Could Training Be Making Your Dog Worse?

Did you ever wonder whether what you're doing might be making things worse so the training that you're using is that

Making your dog worse. Do you find that the more you train the more your dog is stuck to you like glue

Do you find that the more you go in and out of the door and try to do absences?

The more alert your dog is to keep going. Well, here's the thing

Sometimes that can happen. Sometimes when we do separation anxiety training

There can be some quirks that cause the training to not go as we planned and rather than making our dogs better

We actually risk making them worse

That's why in today's episode. I'm going to explain to you how that can happen

But also I'm going to explain to you how to avoid it happening

And what you can do if you think that training has been making your dog worse

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

Specification 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

Okay, so you're training away

You're doing everything you can you're following the rules

but you don't even ever seem to make any progress or if you do it's really spotty and

What you're noticing is

the more you train

The clingier your dog gets which is completely the opposite of what we expect to happen

So you might be scratching your head thinking what on earth is this?

My dog feels worse than when I even started. So what's going on?

Well, let me first explain what?

The training that I teach does what's the standard approach to getting a dog over separation anxiety

And let me explain how that works. It's a process that's called

desensitization and it's based on the

empirical principles of how any brain human or dog

Adjusts and recovers from something that it's frightened of

It's a technique that's known in the human world the human world of psychology as

exposure therapy and

it consists of

Taking the thing that causes the fear and then exposing the subject to that fear

So if you're frightened of cats, you've got a phobia of cats

What we would do is ask you

What's the smallest or safest?

Aspect of being with a cat that you can handle. Can you be in a room with a cat but not touch it?

Or is that too scary?

Could you be in a room looking out of the window to the garden at a cat? Would that be okay?

we're trying to find an

intensity of the thing that scares you

That's an intensity

That's not scary. Do you feel what I mean?

So the cat next to you if you're frightened of cats might be way too much

but if you were frightened of cats and I said to you, okay, but what version of

Having a cat around could you cope with what's the lowest intensity?

That we can find how can we turn that down so that you now feel comfortable with a cat around and

If you are frightened of cats or other animals or something else you might say with the cat example

You might say I couldn't be in the room with a cat and I couldn't look out the window at cat

But I could probably look at a photo of a cat on a computer. So yeah, I could do that

So that's where we might start. We basically turn the intensity right down on the scary thing the cat the fear of the cat

But we're still exposing the subject the sufferer the phobia sufferer to the cat

It's just a dialed down

lower intensity version of cats. It's a photo of a cat and

Then as the subject becomes more comfortable with the cat with the photo we might then say okay

What would be the next step you could cope with and they might respond that it could be a video of a cat

Maybe with some meowing thrown in and

we continue to expose the subject to different levels of the scary thing, but

We're dialing it down each time. So each time at each step in what's called the hierarchy of fear

The thing isn't scary. The intensity is so low at each of those steps that the subject isn't scared

They're exposed to the thing. They're exposed to the thing that typically induces fear

But at such a level that they're not scared and you can see what happens you you have a subject who's frightened of something

They're facing that something facing that fear

But aren't scared they start to learn their brain starts to say. Oh, wait a minute

It's okay that thing that I'm scared of I actually can handle that

So of course with dogs, it's alone time. That's the scary thing and

When we get a dog comfortable with being home alone

We are dialing rule that intensity of home alone time right down and we do that

By reducing the amount of time that the dog is alone

So we take a tiny tiny amount of alone time to start with for most dogs. That is second

For lots of dogs. It's not even going out the door. It's you working on the door

So we've dialed down the intensity we've reduced the fear-inducing stimulus to such a small amount

That it's no longer scary to the dog. So it handles that alone time because it's so tiny and so dialed down

So how on earth if we do this, how on earth are we making the dog worse?

How could you possibly be making your dog worse if what you're doing is sticking to the rules

Exposing your dog to a tiny tiny intensity of scary alone time

So low such a low intensity so short, but it's not actually scary. So how is that going to make your dog worse? Well

Think about what we're doing

We're using an approach that is basically face your fear. In fact, some people call it a face your fear approach

So we have to expose the subject the learner to the thing that it's scared of

And that for the dog is home alone time

So we are exposing our dogs to home alone time in order to help them get over their fear of home alone time

So where it can go wrong is if we get that intensity wrong

If we muck things up and expose our dogs to too much alone time. It's too long. It's too intense

It's more than the dog can cope with

Then the opposite of what we're trying to achieve

Happen and in fact, that's usually how fear gets on board

If a dog a subject a human whatever is scared of something the fear can grow

When they're exposed to more and more and more of that scary thing

So back to the person who's frightened of cats if they were locked in a room with 50 cats

It would most likely kind of depends but more often than not they'll come out feeling way worse

about cats and

That process is called

sensitization

We've got desensitization which is face your fear the gradual exposure to the thing that you're scared of

gradual exposure of the dog to alone time in the case of separation anxiety training

desensitization facing your fears exposure therapy

Sensitization

Increasing fear subject becomes more and more fearful of the thing that it was scared of in the first place

And it can be in lots of instances. It can be a fine line

We can on the one hand be making great progress

The dog is getting exposed to tiny amounts of alone time and it's going well, okay, that was fine. I could handle that

