This is the transcript of the Telltail Dog podcast episode “You Need to Teach Both the Dog and the Child Boundaries: Babies and Dogs with Lauren Haley” (https://telltaildog.fireside.fm/30) 

Introduction
Lauren Haley Pit bulls are very much my breed. I love my bully breed dogs. But you have the other side that's, ‘No they're nanny dogs and they're perfect,’ and sometimes having that mindset keeps you from doing the things you need to do anyway and it's not because they're pitbulls. It's because they're dogs. And any dog, any animal that's around your child, you need to teach the dog and the child boundaries and you need to give them both acceptable outs and teach them how to interact with one another, regardless of what that breed is.

[Brief intro music provided by Jim Ciago of Seven Second Chance. Find more of his work on ITunes and Spotify.]

Elizabeth Silverstein Welcome back to Telltail Dog the podcast. I'm your host, certified dog trainer Elizabeth Silverstein, and I have with me today Lauren Haley, who is a board-certified behavior analyst and a long-time dog owner. She started dog training when she and her husband, Doug, started fostering dogs with behavior issues. Hi Lauren, how are you?

Lauren Hey, I'm good. How are you?

Elizabeth I’m doing alright. Thank you so much for doing this with me, kind of again.

Lauren I know. Oh my god, thanks so much for having me. I was excited when I heard from you.

Elizabeth Yes, I've been following you for a while and for everyone listening, Lauren and I first chatted while I was working with Philly Unleashed, and we did a whole feature on MJ as a client spotlight through your work with them so I'm gonna provide that link in the description and everything as well, but I’ve also just been following you as you've been introducing MJ to your new baby. And congratulations! Because I think when we talked, you were pregnant.

[MJ Philly Unleashed Client Spotlight: https://phillyunleashed.com/mj-barker/]

Lauren I was. I was. And funny enough, I don't know if you know this, but I'm actually pregnant again, so we're preparing for baby number two now.

Elizabeth Congratulations!

Lauren Thank you.

Elizabeth That's so exciting. So we talked because you were one of the trainer favorites for a client spotlight with MJ and I know Dana and Cassi have lots of big, wonderful feelings for you and for MJ, so I wanted to share a little bit of her story and how you ended up with her as well. So let's go back to the beginning and you could share a more abbreviated version this time and we'll link to the larger article.

Lauren Alright, sounds good. So yeah, long story short, we had a pitbull mix named Sandy that we both loved, and we unfortunately lost in February 2019. After that, we started fostering dogs. We weren't ready to open our home to another furry friend just yet. That September, October, my husband, Doug, and I decided that we were ready to adopt. So we started looking for some different dogs and we ended up seeing MJ listed on PetFinder through the Trenton Animal Shelter and I--and my husband too but really me--I'm like a really big sucker for those like throwaway mama dogs that were used for breeding and then, you know, just tossed when they weren't useful anymore.
So we met MJ, and i just immediately knew she was the one for us. She's this--I mean, you've seen her--she's this beautiful, you know, kind of like silver but also brindle American Bully and she's just like so sweet. I said, ‘This is our dog,’ as soon as we met her.

Elizabeth And what's that draw for you? Because that was something you mentioned in our other conversation about the throwaway mama dogs. What gets you about wanting to bring them into your home?

Lauren So that's what our dog Sandy was, too. And I think for me, I don't know, I just have such a soft spot in my heart for these like female dogs that were used for their bodies and [the humans] then just said, ‘You know, okay, like you're not useful to me anymore. You can go now’ It's just so heartbreaking to me, so to be able to give those dogs a home and give them the life that they deserve just--I don't know, it just really resonates with me and it's something that, you know, I'm just drawn to those babies.

Elizabeth Yeah, absolutely. It’s a big reminder of how often dogs are made into a commodity and -- oh there she is!

Lauren There comes MJ barging in now. 

Elizabeth She’s like, I heard my name. Yes, and what it really does a disservice to is how much personality these dogs have and what a beautiful relationship we can have with them if we're willing to put the work in. And you said she's 100 percent American Bully. Is that right?

Lauren She is. So we went, we did her Embark test, I've got to be honest. At some point, I'll figure out exactly what it means to be like a pitbull terrier versus an American Bully because honestly it confuses me a little bit. But her gene Embark test came back 100 American Bully, yes.

Elizabeth There's five-- I don't have them off the top of my head--but there's five breeds that are under the pitbull banner. And there's a lot of similarities but there's also some big differences and that's actually one of the big reasons I wanted to have you on. Breed specific legislation is a big thing going on right now in Arkansas. I was just in a town that finally got rid of theirs and I'm currently in a city that still has one, so this is something I am very interested in and I just don't understand in a lot of ways. And I know that there's a lot of nuance to it, and I know that it's used as a tool to control certain things, but the big thing that has come out of this--and people get really so ugly about it. They're just so angry about pitbulls, and I'm like, have you met one? Have you interacted with one? Have you loved one? I don't understand. But a big thing that has come out of it is, they're like, ‘Well, the children. If you get rid of this breed specific legislation, it's going to be these children's blood on your hands,’ and all this really, really ugly stuff. So I'm like, but I can talk about that. If you give me a concrete reason about your concerns and your fears, we can talk about that and we can put protocols in place.
And that's one of the beautiful things about your life with MJ is that you did get her before you had a baby. You have your baby now and you're going to have a second one and you're doing it and you're managing it and there's a lot of beautiful things that can happen when you put that work in.

Lauren Yeah, absolutely. And there's this, you know, there's this fine line because you have, like you said, the people that say, ‘Oh, pitbulls. Think of the children, they’re so vicious,’ and all of this, and then you have the other side, and I can be this way too because pitbulls are very much my breed. I love my bully breed dogs. but you have the other side that's like, ‘No, they're nanny dogs and they're perfect.’ And sometimes having that mindset keeps you from doing the things you need to do anyway and it's not because they're pitbulls. It's because they're dogs. Any dog, any animal that's around your child, you need to teach both the dog and the child boundaries and you need to give them both acceptable outs and teach them how to interact with one another, regardless of what that breed is.

Elizabeth One hundred percent. I’m so glad you brought that up because that's the big point I want to make. Dogs have teeth and they have teeth regardless of the size and this is why I wrote an op-ed. It didn't get published. But someone who wrote in was like, ‘What about you know the dachshunds? Little dogs don't do anything to children.’ It's like, no dachshunds have mauled babies, have killed babies. There's really no breed that's unsullied when it comes to children. I have the book, Don't bite the Baby, and I've been reading through it. And one of the big things that she makes a point of [is] the best dog can still kill your child. The best dog that you've never seen any behavior issues with, ever. And she talks about how dogs when they get frustrated with puppies all of a sudden that puppy's head is in their mouth and they're correcting that puppy and then they stop and the puppy has figured it out, ‘Oh, won't do that,’ but a dog doing that to a baby is fatal. One hundred percent fatal. 

Lauren And to your point, you know, I mean, I see it. My husband and I were out in Peddler's Village last weekend and there's a lot of dogs there. And for someone who understands dog body language, or like you as a dog trainer, being in that setting is very stressful because you see a lot of dogs that are significantly uncomfortable that their owners don't recognize it, just because they don't know better. They haven't been taught better. And there was a small dog, I forget what the breed was right now, but it was like a tiny dog barking at every single person, every single dog, that went by it. And my husband commented, he said if that was a big dog or a dog that looked like MJ, everyone would be saying, ‘Why are you bringing that dog here?’ Because you know, like you said, all dogs have teeth, and the reality is that bigger dogs or dogs that look like bully breed dogs, you know, they can they can do a lot of damage just for the mere sake that, you know, MJ is 65 pounds versus, you know, being 10 pounds.

Elizabeth Yes, and I do think everybody's looking at a dog, and my personal opinion is everyone's looking at a dog and thinking, ‘Can I take that dog on?’ to determine their fear of it. And a lot of people are very callous and dismissive of a dog saying, ‘Hey, I'm uncomfortable,’ because they think, ‘Oh, this dog isn't a threat to me,’ and to me, that does such a disservice to our dogs because we're so dismissive of that relationship and that communication and what that dog is just trying to tell us. I had someone laugh in a lesson because their dog, a big dog, was barking at me, and I knew this dog was telling me, ‘Please give me space,’ and so I was like, ‘I will give you space,’ and the owner didn't understand what I was doing and just started laughing because all he saw was that I was afraid of his dog and I don't even know how to begin to tell people like, I'm not afraid of your dog. I'm listening to your dog and your dog is telling me, ‘I  don't like this.’
Man, I do get really passionate about all of this. I know you do as well. Well, I do want to rewind just a little bit because one of the things that I love about your story is that you're an expert in behavior and when it comes to behavior, behavior is the same across species. It's the language that's so different. So one of the things that was interesting to me was that your understanding of behavior and your first trainer, it was clashing. So I’d love to hear a little bit about your background in behavior and why with that first trainer, what they were telling you wasn't working and didn't make sense.

Lauren Absolutely. So I work primarily in the education system, in schools. So I work with students who are classified as having behavior disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, other health impairments, a wide range. My master's is in education with a concentration in applied behavior analysis and I'm board certified as a behavior analyst. So that's kind of my background in a super quick nutshell. 
With one of my first foster dogs, you know, a trainer came on and they were a trainer who used a combination of punishment techniques and positive reinforcement and everything in between. So, I remember one--first of all, she said that my foster dog was gnarly looking, which in and of itself, I did not appreciate, so already we're on the wrong foot. Like, you don’t have to tell me my dog’s ugly.

Elizabeth Yeah, what a weird thing to say. That has nothing to do with anything.

Lauren Oh, my god, very weird. But some of the things she mentioned were, you know, throwing a bean bag at the dog if they were doing something across the room that they shouldn't be doing as a positive punisher. Being able to utilize a water bottle full of pennies to make those really loud noises. And to me, from a behavioral standpoint, punishment by definition works. If it didn't work, it wouldn't be punishment. So by that, I mean if you put, you know, a positive punisher in place, something that's aversive when the dog does something, it very well might work because the dog won't do that again if it's truly a punisher. 
What didn't make sense to me was that that's not my first go-to as a behavior analyst with children, so why would it be my first go-to with a dog?
And at the time, I wasn't familiar with the force-free dog training community. I wasn't familiar with the positive reinforcement dog training community. So I couldn't quite identify why those procedures made me feel icky, but they just made me feel icky. It just didn't mesh well for me. Once I got to know amazing trainers like Dana and Cassi, who you referenced already, really, I was even more blown away because I realized that, you know, not only were these procedures, that this original dog trainer was giving me, not only did they make me feel icky, but I started to realize that some interventions and strategies in my own practice with humans made me feel icky.

Elizabeth Oh, interesting.

Lauren And I cannot tell you and I say it all the time, becoming part of the force-free dog training community has significantly impacted and improved my clinical practice as a behavior analyst working with humans. I'm a much more ethical and compassionate behavior analyst. I'm a more creative behavior analyst, from learning from people like you and learning from Cassi and Dana and all the amazing people I follow on Instagram and I've connected with over the years. Like I said, behaviorally, they made sense to me but ethically, they didn't make sense to me. 

Elizabeth And I always try to put it in a way that people understand, too. I'm like, you get plucked off of our planet and you're thrown into this alien planet and they're 10 times the size of you and you can't speak their language and you do something and suddenly they hit you or they throw something at you, right? It's like, whoa what? It's complete shock and surprise and so unfair, right? But instead what if they showed you with their body language they brought you to a spot and they gave you food when you sat on that spot? All of a sudden when you want food you go to that spot and you sit, right, and it makes sense and then there's some communication that can happen there too. I think we've been so conditioned as a society that dogs are like out to spite us and get us and rule us and we have to battle them every day to get behaviors that we want. And we do this to kids too, of just like, oh, they're just being spiteful but it's like, no, behavior has a reason and they're trying to communicate and why are we being so mean. 

Lauren Absolutely. There's always more than one way to teach something and not only that if I haven't taught the behavior yet, whether it's MJ, whether it's one of my students, when that student or dog is in crisis, that's not the time to teach them a new skill.
I don't learn new skills when I'm in crisis, so when MJ’s barking because she's over threshold because someone's at the door or something like that, that's when I'm not directing her to engage in a behavior that I haven't taught her how to do yet.
I'm figuring out how I'm going to modify the environment to make sure she knows that she's safe and to get her back to threshold, where I can teach her, you know, back under threshold where I am able to teach her. Because it's so important. 
Even with children, we have kids who we give them a work task and you know they don't want to do it, so maybe they engage in challenging behaviors. Maybe that looks like aggression or yelling or cursing or, you know, whatever that might be.
In that moment, I'm not teaching that child how to ask for a break because they're over their threshold. I'm not going to be able to contact that rational part of their brain. It's my job to be compassionate, to calm them down and then we can debrief and we can talk about the next time and talk about what that next skill is that we're going to work on. But, you know, and it's a battle that I'm fighting in my field, too, to have that compassion and take behavior analysis in that direction.
It's something that we need to do with our dogs, too. If MJ’s telling me she's not comfortable, then it's my job as her guardian to listen to that. 

Elizabeth Yeah, there's nothing to prove, you know, in being able to muscle her or force her to stop, either, which is something I've noticed about people with dogs. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Lauren There's a great article by Susan Friedman, where she says effectiveness is not enough. Just because something's effective does not mean we should be using it as a strategy or intervention.
 
[Susan Friedman: https://www.behaviorworks.org/files/articles/What's%20Wrong%20With%20this%20Picture-Parrot.pdf 
Good Bird ™ Magazine Vol 4-4; Winter 2008, WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? EFFECTIVENESS IS NOT ENOUGH, Susan G. Friedman, Ph. D.]

Elizabeth One hundred percent. 
And I still think about this--and this is something I've told Cassi as well--when you mentioned that she told you, ‘But does she need to?’ about your desire to have MJ with a bunch of people and a big party in your home and Cassi was just like, basically, ‘But why?’

Lauren Yes. 

Elizabeth And I love that and that's something that I've taken with me to my clients, when they have this huge expectation of their dog that I know doesn't want to do it and doesn't have to. It's like well, why do you need that?

Lauren Yeah, that was like a profound moment for me and and just my training and even my journey as a behavior analyst  was realizing that all of my goals should be client-centered. So that means whoever my client is, whether it's MJ, whether it's my students, my goals for them should be based on their values and not mine. And it took Cassi asking me that question and being like, oh man. My goals have been very Lauren-centered. They have not been MJ-centered. 

Elizabeth And it's really cool when you think about it that way too, it's not--I think sometimes people are afraid like, ‘Oh, I can't get anything I want from my dog or I can't get any good behaviors,’ but once you establish that relationship and that line of communication, your world is going to open up in a way that you can't even expect sometimes because of that trust.

Lauren Yes, absolutely. I mean, when I first started working with Cassi, people were not able to come into our house because MJ would bark, growl. Anytime they stood up, she would react. 
So with the help of Cassi and with the help of Dr. Hauser, who’s a vet behaviorist at Penn Medicine, we put a lot of different protocols in place. We did a lot of good training and now MJ’s
trusted people--and used to just be myself and my husband--her trusted people has grown
dramatically. I mean we have all of our parents, one of my sisters, one of my brothers-in-law. They're all able to come into the house without MJ even reacting to them. She sees who [came in and] she immediately goes in wiggle butt mode and she gets excited. Which is something that we wouldn't have thought possible a year and a half ago

Elizabeth Yeah, there's a local pitty here that the first time I was on my own with this dog, I was like, I think this dog's gonna bite me, and now we're six months in and she's so excited to see me every time I show up alone.

Lauren You're a trusted person.  

Elizabeth Yes, and we have to move at their pace. Otherwise, it's just not going to work. You can't force somebody to like you 
Well, I'd love to get back to children and dogs. How did you find the book, Don't Bite the Baby, and why did you decide to follow that protocol when you were bringing your baby home?

[Please Don’t Bite the Baby: https://www.pleasedontbitethebaby.com/
Available here: https://bookshop.org/books/please-don-t-bite-the-baby-and-please-don-t-chase-the-dogs-9781580055772/9781580055772]

Lauren That's a really great question. I have no idea. I don't remember how I found that book. I follow Michelle--she's Pooch Parenting on Instagram. I want to say it's possible she might have posted it and I saw it. Honestly, it might have been Jenny from Dog Minded. It might have been in one of her resource guides. I don't remember exactly how I found it. I don't know. I just picked it up and I read it and was like, ‘Alright, this works. Let's do this. Let me learn from someone who's been through this. Who's been down this road already.’

[Pooch Parenting: https://poochparenting.net/, https://www.instagram.com/poochparenting]
[Dog Minded: https://www.dogminded.training/, https://www.instagram.com/dogminded/]

Elizabeth How did it work because, and I know reading through it myself, there’s a lot of little steps to be aware of and it's a lot of work. It's not easy integrating a dog into a home with a baby or small children but how was that process for you?

Lauren i loved it. So I read Don't Bite the Baby--I didn't find it until after Sloane was born, actually--my daughter's name is Sloane. So prior to Sloane being born, all the protocols I followed were recommended by either Cassi or Dr. Hauser from Penn Vet [University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine]. So we did a lot of like adaptations of  Karen Overall’s relaxation exercises. 

[Karen Overal’s Relaxation Protocol
PDF https://4wl0w11m24034t6kg3vgo48q-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Protocol_for_Relaxation-_Karen_Overall.pdf]

Lauren Just teaching MJ how to calm down. Getting her comfortable with having a safe haven in the house. You know, understanding that we were gonna have people coming over, wanting to see the baby and that might not be comfortable for MJ, so giving her a safe space to go and also just building those trusted people and having protocols for when people would visit. So that was the work I did before Sloane came. 
Once Sloane was born, that was when I started reading Lisa Edward's book Don't Bite the Baby. I wish I had read it sooner, because she gives so many great recommendations for things to practice before the baby comes. I'm excited to go back and revisit my notes on
that book and implement that with MJ now that we're expecting another one in February.
But one of the things that really helped as I was reading the book, I tracked my journey with it so if you were to go on my Instagram, I go through a chapter or a couple chapters at a time in some different posts or if I  go back to my story archives, it's there. Just because I know I'm not the only one who has a dog and a baby, so I figured maybe someone else can learn from this journey, too. Honestly, some of the biggest things that helped me the most in Lisa's book, of course, are the protocols and the strategies but just these little words of wisdom she would give that I have to go back to frequently. One of the things she says is: supervise your dog like it's a swimming pool. 
So you would never leave your baby or your child alone near a swimming pool. You would never leave them with the swimming pool and them without you in between them. That really resonated with me. I was like, Alright, that makes sense. I can apply this. It's something I can explain to grandparents when they're over watching the baby. 
Like you said, I forget exactly what the line is now, but she talks about how even the best dog
 can have that--can react to a baby, and that quick reaction can be fatally harming them.
There was one story in particular that really resonated with me, and just as a trigger warning, it's a story about child loss, but it was a story about how it was a labrador retriever or a golden retriever and they were playing in the backyard, and the child had a scarf on. And the dog
mistook the scarf for a toy, and ended up trying to play tug with the scarf, trying to get the scarf, and it ended up being a fatal encounter for that child. It's hard to, or rather, it's easy to forget that a dog being aggressive is not the only danger they pose to a child.
It can be a dog that's playing. It can be a dog that you know, MJ,  there's plenty of things that we need to do better. I think we do things well, but there's things we need to do better. One of the first times I put up a baby gate, I hadn't done enough training with MJ yet with the baby gate and MJ jumped over the baby gate and just knocked the baby over. Like, kept going, ran right past her but knocked her over. And, you know.I'm thankful I'm married to the man I'm married to, because we both recognize, that's not MJ’s fault. That's our fault. That's not on her. She hadn't learned that yet. So that's a work in progress now is not jumping over the baby gates. 
Accidents happen. Accidents can happen in any way and Lisa goes to great lengths to describe how to train your dog around a baby gate, how to get them ready for this. Once you introduce the baby in a high chair, what to do. She covers everything possible in a very user-friendly way. 

Elizabeth I love how she breaks down each chapter and her writing style is really beautiful and engaging as well, so it's an easy read but she'll share a story and share what's going on in their life and then at the end of the chapter, it's exactly the behaviors and cues that you want to train for and how to do it in a really accessible way. 
Yeah, I didn't get to that story yet. You know, similar trigger warning with that, but the good dog that killed the baby, just the father being heartbroken of like, he had a good dog and he had a baby and because he wasn't doing--he didn't know to do the work or he wasn't doing the work he needed to, so now he has neither and that was just a really like, oh you know, a moment of, it's just so easy, even with the best dogs to lose so much. 

Lauren Something else she said in that book that I really appreciated was, she said something to the effect of: she was thankful for the dogs that she had. Because one of her dogs had already bitten someone and had some behavioral challenges anyway, and she said she was really thankful for the dogs that she had, because they gave her no illusion that she didn't have to prepare for a baby. She didn't have these perfect dogs who never had any challenges at all. That kind of lured her into a false sense of security. 
And I feel the same way about MJ. MJ is kind of just like an anxious dog. She's got this baseline level of anxiety that's higher than some other dogs might be so I was never under the impression that we were going to bring a baby into this house and not think that it was going to be a trigger for her. 

Elizabeth So I think something--and I don't have children so I'm coming at this conversation of not really understanding certain aspects of it--and what I try to work with people on is being aware of the risks and what could go wrong but without living your life in fear and just like complete fear all the time. Was that a hard journey for you? How did you manage that aspect of being realistic and doing what you needed to do but without being terrified all the time?

Lauren That's a really good question. So I never had a fear of MJ with the baby, because I think what it came down to was minimally, if MJ is never next to the baby without us in between and without supervision nothing can happen. So even just following that one rule initially was enough for me. And I think just being able to go into it with a proactive plan and knowing what my foundational skills were that I've already worked with MJ--that was really helpful to me. So one of the foundational skills I came back to over and over again with MJ was her relaxation protocol. So she has this yoga blanket mat that we take out and that's her cue that I'm just gonna lay down and relax.
That foundational skill was so important because I used it with just about everything those first couple months the baby was home. So we brought the baby home and MJ didn't even realize the baby was in the house until she started crying. Then MJ was like, what's that?  She's up, she’s jumping, you could see those initial signs of anxiety where she's yawning and licking her lips more and her ears are back and as soon as I saw that, anytime MJ was in the same vicinity as the baby, I pulled out that relaxation mat and we would practice relaxation and I also did a variation of Leslie McDevitt’s Look At That Protocol.

Look At That Protocol PDF: https://eastbayspca.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Look-At-That_pdf.pdf
[McDevitt also wrote the book Control Unleashed, a protocol designed to help dogs “learn how to relax, focus and work off leash in stimulating or stressful situations”.]
Keep in mind that using a LAT protocol requires some training basics and understanding and that it can be easy to unintentionally poison the cue by working over threshold.

Lauren I did a variation of that where MJ would engage with the baby, I  would reward her and then I would reward her for checking in with me when the baby would cry. Being able to rely on those two foundational skills in and of themselves made drastic improvement in MJ's anxiety level over the first week or two that the baby was home. 

Elizabeth And that is--and the foundations of that can really carry you further. So when there's startlement, for example of, oh the baby did something that she wasn't expecting, because of that engagement and all the work that you've done before, MJ has so many more tools now in what to do instead of resorting back to her previous anxiety behaviors as well. It’s all so important.

Lauren Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it made a huge difference. And one of the things that I'm learning now, and I feel like initially I was good at it, and then I kind of had to remind myself. Every time the baby did something new, I paired whatever that new thing was with reinforcement for MJ. So, when the baby started babbling, when she did tummy time, that was MJ’s time to be on her place, and I would reward MJ for being on her place.
When the baby first started crawling, I would reward her, and MJ eventually, really, her baseline of anxiety around the baby went down dramatically. And so maybe a few weeks ago, when I just started to notice, I was like, you know, she seems like she's licking her lips a little bit more, like those precursor anxiety signs. Still calm, doing her thing but I could just recognize that difference in her and then I made the connection that the baby had really started walking and babies walking--like their gait is off, they look strange and very uncoordinated when they fall. So I noticed that correlated with MJ's anxiety going up, and it made me take a step back and say, ‘Wow, I really haven't been doing the same training I was doing earlier on.’ Because it was, it was this sense of security, where alright, like we’re where we need to be right now. So being able to just have that awareness of, alright, this has changed. Let me go back to the basics. Let's go back to ‘place’ training. Let's go back to all those kinds of things. I think having the plan and just knowing what those next steps are and being able to just constantly evaluate--where is MJ in this process? Where are we in this process?--has allowed us to be successful in integrating Sloane into our home with MJ.

Elizabeth And those are little details. I think the average person doesn't always know what to look for, because just a little lip lick, that's so easy to miss, but it's important to do that work and to understand dog body language and I love that the [Doggie Language] book is out now and I’m going to link that in the description. Super easy way for people to access starting to understand dog behavior because that's where it starts, right? Chirag Patel calls it the whispers of dogs, you know, when they start to whisper, that’s when we need to listen instead of it becoming a shout. But yeah, just those tiny little things that we need to be paying attention to in our dogs are so important. Well, I think that was all the questions that I had. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Lauren
Nothing that I can think of. I mean, I think, you know, at the end of the day, for anyone that's listening to this and is either a trainer working with a parent and a dog or someone who's gonna already has kids or is integrating kids into their home. Look for resources, there are plenty of trainers, excellent trainers like you, trainers who specialize in dogs and babies and there's a whole community that you can access and get resources from.
And at the end of the day, I joke a lot that MJ’s like functionally trained. So what I mean by that is, she doesn't bite the baby, she is good when guests come in now. She's able to relax on a mat. She can breathe on cue but she walks across my coffee table. 
I’m just like, right, like this is just where we're at now. That's okay. My husband said to MJ, he's like, ‘You know, you really gotta stop doing this. Why do you do this?’ And I said, ‘Well, have you taught her what to do instead?’ I said, ‘I know I haven’t.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I know.’
Dogs have no choice but to be a participant in the environment that we give them, so it's our job to manage that environment, manage their stressors, and teach them the things that they need to learn. So, I think if you remember that, when you have a dog and a baby, it makes it, to me, less stressful because I know that I have the power in that situation. 
I have the ability to change the environment. I have the ability to do this training with her and to seek out resources. So, as a parent just know that--I mean, accidents happen. Accidents always happen. We all make mistakes. I shared a couple I made with you already, just in the last 20 minutes, but yeah. I mean, we have ownership over, ownership. We have guardianship over our dogs. So it's our job to make sure their environment's safe and and a pleasant one for them. 

Elizabeth  Absolutely, yeah. That's something I try to remind people: you don't have to prove to your dog that you're in charge. You are in charge. You control everything, so by that definition, you're in charge. What are you doing with it? How are you showing your dog what you expect and all that? Yeah, I have one of those that will jump, throw herself at stuff and jump on things and I’m like, I haven't really taught her what to do differently. She just knows she can do that to get like--going across the  coffee table is probably the fastest way to get off the couch. 

Lauren Yeah, if one of us is standing on the other side of the coffee table, that's the easiest way to get closest to us to be up at a level where we can pet her.

Elizabeth Yeah.

Lauren I’d walk across the coffee table too, honestly.

Elizabeth Yeah, right, the dogs aren't thinking about what's socially acceptable or what this human thinks of me the way us humans do. They don't care. They're just like, what do I want, how do I get it. Where do we go from there?

Lauren Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Well, I'm gonna go ahead and do the little sign off.

This has been Telltail Dog the podcast with your host, Elizabeth Silverstein, certified dog trainer in central Arkansas and my guest today, Lauren Haley. Music has been provided by Jim Ciago of Seven Second Chance. Find more of his work on iTunes and Spotify. And stick around after the music for some final advice from Lauren.

[Brief outro music provided by Jim Ciago of Seven Second Chance. Find more of his work on ITunes and Spotify.]

Elizabeth Where should you start when you realize that you're pregnant? You have a dog. Where do you begin?

Lauren Start with finding a force-free positive reinforcement trainer in your area or remotely that can support you if you have a dog that has a history of anxiety, has a history of reactivity. Potentially look into a vet behaviorist. So, really, my recommendation is to start with the professionals.