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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety podcast. I'm your

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host Julie Naismith and this week we're going to be talking about one of the most, if not

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the most, important factors when it comes to getting your dog over separation anxiety

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so that you can both lead normal lives again and that is consistency. I'll be talking about

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how important consistency is to your training and giving you top tips as to how you can

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make sure your training does deliver consistency.

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Hello and welcome to the Be Right Back Separation Anxiety podcast. Hi, I'm Julie Naismith, dog

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trainer, author and full-on separation anxiety geek. I've helped thousands of dogs overcome

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separation anxiety with my books, my online programs, my trainer certification and my

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Separation Anxiety Training App and this podcast is all about sharing my tips and tricks to

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help you teach your dog how to be happy at home alone too.

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Alright before I start, quick question for you. What do Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Beethoven,

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Leonardo da Vinci and Einstein have in common? And why are we asking about this on a Separation

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Anxiety podcast? I hear you say. Well, I'll tell you what they have in common. Consistency.

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So they didn't or they don't just have one or a few moments of brilliance. They were

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or they are consistently brilliant. Consistency. Consistency, the most important aspect of

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Separation Anxiety Training but that we regularly seem to overlook. It's a huge aspect of any

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performance whether that's sport, whether that's science, whether that's music. It's

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what separates top performers from the rest. So why does it matter in Separation Anxiety?

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Why is she talking about this? Well, here's the thing. If you are working on having a

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dog you can leave, then having a dog who is unpredictable in the time that they can

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handle, whose durations, the times that it's okay with seem to be all over the place, seem

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to be random, that's totally unworkable. If your dog isn't consistently achieving a certain

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time it really doesn't help you. Let me just give you an example, a non-Separation Anxiety

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Training example. Let's talk about dogs who don't like bikes. Alright, so you have a dog,

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you've been working on their reaction to bikes and they are getting much, much better. But

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every now and again you take them out and they do lose it. They see a bike and they

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lose it. But you can keep going with your walk, you maybe have to change direction,

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you maybe have to go to a quiet spot where your dog can recover and go under threshold

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and seem okay again. But you can probably, with a bit of caution, continue with the walk.

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So that inconsistency, your dog reacting to a bike when maybe the last 10 walks it hasn't,

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it hasn't completely scuppered everything, it hasn't ruined your training, it hasn't

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ruined that moment, it hasn't ruined the walk. But if you have a dog who when you leave is

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unpredictable and you don't know when they are going to lose it when they are alone,

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you cannot leave that dog. So a solid, predictable 15 minutes, a dog who can nail 15 minutes

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every single time is actually way better or way better for our psyche and our sanity

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than a dog who can do 3 hours but is sketchy and unpredictable. Because unlike the walk

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with a dog who reacts to the bike, that walk can continue. But if you're somewhere watching

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your dog or waiting for bark alerts or doing an exercise with your dog and you're way down

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the street because you think your dog can do 30 minutes and it explodes at 2, it's game

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over. You have to come back. So if your dog is doing 3 hours, but doing 3 hours randomly

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here and there, you can't do anything with those 3 hours. Not really, you can't go to

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the cinema, your friends will get really annoyed with you if you're watching your dog on camera

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while you're at dinner. And also, when your dog is being really sketchy like that, you

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can't really go very far from the door because if they do lose it, if they do freak out and

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you're 20 minutes away, that's 20 minutes of freak out time, 20 minutes of time that

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your dog should not be left in that state. So you might be set outside for 3 hours because

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it is not consistent time. If your dog, however, is nailing 15 minutes, you can do something

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with that. If your dog can nail 15 minutes every single time without fail, then you can

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go and pick up the mail, you can go and grab a coffee, you might even be able to go and

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get a pint of milk because you know every single time your dog can nail it. Now, with

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the owners that I work with in my Separation Anxiety Heroes group, we talk about the concept

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of the $100 time. $100, Euros, Pounds, call it what you want. The $100 time concept in

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Separation Anxiety Training. What we do when we work on training in our group is we are

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less focused on those extreme variations in time. So the 3 hours you get here or there,

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we are focused on predictability. The $100 time is the time that you would, guess what,

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bet $100 on that your dog could do, every single time. Or at least 99 times out of 100

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because dogs aren't machines and we can't always predict exactly what we're going to

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do. However, as we work on Separation Anxiety Training, there is no doubt that their predictability

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at certain times increases. And it's the increase in predictability and consistency

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that gives you back your life. The random one-off times are no good to you. You need

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to know when you leave the house that you can leave the house for X time. It is no good

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you worrying, will this be the day when he doesn't do that time? And will he? So consistency

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and predictability are everything. Let's go back to that 3 hours, the outlying time that

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maybe your dog got once, or maybe your dog's best ever time is an hour. Personal bests,

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I call them. I call these times personal bests. So just like Usain Bolt would set a record

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when he did a personal best, they are personal bests. And just like athletes, dogs don't

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achieve personal best after personal best. That's not how training goes. That's not how

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learning goes. That's not how improvement happens. Personal bests are outliers by their

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very definition. So they happen and then almost inevitably after a personal best, we're likely

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to see something that's not quite as good. So personal bests happen, they're outlying

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occurrences and then the next time that might not be as good and that is normal. The problem

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with personal bests in separation anxiety training is that they get our hopes up. They

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raise our expectations because we think, whoa, our dog's nailed it, 2 hours, yes. And then

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the next time we train, we've got 2 hours in our plan and our dog does 20 minutes. So

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whenever I come across that happening, the first thing I say to an owner is, what's your

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dog's $100 time? Is it 2 hours? Because if it's 2 hours and your dog just did 20 minutes,

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then chances are if he can nail 2 hours time after time after time, it was just an off

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day. But more often than not, when we're getting those really long times and people are saying,

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oh, I can't make any sense of it, it seems really random, the personal best time is way

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lower. And you might look at it all and say, oh, there's no pattern, I don't understand

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why he's doing really well sometimes and not others. It's because you're looking at outliers.

