Well, hello there and welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast.
I'm your host, Julie Naismith, and this week I'm going to talk about why separation anxiety
training can seem just so hard. Now, before we go on, I just want to say a huge thank
you. Thank you to you for listening. I know you have tons and tons of options when it
comes to podcasts, so I'm really grateful to you for listening to mine.
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.
Now this week I was at a conference listening to my amazing mentor, Jean Donaldson, speak.
She was talking about the need for standards for dog trainers, because for those of you
who don't know, dog training in nearly every country in the world is a highly unregulated
profession. There aren't standards. Unlike plumbers or even nail technicians, anyone
can just set up as a dog trainer without the requirement to go through any standardized
training. And this is a particular beef of Jean, and I love that she leads the charge
on this one, because it's so important that we do introduce standardization into this
profession. One of the other themes that she discussed was that, as dog trainers,
we have a lot of science and evidence behind the techniques that we know will get dogs
over different conditions. But as a profession, we see lots and lots of searching and running
around trying to find different ways to fix things, when actually we know how to fix this
stuff, it's just that we're not doing the right things. We're not using the tools in
our toolbox, the ones we've had for years and years and years. Instead, what we're doing
is trying to find different ways to fix common solutions, because we don't know how to fix
them with the toolbox that we have. And that got me thinking about separation anxiety,
because I hear so often people, owners, trainers, saying separation anxiety training doesn't
work. But it does work. It works for the vast majority of dogs, given the right circumstances.
And so why do we keep saying that? And why do we then end up searching for alternative
remedies or different training methods, when we have a really good method that works,
the gold standard approach to fixing separation anxiety, which is gradually getting your dog
used to being home alone, going in tiny increments, training at his pace, and pairing that with
anxiety medications where necessary. That works. So if it works, why do so many of us give up on
it? Why do so many of us seek out different approaches? And why do we not even start it
in the first place in lots of instances? Well, today, I'm going to talk to you about the five
reasons why I think we give up on separation anxiety training, and hopefully I'm going to
convince you to not give up, even when it gets hard. So the first one is separation anxiety
training is not rewarding. It just isn't. I don't think that any of my clients get up in the morning,
I've asked them this as well, and say, oh my goodness, today is separation anxiety training
day. I can't wait. It's the highlight of my day. I mean, who says that? It's not intrinsically
rewarding. And the way that humans are hardwired, we need rewards. And the more instant, the better.
The thing about separation anxiety training is the rewards, when they do come,
are usually far down the line. When you start training, if you're looking forward to just
popping to the store for 15 minutes and you're at 15 seconds, that reward can seem like a long
way off. So the reward for separation anxiety training isn't instant, it's a long way off,
and that can make us feel like we're doing something that's just drudgery. So one of the
things I do with my clients, the people in my online groups, is we have, I build in rewards
where rewards don't exist. So we do fun stuff. Yeah, guess what? We make separation anxiety
training fun. And we have mini challenges. We have little games where people get rewards,
or they reward themselves, for the number of times they've trained that week or how consistent
they've been. I try to build in as many of those added rewards as possible because I know that
separation anxiety training in and of itself doesn't reward. And the other thing that I
encourage in my online groups and my paid programs is for owners to encourage each other. It's
wonderful when I see my clients post up in my private group that they've hit 23 minutes today,
and then everybody jumps on and says, oh, that's amazing, that's wonderful. That kind of reinforcement
can be incredibly motivating, and it can add reward into a process that is otherwise fairly
unrewarding. Number two, it takes time. There is no doubt about it. Separation anxiety is going to
take a lot of your time. Training exercises take time, and also the time it takes your dog to get
over separation anxiety isn't going to be short. It's time consuming in both those respects. And
that's hard, right? We're pressed for time as it is. All of the challenge with a million and one
different things that we need to do every single day. And if we link back to number one, the point
about training not being rewarding, that can make it really difficult in any one day to get your
video going, to get your stopwatch out, and to get training. So that time that it takes to train
can be a real disincentive. One thing that I say to my clients is, if you have a day that you've
planned that you're going to train, and I often, and most of my plans, by the way, when clients
are first working with me and they're working short durations, I ask them to train for no more
than 30 minutes a day. When you get to longer durations, you're going to train for longer.
