Tapping into your inner dog, training podcast Muttz with Mannerz

Corey
Hello dog lovers, welcome to the Mutts with Manners Canine Training Academy podcast, where we’ll share valuable dog training tips and insights to help you raise a happy and confident pup, whether they’re young or old. Our goal is to ensure that your dog becomes a beloved member of your family and a positive presence in your community for life. At Mutts we create programs that enrich both ends of the leash because it’s not just about training your dog, it’s about having fun, learning together, and building a strong lasting bond.

I’m your host, Corey McCusker, Canine Coach, and today I’m thrilled to have with me, Karen Baxter, Dog Trainer and Behavior Consultant. As many of you are familiar with our guest speaker as she has joined me before on previous podcasts and shared her expertise, I’m really happy to have her back. And today Karen is joining me to highlight some of the key learnings we had on our trip to California as we attended the 2024 Three-Day Association of Professional Dog Training Conference.

Welcome, Karen.

Karen
Hi Corey thanks for having me back.

Corey
Karen, we spent a few days in sunny California attending the ADPD conference and I think we both can agree it was mind-boggling because there was a wealth of information and learnings from some of the speakers and key leaders in the dog world, I’ll say Dr. Kathy Murphy, Dr. Tim Lewis, Sue Sternberg, Kim Ramirez were just a few to mention and I think we both agree we thought it would be beneficial to highlight some of the things we heard and learned and also because we didn’t want to forget because there was so much knowledge and we wanted to apply it. And I think what we’re going to be sharing with you today, those listening, we feel pet parents would benefit from knowing. Our insight is going to be focused on a lot of understanding your inner dog, your dog’s inner being.

Karen and I are both avid learners, enhancing our knowledge so we can evolve and continue to support and provide the best to our clients. Plus, we want to keep well informed as to what is being learned about our favourite species, dogs. Karen was bugging me for months, you know you were, I was getting my weekly texts or when she saw me she was like, Corey, are you coming to the conference?

Are you coming to the conference? Hey, the seats are on sale and I’m like, okay, I don’t know if I can leave the facility but I finally broke down and said yes and I can now say thank you so much Karen as it was really well worth it. Spending the time with you, meeting other trainers, getting to meet, we actually met a lot of the speakers and spent time and the knowledge that we walked away with is just invaluable.

So listeners, so you are aware the conference was put on by APTDT which stands for the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and they help professional dog trainers improve their experience, and qualifications while providing access and benefits to over 4,000 strong global community with the same passion for dogs and they announced at this conference that they have just gone international. So now they are connecting not only with North America, they are connecting with trainers around the world. Karen, you and I’ve talked about how are we going to share this wealth of knowledge and that was covered over three days with 23 speakers.

So we discussed where to start, and what we wanted to focus on and instead of going through each of the speakers and their topics because we would be here probably for a week, I think we’ve decided to summarize some key messages from the talks and the main categories we felt were important to share was understanding the inner dog, the brain, the psychology, the DNA. Also, we want to touch on the adolescent stage and understand what’s going on with the dogs at that stage and I think one of the things that was both really a strong message to us is developing the resilience in our dogs. So we’re going to be talking about resilience.

Karen
Yeah, definitely. I think those topics would be the most useful for the pet parents that are listening.

Corey
Yeah, so Karen, where do you want to start? I’ll get you to start where.

Karen
Why don’t we start with what the conference opened with, which was the opening keynote speaker who was Dr. Kathy Murphy. So I think that’s the best place for us to start. So Dr. Kathy Murphy is a veterinary surgeon and a neuroscientist. She’s living in Scotland now, I think, but she studied in the UK and she was with behavior vets in the US for a while as well. So her presentation really delved into the neurobiology of cognitive and emotional control, highlighting its crucial role in both normal and pathological behavior processes in dogs. So by exploring those underlying neurobiological mechanisms, she shed some light on how appropriate and proportional control of cognition and emotional responses impact canine behavior.

She really highlighted the implications that can impact practical dog training strategies while she was talking about this.

Corey
Yeah, and Karen, that’s a mouthful. So again, we learned so much about the science. I mean, I think both of us know about the science, but when Kathy was digging into it, it was quite impressive.

So let’s simplify that to pet parents listening and what we learned. So when we say cognitive and emotional responses, what are we talking about in particular?

Karen
So cognitive, cognitive means acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and senses. So definitely what that implies is that cognition is related to the ability of the learner to learn something new, retain it in their memory, pay attention.

So an example would just simply be teaching a dog a skill like a sit and using something like a piece of food that the dog can smell. So the dog uses their sense of smell to determine what we have, we get them to do something. And they learn that if they do the thing, in this case, a sit, put their bottom on the ground, that we’re going to give them the thing they smell, which is the piece of food.

So that’s an example of a cognitive process. All right, emotional, right is the way I’m going to stop right there for a second, Corey, I meant to ask you about this sentence, because I don’t get it.

Corey
You can change it. Experience behavior insight is specific. So emotion is when stuff is happening, like their experience, how their emotions and everything and their behavior and how their body’s responding to it.

Karen
Yeah, yeah, like from a biological perspective. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So, so emotional responses, right, are the way that a learner experiences physiologically, an event. So it’s the reaction of the body to something in or something that they’ve learned, they have a physiological response to it, that can affect their behavior. So for instance, if something scares the dog, they can jump back because they internally, have had a rush of adrenaline.

And the you know, they’ve gone their brain has gone into fight or flight mode. So they jump back because they got scared by something, right? But that’s an emotional response versus a cognitive response.

They didn’t stop, think about it first, and decide, you know, okay, maybe this is what I want to do. They just had an emotional response to something that happened.

Corey
Yeah, exactly.

Karen
Right? Yeah, executive function is another element that we want to discuss when we’re talking about neurobiology and executive function is the cognitive processes and skills that we use to like, plan, monitor, and execute our goals, right. So it’s crucial for working memory, cognitive flexibility, the ability to adapt to situations, right, and to move from one task to another, and very critical in impulse control.

So key to remember for our dogs is that it’s very critical in impulse control.

Corey
Yes. Okay. And, you know, I found it all so interesting.

And you know, there are correlations to humans and dogs too. I’m just saying like, meaning that, you know, there’s a lot of this, a lot of these people started out working with the humans, and now they’re focusing on the dogs. And Dr. Murphy also discussed talked about the dog’s brain, and how the brain operates differently, sensory, auditory, motor skills, et cetera. Different breeds can be different, which we know, and brain functions can vary having strengths and weaknesses based on the breeds and the age. Giving an example, a Border Collie is going to have different operating functions based on the design of a Basset Hound. Think about the Border Collies bred to herd sheep, be quick, active thinking on their feet, while a Basset Hound will use their nose to do the job and just hone on in that scent with their nose to the ground.

Karen, can you expand on this?

Karen
Yeah, Dr. Kathy Murphy took it even further. She explained how the brain development, there are different regulations going on during the development of the brain. So specifically in dogs, if you talk about the growth and development of different parts of their brain, it’ll have an effect and influence on their behavior at different times, depending on where they are in their development.

So for example, we use a human example to demonstrate this. Older children activate a more cognitive area of their brain, just in their everyday existence, while younger children activate a more emotional area. So those are firing off.

And the same holds true in dogs. Dogs are the same as humans, because we’re all mammals at the end of the day, right? So puppyhood is like a very small step on a really large mountain.

And they’re trying things out, they’re exploring, they’re exploring things with their mouths. They’re really testing everything as everything’s branding for them. And I think the main point we want pet parents to think about is as your dog develops, so does their brain and be aware that they will be going through different things at different stages.

I think that’s the key.

Corey
Yeah, I think too. I think this is where we’re going to just touch on adolescence. So can you define to the listeners, the age of what we know is adolescent for a dog?

Karen
So definitely can vary. It depends on the breed, depends on the dog. But on average, let’s just do an average, right?

Adolescents can start anywhere as early as five or six months and can last as long as four years, depending on the size and the breed of the dog. So I would say for most breeds, they’re probably averaging around two to three years before they’re out of adolescence. But for some of those larger breeds, it can be as long as four.

For sure. Right. Yeah, definitely.

Right. And there are a lot of changes occurring in that brain during adolescence. And that was really what Dr. Kathy Murphy wanted us to truly understand and take away from her talk. Right. So they are an adolescent dog has an increased sensitivity to emotional stimuli. They have an increased sensitivity to punishment.

And that’s really important to keep in mind when you’re working with them. They have a decreased sensitivity to reward. So that reward that you were using when they were four months old, that the puppy thought was amazing, he suddenly they’ve stopped.

Nah, I’m not really that interested in that report anymore. Right? They, their recovery time that it takes for them to recover from stress takes twice as long as it did is when they were a puppy, right?

And their cognitive and emotional control is really, really unpredictable. It really does depend on what they’re going through at the moment.

Corey
Mm hmm. And, you know, you mentioned the punishment. And I mean, that’s where punishment can even be the voice tone, you know, so the dogs can become extremely sensitive at that time.

And I think a point that I think we both, you know, have referenced is the key point in regards to adolescence. It’s really a time for patience, not push. And I think if you’ve got a really good puppy that’s been doing everything, then all of a sudden they hit the adolescent stage, and it seems like everything’s gone out the door.

I mean, you and I probably get most of our calls during their adolescent stage, because the owners are so frustrated, not knowing what’s going on. And I think if we recognize what’s happening with our adolescent dog internally during this stage, and, you know, we provide support, patience, and even like reaching out to, you know, a trainer, or depending on what the behavior is going on, somebody like yourself, a behaviorist, you’ll be and you have patience, because I think that’s the one thing I noticed with pet parents, the frustration, and the patient goes out the door, the frustration happens, the dog’s more sensitive to emotional stimuli and stuff, too. And that’s where they can pick up on what’s going on with us. And I think if we step back and take more patience, take more time to just help them go through and manage and navigate those development years, you know, and get through it, you know, it’s just your wonderful pet returns to normality.

It’s like your teenage kid is like, you know, in early 20s. And then it’s like, okay, do you remember when? So some things to consider that impact and support the functional connectivity is, which I’m referring to how the different parts of the brain work together to perform the task.

It’s just like different members of a team might collaborate to solve a problem. So for dogs, this could involve the brain coordinating thoughts, emotions, and actions, like recognizing a command, controlling their impulses, or dealing with stress. And things that really need to be taken into consideration is the dog’s genetics.

I mean, I’ve got, I call her Manitoba mutton. I mean, I’m learning through, I learned so much through her adolescent stage of just what she was dealing with, but those genetics, and sometimes we’re not familiar with them. If you get a dog from a breeder, you might be, but a lot of people are rescuing, but their health and welfare, what’s going on with them, stress, their arousal management, which I think we’ll touch on a little bit more.

And what has their life experience been? Are they getting enough sleep? Are they dealing with any pain?

And that’s one thing is dogs have a really high tolerance sometimes when they’re dealing with pain, and you may not know about that. And then this is one that was kind of highlighted to me because I haven’t really focused on it enough, but the whole microbiome, the microbiome is like the ecosystem living inside your dog’s body. And that’s made up of good bacterial, other tiny organisms.

And it can be referred to as just like a garden where you need a balance of different plants and insects for it to stay healthy. Your dog needs a balance of these microorganisms to help with digestion, immune system support, and overall wellbeing. And then also we have to take into account medications.

So, Karen, that’s a lot of stuff. And you and I both volunteer at the OSPCA and adolescence is an age when many dogs end up in the shelters or the rescues as the owners really don’t know how to manage and guide them through this stage. So I think the more owners become aware and have tools and support to get them through this just to have more of an understanding.

And I think this is what we really want pet parents to walk away with, understanding what’s going on in your dog. So we know, Karen, that during this stage, there’s a highs and lows. And I mentioned arousal management being one of them.

Can you touch on maybe what’s going on with the arousal stages?

Karen
Oh, definitely. So when you’re looking at arousal, you also have to take into consideration emotion because that’s part of where arousal is coming from. So when you talk about emotions, they talk about valence, right?

So valence is an emotion. You have negative and you have positive. So negative means that they’re having a negative emotion.

So it could be that they’re in high arousal. It could be that they’re angry and they’re tense. So these would be dogs then who might have high reactivity in adolescence, remembering that their impulse control is not that great.

So they are going to have a negative emotion and then they’re going to act out like they’re angry or distressed, right? If they have low arousal, it can look like they’re sad or not interested in what is going on, right? High arousal on the positive valence side where the emotions are positive experiences, that’s where you can get the really happy, excited at the top end, right?

So that’s where people usually struggle is they have these really bouncy, but now big dogs, right? Because they’re not baby puppies anymore. And they’re really, really super bouncy and they’re extremely excited and getting that arousal to calm down is a struggle for a lot of people, definitely.

So the best point that you want to train at is when they have the positive emotions, but their arousal is sort of in between the low and the high. So you kind of want it right in the smack dab in the middle where the dog still has the ability to think at that stage, right? So yeah, so that’s the challenge in the adolescent brain, of course, is because they have a lot of arousal, right?

And they’re very emotional. So trying to work with adolescent dog, you’re usually at the high end of both. It can either be a negative or a positive emotion, but definitely it’s the struggle is getting that emotion back down to a more of a balanced state.

Corey
Okay. And that’s really good. So let’s talk and give the listeners some suggestions of what to do during this stage.

Karen
All right. So first of all, you have to remember that you have to have a great deal of patience within adolescence, right? If you’re going to be working with your adolescent dog and things are seeming to not go well, then at that stage, you may want to change your approach at that moment.

Maybe you’re not going to train the challenging activity when your dog’s state of arousal is too high. They can’t think they’re just emotional, right? So at that stage, we’re probably going to want to do something a little less stressful for the dog so that they can.

So maybe I’m going to take them on a natural walk or something. I’m going to put a long line on them, let them go and do a nice, a nice natural walk where I’m not asking a lot of the dog at that stage, right? Training though is important during this stage because you can actually teach them some emotional regulation.

So you can help them learn as they’re going through this adolescent phase, right? That how to regulate their own emotions, right? It gives them a chance then to recover when something happens and they have that ability.

So there are different, you know, there’s relaxation protocols that you can teach your dogs and little pattern games that you can use to help regulate their emotions. So if they get really high, you can get them to do like a sniffing game that’s going to then lower their arousal because their nose is going to be to the ground and they’re going to be eating food. So there’s, those are activities you can do for that.

Enrichment is really great at helping these dogs calm down their systems and regulate more. So what is enrichment? Enrichment is any activity that a dog would naturally do if they’re given the opportunity, they would do it on their own.

So, so definitely like any sniffing work where they’re foraging and finding things that’s normal for dogs, migratory practices. So lots of walking is good for dogs, right? Anything like that, that they get to choose to do the activity and we’re not actually asking them to do it can be really good at regulating their arousal levels, right?

Boundaries and structure and routines are also really great. Dogs pattern very well. So when you have a day that your dog is thinking, using their thinking part of their brain and they’re really doing well, right?

Putting in those boundaries and the structure and the routine is going to help those dogs know what to predict. So as soon as you put those in, that’s going to help your adolescent dog be able to cope with life at that time because they won’t have to think so hard about it. And then balance play, right?

So you’re going to get your dog excited and you’re going to teach them how to calm down. So you don’t want to be doing anything too repetitive or that’s going to keep their arousal too high for too long. You definitely want to have breaks and you want to have them lowering that arousal.

So Dr. Murphy talks about regulation being more important than anything else, so being able to regulate their arousal is definitely more important than how extreme that arousal is. So the arousal could be crazy, right? But as long as you’re able to help the dog bring that emotional state down, that’s far more important.

Teaching them that is more important than just how high they actually get. That makes sense. Excellent.

Yeah. You want to avoid keeping them really high. So let’s use a Border Collie as an example, right?

So Border Collies tend to be a little OCD. They can go after a ball or they can go after a Frisbee. And I’ve seen Border Collies where that’s all they’ll do.

They just fixate on a ball and won’t do anything else. And they get distressed if it’s not there, right? So they’re not able to self-regulate.

The arousal is way too high and now it has become a pattern. So you really want to make sure that the arousal is not kept high all the time. And you want to have those breaks often when you’re doing activities with your dogs, right?

And making sure that nothing is too repetitive, right? You want to definitely mix it up, right? And yeah, I think that is really the key about the arousal, right?

It’s very important to make sure that you’re incorporating into your training plans the ability to have the dog get up and get their arousal high up and then bring them back down again. So they learn to control themselves as they work through their adolescence and head into maturity.

Corey
Yeah, that’s key. And you know, I think back to when I did some outdoor play dates and you know, you mentioned the Border Collie. One woman would bring this Border Collie and the ball throw would happen.

And I mean, there’d be probably six to eight dogs in this group all playing with each other, you know, either chasing each other. It was all good play. And this Border Collie was just obsessed to the point that you could have chopped off a leg.

Not that we would have done that, but it would still be going after the ball because it’s just too focused. And so, and even with my Skye, I mean, you know, she loves Frisbee and ball, but we do make sure that she knows how to settle. She knows how to, you know, manage her and regulate herself really.

Perfect. So great points. And so Karen, Dr. Murphy also talked about the social stress cycle. I think we both have seen this with many dogs. And I think especially after COVID, the pandemic, we saw a lot of stressed out dogs and socializing dogs young is so important. And we need to expose our dogs comfortably to life and all the things in it, dogs, people, noises, cars, trucks, whatever’s going on.

She talked about building resilience so that the dog can handle the world. And Karen, this really stood out for me as so many pet parents, and I’m not going to say so many, I don’t want to really generalize it, but I’ve seen many dogs where they’ve been, the COVID puppies, we call them, you know, sheltered or when the dogs get nervous, you see the parents wanting to just coddle them, take them away from that thing that’s making them nervous. So, or avoiding it.

So what can you add, or can you touch on more about what she talked about with the social stress cycle?

Karen
For sure. So in the social stress cycle, what Dr. Kathy Murphy was referring to was how cyclical stress is in social settings. So if we use, so it would be stress in the environment with your dogs or your dog gets stressed in the environment, right, then they can react to that stress, right?

And it can change their behavior. And then it just kind of is cyclical. It’ll just keep going and going in that cycle, right?

And it can really lower their resiliency, right? And it can have an impact on their behavior long-term, right? So what she talked about was how this unresolved stress that’s in this cycle, right, will definitely have a significant impact on your dog’s behavior.

So she illustrated in her social stress cycle diagram in the talk, right, was that social stress can really alter everything that goes on with the dog and lead to a change even in their genetic expression, which I thought was mind-blowing, to be honest with you. So in order to help that dog, you need to break up that cycle. That cycle, you need to complete it so that the dog has resolution, so that they are not continually going into that social stress model and going from stress to reactivity to alter behavior and circling back.

You need to break it, and you need to help that dog deal with that stress in the environment so that it doesn’t impact them long-term.

Corey
Yeah, and I think we’re going to touch on, because Dr. Murphy also was part of Bobby’s talk, the rainbow, the resilience rainbow, and that’s where, yeah, and that’s where we’re going to get into talking about some of those things. So really important to know that, you know, you want to really stop that cycle, but we’ll touch on some of the things that we may be able to do that. So we know the adolescent stage is where the brain is on fire, I say, and we want to dig a little deeper into understanding that, and one of the talks we’re going to reference now is Dr. Tim Lewis, because he really dived into talking more about the brain, and for those of you listening, Dr. Tim Lewis has taught courses in biology, ecology, environmental science, and his current professional work focuses on the biology of domestic dogs. I just bought his book, he signed it for me, that’s great, now I got to read it, and that was recently published, The Biology of dogs from gonads through guts to Ganglia.

Again, our knowledge was expanded on the dog’s brain, so Karen, do you want to dive into what he was talking about?

Karen
Yeah, for sure. First of all, I loved him, he was a great speaker. So his talk, listen to your gut, one of your brains is in there too.

Corey
And his current professional work focuses on the biology of domestic dogs. I just bought his book, he signed it for me. That’s great.

Now I got to read it. And that was recently published, the biology of dogs from gonads through guts to ganglia. Again, our knowledge was expanded on the dog’s brain.

So Karen, do you want to dive into what he was talking about?

Karen
Yeah, for sure. First of all, I loved him. He was a great speaker.

Yes. So his talk, listen to your gut, one of your brains is in there too, was really interesting. That was the title of his talk, right?

So we learned that both dogs and they’re humans, right? Have multiple brains. He says it should be called brains, not the brain.

So he says that there are five of them, right? And then each of them, they have their own evolutionary history and area of expertise, so to speak. So they are all responsible for different things.

He discussed how different cues and rewards each affect the brain differently, right? And should help motivate and help with your communication with the dogs, right? So we know that the brain is a center of control.

It’s really evolved over time and it adapts to the environment and it helps to find food. It helps to predict things. It has many, many focuses.

So that’s really where they started off. That’s what his talk was about.

Corey
Yeah. And he talked and highlighted, you said the food to predict. So again, he goes back to, you know, think about the evolution of the dogs and stuff.

Like that’s where they were out, go hunt, go find their food, you know, do their things and environments changed and everything else. And the dogs had to adapt to that. So what I took away from this is that humans and dogs do things consciously and unconsciously. And I know that I used to, you know, do a lot of coaching on the, the brain.

So we’re talking about dogs right now, but if you think about movement, um, say you look at a dog’s tongues, we don’t control that consciously. A dog’s tongue will pant automatically if need be. Dr. Tim highlighted when a dog is normal and relaxed, the body responds to that, how the body’s feeling. And if it’s nervous and anxious, based on any factors, the body can respond to that and go into the fight or flight mode. And what it really is saying there is there’s so many internal factors that is impacting the dog’s behavior based on what’s going on. And the dog will internalize and, and it affects her body and mind.

So I really want us to touch on the brain-body control right now. And, um, Karen, if you can even talk about the five brains and, and what, if we can get into that.

Karen
For sure. So first, uh, what do we mean by brain body control? So what that actually refers to is the intricate and really dynamic interaction between all the areas of the brain and the body.

So in essence, the brain is sending and receiving signals all the time. And those signals regulate all our bodily functions. So whether they’re unconscious or conscious, it’s still signals that are going in and out of our brain that regulate all of those motions.

So for example, if I’m going to move my hand, give a thumbs up to Corey for instance, right? That is a signal that it’s my brain sends down to my hand to make my muscles in my thumb go into an upward motion. So the brain is really, they’re really intricately connected.

And that’s really what brain body control means. Now, Dr. Lewis, of course, he takes it a step further and he tells us that we actually have five brains, not one brain. So that’s why he says we shouldn’t be calling it the brain.

It should be brains, right? So, and each one of those brains has a different function. They have a different expertise.

So, um, he starts with what he calls the hindbrain and the hindbrain is responsible for all the basic functions that, and that’s all they do. It’s all it does. It’s very primal.

 

It’s just our survival pieces. It just regulates everything we need to do to live, right? Then we have the cerebellum, which is about our actions and motion, um, related, uh, learning, right.

That is to do with our cerebellum. Our limbic system is where that fight or flight mode slips, right? So that is the emotional piece of our brain, right?

And then the cerebral cortex, right, is that’s our thinking part. That’s where our patterns exist, our associations, our predictions, our memories. Um, it all comes from the cerebral cortex.

And then the fifth brain he talks about, he called the enteric nervous brain system is actually our gut. That’s the gut actually has the same, um, physiological makeup in a lot of ways as the brain does. It has, it doesn’t have the neurotransmitters that are in the brain, but it has ganglia like our brain.

And it has a lot of functions like our brain. There’s some significant, um, chemicals that are formed in our brain, in our brain, in our gut, such as serotonin that impacts our brain and impacts our system. Right.

And it’s serotonin is from our, is from our gut. It’s not from our brain. Right.

So I think a lot of people know about serotonin because of like antidepressants, which help people, right. Yeah. So, um, and our dogs, some of our dogs are on antidepressants too.

Right. And yeah, it’s because we’re not producing enough serotonin, right. When this is how come we end up needing to have medication to help with that production, right.

When really it is a brain, it’s a gut function, right. That’s where it really starts is in the gut. So he talks about, um, all of those, uh, elements of the brain.

And he says, you know, depending on which brain shows up to the party, when you’re working with your dog, right, that can have an impact on the learning. So his main point that he wanted everybody to remember was that we had to keep in mind that whatever the loudest brain in the room is, that’s the one that we’re going to be working with. So, you know, if our dog is feeling emotional and they’re so loud, it’s the limbic system.

That’s the loudest part, the loudest brain in the room. Then that’s what we’re dealing with is that brain. That means our learning.

And, um, so our cerebral cortex is not going to be the loudest one. That’s not going to be the one that’s influencing what’s going on in the moment. It’s going to be that limbic system in that moment.

So over there in fight or flight, right? Then, or, you know, if it’s an intact male and a female dog, it comes around, you know, that’s going to take his attention and then getting him to pay attention to us and think about the cookie in our hand. And yeah, exactly.

So as we’re training, if we keep those things in mind, it’s going to reduce our frustration and we’re going to be a lot more empathetic towards that dog. Right. And making sure that we understand what’s going on with that dog in the moment is going to help both the dog and the human.

Exactly. Yeah.

Corey

Yeah. And I think there, the point is really understanding. And I mean, you just say with the limbic system, if they’re in that fight or flight or sex is on their brain, um, forget the cookie.

You can’t even get the high value. It’s like, that’s where it’s like your dog will not take a cookie when they are stressed or when they’re like highly aroused. So I always say that’s kind of one of the things that can tell us what’s going on with the dog too.

So, um, yeah, I think we want to just leave the listeners here, understanding that there’s five brains. What’s the loudest one? Maybe you might not know, but just understanding that there is definitely a lot going on in their mind.

And that’s where it’s the, you’ll go back to the brain body. It’s like connecting. I mean, you gave a really good example there about, you know, giving me the thumbs up or whatever, but am I talking about the tongue?

Like that’s where, again, there’s so many messages going on in the brain and that’s sending out to the body. So it’s really, um, uh, trying to take a big picture or, you know, you can’t really get that internal one. Um, and so we move on to, you know, we went to Dr. Kathy Murphy and Bobby Brambry again. Um, I mean, that’s where Kathy Murphy came up again and they really got into talking about resilience and they highlighted the resilience rainbow. And we, I mean, I think many, I think throughout this whole conference, resilience was just kind of speaking and how the importance of really building this within our dogs. Um, and if I think of a definition of resilience, it’s really the dog’s intensity of response to an environmental stimulus and how much time they can recover.

And, um, you know, I listened to another podcast of Bobby’s talking about this resilience rainbow, cause I wanted to explore it more. And I was telling you the, the visual that they gave is if we’re trying to build resilience, or if we think about resilience, think about an elastic band, when you stretch it, how it bounces back, then that’s somebody that has resilience. So if you have a dog that’s able to bounce back, able to handle some, you know, stressors and that, and still be able to regulate themselves and be, you know, um, able to function.

If we think about the ones that don’t have the weak resilience, think about, um, either cookie dough or bread dough. And if you stretch that out, it can break and crumble. And that’s what can be happening with those weak resilience dogs.

So in the resilience rainbow, Bobby talks about seven domains, uh, for resilience conditioning. And, um, I know you’re familiar with this more than I am. So I’m going to get you to talk about the resilience rainbow and those seven domains.

Karen
Yeah, definitely. So, um, remembering that resiliency is like Corey was saying, it’s the ability to recover. So there’s stress in life.

That’s just reality. There’s always going to be a stressor that, you know, an event can happen. There can be trauma, right.

And how that learner deals with it and recovers and, um, and takeaways they have from it. Right. That’s, that’s really what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about resilience. So a dog that is really resilient means that they can experience a mild stressor or, um, having an environmental change that suddenly happens and they may get startled or they may be surprised, but instead of it impacting their behavior extremely negatively and creating a negative experience for the dog, they just bounce back, shake it off and they’re good to go. Right.

That’s resiliency for dogs that struggle with resiliency. They may, um, have that same experience being the same situation as the first dog, but when the startling event happens unexpectedly in the environment, their ability to recover is slow or not at all. And now they’ve created a negative association in that environment because of the fright that the dog got and the fact that they were not able to recover from it.

That’s in essence, what resiliency is about. And this is where stress and trauma can go. Stress can go from just stress to trauma simply based on the fact that the dog’s ability to recover isn’t that great.

Right. And of course it all, um, stems, it helps with the brain and let’s keep in mind too, let’s put it all together a little bit as well, that, um, when they’re adolescents, they’re more sensitive to everything, right? So if they’re more sensitive and they don’t have good resiliency, they can really easily become traumatized by something that happens during adolescence because their resiliency is not there.

Right. So in these seven domains that they have for resiliency, there, um, I’ll list them really quickly and then we can talk about them. So mental and physical wellbeing, agency, social support, safety and security, completing the stress cycle, which we talked about already briefly, right.

And decompression. So those are the, those are the, um, I think it’s seven, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Corey
Predictability.

Karen
Predictability. That’s the seventh, right? Yep.

Predictability. So what do those things mean? Let’s look at the first one, mental and physical well-being.

So that means is, do, is the dog in pain, right? Are they free from injuries? Do they have any disabilities?

Um, are they uncomfortable in any way? Are they getting enough sleep? Right?

So if, if the answer to some of those is no, you know, like, no, they’re not getting enough sleep, you know, um, no, they’re not comfortable. Well, their ability to be resilient is not going to be less. They’re going to have less resiliency because of their discomfort.

Another interesting thing we heard in the conference, which was a little bit mind blowing for me, which would completely impact resiliency. If we’re not aware of it is that nowadays most dogs by the age of two are starting to develop some arthritis in their joints. So that means that most dogs by the age of two have some pain, right?

So keeping that in mind, when we’re working with our dogs, we really need to be conscious and able to read our dogs well, because dogs are not going to tell us they’re in pain, right? And we’re going to have to watch subtleties in their behavior change that there’s a mental or physical thing going on with them that could be impacting their resiliency, right? Agency is, that’s a, that’s a good one.

Cause we hear that word a lot. And a lot of people don’t really understand what it means. Agency means the dog has the opportunity to do things freely.

So we aren’t controlling it. It’s not human controlled. It’s the dog having the ability to do what they want to do when they want to do it.

That’s agency, right? So if we give our dogs opportunities to make choices and do things that they want to do without us intervening and controlling it, right, that’s going to help build up their confidence and build up their resiliency. So those, you know, doing any kind of activities that are good for the dogs, one that we like to use a lot at our center that helps with resiliency that is based on agency is what they, something they call ace free work, right?

So ace free work lets a dog have the opportunity to go into a room and forage and look for stuff and hunt without any influence from humans. They just get to go do what they want, right? That’s an example of agency, right?

Social support that we do this as well with, so that means having your puppy or your dog in an environment and knowing that they’re safe, right? So like making sure that they know they’ve got support from us as their caregiver, we’re taking care of them, they’re going to be okay. So they get a lot of support socially, or if they have other dogs, so I have multiple dogs, as you know, so you know, they’re pretty resilient when something happens in the environment because they have each other, right?

So yeah, they rely on each other significantly for that feeling of support, and it really impacts their behavior that they have that support. It makes them a lot braver, and they are, they really, so like none of my dogs are afraid of thunderstorms as an example, or fireworks or anything like that, none of them because they’re together, right? And they, they’re supported.

Safety and security, make sure your dogs feel safe. That is the key. All living things want to feel safe, right?

So if they feel safe and secure, then teaching them things is going to be much simpler, and they have the ability to recover from stress and, and anything, anything traumatic a lot faster if they feel safe with you and in their environment. So that’s the other one, right? Then completing that stress cycle that we had talked about earlier, right, is also going to help build resilience.

So anytime that we know our dogs are suffering from a stressor, we want to make sure that we’re helping them complete that stress cycle and recover from the stress, right? So if we get that chance, so like for example, if the dog’s getting, gets a fright and his adrenaline has gone up because you can tell because they’re like vibrating because something has happened, right? Giving them something to do that helps calm them down, right?

Like a nice sniffy walk where they’re searching for cheese in the grass, for example, right, is going to help build up resiliency. So they start to recover from stressors like that a lot quicker, their body’s going to react a lot faster, right? And then decompression, right?

Again, that’s another way of reducing stress, right? So natural walks in the woods or, you know, where they’re not having to walk in the human world on sidewalks, for instance, right, is an example of a decompression activity. It helps de-stress the dog.

Chewing things, doing anything where they get to chew stuff is going to help decompress your dog. So those are a few examples of those. Then the seventh one, of course, is predictability.

Dogs love knowing what to expect. They love to know what to expect. They love to, they love patterns, they love games, they love structure.

It really helps them to keep, and feel safe. So it helps all other elements of the resiliency rainbow, right? So Leslie McDevitt has a great book out, I think it’s called Control Unleashed, right?

And it has all kinds of pattern games in there. And those games help build up resiliency, right? They’re really good games.

Bobby and Kathy in their resiliency rainbow course talk about Leslie McDevitt’s pattern games all the time, right? So yeah, and they really do help with making sure that dogs have a pattern that is predictable for them because it helps them cope with stressors in the environment if they have those. So those are, that’s an example of how you can take different games and things like that that we work with and help build up resiliency in your dog so that they’re able to recover.

And like I said, keep in mind that during adolescence, this becomes critical because of this.

Corey
It really does. Yeah. And, and, you know, I do these community walks where we just did one tonight and there was, you know, a little dog that was comfortable with the other dogs, but it’s the people that, and we were talking just about, you know, we’re not going to really push too much.

We’re going to just let the dog go at its own pace and do it. And I said, when this walks over, make sure you go and do something comfortable. So there’s a decompression thing we talk about there.

And they said, oh, well, we’re going to my parents after, and their favorite thing in the world is to play with their dog. And I said, well, that’s great. And I said, but at the end of the walk, which we didn’t push the dog too much, because we want to have patience, not push.

We, you know, we did see a much more relaxed dog too, but, but those are like seven, you talked to some great points there, Karen. And I mean, we could talk about many more things at the conference, but I think we’ve probably overwhelmed the people listening today with all of our information. We were overwhelmed when we were there.

So I want to kind of just bring it to a close, but I think going back to the point, we’ve talked about the importance of understanding what’s going on in your dog. I mean, we go back to the inner dog, what Dr. Kathy Murphy talked about. We talked about what, you know, Dr. Tim Lewis, those five brains, and then we just touch on the resilience rainbow, which a lot of great information there we will be providing in the show notes, links to more information on the speakers and what we’ve talked about. Karen, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your time with me, your expertise. We will be putting in the show notes to Unified Canine, which is your center. So Karen found it a Unified Canine Center in Newmarket to 2000.

Karen
And I’m going to say, 2002, because it’ll be three years in 2022.

Corey
So there

Karen
So, yeah.

Corey
So, and I will put your link in there, but I’m sure I’m going to have you on another podcast again, because we always are learning and sharing and that’s great. But for those of you listening, I want to thank you for the time. If you would like to listen to more podcasts, Mutz with Manners, we have a number of podcasts on our website, www.mutzwithmanners.com.

If you are interested in us doing a podcast, please email me at info at Mutz with Manners.com. And I want to just again, say thanks, Karen. Thank you for tuning into us.

We hope we’ve left you with some valuable information. If you have an adolescent dog, patience, not push and understand they’re going through stuff and we are there to help them. So thanks everyone.

If you’re interested in hearing a topic that we may not have covered on our podcast, or you have questions, please reach out to us at info@muttzwithmannerz.com. Our goal is to enrich the lives of both ends of the leash. And today we’ve provided you with some tips on how to do that. Karen, thank you so much for joining me. And again, thanks listeners. Everyone have a great day.

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