#158 - Why Dogs Need Skills, Not Just Feelings

There’s a quiet assumption that runs through a lot of behavior work: if we can just change how an animal feels about something, the problem will resolve. Counterconditioning is a powerful tool, and Emily and Allie aren’t here to take it away from you. But in this episode, we’re talking about limitations. What happens when the feelings improve, and the behavior doesn’t? What happens when the emotions shift back? What happens when the world throws something at your learner that you never had a chance to train for?

This episode is about completeness. It’s about understanding that emotional safety tools and behavioral skills are partners. And it’s about building learners (and training plans) that are actually robust enough to survive real life: crows dropping chicken bones in the park, paramedics banging down the door at 2am, and all the other things no one puts in a training protocol.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 

1️⃣  Feelings and skills are not the same thing — Changing emotional associations is necessary but not sufficient. Learners also need to know what to do.

2️⃣  Resilience is built on skill — Trading, disengaging, tolerating delayed reinforcement, predictable response patterns: these are the skills that let learners navigate an unscripted world.

3️⃣  When a plan isn’t working, that’s information, not indictment — Regression and spontaneous recovery aren’t failures of the dog, the handler, or the technique. They’re signals to expand the toolbox.

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: I feel like the place where our industry was when I entered the profession, put a really strong emphasis on using classical conditioning. And like the common refrain was if we just change the dog's feelings, the behavior will resolve.

And it was just really, really focused on counter conditioning I mean, it is definitely an improvement on methods and techniques and mindsets that were popular prior But the thing is, if you're in this industry for any amount of time.

You're going to encounter situations where you're like, well, okay, the dog feels better, but they still don't know what to do. And so, you know, those good feelings can very easily be reversed if the dog is like, okay, but like, what do I do about this situation? So we're going to be talking about when to tell classical conditioning to take several seats, but not because we're anti emotional work.

It's because we're pro completeness and we want, we want animals to experience the full picture of improved welfare and wellbeing, which includes agency and autonomy, which requires skills. So that's what we're talking about how classical conditioning fits into the larger picture of learner support and care.

[00:01:21] Allie: Yeah, and I think this is the same phenomenon that we see so, so many times where we're all the way on one side of a situation. You know, the previously, many moons ago it was. Uh, People questioning if animals even had feelings. We didn't consider their feelings when we were training. It was just get the behavior no matter what. And then the pendulum swung too far to, it's all about feelings and the behavior doesn't necessarily matter. And as with everything, it, the answer is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes of feelings are important. Skills are important, let's figure out how to do both.

[00:02:05] Emily: Robert Sapolsky's. Introduction to his book Behave is so important and everybody should read it because he does such a good job of highlighting the fact that these categories that we've created don't exist in the real world.

They're just, they for us to perceive the world and learn about it and learn how to respond to it optimally, but in, in reality, classical and operant conditioning are coexisting all the time. Like it's all happening all at once. So the separation between them is really just in our heads. That's not to say that like those categories aren't based on real world observation, but the idea that. It's only one or the other is a, a human construct. We've made that up. That's not actually how it works.

So really what we're talking about is which one are we focusing on? When we're talking about, I'm using quote unquote classical conditioning and training, or I'm using unquote operant conditioning. What we really mean is like, which one are we focusing on? And it is, there are times that are appropriate to focus on classical conditioning.

We believe that so strongly that Ally and I are developing a course about it.

So obviously we value classical conditioning and focusing on it, and also it's not an all or nothing enterprise, like it has its role and it needs to stay in its lane, right? So. Let's talk about what classical conditioning does well, what, how it helps us in when we're trying to help our learners.

[00:03:43] Allie: So before we get into, when should we use classical conditioning, when should we not? All of that sort of stuff. Let's define our terms. Y'all know we love to define terms 'cause that's how learning works best. So when we're talking about classical conditioning, we're talking about stimulus, stimulus pairing. And so thing A happens and then thing B happens and it equals this response. And when it happens enough times, eventually thing A equals this response. That was like the most explained, like I'm five. Definition that I could give to this.

