How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD (Formerly known as School For The Dogs Podcast) – Details, episodes & analysis
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How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD (Formerly known as School For The Dogs Podcast)
Annie Grossman, founder of School For The Dogs and author of the book How To Train Your Dog With Love & Science, is obsessed with positive reinforcement dog training and thinks you should be, too. Anamarie Johnson, PhD, who consults with shelters and loves to nerd out on dog-related studies. They want dog owners to be more literate in the basics of behavioral science! Tune in to learn how to use science-based methods to train dogs (and people) without pain, force, or coercion.
Get the book at anniegrossman.com/book
(Formerly known as School For The Dogs Podcast)
What happens when you publish a paper showing e-collars can be effective? Anamarie replies to negative feedback to her study. Plus: Annie tries to buy one.
Monday, September 30, 2024 • Duration 49:33
Anamarie and I recorded this episode separately because we had different things we wanted to communicate in a format that wasn't really right for conversation.
Me first: What if you're someone who has strong feelings about putting dogs in shock collars and... one of your friends publishes a paper on research she did that involved putting shock collars on dogs?
What if that person is your podcast host?
Hi, I'm Annie, and this is my life.
The day after I publish a book that is essentially a paean to Positive Reinforcement dog training rooted in science and research, a major journal publishes a paper (rooted in science and research!) that says that using a shock collar may be more effective when teaching a dog to stop chasing than reward-based training would be in the same period of time. Anamarie was one of the authors.
Do you hop on the bandwagon and hate on this person?
Do you yell at the angry mob -- which contains many of your colleagues -- to stop hating on her because she is someone you respect and love?
Do you hit your desk on the head several times because you know that 99.9 percent of US dog owners don't care about the studies or the ethics and will never consult with experts but are going to use these things anyway because THEY'RE COMPLETELY LEGAL?
Do you ... buy a shock collar?
Join me as I confirm all my worst fears during a series of phone calls with shock collar retailers.
In the 2nd part of the episode, Anamarie responds to attacks on the study that has been the source of so much criticism in the Positive Reinforcement dog training community over the last few weeks.
Professional dog trainers are really mad at each other! Also: Book Launch, Miniconference, and... New Co-Host!
Monday, September 2, 2024 • Duration 01:02:24
Meet Anamarie Johnson! She was one of my first hires at School For The Dogs nearly a decade ago. She recently got her PhD, and she'd coming on to join me as a co-host!
Me= Annie Grossman, dog trainer, business owner, human. I started this podcast in 2018. I had to take a little time off, mostly because... I was working on a book! It comes out next week! Learn more at SchoolForTheDogs.com/book.
It's called How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science and much of it stems from conversations that started on this podcast.
In this episode, we talked about some of the crazy drama that's been going on, most of it having to do with positive-reinforcement pros and those trainers are positive-reinforcement adjacent going at each other online. Characters include Michael Shikashio, Zak George, Ivan Balabanov, Behavior Vets, Eileen Anderson, and Jo-Rosie Haffenden, among others.
Anamarie and I come to the conclusion that a lot of the pros don't know how to interpret science, and are basically just talking to each other since the majority of dog owners have no idea that dog training has anything to do with science to begin with.
I recently renamed the podcast to match the book's title: How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science.
I think it is fitting for the new format because Anamarie can be the science and I can be... the love? Or something.
Along with the new title came an amazing new theme song, by Sam Swinnerton, who recently KILLED IT on The Tonight Show! See .
Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at
Dom Hodgson is coming to NYC to talk to pet biz pros! Plus: What do you think a good dog training "pledge" should include?
Monday, April 10, 2023 • Duration 41:28
Annie has been on podcast-hiatus working on her book, but... she's back! Join her for a conversation with longtime friend of the podcast, British pet marketing guru Dom Hodgson, who is coming to New York City to lead a seminar at School For The Dogs later this month. Dom shares his thoughts on the current state of the pet service industry and gives some really excellent advice on how to turn happy customers into brand cheerleaders.
Sign up for Dom's April 23rd seminar Grow Your Pet Business FAST
She also sometimes goes live to answer questions on Clubhouse. Find her there: @anniegrossman.
Here, Annie talks to an SFTD client who has a young rescue dog who became frightened about going outside after some bad experiences on walks. The owner has been bringing the dog to off-leash time at School For The Dogs in NYC and wants Annie's thoughts on bringing him to the dog park.