But hey, nice problem to have. If a client says to me, I just didn't have time to train today,
I didn't have 30 minutes. What I say to them is, that's okay. So if you don't have 30 minutes,
don't say I'm not going to train at all. Say I'm going to do five minutes. There is stuff you can
do in separation anxiety training in five minutes, even if you don't have half an hour. I'd much
rather they did something than say, I don't have time to do anything at all. And usually they'll
come back and say, oh yeah, I can find five minutes. And I give them exercises such as
repeatedly opening the door in a way that desensitizes the dog to door opening, or repeatedly
approaching the door. Again, desensitizing the dog to that. So we can usually find something
they can fit into their day, even if they're too busy to do a full exercise. So the third thing,
not only is it not rewarding, not only in separation anxiety training does it take time,
it's also difficult to do. I mean, it's so difficult that lots and lots and lots of
trainers won't touch it. I constantly have conversations with trainers saying, well,
I don't know if you do separation anxiety. Whenever a separation anxiety case comes to me,
I just want to push it your way. Now, obviously I'm a complete separation anxiety training geek.
I live it. I breathe it. I quite often sleep it. And I wake up in the middle of the night
thinking about separation anxiety training. So I feel differently about it. But I do understand
that it can be hard, even for expert trainers. And why is it difficult? Well, we need to really
understand the dog's body language. And most trainers are brilliant at that. So that's not
necessarily a barrier for them. And if you're training your dog, one of the things that I say
to my clients is I ask them to become an expert in their own dog. So that can really help. But
the challenge with separation anxiety is that there are so many different scenarios that can
pop up. Sometimes the body language that a dog gives off can be confusing, especially when it
comes to things like vocalising. I know it's not body language, but it's one of the things we look
for when we're diagnosing separation anxiety. So body language and stress signals can be confused
with other things. And of course, it's a very different way of training for most positive
trainers because we're not using food. And I use food for every other piece of training that I do.
So I understand the challenge of not using food and just doing straight what we call
desensitisation. And so it is difficult. And that's why I make sure that I make it as easy
as possible as I can for my clients with things like my Separation Anxiety Training App.
Writing training plans is not something that comes naturally, well frankly to anybody. And
trainers can get really good at writing training plans. But I don't expect owners to become really
good at writing training plans. So they use my Separation Anxiety Training App, which delivers
plans for them. Over time, I do see owners becoming so expert in this that they write
really good training plans. But from the off, they work with my app. And that takes out a lot
of the headache of working out what they should do in each exercise. And another thing that people
struggle with very often, trainers included, is the nuances of what's going on with the dog during
an exercise. So questions come up like, I'm not sure, was she about to go over the threshold here
or not? Should I have stopped it here? I mean, I did, but I could have gone on. Or clients will
ask me, do you think that whimper that she did three minutes in is where I should have stopped?
I mean, I went to 30, but she did whimper at three. So I'm not sure. And so to help with that,
whether it's with my private clients, or whether it's with my group clients, I do video analysis.
You can't beat video for helping you through separation anxiety training. So I get everybody
not just to look at their dogs on a monitor when they're doing the training, but also to record it.
And then I get them to upload little snippets that I can review. Or another fun thing that we do,
yeah, I know, I do try to make separation anxiety training fun. But another thing we do, which is
quite good fun, is I have regular hot seat video calls. Now, what on earth is that? Well,
we have these group video calls as part of my program. But every so often, someone volunteers
to be in the hot seat. And I connect to their webcam, whatever camera they're using to watch
their dog. And I share the screen with everybody in the group. And I analyze the exercise live
as the owner's doing it. And there's huge benefits to this. First off, owners find it
really helpful for me to give them live commentary on what they're doing. But everybody else loves it
too, because they're looking at it going, oh, yeah, I might have stopped there. But Julie,
let that run. Or, oh, Julie stopped that way before I would have done. So that type of exercise
really helps people to become expert in their own dog, which is the mission that I'm on.
