Kindness Will Get You Everywhere

Hello everyone! This is Krista with Episode #156 on the Wag Out Loud pawdcast. My dog Winston just turned 13 And over time I've noticed that his eyes are a bit cloudy and he sometimes hesitates when going downstairs. And in full sun, he squints. So I decided to take him to a canine ophthalmologist to get checked out. I just wanted to know if he has the start of cataracts. What I learned was that he actually has lenticular sclerosis, also known as nuclear sclerosis. And the bluish haze that I've seen is not a cataract, but a common normal part of aging. Who knew? Lenticular sclerosis is simply a hardening and thickening of the lens fibers. And with aging, the old fibers in the lens become compacted and create a cloudy appearance in the eye. So I was so relieved to hear that Winston is still able to see, maybe not just as in much detail as he did in his younger years. But fortunately, this is a harmless condition that requires no treatment. But cloudiness of the lens should always be evaluated by a professional to rule out conditions such as cataracts, or glaucoma. Did you already know about lenticular sclerosis?

Welcome to the Wag Out Loud pawdcast, where we are obsessed with bringing you helpful tips on canine health care, nutrition, and overall wellbeing. If you'd like to support the show, check out the amazing online events, products and resources that I personally recommend on the Wag Out Loud website. I'm your host, Krista and I'm super excited to be bringing you yet another tail wagging episode.

Since she was a little girl, Gail Green has always been fascinated with dogs.  She has done rescue work with major disaster response in a variety of places in the USA as well as individual rescue and placement for individual animals.  She founded an award-winning animal assured therapy program in the east Bay - still thriving today and is the Co-founder of the first designated dog park in the country. Gail also authored the book, “Dog Parking It!” which is available on Amazon. Throughout her amazing career, she earned a variety of effective and loving methods to train basic obedience and behavior problem solving ideas and has been fortunate enough to learn from several of the top trainers in the world. Gail’s philosophy has always focused on positive training methods and fear free work.

Hello dog lovers! We have another learning opportunity in store as I chat with Gail Green. She's gonna tell us about her input as a trainer of 60 years. Kindness will get you everywhere. Gail, thanks so much for being with us today.

You bet. Thank you for having me.

This is so exciting. I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself and tell us about how you adopted the philosophy that you use when working with dogs.

Yes, I've been training for about 60 years. I started I consider my career that started at six, because I was bitten by a dog across the face. And went home, not feeling scared or bad or whatever. But I couldn't understand what the behavior was. Why? What did I do to cause this behavior. And I started doing reading and started helping other trainers and got me where I am. I am the co founder of the first dog park in the country. And it is still actually going really well. I have written a book about dog parks called Dog Parking It. And it has reviews of 237 parks that I visited in 2008. With my dog, and it was it was an incredible experience. It taught me a lot about people and animals together.

Well, you've done a lot.

Yeah, I've been very lucky. I've had the motivation, you know, it's working with dogs is just part of who I am. And I found that out when I was six.

That's amazing. And you're still going strong.

I'm telling you, you know, I just I it's just part of me. I can't not do it.

Well, Gail, you're all about kindness in training. And that's what we're going to talk about today. How does that differ from reward or positive reinforcement dog training?

What is Kindness in Dog Training?

It's very different. Kindness is not about reward. It's about a visceral presence, not keeping track of things not owing and being owed. Just being kind. The energy we put into kindness is paid off 1,000% In the small victories that we’re afforded when we're kind without expectations.

So, dog training with kindness, I guess, are you saying that it's using motivation and encouragement as opposed to fear, punishment or reward?

