dog training q and a drawing by annie grossman

04 MarEpisode 43 | Ask Annie: Separation anxiety, tips for crate training and an overview of attachment theory

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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

Transcript:

[Intro]

Annie:
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 Q&A episode, you can find us on Instagram @schoolforthedogs. You can send a direct message. Or go to Anniegrossman.com/ask and you'll find a nifty little form there.

So our first question comes through Instagram from a listener named B. 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 slept in a crate. However, our last foster and now adopted member of the family hates the crate. He'll go in if there's food, but if the door closes he immediately loses it and won't eat. He tries to eat the bars, jumps up and throws himself against the bars, and generally cries until you open the door. We've also tried pens, et cetera. We want to crate 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 and I'm always scared he'll fall off. He was rescued from a puppy mill. And I've been following the Best Friend's 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 is very happy when he's let out. He also won't eat if he knows he's closed in the pen 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 want him 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?”

Annie:
Okay, so first of all, B mentioned 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've 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 crates 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 crate 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 good stuff happens when you're [not] 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 if a dog can't handle that, it might just mean turning your back on the dog or a 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 stressed 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 you can handle is you turning your back on him while he's eating, then that's a good place to start.

My reasoning too, this whole idea of feeding the dog and then going out of sight is rooted in my suspicion 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's going on during mealtime. Again, if your dog is able to eat. If your dog is too stressed to eat, it's a different story, but if your dog is eating and you're there, he's pairing 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 can pair 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 is 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 dog’s 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 associations your dog is making.

I suggest the Toppl, which is kind of like a Kong style toy. It's a toy you stuff food into. And because the crate 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, uh, frozen or dehydrated wet foods like Evermore or Stella and Chewy’s, and fill the top of it, which kind of looks like a sort of thimble shaped rubber toy. But what I particularly like about it is it has a hole on the side so you could zip tie the Toppl 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 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 Toppl 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, 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 head space. And ideally we never want them to have another panic attack again. We shouldn't be like pushing them 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 five seconds. Just briefly, briefly going out of sight.

I also really love using the Treat and Train for this kind of work. If you're not familiar with the Treat and Train, we do carry it at storeforthedogs.com. It's a remote controlled treat dispenser. There are a lot of high tech, Bluetooth, wifi, video camera kind of versions of the 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 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 Cheerio's, anything kind of dry and small. And, if you sit the whole thing on top of the crate treats 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 gonna run back in when he hears the treats dropping into the crate. Um, 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 dog crates, specifically about the Revol dog crate, I mentioned that I like dog crates that are as 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 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 is going to be spending time with you and your dog is 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 works 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 gonna probably get a lot of sets or click. Every time your dog lies down, you're going to get a lot of downs because your dog's not going to be wandering all over the place. I've even taught dogs to spin in a crate. A hand touch is 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 in 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 give them an 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 weeks of puppyhood sometimes can develop severe adverse reactions to being confined, especially being confined in 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 can be super stressful for 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's as 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 size your apartment 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 acrylic crates or pens that are kind of walled off clear areas that you can buy on Etsy. There are some crates of this style made by a shop called Pretty Kennels. I'll 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 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 lucidium that are made of acrylic and aluminum and stainless steel and look like, um, yeah, kind of like these mini apartments that you can put your dog in that I think would probably be big enough even for you to hang out in there with your dog, which is a great way to try and acclimate your dog to being in this new space.

Now, like I said earlier, if you don't want to use the crate at all, that's also 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 four W's of feeding your dog. Where, when, what, and who. In journalism, of course, there's a fifth w, which is “why,” but we know why you're feeding your dog. Anyway, we talked about where you're feeding your dog. Uh, in this case, I would be feeding him in the crate. We talked about when we're gonna 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. 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 your dog is likely to be specifically to you because he's more likely to feel like, “Oh, okay, my human's 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 I'm not 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 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 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 Treat and 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 has gone, but that's fine because the Treat and Train 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 a blanket. It's possible to use an object to help your dog develop a sense of safety and security, especially if it's an object that you can 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 Treat and Train.

And other kinds of work to eat toys. Like I mentioned the Toppl before, but other kinds of toys I think can serve a slightly 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 Ottoson 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 7th street. And they really require effort and time and a degree of problem solving for your dog to get to their food. And the toys I mentioned are ones that you can use with wet food, dry food, raw food. I even often will freeze my dog’s food in these toys to make them extra hard.

There's 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 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, if I wouldn't leave just yet. I might just suggest you be on the other side of the room or have your back turned towards your dog or walk 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. 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 am 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 dog's 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 by Patricia McConnell. I think both of these books are filled with great tips and protocol for dealing with teaching your dog to be alone, whether 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 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 a stressed out dog owners contact me about their dogs who have separation issues, but who are worried about spending the money on a trainer, I've often told them to go and read and work through the steps in Malena DeMartini-Price's 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, 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, uh, it's certainly something that you can deal with on your own. And these books are a great, great place to start.

**music**

Annie:
Okay. Our next question touches on actually some similar issues.

