12 FebEpisode 119 | School For The Dogs’ Trainer Maddie Messina on studying animal cognition, inspiring puppy parents, dealing with allergies, and more
Our trainer Maddie Messina, who started out with us as a walker two years ago, is getting a master's at Hunter's Animal Behavior and Conservation, where she is studying canine cognition. She and Annie discuss her early interest in veterinary medicine, the opportunity she had to work with primates as an undergraduate at Bucknell University, her current focus on working with puppies, and doing it all... while being severely allergic to dogs.
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Transcript:
Annie:
Hello, human mammals. Just some housekeeping. Before I share with you this conversation with our trainer Maddie, a few things. One is that I've been experimenting with the app Clubhouse which right now is available just for iPhones. If you're there go ahead and follow me at Annie Grossman. If you would like to try out Clubhouse, I do have a couple invitations, happy to invite you. Send me a text message. You can do that at (917) 414-2625. And I will invite you as long as I have invitations left.
We've also opened up access to our new community app School for the Dogs community. You can look for it in the app store or the play store. You can also get there in any web browser SchoolfortheDogs.com/community. Post in the introduction section would love to see you there. And if at the end of your introduction, you use the hashtag podcast listener, I will grant you one month of premium access, which will give you access to the resources section in the app.
We have put all of our webinars there. You can listen to the podcast there. There are tons of cool things: checklists, there's a great section for puppy owners. One thing that I think is really cool as I put in sounds that you can play when you're doing puppy socialization work with your puppy. They are the same sounds that we play at our puppy kindergarten classes.
So lots of really neat stuff there. And there's a group specifically for podcast listeners where I've been posting some extra stuff each week. So I do hope you will join. Again, you can just look up in the app store or the play store, School for the Dogs community.
Lastly — Hey, go leave a review in iTunes, if you like this podcast. I don't really know if it makes any difference to the rankings or whatever, but it'll make me feel good! [Laughs] And it will positively reinforce the behavior of me producing this every week. Thanks in advance.
[Intro and Music]
Annie:
So thanks for being here, everybody. I am here with Maddie Messina who's been at School for the Dogs, working with us in various capacities for, gosh, could it be two years now? Is that right?
Maddie:
It's definitely coming up on that, for sure.
Annie:
So why don't you talk a little bit about what you're doing right now with us, and then we can talk about what else you've done and what you're doing when you're not wearing your training pouch.
Maddie:
Okay. Absolutely. So I started at School for the Dogs as a walker, and I came from a training background. So that was my step into the School for the Dogs world. And since then, I've transitioned to working at Day School, which is our adult basic manners drop-off program. And I also mainly focus now on puppy training.
I do a lot of first sessions. So people who come to the school, they see me for the first time as their trainer. And then from there, we kind of build out a program for them or lead them into our group classes, which I just started teaching as well. So last week was my first week of teaching puppy kindergarten.
Annie:
Oh yeah, congratulations. How did it go? I think I was, I was there right when you were starting to set up, I think.
Maddie:
Yeah, it was definitely a big change because I'm used to kind of handling one-on-one clients. But the one thing I will say is that I also think that I'm skilled in handling chaos. That was definitely just kind of practice in handling more chaos, but it went really well. I think the nice thing about our puppy kindergarten setup is that all the puppies who come, by the time they're here for their first week, they've already kind of met with a private trainer and they know the gist, so I think it's a little bit less chaotic than it would be if you had a group of puppies and parents who were stepping into the training world for the very first time.
Annie:
It's so true. And it's like having that prerequisite, I think makes such a big difference. And any time, like, I can remember one time when I let someone in, because they had done a training session with a trainer, like who I know it's a very good trainer. And I was like, Oh, well we have space, you can come in. And it was just a mess. They were like, why are we doing this? What is the point? And everyone else in the class just kind of like, got it. You know? So it's also kind of like a hurdle that we force people to jump over. And I think sets a certain tone for the whole thing.
So you and I have something pretty big in common, which is that we're both native New Yorkers.
