25 FebEpisode 121 | A group discussion about The New Yorker article, “Bad Dog,” with its author Anna Heyward
Anna Heyward is a writer and a School For The Dogs apprentice who has been featured on this podcast. She joined Annie and others to discuss her heartbreaking new article in The New Yorker, "Bad Dog," on Clubhouse. Their discussion touched on the complicated world of behavioral euthanasia, the cultural fog about dog training and the rampant misinformation about it, and more. Former School For The Dogs trainer Anamarie Johnson, also previously interviewed on this podcast, was among those who joined the conversation.
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Read Anna's article at NewYorker.com. Anna Heyward is on Instagram at: @biggirl.world
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Episode 77 | Lessons learned from foster dogs: A discussion with our apprentice Anna Heyward
Episode 8 | Let’s talk about classical conditioning with dog trainer Anamarie Johnson
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Transcript:
Annie:
This is a bonus episode that was recorded on Clubhouse. Clubhouse is an app for iOS devices that is currently open by invitation only. If you would like an invitation text me at (917) 414-2625. And if I have an invite available, I will share it with you. You can find me there @AnnieGrossman.
So thanks for being here, everybody I've asked Yolanta who is a virtual assistant specializing in dog businesses to be here to help me moderate this room. Cause I've never moderated a room before and I didn't want to get it wrong. And Anna Heyward is here. Anna wrote the wonderful, very moving poignant article, Bad Dog, which appeared in the New Yorker last week. Anna Heyward is a School for the Dogs apprentice and started out with us as a client.
I actually interviewed Anna for the podcast a few months ago and then wanted to have another conversation with her for the podcast about her article, but thought it would be fun and interesting to open it up to others who read the article. So Anna, thank you for being here. And if anybody would like to ask Anna a question or discuss the article, just go ahead and use that like hand raising button on the bottom of the screen and Yolanta or I will ping you to to the stage to speak.
But Anna, why don't you go ahead and maybe just introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you're doing these days when you're not apprenticing and you're not writing fabulous articles for the New Yorker.
Anna Heyward:
Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. And thanks for hosting this, Annie. This is, you know I know people have probably read cheerier and happier articles about dog care and dog stewardship and animal companionship. So we're gonna keep it light and happy today, but thank you everyone for reading and being here with us.
And yeah, as I said, I'm an apprentice at School for the Dogs. I began as a client in 2017 with a dog who had really, really bad separation anxiety. And Annie and I talked about him the last time we did a podcast together. I was helped by one of the School for the Dogs senior trainers, Anna Ostroff. And that was really kind of the beginning of my interest in thinking about animal behavior, maybe not professionally, but maybe seriously.
So yeah, fast forward a few years, I became an apprentice. I'm also now in grad school for animal behavior and welfare at Penn school of veterinary medicine.
Annie:
And you're doing that remotely, right?
Anna:
Yeah. I mean, doing everything remotely, even my apprenticeship I've been doing remotely. You probably talked about that a few times on the podcast already, but remote dog training is an interesting discussion to have as well. It's great for some dogs, like mine. My dog would never be able to participate in a tricks class in a live setting with other dogs and people in the room. So that's been yeah, that's been the peak from the troughs of doing everything online this past year.
Annie:
I think you know this already, but we're actually in the process of putting as much of the apprenticeship as we can online. Actually just today I was working on editing some of the video lectures and what's really cool about it actually, is that a huge part of it is going to be completely free because we really want to take away the barriers between people who are interested in becoming dog trainers, people who can become dog trainers.
But so how did this article come come about, or maybe a better question is how did Jack come into your life? Pick or choose your questions!
Anna:
Jack came into my life, I had been fostering for a couple of years on and off when Jack arrived. And it was kind of a case that — it was described briefly in the piece, but I guess Jack had moved through a couple of different homes after a few different foster cares discovered that he had some challenging — his behavior was really challenging and hard to predict.
So he came to me, I hadn't applied to foster him or anything. They just asked if I could take him. And I said yes twice. And you know, soon after discovering some of the confusing and challenging aspects of his behavior, I guess I realized, wow, this is, he's more difficult. I mean, more difficult is — I'd had difficult fosters before, but he was difficult in kind of a new way.
So after going through that whole process with Jack and then after he died, I started writing the first little seeds of the essay pretty soon after he left. But it took me quite a while to write. It took me maybe like six months to a year, I think before I sent you that first draft, Annie, that you read.
So it was a slow process and actually, it coincided with my beginning of the apprenticeship and, and beginning more formal education. And some of the science in there is the result of my apprenticeship and school and that kind of thing, and the reading that I was doing alongside those pursuits.
Annie:
So for those who haven't read the article, do you want to give a summary?
Anna:
Yeah, so Jack was a small dog. He was middle-aged, and he needed a foster home because he he'd been kicked out of a few different homes because he had aggression. He had pretty low bite inhibition, and he was unpredictable, and he didn't give too many warnings before he bit. So that was really challenging.
And the first time he came to me it became a problem for my boyfriend at the time. Quite understandably, I don't want to criticize him or anything, but he wasn't really into living with Jack so —
Annie:
Well, and it should be said you were a rather experienced foster at this point, and you'd actually started working with Anna with another dog before this, who had behavioral issues
Anna:
Yeah, yeah. I had, and Freddie, the dog who Anna helped me with, Anna Ostroff the senior trainer at School for the Dogs helped me with, he had extreme reactivity, but it was just so different from Jack. Freddie had very, very serious separation anxiety. So he was really difficult to manage. He couldn't be left alone because he would self-harm, he had really, really, really hair trigger for his anxiety.
But it's really different from a dog who bites. The management strategies that we use and the training strategies that we use and just the risks, the whole shebang, it's really different. So although I had some experience with difficult behavior, biting without warning was not something that I had experienced much off before. You know, little bits of predictable aggression is, it's kind of different from the way that Jack behaved.
So Jack came back and we started living together.
Annie:
Do you think the foster sought you out because they knew that you could, might be open to trying to handle a more difficult case?
Anna:
Yeah, maybe, I think they just really needed a place for Jack also. And they were just trying. Holly knew at that point that my boyfriend and I had broken up and that I was living alone. And I guess that made it a more hospitable environment for Jack because the fewer people and the more predictable his home would be, the better.
So he came back and we entered into the process of living together. And it was kind of just me kind of trying to catch up with him, trying to compensate for what I didn't know about him and learn about him as fast as I could and manage his environment as best as I could. Because at the time I did not have any formal training. I did not have all the information that I have now and the experience that I have now.
It was, it was a very pretty kind of improvised process of trying to adapt to Jack. So I would do things like stop having people over, stop playing certain kinds of music or cooking certain things, just trying to keep his environment as low key as possible. But it wasn't perfect. And we did have a few bite incidents and so when I had to go away I found another place for Jack to stay.
There was another foster who had experience with aggression with the same rescue. So he went to stay with her, but it did not quite work.
Annie:
Well can we back up a little bit? So I mean, part of what I think is so interesting about your story and really the saddest part — and those who have just joined. Thanks for being here. We're discussing Anna Heyward's article “Bad Dog,” which was in the New Yorker last week with Anna.
I think part of what's so heartbreaking about your story is that you already had a little bit of an education on science-based, reward based training, and you were really trying to take baby steps and do everything right by Jack. Including preparing for your trip, you were doing it in such a thoughtful methodical manner.
And then based on kind of, maybe advice from your family or just sort of like cultural fog, you had a moment of deciding that you just needed to be, you needed to be the boss, you needed to be the alpha. And would you describe it that way and maybe talk about what happened?
Anna:
I mean, I just had a moment of thinking, maybe I'm overreacting here. Maybe it'll be fine if I just go ahead. And it was not, I overstepped Jack's boundaries in that moment. And it was completely my fault, resulted in a bite incident. So Jack sadly ended up being a case with behavioral euthanasia, which was not my decision. But who knows what would have happened if he'd stayed with me.
And that has just led me into kind of wanting to learn what had happened and what I could have done differently. And that was when I began thinking about changing my career and really learning science-based dog training and going back to school. So all of that happened in the wake of, in the wake of Jack.
And funnily enough, my dog now, my foster fail, I actually didn't know this about her when she arrived, but she was on a behavioral euthanasia list at her shelter in Texas. Before she came into the rescue. There was a volunteer who ended up reevaluating her and taking her out at the last minute.
So I knew she had a bite history and some challenging behavior. She's had multiple level three events, which on the Dunbar scale is not great. She had broken skin and multiple attacks at different times. And so I took her in after Jack and I was really honestly so scared of her for weeks.
But in many ways, Jack really prepared me for her. And all of the learning that I've done since then has been applied to big girl in much more successful ways. And she's here right next to me playing with her toy really happily and calmly.
Annie:
Well I think the part of the essay that got me the most was the ending where you kind of imagine the moment of his death. And and I read the essay before it was published. So it didn't have the title Bad Dog yet.
Anna:
Yeah, that was chosen by the editor, but I don't object to it at all. It cause I think it does do the job, it's an essay about what went wrong. It doesn’t celebrate
Annie:
I don't mind it as a title either. But as a dog trainer, I'm going to deconstruct it. [Laughs] Actually yesterday, someone was asking me, can dogs be born bad or is it all the owner's fault? And I said, well, before we talk about what behaviors might be born baked in and what might be brought on by the environment, including or not including the owner, let's address the fact that “bad,” is completely, it’s subjective.
Anna:
I mean, bad, it's a moral term, isn't it? And it's just so unhelpful in evaluating what drives behavior.
