25 SepEpisode 78 | When your home isn’t the right home for your dog (and other subjects)

Warning: This episode meanders a bit! Annie's Facebook friend made the difficult decision to rehome her rescue dog, and Annie considers what it means to decide that a different family might be a better fit for anyone you love, be it human or dog, temporarily or forever. What if all forms of parenting were truly voluntary? Is it a dog's fault if behavior problems are exacerbated by an environment that may have been chosen for him or her more or less at random? Were slaves insane if they tried to escape their masters? Annie follows a line of thinking that touches on how we could use positive reinforcement to help prevent unplanned pregnancies, and on how both fear and generalizations based on false assumptions can cause racism. She also explains BF Skinner's unusual argument in favor of teen pregnancy.

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Transcript

Annie:

Hello, human animals. And hi to the dogs that may be in the room. If you are listening, that means you are alive. And that's, that's a good thing right now. So I'm glad to know that about you. I have a lot of really cool episodes coming down the pipeline that I am excited to share with you all. I've been doing interviews with the people who work at School for the Dogs and well, last week I got, sometimes I say “we” cause like, I think of School for the Dogs as like me and Kate, but then I know sometimes I say “I,” and sometimes I get lost. Like, am I, am “I”? I think, I think this podcast is “I”

I interviewed Anna Heyward, our apprentice, one of our apprentices last week that was kind of, I guess, part of the inside School for the Dog series.

But I have been talking to lots of different people on our staff and I'm going to be sharing those conversations, just talking about to them about how they got into what, what they, how they got into training and what they're doing now. And so that's been really fun.

You know, running a business through a global pandemic, I now know is intense and I think I feel so appreciative of our staff right now. I just feel gratitude. I think, you know, the intensity and shared mission of, you know, trying to keep a business afloat through all of this and trying to, you know, continue helping dogs I think has brought us all closer together. So it's really been lovely to get a chance to talk to some of these wonderful people.

And I am also doing a series of episodes about some of the really cool products we have in our shop. I've been interviewing some of the brand owners people who have worked to develop really interesting things that I'm psyched we get to share it with our clients. Also, by the way, so appreciative of our clients through this period too. I must say that I feel like we somehow have this like self-selecting group of clients who've come to us through the years at School for the Dogs. It's like, self-selected wonderful group of people. You know, I know in a service business, you don't always wind up with clients who you could imagine as friends, but there are so many clients that we have that I do think of his friends, friends of mine and friends of the business. They've a lot of them kept their membership fees going even when we were, you know, basically totally closed to most of the services that they take advantage of.

Anyway, that was a side note to me saying that I have some cool episodes about products coming up, particularly next week's episode. I'm really excited about. I talked with a bully stick expert and I will be posting that next week. So anyway, I have all of these episodes saved on my desktop ready to post, or just about ready to post, but I wanted to this week, see if I could record some thoughts that I've been having that relate to a lot of different things. And I have like one hour before my babysitter is going to need to go home. So I thought I would see if I could attempt to make sense of this line of thought in a podcast form. 

So there's a woman I know who posted this on her Facebook page the other day.

 “Dog people are weird. I confess we rescued a dog from Alabama and the dog was such a great dog, strong, confident, happy, and filled with puppy energy. We are not 20 something parents and my son is a fresh teen. Need I say more. I tried my hardest with Bryce Harper, Number 34. We crate- trained him, taught him to sit and sometimes come when called. The good trainer from Grateful Pups taught him to be a gentleman. He would sit patiently until I walked through the door and then we would burst on out. He was bored with us. Walking was not enough, playing with bones and Kongs only lasted so long. Then came the shoes, couch, pillows, purse. He wanted to play with my seven year old black cat. Mars wanted no part of Mr. Harper. We had to say goodbye to Bryce, the dog.  We failed. I failed. I miss that dog so much and want him back. The dog organization won't give me an update and deleted our family from the Facebook page. Did I mention the horrific day that I brought him back? He sat in the back, looking out the car window and made me stop once and refuse to get back in the car. I had to pick my 80ih  pounder up and hoist him into the car. He was immediately adopted by a younger and more energetic family that has another dog. Some dogs just need a dog. I just want to know that he is happy. The weirdo dog people don't respond. Cat people are not like that. Don't even get me started on weirdo dog trainers, and that think they are the female version of Cesar Millan. Here's to Bryce Harper, the coolest dog ever. Please don't ask how my dog is because I don't know. He will always live in my heart.”

