This week, Naomi gives you a peek behind the curtain at the Cat and Dog Coexistence Club for a private office hours session with one of its members as they discuss Bridget's dog Bella who is hyper-fixated on her cat Walter.

Key Moments

[01:01] Different types of attention

[02:18] Predatory sequence in dogs

[04:28] Ways to train in the orient stage

[05:14] Two ways to "unstick" a dog

[06:46] Finding the sweet spot to do training

[07:56] Miscalibrations are understandable

[09:20] Practicing while Eyeing bakes tension into the behavior

[09:46] Working on a true relax in place behavior

[11:23] Why routine in management is so good

[12:45] Training the cat as well for enrichment

[13:41] Training cats makes them more relaxed

[14:00] Progress

[15:08] Relax on the Mat protocol

[16:46] Body language is a great starting point

Key Links

The Cat and Dog Coexistence Club

The PETS Process Guide

Welcome to It's Training Cats and Dogs - the show for people with both

cats and dogs who want peace in their home and peace between their animals.

I'm Naomi Rotenberg and today's episode is a peek into a private

office hours session that I recently had with one of the wonderful members

of my Cat and Dog Coexistence Club.

This call took place on Zoom so I really apologize for the fuzzy

sound, but the info we talked about was so good that I knew you

all would be able to look past it.

Bridget has a cat named Walter and a young German shepherd, Bella who

fixates on Walter and isn't able to calm down when she knows that he's around.

During this call, we talked about common mistakes that people make when

trying to train their animals to look away from stuff and some techniques to

work on helping Bella disengaged from triggers, both in and out of the house.

Let's get into it.

Talk to me about what's going on in your head between the different types

of attention that you're thinking.

Oh, Bella likes to observe everything.

So we will spend time like at the park, always 10 to 15 minutes of

just sitting and watching the world.

Sometimes I don't know if some of her engagement is good or if it's a

little too focused, but since her body language isn't lunging, isn't going

towards it, I just let it happen.

And I treat her when she looks at me.

So I'm working on or work on with her.

Um, when I sit with her and I will give, I just give Walter treats.

I don't really train him to do anything right now because I'm

just trying to get him to be okay.

Being around this monster with her because she's so hyper on him.

I'll try to see, can I get her to shake my hand?

Can I get her to touch and look in a different direction?

Can I get her to look over here, but that's a lot of meat.

So I watched one day, what happens if I don't show her to do anything?

Does she ever not stare directly into the cat's face?

And it's not very frequently, even with she's being outside and making

all this noise and coming out of the house, she is high-profile.

So trying to get her to disengage with the cat without telling her, I feel like

it's more powerful than me telling her.

So this is a very common issue where I think the key is thinking about

the predatory sequence in dogs and where she is in the first three sections of it.

So.

The first thing is orient.

So she looks towards Walter, right.

Or whatever he's looking at, the next step is eyeing.

So that's where you get that kind of intense looking.

So we can go from eyeing to the early stages of stalking.

That's the next part.

So that's where you see forward momentum, even if she's not leaning

or like lunging forward, it's that really tense forward body posture.

So ideally when we are trying to change her behavior or emotions around

whatever she's looking at, we are only working at the orient stage.

So if you're at the eyeing or the early stages of the

stalking, she is over threshold.

Now we have the unique issue when we're working in our home.

That we don't have unlimited distance to be able to say, great, you're

over threshold at the farthest ends of the house, for example.

We can't go any further.

So sometimes we have to be pretty creative in how we approach our setups,

but what I would recommend before we even try to do let's look at Walter.

And then look away is really get her not to be as starey at other things.

So if we can get her a little bit more muscle memory of staying in

that orient phase with less kind of emotionally charged triggers, then

you're going to be much more likely to get a dog who's still able to think

when doing setups later on with Walter.

And there's a couple of ways to work on this.

One is when you're outside and you want to be doing your let's

look at stuff in the world.

I want to make sure that she is not stuck in those stages and practicing

being stuck in those stages.

So the first thing we need to teach her is how to respond to cues

where you're actively managing her.

We need to install a series of behaviors where you can very easily move her

when she looks like she's stuck.

There are some really easy ones that should be practiced in

the house or right outside of.

Number one is treat scatter on the ground.

Can you look away from the thing and snuffle stuff off to the side of you?

The other one is like a U-turn with magnet of food in front of her if she needs that.

We want to control where she's looking is the main goal of this.

And those are two really foundational ones of being able to, if she's stuck

and you'll be able to know if she's.

If you can count a quick 1, 2, 3, and she's got nothing and you can test it.