Annie:
I mean, and then in another environment, a dog who is anxious or aggressive or whatever we might call bad, those behaviors might actually benefit the dog in another environment, which could make them a good dog. Right?
Anna:
Right. Yeah. Yeah, there are dogs whose job it is to bite, there are dogs who were trained to bite. There are times at which biting is a really important and helpful behavior. The example I like to give is an incident that happened with big girl in which we were taking a nap together, and she's a small dog, she's 12 pounds. I rolled over in my sleep and started squishing her against the bed, which is super dangerous for her because I'm so much bigger than her. And she gave me a really sharp little nip that caused me to recoil and roll away from her.
And it's a total survival behavior. That was a perfect response that needed to happen in that moment. And that's why she has the bite response. It's to protect her from dangers in her environment and who knows what had happened if she had not had that response.
There are times when biting works that exist for a reason. And it's up to us as the stewards of these animals with these responses to make sure that we are guiding, managing the environment and guiding the reinforcement so that the dog is doing things that keep it safe. Which generally is not biting. That's not a good or helpful behavior for pet dogs. So it's up to us to do everything we can to make sure that those kinds of extreme responses are really only ever used in extreme circumstances like that.
Annie:
Yeah. Yeah. I heard one dog trainer recently talking about how a dog may be born into a situation of surplus, and where the environment is perfect for them. And that can breed a confident, happy dog, but a dog might also be born into an environment where resources are scarce and the same dog might turn into a very different kind of dog, if there's a desert of the stuff a dog needs to survive. So, so much depends upon the world we create for the dog, as far as what behaviors we're going to get.
Would love to hear from anyone who is here. Hey Claudia, Hey Alex, Hey, Anamarie, Justice. I know some of you all. If anyone read the article and would like to share anything they felt about it or has any questions we would love to bring you onstage. Do know we are recording this session for School for the Dogs podcast. So if you could just be aware of that, if it's okay with you and introduce yourself.
BIL Hi.
Speaker 1:
Hi. Thanks for having me up here. I was not even aware of this article. I just read it while after I came into the room. And Oh my God, it was so moving. And so touching to me, and that was just amazing that you gave so many chances to Jack. But actually a lot of it reminded me of a dog I had as a child who we had had as a puppy who was a fear biter. Because she went for, also, men who were carrying things: briefcases, umbrellas, men in trench coats. And we had to unfortunately put her down.
The fifth person she bit was a neighbor of ours who was also like 10 years old, who came to our door like swinging a jump rope. And Mouse, which was the dog's name, ran out of our door and bit her in the leg. And she required quite a number of stitches. Mouse was a German shepherd. So also very different from a 10 pound dog. Had Mouse been 10 pounds, she would have gotten an ankle and everybody probably would have laughed it off and moved on.
The thing that struck me though, just to get done with my story is that especially a dog like Jack, that you really don't necessarily know what happened before you got him. Like, he obviously had PTSD. I mean, just his reactions and everything. That's what I kept thinking while I was reading the article.
Anna:
Yeah. I think that's very likely.
Speaker 1:
Yes. And while the outcome was awful, and I can understand wanting to feel like you could've done more. I just want to say you really did everything for him. And in a way he really, I mean, he was totally a dog in pain. I mean, that's everything that I got from that article that he was just living life in pain every day and not able to handle his own behavior even.
Anna:
Yeah. Maybe this is a good point to raise, the fact that behavioral euthanasia is, I mean, it's such a difficult topic. It's really painful. Nobody likes talking about this topic or having to go through the experience, but it is really misunderstood. And I think one of the important things to think about is the way that we kind of manage the dog's experience of the world.
We're generally really good at thinking about things like physical pain and quality of life, but we are often kind of less adept at considering, or being compassionate about the mental pain that the animal is in and the quality of life that's happening. And euthanasia being, not just a sad outcome, but sometimes the humane one for for the animal in question, because we have to think about what kind of life the dog is going to have available.
Which can be an uncomfortable question, but living in pain is, who are we doing this for? Is it for us, is it for the dog? Those are all really important questions to think about in this sad question,
Annie:
Something sort of tangentially related is that physical pain can cause behaviors that we often don't like. And it certainly is complicated with dogs cause we often can't know if they're actually in physical pain.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was brought up that euthanasia, it was a thing that we occasionally did have to, I mean, I hate to say put to sleep, but I grew up with many, many dogs and we would occasionally would have to, for whatever reason, they were myriad, and each dog was different. But the one thing that was always ingrained in us is, whatever you're doing, you have to say, is this for me or for the dog? And the answer always had to be, it is the best thing for the dog.
Anna:
I mean, but safety is also a real concern, you know, in the case that you brought up with Mouse. Just think about what could have been the worst case scenario in that situation that you described with the neighbor and, you know, dogs are not humans. They have just different everything from us. And we have to make sure that we are keeping everyone safe in this situation as well.
