29 JanEpisode 39 | Let’s Talk About Dogs & Babies With Jessica Jacobson of Dapper Dog Training
You might consider your dog your "baby," but what happens if you decide to add an actual infant to your family? Jessica Jacobson, owner of NYC's Dapper Dog Training, has spent years coaching families on prepping their dogs for the arrival of a tiny non-furry new family member. Annie and she discuss how she built her career, and go over some key things to consider when training a dog for interspecies sibling-hood.
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Transcript:
**music**
Annie:
Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Before we get into the meat of today's show, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has left reviews on iTunes. It's a really great way to let people know about this podcast. If you're enjoying it, please do leave a review. And Instagram stories has also been a fun way that people have let others know about the podcast. If you take a screenshot and share in stories and tag School for the Dogs on Instagram, we will reshare it. And it really feels good to know that we're reaching people.
So today I am talking to my friend, fellow dog trainer, Jessica Jacobson, who has her own dog training business in New York City. And I wanted to talk to her both to just find out how she got into dog training and built her business, but also specifically because she has something of an expertise on preparing dogs for the arrival of a baby. And I have a baby on the way so I was hoping she might be able to give me some tips on getting Amos, my Yorkiepoo ready for this life event.
Jessica:
Hello? Hi. My name is Jessica and my company is called Dapper Dog training and I'm stoked to be here.
Annie:
And we've known each other actually for a long time now.
Jessica:
Yeah
Annie:
We met in Atlanta at the APDT dog conference dog conference.
Jessica:
30000 years ago.
Annie:
2010 it was. I remember it was 2010, cause it was right after I finished Karen Pryor Academy.
Jessica:
Oh yeah.
Annie:
Was that the first time you'd ever been to the association? APDT is the Association for Professional Dog Training?
Jessica;
Yes. I think it was my second conference or maybe my first. I don't remember, but I remember when I saw you and we had gotten together because I think I was listed on the APDT website as having a dog trainer meetup.
Annie:
Yeah, yeah. Which is actually also, I think how I met Kate was through your meetup. But that was like a real seminal moment for me because it was the first time that I was sort of immersed in a group of dog trainers outside of the two other people in my class at KPA.
Jessica:
It's like social crack.
Annie:
Yeah. It was a bit. It was also, it was just so interesting to meet people doing it, like all people from all over the country and also meeting different kinds of dog trainers and cause Association Professional Dog Training is not strictly, um…
Jessica:
one type of philosophy. There's a lot of, there's a big bag… of nuts.
Annie:
Anyway, we met there and eight years, nine years later, we're both running our own businesses in New York City. And the reason why I wanted to talk to you today specifically is I am eight and a half months pregnant if you didn't notice, which…
Jessica:
barely.
Annie:
You can't not notice. I'm massive. And people keep asking me how I am preparing my dog Amos, who is a 13 and a half year old Yorkie poo.
Jessica:
Oh my gosh, he’s thirteen now.
Annie:
Yeah, but he’s my puppy.
..how I'm preparing them for the baby and if he notices and I'm kind of embarrassed to say, like, I haven't really even thought about it that much. I don't think he notices.
Jessica:
I've heard some really weird stories actually.
Annie:
About dogs noticing?
Jessica:
Or maybe doing things that you might not realize you’re noticing. I had one woman who said that her dog immediately started sniffing her ear more right as she became pregnant. And she sort of like figured out the timing and realized that it was sort of like almost to the day that she might have conceived.
Annie:
Wow. Ear licking. I do you feel like he's become a little like…
Jessica:
Nope. Ear sniffing.
Annie:
Ear sniffing. Hmm.
Jessica:
Almost as if the rabbit test, but the ear sniffing test.
Annie:
What's the rabbit test?
Jessica:
It's a really old, archaic way of testing if a woman is pregnant…
Annie:
using a rabbit?
Jessica:
Yeah. It's not a fun description, but it has to do with injecting the rabbit with the blood from a pregnant or non pregnant woman and seeing if it kills the rabbit and if it does you're pregnant.
Annie:
Wow.
Jessica:
That's how they used to tell. Ask the rabbit.
Annie:
I have never heard of that before.
Jessica:
I hope that's right. Someone going to go look it up and report into.
Annie:
Wow.
Well, Amos has definitely been a little extra affectionate, but I don't know if that's just because he's, you know, going through a phase of loving me more than he used to.
Jessica:
Well, definitely.
I always wondered if they couldn't hear a second heartbeat.
Annie:
Oh yeah. I wonder. Well, there's so much that we don't know about how they, I guess, perceive things going on with our body. There's certainly evidence that dogs smell cancer and diabetes
Jessica:
…and internal bleeding.
Annie:
Wow. Yeah.