Maddie:
Yeah. We are.
Annie:
Which is funny because growing up, I'm sure you were like, everybody's a native New Yorker that I know.
Maddie:
I think that all native New Yorkers are native New Yorkers for their entire lives.
Annie:
Right. But now as we're adults, it becomes something slightly more special. So did you have, like, I'm assuming you grew up in an apartment, did you have dogs growing up?
Maddie:
No, I had just about every other animal. So I am actually pretty severely allergic to every animal that walks this earth.
Annie:
Really?
Maddie:
Including dogs. Yes. Certain dogs bring it out of me more than others. And if I'm away from dogs for an extended period of time, it's almost like a relapse in my allergies.
Annie:
Do you take medication, then, in order to do your job?
Maddie:
Yeah. Actually, as I was growing up, I took allergy shots. So every week I would turn up at my allergist and I would get one arm and three in the other.
Annie:
Wow. And that's, even though you didn't have dogs, you were still just allergic to the world?
Maddie:
Basically. Yeah. So I finished up with allergy shots and I found this amazing doctor who actually does sublingual immunotherapy. So I take drops underneath my tongue and it has been, it's definitely better than getting actual needles into your arm. And it's super easy to take them every day. And it just is kind of at this point now, more like maintenance.
But I do, I can tell, when I was in college, for example, if I left, you know, went to college and then came back and was like rubbing my face in my family's dog, I would break out in hives and get itchy. And I have asthma as well. So I'm definitely not — my body, I would say is not necessarily suited to animal training, but I love it. So.
Annie:
So when did you first then get interested in animal training?
Maddie:
Basically, we didn't grow up with dogs. I had every other animal. I campaigned my parents for a dog at the age of 16. So I was quite old to be bringing a first dog into the family. And then I left and went to college.
Annie:
Remind me where you went to college.
Maddie:
I went to Bucknell university. It's in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. So it's about three hours out of Manhattan. And obviously I had fallen in love with my dog at home and was very dog oriented already. So I knew I wanted to do something with animals. So I got into biology at Bucknell. I was hoping to become a biology major. And I happened to find the one school on the Northeast at the time, or one of the few schools that had an animal behavior program.
Annie:
Right. I was going to say, it's well known actually for that. Right?
Maddie:
Yeah. And so they have primates on campus, monkeys mainly, and it was kind of, I totally fell into it, and it's also a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So that really shaped me.
Annie:
Wow. So you didn't go there for that program. You just lucked into being in a place that had that program?
Maddie:
Yep, right place, right time.
Annie:
So did you get to work with primates?
Maddie:
I did. I started working with them at the very end of my freshman year. So almost all four years, I worked with specifically two species of monkeys. I worked with squirrel monkeys and capuchin monkeys.
Annie:
Wow. What kind of work were you doing with them?
Maddie:
Actually, I started doing what's called a match to sample with squirrel monkeys and this is a type of concept training actually, I was recently watching the video with Ken Ramirez on Instagram and he does a lot of concept training. So it is applicable to dogs. But the idea is, can you match like things? So every week I would come and wheel this touchscreen into the squirrel monkey habitat and reward them for matching like shapes on a touch screen.
Annie:
What do you use to reward them?
Maddie:
Mealworms.
Annie:
Eww! [laughing]
Maddie:
It's not very glamorous work, but I'm very special.
Maddie:
Wow. That's really cool. So at that point where you were like, Oh, okay, I want to, for sure work with dogs or were you just kind of interested in working with animals in general and dogs seemed most convenient?
Maddie:
So definitely it was a convenience thing. I would come home from being at Bucknell and I needed to keep up my animal work. As far as my goal, I think at the time was to go into veterinary studies. So the first internship I had in between school during the summer was I worked at Animal Haven, the shelter in Soho.
And then the next summer I took physics at Columbia. Physics is very hard at Bucknell, but it's unfortunately a prerequisite for that school, which is intense. And then the summer after that, I worked at an actual vet office. I was a tech assistant, so I wasn't a vet tech, but a tech’s assistant on the Upper West side.
