Maybe It's Not The Dog Ep139

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Chrissy Neumyer Smith: Episode 1 39 of the podcast. The problem may not be the dog. This week we'll talk about the kinds of things that we as groomers owners and other pet pros do that can actually teach dogs to hate grooming

You are listening to the Creating Great Grooming Dogs podcast. I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith. I'm a certified professional groomer, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a certified professional dog trainer and the owner of Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire. And this my friends and colleagues, is the podcast where grooming and training meet.

Is the dog the problem? The dog is just being a dog. So they're communicating that they're scared or that they're uncomfortable, or that they're worried or they're frustrated. There are so many emotions they could be trying to communicate to us. Dogs that aren't listened to will continue to try to communicate their feelings and their needs, and they'll do it by increasing all of the behaviors that they're doing.

So, for example, if putting the brakes on and sitting instead of walking on leash. Isn't working. They may increase that message by lying down or cowering on the floor or by actively pulling away from you, and often that's pulling toward the door where they saw their owner Last. Another example, a groomer goes to trim nails and the dog tries to keep their foot from being picked up.

This one happens a lot, and then the foot is forced up anyway. So the dog responds by pulling back or flailing around like a trout on a line, or by threatening with a growl or with their teeth. Should we be surprised? That's the question for today. Should we be surprised? Because when we know that a dog is uncomfortable and we keep pushing without trying to help them.

We should expect them to continue to try to tell us they're uncomfortable. And here comes the thing that you guys hear on the podcast an awful lot. Here it comes. We should be trying to help them be calm, comfortable, and cooperative. We should expect them to make their message bigger, louder, stronger, and more obvious if we're ignoring all of their signals that they're uncomfortable.

Now, what about this scenario? This one happens a lot. A dog is wiggling away from you and trying to get away. And we, the groomer, or the owner or another dog pro respond by holding them tighter. So the dog's trying to wiggle to get away, and we're responding by holding them tighter. And we give maybe that stern no or a stern.

You stop that. So what should we expect in this scenario? The dog is communicating that they're uncomfortable. And we're communicating that we don't like that, that things are going to get worse, that we're going to keep pushing and this is going to continue to escalate. Because that's what we can expect from a dog who's telling us they're uncomfortable.

It's the natural flow of this interaction, and it plays out all the time. It happens in owners' homes. It happens with the dog walker. It happens at the vet's office. It happens at grooming shops. It's such a common occurrence for us to miss this. And why do we find ourselves surprised when the dog continues to escalate, when the dog continues to make?

More drama, be more dramatic about all of their ways of telling us they're uncomfortable. And I think we find ourselves surprised because so many dogs allow us to groom them with very few problems. And let's just take a moment and think about how truly remarkable it is. That so many dogs are so good without needing any real big help.

You would expect them to all have some problems with it. I would, right? Don't you expect them to all be a little bit ner nervous, all be a little bit scared, a little bit uncomfortable? That's why we're so cautious with new puppies and with their first grooming experience to help them feel comfortable with it.

But many, many dogs are perfectly fine. And that's where we get this false sense of security that like what he just, he'll be fine. He just needs to get past this. Now let's take this example away from the grooming setting. Let's step away from the grooming setting for a moment and into a different setting.

Now let's imagine that a person, just a random Joe, wants to pet a random dog. This happens all the time. So the stranger wants to pet a strange dog, and the dog shows that they're uncomfortable. Maybe they just move away or hide behind the owner. Maybe they growl, maybe they bark and lunge forward. There are lots of ways that a dog may express that they're uncomfortable.

Now imagine this random person, this stranger just keeps coming at the dog, just won't take no for an answer. What can we expect from the dog? We can expect them to make the message bigger. Louder, more obvious. Think about it from the dog's point of view, and I realize I'm being anthropomorphic, but they're trying to send us signals to please stop back off.

I'm uncomfortable and they think we're pretty dumb. Like, wow, they really don't understand. So I'll make that bigger. I'll make it louder. I'm gonna try harder to get you to leave me alone. Now, when it's a random stranger and a random dog, you know, they don't know each other. There's no purpose for them to be meeting.

Most of us would say, why are they provoking that dog? Right? Think about that. That's provoking a dog. Yet in other situations we don't always see it. Now, here's another example, because as a dog owner, my last dog was kind of a shy girl and there were plenty of times I had to tell people to get away from my dog.

She was a little bit shy, she was a little bit scared of strangers. And what did she need? If people wanted to pet her, she needed them to take a few moments to help her be. Calm, comfortable, and cooperative. There were those three C's. Again, it's not that she wouldn't necessarily accept them, just that random strangers just running over to pet her was pretty horrific.

And I, I've told plenty of strangers, listen, if you need a hug, I'll hug you, but my dog isn't interested and she's not a toy and she's not here to make you happy. So we need to think about that in other situations. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. This dog is showing you that they're uncomfortable.

Now again, dog training, right? We want dogs to be comfortable. We want them to feel comfortable. We wanna be able to help them with the training part so that they can function and do the things that are going to happen in their life. But you know what? I don't think that being hugged by strangers in the woods is something my dog needed to learn to do.

So I didn't teach her that. No. That's my example as an owner. Here's another example as a trainer, so I talk to a lot of owners about setting boundaries with their kids and interfering on their dog's behalf and why? Because kids don't always see discomfort in a dog. They don't always notice that a dog is uncomfortable, and many owners don't notice it.

Either they don't know what to look for, or they feel that a good dog is always going to be happy with anything a kid does. Again, dogs aren't toys. They're not just here for our pleasure. They have feelings and emotions. So a dog may not want a kid yanking on their ears or riding them like a pony, and it's truly remarkable how many dogs allow it.

So we need to think about that, right? In other circumstances, we're like, well, you can't just let the kids climb on 'em. We're aware of boundaries in other aspects of dogs' lives, but we don't always think about it in grooming, and we don't always think about it in vet visits and vet visits, I'm saying non.

Emergency vet visits are going to be different. So anyway, as a trainer, talking people through how they can help their kids understand the dog doesn't like that. We're not gonna do things that he doesn't like. Maybe an owner, an adult owner, can touch their dogs anywhere and do anything. But we're not gonna put kids in a situation where they could get hurt because they're pushing a dog's boundaries.

So outside the grooming setting or the veterinary setting. We see that pushing dogs who are uncomfortable is a bad idea because that's how we provoke a dog. It's picking a fight, and it's really not the dog's fault, right? A dog that's giving you warnings. If that dog hasn't physically hurt you yet by sinking teeth into your skin, that dog is giving you warnings.

And most of the dogs that we work with are giving so many warnings, and we call those warnings, behavior problems. They're part of the problem. Certainly. We don't want like, oh, well, he's just giving me warnings. Like, that's okay. No, we need to teach him to be comfortable with it, but. It's not really the dogs that are the problem.

I'm gonna say. I think we have to remember that while we have a job to do, we also need to have professional animal handling skills. We need to be aware of a dog that is uncomfortable and that grooming needs are lifelong grooming needs. This isn't a one-off. It's not like a, a problem that is only gonna crop up once in this dog's life.

Like, oh no, he got porcupine quills in his nose. Let's you know, do whatever we have to do in this moment. It's an emergency and let's get it done. This is dog grooming. We are recommending every four to six weeks for a dog's entire life. So we need to be thinking about the big picture and we need to be thinking about helping them be calm, comfortable, and cooperative.

And I know you may be thinking, I'm not a random person and I'm not a stranger. I have a dog job to do. And it's for this dog's health. It's in this dog's best interest, and that's true. What I'm suggesting is that we spend time teaching dogs to be comfortable with it, that we stick to the three Cs, calm, comfortable, and cooperative.

We watch for the problems that they're having if they start becoming uncomfortable, and we address it at the moment that we spend the time. Okay. You seem uncomfortable with that. Why are you uncomfortable with that? Let's take a look. Let's take a closer look and help you be comfortable with it, because if we stick to the three C's, calm, comfortable, and cooperative, even though that in itself isn't a training program, it's good animal handling, and we can make progress during each and every grooming session.

That's the goal. It's not about, oh, well maybe next time we'll do it. Or if he becomes too hard to handle, we're gonna go ahead and start working with him on this. No, we need to make progress right then in that moment. And it's a different mindset because I want you to start thinking about long-term goals, not the trim today.

And that's why it's important to have a safety policy, and that's why it's important to talk to our owners and have our owners on board that if your dog is having trouble, we're gonna calm 'em down and we're gonna try to help your dog be comfortable with it. This is not an emergency, and while grooming needs are super important, they're part of healthcare, we can also prioritize what needs to be done.

And let go of some of the structure and some of the need to get everything done today. There's nothing saying that this dog has to be completed right now. So watch for signs of discomfort, watch for signs that they're frustrated or they're scared, or they're worried, or they're trying to get away from you, or cowering or screaming, and just think about how can I help you calm down because otherwise.

You're like the little kid that's chased grandma's dog underneath the kitchen table, and we all wonder why that dog bit. Think about it. Think about it. In any other setting, we would say you provoked the dog. But in the grooming setting, we're like, he has behavior problems. It's not really the dog. It's our responsibility to have professional animal handling skills.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please remember to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes and tell all of your friends. Let's play a little game for a second. Now, let's imagine that we were trying to teach dogs to hate grooming. What might we do? Hmm. Now, the purpose of asking this is for us to start looking at the kind of things that we do and ask ourselves if we're making our problems worse.

This episode's all about is the dog the problem? Because I'm not convinced that the dog is the problem. So let's talk about what would we do if we wanted dogs to really hate grooming? What might we do? Well, we might do some common things that I hear owners doing and people having owners do such as, well, you know, he really doesn't like having the clippers near his face, so I'm gonna send him home and the owners are gonna use an electric toothbrush and just get him used to having that around his head, that vibration and that feeling on his head, but without all of the instructions.

What happens is the owners go home and teach him to hate that by holding his head, still telling him what a bad dog he is, and rubbing him all over with an electric toothbrush that he finds scary, overwhelming, frustrating, uncomfortable, and they just hold on and ride it out. Like they're bull riding.

We're just gonna hold it on there and let the rodeo start. Right? And I think we've seen groomers do this. We've certainly seen other dog professionals do this. I have done this, right? When I say we do this as an industry, I've been there, I have definitely done this. And the idea is, oh, well if he figures out it doesn't hurt, you know, then he'll be okay.

Fear isn't about just if it hurts. Frustration isn't about just if something hurts, plenty of things tick me off. That did not physically hurt me. Think about that for a moment. People can become anxious using human examples. Now, people can become anxious even if there is no chance of physical harm. If you're afraid to go on stage and talk to people.

Something that I'm thinking about right now because I'm gonna be teaching at Groom Expo, gotta prepare myself for being up in front of people live. But if you're afraid of something like that, it's not because you're afraid it's going to physically hurt. That's not the only thing that we have to think about.

So when we start thinking that a dog's going to be better for it because he's going to figure out that it doesn't hurt, what we're actually doing is we're tormenting the dog and pushing their boundaries. Just like I was saying before, you're kind of picking a fight and then like, oh no, it's not helping.

The clearer message is. If we want to help them feel comfortable with it, and we send owners home with instructions, we need to make sure that the owners know the purpose is to never bring him to the point where he's uncomfortable, and not because we're new agey, granola, crunchy, wishy-washy, but because discomfort and causing more discomfort is not gonna help him be comfortable with it.

Hmm, let's ponder that for a minute. We don't wanna teach 'em to hate it and not bite us and behave anyway, right? That's not a great message. We want 'em to teach 'em to be comfortable with it and hold still because it's not scary. So we can't do that by scaring him. So if we start thinking in terms of helping them be comfortable with it, then we need to figure out what part they have trouble with.

Is it having something near their head? Is it vibration? Is it sound? Is it the combination of all of those things? Is it only near their eye? So we need to think about that. We need to make that clear. And when we do send something home with owners, we need to make sure that they know if you're doing it right.

It's about as interesting as watching paint dry. The dog does not respond with fear. If they're responding fearfully, we're not doing it right. The purpose is to teach them to be comfortable with it, not to put up with things that are uncomfortable. Because our long-term goal is 15 years worth of grooming once a month, and that's a long time, and that's a lot of time to be afraid or a lot of time to get over it and just feel like this is safe.

So if I really wanted a dog to hate having clippers near his head, what might I do? Just keep putting clippers near his head and fighting with him about it, and it's what we accidentally do. And sometimes I think about rattlesnake avoidance training that some trainers do where something bad happens every time there's a rattlesnake nearby.

Not the way I prefer to train, though. I don't live someplace with rattlesnakes, so I can't be super judgy about that. But you know, they're trying to teach an animal, this is dangerous. Never ever go near it. And we actually use some of those procedures accidentally. In grooming, in vet visits, like, well, let's just dive bomb you with the thing that you hate and keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it until you run away or until we can't handle you anymore, until you're so over the top that we have to stop.

That's not a good message, and it happens all the time. We need to calm down. We need to help them settle down and be okay with it. Because when a dog is comfortable with something, then we can add follow instructions. Comfortable first, follow instructions second. Now let's come up with some other ideas on ways that we accidentally teach dogs to hate things.

Here's one. So let's say you're holding a foot. And you need to get the nails done. The dog's pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling, and you're like clamping down harder and the dog's pulling harder and you're clamping down harder and, and you clip those nails because frankly, if you can get it done despite their behavior problem, I just don't think it's the right way to do it.

My personal opinion. Kind of what I present across the entire show, but that's my trainer point of view. Instead of just getting it done, we should be teaching them to be good, but we could just physically push them past. And then what happens? So let's say that fight's happening. We're pulling. They're pulling.

We're pulling their pulling. And like snip, snip, snip, snip. Fourth toes done, we let go. And that dog yanks away from us. What did we teach the dog in that moment? Fight as hard as you can until they let go. We didn't teach 'em anything about being calm. That literally is teaching them to fight harder. So as a parallel to that idea, there's something that we do in, um, flyball.

So I compete with Flyball with my guys, and it's a pretty common warmup. It's actually part of our basics for teaching a dog to run really fast away from you is a restrained recall. So someone else holds your dog and they're holding them back while you run away and call them to you, and by the time they let go, your dog.

Usually, or often, or the goal that we're looking for is to rock it away from that person as fast as they can because holding them back, holding them back, holding them back while they pull against them and then letting go is super exciting and rewarding. So let's again think about what happens when we're holding onto a foot or we're drying an ear and a dog is flailing and they're, we're drying an ear and then we decide we are done with what needed to be done and we just stop.

And the dog feels like they have escaped, feels like they have escaped, is literally teaching them that fighting was really effective Fighting. Worked. Fighting is something worth doing again. So what I'm suggesting instead is avoiding that fight altogether. A dog that's pulling away from you. Double check.

Are they uncomfortable? You will be surprised how many dogs if you pause for a moment and figure out, does this dog have any issues with standing on this other back leg? Is this dog's leg is a weird angle? Do they just need to get their balance? Let's just give 'em a chance to get their balance and reposition and try again.

How many dogs are like, oh, that's exactly what I needed. You would be surprised how many dogs, that's all they needed was just to get their balance. Maybe have their leg pulled out in a different direction, or maybe not quite as high, or maybe bring them over to the edge of the table so that you have a little bit more room in their leg can dangle pretty naturally.

It really is not always a dog who's trying to pull against us. So first of all, we're gonna try to avoid the, the fight to begin with. Avoid the fight. Try if you can. But if they are pulling, restore, calm, see if you can get them to calm down, it's going to be a lifestyle change. It's a very different mindset from what many of us were taught.

I say us because I was not taught this way either. So think about if I want this dog to be calm, then I need to help them calm down. I am gonna calm 'em down. If they're pulling against me, I'm not gonna continue trying to do what I was doing. If they're pulling against me, if they're thrashing and flopping around like a trou on a line, that's not how we're gonna get things done.

That's literally teaching them to hate it. So if we calm them down, calm them down, and maybe not even go for it. Get them calm. Set that foot down, calm again. Lift the foot up again. Do one nail while calm. Put the foot down, pick up the foot, do a second nail while they're calm, it's all about trying to help them be calm, comfortable, and cooperative.

And that's part of our animal handling skills, and we need to be thinking about the long-term goal. Because later in life some of these dogs are gonna have health problems that are gonna make them really cranky, that are going to be uncomfortable all the time. And we need them to know that they're safe with us and that we're gonna try to make them comfortable.

And that if they're a little bit uncomfortable, they don't need to freak out on us, that they can just like wiggle a little bit and we're going to listen. And that's how these dogs. That we work with over time can adapt and realize that this is safe. So sometimes it's not the dog. Very often, it's not the dog, it's our handling skills, and it's the way that we push dogs past what they're comfortable with.