Perhaps one of the most common questions that comes up in my Separation Anxiety Heroes group,
which is my membership for all about separation anxiety training, is, is it okay if my dog
follows me to the door?
Now one of the things that we do in Separation Anxiety Heroes is we give members the option
to have video reviewed and we do see a lot of dogs walking to the door following their
owner.
So no wonder so many people ask, is that okay?
And if you're in the midst of separation anxiety training, maybe you're asking the same too.
Does it matter that my dog is on my heels as I go to the door or does my dog actually
need to stay in the same spot, maybe on his or her bed?
Well, the spoiler is following is fine.
What matters is how we observe the behavior in context and what else we see alongside
the following.
And that's why in this episode, we're going to talk all about dogs who follow to the door.
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.
All right, before we start to talk about following, let's do a really quick refresh of how we
approach separation anxiety training.
Now, if you're already doubling down on your separation anxiety training efforts, this
will just be a quick reminder for you.
But for those of you who haven't started yet, here's what we do.
We are going to gradually expose our dogs to alone time.
Alone time scares our separation anxiety dogs.
And so we need to teach them a brand new association that alone time isn't actually scary, it's
actually fine and that they can handle it.
The training method that we use is very similar to the training method that we would use for
dogs with phobias, for people with phobias, for dogs with phobias too.
But it comes from the way that we approach getting people over their fears.
So we take the thing that the subject is scared of.
So with people that might be heights, with our separation anxiety dogs that's being alone.
And then we expose them to that scary thing.
But here's the really important piece.
We expose them to the thing that scared them at an intensity that isn't scary.
So if somebody is scared of heights, we don't start by taking them to the top of the Empire
State Building or even the Eiffel Tower.
And with dogs who are afraid of being alone, we don't start by leaving them for an hour
or more.
We take that thing, we take the scary stimulus, we dial it right down to a level that the
dog or the person can cope with and then we gradually increase it.
And we only increase it when the patient or the dog can cope with the increase in the
intensity.
There you go, that's separation anxiety training in a nutshell.
If you're working on separation anxiety training, you know there's a lot more to it.
But that's essentially how we get dogs to be comfortable on their own.
The most important takeaway from what I just described is that you need to remember we
are not teaching dogs to do something.
And we spend a lot of time and we put a lot of effort into teaching dogs behaviours.
We teach them how to sit when visitors come.
We teach them to go to their mat when we're eating dinner.
We teach them how to walk nicely on leash.
So we spend a lot of time teaching behaviours.
We might even be doing fun stuff, we teach them tricks, teaching them fun things to do.
So lots of time and lots of effort is put into teaching dogs behaviours.
It can be hard then to think about a form of dog training where we actually don't care
what the dog is doing.
We don't care what he does at all in separation anxiety training.
Why?
Because we don't need him to do something new, we want him to feel something new, feel
something different.
We want him to feel less scared of alone time.
So we want to change how a dog feels about being alone, we want to change his association
of being at home without anybody there.
So behaviour doesn't matter.
As long as the dog starts to develop a new association, then we are good.
But you'll have noticed, if you're doing separation anxiety training, that lots of dogs start
to follow owners to the door.
It just happens.
And if this is your dog, well, why is that happening?
Why is the dog following you to the door?
There are three big reasons why dogs do follow to the door.
By the way, and this is really important, if you were doing this training, if you were
implementing this method, the method that I explain in my Be Right Back book, with a
dog who didn't have separation anxiety, so a dog who didn't jump up and down when you
were about to leave, but equally isn't scared, chances are they'll follow you to the door.
Now I've seen this so many times, I've watched videos of client dogs who happen to be in
households with other dogs and so often owners will start the training, they'll start going
out of the door repeatedly and dogs, the non-anxious ones, will start to go, well, what's going
on there?
So the number one reason why dogs follow us to the door is curiosity.
They want to know what on earth we're doing.
Just going back to those videos of all the dogs that I've seen being trained for home
alone time and owners repeatedly going in and out of the door, I've also, not only have
I seen other dogs in the household, the non-anxious dogs take part, I've seen cats.
It's quite hilarious when you see the cat taking part in the training too.
So curiosity is a big driver of this behaviour.
You're doing something weird, you're doing something very novel and you're doing something
which involves the door and doors are exciting to dogs.
So no wonder then they get curious about what the heck you're doing.
And in fact, sometimes, often, I love it when an owner will say, he just looked at me like
I was losing it.
That's kind of what we want.
We want them to go, what is she doing?
Not, oh my goodness, I'm so scared by what she's doing.
We want them to go, what?
In that quizzical way because it's kind of normal that dogs would think this is a weird
thing because it is.
And as long as they're not scared, then we're okay.
So the second big reason why they're going to follow us to the door is that they expect
something fun would happen.
So I alluded to it in point one.
Doors are fascinating to dogs because often doors, especially front doors, lead to lots
of great things.
The way that the dog gets to explore the world is, he gets up to the front door and the front
door can lead to trips to the park and it can lead to sniffs.
It can lead to ball games.
But not only that, fun happens when people come in the door.
So when mum or dad come home or when visitors come through the door, dogs who love people
love it when the door opens.
In my household, one of the things that my dogs love about the front door is, occasionally,
it will mean there's a parcel for them.
Well, not for them, addressed to me, but inside that box, there may be something amazing
for them.
Does that happen in your household too?
The funny thing is, it's very, very rarely for them, but they are so excited with anticipation
that it might be for them that anytime we bring a box or a packet inside the door, I
get surrounded by dogs going, oh, what's that?
So expectation of something fun is a big driver of why they might follow you to the door.
And then the third big reason and why they're prompted to shadow us as we go in and out
is they learn through this training exactly what we want them to learn, which is that
you come back.
We're teaching dogs that not only are they okay on their own, but guess what?
You come back.
You go and you come back.
You repeat that over and over because you are trying to say to your dog, hey, it's fine.
When I go, I always come back.
So they've got this expectation that you're going to come back, you're going to come back
through the door soon anyway, so they may as well follow you to the door so that when
you come back, they're there.
So no wonder then dogs get into this habit of following us to the door.
And as we go through this process of coming and going, it's also kind of impractical for
dogs to go right back and hang out in our living rooms because, you know, if we're going
out of the door, particularly when we first start training and duration is short, they
don't even have the time to get back and go somewhere else.
So just logistically, it doesn't work for them.
So can you see now how we can't just say when a dog follows to the door, it's a really bad
sign and that the separation anxiety training, that exercise you're doing isn't working.
There is more going on.
Let's also talk about another linked behaviour and that's waiting.
So waiting and following, following and waiting tend to go hand in hand.
Not all dogs that follow will wait at the door, but lots of dogs do.
Lots of dogs who followed you to the door will then hang out at the door.
And also, that's also OK, that's fine.
Again, it doesn't necessarily ring alarm bells.
Just because a dog follows, we're not immediately concerned.
Just because a dog waits, it's not a reason to say that exercise went badly.
Similar to the reasons why they follow, there are prompts and there are drivers for why
dogs wait at the door.
It's a bit like waiting for a bus.
They have learned that you come back any minute now, just as dogs, dogs, just as we wait at
bus stops, maybe the dogs wait with us.
We learn that when we're at a bus stop, the bus is going to come soon because that's the
pattern we expect.
So from an efficiency point of view, a dog who doesn't have time to go back to the living
room because we're doing these short departures and would like to greet you as you come in,
just says, hey, you know what, I'm just going to wait by the door.
Now as we stretch the durations, it's true that the dog has time to go somewhere else
and settle in another spot, but it's that any minute now phenomenon that we've created.
A bit like with a bus where it should come every minute, but it's not, it's two minutes,
it's five minutes.
We keep waiting because our expectation is that it is about to come along any second.
And as we stretch duration in Home Alone training, so the dog's expectation still remains that
any minute now, you're going to come through the door.
So don't immediately stress out about following or waiting because they aren't in and of themselves
reason to be concerned.
However, with some dogs, we learn that actually being by the door or following isn't a good
thing.
And here we're talking about something else going on.
We're actually saying that we've worked out that when this dog does this thing and it
follows to the door, he isn't happy, he isn't okay.
But we're not saying he followed so he mustn't be okay.
Can you see the difference?
We've learned that for this dog, that behaviour is pre-empting anxiety, or maybe even it's
already manifesting anxiety because following for that dog is the way that it shows it's
upset.
How do we know that?
Well, we're not looking at the steps it takes as it approaches the door, we're not looking
at the following behaviour per se or the waiting behaviour per se, we're looking at
what else is going on.
This is where you need to become a body language detective, but not about the big stuff.
I think a lot of people get confused or misunderstood what it is we're looking for with separation
anxiety training.
We aren't really, when we get into training, we are not looking at the big stuff.
We're not looking for dogs who explode with vocalising and howling and crying or they
destroy or they chew or they soil.
