Hi, my name is Annie Grossman, and I'm a dog trainer. This podcast is brought to you by school for the dogs a manhattan-based facility. I own and operate along with some of the city's finest dog trainers during this podcast will be answering your questions geeking out on animal behavior discussing pet Trends and interviewing industry experts. Welcome to school for the dogs podcast. Hello humans today. I am going to be answering some dog training questions that have come down the pipeline. If you have a question, you'd like answered in a future QA episode. You can find us on Instagram at school for the dogs. You can send a direct message or go to any Grossman.com. Ask and you'll find a Nifty little form there. They're so our first question comes through Instagram from a listener named be she writes. Hi Annie. I've just finished listening to your crate training episode. I love how No Nonsense you are with most subjects. And this one is of particular interest to me. My husband and I fostered a few dogs before we adopted all the dogs we had before including puppies and adults left in a crate. However our last Foster and now adopted member of the family hates the crate. He'll go in if there is food but if the door closes he immediately loses it and won't eat he tries to eat the bars jump up jumps up and throws himself against the bars and generally cries until you open the door. We've also tried pens Etc. We want to create train for all the reasons you mentioned on the podcast and also because I want him to stop sleeping in our bed. He moves around that I'm always scared. He'll fall off. He was rescued from a puppy mill and I've been following the best friends guidelines, which say that some dogs will never adapt to crates. After being born in a puppy mill, he is five months old. He also hates pens. I've tried covering the crate to make it more Den like but he barks and jumps the whole time occasionally. He goes quiet. I've even filmed him and left the apartment and he keeps jumping and barking until I'm back. He's very happy when he's let out. He also won't eat if he knows he's closed in the pan or crate. He's very stuck to me in general if I leave the room. He follows me. He scratches at the door or the bathroom if I'm in there I To feel confident and comfortable in our home and I think crate training would help him. But overall. He just seems very unsure. He goes to daycare and is fine being cared for by others. It seems that he is perfectly happy as long as he isn't alone. Is there any hope for him or for us? Okay. So first of all be mentions that her puppy is only five months old and let's remember five months. It might be towards the end of a puppy's socialization period which We really think starts to end around 12 weeks, but dogs are always learning and 20 weeks is still a very young puppy. So don't lose. Hope about anything just yet. All of that said I suggest picking and choosing your battles to some extent here. And unless it's absolutely necessary to be leaving your dog in a crate or really leaving your dog at all. Perhaps I wouldn't stress too much about trying to get him. Acclimated to being in a crate and being alone and being alone in a crate. I do think there are lots of benefits to crate training. But I also think you can have a really great dog who doesn't use a crate. I actually never taught my dog to use a crate. He has been in a crate he can go in a crate, but I very very rarely had to leave him in a crate for any reason and it really hasn't been an issue in our lives together. I just didn't really know about crate training when I First got him and by the time I eventually started learning about dog training and then became a professional dog trainer and understood how useful creates could be I just didn't see a great need for it as far as his training went. So all of that is to say that crates are great for many reasons, but you can have a well-trained dog and not use a crate and in some situations for some dogs that might be preferable and if a dog is dealing with any kind of Anxiety which might be anxiety about being alone or being confined. I certainly would rather first focus on that issue and then think about how we can get them interested in both being in a great and being in a crate alone. Now whenever a dog has any kind of separation issues or even if a dog doesn't I think it's still wise to get a dog used to the idea that That good stuff happens when you're around and usually that means I suggest feeding your dog when you leave and that might just be you leaving the room going into the hallway going into the bathroom. But of a dog can't handle that it might just mean turning your back on the dog or feed when you're not paying attention to the dog. If a dog is too stressed to eat. When you leave the room that's certainly not a good sign and a super stress dog is not a dog that's going to be doing very much learning. So we want to figure out what your dog can handle and if all he can handle is you turning his your back on him while he's eating then that's a good place to start my reasoning to this whole idea of feeding the dog and then going out of sight is rooted in my suspicions. That your dog already has lots of good associations with being around you lots of good things in your dog's life clearly happen when you're around and when your dog is eating your dog is forging associations and learning to associate good things with whatever is going on during mealtime. If your dog again, if your dog is able to eat if your dog is too stressed eat, it's a different story, but if