[Voice Message from Listener]:
Hi, Annie. My name is Supriya Ayer. I live in Portland, Oregon with my dog Fin. I had a question. This might be a little long, but, first of all, I love your podcast. Yours is the only dog related podcast. I listened to it because it's so informative and 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. I’m currently reading about attachment styles and infants, secure versus insecure attachment, that sort of thing. And it got me thinking that my dog, Fin does not really play with other dogs when I'm not around. So at daycare, on the dog cams, I don't see him playing with other dogs. And when my neighbor comes to check on Fin with his dog, when I'm at school or at work, he doesn't really play with the other dog ever. 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 I guess my question is, does attachment theory apply to dogs and, maybe this is related, but is there a way I can get Fin 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 textbook right. And sometimes that's a great thing, but maybe in this case it has sort of an unfortunate consequence. Anyway, thank you very much. And I hope to hear an answer from you.

Annie:
Really excellent question. And if you would like to call and ask me a question on voicemail, you may do so at 917-414-2625, 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 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 and especially we all are mammals. But I'd never heard people refer to attachment, in the way the caller does when it comes to dog training. Although I think there are other terms that we do 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 a few dozen people raise their hands. And then when they said, okay, now, 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 their person is around.

And this can 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 about this to our former trainer, Anamarie, and she mentioned our French bulldog students Gilbey and Ghost 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 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 they're at one of the other's house, one of their moms might leave and the playing changes noticeably. The two dogs might interact, and I wouldn't say that either one seems overwhelmingly distressed at all, but, if they're at Ghost’s house and Alex (who is Gilby’s owner) leaves, you'll often see, Gilby kind of eyeing the door. And if they're at Gilby's house and Ghost’s owner, Tiffany pops out, you'll see Ghost might kind of drop out of play. But if both Alex and Tiffany are around, Gilby and Ghost 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, I 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, we’re asking a lot of them. We're not only asking that a dog tolerate being away from his or her main human, but 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 Is a daycare near School for the Dogs Fuff Club, and they charge a yearly fee that they call like a membership fee, which on the one hand, I think is a little gimmicky because it's sort of billing, they try and bill themselves as like a social club. But on the other hand, I think that's smart because if you're paying an annual fee, you're more inclined to send your dog there regularly. And they, the dog daycare 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 daycare, 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 that’s 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 just kind of make peace with the fact that your dog might never love 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 daycare or, a dog run where he's going to have to find new friends each time. And you can try and pay as 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. Of course, 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 there just 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 than hang out every night at a bar where I don't know anyone. That's why people go to the same bar over and over. Cause 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 at a daycare where it's the same group of kids every day. Than 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 a 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 evolutionaryparenting.com. It's the website of Dr. Tracy Cassels. And I'm actually just gonna read a little bit from her site, ‘cause I thought it explained things pretty well. I'll link to the full page in the show notes. I'm abridging a little bit here, but Cassels writes:

“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 has 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 with time that it's not all about mom; that so long as infants have an attachment with a primary caregiver, they will have the tools to develop in a healthy manner.

“There have been over the years, four 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 parent 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 parent's 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 three 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 for 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 in his initial research believes 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 environmentalparenting.com shared many premises with what is termed attachment parenting and what has been studied 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, are responded to immediately when they cry, birth is a natural event, free of interventions, and babies are immediately given to mom post-birth, and infants 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 and attachment parenting? It's responsiveness. It's listening to your child and responding to his or her needs, and early in life, all your child has are needs. As your child ages, there will be wants mixed in, but believe it or not most things that will cause them distress 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.”

Annie:
Okay. So I'm done reading now, this is me talking again. So 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 associations a puppy is making with everything around him before we start asking the puppy to do things.

I call it criteria zero. It's focusing on the classical conditioning. How can I just make my dog feel good about something, 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 a trained dog is a dog that can sit or leave it or drop it or do whatever number of things you want to check off a list. And I've seen that so many times when people come into a puppy kindergarten class, and even before classes started, they're trying to get the 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, have 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, 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, et cetera, et cetera.

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 appropriate to be evaluating the drawing on the merit of, you know, on 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 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 be 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 zero, is just pure existence. That when you're dealing with an infant, you can't 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 consequences, AKA operant conditioning. Both are happening all the time. But if there's ever a choice on which one to focus on, in every situation, classical conditioning is always going to win because it's so it's so deep. It deals with how we're feeling about the world around us, how our baby is feeling, how our puppy is feeling. 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.

And 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 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, you're building like this bank account of trust and love. And you might say, you're helping your dog feel attached to you in what I would say is a good way. And you're basically becoming a secondary reinforcer.

So, a primary reinforcer is something an animal needs, like food. You don't need to learn to like food. You're just born knowing that food is interesting. A 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 where 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 meeting, 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 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, these 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 associations 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. Both because, you know, she has,

[Baby vocalizing in background]

Annie:
That's her giving her 2 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 I feel like I want to meet her needs. And I don't want to be giving her things on the basis of 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 of these things that she is going to discover with me in her life.

**music**

Woof Shout Out today goes to Alix Kriss and Tiffany Fringe, owners of Gilby and Ghost, 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, @gibykriss that's Gilbey and then K R I S S. And Ghost is @ghostfrench.

And fun dog fact of the day. I'm not sure if this is true, but I recently heard 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.

Thanks so much for listening. You can support school for the dogs podcast by telling your friends about it, leaving a review or shopping in our online store. You can learn more about us and sign up to get lots of free training resources. When you visit us online at Schoolforthedogs.com