Annie:

Ooh, right.

There is a lot, yeah going on in this post,  although it feels more like a letter to someone. It's funny how Facebook is kind of like that. Like I used to love writing letters and postcards to like individual people. And now I do it in like this watered down way to everybody. But basically she had a dog that she got but it wasn't right for her family and she had to rehome it. And it was a very difficult thing for her, which is completely understandable. And it just made me think about how hard it is to rehome a dog. And also how, how important it is. I think that people do that much of the time.

Many dogs have lived in many homes and many dogs will live in many homes. And even if you think that your dog is in his or her permanent home, you know, frankly, you could die and your dog may end up in a completely different home.

You know, you might have a backup plan in place. I'm not saying like it might be a surprise, but fact is it will still be a different home. You might move, you might live with new people.  In a lot of ways. I think, you know, I think most dogs have sort of a person they are attached to. I know, you know, I'm my dog's main girl, but one reason why socialization, I feel, should be a lifetime process is because, you know, we simply can't know what life is going to hand us. And one kindness that we can can do for our dogs is to get them used to being in different places, with different people, if that's appropriate for them, getting them feeling good about lots of different situations so that wherever life takes that dog, whether or not you are in that situation, that your dog will be as, as comfortable as possible.

But if we think about all the dogs who have lived in many homes, ideally they're going from one home to another, in the direction of going towards home that's better for them. And I think that's something that can be misunderstood by, you know, rescues who are picky about where they put a dog, you know, I know plenty of people who have gotten frustrated that rescues are too picky which, you know, I'm sure sometimes they are. But I remember like years ago I was working at a rescue and there was like this beautiful sweet young pit bull that needed a home. And I told my neighbor and my neighbor showed up with a leash and was like, ready to take this dog. And the rescue was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, you have to fill out an application. And there's 30 people on the application.

And he was like, I thought I was offering a home to a dog. Like I didn't realize that, like I might be deemed unqualified. Like isn't a home with me better than living in a shelter. And like, I totally understand where he was coming from, but now I also see where the shelter was coming from of like, let's make sure that this is the right fit. So that there isn't, you know, the kind of shelter recidivism, I love that word, recidivism, that, you know, we're trying to avoid. We're trying to have dogs stay in their homes with as much certainty as possible. 

But there are, you know, so many situations where dogs are rehomed because they are not in a home that is right for them. And I think  it is the brave person who can do that because very often it's sad like my friend in her Facebook post expresses, you know, this is, it's hard to forge a relationship with a dog and then realize that your home might not be the right place for that dog, for whatever the reason. And I think anybody who relinquishes a dog to a rescue, to a shelter, to whoever, you know, is hoping that the dog is going to a better home. You know, it sounds like my friend here had sort of a best case scenario in, in that respect. And it just got me thinking about what happens when people don't make that choice and in situations where they really should.  You know, I, I have a family member who had a senior small dog who had some heart issues and they got a huge rescue puppy who attacked small dog for years, like every day to the point where sometimes the small dog would, would bleed and their feeling was they'd made a commitment to be a home for both these dogs. And so, you know, kind of like it was the way it was, where I think, you know, in that kind of situation, another home might be better for that dog or at least better for the first dog another. 

Another person not to rat on my family, but another person in my family is always taking in dogs and, and it used to stress me out. Cause I would feel like, you know, taking in a random dog on the street, into your home where you have, you know, small kids, other animals, et cetera, is not necessarily the best thing for you or for the other dog. And sure enough, one time a dog that was taken in killed a bunny that had been taken in. One time one of the dogs broke the other dogs back and the dog had to be, the dog had to be put down.

