Change Is Hard Ep167

Episode 167 this week we're talking about change. Change is really hard.

And when we're talking about dogs who have trouble being groomed, who have difficulty with the grooming process, that's going to involve some training. And training is all about changing how they feel about it and what they need to do. So let's talk about change this week.

You're listening to the Creating Great Grooming Dogs podcast. I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith.

I'm a certified professional groomer, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a grooming instructor at Whole Pet Grooming Academy, where I also teach my online program, Master Groomer Behavior Specialist. And I'm the owner of Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire. And this, my friends and colleagues, is the podcast where grooming and training meet.

I want to start off this week by talking about how training is about change. So when we have a dog in our grooming setting, maybe they're on the grooming table or they're in the tub or they're a new customer.

We're trying to teach them to do something new. We want them to change. And maybe they don't have any experience at all. Maybe it is going to be something really easy. Some just basic instruction.

Now, what I mean by basic instruction, I want you to think about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That's basic instructions. I can teach you how to, in one sitting make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Now, the thing is, is that for a lot of our dogs, they need to know about changing what they've been doing before, which is different than making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now, there's some emotion involved or habits. So when do habits and emotions come in?

Habits and emotions can come in when we start talking about when a dog has been maybe scared in the grooming setting. Maybe they've been on the table before and they thought that was really scary.

Maybe they have a long history of really thinking that grooming is scary or grooming is difficult.

Maybe we have a long history of doing things in a particular way and that's different than the instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So. And I use the peanut butter and jelly sandwich example with our own.

With my owners, I think that my owners say sometimes need to know that this is going to take more than one session. Oh, well, he doesn't like having his nails trimmed. Sure, yeah, you can work on that. But didn't you work on that last time?

It's not going to change overnight. Change is Hard change is difficult, especially when there's a habit or some emotional history. So let's talk about habits.

I want to come up with a couple of good habit ideas for you guys. And first of all, some of these are going to be non grooming related so that we can help think about these things.

I had a habit I wasn't really necessarily aware of when I pull up to the gas pump. So I had a car that had a gas gas cap on one side and then I got a different car and the gas caps on the other side.

Totally took a while to figure out. Like before I had to really think about it every time, like, oh wait, which side is the gas cap on?

I didn't know I had a habit of just pulling into the gas station in a particular way. Now pumping gas might be as easy as putting together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And that could be something you can learn really quickly.

But what if instead of thinking about just how to pump gas, you have to form a new habit and pull up correctly? So I think sometimes we forget that we have these habits. Habits are tricky and we don't necessarily know that we have them.

Here is another driving example for us. I don't know if you guys have ever had to switch from an automatic to a standard transmission, but that's when you realize, or back and forth.

That's when you realize my left foot thinks it has a job or my left foot thinks it never has a job and switching from one to the other, that that is a habit. And it's a, it's something you can learn. It's something you can figure out pretty quickly but takes time.

It's more than just knowing how to drive an automatic or how to drive a standard. Now you have some habits that you've got.

So I think in the grooming setting sometimes we run into dogs who have a habit of trying to run away when something's going on. So maybe we turn on a dryer and they have a habit of trying to avoid the dryer. Or sometimes it's us as groomers.

We have a habit of lifting legs in a particular way for nail trimming. And maybe this dog finds that physically uncomfortable and we need to adjust what we do.

So I'm going to come up with a couple more grooming examples of habits. I'm my own boss, I do house calls and I do things in my own particular way.

And sometimes I'm working for somebody else and I'm going to a friend's shop and helping out there and what happens When I'm trying to match their style.

Now, I can match another groomer's style if I first recognize that I have a habit that I need to backtrack, pause, and think about, how does this shop like this? Done. Okay. And then when you're used to that, you can switch back and forth pretty quickly. But if you have a habit, habits are tricky.

Habits take time. Now let's come up with another habit. Let's see, what can we come up with for other habits that we as groomers have.

A really common one is many of us do things in a certain order. Ooh, that's a big habit, isn't it? And we start with, maybe it's straight to the tub. That's your habit.

Straight to the tub, get the dog wet, start shampooing. But this particular dog, we might need to change our habit.

We might need to adjust for taking off some of the coat if we think that this dog's particular challenge is that they think bathing and drying is scary. So we might go ahead and do some clipper work before we do a bath, before we do any drying.

Hopefully we can break the cycle of that habit that we're used to doing and change up the order that we do things in and think about and really process the fact that we can change what it is we're doing. We get. Don't need to do things in the same order every time.

Now, many of us were taught to do things in a particular order every time because it does really streamline our process. And I get that. I really do. We need to streamline our process.