Right. The reward is absolutely needed. And we need to be able to communicate our pleasure with them and their success. And that can be through treats through, you know, getting on your knees and hugging him. I want my dog to feel like if I walk into the room, that something wonderful is going to happen. I don't want it to anticipate My response to that kind of thing, I want her, I want her to seek out the fun loving stuff. And not act because she thinks I am going to act a certain way or not. It has something to do for me about dominance and submission. Dominance, to me, is something that dogs do with each other. We don't speak the same language we don't. We act in behaviors in response to them. And in order for them to get the behaviors that we that they want. We expect the response in order to get that response, I want them to want to do it. I want them to see that doing this behavior, whether it's shaking hands, or you know, chasing down a burglar, I want the dog to feel like you know, they're doing it, right. And if they're not, that's my fault. I need to change my response and behavior. And with submission, a lot of times people think that submission is something where you have to be mean and in charge, I see a lot of people continuing to do the rollover, you know, they go over on their back, and you hold them there until they get it. But what they're getting is not necessarily that you're in charge, they're getting that you're being forceful and scary. That's why the behavior changes. I don't want my dog to change her behavior, because she's afraid.

Well, Gail, you've been, as we mentioned, that you've been working with dogs for over 60 years. So how has your mindset changed since you started all of this?

What’s Changed in 60 years with Dog Training?

Yeah, I went with what was happening in training at the time, and that was mostly to obtain graduating to pressure collars, to the E collars, and all of it done about manipulating their behavior with our actions, and not not being kind in the process. But you know, for us, positive reinforcement was you choke the heck out of until they do what they want, what you want, and then use praise, instead of taking every step and talking through it, and being present with it being a support system almost.

And when did that change, when during your career did positive reinforcement come in?

I was working at different shelters, doing training and teaching classes and that sort of thing. And we were doing, you know, what normal people were doing which was with choke chains. And we had a trainer, who is well known around the country that Jean Donaldson came in and was our boss. And we were all kind of like, Oh, should we expect because he's one of those kindness trainers, you know. And we were all like, nervous about the whole thing, because we didn't want to not do it, right. But we didn't want to be forced to do it her way. And it showed the benefits of kindness that she showed the benefits of understanding what you're dealing with, to in order to get to the motivation that the dog might have. And I was like ecstatic. We started doing shaping of behaviors, we started doing the positive positive you know I’m coming in, but I'm not gonna make you do anything just coming in. And being and that has, that's influenced me so much. And, you know, we weren't, we weren't forced to change it, which was kind of interesting to me, because of that dominance thing. Was this person going to come in and be dominant and have us do it this way. And we were we were challenged. I think that was probably the biggest turning point is when I suddenly got my own Aha. About, you know, looking at the animal, looking at the body language, looking at the face, you know, getting the dog to be comfortable to sit and stare at you. So I'd say probably it was in the 90s that I started to, to make that change they call it the crossover, and just saw the benefits of it. Instead of you know, I mean, if I make a certain clicking sound in my house, she will come running. And it's because there's something there for her. And, you know, it could be a toy, it could be a treat, it could just be me. And I wanted her to get excited about doing what she was doing. Right. And she does. I mean, I have so many pictures I have of her tail is blurry. You know, she's, she's comfortable with all kinds of people. I have to say that the people that had her before me treated her really well. So she came out being confident and silly and happy and she's learned probably faster than any dog I’ve had.

And Gail, I know that you mentioned back in the day, the choke and the shock collars, which unfortunately are still being used today. Those E collars are not any better, but really have to think it's not just those methods, but even yelling or jerking the leash. There are so many things that we do when we're training that affect our dogs negatively as well. So why don't all of these negative methods, why don't they work?

Negative Training Methods

Well, I'm not gonna say they don't work in getting the behavior that people want. They don't work, as indicated by, you know how trusting the dog is. And I saw one video of a guy working with a dog and the dog was just hangdog, the head was down, the tail was under, and the dog would just stop moving, because it's the safest place to be, and yet would get corrected by this collar. And, and, you know, they called the training session that I watched a success because the dog ended up dealing with it. But the dog wasn't even there. I mean, he was just acting on pure fear, and avoiding conflict. So it's really kind of amazing. You know, I mean, I've been told that the reason that I don't find it useful is because I don't know how to do it, right. And I don't know what's right or wrong about pushing a button. And so I've asked people I said, teach me what’s right with it. And there's a lot of negativity between force free trainers, and trainers who use the kind of aversive methods. It’s a them versus us kind of thing. And that's really too bad, because then nobody wins.

