Nutso men, a cranky kid & a self-appointed guard dog develops PTSD: Scenes from a dog trainer’s life

Annie shares two recent anecdotes from her life, both involving humans behaving in extreme ways and young animals she loves (her toddler and her dog Poppy) having meltdowns. These two events made her think about punishment, fear, socialization, behavioral expectations, generalizations, and the way in which people treat animals (dogs or humans) who are emotional, for whatever reason. The episode talks about counter conditioning, using punishment on animals who are experiencing fear, and looks at the weird ways in which different people react to scared dogs: from bellowing at them to getting down on all fours. Enjoying this podcast? Here are things you can do! -Give a 5-star rating and leave a review on iTunes -Follow @schoolforthedogs and @annie.grossman on Instagram -Shop at storeforthedogs.com -Tell your friends about us -Sign up for our newsletter at schoolforthedogs.com/newsletter --- Partial Transcript: [music and intro] Annie: I wanted to share two kind of crazy experiences I had recently that relate to behavior and dog training in my own life. I guess you could classify this kind of episode as a Dear Diary type episode. And my three month old Marigold is right next to me as I’m recording this. And first she had the hiccups and now she’s sneezing. I think she wants to make herself known in this episode, which actually is about her in some ways. So one of these life episodes is, I would say, crazier than the other. And they’re both about people who I guess you could call crazy, but I feel like that’s sort of a broad and sloppy term, probably not particularly PC. So I think I’m gonna go with calling both these people simply bananas. The first incident I wanted to talk about happened about a week ago when I was on my way home from my daughter’s nursery school. I think it was her first day of nursery school. I had her with me, she’s two and a half, and the baby. And we were waiting for the bus and the bus wasn’t coming. And finally the bus came, and right before the bus came, a cab went by, and Magnolia said, “I wanna take a taxi.” And I said, “No, honey, we’re taking the bus.” We got on the bus and she had a meltdown. “I wanna take a taxi! I wanna take a taxi!” Crying, screaming about how she didn’t wanna get on the bus, she wanted to take a cab. I had to pick her up because she was doing that toddler thing where they try and go flat on the floor. And I was also carrying the baby. I had the baby like strapped to me. And the bus was really crowded and some very kind person stood up and said, “Why don’t you take my seat?” And meanwhile, Magnolia is screaming, crying the whole time. And you know, I felt like everyone was looking at us, but not with like great anger. Just kind of with like that upside down smile, like Beaker the Muppet smile-frown, feeling pity for me, I guess. But the guy who was in the seat right next to me, an older man starts saying to me, “You need to chastise that child! This is the problem with the world today. You should be chastising her. If she was my kid, I’d smack her.” And at that point, I’d say two or three people nearby me offered to get up and give me their seats. Full transcript at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe