All About Thresholds

Welcome to episode five of the fixing separation anxiety podcast.

Welcome to the fixing separation anxiety podcast where it's all about

healing your dog,

regaining your freedom and getting your life back on track.

And now here's your host,

Julie Naismith.

This week's topic is thresholds.

And guess what?

This is a topic I'm really passionate about.

How can you guess?

Well, I suppose I wouldn't have named my company sub-threshold training

if I didn't think that thresholds were as super important concept.

Understanding thresholds and how they apply to separation anxiety training is

so important.

Now question for you before I start,

do you think you have to be an expert dog trainer

to get your dog over separation anxiety?

Put your hands up if you think yes,

I can't get my dog over separation anxiety because I am

not a separation anxiety expert.

Well, I'm going to disagree with you now.

Of course,

I think having expertise in separation anxiety is really important.

It's what I do.

It's what I devote all my time to.

And I am deeply into everything,

nerdy and technical about separations anxiety.

I think it really matters.

I think it's important to have specialists.

However, there wouldn't be a ton of books on Amazon or

a ton of online courses on separation anxiety if as the

specialist didn't think that you could do this without us.

I mean,

I'd love you to do it with us,

but I know that everybody can.

There is one thing though that you have to be expert

in. If you want to stand a chance of getting your

own dog over separation anxiety,

and that is you have to become an expert in your

own dog.

All right?

So you don't need to be a separation anxiety expert.

You just need to be the expert in your own dog.

I know you can do that.

I think that's totally achievable.

And I see it all the time with owners that I

work with.

And in particular,

you need to know how your dog shows that he or

she is over threshold.

And that's what this episode's about.

We're going to go into that topic in some detail.

So when we talk about thresholds,

essentially what we mean is a fear threshold.

Where are we talking about it in the context of separation

anxiety that is and dogs just like us have different tolerances

of things that might frighten them.

For example,

and I'm sure you've all seen this.

Dog might be frightened of men with hats,

but another dog just thinks that's a,

nothing. Doesn't even see the guy with the hat.

And sometimes that same dog can be fine with men with

hats on the street.

But when the man with the hat comes into their house,

they're really uncomfortable.

So different dogs have different things that they're frightened of,

and that can change within the dog too.

And your threshold and my threshold might be very different.

You know,

for example,

I hate horror movies.

I really am not a fan of it even if there's

one on Netflix,

ain't watching it.

But if I had to,

I'd be hiding behind the cushion.

I'd have the little Scott's cushion up to my face to

block anything horrible out.

And I'd probably have my fingers my eyes,

my ears too.

But you might be a massive horror movie fan and equally

the way I show fear and the way you show fear,

it might be oceans apart.

So I tend not to eat when I I'm really nervous.

Exams are a great example.

When I was doing my Academy for dog trainers study,

I did the most difficult exams I've ever done in my

education, full-stop including university.

And before any of those exams,

I would be petrified and I just couldn't touch a thing.

So maybe you're like that when you're nervous,

you can't eat.

But some people,

maybe this is you some people eat more when they are

nervous. We had different ways of sharing fear,

and we have different things that we're frightened of.

Just the same with dogs.

They have different threshold,

different tolerances of things that frightened them and they show different

signs. Not only does this differ dog to dog,

it differs within the dog,

depending on,

well, depending on a number of things,

it could depend on time or context or changes in the

stimulus. Oh,

stimulus, by the way,

it's just a fancy term for thing that he's scared of.

If you've got a dog with separation anxiety who seems to

do well at certain times,

but not others,

this is the dog differentiating.

And we don't know why we could guess maybe he hates

you leaving on a Saturday night because he's had really bad

experiences on a Saturday night,

but maybe he's fine on a Wednesday afternoon because it's always

been okay.

And interestingly,

I often get asked question,

Oh, well he seems okay,

you know,

on a Wednesday afternoon,

but not good on the Saturday night or he's fine on

Mondays, but not on Tuesdays or he's fine when I leave,

but not when my husband leaves.

So this question comes up a lot.

Why is that?

Why are they frightened sometimes and not others?

And we don't know,

you could hypothesize and say that past experience might be driving

this. They've just had a worst time on different occasions.

There might've been some certain triggers that certain day of the

week or time of the day,

whatever, but whatever goes on in the dog's head,

he's decided that sometimes it's safe and sometimes aren't,

so they have different thresholds for different things and different stimuluses.

The stimulus for a separation anxiety dog is obviously fear of

being home alone and our job when we try to get

our dogs over fear of being home alone is to show

them that it's just fine.

If only we could tell them,

obviously we can't or they have you ever walked out the

door and looked at them and said,

I really don't know what you're frightened of.

I am always going to come back.

Don't always come back.

Have you ever said to them,

I always come back,

but they have decided for whatever reason,

the who knows the world is going to end,

the sky is going to fall on their head.