Your dog is eating and you're there. He's preparing the food with you. Gosh. My human is awesome food always appears when she is around and we want to change that into gosh. It's awesome when the door closes behind my human because that's when food appears. Now if you also want to try and get your dog to feel good about the crate you compare food with the crate and you have the opportunity to do that at every meal time. Now, I understand what you're saying that the dog is stressed out in the crate and it's just focusing on getting out of the crate once he's in there. So I suggest putting the food in the crate, but leaving the crate open and Seeing if your dog can handle that. I would also suggest feeding in some kind of toy which will slow down your dogs eating and just extend the amount of time your dog is eating in the crate, which is extending the amount of time. Your dog is making associations between food and crate. Also, if your dog likes the toy that is only going to further help the association's your dog is making I suggest the topple which is kind of like a Kong style. Toy the toy you stuff food into and because the create sounds like it is a source of stress for your dog. I would make sure that you're feeding extra delicious meals in the crate. So if you're giving dry food, you might switch to wet food. I always suggest Frozen or dehydrated wet foods, like ever more or sell and Chewy's and fill the top. Well, which kind of looks like it's sort of like a thimble shaped rubber. Toy but what I particularly like about it is it has a hole on the side so you could sip tie the topple into the back of the crate. That way your dog can't just go into the crate and take it out and see how that goes. Now. I would not suggest closing the door. I want the door to be to be open and also because we don't want to stress your dog out really in any way. You also don't want to start doing Trials of leaving at first because that would probably be Asking too much of your dog. So you could start out at a meal putting the topple in the back of the crate stuffing it with something more delicious than his regular meals and stay near the crate. And if that seems to be easy for your dog, then you can just start walking around the room while your dog is eating his meals and you could do this every meal when that seems easy and your dog doesn't seem overly stressed out about you walking around. Around you might start just very briefly going out of sight again. I don't want to stress your dog out even a single time. I think when you're dealing with a dog who has any kind of Separation distress. It's like they're having a panic attack when they go into their crazy headspace and ideally we never want them to have another panic attack again. We shouldn't be like pushing them to to the limit at any point. We always want to be hovering below. That threshold so that could just be like ducking under the kitchen counter for 10 seconds or 5 Seconds just briefly briefly going out of sight. I also really love using the treat and trained for this kind of work. If you're not familiar with the treat and train we do carry it at store for the dogs.com. It's a remote-controlled treat dispenser. There are a lot of high-tech Bluetooth Wi-Fi video. Oh camera kind of versions of the treatment right now treat and train now available, but the treat and train doesn't have any of those Nifty features, but it is my favorite treat dispenser of any kind for a variety of reasons one is that you can take off the kind of like lip that normally sits on its bottom and put the whole thing on top of the crate and then fill it with dry food or treats or I even like to use sometimes I'll use peanuts or Cheerios anything kind of dry and small and if you sit the whole thing on top of the crate creates can just drop into the crate. So the way I would use that in the kind of situation you're talking about again put the dog in the crate, but don't close the crate and fill it with some treats that are going to be able to be used with the treat and train something your dog really likes and start triggering it as you're walking around the apartment. If your dog leaves the crate, that's okay. He's probably going to run back in when he hears the treats dropping into the crate when that gets really easy again, you can start triggering it when you duck behind a door or duck into the bathroom or that kind of thing again, making the association for your dog. Oh good things happen in the crate treats fall in the crate when my human is briefly out of sight now in the recent episode I did about Crates specifically about the Revol dog crate. I mentioned that I like dog crates that are as like open as possible. The kind of just ones that have metal bars that a dog can see through very easily instead of the more enclosed plastic kind of crate. And the reason is that I think it's nice. If a dog can feel still like he's part of what's going on in the room. Room when he's in the crate as opposed to feeling separated and I also like these sort of more open wire kinds of crates because you can do training with the dog while the dog is in the crate, which is again only going to help your dog feel good about being in the crate because your dog going to be spending time with you and your dog's going to be getting treats in the crate. And actually there's lots of training that you can do with a dog in a crate that Really? Well because your dog doesn't have a whole lot of choices of things to do. So for instance, if you wanted to click every time your dog sits in a crate, you're