I was pretty lucky that I never had that kind of an experience with Jack. I never felt like I was truly unsafe or anything like that, even though I did feel like I was out of my depth the whole time, constantly wondering, where does this come from? What, am I pushing? Am I getting towards the limit? Am I not? What's going to happen next? With a dog who's much bigger or has different kind of anatomy, the equation changes a little bit, depending on who the dog is and what's around.
Annie:
Did you, did you consider working with a professional trainer?
Anna:
Yeah we did some training with him. So the piece, I mean, Annie, I think by the time you read it, the piece that was already shortened, but it started out at 40,000 words.
Annie:
Well, I think I already told you, I think it should be a book, so this could be a good starting point.
Anna:
Well, so there's so much that didn't go into the published essay, and that is one of the big — I've had so many people write such moving things to me since it was published, a lot of people wanting to share their own stories, their experiences with different dogs who had something in common with Jack or similar experiences that they had.
A lot of people also wanted to know, did you try any kind of training and management with him and what about muzzles and what about crates and what about counter conditioning? And yeah, we did. There was training. Certainly if I had the chance, I would do things differently. I would do different kinds of training. I would do more, and ask different people and would have loved to have had all of the knowledge and the skills and the resources that I have now, but I didn't.
And yeah, we did do some training with Jack, and we did do science-based training with Jack. There was certainly no punishment involved in his training program. But yeah, we did. We did train Jack.
Anamarie:
Oh, I was going to chime in
Annie:
Is this Anamarie?
Anamarie:
Yes.
Anna:
Hey, so Anamarie, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself since we are recording this and you are worth any introduction.
Anamarie:
Oh I'm worthy. I'm Anamarie. I used to be a trainer at School for the Dogs for three years. I originally from California and moved out to New York to get my master's in animal behavior from Hunter, came back out to California. Manage the shelter and behavior department for a small no-kill, which is a whole other discussion. No kill shelter out here in California. And now I'm [inaudible] my PhD in Clive wins lab out of ASU.
So I mean, I think there was a lot of things that popped up for me in the article having been both on the training side of things and the shelter side of things. And one of the things that really popped up for me, a memory. And I've experienced, I mean, I'm fortunate enough that most of my behavioral euthanasia — fortunate is a relative term — my experience has not been with personal dogs. It's been with shelter animals.
But I had this really vivid memory of, and I think there's two sides of the equation that I bring up in this topic is, I had a family come to me when I was managing the shelter. Which, they came to me with a dog with a fairly severe bite history. Ten-year-old doodle, small doodle. And they came to us being a no-kill shelter with this concept of —
And I think this is also the mindset that happens with trainers. This concept of, Oh, the shelter can either fix the problem or can give concept of behavioral where people default to this idea of, Oh, they probably didn't try hard enough to do X, Y, and Z.
So I had this family come to me and they were obviously very distraught. They had had the dogs since it was a puppy. They had done literally all the right things. And they had children, so the children were a bite risk. And the wife had been bitten.
There wasn't really any issues, and I'm going through their background with them and they're like, Oh, you know, we moved from Hawaii and then we lived up there, and he's seen, you know, vet behavior is all over the place and we've done different kind of positive reinforcement training, and we've done behavioral medication and, Oh, you know, we have this whole rotation where the dog is exposed, and we have X pen set up, he only can be out for a half an hour and all this kind of stuff. Oh, the dog had heart issues. So then we did a whole treatment. We drove to, we went to France and we did the whole heart replacement.
And I just looked at them and I said, I want to tell you that I know this is a hard decision, but I was like, you didn't fail this dog. Cause I think that's the default. Like these were people that literally expended any type of resource that they had, and they came to this point where they said, you know, we can't have our dog in our house, but we're failing it.
And they just gave me this litany of ideas, and I just wanted to say like, One, you didn't fail to stop. Two, it would have been really easy from a shelter perspective to be like, Oh my God, a ten-year-old doodle? We never get doodles in the shelter. Yeah. Maybe we can fix it.
But I made it really clear to them that as a steward of the shelter, and a steward for the community, I said, you've done everything for this dog. And what your dog's telling me is, from what I'm hearing, your dog's not happy. You giving your dog, this dog everything and me putting it in a new environment is likely not going to change this scenario. And that's also not fair to the dog.
And it was this really big kind of — and they said, but Oh, we think this can fix it. And we think this can fix it. And I said, you gave your dog a really good life, it's time that you, you know…
Anna:
Anamarie I think you might've cut out briefly. Oh no, I've got you back. Sorry.
Anamarie:
Yeah. So I was just saying, it wasn't responsible for the shelter, you know, quote unquote, this is on every taken a look at this photo, you know, of a dog. It's a highly adoptable dog. It's a doodle. Someone will pick it up in 24 hours, but that's not a responsible — that's not the point. And I made a big point to them is dogs have evolved and we have dogs, in part that they provide opportunity to us in our lives. No one should have a dog in their life that they feel trapped by.
