Heel, Zsa Zsa
Zsa Zsa is my German Shepherd dog 🐕She's also my current anxiety avatar. I've had others, but she's the best one, so far, because she fits the story of anxiety and how to effectively manage it so well in my opinion. Perhaps Zsa Zsa may help you, so please feel free to borrow her. Or perhaps she can help you create your own avatar?
Zsa Zsa is now 1. She is the most adorable, snuggly, and hysterically funny dog. Quite calm at times, and quite playful at others. I love her to bits and pieces. She is my first dog, ever. It took 20 years to convince my dog-fearing husband that we needed a Zsa Zsa. Of course now, the two of them are inseparable 😊 She's a love these days. But not too long ago, I considered giving her away because I simply couldn't handle her. She was an anxious, chaotic mess of a puppy whose behavior had begun to put me and my family at real risk.
I knew she was on the fearful side from early puppyhood. I was concerned about her anxiety, but we were bumbling through treat-based puppy-training classes and I remained hopeful that she would mature, and that things would just get better. At 4-5 months, all was still manageable because she was just 30-40 lbs. But at 6 months, she hit the 60 lb mark and things got quite hairy. Here are the things were were experiencing on a daily basis when out and about:
Garbage cans were alarming
Anything unusual on the sidewalk was a threat
Garbage trucks were a dire threat
Most people were scary
Most other dogs were downright terrifying
Squirrels, deer, raccoons, mice, and any other animals we might encounter were daunting
Forget about balloons, kites, and flags flapping in the breeze
Forget also about loud motorcycles, busses or backfiring cars
Going for walks became a true ordeal, because as we encountered these ubiquitous things throughout the walk or the world, she would scurry and pull and try to retreat or avoid. This was now 60 lbs of incredibly strong dog, suddenly and frantically pulling me into the middle of the road or down a steep hill off the side of the road because of the terror of..... A balloon gently floating on it's string, tied to the mailbox of the home where the birthday party had taken place the day before.
Now Zsa Zsa was only going to get bigger and stronger. I knew I needed to do something helpful and effective for both of us, and quickly. So I scrounged up my pennies (many pennies!) and got a professional trainer. Enter Joe, the trainer.
When Joe the trainer arrived that first day, Zsa Zsa gave a few weak barks at the door, then she slunk away under my desk in the kitchen.
No hellos or introductions with Joe. He looked at her curiously and asked, "Does she always do that when people come over?"
It took him all of 15 minutes of asking me questions and observing Zsa Zsa on a short walk to make his assessment. Zsa Zsa was a highly anxious, highly reactive dog.
What he did next caused me so much confusion and alarm at first. He took out a Herm Sprenger prong collar and explained to me what it was, what we would do with it, and how it would work. I'd heard about these but was fundamentally against any "aversive training" techniques. We spent almost the whole session simply talking about how Zsa Zsa was failing at treat-based training approaches, how much she was suffering, how dangerous the situation had become, and how she could best be helped. I learned a lot of dog psychology in that first 2 hour session.
By the end of the session I felt encouraged, educated, and more hopeful. Still a little skeptical, but mostly convinced by what I had learned. And it boiled down to this:
An anxious dog needs to be relieved of responsibility.
An anxious dog needs to be told, almost always, what is expected of him.
An anxious dog needs a calm, collected, responsible, take-charge leader.
When the anxious dog has been taught that he/she needn't worry, because the calm, responsible leader is calling the shots, the anxious dog calms down.
When the anxious dog calms down, she is a much happier, more organized, more care-free, run-in-the fields dog.
We put the prong collar on Zsa Zsa.
For those of you who don't know what a prong collar is, it looks like a medieval torture device. It's not, though. It's quite an amazing training tool, actually. Properly used, it communicates with the dog what you want from it. For a chaotic dog on a walk, it's like power-steering. Let's remember what Zsa Zsa needed: A calm, collected, responsible, take-charge leader. And the prong was the communication tool necessary to convey that this is exactly who was on the other end of the leash.
Joe gave me the basic lesson and lots of homework. Daily, I was to do 2 regular walks with Zsa Zsa, correcting her for any squirrelly deviations from the walk (a quick snap of the leash on the prong, and a firm "No", and 1 "training" walk. The training walk would involve lots of sudden commands: "Sit", "Down", "Watch me", and the entire training walk would be done with Zsa Zsa in heel position.
Why heel? Heel is fantastic. An anxious dog is out front, scanning, predicting, searching for threats. The eyes are wild, and frantically looking all about. If there's a noise behind, the head whips back to look, and the butt scootches sideways. A big dog can easily knock you down like this. By putting the anxious dog in heel and keeping him there (using the prong collar to maintain that position), the dog is stuck looking at the back of your leg. Over time, with practice, the dog learns to trust that the back of your leg is all he needs to focus on- because YOU, the HANDLER, own the walk and are going to make sure everyone is safe the entire time.
Now let's deviate a little and talk about Zsa Zsa the anxiety avatar. This is a wild oversimplification but I like simple. The way I see it, the mind has 2 parts and 2 parts only. Never mind the complexity of the central nervous system. I find that human anxiety responds best to very simple, very accessible explanations of what's going on in the mind. Remember, the avatar needs to be accessed IN THE MOMENT. If I'm trying to piece together what's happening in my mind by conceptualizing the hypothalamus, limbic system, parasympathetic, sympathetic, prefrontal cortex, blah blah etc etc- forget it. Too complicated. I find it's much easier to implement something really, really simple in the anxious moment. So let's keep it this way: there are only 2 parts of the mind. There's the ANXIETY CENTER, and there's the WISE MIND.
The Wise Mind is gigantic. It's rational, logical, calm, slow, and peaceful. It's like a giant Buddha. It's very powerful, but also tends to passivity. It can be overtaken easily by the anxiety center if it doesn't understand the anxiety center, what the relationship should be, and then learn to assert itself.
The Anxiety center is tiny but very powerful. Now, thank goodness for this little part of the brain. It's quite a lifesaver sometimes. If a car suddenly cuts you off, this part of the brain says, "REACT!" before Wise Mind is even paying any attention. In less than a second, the right leg has already slammed on the brakes and phew! Catastrophe averted. Thank you Anxiety center! But as we all well know, if the anxiety center tends to be too awake, and generally too good at it's job, it's got both eyes wide open almost all the time, and it's scanning, searching, predicting, forecasting, and doing a lot, lot, lot of misinterpreting of things.
Now you can see where the analogy and Zsa Zsa the anxiety avatar both start to work here.
In general, things work much better when Wise Mind is in charge of things, with Anxiety taking commands from it. Just as I, the handler, am mostly in charge of things, and Zsa Zsa takes her commands from me. Let's put this into real-life practice.
Someone criticizing me can be the equivalent of scary balloons.
Zsa Zsa my anxiety avatar starts to hustle away, wanting to hide, wanting to flee, maybe feeling cornered and wanting to fight. Criticism! Scary Balloons!
Wise Mind puts the prong collar and leash on Zsa Zsa and says, "Heel Zsa Zsa". Zsa Zsa gets in heel. Still a little yelp here and there, a little skittish but Wise Mind says, "No Zsa Zsa. That criticism? It's nothing. You don't need to pay attention to that. I'll sort out if there's any merit in the criticism. I'm Wise Mind and that's my job. Those balloons? They're nothing for you to worry about. Now Heel. We're on a walk."
An anxious thought- like, is this new mole on my skin a cancer? It's the equivalent of a loud, frightening garbage truck.
Zsa Zsa my anxiety avatar starts to hustle away, wanting to hide, wanting to flee, maybe feeling cornered and maybe even wanting to fight! She lets out a bark (adrenaline) trying to alert me that there's a threat! A Mole! A loud Garbage Truck!
Wise Mind puts the prong collar and leash on Zsa Zsa and says, "Heel Zsa Zsa". Zsa Zsa gets in heel. Still a little yelp here and there, wants to run away, but Wise Mind says, "No Zsa Zsa. That mole? It's probably nothing. People get new moles all the time for goodness' sake. I'll set up a doc appointment and until then, we're not going to focus on it. That garbage truck? It's nothing. Now Heel, darling. We're on a walk."
Giving a public talk. The equivalent of a big, scary, unknown dog walking towards us.
Zsa Zsa my anxiety avatar starts to really freak- starting days or even weeks in advance. She wants to run, she wants to hide under the desk. Lots of barking (adrenaline) trying to alert me that there's a threat. A public talk! A big, scary dog! Retreat! Don't do it! Cancel!
Wise Mind puts the prong collar and leash on Zsa Zsa and says, "Heel Zsa Zsa". Zsa Zsa gets in heel. "Talking in public is nothing. We've done it before. Sure it's uncomfortable but we always live through it. Sometimes it even goes well. That dog coming? We're walking on the other side of the street. There's no threat. Now Heel, darling. We're on a walk."
I've imagined Zsa Zsa the anxious dog in my mind for countless situations in the last few months, and this has worked like a charm for me.
Back to the real Zsa Zsa: Now in those rare instances where there's a true emergency- like if there's a Mountain Lion creeping up behind us for example, I'm not going to correct Zsa Zsa when she starts barking her head off at it. Or if a burglar breaks into our house and Zsa Zsa pounces on him, I'm certainly not going to stop her from doing that, either (she no longer slinks under my desk- she's got too much confidence these days). I couldn't stop her from this if I tried- she'd be too quick. She knows people shouldn't be arriving unannounced. These are split-second decisions that she's allowed to make- because these are actually real threats, real emergencies. It's like avatar Zsa Zsa slamming on the brakes to avoid a car accident. But if Zsa Zsa starts squirreling away from balloons, garbage trucks, and dogs going the other direction, you can be sure that Wise Mind is going to lovingly, but firmly correct her.
And so much of life is balloons, garbage trucks, loud motorcycles, squirrels and deer, right? So many false alarms. So few real catastrophes. So many things that can trip anxiety up and confuse it- make it think it needs to protect, to be on guard, to run, to bark, or to pounce.
Let's check in with the real Zsa Zsa. She's now pushing 90 lbs! Oh my goodness. She looks like a horse to me sometimes. She's truly such a light in our lives, and brings my whole family such tremendous joy. And these last 6 months of training walks and implementing the proper construct for our relationship have paid off in spades. Zsa Zsa has excellent behavior and is completely obedient. I barely correct her at all anymore. Her focus is NOT on the scary world, hardly ever. Her focus is on me, the handler. She has grown to trust that I make pretty much all the decisions, and she can relax, because that responsibility is not hers. I am now free to enjoy our walks or hikes or trips to the park without the constant distraction and chaos of her worry. I'm in charge. Zsa Zsa is not. And we are both are so much happier and calmer for it.
And so it goes in my mind now as well.... Wise Mind has got this one, Zsa Zsa. And the next one, and the next one. You stay in heel darling...
