Door GreetingsWhat does your dog do when the doorbell rings? In this episode, Emily and Libby lay out the possible ways your dog might respond when there’s someone at the door, break down the potential roots of different behaviors, and discuss ways to address and manage this behavior (hint: your behavior also plays a role in this!)
Kim Brophey’s website: https://www.dogdoorcanineservices.com/ Klimb by Blue-9: https://www.blue-9.com/KLIMB |
Episode Transcript
Emily 0:09
Welcome to pod to the rescue.
Libby 0:11
Rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with everything that comes next. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to pod to the rescue. I'm Libby.
Emily 0:23
And I'm Emily.
Libby 0:24
We're going to talk about door greetings today. But before we get into that quick update, Emily just got back from Kim Brophy's seminar at Wolf Park in Indiana. And she learned so much and we are really loving Kimbrough for his work and the message that she's spreading out in the dog world. So we're definitely going to have her on an episode in the future in the podcast this season. Until then, Emily, do you want to describe a little bit about what you learned,
Emily 0:55
it was really amazing social development, it was so comprehensive, to actually distill it into four sentences of what I learned would be difficult. But a lot of what I learned we're going to be chatting about in this segment on greetings, there was quite a bit that would pertain to how we tend to create either aggression or stress or anxiety in our dogs by being unclear in our social expectations of our dogs.
Libby 1:28
Yeah, and we see this come up all the time when we talk about door greetings, because it can be so variable, and until you realize that your dog is struggling with door greetings, you might not have a plan in place of what you're going to do when people come to your house and people come to the door.
Emily 1:48
Right? And, you know, it's such a huge variety of situations like is it a puppy? Is? Is it a dog that was bred to have, you know, some territorial response to intruders? Or was it a dog that, you know, it's genetics goes back to really being aware of sudden environmental contrasts such as Daisy, you know, she was bred to notice, like, the smallest movement in a cow, you know, so, you know, all of a sudden, some human pops through the door, that's really alarming for a lot of dogs.
Libby 2:26
So yeah, people entering the home can be really difficult for most dogs and navigating door greetings. And we can also extend this to greetings out in public as well.
Emily 2:41
Yeah, and if you think about it, you know, navigating social situations, having just come back from being with 50 amazing dog trainers, most of whom I did not know or have close relationships with, was actually for me stressful because I'm an introvert. And I actually noticed I have some weird social anxiety where, when I'm not comfortable, I talk way too much, which is odd, you know, so we have such big expectations for our dogs, and we can't ask them, How do you feel about this? You know, how do you feel when people come bounding into the house. So it's important for us to take into actually like, think about why our door greetings ingredients in general, so difficult for our dogs. So I think that's probably the best place to just start is like, we have these expectations that you know, fluffy is going to be laying around and you know, someone comes to the door and the dog isn't going to jump on them. Dog isn't gonna bark at them. Dog is just gonna somehow nicely go up and greet them, say a quick Hi, and then go and lay down. So that would probably be like your rare unicorn dog. When when you think.
Libby 3:53
Yeah, and I mean, when you lay it out like that, like that's a huge expectation, and it's really unrealistic. And so, oftentimes, what our dogs need is direction from us on what the heck they're supposed to do in this situation.
Emily 4:10
Yeah. And, you know, just like we were talking about in our other training, basics, associations are being made all the time. So, you know, you bring home your new puppy, you think, oh, I want to socialize it all the neighbors are coming over, you know, Aunt Joan is coming over, the puppy comes running up. And, you know, in the past, what we would do is let that puppy jump all over aunt Joan, and then, you know, either that can go wrong in so many ways, because either it's being reinforced for jumping, it believes that jumping is okay. And we let them practice that behavior for the next four months until they're large and then we start punishing them for jumping on people.
Libby 4:48
And that's so confusing because all of a sudden, what they've been doing and what we've been allowing and reinforcing is the wrong thing to do. And they're like, what, what lady
Emily 4:59
Yeah, And then, you know, the other option would be, you know, they come up there. I mean, there's so many things that could go wrong, they come up, they're excited, and then anjaan picks them up, and now they're no longer comfortable. And now they're having like a negative feeling about people coming in the door and ancho and kisses them on the nose, and they can't say, oh, I'm not comfortable, you know. So then you're starting to create some sort of like, contrary indicating feelings about people coming in the door. And people come in the door can be carrying backpacks or bag around their shoulder, and dogs really do a lot of referencing through their nose. You know, olfactory senses. So just a sudden popping of someone walking through doors, not really how dogs were designed to meet new beings or species out in the world,
Libby 5:47
right? It's not like they could smell aunt Joan, coming from a half mile away, because she was outside the house.
Emily 5:54
Yeah, they're locked in a room and Antion walks in, and they're like, is this a threat? What am I supposed to do? Right.
Libby 6:01
And I think it's important here to interject that. You know, when we say that dogs need a little direction from us. We're not saying that you need to be the alpha. Right? Because that has been debunked. Right? Dogs are not pack animals, but they do have social social relationships with people. And they they know that their people are not dogs, but they do look to us to help them navigate our human world. Right. Emily? would you add anything to that,
Emily 6:36
and they form strong social bonds. One thing I really felt like Kim Brophy, you know, got into my brain was they have social bonds with us, like we are their family, their social reference, their social connection. And so they're looking to us for direction when they live in our home, they're not necessarily looking to Aunt Joan. So it's our job just so similar to like, if we had a two year old, were the ones who show them how the world works, we don't tell a two year old like, here's the keys to the car. You know, this is how you plug in a plug into the outlet, like when there to you know, when we put in all sorts of parameters and management to make sure that our children are raised with the tools to be successful at developmentally appropriate times based on their needs. And that's what we have to do with our dogs. It just makes sense. And it will really help set them up for success.