Because equally in my opinion, I feel like the dog similarly feels that in its environment. You have dogs and particularly coming from a shelter environment, you have dogs that have a family environment. You don't have a dog that you are, and it sounds terrible to say, but, beholden to just because you have this idea that it would be worse for it to be euthanized, when the dog's probably frankly pretty miserable, stressed out all the time.
Those are always things that come up to me when I have this position and those are really hard discussions to have, but it's the rational — [inaudible]
Anna:
Yeah. You have to keep the human also in mind, in your humane treatment of animals in general. I mean, what you just described sounds like such a perfect storm for so many of the misunderstood and misconceived ideas about behavioral euthanasia. And my heart really goes out to that family, it is not an easy situation to be in.
Anamarie:
Yeah. And ultimately they left and I said, you're welcome to surrender your dog to this shelter. And they had said, other behavior vets had said it, they hoped that they could get one alternative opinion. And I said, you're welcome to surrender. We'll make it a comfortable transition. And they said, no, they decided that they were going to go to, you know, some man that had dogs that lived out in the middle of Canada and they were going to, you know, live on that like existential farm.
And I said, okay, that's your decision. And then they came back to me two weeks later and they said, he can't take it. Do you think your opinions changed? And I said, I'm sorry, my opinion hasn’t changed. And that was the last I ever saw them. So, it's unfortunate, I don't ultimately know what happened, but as tough as it was, I felt good in the sense that I gave them the best option that they could have for themselves and their dog.
Anna:
Yeah. I mean, hopefully our understanding of what euthanasia is will change in time and families like that will not feel so bad about the idea of just kind of being forced to keep this dog alive and [inaudible] against all evidence and against all. I mean, because once in a while there will be a blue moon kind of situation where it's like this dog has a lot of problems, but there is a very unique niche situation in which this dog can live out the rest of its life.
So, I mean, that's kind of the situation with my dog. She has a robust bite history and she cannot be around children and she needs a lot of careful management, but I feel like I’ve been able to provide her with really good quality of life. She's had a lot of successful behavioral modification. And she very rarely has to go into stressful situations. Obviously some unavoidable. We have to go to the vet. She hates that. It's just part of the deal. She has to wear a muzzle. She has to be medicated, dah dah, dah.
But it is, I mean, it is really a difficult calculation for me to go every single day, is her quality of life where it should be? Would I opt into the life that I'm providing for her? She's so scared by the world in so many common situations, is this okay? You know, what are the options for her? It's not, I mean, it's not easy for the human
Anamarie:
You happen to be a very lucky person, that you happen to be the person that got her from the shelter environment. But I think that adds to a whole other layer of the responsible stewardship of rescues, which I know is a whole other hot topic. The sense of, that's a decision that, and I am very fortunate and I haven't had to make that decision very often in my shelter career, but we can wait for that one in a million person for that dog.
But then, the dog’s sitting in a shelter, or only sees one person a day. How is that fair? And, yeah, it's not fair that the dog got stuck in a shelter environment. But that's the situation that's at hand. And it's the responsibility of the shelter to not also pass the buck. Because, that's how I interpret it, of the shelter now, Oh, we have this dog and, Oh, there's this one person that thinks, yeah, it's okay. We can, I can take this on.
Anna:
It's a nice idea, but it's rarely a reality.
Anamarie:
Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, you're putting that person in the position where they do have to live their life around X pens and all that kind of stuff. And not many people are like you, or like me, or like other people that are willing to take that on. And that's our responsibility of moving forward in the shelter world that does have a very big no kill experience. And no kill in the context of quality of life and using aversive training methods just for the sake of not euthanizing a dog, which once again is a whole other discussion.
Anna:
I mean, not everyone has the option of opting into being like me either. I live alone, there are people with families who have to — You just have to consider people. People often feel very shamed about, as you said, the idea of failing the dog. And if you cannot manage a dog with severe behavioral problems, that is not because you're a failure of a person. Which I really want people to hear. And know that it's not easy and it's not for everyone.
Annie:
It looks like we have Jay here. Jay would you introduce yourself, also know that we are recording this for School for the Dogs podcast, but did you read the article, and what did you think?
Jay:
I absolutely read the article? It was sent to me. I loved it. And I sent it on to some friends of mine who are also having a very similar situation with one of their pups. I have to say Anna, you did an amazing job. They, in their situation with a dog that is temperamental, does have a level three bite history or category three bite history. And that they've been doing so much work, trying to find him trying to work with behaviorists, multiple trainers.
They have very much felt that they have let the dog down by not being able to control or better his behavior to the point where — when they had their toddler in 2019, despite our best efforts, he did not take very well to it. And he's been staying with me for almost a year, except when I have to be at work. So he still gets to spend time with them. I've more or less been fostering him, but he still gets to see his parents.
But reading that article, they said that it really made them feel not alone in their behavior. And it really meant so much to them to read it and understand that these incidents do happen. And it's just, as Anamarie mentioned earlier, people tend to feel like we are failing the dog when we can't provide the right environment for it, or to give it the kind of happiness or the life where it's most comfortable, even if that person may not be able to provide an environment that is best suited to it.
But thank you so much for writing that article. It was very touching. I can't tell you the amount of people I’ve sent that to, it was just wonderful.
Anna:
Well, I thank you so much for saying so. And my heart really goes out to your friends because, I can't imagine with a toddler in the mix. That is just a really, really scary situation. Nobody should be in. And it sounds like your dog agrees
Jay:
Well, that one is actually my girl, she she just heard somebody at the door. She's very, very different there. They tolerate each other while they're here. They're both small, he's a Shih Tzu Chihuahua mix. So he's only maybe 22 pounds, but surprising — just triggers that they can't seem to pin down what let them out.
But that actually led me to a question that I was going to pose to all of you. We all live in a world where a simple internet search can reveal so much information about dog behaviors or ways to train your dog. But if you do a little digging, you quickly find out so much of it is terrible advice that relies on antiquated methods that are not science-based.
And even nationally, national chains of behaviorists will fall back on methods, such as you know, a bag full of chains or coins to distract a dog, which if you have an already anxious pup, it's going to just further exacerbate their conditions. What would you suggest for anyone who's listening to this and experiencing problems, is there a set of resources that would be a go-to or simple things to look for, behaviorists or et cetera, ethologists for animals following that?
Any information like that would be really appreciated if anybody was picking this up or experiencing a similar condition.
Anna:
Yeah, Annie is going to have probably a lot to say in response to that as well. I mean, one big thing that is not going to — the situation isn't really going to change I think unless we get regulation. It's an unregulated industry with no occupational licensing. And I would personally like that to change for the sake of both humans and dogs.
But I guess a short way of answering that question is that you can go to apdt.com and you can look at trainers who are registered with that respected science-based professional guild. And that will show you a list of trainers who have committed to continuing education and who have passed educational standards that are really, really sound.
It really is a way of market in terms of who you can hire as a trainer and what they know about how animals learn. So I know Annie and AnaMarie, there are so many Anna’s here who also have answers to that question.
Anamarie:
I was actually going to say part of my PhD work that I'm actually looking at is particularly this kind of what people are saying and how people are buying into it. So one of my work in progress right now is actually doing some qualitative text analysis of what trainers are putting on their websites. And basically kind of, in summary, is basically there wasn't a lot of consistency, as much as you wanted in terms of what is actually being said. Which goes to the fact of people can say what they want.
And considering that I pulled my data from a hundred top rated trainers from Yelp, from 10 different United States cities. It's showing that people are seeing this and going and using this, and highly rating these people that have no consistency of their views or their recommendations.
here was this one website where basically their credentials were, I used to work in the military and all their photos were them in their military gear, and that was their experience with dogs. Or I have some connections to dogs, and connecting to that, a lot of them were not certified even to the certifications that Annie or myself have, of CPDT or KPA or any of that. That was very lacking. There was only about 30% out of the a hundred that actually had a certification. So yeah, it is a big problem in terms of the licensing and regulation.
And connected to that. Another study that I'm in the process of right now is I'm getting the idea of what methods people actually use to work through problem behaviors. I'm doing a pilot study right now with some students at ASU, the undergraduates. And in one of the initial studies, they say, well, if they have a problem behavior, they asked their vet. But when you actually get to the nitty gritty of them asking where they received this information, it was friends or family. Second to that was the internet.
And that's been perpetuated pretty consistently across different research papers that do talk about that information. And I think unless there is someone mainstream that actually changes — you know, everyone, I don't know if anyone knows about the new Netflix thing that just came out. With mainstream media, these things just get perpetuated.
And unfortunately positive reinforcement is slow and not very pretty in the sense of, it's kind of boring to look at from a perspective. And it's very compelling to say, I took a dog that was very aggressive and I quote unquote fixed it. So there has to be a major in my opinion, major social change that I don't necessarily see in the next unfortunately 15 or 20 years.
Annie:
Well just to jump in and to maybe be a little bit less negative than your prediction, AnaMarie [laughing] who by the way, is one of my favorite people. And any time you want to come back to work at School for the Dogs, you are welcome. You know how loved you are. And thank you for being here.
I mentioned earlier that we are putting so much of our apprenticeship online and actually already, if you go to SchoolfortheDogs.com/courses, which will bring you to our online store, which has all of our on demand courses. One of the courses that we just put up and we haven't even really promoted it yet, cause it's that new, it's called Born to Behave and it's completely free. And it's designed for people who are interested in becoming trainers.
I wouldn't say you can do this course and then you're a dog trainer, but I think it's a really good starting point. It's more than, your average new dog owner who just wants their dog to not pee on the carpet. It's more than I would suggest for them to look at. But Ilana Alderman who has worked with School for the Dogs for ages, it's really her brainchild.