We are in this to make money, you know, and it does go faster if you have things on autopilot until. Until you have a dog that can't handle that particular version.

And when we start working with behavior cases, that's really common for us to have to backtrack and say, all right, for this dog, I'm going to need to try to do things in a different order. Now, when I do things in a different order, I'm usually pretty good at just having a checklist in my head.

But when I first started doing things in a different order, what I found I needed to do was, was I have an actual checklist beside me, a piece of paper where I'm checking off. Okay, did nails on the left front foot, right front foot, left back foot, right back foot, you know, like, come up with your entire checklist.

Did the sani, brushed out ears, cleaned ears, trimmed back, scissored legs, whatever that is. But I needed to have the notebook beside me to keep track if I was going to go and do it in a different order. And that might be helpful for you.

Change is hard. Change is not easy. I'm going to give you another example that's not grooming related as a change is hard.

My guys had to go to the vet for routine dental work this week, so no food after midnight. So the next morning, I get up and man that habit to get up and feed my dogs. Wow, that is a tough habit. And for my dogs to be like, we're up.

We went outside. Where's the food? Hello. We were outside. It's morning. Hello. Mom, you're forgetting something.

Um, I actually slept late so that I would basically get them up, have them go potty outside while I get dressed and just load them in the car to. To bring them to the vet so I didn't have to stare at them for an hour of this. Like, why aren't you feeding us? Habits are tricky.

It was really hard to not go ahead and just feed them. Going to give you another example of a habit because change is hard.

If you've ever moved and suddenly you're going home from work and you start driving to where you used to live. God, that one's a really common one.

You're driving back to where you used to live because you moved and it's only been like a week, you know, and you're like, oh, wait, wait, wait, I don't live there.

Or you work someplace new, or maybe it's on the weekend and you are driving someplace else, but you start going on your regular commute and you start driving toward where you work. Those are examples of habits. We have weird habits. Sometimes we are not aware of them.

But for a lot of our dogs, when we're asking them to change on the grooming table, when we say, okay, you're eight years old and you've never liked grooming, but I've been following some podcast and she says we should try some different stuff. Stuff. That dog also has habits. That dog's like, what are you doing? You always did it a different way.

And I'm still going to give you, you know, the chance to do this part and maybe not a chance to do that part. I'm still going to have some issues with it because I'm a dog. You know, we need to think about. Habits are tricky. And some of our dogs have habits.

Some of our owners create habits with their dogs that we don't necessarily help with grooming. So change is hard.

And it may be that, that the dog doesn't mind being groomed, but they have this weird habit and that habit could be just to be pulling on the end of anything.

Maybe they just pull so hard on leash and their owners have never worked on it, that when they get on a grooming loop, they're trying to pull on it the entire time, which of course is not safe. So we're trying to encourage them to stop pulling on that thing.

So I want you to think about, it's not as simple as, oh, I'm just going to teach the dog this afternoon. And if it were, honest to God, if it were that easy, we would not have professional dog trainers.

That would not be its own industry, its own profession. Like, if it were just as simple as, like, oh, I'm just going to explain it to your dog today. Ta da. We wouldn't have this whole other industry.

So I want you to think about times when maybe you have a habit and that could be grooming related, that could be your procedure, that it can be really hard to change that up. Maybe that habit is to grab the chin hair and hold that dog's head really still. Right?

I mean, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know, that's really not my style, but maybe that's a habit you have and to recognize, like, okay, where are my habits? And am I flexible? Can I try to be flexible? Can I try something new? And what kind of things do I need to do to try something new?
Friends what happens when our habits and the thing that we need to change has some emotion, part of it. What happens when emotion is part of it?

What happens if it's something you're afraid of or something that you find really challenging because of an emotion. Maybe it's over excitement, maybe it's fear.

A lot of our dogs are having problems during grooming because there's something about it that they're afraid of. Well, certainly that's more difficult to change than just teaching them how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right?

That's different than teaching a dog. Well, the dog's version of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the simple sit. Right?

I mean, as a dog trainer, I rarely teach dogs how to sit because the owners have already figured that out. They've already taught that. Right? Teaching us it is really easy.

It's like the teaching of peanut butter, how to make a peanut butter and Jelly sandwich. It's really easy to do. So what happens when there's emotion involved?

You know, I can't just teach a dog like, oh, see, I'm just going to teach you how to let me do your nails. If doing your nails has been something that makes this dog frantic and scared and aggressive, then I'm not going to be just like, oh, poof, ta da.

Everything's fine now. I mean, our owners sometimes think that that's what's going to happen.