One of the biggest things that I wanna mention with classical conditioning though, is that it is not dependent on the behavior. So thing A happens, thing B then happens regardless of what the animal is doing. And that I see being a thing that our industry doesn't understand very well about classical conditioning. That a lot of times people think they're doing it, but they're waiting for a response, which means that it's not actually true Classical conditioning, again, you can't separate them. There are a whole lot of nuances to what

I just said, and also that is a huge thing that I see operant conditioning is when we think about those ABCs antecedent behavior consequence, that the animal does a thing, a consequence happens, they get a treat, let's say, and then they're more or less likely to do the behavior in the future based on what the consequences. So opera is based on behavior and doesn't necessarily take feelings into account, aside from Pavlov is always on your shoulder.

[00:05:31] Emily: So another way to think about classical and operant conditioning is that classical conditioning is two term conditioning. There's, there are two things that are happening. A stimulus, stimulus pairing. So like Allie was saying, it's a passive process because the learner is not actively engaging in the learning process.

They're just experiencing this association between two different things. Where the second one's, meaning is acquired by the first one. So the first one has the same, develops the same meaning as the second one.

Operant is three term conditioning antecedent behavior consequence. So that I think is really helpful for people to, to bear in mind that. Yeah, there's only two things happening in classical conditioning, and it has nothing to do with the learner.

There are three things happening in operant conditioning and the, and the second of the three things is the learner is responding to their environment and the environment is responding right back. So it's a more proactive interaction type of learning. And that is important, and we'll talk about why that's important later.

But first, let's talk about what classical conditioning does well, how it's useful to us. It is in fact true that we use, quote unquote, we use classical conditioning to change emotional associations. Specifically a technique called counter conditioning is where we change the learner's response to.

A stimulus something to, to a thing. I like calling it a thing better than stimulus 'cause it sounds less snooty. And also it can reduce the intensity and, and the reactivity of a learner's response to something which can sort of like open the door for us to, to do opera and conditioning. So it is, it is a really important tool in our toolbox.

We're not rejecting it in this episode or ever really in life. But what classical conditioning doesn't do, by definition, it doesn't teach skills. For example, how to disengage from a stressor, how to tolerate or process losing something, losing access to something. How to request space, how to say no thank you. Hard pass. You can. You can keep that toothbrush or nail trimmer or whatever way over there, away from me. this is really important because a dog can feel less afraid. We can change the emotional state, but the dog can still perform the act of guarding an object or a location or a person from something or someone else.

So they can be like, yeah, I'm not worried about this anymore, but you still gotta way stay away from my resource. A dog can feel better about a situation, but they can still escalate to like big dramatic emotional response because that has been a learned behavior that has been reinforced in the past by probably their environment.

I mean, what else would it be? Everything is in their environment. We are a part of their environment. It has been the, the behavior's been reinforced so the dog can not be worried, like, I feel great about you coming onto my property, but I'm still gonna be super melodramatic about it. it's really important to recognize that feeling safer does not equal having skills, being a skilled individual and knowing how to skillfully navigate a difficult situation,

[00:09:03] Allie: I think the other element of this is that yes, to everything Emily just said, even if we change the feelings, that doesn't necessarily mean we change the behavior, but also we have to understand that we can't change feelings about every single thing that could possibly happen in this animal's life. So even if we spend all of this time working on changing their feelings to visitors coming over, let's say if you are in an emergency situation and somebody calls the paramedics, and the paramedics come banging down your door and are coming in and all of their, their hustle and bustle doing their job, I'm guessing that. Your dog is going to have an issue with that. Like we didn't train for that particular situation because why would we? And so they still need skills to navigate those situations and to navigate their feelings because the world is stressful and we can't get rid of distress completely.