But anyway, I specifically wanted to talk to you today because I know that you have something of a specialty on the topic of preparing dog owners for having babies, which is… well, let's back up a little bit. Tell me about how you got interested in dog training to begin with. I know you had a mentor who was very important to you, right?
Jessica:
I did. And so originally I was in advertising.
Annie:
And did you go to college and then do advertising after college?
Jessica:
Yeah, I did. I kind of shot around a little bit. So I went to college at Vassar for philosophy and then I was a paralegal and I didn't find much reasoning in that. So then I switched to advertising found even less reasoning in that, and then I decided to quit. Didn't know what I was going to do. And my parents sort of forced me to take a, “find your dream career workshop,” which I recommend to everybody. It happens twice a year at NYU. And I remember the name of the lady who was my professor. It was a one day workshop. And her name was Marilyn Omen, namedrop.
Annie:
Find …what's it called? Find your career passion.
Jessica:
I did remember it, but now I'm flummoxed by your wording. Find your dream career. Well, it's a workshop on, you know, not pigeonholing, somebody who, you know, or whoever's in the workshop for what you think they might be good at. Oh, you like animals, people would say to me, be a veterinarian, right.
Annie:
I mean, that's actually one reason why I wanted to do this, start this podcast to begin with was to be able to talk to people who are doing interesting things with animals that are not veterinarians because I never, it would never, I mean, as a kid, I remember someone suggested to me you're really good with dogs, you should be a dog trainer, but it seemed like not a serious suggestion.
Jessica:
Well that was amazing that someone suggested that.
Annie:
Like the only, well, yeah, but it seemed like at the time it was like, she might as well have said, like you should grow up and be a plumber. Like it doesn't seem like something you could aspire to be the way, like, you know, you could aspire to be a vet, but dog trainers to me seemed like people who just come in and fix something and leave.
Jessica:
Well, I do feel like an ambulance worker at times.
Annie:
Well, yeah. I mean, while there's certainly is an aspect of that, but yeah.
Jessica:
Um, but I also feel a real noble cause in what we do. We actually have way more of a personalized relationship with our clients. And there's the idea that, you know, we have more of a holistic change or ability to change a dog's life.
Annie:
Yeah. On people's lives too. Yeah.
So you went to this workshop and how did you come to the conclusion that dog training was something you should pursue?
Jessica:
There is a bunch of questions that she would have and I still have the work papers and people often ask me for them, but there's a lot of thought experiments based around the idea that you either have a whole lot of money or a whole lot less time and what you would fill all of that time with, if you could use your resources the way you wanted. So for me, it was basically at the end of the day, either fashion, which sounds like a horrible way to spend my time. Maybe not everyone else ‘cause I do love fashion, but not on a daily basis climbing the ranks or dogs. And at that point it just sort of clicked. I'd always been interested in behavior. And I wanted to control my own schedule and I wanted to sort of be my own boss at that time and it just clicked.
Annie:
Oh, that's so cool. I came to her to it in a similar way, although not with, not in a class, but I was spending a lot of time at the dog run with my dog writing lists of like things I like to do, like kind of trying to figure out like, if I had to spend all my time doing one thing. And then at some point I was like, I like to sit at the dog park and look at dogs and talk to people about their dogs and read about dogs. So maybe I should be doing something with dogs.
Jessica:
10 years later.
Annie:
So what was your first step after that?
Jessica:
Um, so my first step after that was I had already had planned to move into my grandmother's home in Vermont and I was a volunteer at a horse stable, which was teaching kids how to ride horses, which was actually a fabulous primer to dog training. Because if you can teach a kid how to ride a horse, you might have a good time.
Annie:
Don’t we always say that animal trainers are the only kind of, teachers who have to work with two species at once.
Jessica:
I had never heard that. I find that the kids are akin to the adults and that the horses are kind of like the dogs. So, you know, it's kind of like a kid saying I'm not scared. And the person's like, you know, lying about something that their dog is doing cause they feel bad.
But, um, in any case, so I worked at the horse stable and I think I even hired Marilyn to be my coach for actually entering the professional field, which it turns out that I was a little bit farther ahead than most of the people in the class because I decided what I wanted to do. So I contacted, you know, all the people in the country that I thought looked like good or popular dog trainers. And I asked them how they got their start. But it occurred to me just sort of naturally that this seemed like the kind of profession you would become an apprentice for.
You just would have to sit at somebody's side and like shine their boots while they taught you. And so I just knocked on some doors and the first door that I knocked on was my mentor and his name was Gary. And sadly Gary has gone now, but he taught me a lot of golden rules that I don't know if I'm going to share.
Annie:
That's okay. You can your secret sauce.
Jessica:
But for the first six months, all I did was like watch tennis.
Annie:
What?
Jessica:
Yeah, I think he really just was like an old dude who wanted to hang out with a young lady.
Annie:
And watch tennis?