Bonus: Annie reads aloud John B. Watson's 1913 essay "Psychology As The Behaviorist Views it"
Monday, March 8, 2021 • Duration 01:00:05
Professor John B. Watson's 1913 essay argues that psychology should be studied from a behavioral perspective, echoes some of the same conversations that are had today between dog trainers who are approach dog training as a science and those who approach dog training by making assumptions about dogs' internal feelings and motivations.
It’s from Psychological Review from 1913 by John B. Watson. I looked this up because I am working on some of the lectures that are going with our online professional course, which, I’m just finishing up these lectures. And I did a lecture on the history of dog training, and the history of dog training and both in universities and in pop culture, I guess is the best way to describe what the lecture is.
And I mentioned Skinner and said something about how Skinner was influenced by the work of Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson. Both of whom were mostly working in the very early 1900s. And I kind of just started looking up stuff about John B. Watson. Again, I got on kind of a Watson kick a few years ago. I read part of his biography, which I’d actually like to look at again. I think Watson has probably due his own episode at some point, and is widely considered the OG daddy of the field of behavioral science as I understand it.
Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at
In Defense of Negative Punishment: Teaching dogs patience at mealtime, stopping thumb sucking & more
Friday, March 5, 2021 • Duration 17:50
Is all punishment necessarily bad? Nope! There are two kinds of punishment, and one of them is actually frequently used by so called "positive reinforcement" trainers like Annie: Negative Punishment. Here Annie breaks down what Negative Punishment is, talks about how it interplays with positive reinforcement, and explains its role in the "Elevator Game," which is a great exercise you can to do at mealtimes in order to teach a dog to not bum-rush the food bowl. She also reads from Behavior Principles In Every Day Life by John D. Baldwin and Janice I. Baldwin, which talks about a study in which parents used negative punishment at story time in order to discourage children from sucking their thumbs.
Behavior Principles In Every Day Life by John D. Baldwin and Janice I. Baldwin, https://amzn.to/3qd8TXf
A conversation with Terra Newell (former groomer, owner of a mini Aussie) about killing her stepfather... and dogs
Monday, March 1, 2021 • Duration 49:33
We're posting this as a bonus episode because it isn't really about dog training... but it's something we think you will want to listen to if you love dogs and empathize with people who love them. If you've heard the podcast Dirty John, or seen the dramatization on TV, also called Dirty John, you'll know that it's a story that is... complicated. The hero of the real-life true-crime story is Terra Newell, a soft-spoken dog groomer who was attacked by her sociopath stepfather one night when she and her dog were coming home from a day working at a shelter. Annie and Terra talk about her life with pets, the traumatic experience she and her dog experienced, how her dog impacted her recovery, and more.
So I’m posting this as a bonus episode because it’s not really about dog training, but it is about a pretty incredible and traumatic experience that a woman who is a huge dog lover had with her dog. And I explain it in this conversation, which I recorded live on Instagram, why I wanted to talk to Terra Newell, who I first learned about from the podcast Dirty John. She is also portrayed in the dramatization of the story Dirty John, in the TV show called Dirty John.
I think I say this in the conversation, but there’s so many things to talk about and think about that are brought up in Dirty John. But of course, with my dog training point of view, all I could think was this woman should become a dog trainer! [laughs] Anyway, I don’t think that is part of Terra Newell’s life plan, but I was happy that she agreed to talk to me.
Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at
SFTD Off-Leash Manager Adam Davis on training as a teenager & developing a career specializing in helping dogs socialize
Friday, February 26, 2021 • Duration 01:01:53
When Adam Davis came to work at School For The Dogs in late 2019, he was only in his mid-twenties but already had a decade of working with dogs professionally under his belt. In particular, his background involved a lot of hours spent helping city dogs learn to co-exist, and play, off leash. Today, he runs School For The Dogs' unique School Yard program-- a by-appointment, trainer-supervised members-only dog run -- and also oversees puppy playtimes, in addition to working private with clients. He and Annie discuss his early introduction to the world of science-based training, his interest in police dogs, his rescue dog Sonic, and more.
So I am here with Adam Davis. Adam, why don’t you introduce yourself with your official School for the Dogs title.
Adam:
Hi, Annie, thank you for having me on. Yeah, my name is Adam Davis and I am the off-leash manager at the School for the Dogs.
Annie:
And what does that mean?
