Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Becoming Better Pet Parents With Wendy Lyons Sunshine
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:08] PF: Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Derrenbacher presented by Live Happy.
[OVERVIEW]
[0:00:15] PF: You may have noticed that pets and children have a lot in common, and today’s guest understands just how similar they are. When award-winning journalist and best-selling child development author, Wendy Lyons Sunshine adopted a difficult puppy, she found that traditional training methods just didn’t work on her dog. She began applying the evidence-based parenting practices she wrote about and found this new approach was life-changing for both her and her dog.
In her latest book, Tender Paws: How Science-Based Parenting Can Transform Our Relationships with Dogs, Wendy offers therapeutic concepts designed to meet each dog’s needs. In this episode, she tells us why this approach is so effective. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:59] BD: Hi, Wendy. Welcome to the show.
[0:01:01] WLS: Great to be here, Brittany. Thanks so much for inviting me.
[0:01:05] BD: I’m really excited about this conversation, and I think any dog lover that’s listening today is going to be super pumped to have this conversation, too. I thought it was so interesting, because you’re a journalist and a best-selling author, but most of your writing and research is in parenting. Your new book, Tender Paws, is on dogs. How did you make that shift?
[0:01:31] WLS: What happened was the experience helping the parenting experts write books saved my bacon with a puppy, who was really more than I knew how to handle. I was struggling mightily. The puppy guides were not giving me the answers. They were talking about calm, easy-to-handle creatures who were ready to learn things like, sit. My puppy was acting like something shot out of a cannon, and which many puppies are. But any case, going back to the parenting books provided the inspiration and guidance that I really needed to turn my relationship around.
It had become too confrontational with the puppy, and I felt we were going down a really bad path, and I didn’t know what to do. Turning to these particular parenting experts who had worked with kids who came from really troubled backgrounds, what the author called, hard places, like orphanages and child protective care and so forth, they really needed special extra attention and nurturing and guidance. It helped change my mindset so much that I was fascinated.
I mean, at first it was secret. I didn’t want to tell anybody. I was embarrassed that I was looking at parenting guides for inspiration. But the science journey helped me understand there’s a lot of really solid evidence for why this is really a sensible, compassionate, well-informed approach.
[0:03:03] BD: I’m glad this isn’t a secret anymore. I’m glad you didn’t keep that secret, because you’re using this wisdom of parenting that I think can really transform our relationships with our animals. I identify as a parent to my dogs. I love that you’re using this idea of parenting. How is that different than training, obedience, the way that we’ve looked at our relationships with animals in the past?
[0:03:29] WLS: Well, training and obedience traditionally come from a place of domination and perhaps, heavy emphasis on punishment. Whereas a parent, a skillful parent, has a much wider palette of colors and tools at their disposal, and they’re trying to build a relationship that’s productive and beneficial over the long term. They’re not just thinking about this one moment in time where you must do this thing. They’re thinking about, okay, how do I help bring out the best in this little one? How do I help create a situation of cooperation?
Even, how do I recognize what they’re trying to tell me? Like, with children who don’t yet have language skills, we have to become detectives. Parents have to be very observant and mindful and attentive to details. That’s a parenting mindset. I call it a therapeutic parenting mindset, because we’re bringing all the support that we can offer across many different realms. That’s very different. In the parenting model, training, which is really like teaching, and it’s just a piece of the puzzle. It’s not the whole interaction.
[0:04:54] BD: I’m a therapist. When I’m working with humans to have children and I’m helping them maybe with parenting, I’m asking them to really look at their child as an individual. I think that’s what’s so powerful about this concept of parenting with our dogs is that how can that help us evolve and grow in our relationship with our dogs by looking at them as individuals and understanding their personalities and their needs and their backgrounds?