Jessica:
Yeah. And then the other thing was I had to bike if I wanted to come to any sessions, I had to bike along with him in the city. He was like 72 and I could barely keep up with him.
Annie:
Were there dog training lessons imparted while watching tennis and biking?
Jessica:
No. Um, not at all. But so yeah, I worked at the horse stable, came back and I sort of just like started sitting in on his sessions and he was, he'd been doing it for a little while that time. So he had a couple of clients that he had me just maybe teaching like a couple of simple tricks to and stuff like that when they weren't around, if they were boarding and training at his home. But I think that's where I really learned what clients, as dogs, were going to be sort of like just to have some perspective on the dog training industry and what it was like to be a professional dog trainer, as opposed to just immediately starting to learn the actual training to have a dog. I think I actually taught myself most of that, unfortunately, but, so yeah, that was how I got my start.
And then I also, you know, just started taking some online classes. I think, which is a really tough sort of decision tree for a lot of people who are wanting to maybe enter the professional world of dog training is, you know, what direction do I go in? And a lot of people don't know what their philosophy is. So I actually started to follow around a couple of trainers. I followed around not only Gary who was a positive trainer, but was a crossover trainer, meaning he used to do punishment and I didn't know the spectrum, you know, where was his punishment starting and ending and where was his positive training starting to ending? And it wasn't until I followed around some punishment trainers that I got to see that perspective and get clear on what my philosophy was going to be. And that was how I chose some online classes to take and what books to read. And then, you know, pretty soon I started doing some other things. I started working at Water 4 Dogs, which was the dog rehab center and that was a wonderful way to start, you know, looking at a lot of rehab that could help animals that were also suffering at the same time that they were having emotions.
Annie:
Water 4 Dogs is in Tribeca and they have a pool there and they have water therapy for dogs.
That's so interesting. I feel like it's funny. Cause one thing I love about talking to dog trainers about how they became dog trainers is like no two people have the same story.
Jessica:
Wildly different all the time.
Annie:
It's not like, you know, I went to law school and then I became a lawyer. Every single person has a different path that they've taken. And for me, when I, when I started at Karen Pryor Academy, I really went in knowing nothing. I mean, the idea that there were different philosophies of dog training, I think, like totally would have made my eyes roll. Yeah. You know, like, oh, philosophies of dog training, like, which in a way I feel like it's good that I came from that because I feel like I can see that in other people now.
Jessica:
And I don't even think it's a very clear to owners as well that there might be different philosophies
Annie:
or different approaches.
Jessica:
And whenever I meet somebody that has somehow plucked through the internet deluge of information and seems to be in line with what I was going to say, when I got there I'm frankly shocked and tell them that they should enter the dog training field immediately.
Annie:
Right. Yeah. It's wild when that happens and exciting, but I felt like, you know, for me, Karen Pryor Academy really just sort of put me on a path towards learning more and figuring out what I wanted to learn and how I wanted to train. But when I graduated, because it an online, mostly online course, you do four weekend workshops over the course of six months, which I got a lot out of, but the weekend workshops were in Binghamton, New York, the guy teaching the class who was wonderful, that, you know, you kind of pick a mentor based mostly based on location. And I worked with this man named Steve Benjamin, who was excellent.
But he lived in Binghamton, New York and he wasn't really training himself very much anymore. So I graduated feeling like, okay, well I know how to train a dog now, but I don't know how to like go into someone's home and, you know, work with them as a client because I never saw anyone do that. I never saw anyone teach a class. And that was, you know, I think,I remember in the very beginning, both Kate and I kind of having this like giant fear of actually training. Like we both knew how to train a dog, but neither of us knew how to like sit across from someone who knows nothing and impart the information.
Jessica:
That is so interesting. That's the only thing that I got in the beginning was to see these people actually learning in a room with their dog and another person and the massive spectrum of reactions that they might have.
Annie:
Yeah. Which is invaluable, I think. And that's, you know, I don't know if you know, but we've started an apprenticeship that we've had now for a couple of years. And part of the goal of the apprenticeship is to kind of marry those two things. I think, you know, for me, I would definitely recommend Karen Pryor Academy to anyone, but I also think there needs to be some other component, you know, coming out of that. And I was so hungry for that, but there was no, you know, I didn't..
Jessica:
…didn’t know.
Annie:
Yeah. I didn't have the luck that you had to find it. Well, not luck, but, the path that you took to find someone to kind of sit in on, sit in with, there was no obvious person, at least in New York city,who I wanted to, you know, follow around like that. So that's so cool that you found some
Jessica:
That was cool. And I did, actually it was luck, right? You know, because I contacted 10 other people that there was no luck with, so it just ended up being, and he lived ironically, you know, three blocks from where I was staying which was on my mother's couch.
Annie:
Well, I've also found, tell me if you found this, that at least in New York City, dog training has not generally seemed to be a profession where people are very welcoming of like newbies.
Jessica:
Oh yeah. There is a real aspect of, are you trying to steal my knowledge from me and how competition works? And I even, I came back to the city from living with my grandmother to be, you know, a dog trainer ended up, you know, getting a dog walking job. And that is an extremely cutthroat industry as well. And that I ended up having to sign a contract for non-compete that was binding for five years. And there was, it was sort of a rude awakening to the industry. And you know, people were trying to house me as their apprentice dog trainer at that point. The owner of the dog walking company, you know, sort of wanted me as “his” and I, at that point, I'd already signed one contract and I was like, forget about it, I'm not signing anything else.
Annie:
Yeah.
Jessica:
So yeah, there is a real ownership sort of thing. Yeah. Um, but the good news is that as you get to keep going and, you know, you feel confident in what you're doing and you start having your own clients, there's always enough to go around.
Annie:
Well, that's really how I see it. I feel like there are enough dogs that need training in this city. Yeah.
Anyway, let's, let's talk about how you developed an interest in helping people with..
Jessica:
bebes..
Annie:
Bebes. Prepare for their babies with their dogs.
Jessica:
I don't think there was a moment when I thought this is a niche that I want to enter into. I think it may be, was always there, just sort of from the beginning. And there were definitely some stories that I thought were really interesting between the connections that animals have with their, you know, human siblings. And I think it was always kind of an interest of mine. And so I did start doing a little research, but honestly I think I found out most of what I wanted to know from interviewing with clients that I was working with and I love working with families who have children and it sort of was like a backwards road, sort of Benjamin Buttoning style my way from teaching children within homes, how to work with their animals backwards.
And I think that's where it developed from. And then I sort of made a manual and I started talking around the city and doing some workshops. And that also was a huge plethora of information that people were giving back to me. And you know, there was…usually the same issues that people were scared of before the baby was coming. And then a lot of people who contacted me two weeks before the baby was coming.
Annie:
Which is kind of the position I’m in.
What kinds of concerns were/are common?
Jessica:
I found when I was giving workshops that most of the people there didn't have real issues, they were more nervous about having another..a real baby and how their fur, first baby, would react and how to help them get through that transition. Some people had serious issues that I was not prepared to treat in a workshop for everybody.
And, you know, those often would get referred privately.
Annie:
Um, and I'm just thinking about it. Like, I think part of the reason that I feel like I've, I don't know, maybe been a little negligent in proactively preparing my dog for…
Jessica:
Prudent parenting.
Annie:
Yeah. Is that, I feel like he's pretty bulletproof, you know, like I've traveled a lot with him. He's, you know, I definitely believe socialization is something that is always happening. It's not just, you know, a period that ends and I feel like he's pretty good at assimilating new things into…
Jessica:
He's a pretty resilient little guy.
Annie:
But certainly I have, you know, had many clients with very spooky dogs who, you know, I just, you know, you just…
Jessica:
you're worried about the unknown kind of.
Annie:
Yeah. Yeah. And,you know, something as simple as suggesting, you know, maybe you should keep the stroller out before the baby's born or…
Jessica:
Right. A lot of those little suggestions are really helpful. There's a couple of trainer suggestions out there. He who shall not be named that are not helpful. There's a lot of mythical, illogical stuff-that's not even a word, out there that is not helpful. And sometimes it's really awful to dispel those myths.
Annie:
Let's talk about it. Let’s name them.
So I'm guessing, you're talking about Cesar Milan.
Jessica:
I am talking about the Cesar. So I believe, I don't know if he's redacted this in the meantime, but I think he, at one point had said to take home the baby hat, which is a very, very, you know, sort of world, you know, dispelled myth about taking the baby's hat home and letting the dog smell it. And honestly, in my opinion, I take clothing home every day that my dog has never smelled. And I don't know what they think of it, how is this one supposed to be getting…
Annie:
Where are you getting all this weird selling clothing?
Jessica:
Well as a dog trainer, you come home smelling like something different every day. Somewhat of a dog whore. Um, but so Cesar Milan would have you take it and put it on the other side of the room and make the dog stay away from it, I think in, some sort of like space mongering thing, like distance increasing from the baby hat. I don't know, but that was definitely a myth. And I can't say whether or not the smell of a baby…
Annie:
That seems so counterintuitive to it, it seems like you should want your dog to be near that smell and like being near that smell.
Jessica:
Well, I don't think he's a logical or scientific trainer so I won't try to get inside of it. But I have found that. So one, I'll just go to the other side of that, which is what I do is I'll have a dog relax and I call it like a family date leading up to the birth of the baby where it's like a family relaxing with the animal and doing, not necessarily a working toy, but I'll have them light a candle that is pregnancy-safe and get used to that sort of like scented moment or sort of romantic relaxing date. And then take that scent and put it on some of the baby’s paraphernalia when they come home.