If you become an expert in your own dog, you will find separation anxiety training way,
way easier. But just to say, if you're finding separation anxiety training is difficult and
complicated, you are not alone. There are definitely things you can do to make it easier.
Okay, so the fourth thing that I find it makes separation anxiety training really hard for people
to stick to is that, honestly, it doesn't work for every dog. Now, there's no way of sugarcoating
that. I wish I could say that if you followed my training method, you will definitely get your dog
over separation anxiety. But the reality of it is, that's not the case. Some dogs, for whatever
reason, just do not respond to desensitization training. And I think because of that, because
we see people getting stuck, as well as we see people progressing. But because we see people
getting stuck, we may have the tendency to think, well, if it didn't work for that dog, chances are
it won't work for mine. Sure, we get optimistic when we see the success stories, and there are
plenty of those, but it's human nature to focus on the negative. And if you see somebody else
is struggling with their dog, and you hate the training because it's boring, and you're struggling
to fit it in, and you're finding it difficult, then seeing somebody else struggling might just
make you give up. You think, is it worth it? Is it worth going through all of this, only to find
after six months that we've made no progress? Well, here's the thing, you don't know unless you
give it a really good try. You can't stop before you've given it a chance, because what if your dog
is one of the many dogs who does get better as a result of desensitization training? Wouldn't it be
worth it? Wouldn't it be worth all the hassle, all the boring training, all the complexity? It would
be totally worth it, wouldn't it? So don't give up before you've started, thinking this won't work
for my dog. Give it your absolute best shot. And finally, the last reason that I see people
giving up on separation anxiety training, and actually maybe rightly so, is that if we don't
do separation anxiety training properly, we can actually make dogs worse. So we're trying to
desensitize dogs when we do separation anxiety training, but if we push dogs too far, too fast,
if we don't understand their anxiety threshold, if we don't respect the pace at which the dog
can progress, then we risk sensitizing them to leaving. We do the exact opposite of what we
intended to do. And of course, if we do that, then we are going to get stuck, and we will want to
give up. And actually, if your dog is getting sensitized by training, then you should definitely
stop. You should definitely stop, because there's no way we want this training to make your dog
worse. But look, if you train well, if you are totally cognizant of your dog's anxiety threshold,
if you don't push your dog, if you don't do what it says on the internet, where you're told to pick
up keys and put them down repeatedly over and over again, if you train well, you won't sensitize your
dog. You won't cause your dog to get worse. So if you're doing everything you should, then you
really needn't be worrying about this. So those are my five things, the five big reasons why I
see people quitting separation anxiety training and giving up and looking for different alternatives,
alternatives that will not work. So if this is you, what I want you to do is to stay the course.
Remember, separation anxiety training is just like training for your first 5k or trying to
lose weight. If you don't stick at it, you won't reach your goal. You can't just chop and change
and try different methods because after a week you haven't lost 10 pounds. Similarly, if you've
been doing separation anxiety training for a month but you still can't leave your dog for four hours,
don't give up. It's not that it's not working, it's just going to take more time and more
repetition. So often we give up before we give separation anxiety training a chance and don't
get drawn in or dazzled by all the quick fixes that there are seemingly for separation anxiety.
The quick fixes that I promise you will not work. So my top tip for you, if you feel like separation
anxiety training isn't working, jump into the Facebook group, either the main one or in my
private group, and connect with other people going through what you're going through because
this does work for a large number of dogs. There is hope for getting your dog over separation
anxiety. You just need to dig in and stay the course. Okay, thank you so much for joining me
this week. As ever, it's a pleasure talking to you and I hope that you'll join me next week
for another episode. But before I go, I'd like to ask you if you love this podcast,
will you head over to iTunes and rate and review it for me? I'd be so grateful if you would.
Anyway, that's it from me. I'll see you next week.
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 julienasmith.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.