[0:05:26] WLS: That’s a great point, because while kids have a lot in common, they also are very individual, right? One might love to run around outdoors, another loves to stay and play on a musical instrument. We want to give them the opportunity, each of them, to fulfill their talents and be who they are. We can do that for dogs. In a way, we have an advantage with dogs, because we think about breeds. But that can be misleading, because as breeders will tell you, one litter can have quite a variety of personalities and temperaments, even within the one litter. A lot of their personality comes from genetics, as well as how they’re treated. Responding to the individual in front of us, that’s really what you’re bringing to your clients, and that’s what we can bring as pet parents to our relationship with our animal.
[0:06:19] BD: This is probably a question that Paula is also interested in hearing the answer to, because we’re both involved in rescue, and that’s how we became connected. We’re super passionate about rescue dogs, and especially if they come from trauma backgrounds, and who knows what backgrounds they come from when they come into rescue. How can this concept and methodology really help someone that might be bringing a rescue dog into their home?
[0:06:45] WLS: That’s a great question. I have a great softness in my heart for rescue and the animals I’ve raised. One of the biggest lessons we can learn, so valuable, if we don’t remember anything else, it’s to help them feel safe. That is the most healing gift we can give, because there are literally physiological processes in the body and our nervous system and our digestive system do not work to maximum capabilities when we are scared. The same goes for animals.
Here, you’re thinking of rescue animals who have had such disruption in their lives. Even if they appear calm, sometimes it’s actually out of abject terror. They freeze, so they seem easy going, or perhaps, they appear to be smiling with a big funky grin, but that could be a sign of fear, too. If we can become attuned and help learn a little bit about dog body language and read the signs, that’s one of the things I tried to include in the book, because it isn’t so natural to us. We are built differently than dogs that we don’t always read the signs.
We want to. We want to care for them. If we can help them feel safe, we develop a trusting relationship, and then opportunities open up, then just the whole relationship can blossom and their confidence builds and their health builds, and we can see the potential that they have to offer us. It’s beautiful.
[0:08:21] BD: This might be a silly question, but I’m just asking maybe for someone that doesn’t understand what attunement means, how might you explain that to someone who’s curious about how to attune to their animal?
[0:08:36] WLS: Attunement is, let’s find some other ways to say this. It’s like being in sync, right? It’s responding in the moment dynamically to what you’re seeing. One of the beautiful things about parent-child relationship is that there’s an attunement, meaning the parent will do something and the child responds and they have a – they’re on the same wavelength. Here’s an example I just love. Did you know that there are some indigenous people who do not diaper their babies? They are so attuned to the baby’s body language that they can recognize when that child is about to evacuate. They simply hold it away from their body and let the child do its thing. There’s never soiling on the parent and there’s no diapers, but there’s such an attunement, such an alertness to the moment-to-moment needs and body language and what their child is trying to communicate non-verbally. Attunement is a non-verbal communication, is one way to put it. I’m sure as a therapist you have some other ways that you can help describe it for us.
[0:09:46] BD: No. I felt like that was a beautiful way to talk about it. I think this really requires us to open up our minds and start to really view our animals differently, which is the whole reason that we began this podcast is to have deeper conversations about how we can deepen our connections with animals. How can we be more considerate of trauma in regards to our relationships with dogs?
[0:10:13] WLS: Right. One of the things we can do is adjust our expectations and perhaps slow down and offer choices to the animal. We talk about consent for kids. For example, therapists, as I understand it, working with traumatized kids are very cautious. They don’t come swooping in with two-armed big hugs, right? They might touch with one hand and they always let the other individual feel they have an escape and feel that it’s consensual, that they have a choice. They’re not trapped in any way. That’s a big thing we can do for dogs, too. Because you think about the scale of we’re giants compared to most dogs, especially those little ones. We come swooping in and we want to smother them with affection and take our two hands and wrap them up in a bear hug. That could really be disturbing to an animal who doesn’t know us that well, even to an animal who does. Sometimes they’re just not in the mood.
Their trauma in the past makes them particularly sensitive to situations where they don’t have an escape. Think about how many dogs really love being in a veterinary office that’s little and small and they – for any dog, but especially for those with a background of trauma.
[0:11:34] BD: Yeah, and Paula might want to chime in on that. She may have a follow-up question, because her dog, Josie, if a stranger tried to come swoop in and give Josie a hug, that would not happen.
[0:11:45] PF: Yeah, that’s very true. First of all, this is such fascinating information. When you do have a dog that is fearful like that, what are some of the ways that you can still show your affection? Because as you mentioned, we want to give it a hug, we want to scoop it up. It’s hard. I have also a little rescue bunny named Baxter who was, when we rescued him a year ago, you couldn’t touch him. He was terrified. He had been mistreated badly. Now you can touch him, but you can’t pick him up. Can you talk about that, how you create boundaries for yourself, basically, to be able to provide affection to an animal?
[0:12:25] WLS: That’s a big key. Giving boundaries to ourselves. That’s the hardest, isn’t it, when your heart is overflowing? It’s the mantra, I keep in mind, is let them come to you as much as possible. One thing that’s also interesting to note about dogs, for example, is eye contact can actually be quite uncomfortable. In natural circumstances, like in the wild, that can be a sign of confrontation, or aggression even among dogs. When we go and stare at a dog, because we think he’s cute as could be, we might actually be making him more uncomfortable, or her more uncomfortable.
Here, again, one thing easy we can do, and perhaps this works for bunnies, I’m not sure, is turn a little bit sideways, right? The same as we don’t want to loom over them. We might think about, if we could just divert our head a little bit. You’ll notice with dogs sometimes, if you observe them on walks and they’re greeting each other, they don’t come up and stare each other in the eye. They often turn away just a little to show that they’re okay here, but they’re waiting to see what’s happening, until they’re ready to engage.
I have found that some animals where you don’t stare them straight in the eye, and you give them the opportunity little by little, they’ll come up and they’ll want to lean up on you and give you that opportunity. I remember a neighbor’s dog, just a beautiful Borzoi, this magnificent, I don’t know if you’ve seen these dogs, they’re sight hounds, they’re tall. I think they were from Asia originally. I knew this dog for a few years. We walked the same streets when I took my dog out, we met this dog. But this dog for two years never would engage with me. I would reach my hand out and say hi, and the dog would take a sniff and look away, and that was the end of it.
Then one day I was out chatting with the owner, and this big dog just leaned up against me. It was like magic. Granted, I waited a long time. But it was so beautiful, because it was so voluntary. I was so startled, because the dog had never interacted with me. It just leaned its, like 60 pounds up against me. I was just getting to stroke this beautiful fur that the Borzoi has. It’s hard for us if we really want to connect to be patient. If we can do that, we can be so rewarded and help the animals feel comfortable.
[0:14:58] PF: I love that.
[0:14:59] BD: I love this conversation, because I think it really challenges conditioning that’s been passed on to us that we are alpha. We’re dominant. By extension of that, our animals are supposed to listen, obey, do exactly what we want and ask, and really be an extension of that. I don’t know. I love that this is more of the conversation now than maybe five, 10 years ago.
[0:15:28] PF: What I wondered is how that changes us. We talk about how that approach changes our animals and the way they interact with us. I’ve known people who call themselves the master, which, and they’re just like, as Brittany said, they want to be this authoritarian figure. How does it change us as humans when we start approaching it differently, when we look at ourselves as a parent instead of a master? I feel like, that has to spill over into other areas of our lives.
[0:15:59] WLS: We raised something really interesting, because parenting means different things to different people. Some families, being a parent does mean being the master of the house. For people who grew up that way, this might seem very natural. They can’t imagine a different way of leadership and guidance and nurturing. I try to remember where these people are coming from themselves. I don’t know, it’s not the easiest to shift our habits, but it’s up to them if they want to do it, they have this opportunity.
That’s one of the things I wanted to cover in the book is that not all of us came from ideal childhoods with ideal parenting situations. I had some bumps in the road and many of us do. I find it very helpful to think about what the ideal is, because sometimes my impulse is not toward the ideal, especially if I’m frustrated, or tired, or cranky. Finding that balance of leadership that’s firm, but kind with the nurturing. I don’t want anybody to think that parenting is strictly about indulgence, because studies show for long-term well-being that you want some indulgence, but you also want limits. You have love plus limits, perhaps, is a way to think about it. As adults, we try to find that balance, balance in a kind, appropriate way that makes the whole house feel safe and comfortable and welcome and loved.
[0:17:45] BD: In your book, you talk about HEARTS approach to parenting. Can you explain this? It’s an acronym. You have a whole chart in the book. Why is this so effective? What does it stand for?
[0:17:58] WLS: Right. I use the acronym HEART to summarize the real key principles that we can use and skillful parents use and professional experts who work with troubled children use. The H stands for heal the body, and that’s number one. Because if we’re sick, or ill, then we’re hungry, or we’re too tired, none of us is going to behave our best. That’s true, of course, for puppies and dogs. E is for engage and optimize the brain. What I found really fascinating from the research, that’s not doing crossword puzzles, right? This is actually about movement. In using our senses, our physical body in space and problem solving, in play, all of those things help self-regulate more. That movement’s really important for our brain to work well.
We have H, heal the body. E, engage and optimize the brain. A is appropriate environments with felt safety. This is where, it’s not just that we know the child, or dog is safe in the situation. They have to experience it as safe. That makes a world of difference in the trust that builds up in their physical wellness. R in HEARTS is for respectful and secure relationships. It’s not just any kind of relationship. It’s one that’s mutually respectful and is secure in, for example, they don’t feel they’re going to be abandoned, or abused, or otherwise neglected. It’s a supportive relationship.
T is for teach sensitively and positively. We know from a lot of research here too, that we work when we feel something’s rewarding and engaging and fun, and not because someone’s standing over us with a ruler ready to smack our knuckles, as once happened. That still happens in dog training circles to some degree. We want to be sure we’re doing it positively and also sensitively. Again, we want to be aware of the individual how they’re reacting in the situation.
Then finally, that S is circles us right back to support the individual. Just like you were saying, we want to think about, in the dog’s case, the breed, the stage of life that they’re in. You don’t treat a puppy the same way you treat a senior, for example. You don’t expect the same things. I know for me, when I took home rescue puppy, I didn’t realize how very young she was. She was really too young to have come home. We, in our eagerness to rescue animals sometimes, we don’t realize what we’re taking on. Puppies need to be with their litter and mama through weeks eight to 12. Mine only had her family through week three. That explains part of why we were struggling together. She just didn’t have some of that physical experience, that learning experience, that security. Any case, that S is for support the individual, whatever that means for you and your dog. Altogether, HEARTS.
[0:21:12] BD: I love it. I love it. I have a puppy as well that came through rescue, who has hydrocephalus that was removed from her mom, probably around the same age. I syringe fed her. She was a challenging kiddo. This is her and this is who she is. I love her. She keeps me on my toes. I’m more willing to pivot and shift for her, so that she can live her best life. Also, I’m willing to have boundaries.
[0:21:48] WLS: Exactly. She’s lucky to have found you and that you’re willing to understand her for who she is and what she brings to the table, and is doing the best she can under the circumstances.
[0:22:02] BD: Shout out to Margot Moonbeam. I love you. How has the human animal bond changed your life?
[0:22:11] WLS: Well, of course, it’s enriched my life so much. Actually, your background in working with families and also with grief, one of the things that surprised me was when I lost that dog that had grown up, the one who was the puppy who was so challenging, I found myself in a case of grief that I had never experienced. I had lost animals before. It was so profound. It was crying for six months. I mean, I was so shocked. I thought, “Oh, my goodness. I had been trying to build attachment with the dog.” I got attached just as much as the dog got attached. Of course, she left earlier. That’s a profound thing to realize that it’s a mutual situation.
I also found it really eye opening to learn just to reflect, I guess, is the way to think about reflect on some of the things that I might have wished I had as a child. Now it helps me to be mindful of what those might have been and why I might struggle in certain situations myself and struggle to give them to a dog in my care. Because in some cases, my parents were, of course, doing the best they had and you look at their parents, we each teach the next generation. We have opportunities to do better. Our dogs are so forgiving, aren’t they? When you’re ready to reach out and support them, they are so often so receptive. It’s just so heart-warming.
[0:23:56] BD: Yeah. They don’t even have to go through the act of forgiveness, because they already are forgiveness. It’s just, they don’t even have to go through the act of doing it. It’s already gone. It’s already just flowed right through.
[0:24:10] WLS: Yeah. Sometimes I will apologize. I’ll like, “Oh, no. I’m sorry.” It’s like, they seem to get it.
[0:24:19] BD: Cool.
[0:24:20] WLS: Right. They’re like, yeah, they can sense the goodwill and recognize that, because it’s also about patterns. I want to say this too, that it’s helped me a lot is that no parent is 100% perfect. We don’t have to expect ourselves to be 100% perfect with their dogs either. It’s more about the trend and the pattern, and if we overall are supportive, and then we repair the relationship, if it goes a little off the rails. That can strengthen the relationship, I think. I don’t know. Perhaps, you can speak to that from the human side, Brittany.
[0:24:58] BD: Yeah. I mean, repair is huge. That’s always my goal in a session with a client is repair, repair. I think that’s so important in our human relationships and just our relationship here on earth. If we view that also in our relationships with our animals, that repair should always be our strategy.
[0:25:20] WLS: It’s wonderful to have that. That’s what I call the do over, or redo. You get to try again. Thanks to these dogs that let us do that.
[0:25:32] BD: Well, Wendy, one question that I like to ask everyone that comes on the show is, do you have a particular animal that stands out to you that really brought healing, or magic into your life?
[0:25:44] WLS: It’s hard to pick. They each bring something so special, although I have to laugh, because there was a cat who chose me. I didn’t even want this other cat. My husband asked me to give it a chance, because it had been born feral as a kid. I was feeding them, they were born in our backyard. This guy, I have never had an animal just so devoted to me, that he’s still an inspiration. He’s gone now. He’s one of the cats up there. He was around. He helped raise the puppy that was difficult. He was like a Zen master, this cat. When the puppy got a little out of hand, he’d give a little bite, but not too much. Just enough to say, “Ah-ah-ah.” He was very loving, and so – I guess, just a diffusive, and that he stands out. It’s really not fair to say, because I haven’t – and I have another dog around the corner here, who is just magical. He brings joy. He’s zesty and humorous and happy. Life just thrills him. He’s such a role model.
[0:27:00] BD: What’s his name?
[0:27:00] WLS: Sorry, I rambled on. Bernie. He looks a little Bernie’s mountain dog, but he – DNA testing shows there’s not a shred of that in him. He’s a rescue, too. He’s just very joyful. I’m always grateful to him every day. I find him happy waiting to meet me.
[0:27:22] BD: Oh, I love that. Well, Wendy, thank you so much for coming on the show and having this conversation that I hope continues in each listener’s home beyond this episode.
[0:27:36] WLS: Thank you, Brittany. It’s wonderful what you’re doing here and helping people think about things in new ways. Thanks for the invitation.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:27:44] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher talking with Wendy Lyons Sunshine about evidence-based pet parenting. If you’d like to learn more about Wendy, check out her book Tender Paws: How Science-Based Parenting Can Transform Our Relationship with Dogs, learn more about her HEARTS parenting strategies, or follow her on social media, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link.
Of course, Brittany will be back here next month to talk more about how animals bring us joy, help us heal, and can be some of our best teachers. Until then, for everyone at Live Happy, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.