Annie:
So you thought about becoming a vet?
Maddie:
Yes, definitely. That was because you kind of don't think, I think at the time it wasn't becoming a dog trainer wasn't one of the options for me necessarily. There's a lot more information now, as far as people who are interested in animal studies, where you can go and where you can take that. But for me, I kind of thought that veterinary studies was my only option.
Annie:
Oh Yeah. I mean, growing up, if you're interested in animals, at least when I was a kid, it wasn't like an obvious choice, like, Oh, you could become a dog trainer or an animal trainer, even. It was like, if you like dogs, you could become a vet.
Maddie:
Exactly.
Annie:
Like anything else is like not a serious job or something.
Maddie:
Oh yes, definitely. So I was preparing for vet studies. And I think I realized after working hands-on with the primates, which I loved, and I was doing cognitive studies with them, so it was kind of training oriented. And then I went into the vet world and I realized that it's a really hard world to be in. Because a lot of vets know how to help an animal in need, but the parent might not necessarily be able to provide the funds for that. So I think I came to terms with, if I was a vet, I wouldn't necessarily be able to do as much as I wanted to do
Annie:
Also, I mean, I think that must be so difficult, when you know how you could help, but like the funds just aren't there or the will isn't there. But also vets need to know about so many different species at so many different points in their lives. And the knowledge base is, seems like it must be 10 times what you actually need to know in order to be a human doctor. Plus you can't talk to your patients.
Maddie:
Exactly. So once I kind of figured out that vet studies wasn't for me, I graduated from Bucknell and I ended up back in the shelter world. I worked at ASPCA for a year and then I found my way into dog training.
Annie:
And what was your like entree into dog training?
Maddie:
Hearkens back to my first internship at Animal Haven. I was working with a dog who had to be quarantined for ringworm. And she just kind of fell apart during the quarantine. She was a high arousal dog and wasn't getting the exercise and enrichment she needed. And I was, I guess, really lucky and maybe a little overwhelmed by the privilege of being able to kind of bring her back to a normal, happy, well adjusted pup.
That was my project for the summer. And by the end of the summer, she actually got adopted. That's when I realized that hands-on work with dogs can change their lives. And at the ASPCA as well, I saw a lot of, I was really focused on watching the trainers do the behavior rehab there. So that's when I kind of put two and two together and realized that I think training is the way that I can impact dogs. It's my way of helping, I think.
Annie:
How did you, I know you came to us. How did you find School for the Dogs?
Maddie:
My advisor at the time at Hunter, where I'm getting my master's degree in animal behavior, Julie is the one who suggested that I seek you guys out.
Annie:
Oh, Julie Hecht?
Maddie:
Yes.
Annie:
Oh awesome. So tell me about your masters. I know you're almost done, is that right?
Maddie:
I am. Well, sore subject. I'm finished with coursework.
Annie:
Well that’s a big deal.
Maddie:
It is. It is. I'm taking that small win. And I'm right now working on getting my thesis out. So, had a lot of dogs come in. I tested them at a cognitive task, which I can explain a little bit further. And then right now we're in the process of examining the videos and scoring them for analysis, and then I'll be writing up my thesis. I'm hoping to be completed with it by the end of summer 2021.
Annie:
That's amazing. Well, I want to hear more detail about your thesis, but for people who are listening, who don't know about the Hunter ABC program, maybe you can just kind of give an overview of what it is.
Maddie:
Yeah. It's a really great program for people who are working full time. All of the classes are in the evening. And it's a very well-rounded program in the sense that they have professors who work with primates, professors who work with dolphins, professors who work with dogs.
So there are a lot of opportunities to do research in different areas. There's a professor who works with elephants and pandas as well. And it's really just, I think, meant for people who are interested in learning more about animal behavior, but also may want to use this as a stepping stone to get further in their desired field.
Annie:
And it's called, I mean, the full name is Animal Behavior and Conservation. Tell me about the conservation aspect of it.