Like it comes from a really good place of wanting to take in animals, wanting to be give a good home to an animal versus, you know, the possibility of euthanasia at a kill shelter. But quite frankly, I think there are bigger considerations that have to be made based on, you know, the people in a household, their safety, their sanity, what they're able to deal with. And also, you know, other animals that maybe were in the home before, whatever animal you are bringing in. 

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why people do and don't rehome dogs that should perhaps be rehomed. And there are also people who rearrange their lives in order to accommodate their dog's needs and in order to give their dogs the best life possible. And I think, I won't embarrass her, when I mentioned our trainer, Anna Ostroff and her husband, Alan, like they are these people.  Not everyone can or will go to the lengths that they do to accommodate their dog. Ginger is the sweetest, most loving, snuggliest dog, really one of my favorite animals on this earth. But she really can't walk outside on the city sidewalks. She gets really stressed out. She has a pretty serious anxiety about being in urban environments and Anna and Alan  have trained her to pee and poop in like a closet bathroom they've made for her. She basically has her own indoor bathroom in her New York city apartment. They have an office that they rented that has like an outdoor space, so she can be in a private outdoor space outside. Did they go visit their families in the suburbs all the time, where she has tons of grass to run around and they go to Disney World on the regular and they drive there and they go to a hotel where it has like a special Disney dog daycare. I mean, like they go to the extremes to adjust their lives.  

But look, not everyone is going to do that. And, you know, don't you hope, you know, I, I think there's like a certain hopefulness of re-homing a dog because you hope that maybe the dog will wind up with the equivalent of an Alan and Anna Ostroff who really can be the perfect situation for that dog's individual needs. 

Anyway, I was thinking about some of these family situations of mine where  dogs, I think, were probably in the wrong homes. And I was thinking about this one time in particular, where I was at this person's house and one of the dogs they taken in was like scratching and howling at the door, trying to go outside, like on the street, like all day, every day, because like the dogs weren't getting walked regularly and you know, every now and then one would escape and get hit by a car.

Anyway, this dog was clearly being like, I need a long walk every day that he wasn't getting. And by everyone in the household, he was being, you know scolded left and right for being really annoying and difficult and having a problem. And I remember this whole situation happening, right when I was listening to the podcast, which I love, School Sucks, where he was talking about Drapetomania, which I'd never heard of before, which was a hypothesized mental illness in 1851 that this Dr. Samuel Cartwright believed was basically a mental illness that caused slaves to want to run away. Like if the slave didn't want to be a slave, clearly he was mentally ill-blaming the slave for not wanting to be enslaved. Anyway, I was listening to that while looking at this dog, climbing at the door, trying so desperately to get what he needed in life. And my mind was just like, Whoa. 

Anyway, as I was thinking about this Drapetomania stuff, oh, you know, the cure for Drapetomania was cutting off the slave’s toes so they couldn't run away anymore. But while I was thinking about this and thinking, God, is it, is it really that crazy to be equating the treatment of dogs to the treatment of slaves? And I thought, you know, black people have been treated really badly and dogs have been treated really badly. I don't think the reasons are necessarily the same, but then I had this thought like, imagine you had a dog that was like chained to a tree and you just treated that dog terribly for year after year, hit the dog, you know, allowed that dog no opportunity to enjoy life caused that dog pain and suffering and offered the dog no way to escape. 

And then somehow the dog gets free. Okay. That dog wouldn't have to do anything. That dog could just sit there looking beatific. And you would probably be terrified. Now, I think there were a lot of white people in this country, not that long ago, who literally treated black people like abused dogs, chained to trees. And I wonder, I suspect that so much of the awful behavior, white against black, that we're seeing in the news so much right now. Like it's, it's not new, but it has a Klieg light on it right now. I think so much of that is just fear going from one generation to another generation, to another generation, I mean, farther and farther removed from like the original sin, perhaps, but perpetuated and, you know, still awful. Like one thing that dog training has made super clear for me is that most bad behavior, most violence, aggression, whatever most of it in the animal world seems like it stems from fear.

