#119 - Try it: Teach "Go To A Safe Space" From Behind a Barrier

In this episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Emily Strong shares two ways to teach your dog to go to a safe space from behind a barrier—a skill that supports emotional regulation and improves outcomes for both aggressive and behaviorally healthy animals.

You'll learn when and why Pet Harmony uses this technique (spoiler alert: a lot!), how it supports protected contact and training distance, and what you need to get started. This episode is all about creating safe, achievable wins, no matter where you’re starting from! 

TLDL (Too Long, Didn’t Listen): 

1️⃣ Protected Contact Isn’t Just for Aggression – Teaching behind a barrier can help you stay safe and build trust and success, even with behaviorally healthy pets.

2️⃣ There’s More Than One Way to Train a Skill – Emily shares two foundational strategies, but remember: this is just the beginning. You’ve got options!

3️⃣ Focus on Foundations First – Big progress starts with small steps. Build your “go to a spot” behavior thoughtfully to ensure long-term success.

Links & Resources from the Episode

🧾 For full episode transcripts: Arial | OpenDyslexic

🎧 Episode #117 – Training an Aggressive Dog Safely: The Ins and Outs of Protected Contact

📖 Canine Enrichment for the Real World

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: It's also equally useful to teach this skill or, or teach it through, be protected contact for a behaviorally healthy dog because I think it's really good for behaviorally healthy animals of all species. I keep saying dog, but all species to learn how to work with the human, at a distance rather than requiring the person to be right in front of them. So often when we're training animals, we're standing right in front of them. So standing in front of them becomes an important component of that. That like constellation of cues that, um, they're receiving from us. So I think it's actually really good for all animals for different reasons to practice, training through protected contact.

[00:00:40] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:58] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:59] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

The information in this episode is for educational and informational purposes only, and does not constitute professional behavioral advice. Every pet is unique and what works for one may not work for another. If your pet is struggling, we strongly recommend working with a qualified behavior professional who can provide individualized support for you and your pet. 

[00:01:40] Emily: So this triad episode is gonna be focused on one of the skills that we most commonly teach through protected contact when we're working with aggressive dogs. And in order to talk about that, I first wanna remind y'all how we define aggressive dogs. What we mean when we say that, when we call a dog aggressive, or a cat, or a horse, or a parrot, or a goat or a pig, whatever species we're working with, when we call them aggressive, what we mean by that is that they will choose fight over flight or freeze during periods of high stress.

And the reason that I am, redefining that for y'all, reminding you how we define that is because one of the most common skills that we teach those dogs through protected contact is how to choose flight instead of fight. And the way that we typically do that through protected contact is teaching them to move to their safe space.

Which means that we also ideally want them to learn self-regulation so that, uh, when they go to that space they're choosing to escape to a space where they can complete their stress response cycle and no longer be in a state of distress. So today in this episode, we're not going to talk about how to create a safe space.

That's not the point of this episode. We're going to assume that the dog or cat, or horse or pared or goat or pig, whatever species we're working with either already knows that that space is safe and they already can complete their stress response cycle in that space or. We'll teach them that skill after we teach them how to go to that place.

So today we're just going to focus on the part where we teach the dog to go to that space through protected contact through a barrier. So basically, this is just a stationing behavior, and for those of you who aren't familiar with that term, stationing just means going to a specific location and staying there for a certain amount of time.

And if you don't work with aggressive animals you can still practice the skill because it can be equally useful for animals who are too afraid to come close to somebody. And we often find that with those animals teaching them or working with them through protected contact. Through a barrier actually often makes them feel safe enough to work with the scary human, whereas they may not feel as safe working with you through free contact.

There were many, many, many situations in which an animal would take food from me and interact with me and work with me and do training sessions and participate in games and do like little enrichment activities when I was standing a foot away from them. Because there was a barrier between us, but if there was no barrier between us, they would have to be 20, 30, 40, 50 feet away from me in order to be able to do those same activities.

So I have seen over and over and over again that protected contact can be really useful even for animals who do choose flight or freeze, um, when they're in incredibly stressed. And so it can actually be easier to work with those kids through protected contact as well.

And. It's also equally useful to teach this skill or, or teach it through, be protected contact for a behaviorally healthy dog because I think it's really good for behaviorally healthy animals of all species. I keep saying dog, but all species to learn how to work with the human.

At a distance rather than requiring the person to be right in front of them. So often when we're training animals, we're standing right in front of them. So standing in front of them becomes an important component of that. That like constellation of cues that, um, they're receiving from us. So I think it's actually really good for all animals for different reasons to practice, training through protected contact.

And I think it's really good for trainers to exercise those skills. Doing teaching animals to go to a safe space through protected contact has a lot of practical applications beyond just working with aggression. But we're here in this episode, we're assuming that we're working with an aggressive dog, and we are working through protected contact to teach them how to go to a safe space in the presence of stressors.

So as is true for most training, we are not going to start in the presence of stressors. We're going to teach this behavior in a low stress scenario first. And the first thing we're going to do is, lure shape that dog to the station, by which I mean toss a treat towards the station.

You're essentially just tossing the treat to wherever the dog will go that is closest to the station. And, then once you've done that a couple times and the dog is following the treat, then you introduce your cue.

I don't care what your cue is, for the purposes of this episode, let's say retreat is the cue.

So you say retreat, and then you toss the treat towards the bed. Once they hear that cue and they're reliably heading towards the bed, you can start tossing the treat closer and closer to, I've been calling it bed, but really, let's say station. 'cause it could look like anything. It doesn't have to look like a bed, right? So once you toss the treat towards the station, and the dog just is reliably going to the station all the way. Then ta-da. You finish the first phase of this.

So the first phase looks like you say your cue in this case retreat, the dog just immediately starts moving towards the station, when they get there, you toss the treat at the station. Ta-da phase one complete.

Okay. Now that's assuming that tossing treats is the effective strategy for you. We have had some dogs where it made way more sense to use a treat and train instead of a treat toss for several reasons.

One is we've had dogs who've been incredibly sensitive to things flying overhead, and so that was not working for them because we were adding stress to their environment every time we were trying to train them. So, and you know, it was so much easier to just use a treat and train.

We've had other situations where the, the client has had mobility issues, so they physically couldn't throw a treat that far.

We've had location difficulties where the safe space had to be so far away from the barrier that, I'm not even sure that a professional pitcher in a baseball league could actually throw the treat that far. So there's been there's been several situations where a treat and train has made more sense. And definitely you can use that instead.

Okay, that's it. Show us you doing this process with the dog. We would love to see videos of you practicing this skill on Instagram at Pet Harmony training. I am. I really enjoy seeing y'all do the things in real life. All right. That's it. Happy training.

[00:08:23] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.