E96: 트리시 맥밀란(Trish McMillan) - "반려견 바디 랭귀지"

He likes to rearrange things. So instead of getting upset with him, I started taking pictures and giving them names. And that has really helped me cope with having such an energetic and busy and creative dog. And the Doberman, his name is Peter. And the Doberman is Maggie. And we've just been working on fear things with her. She's quite an anxious dog. So we may try a little bit of agility if I ever slow down with the seminar stuff because I think she would like having a job to do. But she's been very anxious about car rides and new things. So she has just been being a dog for the last year and a half. And she's settled into that quite nicely. So I should do more with her. Hey, being a dog is pretty awesome too. So, you know, for her just to be a dog is quite a nice step. So I'm happy to see her more comfortable with life in general. To take things back a little bit. How did you originally kind of fall into or wind up in dog training? Well, I was a horse person before I was a dog person. I mean, we always had a family dog, which I always trained because nobody else was going to do it. But I trained and showed horses for about 12 years. And then I got too broke to have horses after I finished art school. So I went to the shelter. I called up the shelter to see if I could get a dog. And they said, no dog for you. You're a university student. We don't adopt university students. You're sometimes away from home more than four hours a day. We don't adopt to people who are away from home four hours a day. And they're in general very rude to me on the phone. So I went to a breeder and bought a Dalmatian. For the only good reason anybody ever buys a Dalmatian, I wanted a dog to ride beside my horse. To run beside my horse. When I got a horse again, that's kind of what they do. And I knew nothing about buying a dog. And I lucked into this awesome breeder. And I got this amazing dog who did obedience and agility and therapy work. And I spent 13 years with her telling people, Dalmatians aren't all like this. You don't have to. I mean, she loved children. She loved everybody. She was a great, great dog. So I don't know if my first dog hadn't been so awesome. I don't know if I would have gotten so deeply into dogs. But about three years in, I started feeling guilty about having this beautiful purebred purchase dog. So I started volunteering in shelters. And that was the mid-90s. So the rest is history. I still haven't gotten out of the shelter stuff. It sucks you in and you can't ever leave. What got you started on positive training? Obviously, coming from a horse background, that probably wasn't kind of where you came

from. So kind of how did that happen? Well, I didn't come from a conventional horse background because my dad is a minister and my mom is a social worker. So it's not like horses were given to me with lessons and things. I got free horses and I trained them myself and I read books. And I sort of secretly had a carrot in my back pocket a lot of the time. And I had very obedient horses who really liked me. Because nobody ever showed me how to do harsher things with them. So when I got to mention, it was the early 90s. And they said, you can't train a dog until they're six months old because that's how big they have to be to take a choke chain correction. So I trained her at home with cookies and love and then took her to the class with the choke chain. And she was very puzzled and brought her back home and trained her with cookies. So I was really delighted in the mid 90s when the whole positive reinforcement thing started coming around. I read Don't Shoot the Dog and I read The Culture Clash and all of these wonderful books that were coming out. And I thought, see, I was right with that carrot in my pocket with the horse. That's awesome. And it was really cool to be able to find my people and to be able to go to a class without hiding the cookies. You know, I have been looking for people who know more than I do since that time. And I have been downloading as much as I can from their brain. And I take what is useful to me and discard what I am not so good at. And that's what I've been doing since the 90s with dogs and horses. And now I'm working with cats and I have two goats and I just got two chickens. And the cool thing about positive reinforcement training is that if you have things they like, you can get them to do behaviors. It doesn't matter what the species is. If they eat, they can be trained. You mentioned in there kind of you've been working with shelters since the 90s. So, you know, as somebody who's worked extensively with shelter dogs, how much can people really tell about a dog's personality and what that personality is actually like while it's still at the shelter? And how often do people just kind of get it wrong? Well, there's been a real revolution in shelter behavior assessments just in the last few years with some research that's come out. One of the big papers that came out was Patronic and Bradley's paper called No Better Than Flipping a Coin. And what they found is that the two most popular behavior assessments get a whole lot of false positives for aggression and a whole lot of false negatives for aggression.

So even if you think you are assessing them for as well as a human possibly can, you're not going to get real life results. So the more modern way to assess behavior shelters and what I teach in my shelter behavior class with IAABC is to start as soon as the dog walks into your building and get information from whoever found it, get information from whoever's relinquishing it, get information from the officer who seized it because they'll know maybe it lived in a yard with other dogs or maybe it was awesome in the car on the way here or maybe they had it for three days before they brought it in and put up posters. So they often know the person bringing the dog in often knows a lot. And the best predictor of future behavior in a home is past behavior in a home. So I really encourage people to get that information because once they're in a shelter, they may have never seen another dog before. It's kind of like I'm a Canadian and I'm pretty mild-mannered. And if you put me in jail and I had a roommate who kept me up all night and I had there was noise and I was fed things that I'm not familiar with and threatened by people who were not as Canadian as I am, I might show some behavior under those circumstances. That is not typical of what you'd run into if you were to walk into this house right now. What we used to do in the behavior assessment was we would annoy the dogs with every possible trigger they could possibly run into in life all over a 20-minute period in some back room where they have not been before. And surprise, surprise, what they're finding is we were getting a lot of false positives for aggression or we were getting dogs who were so shut down they wouldn't show what they would do in a home. So that's kind of falling by the wayside. So people are starting with intake. They're getting positive feedback from volunteers, from the people who feed the dogs, the people who see the dog at their best. And so rather than – and we take them out to play groups and really see how they are with a variety of other dogs, figure out what kind of friend they would do well with. A lot of shelters send dogs on field trips, send them home for overnight trips. And you can really build a better picture of what a dog will be holding multiple points of view. And I'm thrilled that the ASP just came out with a position statement saying exactly that. So it's very cool to see the formalized assessments being walked back a bit. And dogs being given a little more of a chance. That's awesome. I hadn't heard about that, so that's really cool. Yeah, yeah.

I should send you some references along these lines if people are interested in learning more. Yeah, that'd be great. And I'll include the links in the show notes for anybody who wants to take a look. Yeah, yeah. It's an exciting time to be in the shelter world. And I see with the rise in fostering and a lot of really cool new programs, I think it's only going to get better for shelter dogs. How do you think kind of the work that you've done with shelters and in shelters has influenced your behavior modification work and the other training that you do? I think shelter training makes you very pragmatic. You tend to want to find the fastest, most expedient, the quickest way to get things done. So when it's your dog and you can take a little more time, you can shape more things. But in sheltering, if the dog does not learn the behavior, they might not find a home. And the longer they're in the shelter, the less likely it is that they'll get out of the shelter. So I think it's made me a pretty speedy trainer. I might not be as elegant as some of the competitive obedience trainers that you have, but it's been very helpful in my private practice because I can get things accomplished pretty quickly. I can get any dog to lie down pretty quickly or go to their bed or whatever the alternative behavior we decide is that is going to help them with whatever problem they call me with. And I really recommend for young trainers to go and work with shelter dogs because I've worked with some of the best in the business. I've been doing this for a long time and I've got a master's degree in animal behavior. But you know who's taught me the most is shelter dogs. Absolutely, hands down, shelter dogs have taught me how to handle dogs, how to get behaviors quickly, how to handle a leash, how to handle defensively. They've really, really been my best teachers. And a lot of them are the ones that I've brought home and looked into their little eyeballs and said, how do I work with a dog with this problem? And if they're in your home, you've got to figure it out. So yeah, I really, really encourage people to foster, to volunteer, to take shelter dogs out on field trips if you want to improve your training. They're amazing teachers. And you also meet some dogs in shelters that you won't meet in private practice. You'll meet the ones who are brought in on bike quarantine who you still have to handle. You still have to get them from point A to point B. But these aren't dogs that you would necessarily see a whole lot of living in homes. They're dogs who have not succeeded in homes.