going to probably get a lot of sense or click every time your dog lies down. You're gonna get a lot of downs because your dogs not going to be wandering all over the place. I've even taught dogs to spin in a crate a hand touches a really easy thing to work on with that kind of crate and I usually suggest selecting a crate that's not a whole lot bigger than your dog. You want your dog to be able to turn around and lie down on a crate but I usually suggest not getting a very large one, especially if you're dealing with house training issues because one of the great things about using a crate is dogs don't usually want to hang out where they pee and poop. So a dog is usually more inclined to hold their pee and poop when they're in a crate so it can help you figure out when they're going to need to pee and poop because as soon as you let your dog out of the crate, you can whisk your dog outside and Them and elimination opportunity. However, you mentioned that your dog may have come from a puppy mill. And yes, I think it's true that dogs who come from puppy mills or that are in pet stores. Sometimes especially, you know during those those early early weeks of puppyhood sometimes can develop severe adverse reactions to being confined especially being confined in some Something that is like a metal cage if that's perhaps what they were in early on, you know also people often don't think about it. But many dogs are transported at the age of six seven eight weeks old right after being taken from their mothers and their siblings and sometimes they're put on planes or on very long car rides and that could be Castle of her many dogs and can certainly leave them with a deep-seated fear of being confined in anything that's cage like so I would actually suggest going big and getting a large crate for your dog. So almost like it's like he's going to have his own room and if he's been having bad experiences in the crate that you have you didn't tell me exactly. What the size is or what the style is but whatever the size or style probably not a bad idea to start fresh with a completely new crate so that you can have a spot that's like a clean slate, but I would get a crate that this big as possible. Which to be honest might not help with housebreaking and using a crate for housebreaking house-training reasons, but it's going to be a while before I would want you to be leaving your dog in the crate alone with the door closed anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. And once your dog is happy and comfortable in his large studio apartment style crate or whatever your apartment whatever size your apartment can can accommodate. You eventually could probably go smaller without too much stress. I also have recently seen and I haven't seen one of these in person but I've seen them online these like acrylic crates that were pens that are kind of walled-off clear areas that you can buy on Etsy. There's a there are some crates of this style made by a shop called pretty kennels a link to it in the Show notes, they are pretty pricey. But I like this idea of a totally clear see-through crate that has no kinds of bars. And then there's also they this other company looks like they have more like pens than crates but similar idea pretty cool and more affordably priced slightly more affordably priced. They're still pretty expensive, but the shop is called clearly loved pets and they have these crates called loose idiom. That are made of acrylic and Aluminum and Stainless Steel and look like yeah kind of like these many many apartments that you can put your dog and that I think would probably be big enough even for you to hang out in there with their dog, which is a great way to try and acclimate your dog to being in this this new space. Now like I said earlier if you don't want to use the crate at all, it's also totally fine. But you still are going to want to try and build your dog's confidence during the times when you can't be around because certainly you can't be with your dog every moment of every day. And in order to do that. I would go back to thinking about what I think of as the for W's of feeding your dog, where when what and who in journalism, of course, there's a fist. W which is why but we we know why you're feeding your dog. Anyway, we talked about where you're feeding your dog. In this case. I would be feeding him in the crate we talked about when we're going to feed him when you're leaving or when you're sort of pretend leaving in order to create a good association with your departures. Now who is going to feed your dog? I suggest that you have whenever possible someone other than you feeding your dog. Dog again, it's all about creating associations. And the more we can help your dog feel good have good associations with people other than you the less super attached to your dog is likely to be specifically to you because he's more likely to feel like oh, okay. My humans not around but that's fine. There are other people who can help take care of me, which brings me to the what you're going to feed your dog and Talking about what kind of food I know I spoke a little bit about that and suggested my go-to types of food, but certainly you're going to make a personal choice about what you want to feed your dog. But instead of thinking about the kind of food, you're going to feed him. I think this what question should be more about what you're going to feed your dog in. How are you going to feed your dog? And again, I'd really suggest you consider using the treat and train. And different kinds of work to eat