Maddie:
Absolutely. So that's not necessarily my area. So my knowledge of that is a little bit more spotty,
Annie:
I guess the reason I think it's interesting that that's in the title is like, it didn't occur to me at first that trainers are part of the conservation world. I thought of conservation as, I don't know something you do to make sure the rainforests don't go away.
Maddie:
So one of the ways that I think of conservation really tying into animal behavior is, well, the conservation of species themselves. Right. And also how does conservation and the protection of land tie into the conservation of species?
So one of the ways that we kind of look at conservation is there is a professor who works with Dr. Plotnick, who works with elephants in Thailand. And specifically he looks at interspecies relations as in elephants versus humans. Because in Asian countries, elephants and humans can often be at odds, in the sense that elephants want to eat. But sometimes elephants are eating humans’ crops.
So that's where conservation comes into play, right? Which is how can we either train the elephants, or create obstacles or structures to keep the elephants away so that the humans are therefore not retaliating against the elephants.
The other, I mean, I think this is the coolest conservation technique in animal behavior, is the dogs who are being trained to scent detect invasive species or rare species. I think that's the coolest juncture of dog training and conservation work.
Annie:
What do you mean? Like how, how does that work?
Maddie:
Yeah, so there are places around the world and in the Midwest and the West of the United States where people are training dogs to scent detect scat from particular animals. And I think also the kind of added bonus is a lot of those dogs are shelter dogs. So there's a big program, and the name is not, I can't think of the name right now, but there's a program that trainers are going into shelters and pulling out shelter dogs who are high arousal, high energy, not fit necessarily for home life. And they're training those dogs to scent detect for conservation.
Annie:
Wow. That's cool. Yeah. There are coyote scat detection dogs in New York, I know.
Maddie:
Oh yeah. Very cool.
Annie:
I don't know if the idea is to protect the coyotes, [laughs] but…
Maddie:
I'm not sure about that one either, but scent detection work is just the coolest to me.
Annie:
That's really neat. So yeah. Tell me about your thesis.
Maddie:
Yeah. So I'm really excited about it because it really plays into what we do on a daily basis, which is train dogs. Right. So right now, what I'm looking at in dogs is something called contextual interference. And it's this idea that — the way that it was actually explained to me is the basketball analogy, which I'll explain to you as well.
So at a typical basketball practice, right, your coach may suggest that you spend five minutes practicing dribbling, and then five minutes practicing layups, and then five minutes practicing free throws. And if you don't know what basketball is, it's just three separate skills, right?
So one thing that this theory, contextual interference, suggests is that, actually, if you practice one minute practicing free throws and then three minutes practicing layups, and then one minute practicing dribbling, and then two minutes here and there. So you really kind of mesh and muddle the skills, that your retention of those skills will be better than if you practice in a blocked format. If that makes sense.
Annie:
Yeah. Interesting.
Maddie:
So if we apply that to dogs, this is pretty much what we do with dogs very often. So we do five minutes of sit, five minutes of down, five minutes of paw, but what if we muddled all of that together? Right? So what I'm doing is looking at the difference between dogs who practice skills in a blocked format versus a random format.
And so each dog, when I was working at the canine cognition center at ABC, each dog came in twice. The first day I would teach them three skills and then the next day they would come back and I would see what they remembered, basically. And so some dogs were sorted into the blocked group and some dogs were sorted into the random group.
Annie:
And what are the skills that you're teaching them?
Maddie:
The three skills we taught were chin rest, platform, so stepping onto a platform with your front two paws, and spin. And so the idea was that there were supposed to be a hierarchy of skills and their difficulty level, with chin rest being the easiest and spin being the hardest.
Annie:
And are you doing it with the clicker or other kind of marker?
Maddie:
I was using the Yes verbal marker.
Annie:
And are these dogs who've never done training like that before?
Maddie:
So the dogs were able to do any — any of the dogs who were eligible for this project were supposed to come in with no more than basic manners training. So we sent out the specific skills that we were looking at and said, if your dog has practiced these skills before, please don't come in.
And for also the purpose of training, I was using a food lure the entire time, just we have to be somewhat consistent, right. Because it is a research project. So it's a little bit different than how I would probably train dogs here at School for the Dogs. But —
Annie:
Yeah, where we don't, let's explain. We don't use it food lures as much.
Maddie:
Exactly. Right. We prefer to capture or use nose targets as lures so that our dogs are not as dependent on food, but a lot of the dogs had no training and really didn't even know what, following a food lure, let alone my fingers around space, was. So it was a very interesting experience. I had 16 dogs come in. Well, I had around 24 dogs come in, but a lot of them had to be pulled from the study just because they weren't eligible to continue with it. So 16 dogs is the total number of dogs. We have that we're looking at their videos right now and scoring their behavior.
Annie:
So like with one group you did like two minutes of spin, and then two minutes of chin rest. And sorry, I forget what the third behavior you said was.
Maddie:
Platform.
Annie:
And two minutes of platform. For example, and then the other group you would do like one minute of spin and then three minutes of platform and five minutes of chin and that kind of thing, like, and then mix it up like that?
Maddie:
Totally. So we didn't do durations. We did repetitions, right? So each dog had a certain number of repetitions per session. So it's three sessions of training within their first visit. It was really quite taxing on the dogs, but this was the best way that we could come up with getting the numbers that we needed for the research. But yeah, we had repetition. So out of, you know, 24 repetitions of chin rest, the dogs either got eight chin rests in a row, or they got a scramble of chin rest, platform, and spin.
Annie:
So do you have an idea, like what your conclusions are going to be yet?
Maddie:
Really, I don't right now, right now. We're in the process of, I have other students who are helping me code the videos. And right now we're in the process of basically making sure that we're all looking at a video and coding it the same way. So we have definitely a ways to go before we get there.
Annie:
Did you do any kind of like thesis work in college?
Maddie:
I did. So this is actually one of the topics that I find really interesting. In college, I did an independent study for my final year and we looked at what's called metacognition in primates and Capuchins. And metacognition is in layman's term knowing what one knows. And I think the easiest way to think of this is, this was how this idea was explained in a paper that I read.
It's the idea that, for example, when you're packing your bag and you put your wallet in your bag, maybe you will go back to your bag and double check that your wallet is there. To make sure. But by the third time that you're approaching your bag again, ready to head out for the day, you're not going to check that third time for the wallet being there because you can think back to Oh, five seconds ago, I checked out the wallet was in my bag, and it was indeed in my bag. So now I can leave the house.
So it's this idea that you can evaluate what you know as a person based on your actions and the information that you've received from the environment. So we did a study with Capuchin monkeys to see if they could evaluate if they needed more information. So it was called an information seeking task.
And the basic component of the task was, we had previously trained these monkeys via match to sampling that certain — they were a nut and a bolt. Certain nuts and bolts were assigned two types of treats. For example, a nut was assigned to a grape and a bolt was assigned to a Cheerio.
And basically asked, we asked monkeys to say, we showed them a nut or a bolt, or we showed them nothing. And we asked them to choose the corresponding treats based on what they had previously seen. So when we took this a step further, if we showed them nothing, we gave them the chance to seek more information and look for the bolt or the nut that they needed to assign to a specific treat.
So I did that for my entire senior year, and it was quite a complicated —
Annie:
You were literally working with nuts and bolts.
Maddie:
Exactly. And this experiment was actually the research project was actually a replication of something they had done on apes. So to go from a gorilla to a capuchin monkey is a big jump.
Annie:
That's so interesting. So where do you see things for you going from here after you finished school? Do you think you'll go on to get a PhD or are you just sort of going to use this information to bring to dog training clients? What are you thinking?
Maddie:
Absolutely. For now I'm probably not going to go back into academia as far as getting a PhD, just because I love what I'm doing so much right now. But I think that I do have the benefit of really being science-minded when I speak to clients and guardians, because I like for clients and guardians to understand that this works because we've shown it works, because there's been research on this particular topic.
So I just kind of hope to continue bringing that aspect of the literature into my work. And continuing to help puppy parents, you know, feel like they are able to communicate with their puppy family members.
Annie:
What's been the most surprising thing for you as you've become sort of a puppy expert, do you think? Or maybe what do you think would surprise other people about a job working with puppies and often new puppy owners?
Maddie:
Well, first off, it's not very glamorous. You know, puppies are gross little Piranhas, but I love them dearly. I think, it's not so much of a surprise.
Annie:
They're better than mealworms aren't they?
Maddie:
Oh, definitely. It’s not so much of a surprise, but I think that the biggest gratification that I find being able to kind of relay to puppy owners and once this kind of clicks in the puppy owners minds, then I find that their relationship with their puppies and their relationship with me, as well as, as a teacher kind of grows exponentially, is the idea that your puppy is constantly learning.
And we talk about this a lot, but it's very easy to give your puppy the positive feedback about things you like. And I think that it goes a long way, as far as your relationship with your puppy, to be constantly trying to give them the feedback for what you like. I think that we find that we have to fall back on — we get a lot less of the negative behaviors if our puppy is, from the very start, receiving the feedback, Oh, my parent likes this. Oh, they really like it when I do that.
Because then our puppies are going to continually be trying these good things rather than potentially swaying into where we don't want them to go.
Annie:
Well, also just the notion that like learning is happening all the time is so huge. I mean, I think just for me as a human being, that's something I learned through working with dogs, and it kind of blew my mind when I realized that. Cause it's not like, Oh, a love of learning is so important and we need to be learning all the time or we should be learning all the time. It's not like some sort of philosophical or moral dictum. It's like, no, you actually are just, as an animal living on this earth, learning all the time. You know what I mean?
Maddie:
Right. Yeah. So you get a burnt coffee from one cafe and maybe you don't go back there next time.
Annie:
Right. And like, we don't think about that in normal life or at least I never thought about that until I became a dog trainer. I never thought about that as a kind of learning.
Maddie:
I think a lot of puppy parents really think, okay, we practice our five minutes of sit or five minutes of touch and that's it. Right? But I think that once they've realized that dog training goes much more beyond that, that's when they really start to become gratified by the relationship that they're building with their canine companion.
Annie:
Yeah. No, I agree with you. I feel like it's, I have worked more with puppies than with any other kind of age of dogs and I love it for that same reason, because when you are able to sort of suddenly switch someone's point of view and help them see they're dogs in that way, I think it's something that they will never unsee. So even if you only ever spend 90 minutes with that puppy and that puppy owner, you often can really impact, I think, their whole relationship. And that's like super gratifying and so much fun.
Let's talk for a moment about the pandemic, because you were training puppies before it started. And now, and of course we know that a lot of people have gotten puppies, and I'm increasingly reading things about problem pandemic puppies. Puppies being poorly socialized because of the pandemic. And as someone who's in the thick of it, I’d just love to hear kind of what your experience has been from March til now, working with new puppy owners.
Maddie:
Well, first off Zoom puppy sessions were definitely a big change. For me, it was a great learning experience because not being able to rely on my body as a teaching tool has been a big change. And having to figure out how to word what you want puppy guardians to be doing with their hands and with their mouths is very challenging, but it's been a great learning experience.
I think the biggest issue that's coming about as, because of the pandemic is the clash between socialization and separation. I think that we're now living in a society where dogs are much more welcome, pretty much everywhere. And I wouldn't say you can walk into a restaurant with your dog, but most puppy parents nowadays are bringing their puppies around Manhattan in a baby Bjorn style carrying. Which is awesome because the puppies get to have the experience of seeing and hearing the stimuli in Manhattan.
But it's also a potential negative because these puppies are glued to their parents' sides. And then the reality of a society that is no longer work from home is that's probably not going to be the case in the next year or so. So that has been probably the biggest challenge, is walking that line between socialization and separation.
Annie:
What do you suggest to new puppy owners who are trying to figure out how to safely socialize their dogs during this time?
Maddie:
Definitely. So I'm a big fan obviously of our puppy play times. I think the learning experience is just out of this world, not just so for the puppies, but for the humans as well. I think that the art of reading canine body language is a difficult one to master. And I definitely think that with our puppy play times, the parents are really given that step up in the dog training world that I don't think all trainers or training companies or other puppy play times have.
And for those of you who don't know what our puppy play times look like, a trainer walks you through the type of play that you're seeing right in front of your eyes, and helps you to understand this is good play. This is maybe not so great play. Clearly this puppy is very comfortable, or clearly this puppy is in some kind of discomfort, and your trainer walks you through kind of how to manage those interactions.
So for me, my biggest recommendation is take your puppies to puppy play time, at least weekly. And then as well as, you know, spend five to 10 minutes a day outside, just soaking in the sights and sounds of New York. And ideally right, pairing that with appetite of stimuli, like treats or maybe even bringing your puppy's favorite tug toy out for that five minutes.
Because I think between play with other dogs and desensitization to their environment, that's a pretty solid introduction to socialization, especially somewhere like Manhattan.
Annie:
Yeah. Also I think having, like you were saying a baby Bjorn, you know, it sounds silly sort of, but like it's actually really helpful to have a dog and a bag. Especially if you have a dog who doesn't have all the shots, or if it's cold out, it's a way to be able to bring your dog places safely and comfortably.
Which is funny because I feel like, it used to be like carrying a dog — I mean maybe still plenty of people still see it this way, but it was like, Oh, do you have your dog accessory? Like, like it had this sort of like Paris Hilton cliche.
Maddie:
Yeah. I think it definitely has, I think our society has changed and is shifting towards being more of a dog friendly society. For sure.
Annie:
Have you seen people get puppies that, what's the best way to say it, that like maybe they shouldn't have gotten, but they got them because of the pandemic?
Maddie:
Definitely. I think that I was just actually speaking to a family friend about the positive impacts on our psyche that dogs have. And I think that the pandemic has been really challenging emotionally for a lot of people. And for some, dogs were an answer, right? Dogs got them out of their apartment. They got them into the fresh air and really helped kind of boost their overall wellbeing.
But for some people who were maybe thrust back into society before they expected to be, again, that issue of making sure your dog is comfortable with separation. I think for people who didn't prioritize making sure their dog can be alone in their apartment when they had to go back into work earlier than they expected to, that was a big issue.
Annie:
Yeah. It's funny because shelters have emptied out, but I'm wondering if there's going to be an influx of doodles into shelters.
Maddie:
I really hope not, fingers crossed. And hopefully right before that has to happen, they'll seek out who can help them with that aspect of life. But yeah, that is definitely a very potential negative to the influx of puppies in our lives.
Annie:
So if someone's listening to this and they're younger person, as you are, who is thinking about becoming a dog trainer, what would you suggest that they do first?
Maddie:
Do research. There are definitely better dog trainers than others in society. Make sure you are looking into people and professionals who are using techniques that are widely accepted and really backed by science. We always say that, but it's true that we really do kind of pay attention to the science behind what we're doing.
And I think that the easiest way to get your feet in the water so to speak is to just reach out to your local training company, whoever is like-minded with you, and just see if they have any position that you could just take on even to get yourself in the field. I have always learned the most from watching my fellow trainers interact with dogs. And I think it's a huge learning opportunity to be able to just kind of be a fly on the wall.
Annie:
Have you encountered clients where, I don't know, people that are paying you, who have pushed back when you've told them about the kind of training that you do?
Maddie:
I think, yes. A lot of those people are maybe of an older generation. I think that for a while, we were in that kind of that shift from positive punishment to reward based training. But I think now we're kind of at a point where we're moving away from that. Because also just people who are using a lot of positive punishment techniques have either crossover, are crossover trainers, or we're just, they're really old. That's right.
But I do think that people from the older generation, especially who grew up raising their dog on positive punishment techniques, are the ones who I hear pushback from. But I do think that reward-based training is really kind of the here and now. So I don't actually receive that much pushback on a regular basis these days.
Annie:
I find I I've encountered people who kind of are like, well, let's agree to disagree. You have your ideas and I have mine. I'm like, yeah, but like you have your ideas and I have science, right?
Maddie:
I mean, when I hear that type of thing, I know that also their interactions with people and in the world in general are probably not as good as they could be.
Annie:
[Laughing] That's a good way of putting it.
Maddie:
And I mean, that's the truth. I think you said it before. Right? We can give people positive feedback and it, training does not just apply to humans. It applies to everyone. So I do think that a lot. When I'm listening to other people interact with friends, employees, daughters. I think about it when my parents interact with me and my siblings. Or did or do, in the sense that maybe there's a little bit of a different way of approaching that in particular that they're approaching.
And maybe if, rather than focusing on the negatives, instead focus on rewarding with praise, or the ability to do activities, like go out with friends. Some of the things that we did as kids, maybe they would be seeing less of what they didn't like to see.
Annie:
Do they appreciate it when you give them advice as a dog trainer about their parenting?
Maddie:
You know what, it depends on how mad they are already.
[laughing]
Annie:
That's funny. Well, wait till you have kids, then you can implement these strategies yourself for the better.
Maddie:
Yeah. I mean, we'll see about that one, but…
Annie:
Well it’s funny, because I do things with my daughter that doesn't even occur to me that it's dog training until someone else points it out. Like I remember one time I had a friend over back when we could have people over, and my daughter was standing up in her chair and I was trying to get her to sit down and her chair to eat. And I just put the food, like I put the spoon with the food on it, in the position that she would need to be sitting in order to get the food. And then she sat down and ate the food.
And my friend was like, Oh, that's like a dog training thing, huh? I was like, Oh, I guess so, like, I'm not sure I would have thought of that before being a dog trainer. But like in the moment it just, you know, like stuff just ends up coming naturally.
Maddie:
Yeah. My favorite, I think, you being a dog trainer and also having a child moment was when you posted about having Magnolia nose target a – she nose targetted [inaudible] the color of the light.
Annie:
No, it's so funny. I've done that with a lot of things, like to turn something on or off, not, I mean, just for fun, not with any kind of like grand purpose. But every now and then I'll see her try and accomplish something by touching her nose.
Maddie:
Oh, that's very funny.
Annie:
She'll try and like turn on the light by touching her nose. It's pretty cute. I hope it doesn't screw her up too much in life.
Maddie:
I doubt it. I mean, that's probably just more like an enrichment activity
Annie:
[laughs] But also it's a way for her to have some kind of control over her environment. I mean, even if it's like, I'm the one turning off the light, but she thinks she's doing it by touching her nose. I don't know. Maybe there's some benefit to it. Well, if I ever go get my masters in animal behavior and conservation, I can study…
I guess, you know, it's animal behavior and conservation, but isn't it funny how we don't include humans as like animals, like people aren't in the ABC program study?
Maddie:
Oh yes, definitely. I mean, and that's like a big thing that I think about a lot, which is whenever people ask me, what is animal behavior? What did you major in? I say, it's like a mix of psychology and biology, right? Because that really is what it is. Everything we think about when we're talking about Skinner or Pavlov, they were psychologists. They weren't necessarily ethologists, people who studied animal behavior only, specifically. Skinner and Pavlov that has been applied and extrapolated obviously to humans. So it really it's an all-encompassing field, I think. And definitely
Annie:
Actually I think Pavlov was actually like a gastroenterologist or something.
Maddie:
Oh, really.
Annie:
Yeah. He just happened to figure out some stuff that had a minor impact on psychology. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to talk, Maddie. We're thrilled to have you as part of School for the Dogs. And I know that you have helped so many puppies, and for that, I am very, very grateful. So I hope we can talk again soon.
Maddie:
All right. Thanks, Annie.
Annie:
All right, I'll talk to you later.
Maddie:
Bye.
Annie:
Bye.