You could say any kind of attention, noise.

I wouldn't use her name, just seeing if she'll, if she'll give

you an ear flick or anything.

She's still stuck.

We still want to get distance or move her behind a visual barrier or something.

But at least we know she's not in full.

Like I stopped.

She's still able to look back.

And so you want to find, not just like staring at the world in general.

Cause she's probably just overwhelmed by all of the stuff

that she's able to look at.

But what I would suggest is saying, okay, once a day, Try to find something

relatively easy that she can look at.

So if she's obsessed with watching dogs, for example, playing, we're not

going to go to a field where there's 20 dogs, but we might go on a park

bench where it's a little bit quieter, where there might be dogs just walking

by, on leash across the street.

So we're really trying to find that sweet spot where if she is able to stay in that

orient zone with minimal intervention.

Great.

Hang out there and do like a, a therapy session of look at that and look away.

Oh, this is so nice.

It's really fun.

We're not fighting each other.

If you find that she switches over into eyeing or stalking,

that's when you would say therapy session is not happening right now.

I need to get you out of here because you're just practicing, getting stuck.

Does that all make sense?

That's for outside that's if you magically find a spot one day, once a day, a

couple of minutes, and then you're done.

Do you want to be practicing on your wall?

These active strategies when there's nothing happening, you want to just be

like, oh look, we're having a nice time.

Can you eat a scatter?

Cause I know you were saying sometimes she won't eat outside at all.

Is that right?

Like yesterday I took her to a new place.

Cause I was just like, let's go someplace new.

You took her to a park by Aaron's house.

Squirels.

Everywhere.

And it was like, yeah, we can't can't be here at that point.

It was like nothing I said, or did she wouldn't even take a tree, wouldn't even

take her high-value chickens, nothing.

So I was like, you gotta go.

Exactly.

And that's, there's nothing wrong with that.

In fact, you're helping yourself and you're helping

her by saying I miscalibrated.

I thought this might be an enjoyable experience.

You're showing me that it's too much for you.

Okay.

We'll work up to it.

And we'll try again.

Once we've worked on stuff in.

Oh, my God, this is new and they're squirrels and there's

lots of new smells and where am I?

And all of that stuff.

Yeah, we do go to a park daily.

She is very well behaved.

It's a huge park.

There's lots of people, soccer games, and, but we go there so regularly.

She's doing really well there.

So I practice a lot there when you see other animals.

And I made sure that we're our distances enough where I can

scanner or try to distract her.

Great.

So I would say you're probably still working often in that eyeing,

even at that part, rather than the orient, because most people aren't

able to see the switch fast enough.

So now that you know what you're looking for, I want you to focus on that for

the next couple of days to say, am I trying to fight her a little bit?

Or is she just hold up, mom, look, I saw a thing.

And so if she is able to not just behave and do the things that you

want her to do, but to actually look relaxed, that's exactly what we want.

I definitely thinks I can start to see that switch over

but before I started talking to you it wouldn't have clicked yet.

That's what I'm here for.

Yeah.

When a dog is, or any animal is in that eye, you build that

tension into the behavior.

So even if they are able to reorient to you, it's not a relaxed situation.

And so when you try to use that type of setup with Walter, for example,

there's going to be that tension.

And we want from the beginning it's to be as relaxed as possible.

So one other behavior that we're going to start working with her and

him, but her, especially because she has no chill is not just, she has a

place behavior, but I want to work on a true, relax on a mat behavior.

Like can she melt.

Okay.

I'm here for the duration.

It's just how I roll and she's not sleeping, but working towards

that and there's a special protocol for that, that will do.

But the goal here is that if she can do the real relaxation in

different areas, you could then take that mat out to different places.

And say, oh, look, this is your relaxed mat.

You might be able to actually relax because we've practiced this so much.

With her, our last consideration with the relaxing and any of these things is

that if Walter is potentially around, she is not under threshold in your house.

So we need to find a place where she can actually relax.

Walter is now pretty much in the basement all the time.

She now knows this.

So she stopped going to the door as much because there's no cat door.

So she knows like whatever.

I built it into the routine and it's certain times in the day.

And they're always pretty much the same time.

I'm going down the basement stairs with Walter and she has got to find her.

She doesn't try to rush.

She just sits and waits more relaxed knowing he's there,

but he's someplace else.

My room is probably her most relaxed.

Great.

So we will stay there.

We'll start there.

And what you just described is the most wonderful reason that routine

and management for dogs who are truly anxious about the other thing need that.

Because they can expect a situation to unfold in a certain way, and they

don't have to feel this unknown.

They feel a little bit more control over their environment.