Annie:
Take the…what scent? Like a lavender scent, a lavender candle and a lavender scent?
Jessica:
You would, the mother would pick it because she's the scent-sensitive one.
Annie:
And I liked that picking candles is part of this training process, I can totally do that.
Jessica:
Yeah. Maybe that's why I made it up. I like picking scents. Um, so that was sort of, that's sort of like the other side of that coin. What you can sort of, you know, scent association is so strong and my perspective was, well, if you can't control the scent of your baby, you can put a scent on some of their things, not necessarily on the baby itself. But so that's the other side of that coin for me.
But a lot of people are worried about, you know, the baby toys. How's the dog get to know the difference? That's a longer process. A lot of people are worried about the sound of a baby crying and if that's going to stress their dog out. And you know, as you and I know, there are a lot of dogs who are noise sensitive and one of the popular ways for people to prepare for that is to play the sound of a baby crying. But what dog trainers know is that you can't or actually all of human civilization knows that a pre-recorded sound of a baby is not necessarily going to be what your baby sounds like. So the answer to that is to just play a lot of different babies crying and see what your dog does.
Annie:
And thank God for the internet. Cause otherwise you'd have to like go find all these crying babies and record them.
Jessica:
Yes. Well the other day I helped someone prepare their dog for a helicopter ride and the guy was, you know, pretty confident that his dog would be fine. She's a pretty confident, Samoyed puppy, so sure she might be fine, but we played what appeared to be a pre-recorded eight hours of helicopter sound from YouTube. And thank God for that, cause she started howling.
Annie:
There's someone out there taking eight hour recordings.
Jessica:
Yes, there is a recording of everything. The other sounds that you should be playing laughter, gurgling, um, and…
Annie:
…and of course starting at a low volume if necessary.
Jessica:
Right. So the key to all of these things with socializing your puppy or your dog to a new baby is playing all of these, you know, sort of new introductions at a level at which you can clearly observe when they're not reacting to when they might be showing some mild stress signals.
And one of the things that I always do that I found really super helpful is even if there's, you know, one parent or a partnership or multiple people in the family, whoever's going to be caring for the animal, I have them record these things and write down their observations separately because I find that there's really no agreement that needs to be made on whether or not the dog reacted. It really is only about what you saw for yourself and what the other person saw. And then I can make sense of it as a professional, but I do find that it's very helpful for everybody to record, write down separately and then review.
Annie:
That's great. That's a great suggestion. I find when I ask people to observe their dogs, it's so hard for people to strictly observe and not interpret, you know, they'll say, you know, he was interested in something over there or he was nervous about X, Y, or Z rather than actually like stating what the dog was doing that made them think the dog was nervous or..
Jessica:
Right.
Annie:
Or introspective or whatever.
Jessica:
Yeah. Then the important part of that for us, you know, for the audience, so you guys know, is that as a dog trainer, when you come into a situation, someone says, my dog was flipping out or you know, went Cujo on someone. And you're like, okay, you have no idea whether the dog bit somebody's leg and actually should, you know, the person went to the hospital or if the dog just barked at them and then went right away. Oftentimes our job is to discover whether the person is underwhelming or overwhelming the story.
Annie:
My favorite piece of body language to suggest people tune into is a lip lick. Cause I think that it's something that every dog does, you know, a lot. I mean some more than others. But my dog just did it today. Something like fell off the couch and it's a self soothing behavior.
Jessica:
One thing that's really helpful for this stress signal list is the manual that I said, give to people cause it comes with pictures. And once you start to get into the whole story of that, your dog can tell you things about its feelings without barking and doing something very obvious. It's like a whole new world has been opened up for those people and it hopefully they're happy about this.
Speaker 2: (04:40)
Right. Well cause often, you know, my dog went Cujo and there was no, it was preceded by them saying, and there was no reason for it or it came out of nowhere. But if you can tune into something like a lip lick or yawning or shaking off or any of these, you know, cues, clues that dogs give us, that they're uncomfortable, then often you can prevent,
Jessica:
You said your favorite cue is a lip lick. My favorite is the shake off. And one of the reasons it's my favorite is because I been teaching my friends and, you know, anybody around me about dog language forever and a couple of my best friends, actually, my best friend loves the story of shake off because it's so similar to when a human gets the heebie-jeebies and it has to shake off. And once you start describing these things to people and that reminds me of my other favorite example, which is the yawn. And I always give the same example, but sometimes it doesn't come across. Which is that if you and I or anybody was in an argument and then I took a yawn, maybe you wouldn't think I was so mad at you anymore. And then some people start to get it.
Annie:
Yeah. It's like a way to change the tone of the situation.
