E457: 크리스티나 영(Christina Young) - "반려견에게 갈등으로부터 멀어지는 법 가르치기"

And they didn't always match, right? So learning how to integrate them and how we get everybody living happily together. And then when I started my company, I thought I would be doing mostly sport training, but people were like, actually, sports are cool. Well, can you help me with that? That's how we kind of ended up here. Can you share a little bit about kind of your general approach to dealing with dog-dog issues in the home? In the home, uh, when dogs are living together or spending a lot of time together, um, I like to always start from a place of safety. So we put some management in place. We put things in place so that every being in the home, whether it's the humans, the dogs, other dogs, cats, everybody in the home should feel safe. That's always step one. We want to make sure that we're starting from this place where everybody can just breathe and have their needs met at the same time. And then we start building on skills for our dogs, teaching them self-control or confidence building or regulating arousal, whatever it is, those particular dogs need help with in order to integrate with the other dogs. And we teach them now that kind of separate from the group dynamics, we're going to teach them how to move away from things that they're interested in. So for instance, if you have a ball crazy Labrador, if you have a ball in your hand, can your dog still walk away and go to a station or ask to sit? Can they still respond to cues and move away from that ball, even if they're really excited about it? And without creating any icky kind of feelings in our dogs or frustration or anxiety in our dogs while we do it. And once we have all of those skills kind of put together, we add arousal and then we look for safe ways to start integrating the dogs to put it all back together. This wasn't really one of the questions that's never in advance, but just kind of thinking about that for a second. You know, do you find that these are skills that most people with multiple dogs should be working on? Or are these kind of things that you look at, there's a problem and now we're going to fix it kind of thing? I love being proactive when we can. And because I know that I'm likely to bring home dogs with big feelings, any dog who comes into my home is going to learn these skills proactively. Because sometimes if we wait until it's already a problem, those dogs have a damaged relationship and we might not be able to get them back to being good friends. We might only be able to get them to the point where they're considerate roommates.

And if we can be proactive, we're much more likely to preserve the relationship between the dogs and of course keep everyone safe. So I personally prefer if everyone would do it proactively, train them all these skills. But I understand that often people have had dogs in a certain way and done things in their home in a certain way for their whole lives. And it might seem odd for me to say, oh, we need to train these skills when they haven't needed them before. Yeah, it sounds like it would be then even appropriate if somebody has their first dog and is looking at getting their second sports dog or something like that, that these might still be skills they want to consider. Absolutely. When dogs are kind of struggling with tension or conflict at home, what are some of those early signs that maybe people tend to miss that there may be something going on here we should pay attention to? Well, there's the big signs. Obviously, if they're having out in brawls or anyone's getting hurt, you know, those are pretty obvious. But the other signs to look for would be if they're changing habits. So one dog maybe used to sleep in the living room on the couch or in a certain dog bed. And now they're sleeping in a corner or either table or maybe in a bedroom. And they're maybe don't feel safe resting in places where they felt safe resting before. And any changes in habits. The fur dog used to maybe pick away at their food and now they're inhaling it. Or maybe they used to inhale their food and now they're walking away from it. The sleep and eating habits are two things that I look for in the home. And then, of course, if our dog is suddenly developing like leisure activity outside, that could be a result of stress inside the home. Now they just don't have anything left to deal with things outside. Yeah. How do you, I mean, you know, sometimes dogs do have conversations in the home. So how do you differentiate between like some of that normal dog to dog disagreement type stuff? And like when it's becoming a problem. Or is it always a problem? Or are we just like a little too quick to sweep things under the rug? You tell me. I think there is absolutely normal communication that might look unpleasant to humans. Because dogs can growl and start and do things. But you actually use the perfect word when you ask the question. It's because it should look like a conversation. It should look like, oh, hey, can I chew on that bowl with you? And the other dog says, no. And the first dog goes, oh, okay then. And wanders off. And no big, big blow up about it. It's just a conversation. Like, hey, do you want to play with me?

