Puppies and Pandemic Parenting

Getting a puppy right now is hard. I get it. Socialization is a real concern, and while I think there are a lot of advantages to be gained from a puppy who is not swarmed from birth by everyone they meet fawning over them, it’s still a challenge. Sure, emotional regulation is great - I look forward hopefully towards puppies who can calmly take in their environment, and look to their owner for reinforcement, unperturbed by the chaos around them. It’s an opportunity not typically afforded to adorable puppies to be able to quietly appreciate humanity from a distance - we are all far too magnetized to want to “go pet the puppy” to allow them that. I’m among the most guilty of this. But it is a scary proposition to ensure emotional well-being with a puppy who will likely not directly interact with more than - what, five? - five humans during the first six months of their lives with us, at least. As this crisis has grown, as the situation became quickly as serious as it now is, I got it.

I got it.

…I thought I got it. 

And then I was out the other day with my family.  With my gregarious, outgoing-while-surprisingly-introverted 6 year old and my extroverted-and-somewhat-bossy-but-wary-of-new-folks 3 years old.  Just out for a walk, enjoying one of the sunnier days of the recent spring weather.  On the way to the nearby school to burn off energy in the fields, find some clover, climb some trees, do some cartwheels, head home for lunch.  Just enjoying the outdoors.

Until my youngest, the 3 year old, stopped stock still.  Staring at the few kids riding their bikes in the elementary school parking lot.

Staring in fear at the few kids riding their bikes in the elementary school parking lot.

“We can’t be here” she hissed, sotto voice.  “there’s people.  The sickness.”

My daughter has been very conscientious about lockdown since it begun. Every video chat starts with a debrief for the person on the other end of the line about how we can’t see people because of The Sickness. She’s careful to stay three cement blocks away from anyone on walks. But this was the first time that I saw my daughter, always the more reserved of my children, look at fellow human beings, fellow children, in fear.

Oh.

I got it, now.

Because what do you do? You can explain to a child in ways you can’t to a puppy, but not really. How do you explain to a child that there’s no need to be frightened of others, but that doesn’t mean they are safe? How do you impress upon them that this isn’t forever when you can’t tell them when, or if, this will all end? How do you help them cope with the grief of not seeing the people they love, not being able to hug their friends or kiss their grandparents? How do you explain this, when we are all struggling to even barely comprehend it ourselves?

Our puppies, and our children, live in the present moment. There is only right now. And right now, other humans aren’t safe. So you do what you can to balance the scales enough to hopefully teach them it won’t always be this way.

Maybe you sit on a hillside and reward your dog for watching families walk by, enjoying the sunshine too.

Maybe you let your kids yell back and forth at their friends across the driveways.

Maybe you set up greeting safely, letting your dog run up to a non-household person, in return for a treat thrown to them, rather than pets and snuggles.

Maybe, you take your daughters hand, remind her that we’re all trying to be as safe as possible, and wave with her at the other kids before heading to her favorite climbing tree. Click, treat.

Like most things right now, protecting our child but letting them grow unafraid is a challenging balancing act. So is raising a puppy. Taking one step at a time, letting new people still be a predictor of good things, and rewarding for calm, unruffled behavior. It’s a slow path, but with consistency, it’s one we can bring our young ones through to the other side. Unafraid.

I'm the Mean Mom: No, My Dog Can't Say Hi

I’ve resisted writing this post since so many people have written in support of those of us with reactive dogs, and in cautioning against on-leash greetings. But as the question comes up again and again, I’m realizing that this should be one of those things that should be shouted from the rooftops.

The reason Mouse doesn’t say hi: A visual. This captures the moment before a dog barked, and the moment after. Look how thoroughly her body has changed.

In so many areas of life, it isn’t until you’re midway through your journey through something difficult, something heartbreaking, something isolating, that you suddenly discover a community of people all ready to tell you “that happened to me, too.” It seems almost unjust that in a world so globally connected by the press of a button (or, rather, given touch screens, with no button at all) that people should be so…alone.

But when you have a reactive dog, or a scared dog, or an angry dog, or simply an impolite dog, it seems more often than not that you are alone. When I dip my toe into the dangerous waters that are generic Facebook groups, I see it:

“How could you force your dog to wear a muzzle, didn’t you TRAIN her?”

“Just walk them in a field.”

“Just ‘socialize’ him”

“XXX celebrity fixes dogs like this”

“It’s all in how they were raised” (to the owner of a reactive dog, oh, this one cuts - what on earth did I do to create this?)

It’s hard not to rail against the storm of unique ways we diminish the toll a reactive dog can take on someone, to correct the misconceptions, to scream into the void that we are here and we are not alone. To quote a long-favorite web comic, “someone is wrong on the internet.”

If it stayed virtual, though, that might be one thing. But it’s in our neighborhoods. The alarm bells that ring out with every “It’s okay, he’s friendly!” that I long since lost self-consciousness over countering with “Mine isn’t’”.

Dogs are challenged on leash for so many reasons. For some, it’ because they like dogs (or humans), and their frustration is expressed in barking and lunging. These dogs should not say hello on leash. They aren’t emotionally stable in that moment, and being rewarded by pulling toward the object of their affection isn’t conducive to a peaceful walk with their person.

For others, they are scared. They want to warn other dogs (or people) away. Or they are angry. Or, perhaps, they just think fighting might be super fun. And this could have happened for so many reasons. Genetically, many breeds should be wary of newcomers. They may have had a lack of socialization or a challenging experience during a fear period. Or perhaps they were just poorly bred and have fear or neuroses in their bloodline.

It is okay not to say hi. Your dog should not be expected to love everyone they meet. They should be permitted their space. They should be given the balance of freedom and management that allows them to live their most fulfilled life. Parallel walk with known, neutral dogs. Muzzle train. Take them for decompression walks, and train behaviors that reward them for looking to you rather than losing their minds.

Above all, embrace the “No.”

If you have a friendly dog and love visiting with the neighborhood canines, please ask first - and please be ready to take no for the answer. If you have a reactive dog, know you’re in good company. There are some fabulous articles surrounding this topic here, here, and here. Check out the DINOS project, and the Muzzle Up project .

In Praise of Virtual Learning

As we’re continuing to navigate the current state of the world, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with our own limitations. Buying toilet paper is now a challenge. Visiting a loved one is an ethical struggle. And the limitations of our control on the virus itself - whether we catch it, and what happens to us if we do.

But light is always found in darkness, if you look for it, and virtual training has been the most recent light added to my little internal candelabra.

Not mine, mind you. I highly recommend my services, but the virtual training I’m talking about is the classes I’m taking, the classes I will be taking - and, importantly, the classes I now can take.

Taking group classes with Mouse is historically an endeavor in finding the light moments in a time of stress. She’s highly reactive, and usually amped by training environments that smell like a whole lot of dogs and their arousal, and people with their treats, and me with my stress over how she’s going to behave. To say I get “tense” is probably a generous description of my blood pressure levels. It’s a challenge for both of us, and one I plan carefully - not too often, and not too many at once. But my girl will be 9 next month, and sometimes she is starting to feel her age. There are so MANY classes I want to take with her, and heartbreakingly little time.

So when a friend had a smaller-sized Rally class and offered to send the Zoom invitation, I immediately accepted. I didn’t even think about it.

And when I saw that Coventry was offering some strength conditioning classes, I messaged the instructor and asked her to sign me up.

Two classes in the same week, and I didn’t even blink.

When my Beginner class was graduating, they commented on their focus their dogs had in class, and how they learned the skills I was teaching much more completely because they weren’t focused on redirecting their dog from the people and dogs in the class.

When my husband and I were playing Dungeons and Dragons last night, he mentioned that playing virtually felt like so much less of a time commitment and was much easier to commit to a weekly session.

When my children were outside learning how to tie knots and exercising addition skills by counting the birds that they were seeing in the trees, I noticed how peaceful it was to let them learn at their pace in a flexible environment.

I thought about the way we - and our dogs - learn. How much more prepared for learning we can be if we are in familiar surroundings. When we feel supported and flexible - if we’re able to take breaks and have fun and not get frustrated. If we have a little more green space in our lives.

There is certainly a great deal that’s stressful about our lives right now. There’s a great deal that is unknown, out of our control, and outside of any of our experiences. But in looking for the light, I realized one of the gifts I have is the time to train my dog and the opportunity to work with her on whatever we want - without fear of reactivity, without concern for her stressors, without management against distractions. And it’s right at our fingertips.

Doing Less

My dog is sick of me. This may not be the most common quarantine challenge I’m hearing from clients and pet owners, but it’s a real concern at this trainer’s house.  Without other dogs to see and play with and train with, Mouse is getting 110% of my training attention, and She. Is. Done.

Uncertainty is challenging for me.  And there’s a lot of it right now – uncertainty over job security, over when school will be back in session, over the impact of this virus on our loved ones - what this means for our family, for our community, for our future.  So when chaos strikes, I make it orderly.  I do things.  Over a month into lockdown means that I have written and edited and re-written the daily schedules for myself and the kids at least twenty times.  I have lists and folders and saved websites to source out educational materials. I  jumped back into parenting books I thought I would never have the time for.  I have ordered art supplies and orange nail polish (a story for another blog) and a fire starter.

And it means I have written, and edited, and re-written training plans at least twenty times.  And for the
first few weeks, I was noticing something. Especially surrounding certain behaviors, I was not getting the bang for my buck that I would have hoped. I was quickly reminded of something: I have one dog. She is almost 9 years old. And while there is plenty she could learn…she doesn’t want to. She wants to nap in a sunbeam, to sniff out a new hike. She wants to curl up with me and the kids and watch a movie. And sure, she will enjoy training for brief sessions, she doesn’t want to be a demo dog for classes, she doesn’t care about getting a trick title, and she doesn’t need to learn more precise heeling.

I love training. I love working with dogs throughout the day, and I love teaching my group classes in the evening and on weekends. I stress throughout those classes to take breaks when your dog is frustrated or not feeling it – to always remember Pavlov on your shoulder, that classical conditioning is something that is always, always, always going on. That your first priority should be enjoying the time you’re spending with your dog, and your dog enjoying that time with you. 

It’s easy to forget, right now. In a culture that values productivity, that measures education in hours spent in a classroom, that stresses forward momentum, it’s so easy to forget that joy is what drives learning, that connection drives progress…that reinforcement drives behavior.  I kept it in mind for the kids, mostly. My
kids thrive off of structure, but within their constantly re-evaluated day I’m building time for Yoga, for mindfulness exercise, for exploring nature and connecting to their environment in ways that public school can’t (or doesn’t).  I’ve been slowly building in time for “Forest School” – a concept more embraced in European countries, but one that emphasizing growing independence and resilience and connection by setting children (safely) free in the woods with minimal directed activity.  Actively and intentionally doing less, to give them space to grow.

I’ve been thankful that my county has been somewhat unique in taking very measured steps toward implementing distance learning, and seem to be considering the novelty – and stress - of this situation in their rollout (thank you, Howard County educators!). But for my dog, I was just asking more and more. Not out of a sense of driving forward necessarily, but because I missed it.

I miss my bonus dogs. I miss mapping out quick hit training goals for multiple dogs, visiting each of them and seeing them all so happy and excited to work – fresh and waiting for me. I miss getting to work briefly, but directly, with puppies in my classes. I love all the extra canine love I am lucky enough to surround myself with.

But in missing that, I need to step back and watch that I am meeting the needs of my own dog, my wonderful, silly, older dog at home. She, as much as any dog in the home during this, needs me right now. Her routine has also been disrupted. And much like the kids, this is an opportunity for her to learn and connect and grow in new and unprecedented ways. But also like our children, that may mean doing less. Connecting more and finding what our dogs need. For some dogs, they may thrive off of that training plan emphasizing new skills and challenges every day.   Those training plans, and enrichment puzzles, and food searches – they all have their place, and my hope is that an effect of this lockdown will be dogs and humans learning new ways to play and bond together.

But even busy dogs need a rest. Leave time for that, as much as you’re leaving time for growing mindfulness in our children, for practicing self-care with ourselves.  For many of our dogs, fulfillment and connection means a hike with their favorite human, and then a leisurely afternoon nap in their favorite sunbeam. Our dogs are so good at knowing the value of doing less.

We might want to look to them for guidance.

Train the Dog in Front of You

Mouse is a terrier, through and through. Slap her picture onto the dictionary definition of an American Pit Bull Terrier and she lines up perfectly.  She is interested in things that skitter across the ground – the squirrels and the chipmunks and the rabbits and, on occasion, the deer.  She approaches other dogs as if they have already challenged her to a duel (“Would you like to play or fight?  I’m down for either, but on me they mostly look the same.”).  And she couldn’t care less about birds. 

 I even tell a story about it. One summer morning, when the sky was still hazy with the morning’s sunrise, a rabbit jetted across our path into a bush.  It was near enough to us that Mouse didn’t even need to pull to have her nose into the shrub.  As she did so, she (or the rabbit) startled two birds that swooped out of the bush and took flight.  I was startled.  I may have yelped.  In a very commanding, confident, and adult-type way, of course.

 Mouse…couldn’t have cared less.  She barely gave the birds a glance as she continued to search diligently for the wayward bunny.

 My dog doesn’t care about birds.

 So when we were walking at the nearby park and my consummate terrier lost her mind at the flock of seagulls nesting in the lake ahead of us, I calmly reminded myself and her that she doesn’t care about birds, and we moved on with our day.

 Or we would have, if dogs worked like that.

 What happened instead was that I stood, dumbfounded, as my previously bird-neutral dog became what can only be described as increasingly bird-reactive as the moments ticked on, with my brain chanting a constant refrain “but she’s not reactive to birds.  She’s not reactive to birds.  What the hell.”

 It was around that moment that I realized that with my own dog I had forgotten the cardinal rule of training – you train the dog in front of you.

Mouse, the (Sometimes) Bird Dog

The dog in front of me? Was reactive to birds.  Once I accepted that, I could help her.  We created distance, then worked focusing behaviors nearby once she was back in her head.  After gaining her attention, I whipped out my phone and worked a relaxation protocol that rewarded her for maintaining a stay through many distractions – several of them involving watching those birds, as well as the people and dogs who walked by on the path.

 But I couldn’t help her until I acknowledged what was happening.

 So often in classes I hear that a struggling dog “can do it at home!” or similar.  These downtrodden pet parents, baffled by their typically well-behaved dog, are wracking their brains trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance between two contradictory facts they know to be true.  That (1) Their dog doesn’t act like this and (2) their dog is definitely acting like this.

 It’s easy to dismiss this as willful blindness, but it’s not, really.  Humans are contextual creatures – we are known by our habits, by our routines and rituals.  We have philosophies, religions, whole practices devoted to our attempts to “be present.” Like meditation – which I am hilariously bad at.  I try to do the guided meditations that have the bell to remind you to return to the present moment, but I probably need that bell to chime just about every five seconds.

 But the importance of the Now is one of those things that is true of all relationships and is crystallized in our interactions with our animals.  When we are caught up in what we’ve always known to be “true”, it’s a challenge to pull ourselves into the present moment with our eyes clear. 

As a parent, as a wife, as a friend it’s easy to fall into the roles that are expected of us, and get confused, upset, and even frantic when someone changes the rules mid-play.  When my child – usually a genuinely great listener – routinely was having trouble when they were asked to get ready for the simple task of getting ready for school, it was tempting to get frustrated.  To be incredulous – this isn’t you, what the (ahem) is going on?  In my impatience, it would have been easy to take a five-minute delay due to my child’s developmentally-appropriate inconsistency, and escalate to a longer delay due to my inability to adapt to change.  To respond to the child in front of me.

 Relationships of all types experience this adjustment.  It’s easy enough to take someone for granted because “they are always there for you,” and react badly when something upsets that dynamic.  We all crave consistency, stability and though we ourselves are always changing, it’s upsetting when other people have their own internal contradictions.  It is only be accepting the evidence in front of you – whatever evidence that is - that you can comprehend it, understand it, and address it.

 Whether it’s your friend, who is always there for you (but wasn’t).

 Or your child, who always listens (but couldn’t).

 Or your dog, who doesn’t care about birds (but did).

Pause. Breathe. Listen.

Train the dog in front of you.

From Unintentional Decisions to an Intentional Life

As far as calculated career choices, there are very few that I’ve made intentionally or with great deliberation.  As a 16-year-old, my first job was chosen wholly and entirely while perched on a storefront countertop at the local mall, based on the affirmative answer from a friend when asked, “If I worked here too, can you drive me?”  Thus, began my short-lived career as a chocolatier. 

As a college student, I knew I liked my chosen major (Sociology) because I was interested in people – why they behave they way they do, what forces we generate that in turn act upon us to create an intricate societal dance.  I didn’t expect to really use it in my work.  I assumed I’d have a relatively boring “normal” job, leave to a home and a family, and build the time around that job for my interests and passions.

So when an internship popped up not in my field and not in my interest but that paid…at all (it was 2010, right as we eased out of a recession, and any internship that paid anything was well worth having) – I jumped at it.  I needed a job, the location was convenient to school and social life alike, the work was straightforward and simple.  Perfect.

The decision to enter a financial field was, then, not a calculated choice.

Nor was the choice to be in leadership in that field an intentional one.  At the time, it was merely another step on the ladder, one that I made two years into that internship becoming full time, in order to move into a new position and a new challenge. 

Leadership changed me, fundamentally.  As far as I’ve moved (in a short time) away from corporate offices, I am indebted, unconditionally, to the institution that introduced me to so many things I love.  Understanding behavior is part of leadership.  Developing others.  Communication and curiosity and the flexibility to adjust your approach and try again tomorrow.

And I found myself saying things I hadn’t realized I believed.

“You spend most of your life at work, you may as well enjoy the position you’re in.  How can I help you get there?”

I had been saying that, or a version of it, for over three years before I started training dogs, and kept saying it for another four before it occurred to me to follow my own advice.

I love dogs.  I love animals – I always have.  My house growing up was haven for whatever caterpillars- toads- crickets – turtles – bunnies I brought home with me tromping around the woods and fields in Westminster, Maryland.  We had dogs, cats, and a bunny for most of my childhood.  One of my mother’s favorite books is Beautiful Joe, and had she been able to get away with it I think our house would have been modeled off the one the Morris children lived in.

Training and working with animals requires an interest in behavior, and interest in how human’s build society and communication and how that translates (or, more often, doesn’t) to the canine.  It requires patient development, understanding of motivation.  It understands a desire to help people and their animals achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves.

And it requires intention.

“Training is a mechanical skill” – says Bob Bailey, and so say the trainers that I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with.  Training takes planning, takes intention, takes skills built and developed.  Choosing to utilize positive reinforcement and reject punitive tools takes a conscious, informed choice.  The patient consideration that training quickly taught me carried over to other parts of my life before it informed a career change.  To relationships, to parenting.  To home improvement and daily planning.  This is where writing comes in – my intention, to enunciate what is so challenging, and what is so rewarding about living – and training – positively.  How the choice to train positively is the choice to be both efficient and kind, and how that philosophy can be applied and extended to every role you’re asked to play.

And finally, right back to dog training.  The decision to leave the relative safety of the cubicle probably seems, externally, like an emotional decision, not a logical one.  But I think it’s the most intentional one I’ve ever made. 

We spend most of our lives at work, we may as well enjoy the position we’re in. 

Welcome to the journey.