Caring for Dogs with Pilley Bianchi, Wendy Lyons Sunshine, and Carri Westgarth PhD at Bark! Fest

Watch or listen to the recording of Pilley Bianchi talking about her book For The Love of Dog (illustrated by Calum Heath), Wendy Lyons Sunshine on her book Tender Paws, and Prof. Carri Westgarth on The Happy Dog Owner.

Clockwise from top left: Zazie Todd, Pilley Bianchi, Kristi Benson and Apricat, Carri Westgarth, PhD, and Wendy Lyons Sunshine. Zazie, Pilley, Carri and Wendy are holding up copies of their books.

By Zazie Todd PhD

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Bark! Fest with Pilley Bianchi, Wendy Lyons Sunshine, and Carri Westgarth, PhD

Bark! Fest, the book festival for animal lovers, took place in
September 2024 with 11 author panels (and one tricks class from the
amazing Erica Beckwith of A Matter of Manners Dog Training). It was organized to celebrate the launch of my new book, Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog, which is out now and available wherever books are sold.

This is the recording of the panel Caring for Dogs with Pilley Bianchi, Wendy Lyons Sunshine, and Carri Westgarth, PhD.

You can watch the recording on Youtube, listen to this episode of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Spotify), or do both of those and read a transcript of the highlights below.

Get the books

All of the Bark! Fest books are available wherever books are sold, including from Bookshop (which supports independent bookstores), UK Bookshop, and my Amazon store. 

The conversation with Pilley Bianchi, Wendy Lyons Sunshine, and Carri Westgarth, PhD

Develop a better bond with your dog with these 3 canine authors. For the Love of Dog is Pilley Bianchi’s love letter to our canine friends, sharing wisdom from her father John W. Pilley’s work with Chaser the Border Collie and illustrated by NYTimes illustrator Calum Heath. In Tender Paws, Wendy Lyons Sunshine examines what dog guardians can learn from the science of human parenting. And Carri Westgarth draws on her research into human-animal interaction to help you improve your pet’s wellbeing and become The Happy Dog Owner. 

This conversation was recorded at Bark! Fest, the book festival for animal lovers, which celebrated the launch of Zazie Todd’s new book Bark! The Science of Helping Your Anxious, Fearful, or Reactive Dog.

In this conversation, we talked about:

•     How Pilley Bianchi’s book, For the Love of Dog, illustrated by Calum Heath, came about
•     The role of Chaser the Border Collie in the book and tips from her learning of words
•     The parenting research that Wendy Lyons Sunshine drew on to write her book for dog parents
•     How to understand parenting styles when caring for a dog
•     Why Dr. Carri Westgarth decided to focus on how to make dog owners happy
•     Tips from her book about finding a responsibly bred puppy, which behaviors are most important to teach, and tips on training an alert

The other books mentioned in this episode are:-

•     Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows 1000 Words by John W Pilley and Hilary Hinzmann (mentioned by Zazie and Pilley)
•     Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy by Zazie Todd (mentioned by Carri)
•     Kitty Language by Lili Chin (mentioned by Kristi)

The authors’ websites:

Pilley Bianchi 

Wendy Lyons Sunshine 

Carri Westgarth, PhD 

The co-hosts are Zazie Todd, PhD, and Kristi Benson.

Highlights of the conversation with Pilley Bianchi

Z: Your book, For the Love of Dog, is a delightful story of our relationship with dogs. How did the book come about?

P: Well, there is a long and winding road to this book and I won’t go through all of it, but this was the book that I had been working on with my father.

That was the second book his publisher was wanting. So we had been coming up with something that was more prescriptive and a how to for people. And then he ended up passing away unexpectedly. But he was 90, you know, so.

And then Chaser went about a year after him. So I was left with some great stories and material, but not really sure what to do with it now that the man and the dog were no longer with us.

So I ended up doing some spitballing sessions with my friends Cat Warren and Maria Goodavage about sort of brainstorming maybe the new book. We. We became friends through all of our.

Our connections to dogs and decided that this should really be an illustrated book. It had to be accessible.

That was one thing that my father emphasized before he passed away, is that science needed to work harder to deliver valuable information to the masses in ways that they can see themselves, we can see ourselves.

So I knew that he had more science and philosophy and information, so I thought it should be illustrated. So I reached out to my friend Calum Heath in the UK and said, would you be interested?

And he said, well, yes, Pill. I think we should give it a go.

Z: Awesome. Thank you. And Chaser is actually a very strong presence throughout the book. So please can you tell us about her?

P: Well, Chaser was first and foremost a family member. She was my father’s dog. And he got Chaser when he was 76 years old.

It had been 10 years since his heart dog had sort of passed away and he thought he’d never get another dog.

And he’d worked with dogs in his Wofford College classroom for over 25 years and his goal had been to teach them human language. But he, he’d gone about it the wrong way.

So when he got Chaser, he started attending, well, before he got Chaser attending Border collie trials, and it was really the Border Collie farmers that sort of pointed him in the right direction.

He needed to pay attention to this more salt of the earth approach and actually what brought these dogs joy and meaning. So when he got Chaser, that was his goal, was to teach her human language.

And he knew where he had gone wrong previously. And, boy, he got it right with Chaser. She loved playing and, and he used that love of play for her, teaching her the names of over a thousand objects, which is just incredible.

Yes. And so when their research was published and went globally viral, it shocked everybody. And so Chaser reached sort of international recognition and fame through learning the names of her toys.

Z: And one of the things that you say in your book is that every dog is an individual. So I’m wondering if you can use Chaser as an example to illustrate this.

P: You know, dogs are just like humans. You know, everybody kind of has their thing. And the same is true for dogs. Dogs have similar, certain similar traits, like they all like smelly things and to roll in dead things and they like to chase things.

So those are some commonalities, but each dog has their own personality. And Chaser, we discovered, was a very confident dog, but she was not assertive like our previous dog.

So we really have to pick up on these little cues that dogs are giving us. She loved to play with children. She did not like other dogs. You know, she would stoically tolerate the perfunctory sniffing of the bums, you know, but she.

You could tell from her body language she just was not. She was frozen and not comfortable with it. So she was a soft dog, not a hard dog.

She wasn’t going to be adventurous like our previous dog, Yasha, but she was very social. So everybody should pick up on what their dog is trying to tell them through their body language and their vocalizations.

And we give you those tips in the book in ways that you can identify who your dog is.

Z: I love that. And you saw Chaser being trained throughout her life. So if someone wants to get started on teaching their dog to understand words, do you have a tip based on Chaser’s story?

P: Sure. Using my dad’s methods. They’re super simple. And the way Chaser learned was through a process called errorless learning. And this is hosting a situation where she could not make a mistake.

So when he would present a new toy, there were no other toys in the room, and he would say, Chaser, this is blue.

And then he’d put blue on a piece of furniture, and he’d say, find blue. And she’d go over and she’d take blue, take blue, catch blue.

And so he would play games and keep only using this one toy for, like, three days. And so she would reach the point, and you can reach the point with your dog when they can find it in another room, then you can go on to another toy, but keep it very simple and reinforce that name constantly.

Z: I think she was very clever and had an amazingly clever family, too.

So the book is illustrated by Calum Heath, who’s an illustrator for the New York Times. And I know you’ve got a workshop coming up actually, on producing nonfiction books with an illustrator, but what was it like for you working with an illustrator on this book?

P: Oh, gosh, it was so amazing. And especially someone as creative as Calum. I would just give him the prose, whatever I was working on, and he would turn it into something that I would have never imagined.

He’s just so creative, and it really brings the message home. It’s also such an easy way for people to learn because when learning is fun, it happens rapidly. So that’s what we were going for in the book.

And Calum there. I don’t think there were maybe one illustration out of probably 175 that I said it’s not quite right. But. And sometimes we would work through them, you know, where I’d say, give me a little more of.

Of the dog instead of the human. But he’s so brilliant. It was a lot of fun working with Calum.

Z: Good. And it’s a really fun book and I think the illustrations and the text work so well together. That’s really, really nice.

Highlights of the conversation with Wendy Lyons Sunshine

K: Before this, you had written a bestselling book about The Connected Child, as well as a guide for those with adopted children, Raising the Challenging Child. So how did the switch to a dog book, Tender Paws, come about?

W: Well, interestingly, my husband and I adopted a little dog right about the time that I finished working on that first book. And I was struggling so much, and the puppy guides actually were not helping me.

And I hit a moment, honestly, I asked my husband if we could bring this dog back to the pound. I mean, I was so desperate, and I didn’t have the strategies, and he still believed in her.

And in desperation, really, I went and looked at a parenting book that I had just helped write. And it gave me inspiration and some ideas and just a new perspective and more compassion.

And I found that there was so many parallels and value in the wisdom they had for children. And so later I, working on another children, you know, book for parenting children, I found more different kinds of insights.

And so it just led naturally, because then I wanted to know, am I making this up? Am I imagining this? Or, you know, is there any science behind this?

K: Yeah, I actually, I read your book as an ebook, and I highlighted in one of the pages about it was a line something like, this wasn’t a puppy who was trying to, you know, be evil or bad.

You know, this was a puppy who was struggling with unmet needs. And I was like, oh, I love that so much, struggling with unmet needs. It was just like, as a dog professional, I was like, yes, that is such a perfect reframe.

So your book draws heavily on research on parenting styles. Can you tell us what parenting styles are?

W: Yes. It’s an interesting way that experts have come to. You know, researchers look at the different approaches that parents use. So there are two kind of measures that they look at.

They look at how responsive the parent is, and often that’s thought of as nurturing.

So how responsive a parent is to the child’s needs and own perspective. And then on the other measure is how demanding that parent is and how much they insist on rules or guidelines.

And so if you take a low level or high level of each of those two measures, you map them and you get four quadrants, essentially, you get four styles. And one of the styles is neglectful because you’re not either.

You don’t demand much and you don’t give much. And so that’s the least.

But then you have these other variations. And one, for example, is a very permissive parent. And they are all about indulging the child and meeting their needs in a particular way.

But they don’t have expectations, demands. They don’t set rules or guidelines the same way.

The other extreme is where they’re all about rules, they’re all about guidelines. They’re like, this is my way, and that’s it. And that’s considered authoritarian style. The fourth style, which can be confusing because the words sound very similar, is authoritative.

And that’s where you give a lot of nurturing and you’re very responsive to what the needs and the experience of the little one are. But you’re also helping shape the expectations.

You’re setting guidelines, you’re establishing limits, but you’re doing it in a compassionate way. So it’s this blend of both of those dimensions, and that’s called authoritative. In my book I like to call it therapeutic. Just to help distinguish it from the confusing, you know, authoritarian authoritative.

K: And that actually, like, leads very nicely into the next question, which is about authoritative parenting styles. And when. When I first read these questions, I was like, Zazie, I really dislike that word. Do we have to?! You know, both Zazie and I have this minor obsession with words and wording. And like, I think her entire PhD was on metaphor. So we often talk about language.

Cause it’s just something that we’re fascinated in. I was like, here’s this word. And the dog world is so characterized by conflict over, you know, like, words and techniques. And I was like, oh, do we have to ask this question?

And so we ended up coming to sort of the decision that I would bring it up as a. There’s a problem. There’s sort of a problematic. You know, this word is problematic for me to say it, but I still wanted to ask you about it. So for dog guardians, why is this authoritative? Or I love your, you know, revision, calling it therapeutic? Why? What does that mean when it comes to dogs?

W: So it’s something that we. That really a lot of expert dog handlers do already. I mean, what it is, is it’s finding win wins, essentially, right? It’s. It’s recognizing the underlying need and finding a way to meet that need kindly and effectively, but also helping guide the animal toward behavior that is more welcome and suitable for a situation. 

So it can be something as simple as a redirect. You have the dog, a puppy, chewing on your furniture and instead you offer them this chew toy. The puppy’s happy, you’re happy. And it’s also learning like, that’s not the place to chew.

This is a good place to chew. And so you’re meeting both those criteria of you’re demanding a certain thing, but it’s not in a mean way, it’s in a supportive way. And you’re also nurturing them as best you can.

And if you look closely at a lot of different techniques, there’s thought behind them that really blends those things. And as we know, balance is another word that can get really complicated in the dog world.

So I like to say blend these two factors to achieve a therapeutic approach. It’s kind of like giving the animal the benefit of the doubt. Right?

That’s really like understanding that they’re not out to get you. They’re trying to meet their needs and they’re trying to communicate something.

And we sometimes gloss over that because we’re so focused on our own needs. So we just want to bring those two more to equal level.

K: I love how it brings the human. And I think we’re going to get more, even more into this with Carri’s book. But it sort of is an acknowledgement that us as the human component matter too.

You know, like, I don’t want my furniture necessarily being chewed. I mean, that ship has sailed in my house. But you know, there’s. It’s okay as a human to be like, I really wish my dog wouldn’t do this, but how?

And I love how instead of saying, how do I get my dog to not do that? It’s like, how do I meet my dog’s needs in a way, you know, that allows them to still be a dog and have all of these behaviors, but just sort of giving them the option of doing it in a way that doesn’t impinge upon us as beings, you know, in the relationship.

Right. As a parent, that’s the job of a parent, right. To just kind of help steer everybody in the household to general well being.

And so there are certain expectations. If you’re in that family, you’re not walking on the dining room table. You’ll eat there. Right? So you have a section in your book where you consider training methods from a parenting styles perspective. So can you say something about that?

W: Yeah. I found this measure is very interesting. When we look at a training technique, we can ask ourselves, is this, is this serving the dog’s needs more or my needs more?

And can we find again, a win, win situation where it more effectively serves Us both. So you can analyze different kinds of equipment. For example, thinking about if this is a really punitive device, then that’s probably more about my needs than addressing, you know, the experience of the animal. It’s not as responsive to their needs.

So it would automatically make me step back and say, well, then what can I find that does meet my needs, but also respects and honors the needs of the animal?

So that would turn out to be a therapeutic choice, one that meets both those criteria.

K: Right. I love that frame. So how have your own experiences with pets influenced the writing of this book?

W: Yeah, well, that first puppy, Hazel, she. She was the catalyst for all of this. And then there’s Bernie sitting back there. He’s. He is like, chapter two in that whole experience. And, you know, it’s a constant.

I guess it’s humbling, right? Parent. Parent. I haven’t been a human parent, but even pet parenting, there are no recipes. And that’s part of what I try to convey, too, is that we try to just accommodate all these different needs.

I like to put it in the package of what I call hearts parenting, or HEARTS. Approaches that heal the body, enrich and optimize the brain. Appropriate environments with felt safety, respectful and secure relationships, teach sensitively and positively, and then support the individual.

If you put all that together, which is what expert parents do, then that helps me think about these pets and, you know, am I giving them what they need?

Well, Hazel’s passed, but Ernie gets the best of what I can give here now. But it’s a wonderful learning experience. And of course, we all love our dogs so much and our cats.

K: Yeah, that was wonderful. Thank you so much.

Highlights of the conversation with Carri Westgarth, PhD

Z: Now, your book, The Happy Dog Owner is a little bit different because your focus is on the dog guardian and how they can be happy. Why did you decide to take this approach?

C: Mainly because there’s many fabulous books out there, including yours [Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy], that have really focused on the dog side of, of this.

But it’s, there’s two sides to this coin. It’s a, it’s a dog. Most dogs, at least in our societies, have owners and it’s a relationship.

And what I loved about Wendy’s book is that first chapter just totally sets up how hard it is as a dog owner, especially when you, you get a puppy. And we just, we just don’t talk about this enough.

So, yeah, I wanted to talk about, yes, the dog welfare side of things, but also the human side of things. What we need to, to know and expect when we’re getting a dog.

Those of us that work with people and their dogs know that it, it doesn’t always work out like the fairy tales and unicorn stories about these wonderful dogs that people have and how cute it is on Facebook and Instagram when they’ve got this puppy.

So what do we want? What do we wish all dog owners knew to really help set them up? What sort of work do they need to put in before they get the dog? When they’ve got the dog?

If they want to really enjoy that dog owning experience and have a happy dog, but also be a happy dog owner.

Z: Yeah. And I think it’s so true that so many people actually get a dog and then think, oh, no, what have I done? Because they struggle in those early days and weeks.

And although the title is the Happy Dog Owner, I think it’s about happy dogs and happy dog guardians too, in your book. But there’s this widely held view that dogs improve our mental health. What’s your take on that and how can they do that?

C: Yes, it’s a widely held belief. I certainly personally believe my dogs help improve my mental health. But when we go into the science around this in the book, it’s actually not as straightforward as the media makes out.

So there’s no actual conclusive evidence that having a dog positively impacts our depression levels, our anxiety levels, for example, which is quite interesting. Part of that is down to the limitations of the study designs, the funding we’ve got in the area in order to try and really tease out what’s going on in terms of causal relationships.

I think partly those of us who have tendencies towards anxiety and depression, we seek out the company of animals. So that complicates the evidence. Where we do have evidence is around social interactions.

So dogs create a sense of community, they can encourage us to interact with others. There’s a real icebreaker effect. If you go out and walk your dogs, you know, you probably know of other dogs out there that you meet on your daily walks and you’ll. You’ll say hi to the owners, you probably know the names of the dogs, but not the owners. And we feel less lonely because of that companionship, not just from them, but. But with the other people that they get us to interact with through dog training clubs and things, for example.

They also do really fun stuff and make us laugh, which I think during the pandemic, our research with people who are owning dogs during the pandemic, it really brought them out, you know, they were just something to focus on and a really fun distraction other than, you know, the terrifying news.

They give us a sense of purpose and responsibility as well. So, you know, people who are struggling in different periods of their lives, you know, they feel they do need to carry on because of the dog.

You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get out, and that’s one of the main things. They do make us be more physically active. And we know getting out, being physically active, being around nature, those natural, nice environments, woodlands, fields, all those places that we really enjoy taking our dogs, that’s really good for our wellbeing and that sense of mindfulness and being in the moment.

So that’s the mechanisms behind the impacts on our mental wellbeing. But they aren’t going to solve your stress and worries and just take them away completely. And that’s what we need to remember.

Z: And the book draws a lot on your own research as well as your own experience as a dog trainer too. And you’ve got a flowchart for how to find a responsibly bred, bred pedigree puppy in the UK.

And I know this is something you’ve done research on. We probably don’t have time for all the details of the flowchart, but I wondered if you could please share us some quick tips on what people should look for if they’re getting a puppy.

C: Yeah. So I have a breeder and dog behaviourist friend, Claire Stewart, to really thank for putting together the flowchart. Whether you can see there’s a nice little Flowchart. She made people think that you, just by being a good dog owner, then you can have a great dog.

But we actually know the genetics, the line breeding, the very early socialization that the, that the breeder is doing is, is so incredibly important to what then happens later on in that dog’s life when it’s with you.

So it’s really important to, to find a good breeder, but it’s, it’s a minefield. So it’s kind of a flowchart with some of the, you know, guiding you through questions to ask what to look for and some of the red flags that you may make.

You want to consider inquiring more or even walking away from that litter, such as what sort of health testing has been done. Obviously that varies between breeds as to what needs to be done.

But how to then interpret those health tests for different breeds? What are things like responsible breeding practices, such as the puppies must all be in the UK at least. They need to be microchipped before they leave the breeder. They need to be at least eight weeks old.

The dam should be between two and eight years old. You shouldn’t be breeding from a really young dog or a really old dog. How many litters have they had?

And just finding out how interested is the breeder in you and what sort of life you’re going to give that, that dog. Because if they aren’t being incredibly careful about who they want their dogs to go to, then that’s a red flag that they really, they’re not really in it for the purpose of breeding really nice dogs for people.

They’re in it potentially just, you know, for the money.

Z: Yep, yep. So that’s really important to know. And in the book you suggest three important things that every dog should learn. So how did you decide which three behaviors you were going to pick as the most important ones?

C: So that was basically having taught lots of dog training classes and worked with owners over the years, what is it that I can tell that they’re really wanting when they come to those classes or when they’re asking for help.

So mainly they want to be able to go for a walk without being dragged around. So they want a nice, pleasant experience. That’s probably why they got a dog this idea of these lovely relaxing walks, which can be great. So loose lead walking, heel work, things like that.

They also want to be able to let their dog off the lead. My research shows that watching your dog running around, off the lead, off the leash, is one of the real vicarious Pleasure, joyful moments of dog ownership.

They won’t be able to do that without worrying they’re not going to be able to get the dog back or it’s going to chase squirrels and things. So recall training, what’s the basics of that?

And then the third one is something that I find the most useful in my daily lives with dogs. I rarely ask them to sit down, stay, anything like that. But the thing that’s really useful is them having some control over what they want to do and what you want them to do, controlling their impulses and to be able to just be patient just for a second whilst we do stuff before we’re ready to move.

So the wait cue, can you be able to ask your dog to just. You just wait there for a second. But okay, now you can jump out of the car or okay, now you can go and run around that field.

Z: Yep, yep. And those aren’t the only training plans that you’ve got in the book because you’ve also got plans for behaviors like opening doors and reminding the guardian to take their medication and training and alert behavior.

So it’s a really practical book. And can you give us a few pointers on training and alert?

C: Yeah. So I wanted to have some training ideas in here for people that wanted to take it that bit further in having their dog assist them with their health needs.

And a useful foundation for lots of different assistance service dog type tasks is an alert. So you can use it for things like medical detection or maybe if you’re deaf, you could use that to help you know about when someone’s at the door, ring the doorbell, for example.

One of the things I notice that people struggle with, they think their dog is telling them that something’s happening, but it’s not very clear that the dog is indicating. So you need to pick a behavior that your dog, it’s really clear they’re not just staring at you a bit and you’re thinking, are they alerting? Are they not?

A brief nudge of the nose perhaps you’re not going to notice.

When I worked as a distance dog trainer, two of the ones we generally use for a little dog was to jump up and really scrabble at you with their front paws.

So they like doing that with a big dog. To sit and clearly put one paw on you is another way of doing that. So basically you teach that behaviour you want through luring through rewards, getting really confident at doing that particular behavior.

And then you need to introduce some sort of cue, perhaps a sound or a word that means do that behavior, and then finally you introduce that task, whatever that situation is.

So, example, the doorbell. So you get someone to ring the doorbell. If you wanted your dog to tell you about the doorbell, you get them to see your friend to ring the doorbell and your dog would run to the door going, oh, my God, there’s amazing.

There’s someone at the door. But then sort of be like, come on. And then you could bring in your little sound or cue or whatever that means alert me. And then they go, oh, no, I’ll come and alert you.

And then they can take to the door. So kind of back chaining that in. And having a helper can be really useful through all of this.

Z: Yeah. And I love that, the way that this brings together your practical experience and the science as well.