Building a Trust Bank With Your Dog: Small Choices That Build Security

Estimated reading time: 9min

Your Pet’s Trust is Like a Bank Account

You can put money in, you can take money out, and at the end of the day, we’re hoping to have a positive balance in the account. We call this the “trust account.”

I know, I know, relationships are about more than transactions, but bear with me. When I was learning about trust and building trusting relationships, this was an incredibly helpful way to view things. And a special thanks to Dr. Susan Friedman, for making so many things in this world accessible.

For families bringing home new pets, it can be hard to understand why their pet seems so distrusting. I mean, it doesn’t feel like we’ve made any withdrawals. But here’s the thing, we probably haven’t made many deposits either. And remember, this is through the pet’s point of view. Trust isn’t just about our good intentions, but rather, how predictable and consistent we are over time.

So let’s talk about what withdrawals and deposits look like, and how to build up a trust account with your pet.

Your Pet’s Trust Account

First up, some reminders. While I am a behavior consultant, I’m not your behavior consultant (unless you want to work together 😉). This is free-to-you content intended to speak to the masses, which means I will be intentionally leaving some nuance out. Because I can’t speak to every single pet, pet parent, and environment on the planet, we’re going to talk in generalizations.

And that means, I need you to keep in mind that you are an individual, your pet is an individual, and you each have your own learning histories. What counts as a withdrawal for one individual may not for another. For some, deposits are easy. For some withdrawals are plentiful. Each situation is beautifully wondrous and unique. If you would like personalized guidance on building a robust trust account with your pet, myself and our team are here to help.

And lastly, I know the wonderful, incredible, empathetic pet parents who engage with our content, and I know our audience’s propensity for anxiety. If you’re worried about your pet’s trust account, you’re already in a good place. The point of this blog isn’t to pressure you to avoid withdrawals, rather, it is to help you invest in the deposits, so when bills are due, you have plenty to pull from.

And with that, let’s talk about those generalizations!

Trust Withdrawals: What Chips Away at Your Dog’s Security

Withdrawals are tricky. Withdrawals typically aren’t intentional, but that doesn’t make them any less impactful. Think about a time where you felt slighted, or brushed off, or *insert some uncomfortable social emotion here*. It doesn’t take a lot! It can be small, like when your dog blows you off when you ask them to come over, or when your friend doesn’t respond to a text message.

Of course, there will be big expenses, like challenging medical care, or the unavoidable off leash dog barreling toward us, but more often our withdrawals are a “death by a thousand paper cuts” type situation. It’s a penny here and a penny there, and suddenly, we’re in debt.

So what might your pet think is a withdrawal? Here are some of the common culprits:

Removing or preventing choice. Examples: Picking a dog up to move them in space, making your dog stay on their bed
Removing or preventing escape. Examples: Cornering a cat for nail trims, toweling a bird for wing clipping, making your dog sit around triggers.
Being dishonest. Examples: Using peanut butter to lure your dog into the shower, offering food in your hand and then snatching it away
Using force or fear. Examples: Scaring your dog to interrupt their barking, pushing your dog’s body into a down
Being unpredictable and/or disrupting routine. Examples: Going from treating every repetition to treating every 3 repetitions, promoting barking sometimes and then scolding barking others, ignoring requests for things
Asking too much too soon. Examples: Applying spatial or social pressure, asking your pet to be in environments that are too much
Causing pain (unintentional included). Examples: Catching hair in a harness clasp, accidentally quicking a nail, touching a sensitive body part

Trust Deposits: How to Build Safety Every Day

Fortunately, many everyday interactions can deposit into your trust account, particularly when you focus on having a sustainable care routine for you and your pet. If you’re here, I’m willing to bet you’re paying well into your pet’s trust account, or at least, you’re trying!

Let’s talk about some of the general ways we can make deposits into the trust account:

Giving and listening to choice. Examples: Consent and preference tests! Letting them pick their training treat, their toy, where you scratch, where you pet, and where to lie
Giving and listening to escape. Examples: Teaching the Flight Cue so they can move away from stress and triggers, building a safe space.
Being honest. Examples: No trickery here, practicing clear event sequencing, so they are aware of what’s coming next.
Not using force or fear. Examples: Using a target or lure to move them in space, teaching them things aren’t scary (like when we yell because we stubbed our toe for the 18th time)
Being predictable and providing routine. Examples: Building a sustainable routine so they know what’s next, practicing our skills of observation, and teaching to help them learn more easily.
Letting them drive the bus. Examples: Giving them the skills and the space to engage with things on their own, on safe terms.
Managing pain. Examples: Investigating potential signs of pain, learning their behavioral indicators of pain, and arranging your house to reduce accidents
Meeting their needs. Examples: Enrichment opportunities, developing skills, and listening to requests.

