27 JunEpisode 65 | Don’t Let Your Dog Cry It Out: On Training Dogs To Be Alone
In an ideal world, dogs would all be trained to be able to be alone. It would be a process of shaping a behavior, and helping your dog make good associations with being without you. But, in the real world, not everyone can take the time to acclimate a dog to alone time. Annie talks about the "cry it out" method and some of the tools that are used to punish the behaviors that can occur when a dog is stressed about being alone, and their potential fall out. She also gives a few strategies you can use when you really just have to leave your dog before you are sure he can handle it, and discusses what it means when we get rid of a behavior using extinction.
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Transcript:
Annie:
I am in my neighbor's apartment. This has become my backup recording studio. And my neighbor is a wonderful man I have known my entire life. He has a lot of stuff. He has a lot of stuff. I don't think he would disagree with that statement. And right next to the desk where I've been recording in order to seek some quiet, because my apartment is not quiet very often with my little daughter, right, running around. Right next to the spot in his apartment, where I sit is a dead cockroach that's been dead on its back for, uh, the last few months and has remained unmoved. And I feel like I've been paying homage to this dead cockroach. Like we've been sharing space with him in his death, me still alive. You know, I don't think I ever saw him when he was alive, but he did live in my building. I thought about picking him up. But then I started to feel like he was some kind of symbol. Not as cute as like a rabbit's foot, but actually kind of less gross. And, you know, people have taxidermied animals that they keep around. Right now, I'm just coexisting with a dead cockroach.
[Intro and music]
Annie:
So I've been getting a lot of questions relating to separation, which I guess could be sort of seen as predictable seeing that there's been a period of people being home a lot with their dogs. And now perhaps a period of us being less at home with our dogs. And a lot of people who have gotten dogs in the interim period, this like COVID 19 puppy and adoption boom that we seem to have seen. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about how I think about separation and the various options of how you can deal with it.
And you know, I should say that separation is such a frustrating issue. And if you've listened to this podcast before you might've heard the episode I did with Malena Dimartini, who is probably the separation anxiety dog training expert out there. I often recommend her book if you are dealing with real separation stuff, or even if you're not and you just want to make sure that you are not setting your dog up for separation anxiety. It is called Treating Separation Anxiety in Dogs. She has an approach where she really talks about how you're creating a contract with your dog when you start dealing with separation anxiety.
The thing about separation anxiety is it's very rarely going to be a quick fix, and that can be really hard, definitely easier to prepare for it and to try and keep your dog from experienced separation anxiety, then letting separation anxiety become a thing, and then having to let your dog experience the anxiety and then try and get rid of the behaviors that those emotions lead to, when you can first ideally teach your dog to feel fine being alone and to never get to a high stress state.
But when I was trying to explain this to some of my clients this week, I felt I was disappointing them. Because they wanted me to offer some kind of quick fix. I feel like they wanted me to say, here's this product that you can buy and it will make everything better. And sure, there are products that you can try to use, but you know, like, slapping a Thundershirt on your stressed out dog is probably just gonna yield you a stressed out dog wearing a Thundershirt, its not necessarily going to be magic.
I think about separation as something that we need to train using shaping. It's a shaping process. Every behavior is being shaped in some way all the time, whether that's by the environment, or whether that's by the choices a trainer is making to reinforce certain criteria versus reinforcing other criteria.
And the shaping process, I feel always starts at zero ideally, right? We're always starting, especially when we're dealing with fear, emotions, anything super basic like that. We want to start at like that criteria zero, and in any new environment, in any new place, whenever you're adding some kind of criteria, that criteria could be being in a new place, you can start by just reinforcing the behavior of existing. It doesn't have to be a Sit or a Down. It's that idea of a criteria zero is the best place to start. Does my dog exist in this room right now? Good. I'm going to reinforce the behavior of just being here. And I want to be reinforcing that behavior in a moment where it's not attached to feelings of stress and fear and anxiety. It's about classically conditioning a dog to feel good before working at having to countercondition, having to change an emotion.
I talk about this in puppy class. I don't care if you get through six weeks of coming to class and all your puppy can do is be in that room without being stressed out. That to me is an A+ dog with an A+ human. If your dog learns to sit and lie down and walk nicely and do all the other things we work on in puppy kindergarten, great. But my main concern is that we're shaping the behavior of existing with all these new people around, and with maybe you moving around, and all of the new sights and smells of being in a room with lots of new people and new puppies, and plus the experience of having to get there, which can be its own huge thing. We want dogs who can feel good about all of that. And then we can start saying, okay, well now we're only gonna reward. If you're sitting in this new environment, et cetera, et cetera.
Same thing in your home where it's probably easier. You know, first you're going to be rewarding your dog simply for existing in your home. And then you can start rewarding your dog for existing in a situation where your back is turned, where your back is turned for a long time, where you're going in and out of the room where you're going in and out of the front door. Right?
So it's like you can constantly be shaping the behavior towards a point of success towards your dog feeling. Does my dog feel good about being in the room with me? Yes. Okay. Does my dog feel good about being in the room when my back has turned? Can she do it? If my back is turned for a long period of time, uh, what if I just remove my intention for awhile? Can she survive without freaking out? You know, what's the next step? Can I, can I walk into the bathroom? Can I walk into the bathroom and close the door? Can I go out of sight for 30 seconds? There's a whittling towards perfection, which of course, you know, you're the one who's gonna choose what perfection is, but perfection might be you being able to leave for four hours without your dog eating your couch. But you know, that that might not happen for a long time, depending on your dog and your situation.
And part of this contract idea that Malena talks about is–you know, I like that she calls it a contract. But I don't even think of it in terms of the contract, as much as, like, you need to not let your dog be alone if your dog can't handle being alone, like, that's basically what she's saying with the contract is, like, you need to make a contract with your dog that you're not going to leave your dog alone, but, you know, I don't leave my daughter alone. Right. Like I don't need, I don't think of it as like a contract that I've made with her. Could I leave her alone in like a padded room? And would she be okay?
That's kind of how I think about it when people leave, especially like puppies alone, before they can really handle it. I think of it as kind of like, if you left your toddler alone in a padded room, they would probably cry. They would freak out. They would be unhappy. Would they survive? Yeah, probably. Is your puppy gonna survive, you know, suddenly going from being in a litter with his mom all the time, to being with you a hundred percent of the time, to being, you know, locked in a crate for six hours at a time when nobody around like, yeah, your puppy is probably gonna survive. But ideally we can do better than that. We're not just aiming for survival. I don't think it's like the ideal way to approach the situation, but of course it's hard because people lead busy schedules that don't always allow for a dog to have constant company.
And there's kind of a hole in the market for dog babysitters. We think about hiring dog walkers, dog sitters for when you go away, dog trainers, of course, dog groomers, but dog companioning is not something that there's like a paradigm for in our culture. I don't think people think about needing babysitters for their dogs.
But the truth is, I think that the number one way of dealing with separation anxiety is to not let your dog be alone if your dog can't handle being alone. And that might mean finding, you know, neighbors who are unemployed right now and paying them or offering some kind of exchange of services. I'll cook you dinner if you hang out with my dog, or, you know, finding a kidin the building. This does not necessarily mean you even have to walk your dog. I mean, if you have a dog that's not used to going for walks with other people, might not even be a good idea. We think about hiring dog walkers, like people to come to our apartment and take our dogs out. But you know, it's hiring– at School for the Dogs, we call it buddying–hiring a buddy for your dog can often be the answer. And if you have a sweet, adorable puppy, for sure, maybe you can find someone who could even volunteer for the job.
Certainly, you know, if there's one bit of good news about so many people being unemployed right now, perhaps it's that there are people out there who would gladly be paid to hang out with your puppy in your home or their home. You know, I don't recommend sites like rover.com and dog vacay and stuff so much for people hiring dog walkers, because I worry about a dog being walked by some different person that they've never met. Someone coming at different people coming different days, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I do suggest using those kinds of sites to see if you can find a buddy. Sometimes people on those sites will take dogs into their homes or they'll come to your homes. Of course, you know, there is a leap of faith of having to trust people in these situations.
But you know, you could also try contacting a trainer if you've worked with a trainer before, or a walker. If you've worked with a walker before to see if maybe they would come, just hang out with your dog while you return to work. Like I said, at School for the Dogs, we call this buddying, and it's really just kind of that, dog hanging out time.
Actually years ago, I even started a website called NYdogshare.com. I don't tend to it very much, but it still exists. And it's a place that the idea for it was that people could go there in New York to find people who work from home or students or whatever, who would like to spend time with dogs, kind of like a way to pair those people with people who have dogs who have issues being alone, as kind of like a dog cooperative.
[music]
Annie:
So, once you have a dog who is stressed out about being alone, and is barking his head off, and you're worried about getting kicked out of your building, what are you going to do? Well, you could put like a citronella collar on your dog, which is going to spray your dog in the face every time they bark. People get shock collars for their dogs. Actually, my husband with his ex wife put a shock collar on their dog who hated being alone to stop the barking. Now he realizes why this wasn't a good idea. But then it just seemed like a no brainer to him, when he wasn't married to a dog trainer. Hated being alone, barked like mad, so they put a shock collar on this tiny little Papillon, and then he developed the problem of scratching the door until his nails bled.
And, you know, if you're suppressing your dog's expression of the emotion of frustration and distress and all the other things indicated by the barking, okay, I get that, you know, you have neighbors and you don't want to lose your lease, et cetera, et cetera. But really what you're often doing is just like helping your dog change seats on the Titanic, you know. And that frustration is going to come out in some other behavior, which is not really changing the emotion that's causing the behavior.
That's why I think shape–and same thing, you know, with something like a citronella collar or whatever it is. It's like, if anything, you can be making your dog even more stressed out because your dog is like “God, not only do they leave me, but when they leave me, I get shocked periodically.” You know, your dog might not even associate the shock with the barking or even if they do, they can still feel like I'm getting shocked is a consequence of you leaving, which can stress your dog out even more.
One client this week said, well, can't I just let the dog cry it out? And I said, okay. I mean, you can, but it's not my preference. And for a few reasons. You know, it's important also, I think, to think about extinction and what that process is like. Behaviors, extinction, can be such a complicated thing to think about and to understand. And I'm giving you the way I try and understand it.
It's like, when you go to start your car and your car doesn't turn on. Or I've done a couple episodes where I've talked about thinking about operant conditioning and classical conditioning as like two different kinds of vending machines. Classical conditioning is like a Coke machine, one thing equals another thing, you put money in the machine, the soda comes out, and the behavior doesn't really matter. The way that you put, if you put the corner in with your toes, or you did it with your nose.
But with operant conditioning, there is some kind of behavior required. It's more like a claw machine that you're operating. And if you operate it in some specific way, there is going to be a consequence, but there is some requirement for behavior.
Extinction is like either one of these machines, if it's completely broken. It's what happens when a behavior goes from being reinforced to not being reinforced, not punished, just no longer reinforced. So you go to it, you put your quarter in. The claw doesn't move. No soda comes out. Eventually you will probably stop messing with the machine.
But of course there are a few things that will probably happen first. We call it an extinction burst where a dog will just try the thing over and over and over. This behavior that used to work like the soda machine used to work. Or the way I always think about it also is like, when I'm swiping a Metrocard, I swipe it. If it doesn't work, I'll swipe it 10 more times. That's kind of an extinction burst. Also you'd sometimes see an animal suddenly like trying new things that they've never tried before, just like totally out of desperation. Like, I'll try bending the Metrocard. I'll try wiping the Metrocard on my sleeve, just like with the soda machine, right. You would try putting the money in, and then you'd start hitting the machine and, you know, bang, you're banging your hip against the machine.
What also can happen is anger. So then I go over to the token clerk and start yelling about why, you know, I'm late for work. And I can't get on the subway because my card won't work, and I don't understand why. Just like you might start yelling at the soda machine.
So if you have a dog who is barking when you leave, well, barking is a behavior that has tended to get your attention, or someone's attention. Now it's possible the barking might be intermittently reinforced because there's some correlation may be with hearing something outside that then goes away. That could be reinforcing your dog's barking. Your dog might feel like it went away because of his barking. But there's also the chance that this behavior of barking could just become extinct in that situation, because perhaps it is no longer being reinforced at all.
That could take a while, but extinction, first of all, it's not like a really fun way to learn something, to have, you know, something that was previously rewarded, encouraged in some way, whether it meant it got you onto the subway or, you know, your dog has barked in the past and probably you've played with him or given him some kind of attention, or it was rewarding to get the soda, the soda machine, whatever. It's not something that tends to feel good. It's like getting ghosted, which is why probably it can produce anger, in any kind of animal.
But also–and you know, this is not, I believe applied behavior analysts don't talk about things being self-reinforcing, like, that's not like actually a thing in the science of behavior, but seems to me as a non-scientist as, as the way that I can understand things like it's like some things are going to be self, like the joy is just that in doing it, right. Like you might get paid to sing, but you also might just sing because you enjoy singing, right?
Although I guess I've also seen artists stop doing what they enjoy, if they're used to getting paid for it and then the pay goes away, the actual behavior becomes less fun when it might have been fun had there never been a monetary reward at all, but it seems to me that that's really like something that's going to differ in one environment to the next and from one individual to the next. I know for some dogs, barking might just be really fun to do no matter what the consequences.
I think that even if you're not there paying attention to your dog or, you know, opening the crate in order to reward your barking dog or whatever, there's still likely some way in which the very act of what your dog is doing is encouraging it in some way, like say they are working out this muscle in some way, by just engaging in the behavior, and that might also feel good.
Another thing to think about though with extinction is it can get rid of a behavior, but not like with 100% reliability. And again, I think this might have something to do with, you know, maybe there's something actually inherently rewarding about banging the soda machine. You know, that's a behavior in an in and of itself as well. Maybe there's the act of turning the car key, maybe there's some degree of just something that's rewarding, even if, you know, the car is not going to start, but there's also maybe, you know, the fact that it's on, you know, so many things in life are on this like weird schedule of being reinforced that at some point you might just be like, “Screw it, I'm going to try starting the car again,” even though it hasn't started for a day or a week, same thing, right. With the soda machine, and same thing with the dog, you might get rid of the behavior of barking for a little while, and then it could rear its head again.
So the barking it out method is not that reliable. And for that, for that reason, I don't think it's particularly humane. I mean, I guess it’s probably more humane than putting a shock collar on your dog when they bark. Also your neighbors probably are not going to appreciate it.
So if you are absolutely unable to get someone to sit with your dog, while you go to work and you can't bring it your dog anywhere to someone else or to–you know, I'm not a huge fan of dog daycares, but in some cases, I think it's a better alternative than a dog being home alone–If there is nothing that you can do to prevent the situation of your dog being alone, try and build up to it as much as you can, by helping your dog shaping your dog to be alone, but also just like trying to create as many good associations as possible with you leaving.
And I talked about this in the episode with Malena Dimartini and she was kind of like, well, yes and no. I mean, like you could cry your way through a pint of ice cream. It's not going to make you feel better that you're, it might not make your dog feel better to be left alone just because he has something to eat. I think of it more as like building up to that point or rather figuring out how to make sure that point never comes.
And one way you can make sure that that time never comes, that you have a dog who really has full blown separation anxiety, is from early days, get them used to feeling okay about you leaving, and that is the shaping process that I was talking about and think about how you can keep making your dog have good feelings. How can you create good associations with you not being there on top of your dog, a hundred percent of the time.
Talking about this idea of crying it out, I have to say, if you really have to leave your dog, then you know, at least try and make some kind of good association for your dog. Although like Malena says, your dog might be able to cry through a pint of ice cream. But if you're going to have to leave your dog, toss a whole bunch of treats behind you when you close the door, and hope for the best, and try in the future to do what you can to make sure your dog doesn't have to get to that point. And maybe it'll be totally fine because every dog is different. Every environment is different. Your dog might also recover from going through the cry it out method with no issue, another dog, it could be a hugely psychologically damning thing.
Like with people, dogs each have their own ability to handle frustration and their own learning histories. And so one dog might bark a lot, realize it's not going to help the situation, and then stop barking and never bark again and be just like a happy guy no matter what, whereas for another dog, it could be such a stressful thing that they are never wholly able to recover without a lot of remedial work.
I mean, don't we all know people like this? Some people who, you know, everything is water off a duck's back. Like any crazy thing that happened, they're just like, “yeah, whatever.” And other people who seem like they will never recover from something that seems ridiculously trivial to you.
You know, at least give your dog like a huge handful of something delicious before you leave. And, if you can't get someone to stay with your dog, at least see if the neighbor maybe can come over once an hour and, like, I don't know, throw some hamburger meat, something really good on the ground for your dog!
Or, you know, I'm a huge fan of the Treat and Train. Probably the best time to introduce a Treat and Train–which is like a remote control treat dispenser–probably best time is not the first time that you're going to be leaving your dog, but it's something that you can use to reward your dog from a distance. Something you can even have a neighbor use to reward your dog. You fill it up with treats, or even your dog’s dry food or whatever. But again, we're trying to create really good associations with you being gone. So I would put the good stuff in it and trigger it off from the other room, trigger it from your neighbors’.
Again, it makes a noise. It makes a kind of grinding sound. Probably a good idea to not have the first time your dog be introduced to it be also the first time you're leaving a dog alone. But I think it's a nice way to start introducing the idea of separation. And I think of it as a way to also outsource some of your dog's caretaking to the robot world in a way that–it always makes me think of like Rosie the Robot in “The Jetsons,”–so that your dog of course has lots of good feelings about you, partially because you're the one providing your dog most of his meals. But he can also be like, okay, the human's gone, but the robot's still here. The robot will still take care of me.
I hope that these are some helpful thoughts on dealing with what I know can be a difficult situation for dogs and people. But the good news is, more people have dogs in their lives now, I think, because it's been a nice side effect of a crapola situation we're in, which is, I think, more people have welcomed dogs into their homes recently. And more dogs have found what I hope are good homes.
I also did want to mention that we are finishing up this mosaic that we're doing at School for the Dogs. There are only limited places left. If you are interested in having your dog be in one of the tiles that is going up in this beautiful mosaic we’re doing as we reopen the studio, Jim Power, who has done, he's called the mosaic man. He's done all the gorgeous mosaics on lampposts throughout the East village for like, I mean, since I was a kid, I don't know, decades and decades now. He is building this work of art really for us, it's gorgeous.
And if you give a $100 donation or more to the School for the Dogs scholarship fund, we will turn a photo of your dog into a tile, and give it a special place in this mosaic, which is going to go, if you're familiar with our space, it's going to go on the wall that is next to the staircase that goes down to our main training studio.
We're just asking right now for a scholarship donation of a hundred dollars or more. All of our members will be in the mosaic. It's one thing we did in part for all of our wonderful members who've continued their membership with us through this closure, even though our services, our in-person services were so limited. One reason we did it was as a thank you to all of them. So if you are one of those members that's been a continuing member despite reduced services, thank you again. And if you'd like to learn more about the mosaic, just go to schoolforthedogs.com/mosaic.
If you'd like to learn more about the scholarship fund, which is what we do to help people with rescue dogs who have limited income be able to work with some of our trainers in private sessions, and really get, ideally, some help that will help them keep their dogs in their homes, you can learn more at schoolforthedogs.com/fund.
And lastly, please make sure to check out my brand new, totally free, I hope very useful Masterclass. You can find it at anniegrossman.com/masterclass. It talks about our online course offerings and it contains some pretty useful information and a whole bunch of freebies. So go make sure to check it out. It's about an hour long. I think you'll like it. You can find it at Anniegrossman.com/masterclass.
Links:
Treating Separation Anxiety In Dogs by Malena DeMartini-Price
Episode 59 | Separation Anxiety Expert Malena DeMartini on Helping Dogs Learn To Be Alone
Treat and Train Treat Dispenser and Training Tool
What vending machines can teach us about training “come” and “drop it”
