13 NovEpisode 95 | The Bully Test: How to tell if your dog (or kid or country) is having fun PLUS: FOMO crate training

If two dogs are playing, and you're unsure if your dog is into it, there is a simple "test" you can perform. The Bully Test, which was coined by Dr. Ian Dunbar, is a great way to tell how your dog feels about his or her playmate. Annie looks at how she herself behaved when faced with childhood mean girls, and how voters reacted when bullied by the Bully-In-Chief. Also: Is "bully" an inherent quality in a dog? Or a kid? Is there a term that we could come up with that doesn't vilify one of two puppies when performing this "test?" And: Why you shouldn't expect dogs to just "working it out" during play. Lastly: Annie explains how to use FOMO to train dogs to love going in crates.

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Annie:

I wanted to let you know that I have a brand new, totally free masterclass available. And I'd love if you wanted to check it out. It's about an hour long and it goes over three simple things that every dog owner needs to know in order to teach it on quickly and easily, without pain, force, a major time investment or fancy equipment. When you register, you'll also get a free 20 page ebook all about what I call the Dog Training Triad. You can find it at Anniegrossman.com/masterclass.

 

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Annie:

Here is a pretty simple thing that any dog owner can do if their dog is playing with another dog and they're not sure if both the dogs are enjoying themselves. What you do is you gently restrain whichever dog is the more outgoing, the more aggressive one. I think a lot of the time, in play with dogs, just like with kids, one person is the chaser.  Hold back, restrain in whatever gentle way you can, the more aggressive of the two dogs and see what the other dog does.

 

If the dog comes right back and goes up to the dog, who's being restrained and is like, come on, I thought we were doing this. Then that dog probably was into it. Right? That dog was probably feeling good about that place session. If the dog goes to the other side of the room that tells you that that dog was most likely happy that he has the chance to take a break and that perhaps he was feeling bullied.

 

This is called the bully test. I believe it was named, if maybe not also developed, by a Dr. Ian Dunbar, a trainer of great renown and also a veterinarian. It's such a simple thing. It makes so much sense. And if it can help you make sure that two dogs aren't enjoying playing with each other, there's really no downside. And by the way, the dog who is the possible bully — if the dog who wasn't being restrained does take the chance to go to the other side of the room — that does not mean that one dog is a bad dog. It just means that in that situation, maybe the intensity was too much.

 

Maybe there's a size difference between the two dogs that is making one of them uncomfortable. Maybe it has nothing — one dog might just be extra fearful for any reason, or no reason.  Could be mix-matched play styles. So this isn't, you know, see which dog is the good dog and which is the bad dog. It's just a way to diagnose the healthiness and the happiness of play that is happening. 

 

So I wanted to mention this because I think it's a really easy tool to have in your dog training dog-owning toolbox to use with dogs who are off-leash. And I think off-leash play is very important for most dogs, much better than on leash play. But I also think one-on-one play is often the best kind of play. However, this technique could be used in a dog park situation too, or with more dogs.

 

Another reason why I was thinking about the bully test recently and wanted to mention it was because I was going through some stuff in my mom's basement recently. And I found a letter. I wrote it to my mom from summer camp when I was nine. And it was about this girl who I was in grade school with at that time.

 

We were in the same class for several years, and I kind of remember her being a bully, but I've also sort of doubted my memories because I could never…cause it wasn't like she peed in my juice box one time or something. I couldn't really remember any specific things she ever did to me. It was more like, I just kind of remember, she wasn't particularly nice to me. Just sort of a general feeling that I remember.

 

I know that I was like having a hard time when I was around nine. My dad broke up with his girlfriend who I was really, really close to.  My babysitter, who I was also really close to was diagnosed with cancer. My dad gave my bedroom to my 23 year old half brother who moved back home and there was no other bedroom for me in his apartment. I vaguely remember crying to the teacher because I was just, I guess, having a hard time in general and this girl kind of making fun of me for that.

 

But again, yeah, I had no specific memories and no specific artifacts that spoke to how she wasn't particularly nice to me. But then I found this letter I wrote from camp on lavender stationary. I wrote: Hi mom, why are people so mean? I wrote to Heather to ask how she was doing at camp.  And she wrote me back this: dear Annie, I'm at the infirmary. I have the flu, but it's not that bad.  Camp is okay. I have the best bunk, but I'll be happy to go home and go back to school cause I miss Megan so, so, so much.

 

Megan, was this a popular girl in our class now as an adult, I read that. And I think, yeah, that's actually kind of bitchy. I mean, it's a far cry from stealing a kid’s lunch money or any of the extremely terrible, awful things we hear about in the media with kids today especially, in bullying or cyber bullying. I mean, there's so much bad bullying out there.

 

But if you think about it in terms of the bully test, like I said, one dog might be uncomfortable for reasons that have nothing to do with the other dog.  Like I said, I was going through my own stuff.  But you can perform the bully test to make sure that when given the choice, everyone is hanging out where they actually want to hang out, with the people they want to hang out with. 

 

You know, actually now that I'm talking out loud about this, it makes me wonder if maybe there should be another term instead of bully test for this, because calling it the bully test implies that one of the dogs is a bully.  Where, like I said, it's possible that the bullying dog is being completely polite, and it's the other dog that just maybe needs something different in that moment.

 

Then I was thinking how it was kind of weird that I was writing this girl if she really was bullying me, in the bully test kind of way, not in the internet troll kind of way. I was writing her from camp.  If she was really bullying me and here I was at camp couldn't I have like, totally ignored her and gone off in the other direction? Like, why was I paying attention to her at all?

 

I was thinking about it and realized that I must have known that she and I were going to be in the same class, the following year. And so I must have like, without having the freedom to choose my own environment at that age, without voluntarily being able to say like, Hey, I actually would like to take space from this person. I was like trying to adapt to the situation have a good relationship with this person that I was gonna be forced to be in a classroom with for the following year.

 

Because once we hit high school and I was not in this girl's class, I didn't have to be around her at all. Like, I didn't physically have to be in the same space with her for seven hours a day, five days a week. I didn't talk to her anymore. She was someone who was just not in my orbit. 

 

So anyway, I thought that was interesting. It was like, Oh, here, when I finally did get the opportunity to physically not have to be in close proximity to this person all the time, I certainly took that option and hardly ever talked to her again. I'm sure I was not writing her letters from college so that she could write me back and tell me who she actually missed from school.

 

The other reason why I was inspired to talk a little bit about bullying is because I saw a similar thing happen with the election. I think that Donald Trump is the most — I mean, he seems like the most bullying-est bully bully who's ever bullied, and that we've all been bullied by this narcissistic orange man over the last four years, and a significant part of the country is taking the opportunity to run in the other direction.

 

So it's interesting how this sort of bit of dog training wisdom is baked into the election process. We can make a choice every four years if we want to run in the other direction from the person in charge.

 

Of course, the person or dog who is being restrained so that everyone else can have a choice about whether they want to be in close proximity or not. If that dog or orange person cannot be gently restrained.  If that dog has no ability to be restrained and is going to turn around and maul your face, or wriggle to the point of self-injury, or harm himself or whatever.  That dog should probably not be in a place situation to begin with.

 

It's funny because we think of restraint often as a virtue, but you don't think of the virtue of allowing yourself, or someone allowing anyone to restrain them.  Unless maybe you're into some like BDSM stuff.

 

And I also know that the idea of restraint could seem completely antithetical to positive reinforcement training.  Which is so much about giving animals choice to behave in ways that will ultimately be reinforced, and then those behaviors will be more likely to keep happening.  But we're also architects of our, of our dogs’ worlds. And sometimes that means restraining them from having the chance to do certain things.

 

Sometimes that might start out with like a gentle physical restraint, but can then be turned into something that can be treated using positive reinforcement and using just simple classical conditioning.

 

Again, imagine puppies playing. I mean, this often happens in our puppy play times. We ask one puppy owner to restrain their puppy.  Initially, yeah. They might be kind of grabbing their puppy, holding their puppy, physically, not letting their puppy out, but they're also ideally at the same time paying attention to the puppy and even giving the puppy treats.

 

So by the second or third time, and you can even pair this with a word, like break or pause or Hey you, or whatever you want, as long as you're consistent about it.  You're going to say break, grab your dog, give your dog a treat and attention and love. Say, break, grab your dog, give your dog a treat, attention, love, et cetera, et cetera.

 

What's going to happen is your dog is going to hear the word break and want to come to you for all that good stuff. So you're not even going to have to be using any kind of physical restraint at that point.

 

Anyway, I love dog training that makes sense in this kind of way, right? It's like, you want to see if Billy is having fun playing with Jesse? Then keep Jesse home and see if Billy comes over to play.

 

Here's another little bit of dog training advice that I love, because it seems so obvious when you think about it not related to bullying, but related to FOMO.  I call it the FOMO crate exercise. You put really delicious stuff, your dog's favorite treats, your dog’s meals, toys, whatever in the crate.  Then close it inside the crate and let your dog investigate. Then of course you should let your dog in to get the stuff. That's a great way of building the behavior of rushing into the crate with great eagerness.

 

It's also kind of a form of reverse hooky. Reverse hooky is what I call it. When our dog students in the neighborhood pull their dogs to School for the Dogs, even when we're closed, hoping that they can get in. This is a way to get your dog to desperately want to go into this space where he is going to be restrained.