Jessica:
Change the vibe:
Annie:
I like, I had a client onceI was explaining stress signals and displacement behaviors and I was talking about how dogs scratch their ears and the client. Uh, I was like, you know, it's kind of like if a greeting goes poorly and then the dog it's just like, “Oh, I wasn't actually trying to say hi you, I was just busy scratching my ear over here, no big deal.” She said, “is it kind of like when I'm at a party and I check my phone even though it's dead.”
Jessica:
That is exactly what it is. Right.
I always give the example of why dogs meeting on the sidewalk or being forced to meet on a leash is so weird. And then I will give the example of if you leashed to your partner in a bar, but your partner was standing at the wall and you had to interact with everybody else's partner while you were leashed to them in a bar in really close quarters.
Annie:
It sounds awful.
Jessica:
It sounds like my worst nightmare. But now I'm sort of thinking of all these, you know, wonderful little stress signals that dogs give around babies even when the baby is born. And I have a photograph in my manual of a baby and a dog, you know, a couple photographs and I'll show them to people and I'll say, is this dog happy? And yeah, I'm not trying to embarrass them, but most of the time they're wrong. Oh, what a cute picture because they're looking at the baby. But whale eye really, really big one around babies actually. Yawning and licking lips. Totally. But whale eye is often see as the first, Holy moly, what is that signal.
Annie:
So whale eye, for those who don't know the term, is when you can see like the white half moon of the dog's eyes usually.
Jessica:
So if you were looking at a person and they were looking at you sideways but their head was still in the other direction, they would be giving you sort of like a weird sort of like the hairy eyeball.
Annie:
Yeah, I think of it like maybe this is kind of what dogs are doing. It's like if “I hold very still, no one will notice from here. I'm only only going to move my eyes, I don't want to do anything unpredictable around this tiny human.”
I admit that I have very, I mean so much of what it's going to be like to have a baby. It seems like a mystery to me, but certainly how our dog is gonna react seems like a mystery to me. I don't know what it's going to be like.
Jessica:
You know, one of the other interesting things about this niche that I've had experience with is home birth and what that's like for a dog. And most of the time I think it is actually, I mean not, I don't think it's a very common thing now more so than going to the hospital is more common than it used to be in the last 10 years, maybe it's back in fashion, I don't know. But I think it's sort of like the dog observing is different than coming home with a new baby friend.
Annie:
Do you think it's better or worse?
Jessica:
Dare I say, I think it might be better really for some dogs.
Annie:
I was going to say if I were having a home birth, I wouldn't want my dog there just cause I feel like it would probably, I mean assuming that I was making crazy noises..
Jessica:
Right, it'd be like this thing is the devil I want nothing to do with it.
Annie:
Like I don't know if I feel like I'd worry about scaring him or about like causing him to make some erroneous, you know,…
Jessica:
Fair, okay.
Annie:
… association with like the baby and me being in pain or I don't know.
Jessica:
Okay, fair, fair. So for the right dog
Annie:
I think it depends on the dog. I like the idea of him being there but..
Jessica:
Well the only person that it ever happened with, cause I've had a lot of people who said they might have a home birth not happen or, you know, a lot of things that just, I don't think…pregnancy is not a very well planned timely event. So some things happen and some things don't. But in this case it actually ended up very well and the dog was extremely calm and sort of brings me to this other point, which the same client had, which was she actually wanted her dog to be in the home…
Annie:
Cue the umbilical cord.
Jessica:
Chew it off.
Annie:
Just kidding.
Jessica:
Yes, we're kidding. Um, no, it was part of the whole home process for them. And one of the things that I started doing after that was assigning mom lap time, ust as a way for moms to keep really clear on this is my dog time and it's very difficult for them otherwise to have non-dog time.
Annie:
Oh yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Make sure the dog gets allocated …
Jessica:
20 minutes of lap time every day.
Annie:
What do you think about dogs kissing babies?
Jessica:
I try not to get involved because I'll never forget a Victoria Stilwell episode, when she, you know, went around pointing out all the germs that were present in a home with wee wee pads and you know, dogs walking around and kissing the baby's face and stuff. So in Manhattan, that's a really common thing- you have dog wee wee pads and especially when you have a new baby, I can't imagine it's easy to do everything. So, but if there are dog pads and they're kissing the baby, I mean it's not sanitary. It's certainly not. But did anyone's baby die from this? I don't know. I can't count, but dogs have been around new babies for centuries and I don't know. I don't know the scientific, you know, background on it.
Annie:
Well, you know, it just makes me think that, one small thing that maybe we should start doing when we have the baby is, I mean, taking off our shoes, but also cleaning off the dog’s paws.
Jessica:
Yes, for sure.
Annie:
I try just to not think about the fact that he's like walking barefoot basically on the sidewalk and then, and then sleeping on my pillow.
