[00:00:00] Emily: Like you don’t have to do things just because everybody tells you that this is what you need to do with your puppy, or with your grown up dog, or with your teenage dog. Every time you feel like you have to do something a certain way because that’s what you’ve always done in the past, or that’s what your family has always done, or that’s what the internet tells you to do, or that’s what however many experts tell you to do, I want you to embrace your inner Scotti Harvey and just let her out, and let her ask the question, “but why though?”

And if the answer doesn’t make sense for you, then you get to throw out the rules that everybody has imposed on you, and you get to make up your own rules that make sense for your household, and that fulfill your life, and your needs, and your pet’s needs, and your family’s needs.

[00:01:10] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender…

[00:01:28] Emily: …and I’m Emily Strong…

[00:01:29] Allie: …and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be, and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let’s get started.

Thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Last week, we heard from Scotti Harvey and one of the topics we discussed was being a mindful puppy raiser. This week, we’re going to dive further into successful puppy raising and talk about implementation with the animals in your life.

In this implementation episode, Emily and I talk about babies and also puppies. It’s unrealistic for puppies to learn that everyone will greet them all the time. How Copper is Emily’s pillow buddy. To unleash your inner Scotti Harvey. To sit or not to sit. And teenagers of any species are just dang hard.

[00:02:26] Emily: So, a friend couple of mine had a human baby about nine months ago and I recently checked in with them and was like, “Hey, how’s life? How’s the kiddo? Like, what’s going on?”

And they were like, “I don’t remember…what life was like before nine months ago. Like, I don’t remember, did I exist before this kid was born? Because like this kid is my entire existence.”

And they were both like, “We’re so tired. How can something so small have so many needs? We love our child and also dear god, we can’t wait until she’s older.”

And I was just, talking with them about that. And I was wishing I could record the conversation so that I could just give it to everybody who has a puppy and be like: “friends, this is also you.” Because I know that we humans think of dogs as less than humans. And, we think like, “Oh, they’re just a dog. I got this. It’s just an animal. It’s just a puppy.” But infants be infanting, no matter what species they are.

And teenagers be teenaging no matter what species they are, and it’s always hard, whether you have a human child, or a dog, or a cat, or a parrot. And so, I just want people to go easier on themselves and maybe lower the expectations that they have for themselves when they’re caring for a youngling of any species.

[00:03:50] Allie: Absolutely. I think that people need to give themselves a little bit more grace when they have a baby of any species in the house, baby, adolescent, teenager, all of the above. Anything that is not an adult. I would also say too, that this applies to, a lot of what we’re talking about, applies to pets that have maladaptive behaviors. Because you and I hear this all the time from clients who have an adult dog, or cat, or bird, and that pet is showing atypical behaviors, and so they have some additional special needs that perhaps the human was not anticipating, usually not anticipating, when they brought this animal into the house. Let’s be real, it’s very rare that somebody knows what they’re going to get into with somebody with maladaptive behaviors. So I think this, in addition to, yes, we’re talking today about puppy raising, and it can be applied to kitten raising, and parrot let? Is that? What is birds?

[00:04:49] Emily: Parrotlets are a species of parrot. They’re budgie-ish sized. I’m impressed for being a non-bird person that you know bird-ish things. So, or is that know-ish bird things? Regardless, like, yes. We can call baby birds, chicks or, baby birds. I call them baby birds. Yeah, whatever you want to call them is fine.

[00:05:10] Allie: I’m glad we had this really important conversation about what to call baby birds.

[00:05:14] Emily: It’s critical. How can you not talk about what to call baby birds.

[00:05:18] Allie: Well, and especially when baby rabbits are called kindling, and that’s, just like, adorable and also not at the same.

[00:05:25] Emily: Right. That’s, yeah, that’s why I steal from foxes and I call them kits because I just have a hard time calling them kindling. Although I do love calling baby goats kids because they are kids! They’re the best.

[00:05:39] Allie: the truest. So, anywho, I derailed us. But, in addition to, you know, we’re talking about puppy raising today, and that can apply to any other baby species you’re working with, species of baby you’re working with. It also can apply when your pet just has additional special needs that are beyond the scope of what a typical adult would have.

[00:06:02] Emily: Okay. So today we’re going to talk about five tips for successful puppies slash other species babies raising. Five tips for successful puppies slash other younglings of other species raising. I like that one.

Well, okay, so it’s focused on puppies, but y’all know I have big feelings about only talking about dogs, because I love all the species, and so I want to include all of them, but yeah, we are mostly focusing on dogs today. That’s just true.

