At this time of year many of us are travelling, we're travelling for holidays, we're travelling
for vacation, we're travelling to stay with family and friends and it's often at this
time of the year as well as during the summer that I get asked is it worth me training when
I'm away?
I get asked this an awful lot and I totally get it and it makes a lot of sense.
So in this episode I'm going to explain when it might be a good idea to train while you're
on the road and what to do if it is and I'll also mention when you might not worry about
doing training while you're away.
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.
First of all though let's talk about a concept of context and dogs and learning.
Dogs when they learn take into account the context in which they learn and it's a huge
cue to dogs.
Context sends a big message and the context, the biggest context in separation anxiety
training is location.
So the location that we do the training in sends a really clear message and sends lots
of data to our dogs about being left.
What do I mean by that?
When we do home alone training in our house or in our apartment your dog is learning that
being left in that place is safe because that place, your apartment, your house, wherever
is the context in which you do the training and it's telling your dog that oh when mum
goes out and back through that door right when I'm here that's safe.
When you do the training that is obviously when we leave them for longer than they can
cope with it's not safe but when you do the training you're making everything super safe.
So you go you come back your dog's in your home and when your dog is at home you do that
training the message starts to become oh okay yeah I can be okay got it and it's a very
very salient cue to dogs it sends a huge volume of data location because it is just
so all-encompassing it just dominates over other cues so location is massive when it
comes to teaching dogs.
Great examples of that that you might have come across in other forms of dog training
would be when you've been working with your dog on a sit and they can sit in the kitchen
and they can sit in the living room when you ask them but you take them to the dog park
or you take them to your friend's house and you ask them to sit and it's like they have
never learned it's like all those repetitions that you did have been completely forgotten
You see this with puppies all the time and why?
Because the context of location is so salient to your puppy or dog that when you change
it it's like you've just changed the whole thing Karen Pryor talks about it in animal
training and she talks about a different tank syndrome and this related to training whales
I think it was to do certain things in a certain part of a certain tank that sounds
kind of weird now doesn't it to think about a whale in a tank but you kind of get where
I'm coming from but as soon as the whale was transferred to another tank it was often the
case that the learning was forgotten and she called it different tank syndrome so location
is a different tank your house and other places you might stay different tanks the
learning can just disappear and definitely with fear-based training but the thing about
dogs actually all animals and the way they learn is they do learn differently to us in
one respect very similar in many respects but one of the things that they do differently
is when they are trying to work out whether something is a threat whether it's safe whether
it's dangerous rather than looking at the whole entity they look at changes to an entity
and I let me give an example of this and this comes from Temple Grandin who's written lots
of fabulous stuff particularly around the welfare of animals that are used in farming
and agriculture but the example she gives is talking about a horse the horse who was
struggling with people and in particular with a man who had a hat on but the man without
a hat the horse was fine with and the way she explains it is that to us we look at that
picture and see a man and a man with a hat and we evaluate them as being similar I mean
that you know 95% the same image to us so we're not as scared if we were scared of men
with hats or if we were scared of men then we probably wouldn't be that much more scared
by a man with a hat however animals don't do that they take an approach which is that
bit is different so therefore those two things are fundamentally different so the man without
a hat the man with a hat as far as the horse goes could be as different as a tractor and
a giraffe because just adding the hat completely transformed the picture and to us it wouldn't
but to animals it does and so when you think about the man with a hat analogy and you then
start to think about training locations with dogs you can start to see that the location
really does matter particularly when the dog is trying to make sense of is this one okay
is this safe is it not okay and you'll know if you've been doing separation anxiety training
for a while that context other context really affect training too and the big ones are who
does the training if you've got other people in your household and they've got involved
in the training you might have noticed that one of you when one of you trains your dog
does better than when two of you train or the other one of you trains or any combination
of those because all dogs seem to see that picture as different when you train that can
have a massive impact some dogs are fine with being trained in the evening some dogs hate
it some dogs prefer the morning it's all very dog dependent day of the week that's
another big factor the weather there are many many contexts which change how a dog feels
about home alone training so you probably notice that with your own dog and so location
is one of those and it's a massive factor in all of that dogs are really really bad
at generalizing confidence from one location to another from one context to another but
they're really good at generalizing fear so you can take a dog who is scared of being
home alone and take it somewhere else and he's probably going to be scared of being
left in a new location but if your dog is developing home alone confidence the chances
are he's not going to take that confidence on the road with him so if you want your dog
to be okay with being somewhere else you have to work on your dog being okay somewhere else
it's as simple and as maddening as that but it's just the way their brains work and what
does this mean for your travels and you thinking about whether you should do any training when
you're away well there are times when it's going to make sense to train and times when
it's not so here's what I advise if you are visiting family or friends and it's somewhere
you're going to go to regularly say you visit your parents every weekend and it's consistent