And that is really great.

Like I said, for the animals that are a little scared of the thing,

whether it's the cat or anything else, and they just want it to go away.

And that's why they're behaving in these kind of crazy nutty.

Having this kind of out of sight, out of mind, types of management really

tends to help them decompress and relax.

And so it's a really good way to see, okay, what can we do to make

sure that she is as decompressed and relaxed as possible?

So we can start building in and building up these new behaviors in a relaxed way.

So I'm really happy that she's already getting with the program.

You found that the new management is working for you.

As long as Walter is happy, then we are good to go to start training some

of these foundation behaviors for her.

For him, one of the things you could do for enrichment is to also start

training him while you're down there.

So you could start teaching him to go sit on a mat.

Well, I bought a treat dispenser that turned out to be wonderful because

now he is trying to get the treats so when I'm not there he has something to do.

But I've been trying to get him to fetch or I throw the treats

cause he also won't run around.

When I play with him, he wants to stay by me.

You gotta get.

Run in you.

And I do put a little wash glove and give him another treat if he touches it.

And he's definitely a cat that I thought would listen like that, but, but if I knew

how to train him I think he could get it.

Was the cat, whoever thought you could train...

I don't know why people don't think that, but nobody does that.

So you don't think that cats are really trainable, but I'm

noticing that he's actually pretty trainable, even with small things.

How to get the treat dispenser out.

He learned in like 30 seconds.

Yeah.

And so what you're going to start to see is that training him as well is going

to give him more agency and feeling like he's in control and more relaxed.

And so when you do bring them together, it's not just him being the trigger.

He's also a part of the training and it works really well.

Cool.

How are you feeling?

Good.

Definitely good.

The management has been a game-changer for us, like in these two fell off.

I do feel bad often about Walter, but then I go downstairs and like

this basement is bigger than my whole apartment that we lived in.

Like he's okay.

He's got lots of windows, got lots of places to climb.

He's got lots of toys.

I just feel bad that he doesn't get to like sleep with me and stuff.

But I think he's adjusting.

He does copy me out.

Bella has stopped reacting to his Meow unless I react to it.

If I don't react to, if she's cool and she just sleeps and leaves.

We don't have an issue, but he hasn't come up to meow, I

think it was five days in a row.

Yeah, his work's great.

This, I feel really good about.

'cause I feel like it's stuff I'm starting to, just through watching

videos and paying attention things.

I'm starting to realize that's what needs to be worked on next

again, that eyeing and stalking.

I didn't know really where I was with that.

So that's super helpful.

And relax on the mat is also the next thing I've been researching

and watching videos on is how the hell do people do this?

Because I can't get her to do that.

So I have a protocol that is based on.

There's a famous vet behaviorist.

Karen Overall, who developed this relaxation protocol.

That's the way that I would recommend working on this.

And it's actually like a step-by-step it's like day one, have her go to her

mat and then count for five seconds.

So you don't have to worry.

We all know that videos are like work on the three Ds and I'm

like, what, how long and how much distance and what does that mean?

What if it doesn't work?

What do I do then?

You have just outlined the module that I'm working on in the

training course that I working on it.

So, yeah.

I'm glad that you hit on all the things that everyone has these same questions.

Because it takes us as trainers, years to figure out how to tweak things based

on subtle body language indicators.

How are you supposed to know when this is all new to you?

Right.

It's been an amazing journey.

We've had dogs that we have never really trained our dogs before.

I may have like tricks and all that stuff, but I just, even the other way,

my boyfriend's says her tail is wagging, but that doesn't mean she's happy.

And he was like come on and I was like, no, for real, it's like I now know all

of these things that I looking at paying attention to how many times she licks

her lips, how many times she yawns.

Never in my life did I realize how intricate all this was?

So it was pretty amazing.

Couple of months just learning things that I didn't even know.

Yeah, body language is probably the best way to start because you

realize that are so much subtlety, but you can triage first working on some of

the management techniques in the house.

You can switch back and forth between the relaxation for one session and

the other management techniques.

Okay.

Yay.

We will hit the ground running.

Alright, awesome.

Thank you!

I hope you enjoyed this peek behind the curtain of the

Cat and Dog Coexistence Club.

If you're having trouble with the cat/dog interactions in your home, and you feel

like this is the kind of support that you've been looking for, in addition

to being a member of an awesomely supportive community, group coaching

and training resources, as a member, you also get one private office hour

slot with me per month of membership.

You can find out more information at praiseworthypets.com/club.

That's all for now you wonderful cat and dog people.

See you back here next week.

For another episode of It's Training Cats and Dogs.