So you're saying that dogs are, it's better for them to work for something than against it?

Right. I want them running to me, not away from me.

Well, I wanted to bring up a study that I found it was done in Portugal a couple of years ago. And it addressed the common question that if dogs can learn from both positive training methods, and those that are considered punishment, does the choice of method matter. And I guess the dogs who experienced punishment during this study, were more pessimistic than the dogs that did not get punished. And that makes a lot of sense. So I think this study supports the idea that dogs are harmed, even with the use of the less extreme methods that we talked about. And offers evidence that the use of punishment in training is really a problem for canine welfare, their entire being.

A Fearful Dog

And the, you know, being grounded or trustworthy, you know, if they have the opportunity to get away from whatever that behavior is, then they're going to do that. I do a lot of work with disaster response, then was down in the south right after Katrina, and watched some of these dogs. So many were, I mean, it wasn't necessarily even negative. Work with them, but, but neglected, work with them, you know, and then somebody suddenly, you know, thinks that then we're gonna get a scared dog to sit and down and stuff. And that’s how we’ll take care of it. W e had several dogs that had clearly been backyard dogs, we had to set them up with igloo, kennels, and, and a 50 foot cord. And we did that we put it right outside of mess hall area. So that they had to get used to at first seeing people walk by. And that was the first step, I had one little chow that I worked with it, she would just panic at the end of the 50 foot cord, if you ever even came within 75 to 100 feet. And at one point, I started to walk up the cable, I would step on it as I went so that she couldn't really go very far. It took me two hours to get 50 feet with her not panicking. And finally was able to like go for a walk and stuff. And you could start to see these little tiny glimpses of her emotional mental healing. When I got to her, I just stood there with my back to her for 20 minutes. And she came over and started sniffing. And then I felt a little nudge in my hand and it was like, ok we're getting there. And not every dog is you're not able to necessarily rehab every dog you work with. And that's, that's something that as a trainer, it's a tough thing to accept.

Sure, because you want to help them all.

Exactly. And I you know, I finally got to the point where I knew what, what issues I was most comfortable with, and what issues I was no good at. And I had, you know, I think we need to have a lot of self disclosure and honesty about, you know, what our limits are so that we can continue to help the dogs and not just la ti da.

That's a great point. Well, Gail, I'm going to stop you there just for a minute so we can take a quick sponsor break and we will be right back.

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Welcome back, everybody. We are chatting with Gail Green about training with kindness with our dogs. Gail, obviously this boils down to mutual respect. Can you unpack that?

The Must Be Mutual Respect

Yeah, I mean, I think the mutual respect and trust comes from us first. You know, I don't want to make a dog. I mean, somebody has pointed out to me that, you know, the fear could be thought of as respect. Okay, he respects me, it's not that simple. You know, when you do the putting down on their back, and you're sitting on top of them, and they're scared to death, and they've stopped their behavior, they haven't stopped it because they go, Oh, you're in charge, okay, I got it. They're just frozen because of the fear. And if they had a chance to do it, they will get out of there. It does change behavior. But it doesn't change it to a place where it's trustworthy. And the motivation is to stay where you are and work together. If somebody doesn't have respect for a dog, that's not the dog’s problem. That's a person's view. And I think kind of ego motivated. You know, he listens to me now, because I did this and that, well, you do this and that, and he's doing it with you, but look at his body language, you know, is he looking at you is he you know, inspired by you? No, he's afraid of you. So he's doing it, so he doesn't have to get hurt. I just I think first of all, you know, eye contact is really important. It's really easy to see the dog's comfort level, but just looking where are they looking at when you're talking to him, I'm my goal is to get her to turn her head sideways every time I talk. And for me to do that, I have to encourage that I have to be the one who takes that first step of respect. And some of it is about like with the little chow that I worked with. She was so scared. And I had to respect that, you know, that's something that's an issue I had to deal with. And if I didn't deal with it, I would never get that nudge that she did in my hand and a little bit of a wag, you know, just walking into a room with a scared dog and sitting on the other side of the room.