toys. If you've listened to this podcast before you certainly know that I am a big fan of work to eat toys. But in this case, it's not just about helping your dog expend Ender energy and keeping your dog occupied and making meal times last longer. Although those are all benefits of work to eat toys. In this case. It's really about building your dog's confidence and helping him figure out that he can sort of Take care of himself or in the case of the treat and train that if he's alone. The machine is going to take care of him. So to talk about the treatment train in this situation. I kind of think of it like Rosie the robot from The Jetsons if you ever watched that cartoon, you will remember that Rosie was The Nanny and she was also a robot but the parents left the kids alone with Rosie and you can imagine the kids felt safe even though Rosie wasn't their parent and Rosie wasn't even a human and that's sort of how I think of the treat and train. I want your dog to funnel some of his feelings of oh, I'm okay I'm being taken care of. I'm being provided for onto this inanimate object. I want him to feel like oh mom is gone, but Fine because the treatment rain is here to feed me and take care of me and as ridiculous as this might sound just take a moment to think about how much people do love objects and objects make people feel safe and happy whether that's the way someone feels about their car or the way a little kid might feel about a special teddy bear or blanket. It's possible to use an object to help your dog develop a sense of Safety and Security. Security especially if it's an object that you could be controlling secretly from the other room and that is literally dispensing food for your dog. Of course, you don't have to be in the other room to control it. You could be controlling it from the same room even with you visible to your dog. The food is still coming out of the tree and train and other kinds of work to eat toys. Like I mentioned the topple before but other kinds of toys I think in serve a slightly different Different but equally important purpose of making your dog feel like he can take care of himself and I'm thinking about toys that your dog really has to work at I love Nina Otis and toys the casino is a great one. The brick is another really good one. We have these at store for the dogs or in our shop on East Seventh Street, and they really require effort and time and a degree of problem solving for your dog to get to their food and the toy as I mentioned are ones that you can use with wet food. Food dry food raw food I even often will freeze. My dog's food in these toys to make them extra hard. They're certainly the benefit of giving this kind of toy to your dog when you're leaving because it is going to occupy your dog and burn a lot of energy and by the time your dog finishes the toy the sadness of you leaving will probably have dissipated because 10 or 20 minutes may have passed now. I'm not necessarily Really suggesting that you leave your dog with a toy like this at this point. Like I said, if your dog is too stressed to eat when you leave I wouldn't leave just yet. I might just you know suggest you be on the other side of the room or have your back turned towards your dog or walked quickly out of the room and back into the room while your dog is eating but the idea of giving a toy like this is that I want your dog to feel like I did that. That I fed myself. I scavenged. I problem solved and I am capable of taking care of myself. I know it sounds sort of silly. But I really want your dog to have that sense of accomplishment rather than just thinking I'm totally dependent on my human to place a bowl down in front of me. I think we can use these kinds of toys to build this sort of sense of self sufficiency. And it doesn't just have to be about the toys you could do something similar by hiding treats or Bully Sticks or even your dogs meals around your house. If you don't want random food under your couch and your dining table, you could dribble some dry food in a towel or get like one of those stringy Mop Heads even and hide some food in one of those and put those in a corner for your dog to find for more on dealing with separation issues. I highly recommend a book called treating separation anxiety in dogs by Malena demartini price and also the book I'll be home soon. Bye Patricia McConnell, I think both of these books are filled with great tips and protocol for dealing with teaching your dog to be alone when Or not you're having a serious separation issue separation anxiety or isolation distress puppies certainly need to learn to be alone. And like you said different puppies from different situations, whether it be from a shelter or a pet store or who knows might have different issues with being left alone. And I think following some of the steps in these books. X from the get-go can really help your dog learn that being alone is okay and can help Stave off behavioral issues before they ever get to the point of having to call in a professional trainer to work with. In fact when I've had stressed out dog owners contact me about their dogs who have separation issues, but who are worried about spending the money on Trainer I've often told them to go and read and work through the steps in Malena demartini prices book because she outlines very clearly the steps that a trainer is going to want to work through with a client and a client's dog as well. I think it can be super useful to work with a trainer if you are dealing with serious separation anxiety with your dog. Dog both because a trainer can diagnose how serious the issue is and also because it can be helpful to have a trainer really be like a coach to do some hand-holding and to encourage you to keep going during what can sometimes be a long and slow and difficult process. But if you don't have the luxury of working with a trainer, it's Certainly something that you can deal with on your own and these books are a great great place to start. Okay. Our next question touches on actually some similar issues. Hi Annie. My name is Supriya Eyre. I live in Portland, Oregon with my dog Finn. I had a question. This might be a little long but But first of all, I love your podcast yours is the only dog related podcasts. I listen to it because it's so unfortunate event. I love how precise and thoroughly you describe everything. Anyway. Yeah, so thanks for making this podcast. So my question is that I'm currently in a psychology class and we're learning about developmental psychology currently reading about attachment Styles and infants secure versus insecure attachment that sort of thing and I got Thinking that my dog sin does not really play with other dogs when I'm not around. So at daycare the dog cams. I don't see him playing with other dogs. And when my neighbor comes to check on Finn with his dog when I'm at school or at work, he doesn't really play with the other dog at me. He'll go out to pee and stuff, but he doesn't really get excited to see the other dog, even though he loves playing with that dog when I'm around. So does I guess my question is does attachment Theory apply to dogs, and maybe this is related. But is there a way I can get them to play with other dogs when I'm not around. I think it seems like he may be securely attached if I'm reading my text book, right and sometimes that's a great thing, but maybe in this case it has sort of an unfortunate consequence. So yeah. Anyway, thank you very much, and I hope to hear an answer from you. Really excellent question and if you would like to call and ask me a question on voicemail you may do so at nine one seven four one four two six two five or if you have the anchor app, you can leave a message there. Anyway, so attachment theory is not something I was very familiar with although I had heard of it and I had also heard the term attachment parenting but that too was something I didn't really know very much. Much about but having recently become a mom. I was interested to learn a little bit about it. And this question gave me the opportunity to learn about both attachment Theory and attachment parenting and what they have to do with each other and I was kind of surprised to learn what they have to do with how good dog trainers approach dog training. I mean, I guess That's not that surprising since I'm constantly seeing similarities in the way we deal with people in the way. We should be dealing with dogs since after all. We are all our animals, especially we all are mammals, but I never heard people refer to attachment in the way. The collar does when it comes to dog training, although I think there are other terms that we Do you use to describe similar phenomena, but before I get into the kind of nerdier side of things, I want to give some quick suggestions and thoughts. So first of all, it's very common for a dog to not want to play with other dogs. When his or her human isn't around. In fact one time. I was at a conference and there was a panel about multi dog households and one of the panelists asked the audience of several hundred dog trainers who here has dogs who play when they aren't around and I guess enough people have like nanny cams kind of things now that they can spy on their dogs when they're not around and out of this room of a few hundred dog trainers, I guess first, they asked who here has households with More than one dog and I don't know a few a few dozen people raise their hands and then when they said, okay now like only only keep your hand raised if your dogs play when you're not around almost nobody kept their hand raised and anecdotally, I know that it's often the same thing with toys some dogs. I would say many dogs don't play with their toys or chew toys or anything unless they're person is around and this could be the case. Even if you have a dog that is super comfortable with the other dog that he or she is with in the case of households with multiple dogs. And this can also be the case when the dog is super comfortable with another person that's around if it's not their primary person. They still might not be interested in playing I was talking to about this to our former trainer an Me and she mentioned our French Bulldog students, gilby and ghosts who met at school for the dogs and they play all the time with each other at each other's Apartments. They're totally best friends and their their moms will often Instagram their play dates and stories and when you watch their little Instagram videos, you can see that every now and then when Are at one of the others house one of their moms might leave and the playing changes. Noticeably the two dogs might and Dirac and I wouldn't say that either one steamed overwhelmingly distressed at all. But if they're at ghosts house and Alex who is gilbey's owner leaves, you'll often see Gil be kind of eyeing the door and if they're a gilbey's house and ghosts own. Tiffany pops out. You'll see ghosts might kind of drop out of play. But if both Alex and Tiffany are around, gilby and ghosts can't get enough of each other and these are both very healthy well-rounded. I would say pretty happy dogs without