 

Just made that connection. But it does kind of tie it all together. Cause the dog is ideally being restrained in such a delicate way that they, you don't even realize they're restrained.  Kind of the same thing we try to do with a leash.  It's there, but we want it to be almost invisible to the dogs. 

 

I would love to hear from you what you think we could change the name of the bully test to?  What might make more sense? What might keep one of the dogs from seeming vilified? Cause like my old friend, Heather. She didn't really bully me as much as she maybe just wasn't super nice. And I was sensitive.

 

Also I'm wondering if others can see this kind of dynamic in different kinds of human relations where people seek freedom from so-called bullies when they can get it. And if they can't get it, they adapt in ways like I did writing this girl a letter from camp. It's like, when you can't escape, when you don't have that freedom, you make all kinds of accommodations to try and make things, make things a work.

 

Again, it kind of comes back to politics in that way. We can't all just pick up and move away from people we don't agree with. So we have these systems in place to help us all try and get along. 

 

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts. And I'm excited to announce that we are just on the brink of launching this really cool app. It's called School for the Dogs the Community app. And it's going to have a section all about the podcast where we can discuss these kinds of things. So if you're interested in getting an early invite, go to schoolforthedogs.com/podcastcommunity, 

 

And I just wanted to end actually, by going back to talking about this bully test idea with puppies in particular and little kids in particular.  Again, I remember early on in school first or second grade, there was a girl in my class who was just a kind of difficult girl.  Not nice to other kids, again, not a bully, just not nice.

 

And I remember, I think my mom explaining to me that I was just going to have to learn to deal with her day after day and that it was a lesson on dealing with difficult people, because there would be difficult people in the future. And first grade is just like a microcosm of what the rest of your life will be like. That's how I remember interpreting it. I remember feeling like, okay, this is a lesson I need to perfect.

 

But the truth is as an adult, fortunately, I feel like life isn't really like that. I mean, I do think as you get older and older, you should only be getting better and better at dealing with difficult people. But as you get older and older, why do you want to spend time with dealing with people that you don't like being around?

 

I mean, we all get stuck in crappy situations sometimes, but by and large in my life, I am trying to always do my best to surround myself with people I want to be around. If I don't like someone, I probably won't choose to sit at the lunch table with them and be in the same room with them every day, all day, 10 months out of the year.

 

All of this is to say, it sure is nice being a grownup sometimes, but also I think there's a lesson here on not forcing our dogs to deal with situations. I could see observing a situation — I'm thinking about puppy play times, cause I've run a million puppy play times in my life.  And I could imagine a puppy playtime situation where one dog's coming on a little strong to another dog. And the owners are feeling like, you know what? They need to learn to work this out.

 

Where my feeling, for puppies in particular is no, they don't need to learn to work this out.  They learn, they need to learn to feel comfortable in this room. They need to learn to feel comfortable with this other dog in the room. They need to feel comfortable about so many things before we start to ask them to also accept new challenges, like being in the presence of a puppy who wants to play in a way that maybe feels scary. 

 

There is a time in life where they will learn how to engage with or avoid another dog during play. But there's no reason to force them to be in the classroom with someone with whom they don't feel totally comfortable yet.

 

And what I've seen at so many puppy play times is once that one dog is held back, that so-called bully dog is held back gently, and the other perhaps shyer or sensitive, whatever you want to call it, dog newer to play newer to the environment, whatever.  Once that other puppy gets a chance to sniff around and realize, I'm in this okay place, my humans are here.  There's treats, there's toys.

 

Once that dog can explore without fear of being jumped on or whatever, he is going to come to the spot where he wants to play with the other dog. Not always, but very, very often you then see him starting to approach the other dog. And it's a very sweet, lovely thing, and a nice way, I think, to make sure again, that everybody is comfortable and happy in this situation.

 

Quick plug, we do host playtimes at School for the Dogs, never more than four dogs. We keep them really small because we like it when dogs play one-on-one.  Our play times are 30 minutes. They’re trainer supervised. You can learn more schoolforthedogs.com/services. We're located in the East village, in New York City.

 

Another reason though, why I'm so excited about the community app is that it is going to I hope be a way that puppy owners can connect wherever they are to try and find people nearby with whom you can coordinate socially distant one-on-one puppy play times.

 

And I actually had the idea that we could even maybe live stream some people's puppy play times into the community so that you know, you can get a trainer's input on what play is looking like, whether it's looking comfortable or not. And also, I mean, who wouldn't want to just like go into the app to watch puppies play? It sounds like a fun time to me. Anyway, again, sign up for an early invite schoolforthedogs.com/podcastcommunity.

 

Special thanks to Bill and Lizzie AKA toast garden for their sweet tunes. Find them at youtube.com/toastgarden.

 

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