We need to think about, well, if we backtrack and say, all right, how can I help you understand each step of this and that this is not scary. It's not scary. I want you to be comfortable with it and not be afraid.

And not being afraid is going to be the main goal, which is different than just following instructions. Like, you can't tell a dog, oh, just don't be afraid. Like, oh, okay. Any more so than you can teach a person to just, oh, just don't be afraid.

Oh, okay. If that were true, we wouldn't have people who are terrified of snakes and spiders. Oh, hey, by the way, that spider can't hurt you.

Oh, all right, I'll just walk over, pick it up and bring it outside. We know that people have emotions with their fears.

And so if we're looking at fears and we're looking at emotions, that's going to help us to understand that this is not simply. I'm just going to teach you to do it differently or I'm going to insist that you just stop it, stop it, just knock it off.

And I think that it's common for us to kind of forget. Oh, yeah.

When it's a fear, when it's something that you're afraid of or something that you're really emotional about, it's really hard to just, you know, turn that off. Like, oh, oh, I don't need to be afraid of that. I think many of us have faced fears. I'm going to give an example of, like, fear of heights.

Now, heights make me a little uncomfortable. I used to be afraid of heights. They make me uncomfortable now. And I will say that part of that is what I've done is, am I safe right now?

And I can logically think it through and say, yeah, okay, so when I've gone up on the roof to check something on the roof, all right, we have a one story house going up on a one story roof. Not a big deal.

But I have gone up onto like a friend's third story roof to help him with some roofing My husband was like, I don't think so, but I'm okay, I'll get up there. But part of what I have to do is think to, like. My logical brain has to say, oh, I'm going up on the third. On the roof of the third floor up there.

But I am safe. We've got some ties, We've got some stuff going on. I'm making sure that I'm going to be safe up there. There.

I think that, that the logic chain has to be there. And now I can go up ladders, stuff like that. Not a problem. My dad had me go up his mast to do. Fix something at the top of his mast on his sailboat.

Like, okay, I can do things like that. As long as I know logically. I have done everything to make myself safe. Now, here's the thing.

When we have a dog who is afraid, afraid of some aspect of grooming, it can be really difficult to convince them that you are now safe. And that's our goal, is calm, comfortable, and cooperative. You guys know I say it all the time, but calm, comfortable, and cooperative is our goal.

If we are actively trying to help this dog understand that you are safe, everything is safe. You are fine. I am not going to push you to the point where you're scared. I want to keep you feeling that you are fine the whole time.

This isn't about push them till they're scared and then back off, which I think we commonly do that backfires because then we never build trust. You can't build trust that way. We want to help them remain calm. We want to think about this dog's comfort level. We want them to be successful.

Here's the thing. Dogs are having a hard time. They aren't giving us a hard time. They're having a hard time. We are going to try to partner with that dog. Okay?

When the dog wins, we all win. Team Chrissy and Sparky. We're at our grooming table and we're working together. I want this dog to be successful. I want this dog to feel safe.

And when dogs feel safe, they often let us do more. Kind of like when I feel safe, I'm more willing to go up a ladder, go up on a roof, try to do some roof work, go up to the top of a mast.

I have to feel safe to do it. Otherwise that little bit of fear of being up high can kick in. Next thing you know, you start thinking about falling.

I don't want the animals to feel like it's unsafe. So that's why we have to think about this change. We're trying to make a change and help this animal be able to feel comfortable for grooming.

Calm, comfortable and cooperative. Change is hard, and it's hard for the animals and it's hard for us. Sometimes we as groomers feel like, I am going to be unsafe.

This dog is going to do something, and I'm going to get injured. And I don't want groomers to get injured. I don't want dogs to get injured.

We need to think about keeping it safe for everyone so that we can be comfortable continuing, so that we can build on what we have. Because change is difficult, and we're asking dogs to change how they feel about grooming.

We're asking other groomers to change how we feel about grooming and how we do things, but so that we can meet in the middle so that things can be more comfortable for all of us. All of us. Not just the dog, not just us, but for the whole team. So change is difficult, and sometimes it's just a matter of adding some instructions.

Sometimes that's a pretty blank slate. Like, oh, you wanted me to do it this way. Okay, sure. I don't have any emotional attachments to the way I was doing it before.

Okay, fine, I can do that.

But most of the time when we're talking about behavior issues in the grooming room, we have habits and we have emotions, and we need to work around those.

If you'd like more information, you can find me at chrissyappycritters.net happycrittersdogtraining.com or or you can join the Facebook group Creating Great Grooming Dogs podcast or the Facebook page Creating Great Grooming Dogs. I really look forward to hearing from you.