major behavioral issues. So I think if you're seeing that your dog isn't that interested in playing with other dogs when you're not around wouldn't worry too much. About it. I think it's pretty normal. All of that said I think it's also worth thinking about the fact that it can be very hard for dogs to negotiate new social setups and I think often when we put a dog in daycare or asking a lot of them or not only asking that a dog tolerate being away from his or her main human. We're also asking the dog to navigate a whole new group of dogs because very rarely at a daycare. Do you find the same grouping of dogs one day to the next which is one thing? I don't really love about daycares. There's a there is a daycare near school for the dogs called rough club and they charge a yearly fee that they call like a membership fee which on the one hand. I think it's a little gimmicky because it's sort of billing they try and build themselves as like a social club but on the other hand, I think it's smart because if you're paying an annual fee, you're more inclined to send your dog there regularly and they the the Dog Day Care is less likely to have people just sort of dropping in and we actually kind of do a similar thing with our membership at school for the dogs for our school yard, which is our trainer supervised dog run. It's not like dog. Are Dog Day Care in that? We don't let people just leave their dogs with us. The owner has to be there with their dog. It's a little bit more like a dog run but rather than a dog run having random dogs in it, which is again kind of like the daycare situation our school yard has a limited number of dogs and it because it's only for our members who also pay a monthly or a yearly fee. So the dogs who come tend to get to know each other and really do develop these sort of like friendships. So I suggest, you know, you just kind of make peace with the fact that your dog might never loved playing with other dogs in your absence as much as he's going to love playing with other dogs when you're around but try and arrange play sessions for your dog with dogs that he is comfortable with rather than putting him in situations like at a day. Her or a dog run where he's going to have to find new friends each time and you can try and pay a little attention to your dog as possible in these situations. So I think that might help your dog become a little bit more comfortable playing when you are not super engaged I say that of course, you know another benefit of having dogs. Your dog knows and has sort of figured out how to interact with is you can breathe a little bit easier knowing that you're not your dog is not going to most likely get into some sort of altercation with an unknown dog, which I always worry about at the dog park where they're just so many so many variables and dogs and people who you don't know. I mean again, it's not so different than with anyone else. Like I would much rather socialize with a bunch of friends then hang out every night at you know, a borrower. I don't know anyone. That's why people go to the same bar over and over because you get to know the people or a kid right like a kid is probably going to learn to make friends and be away from his mom or dad. A daycare where it's the same group of kids every day then if you just dropped the kid off at a playground where there are new kids every time you go and also dropping your child off at the playground is probably a bad idea. Anyway, let's go into a little bit about what I learned in my effort to educate myself a bit on attachment Theory and also on attachment parenting I found a Really interesting website that's called evolutionary parenting.com. It's the website of dr. Tracy Cassell's and I'm actually just going to read a little bit from her sight because I thought it'd explain things pretty well. I'll link to the full page in the show notes. I'm a bridging a little bit here, but Cassell's rights attachment Theory began with John Bowlby and was continued in his work with Mary Ainsworth. As a theory describing the types of relationships that exist between child and caregiver. It is also been extended to refer to all of our relationships with individuals, but the focus has remained on the parent-child attachment relationship most likely due to the extreme importance of this initial relationship as a bit of History the theory began when Bowlby was asked to study orphaned infants and children after World War II who presented with Myriad problems socially emotionally and cognitively and he determined that the cause of these problems Stemmed from a lack of maternal involvement. Now. We know that time now we know with time that it's not all about Mom that so long as infants have an attachment with a primary caregiver and they will have the tools to develop in a healthy manner there have been over the years for different types of attachment parent patterns that we can see between infant and parent secure avoidant anxious and disorganized secure attachment is what we strive for and is characterized by a child showing some distress when separated from their parents. happiness at their return and a generalized preference for their parents over others avoidant attachment is characterized by a lack of preference for the parent over other strangers these children rarely seek out their parents for Comfort anxious attachment is characterized by distress when separated from the parent but a lack of comfort upon the parents return and May in fact be quite hostile towards the parent Upon returning finally disorganized attachment