Are my cat and dog ready to spend more time together?

When your pets are “absolutely apart” and only seeing each other during short, micromanaged setups, how do you know if they are ready to level up?

In this episode of It’s Training Cats and Dogs, Naomi laid out the main things to think about when making the decision to attempt some more extended interactions.

To listen to the full episode, click here to open it in your podcast player or press play below:

If you’ve been doing setups with your pets and they are going relatively well, you might be wondering:

• Am I being paranoid and keeping them apart for no reason?

• Can I trust the behavior I’m seeing during setups? Or am I getting impatient and looking for signs they’ll be able to hang?

• Is continuing to keep them separated better than seeing what happens if we put them together?

The best answer to these questions is: let’s try it (carefully)!

Write out your plan

You shouldn’t just put everyone in the living room to see what happens! It’s best to think through as many possible scenarios as you can before you attempt to bring your pets together.

Here’s what to consider and include in your plan:

• What does “success” look like?

• What behaviors am I going to reinforce? How?

• How can I set up the environment to create protected contact?

• How will I intervene if:

  • management fails?

  • one or both pets goes over-threshold?

Test whether your pets are ready

Do they have the necessary skills to stay safe?

Can they respond to cues when they are stressed or distracted?

Pro tip: do some practice training sessions ahead of time to refresh your pets’ responsiveness and to give yourself a confidence boost!

Check in with yourself: am I ready?

Do I feel comfortable taking this next step?

What kind of support do I need to attempt this new phase of integration?

• a friend or family member

• support from your trainer and fellow members of The Cat and Dog Coexistence Club

• Click HERE for full episode transcript

  Hello you cat and dog people! This is It's Training Cats and Dogs - the show for people with both cats and dogs who want peace in their home and peace between their animals. I'm Naomi Rotenberg, your source of practical strategies for keeping everyone in your multi-species household safe and sane.

  During our monthly live goal setting call one of the wonderful members of the Cat and Dog Coexistence Club laid it all out there. She was having lots of feels because her pets had been “absolutely apart” for a long time and setups had been going mostly well, but it just wasn't clear whether any of them were ready to take the next step. Luckily, she got some guidance and support from me and her fellow members. We touched on so many important things in this conversation that I knew I had to bring it to the podcast.

  So without further ado, let's get into my reenactment slash paraphrasing of this section of this month's coaching.

  The question: am I being too paranoid about my pets and creating problems by forcing them to be separate all the time? I want to be able to have more passive moments with them, and I sometimes feel like they're probably more ready for that than I am.

  And maybe I'm the barrier preventing them from coexisting during setups. Sometimes the cat jumps down from her perch like she's totally confident. Should I trust her behavior? And I have all these shelves for the cat to get to where the dog can't possibly reach her and I sometimes wonder why don't I just kind of let them be. Maybe on the other hand, I'm getting impatient and I'm ready for them to vibe, but they aren't ready and things could go really wrong.

  So how do I assess whether they're ready to move forward from absolutely apart to beginning buddies? During our setups there's some mixed signals. We'll have really, really great setups and then the cat will decide to go do something that's unexpected and the dog will lunge or become stiff and fixated, which I know is really not good. But I feel like no progress has been made cause they're still spending lots of time alone and we can’t hang out all together, even though I know we've gotten so much done from the beginning.

  So when I heard this, I was immediately so happy that we are able to tackle so many of the issues that are going on. So your gut is telling you that your pets can probably handle more than what you're doing now. So let's listen to your gut. What we can do is make a plan to take that next step so you feel ready and prepared to get some information about whether your animals are actually ready to spend more time together.

  And we'll also make sure to lay out how to handle it if things don't go to plan. Side note - what I know about this club member's particular dog is that habituation actually plays a huge role in how she feels about something. And historically the longer she has to get used to something in the environment, the more comfortable she is with it because sudden environmental contrast freaks her out. Which makes sense - when the cat jumps off of her perch during setups, she reacts. Okay. Back to the answer to the question. Right now, because they're absolutely apart, the only time the dog sees the cat during the day is during short, highly managed setups. So if we have a new goal of having the animals spend more time together, we're likely going to make a huge difference in the lunging and fixation at the site of the cat, because it's not such a big event.

  The important thing is to think about safety. So when we transition to spending a little more time together, we want them to be able to be in the same space, but with protected contact so they can't actually make contact with each other. This is the first move from absolutely apart to beginning buddies.

  We're still going to have highly managed interactions with barriers in between the animals and we'll be heavily reinforcing appropriate behaviors that they offer. And the goal is to have the animals observe each other and exist around each other for relatively extended periods of time. Which sounds great.

  Well, the question is, how do we know if we're ready to do that leveling up? There's a few things to consider. Number one, do we have an idea of what success will look like? What behaviors are we going to be reinforcing and how? In this case, we thought that we'd like to hang out on the couch with the dog and the cat will have free room around the living room.

  How might we make this happen? Well, what are we gonna do to reinforce these behaviors? Let's think. So, we'll hide some treats around the perimeter of the room, which will reinforce the cat for keeping her distance from the couch area. And we'll set up some Lickimats around there as well with some wet food, which will encourage the cat to groom and rest after she's finished and hopefully be relatively chill.

  And while this is all happening, we're gonna give the dog a bone or some other kind of long lasting chew while on the couch. Which should hopefully promote and reinforce any calm, and giving the dog something to focus on besides the cat.

  So that's number one: what does success look and how are we gonna reinforce it.

  Now, the next question. Number two, how are you going to set up the environment to create that protected contact and how are we going to make it so that we have the best chances of success?

  Well, this is gonna be different for everybody. In this case, we should probably have many, many layers of different management going on. So we could have a drag leash on the dog attached to a back clip harness. Or have a leash tethered to the couch leg if the couch is heavy enough, so that if something happens, then my client is not having to be holding on to the leash, she has more hands to deal with whatever.

  In addition to the dog being on leash, I'd want to set up an exercise pen around the couch with you and the dog on the couch together. And if you want to be extra safe, you can even create what I call a DMZ area around the ex-pen where no animals will be.

  So for example, this client has an office with a glass door that is visible from the couch. So if we put the cat in the office behind the glass door and the dog is inside the ex-pen in the living room, then there is actually about 3-4 feet plus another physical barrier that would prevent them from getting too close to each other. I'd probably start there.

  We could also muzzle the dog. We'd wanna make sure that it is well conditioned and that being muzzled does not actually affect the dog's behavior. We'll talk about that in a second.

  I'd also want to choose an already calm activity that has a strong history of producing desired behaviors. So for example, this client sits on the couch with her dog every night to watch TV already, which many of us do as well, and the dog readily enters into super chill mode and even falls asleep during that time. So I would suggest using that situation as the first foray into longer exposure. So in order to make sure that she's conditioned well to the muzzle, I would suggest practicing before we bring the cat in to see if she can hang out comfortably on the couch while she's wearing the muzzle when the cat is not around, just to make sure that it'll be useful during the setup.

  Another thing we could do to set ourselves up for success is to play with the cat beforehand. So the goal would be to drain some of her excess energy and make sure that her needs are met and to spend some quality time with her so that she's less likely to seek attention from the human on the couch and would generally just have less of a need to be moving around the space a lot.

  And the last thing I would do, which a lot of people don't think about, but I would make sure that there is a clear visual boundary around the couch that will help you identify whether the cat is too close. So an option might be like an area rug that's already under the couch, or you could even put some painters tape down on the floor to create a perimeter, a few feet from the couch, so that you'll be able to tell whether the cats paws have crossed that line, and that indicates that they are too close. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a second. So that's number two, making a plan to set up the environment so that protected contact is engaged as well as setting yourself up for success as much as possible.

  So the next thing to ask ourselves: how do we know if we're ready to level up? We need to make sure that each of your animals has the necessary skills to stay safe in this type of situation.

  So my client already talked about that the cat has demonstrated that she can easily get up to the many wall shelves that she has and many other safe spaces around the apartment. She has no problem jumping up to those and getting away from the dog and getting to safety. I also know that this dog has an excellent whiplash turn, good name recognition, and has also shown that she can turn away from fixating on the cat to follow a scatter of kibble to “find it” before. So this is something that we know is in her behavioral repertoire.

  So if you're trying to make a plan like this, I would recommend writing down the skills that each of your animals has that you've intentionally taught them that you'll be wanting to call upon in case of an emergency. Once you have those written down, you can see if there's any holes in their skill set that you can work on in order to get yourselves ready to be able to have these longer exposures to each other.

  The next thing to think about is all right, so we have the necessary skills to stay safe…What is the plan? How might we intervene if management fails or if the animals go over threshold? Okay. So we wanna take the skills that we've established that we have and finagle them into an easy-to-follow plan so that if there is a stressful situation, you aren't trying to think about what to do.

  So the first thing that I would recommend is do some practice sessions with each of the animal outside of the setup to do a refresher of any of the cues that you're gonna include in your emergency plan. So hopefully these sessions will give you some confidence knowing that you've made progress because you have worked super hard to train these really important emergency behaviors and your animals are responding.

  All right. So let's come up with a plan. Let's say something goes wrong and the cat decides to approach the ex-pen and gets too close. Well we'll know that they're too close because their paws will be on the rug or have crossed over the tape line. So in that moment, it's a yes or no decision for you so you won't have to wonder, are they too close? Should I be intervening? It's either yes, they're too close or no, they're not too close.

  So if they are too close, the first thing you would do would be toss treats away from the couch for the cats to go find. And if the cat stays away and continues to roam around the rest of the room, then you can relax. Crisis averted.

  If the cat approaches the ex-pen again, you know that the setup is too difficult. And that's the rule of two that I've talked about before on the podcast where two, you know, the first quote unquote mistake, we are gonna keep an eye on it. And if there's another mistake, pretty close after that, then we need to take a break and reassess and switch some things up.

  So if they approach twice. Then you're gonna toss treats again, but instead of going back to the same thing you were doing, you're gonna calmly lead the cat away, back into their safe room, behind visual barrier to reassess what you might be able to change in order to help the cat settle down and not be so magnetized to the couch area.

  Okay. Another example of what could go wrong with this setup. So what if the dog gets over threshold and lunges towards the cat? This totally might happen because this is honestly a fact finding mission for us. We don't know whether they will be able to handle this kind of extended sharing of space.

  So if possible, you're gonna take a breath because you need to remember that you have at least three levels of barriers, layers of barriers in place to prevent them from actually getting to each other. And if your dog is tethered to the couch and that is holding well, then you can actually get out of the ex-pen and remove the cat if necessary.

  You can probably also do a treat scatter on the ground as kind some kind of like, you know, damage control to hopefully bring the dog’s arousal level down a little bit so that you can then either lead the dog away or go move the cat.

  All right. So we've come up with a plan that is straightforward and you won't have to be figuring out what to do in the moment.

  So are we ready to take this next step? Well, there's one more thing to consider, and that is your comfort level as the human. Do you feel comfortable taking this next step? Going from the safety of absolutely apart to the first stages of beginning buddies? Because your stress level and confidence are so huge and really will affect the success of this new endeavor.

  So if it'll make you more confident, try to have another person around, if possible. Another person who you've filled in with the plan and you've discussed what your goals are and what behaviors you're looking for. And you feel like they can support you in reinforcing appropriate behaviors and interfering if something goes wrong.

  And if you live alone, enlist a friend to help (if your animals aren't freaked out by new people in the house). Again, making sure to fill them in on all the plans ahead of time. And if you're looking for a support system to help you through these tough situations, that is what the club is for the Cat and Dog Coexistence Club.

  During these first forays into beginning buddies, I will often do a zoom session with my client so that I can live-coach them through that kind of initial half an hour. And sometimes that is really helpful for people to realize that they do have the skills and things usually go a little bit better than the worst case scenario that they feared.

  It's nice to have that support from me and from other Club members as well. And if I'm not live coaching you during this first longer setup, when you actually do that first longer interaction, make sure to take video from multiple vantage points, if possible, because if the interaction goes well, excellent! You have the opportunity to look for more behaviors that you can reinforce next time.

  And if unfortunately it goes badly, then you can easily identify triggers to work on in another setup to hopefully make your experience more successful the next time.

  All right. Whew. This was a heavy one friends. It's so common to have intense feelings when you're on the cusp of beginning buddies, the emotions and stress around taking that leap of faith away from the bosom of safety of absolutely apart. It's really not easy. And remember you are not alone, even though it feels that way for a lot of you, but there are a lot of other cat-and-dog people going through the same things.

  Which is exactly why I created the Cat and Dog Coexistence Club and that I've structured my private coaching programs the way I have. You can't do a private coaching program with me without being a member of the Club. When you're in the day to day of this type of long term integration project, it's difficult to see your own progress, even when you're actively checking off the tasks that I've assigned for you inside the private coaching program.

  So, having the other members of the Club as support on top of my guidance is so valuable because they give you a more objective outsider’s perspective and they can remind you of how far you've come to that point and cheer you on. And we really do start to care about each other's animals and how well you're going, and it's really supportive environment.

  If you found yourself thinking, yes, I've been feeling like this too! Or you felt like, wow, the steps that I laid out in this episode really made sense and you like some guidance in how to apply these things to your own animals, then you can also join the Cat and Dog Coexistence Club. Head over to praiseworthypets.com/contact to get in touch with me and we can talk about what program might be best for you. And that's all for this episode you wonderful cat and dog people! I will see you next week for more It's Training Cats and Dogs.