E399: 사라 브루스키, 이리스 블룸, 킴 팔레르모, 소피 류(Sara Brueske, Irith Bloom, Kim Palermo, and Sophie Liu, DVM) - "짖고 덤비는 개들 살펴보기"

they want um and then they get focused on me instead of on the person that really needs that focus so anyway that's just a side note so that's kind of what i do i have a team that helps me out and uh we do everything we can to make training fun and effective for everyone involved that is always our goal so that's kind of what i do i also teach obviously for you know fenzy dog sports academy and other places and i love working with people and i learn so much from my students i can't even begin to say how enriching it is for me to get amazing questions and see all the amazing progress that the people i work with are actually making on their own maybe with a little bit of my help so um i will be talking about whether feelings are something that we can really change at the barky lungy conference it's one of those things you know there's all those techniques out there that people teach they're all sort of variations of classical counter conditioning and desensitization and there's a lot of different ways to approach changing feelings and some people they'll take some one technique and it'll work for them like it was written for them in their dog and three weeks later everything is perfect and other people three years later they're still not making progress so we're going to talk a little bit about why working through feelings can be so challenging and some best practices to help ensure that you make as fast progress as your animal can make kim hi i'm kim palermo um i have been i work with family dogs as well and then also i've been in sports for a long time and i work with sports dogs i am a certified control unleashed instructor and i think cu is how most of the students at fenzy know me at this point um and i am going to be talking about a particular technique i'm going to be teaching the look at that game for this conference i'm super excited to finally be teaching like a presentation on look at that because i really love the skill and i've had such great successes with some of my in-person students some online students and certainly my own dogs but i also find that it's a very complex skill um you know i think we're not always it's not always taught in a way that's actually going to address the underlying emotions and feelings um so i'm hoping to really lay out a foundation on how we can teach look at that it in a successful way so that um it can really really help a lot of dogs sophie hi i'm sophie lu i'm a veterinarian and i practice behavior medicine um i'm very bad at talking about myself so if you see my name come up

i'm also co-founder of a doberman diversity project and there's a conference about that coming up soon too um but i guess what really brings everything together is that i adore dog training and i adore it because i think it is complicated in a lot of situations and when everything comes together it can feel so smooth and so simple but there's so many pieces that come into it to make it look that smooth and beautiful so i really love the complexity of behavior um of digging into behavior problems and really understanding dogs at a deeper cognitive level so i will be talking about frustration and it is a topic that is so relevant for anyone with dogs um anyone who lives with a pet dog whether it's a sport dog or working dog or just your companion frustration is baked into so many things that we do with them you know just having them on a leash or learning muscle training which is a necessity for life for a lot of situations there's frustration baked into all of that including in the process of learning itself so i really want to dig into that and better clarify you know what it is how it appears in our interactions with our dogs and what we can do to make things smoother awesome so let's dive into the meat and potatoes here guys so if somebody comes to you looking for help and uh they say their dog is showing barky lungy behavior um kind of where do you go from there what what are your first steps or what information do you want next uh so if you want to start us off sure yeah so because i do behavior medicine this is basically like 90 of my cases um what i really like is if they i don't want them to provoke the behavior but let's say you're on a walk and you have a second handler and you're trying to do your best to manage and they're filming you but uh-oh you know your dog accidentally goes above threshold does the behavior we didn't want if that can be captured on video at some point in the dog's life whether it was intentional or not i really like to see it because i think being able to see it helps to clarify what exactly we're dealing with um barky lungy behavior is just a non-specific descriptor right like in medicine we'll say a pet's just adr ain't doing right and it's just a non-specific descriptor just like vomiting diarrhea can be very non-descriptive it's it's a symptom of something but what that something is varies dramatically depending on the situation depending on the individual depending on the individual's personality traits a lot of it is more complex than just all reactive dogs are xyz right so if anyone has video of course don't provoke the dog

but if it got caught you know incidentally i love to see that um if they don't have any video because again don't provoke the dog then i like to kind of parse it out to where do you see it to what have you seen it with and what exactly are we looking at and i find that owners are actually quite perceptive they they can tell you know are the hackles raised um where's the tail if their dog was on a longer leash what would it do if it's ever happened off leash what would the dog do so all of that i think is really really important sarah yeah um one of the first things i do you know obviously getting nice on the dog is is probably one of the most important things um but most of my cases i do uh as board and trains or as day school so the owner actually leaves the dog with me to do a lot of that work and then we spend a lot of time generalizing that training to different trainers at my facility different environments different triggers different everything um and so the first thing i want to do with that dog is one make sure i have a working relationship and the way i get those working relationships and the first thing that's going to transfer back to the owner is what i call focus games so not just taking food but making that food fun and engaging and i ultimately want three different levels of focus games with those dogs i want a high arousal one that i'm going to use right away when they see that trigger it's going to be fun and exciting it's going to help that dog release their energy and their frustration then we use a middle level focus game after that something that helps them calm down a little bit and then we use a calm control focus game after that and these games are going to be different each dog i kind of spend my first little bit feeling out the dog do they like chasing a toss tree do they like trying to catch a tree do they like it when i move backwards and having them come into me do they like that slow delivery because it really pulls their focus and attention back to me whatever it might be i'm going to spend my first time with that dog developing those games because that's going to be my biggest tool we're helping push them into engagement and more control around those things that they might be barking and lunging at the first sarah i have to say that i love that that you're trying to figure out like what the best way is to get their focus in that situation i just love that that's what you start with that's so brilliant so i just have to say that and and dr lu i just have to say thank heavens for vets who

specialize in behavior because you make my life so much better because like everybody else on this panel i do to a great extent work with the barky lungy dog and you know it takes it's a team sport it really is you need everyone to be working together and often that involves a veterinarian i'm blessed that i have two of them right in my area so that is all not answering the question though so if someone does come to me you know i have an intake form and it's always really interesting to me to see what i get on the intake form i have the clients who send me two pages when i say you know what's the behavior you came to me about and i literally get like two eight and a half by eleven densely written pages of all the things that are going on with the dog and then i get the ones who write me one line my dog bit someone i'm gonna need a little more information than that no matter what i always ask for more information but like dr lu i'm a big fan of video if it can be captured incidentally and not intentionally set up which is something that i say like 10 times to people like if you can get me video but don't make this happen don't put anyone at risk you know all of those things because one of the issues is that for many people they're either so stressed or so embarrassed in the moment that their animal you know other emotions too in the moment that their animal's reacting this way they often don't actually see what is happening so if i ask them to describe it i may not be able to get much information and since i work remotely with 90 maybe more of the people i work with i'm gonna need to get eyes on this somehow and video is usually a really great way to do it then there are situations where you know it's a really like when someone's at the door it's a very predictable indoor thing those ones you know sometimes i actually get to see them on video during a session if someone happens to knock at the door but definitely getting actual eyes on the behavior so you can see what the topography of that behavior is like and also what are you what are the antecedents and consequences that are involved in that because a lot of behavior isn't just straight antecedent behavior consequence but if we can at least figure out is there a predictable result that the dog is getting by barking and lunging is there a predictable trigger that is starting the barking and lunging that gives me something to at least dig into and then start playing with so that's sort of where i start is trying to figure out what's the context for the behavior

and if i can get video that makes it a lot easier and then what does the actual behavior look like is it barking and lunging but they don't actually move closer are they backing up are they air snapping you know what's what's what exactly is going on so those are some of the things i look for a lot of what everyone else said um i did i do so i start with um a zoom consult so um my client will fill out an intake form so in addition to what everyone else said things i do like to get information about is you know the dog's history um you know when they were last seen by a veterinarian and what their routine looks like more about their breed and all those kinds of things i want to find out more about what the dog's life is like and often i find that a dog you know it might just be something simple like their needs aren't being met or you know they're they have discomfort or pain or whatever it might be where it's ultimately not really a training issue but more of a lifestyle issue so i like to gather that information as well because sometimes then i can just give clients an easy fix um not necessarily an easy fix but some quick changes um or you know first go see a vet to rule out pain and discomfort before we start working together um so that's something else i do i do find that a lot of clients want me to see the behavior and i do you know there's definitely value in getting video um but i also try to help them understand that i don't necessarily have to we don't have to replicate it so they'll say you know well when we meet in person is there going to be a dog there because that's when my dog barks and you know that's not what my goal is at that point you know when we start meeting i want to see you know that the dog will take food and that they're comfortable in the space that we're meeting at and those kinds of things so um video is great but i don't necessarily need to you know we don't need to replicate the behavior in order for me to be able to help with it are you yeah i totally agree and i totally agree with kim as well i think the really important thing especially in this day and age of social media is to emphasize like do not provoke your dog and set up a situation to create the video because we've seen a million reactive quote unquote reactive behaviors like we don't need to see your dog doing it it's fine you say it happens i believe you but you know as a reed said like if you have video that shows the topography of the context in which it occurs that is really revealing that is really helpful just to see you walk on a

street normally with no stimuli that is actually really revealing that's interesting that's not something i would have thought about just having kind of a neutral video as well as like a comparison point yeah i'm gonna jump in and say that it's actually surprising to me how often you know they're like well we weren't able to get a reaction and i'm like okay but you took some video can i see that video and there are little subtle signs that are more obvious you know we we have spent a lot of time training our eyes as it were to find all these subtle signs of stress our clients often haven't you know focused on that in particular it's not that they can't learn it it's just that they haven't delved into it yet and you'll see things that are really interesting and i will also say a veterinary checkup is actually one of the things that is sort of baseline for all of my cases it doesn't even matter if there's behavior issues one of the first things i ask people is when did the animal last see a vet and what did the veterinarian have to say so i mean i think those medical rollouts are hugely important and i will stop there um all right so safety first right so what precautions do you guys like to have in place or do you feel that it's important to take when we're talking about a barky lungy dog both you know if you are training in person to keep yourself safe um but also like in terms of just keeping the dog more comfortable or the handler more comfortable uh kim you want to start us off yeah i'll if so i often will meet clients at my facility at my training facility um but if i believe that the dog isn't going to be comfortable there we're going to start on you know we're going to work virtually and work on our friend foundation skills until i believe that the dog is comfortable coming um i do have some um team members who work for me that will actually go into client homes i'm not doing that currently um but i do meet with a lot of people at my facility so often i'll set things up you know we've got lots of barriers and different ways to help the dog feel more comfortable more often than not i'm working with dogs that aren't necessarily you know barky lungy towards people in a way that's going to be you know dangerous for me but i don't want them to be uncomfortable and do that the thing is i do know how to do all the right things to make a dog feel comfortable pretty quickly only once in a while i'll get a dog that's like you're being too good and that's that's weirding me out like um but i'll

you know behave accordingly in a way that's going to help the dog stay very comfortable but what i'm ultimately looking for is that the dog is going to start to explore on their own that they're going to become curious that they're going to start to move away from their owner um maybe take some food so i'm looking for those kinds of things um i do also so depending on the individual dog and this might be something that some people disagree with but i will often to help them feel more comfortable i'll incorporate one of my dogs into the session um i have very socially savvy i have two very socially savvy dogs and they're very good at helping another dog feel more confident and i work a ton with um fearful puppies so i am i mean i think my colleague jane probably works more hours than i do um building confidence in puppies so i will often do that and i'm able to understand if the dog is appropriate for my dog and my dog also communicates very well with me if she doesn't feel comfortable um which fortunately i've never put her in that situation but i do find that that helps a lot so it almost goes in line with you know amy cook's play way in that if my dog can get some play going you know with either the adult dog or the puppy it it changes so much and i necessarily i can't necessarily do that as skillfully as my dog can um so i find that that can be very helpful in just allowing them to be more confident and then we're able to get some some progress made um yeah i as far as safety and precautions i come from a very conservative standpoint i suppose you could call it because you know in veterinary medicine it's like safety first and that that is important not just for physical safety but for legal reasons because i have i tend to see the more extreme cases right so i have dogs with bite histories and i have dogs who are at risk of bites and so for me i think i tend to take a very conservative stance on this and require that we talk about muzzle conditioning for essentially all dogs even very friendly dogs just because there is probably i'm willing to bet there is probably going to be a point in every single dog's life where they will be muzzled for a treatment of some sort in a medical setting you know even if we do cooperative care with a really friendly dog the facility might require muzzle conditioning in that situation for minimal or low restraint handling so i tend to to emphasize that to lean on the side of physical barriers like double gate system or an x-pen system or muzzling

double leash system you know ways to ensure that a bite does not happen because once a bite does happen for legal reasons and for safety reasons it's just it's so much more complicated and so i i tend to lean on that from the very first get-go tara yeah i just want to emphasize more what kim said about the buddy system we use the buddy system quite a bit with our dogs at the facility and foster dogs i have i've got such a fortunate group of dogs that generally i can find one that's going to help bring out the best and it might be a client dog that i have at the facility for the day already or it might be one of my dogs but that is such a huge thing for those dogs that are exhibiting barky lungey feelings and behavior in underconfident situations but one of the things that we do and this is coming again from the board and train perspective so we don't tend to do in-home lessons or private lessons as much as you know as follow-ups for a board and train is tends to be the only time that we'll do those off those services um we do a couple of days of our day camp program so if i know i'm gonna be getting a dog in that might be a little bit nervous around people or might have some environmental sensitivities i always recommend that they do two to three days of day camp at our facility before they drop off for the boarding program and so that way the dog is getting used to us we can do little fun things throughout the day and then they go home that same day and so it's kind of just easing them into the situation getting used to our handling getting used to our facility and the other thing that we enact for all of our dogs that have a little bit of fearfulness and uncertainty to people even if it's just the tiniest little bit we have a neutral handling policy and so a lot of that is done we're not doing the typical coaxing them coming up to us it's simply we pick up the leash that the owner has put on and the owner's not involved because a lot of times the dog will have some extra feelings when their handlers are or their humans are by them and we just go for a sniffy walk like we don't acknowledge the dog we have two leashes on to prevent any issues and we just go walk with the dog and a lot of times with us just walking with the dog they start realizing that oh we're moving together nothing bad is happening this is just a sniffy walk they can disengage and sniff to their heart's content i'm not asking anything of them i'm removing all pressure i possibly can do and we're just going to move together as a team and generally by the end of one or two sniffy walks we can get some food and

see if they'll take food and we can start asking a little bit more of them and often those sniffy walks are done with a dog that already has a relationship with us so they're seeing that dog model confident behavior to us and if they see that dog model confident behavior to us they're more likely to go oh this person can't quite be that bad and so our neutral handling policy is has done a lot of good work with a lot of dogs great i just have to say i love the i the term neutral handling it's such a such a nice way to look at it uh so first i'm with dr lu i think every dog should be muzzle trained full stop that's the end of the sentence every dog should be muzzle trained and because i have great confidence in that concept myself i often wind up selling muzzle training so to speak selling it to people who have barky lungy dogs not so much as i'm afraid your dog because they'll be like but my dog is a good dog that has nothing to do with it i put a muzzle on everyone it makes everyone feel safer it makes everyone safer because the worst that you can get is a muzzle punch and not puncture wounds i do discuss if i so not every case some barky lungy dogs they're just a lot of bluster they're the emotional underpinnings sometimes don't really mean that any injury is likely but if my dog barks and lunges at a passerby and they fall over at least here in the state of california i can still be sued for that so i talk to people about how you don't even necessarily need a bite to wind up in the you know animal control system having to address possibly having your dog labeled as a dangerous dog and then all the implications that go with that you could lose your homeowner's insurance you could lose your home so those are things that i'll use if i need sort of if some people are just like right on board they're like i get it let's take these precautions let's wear two leashes which is another one that i recommend a lot because one leash gets pulled out of your hand you still got another one if they're resistant then i will often sort of talk to them about the potential risks even with a dog who doesn't bite and then one of my top priorities is making sure everyone in the household is safe i find in a lot of these cases i'll get like i have a case that's been going for a while where there's one person in the family who is completely immune to any of the behavior issues that are coming up the dog never threatens them the dog never barks at them the dog never you name it and everyone else is getting bitten or shoved into corners with a barking dog or whatever else is happening so now i have a

human household where a lot of the humans are feeling unsafe and if they're not feeling safe then we're not going to be able to make progress so i'm always also considering how can i make sure that both strangers are safe from anything that might happen whether that's you know strange other dogs strangers that are other humans and also for those who are in the household and again that includes dogs is there a child who's feeling threatened by the dog is there another dog who's being bullied for lack of a better term by this dog because if everyone doesn't feel safe we're not going to make any progress at all and that's i have the first thing i have to do is reduce that overall stress for the household so i try to look at safety very holistically and and i will add since i'm usually not there in person i at least don't have to worry about me being the potential bite on this dog if you know what i mean so how much here does the you know we got some pretty extreme different different answers in the last one which i think is a good thing but how much does kind of the underlying emotion or our read on the dog's underlying emotion that's kind of causing that barky lungy behavior matter as we're talking about all this stuff right does it impact you know your plan for working on the behavior um does it impact how you're thinking about things i would guess yes um iri mr soft well so i'm gonna say yes and no and i'll start with the no part um you know we've all talked a little bit about how there's stress and arousal involved in these behaviors and i'm always going to be looking at that what is the arousal level how can i lower the arousal level because usually barky lungy behavior suggests of a level of arousal that's higher than ideal i guess is what i will say and this is where the yes part comes in that behavior could be coming from a very positive emotion or from a very negative emotion and you know positive emotions are excitement and a desire to interact and i don't know if a desire to interact is an emotion but let's call it an emotion and you know it's frustration that i can't get to it because i want to play with it as opposed to this thing scares me or i'm i want to go over there and attack it because you know it's a squirrel which is a completely reasonable way for in a dog to feel by the way um or i'm frustrated because there's a fence between me and it and i don't feel comfortable about it and a lot of animals seem to swing between different emotions when they're in barky lungy mode and they might start out oh i really want to see what it is i really want to go and interact

but then when they're prevented they slip into frustration and then that frustration tips them into more and more negative emotions and ultimately they get really really agitated and unhappy so if i'm lucky enough to have a barky lungy dog where it's almost certainly coming from a i just desperately want to play i'm i'm seven months old and everybody looks like my next best friend then i'm gonna actually have to change what i use as reinforcement reinforcement if a dog is afraid one of my primary reinforcement thoughts is going to be how can i create distance when i see behavior that i like how can i teach them to feel more comfortable because they know they can move away whenever they want to but if i have one of these dogs who just wants to say hi to every other dog on the street and maybe the other dog doesn't necessarily want to see them then i have to find those times when i can allow interaction to reinforce all the times that the dog is giving me whatever i'm asking for instead of just lunge over and greet for some of these animals also you just want to slow them down they're so excited that they go in like a you know freight train and then the other animals are kind of stressed by that like this is this is too much and then they get a bad reaction and then ultimately they start associating i approach a dog and bad things happen and again we're tipping into negative emotions so the emotional valence of what's going on the emotional underpinning is definitely very important and at the same time usually the first thing i'm doing is trying to figure out how to lower the arousal level so sometimes lowering the arousal level is is very similar even with completely different emotional underpinnings to the behavior and other times you can't lower the arousal the same way for two dogs so like everything else it's kind of that the the mixture of art and science where you're trying to figure out what's going on and what's the best solution for the animal in front of me right now kim i agree with um well all of that and that there is an importance in understanding the underlying emotions as a certified control and leash instructor i find that patterns in particular are going to work for kind of whatever underlying emotion we have so they're creating predictability they're creating consistency clarity they're putting the dog in control so they're giving them agency so if you have that you know frustrated adolescent dog who just wants to go bounce on everyone's head it's going to help them because we're creating a predictable

pattern for them to stay in and then if you've got that nervous dog it's going to help them because you're creating predictability for them and they're fearful because of the lack of predictability so i'm always it's i'm always so curious and i always want to know what the underlying feelings are for any dog that i work with um you know just because i find it interesting but ultimately um i am going to use similar skills for all of the dogs and um i find in particular the cu skills really help regardless of what those emotions are sophie yeah i i agree i think the answer is yes it matters and it's interesting but does it impact my plan typically not because and i don't think that's a bad thing that's like you know if your animal is painful whether it's because it's sore because it just went on a super long hike or it has arthritic pain our options are basically anti-inflammatories right and i don't think anyone would say that's a bad thing i don't think anyone would say that our treatment for both of those musculoskeletal or orthopedic conditions are the same drug um and so i i know a lot of people put a lot of weight into the underlying emotion that's driving the behavior and really spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure it out i think this tends to come more from the owner side of things like they really want to know why but at the end of the day i tend to agree basically there is um challenges with stress and arousal and probably negative emotions and but at the end of the day does it really impact the training plan that much probably not in most cases um i think what impacts the plan more is how the dog views reinforcement how the dog can take reinforcement and a lot of this does depend on personality and individual characteristics um and and how that individual dog copes with stress as like a general principle there are some dogs who can be inhibited and there are some dogs who can be activated by stress and i think that does tend to impact my training plan more rather than the fact that one dog is frustrated and happy causing barky lungy behavior versus another dog is extremely distressed and fearful causing barky lungy behavior i think their individual characteristics personality traits sensitivity to reinforcement frustration impulsivity all of that like their personal being to me matters more and how we approach the training plan sarah yeah so i think where i tend to use the underlying emotions is when i need to strengthen my and condition my reinforcers so if i have a dog who is about food and i've tried making that food

exciting i've tried creating gains with that food i've tried you know putting that food in patterns and it's still just not quite where i need it to be to be able to do the work i want to do i'm going to use emotionally what they find reinforcing so is that creating distance is that going to be going to say hi and i'm going to use that to reinforce my reinforcer so if you eat this food you can go say hi if you eat this food we're going to leave this room if you eat this food da da da da and so that way i can use the thing that the dog inherently finds reinforcing in that situation to help make my training and my existence and my engagement more reinforcing so that eventually i can fade that bit and just use the reinforcer that's convenient and easy for me to use which is mostly food or toys let's talk about like life view right zoom out a little bit here uh do dogs who display these types of behaviors are we going to be dealing with this for the life of the dog are there you know times when they're 100 better whatever we're using better to mean in this case um what does that look like you know when we zoom out and we think about like picture for the future right sophie you want to start us up it depends so it depends on for me i really do like to focus on the individual dog and who they are are in terms of personality in terms of what they find reinforcing as individuals um as far as the context in which they live and their family expectations so i think the best way to explain it from my point of view is what are the owner's goals what is the stock capable of and can we arrive at a negotiated agreement between those two and if we can then yes i think we're we could we could call them better whatever that means right um can they meet their owner's goals 100 percent oftentimes the answer is no because i think a lot of times we have unrealistic expectations and goals so and that's that's normal that's fine um but i think to some extent all dogs need to be managed for life right even your happy friendly dog needs to be managed in some extent for life so i i don't think it's a negative to say that barky lungy dogs need management for life it's just the sort of the reality of having dogs in an urban environment um and kind of going back to arit's point i have had cases where they just jumped on someone and that started a whole cascade of legal action and it could be that we're both in california i don't know but because of those experiences i think all dogs need to be managed for life

at least if you live where we live so i don't think it's a bad thing it's just um sort of the reality of human society yeah yeah i think it all depends on the dog i agree with that i think you know it depends is going to be a big answer for this one um you know if i look at my own personal dogs so i have zuma who has always been barky lungy um she gets uncomfortable when dogs are in her space and you know i was you know if i'm managing it it doesn't exist but now that she's older she's 13 years old like yeah i kind of let the training slide and i don't manage it nearly as much and you know she's kind of funny when she's an old lady and she's crabbing at other dogs at the vet clinic when i'm holding her like this keeping everybody safe you know like at that point she's 13 so you know letting it slide yeah she does require a lot more management now but then if we look at you know famous my malinois who was reactive as a puppy you know defecating urinating when she see other people um lunging growling everything as a nine-week-old puppy she doesn't exhibit any of those symptoms anymore i don't even have to think twice about her when i'm out in public with her um and it's been that way for almost her entire life now so you know i did the work when she was young i respect who she is as a dog meaning she doesn't want to be pet by strangers she loves the people she loves and she returns that trust that i'm showing her by knowing that i'm not going to put her in those situations so she doesn't need to bark and react and and show those those scary signs to keep people away from her so it's kind of a mutual thing yeah my management for her is if somebody has to pet her i say no she doesn't really like to be pet you know but if you want to toss her a treat she would love that you know so that's the management extent that i have to do with that dog and she's perfectly happy at 10 years old and hasn't shown her activities since she was probably six seven months old so i think it all depends on the dog and how the handler kind of views what management is and you know like sophie said what management is what you guys negotiate as what can be done um and kind of i think our job as trainers is setting that expectations for them and making sure that we are setting them up for success as far as what tools we're giving them and um making sure they know the reality of basically owning dogs yeah you read well i'm gonna agree with everyone it depends and there's a reality to owning dogs um i'd like to add the thought that in many cases our task is to help the person maintain safety with that

dog and by the time we get to the point where i might say are they better where better maybe means we can walk a lot closer to other dogs or we can have a guest enter the home as long as we've as we're behind a barrier with a chew or whatever that might look like we get to the i think that we meaning me and the client we get to the point where it's a habit for the client now too and they might not even find it so stressful and i actually do get the clients who say to me oh it's just easier to just put her behind the barrier and hand her you know uh whatever to chew on and then i don't have to think about whether she might suddenly decide when the person gets up to go to the bathroom to go bark and lunge at that person and so often i find that the humans just they get so used to the management if we're encouraging them to follow that management plan whatever that management plan might look like they get it to the point where it's pretty close to habitual for them it's comfortable it works for them it works for the dog and the only times when i might resist continued management is when i feel like it's actually slowing the animal's progress which is a really rare thing but there are times when you have that dog who who just is shy and as long as nobody reaches for them they're going to be okay but if we keep tucking them in the other room they're never going to learn to feel comfortable around that person so we put in too much management initially and now we need to track it back a little but i agree that generally you know management is for life for all of our dogs unless we're blessed to live in the country on a farm basically kim yeah i have collies so the barky is always going to be there i'll never get rid of that um i mean yes it depends i think you know building on what sophie said our environment these days for our dogs can be very challenging to keep a dog under thresholds when you're out for a walk when there's you know dogs you know barking out windows or behind invisible fences and you know all those things that the additional traffic and people it's so hard to ensure that our dogs are always going to be comfortable and if discomfort is what's going to create that barky lungy behavior it can be hard to to avoid that so i do try to help my clients understand you know we set expectations very early on as far as you know how much progress we'll make and it also depends so much it depends on the dog but it also depends on the the handler the owner and the work they're going to put

into things how much they're going to manage things you know and and and their progress the progress is going to depend so much on them we have so many clients who will ask you know how many sessions will it take for you know for me to reach my goal and it's it depends so much but a lot of it falls in the hands of the handler themselves and so we have to you know keep that in mind when we're setting goals and expectations okay so i've got one more uh kind of big question here and i do think it's kind of a big one especially for our audience but how do you decide whether it's safe for a dog who exhibits barky lungy behavior to do dog sports sarah yeah so i have a lot of experience with this um a lot of my dogs the ones i actively compete in trial with um you know rescue dogs i'm a little bit barky lungy for different reasons and i do have experience with one of my dogs deciding that dog sports weren't right for him um and so the when i reached that conclusion we'll just say this was one of my first dogs and so my confidence as a handler was that i didn't think i would be 100 able to call him off of a trigger when he was awfully shurning agility and so while it was fun for us to do agility and it was great for us to bond together in that sport and selfishly i would love to keep him in agility he he loved it so much and he was really good at it i mean he was a great dane so he's as good as great dane can be but he was a very athletic great dane um selfishly i would love to have that but when he would go up to a bar setter and bark at them it was a scary experience for that bar setter and while no he didn't ever do anything that was dangerous that is emotionally damaging to a volunteer at a dog sport at a facility i love in a community i love and so whenever i have a dog where i'm not a hundred percent confident that if i call that dog's name or i know i attempt to engage that dog away from their trigger and i'm not a hundred percent they're confident they're going to re-engage with me or i'm gonna be able to control that dog they're not going to do the thing and it could be for whatever reason it could just be a young puppy you know playing disc for the very first time where we can play puppies and i'm afraid they're going to run off and say hi to another dog they're still practicing a habit i don't want them doing in the future and if they run up to another dog that is not so welcoming now they have a bad experience on their hands so while selfishly i'm like yes all dogs should be doing dog sports all dogs

should be out there you know showing what rescue dogs can do and well-bred dogs can do and they should be out there off the couch like that is my life ambition is to get more dogs off the couch playing games with the handlers you have to think about the safety of the dog you have your emotional safety is important too as well as the safety and emotional well-being of those around you that are in love with that sport just as much as you are and so for me zuma that border collie i was talking about who's 13 now who crabs at other dogs in the vet clinic when i'm holding her she competed she had a long career competing in agility and disc and her reactivity was very well managed with the games i created for her and a hundred percent was able to call her off of her her triggers even if they were barking at the sidelines as she was running past so for her yes she was a barky lungy dog who had she was a world champion in frisbee had a very successful career you know doing dog sports but that great dane i was not convinced that i was going to be able to manage his his emotions and his triggers and engagement with me in those situations so we played agility in the backyard where it was fun for him and way less stressful for me i love that and recall is one of those things that because i have um i have off-leash trails around me you don't get to be on an off-leash trail unless i am 100 sure you will drop the deer carcass or call off of the coyote that just raced past because i can't afford that risk and so what sarah just described is the sort of dog sports equivalent of that and i think it's so brilliant um i also ask you know what what sport is it some sports like if you're doing say canine nose work there's usually not another dog in the space with you but as you advance up the ranks of canine nose work you do more and more work that is off-leash potentially and especially if you're doing other kinds of scent uh sport i guess you could say there are there are different kinds of sports where the animal is off leash and then you really do have to look at can i get that recall can i get that dog back because if i can't the risk is really really really high um i also think it depends on your community i think there are some communities where if you have a barky lungy dog all everybody in that community knows everybody else in that community we've all been competing agility together for 15 years every once in a while there's one of these dogs it's a little barky lungy and all of our dogs are like yeah yeah whatever you're barking at me i don't care if that's the environment then i'm going

to be a little bit more willing to take the risk than if it's a bunch of people who maybe also have dogs who are going to overreact back and then things could spiral upwards and i don't know what's going to happen so i think sarah brought up such a good point about how so much of it has to do with what's the impact on the other people you don't want the volunteers stressed you don't want the other competitor dogs stressed you don't want the other competitor humans stressed but there are situations where it's it's the kind of crowd where it's okay if there's a little bit of sort of out of place behavior and then you start asking what's the point where that's too much or it's too dangerous has anyone ever actually been injured by the dog in that case i'm gonna just kind of put a hard no on it unless you come up with like we have a there's a shelter rescue it they do do municipal dogs technically they're a shelter near us that um has they call it inappropriate agility and they actually have an agility course and they have an agility instructor and they run the dogs one at a time and everybody else is crated and away when they run the agility so if you can come up with something like that you still get to run agility maybe you're not competing in trials but if you don't have a backyard big enough for agility which los angeles most people don't at least it's an opportunity the other last thing that i'll mention is i also want to look at how it affects the dog so if my barky lungy dog goes to a trial and everything's kind of okay but he's then a mess for the next three days maybe the dog sports are increasing his arousal and stress to a point where it's unsafe for that not unsafe unhealthy for that dog it doesn't support their well-being i think that's a really great point kim yeah i'm gonna build on that because i so my dog jane you know i recently competed in a obedience trial and she can be very barky lungy out in the real world in certain situations so we've made tons of progress but in the ring she's you know the she loves the game and she's able to focus on me and she can manage just fine and i don't get barky lungy behaviors if i did i you know i can't imagine that i would bring her back in the ring until i felt like i could work through that so i think this is where the underlying emotions actually are going to come into play more than ever um my puppy sunday she's a year old and i'm doing confirmation with her and she just sasses in the ring and we'll start talking and ultimately though i'm embarrassed um i don't believe that those feelings are so much

concern um or worry there are certainly things that i'm addressing and i'm trying to help her through but it doesn't feel to me as though it's a an emotion that i don't really want to have her you know be experiencing and of course i do 100 agree that we have to look at everyone who's around us as well you know the other exhibitors and their dogs i know you know i i think um hiking off leash is such a great example because that is where you see a lot of barky lungy behavior and um you know i have my husband and i have we have five dogs and three are mine one's a family dog i guess and then the golden retriever is his and i've taught i've brought the golden retriever on hikes and she just you know she'll run up and kind of do these big woofs and i have stopped bringing her on hikes she gets plenty of interaction and fun things to do with him um you know my dogs are already trained to be off off leash i don't feel like training another one um but i don't think it's fair to have her do that to other dogs i mean she she did it once and i i went home and i was like i'm not i'm not doing that again because i i couldn't sleep that night because i felt so bad and the other person and dog they were perfectly fine but we really need to consider you know what this is doing to other dogs and i think that's a big part of our barky lungy problem is that we just our dogs are being shouted at a lot and so being mindful of that is going to be you know really important when it comes to dog sports or any activity that you do with your dog sophie yeah i agree with that completely um i i had similar thoughts as kim where you know before does it impact do the emotions impact a treatment plan i don't think as much but does the do the emotions impact the decision about whether this dog should be in a sport or compete i think it does because if the emotion driving the behaviors is an emotion that would really push or prompt this dog to put teeth to skin for me i think that's a pretty hard red line and we could find other sports that are appropriate like maybe nose work at the levels where the dog is kept on leash where it's one one dog run at a time or a fully fenced in field where there is no other dog on the field those could be safe options for management but if the uh if that emotion is there and that's driving the behavior then there's certain hard red lines i think for me um but i also agree it really their behavior even if quote unquote benign and not you know quote unquote malicious in the sense that the dog uh would be prompted put to put tooth to skin just the act of being charged at is so

traumatizing for others my old dog just got charged at three times three days in a row in our neighborhood and i'm just like forget it we're just going to bring treats everywhere i'm going to bring my deterrent and we're just going to avoid dogs for the rest of your life because that was just so unfair and i don't blame you for how you feel at this point so it you know i think all of those things have to be taken into account when making the decision about whether to take your dog into a ring if it does have barky lunging behavior all right um i want to give everybody just a kind of final chance to share any like last thoughts or a key point maybe you kind of want to leave listeners with um iri you want to start us off sure um i think that barky lungy behavior is a big issue these days for and so many of the reasons for that have been discussed actually in this last sort of hour um and i'm a big fan like sophie i will say for me for my dogs um i joke that if a meteorite fell at my feet my dog would look up at me and say i'm getting a treat for that right i always have treats on me we get treats for everything i mean i i'm i'm i'm i'm exaggerating a little you know once once we've got a routine going i'm not handing the dog a treat every three seconds but i had this dog in my life at one point who was really really very beautiful and we once had a woman literally just walk up to us out of nowhere grab his face in her hands and plant a kiss on his nose and all i could think was thank heavens he doesn't have an issue with people because that could have been a real mess and as soon as she walked away he got like 10 treats in a row you are such a good boy for not biting that woman who deserved to be bitten maybe i'm exaggerating a little but i was feeling pretty threatened at the time so i will say i don't think it hurts at all find what's reinforcing for your dog that particular dog did really love food it didn't matter the quality of the food was all good find something that helps your barky lungy dog think that thing that normally makes me bark and lunge it predicts food and i'm just going to have food on me all the time as a handler so that i can hand that to them when that trigger appears in general going back to something that just got said try to make sure your barky lungy dog doesn't produce the next barky lungy dog and also know that having a barky lungy dog is not your fault it's a really really common thing in today's society it has a lot to do with the way that dogs are handled in our modern world tim so the this conversation has got me even more excited

about my presentation because i'm looking forward to offering you know some sort of solution to barky lungy behavior in the sense of you know with the look at that game we're not just changing behavior um it really ultimately comes down to having a conversation with your dog about the environment and having your dog you know learn the ability to converse back to you so that you two are more engaged and you know it goes along with you know what arit said about you know having food with you and um you know pairing things with food and we're just kind of bringing it even to the next level because we're turning it into a conversation so um i'm really excited to to dive into this even more um after this conversation sophie it's been a pleasure speaking with everyone here and i am excited to dive into frustration because even for the non barky lungy dogs there's so many points where i have average pet dog being very frustrated with their handlers or their um restrictions or their schedules and so even if you don't have a dog that's actively barking and lunging frustration is out there and just the act of learning is frustrating so how can we make things smooth smoother and simpler for our dogs while creating more and more complex behavior chains so i'm excited for that awesome sarah yeah i just want to say that if you are experiencing your very first reactive dog know that the trainer that you are working with likely started in your shoes and that is probably the reason they were prompted to become a dog trainer most of the dog trainers i've spoken with i have relationships with their origin stories are because they had a barky lungy dog and that kind of let them down the rabbit hole and on dog training and that's why they are helping you and so don't feel embarrassed by it it's so common it's a it's a big thing and working through it with your dog is just going to strengthen your relationship even more i like that that's a great note for us to end on thank you all so much for coming on the podcast thank you so much it's been an honor and a pleasure to speak with all these amazing women awesome all right and thank you uh again to all of you and to our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week 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 fenzy dog sports academy special thanks to denise fenzy for

supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by bensound.com the track featured here is called body audio editing provided by chris lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training