is characterized by a mixture of avoidant and anxious behaviors the final Attachment patterns cluster together under the term insecure attachment, although not all children with insecure attachments will develop later psychopathologies or generalized problems the likelihood that they do is far greater than four children with secure attachments. So how do we get our child to be securely attached isn't that the question most parents want to answer? Well in one sense the answer is incredibly easy respond to your child. But what that means opens up a whole other debate and this is where attachment parenting seems to come into play Bowlby and his initial research believe that early attachment was fostered in environments like those of historic and modern hunter-gatherer societies these societies as I have focused on here on environmental parenting.com shared many premises with what is termed attachment parenting and what has been With respect to moral development and infant outcomes infants in these societies are typically breastfed on demand held close to a parent nearly all the time. I responded to immediately when they cry birth is a natural event free of interventions and babies are immediately given to Mom post-birth an infant sleep close to their caregivers in bowlby's view this type of behavior fostered immediate response and responsiveness and thus attachment. So what is the real premise of attachment Theory an attachment parenting its on Savannah sits listening to your child and responding to his or her needs and early in life. All your child has our needs as your child ages. There will be wants mixed in but believe it or not most things that will cause them to stress will be needs. And in this we must remember that their needs will be very different from our own and we must not Place adult expectations of what they can and cannot handle on our children. Okay, so I'm done reading now. This is me talking again. Interesting. So what I think is so interesting about this as it relates to dog training is that it is very similar to what I think about how we should be treating puppies. I've taught lots of puppies. I've taught lots of puppy owners. I've taught many puppy kindergarten classes and I'm always stressing to puppy owners. I mean dog owners in general, but specifically puppy owners that we really need to First. Think about how a Puppy is feeling how we can get them to feel good about the world. We are asking them to live in in my view. It is so much more important to think about the association's a puppy is making with everything around him before we start asking the puppy to do things. I call it criteria 0 it's focusing on the classical conditioning. How can I just make my dog feel good about something rather than and basically rewarding my dog For doing nothing is what it's going to look like to others before I start rewarding him for doing specific things that I want. The behavior I want is just at the beginning is just the behavior of existing in this room. You're here in this room with these new people with this person with a beard or a funny hat or whatever. Good job. Here's a treat too often with dogs. We think about well-trained dog is a dog that can sit or leave it or drop it or do whatever. Were of things you want to check off a list and I've seen that so many times when people come into like a puppy kindergarten class and even you know, before classes started they're trying to get their dog to sit or they're trying to get their dog to lie down and I'll come over and I'll say, you know, Bella be cute good job Stanley exist. Nice work. Give a treat right? Because at that stage of life, we want the dog to just feel good about showing up in that room. And we often fail to think about how much we're asking when we're putting a dog in a new environment with new people New Dogs new new stimuli all over etcetera Etc. I often tell dog owners, you know, it's kind of like when you send your kid to preschool the first day and they come home with some Crayon drawing you could look at that crayon drawing with your eyes closed, but you're still going to tell the kid that it's amazing because you just want the kid to feel good about being at school and it's not yet approved. Appropriate to be evaluating the drawing on the Merit of on the on you know, your child's Talent as an artist. There's plenty of time for that later on. But first we want your kid to just be showing up to school and to be happy to be there. And from my understanding of attachment Theory and attachment parenting specifically that's kind of what it's all about. It's about creating a sense of safety and and comfort for your child by giving them what they need rather than assuming that they are trying to manipulate you and that by tending to a child who's crying for instance you will Rewarding the behavior of crying and teaching them in the future that they should cry when they want something that instead. It's more like you're just rewarding the behavior of existing and whatever your child is doing in that moment, whether they're smiling or crying or Screaming or whatever. You're still going to give them what they need because the criteria of behavior that you're looking for is just 0 is just pure existence that when you're dealing with an infant you Really be expecting more than that that they're just trying to survive and you need to do everything. You can to help them rather than falling into the Trap of thinking about the consequences of every little Behavior. As I see it like everything else it all comes back to these two