It's not a fancy piece of kit

and it fits into your window, but it's not a permanent fixture. You put it in when you want

to block out the sound and it also has the benefit of blocking out vision as well. But primarily,

it's designed to block out sound that seeps in through windows. So that's very cool for you

if noise is coming in through windows. If noise is coming in under doors, then think about putting

something along the bottom of the door. It could be something temporary, you can roll something up,

pop that at the bottom of the door. So the other thing that we can do to mute those external

triggers is we can turn up the volume inside. So now we're managing the internal environment

in order to mask the noise outside. So that means things like white noise, brown noise,

all of these, by the way, you can get on platforms like Spotify or you can find a YouTube video. So

you can play white noise, brown noise. Putting on a fan is a really, really quick way to create

essentially the same thing, some white noise. And in fact, lots of the white noise playlists that

you'll see have things like fans as one of the options you can choose. But just an ordinary fan,

put that on and put it near the source. So if a lot of noise comes under your door, that's where

you put the white noise, the brown noise, whether you're playing that on an old phone or whether

you're using a fan, whatever, wherever the source is, wherever the noise is coming in most, that's

where you put your noise to mask the noise that's coming in. Music is fine. Don't listen to what

everybody tells you about music being a bad thing. It's not. You can put on the TV or the radio

before you leave. I think why people get confused about that being a bad trigger and it's a cue

that will make your dog really upset and really worried about you leaving is in the past, if

you've ever tried to put the TV on and then you left your dog, your dog with separation anxiety

for longer than they could cope, they do start to associate the TV going on or the radio going on

with a scary absence. If you've never done that in the past, you can do it now because you're

doing training absences and that's fundamentally different. And actually, it will tell your dog,

this one's going to be safe. I put the TV on when we do this training absence.

So muting and managing the triggers that are coming in with just a recap as much as you can

try to do stuff about windows and doors where the noise is coming in. Think about having things

like fans or white noise going so that again, you're managing and meeting that noise coming in.

And thirdly, you can put on the TV, you can put on the radio. We can't ask the dog in the street

to bark quieter. We can't ask people not to slam their car doors when they go into our neighbor's

house, but we can do something to mute the noise inside by masking it with noise that we create in

our homes. Moving your dog away, your barky dog away from the source of the noise, managing and

muting the trigger by producing inside noise. Those two are the easiest go-tos. You can do those

immediately. You can significantly transform the setup today with that. The third thing that you

can do, and this is more difficult and it's going to take longer, is you can modify your barking

dog's behavior. Instead of barking at external noises, we can get them to respond less to those

external noises. What often happens with dogs that respond to stuff outside is they pattern it,

they repeat it, they rehearse the behavior, rehearse the behavior, and it just becomes ingrained.

So here's the thing that really helps with modifying behavior, because modifying behavior

does take time, is if we do the first two things of moving your dog away, your barky dog away from

the source of the noise, and then managing and muting the triggers, that helps with the third

task of modifying behavior. Why? Because the less opportunity your dog who responds to the outside

has to rehearse the barky behavior, the less they will do it over time. They won't stop instantly,

but the more they get bombarded with external noise, the more they repeat the behavior,

the more ingrained it gets. So the three M's really do work together. If you don't solve

the whole problem with the first two, and you do need to start modifying behavior,

I still want you to think about using the first two of moving and managing triggers.

Anyway, so what does the behavior modification look like? The one I really like, and I use this

with my own dog India, is I would recall her away from the source of the noise. So if she went to

the window to bark, I would recall her to me. Recall, she gets a treat. And over time, what happens is

she does the behavior less, which is fantastic, but she also realizes that the best place to be

really is coming to me to get a treat. So you want a dog who's got a really strong recall here,

and how you would practice that is take a recall plan, and I'm actually going to link to a recall

plan in the notes, and you're going to practice it in different parts of the house with no noises

going on outside. You're going to do that so that your dog comes to you every, every, every single

time, and then be ready when they do have a response to an external noise to call them to you

and be prepared for them not to come straight away. Now, I wouldn't leave your dog barking at

the window if they don't come to you straight away. Remove them from the window. Take them away

from the thing that they're enjoying barking at. Take them gently. We're not talking about pulling

your dog across the room, but just gently bringing them away from the thing that they're barking at,

and if they didn't recall to you the first time you asked them, they're going to forfeit the treat.

So not only do they forfeit having the opportunity to bark at the window if they don't get recalled

first time, they also forfeit the treat. So make sure that there's a bit of a penalty for not

coming away from the window when you ask. If you give your dog a reward and allow it to continue

barking at the window, you're going to be pushing water uphill. So have a look at the plan I've set

out. You're now thinking, wait a minute, she's talking about me recalling my dog away from the

window, but I'm outside doing this separation anxiety training exercise. How is that going to

work? The thing is, if you practice this, if you and your dog practice this over and over,

when you are around, you're reducing your dog's opportunity to rehearse the behavior,

and you're also doing the other two ends of managing the noise, muting the noise,

and moving your dog away from the source when you do the absences. It's a combination of all

of these things that mean when you do an absence, you can see your dog's reaction to external noises

starting to diminish, and that's what we want. So the modifying behavior piece will take time,

and it will take repetition, which is why I want you to try the first two things while you're

working on the behavior. But if you do the modifying approach often enough while you are there,

you will over time start to see it reduce when you're not there. So a quick recap. First of all,

you are going to think about moving your barky dog away from your other dog and away

from the noise, the trigger that's causing them to bark, whether that's visual or a noise.

Second, you are going to manage and mute the triggers, and you're doing that by increasing

the noise generated inside your own home. And then third, you're going to work on a modification

approach. So using a training plan to reduce the opportunity or reduce the number of times

that your dog does react to those outside noises. Now I'm not saying any of this is easy.

I've been through it, and I know it's difficult, but if you do put in enough work and you can find

a way, and by the way, don't give up on the managing and muting if you can't get those

outside noises down first time. You just might need to work with different combinations of

different noises, different white noise machines going and so on. So don't give up if you can't

immediately block those outside noises. But with all of these things, if you do work on them,

rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, you stand a really good chance of reducing your dog's reaction

to outside noises. And hey, that isn't just going to be good for separation anxiety training,

that is also good for the nerves because who wants a dog that reacts to every single thing

outside? So not only will your dog with separation anxiety thank you, but the rest of your family

will probably thank you too. And you will be grateful for the peace that it brings to your

household. Okay, I hope that's helped. I'm really glad that you joined this podcast today because I

do understand you have lots of options when it comes to listening to podcasts. So I really

appreciate you tuning into mine. And I look forward to joining you on the next one. All right,

bye for now. 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 maysmith.com. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed listening today, I would love it if

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

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