And, you know, as humans, we are a lot more complicated than dogs, but fear is certainly something that we do experience and can lead to, I don't know, lead to the kind of hatred and aggression that there's just too much of right now, if you ask me. And to circle back to positive reinforcement, it is kind of akin to so many of the problems in the dog training world where there's still so much force used, so much punishment, so much coercion. And force, punishment, coercion that's what slavery was all, all about, is all about. I should say, there is still slavery in this world. But couldn't it be different like with good dog training, it is possible to get your dog to happily do the things you want your dog to do without force and punishment and coercion and like, if only if we can, if we can learn how to do this with our dogs, maybe we can move society towards a direction of figuring out how to do things without the kind of force and pain and coercion that can maybe lead to better interactions in the world at large. 

So right after I read it, my friend’s post on Facebook about, I saw this post on Instagram, on The Cut. “In a YouTube video posted in late May, Micah and James Stauffer revealed that they had placed Huxley their then almost five-year-old autistic son from China whose adoption process and life they had documented for more than three years with his “now, new forever family.”  Micah and James tearfully explained that the extent of Huxley's needs had not been clear when they had adopted him, that it was never supposed to happen this way. And that they loved him in the kindest light Micah, now 33 and James 35 were painted as self meaning, but naive parents, I'm sorry, as well-meaning, but naive parents who had gotten in over their heads. In the harshest, they were fame, hungry narcissists, who'd exploited a child for clicks and profit only to discard him when caring for him proved too difficult. Had they not shared Huxley's adoption with the world, building an audience from videos about everything from his medical diagnoses to his food anxiety, they would be dealing with a private family tragedy rather than a public scandal. Instead, the Stauffers have been held up as examples of what is wrong with both influencer and adoption culture and what can happen when a child is caught at the intersection. Link bio for a deep dive into the dissolution.”

I did not take the deep dive, but there's a photo here. Well, something just fell from my desk. Oh, it was my junk dish. I have like a little plastic dish full of like old batteries and single earrings here on my desk. And now all the junk is on the ground. Anyway, there's a photo in the Instagram post with an Instagram post of this family with four little blonde kids and matching clothes and then I cut out where, I guess this one little adopted boy would have been in the photo. 

And I thought it was interesting reading how there were two sides of the story because reading this, my personal feelings was the same thing that I feel about my friend with our Facebook post, which is like, these people definitely did the right thing. I guess if you think you can't handle the care of an animal, be it a dog or a kid and if you think there could be a better situation out there, wouldn't you want that for your child. But I also recognize that that's like extreme and kind of like an extreme way of thinking and kind of a taboo one, because we assume that children should stay with their parents and children should stay with their families. But in reality, in an ideal world, there would probably be a lot of shuffling around and maybe it would be less taboo.

But I think people who give children up for adoption, I mean, it's hard to make generalizations about this kind of thing cause there's a million, a million different situations why somebody would choose to give a baby or a child up for adoption, but I've always thought, it's a very selfless thing to do because it's admitting in some way that there is another situation that for that child, that would be better than  a life with you as a parent in your current situation. And there's the assumption that, you know, the family you're born into is the right place for you to be, I mean, at least I think, you know, I know a few people who are foster parents and they're always talking about how family reunification is the goal in most of the foster situations where there are families, but, you know, in candid conversations with some of these foster parents, I've heard them say that they feel that their home is probably a better home for the kid than the home the kid is ultimately gonna go back to  the birth family.

But that, of this family with the Chinese autistic boy, you know, it would be an unthinkable story if it was their kid, right. If they had five kids and found a new family for one of them, if it, I mean, if it wasn't like an adopted kid, if it was like a biological kid, if they were like this young YouTube celebrity family, and just decided that, you know, the, the fourth of their five biological kids should be with a different family. That's like unimaginable and yet, I guess what I'm saying is like, it's too bad that we're not, we're not more open about the way that we think of parenting. I think in that like family switcheroos are not usually prescribed lightly.

 Although, you know, I lived with a different family for a year in high school. I lived in France with a family that was very different than my family. And I loved it. I mean, I loved it in part because it made me see my own family’s, you know, the, the highs and lows of my own family life. It gave me a little bit of distance on that. And it was something completely different: different way of existing in the world, a different way of existing with people. So, you know, maybe, maybe family swapping is good child socialization. 

Anyway, I warned you that, like I had some weird tangents that this rehoming dog post ignited in me. It also, as I started to think along these lines made me think about abortion and choice, especially in the wake of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And the fears about Roe v Wade being overturned.

Like we don't think about someone having a choice about whether or not to parent their child, once you have a child. Like I was saying, you know, we can imagine a society with a more communal approach to raising a child. But the world I live in is one where individuals don't have a lot of choice about whether or not they're going to raise the child that is born to them. If they do make the choice, they're not going to parent that child, that is like, I was saying a very, very difficult thing, if there is choice involved. 

Anyway, to bring it back to dogs, I want dogs living in homes with people who are excited and thrilled to have those dogs in their homes. I don't think anyone should be forced to have a dog they don't want to have. And I think no one should have to have a child they don't want to have, I am firmly pro-choice. I think everybody should have the choice about what they're going to, if they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, but that doesn't make one also like super psyched about abortion. And I think it's another instance and stay with me here, where there is kind of a dog training lesson, because, you know, if you think about it, there's so much focus on abortion rather than focused… like there's focus on the problem rather than focus on prevention. No focus on like, how can we arrange the environment and arrange the contingencies so we don't wind up with this problem of some people wanting to have abortions and other people not wanting them to have abortions and all the like, craziness that this leads to. I mean, I think nobody wants to have an abortion. It's nobody ever talks about that. As far as I know, I mean, sort of this unspoken truth that I think needs to be spoken, which is like, I don't think some people are psyched to be pregnant. And then one day like, decide, you know what, I'm actually going to have an abortion. I think, I mean, at least if I polled all the women, I know who've had abortions. If they could turn back time and rearrange things so that they wouldn't be in the situation where they needed the abortion, they would have done that.

Lena Dunham a few years ago, said something in an interview about how she wished she'd had an abortion and people attacked her online. And, you know, doesn't that prove the point that like the notion that it had is something that anybody would want is so crazy that it shouldn't be said.

So like my suspicion is basically, even if you're pro-choice, you're probably still anti-abortion, but you want that option. What if all the energy, all the money that went into this war of these two sides of the issue all agreed that there should be fewer unwanted pregnancies, that parenthood should be planned. I've always loved the name Planned Parenthood, because it just makes so much sense. Like, how can you be anti planned Parenthood? Where are you like pro surprise Parenthood? 

Anyway, I'm not just talking about education about pregnancy and contraception and all that, like, yes, that's a given, but like, what if people were actually incentivized to not get pregnant? I'm not sure what that would look like. I'm not suggesting any kind of sterilization. I think people should have the choice to, I don't know, pee stick once a month. And if you're not pregnant, you get a hundred dollars.

Like anything that can help people not have unwanted pregnancies should at least I think be free. But more than that, people should be rewarded for taking those measures. Like, there's nothing very rewarding about using a condom, if you assume that it's not going to lead to a pregnancy, if you don't use one, like the reward of not having something bad happen is in this case, I think you know, the behavior is not going to be as reinforced as it could be, if you know, every time you bought a condom, you got an entry into some sort of lottery or something. I don't know. I guess it's not just about buying the  condom actually have to also use the condom. Oh, now I'm thinking about used condoms. Like, see, there's like nothing rewarding about this whole line of thought, but if like every used condom could be traded in for a hundred bucks.

Okay. All right. I admit, I haven't fully thought this out and I'm thinking out loud here, but to bring it back to dog training, you know, we don't wait for the dog to get food off the counter and then like beat the dog for having gotten food off the counter and then have like an argument about whether or not that was a good idea. We set up the situation where the dog is not going to be likely to get on the counter and is going to be super psyched, in fact, about all the things that are not about being on the counter. 

All right, folks, I think I did it. I think I took a story about somebody giving up a dog named Bryce and managed to get to the point of telling you my crazy ideas about how we should incentivize people to not get pregnant. Which, you know, I was, I told this idea to my husband and he said that, you know, if you paid people for not getting pregnant, it would incentivize the poor more than it would the rich, because the money would be more valuable to poor people, which is true. And I think makes this whole scheme sound too much like eugenics, but you know what the fact is, I think poorer people have been much more restricted by…much more impacted by abortion restrictions than wealthy people. I suspect. 