That's what dogs who are upset when they're home alone, many of them do.
But when we're doing training, we're keeping our dogs under threshold, or that's our goal,
so we're not looking for over-threshold behaviours.
What we're looking for in exercises are the way more subtle signs, the micro-behaviours
that tell us, actually, that dog, he isn't comfortable, he isn't over-threshold, he hasn't
exploded like he used to do when he was left on his own, but there's something not quite
right.
And so when we start to see those micro-behaviours and we see that the dog does those when it
follows or waits, that's when we can start to say, you know what, as soon as he follows
and leaves his bed, then we're going to cancel that exercise.
But it's for that dog and it's based on what else we see.
What do I mean by micro-behaviours?
Well, you know, as the name suggests, it's really subtle stuff and often it's very dog-specific.
But you want to be looking at your dog's eyes, what it does with its ears, so not just ear
placement but ear movement, and it can be tiny, what's going on with their faces, particularly
around their muzzle, how they carry themselves, their tail, and by the way, dogs tend to tuck
their tails when they're really scared, when they're over threshold.
The end of their back lowers and the tail tucks under.
But a tail drooping down, just hanging there, isn't a sign of anxiety.
That's a dog with a tail that's doing nothing.
But back to the micro-behaviours, you need to be really on top of what does your dog
do as it starts to get unsettled.
And those micro-behaviours, if you can spot them in your dog, if he can give you those
signals, that is priceless because that's going to help you stop and exercise way before
he gets too upset.
If you decide that following and waiting are accompanied by micro-behaviours that say,
this dog is scared, my dog isn't comfortable, then you can decide, actually, I am going
to take his behaviour into account in deciding how this session went.
So, if your dog is a waiter or a follower, and you've decided that it's okay for him
to do that behaviour because it's not a sign of him being anxious, what can you do?
You might want to stop that behaviour, so what could you do?
Well, there are four things you can do if you are really troubled by that behaviour,
and I don't think you always have to be, but let me give you some tips just in case you are.
Number one, don't go back and forth, just stay at the door.
So, your dog is only going to follow you if you go backwards and forwards into the
living room or into the kitchen, but you can do this training staying at the door.
Now, that is definitely going to make your dog wait at the door because you're not going
back in, so just be aware that if you do that, and it's a perfectly appropriate training
approach and I often recommend it, actually, particularly for dogs who get really amped
up by us going backwards and forwards to the door, often because they're really excited
that something fun is going to happen at the door.
For those dogs, I actually like it when we stay at the front door.
Alright, number one.
Number two, then if you have a waiter and you know your dog's not anxious but he's just
hanging out at the door, put a dog bed by the door.
Put his favourite bed by the door so he has somewhere to go.
It can be a bed, it can be a mat, whatever, just give him a space to go chill.
I've seen dogs ace five-hour sessions while being in the bed by the door.
It's their choice, they're fine, but it's where they want to be, so let's make it comfortable
for them.
Okay, and then number three, if you try one and two but you're still not entirely comfortable
with what's going on, you can, as I said, call it.
You can say, actually, I'm not sure, maybe I am seeing some anxiety, maybe I'm not, but
I'm going to try the training with my dog not following or waiting.
So there, you're putting in a behaviour contingency and you're going to say for your dog, as soon
as the following starts, I am going to cancel, I'm going to stop that exercise.
And the final thing, just to reiterate, really, keep being vigilant about the micro-behaviours.
So the more you train, the more you're going to spot these, so it's not a one point in
time assessment of your dog's micro-reactions to a stressful situation.
You're going to monitor this all the way through.
Things to look out for if you do have a waiter would be things like sniffing, breathing when
at the door, and if you've got a dog who follows, then pace is often an indicator.
So if your dog runs to the door to follow you and keeps running to the door every single
time you do a departure, that's more worrying than a dog who kind of trots to the door
or ambles to the door behind you.
And you want to be particularly concerned if your dog picks up pace as you do step after
step after step.
Alright, so, some tips for you, some insights I hope, but the big takeaway that I want you
to reflect on is just because your dog follows or waits, don't automatically assume that
that exercise was a dud.
It may be that your dog is just doing that behaviour because of a whole host of other
reasons other than anxiety.
I hope this helps.
If you have one of those dogs, keep that vigilance going, keep watching their behaviour, and
the more you learn about your dog and his micro-behaviours, the better the separation
anxiety training will go.
Alright, that's it from me for this 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 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.
www.berightbackseparation.com