Libby 7:33
So all of that being laid out as a foundation. Let's talk about maybe three different types of dogs who could struggle with the door greeting. All right, so first of all, if your dog is that unicorn who like will calmly walk up, say hello, wag their butt and then go lay down in their bed? Like, cool. Why are you listening to this episode?
Emily 8:01
I mean, that's awesome.
Libby 8:03
Yeah, I mean, share this episode with your friends. But we're not going to talk about that dog. Today we're going to talk about dogs who are struggling. So one dog might be the super social dog that jumps up on visitors can't calm down. This is often reinforced or encouraged when they're little and then or when they're new to the house and then suddenly, they're punished for it. So it's a big social situation. They might even be nervous, like Emily was saying, you know, that kind of chatterbox nervous chatterbox energy.
Emily 8:36
It's so interesting. And even just that, yeah, there is that stress and that excitement, where they become aroused at the door, you know, so even if you do have a happy social puppy, it's still not something I would recommend practicing.
Libby 8:55
So the second type of dog who might struggle with door greetings is the uncertain dog. So people are coming into the home, they maybe the dog hangs back a little bit people are approaching the people might be ignoring the dog's body language and signals and the dog could be flooded. And just totally overwhelmed. Maybe a little shut down. The dog is fearful, but is still you know, in, in the in the thick of it.
Emily 9:28
Right, right. They could be conflicted. It could be like mmm, maybe this is good. Maybe it's not. Yeah, and we we miss so many body language communications from right. So, you know, I've been to so many people's houses where they're like, Oh, he's fine. He likes people. And even though the dog is like happy to see me, I also see like some hesitancy because their natural brain, you know, capability is to be also thinking about is this person a threat? Where does this person fit into our social group? You know, what are the smells? What, you know, what am I supposed to do in this situation and you don't want your dog to be in a conflicted scenario where they're trying to assess very quickly because mistakes happen.
Libby 10:14
And you know, I'll add here that as dog guardians, it's our job to become experts at our dog's body language. But not everyone who comes over to our house is going to understand that and as you know, or to, even your friends who have dogs might not be able to read body language. So, you know, this is where you have to be an advocate for your dog,
Emily 10:39
if to be the parent, really, dog parently.
Libby 10:43
The third type of dog who might struggle with door greetings or any kind of greeting is the fearful dog. So this is a dog that's actually barking, maybe using aggressive behavior when people come to the house. And maybe in the past, they've been punished or yelled at for this behavior. And then they've made that association that people coming over means bad things are going to happen,
Emily 11:05
right? So much of it is just how we set the tone to have like, if people come over, and we're like, stop it barky No, good get down, you know, then they're like, oh, my gosh, my social reference point, my human gets agitated and upset when people come over. And with that fearful dog, you know, you don't want them practicing that behavior. Kimbrough, he was talking about neural pathways, and how they're like a riverbed, I thought this was like, one of my favorite takeaways from the course was, I've always said, you know, there's a saying, like, neurons that fire together, wire together. So we're always like, don't let them practice that behavior. But really, it's because your brain, you know, makes social references, like looks for patterns in the environment, and then kind of goes through the easiest channels based on past experiences. So anytime you practice a behavior, it's like a riverbed. And every time the rain runs down, it gets deeper and deeper. And that's the pattern that your brain will adhere to, and go with. So every time your dog is barking, at people walking in, you're strengthening those neural pathways, and that's the dog you're creating, basically. So we want to prevent that the feelings and the behavior.
Libby 12:30
So there's one thing that we're going to start with to manage the behavior of all three of these types of dogs.
Emily 12:40
One would be go back and listen to our amazing conversation with Mary Anjali on management, because I feel like management is just a huge part of it. But we can briefly go through some management techniques, because that's what I would say, unless you have that social unicorn, two year old three year old dog, because you have to also keep in mind, like social development, you know, so many people have an eight month old dog or a five month old dog, and they're like, Oh, they're fine. But you know, as they reach sexual maturity around a year, and then social maturity, between two and three, behavior can change, just like with us, when we're eight year olds. And when we're 25. We were different people, you know, so you really want to be always training for you know, always managing your environment for the dog that you want in 10 years, not for the dog you want next week. And one other amazing Kimbro fee ism was control the environment, not the dog. I just thought that should be the name of her next book. Honestly, it's just, you know, it's just it was an amazing phrase, because, you know, we're so into controlling the dog, what do you want me to do with the dog right now.
Libby 13:53
So the way we're going to address the behavior of all three types of door greeters is to put management into place. So the dog has a predictable pattern when people come to the door, regardless of if they're overly friendly or barking.
Emily 14:08
So the most important thing here would be thinking about yourself as like upper level management. If you started a new job at let's say, Google or a restaurant, you don't just go in and they say, go for it, do your job. We're not going to give you any instructions on how it looks. You know, they're going to teach you like this is how you greet a customer. This is how you roll the silverware and this is how you put it in order. So you know, we really want to be socially clear with our dogs. So the way we would do it would be management, putting in a baby gate, someplace where the dog is like, not right up next to the door but can see what's going on and giving them something super yummy, like a raw meaty bone or a bully stick or a stuffed topple Fill with wet food in it, and be like people are coming over. And then like giving them the words, that was one thing that I learned a lot was that dogs actually have a much higher ability to process language than we tend to believe in our society. So you know, giving them the words, which is like a predictive cue so that they can have a social reference to people are going to be coming over. So you say like, you know, people are going to be coming over, I'm gonna put you behind this baby gate. And then give them their yummy thing, and then have the people come in the door.
Libby 15:34
Totally. And I did this with Daisy. Over the summer, my partner's parents came to visit, and Jason's mom has some struggles with her balance. And Daisy is an overexcited greeter, and I didn't want her jumping up on Jason's mom. So that's exactly what we did, I separated her, I gave her a topple, and she was able to just observe, and then once she was calmed down, we were all seated in the house, then I was, you know, I let her back in, I let her come say hello to everybody. And it was a calm environment for her to, to greet people. And she was also able able to observe that, you know, I was sitting and having a conversation with these guests, it was not a threat. These were my, these are my family, that these people are part of our social network. And, you know, this is what we're doing, we're sitting in the living room and chatting,
Emily 16:37
right, and you're taking control, not in a mean way. But, you know, these are the expectations. And she got to observe and realize this, like you were saying, I mean, everything you said there was so beautiful and brilliant. And then she was brought in, you know, and if she did get too excited and jumped on Jason's mom, then instead of being like, no bad, Daisy would just be like, okay, like, now you're in over your head, you're, that's not appropriate behavior, you're just going back behind the baby gate, no, like big foster Moss, it's just, that's not how we act around our company. And you could always have also, like, if you had a younger puppy, you know, maybe have a leash on it. So you can keep them from practicing, like jumping up on people or being overly excited.
Libby 17:21
Yeah, and this is also a place where you know, once once you have brought the dog into the calm environment, you could do some mat work, some mat training or something like that, just like some relax on a mat night. Or, you know, this is the time you can do a little play with your dog toy, take a break, okay? Now, if you want to interact with people play with the tug toy. So that could be one way.
Emily 17:48
I love that. I love that. So it's like managing the environment. And then using some of the training that we've worked on, to be like, in this environment, this would be some skills that we practice that you could use.
Libby 18:00
And, you know, these are things that are great for super social dogs. What how would you change this next stage MLA for a fearful dog?
Emily 18:09
Hmm, you know, I guess that would be a little bit tougher. And I would be hesitant to tell people how to proceed without a professional involved there. Like, because you know, harkening back to our last episode with Michael Chicago, it's like, you know, if I was like, oh, then bring your fearful dog out. You know, and something goes wrong. I don't want someone someone to be like, well, pot to the rescue said, bring your fearful dog out. No. Like?
Libby 18:38
Well, I and my advice here would just be yeah, definitely listen to the episode we just released with Michael Shikashio. And this is the time when you don't need to force your dog to interact with people at all. I It's okay, if your dog stays behind the baby gate, right? It's okay. If they, you know, poke their head into the living room say no, thank you and go upstairs to bed. Like, that's all totally acceptable and fine,
Emily 19:09
right? Like Benny my new foster dog is quite fearful. And so we actually do have a little gate and he's in my office right now sleeping on the couch. But he's, he would never be a dog where I would be like, now you need to engage socially with strangers entering the house, but I do put him in here and throw some food. So he's making that association of like, okay, first of all, I know now that my foster mom has the situation. And good things happen. I have something to do. I can chew on my bully stick or lick my topple when there's other people in the house. And then him having that ability to like take space. You know, I do think if you have a fearful dog, there's so many trainers now who are doing virtual help because there's just so many variables of like, who's the person coming over? And what's your dog's learning history? So I guess I would not feel good putting into, you know, recommendation, like, bring your dog out and have them on a leash. I mean, you really have to kind of understand your dog and what's going on and who the person in the house is, blah, blah, blah. Yeah,
Libby 20:17
and I would just say that the probably the number one thing to do is to keep your dog safe and keep your guests safe. You know, it's your responsibility to advocate for your dog in these situations, your dog doesn't have to say hi, it's okay for your dog to stay behind that baby gate. Have some space, you know, have some calming activities, like a topple or play stick, are looking at. Exactly. So um, do you want to describe what you do with Piper when you have guests over?
Emily 20:49
Yeah, so I got Piper when she was about 14 months old. And she's opinionated. So she's pretty low energy. But she does love every body, which I'm extremely blessed to have that. She's appear nice. So she's actually been, you know, genetically bred for the trait of being suspicious of strangers. But she, she does not have that. So she's pretty accepting of all new people coming into our social group, which is really great. But I noticed after a few months of having her, you know, everyone would come in and be like, she's so cute. And she would just do like the full body of wag. And then she would go lay down. So she was pretty much that perfect dog. And then she started to be like, Oh, God, I'm really loving when these people come over. And so she did start jumping up on people. And she's really large. And I didn't feel like it was the point. Like I'm really good at watching body language. I didn't see any stress or anything that made me think that she was having any conflict, except that she was jumping on people, which was not okay for, you know, just people coming in, and I didn't want her practicing it. So I got this thing called a climb KLI MB, climb with a K. And I taught her how to stand on that. Because one thing we didn't talk about is the reason that dogs jump, because this is why most people want you to deal with door greetings in general is that their dog is hyper social and jumps up on people. And really understanding that jumping up is for them to it's a social behavior to say hello to our face. So it is a pro social behavior if your dog is greeting and then jumps up. And so, you know, you could put the management practices into place, if you don't see anything that makes you think that your dog is weary, like put them in behind a baby gate until that like arousal at the door calms down because that's a big part of it. It's like, you know, the person walking in his gasoline, and the dog is a match. And boom, you have like too much excitement at the door. Kind of harkening back to Jason's mom coming you like defuse the situation gave Daisy time to like, assess everything, and took that pressure away. So that was brilliant. So it is a pro social behavior. So if your dog isn't like struggling, and you don't see any contrary indicators for having them greet at the door, but they do seem like they're starting to jump, you could teach, you could train them to go on something higher. And that's the only time they're rewarded. So when people come in the door, I do have Piper go up on the climb. They're not allowed to say hello to her until she's on the climb. And she's just really good. And so then she gets food and pets on the climb for like the first couple of minutes. And then that just takes away the whole social pressure at the door. And if I had someone coming over who wasn't you know, if I had like the no oven cleaner, or oven repairman coming over, I would put Piper outside or behind a baby gate. I don't expect everyone walking in my door to have to go through this ritual. But that is the ritual or the predictable pattern of precedents that I have put in place for Piper
Libby 24:03
oh my god, I love that the predictable pattern of precedents that you put in place for Piper
Emily 24:06
oh my god, that is true. The PPP P. Yeah. So back to the Kim Brophy course. One of the parts about the brain that that we learned was that the brain is always looking for optimal predictability in an unpredictable world. So that's where putting these patterns in place for the dogs or we could call them rituals, but at the core, she called them PPCPs, predictable patterns of precedence. And that's really just going to take a lot of stress and anxiety off your dog. Like even if your dog's friendly, it's anxious, perfect. It's anxiety provoking to be in social situations for a lot of dogs and did a lot of humans, I can tell you? Yeah. So how do we have this ritual for our dogs, so that were the upper level management. And we're letting them know how the world works. And nothing bad happens. But we've got this is really, one of the takeaways of the course was just being the parents or she was like You can even she has one hack that's like the game show hack, which I thought was really great where you know, the game show for those of you who actually have ever watched one, it's like, no one's ever like, you know, the game show like, Pat's a jack, or I don't even know who Alex Tupac, you know, they were never like, you've got it wrong, and you're in big trouble. You know, they would just be like, Oops, that was not the right answer. We're moving along. Now, you know, like, and when you get the answer, right, it's like, you got the answer, right. Good job. And, you know, that's where you could use some of your food rewards when they get it right, but not a lot of like, or never, or they like, and now we're gonna, you know, shock you because you get the, you've got it wrong.
Libby 26:06
Oh, my God, that would be a terrible game show.
Emily 26:08
Yeah, that'd be a terrible game show. And there's so much structure in a game show, you know, like, you're not just allowed to like wander around, you have to sit at your stand at your podium and press the button, like they put in all the structure. So that's really a lot that could help our dogs is just having the structure in place. And then it's like, Oops, you jumped up on at March after she was here for 20 minutes. And we thought you have the skills to navigate this, you're gonna go back in your room where you have a nice little chewy, chewy stick.
Libby 26:37
Yeah. And that's, and that's totally fine. And that's, you know, if your dog doesn't yet have the skills to do the right thing in this situation, it's totally fine to separate them from the situation behind a little baby gate until they do.
Emily 26:52
Yeah, and understanding it for ourselves about how hard this is for our dogs. Because I know for me, even like, we take on so much emotion around these greetings and around our dog's behavior, which we, we need to start shifting away from like, your dog is, its own being its own species. Like, if your dog barks at someone that's not a reflection on you, like, yes, like up your game, bring more food, increase your distance, like, you know, consider what you're doing. But, you know, let's try to remove our emotion because if we start becoming freaked out, that is totally going to be a social reference for our dogs like, okay, my one human in the world is freaked out when people come over. And it might just be we're freaked out because we're like, oh my god, I'm a dog trainer. My dog is jumping on people. This is really okay. Okay. So I had to put something into place. So I wasn't like, oh my god, Piper good to help. I broke it down. Like that is not a good response. That would not be the response, I would recommend
Libby 27:55
totally, and just, you know, just being able to say, Ah, okay, Daisy is behind the gate, and she's doing her thing. And I'm going to do my thing over here. And then it's all taken care of. And you don't have to worry about all of these moving pieces at once with the door grading. It's just a calmer environment for everybody. And it it does nothing but help your dog cope with a really kind of strange situation.
Emily 28:26
Yeah, I think that's amazing. I mean, one other thing if people are still hanging with us for this podcast, because it's I know, it's, we're really going on and on. But, you know, these are captive animals. That is like one of the big aha moments I got the first time I heard a podcast with Kim Brophy, I was like, Oh my God, they are captive animals. And in the last, like, 30 to 50 years, we took dogs that were bred to herd sheep, or protect against wolves, intruding on on, you know, livestock, or, you know, taking rats out of the population like terriers, you know, so they were all bred for really specific jobs. And that's why we kept them around, except for Toy breeds. Pretty much every other breed had some sort of job. And they just kind of coexisted with us and became part of our social group, but they weren't like in our houses and apartments, going to brew pubs, we put so much social pressure on our dogs and as our world is changing so rapidly, like in my lifetime, we went from a black and white TV to now like watching everything I want on my phone on Netflix. So you know, like the world has changed rapidly and dogs haven't had a lot of time to adjust to this new world and we expect so much from them. So if I had one thing I would say it was my takeaway was like, Let's just remove a lot of social pressure off our dogs and realize that their lives, you know, as opposed to like little Disney animal We'll start with mythologized to just fit into every scenario perfectly
Libby 30:04
100%. I think that's a great place to end.
Emily 30:07
We over the break, got a new website, we have the most amazing website developer who volunteered to do our website, which is now beautiful and extremely easy to navigate.
Shout out to Nadia Magallon from rewarding dog training in Lafayette, Colorado. She's super amazing. And our website looks beautiful. So please check it out.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Libby 30:30
Cool. Well, should we leave it there? Did we? Is there anything we didn't cover?
Emily 30:34
I think we have just really covered a ton today. And we we just want to say last little wrap up here is we've been getting emails from people all over the country who work in rescues and in shelters, or volunteer in shelters, saying that you're listening and suggesting topics and we just love those because when we're just sitting here recording, we have no idea if anyone's really listen. And so hearing that this actually is helping people and changing the lives of people and dogs is really satisfying and makes us keep going because that's our goal. So if you like what we're doing, you know, follow us subscribe. Follow us on social media, tell your friends but also drop us a line because it really does help us you know, feel like okay, this is this is worth arranging our day and doing doing because someone's actually listening and finding value. You know,
Libby 31:32
we love connecting with our listeners. So if you want to get in touch with us reach out on social or email us pod to the [email protected] Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate and review and helps other folks like you find the show. To find out more about our programming and adoptable rescue dogs. You can visit summit dog rescue.org thanks to Mike pesci for the original music and to Alex Lee Ammons and for the love media for graphics production and editing. See you soon on pod to the rescue.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Welcome to pod to the rescue.
Libby 0:11
Rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with everything that comes next. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to pod to the rescue. I'm Libby.
Emily 0:23
And I'm Emily.
Libby 0:24
We're going to talk about door greetings today. But before we get into that quick update, Emily just got back from Kim Brophy's seminar at Wolf Park in Indiana. And she learned so much and we are really loving Kimbrough for his work and the message that she's spreading out in the dog world. So we're definitely going to have her on an episode in the future in the podcast this season. Until then, Emily, do you want to describe a little bit about what you learned,
Emily 0:55
it was really amazing social development, it was so comprehensive, to actually distill it into four sentences of what I learned would be difficult. But a lot of what I learned we're going to be chatting about in this segment on greetings, there was quite a bit that would pertain to how we tend to create either aggression or stress or anxiety in our dogs by being unclear in our social expectations of our dogs.
Libby 1:28
Yeah, and we see this come up all the time when we talk about door greetings, because it can be so variable, and until you realize that your dog is struggling with door greetings, you might not have a plan in place of what you're going to do when people come to your house and people come to the door.
Emily 1:48
Right? And, you know, it's such a huge variety of situations like is it a puppy? Is? Is it a dog that was bred to have, you know, some territorial response to intruders? Or was it a dog that, you know, it's genetics goes back to really being aware of sudden environmental contrasts such as Daisy, you know, she was bred to notice, like, the smallest movement in a cow, you know, so, you know, all of a sudden, some human pops through the door, that's really alarming for a lot of dogs.
Libby 2:26
So yeah, people entering the home can be really difficult for most dogs and navigating door greetings. And we can also extend this to greetings out in public as well.
Emily 2:41
Yeah, and if you think about it, you know, navigating social situations, having just come back from being with 50 amazing dog trainers, most of whom I did not know or have close relationships with, was actually for me stressful because I'm an introvert. And I actually noticed I have some weird social anxiety where, when I'm not comfortable, I talk way too much, which is odd, you know, so we have such big expectations for our dogs, and we can't ask them, How do you feel about this? You know, how do you feel when people come bounding into the house. So it's important for us to take into actually like, think about why our door greetings ingredients in general, so difficult for our dogs. So I think that's probably the best place to just start is like, we have these expectations that you know, fluffy is going to be laying around and you know, someone comes to the door and the dog isn't going to jump on them. Dog isn't gonna bark at them. Dog is just gonna somehow nicely go up and greet them, say a quick Hi, and then go and lay down. So that would probably be like your rare unicorn dog. When when you think.
Libby 3:53
Yeah, and I mean, when you lay it out like that, like that's a huge expectation, and it's really unrealistic. And so, oftentimes, what our dogs need is direction from us on what the heck they're supposed to do in this situation.
Emily 4:10
Yeah. And, you know, just like we were talking about in our other training, basics, associations are being made all the time. So, you know, you bring home your new puppy, you think, oh, I want to socialize it all the neighbors are coming over, you know, Aunt Joan is coming over, the puppy comes running up. And, you know, in the past, what we would do is let that puppy jump all over aunt Joan, and then, you know, either that can go wrong in so many ways, because either it's being reinforced for jumping, it believes that jumping is okay. And we let them practice that behavior for the next four months until they're large and then we start punishing them for jumping on people.
Libby 4:48
And that's so confusing because all of a sudden, what they've been doing and what we've been allowing and reinforcing is the wrong thing to do. And they're like, what, what lady
Emily 4:59
Yeah, And then, you know, the other option would be, you know, they come up there. I mean, there's so many things that could go wrong, they come up, they're excited, and then anjaan picks them up, and now they're no longer comfortable. And now they're having like a negative feeling about people coming in the door and ancho and kisses them on the nose, and they can't say, oh, I'm not comfortable, you know. So then you're starting to create some sort of like, contrary indicating feelings about people coming in the door. And people come in the door can be carrying backpacks or bag around their shoulder, and dogs really do a lot of referencing through their nose. You know, olfactory senses. So just a sudden popping of someone walking through doors, not really how dogs were designed to meet new beings or species out in the world,
Libby 5:47
right? It's not like they could smell aunt Joan, coming from a half mile away, because she was outside the house.
Emily 5:54
Yeah, they're locked in a room and Antion walks in, and they're like, is this a threat? What am I supposed to do? Right.
Libby 6:01
And I think it's important here to interject that. You know, when we say that dogs need a little direction from us. We're not saying that you need to be the alpha. Right? Because that has been debunked. Right? Dogs are not pack animals, but they do have social social relationships with people. And they they know that their people are not dogs, but they do look to us to help them navigate our human world. Right. Emily? would you add anything to that,
Emily 6:36
and they form strong social bonds. One thing I really felt like Kim Brophy, you know, got into my brain was they have social bonds with us, like we are their family, their social reference, their social connection. And so they're looking to us for direction when they live in our home, they're not necessarily looking to Aunt Joan. So it's our job just so similar to like, if we had a two year old, were the ones who show them how the world works, we don't tell a two year old like, here's the keys to the car. You know, this is how you plug in a plug into the outlet, like when there to you know, when we put in all sorts of parameters and management to make sure that our children are raised with the tools to be successful at developmentally appropriate times based on their needs. And that's what we have to do with our dogs. It just makes sense. And it will really help set them up for success.
Libby 7:33
So all of that being laid out as a foundation. Let's talk about maybe three different types of dogs who could struggle with the door greeting. All right, so first of all, if your dog is that unicorn who like will calmly walk up, say hello, wag their butt and then go lay down in their bed? Like, cool. Why are you listening to this episode?
Emily 8:01
I mean, that's awesome.
Libby 8:03
Yeah, I mean, share this episode with your friends. But we're not going to talk about that dog. Today we're going to talk about dogs who are struggling. So one dog might be the super social dog that jumps up on visitors can't calm down. This is often reinforced or encouraged when they're little and then or when they're new to the house and then suddenly, they're punished for it. So it's a big social situation. They might even be nervous, like Emily was saying, you know, that kind of chatterbox nervous chatterbox energy.
Emily 8:36
It's so interesting. And even just that, yeah, there is that stress and that excitement, where they become aroused at the door, you know, so even if you do have a happy social puppy, it's still not something I would recommend practicing.
Libby 8:55
So the second type of dog who might struggle with door greetings is the uncertain dog. So people are coming into the home, they maybe the dog hangs back a little bit people are approaching the people might be ignoring the dog's body language and signals and the dog could be flooded. And just totally overwhelmed. Maybe a little shut down. The dog is fearful, but is still you know, in, in the in the thick of it.
Emily 9:28
Right, right. They could be conflicted. It could be like mmm, maybe this is good. Maybe it's not. Yeah, and we we miss so many body language communications from right. So, you know, I've been to so many people's houses where they're like, Oh, he's fine. He likes people. And even though the dog is like happy to see me, I also see like some hesitancy because their natural brain, you know, capability is to be also thinking about is this person a threat? Where does this person fit into our social group? You know, what are the smells? What, you know, what am I supposed to do in this situation and you don't want your dog to be in a conflicted scenario where they're trying to assess very quickly because mistakes happen.
Libby 10:14
And you know, I'll add here that as dog guardians, it's our job to become experts at our dog's body language. But not everyone who comes over to our house is going to understand that and as you know, or to, even your friends who have dogs might not be able to read body language. So, you know, this is where you have to be an advocate for your dog,
Emily 10:39
if to be the parent, really, dog parently.
Libby 10:43
The third type of dog who might struggle with door greetings or any kind of greeting is the fearful dog. So this is a dog that's actually barking, maybe using aggressive behavior when people come to the house. And maybe in the past, they've been punished or yelled at for this behavior. And then they've made that association that people coming over means bad things are going to happen,
Emily 11:05
right? So much of it is just how we set the tone to have like, if people come over, and we're like, stop it barky No, good get down, you know, then they're like, oh, my gosh, my social reference point, my human gets agitated and upset when people come over. And with that fearful dog, you know, you don't want them practicing that behavior. Kimbrough, he was talking about neural pathways, and how they're like a riverbed, I thought this was like, one of my favorite takeaways from the course was, I've always said, you know, there's a saying, like, neurons that fire together, wire together. So we're always like, don't let them practice that behavior. But really, it's because your brain, you know, makes social references, like looks for patterns in the environment, and then kind of goes through the easiest channels based on past experiences. So anytime you practice a behavior, it's like a riverbed. And every time the rain runs down, it gets deeper and deeper. And that's the pattern that your brain will adhere to, and go with. So every time your dog is barking, at people walking in, you're strengthening those neural pathways, and that's the dog you're creating, basically. So we want to prevent that the feelings and the behavior.
Libby 12:30
So there's one thing that we're going to start with to manage the behavior of all three of these types of dogs.
Emily 12:40
One would be go back and listen to our amazing conversation with Mary Anjali on management, because I feel like management is just a huge part of it. But we can briefly go through some management techniques, because that's what I would say, unless you have that social unicorn, two year old three year old dog, because you have to also keep in mind, like social development, you know, so many people have an eight month old dog or a five month old dog, and they're like, Oh, they're fine. But you know, as they reach sexual maturity around a year, and then social maturity, between two and three, behavior can change, just like with us, when we're eight year olds. And when we're 25. We were different people, you know, so you really want to be always training for you know, always managing your environment for the dog that you want in 10 years, not for the dog you want next week. And one other amazing Kimbro fee ism was control the environment, not the dog. I just thought that should be the name of her next book. Honestly, it's just, you know, it's just it was an amazing phrase, because, you know, we're so into controlling the dog, what do you want me to do with the dog right now.
Libby 13:53
So the way we're going to address the behavior of all three types of door greeters is to put management into place. So the dog has a predictable pattern when people come to the door, regardless of if they're overly friendly or barking.
Emily 14:08
So the most important thing here would be thinking about yourself as like upper level management. If you started a new job at let's say, Google or a restaurant, you don't just go in and they say, go for it, do your job. We're not going to give you any instructions on how it looks. You know, they're going to teach you like this is how you greet a customer. This is how you roll the silverware and this is how you put it in order. So you know, we really want to be socially clear with our dogs. So the way we would do it would be management, putting in a baby gate, someplace where the dog is like, not right up next to the door but can see what's going on and giving them something super yummy, like a raw meaty bone or a bully stick or a stuffed topple Fill with wet food in it, and be like people are coming over. And then like giving them the words, that was one thing that I learned a lot was that dogs actually have a much higher ability to process language than we tend to believe in our society. So you know, giving them the words, which is like a predictive cue so that they can have a social reference to people are going to be coming over. So you say like, you know, people are going to be coming over, I'm gonna put you behind this baby gate. And then give them their yummy thing, and then have the people come in the door.
