E86: 마이크 시카시오(Mike Shikashio) - 개 대 개 공격성

place, but then I caught more into this training and behavior side of things. And that's kind of led me down the road of doing more research on my own and learning and catching, going into my first conferences and seminars and doing things like that. And that's kind of, uh, how it led me to where I am today. So, uh, you know, really just getting focused on training behavior. So, uh, yeah, those foster dogs got, or I can give them the credit for, uh, making me want to learn more. So starting kind of, you know, without necessarily a specific background in dogs or, you know, what have you, were you always a positive trainer? Is that kind of where you got started or what kind of led you down that path? Well, actually I started out as more of a traditional, uh, quote unquote, traditional balance trainer. Um, one of my first mentors was, um, sort of, uh, had a working military dog background. So that's what I started with. Um, and I, some of the more traditional tools, the tools, pinch collars and, uh, e-collars and things like that. Uh, but then coincidentally, I was at the APDT conference this week and finally got to meet Jean Donaldson in person. Believe it or not, I haven't met her in person ever. And, uh, she's sort of a, she's mentioned to me, she's not big into traveling. So I think that's one of the reasons I didn't have met her at any of the previous conferences, but, uh, I, I actually got a chance to finally thank her because one of the first books I read about, um, the positive training world was the culture clash. And that really had an effect on my, uh, training methodology and getting into that side of the world of the training world. And so, um, yeah, I finally got to say thank you to her. And, um, so I didn't start out as a, as a positive trainer. I started out more, again, more on the balanced training side of things and, uh, to where I moved on to where I am today with my training, uh, methodology. Would you mind just talking a little bit about kind of what your methodology is today? Like how do you describe it or what have you? Yeah. So now, you know, my work is exclusively with aggression and dogs. So I only take aggression cases and, um, most of the work I do, the methodology I use is through, uh, behavior change strategies, usually, uh, desensitization and counter conditioning and also differential reinforcement or positive reinforcement based strategies to teach the dogs, you know, that, that, that normal saying we hear, what do you want the dog to do instead? So a lot of it is focused on that.

And of course, antecedent arrangements and, um, you know, and a lot of the, it isn't just training and behavior modification. A lot of times I'm working in conjunction with vets in terms of, uh, addressing underlying health issues. And so, uh, most of it is a combined combination of, um, you know, management and safety, um, environmental changes, and then working in conjunction with, um, ancillary folks like the veterinary field and then of course, uh, using those, those differential reinforcement and counter conditioning strategies and my work with the aggressive dogs. So why aggression? I mean, you mentioned you kind of do that exclusively now, what led you down that path and why, you know, kind of what keeps you there? Yeah, that's, that's the question I get a lot. Now, I think first and foremost, you know, if, if people listen to this and they want to get into aggression or they're taking a lot of aggression, I will say that you do have to love working with aggressive cases or aggression cases. Uh, because I, you know, I, there's, there's weeks that can go by where I can work a bunch of cases and not even pet a dog. And so, um, you know, you have to be prepared for that. You have to be prepared to, to have lots of dogs want to bite your face off the first few times to meet them and see that day after day after day. Um, so that, that's part of it. I think it's, it's being able to, um, sort of have that, uh, uh, being able to cope with that and be able to come home and pet your own dog and, and meet a nice puppy every once in a while. But, um, I, I think one of the, the most significant factors that got me into was really helping the people and helping the dogs sort of reestablish that, that human animal bond. I think that's fractured a lot in aggression cases. A lot of the clients are sort of on their last leg or, uh, really struggling emotionally. And I found that repairing that and focusing on really helping that relationship and, uh, affording the best outcome for the dog is what really got me into it. I saw I was able to make some significant changes in the future for these dogs by focusing on it. I also say that I think specializing, we see a lot of this, um, and Denise, uh, Benzie is a good example of that and specializing in certain areas of the dog training world. Now we have the CSATs that focus on separation anxiety. We have, uh, people focusing on certain aspects of dog training, the dog sports world. You know, if people ask me to how to teach a dog to go through reef paws, I would say, I have no idea. And I would, uh, I would refer that on to somebody else.

Um, but you know, I think specializing allows you to get much better at the thing that you're specializing in much faster than if you were taking a variety of different cases. And I also found that was one of the reasons I wanted to get just solely into aggression because I wanted to be really good at it. So I said, all right, let me, let me, let me try this. Let me just try taking aggression cases exclusively. And, and it's worked out really well. And I think because you get to see the same things over and over. And so you're able to troubleshoot much faster. You're able to, um, see the same things happening. You get a general, uh, idea of what is happening in a case, even before you step into it, uh, you'll start to see the same things over and over. So, um, yeah, I, I think that's, that has a lot also what to do. I want to kind of focus on one area rather than being good at a lot of different things. I want to be great at one thing. So that's kind of what led me down the road of, of working, you know, with, with just aggression. I think that's really important for, uh, you know, professionals to realize that sometimes niching down is really a great way to grow a business. It's not, you know, limiting the business. It's actually a way to, to become more successful. So I think that's a great point. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And I, and I just listened to one of your recent podcasts where you're doing this one was focused on our business. And I, and I think that's just such an important point is that you can really, like a lot of folks are worried about how, if I do this one thing exclusively now, I'm, I'm, you know, all those clients that I could take doing all those other behavior problems are off the table, but believe it or not, it really, once people know you specialize in something, the business really takes off because you've become that like go-to person for that one area. Absolutely. So just to kind of make sure everybody's on the same page in terms of terminology and what we're talking about here, when, when you say you only take aggression cases, what's the range of severity there? What, what does each end of that spectrum look like? Dig into that a little bit for me. Yeah, that's a, that's a great question, Melissa. I think piggybacking off the last question actually is I define aggression as basically whatever the client thinks is happening when they call me because I, I actually, yeah, I advertise for, you know, aggression in dogs or people having problems with aggression. That's that keyword right there because that's usually what people are searching for online

and, and that can fall into, into a wide range. You know, aggression itself is a, is that, that's a construct or a label. So it can have different definitions even when you're talking to experts or behavior experts depending on who you're talking to, that definition is going to differ. So I just classified as, or define it as whatever the clients are calling me for in the first place. And that could be anything from a dog barking and lunging at leash, at, on leash at other people and dogs with no bite history and is perfectly social when they are close to people or other dogs. And so, you know, we might, that might be labeled, you know, quote unquote reactive or, you know, may not be labeled aggression, but the client who contacted me because they think it's aggressive. So they will call me for that. And then on the other 10, you might have true aggression, like aggressive behavior with biting, severe bite injuries and things like that. So you can get at any one of those extremes. You might even get, like, I get this sometimes where it's a client that's got a puppy and that's, you know, new to the home and they're just mouthing and the client's not savvy with dogs or it might be their first dog. And then I'll get an email, help my dog's being so aggressive and mauling me. And you get there and it's just a, you know, your typical case of a very mouthy puppy and those sharp puppy teeth. And then you get somebody in my area, you get a lot of retirees. So I'll get like a, an elderly couple on blood thinners with a young golden mouthy puppy. It's a perfect start of like, it looks like a horror show when you get there because the poor folks have like all these band-aids and marks all over their arms. It's just a, you know, kind of a mismatch at that point of a young puppy with elderly folks. But, but that's not, of course, what we would classify as aggression. Right. Sometimes that's what you show up for. Yeah. Yeah. But leads really well actually into my next question, which was how do you prepare for that first session? Right. I mean, sometimes owners definitely don't describe things the way that we would, you know, what kind of information is need to know? How do you figure out what's really going on? I mean, you know, sometimes like you said with that puppy situation, right? They're going to think the puppy's crazy aggressive and you show up and it's like, oh, this is actually pretty normal. So how do you approach that? What do you, what do you do to prepare for a new client? Yeah. So, so, you know, in terms of communicating with clients in aggression cases, one of the

most important things to focus on in your initial contact, that client is getting information about the, any kind of bite incidents or the aggressive, the incidents, which why they're contacting you about. And so you want to know about the level of biting that's occurring, the severity of the biting and, and also the context in which it's happening. So that way you can set things up safely for your arrival. And that's what I focus on during my initial contact. I don't do a long intake form. I don't, I don't spend a whole lot of time on the phone or emailing clients. What I shoot straight for is that, that context of when the actual aggressive incidents happened so I can get information about how I'm going to set it up safely for my arrival. Because even when you, you can go into very thorough, detailed information with a client on the phone or you still might not get a full picture. So I always err on the side of caution and assume that, that a bite might happen if the dog has a bite history. So I'm always setting things up very safely. A good question to ask is what do you do with the dog now when people come over? And a lot of the clients will have already set up a system. Most of the time it's, oh, I just put them away. And that works really well for also when I arrive because then I can get detailed information during the first 15 to 30 minutes or so where I do the information gathering step of my consultation. So that's, that's usually, you know, again, getting the most information about how to safely set up the dog or set the dog. So that way I can then get thorough information in front of the client and see the environment and then just determine the best way to meet the dog after that. So you always, and I always stress this, you always want to be very, very safe during your initial greetings with dogs and your initial consult until you have more information. So I guess the hard question, right? Do you think that all dogs can be rehabilitated? That term rehabilitation is sort of arguable in a sense because it depends. If you look at it from a behavioral standpoint, you know, when people talk about rehab, it's sort of, it kind of, kind of leads you towards like the dog having a sickness or an illness because that's sort of an ugly world and an ugly term in the human world. And if you're looking at physical rehabilitation, it kind of implies fixing an issue. So, and we know with behavior, once it's in the, it's in the animal's behavior repertoire, it's technically always there. So we have to, I'm very careful about when one client sees that term rehab.

I want to know their definition of it because if they're implying that it's going to, we're going to fix the problem or the dog's never going to do the behavior again, that's going to skew potentially their, their goals. And so I always explain to clients that, you know, the behavior we can, our goal is to make it less likely to happen. We, we reduce the likelihood of it to happen. We can, and to management and to behavior modification. So, so to say all dogs are rehabbable, that again, that's an arguable term. I think, I think all dogs, we can change behavior and all animals, we can change behavior. So that's what I focus on is making sure the clients understand how behavior works and how we can reduce the frequency of behaviors. And then they can start to understand. And also, of course, looking at the variables that affect behavior, the antecedent arrangements and the distant antecedents and things that can affect behavior are, once the client starts understanding and grasping those concepts, you know, and using layman's terms, not, not using the behavioral terms with clients. But I think once they start to understand those concepts, then they realize that, okay, this is, this is something that is not going to be like a light switch, which we turn it on or off. So that's, that's how I approach it generally with clients. You mentioned earlier, I guess, some of the tools that you use. Can, can you talk one more about those? What things to use most often? Feel free to kind of break it down, delayman terms for us. I know we have a wide range of backgrounds kind of in the audience, so. Yeah. So with aggressive behavior, you know, or aggression, you're looking at two sort of components. And this is the way I explain to clients is that you have factors that make the behavior more likely to happen. But that doesn't mean the behavior is going to happen unless you have the antecedents. So, so I actually use this analogy a lot with clients where if you have an empty fuel drum or fuel can, and what we can do is add more fuel to it. We can add layers of fuel, which make it the more fuel you have, the more likely you are to get an explosion or that aggressive behavior we don't want. So, and those are what we refer to as distant antecedents in the animal world. So when you have those factors, if you add in more and more layers, you're going to have a, at one point, a fuel can that's ready to explode. But again, you need a spark or a match to actually make that explosion happen. Those sparks or those matches are the antecedents or what sets that behavior in motion. So you need both.

You need both often to see the aggressive behavior. So I start to teach clients about how to recognize factors that can influence behavior. So, for instance, a dog that is growling near the food ball or biting people when they come near the food ball, factors that can increase the likelihood of that are a dog that's really hungry or a dog that is stressed or a dog that might be on medication, for instance, or underlying medical issues that make it more likely to do that behavior. Because those are what we call distant antecedents or, again, factors that are added in layers of fuel. So if you have a dog that just ate a full, huge meal and then you put a full food ball down, you're less likely to see that behavior if somebody approaches. Now, the person approaching, that's the match. That's the antecedent or what can spark that explosion. So one day it might be somebody approaching from 10 feet away and the dog explodes. Or the next day it might be the person can literally reach near the food ball because the dog doesn't have all those fuels fueling it. So once the client starts to understand that, rather than them assigning personality traits to the dog or reasons, underlying reasons for the behavior, you know, my dog's dominant or, you know, my dog's just like this. 90% of the time he's good, 10% of the time he's bad. I just don't know when. So once the client really starts to understand how there's got to be fuel there and then there's those matches, those matches are not always present. There's going to be times when those antecedents or those matches come into play and that's when you're going to likely to see the behavior. So once we see that, then we can start modifying those behaviors. So near the food ball, we present the match or the person approaching from maybe 11 feet away and we can change the dog's association with that match approaching. So that's the desensitization and counter conditioning that I mentioned before, we're changing associations. Somebody approaching the food ball means something good is about to happen. And a lot of times I'm often using food in my work with dogs. And so maybe as simple as somebody approaching means they're about to throw treats, a higher value treat than what you have in a food ball from 11 feet away. So we're doing it at a safe distance where we're not causing the explosion and we're changing the dog's association. Then you may also incorporate differential reinforcement of an alternative behavior. That's just a fancy term for what do you want the dog to do instead when that match approaches.

And so lifting the head up out of the food ball, we can start to catch that. And if we're doing marker training with our dogs, we can say good or yes or even click for lifting the head up out of the food ball, which is an alternative behavior to growling or barking or lunging or biting. So we can start to catch that. And so you're doing two different things at the same time. You're doing operant conditioning, which is teaching the dog what to do instead. And you're doing the classical counter fishing. You're changing the association for the dog with a very simple procedure of, hey, every time I approach, if you lift your head up out of the food ball, something good is about to happen. And when you lift your head up out of the food ball, I will reinforce that. And that can be incorporated with a number of aggressive behaviors. Think about your typical dog that barks and lunges at other dogs on leash. Set the dog up, set the stage correctly, keep enough distance from the other dogs so there's no explosion. You're presenting the match of the other dog. So instead of being from five feet away, you might start from 50 feet away where the dog is not close enough to cause that explosion. And you wait for your dog, the one that has an issue with barking or lunging, to just notice the other dog. And then you would reinforce that. So that's a behavior you like. Just notice the other dog. You're going to mark and reinforce that. And what happens at the same time is the associated learning. So the dog learns that, oh, when I see another dog, the person handling me is going to mark and then feed me. So again, two things happening at the same time. The dog learns what to do instead. And the association starts to change. And as the dog gets better at it, as you're reducing fuels because you're reducing the stress of that situation, you might be also addressing the fear or the anxiety, the arousal, and all of those other fuels that might come along in that package. You're reducing the fuel, but you're also changing the dog's behavior around that match so you can get that match closer and closer and closer to that fuel without any kind of explosion. So that's exactly how I explain to clients without using the technical terms. I explain that fuel and match analogy and clients really start to get it because they're really assigning things like territorial dog or red zone dog or alpha dog, which really isn't helpful because we know those are constructs or labels. So I focus on what we want the dog to do instead and in those contexts. So that's pretty much the tools I use most of the time.

And that's most times food and sometimes it's play and sometimes it's toys depending on the dog and the context. That's awesome. And I think that that analogy works really, really well. It explains kind of all the right pieces, right? And it's still a concept that people definitely quickly grasp. So that's kind of neat. I haven't heard that one before. So I like that. Yeah. Thanks. We were introduced because you've got two webinars coming up at FDSA on some of this stuff, right? So for those listening, they'll be back to back. They're on the same day. And Mike will be talking about intra-household dog-to-dog aggression. So Mike, I was hoping we could talk a little bit about those. First, can you kind of explain the terminology there for anybody who might not know what intra-household dog-to-dog aggression means? And then can you just share a little bit about what you'll be focusing on? Sure, sure. So intra-household dog aggression, a.k.a. two or more dogs fighting in the same home when they live together, is the topic that I'll be focusing on. And we'll be talking about things like common factors in dog fights or why dogs fight in the home. We'll talk about factors that can influence dogs fighting and having those conflicts. We'll talk about the overall prognosis in these cases and what the typical outcome can be depending on a certain number of variables. Because each case is going to differ. In some cases, it's going to be more difficult than others depending on those variables. And we'll talk about how to start changing the behavior and how to get dogs to live harmoniously again using a variety of techniques and management tools. So, and we'll, again, focus on the aspects of differential reinforcement and counter-conditioning with most cases as well because it works in intra-household cases. And so, yeah, that's kind of that in a nutshell. We'll briefly touch upon how to break up a dog fight safely because I think all clients that have dogs fighting in the home should be able to do that safely as well. So quite a bit to cover and kind of squish down into that, those two webinars. But I hope to be able to cover it all in those and we'll have some fun. Now, so the first one's, if I remember correctly, kind of talking through some of the stuff. The second one's more case studies. Is that right? Am I recalling that correctly? Yes. Yeah. I'll be showing a couple of cases that show two dogs that had a history of conflict in the home and how we worked on those cases to resolve it with the clients.

So, and then the first webinar I'll be detailing, again, the reasons why dogs fight, different safety and management strategies. And so, yeah, it's one, the second one kind of feeds off the first. So it's good to, if you can, to attend both of them. So it all makes sense in the second one when we start working with the dogs in those videos. Absolutely awesome. I'm trying to pull up the exact date and time because I should have pulled this up in advance. And of course I didn't. So for anybody listening, they will be on November 1st. That's an easy date to remember. And the time, so the first one is at 3 p.m. Pacific time. The second one is at 6 p.m. Pacific time. And they are currently on the FDSA website if anybody wants to go sign up. That makes it what? 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern time. Yes. If I'm correct, I know. You are absolutely correct. I am Eastern and I have to do that time conversion way more times in a day than I care to count. All right. So I have a couple of questions I usually ask at the end of every episode when I have a first-time guest. So I'd love to work through those. The first one is, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? That's a good question. I would have to say after this weekend, speaking at APDT and then talking to Gene Donaldson, I would say that I'm just really, really humbled and very happy to be able to share the information I have now with others. I think that's how I, of course, learned. I had learned from many folks that were generous enough to share information about how they work with behavior. And I'm just really happy I'm able to do that now. If you had asked me, you know, seven or eight years ago when I was attending these conferences, if I would ever imagine myself speaking to an audience like that, I would say, no way. You know, I'm just like, you know, doing my thing, learning training and behavior. But there is no way I would have thought I would be, you know, speaking to a crowd at APDT and other conferences and traveling the world, giving these workshops. So I think that's the thing I feel really good about is being able to share that information. And I think a big part of it is validating for what other trainers are doing. I hear that a lot. Trainers will come up to me and say, thank you so much for validating what I'm doing now. So because what I'm doing now isn't a whole lot different than a lot of what a lot of other trainers are doing. It's just a lonely world sometimes, this dog training world, because some people are, they don't have a local network or they don't really know anybody else taking aggression cases.

So they're not sure if really what they're doing is the latest, greatest or whatever technique, or if they're doing things correctly. And what I'm doing is just a lot of times is validating. I'm not showing them much different techniques or strategies. They're just learning, seeing that, oh, okay, Mike's doing a lot of what I do. So that's very validating for them. So I feel like that's really something I love about just traveling and meeting other trainers and just kind of making the world a little bit smaller for them. I mean, think about it. Aggression is one thing if you're trying to teach a dog to sit with a cookie, right? It's a whole other story when you start talking about, okay, this dog has some serious behavior problems. And do I really know what I'm doing? And can I really fix this? And yeah, I guess, yeah, that would be really validating to say, look, here's somebody who's doing it and doing it successfully on a consistent basis. So that's awesome. Next question. I'm afraid it's not much easier. What's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? I don't know if it's a piece of training advice, but I think, again, because I'm working in more of the, you know, training and behavior, they kind of do the same. But, you know, when I use the term behavior world, I mean, I'm talking about like just general behavior with all animals. And one of the things I started to really hold down on is just, you know, this empowerment thing. So one of Susan Friedman's quotes is a central component of behavioral health is the power to operate on the environment to behave for an effect. So she's one that really opened the world of empowerment, allowing animals to act on their own environment rather than always micromanaging all their behaviors. Giving them the power of choice can have a significant impact, especially in aggression cases. And so an example I use is sometimes is, you know, we focus on getting the dog to watch me if they're reactive to other dogs, or we tell them to go to a mat or, you know, we add these sort of, you know, behaviors that we ask for, which is, which don't get me wrong. They work really well. So the great alternative or incompatible behaviors is the dogs looking at me. They're not going to be barking, lunging at other dogs, right? Or if they're putting their mats, they're not going to be charging the door. The issue sometimes, though, that it's not fully empowering the animal to act on their own environment. So follow me for a second here.

So, for instance, you ask a dog to go to their mat in the home and say they have a fear of strangers coming to the door. And if I put that mat in a place that's going to not allow them enough distance, so we're now introducing strangers sort of past their critical distance, getting into their critical distance, in other words, this bubble around them, that we are artificially removing their flight option. So it looks great on paper. Go to your mats. That's better than biting the person that comes through the door. However, if we artificially remove that flight option, what we're basically asking the dog is to not move away if you're scared of that person, which doesn't fully empower them to act on their environment. Now, of course, we don't want them charging and biting the person because that's acting on the environment. But we want to preserve that option, that option, that choice of being able to move away. So similarly, with dogs that are barking and munging at other people or dogs on the streets or on a leash, we can say, watch me, watch me. And that, again, works really well. So the dog's focused on the handler. Again, however, that doesn't allow the dog to assess the provocative stimulus or the threat. And what you can run the risk of is that the dog's, you're not really changing the association if the person, the dog is watching the handler. So it's a great alternative behavior. However, again, it doesn't change. It puts us at risk of not allowing the dog to act on their own environment, move away if they want to, or just notice the threat and assess that threat and then move away. So a lot of what I focus on now is allowing the dog to act on their own environment. However, I reinforce desirable behaviors without cueing them. So I'm either capturing behaviors I like. Sometimes I will cue, but most of the time I'm allowing the dog to just say, hey, there's a person over there. I'll reinforce the heck out of those behaviors. So that way the dog starts to learn that, okay, I can do this instead, and that'll pay off for me, and then we can increase distance. So there's a lot of benefit to allowing the dog to have that choice and control over their environment. That's a great philosophy for kind of thinking about really what it's like to be in the dog's shoes for all of that. Absolutely. Last question. So who is somebody in the dog world that you look up to? Oh, boy. I have a long list of people I look up to. I would say I think I have to give that one to Susan Friedman again because, you know, and again, she's not necessarily in the dog world. She's in the animal behavior world. That works.

But, I mean, I'm sure, like, a lot of listeners can agree if they listen to Susan. Like, you could just, you could, like, literally listen to her for hours. She could talk about watching paint dry, and you'd be, like, sitting there with your mouth open. I'm like, wow. And she's got, like, that soothing voice, too. She's got, like, such a soothing voice. You know, you could, like, put a Susan Friedman podcast on and, like, go to sleep to it every night because she's just got a soothing voice as well. But she's just amazing, like, the way she understands animal behavior. So I would definitely put her as one of the top on my list for people I looked up to in the animal behavior world. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Mike. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you having me. This was fun. I look forward to the webinar. Thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Jessica Heckman for part two of our series on adopting an adult dog. For that episode, we'll be focusing on what is genetic and what isn't. That is, what can we likely change? If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in, and happy training. See you next week. Thank you.