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His $100 time is actually consistent. Once dogs get training, they do get to a stage

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where there is a consistent time. You just can't always see it. It could be 5 seconds.

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But more often than not, when I ask people the question, what's your dog's $100 time,

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they can tell me. They can say, you know what, he did do a personal best at 17 minutes last

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week, but really his $100 time is 30 seconds. That's the time that he nails every single

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time without fail. So if you're looking at your dog's pattern of absences and you're

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thinking it doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up, it's completely random, what's going

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on is you're looking at the personal best, you're looking at the outliers, you're not

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looking at the consistent times. So personal bests aren't always helpful. It's human nature

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that that's what we're looking for. But what you need to be doing with separation anxiety

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training is you need to be pushing up the predictable, the consistent time. The great

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thing about the personal best though is that they do at least show you that your dog can

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do those times, but you need to work on consistency to get your dog nailing them every single

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time. And that's what separation anxiety training does. We actually don't train for personal

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bests at all. We do not, on a consistent, on a regular basis, leave dogs to set their

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personal best. So this is what we don't do in training. We don't go out and watch our

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dogs and see how long they can last. That's not separation anxiety training. The way separation

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anxiety training works is we gradually increase the time that a dog can do. So we go at the

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dog's pace, we nudge the time up in tiny, tiny increments. We're not doing this, oh

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I wonder what he can do today, keep the stopwatch running, because that just stresses the dog

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You might get lucky, you might get back at 2 hours 56 and your dog's fine, but if your

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dog is freaking out for three minutes between 2.56 and 2.59, you are not teaching your dog

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that being alone is okay, because those last few minutes he was panicking. So if your training

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method is go out and watch how long your dog can cope with, that's not desensitization,

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that's not gradual exposure to scary alone time, which is the method that I teach. The

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method that I teach and that gets results is we go up in tiny increments, we train with

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a plan. No going out and hoping, we train with a plan. So before you do the exercise,

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you know what the target duration is. You are not going out and just looking at your

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stopwatch. You are training with a specific target in mind every single time. And guess

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what that does, that gradual exposure, going at the dog's pace, tiny increments, it pushes

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up the $100 time, it increases the consistent time. And that's how we get a dog to start

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nailing that 3 hours consistently, by gradually going at the dog's pace, not going out hoping

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that your dog might get the 3 hours today, or 2 hours, or 20 minutes, whatever it is,

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we go gradually. And if you can't understand what's going on with your dog in terms of

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the pattern of times, it's because you're not training with a plan. If you train with

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a plan, actually, you haven't got as much variation in the time that they can do because

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you are not just going out, watching them and recording the time that they are achieving,

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you are training to a specific duration. So it might be that your plan says go out for

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12 minutes, but that day your dog might have been able to do 20. You do not do the 20,

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you stick to 12 minutes. Because if you do the hope and pray, go out and just let your

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dog do what it can and stay out for as long as you think your dog's okay, you're not training

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with a plan. I just want to talk as well about where regressions fit into this whole picture

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of consistency. If your dog suddenly does really badly, so say you are being really

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diligent and you're training and you're sticking with the plan, you're only increasing those

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durations by a tiny amount each time, the target durations. But for whatever reason,

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all of a sudden your dog can't come anywhere close to the times in the plan, even though

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you've just been incrementally increasing. So that can feel like your dog has regressed.

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And certainly it can be the case that dogs can get to $100 time, let's say our dog has

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got a 15 minute $100 time because you've inched your way up to that 15 minutes, but then all

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of a sudden it spends two, four weeks and it can't do more than two minutes. Then that

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definitely feels like a regression. So sometimes it actually is just that your dog hasn't got

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the consistency that you thought. It seemed like they were consistent at 15 minutes. You

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seem like that was your $100 time, but in the dog's head, no, no, it's just not there

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yet. So I always encourage people to think, well, I did get the 15 minutes, so I'll take

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comfort from that, but I'm just going to go back to two minutes because that's how I'm

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going to build up the consistency at 15 minutes. So really a regression is just a case of teaching

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the dog more repetitions at the lower durations so we can push that consistency up again.

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And hopefully when you think about it like that, it's less panic inducing because I know

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that what happens is when you hit a certain time and then you spend a month where you

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can't even get close to it, everybody's brain just goes into panic mode. You feel like you're

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in free fall. You think it's never going to work. Instead, think that that time just isn't

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consistent yet and your dog has gone back to a time that it can more consistently do.

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That's consistency. If you work with me, you'll hear me talk about it over and over again

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because I do think it's really overlooked when it comes to training, but it is the single

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most important factor in my experience in getting dogs to a stage where you feel like

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you've got your freedom back and you can do stuff again. If your dog can nail two hours

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consistently, you can go to the movies. If your dog can nail an hour consistently, you

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can go to lunch. But if it can only do an hour, one in every four times, then you can't

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do those things. So consistency, consistency, consistency. It is so important. All right.

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I'll get off my soapbox about consistency, but I hope that's been helpful in getting

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you to rethink that focusing on duration isn't enough. Consistency is really what matters.

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Okay, that's it from me this week. I hope you found this helpful. If you do like these

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podcasts, I'd love it if you'd head over to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. Also, if

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you are in the mood to, why not leave me a review and let me know what you think of these

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podcasts. That would be ever so helpful. Okay, happy training. Bye for now.

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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Be Right Back Separation Anxiety

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Podcast. If you want to find out more about how I can help you further, head over to

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julienaysmith.com. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed listening today, I would love it if you would

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

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

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai