Habituation and Watching the World Go By with Irith Bloom

Join Victoria and Irith Bloom as they explore habituation, stress coping skills for animals, and how to effectively use these techniques in training and behavior modification. Irith shares insights on non-associative learning, practical applications, and her upcoming certification program, Carefree Companion.

• Solve reactivity with Victoria's powerful course on Positively.com: Help! Stop Reactivity. Learn more & enroll here.

• Launch or level up your career as a professional dog trainer with the Victoria Stilwell Academy. Learn more here.

• Launch or level up your career as a professional dog trainer with the Victoria Stilwell Academy. Learn more here.

• Solve behavior problems and find tools to help live your best dog life at Positively.com.

Transcript

Copy

Victoria (00:08)
You've heard her on the podcast before. She's back. It is Irith Bloom. we love her. She is a Victoria Stilwell Positively Dog Trainer, VSPDT. She's a dog trainer, behavior consultant. She is the founder of the sophisticated dog in Los Angeles. She is a teacher, a speaker, and she spoke about her b habituation at the dog behavior conference. And she's also got a really exciting.

New project called Carefree Companion, an advanced certification program for animal professionals. I'm looking at your website now. It's absolutely gorgeous. And it it brings together your combined experience with Christina Spaulding, which is is it fifty come on, fifty years. That's so you're far too young for that. between the two of you. Yeah, no, no, that's absolutely

Irith (01:00)
Well, it's between the two of us. Yes.

Victoria (01:05)
but the goal of the program is to help animals living with people learn better stress coping skills. It's inspired by Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, a program developed for humans who experience a decreased quality of life as a result of difficulty regulating their emotions and behavior. Okay, so this is very exciting. And I know that you've got a cohort because Christina was talking a little bit about it.

that you've got a cohort starting in June. registration is open in June for it to start in September. So for people who are going, ooh, I'd like to do that, can you tell us a little bit more about it?

Irith (01:47)
So, this is a program that, as you mentioned, is really designed around the idea of stress coping skills for animals who seem to have difficulty regulating their emotions and regulating their stress levels in sort of everyday life. And what we do is we teach the humans skills that help support the animals in these situations. And of course, we also have.

Animal skills that these humans are teaching to the animals they live with. The idea is if we can get the human and the animal communicating well and teach the animal a whole new set of ways to cope with the environment, then they are easier to live with, they experience more joy in their life, that joy spreads to the whole household. So it's really about reducing stress for everybody in the household on.

Every level. Now, the actual program is designed for advanced professionals. This is not a beginner program. We presume that people have a certain level of knowledge. We're not going to be teaching you basic learning theory. We assume you're going to walk in knowing that. And if you go to our application, you're going to see that some of the questions in the application have to do with basic learning theory. But

Victoria (03:06)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Irith (03:09)
what we're going to do is we're going to help.

Professionals level up their ability to interact effectively with clients, to help their clients teach the skills to the animals that they live with, because in the end, we don't live with the animals, right? It's the clients who are living with the animals and need to have these skills. And our job as professionals is to help clients learn and convey those skills.

Both, you know, the skills that they themselves as handlers need to have, like how do you hold a leash well? What do you do when your dog starts to panic? Those are human skills, right? And also teaching the horse or parrot or cat or whatever animal it might be skills that are gonna be useful for them in these challenging situations. We've got the program set up so that it's very customizable. There's a one-to-one element.

That allows students to focus in on specific goals that are important for them, things that either are going to benefit their business or are going to allow them to achieve some other kind of dream or goal that they've had. And we have live calls, we have recorded lectures. People do have to work, there's assignments and a lot of work involved, but it's

Highly interactive, and we do everything we can to support learners, which means you know being inclusive to any learning style, challenges that people have in learning. As long as you have the fundamental knowledge, we really do encourage people to try this program because it's going to help you help your clients more effectively. And in the end, what we want is for more animal professionals to be able to help.

Clients effectively so that they don't burn out, the animal professionals, I mean, don't burn out, because then we're all going to be able to help so many more animals. So I'll sort of say, like, as the sort of little catch, like if you feel like you might be burning out a little, if you feel like working with clients is really exhausting at times, Carefree Companion will help you with that.

If you're watching animals struggle and you're trying to find better ways to help them cope with their stress, Carefree Companion will help with that. We are really a sort of I there's a word for this, I just can't come up with the adjective right now, but we're sort of a a a global, we're thinking globally, if you will, about

Victoria (05:49)
Yeah.

Irith (05:50)
the well-being of animals and the humans who live with them.

Victoria (05:56)
Fantastic. So for anybody listening here, if you are interested, it is carefreecompanion.com.

Irith (06:05)
Yes.

Victoria (06:05)
That they should go there and they can find more information. Fantastic. Well, I know that that w is going to be an amazing course. So I always encourage like I mean it's a Irith Bloom and Christina Spaulding. Seriously, come on. Like, come on. You gotta do it.

Irith (06:22)
Thank you.

Victoria (06:24)
okay now.

You spoke at the DBC and again we've had a lot of our D B C B speakers back because they had so many questions that they couldn't get to, because we give you like twenty to thirty minutes for questions. But when you get like a re I don't know, thirty-five questions? When you get that many questions, you can't get to it in twenty minutes. So that's why we'll

kind of give like an overview of what habituation is and watching the world go by, and then I'm going to ask you some of these questions. So I take a mean of the questions and I will ask you some of the of the ones that I I think that people are asking more and want to, you know, stuff that is not going to be too long for you to answer. So first of all, you're talking about habituation.

And for people because we do have a lot of regular just dog lovers listening to this podcast, not just trainers or prof other professionals, what is habituation?

Irith (07:30)
So habituation is a form of what's called non-associative learning. I'm not going to get too deep into the details, but associative learning is things like operant conditioning and classical conditioning, which a lot of you have probably heard about, which is basically something happens and then something else happens, and the two things are consistently associated, and learning takes place. Like after the click, there's always a treat, therefore the click is a good thing. Or

When I ask you to sit, if you sit, then I feed you a treat. So sitting earns treats. Those are associations. But there's also non-associative learning. And it's something that I think we tend to downplay and sometimes even overlook as we're working with animals. And that's a kind of learning that happens when there isn't a consistent sequence or a consistent association. So I'm sitting in my room and a firework goes off.

And then some random thing happens afterwards, like maybe my phone rings. And then a few minutes later, because my neighbors are being unsafe during fire season and firing off fireworks, another firework goes off. But this time the phone doesn't ring and nothing actually happens. And then maybe a third firework goes off, and that time my doorbell rings. So there's no consistent, like when there's a firework, this happens. And yet.

What animals will do is they will become more sensitive or less sensitive to the sound of the firework. So for me, as a human who doesn't have an issue with noises in general, the third time the firework goes off, I'm probably not even gonna notice it. my stupid neighbor's at it again. And you know, I just hope they don't start a fire, is probably all that I'm gonna think. But for someone who's maybe sensitive to sounds, or if I have a dog in my household who's sensitive to noises,

They might be jumping higher each of those times. And that's not because somebody punished them in some way. And it's not because somebody gave them a treat or something after the firework. They just are for a non-associative reason. They are learning that the fireworks are more scary. They're becoming more sensitive. So that's sort of non-associative learning in a nutshell. Now the

I'm becoming less sensitive option, which I described, where by the third time I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever firework. Maybe

Victoria (10:01)
Mm-hmm.

Irith (10:02)
the first one, I'm like, why are they setting off fireworks? And the second time, they're doing it again. The third time, like, yeah, I'm not even gonna notice. By the fourth time, I just keep typing the email I'm in the middle of and don't even look up. That's habituation, where I slowly learn that it's not a big deal and life can go on as planned.

So that's habituation in a sorta nutshell.

Victoria (10:27)
Yeah, and and I love it. And I always use the example of when I moved into an apartment. It was a lovely apartment with a huge, great big garden, but it was right next to the railway line. And this was a a relatively well busy commuter railway line. And I'm telling you, those trains ran until about two o'clock in the morning. And so while I was trying to sleep, I would hear the train.

And it would wake me up. And then I would just be dropping back to sleep again. And then the train ca and then the train and then and it drove me crazy. It drove me so mad that I slept in the bath. In the bathroom. Because it was the only room that had no windows. And so I could shut the door and not really hear. So I slept in the bath. I mean, are you serious?

Irith (11:19)
Wow.

Victoria (11:20)
But then I decided, all right.

This is getting a little much. I really want to sleep in my lovely bedroom that overlooks the garden. I chose this place. Get on with it. So I the tr after I was there for about a week, I I k had been so affected by it. I no longer hardly heard those trains. They came by s so I feel like right at the beginning it really got me.

And then because it happened a lot and it was quite consistent and actually very predictable and the sound of it almost became when I did focus on it, became something that was familiar.

So I feel like I in the end habituated to the trains. And then after that I didn't really hear them anymore. And people will come visit and go, Wow, that train's loud and I go, What? Train.

Irith (12:23)
Mm.

Victoria (12:25)
That's habituation.

Irith (12:25)
I

yes, and I really love that you used the word it be the the phrase it became familiar. I mean that's that's sort of it in a nutshell. You know, the first time you see, I don't know, a motorcycle, like, whoa, that's interesting. What in the world is that? And you might pay attention to it. But then after a while,

You don't even notice because it becomes familiar. I think that's such a beautiful way of phrasing it. I'm going to steal that. It becomes familiar. I love it.

Victoria (12:56)
Yeah, no, please steal it. Yeah,

yeah, it does. And I really I I have never forgotten that. And because I'm such a light sleeper, it's something that when I moved to New York City at the end of my twenties, I was able to cope better. Because, you know, that truly is a very busy place. And if you are sensitive to noise there, don't move to New York City. Just do not. Do not.

Irith (13:24)
Yeah, and what's

really interesting, I will say, about the New York thing is the flip thing also happens. You become so used to, because I've I've lived in New York, you become so used to the traffic, just it it's constant. New York, you know, they say it's the city that never sleeps. It really never sleeps. There's always something going on. And then you go out to the countryside where there's no noise at night.

Victoria (13:46)
You're right. Freaky.

Irith (13:49)
And it's

I can't sleep. There's not there's no noise. What is happening?

Yeah.

Victoria (13:56)
Yeah, yeah,

I absolutely. I definitely have experienced that. So, okay, I'm going to this might seem an odd question, but I think it's relevant. When we leave our dogs in the house, let's say there's lots of different noises, and the dogs are not bothered by the noise, the television or the creaky stare or the this, whatever. They're not it just they they're habituated now to these sounds because they hear them so much.

However, when the family go out, now the sounds that they have heard all the time take on a new meaning. It's like when you're alone in the house and it's at night. And you hear these noises, you hear these noises when your partner's there and when your kids are there. But when you're by yourself, now you're hearing these noises, they take on a different meaning. Could those, could that,

be contributing, especially when we leave our dogs by themselves. Could this be contributing to some of the challenges dogs have when they're home alone?

Irith (15:04)
I think yes. And it's interesting that you mention this because as I expect you know, but maybe not everyone listening knows, there is a correlation. That doesn't mean it's a causation, it just means that there is a it commonly you see two things together. We don't know which one's causing the other or if either one is even causing the other, but you see it together a lot. What you see is separation anxiety and sound sensitivity in the same

Animals. And I think that there's definitely an effect in there. And I think it has, I think both things, both separation anxiety, and sound sensitivity, in that context, have to do with a sense of safety. When we feel safe, we're much more likely to say, yeah, whatever, it's not important. But if we don't feel safe, which I think is true.

When you're alone, you feel less safe than when there's a group of people with you.

Victoria (16:04)
Mm-hmm.

Irith (16:05)
I mean, assuming it's a group of people who are, you know, kind and friendly and supportive and all the good

Victoria (16:09)
Right right.

Irith (16:10)
things. When there's a group of people with you, you kind of figure, hey, there's eight of us, we can handle it. When you're all alone, you don't have that literal safety net, right? It's sort of literal safety net.

And so I think that the same thing is very likely to happen to our dogs. And this may be part of the explanation of why some dogs who have separation anxiety and other animals, because it happens in cats, it happens in horses, it happens in a lot of different species, social species. I think for some of them, that's why if there's just one other animal, it doesn't really matter what animal it is. It could be a human, it could be a dog, it could be a cat, it could be a rack.

Raccoon, don't bring raccoons in your house. I don't know why I just thought of raccoons, but it could be, you know,

Victoria (16:55)
No.

Irith (16:58)
anything. Then they feel more comfortable being left alone. And I think that probably ties into that sense of safety. And then again, I'm not alerting to every noise because I've got my buddy here. And things are gonna be okay.

Victoria (17:13)
Yep. I am such again, because I am pretty sound sensitive. I'm definitely one of those people that are like, I hear the sounds at night when I'm by myself. If I don't have my dogs there, if there's nobody there, I'm not gonna sleep as well. I'm just not. I might be half asleep, but I'm I'm waiting, right? For those weird ghosties and ghoulies to come get me, and your mind

Irith (17:36)
Yeah.

Victoria (17:36)
starts playing tricks and everything, you start to hear noises and every little it's it's it's

Yeah, anyway, and and I've always wondered if there is that correlation between separation anxiety, noise sensitivity.

Irith (17:50)
It seems really, I mean, we do know there's a lot of data to suggest a correlation between the two. We don't know what the connection is. So everything that

Victoria (17:59)
Yeah.

Irith (17:59)
we've been talking about, we're just theorizing. We don't really have, you know, proof. I'm making little quotation marks here.

Victoria (18:06)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right.

Irith (18:09)
And I mean, the other thing is I think it's really good for us to remember as humans when we hear that noise, when we are alone and we hear that noise.

You often go from being sort of relaxed and half asleep to wide awake and on alert. So it does it puts a lot of stress into your system and then it's no wonder that our companion animals who are being left alone then start to panic because the stress just builds.

Victoria (18:37)
And it's one of the things that we address in the shelter zones approach when it comes to noise in shelters, and especially noises at night, and how can we help our dogs actually habituate better to to the noises that they are experiencing in the shelters? are there ways? But I I'm kind of getting a little bit I know we're not really talking about shelters here, but

Irith (19:00)
Yes,

but I do want to plug the sound sensitivity series from I don't remember what they call themselves these days, th Through a dogs. Yep. Yes.

Victoria (19:07)
Through the well, they were through a dog's ear and now they're Icon Pet. And so we had

the canine noise phobia series with I can't pet and through a dog's ear. and yeah, it was really it was really great. So that fabulous bioacoustic music that that threw a dog's ear. I mean, it just helped so many dogs in shelters and

Yeah, and I know there's so much more to it, but okay, so I have some questions for you. And okay. gosh, there's so many questions, and I've like I've bolded some of the ones that I want, but we've already spoken about it. So now I've like now I've put myself out of kilter, sorry.

Irith (19:53)
Ha ha ha ha.

Victoria (19:56)
okay.

So

In

fact, before I ask the questions, 'cause I think this probably be more appropriate, could you first of all say what is watching the world go by?

Irith (20:16)
All right, so watching the world go by is a way to, as we say in Behavior Geek Speak, operationalize habituation. What that means is it's a way for you to practice habituation in sort of a structured way with the animals that you live with. And the name kind of says it all watching the world go by. What you do very briefly is you set up somewhere.

Where things are happening around you, but you're far enough away from them or they're low enough intensity that the animal you're with is not startling or panicking. It's okay if they notice it, you know, if a motorcycle goes by, like I said, whoa, motorcycle going by. It's an interesting thing to look at. But if they're scared of motorcycles, the motorcycle's very close, and then they

jump up and start to run away or jump up and start chasing it, it's too close. So what we're looking for is we're looking for a distance where they notice things are happening, but they don't overreact in any way. Reacting is normal. Seeing something and saying, it's there is normal. What we don't want is that panic, that fear, those bigger emotions that sometimes come with noticing things.

And the key here is you want to make sure that you are well under whatever that sort of overreaction threshold is because we're not using food. And the reason we're not using food is that food can be a distraction, food can mask big emotional responses

Victoria (21:59)
Yeah.

Irith (21:59)
in some cases. It sort of muddies the water. And I think that one of the issues in behavior work these days is that.

At some point we became very over-reliant on food. I'm not saying food is bad. I'm not saying

Victoria (22:14)
Mm. Nope.

Irith (22:16)
never use food. But I think where anything involving sort of fear or over excitement is involved, getting the food out of the picture so you can really see where the animal is truly comfortable is really, really helpful. And so in watching the world go by, what you do is you find that comfort zone and you just hang out in it for a while.

And maybe initially your animal can only watch what's going on for a minute before their emotions start to rise. That's fine. Stop after a minute. Go somewhere else, well away from all the interesting and exciting things. But over time you can build up so that you're just sitting in a space with the animal who's in your care and allowing the world to happen. And the animal is allowing the world to happen. And the two of you are just kind of being zen and in the moment.

Victoria (23:08)
You're hanging out.

Irith (23:09)
You're not, yeah, you're hanging out. You're not, you're

not particularly, you're not playing a game. You're not like, I'm petting

Victoria (23:14)
Mm.

Irith (23:15)
you and this is our big cuddle time. You're just sitting beside each other, allowing the world to unfold, noticing things, maybe zoning out some of the time, just hanging out together. No food, no particular activity. And what I've found with watching the world go by is that.

My clients who do this consistently, my clients and students who do this consistently start to see all these gains in other things going on in their lives with their animals because the animals now have the capacity to say, I'm familiar with that, to take Vic's marvelous phrase. Thank you, Victoria. I'm

Victoria (23:55)
Ha ha ha

Irith (23:56)
familiar with that and I'm relaxed about that. And so I don't need to panic about it. And

This is, I'll make one more point about non-associative learning and then we'll get to the questions, which is we think of non-associative learning sometimes as being completely separate from associative learning, but in fact, the things that we learn non-associatively are going to affect how our associative learning happens. If I'm panicked about trains, then that's going to affect my ability to learn how to sit.

When you feed me a treat for sitting, if there's a train going by. If I'm relaxed about trains, I'm going to be in a better position to learn those things. So it really is helpful to just hang out with the animal and let them see I'm breathing calmly, I'm relaxed, we can be relaxed together and stuff happens and we don't have to investigate or panic or get excited or get afraid.

about every little thing that happens.

Victoria (25:01)
One of the things that I learned at drama school, and I'm I've said this a number of times, so sorry if you've heard me say this before, but there's two phrases that my drama teachers use. First one was was do less, because amateur actors tend to do go over the top, and you know, when you are learning to become an actor, it truly is about y you know, your your discovering your character's truth.

so that was do less. And the other one that we learned was just be. Just be. and so thanks to my drama teachers for that. But I see watching the world go by as just being. And there's there's no interruption and you just are. So with Jasmine, my chihuahua, who's unfortunately passed away now,

Irith (25:57)
Yes, so sad.

Victoria (25:59)
one of our favorite activities was just to sit.

on our stoop, on our little stoop and our front door, which is up a hill, and looks out onto a road and then a creek and there's lots of people as a walking path and people walk by. so our favorite and we usually do this after work, we just be go there and sit. Sit on the stoop, literally watch the world go by.

One of the reasons why we started doing it is after Sadie passed away, and gosh, that was two thousand and like seventeen, two thousand and eighteen. my gosh. Jasmine was quite lost without and became very unconfident outside on a walk. Because it had always been the big chocolate brown Labrador and Jasmine, and you know, Sadie was her emotional anchor. They did everything together.

Irith (26:53)
Yeah.

Victoria (26:54)
So when Sadie was no longer here, it was hard for

Jasmine. She didn't want to go for a walk anymore. And and I one of the ways that we got to walking again was A to go at her pace. One of the ways to get her walking again was watching the world go by. And it was just going on our stoop and just saying, Hey, we don't need to walk. We're just gonna hang here. And we're just gonna be. And then after a while, I could see that she was a bit more interested about going a bit further. So we did. And then we just sat on the grass in front.

And then maybe now she wanted to go and discover and have a bit of a sniffy. Okay, we can do that too. So there wasn't any of this I'm gonna coercing with the food. None of that. It was literally no luring, no nothing. It was her making the decision. So for people who might be listening and going, Well, that's seem like to be a great training thing. That's like like where is the training in that?

It is so powerful. And I think, you know, food is still really important, but food can be an interrupter. And in when

Irith (28:08)
Yes.

Victoria (28:08)
it's used in counter conditioning or when it's used during counter conditioning protocols, it can it can interrupt and add in even another pressured layer into what you're doing. Do you see what I mean?

Irith (28:22)
Yes,

yes, really, really well said. And I think that we sometimes the something that you just mentioned that I think gets to the heart of it is you said it was her decision.

Victoria (28:36)
Yes.

Irith (28:37)
And I think something that we sometimes lose sight of is that food can actually take away an animal's agency. Because the food is so relevant and so important to

Victoria (28:48)
Mm.

Irith (28:48)
them that they will do anything to get to the food, including.

Just blasting through a level of fear that they really are uncomfortable with. But the food is even more important. But that doesn't make the fear go away. And when we take that out of the picture, we give them back their agency and we allow them to let us know, now I'm willing to walk a little closer. Yeah.

Victoria (29:10)
Now Emory. Right. Right.

And how wonderful is that? How wonderful. And sometimes we're not saying, again, we're not saying don't use food. Sometimes what we do in the reactivity zones approach is that we will use a a lick magnet. We will, but it's not, we're not using food to build an association with something. We're we're sometimes we use food as an end result. and but it's not layering stuff. The animal doesn't have to do anything for it. And and it it's not.

It's not a relevant piece of what we're doing. But it can be there sometimes if it wants. We're not luring. Okay. So we're gonna take a quick break and after the break I have questions for you. Okay.

Irith (29:53)
Great.

Victoria (29:58)
All right, I am back with a Irith Bloom. We've been talking all things habituation. So fascinating. okay. So a lot of these questions are

To

do with stress and dogs in stressful classroom situations. So if you have a dog that is barking a lot, as some of these attendees are saying, in a class situation, how and is uncomfortable with that environment, can you that's their question, not mine, habituate a dog to that situation?

How do you use the

Irith (30:43)
So

Victoria (30:43)
situation in that situation?

Irith (30:46)
Right. So the I'll I'll start by saying every animal is different, and some animals it may be extremely challenging to use habituation to help them with that situation. But having said that, for most animals, what you need to do is find that level where

They're not having a big emotional reaction at all. And that means you're not just looking for where they're not barking. You're looking for where there's no tension. Their muscles are relaxed. They're not, you know, their face isn't tight. Their body isn't tight. They're not standing up extra tall or shrinking back. Where the body language is neutral. And you can look up, there's great body language resources that show you what a relaxed dog.

or other animal looks like. So you want to find a level, a distance, a location where the tension that you're seeing that's expressing itself in barking, that distress or for that matter, overexcitement that's expressing itself in barking is not just not just no barking is happening, but it's not even close to happening. That

Victoria (32:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Irith (32:07)
might mean

That you park at the far end of the gigantic parking lot for the training facility and just watch other students walk in and out with their dogs. And then as you see that the animal you're with is getting more comfortable, you maybe bring like one of those director's chairs so you can sit, you know, a little camp chair. Move that chair a little closer, sit with your dog a little closer, maybe just drive in for.

A couple of minutes, then go take a walk. And then do another couple minutes and then go take a walk. Take breaks, do whatever you need for the animal to feel really comfortable and slowly work your way towards the building. When you get to the point where you can actually stand right outside the building and watch people coming in and out of that facility, whether it's or or in and out of that field, if this happens to be something like an agility trial situation or an obedience trial situation.

When you get to the point where you can do that, then you start saying to the dog, Well, what if we got on the other side of the fence? Or what if we walked through this doorway into the building and just stayed at the farthest possible place from the class? Could you handle it then? And very gradually, as the animal lets you know, you know what? Yeah, I actually can handle this. You move a little closer. And what you'll probably see, because I see this a lot with watching the world go by, is

The first time you go into a new situation, there's a lot of looking around. And

Victoria (33:41)
Mm.

Irith (33:41)
there's a lot more sort of reacting at a normal level, but still reacting in general. And they tend to build up stress because stress can be cumulative. It doesn't have to be one bad thing happened. If 15 little things happen, that can add up to the same amount of stress as one bad thing. So you may find that at first they can only handle a minute.

Look, I gotta go, I gotta go, I'm starting to stress out. As soon as you see them starting to stress out, you leave. But then what'll happen is the next time, in most cases, you'll see that they can handle an extra 15 seconds or an extra 30 seconds beyond what they did the first time. So you slowly build up that time, start to move in a little closer, you'll have the same cycle again. this is a little much, and then they'll relax into that, move to the next level.

And then they relax into that and just keep moving. And what you'll find is you'll get to that point where you're just outside the building, just outside the field, whatever it is, and they're able to relax. When you move in, odds are there's gonna be a little increase in the stress involved in the situation. That's a really good time to go back to very short time periods. Okay, we're inside the building, let's walk outside the building,

Victoria (34:58)
Mm-hmm.

Irith (34:59)
let's take a walk, let's go back in for a little bit.

But if you're willing to spend, I mean, this is probably depending on the level of barking and the level of stress involved, this is probably going to take you weeks. And that's okay. Because what will ultimately happen, I've had students go through this with me, where over the course of six weeks, we went from I can't walk into the agility practice.

without barking to I can walk into the agility practice and actually pay attention to my human and even do a couple of obstacles. But it worked because we inched it forward in little,

Victoria (35:41)
Yeah.

Irith (35:42)
little tiny increments. So for those of you who are familiar with the concept of lumping versus splitting, lumping is when you take big steps and splitting is when you take tiny steps.

Victoria (35:53)
Yep.

Irith (35:54)
This is a splitting situation. You really, you want to be

If anything, you want your the animal you're with to be bored. And then you take the next step forward.

Victoria (36:05)
Right. be bored. Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. So and and I think I mean, obviously there are some dogs that just do not take well to group classes and that just that just happens. And that's no bad thing. You've just got a dog that doesn't wanna learn in a group class environment. Okay, so

Irith (36:25)
Yeah.

Victoria (36:25)
now you pivot and you think about doing something different. having like a two dogs class or just have a one to one.

Private session. So it's it's not a bad thing if your dog says, you know what, that is not my deal. I don't want to deal with that.

Irith (36:42)
Yeah, and I think

it it's such an excellent point that you're bringing up is we have this tendency to think this is how it's supposed to look. You're a dog, you're supposed to like X, Y, Z, A, B, and C. But many of our dogs prefer G or And they're not really fans of X, Y, Z, A, B, C. And that's okay. You know, we don't all have to love, I'm trying to think of I actually do love this, but we don't all have to love ballroom dancing. If you don't think ballroom dancing is the best thing in the world, fine.

You don't have to do ballroom dancing. Find something else that brings you joy or achieves what that goal is about. And it's the same

Victoria (37:18)
I think

Irith (37:19)
for our dogs.

Victoria (37:20)
yeah, and a lot of people have this kind of idea of them frolicking in the fields with their dogs and the wildflowers and it's all fabulous and you have the best relationship and your dog sleeps on your bed and it's just the it's the best. And the reality of living with dogs isn't always like that. I mean, most of the time I'd say maybe not, unless you do have that wonderful feel that you can go frolic with your dog and the weather's always beautiful and it's always rainbows and butterflies.

living with another species, I mean, living with our own species can be difficult. Living with another species can be can be really challenging for both of you. And so I always tell people, and and I used to tell people that, you know, have patience. But I I realized that actually when you tell somebody, have, you know, be a bit more patient, some people don't really like that.

They're like, I'm really, I'm trying to be as patient as I can. So now I've kind of gone to saying, give yourself time. Give yourself

Irith (38:27)
I love that.

Victoria (38:29)
time. And that means that you're not saying, well, you better be patient. Come on now. Have some patience. No, it's give yourself time. And when you give people, you say that to people, it's not so, it's not demanding, it's not pressurizing.

It's just, okay. Thank you. You understand what I'm going through too. So

Irith (38:54)
And that's such

an excellent point and such a good part of how to interact with people more productively, right? I want to help them. I don't want to make them feel attacked or shut down. And I love that. Give yourself time. It's beautiful.

Victoria (39:08)
Yeah,

yeah, and I think we all need to do that. Okay. So, right. When if you are using treats, if you are using food, how can you best use it? Do you just use it at the end of something?

Irith (39:28)
So it tip mm.

Victoria (39:28)
So when you move,

like an after you've done the movement, can you use food? Like when when could you use it?

Irith (39:36)
So, in a watching the world go by context, which is what I'm assuming we're specifically focusing on,

Victoria (39:39)
Yeah. Yes. I think so, yeah.

Irith (39:42)
I would only use food after I've left the context. So, in so let's imagine that I'm I'm sitting at my safe distance. I'm just gonna stick to motorcycles. I'm sitting at my safe distance from motorcycles, and all of a sudden somebody actually comes up the sidewalk with some kind of motorized.

you know, moped, motorbike, whatever it might be, and now they're gonna be way too close to me. At that point, you know, what they say about discretion is the better part of valor, like run away. That is fine, run away. And then after you run away, feel free to feed that animal 10 treats in a row, because that was a weird scenario. But the first thing we need to do is give them back that sense of safety. Because what's the motorcycle coming at them doing it takes away their sense of safety.

Victoria (40:32)
Yeah.

Irith (40:32)
And if I'm feeling unsafe and you're shoving pieces of chocolate flowerless chocolate cake into my mouth, I'm I have I'm allergic to gluten. I have celiac disease. Anyway, so I I love I love flourless chocolate cake.

Victoria (40:41)
Stilwell chocolate cake. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Irith (40:45)
That's great. But if I'm terrified, it's gonna taste like ashes. It's not gonna do me any good. However, if you take me away from the scenario, give me a second to sort of catch my breath. Now I feel safe.

Bring on the flowerless chocolate cake. So it's the same thing. Don't feed flowerless chocolate cake to your dogs, by the way, would be very bad. Please do not do that. But whatever that treat is, they're gonna appreciate it way more when they've gotten away and they're at a safe distance. So that's in the situation where you know something's gone wrong and the situation is becoming unsafe. You get out of there, and then if you want to provide food after you're out of there, great. Normally I don't even

involve food at all, but after the session is over, maybe we switch to doing something else. Maybe we're walking and I want them to heal next to me. And so I'm feeding for the healing. Or, you know, I'm practicing standing still on cue while I walk around them in a circle. I would give them a treat for that. But I've changed my context. I'm not in the watching the world go by context anymore.