Jessica:
Yeah. Well I was thinking of getting cause I've been hanging out with his dog who's got these droopy ears and this little mustache and he just drags it all over the city and it’s often wet with other dog’s piss. And then he comes into the bed and it's just, UH and I thought about getting him like a headband just to keep his ears a little bit off the ground.
No, but, so yeah, uh, keeping the germs away is super important. But families have different perspectives on this and I've just, honestly, there are some things that I don't get involved in.
Annie:
So my dog's issues I feel like are more around toddlers than babies because, and I'm more, I mean I feel like by the time our baby is toddling, they will have their own relationship and I'll have, you know, a better eye on how to manage how they are together. But it's, I've seen him get really stressed out around toddlers because they move so unpredictably kind of like, he doesn't like puppies either. And I think puppies are similar and like they're kind of rude and unpredictable, but he hasn't spent so much time around like an immobile, you know, log-like baby who's mostly held and passed around. And I don't, I have no idea what that's going to be.
Jessica:
So there's a few things that I've learned about this and one of them, my cousin exemplified for me one day and I was just like, Oh no, like horror of horrors. She said, “oh, well, we totally prepared our dog for, you know, the baby coming.” Um, I said, “how'd you do that?” And, um, they actually give this advice sometimes in hospitals. Nurses have been known to give how to welcome your dog and baby little workshops and they tell them to pull the dog's tail and, you know, just do all sorts of toddler things that would be unexpected, hurky jerk motions around the dog. And this is a huge no-no for, you know, us positive trainers. A lot of times people will say that if your dog's going to be around a certain thing, the way you prepare it for the thing is to just do it to them.
That's absolutely not the case. So anything that you want to introduce to your animal, you want to make sure you do in a slow and steady sort of half-baked manner. And you always want to observe this as another filming thing, it's not a bad idea to just, you know, you can't use a child in these situations. You can't experiment with somebody else's baby.
Annie:
They don't have rental babies..
Jessica:
Sort of unethical. But you can, you know, take stock of, you know, one of the things that I do in my manual is I say, relearn your dog. Go rewind the story back to when they were a puppy and make sure you have all these observations from when they were a puppy, that those behaviors that you noticed back then might come back. So in other words, anything from, oh my puppy didn't like when I put the leash on. Maybe you got over that, but then you know, does your dog have a leash sensitivity around its neck? Anything that I think happened as a puppy that either a trainer observed or that was actually a problem that you worked on, even if it's housebreaking, could come back at times of distress and a handling issue around petting or anything like that. You just want to relearn all of those things. Just remind yourself of those, you know, hard things and also of the positive things so that you can have them in your tool bag.
So there's a couple of things that I found super helpful besides relearning your puppy that on the positive end of that is taking stock of what the tools are that you're going to have to entertain them with. So remind yourselves, test out, do they like peanut butter still? Do they like this working toy, that working toy so that you can use them at times when there's other things going on.
Annie:
To like extend, extend mealtimes and create good associations?
Jessica:
I would say that's more of like an actual process. I'm just thinking of like a lot of people by the time they have a baby, forget that their dog maybe doesn't like peanut butter anymore. And so you want to have working toys,you know, just on hand that they will actually use. A lot of times I tell people working toys should take 15 to 20 minutes and they don't have anything like that. So that's an important thing to have under your belt.
And then the next helpful thing is the rules of the home. Most people haven't thought of should the dog be allowed on the couch or in the baby room anymore. But certainly the more important safety issue is are you going to have a bassinet? Is the dog allowed in bed? Things like that. So that's, those are, those are the first two things that I have families do is relearn the puppy.
Annie:
Right. And if you're going to have a room where you don't want the dog to be in that room, starting that before the baby comes..
Jessica:
Right. Right. And you know, for what it's worth, there are a lot of, some religions actually prohibit, baby furniture from being brought in too early. So some people can't actually socialize their animal to those things. And it is good to bring in those things early to get the dog used to those new items.
Annie:
Right. Just like having the bassinet out, having the stroller out. Yeah.
Jessica:
The thing that I find is the most helpful is actually walking with the stroller. An empty stroller is kind of freaky, but that's the hardest thing I think a dog has to get used to is walking with a stroller, especially if you have a reactive dog. So you really want to get that equipment.
Annie:
You figure it out too too.
Jessica:
You have to figure it out too. But yeah, and especially if you have a dog that pulls, you know, getting the right kind of situation there for when you're going to be walking both is super helpful.
Annie:
what about teaching dog toy versus baby toys?
Jessica:
So I do, I usually base this on the animal’s learning capabilities. I've found a couple of things to be kind of helpful, which is if you are so inclined, you can decide that they don't get any furry toys anymore. If the dogs, you know, has a quality of life, that's okay without that. Some dogs would not survive that. So if you chose to say, okay, from now on, you know, fur toys are not yours, plastic, anything else that's yours, that's sort of an easy road.