And I have to give her credit for really coming up with this idea of taking away the barriers so that we can have more people producing content that can be what comes up when you search for “how do get my dog to stop barking” or whatever online. So that we can have more informed people who can tell their friends things who will then tell their friends things. All the things that you're talking about Jay, the way people learn.
Because in my opinion dog training has gotten way too mixed up with some sort of new age idea about energy. And I blame Cesar Milan a lot for that. I think we went from an era of thinking that dogs had to be trained with force to, now, an era that I think we're probably still in of sugarcoating the idea of training with force by talking about it in terms of energy.
When the truth is, dog training is an application of behavioral science. And I think it's extremely interesting and exciting and fun, and we have these like science experiments basically that we can do at home using nothing but your dogs’ kibble. And so I would say that part of our mission at School for the Dogs is to make dog training more fun, more accessible.
Certainly with the podcast, my goal has been to try and communicate how interesting and exciting and fun I think it can be. And how much it can make sense, because if you dig in just a little bit, you hit how this is an application of behavioral science, and it's so hard to argue with it.
You know, I was working, a few years ag I was invited actually to London, to do a demo for a trainer who called herself like a balance trainer. And she used to work for NASA. And I visited her home and she had like a shock collar on the coffee table and coins in a can that she would bring to sessions. And I just thought like, how can this person who has been a NASA scientist not see how destructive it is to use punishment?
Anna:
That's such a good point, Annie. And that, to your point about energy, I would encourage anyone who ever hears that word from a dog trainer, please just ask, what do you mean? What does the word energy mean? Define it. You know, it's so often, very vague terms like that, they are almost always, in my experience, they're used when the actual mechanisms that are making things happen are not known. So you use a vague term like, Oh, that's just natural, or it's energy. It's like, well, please, explain.
Anamarie:
Mother nature, instinct.
Anna:
Right, exactly. Yeah. I would also say everyone should learn about how fun it can be to train dogs, but also if you are experiencing a severe behavioral problem, like Jay's friends are, do hire someone who is experienced. Don't try to do it all yourself. You shouldn't have to try to do it all yourself, hire a CDCC or a CBCC certified trainer. And especially if it's aggression, you know, be safe and hire a professional.
Annie:
Oh yeah. I mean, there are certainly lots of parts of dog training that aren't fun and rolling around the ground with puppies. I'm not trying to say that. But I do think that that it can be so fun, and that so much of what we've been sold culturally about dog training is that it's your fault if your dog isn't behaving, and dog training is like something that needs to be checked off of a list. You know, my dog is now trained. Rather than it being sort of a commitment that you're making to your dog for your dog's whole life.
Anna, what's next? What are you going to be doing next? As far as writing about dogs? I really would like to know,
Anna:
Yeah. You and my agent, both. [laughing] Let's deferr that question for another day for another podcast.
Annie:
Anyone else here have any questions or thoughts? Thanks for being here. If you've just joined recently, we're talking with Anna Heyward who is a writer and also an apprentice at School for the Dogs and who's fabulous article, bad dog just came out in the New Yorker. you can get to it if you just Google New Yorker, bad dog.
Mike:
Hi guys. Thank you so much for inviting me on stage and for talking about this. It really is the wild, wild West out there. Pet squad Charleston just posted about it last week, Within the last seven days about how there's only three certified trainers in our area, and the waitlist to get their services is just not realistic. So the way I found my trainer, and she did, she uses the balanced method and we were using her up until the point where we preferred to use — was Patricia McConnell's article, the cautious canine. What was that method called conditional — counter conditioning.
Okay. Yeah. Up until the point where we were preferred to use counter conditioning, we were using her. We got our rescue from a great organization in Charleston called pet helpers, and she was the trainer that would come and help integrate that pet into your home. And so since that's how a lot of trainers are getting their business, I'm wondering, you know, we have a pet business here in Charleston and what can I do to educate these businesses on how to use science to back up the trainers that they're recommending and just being a better advocate for, for animals here?
You know Charleston is ranked 43rd out of 50 on the animal league defense fund, we need a lot of help and I want to try and help improve that situation. So I appreciate what you guys are publishing to help change that culture. I want to know what else I can do to help drive that so locally. Thank you.
Anna:
Well, the great thing about science is that it's based on processes that are centered around evidence. So everything that we use in behavior modification is based on some kind of empirical evidence that has been gathered over years and has been, you know, results are verifiable and repeatable.
So, not that everyone needs to become a scientist, but it can be a good exercise if you're interested to go to scholar.google.com and type in your search terms and look for peer reviewed evidence for what you are trying to learn about. And then of course, if you look for professional guilds that are science-based, then you can pretty much trust what you're hearing from the certified professionals.