By, you know, like they're jumping and chewing on the legs. And the other dog says, hey, no, I don't. Leave me alone. And the first dog buggers off. Those are healthy communications. If one dog says no and the other dog doesn't listen to that, that's a problem. If one dog is now actively seeking out the puppy or the new dog and creating, you know, aggressive behaviors or seeking them out, those are big problems. Make sure it looks like a conversation about whether they should play or whether they should share spaces or, you know, those types of things. I think dog dog issues are probably way more common than people realize. I think a lot of times, especially in the sports world where people have lots of high drive dogs. Yeah. Create and rotate is more common. And dog dog issues are more common than people maybe are public about or talk about. So, you know, maybe why is that? Why do these issues often kind of develop in households with dogs that we generally think about as well-trained dogs with lots of training, you know, that have a lot of time and work put into them and things like that and perform at a high level? Well, dogs with big feelings. We like the big feelings dogs so that they love running fast and love the ball and love fighting things or love fighting the rat or whatever sport we're training them for. We want dogs with big feelings about that so they do well at them. But those big feelings transfer not just out at a training class or a competition. Those big feelings are in the dog period. And they can transfer to inside the house too, to sharing spaces, to maybe a dog that spins up the door when they're excited can be overwhelming. So one of our big feelings dogs. There's lots of things in day-to-day life that those big feelings can be attached to as well. And a lot of these dogs that were bred more for sports or for working, they aren't the same temperament or they aren't the same genetics even, in my opinion, as dogs that were bred to be family pets from the 80s and 90s. The neighbor's dog was a great pet and had puppies with the other neighbor's dog who was also a great pet, right? The dogs that we breed for working, for sports, they often need a lot more structure at home in order to be polite housemates, in order to not get overwhelmed with things, in order to know how to navigate expecting scenarios. And if we have a home maybe that hasn't, has had like an air flow, like that more low-key temperament, and now they have these dogs, they might not know that the dogs need that structure. And then we put five of them in one house.

It's just so many more areas where things can go sideways. Yeah, yeah. I kind of, I don't remember who, where I heard this analogy, but the idea of like, if you took like multiple high-drive people and shove them on a house together, you'll probably have some conflict too. It's like, yeah, yeah. If anybody's ever been in an involuntary roommate situation, you know. Yeah. So why is it that conflicts at home often feel so much more stressful for owners than, you know, other behavior challenges like, you know, reactivity or whatever that only happen outside the home? Yeah. When your dogs are fighting at home or when you're worried that the night fight at home, you're worried that someone might get hurt at home, it affects every waking minute and sometimes while you're sleeping too. It affects 24-7 your life. It affects your ability to walk through a door. Maybe eat a meal. It affects whether or not you can go on vacation. Who's going to take care of your dogs to keep them safe, right? And it can be something that affects all aspects of your life. It stops you from going out for dinner or it stops you from having friends over. It can affect everything. And that is why we start, when we start training, that place of safety, that management place where we start from, the humans are included in that too. We want everyone to feel safe. We want everyone to be optimistic and positive and breathing rather than stress to the max and filled with cortisol and living on, you know, walking on tippy coves around their house. We want to really start from the place where we can all go into the training with a good mindset. You mentioned kind of structure earlier and I was thinking, you know, structure or management, are they the same thing? Are they different things? You know, how important is management in these cases? And how do you, you know, how do you look at it as part of the training rather than, you know, things aren't working and so it's a sign of failure, right? Yeah. So it really depends on the individual home because every home is different. When someone comes to me with intra-household aggression, like it might be that they have seven dogs and two of them are snarking at each other. Or they might have two dogs who literally want to, you know, unalive each other. And it can be a giant spectrum of what it looks like. So management is when we put things in place to make sure sticky things are going to happen. And it's really important that if that's needed, that it's in place. If it's needed to prevent recusal of fighting or aggression, then we have that in place.

For instance, if we know the dogs will fight over balls. Management is we don't have any balls down right now. Or if we know the dogs will fight upon seeing each other. We might put some management in place so that, I'm not a big fan of crate and rotate, but separating them and, you know, barriers up so that they can exist in the home without seeing each other and without feeling those sticky emotions. So management can be really important. And part of it might be crate and rotate. I just try to get us out of that as quickly as possible for the dogs well-being. But that management just sets us up so the dogs and the people can learn. And then if we have a mistake, if we have an altercation, we did some training when it didn't go the way we planned. We have that safe start to go back to so everyone can breathe and reset. That's a really important part. That's kind of the foundation that training sits on. Are there... Oh, sorry, go ahead. You asked if there's a difference between management and structure. That's what I meant by management. Like, take the balls away if they just fight over balls. Structure for me might mean more like, before we go through doorways, we ask everyone to sit. Before I give everyone a treat, can everyone sit or go to their beds or have some processes around? Around high arousal times in the day. Speaking of high arousal times, are there particular situations, you know, food, resting spots, people, transitions, that tend to increase tension? And are there some, you know, kind of simple environmental changes that maybe somebody can put in place that reduce tension fairly quickly? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There, anytime the dogs become aroused or excited, those are likely spots where we're going to have issues. And it might not be the same for all dogs. Some dogs might be totally fine together when their people come home from work, for instance. And other dogs, that might be a time when we're likely to have fights. So if the dogs are fighting when people come home, we would maybe have them separated. One in one room, one in another room, or sometimes just a baby gate so the dogs can't get to the actual front door. Those things can cut that piece right out until we're able to train it. Or if when we start to get their dinner ready, perhaps that's when the dogs get super excited and underfoot and likely to scrap. Well, let's put everybody on their beds or maybe in their crate or in another room. Let's put everybody in like a control position before we go start getting their meal ready. Oof. Right? We can quickly fix those issues just by putting a few pieces in place.