Adam:
So pretty much, we have these really cool services, it’s called our Off Leash services, right? Pretty much it sounds exactly how it sounds you get to come into the school and allow your dog to be off-leash in a highly controlled and constructive kind of way. Our services are great for —
Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at
A group discussion about The New Yorker article, "Bad Dog," with its author Anna Heyward
Thursday, February 25, 2021 • Duration 01:03:05
Anna Heyward is a writer and a School For The Dogs apprentice who has been featured on this podcast. She joined Annie and others to discuss her heartbreaking new article in The New Yorker, "Bad Dog," on Clubhouse. Their discussion touched on the complicated world of behavioral euthanasia, the cultural fog about dog training and the rampant misinformation about it, and more. Former School For The Dogs trainer Anamarie Johnson, also previously interviewed on this podcast, was among those who joined the conversation.
Find Annie on Clubhouse at @anniegrossman. Looking for a Clubhouse invite? Text 917-414-2625
Also: I'm hosting a mini-conference on Sept. 7 at School For The Dogs in NYC (and also online). Registration closes Sept. 4. Learn more at ShoolForTheDogs.com/event.
I got three-ish months old Sunny on January 13th and he has settled in swimmingly. He’s happy go lucky, playful, but overall, very calm and observant. One standout example. When a stranger came in the house briefly, he all blinked at him. He only barks in the mornings to get out of his crate. He’s crate trained and he sleeps for around eight hours every night.
The issue: he was with foster mom on a farm before coming to be in Brooklyn and was increasingly skittish on our initial walks to the park. Note, he was on pain meds from his neutering at first. As days oere on and pain meds wore off this continued. So I started picking him up and walking him to the park. Eventually he didn’t want to go outside at all.
We had a couple of unfortunate incidents that may have sped up the snowballing, including spooky home alone, where the passers-by, and one Pitbull that got a little too close sending Sunny between my boots and then yelping like a car alarm. I tried using treats, but after day five of growing anxiety, frankly, on both of our parts, I stuck to a pee pad in our backyard and we’ve since had great success with him going on command on the pads, both inside and outside.
My question, how soon is too soon to hit the sidewalk and or the park? He’s had two rounds of vaccinations and we’re going to puppy socialization class at School for the Dogs on Monday.
But again, she wrote this like a month ago and she just wrote me a little bit of an update. Let me see if I can find it, but I did also invite her to come on to chat here. So earlier today she wrote...
Briefly put, he was a psychology professor, I think at Johns Hopkins. His most famous experiment was most likely the baby Albert experiment, where he showed you could condition a child to be scared of all things fuzzy, like rabbits and that kind of thing, by pairing similar fuzzy furry things with a loud scary noise. It’s pretty cruel and weird considering his research subject was a non-verbal 18 month old boy named little Albert. But still interesting as it certainly relates to so much dog training where we see dogs become conditioned to fear seemingly random things.
And he ended up leaving academics, I think because of some sort of affair he had with a student. And he ended up at the famous ad agency, J Walter Thompson, where he used what he had studied and learned about human behavior in order to manipulate humans into buying things. He is credited with having popularized the idea of a coffee break, giving people a built-in reason in their day to stop and go drink and buy coffee. So if you are a big coffee drinker, as I am, you might just have John B. Watson to thank for your very stained teeth.
So a few years ago near where I live in Manhattan, I saw a woman walking a dog with a shock collar, like a really big shock collar, bright, I think it was like bright yellow. And she had the remote very conspicuously in her hand. And maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I posted a photo of it, I think an Instagram stories of her with her dog and a shock collar. Like from the back, you couldn’t really tell who she was or who the dog was.
Again, maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but turns out she was a client of another dog trainer that has a studio, not that far from a school for the dogs in Manhattan. And I ended up taking the photo down but not before there was some back and forth in comments if I remember correctly on this photo. Maybe it wasn’t in stories, maybe it was in the feed.
Anyway, there were comments, kind of along the lines of how we as quote unquote positive reinforcement trainers don’t understand the importance of using all four quadrants of operant conditioning, and that — although I think this trainer referred to them as corners — that we, we really can’t be good dog trainers unless we understand and use all four corners, AKA quadrants.
So operant conditioning, is the process of learning by consequence. If you do something, there is a consequence and the consequence can either be punishing or reinforcing. The consequence can be involving adding something or subtracting something. And if you’re adding something, we call it positive.
Hi. This is a bonus Q and A episode. I try and go live every Thursday afternoon on the School for the Dog's Instagram account, which is simply @SchoolfortheDogs. If you would like to ask a question in advance or be notified when I am going to go live, you can go to SchoolfortheDogs.com/qanda. I also periodically answer questions on Clubhouse. You can find me there @AnnieGrossman.
