A (0:00)

Behavior is simple. If anybody's ever tried to over, you know, has made it complex, they're over complicating it. And dogs like simple. Okay. Ultimately, when you know, like the true, like practical science of this, nearly always there's a simple solution to be had before we dive in. A warning. The content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners. This is real life and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic. So, so listen on at your own peril. As a veterinarian, dog behaviorist, best selling author and trainer over the past decade, I've had an obsession with transforming the behavior of dogs, understanding their brains, and creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home. I know all too well when the dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality. In fact, out of the blue, a few months ago, my little dog, Gorse was bitten by a dog 20 times her size. And suddenly our life of stress free walks, a calm and cuddly household, and being teammates was replaced with reactivity, anxiety, and worrying about what's around the next corner. I'm Dr. Tom. This is the Help My Dog podcast. And this is me documenting that journey of transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you, and having a few laughs along the way. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Help My Dog podcast. And today we're diving into a listener's question that I think might be useful for a lot of. And that is, I'll do a bit of context because the question dives right in. So we all know, or certainly if you've been listening to this podcast for a little while, dogs interact in a very kind of set chain of events, right? So the chain goes like this. They see the dog over there, they approach the dog over there. There's a brief nose to nose interaction that doesn't always look like a nose to nose, but certainly unless they're walking backwards towards each other, there's an initially face to face encounter and then there is this move to the rear where they do the classic butt sniff. And then they'll either, you know, disengage and go, lovely to meet you, off you go. Or they will play and then disengage. That's a complete like perfect chain. Okay? Now this chain can be broken at any step of the chain. And important to understand is that the, the chain gets broken not because of lack of practice of the chain necessarily, but rather because the skills that that dog needs to complete the chain are not there or not where they need to be. So, for example, there might be a break in the chain because the dog's level of optimism, in other words, seeing, you know, being presented with an ambiguous or mixed signal or something new from the other dog, doesn't automatically get perceived as something cool and nothing to worry about, and they get freaked out by the other do. Right. Or another skill deficit that might cause a break in the chain might be if you've got one of those dogs that rather than having, you know, a variety of different arousal levels from level 10 to level 20 to level 30 to level 40, which would allow us to navigate a conversation with other individuals, instead, they literally get mildly excited and go from 0 to 100, and they freak the other dog out, and there's an exposure. So there's lots of different skill deficits that can cause this breakdown in the chain. And you teach those skills, and what happens is then what they're able to do is actually complete that chain or do that step. And the best way to think about this, I would spend my life teaching this is think about. We've all had this situation where we've been anxious or worried about going to a party or a social gathering or seeing someone that we'd not seen seen for a while or whatever it might be. Yeah. And you feel you're kind of like, anticipating it in sort of a bit of a negative way. Right. You're like, oh, God. But before you go and before you have that interaction, you know what you should do, Right. You know, you should do like a conversation starter. If you're meeting someone, you should shake their hand, right. And not, like, outstay your welcome and just keep hold of their hand. You know, that you should ask them about themselves rather than just talking about yourself all the time. And you know what you should do. Yeah. Nobody. It's not that you don't know what you should do, but the challenge is, is that when you find yourself in the situation, you might not have the skills to be able to follow through on what you should do. Right. You might not have the confidence to be the first one to reach to shake their hand or give them a hug. And then there's that awkward, like, are we hugging? Are we not hugging? Situation. Yeah. You might not have the calmness to be able to not shout. Right. And be shouting at them and moderate your volume. You might not have the skill of disengagement to be able to disengage from your favorite topic, which might be talking about how much you love your dog, to ask them a question about their life. And Maybe their cat, for example. Right. Because you can't disengage from the topic that you're on. And it's exactly the same with dogs. It's not. It's not what to do that they're lacking. It's the how to do it. It's the skill of doing it and the skill that allows them to be able to do it that is the missing piece. Now, this listener has asked a really great question, and that is, what if the chain is broken before it's even started? Our dog is so reactive, he goes crazy before he's even left the front door. In case there's another dog out there. Right. So it's a really great question, and it's a really common one where I think sometimes what we can think is our dogs are reactive to other dogs, when actually the issue is, is that they're just in a reactive state on walks. And