One of the concepts that I know that you teach because you did a webinar for us and some other stuff is teaching or training dogs to like move away instead of escalating. So I'm kind of curious why that's such a powerful skill and if you could talk about it a little bit. Sure. I love this because if you constantly have to watch to tell your dog, hey, I need you to come away from that situation, you're constantly having to keep an eye on things so that you can step in and tell them how to navigate that scenario. That's going to be exhausting. And sometimes you're going to miss it. Right? So it's much more valuable as a whole life skill. If the dog can just go, oh, this is icky. I'm going to go over there. Or sometimes we like them to become a tattletale. Like, hey, mom, did you see this? Right? So the dog moves away from that situation and comes and lets their person know that something uncomfortable is happening. And when we empower dogs like that, it's amazing how much confidence that they can then have about other harder situations in their lives. So when we empower them to take control of their own bodies in those scenarios, it actually really helps them be better problem solvers and more confident in the big picture. How do you begin to teach a dog to disengage and create space when things feel tense? It feels like such a, like, just even thinking about the idea of that, it just feels like it's a complex training problem. Yes. And most of us, we want to start with that tension. We want to start there. But the training happens away from the tension. So the physiological responses in our bodies when we feel excitement or anxiety or frustration or anger are really similar. We have, you know, increased respirations. We have increased heart rate. Our pupils dilate. Those are all very similar reactions to either being excited or afraid or angry, whatever feeling is going on for our dogs. So when we can find something that our dog likes, and we can train the skill away from the other dogs. So for instance, if you have a ball dog or if you have a food dog, reduce what it is that your dog likes. And we would teach them how to move away from that thing in order to get the thing. Fair enough. Yeah. Did that answer your question? Yeah. I mean, I think so. I definitely understand why that's kind of the foundation, right, to move away from it. Is there anything you kind of add to that that you think would be helpful for people to think about when it comes to that?

So if you're taking them from a – I mean, I certainly can understand how it would be valuable to teach them to move away from the thing they want. But I guess for me, the tricky part would come in when it's time to add the cue of feeling tense or negative emotion. Like, how do you make that leap from – Gotcha. So when we have the skill in place with the dog doing it with their own thing or with their own treasure, we start adding arousal to that situation. And when we feel confident that the dog can do this on their own, then we'll put them safely back into the group scenario. And we'll start adding – with safeties in place if needed, we'll start adding arousal into those situations intentionally. So we're not going to wait until the dogs are angry with each other. We're going to add arousal in there between them. Can one have a ball while the other works on their skill? Can one do something maybe if – a common thing for little dogs is they make a spin when they're excited. Can we cue our little dog to spin and give our dog that was reacting to that their job to do, right? So we would gradually put it into the situation with the other dogs, not wait until they're already super angry. That makes a lot of sense. So part of the reason we're talking about all this, right, is because you're going to offer a new class, Fighting at Home, Teach Dogs to Move Away from Conflict, over at FDSA. So do you want to talk a little bit about the class itself? Maybe who might want to sign up and kind of what you're planning to cover? Sure. I think anybody who has dogs in the home that have big feelings would benefit from these skills. And anyone that's thinking about bringing home another dog, you can train your dogs proactively. These skills so that the introduction to your next dog goes very smoothly. Anybody who likes working with multiple dogs. So step one, it's a three-week course. And the first week, we're going to really work on figuring out that place of safety. And if the dogs have some history of angst between them, we're going to look at ways that we can improve their relationship outside of the scenarios that they, where they're fighting, where they're upset with each other. And then individually, the dogs will start those move-away skills. We'll work on that individually adding arousal. And look at how we're going to put that back together in a safe way. In week three, we're going to apply all of those skills to integrating the dogs back together in areas that might have a little bit of tension. So the baby steps. Yeah. Baby steps.

We'll start one Tuesday and give you a good path of where we're going forward with them. Awesome. That's how to go forward. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and being our second video guest, which is a big deal. Super happy to have you here. Thank you. It's been fantastic chatting with you. Likewise. And thanks to all of our listeners and our viewers for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Alex Woodruff, to talk about the benefits of nose work for senior dogs. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. Or go ahead and hit subscribe over there on YouTube to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone or to receive a notification as soon as the next episode becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fensi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fensi 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.