GussietheHussie says: how do you get the trainers you hire? What sort of continued education do they get?
Very good questions. So, a few years ago, we started our professional program training people up to become professional dog trainers. And I think that's Sophie. Hey, Sophie. And part of the reason we did that was because we had trouble finding trainers that we felt like we wanted to work with. It's really hard to find good dog trainers out there. And I'm happy to share some tips on how to find some good dog trainers.
But before I do, I should plug that we are putting our professional program largely online. And what's extra exciting about that is a lot of the content is actually totally free because we want there to be more educated good dog trainers out there. We wanted to take away as many of the barriers as possible. So we are just on the brink of launching the full suite of courses, but the first two first two are up and you can get them schoolforthedogs.com/courses.
The completely free open-source one which contains most of our professional course online content written content is called Born to Behave. You can find it there, you can sign up there. And there's like a tier one professional course which is the same content as Born to Behave. But you do get a certificate at the end, if you do all the parts and do the quizzes.
You can find Terra on Instagram @terranewell. I also just wanted to mention that my recording settings were a little off for the first minute of this conversation, but then they were fixed. So you will hear a transition about a minute in.
Terra:
I had to put you on mute on my computer.
Annie:
Yeah, I’m putting you on mute here too so I only have to record in one in one place, but I am psyched to get to talk to you, and what a beautiful dog. So is he a mini Aussie?
Terra:
Yeah, he’s a mini Aussie. He’s technically known for the AKC as a North American shepherd now, because the mini Aussies are considered their own breed because they had to use a Chihuahua or like the smallest of the smallest Aussie to kind of try to breed that breed.
Annie:
What made you decide to get that, or to get him?
Terra:
So I was at a pet store, working there, and I was with this guy, in a relationship, and he was obsessed with Aussies. And I was just like, okay, I kind of want a papillon because they have the butterfly ears, and I really liked that, and then I was like, well, they’re kind of cool.
Yeah. Owners are there, you’re there with your dog. You’re talking to other parents, you’re talking to the trainer, that’s there. Yeah, we definitely want people to be involved with their dog, especially when it’s in an off-leash kind of setting
Annie:
And we have two different kinds off leash services, which are?
Adam:
Yes we do. Yeah. We have the puppy ones, which, you come in it’s puppy play time. You get to learn a little bit about how dogs communicate to one another, when to give breaks. Really, really valuable. I would suggest this to anyone that has a puppy. It’s so valuable to have our puppy socialized in a highly controlled manner. So that’s the puppy side. That’s the cool, that’s the baby side. Right.
And then we have school yard, which is a little bit of a step up. It’s for dogs that are 20 weeks and older. Very much a similar kind of structure, but a little bit more laid back, I would say. So school yard is really great for dogs that want to be social, that can communicate well. That can take communication well. And it’s a great space for them to be able to come and socialize in a highly controlled manner. This is for adult dogs. Well, not really adult, but non puppies.
Annie:
Some of, some of them are adults. We have some. Well, I think the part of the reason it’s maybe like less controlled as you say is because it’s… I mean, puppy playtime often, it’s, someone’s first time there with their dog. Whereas school yard, we have people who come almost every day of the week for years, so they don’t need as much as much instruction.
So why don’t you talk about the process of getting into school yard. Puppy play time of course is open to puppies who’ve had at least their first round of shots.
This is a bonus episode that was recorded on Clubhouse. Clubhouse is an app for iOS devices that is currently open by invitation only. If you would like an invitation text me at (917) 414-2625. And if I have an invite available, I will share it with you. You can find me there @AnnieGrossman.
So thanks for being here, everybody I’ve asked Yolanta who is a virtual assistant specializing in dog businesses to be here to help me moderate this room. Cause I’ve never moderated a room before and I didn’t want to get it wrong. And Anna Heyward is here. Anna wrote the wonderful, very moving poignant article, Bad Dog, which appeared in the New Yorker last week. Anna Heyward is a School for the Dogs apprentice and started out with us as a client.
I actually interviewed Anna for the podcast a few months ago and then wanted to have another conversation with her for the podcast about her article, but thought it would be fun and interesting to open it up to others who read the article. So Anna, thank you for being here. And if anybody would like to ask Anna a question or discuss the article, just go ahead and use that like hand raising button on the bottom of the screen and Yolanta or I will ping you to to the stage to speak.
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