[00:10:03] Emily: Emotions are actually pretty fragile and so you can change an emotion and if something is still really, really stressful or really unpleasant or really, I don't know, painful, if I'm thinking of like medical con procedures that are gonna be uncomfortable, regardless of how much you train it, if all you've done is changed the feeling.

 life experience can change those feelings back and be like, no, I was right the first time. This really, this really does suck. Like, you know, so we have to think about classical conditioning as one of the tools that we're going to utilize to help our learners reach a goal of improved welfare, wellbeing, improved agency, all of that stuff.

But if we rely solely on it, first of all, there's just a hard limit as to how successful we'll be. Like, I will never feel totally comfy about standing in the middle of an interstate highway during the busy times and be like, I'll probably be fine because I got cookies about it. Like, that's just never gonna happen.

Like, there is nothing you can give me that is going to make me feel safe and feel relaxed and comfortable about standing in the middle of an interstate. So there are legitimately some things that are gonna be not impervious to, maybe that's too strong of a word, but highly resistant to changing emotional states and like things, especially things that were really traumatic in the past, we can do work to reduce the yucky feelings around that traumatic thing.

But the body and the brain don't forget trauma. So there's a hard limit as to how much we can actually change the way a learner feels about something that was legitimately traumatizing to them at some point in their past.

So let's reframe the work that we do in classical conditioning as emotional safety tools because then we can think about them as like having an important role in our work without being the main character, the primary tool, right?

So, you know, things that are really unpleasant and including things like conflict other stressors that ha, that aren't necessarily in conflict but are uncomfortable, scary hard. All of those things require decision making and skillful execution in order for resilience to happen. For animals to be resilient, they have to have No, I mean, it's not just, well, we're all animals.

For learners to be resilient, we have to have skills knowing how to navigate that and usually the skills actually affect that emotional change that we want because I feel a lot more relaxed when I know how to handle an emergency. But if I have no idea how to handle an emergency, I'm much more likely to panic no matter how much money you pay me in that situation.

Right. I'm using money here instead of cookies, because let's be real, I would much rather have money than cookies.

[00:13:19] Allie: You can buy your own cookies

[00:13:21] Emily: I could buy my own cookies if I have money.

[00:13:23] Allie: And we see that with professionals who are trained to handle emergencies. The amount of training that goes into being like a, a surgeon or a paramedic or flight attendants too there's so many hours of training of here's how to handle situations that when they are in a situation, they're like, yeah, I have hundreds of hours under my belt of being able to practice these skills.

And so they are able to remain as calm as one can in those situations.

[00:13:59] Emily: Yeah, I'm gonna tell on myself because I was a vet tech for 17 years and, towards the end, the last I think five years that I was a vet tech, I just did relief work. I didn't work full-time anywhere. There were periods in my history where I was like part-time relief tech while I was in college and stuff.

But the last five years I was relieving at many clinics around Austin and that included specialty hospitals. And so emergencies were my bag. I was used to them. I was good at them. Like, I knew exactly what to do When an emergency would come in, I would have my little like checklist in my head of like, we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna check this based on the what we see.

We're gonna respond this way or this way. I knew what to do. I got to one specialty hospital. We had an emergency. I, I needed to we needed to start a, a blood transfusion. And the bags that they had. I had never seen before and there were like three equal sized ports with no indicator as to which port was the right port.

And I rose, I was just staring at the bag like, what do I, I don't know what to do here. And I could feel panic starting to rise. And then I just like looked up and I asked one of the vet techs who worked there part or full time, I was like, which port do I use? Like, I don't know. And she just like took it outta my hands and, and set it up.

And I felt so bad. I was like, y'all are gonna think. 'cause I think that was maybe just the first or second time that I had even relieved at that clinic. And I was like, y'all are gonna think I'm a hack. But it was because I was presented with something that I had not been trained for, I did not have skills for.

It was a new situation for me. And so it wasn't that I wa I didn't have. Skills to handle emergencies. I was resilient in, in every other context of emergencies. But in that context, because I didn't yet have the skill with that particular type of blood transfusion bag, which I do not know where it, because came from, because I have not seen one like it before or since.