it could be another dog, it could be a badger, it could be a kangaroo on a lead. You know, it doesn't matter. Ultimately, if they. If something pops up and they see something, they're going to react. And this listener has very rightly said, you know, our dog is so reactive, he goes crazy before he's even left the front door. And in case there's another dog out there. And so the battle, the war is already lost in the first battle. Yeah. And this is such a powerful question on many levels. First of all, it might be that once you get your dog's brain back in their skull. Right. You get their arousal level down, and we fix that part of the picture, you might find that their interaction chains are actually completely fine. Yeah. When there is a break in an interaction chain, let's say it's on sight of another dog or on approach of another dog, that's the break. We cannot assume that the rest of the chain is broken and that we're gonna have to fix this. Then fix that. Then fix that. Because often it's a specific step of that chain that when we fix that break in the chain, the rest of the chain flows really nicely. Yeah. And that's especially true when we think about skills. Right. You know, if your dog can't complete an interaction chain at any step because they don't have the confidence to do so. Well, if you grow their confidence, you fix every issue. Right. That's the first thing. And hopefully that's really reassuring for those of you who are like, oh, my goodness, you know, my dog. I've been working on my dog's reactivity for so long. And the thing is that, you know, we're only at the stage where we're fixing the approach to another dog. We've not even got to the close interaction. This is going to take forever. You might find that when you fix the approach, the close interaction is all fine. You. Yeah. And we see it all the time. And the best example of when we often see that where dogs literally are telling us that's the case is some of your listeners will have a dog like this, dogs that will bark and lunge at another dog at a distance and you know, be flipping around like a fish on the end of the lead and they're really, really worried. But if they're like in a busy environment where there are lots of buildings and a dog comes around a corner and suddenly there is, they cut out the C and the approach step of the chain and it's straight into the nose to nose and the move to the rear. What you can find is they do the nose to nose and move to rear and move on perfectly. And the owners are like, I don't understand, does this mean he's fixed? Right? No, it just means we skipped the step of the chain that was broken. Yeah. And so hopefully that is reassuring that you know at some point it's all going to fix. Right. And we don't know when that point is until it happens and we're like, oh wow, we're here. Awesome. All the work paid off. So that's first takeaway that I want you to take from this. Second thing is, hey guys, I just want to take a moment to answer a question that has been coming in literally 10 emails today and that is how can we help you with your dog's behavior struggle? Whether that be reactivity, separation anxiety, resource guarding, maybe you've got multi dog household struggle right now. Maybe your dog's just so over aroused on a walk that they just can't listen to you and they're chasing everything in sight. Like can I get Tom's help? And the answer is that actually you can. And you can do that by booking a behavet behavior consultation. That's where literally my team give you the plan on how to transform your struggle and get you to that dream that made you get a dog in the first place. Right. Your world's got smaller and smaller and smaller and actually it doesn't need to be that way. You just need to reach out for help. A couple of things to say on that. First of all, if you're insured, if your dog's insured with pet Plan, Kennel Club, Agria, or many pets, we actually do direct claims with them, which means that that's covered by your insurance. So you don't pay out of your pocket. Your insurance covers that. And the second thing to say is that we have loads of options. If you're insured with another provider or if your dog's not insured at all, that's also totally fine. We have loads of options that we've developed to make this so accessible for you because we're aware that you've already invested a load of time and a load of money in getting your dog, looking after your dog, caring for your dog. But the last thing we want is for you to have done all that and still not be living the life that you deserve with your dog. And we know we can get you there. So all you need to do is go to the BehaveVet website and the way to do that is go B E H A dot, V E T. That's beh vet and it will take you there. Or just Google behave vet. Right. And you can get scheduled in and we can literally get you booked in for a consultation as soon as possible. We normally can accommodate it within a week. Right. So that you can be getting to your dream asap. Second thing is, I cannot stress enough how important it is that when you go for a walk and when you leave for a walk, your dog is truly in the moment. Okay. In other words, they're not anticipating what's around the next corner. They're not anticipating that they might see another dog. They're not anticipating that this walk is going to be really exciting or this walk is going to be really stressful or whatever else. When their brain is in the moment, they can actually use the skills that they've got because they're not in a state of constant anticipation. Yeah. And this is really important because many of you would have heard me talk about this idea of a stress bucket before, where exciting things pay into their stress bucket, scary things pay into their stress bucket. The bucket fills and fills and fills until it overflows. When they're in that state of overwhelm and they're reactive right. Now, the thing is, when a dog is in a state of anticipation, they are literally fast forwarding that process. They're chucking pints of water into this bucket. The pints haven't even happened. Right? They're anticipating the stress. They're anticipating seeing the other dog. They're anticipating seeing walking past that garden on the walk where the dog nips at them under the Fence. Right. And already as you leave the front door, their bucket's already full because they've just sped up the process and gone. Yeah, I'll chuck all that in because I know that's happening. So what do we do about this? Well, my top two tips for you is first of all, think about at what point do you start to notice that your dog's arousal level increases and they start to move into that reactive state? Is it when you put your shoes on? Is it when you put your coat on? Is it when you put their lead on? Right. And I'm not talking the final destination of their mania, right. I'm talking the little clues. Oh, they're heading, you know, they're starting to move into a state of anticipation, their brain is leaving the building. Right. That's what I'm interested in. And what we're going to do is we're going to start to do those things. Yeah, the, not the big things, the things where it's like, oh, I start to see that, you know, their arousal levels ramping up. And what I want you to do is I want you to do five different things in consequence of that. So for example, let's say it's you putting your shoes on. I want you to start putting your shoes on and then going and going with your dog into the living room, sitting on the sofa and giving them a long lasting chew. Yeah. I want you to put your shoes on one day and go out into the back garden and scatter some of their daily food allowance in the garden for them to search it out. And I want you to maybe pop your shoes on and go to the kitchen and do some training where you reward them for being on their bed and staying on their bed and releasing off their bed on cue. Right. And I want you to think about all the different avenues that you could build from that event. That is not going for a walk. And then you're going to do the same with a different piece of the puzzle and the same with a different piece of the puzzle until you've worked through them. And you can actually, for example, maybe go out of the front door, your dog's on lead and they're looking at you and going, I wonder what we're going to do now. Yeah, Rather than we're going for a walk and this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen. I wonder if we're going to go into the living room and have a long lasting chew. Right. I mean, imagine how that would change your dog walks if as you leave for the walk, even, you know, as you venture out onto the walk and you're on the street, your dog's thinking, oh, I wonder if we're on the way to the living room to have a long lasting chew. Right. It would completely change how they respond to the environment. So that's the first. First tip for you. Second tip for you is one of those events that are triggered by you doing whatever the thing. Thing is. Yeah. Could be a particular game. And that game that I really like to use is 2ft up on an object. Okay. So you're going to get a little object. I love using the yoga blocks, but you can equally use like a book or, I don't know, just anything that you can like stick in your pocket. Right. And what you can do is you're going to teach your dog to put their front paws on this object. Yeah. And you're going to front pause on the object, feed, feed, feed, reward them for the front pause on the object. You're going to throw a piece of food away, pick the object up, move somewhere else in the house, put the object down, paws go on the object. And what it does is the dog starts to go, ooh, it's the object thing. When are they going to put the object down? Where's the object going? Yeah. And the power of this in combination with the last tip is you can start to take this object out with you on walks and periodically put it down and use it as a way of anchoring your dog's brain back into the moment. And what it does is it starts to change the question that your dog is asking themselves listener of where is the dog? When is the dog going to happen? When is the thing to react to, to where's the object? When is my owner going to put this object down? Are we on the way to the living room to have a long lasting chew which would completely transform their behavior. And I know that it sounds so simple, but, but behavior is simple. If anybody's ever tried to over, you know, has made it complex, they're over complicating it. And dogs like simple. Okay. Ultimately, when you know, like the true, like practical science of this, nearly always there's a simple solution to be had. So I'm really excited to hear how you get on with that. I also think this is going to really benefit lots of you as listeners. And so would you do me a favor because I think this kind of information needs to get out there to save dogs from rehoming situations or aversive force based methods and ending up in the wrong hands. Please, please, please, could you head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a review, or whatever podcast platform you listen on. Leave us a review. Because what that does is kind of bumps this in front of people more so that they're hearing the right stuff right at the start. And it gives context to, to them as to, should I listen to this podcast? Oh, the reviews say, I really shouldn't. It's going to help my dog. And then they get to find the right method right away, which is so, so important. And with that, guys, we will see you next time.