So, all right, we’re going to talk about puppies mostly, but just remember, as you listen to this episode in the back of your head, remember that I’m actually secretly talking about all species. It’s a secret between just you, me and everybody who’s listening.

Okay. So our first one is: It takes a village. Recruit help when you have a baby animal of any kind, but puppies too, and one of the reasons as Scotti and I talked about last week that I have not historically experienced the puppy blues or the kitten blues is because we always had multiple animals, and I had really good surrogate parent animals who took baby animals in our house under their wing. So, it was really helpful for me that I could just leave the puppy with the grown up dogs and be like, “hey, watch this little whippersnapper for me for a minute while I go do other things in life.”

So yeah, having other animals who can interact with and take care of your puppy and show them the ropes is really huge. And if you don’t have a surrogate dog who is a good surrogate parent, then recruit friends and family members, and whoever you have in your life, in your community, in your circle, to help you.

Give yourself a parent’s day out and deposit your puppy somewhere that people will be delighted to have a puppy for a day. I just,I think people who have the puppy blues forget how much other people love puppies. And I think it’s probably going to be easier than you think for most people anyway, to find somebody in their life who’s willing to take their puppy for an afternoon so they can take a break.

So yeah lean in, lean on your community, get help from the people, and the dogs, and maybe other species in your life who can help you co-parent the holy terror that you have, reigning your existence right now. the little potato that is…

[00:08:32] Allie: The potato with teeth.

[00:08:34] Emily: The potato with teeth who is ruling your life with an iron fist, with an iron paw.

[00:08:39] Allie: I can’t wait to see how Ellen just stitches that all together. Actually, what I hope happens is she just keeps the entire thing.

[00:08:48] Emily: Doesn’t, just…

[00:08:50] Allie: She doesn’t edit that.

[00:08:52] Emily: She’s like, “We’re just going to let everybody hear Emily just ramble and just like correct herself because she deserves that after everything she’s put me through.” And you know what, Ellen, if that is your choice, I support you because I do deserve it and I’m sorry for everything that I am and I love and appreciate you deeply. So you know what? I had it coming. Let her rip. I support you.

[00:09:16] Allie: She had it coming.

[00:09:19] Emily: I had it coming. I, once again, I forgot what the words were after the second line.

[00:09:23] Allie: Literally.

[00:09:24] Emily: All along. You should have been there. You should have seen it. I could, I could have something…

[00:09:30] Allie: Technology is wrong. Yeah.

[00:09:33] Emily: I don’t know, but hey, I got more than two lines in, so. I broke my record. Alright.

[00:09:39] Allie: Hilarious. Okay. And in addition to recruiting help to take care of your little four legged terror, it’s also really nice from the puppy perspective because they get to go out and potentially see more of the world, interact with more people, all of that good sort of stuff.

So, make sure that you have a trusted person who is taking care of your little infants just like you would your human baby. But it can be really fantastic for your puppy to just like get out, explore, go new places, do fun things without mom and dad around.

[00:10:13] Emily: Yeah, I bet Auntie will slip them a little bit of, a little more snacks than maybe they’re allowed to have at home. I know Auntie Em does that.

[00:10:21] Allie: Auntie Allie also does that. Auntie Allie is a pushover a lot of the time.

[00:10:25] Emily: I’m not sorry, I have no regrets.

[00:10:28] Allie: I don’t have kids of my own, so I have to spoil something.

[00:10:31] Emily: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:10:32] Allie: So the next tip is to relieve the social pressure. I know I just said that it can be helpful for your puppy to get to go new places with people, interact with all of those surrogate people that are helping you in your village, And that doesn’t mean that your puppy has to meet everyone.

And I’m going to go out, I rarely use “should.” That’s probably a lie. I probably say that a lot on this podcast, but we’re just going to let it go. I’m going to say you shouldn’t have your puppy meet everyone. That’s how strongly I feel about this. And the reason being is, is for a couple of reasons.

One is we’d never want to force our infants of any species to interact with somebody in a way that makes them uncomfortable. That’s just setting us up for disaster later on in life. The other reason, though, is that it’s really what’s the word? Unrealistic. It’s really unrealistic to set your puppy’s expectations to they are going to meet everybody and everything as a puppy, and then suddenly they become a teenager or an adult, and then they don’t get to meet everybody and everything anymore.

And they’re like excuse you, this is not how the world works. And then we get things like excitement based reactivity and all that fun sort of stuff. So, in addition to relieving that social pressure, of you do not have to be introducing your puppy to everyone and everything all of the time, it’s also really helpful to start teaching your puppy how the world actually works when they are a baby instead of just dropping this bomb on them when they become an adult.

We start trying to do this with kids at a pretty young age, so we should also do this with our puppies because one day they’re not going to be puppy cute. They’re still going to be cute, but they’re not going to be puppy cute. And a lot of times people will only interact with puppy cute instead of regular cute.

[00:12:33] Emily: As I like to say to literally everyone of every species, everything isn’t always all about you, friend. Calm down. That’s the lesson they need to learn. That the whole world does not revolve around them, and everybody in the world is not a pez dispenser, and some people just exist independently of them.

[00:12:52] Allie: I frequently tell Oso that it’s not all about him, but he disagrees with that statement. And he’s an old man, so sometimes he’s right.

[00:13:01] Emily: I said that with so much confidence and yet pretty much my entire existence revolves around Brie and her many health issues and the fact that she’s my heart dog and I can’t say no to her because she’s got short time left on this earth. So I’m a hypocrite and I’m fine with that. I own it. It’s fine.

Speaking of which, that segues nicely into the next tip, which is: Damn the rules.

Like you don’t have to do things just because everybody tells you that this is what you need to do with your puppy or with your grown up dog or with your teenage dog. Every time you feel like you have to do something a certain way because that’s what you’ve always done in the past, or that’s what your family has always done, or that’s what the internet tells you to do, or that’s what however many experts tell you to do, I want you to embrace your inner Scotti Harvey and just let her out and let her ask the question, “but why though?”

And if the answer doesn’t make sense for you, then you get to throw out the rules that everybody has imposed on you, and you get to make up your own rules that make sense for your household, and that fulfill your life, and your needs, and your pet’s needs, and your family’s needs. You get to decide how you raise your puppy because it is your puppy, not the internet’s puppy. Not the expert’s puppy. And I’m using experts and quotations here because let’s be real, are any of us really experts? Come on. We don’t know more than we know. So yeah, for every time you feel a “should” in your life, except for the one where Allie just said, like, you shouldn’t, that’s again, I’m just going to be a hypocrite and be like, listen to Allie about that, but literally everything else.

[00:14:46] Allie: But everybody else don’t listen to them.

[00:14:49] Emily: But everybody except Allie in that one very specific circumstance. If you’re feeling a “should,” channel your inner Scotti Harvey and ask, “but why though?” And then, make rules that make more sense for you. You get to decide. You have agency. Do the thing you want.

For example, one of the other reasons that puppy raising, and kitten raising, and baby parrot raising was a mostly enjoyable experience for me and I historically have not experienced the puppy blues, is because I let all the baby animals sleep in bed with me, like they just all did. And that worked for me because I like it when my animals sleep in bed.

Brie is my little spoon. Copper is my pillow buddy. He usually likes to rest his head on my pillow and that’s cool. We have a family bed. We all dog pile. And that’s how my partner and I enjoy living our lives. So, we didn’t have to go through the grief and stress of having to teach a social animal like a dog who has only ever known litter life, how to exist confined in a crate all night long.

That…I never had those puppy blues because that’s not how I live my life. I’m not saying that’s a wrong way to live your life. If you want your puppy to sleep somewhere other than your bed, let them get used to that place that they sleep. But I think for me, the reason that it was easier is because I like the dog pile.

I love animals. I love sharing my life with my animals. So it was not hard for me to let them just dog pile in my bed. And that worked really well for me, but it doesn’t work well for everybody. So you get to make up your own rules.

[00:16:28] Allie: And I think it’s really freeing when you get to make up your own rules too and do things that make sense for your own household, your own family, your own puppy, And exist within the confines of your bandwidth and boundaries. Okay. You looked like you were going to say

[00:16:44] Emily: No, I was just waiting for you to move on to the next, like my eyebrows were because I thought you were going to segue into the next and then you just stopped and stared at me and I was like, it’s your point, babe. You’re next.

[00:16:52] Allie: I…your eyebrows made me believe that you were doing something.

[00:16:57] Emily: They were anticipatory eyebrows.

[00:16:59] Allie: Anticipatory eyebrows.

[00:17:00] Emily: Yes.

[00:17:01] Allie: Okay. So the fourth tip is to remember that they are infants. This is something that Scotti talked about last week. And with infants, we have lower expectations for those individuals in our lives. I am not expecting my little two year old niece to be doing long division, at this age. I was surprised when her brother at three was reading and I was like, “I sent you a thing with terrible handwriting because I did not think you would be the one reading it.”

We have lower expectations for the infants in our life of any species. And then sometimes they surprise us and start reading at three. And I’m like, “oh, I better have better penmanship when I send you letters.” But that’s a thing that we just need to look at the individual in front of us, but plan for that to not be the thing that ends up happening until we see it.

When that comes to our puppies, one of the ways that I very frequently see this is people expecting puppies to be as calm as adult dogs. And one of the really common scenarios for this that I see is when somebody has a dog, an elderly dog, who has recently passed or maybe even the last couple of years passed. And then they get a puppy. And they forgot what having a puppy means. They were used to an elderly dog, and as somebody with a senior dog right now, oh yeah, that’s way different.

I get to mostly live my life at this point in time and he’s napping on the couch living his best life and that’s fantastic for both of us. If I had a puppy, my life would not look that way at all. So, remember that puppies have puppy energy, let’s start there.

The other thing to remember is that like human babies, they sleep. They’re like either asleep or at a hundred miles an hour. And there’s like almost no in between. And that is true for our puppies too. They’re literally running around one second and then fall down and fall asleep the next second. And you’re like, what is your superpower? Because I wish I could do that. I wonder if I ever could do that. Probably because I was an infant with an infant brain at some point in time, and that’s what infant brains do.

So, we need to remember that our puppies need puppy level of sleep. We can’t just be having everybody and their mother playing with the puppy for six hours at a time. That is not going to end well for anybody. Sleep is important for those little brains. For the adult size brains too, but even more important for the little brains. 

And the last place that I want to talk about lowering your expectations is, it goes back to the calm thing, but expecting your puppy to be able to do all of these basic manners, and tricks, and skills, and all of that sort of stuff, and Emily’s going to talk about this in just a second of planning accordingly as your puppy ages.

But for now, let’s just assume that if your puppy can like sit on a cue, you’re doing a great job. Awesome. They do not need to know yet sit, and down, and leave it, and hand target, and I would push back that they need to know any of that at all, but that’s just me and my specific household. 

Okay, leave it for a puppy is actually super, super helpful and a safety thing at that age. But I lost the whole train. The whole train just like went into a Wiley Coyote tunnel painted and just like…

[00:20:32] Emily: Delightful imagery. I can pick up the train and put it back on the tracks for you. Okay, cool. I think that goes back to what we were talking about with damn the rules. Like, you get to decide what skills make sense for your dog to learn in your environment and your household. And, but again, asking yourself, but why though, are you teaching your dog, a down stay, and sit, and all these things because you’ve been told that’s what dogs need to learn? Or do they serve an actual purpose for you? Because I also don’t care a lot about basic manners, but it’s not because my animals are just feral running well, Brie was feral. They’re not currently feral, just running around doing whatever they want. It’s because the skills that they need to have for our household don’t look anything like a down stay, or a heel, or a sit.

I never ask my dogs to sit because I don’t need them to sit. If I want them to move out of my space, they have an out cue. If I want them to go chill out, they have a go to bed cue. If I need them to come to me, they have a recall, but I don’t care if they sit when they come to me, like why do they need to sit to be hanging out with me?

So, so I think that goes back to those, like, damn, the rules is why do you need your puppy to, to know these skills? Is this a priority right now? And if it is a priority, cool, start working on it, and also don’t expect perfection because they’ve literally been alive for like two months, like they’re not going to be experts at anything yet. They’re experts at being puppies and that’s about it. Did that help you get your train back on the track?

[00:22:09] Allie: Yes, absolutely. We can’t expect them to be an expert when they’ve been literally alive for two months on this planet. With that, let’s talk about house training because yes, that is a learned behavior, it is a skill, and we can’t expect our little eight week old puppy to be absolutely perfect at house training. You are going to clean up some messes, my friend, and that’s what living with a puppy is like. 

Now there are absolutely things that you can do to mitigate much of that, but as you are learning your puppy, you’re probably going to make some mistakes, and sometimes puppies have gurgly tummies, and you didn’t know that a mistake was imminent, but it was. 

So keep in mind that in addition to they are learning how to do this thing, that’s not a thing that they had to do the first eight weeks of their life, probably. Also, they have little itty bitty bladders at this point and they physically cannot hold their…

[00:23:09] Emily: Their business.

[00:23:10] Allie: Thank you. Because I was like bladder, bowel…

[00:23:14] Emily: Their business.

[00:23:15] Allie: Their business, and they physically cannot hold their business as long as an adult dog can. So you will be going out every hour with your puppy, and get ready for it. And yes, sometimes even throughout the night, your puppy is not going to sleep throughout the night because puppy. So, we need to not only lower expectations, but plan for what it’s really like to have an infant in your house, even if it is not a human infant.

[00:23:46] Emily: I think that’s another reason that I didn’t really ever historically experience puppy blues, because even before Fresh Patch existed, and again, I’m just gonna say it, Fresh Patch, if y’all wanna sponsor Pet Harmony, I’m not gonna say no to that, because we refer like literally everybody to you. But before that, I would literally go down to like Ace Hardware and just like pick up like, sod. Like, grass squares and put them in the x-pen because I wanted my puppies to get that sensation of that grass as the substrate that is their toilet. I needed them to make that association because that’s how dogs learn where to potty. But I did not, I, not only, it wasn’t even about not wanting to, I did not have the time to let my puppies out every hour.

And so I just, when I couldn’t be watching them, I’d put them in an x-pen with the grass patches and some things to do and a place to hang out and some water, and I just let them be in their little puppy daycare. 

Now, my life is different now, when I get a puppy in the future, I might have the worst puppy blues of anybody because everything changes. Circumstances change. Context changes. I’m older. I’m more tired now. So, I’m not saying I’m perfect at puppies, and you’ll never have puppy blues if you, if you follow these tips. And you know what? If I do get a puppy and I have puppy blues, I will tell y’all about it because telling on myself is what I do.

But I’m just saying, I think a lot of times what makes it so hard for people is the expectations they set on themselves and, and failing to meet those expectations. And I’ve just always had low expectations for myself, that’s probably why I survived raising puppies, and kittens, and parrots, and all the critters.

But! Puppies get older and they do not get easier, and that’s the part that I think really surprises a lot of people is they think if I can just get through this puppy phase, and they can get a little bit older, life will be easier. And, you know, a lot of people are like, I can’t wait till they’re, four or five, six months old, so they can sleep through the night.

And we have this mental image for ourselves of like, when we can finally get to sleep through the night, and then adolescence happens. And it’s worse somehow?. And so it’s like a, the desert mirage of the oasis. And you’re like, if I can just get to the oasis, I can drink some water. And then like you get there and you’ve still got more to go.

And my friends, I feel that exhaustion deep down in my bones, I know it’s hard, this is why juvenile dogs are among the highest population to get surrendered to shelters. You are not alone. You’re not imagining things. Here’s the thing, folks. Adolescence is by definition difficult. It is a hard time because the part of the brain that says, “go do all the things,” develops faster than the part of the brain that goes, “but is that a good idea?” And so they legit have impulse control, struggles and they’ve, they’re like growing into these like gangly bodies where they’ve got like grown up bodies, but they’ve still got puppy brains, and they make mistakes, and they’re into everything, and they seem to have boundless energy and they eat you out of house and home, and it doesn’t matter what species we’re talking about. All of those things are true. 

And then also they start to have, like some adult type of feelings too, and that gets them into trouble. And it’s just hard. Teenagers are hard, no matter what species we’re talking about. So, it’s important to plan accordingly. If you know that you’re going to have an animal who chews a lot, and uses their mouth a lot, prepare ahead of time to have lots of chewable things for them to work on so that they don’t try to use your arm as a chew toy.

If you know that you’re going to have an animal that’s bouncy, trouncy, pouncy, flouncy fun. Then prepare accordingly, and set up an environment that’s going to let them be as bouncy as their little floofy hearts desire.

And if you have been working on skills, and your puppy has been learning the skills and getting better, and they crushed it in puppy class, and they graduated summa cum laude from their puppy skills class, and they’re just the rock stars. Anticipate that they’re going to hit adolescence and maybe some of those skills are going to fall out of their brain because they’re not prioritizing doing those things anymore. They’re prioritizing going out into the world, and exploring, and all the things that teenagers like to do, and so we might have to reteach those skills, and that’s okay because teenagers are hard.

If you are prepared for that, it’s going to be moderately less nightmarish? Like, but, you can get through it. You can get through it. You can do this, lean on your community. Remember, we’re going to go back to that first point and say, lean on your community.

[00:28:49] Allie: Excellent. So, today we gave you five tips for successful puppy raising. And that includes, it takes a village, recruit help, relieve the social pressure (your puppy doesn’t have to meet everyone and everything), damn the rules, stop and ask yourself, “but why though,” remember that they’re infants, you’re going to have to lower your expectations and plan for that. And teenagers. That’s the end of that sentence. Because teenagers.

Next week, we’ll be talking with Tiffany Chen, our very own, about empathy, education, and efficacy in social media.

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. A special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training!