I have no idea where they were, what what, like why there was this discrepancy in my experience and, and this bag, but I didn't know what to do and I froze and I could feel myself panicking. Right? So it's the skill that made me resilient in emergencies. Not that I had just been like trained to tough out emergencies.

I hadn't just been like classically conditioned to be chill in emergencies. It was that I had skills in all of these contexts and the, then the context in which I didn't have skill, I panicked. So like that is, that is a real world example of why. Operant conditioning is so important because skills in stressful situations build resilience, and they're, and they're more, I don't wanna say again, I think I keep using the word impervious and that's not a good word, but they're, they're more resistant to that like panic or relapse or whatever.

Right.

[00:17:02] Allie: let's talk about some functional skills that we might want our animals to have in particular situations. One of the skills that. I love teaching to any animal is how to trade. Please give me the thing that you have and I will give you something of equal or better value for

it. One of the reasons that I love teaching this to every animal, even if they don't have a history of resource guarding, is because it's really, really easy to create a resource guarder,

I would say the majority of animals that I have met. Ha. Human involvement has at least exacerbated their guarding, if not directly caused it.

So it is very easy to create a guarding situation. But the more that we practice of, I will give you stuff that one time out of a hundred where your dog is walking down the street and finds a chicken bone, somebody threw out their window and you have to reach down their gullet and get that chicken bone out and you don't have something better than a chicken bone on you.

'cause why would you also, also doesn't think there is something better than a chicken bone other than maybe like the chicken itself.

[00:18:20] Emily: Right, right.

[00:18:21] Allie: Then you're probably going to be okay because you have this long learning history of I don't normally steal from you. I normally give you better stuff in return. So that's a skill that I think is, is helpful for everybody. Along with that, moving away from resources so that they don't go after the chicken bone, except if your dog is 10 feet in front of you and they find it before you knew that it was there and you couldn't cue them to leave it. It's not like I, I actually have not had that situation of a specific chicken bone with Oso, but,

[00:18:56] Emily: That's hilarious. I, I have that situation on the rug because, there's a. A chicken place near the park where Miley usually chooses to go. On our adventure walks, I let her pick the direction and she doesn't always go there, but there's a favorite park and the crows take the chicken out, the whatever, leftover chicken out of the trash, they'll bring it to the park and they'll eat the chicken and leave the bones all over.

And I was like, when we first moved here and I was like taking our dogs to the park, I was like, who are all these people who just like leave chicken bones all over the park? Like this is so foul. Like, ha, no put intended. And, and and then like what? Somebody in the park, like I was, I was complaining about it one time out loud, and somebody in the park said, it's the crows.

They steal it from the trash can from X, Y, Z restaurant, a block down. And I was like, that makes so much more sense, because they're like scattered all over the place. They're not in a specific pile. And so like, Miley, like legit does like find chicken bones on our adventure walks. And I regularly have to trade.

[00:20:03] Allie: Oso finds garbage that he eats, so I don't actually know what he's eating sometimes. You know, and it's gone by the time. But no, no, no. Chicken bones, usually it's like half a sandwich or something, and it's like, Yeah, that's fine. He has, he had an iron stomach,

[00:20:20] Emily: yeah,

[00:20:21] Allie: that's hilarious also um, just the thought of of, of a human being just sitting on a bench and just like wildly chucking chicken bones around.

[00:20:32] Emily: that was 100% the image in my head that somebody like goes to the park on the rag and eats their fried chicken, and then just like chuck's chicken bones all over the park. That was what was going on in my head. I was like, who's doing this? What kind of a monster are you?

[00:20:48] Allie: Who raised you,

[00:20:50] Emily: Who raced you? But turns out not humans.

Crows 

[00:20:53] Allie: crow's raised you. Okay.