They just can't cope.

And, but we're going to show them how to cope and

how do we do that while we take a really small

dose. I like to call it alone time and that's a

dose they can cope with.

It could be seconds.

In fact,

more often than not,

it's a duration that's way shorter than we expect.

Often when I start working with clients,

they have,

I'll ask them,

you know,

how long can you leave them currently?

How long can you leave your dog now?

And it's usually way longer than when we actually do the

assessment and find out that it's,

it's not minutes,

seconds, or it's not tens of minutes.

It's just a couple of minutes.

So dogs learn by association and your separation anxiety dog has

a really negative association of being left.

We are going to show them that they can have a

positive association of being left and to do that,

we need to have lots of short,

safe absences.

So every time we leave them in it's okay,

we've got a positive association.

So we got a ton of negative historic associations,

but our job is to fill up the bank of experience

with lots of positive associations.

That's where thresholds start to come in,

because if we're going to teach him that he can cope

and it's fine,

he has to be fine.

He can't be upset.

He can't be anxious.

So we have to understand,

is he under threshold or is he over threshold?

And if we're training or if we're going out other times

when we're not training and we're leaving him to panic,

that's not a positive experience.

So that bank of negative experiences,

it stays full and we're not topping up the positive experiences.

And the problem when we let them get that upset and

that anxious either when we're training or when we have to

leave them at other times,

the problem with that is not only do we undo that

changing of association thing that we're trying to achieve,

but we risk going back.

We risk making them worse.

We risk making even more concrete,

that view they have that being on their own is scary.

So we want to avoid leaving them to get upset at

all costs,

so important.

That point at which they go from being fine,

to getting really upset,

that's crossing a fear threshold.

That's crossing an anxiety threshold.

And if you have look at the freebie that goes with

this episode,

and you can find the link in the show notes,

you'll see three different zones.

I want to talk you through those zones.

And I'm going to do that by talking about a gazelle,

a gazelle on the Savannah.

The first one that you see,

that's a kind of pretty chilled happy blissful day.

And that's your dog who doesn't have a problem with separation

anxiety, just surfing on the couch when you're gone,

this is a gazelle on the Savannah who's just munching away

at the grass and isn't threatened by anything.

Now they might see,

in fact,

they do see in this example,

I'm going to give you,

they see a line,

but the lions are so far away.

In fact,

they're lying down,

not moving.

So the gazelle is just like,

yeah, whatever and keeps eating grass.

So totally on the threshold has seen a threat,

but it doesn't feel like a threat.

It's just a lion,

just a lion.

And then the next thing that happens though,

is the lion starts to move.

Now this point the gazelle goes hmm okay,

moving in lions,

aren't normally very good,

not fun of moving lions.

So he starts to process what might I do now?

He's not freaking out.

He's not really frightened or fearful or upset.

He's just,

you know,

this could go badly.

He's definitely uncomfortable.

That zone is,

is holding it together zone.

And from there,

he could very rapidly progress into the over threshold zone where

he is definitely lost it.

Now what's going to trigger him is if he goes from

being aware of the threat to responding to the threat,

and yes,

what's going to happen?

The lion that he's looking at all of a sudden decides

to move more quickly towards him and he's really closing distance.

So now the gazelle knows,

this is definitely a lion he thinks he's seen lunch.

So the Gazelles response is going to be fight or flight

survival mode.

And being a gazelle he's not,

he's not going to pick a fight with a lion.

So he flees off he goes.

He's most definitely over threshold,

freaking out losing it.

Adrenaline has kicked in and he's doing everything he can to

escape the lion.

So he's most definitely over threshold.

So those are examples of those three thresholds.

So remember,

we've got the dog home alone,

who's just chill and fine.

He's in the under threshold zone.

But then in that middle zone,

we may have your dog who say,

you've just gone out.

Your dog can cope with a few seconds,

but as soon as you go out,

he's kind of,

Hmm, this doesn't look good.

This doesn't look promising and feeling like this could go really

badly and that holding it together zone,

it might not last very long at all.

Your dog might not be in that zone for very long.

So you have to be quick because remember,

we don't want him to go over threshold.

And just one more thing to emphasize about why we don't

want to get a dog to go a threshold apart from

the fact that you don't want that,

because it's just horrible when they're in a panic,

it's, it's not a good place for them to be,

and nobody wants their dog to be so upset that they

drool and chew and bark or whatever.

But the other side to that is if we're trying to

fill up that negativity bank or rather fill up the positive

bank and make sure the positive experiences at where the negative,

we do have something that challenges us that kind of works

against us.

And that's that as far as we know,

dogs have a negativity bias,

and we have that too.

If you've ever been in a performance review work,

and maybe you've got 20 pieces of feedback,

and then along comes you reading it through it and you

get one piece of negative feedback,

doesn't that just crush you.

And yet you've got all these other billowing feedback,

but for whatever reason,

we just don't in don't wait on that one,

single negative piece of feedback and it just crushes us.

Well, you know,

animals are the same and negativity bias can be really helpful.

Go back to that gazelle.

If that gazelle was the sort of,

because I looked at lions and thought that lions are friendly,

that gazelle ain't gonna last very long.

That gazelle is going to be eaten by the lion very

quickly. It's actually much better for gazelles to assume that all

lions are going to eat them so they can escape.

And if you escape the lion,

you get to pass on your genes.

So assume the lion is going to eat you negativity bias

and your genes get passed on as does the negativity bias.

So we all have it.

We will have it to different degrees and it can be

a big challenge from a trying to change emotion that we

need lots and lots of positive experiences to outweigh negative ones.

All right.

So I'll go with a separation anxiety dog is to build

up their tolerance of being on their own by changing their

association, giving them lots of positive experiences and doing it gradually.

Now this is so important because as soon as we push

too far too quick,

we're putting them back into the negative experiences.

We're creating over threshold experiences that are undoing our work or

possibly making them worse.

So we must go at their pace.

We must respond to how they're coping with the absence.

We never go too fast.

In fact,

with separation anxiety,

you have to go slow to go quickly.

Your job then when you're working with your dog is,

as I said,

you got to become an expert in their anxiety threshold.

You've got to know when they're fine.

You've got to know when they're freaking out and avoid that

zone. And you want to know when the holding it together

and body language is obviously going to be your key.

But as much as you can watch,

and I do want you to watch videos and body language

and find online materials.

You also have to understand what's unique about the way your

dog tells you that he or she is uncomfortable.

And the trickiest one I find often with clients is the

holding it together.

zone. Often it's more subtle,

usually it's way more subtle than the freaking out zone.

And it's usually more fleeting.

So dogs don't always stay in that zone for very long,

but you can start to spot things that they do.

And that's what I want you to do.

I want you to start looking for do they do certain

things in that zone that holding it together zone that let

you know that they may be about to freak out.

In which case you cancel the exercise,

you don't let them freak out.

Things I've seen when I've worked with client dogs and your

again, your dog might be different.

So this isn't what you should look for,

but this is what I've seen in a sniffs under a

door or suddenly alert eyes.

I've seen poor raises.

I've seen,

you know,

a bit more intense lip licking and all of those are

have been for the dogs i've worked with,

key signs that boys,

his dog,

about to freak.

So we better get back in now.

Okay? So we're going to increase that tolerance being on their

own by going gradually increasing the duration and going at a

pace that they can cope with.

And what's going to tell us that we're going at the

right pace is that the dog is going to remain in

the under thresholds zone with really nice body language and no

signs of body language that's telling us they're fearful or anxious.

So that's a quick run-through threshold.

There's four takeaways,

four actions you can take today.

Get to know your own dogs body language.

I really can't stress this enough.

As I said,

I do want you to look at lots of online materials

and there's a body language video that's linked in the show

notes that you need to know what your dog is showing.

So do they show these common signs?

Which of them do they show?

Is there anything different?

So really get to know your own dog,

number one.

Number two in particular,

are there any precursors to him losing it,

maybe in that holding it together zone,

he does a quirky little thing that's unique to him that

he only does when he's about to get really upset.

So work out what's going on in that holding it together

zone number two.

Number three,

I say this all the time and bored of hearing me

say this,

use a camera.

I know it sounds obvious,

but there's no way there's really no way at all.

You can do separation anxiety training without you're on the other

side of the door.

You need to see your dog.

So if you haven't got a camera and you want to

start looking at your dog,

then there's easy options.

You can get an online app,

a baby cam app,

a security app.

You can Skype yourself,

zoom yourself,

FaceTime yourself,

whatever, but do,

do, do make sure that when you go out that door,

you've got a camera on your dog and you can see

them on your phone.

Number four,

take records,

open up a spreadsheet or a notepad if you like writing

and note down everything.

Every Twitch,

every noise,

every movement,

every shuffle,

every fidget your dog makes when he's on his own.

Get really good at doing this and start to look for

trends. If those are the four things that you can do,

all of those today,

you could do one of them,

but you can do something.

If you want to start separation anxiety training,

pick one from the list and have a go.

Remember separation anxiety training is not something that happens overnight.

It's definitely a journey.

So taking your first step,

coming off this podcast,

if you do nothing else,

but do one of those four things,

then I'll be thrilled because you have taken a first step

towards fixing your dog separation anxiety.

Okay. Thanks for tuning in.

I look forward to seeing you online soon.

Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to the fixing separation anxiety podcast with Julie

Naismith. For more information,

visit the website at www.subthreshold

training.com. If you haven't yet,

go to Apple podcasts and subscribe,

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Thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again soon.