Threshold Practices for Dogs & Humans-Beginner Level
Updated: Aug 18
Here we were: Just me and my crazy dogs trying to pull our shit together. I wanted to get the pack under control but I couldn't figure out where to start.
Trainer Miriam Pollard says that when dogs are unsure what to do in a situation, their genetics take over. When I am unsure of what to do in a situation, I turn to books. I wanted to be less reactive (but still vocal), and I pretty much I wanted the same for my dogs. I picked out some communication books for me, and some trainers for my dogs. I needed a jumping off point.
Each of my dogs has 100 things to work on. I have 100 things to work on. I was immediately overwhelmed by my decision to try and retrain all of us. I could feel my stress and panic rising like a flash flood in my brain. I was about to freeze and/or start pacing (my go-to procrastination tool)...but I also knew this feeling after 20 years of teaching in public schools--it's how most teachers feel most minutes of the day and I knew how to diffuse it: I just needed to pick SOMETHING- anyyyyyyyy small, easy, achievable thing and do it. This would keep the panic at bay and keep the momentum moving forward.
For a solid afternoon, I paced around my new, small pink office, bought new hair scrunchies off Amazon (I needed new scrunchies to train my dogs-duh), and examined some new moles (Did I need to do something about these?). I did everything but attempt to train the beasts.
There were four of them. There was one of me + a helpful husband. Evening was approaching, and soon the dreaded morning walk around our new neighborhood--replete with off-leash dogs, stray cats, rabbits, ducks, woodchucks, chickens, and extra squirrely squirrels--would begin and I still didn't have a training plan, let alone a training goal, for the four dogs that were about to rip my arms out of my body while treeing squirrels and scrapping with off-leash dogs.
I went to work ordering more scrunchies.
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Molly Arvin, a dog trainer based in Salt Lake, is big on keeping her dogs in their "front" brains as opposed to their "lizard brains."
The idea behind all of this is that if a dog is focused while you are walking, hiking, etc., and in their "front brain," they are going to make better choices in high-excitement situations, but more importantly, they are going to have the brain space to pay attention to the cues you are giving them.
This all kind of sounded boring to me. I loved seeing the dogs get excited about something. At the same time, they are reactive and it is hard to control all of them together when we want to go camping or hiking or even walk around the block. They ARE out of control. It was time to try and reign it in so that I wouldn't have a nervous knot in my stomach every time I wanted to take them on a walk together.
Keeping a dog in their front brain is an amorphous instruction in it of itself like "Just don't be afraid" or "Just pop up" but the directive comes with a lot of concrete tasks I thought I could tick off over time. For the sake of getting started, I chose just one: threshold training.
Threshold training is essentially teaching your dog not to bolt out doors. I didn't have to start by swinging the door wide open and making sure they didn't missile out, I could start by just having them do a sit before we walked out the door.
This seemed doable for the next morning and would help with every future skill. I decided this would be the starting point for my dog training.
Starting Now: No More Dragging Me Out the Front Door
Working with this idea that the dogs needed to be in their front brain before leaving for our neighborhood safaris, I started with the front door.
Usually we would just hook them all up to their leashes and hope no one got knocked unconscious as we all piled out the front door. Today, on this, the first day or their retraining, I lined them all up and told them to "wait." I use "wait" to mean "don't move forward goddammit" and usually use it when we are hiking down something and I need the dog to wait so I can navigate steps or roots with out going ass over head.
I put them all in a wait and then I went to open the door. Predictably, before I even got to the doorknob, Cheeze tried to run Kool-Aide man through me and the door. NOPE. I took my hand off the doorknob, backed everyone up and told them to "wait." We have worked on this a little bit before, but not consistently, so they generally understood what was happening, but not Cheeze. I touched the doorknob, Cheeze was up. I cracked the door, Cheeze's nose was in it. I opened the door and he attempted to race through. He was a sprinter at the starting line just waiting for the horn. Not demure at all.
After 5 minutes of this, Porter laid down and told us to "Wake him up when it's time to go." Mabel joined him and Gussie alternated between getting it right and frantically popping up if she thought Cheeze was going to get out the door before her. All in all, it took about 12 minutes for us to get it to where Cheeze would not move if I opened the door a 1/2 inch and I took that as my win for the day. This was still a good start because any start is better then no start.
I had a few takeaways from this first attempt:
Takeaway 1: The main takeaway was that I was going to have to train the dogs individually because giving group feedback was as ineffective with a pack of dogs as it was in the classroom. The kids who needed the feedback were not listening (Cheeze) and the dogs who were paying attention (Porter and Mabel) could already do the things I was trying to teach. One-on-one training was going to be necessary. Although we continue to practice the group wait at doors, other times I set up Gussie's playpen as a barrier so that we could do individual training (re: the Instagram post above.) This went a long way, so we do it when we can.
Takeway 2: Calming the dogs before walking out the door made a huge difference in us getting off our front porch safely, but it also became immediately clear that I was going to have to teach them not to pull during the walks if I really wanted them to stay in their thinking brain for an extended period of time.
There are many thresholds that dogs face over the course of their day: crate doors, back doors, car doors, front doors, gates and many opportunities for useful practice.
There are also many ways to get this right (ie: lots of trainers train this differently) so do not feel you need to do this one standard way.
The main goal is to work on having the dog somewhat focused on you before you walk out the door instead of just being out of their mind and bolting out.
Threshold Practices for Dogs-Things to Try
Ask for a sit before walking out the door. Do not let the dog pop right up out of their sit once you open the door: they need to hold it until you release them. Just keep putting them back in their sit. If they can't do this, just start with cracking the door a tiny bit and if they hold the sit, reward them by exiting the door.
Or, Do NOT ask for a sit; stand there silently and and wait for the dog to sit on their own.
Do not open the door until dog is calm. When they calm down, open the door a little. If they stay calm, continue opening. If they start going bananas (like my do), gently shut the door until they calm down again. Sometimes I have to get the playpen , separate the dogs, and do this 1-on-1 because they are still too excitable as a pack.
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Human Threshold Training
Threshold training for me would look a little different, but the idea was the same. A threshold is a precipice: a "before" moment. A moment when I could pull myself together so I could keep my head on before the action started.
Sometimes I do do this: Before I walk into the doors of my work building, I picture a light switch being switched on. This symbolizes me switching from my introvert self to my extrovert self. I'm ready.
But sometimes I don't to this, even when I know I am about to walk into a triggering situation. Take my email routine, for example:
Open email.
Get pissed off and claw my own eyeballs out or someone else's. Threaten to quit. Type up resignation letter.
Close email.
Go back to teaching.
I had a little tiny threshold routine for the big transition of my day (the visualization of the light switch), and this was good, but I was missing some moments where I could be more proactive about righting myself BEFORE the storm.
One of the strategies I ultimately settled on came from one of my former (and favorite*) ski instructors (Antonio Bellomo from Vail), who was upset that I would get scared shitless and throw a fit whenever we got to the top of a run he knew I could do. He had assessed my skills. He knew what I could ski, and yet, when he took me to a run that was within my ability but maybe a bit harder than what I had been on previously, I would get scared and ski down the run like a frozen robot. He was frustrated and told me I needed to not be scared. I was frustrated and told him I didn't know how to not be scared when I was scared, which he thought about quietly for the rest of the gondola ride.
I was generally annoyed in this moment because knew I was a chicken. I've always been a chicken, and I have had some version of the "don't be scared" conversation with so many different ski and surf instructors over the last 20 years. I was learning these sports as an adult. I was scared.
The conversation usually went like this:
Instructor: "Don't be scared."
Me: "I am scared."
Instructor: "Okay well DON'T BE! This is nothing!"
Me: Mentally notes to never call this instructor again.
But Antonio was different. He listened and did come up with an idea. When we got off the gondola, he took me to a run that he knew I could do but would be scared of. Instead of just going straight down, he stopped me to do some formal breathing. It was simple: few breaths in and out just to get our heads on.
I was grateful because he was the only instructor who had given me a tool. I am not sure the breathing itself did much, but the acknowledgement of my feelings was the magic. I did ski well after that. Since then, whenever I get to the top of a run and my emotions start to run amok, I acknowledge that I am scared but this will all go a lot better if I breathe and loosen up so that I can use proper form.
Since my first draft of this post, where I wrote about learning to use breathing as a threshold tool, I've come across this idea in other places.
In The Next Conversation by Jefferson Fisher, he calls the breath you take before you are about to get heated a "conversational breath." Picture this: You're in a warm situation that's getting hotter. You're getting worked up. You're about to let your emotions take over. Fisher suggests that at this moment, instead of letting words rush out, you take a breath. The breath is in the middle of the conversation, it's hardly noticeable-but it's the critical moment that saves the conversation from going sour. It's a little tiny threshold where you decide to control yourself (or not---which is where I am and why I am writing about this stuff).
There's about 7 pages dedicated to this idea in his book, which you can check out here:
It pops up in other places, as well. In Season 2, Episode 3 of Schitt's Creek, Moira invites Alexis to lunch to prove David is not her favorite child. Both Alexis and Moira are apprehensive before the lunch. When Alexis arrives at the cafe she does a shoulder tap, takes a deep breath, and nods her head a few times as if she's giving herself a pep talk. I thought this was the perfect visual representation of what I am trying to practice:
I plan on using some combination of self talk and breathing not just in my high anxiety moments in skiing and surfing but for any predictable work situation that I know is going to piss me off.
In teaching, a lot of elements can come together at any given moment to piss me off. Sometimes I can't predict them, but 99 PERCENT of the time, I know exactly what is going to set me off: whiny seniors and my email. The seniors have no excuse and my email always has some stupid shit in there.
So like the door routine we are trying to implement for the dogs, I created a little pre-email calming pattern for myself that involves self talk and breathing:
Find quiet, focused time dedicated to JUST knocking out my email. This. is. a. must. (Every time I have tried to knock out some emails during class, there was a parent email, an announcement of some new and dumb county policy, a survey that will not matter even though it's titled "Teachers! Your Voice Matters!" The anger that then burbled up tipped over into my teaching, maing it doubly hard to finish class. Bad idea to teach like this---just save the email for later.)
Take a deep breath.
As I am on the THRESHOLD of opening my email, remind myself that SOMEONE in this email batch IS going to piss me off and they can fuck the fuck off.
Breathe
Open email. Deal with everything calmly since I've already told everyone where they can go in my head.
Close email.
Do not open again until tomorrow. : )
The threshold routines are meant to be proactive in helping my dogs and I stay calm before an electric situation, and it seems like a good first step for our respective retraining journeys.
Human Threshold Practices-Things to Try
Visualize a symbol that represents crossing the threshold.
I visualize a light switch turning on as I walk into work. (Yes-this is corny but I need to do it anyway to turn off the introvert self and turn on the extrovert self.)
Controlled breathing
Ex: Breathe in for 5 seconds, hold for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds....or literally any variation of controlled breath.
Get the strong emotions out beforehand
If you know you are walking into a situation where you are going to be PISSED OFF-spew it all out BEFORE the meeting and leave the pure rage to blow away in the wind. Then you can use calmer rage in the meeting to say what you need to say in a more controlled way and not have everyone fighting you back or running to the hills.
What are some threshold practices that use with your dogs or in your own life? Please let us know in the comments!!
*My favorite ski instructors are the ones who understand that I am a chicken, but they are supportive and help me improve anyway with just the right amount of push. I skiied with many great instructors over the years and would love to share them. Message for me if you are a chicken like me and would like an instructor recommendation for Steamboat, Crested Butte, 7 Springs, or Vail.
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