But they still need to be handled in shelters. They still need to be handled as gently and carefully as possible to keep them and to keep people safe. That's kind of what I've been teaching a lot of lately. And the other kind of advantage that jumps out at me is, you know, most people can only have so many dogs in their home at a given time. In the shelter world, you're probably dealing with more dogs more quickly than you might if you're just training your own dogs or even client dogs. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And you get a really wide variety of breeds and personality types. And it's just a wonderful learning lab for trainers. And the more trainers we get into shelters helping the shelter dogs, the better it is for them. So I'm always encouraging people to spend half a day a week at the shelter and you will be better for it. Absolutely. Now, in addition to kind of the dog work, you've done quite a bit of work training other species. I know you mentioned cats and horses, chickens and goats now. How do you think that kind of impacts your training? I think every species I add makes me a better trainer. I think one of the things that horses did for me was they made me really good with fearful dogs. When you're working with a prey animal, with an animal where flight is their first option if they get worried, you learn how to be much more careful with your body and you learn to be not startling with your movements. And horses will also slow you down. You can't make sudden sharp movements. You can't be as sloppy with your clicks and your treats with horses because they're huge. They spook easily. They're always hungry. They're very enthusiastic. So they make you very precise and methodical and slow you down. Whereas your smaller species like chickens will speed you up because you've got to be on it. You've got to have that reward into them quickly or they are on to the next bug. And so I think every species I've added has really taught me something. And I really encourage trainers to just get a cat, get a friend's cat, mess around with them a little bit, teach them a little bit with a clicker. I mean, cats will teach you humility. You cannot make a cat train. I had a Skype session with a client last week and I thought, I will use my senior cat, who's an awesome clicker cat, to show her how to teach hand targeting. And the cat did one hand target, ate one piece of chicken and went right up the dog door. She's like, see ya, not working right now. There's mice calling me. But it was a good illustration. It was, you know, your cat will do this and you can't beg them or force them.

And you shouldn't do that with any species. But yeah, they will. And they're just as smart as dogs. They will learn all kinds of things. They're super, super quick. But you do have to change up your training style and your expectations and do it at the cat's speed. That's funny. Now, I know you chatted a bit with Denise about doing a webinar on canine body language, kind of pending, you know, figuring out the rest of the details. And generally, I think our audience is slightly more dog savvy than probably your average dog lover, right? So what are maybe some of the more subtle dog body language cues that even a fairly dog savvy person might miss? Yeah, there's, I always tell people I do a small section on body language at the, at our seminars. That I do with Mike Shikashio. And I always tell people I could do a whole weekend on body language because if you're going to do one thing to make you a better trainer, especially working with aggression, I think learning how to read dogs as efficiently and quickly as possible. And it's those little changes, these things that happen right before the dog aggresses or as the dog is amping up that if you can read them and defuse it, you never get to the bite. So Mike's always talking about getting the pot off the stove before it starts whistling. You want to see those little bubbles and crackles. A lot of people focus too much on the back end of the dog and they worry about tails and what's going on back there. Whereas I look at the pointy end of the dog. I like to look at the, look for small wrinkles on the top of the nose, look for tension above the eyes. And I think a thing that a lot of people miss, maybe not the FENZY group, but a lot of us teach about dog body language is, are those freezes where the dog is panting, panting, panting, and then stops. So we know that we know the more overt stress signals, the lip licks, the sniffing the ground, the displacement signals, the yawns, those are pretty obvious. But those little micro freezes where the dog's panting, panting, panting, and then closes their mouth. That really often happens before the dog changes their mind about what they're going to do with you. And so I think, I think looking at the stiffness of the body, looking at the little micro expressions around the face. And that's where working with a wide variety of dogs is really helpful because some of us are like, I'm a Doberman person. I'm on my fourth Doberman. I'm pretty good at reading them. I'm on my second pit bull and I've worked with probably thousands of pit bulls.

So I feel like I'm pretty good with some of the breeds I'm more familiar with, but you get a fluffier breed like a Pomeranian or a Chow and they don't have all of those little wrinkles. So getting to know a variety of, and the different ear types. There are dogs who can do more with their ears than others. Like a shepherd can go from all the way up to all the way back, whereas a Cocker Spaniel can only move the base of their ears. So it's very helpful to get to know a wide variety of dogs and know what those micro expressions look like on different faces. But yeah, a lot of people look at the tail and they're, well, the dog's wagging. That means it's happy. But it means they're aroused and there's good aroused and there's not so good aroused. And which one it is, is determined by what the rest of the body is doing. That's really interesting. And just kind of thinking through, like you said, there's a difference between talking about a dog that, you know, you can see all those muscles and all those little body parts moving and something with too much hair to see it and figure out what they're thinking. Well, I think, I think a lot of the times when we see, you know, I'm, I'm a hardcore pit bull person and there's always these horrible articles. And suddenly and without warning, the dog just attacked somebody. And I always wish I had video because suddenly and without warning, a dog's going from friendly to biting. I'm sure it happens. Like maybe if they've got a brain tumor, but if you can read dogs and I would bet that the thing people are missing is, is the freeze is the cessation of behavior. It's hard to read a lack of behavior. It's just so important. And I really urge the people who are listening to this, who educate folks to teach, teach people about freezes because dogs read that really well. And, and humans don't, and very young humans don't at all. Right. Very young humans aren't always so good at reading even the more obvious signs, but. I know. I know. That's why, that's why they get more, more bites than the older ones. And it's, it's so important for us to learn as much as we can about body language and I'm, I'm still learning. Every dog I work with teaches me a little bit more. What about, uh, you know, when it comes to dog, dog play, kind of what is there there that, you know, even, you know, semi dog savvy people might, might not think about. Yeah, that was the other topic that, uh, Denise and I were discussing, um, doing a webinar on because a lot of us, especially if you've got competitive dogs, maybe you don't let them play.

Maybe they only play with their very good friends. So you get to know how your dog plays, but what do you do if, well, what I just did this weekend. I came to my friend's house with one of my dogs and she has two dogs who don't know this one. And so how do we introduce them? How do we know, um, if they're going to get along? So there's so much to learn about dog play. My first paying job in the dog industry was in a dog daycare. I did that for two and a half years. And I'm so grateful for that to this day, because 2000 hours a year of watching dogs play with one another really teaches you a lot. Like often on a level that you're not even processing. You can sort of feel the tension over at the other end of the room and go, Oh, something's going to erupt and you can't even put your finger on it. But it, um, it's been really helpful for me in my shelter work because dog play is becoming a lot more popular in rehabbing shelter dogs. And I foster a lot and I do board and train. So I'm really often bringing dogs in and introducing them. So there, I think it's really great for dog professionals to learn more about dog play. And I think most of us really micromanage it a lot too much. And I think we can get our dogs and ourselves in trouble because if every move they make, they're being interrupted or pulled off by the leash. I don't like letting dogs play with one another on leash if I'm out walking my dogs and they're, they're all pretty dog social. So, but even if they meet a dog, they like, even if I have my most dog social dog, which is the fight bus pit bull, ironically enough. If he, if he meets a dog that he really likes, he can't play on leash. He'll start bouncing around. He'll start choking himself. Nobody makes good decisions while they're being strangled. The leashes can get tangled. I like to do introductions off leash. And the things I look for are the, like dog, dog plays just rehearsal for everything the dogs are going to do in life. So they are fake playing. They are fake humping. They are fake chasing and, and stalking. And a lot of it depends on what they were originally bred for, but. Knowing what's normal for your dogs and figuring out what's friendly and knowing when to step back and just let the dogs be dogs. Because I have, I just, I think about all of the time in daycare, we had a webcam at our daycare. So the moms in Silicon Valley could check in on their dogs. So I spent a lot of time getting, getting dogs to stop humping one another. And I had leashes and timeouts and protocols and warning signals.

And I, I really spent a lot of time trying to make sure mom in Silicon Valley didn't see anything. Happened to, happened to a little fluffy. But now that I'm working with shelter dogs in play groups, my favorite thing to do with a humpy dog is put them with a mama dog who will just say, stop it right now in a way that won't hurt them. And they get it. Like with me going and interrupting and please stop. And you're going to get a timeout and you're going to sit in the naughty dog pen for a while. So as soon as you let them out, they go right back to it. But one correction from a mama dog and they go, oh, I'm going to think twice before I do that. So sometimes they can be, dogs can be one, their own best teachers. But you've got to know when it's okay to let it go and when you have to step in. And that's, that's a fine line that takes some, takes some practice and some teaching. So I would, I would love to talk about that. Cause I've seen just amazing healing happen in shelter dogs, particularly with the fearful ones. If another dog comes along and helps them through it. And my, my little pit bull does a lot of great work with me with fearful dogs. If, if a client has a fearful dog who's social, I'll really often take fear over. And maybe we'll go for a walk around the neighborhood with him and the dog will go, okay, I've got a friend. I'm all right. And often if they play a little bit, I think the oxytocin that comes out in play is an amazing healer of traumatized dogs. And then I, I love, as I am pulling out of the driveway to let them know that he comes from a dog fighting bus after he has helped their, their fearful dog through it. So, yeah, I think, I think dog play is making a big impact in the shelter world right now. A lot of people are using it with their shelter dogs. And I think we could use it with our clients a little more if we have the right dog to help them. Of course, getting that right dog isn't always so easy. But, but absolutely. I know. I know. I got mine from shelter dog play group because he was so good with the other dogs. That's awesome. I said, you need, you need to belong to a trainer. So you can do more good, huh? Yeah. Yeah. He works very hard and he loves his work. And I love having a rescue dog who can, who can help other people's dogs. Yeah. So we're kind of getting to the end here. And there are three questions that I always ask at the end of the interview. Anytime I have someone new on the show. First, what's the dog related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Oh boy. I think it would probably have to be my first Doberman.

Who I adopted after I had to euthanize a really aggressive dog of mine. So the correct thing to do is two days later, adopt a really aggressive Doberman from the shelter. And the one I couldn't help, he really had something chemically wrong with his brain. And this, this Doberman, I really felt like, I felt like she was salvageable. So she was kind of my penance. So I adopted Sarah in 1999. And she did not like men. She did not like you messing with her resources. She did not like having her collar grabbed. If you went anywhere near her nails, she would take, she would snap at you and then take off. Just many, many, many issues. But she was smart and she was sane and she was trainable. And that dog at age eight, I took her into her first and last agility trial. And she was able to do, I think we did two or three courses that day with a male judge, following her around with a clipboard with no collar on her, no leash, no nothing. And just to be able to take that dog through an agility course with all the humans around, with men around and have her just present as a completely normal dog by the end of her life. I think that's probably the thing I'm most proud of. That's a lot of work, I'm sure. It took a lot to get there, but that's pretty awesome. Yeah, she lived 10 years with me and she did not bite anybody. So that was, that was an awesome accomplishment because she was slated for euthanasia, the shelter for aggression. And honestly, if I met her at this point, I probably wouldn't adopt her to a normal person either. She, she really was a lot of work, but she taught me a lot. Sometimes the harder dogs do that teach us the most, right? I think every trainer's got at least one of those in our past. So my next question here is what is the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Oh, there has, there have been so many. I've been thinking about this one since you sent me the question. And it's really hard. It's so hard to pin one down. But the one that keeps popping into my mind is something that Steve White said a long time ago. And it was, whenever you are with your dog, one of you is training the other. I love that. I know. And having Theodore the Pitbull, I think he's a really good people trainer. I think he is most often the one who's doing the training, but it's, it's a fun journey either way. That's excellent. I haven't heard that one before, so I really like that. And my last one here, who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Well, besides Denise, who has taught me a ton about dog human play.

I would say Patricia McConnell's got to be one of my all time favorites. I have to respect anybody who does all of the work to get a PhD. But the thing I love about her is that she walks the walk as well. She does amazing things with her own dogs. And she's wonderful with people. So the trainers I admire the most are the ones who can, who have the whole package, you know, who can, who know the science, who are good with the humans and who can also really, really train dogs well. So, and she's a fantastic writer. So I follow her blog as well as, of course, Denise's. Hey, it takes a lot to be good at all three of those. Yeah, it really does. And I think a lot of people go into training because they hate people and they just want to train dogs. And that's fine if you want to train service dogs and somebody else introduces them to the humans. But for the most part, it's the other end of the leash that is writing you the paycheck. So you've got to make that client happy as well or adopter or service dog handler. So I really think being able to talk to both ends of the leash is super important. So another hat tip to Patricia McConnell who wrote a book by that title, The Other End of the Leash. Yep. Yep. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Trish. This has been great. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I am excited to be working on some webinars for Denise and hopefully we will get a little more stuff out sometime in 2019. We haven't decided on a date yet, but I'm really excited to be working with you guys. It's a huge, huge thing that you're doing to improve training in pet dogs as well as competitive dogs. Yeah, we're super excited about it. That is great. All right. Have a great night. You too. Thanks again for joining us and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with a surprise episode talking about the future of R+. Don't miss it. 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. Music. Thank you.