Victoria (41:53)
Hmm.

Lovely. Love it. how can we use that? watching the world go by for socialization purposes.

Irith (42:07)
I love using this for it's really most properly, I would say it's exposure, sort of a safe socialization, you know?

Victoria (42:14)
Exposure. Right.

Irith (42:18)
So it is a wonderful way to just allow, let's imagine you have a puppy, because usually when we're talking about socialization, we're talking about a a very young kitten, because the cat socialization window is super narrow and early.

Or a very young dog, or perhaps a foal, like a young animal that's still in that sensitive period when they're learning about the world. It is the best thing in the world to just sit and let them observe. Now, especially with a puppy, they're gonna tend to want to explore more in many cases, especially puppies who are relatively emotionally solid. They have a good genetic background and they've had good experiences.

They're a lot more likely to want to go and explore. So if you can find scenarios where it's safe for them to go and interact with whatever they're looking at at their own pace, at, you know, in a way that is led by the animal, animal led, then

Victoria (43:19)
Mm-hmm.

Irith (43:20)
you can absolutely add that in. And then I don't use food. If it's, you know, like let's say you have a puppy and they go up and they greet a person, greeting the person and being petted by the person, that should be a good

Victoria (43:31)
Yes.

Irith (43:32)
enough.

Positive association as long as it's puppy-led and as long as the puppy can leave when they want to. So it's a really, it's one of my favorite things to do with puppies is just sit around. I've got them on a long line. We're watching stuff happening. Maybe they're eating blades of grass, which is fine, by the way, unless there's really horrible fertilizer on the grass.

Victoria (43:52)
Is it?

Irith (43:55)
You know, just let them.

Sit around, watch things, and then all of it becomes familiar and not a big deal, which is what socialization is really about. Socialization is not about, I want to go meet every dog, I want to go meet every person. I the joke I make, we've been talking about New York a bit,

Victoria (44:14)
Right.

Irith (44:15)
is that if you live in New York City and you're walking through Times Square and you walked up and shook hands with every single person who walked by you.

You probably wouldn't make it very far before someone hit you. I mean, that's just no, it's just, it's not

Victoria (44:29)
Yep. yeah, you'd go down. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Irith (44:33)
normal behavior. And yet we expect our dogs to go up and say, hi, hi, hi.

Victoria (44:38)
I know, it's weird, isn't it?

Irith (44:40)
And that's, and then we complain: my dog is pulling me to other dogs. My dog pulls me to every stranger. Well, we created that. What you really want is a puppy who says, person walked by, dog walked by, motorcycle went by.

Leaf fell from the sky. The wind is blowing. It's all just, this is life, and I I hang out and I watch it, and maybe I'm really curious about this thing, and I go and I sniff it and I interact with it a little bit, and then we move on and we go back to our normal day. So I love watching the world go by as a sort of exposure/slash socialization exercise. And don't stop doing it when the puppy is 16 weeks old because.

All animals are always learning about the world, and it's nice to give them opportunities to sort of reset and recalibrate on a regular basis.

Victoria (45:33)
Irith I always love having you on the podcast. You make such

Irith (45:38)
Thank you.

Victoria (45:39)
sense. People loved your presentation at the DBC. And you

Irith (45:43)
thank you.

Victoria (45:43)
know, you are great teacher for our students and you know for the people that have been so lucky to work with you in LA and beyond. And I'm very excited.

what you are gonna be doing with Christina Spaulding and taking this to the next level.

Irith (46:07)
Thank you. And I just I have to say it is always an honor and a joy and a pleasure to do things that involve the work you're doing, which is so amazing. And to spend time with you, which because we're on opposite coasts, we rarely get to actually spend time together. So it's just such a joy. So thank you always for having me at VSA, at the dog behavior conference, here on the podcast. It is

Truly an honor and a pleasure and a joy.

Victoria (46:40)
Well, that's that's good positive reinforcement for me. I don't need a treat for that.

Irith (46:45)
Ha ha ha.

Victoria (46:45)
Your words were enough. Thank you, thank you. well thank you everybody for listening and I hope that you really enjoyed this podcast and you all take care and I'll see you again on another podcast.

Irith (46:59)
Bye everyone.