Welcome to another episode of the Fixing Separation Anxiety Podcast.
Hi, I'm Julie here and my goal with these podcasts is to help you through the ups and
downs of training, not just from a technical perspective but also from the emotional side
because separation anxiety training is a roller coaster and in fact that's the exact topic that
we're talking about today. We're talking about why separation anxiety training seems to fluctuate
so much. What does your dog do fine one day and then seemingly do really badly the next?
So stay tuned to find out why I think this happens. I'll explain to you what I think is
going on and I'm going to leave you with my top tip for dealing with those variable times,
those times when your dog just doesn't seem to do as well as it was doing.
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.
So what do we mean by fluctuation? Well really we're talking about a dog who is doing fine,
maybe making some nice progression in terms of target duration and you're seeing some steady
improvement and then maybe one day from nowhere your dog just bombs, so not even close to target
duration. But it's okay, it's just a one-off, so you're going to try again, you'll go back and
you'll see if you can get close to some of those previous target durations but nope, your dog's
not having any of it. So kind of the first time it happens, the first time you have one of those
days, you can just feel a bit flat about it and chalk it down to experience but it gets really
difficult to handle when that goes on, when either you feel like every time you train your
dog can't even get close to what it was doing before or when you just see this pattern that
you feel like you take a few steps forwards only to take a huge, huge leap backwards.
So that's what we mean by fluctuation, just your dog going up and down when it comes to target
duration. So when that happens, here are some things that you can do. First of all,
have a look at the trend. Now if you aren't a whiz when it comes to graphs and charts and
stuff like that, don't worry too much but if you are, let me tell you what you can do.
So grab your worksheet and do something called running a trend line and it's going to differ
depending on whether you're on Google sheets or Excel sheets. For those of you who don't
geek out on data, you can actually do this kind of by eye. So a software program will calculate
the trend line and the trend line is basically saying, okay, we've got all of these numbers
but are they heading in a general direction? We might have ups and downs but can we see overall
that there's a trend and is that trend up or is it down? So that's what a trend line is
and like I said, you can get Google sheets or Excel to work on that for you but if you're not
into fancy stuff like that and that's fine, just have a look at all your data and by the way,
I hope you are keeping records of all your training because that is crucial. Whether
you're doing that in a worksheet, whether you're doing that with pen and paper, just make sure
you're keeping records of your training. So have a look at either the list of times that your dog's
achieved either in your worksheet or on your notepad and just see, does it look like overall
my dog is progressing? So even if the last three have been disastrous, do I see that over time
the trend is upwards or is it just a disaster? Maybe for the first few weeks we saw things going
upwards but you're saying but now all I can see is a downward trend. Chances are, you will be
having an upward trend. Chances are. Why? Because we don't push dogs through difficult, scary
exercises when we do separation anxiety training. So you shouldn't be having bad session after bad
session and that means you shouldn't have a downwards trend. If you are, if it does look
like say the last three months all you've done is trended down, you need to stop. You need to stop
and you need to reset and you need to go back to a time that you're really confident your dog
can do and start building that upwards trend again. And don't worry when that happens.
I'm going to come on to a bit later in this podcast the crucial point that every dog who
overcomes separation anxiety has more than likely gone through what you're going through now, what
your dog's going through now, i.e it's fluctuated. So don't worry too much when you have to take a
few steps back in terms of time because every single time that you get out of the door
you're adding to the chances of your dog getting over this. And actually when I say every time you
get out the door I mean successfully and success means without anxiety. So you're way better to
have a shorter duration that doesn't freak your dog out than you are to keep pushing and pushing
on challenging durations that your dog can't do. Alright so if you stick to those rules you should
see an upward trend. Alright my next tip is when you look at that data, see I keep going on about
all the data you've recorded so if you are not recording data I hope this podcast at least makes
you do one thing, go away and record your data. So when you look back at the data from each training
exercise how many good days did you have versus bad days? Go and have a look at that. So a good
day would be where you at least equal the target duration that you were going to do that day.
Now in my training app, so all of my clients get my separation anxiety training app and when you
have a good day when you meet target duration in my training app you get a little high five.
Actually I think it's a poor five but in other words what we're looking for is we're looking for
the good days being the days when you achieved, when your dog achieved what you set out for your
dog to achieve that day. And we also want to look at bad days but overall if you've trained 30 times
or 90 times or 100 times how many times did your dog meet the target duration and how many times
did you not? I'm willing to bet that you've had way more good days than you've had bad days.
It's just that right now in this moment the bad days seem to in your mind to be overpowering the
good days. So look at the data. Another thing I want you to do is think about changing behavior
more broadly so beyond separation anxiety. Now if you've never had a dog with any behavior problem
other than separation anxiety this might be harder for you to understand but maybe you've
got a friend or family member who's had a reactive dog or a dog who gets scared of things.
When we work with dogs to change how they feel particularly to change their fear to confidence
it's a slow sticky process that never goes in a straight line and so if you are trying to get a
dog to love strangers it will not have a training history where every single session it aced. There
will be days when it wobbles. There will be days when it looked like it was going to meet the
criteria that were set for it but it wobbled. That's just the nature of behavior modification.
When we set out to change how a scared dog feels we will have ups and downs regardless of whether
it's separation anxiety or fear of strangers or dogs who don't like going to the vets or dogs
who are scared of skateboards. We will have days where the dog doesn't achieve what we thought it
could achieve so it's a really natural occurrence. Actually it's a very natural occurrence in all
emotional change in all subjects so not just in dogs in humans too. Recovery from things like
PTSD or grief for humans isn't a straight line either. If you have ever experienced anything like
that if you've experienced grief or a significant trauma in your life you'll remember that although
it feels like hopefully you make progress you then hit days where you just think where did that come
from? I thought I was doing so well. I've been feeling so much better and now I just feel so low
again. It just hits you right? If you've ever had that experience you'll know what I'm talking about
or if you've had friends or family who've been through that you'll see the same. Grief is a
particularly helpful analogy because grief does tend to follow that pattern where somebody
recovering from grief will seemingly be in a really good place progressing and feeling less
weighed down by the grief until then one day boom they're completely overwhelmed by it again.
So referencing something like other behavior change can really help you normalize what's
going on with your dog's separation anxiety and it might seem a really dramatic comparison to you.
Grief, human grief to a dog's fear of being home alone but the chemical effect what's going on in
your dog's brain is every bit as extreme as a human brain that's dealing with trauma. Your dog
is dealing with trauma for your dog being left home alone is a massive traumatic event so the
brain is going to take as long to recover from that as human brains take to recover from the
traumas that we encounter and continuing on thinking about how any brain recovers from trauma
a fundamental rule of recovery is that you have to go slow to go fast. I heard Dr. Karen overall
described this phenomena as if you think you're not going quickly enough you need to slow down.
So what do we mean by you need to go slow to go fast?
Changing a brain is just a long-term activity it takes a lot of repetition particularly when we're
dealing with negative experiences in the past it takes a lot of repetition and a lot of new
positive experiences to overcome negative ones. It's not really a one-to-one either
so we might I mean think about it how much negativity bias is that in our brain if you've
ever received bad feedback or had something unpleasant happen to you say you have a day
where lots of fun things happen but something horrid or unpleasant happened in the middle of
that day you will remember that day for the negative thing. Same thing happens with our
history of negative emotion and negative emotion imprints much more strongly on our brain
than positive stuff and so it means we have to have a lot more experience of positive emotion
or positive experiences in order to outweigh the negative ones and the same is true for dogs.
So we have to go slow in order to get the repetition of the positive experiences also
going slow means not pushing our dogs too far not taking them to the edge of their anxiety
and just keeping them holding it together all the way through because that's one of the surefire
ways you can create a meltdown in the dog who's recovering is to constantly just push them to the
edge of their comfort zone when you train until one day they absolutely lose it because of the
cumulative impact of being pushed to the edge all the time. What we don't want is dogs who
kind of white knuckling the training so they're kind of hanging in there but they are not feeling
better about being left. The slower we go the more positive experiences with no white knuckling
we give dogs of being home alone the better our chances of outweighing the historical negative
experiences that the dog still has stuck in its brain and that brings me on to another guiding
principle that we need to think about both patience and urgency. I'm actually talking
about patience and urgency those two don't fit together but they do so we talked about going
slow to go fast so that's patience. Patience to go at the dog's pace, patience just to stick with
the ups and downs knowing that they will come but the urgency part is you have to be urgent in acting
that means if you're listening to this and you haven't yet started training or maybe you've
taken a long break I want you to be urgent in your desire to get on with the training again
so be urgent in the way you take action about your dog's separation anxiety however
be patient in waiting for results so urgency in action patience in waiting for results so all of
this means all of these points that I've gone through mean you have to do a few things to get
through this. First of all check your data if you haven't heard that loud and clear from this
podcast I'm going to say it again check your data and if you're not keeping good records at the moment
please do then keep saying to yourself that all successful dogs will go through this so
all those dogs that you see now acing four hours or five hours they have been through this too
they have been through ups and downs they've caused their owners to despair those dogs you
know the ones that seem like they can just be left without a care in the world well they can now
but they've been through this too so just remember that when you're feeling like your
dog is never going to get through this if your dog isn't currently on medication I definitely
want you to think about that anxiety medication isn't going to solve separation anxiety but
combined with the training that we do it's a really powerful combination why because anxiety
medication just helps us have more room to train we have greater tolerance of the dog of being
alone so it doesn't mean to say you can put your dog in anxiety medication and suddenly leave them
for three hours it might mean you can train for 30 seconds instead of three seconds but honestly
it's enough what happens is their tolerance of the training goes up they just are less
stressed by it you can push the duration on more systematically and typically with more consistency
when your dog is on the right medication for them at the right dose I've got other podcast episodes
all on medication so I'm not going to go into it here I will link to that in the show notes
but my number one tip my number one tip to get you through these fluctuations is to think about this
so it can feel like our emotions are not something that we can control so
when our dog is doing really badly in separation anxiety training we feel flattened we dread doing
another exercise because if they have a bad exercise it's going to make us feel blue
well it's not true that we can't control our feelings or that our feelings are controlled
by events we think that our feelings are controlled by events or consequences what do I
mean by that well that's a great example that if you feel blue because of separation anxiety training
it's because your dog didn't do well so the event of your dog not doing well not meeting target
duration is what made you feel so blue about training that you can't bear to do another step
but actually what's going on is that your thoughts are controlling your emotion
when your dog doesn't do very well you think oh my goodness this is it or you think it's not fair
everybody else's dog seems okay or this isn't going to work for my dog I am always going to
be stuck in the home or if I do another exercise he's going to fail so I'm not I just can't bear
to do it so it's not the event the activity the consequence that's making you feel that way
it's what you think about them let me give you another dog example if you've ever had a dog who
pulls on the leash you know how difficult that can feel so you're on the street you've got this
dog who is pulling you around like crazy it's quite a busy street and it completely looks like
you're being walked by your dog not the other way around so you feel embarrassed you feel
self-conscious you feel judged however what is causing that is not your dog pulling on your
leash your dog pulling on the leash is not what's making you feel embarrassed and judged what's
making you feel embarrassed and judged is that you say oh everybody's looking at me or oh you know
what they're just they're saying they're talking about me they're thinking that their dog doesn't
do this oh I feel so embarrassed so event your dog pulls on leash feeling you feel embarrassed
not caused by the event but caused by the thought that everybody's looking at you and judging you
for what your dog's doing what if when your dog pulls on leash instead of thinking everybody's
looking at me everybody's judging me you said I bet there's some people watching you thinking oh
gosh that's my dog too or what if you said to yourself I don't think they're really looking
at me and judging me they're just looking at me because I'm walking my dog and you know hey it's
my dog's cute they're looking at me because my dog's cute or they're looking at me because they
think it's just a fun scene they're not judging me so can you see how the thought of what's going
on is causing your emotion not the event itself let's talk about consequences emotions and thought
in separation anxiety training so your dog's going up and down having good days having bad
days but seems like you are not making that progress that you'd hoped you would on a
particular day your dog doesn't meet target duration you feel you've had enough you just
cannot do this anymore you feel worn out deflated beaten but what's causing that that feeling of
just wanting to stop and feeling totally defeated that feeling of defeat is coming from your thought
about the event of your dog not meeting target you're thinking it's never gonna work you're
thinking this isn't it's just not the right training for my dog you're thinking I just
can't I can't do this anymore because it's a waste of time and it's that thinking those thoughts that
make you feel how you feel so what could you say instead when our dog doesn't meet target duration
well first of all you can say write this down Julie said this would happen she said it would
happen she said it's normal okay so not my dog's different it's not gonna happen but Julie said
this happens now just as an aside I am not saying that your dog is definitely 100% going to get over
separation anxiety but I do want you to know that what you're going through when your dog
fluctuates it's really common in fact here's another one thing you can say to yourself
Julie says if dogs don't fluctuate when you're going through separation anxiety training she
would question whether your dog actually had a fear-based problem in the first place you could
also say oh he did that a few weeks ago but we made progress again you could also say I have
read about people whose dogs get to three or four hours I remember when they said early on
dead dogs were going through this so okay this does seem like something that would happen
and immediately that you start saying those things you're going to stop that feeling of
defeat and overwhelm and wanting just to crawl away and never do separation anxiety training
again at least I hope you will so I said at the start that I wanted to leave you with a number
one tip if you only do one thing as a result of listening to this podcast oh actually I'm going to
give you two things because you remember I said if you're not tracking data you have to do that
that's kind of an aside my tip actually for this whole podcast is think about consequences thought
and emotion so the next time something happens in separation anxiety training that makes you feel
totally rotten have a look at what you're thinking about that event and say to yourself can I think
about that consequence that event in a different way and I bet you can and I tell you what if you
can't then I want you to jump into my free Facebook group or join me on one of my regular Facebook
lives tell me what your event is tell me what you're thinking about it and I'll tell you how
to reframe it so that you don't feel the weight of negative emotion dragging you down do we have a
deal excellent okay thank you so much for joining me today I know you have a huge choice when it
comes to listening to podcasts so I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to mine
so keep training keep positive and I look forward to seeing you online or on my podcast sometime soon
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.