Libby 15:34
Totally. And I did this with Daisy. Over the summer, my partner's parents came to visit, and Jason's mom has some struggles with her balance. And Daisy is an overexcited greeter, and I didn't want her jumping up on Jason's mom. So that's exactly what we did, I separated her, I gave her a topple, and she was able to just observe, and then once she was calmed down, we were all seated in the house, then I was, you know, I let her back in, I let her come say hello to everybody. And it was a calm environment for her to, to greet people. And she was also able able to observe that, you know, I was sitting and having a conversation with these guests, it was not a threat. These were my, these are my family, that these people are part of our social network. And, you know, this is what we're doing, we're sitting in the living room and chatting,
Emily 16:37
right, and you're taking control, not in a mean way. But, you know, these are the expectations. And she got to observe and realize this, like you were saying, I mean, everything you said there was so beautiful and brilliant. And then she was brought in, you know, and if she did get too excited and jumped on Jason's mom, then instead of being like, no bad, Daisy would just be like, okay, like, now you're in over your head, you're, that's not appropriate behavior, you're just going back behind the baby gate, no, like big foster Moss, it's just, that's not how we act around our company. And you could always have also, like, if you had a younger puppy, you know, maybe have a leash on it. So you can keep them from practicing, like jumping up on people or being overly excited.
Libby 17:21
Yeah, and this is also a place where you know, once once you have brought the dog into the calm environment, you could do some mat work, some mat training or something like that, just like some relax on a mat night. Or, you know, this is the time you can do a little play with your dog toy, take a break, okay? Now, if you want to interact with people play with the tug toy. So that could be one way.
Emily 17:48
I love that. I love that. So it's like managing the environment. And then using some of the training that we've worked on, to be like, in this environment, this would be some skills that we practice that you could use.
Libby 18:00
And, you know, these are things that are great for super social dogs. What how would you change this next stage MLA for a fearful dog?
Emily 18:09
Hmm, you know, I guess that would be a little bit tougher. And I would be hesitant to tell people how to proceed without a professional involved there. Like, because you know, harkening back to our last episode with Michael Chicago, it's like, you know, if I was like, oh, then bring your fearful dog out. You know, and something goes wrong. I don't want someone someone to be like, well, pot to the rescue said, bring your fearful dog out. No. Like?
Libby 18:38
Well, I and my advice here would just be yeah, definitely listen to the episode we just released with Michael Shikashio. And this is the time when you don't need to force your dog to interact with people at all. I It's okay, if your dog stays behind the baby gate, right? It's okay. If they, you know, poke their head into the living room say no, thank you and go upstairs to bed. Like, that's all totally acceptable and fine,
Emily 19:09
right? Like Benny my new foster dog is quite fearful. And so we actually do have a little gate and he's in my office right now sleeping on the couch. But he's, he would never be a dog where I would be like, now you need to engage socially with strangers entering the house, but I do put him in here and throw some food. So he's making that association of like, okay, first of all, I know now that my foster mom has the situation. And good things happen. I have something to do. I can chew on my bully stick or lick my topple when there's other people in the house. And then him having that ability to like take space. You know, I do think if you have a fearful dog, there's so many trainers now who are doing virtual help because there's just so many variables of like, who's the person coming over? And what's your dog's learning history? So I guess I would not feel good putting into, you know, recommendation, like, bring your dog out and have them on a leash. I mean, you really have to kind of understand your dog and what's going on and who the person in the house is, blah, blah, blah. Yeah,
Libby 20:17
and I would just say that the probably the number one thing to do is to keep your dog safe and keep your guests safe. You know, it's your responsibility to advocate for your dog in these situations, your dog doesn't have to say hi, it's okay for your dog to stay behind that baby gate. Have some space, you know, have some calming activities, like a topple or play stick, are looking at. Exactly. So um, do you want to describe what you do with Piper when you have guests over?
Emily 20:49
Yeah, so I got Piper when she was about 14 months old. And she's opinionated. So she's pretty low energy. But she does love every body, which I'm extremely blessed to have that. She's appear nice. So she's actually been, you know, genetically bred for the trait of being suspicious of strangers. But she, she does not have that. So she's pretty accepting of all new people coming into our social group, which is really great. But I noticed after a few months of having her, you know, everyone would come in and be like, she's so cute. And she would just do like the full body of wag. And then she would go lay down. So she was pretty much that perfect dog. And then she started to be like, Oh, God, I'm really loving when these people come over. And so she did start jumping up on people. And she's really large. And I didn't feel like it was the point. Like I'm really good at watching body language. I didn't see any stress or anything that made me think that she was having any conflict, except that she was jumping on people, which was not okay for, you know, just people coming in, and I didn't want her practicing it. So I got this thing called a climb KLI MB, climb with a K. And I taught her how to stand on that. Because one thing we didn't talk about is the reason that dogs jump, because this is why most people want you to deal with door greetings in general is that their dog is hyper social and jumps up on people. And really understanding that jumping up is for them to it's a social behavior to say hello to our face. So it is a pro social behavior if your dog is greeting and then jumps up. And so, you know, you could put the management practices into place, if you don't see anything that makes you think that your dog is weary, like put them in behind a baby gate until that like arousal at the door calms down because that's a big part of it. It's like, you know, the person walking in his gasoline, and the dog is a match. And boom, you have like too much excitement at the door. Kind of harkening back to Jason's mom coming you like defuse the situation gave Daisy time to like, assess everything, and took that pressure away. So that was brilliant. So it is a pro social behavior. So if your dog isn't like struggling, and you don't see any contrary indicators for having them greet at the door, but they do seem like they're starting to jump, you could teach, you could train them to go on something higher. And that's the only time they're rewarded. So when people come in the door, I do have Piper go up on the climb. They're not allowed to say hello to her until she's on the climb. And she's just really good. And so then she gets food and pets on the climb for like the first couple of minutes. And then that just takes away the whole social pressure at the door. And if I had someone coming over who wasn't you know, if I had like the no oven cleaner, or oven repairman coming over, I would put Piper outside or behind a baby gate. I don't expect everyone walking in my door to have to go through this ritual. But that is the ritual or the predictable pattern of precedents that I have put in place for Piper
Libby 24:03
oh my god, I love that the predictable pattern of precedents that you put in place for Piper
Emily 24:06
oh my god, that is true. The PPP P. Yeah. So back to the Kim Brophy course. One of the parts about the brain that that we learned was that the brain is always looking for optimal predictability in an unpredictable world. So that's where putting these patterns in place for the dogs or we could call them rituals, but at the core, she called them PPCPs, predictable patterns of precedence. And that's really just going to take a lot of stress and anxiety off your dog. Like even if your dog's friendly, it's anxious, perfect. It's anxiety provoking to be in social situations for a lot of dogs and did a lot of humans, I can tell you? Yeah. So how do we have this ritual for our dogs, so that were the upper level management. And we're letting them know how the world works. And nothing bad happens. But we've got this is really, one of the takeaways of the course was just being the parents or she was like You can even she has one hack that's like the game show hack, which I thought was really great where you know, the game show for those of you who actually have ever watched one, it's like, no one's ever like, you know, the game show like, Pat's a jack, or I don't even know who Alex Tupac, you know, they were never like, you've got it wrong, and you're in big trouble. You know, they would just be like, Oops, that was not the right answer. We're moving along. Now, you know, like, and when you get the answer, right, it's like, you got the answer, right. Good job. And, you know, that's where you could use some of your food rewards when they get it right, but not a lot of like, or never, or they like, and now we're gonna, you know, shock you because you get the, you've got it wrong.
Libby 26:06
Oh, my God, that would be a terrible game show.
Emily 26:08
Yeah, that'd be a terrible game show. And there's so much structure in a game show, you know, like, you're not just allowed to like wander around, you have to sit at your stand at your podium and press the button, like they put in all the structure. So that's really a lot that could help our dogs is just having the structure in place. And then it's like, Oops, you jumped up on at March after she was here for 20 minutes. And we thought you have the skills to navigate this, you're gonna go back in your room where you have a nice little chewy, chewy stick.
Libby 26:37
Yeah. And that's, and that's totally fine. And that's, you know, if your dog doesn't yet have the skills to do the right thing in this situation, it's totally fine to separate them from the situation behind a little baby gate until they do.
Emily 26:52
Yeah, and understanding it for ourselves about how hard this is for our dogs. Because I know for me, even like, we take on so much emotion around these greetings and around our dog's behavior, which we, we need to start shifting away from like, your dog is, its own being its own species. Like, if your dog barks at someone that's not a reflection on you, like, yes, like up your game, bring more food, increase your distance, like, you know, consider what you're doing. But, you know, let's try to remove our emotion because if we start becoming freaked out, that is totally going to be a social reference for our dogs like, okay, my one human in the world is freaked out when people come over. And it might just be we're freaked out because we're like, oh my god, I'm a dog trainer. My dog is jumping on people. This is really okay. Okay. So I had to put something into place. So I wasn't like, oh my god, Piper good to help. I broke it down. Like that is not a good response. That would not be the response, I would recommend
Libby 27:55
totally, and just, you know, just being able to say, Ah, okay, Daisy is behind the gate, and she's doing her thing. And I'm going to do my thing over here. And then it's all taken care of. And you don't have to worry about all of these moving pieces at once with the door grading. It's just a calmer environment for everybody. And it it does nothing but help your dog cope with a really kind of strange situation.
Emily 28:26
Yeah, I think that's amazing. I mean, one other thing if people are still hanging with us for this podcast, because it's I know, it's, we're really going on and on. But, you know, these are captive animals. That is like one of the big aha moments I got the first time I heard a podcast with Kim Brophy, I was like, Oh my God, they are captive animals. And in the last, like, 30 to 50 years, we took dogs that were bred to herd sheep, or protect against wolves, intruding on on, you know, livestock, or, you know, taking rats out of the population like terriers, you know, so they were all bred for really specific jobs. And that's why we kept them around, except for Toy breeds. Pretty much every other breed had some sort of job. And they just kind of coexisted with us and became part of our social group, but they weren't like in our houses and apartments, going to brew pubs, we put so much social pressure on our dogs and as our world is changing so rapidly, like in my lifetime, we went from a black and white TV to now like watching everything I want on my phone on Netflix. So you know, like the world has changed rapidly and dogs haven't had a lot of time to adjust to this new world and we expect so much from them. So if I had one thing I would say it was my takeaway was like, Let's just remove a lot of social pressure off our dogs and realize that their lives, you know, as opposed to like little Disney animal We'll start with mythologized to just fit into every scenario perfectly
Libby 30:04
100%. I think that's a great place to end.
Emily 30:07
We over the break, got a new website, we have the most amazing website developer who volunteered to do our website, which is now beautiful and extremely easy to navigate.
Shout out to Nadia Magallon from rewarding dog training in Lafayette, Colorado. She's super amazing. And our website looks beautiful. So please check it out.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Libby 30:30
Cool. Well, should we leave it there? Did we? Is there anything we didn't cover?
Emily 30:34
I think we have just really covered a ton today. And we we just want to say last little wrap up here is we've been getting emails from people all over the country who work in rescues and in shelters, or volunteer in shelters, saying that you're listening and suggesting topics and we just love those because when we're just sitting here recording, we have no idea if anyone's really listen. And so hearing that this actually is helping people and changing the lives of people and dogs is really satisfying and makes us keep going because that's our goal. So if you like what we're doing, you know, follow us subscribe. Follow us on social media, tell your friends but also drop us a line because it really does help us you know, feel like okay, this is this is worth arranging our day and doing doing because someone's actually listening and finding value. You know,
Libby 31:32
we love connecting with our listeners. So if you want to get in touch with us reach out on social or email us pod to the [email protected] Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate and review and helps other folks like you find the show. To find out more about our programming and adoptable rescue dogs. You can visit summit dog rescue.org thanks to Mike pesci for the original music and to Alex Lee Ammons and for the love media for graphics production and editing. See you soon on pod to the rescue.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai