Bonus Ep. A 3.5-year-old, falls on her scooter and gets yogurt: A tale of classical conditioning? Plus: Online Campus' support groups and more

SFTD Podcast is still on hiatus, but Annie is popped on to say "Hi" and tell a quick story about her daughter.

Transcript

This transcript was made automatically from the audio, so it may contain small errors.

I am experimenting with going live in our new online campus every day at noon for a trainer chat. So go ahead and... Join me any day at noon. If not me, it'll be one of the other trainers at School For The Dogs. It's an experiment.

We'd love to see you there. And yeah, we've been doing some fun things on the online campus and I'm hoping to get back to the podcast soon. I'm recording this to podcast listeners to say hi. I have some fun episodes lined up and some interesting people lined up to interview. I just have not had a chance to...

Put everything together as I have spent the summer working on this book and various marketing efforts and... I traveled to Italy and Greece with my husband and our two tiny kids for seven weeks because he runs a company that does language immersion programs for people who study ancient Greek and Latin. So in the summertime, he has something like 100 students from middle schoolers to grad students on trips throughout Italy and Greece. So we were parked there for a few weeks, which was for a few months, which was wonderful. But a lot and a lot to it's funny if you're doing payroll in New York City or you're doing payroll in Greece, you're still looking at a A screen and you're doing payroll.

I just wanted to jump on to share a funny story that relates to writing the book. I was just working on a section about classical conditioning and how it's so important to think about the associations our dogs may be making at any moment and how we can use the associations they make to our advantage. And one thing I was talking about is counter conditioning, changing a dog's emotion about something, and also the possibility always of sensitization, right? It's possible for a trigger to... Only become more and more difficult for a dog to deal with.

We try to, if they're really experiencing fear, so we try to introduce them to things at levels that they can handle, pairing those new things with good things in order to desensitize them to possibly scary things before those things really become truly scary. And... And some of the time it really is about just throwing treats on the ground, shoving something on me in their face. You know, it's sort of that stupidly easy. And of course, you know, I'm getting into stuff about how like, you know, if you're training in this way, you're also, yes, are you also rewarding a behavior?

Yes. But if you can change the emotion, you can so often get rid of the behavior and you're going to... Don't do, you know, not do a whole lot of harm. If the harm you're doing is, you know, you're tossing some extra yummy stuff to your dog, so be it. It's not going to leave that big of an impression.

Anyway, I had all of this on the brain this morning when my daughter and I were on her way to school. She... Tripped on her scooter and she fell and she was upset. I think it was scary. It was really not a very big fall, not a big deal fall.

But we sat down on the stoop and I reached in to get her ice pack from her lunchbox so she could put it on her face and there was a yogurt sitting on top of the ice pack and just kind of like not being serious. I was like, oh, you want some yogurt? But in my head what I was thinking is, you know, well, if I was dealing with a dog who, and of course I'm not trying to change the way she behaves in this, I'm just trying to help her feel better about the situation. Just as I would, you know, if a puppy I thought was possibly hurt, I would want to comfort them, help them feel better about the situation. And one way I might do that after making sure they're not...

You know, mortally wounded, make them comfortable, give them some food, give them some treats. Anyway, the treat on hand in this case was yogurt, which is not really that exciting of a treat. But yogurt is delicious.

But I was kind of kidding because I was really going for the ice pack. She took the ice pack and then maybe 10 seconds later she said, Mama, I'll take the yogurt now. So I gave her the yogurt. Um, I just thought it was just very cute. And, uh, and you know what, for a moment, like, I think the yogurt did sort of change the moment, changed the experience, changed the way she was feeling.

Um, anyway, we, she finished it, um, and, uh, she got up and we walked back to school and, uh, or walk, walk, yeah, we were going on the way to school and, um, And I said to her, well, you know, did the, did the yogurt help you feel better? And she goes, a little bit. And I thought, okay, well, I'll take it if, if, if, Creating an association between this scary thing of falling and, you know, if I could create an association that is not just one based in fear. Because remember, you know, these associations, in the case of a dog, and a person too, like, they can stick to anything. I don't think Magnolia is such a sensitive child that this kind of experience is going to really leave a mark, but...

And it wasn't really that scary of a fall, in my opinion. But, you know, if you think of extreme examples, people develop fears based on things that are scary. People who won't drive in a car. A certain make of car because of an accident or won't go to a certain restaurant because they got sick. You know, it might not have anything to do with the restaurant or the make of car.

Anyway, same thing with a dog. With a dog, though, we don't know what associations they're making so clearly. We don't know how they feel about a certain make of car. We might, we can make some guesses that they might make connections between the scary thing that just happened, an injury, say, and something in the environment that may have nothing to do with it. Actually, there's an example of this in the first episode of Cesar Millan's Dog Whisperer, which I watched recently, where a dog develops a fear of any shiny floors after he slips and falls on a wet floor.

After that all linoleum or shiny tile or anything is scary to that dog. And I'll leave you hanging with wondering how Cesar Millan deals with this issue. I leave it to your imagination. All right. That was it.

Magnolia was fine. I think she forgot about the whole thing as soon as she got to school. That's it. Hope to be back here soon. In the meantime, join us in the online campus.

One thing that we have going on there is support groups. We're starting up a separation anxiety support group, a reactive group. and, of course, a puppy support group. Join us there at schoolforthedogs.com slash online campus.