There are dogs that don't like bitter apple spray and learning the distinction between a preparatory sort of, you know, a couple of months beforehand, bringing in new toys and then teaching an association between, I'm going to have this group of toys over here and this is the baby's toys, even though the baby's not here yet, I'm going to teach my dog the association between leave this alone, when I say it, it means this is going to get sprayed with bitter apple spray. And the dog will learn that when I have this situation where I have a group of toys and I say leave this alone, they think that it's going to smell bad. And then when the baby comes you don't spray it anymore. But that association may have already..
Annie:
Just been just the smell of the bitter apple.
Jessica:
Well it should, it should become the word. So you know, you want, that is a more complicated concept but sometimes bitter apple spray doesn't work. And in those situations it gets a little bit more sort of know what kind of dog are we dealing with and, you know, among the rules that the family is going to discuss is where his playpen, where his dog allowed, where are the toys?
Annie:
Just being cautious, or not cautious, maybe the wrong word, but being cognizant of space. Right? Yeah. I think probably can like head off a lot of problems before they start.
Jessica:
Yeah. Space space is a huge thing that there definitely needs to be structure around. And there is a trainer that started the concept of it's a “crate gate tether and rotate,” I think. Which I have introduced to a lot of people. It's the idea that you're constantly having your dog in one of those zones, which I think is a good concept, but a lot of times people, you know, don't want their dog to have to live like that.
Annie:
But certainly if there's a time to be prudent, it's when you have a tiny baby around.
Jessica:
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think one of the things people are most nervous about is the actual meeting. And what I will say about this is that I prefer for the dog to meet the parents actually separate from the baby so that they can go all crazy with their greeting and not miss the baby interaction.
Annie:
True. Cause they're going to be excited when it's…
Jessica:
Yeah. And you want it to be a calm meeting and you don't want to be, you know, the baby to get literally passed over.
Annie:
Right, right.
Jessica:
So I will often recommend that.
Annie:
Keep it separate.
Well these are great suggestions. I'm excited to share these with listeners.
Jessica:
Yeah, I'm happy to give any tips.
Annie:
I will put some useful links in the show notes. Maybe we could share a part of your guide. I have found very helpful. Which is, I think it's full of good ideas.
Jessica:
Hopefully no spelling errors.
Annie:
No spelling eros. Thank you so much, Jessica
Jessica:
I’m so excited. Great to see you too.
*music**
Our Woof Shout Out today goes to my baby. Four days after I interviewed Jessica, I gave birth to a little girl, sort of by surprise. She came a month early. Her name is Magnolia and I am completely in love with her, as is my husband and Amos. Our dog has been really great. I must admit that he's particularly interested in her diapers. But sometimes he lies on our bed and hangs over the side and looks into her bassinet. And interestingly, the pediatrician actually told us it's a good idea for him to lick her face, but we haven't actually let him do that yet.
Anyway, I'm sure I will report back as their relationship develops. And I'll post a photo of the two of them together in the show notes.
Fun dog fact of the day.Karen Pryor, the dog training guru and founder of the Karen Pryor Academy, author of the book, Don't Shoot the Dog among many other really excellent books on animal training. Before she was a hero to animal trainers, she was a hero to mothers. She wrote a book on breastfeeding in 1963. It's called Nursing your Baby. I believe it's out of print. But I did get my hands on a copy and I read it and I enjoyed it. It's kind of dated in that there are a lot of stereotypes about men and women that are, sort of, no longer PC. But I enjoyed it because it was interesting to experience the early work of someone who is definitely a hero of mine.
Big thanks to Alex Kriss for producing this podcast. To Jessica Jacobson for sharing her expertise and to Melissa Mahoney of the Channel Drifters for her ukulele cover of Hello My Baby.
You can learn more about the channel drifters at the ChannelDrifters.com.
And this episode’s product sponsor is the snuggle puppy. The snuggle puppy is a really cool stuffed animal that is interestingly kind of good for, I would say puppies and babies. It has a little battery operated heart that goes inside of it, inside of this stuffed animal and that heart kind of beats. And there's also a place inside the stuffed animal where you can put a heating pad. And the idea is that your puppy can cuddle up with it and it kind of mimics what it must be like for the puppy to be sleeping with his or her litter mates. But I think you could totally use it for babies too, who might also enjoy having heartbeat near them.
We have the snuggle puppy at storeforthedogs.com. You can search for an in store for the dogs or you can go to schoolforthedogs.com/snuggle.
Links:
Dapper Dog Training
APDT
Karen Pryor Academy
Water4dogs
Expectant Parent + Dogs
Don’t Shoot the Dog
Nursing your Baby
The Channel Drifters