Well, Gail, you, you bring up the best point because often what appears to be aggressive behavior in dogs is simply fear based. Right. And I think a lot of people don't understand, like, if I have a dog that acts aggressively, maybe toward a stranger, it may simply be that they have fear. And therefore they bark and they growl out of, you know, fear aggression, it is a thing. So it is we are not setting them up for success. Because, you know, for that instance, every time a stranger walks by, this dog is going to learn to fear them even more. Yeah. So we would be setting them up to fail.

Fear Might = Aggression

Yeah, yes. Well, you know, it's like, bottom line is we have the choice on what they get what they interpret. We make that decision. There was a dog at Katrina that it was probably middle aged-ish pitbull that was in a run that had stacks of straw and hay so he could go high if he wanted to. And that design was out of respect for his fear. And I sat with him for a while and started just kind of throwing treats around and he slowly came down and then he came over to sit by my feet because I had treats on my feet. And just got to the point where I could do, the best I could do is start petting him behind the ears and that kind of thing. People don't want to take that kind of time because it does take more time. But it also creates a more solid dog. A dog with more confidence. People approach from a lot of times that they take a step backwards or so. And if I, if I see that step happen to tell them, we're going to go another way here, because that's what I want to start with, is that step backwards, I want to make a step forward.

Meet them where they are. Not with your expectation, right.

Right, right. Let them make the decisions on what feels okay. Because if they feel okay, then they're likely to learn better.

Well, let's do an experiment. Let's take a dog that either a puppy or an adult dog that does not know how to sit. Okay, we would probably think when we're teaching this dog to sit that we're going to push their butt down to the floor. Can you give us an example, how would you train a dog to sit out of kindness?

Teaching Sit with Kindness

What I do use rewards, and I do then randomize them, so they don't know when it's gonna come with a puppy, I will run the reward right past their nose, then usually, they will start to pay attention to it. And then I will just run it over their head a little bit. And I usually get a sit, because that's where the body is gonna go. So what they learn, I don't give a command first, when I'm teaching a new behavior, I get the behavior first. I don't want to waste commands, I don't want to have them hear sit 10 times, and then we push them down that teaches from nothing. What that teaches, is that they're going to wait for number 11. So what, what I'll do is start off with play. If you've got a shy dog, or that kind of thing, I don't go towards the dog with play, I go away from them with play. And that can influence them in thinking, Okay, if I step forward, not, it's not gonna happen badly. And I really want that toy, just working with them, to motivate them. And that's the key thing is motivation. I think, you know, if you're motivated to run out of fear, that's what you're gonna do. And each dog is different in motivation. But with a puppy, I will walk around and I'll make sure that that sit behavior is kind of generalized, I'll go into different rooms and that kind of thing, do the treat at their nose, if they jump, the treat us goes away, and then I'll do the treat again. And if they get bored, or tired, or don't know what to do, they will oftentimes sit just to think, and then they get the treat.

So you have to wait it out. There's a lot of patience involved.

Yeah, yeah, there was a young puppy, it was a little German Shepherd puppy in the shelter. And we were doing the Open Paw program with them. And I was showing the volunteers, this is how we get a sit from inside the kennel. And to hold the treat right outside the kennel door, let them smell it, almost touch it, let them get really frustrated. If a behavior doesn't work, a dog will change that behavior. So if enough times pawing at it and stuff doesn't get them the treat, they're gonna start to ponder what's going on, and most likely sit partly out of frustration, then they get the treat. And so the you can see the brain working. It’s like, wait a minute, what did I do that got me that treat? And this little guy, finally he got he got frustrated. And he did the sit. But he did it. He got went back to the back of the kennel and sat in his bed. And I threw the treat. So he put in another step. That was part of his interpretation of what I wanted. So I would hold the treat out and he would run back to his bed and sit, which is great. I mean, in the shelter. That's a good presentation. But we did have, you know, the different breeds are gonna have different kinds of motivation as well. And we had a little foxhound puppy, and she came to the front of the kennel, and she didn't sit, she did a play bow. And she stayed in that play bow until she got her treat. So when people would come up to look at the dogs, they would all run to the front of the kennel quiet, nobody jumping around. They would all sit right there. You know, people weren’t walking around with their fingers in their ears with the barking. The motivation was, this was you know, the motivation for most dogs is often food related or toy related, and making sure that you follow through when they do what you've asked them to do.

