The One Critical Question You Need To Ask Each Time You Train

This episode is inspired by Patti, Skippy's mum, shout out to Patti and Skippy.

In the back and forth that Patti and I have had about various factors that could affect

Skippy's training, I just said to Patti at one point, look here's a really simple rule

for you to follow, does the thing that you're talking about, the question or the factor

that you're wondering about, does this make Skippy's separation anxiety training outcomes

better or worse? Is she more or less likely to do well if the factor that you're considering

is involved? So thank you to Patti for making me think that way. And it sounds really simple

doesn't it? Just ask the question, does this make it more or less likely that my dog will

be successful with training? Will my dog be more successful with the training exercise

I've given them if this thing happens or if this thing has occurred? So very simple.

But there's quite a lot going on underpinning this really simple rule, of course there is.

But however, I think this just might be the most important thing you can ask when you're

about to start a very specific separation anxiety training session. So tune into this

episode to find out why I say that.

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.

Alright, no episode would be complete or very few episodes would be complete without a really

quick refresher of how separation anxiety training works. In its simplest form, we're

just exposing a dog to the thing it's frightened of, alone time. But we don't do it at a scary

level. We're not exposing the dog to alone time that's going to frighten the dog. We

take the alone time and we just reduce it to a level that the dog can handle. And it's

a technique that's called gradual exposure. And then we gradually, and there's the term

gradually gradual, we gradually increase the amount of time the dog can handle. And we

make sure that the dog is never anxious, that however much time we leave the dog for in

training, so however long the duration, the dog is fine with it. So it's not hard. It's

not easy. Every single time we do a training session with the dog, it should be achievable.

And then we go at your dog's pace. So we only increase duration if we think a dog is going

to be okay with it. Again, we don't increase the duration and make it hard. We always are

cognizant of whether our dog is going to be okay. We should always be thinking, I'm going

to set a target duration that a dog's going to ace. And then we don't go too far, too

fast. So we just follow what our dogs can handle. We're guided by their tolerance of

the training and of the alone time. So really, there's just one rule, like keep a dog under

threshold, expose it gradually to increasing intensity of alone time and don't go too far

too fast. Boom, there you go. So that's separation anxiety training. We're done here, right?

Well, obviously not so fast. Because, you know, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast

if you thought it was that simple. Because underneath that quite tight, quite straightforward

rule, of course, there's lots of different things going on. As I say, otherwise, you

wouldn't be tuning in and you wouldn't be thinking about getting a trainer or diving

into my free Facebook group or grabbing my book because you'd have the answer. Just go

at your dog's pace. Keep your dog under threshold. Increase the amount of alone time. Don't go

too far, too fast. And the reason why I'm sure you want to know more and you're always,

not always, hopefully not always thinking about separation anxiety training, but often

thinking about separation anxiety training is that there are nuances and there are very

many things that are dog dependent. And I've worked with so many dogs now that I can see

they depend. I can work out categories of it depends because I've seen dog after dog

after dog after dog, hundreds of dogs. And I see patterns and I see patterns that lead

me to conclude that, OK, so there are certain things that do affect training, certain categories

that affect training for the vast majority of dogs. So very dog dependent. That rule,

we take that rule and we apply it to each dog and we answer that question. Are the things

we do, are certain factors more or less likely to make a training session successful for

your dog? We're talking about things that when you start the training session, when

you start doing the gradual exposure training session, things that have happened before

that training session that might mean your dog will absolutely smash the training or

it might mean that your dog will have a really bad time in training. Now, fancy terms for

this, if we want to get all dog trainery speak, we're talking about things you might have

heard of these terms called antecedents and setting events. You can think about these

as broadly as things that happen before you start to train. Now, obviously, there's stuff

that happens while you're training that can throw everything up in the air, like the delivery

person coming, like the doorbell going, like the dog barking next door. But let's think

about the things that affect your training up to that point where you say, right, I've

got my training plan and I'm going out of the door. Antecedents, think about antecedents

as things that happen just before. So things that happen just before you start the training.

Maybe it's putting on a coat because you put on your coat, it's cold. You did that just

before the training. Then there are things that happen further back. So not the things

you do right that moment when you're training, but things that go further back, maybe further

back in the day or maybe further back in the week. And these two increase the likelihood

or decrease the likelihood that your dog will do OK. They increase or decrease the likelihood

that your dog will respond to your trigger of leaving. And those things that go further

back, we can call them setting events. I know I said I wasn't going to get fancy, but I

did. But let's forget the fancy stuff for now, because we could go down a complete rabbit

hole. I could do a whole podcast episode just on those concepts. All you need to think

about, let's keep it simple. Just think about stuff that has bearing, that has an impact

on your dog's likelihood to succeed in any given training session. That's all you need

to think about. Just think about that question that I started this podcast off with. What

affects your dog's chances of success? Does this make it easier or harder for your dog?

Does this make it more or less likely that your dog will succeed? And every dog really

is very different. But the good news is that most of these things, I don't like calling

it saying things because that's so broad, but these setting events and antecedents,

the things that are happening beforehand, the good news is that although every dog is

different, there's about a 90-10 or maybe even a 95-5 rule here in that most dogs are

affected by a smaller number of categories. In other words, I can now tell you the sorts

of things that you might want to look out for because we see the pattern across dogs

over and over and over again. Certain things seem to affect all dogs. Now, there's always

outliers. You'll always get some dog who is affected by a very unique event that we've

never seen any dog affected by before. Although often when we drill down, we can sort of put

that event into the categories that I'm about to go through with you. But that's the beauty

of watching so many dogs and training so many dogs and working with so many dog parents.

I've seen over and over again the patterns of what affects the likelihood that a dog

will be okay. So let's have a think about those. I'm not overcomplicating it. Let's

keep it as simple as we can. I'm just going to talk about categories. Instead of talking

about things, let me change my terminology and I'll talk about categories. Categories

that will affect your training outcomes. As I say, let me give you the common ones

so that you've got a starting point and you've got a basis to ask questions about,

well, does this apply to my dog? Is this making training more difficult or easier for my dog?

The biggest thing that affects dog's likelihood to be okay when you leave are departure cues.

And I'm sure you've heard of departure cues. Departure cues are items or processes. Processes

is probably not the right word. Items or activities or actions that happen that we do or that we

involve just before we leave. The classic ones might be picking up keys or putting on the coat

or putting on our shoes or opening a door where keys are or maybe picking up our coffee mug. So

things that we do before we leave that we know immediately trigger our dogs into,

uh-oh, this is going to be bad. I've done another podcast episode just about these cues, so I won't

repeat all that here, but I will link to that in the show notes.

But just to say that these cues, these pre-departure cues, they are biggies. They do

have a really big impact on the dog's response to being left, the dog's response to your training

of him to be left. And that's why, and I explained it in the other podcast episode, but that's why

it's really important to remove as many of them as you can from your leaving routine.

Now, you might say, oh, Julie, that's ridiculous. You know, I can't go out without my coat. Okay,

yeah, if it's minus 30 outside, I get it. If it's five degrees, yeah, maybe I get that too. But

because cues have such a big impact on a dog and because they often, not often, if it's triggering

for your dog, then your dog is getting upset before you even think about leaving. So if picking

up car keys gets your dog into a state of anxiety, you can't start absence training because

your dog is already anxious. And yes, there are processes we can use if we need to, to make things

like car keys or picking up a gym bag less scary. But the main thing we need to work on is your dog

not being frightened of being alone. So we can remove these antecedents from our training.

And if we need to, we'll add them back in. Now, that all sounds very, I don't know,

almost like I'm talking about something that's happening in a science lab. Oh, yes, we can,

you know, we've got antecedents and we'll take them out and it's just training. Well,

actually, you can do this for real. I remember that we developed a way of leaving the house that

did remove some of these things. If we had to put our shoes on outside, that we'd put our shoes on

outside, because when you have a dog with separation anxiety, if I were to say to you,

if you put your shoes on outside, your dog might be okay for two hours. Would you do that? Would

you go through the inconvenience of putting your shoes on outside so that your dog could do two

hours? Yeah, of course you would. You'd be like, Julie, where do I sign? Now, I'm not saying that,

by the way. I'm not saying that if you put your shoes outside, your dog will get to two hours.

Just making a point. I know you know that. But let's not make work for ourselves and let's not

create anxiety for our dogs. If we can drop things from our leaving routine, even if we have to drop

them forever, let's do it. Because all we're doing is increasing the likelihood of our dog succeeding

at being left, succeeding at the training and then ultimately succeeding at being left longer term.

So I call these, the cues, I put them into what I call my what category. So they're things or

actions or stuff we do. And the classic ones, there are many, but the obvious ones are things

like keys and bags and purses and shoes and car keys. They can be opening and closing a cupboard

where you put your coat. They can be things like I mentioned before, grabbing your water

bottle or your coffee cup. They can be slamming your laptop because you always do that just before

you leave. They're at that level. They're at that level of detail. They usually involve some kind of

implement coupled with some kind of action. So that's why I call them the what. So for you,

a little exercise for you is to think through, what does my dog respond to when I'm about to

leave? Whether it's leaving for training or whether it's leaving for, you know, real life.

And by the way, dogs don't know the difference between training and real life. They just know

different. Those are words that we use. But let's say training versus when you used to leave your

dog. Do you know what things affect your dog? We're not worried about things that don't cause

an anxious reaction because they're not having an impact on your dog's likelihood to be okay.

So we can forget them. If you slamming your laptop closed, your dog doesn't even notice,

your dog doesn't go, oh no, they're going out now. Then slamming a laptop is not something

that we are worried about. So you only want to worry about the things that your dog worries about.

And as much as you can, try dropping them from your leaving routine. And then listen to the

podcast that explains what else you can do. So we've got the what. My next category,

because this one is very, very common in the way it affects dogs, is the when and who category.

I don't have a specific statistic for you here, but the percentage of dogs that are affected by

who does the training and when the training happens is sky high, really high. Let's look at

when. So dogs are affected by the time of day. It can be the day of week. I've even seen dogs

who are affected by the season. So when is a very, very big factor on the dog's likelihood

to succeed. So think about it for your dog. Now, what I find fascinating here is there isn't a

consistent pattern. If you have a dog that does badly in the evenings, you just know when you're

training in the evenings, you can't get the same duration as when you're training in the mornings.

You might be led to think that all dogs struggle with training in the evenings,

but the reality of it is it's all over the map. I've seen dogs who are fine in the evenings,

bad in the mornings, fine in the mornings, bad in the evenings, afternoons are better,

Saturdays are better than Wednesdays, are better than weekdays in the summer and so on and so on.

But the broad category there is when. Start thinking about that for your dog because

it's really a massive light bulb moment and it often helps you answer the question,

I just don't get it. I don't get why my dog struggled on Tuesday, but then I went to do

the training today and he was fine. Is one of the things that changed the time of day you did the

training. So I'd recommend as well as thinking about the classic departure cue triggers,

I would definitely start getting together a list, looking back at your training exercises,

comparing the time you did the training with how well your dog did and see if you can see a pattern.

Once you've got that pattern, boom, then you can start training for different target durations

at different times of day and you can use what we call scenarios. So members of my

Separation Anxiety Heroes membership club use an app that's called Be Right Back,

like Be Right Back the books, but it's called Be Right Back and one of the things they can do in

there is they can set up different scenarios and that allows them to do just what I explained to

you there, that they can set up at say an evening scenario and if their dog does better in the

evenings what they'll be doing is they'll have a different target duration, a different trajectory,

a different graph for the evenings and then when they train in the mornings they'll switch to the

morning scenario. So when is a really big factor. Let's talk about who. I would say also as I

mentioned it's a really high percentage of dogs struggle with when, a really high percentage of

dogs also struggle with who does the training and differences in who does the training.

Classic differences are often two people doing the training can be harder. So if you're a family unit

and two of you do the training, many dogs find that harder than just one person doing the training,

but not all dogs. Some dogs find it harder when one person does the training and easier when two

people do the training. So think that one through and when you work it out, work under the easiest

conditions and I should have mentioned that with the context of when also. Even though I encourage

people to use scenarios, I also don't want you to overuse scenarios. What I mean by that is if

you've got a dog who does well in the morning but struggles in the evening, does well when two of

you leave but struggles when one of you leave, I don't want you to create a million permutations.

I don't know how many permutations there are for that, there's probably eight, probably not a

million, but I don't want you to have a scenario that says both of us in the morning, both of us

in the evening, one of us in the morning, one of us in the evening, the other person in the morning,

that's about six isn't it, the other person in the evening, whoa, whoa, all over the place for the dog.

Focus on the easiest context. So if one of you training in the evening is the easiest context,

start there and get some really, really solid alone time under your belt, under your dog's belt,

before you think about mixing up scenarios and a good rule of thumb could be 15 minutes,

ideally something like 30. Having said that, sometimes practicality plays a part too. So if

you find that, well, your dog does do better in the evenings when only one of you trains but that

situation almost never happens, then you don't have to stick as tightly to that rule of don't

bounce around all over the place with your scenarios. All right, so another little bit

of homework for you then, start thinking about combinations of who affects your dog. So who

does the training, think about that, think about who does the training and how that affects your

dog's likelihood to succeed or not. All the who's there, too many who's. Okay, my final category and

this is the why and the why is often the one that gets us scratching our head. What's interesting

about the why is that why can make any of the other factors we just talked about more or less

problematic. The reason why the why category can be confusing and confounding is that it's not always

obvious why a dog does differently well. Let me give you some examples of what I put in the why

category and you'll see what I mean. So things that can affect a dog that are farther back in time

include things like sleepiness, what else was going on for your dog that day, that week even,

maybe other stresses that your dog has been responding to. It could be things like a trip

to the groomer, a day in daycare, it could be routine changes, it could be breaks in training,

it could be more play, less play, more tired, less tired. I'm going to say again every dog is

different here. Some dogs train better when they're sleepy, some dogs train better when they're alert,

some dogs train better after a day at daycare, some dogs train worse. But think about those

things that if you go back through a dog's day, through the day before, through the day before,

seem to have a pattern in affecting your dog's likelihood to do well or not.

Because that will help you answer the question why. Why did my dog do differently well today?

We trained at the time that I know is right for him, his best time. I dropped all the cues and

I did the training because he does better when I do the training but he still did badly.

If you go back through your why category you might find an answer. You might start to see that

your dog does badly when they go to daycare on a Tuesday and you train on a Thursday.

That might be it or it might be the other way. When your dog's had a day at daycare that week

maybe your dog does better. The thing about the why category as well is that sometimes we can

work out why but sometimes, and this is the maddening thing, sometimes we don't work out why.

We can scratch our heads and look for these factors but sometimes those factors can be

internal to the dog and they aren't things that are affecting the dog externally so we don't

always see. They can be things like dogs being saturated with learning. Their brains are just

going whoa I am just no I can't take any more learning and their brains just regress to old

ways of thinking, old associations. So as much as it's great to try and find out why, don't drive

yourself crazy doing that. Sometimes we have to accept that there isn't always a why no matter

how hard we look for it. Okay so a really quick summary. I've thrown a lot of stuff at you today.

We're trying to answer the question does this make training more or less likely to succeed for

my dog and if so you want to work with those factors. You want to think about how you're

going to accommodate or omit those factors from your training. Every dog is very different but

I've given you some broad categories so that at least you can then start to think about

any patterns that fall into those categories and once you start to work out what makes your dog

more likely to succeed and what makes your dog less likely to succeed you absolutely want to

play to strengths. So always try to think about training at times when your dog's likely to do

well. Train with the parameters, the combination of people or who does the training that's likely

to make your dog do well. Dropping those cues because we know that makes it harder for dogs.

Always thinking how do I make this better or worse for my dog. How do I make my dog succeed

and if you do that you've just answered yeah like I said probably the most important question when

it comes to approaching a training session for separation anxiety. I hope you found this episode

useful. Thank you again for tuning in. I know you've got many choices when it comes to podcast

listening but I appreciate you listening to mine. So that's it from me for now. I'll 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 podcasts and consider rating my show.

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