A Typical Daily Trust Budget

What does this all look like? Let’s use a typical day for Laika and me as an example.

6:00 – Wake up to Laika’s tongue in my nose
- Yelped and pushed her away because it’s an awful way to be woken up. She’s stoked when she gets to control mom, and that includes sheer joy when she startles me awake.
  - Withdrawal via force (or at least you’d think, she’s been doing this for nearly 14 years 😂).
  - Deposit via control 👅👃
6:00-6:30 – Morning snuggles and scritches
6:30-6:45 – Breakfast
- She says no thank you, but offered 3x
  - Withdrawal via removing choice, no means no, mom!
6:45-7:00 – Outside break and prep for the day
- Turned on office heater, gave her choices of beds and blankets
  - Deposit via choice
7:00-9:30 – Work chunk 1
- Ignored request to go outside while on call
  - Withdrawal via lack of predictability, control and routine
9:30-9:45 – Break
- Quick little attention session, potty break, some social time
  - Deposit via predictability, routine
9:45-12:00 – Work chunk 2
- Picked her up and put her on my lap since she kept bullying Griffey, made her a recycling shreddable
  - Withdrawal via removal of choice
  - Deposit via meeting needs – shreddables are one of the ways we fill her cup
12:00-1:00 – Lunch
- I ate, they got a 15-minute treat scatter, I did self-care and snugs
  - Deposit via meeting needs
1:00-4:15 – Work chunk 3
- Afternoon nap time
  - Deep, restful uninterrupted nap time deposit via meeting needs
4:15-6:00 – Post work play, walk to mailbox, and dinner
- Lots of veggies and little-t training (casual, unplanned training)
  - Deposits via meeting needs, predictability, routines, choice and control
- Caught her hair in her harness buckle
  - Withdrawal via unintentional pain
6:00-8:00 – Wind down
- Cuddles, hobbies, and rest
  - Deposits via meeting needs, predictability, routines, choice and control

All in all, we have 8 potential deposits in Laika’s day, or $8. Assuming that all these transactions are $1, then we have $8 deposit – $5 withdrawal = $3 daily deposit.

Of course, Laika is who decides if these are $1 transactions, or more, or less, but let’s keep math simple for this one.

Trust Account Savings

We only looked at one day in the life of Laika. But trust accounts span the life of a pet. We may need to zoom out and look at the span of a week, did we have more green days or red days? What about the last month? Did we have more green days or red days?

Back in February, Laika had a couple of weeks where she was quite sick. We had multiple, no choice, this sucks vet visits, a lot of medications, a lot of pain, and a lot of challenges. Overall, those weeks were rough, for all of us.

If I was to look at the February account, I’d say we had 10 days of deposits, and 18 days of withdrawals.We made a lot of withdrawals, but because we have years of deposits in our trust account, we still have a robust account.

Diversifying Trust Accounts

Your pet is more than their relationship with you. You are more than your relationship with your pet. So I think it is worth taking it one step further, and consider all of the trust accounts your pet has:

Their account with you
Their account with their home
Their account(s) with other family members
Their account(s) with friends…
Their account with the world

And this is where it can get messy. Each of these accounts will build up how much baseline trust your pet has in their day-to-day life. While each may have a different balance day to day, we want to look over the span of the pet’s life to increase their sense of security and their default to trust.

Laika, with her really rough couple of weeks had withdrawals from many accounts: mine, the vet clinic, my car, her harness, Griffey… and yet, when I took her to see her rehab vet last weekend, she was still trusting of the dog she saw in the parking lot, the other people, the kids piling out of cars for a birthday party at the business park, her rehab vet and me. Overall, in life, she still had a net positive across her life accounts, and that meant that getting out into the world wasn’t terrifying, even if we had a horrible couple of weeks.

We can continue to deposit into all of those accounts, so that when withdrawals need to happen again, we’re still coming up flush.

A Note for Pet Parents: Trust Takes Time

If you see that your dog, cat, parrot, or horse is hesitant, try not to take it personally. Time and time again, for the families concerned about their pet’s relationship with them, I’ve seen that it wasn’t something they intentionally did, or wasn’t something they could avoid. We had a series of circumstances, outside of our control, that means our pet is overall less trusting right now.

Trust grows through consistent, predictable experiences. It is the culmination of hundreds of small interactions over time.

Here’s to harmony,

Ellen

Now What?

Whether your pet is new to your household, or a lifelong friend, if you’re seeing your pet’s accounts are a little low, remember to invest in depositing trust. Be safe, predictable, and meet their needs. Give them choice, control, agency, and predictability, so they can learn to trust the world again.

And if you see that your dog no longer trusts the world, start with your account, and you can load your trust to others.

Some related content that may be helpful if you are still working on building trust with a pet:

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