[00:20:55] Emily: It's actually good because Miley is now very skilled at trading because we have had so many opportunities to practice high stakes trades.

[00:21:03] Allie: yeah, I love that,

[00:21:05] Emily: Yeah. 

[00:21:05] Allie: but that's actually a kind of a, a great segue of if there are things that you're finding regularly that that your dog should not have, like chicken bones that are left by crows, apparently, then teaching them to just move away from those resources.

Kind of like I grew up hearing it as an automatic leave it, so that's what my brain refers to it as. Whether or not I love that terminology. Now, I haven't really considered, but that's usually what I hear. I had a, was it my client or. Y'all's, somebody knew, somebody on our team knew somebody. There we go. Who had a dog who was allergic to bananas of all things. And this person would walk their dog in a forest and banana peels would happen more frequently than one would expect

[00:21:58] Emily: let's blame Crows. It was Crows.

[00:22:00] Allie: was crows. Well, obviously.

 and so she had to teach an, essentially an automatic leave it to banana peels so that her dog wouldn't have an allergic reaction when they happened upon them more regularly than one would think

[00:22:16] Emily: Katie. And if you're listening to this, I want a t-shirt that says it was the crows. Let's blame the crows.

[00:22:21] Allie: wi with a crow with a bone. And

[00:22:23] Emily: Yeah. Chicken bone. 

[00:22:25] Allie: yeah. Yeah. Love that. So moving away from resources similar to that, moving away from stressors. I, we teach that to just everyone. It is helpful for all individuals, I'm gonna say, of all species

to know how to move away and disengage from things that make us stressful instead of, I don't know, post angry comments on the internet at 2:00 AM

[00:22:51] Emily: Or go into lawyer mode and just like shred somebody's argument to pieces because you're not taking care of yourself and so you just need to really shred somebody's argument to pieces.

[00:23:03] Allie: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:04] Emily: Definitely not talking about me. I've never done that.

[00:23:06] Allie: I have not posted an angry comment on the internet at 2:00 AM so

[00:23:11] Emily: Ever in your life,

[00:23:12] Allie: no, I don't. Well, one,

I don't. 

[00:23:14] Emily: not awake at 2:00 AM

[00:23:16] Allie: One, I'm not awake at 2:00 AM two even when I was on social media, I wouldn't comment I was a lurker. So being able to move away from stressors is also super, super helpful skill. We've talked about that before it, when we've talked about flight training on the podcast. I know we have an episode specifically about that. So we'll put that in the show notes for more information about that particular skill.

But again, I think that's a skill that everybody should have. Another skill that I think is helpful is tolerating delayed access to things. We meet a lot of dogs who have a really low tolerance for frustration, where they're like, I want a thing and I want it now. Delayed access to reinforcers is a really helpful skill to have, especially when we're talking about things like trading, moving away from stressors, moving away from resources all of that sort of stuff. You know, when you're living in real life, I don't know about y'all, but I do not have a treat pouch on me at all times. I don't have treats in my pockets at all times. I never have treats in my pockets. That's, no, I don't. Then they go through the wash and it's gross. I don't, I don't subscribe to that life.

[00:24:28] Emily: Hard agree.

[00:24:29] Allie: yeah. I do have treat jars around the house and also it's gonna take me a second to walk over to the treat jar, open it, get the treat, give it to my creature. So so delayed access to reinforcers where they're like, okay, I get it, you're slow, but like, you're giving me the thing, so I'll wait here.

[00:24:52] Emily: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:53] Allie: And then finally, I think another functional skill is having predictable response patterns under pressure.

[00:25:00] Emily: I like to tell people in Pet Pro, we wanna give our learners clear, consistent contingencies so they know if this situation, then I do this. If this situation, then I do this. So we, we build these response patterns of like, I know what to do in this situation because I have that decision tree in my head of what to do in each kind of version of this scenario.