kinds of learning learning by association AKA classical conditioning and learning by consequence AKA operand conditioning both are happening all the time. But if there's ever a choice on which one to focus on and every situation classical conditioning is always going to win because it's so it's so deep it deals with how we are feeling about the world around us at what how our baby is feeling our puppy is failing. And it's an uphill battle to teach your subject the consequences of a behavior if your subject is not comfortable to begin with just existing in the environment. You have him in an another way to think about what's being called attachment here is how many good associations your dog has with you or your child has with you or any any Infant has with a caregiver every time you're feeding your dog. Every time you're paying attention to your dog. Every time you're doing anything for your dog that your dog likes your building like this bank account of trust and love and you might say you're helping your dog feel attached to you. And what I would say is a good way and you're basically becoming a secondary reinforcer so, you know primary Sir is something an animal needs like food your you don't need to learn to like food. You're just born knowing that food is interesting. Secondary reinforcer is something that earns meaning that we give meaning to like money is a secondary reinforcer. We're not born knowing about money, but we give it meaning over time because it's paired with so many things we want and need and love and you as a caregiver become that kind of secondary reinforcer to the point. I think when you're in any kind of new situation with your dog your dog thinks okay. Well, my human is here and I associate good things with my human. So this new place that we're in this new person that I'm needing this new dog that I'm encountering. These must be okay things because I'm associating them now with my human as well. So anyway, I found all of this interesting. To learn about and to think about in terms of dog training and also as as a new parent to think about in terms of my relationship with my daughter, I felt like when I was reading about attachment parenting, you know, oh gosh shoes are kind of things. I'm already doing, but the way I thought about it was less about this word attachment and more about the association's I'm helping to create because of course, I'm a dog trainer and I'm thinking about associations all the time. I want my daughter to feel nothing but Good things about having me around and both because you know, she has that's that's her giving giving her two cents here. That's because I'm the one who's going to be introducing her to so many things in the world. I'm going to be the one bringing her to new places and introducing her to new foods and this that and the other so on the one hand. Yes, of course, they feel like I want to meet her needs. Needs and I don't want to be giving her things on the basis of her behavior at this point because she's just like a little need machine and I want her to feel safe in the world. But also I want her to feel good about me so that the good feelings about me can translate to all these things that she is going to discover with me in her life with shout-out today goes to Alex Chris and Tiffany French owners of gilby and ghosts because they really do such a great job of making sure these dog best friends do get to hang out together. You can see their play dates on Instagram gilby is at at gilby Chris. That's gilby and then K riss and ghost is at ghost French and fun dog fact of the day. I'm not sure if this is true, but I recently heard that that the Beatles song A Day in the Life contains an ultrasonic whistle in it that Paul McCartney put in for the enjoyment of his Shetland Sheepdog. So if your dog is a Beatles fan now, you know, why? Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week with another show. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe rate and give us a five star review on iTunes. And of course tell your friends. If you have suggestions for future topics or questions about training, please make sure to join our Facebook group facebook.com slash groups / school for the dogs. See you next week.
In this Q+A episode, Annie answers a question from a puppy owner whose dog is scared of the crate and stresses out when left alone, and then considers another dog owner who asks if "Attachment Theory" applies to dogs. Visit AnnieGrossman.com/ask or leave a voicemail at 917-414-2625  NOTES Products Annie's preferred crate, the Revol: http://schoolforthedogs.com/revol (get $25 off the Revol with code SFTD25 at checkout through March 31, 2019) See through pen on Etsy by ClearlyLovedPets: https://etsy.me/2tNn3mT See through crate on Etsy by PrettyKennels: https://etsy.me/2C3dx3U Treat and Train: https://storeforthedogs.com/products/treat-train The Toppl toy: https://storeforthedogs.com/products/toppl  Books:  Treat Separation in Dogs by Malena Demartini-Price: https://amzn.to/2UirZMd I'll Be Home Soon by Patricia McConnell, PhD: https://amzn.to/2UrGIV6  Sites:  Evolutionary Parenting article on Attachment Theory and Attachment Parenting by Tracy Cassel PhD: http://evolutionaryparenting.com/attachment-versus-attachment-parenting/ Shoutout:  You can witness Gilby and Ghost's playdates at @GhostFrench (http://instagram.com/ghostfrench) and @GilbyKriss (http://instagram.com/gilbykriss) Fun Dog Fact:  The Beatles song that contains a secret dog whistle: https://www.dogingtonpost.com/video-a-beatles-song-that-only-dogs-can-hear/ 