Oh, you know, also on the topic of family rehoming I wanted to mention that BF Skinner in Walden Two, one of my favorite books, it's about his idea of what a utopia would look like, a utopia that is run without force or coercion. He, in this book, makes the argument that kids like 15 year olds should have babies because if every generation was only 15 years apart, the pressure could actually be on the four grandparents, or not pressure, the joy of child-rearing should, could be on the four grandparents who would only be 30 and the eight great grandparents who would only be 45 et cetera, et cetera.

So there would just be a lot more people with vested interests in raising children, which would take the pressure off the two parents and instead expose the children to more people. Like we were talking about the importance of a lifetime socialization and I was saying, for me, the impact of having experienced living with, with another family and growing up for a little while was, was a totally a good thing. 

Oh, so one, one last tangent I wrote to this person on Facebook and asked if I could read what she wrote on her Facebook page about re-homing the dog. And she wrote me back. Yes. and then I wanted to read what else she wrote. She said, “Hey, warn your listeners to ask questions. What do they want to achieve with training? My gripe with School for the Dogs is you asked way too many questions” -when she's talking about when she was thinking about working with us, which she didn'. “There were more questions than when I get Mt Sinai mammogram yearly checkup. Dog trainers need to make it simple and streamlined. And I don't want to hear about their dog or other client challenges. It's my money my time. Also tell them to stay clear of the alpha bitch trainer in such and such location”- I don't want to say where, “she works with Cesar Millan and she tries to channel his Napoleon bravado. Dog people are a twisted bunch and I am done. Hello, black Felines. I will hang in there. Thank you very much.”

So actually two things there: one, we do have like a pretty lengthy equation questionnaire that we ask clients to fill out when they're going to be working with us in private sessions or group classes or whatever. And I'm actually positive that there are plenty of people who like her are put off by all the questions, but I kind of think it's a good thing like it weeds out the people who are probably going to be unhappy with our service, no matter what. And you know, those people who are looking for the dog trainer to come in with a magic wand rather than looking at the whole picture. 

But the other thing that I wanted to mention and it's apparent in her post too, is how like… so, you know, dog trainers are always talking about how like dogs don't make generalizations very well, like they're poor at generalizations. That's something you will hear dog trainers say often. And like, it's true, but the fact is like, people are also really bad making generalizations. Like there is certainly an evolutionary benefit to generalizing to some extent, right? Like this red berry made me sick so I am going to avoid all red berries. Like that kind of thinking can keep you safe and alive.

But the reason we say dogs are not good at generalizing is because, well, first of all, like if you teach a dog how to sit in one room, you are probably going to have to start from scratch in the next room. But also, you know, if a dog has a bad experience with a man who's wearing a baseball hat, he might decide that all people in hats are bad or all men are bad or all men and hats are bad or whatever. But look how dismissive this person is of all dog people. Like I know she's voting for Joe Biden from her Facebook page and he has a dog. Oprah has a dog. And I think racism stems from this same tendency people have to generalize in ways that just don't makes sense. I mean, forget racism. I mean, I just think even the concept except of race is based on generalizations that with some scrutiny, just make no sense. I mean, just, yeah, even the fact that black people are called black, that that is the shortcut word or the same thing with white really. I mean, aren’t we all many different colors and shouldn't making generalizations about someone based on whatever color their skin is be as seen, as ludicrous as making judgments about someone based on the color of their hair.

I remember as a kid being really, really confused by that, you know, why were black people called black when their skin was various shades of pink, brown, whatever. Why was I called white when I had this kind of peach tone skin?

Anyway, I promised you this episode was going to go in a lot of directions. I think I have fulfilled that promise. Must go relieve my babysitter. Thank you for listening. And oh, exciting news. I am going to do a live Q and A on Thursday at noon. That is Eastern time. I might try and do it regularly, but gonna give it a go on Thursday. See how it goes. If you're around, come say hi, I will put the link in the show notes, take care.