Well, let's talk about your dog Frolic. She is adorable by the way and obviously loves to learn as all dogs do and they need mental stimulation. So how do you work with Frolic every day to make her want to get up every day and do things with you?

Well, first of all, she's a real chowhound. So she will, if it looks like it might be food, she'll do whatever you want. But she loves life. And when I got her, she was just kind of, you know, she was a happy dog. But she wasn't, she was like, she wasn't expecting anything back. And so she in the first two weeks that I had her, she had no training, when I got her. The first two weeks that I had her, she learned 20 commands. And I tried to make sure I'm doing them different times different places on different surfaces, I'm doing them alone in the house and out in the crowd, just get her so that it's about the behavior, not the environment, I try to introduce new behaviors fairly often every few days or so. And then we work on those and she gets them so fast. I mean, she just like this sponge. So it's a pleasure for me as well. And she you know, and I tried to do silly commands you know, with with behavior so that people can also enjoy it. I had a sheltie that would roll over on her back when I said seduce. So if you could put some humor and play in everything, she was afraid to go into the bathroom. And most dogs are waiting at the door. But she was afraid to go in. So I just did a path of treats in and then back out of the bathroom. So she got something for staying there, she got something for leaving there. And she got two different commands in there.

And you've told me in the past, you want her to expect fun and surprises and you actually say, parties.

Training Should be Fun!

A party party. Yeah. And that's, you know, think about when you're a kid, what kind of what kind of things motivated you as a kid. There were times when you got a positive response to those things, you got rewarded by being often asked to do the same thing again, which in itself can be a reward. It's about feeling also worthy. You know, Frolic knows that she can, I can actually move her around my house just by pointing. And she can do commands. And you know, her favorite thing is sort of run up the little steps, we have at my couch. And she'll run up there and run to the other end of the couch and wait and then I’ll point to the chair to go jump in the chair. You know, she anticipates the fun of it. You know, most dogs don't like baths. So I'll take her in the bath and the bathtub dry and give her treats and stuff. And then she gets a jump up. So we make it so that it isn't about something negative. It's going to happen. It's about here and now.

Well, Gail, this has been amazing, and I can't believe our time is running out. But I guess in essence, what you're trying to convey to us that lives with our dogs is a true partnership, that we need to respect each other. Have patience with them. Because we are different species we speak different languages. So as we wrap up, what would you like to leave us with?

Just a couple of sentences here. Kindness is simply about noticing and honoring each other. I honor my little stubby dog as she wags 24/7 The response in anticipation. And kindness is not just positive response to behaviors, but acceptance and enhancement of being alive and sharing our time together.

I love that is so profound. And you hit it on the head. That's what life is all about. Right? Right. Well, Gail, thank you so much. I can't believe you've done so much for so many dogs in 60 plus years. That's just amazing. So thank you for your heart and teaching us through all that you've learned. Where can everybody find out more information about you? Or if people have questions? How can they get in contact with you?

CONTACT GAIL

I do have a Facebook page. Okay, Gail Green, located in Forest Grove, Oregon. And that's probably the best way to go.

Instagram: joopie2

email: bgdogs1@yahoo.com

All right, Facebook. Well, give little Frolic a squeeze for me. And thank you so much, Gail. I appreciate your time today.

All right, thank you so much.

Thanks again to our friends at Primalhealth, makers of TEEF for sponsoring this episode. Your dog deserves a healthy mouth!  Go to teefhealth.com  to learn more about this amazing product and don’t forget that the code WOL gets you 20% off of your order

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Hey Winston was that another tail wagging episode?

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