And to be clear, we're not only talking about pattern games. I know in our industry, pattern games are really popular and people love to use them, and that's great if you're using them in an appropriate context, good on you. But we're, but they don't have to be pattern games. It's, it's really about response patterns of like, what in this situation, how do I handle it?

If the situation looks a little bit different like this, how do I handle it? If the situation looks a little bit different like this, how do I handle it? That decision making tree is where the skill lies, because. It's easy to teach learners to respond to external cues because they know that you're going to give them a reinforcer.

It is much more difficult to help learners identify cues that are just happening in the environment or in their own body to procure their own consequences from the environment or from their body. So it's the response patterns which may or may not look like pattern games. Just because the word patterns in it doesn't mean that that's always what we're talking about, but it's those response patterns of when this situation happens in the real world, whether or not my guardian is there to, to give me a cue. I know how to handle the situation, I know how to respond to it, and I know what I'm gonna get out of my response. That's what we're talking about in this situation and their ability to do that in high stakes situations, high stress situations, that is peak skill. That's our goal. That's what we're working towards.

[00:27:04] Allie: And I would say it's really important for the behaviors that make up. Those response patterns that the behaviors are functional to whatever it is we're trying to achieve. So for example, oso has a response pattern of if I am stressed, good stress or bad stress, it doesn't matter if I am stressed, I destroy something. That came out of watching how he responded to stress prior to giving him that skill. Prior to that, and I think we've talked about this on the podcast before, I'm sure we have. It's been four years that he would bite people's feet when he was stressed. Usually it was a good stress situation in that, in that case.

But sometimes we'd see it with distress too. So he would bite people's feet, which y'all, if you haven't been bitten in the foot, it hurts. It doesn't matter how much pressure there is, it hurts. And so it was like, okay, clearly his response too, I feel stress is to put something in his mouth that is the thing.

So let's give him a more appropriate thing to put in his mouth. And as we started working on, on that skill of, you can put things in your mouth, but please not my body parts. Then we found that the, the best deescalation strategy for him was destroying stuff. So it was like, okay, specifically go over here, put this thing in your mouth, destroy it.

And that dramatically decreases his stress levels pretty quickly. that response pattern is, I feel stress. I go find a thing and I destroy it. And he can do that in multiple situations. So if he's in the house, he has two primary areas where there are things there for him to destroy. One is his toy box which he can destroy toys in his toy box.

We usually also put DIY destructible in there for him, especially if we know that like somebody's coming over and he's going to be excited. We also have near our garbage can in the kitchen, just like a little waiting to go in recycling area that anything that is safe for him goes in that and he can go and find that and, and steal it, quote unquote.

And he, he gets his little like, hoo, I found a thing jaunted in his step. And it's so freaking cute when dogs think that they're stealing things and you're like, I put it there for you. But yes, you stole it. Good job. Outside, we have to have toys outside. And it's really interesting where outside, you know, we'll, we'll play.

And I see him get a little bit too excited where he gets to the point where like, I have to grab things and watch him, scan the environment, find a toy, run after the toy, and then start shaking it and, and eventually destroying it. So he has very similar behavior. IFI find a thing, I destroy it. But he can do it in multiple situations.

So there are, there are many other skills that I think are really valuable and functional when it comes to navigating the real world, navigating stress, all of that sort of stuff. Those are just a few of them. But really the point is that skills are how our pets use their improved feelings so we can get them to a point where they're. They're not so afraid of a thing that they can't learn about that situation. And then once we get there, it's like, okay, now let's teach you how to use that situation. And one of the things that we get questions about is when is the best time to teach these skills? And I, I think we've not talked about it, but like it wouldn't be surprising based off of hearing what Emily's working on with Miley, that the answer is like, as soon as you can, as soon as possible. Like realistically, I think these skills are way more valuable for puppies than kind of the, the typical, you know, sit down, all of those things that we, we often teach to puppies.

And I had a, a recent experience that like, kind of solidified that opinion in my head of like, no, for real, train it as soon as you can early and often, like all of that. I've gone by Ally for over 20 years at this point. But when I was in the hospital after my accident and they asked me my name, I immediately told them my legal name because that was the only one I could remember. Like, I couldn't remember my nickname that I've used for 20 years.

I, yeah, it, it was weird. Like I said my name and then like maybe 30 seconds later I was like, whoa, what? Like, that was weird.

[00:31:50] Emily: Yeah.

[00:31:51] Allie: And it, and I'm guessing it's because that's the one that I learned in my formative years. And so when I was in in a, it. Situation of extreme stress. My brain went all the way back to this is the first thing we learned. Let's do that.

[00:32:08] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really good real world human example of what we see with dogs all the time. When dogs are in extreme distress, they just kind of fall back on the innate behaviors, the behaviors that they were, that were built in. Which is why so often we like care a lot about teaching people to distinguish between like play that's happening because it's fun versus play that's happening as a coping mechanism because it's like, well, yeah, they're playing, but it's not because they're happy, it's because they're like, I have too many feelings.

I don't know what to do with them. So like you play about it, right? Or zoomies about it or destroy things about it.

So let's talk about what actually goes sideways when skills are missing.

And we have just relied on classical conditioning to change feelings. A lot of times we'll see that dogs will do great in a session, but then once you take them outside of that. Like practice kind of context. It breaks down. They can't handle it in, in other scenarios. Even if you're practicing in the presence of a stressor, that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be able to do the same thing in the presence of a different stressor somewhere else.

We see dogs who regress, like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, where we change the way they feel. But as the unpleasant thing continues to happen, and usually this is when the unpleasant thing is outside of our control because we can't always be there to shower the dog with cookies every time a scary thing happens.

And so we see regressions happen when the scary thing is happening without us there to intervene. Even if we had already. Successfully change the way the dogs feel about it. That doesn't mean that they're gonna continue to feel good about it. If bad, the, if the bad thing continues to happen without the good thing following it. We can have regressions as a result of that.

We also see that caregivers can feel really confused because like the feelings didn't stick. Like they, they went backwards. There's something called spontaneous recovery where it's like one day all of a sudden they forgot all of the counter conditioning training that happened and they go back to just being as scared as they were at the beginning. Scared or reactive or whatever the, the emotion is, right? So that can happen too, where it's like. Where did this come from? We've been making such great progress, and then you just woke up this morning and it's like you forgot all of the progress we've made, and then like we've been talking about this whole episode, we can change the feelings, but if the, all we've done is change the feelings and it's a passive experience and the animal does not have skills, how to handle that situation, at some point, the confusion or the, the powerlessness is more aversive than whatever repetitive thing we have to offer.

So it's like, yeah, your cheese is great, but I would rather just know how to get out of the situation. Right. So it's important to normalize this as like, this is an issue with the plan. It's not a failure of the dog or the handler or counter conditioning as a process. Or the trainer, the, the behavior professional like these, this, it doesn't mean that anybody is defective, it just means that we're overly relying on this tool instead of using the tool in a context in which it can be more constructive and helpful.

So remember that like training plans that work only under ideal conditions aren't robust training plans because they're just not going to survive the real world. Right? And ethical effective training includes preparing your learners human and non-human for what to do when things go sideways because things will go sideways because we live in the real world.

We don't live in ideal conditions. Preparing your learners for how to pivot when things don't go as planned is an important critical, I would say part of ethical and effective training. If you just focus on changing the way a learner feels you're gonna struggle. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna sidebar to tell a story that is both relevant to this and where I learned a really important related lesson as a behavior professional.

I went through this phase when I was in Salt Lake of trying to give my clients more agency by letting them choose when they needed their next session. And so the way I would frame that for clients is we've still got work to do. Here's this trajectory. Here's where we're going, but I want you get to decide the pace at which we work at this.

So you work on this, if you have any issues with it, hit me up. I can help you work through it, and then let me know when you're ready to work on the next step. And then we can schedule a session at that point. So that was kind of my script at that period of my career where I was trying to give clients agency by letting them choose when to work with me.

I had a client with a very fearful small dog. We did the work of figuring out what the most urgent issue was. The biggest issue was people coming to the door and we, I started with a counter conditioning protocol because the dog's feelings were so big that it would've been hard to work on anything else.

So we started with just counter conditioning to people knocking on the door or ringing the doorbell because I had the plan that when, when the dogs, we had changed the dog's emotions a little bit, we could then pepper in some skills for this dog to work on. The cli. The, the counter conditioning was very effective within our training session.

The client was super impressed and what happened was she was like, well, this is such an amazing technique. I'm just gonna keep using this in every te in every situation in which my dog is scared. And I didn't hear from the client, it was maybe like two months. I ran into the client at like a grocery store or somewhere really mundane.

She was like, well, we tried the strategy that you taught us, but my dog ended up gaining nine pounds and my vet yelled at me for giving her so many treats. And he told me like, that's why you don't use positive reinforcement training, which is ironic because we weren't using positive reinforcement training.

Um, But so like her vet yelled at her and she was like, and also it does, just doesn't work as much now. And I was like, okay. Yeah. I am realizing now that I did not give you enough support. Because If you try to make everything special, nothing is special. And that's what you're seeing is that if everything predicts cheese, then cheese is just not that big of a deal anymore and it's not going to be as effective.

And yes, your dog is going to gain a ton of weight if your response to everything is cheese. So you are absolutely right that your, your experience is valid. Like you are experiencing exactly what I would expect you to experience in this context. I'm realizing now that I, I should have made sure that you had more support to keep moving forward and not get stuck at step one of our plan.

And that taught me a valuable lesson about not just, this is, this is one of the pitfalls of counter conditioning is that like it can be very easily misapplied and then everything goes sideways, but also. You can't give a learner agency if they don't have the skill to use that agency. Well, and I was expecting my client to be able to make a judgment call about when she was ready for the next step, that she was not in any way equipped to make that call because she didn't have the professional knowledge and skills that I have.

And so I had set her up to fail by leaving it up to her to decide when she was ready to move on, when clearly she did not have the knowledge and skill to make that assessment. And so she did exactly what a learner would do, is she just kept doing the thing that worked until it stopped working. And then she was like, well, this plan doesn't work.

So that was a really powerful lesson for me, not just about like why we don't rely only on counter conditioning, especially in a situation like that where the dog is afraid of lots of different things, but also. How the, how agency and skill are really, really powerfully interrelated. And that's another reason you can't just rely on classical conditioning because you can't give learners the agency they need and deserve if you don't teach them the skills to adeptly navigate their environment.

[00:40:48] Allie: So again, emotional change is necessary 100%, and also it's insufficient on its own. We need to use multiple tools in our toolbox. And remember that if a plan isn't working, that's information. It's not an indictment.

[00:41:04] Emily: As you're working with your own pets or your client's pets, whether you're a pet parent or a professional, whatever, whatever your relationship to animals may be I think I'm, I would like to invite you to look at where your plans might be overly relying on feelings to do all of the work, and where are there opportunities to actually give your learners skill in addition to changing their feelings.

And then the next step of that reflection is. What skills would make life easier or clearer for your dog? What skills would give them resilience? What skills would help them to make better life choices? What skills will help them to more successfully navigate the environment they live in? Not the ideal environment that we wish they could live in.

Again, real world. Real world. There's a reason that we use that phrase in pretty much everything that we do. So what real world skills do your, does your learner need or do your learners need to have more agency to be more resilient to more successfully roll with the punches of life.

[00:42:08] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony. 

[00:43:01] Emily: They're just experiencing this association between two different things. Where the meaning of the second one? Nope. Sorry. Where the meaning of the first one? Nope. I need to re I need to start over. Yeah. Ally, watch me try to work this out. It's fun. Where the second one's, meaning is acquired by the first one.