That's not like it used to be

Yeah, you went out, but you came back and

The bit in between that was fine. I was okay could have been two seconds

But we build on those two seconds. We build on it. We build on it. So

That's that's the process working. That's the sensitization that fine line is

If the dog your dog is a dog can't handle the time that it's exposed to

We are going to see some

Sensitization and the challenge of course is how much is too much how long is

Too much for the dog to cope with

And it's not always easy to tell how can we tell what they can't tell us

So we've only got body language to go with and as you know

You might have one of those dogs where it's actually really difficult to read them. They're not exploding

They're not barking howling whining

They are showing more subtle signs of anxiety or fear and those ones can often be tough

There's a general rule though

if you find when you're doing this training where you're gradually exposing your dog to increasing amounts of alone time and

They are getting more and more agitated about you leaving

They're starting to follow you around the house more. They're more vigilant. They're kind of on guard

They're alert to everything you do if you find that's happening

Even if when you're doing the training, you're not seeing your dog upset. You're not seeing your dog explode or cry or scratch

if you think or if you observe that your dog seems to be getting more tense and

More on edge about you leaving the chances are that you've just crossed over that line and you are

unwittingly

Pushing your dog a bit too far

so if that's happening to you if you're in this place right now, and you're finding that it's

Completely the opposite to what you want to achieve

What can you do?

You dial it back

You take it much easier. So if you're on a duration, let's say of 30 seconds

You're going to stop trying those 30 seconds absences

You're going to go right back and I would always suggest going right back if you're seeing sensitization

We want to nip that in the bud really early and get back to giving your dog some easy wins

So you go and you come back and it's easy and there's no issue and no worry and no stress

So the first thing you can do then is you're going to dial back the duration that you're on number one if you're not on

Absences at the moment if you're still working on the door using my game the door as a ball game

then

go back and

Work on the previous step or the previous step to that

So wherever you are, whether you're on duration or whether you're on door as a ball you go back you go back a step

so going back is

Going to be immensely helpful and it always feels crushing when you go back because it feels like you are

Never going to get there. Oh my goodness

If I keep going back all the time, how am I ever going to make progress?

Will you make progress when your dog has an experience of being home alone?

That is good. But every time your dog has a good experience of alone time that's in the bank

If it has a bad experience or a kind of holding it together hanging in there experience

We don't want that. So going back actually is

Helpful for the cause because you get back to having more positive experiences

You're banking them so that you can progress forward again and with separation anxiety training

You really have to go slow to go fast. You cannot rush this rushing it is

one of the big causes of sensitization because we are so desperate to move on and

Especially when you're starting out and you're on really low durations. It can seem like if you did the math, you know

It's taking you two months to get this three seconds and like well, hang on a minute this isn't going to work

It's gonna be ten years before we get there, but it doesn't work like that

You're in those early stages where you're going out for really short durations. You're you're working on the foundation

It's tiny tiny changes that you probably can't see in your dog that ultimately add up to progress

So no, you're not going to go up a second a month

That's not how it works

But at the start you will spend a lot of time on really really really short durations over and over and over

Okay, so the first thing you need to do you're going to dial things back

If you think your dog is being sensitized by the training

So you go back a step in door as a ball or you reduce the target duration

Second thing you're going to do

Try training less if you're one of those crazy a types and I know a lot of you are

That's why you listen to this podcast. That's why you're desperately working so hard to get your dog over this

You can do too much. You can do train too often. You cannot give yourself or your dog a rest

So second thing you can do is just have a little bit of a break

If you normally take the weekend off take three or four days off

If you normally take one day off take two or three days off

So however long you normally break for between training sessions take a bit longer

So that's the second thing you're going to take a break

The third thing you're going to do is actually look at how you carry out the exercises

So you might want to give more time between the steps

Some dogs do way better when you increase the amount of time between the steps

Although interestingly some dogs do worse with more time

You're going to have to play around with that with your dog

But play around with how you structure the exercise if you need more time between steps

You can also split the exercise up

So if you're working on a short duration and you're following the training plans in my book

You might be on say eight steps or ten steps. You can chunk those up. You could do three steps together

Take a break go and have a cuppa come back half an hour later and do the next few steps

So you can break up the exercises if that's helpful

So looking at the structure, looking at how you train is the third thing that you're going to do

And the final thing you're going to do is don't panic

It's okay the fact that you are asking yourself is your dog doing worse

Is really really good because it means you're on it, it means you are observant

It means you are really noticing how your dog responds to training and that is absolutely priceless

I always say you don't need to be an expert in separation anxiety to get your dog over this

But you do need to be an expert in your own dog

And if you're noticing these subtle changes you are absolutely on top of this

Alright so my four tips for you there

Please don't worry, this isn't terminal, you can turn this around

You can get back to progressing ahead again

You can stop your dog from sensitising if you think that's what's happening

It's all good

Just follow these four tips and take it from there

Alright thank you so much for tuning in today

I really appreciate you taking the time to listen because I know you've got a ton of choices when it comes to podcasts

If you like what you've listened to today I'd love it if you could rate and review the podcast

Remember that when you rate the podcast that's going to show it to more owners of dogs with separation anxiety

And it will help more owners of dogs with separation anxiety because they find the podcast

So you'll be doing them a huge favour and it would be great for me to know what you think about the podcast too

Okay I'll leave it there and hopefully I will catch you on the next one

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 julienaysmith.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

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