But I understand it is really hard for just ordinary citizens who want to share their life with a dog to know what is what, because it is so it can be really, really murky. And there's a lot of popular entertainment out there that just does a lot of damage to people's perceptions on how things work, but maybe Anamarie has something to add to that too.
Anamarie:
Well, I was gonna say that, kind of tying into this back to this whole idea of behavioral euthanasia and dogs that have issues. I think that's something that I've seen a lot in the shelter world, cause you were mentioning that you had gotten your initial recommendation for a trainer from the shelter that you worked at. And I think because shelters often see dogs within certain small timeframes and may or may not necessarily be seeing dogs in a long-term event.
I think historically it's been very easy and to default to the idea of using more balanced or aversive based trainers, in the sense of you sometimes do get responses really fast. And so for shelters that are trying to get dogs out into homes and are trying to have that dog in a home and say, Oh, it had this issue or we fixed it or you can do this method. That's something that's very desirable, not necessarily thinking about the quality of life of that animal moving forward in that condition.
So I think that is something that you could try to do, get involved in the rescues in your area and saying, Hey, let's kind of switch the focus into long-term quality of life, as opposed to, we're just going to get the dog in the home and then move forward from there. So that's something that you could try. If you make good connections to the positive reinforcement trainers in your community, you can also encourage them to reach out to their own shelters and, if they're willing, offer potential training services or to train volunteers.
The shelter that I worked at previously didn't have any shelter behavior staff members. And then when we took over the public shelter, there was a lovely wall of prong collars on the wall, because for big dogs that pull, yeah, that can be the really easy default. And they just didn't think, or didn't have the experience to look at harnesses. So simple changes like that can definitely help mindset from the shelter environment that's trying to make minute changes for the animals in their care.
So you could always reach out to the shelters in your area and say, Hey, this is what's worked for me, and see if they're willing to do that. Or fundraise — harnesses can be more expensive than prong collars. So helping fundraise organizations that say, Hey, this organization we're gonna fundraise and give you a bunch of Freedom Harnesses. That's something that's really tangible and maybe can make a difference that they see that they have the same effect or better effect than something like a prong collar.
Annie:
Thanks, Anamarie. Thanks, Mike. Really good question. Yeah, I mean, I would also plug that we have a free masterclass that you could suggest to anyone take that I think is a good accessible introduction to science-based training. Tou can get there at Anniegrossman.com/masterclass. And I also do encourage people who are interested in pursuing a career in dog training, or just diving a little bit deeper to look at the Born to Behave course. And there's so many great books out there. I recommend anything written by Karen Pryor, Jean Donaldson, Patricia McConnell. I think you already mentioned her. Pat Miller. If anyone else on stage here wants to shout out any books.
Anamarie:
Oh, there's a good book. I stole it from you for a really long time. And then I think I gave it back to you. So it's somewhere in the School for the Dogs’ library. It's by Annie Phoenix. It's not to the extent of behavioral euthanasia, but it's the Midnight Dog Walkers. And it's about dogs that have really bad reactivity, which for some people can be very hard to manage and feel like a failure. And that's actually written by a dog trainer and talking about her experience moving from actually not having any idea for a minute. So that's something that might be. Midnight dog walkers. I think it is.
Anna:
Dr. Sophia Yin.
Annie:
Yes, she has great resources. Lots of great Lily Chin graphics that are out there that are generally public domain.
Mike:
The one I didn't hear you mentioned was My dog is my mirror. I think it's Kevin Behan.
Anna:
Don't recommend that one.
Mike:
You don't recommend it, right. It was really difficult, and we put it down rather quickly. But the doggy language book. Oh my gosh. I've scribbled so many little notes in that little pamphlet.
Annie:
Is that the new Lily Chin book? Love it.
Mike:
Yeah. I want to order like a dozen copies for all of my friends to do it. There's like a wait list. I had to wait like three months to get it. It’s great. And she's got a, [inaudible] and Kathy Sdao. They're going to be talking about in the next two weeks, there’s going to be a panel discussion on that book.
Anna:
Those are two incredible contemporary trainers that you just mentioned, Mike. [inaudible] and I encourage everyone who's interested to look up their work for sure.
Annie:
Anna, thank you so much for doing this. If people want to follow you and learn about your future projects, what's the best way for them to do so?
Anna:
I have very little social media. Big girl has an Instagram account. If you want to look at what big girl is doing day to day. That's my reactive dog who I spend my time training and living with. She is @biggirl.world on Instagram, but otherwise I'm not a great social media follower.
Annie:
All right. Well then people can just follow you on Clubhouse or keep an eye on the School for the Dog's newsletter, or Instagram. I'm sure we will continue to promote whatever it is that you do. Because I, for one am a very big fan. And Yolanta, Anamarie, Jay, Mike, thanks for being here. And I am going to post this to School for the Dogs podcast, I think right now. Unedited raw material. And hope to do something like this again soon. So thanks a lot, everybody.
Thank you. Bye bye.