and you're there a lot then it starts to make sense to think about doing the training
because there's consistency there's permanence it's the same place it might not be somewhere
that you are full time with your dog but you're spending a lot of time there so the permanence
makes sense and it's not going to be a different place in three months time so you're going
to be able to do the training for as long as you need that's when I say it makes sense
and the other thing to overlay on that is to say when I'm there do I need to be able
to leave my dog so we've got opportunity which is it's going to be a place that you're going
to go to regularly and it's permanent and then there's need what's the motivation do
you need to do it do you need to have your dog be okay with being left in that new location
and if those two come together then I would say it does make sense it's going to be work
but it's doable other examples that I've come across with clients I've worked with
would be where somebody's other half doesn't live with them and they might be spending time
in the other half apartment or home again that's a really good example of where training somewhere
else makes a lot of sense when should you not do this when should you skip training
in a strange location I would say absolutely don't worry about it don't think about it
if you're thinking you'd like to get your dog comfortable with a hotel so that you can travel
with your dog but still go out to dinner even though you might go to a hotel the same hotel
a couple of times the chances are you're not going to go to a hotel over and over again
and just because to us the notion of being in a hotel room is kind of similar I mean every hotel
room is different every hotel room in the hotel might be different but it's still a hotel room
and it still has the same kind of stuff going on and it's a you know being in a hotel room in one
hotel is more similar to being in a hotel room in another hotel than it is to being at home if you
see what I mean so to us they're not two hotel rooms are similar experiences in the scheme of
things but to your dog hugely different so you will really be pushing water uphill if you try to
get your dog to be comfortable with being left in a strange hotel room lots of dogs who don't have
separation anxiety struggle with that so I would say skip that bit also skip it if you're thinking
I would love it if when we go away in the summer we could you know book a place a holiday rental
a vacation place and my dog would be okay for a couple of hours well we go out and we go for a
swim or we go for dinner again same issue it's a new place and dogs with separation anxiety
really struggle with new places now if you have a vacation rental or you're lucky enough to have
a holiday home or a vacation home that you go to regularly then that's going to be an ideal
situation in which to get your dog comfortable with that place because it's permanent equally
if you've got a camper or a trailer or something like that where you go to regularly it's going to
be around for long enough that you can train that could also make sense but strange hotels
strange vacation rentals I wouldn't even think about it but if you do decide you've got this
place that you're going to visit parents home other house apartment whatever it might be
what could the training look like when you get there when you first start to do the training
in the new new location just start with some super easy doors above simple as that just test it out
to see how your dog responds your dog might be as bad as your dog first was when you train in your
own home or they might be a bit better they might even be a bit worse so have zero expectations
about how it might be and just see be really gentle be really cautious just see how your dog
responds to some simple easy doors above training now if you progress through the doors above
training then you can think about moving on to departure training departure training where you
can go out of the door for a small amount of time repeatedly gradually gradually increasing the time
that you're out and going at your dog's pace things to bear in mind when you're doing this
training everybody else so when you're visiting people chances are there's other people in the
house are you going to get them to go out so you can train are they going to do the training with
you they could they could do the training with you they could do the training instead of you
that can work too if you're going to stay somewhere again that's pretty permanent that
has the same people around in that place then they can definitely get involved in the training
but you know going to stay at somebody's house and then saying to them could you please go out
so i can do my separation anxiety training isn't always going to go down that well so you can do
training when people are still around it's not the same but it's better than doing nothing if
your goal is to do training in a new location overall though you are you're on location
you are on holiday so i would just say don't overdo it i i do often see people having a goal
of when i go to this place when i visit my family when i see my other half i do want to do lots of
training and i see people getting really overwhelmed because then when they're there
particularly when it's family time you know when people are getting together for holidays for
celebrations for christmas and yet you're thinking about doing separation anxiety training
the chances are you probably won't do as much as you thought you were going to do and then you're
just going to feel bad that you didn't achieve your goal so i would say don't overdo it don't
worry either that your dog's going to forget about separation anxiety training if you're away for a
short amount of time your dog probably won't and if you are worried then do do some training keep
it super easy door is a ball i would just say don't pile on the pressure you know you're visiting
people for a reason you're going there to enjoy time with them so take the pressure off everyone
when you get back even if you haven't done a ton of training and you thought you were going to
it's okay just gently get back into it when you go back home i just say more than anything
enjoy your time away it's fine to have a goal of getting your dog to be okay when there's
somewhere else but it's also okay not to have that goal because living with separation anxiety
is tough and doing the training is tough you don't need me to tell you that and honestly you and your
dog do deserve a break so don't be too hard on you or on him all right thanks so much for listening
i look forward to catching you 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 julie naismith.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