E88: 린다 케이스(Linda P. Case) - 반려견 영양학

So I'm doing quite a bit of tricks training with Alice and Cooper. And my current goal, Alice is being trained to scoot backwards as a, like a backwards crawl under a bunch of, it's like basically a backwards army crawl. And she loves that. And Cooper is doing a forwards army crawl. And my goal is to get them to do it together. Again, not going so well, but that's my, that's my ultimate idea. And also, I just want to mention that our school, I kind of separate these two. Our school primarily works with what I kind of call the highly interested pen order. We have folks who want to do basic manners training and oftentimes want to do more, but they're not generally dog sports folks. They're, they're people who just kind of want to get out and have fun with their dogs. And so our school, we're kind of challenged a lot of the time to provide things that are fun for them, but not too intense because then they may not want to do the competition stuff. So we recently came up with a concept that we call life skills courses that are kind of a bump up from your basic manners courses and things like, you know, just good greeting behaviors or being out in a park or even dog park behaviors or behaviors that, you know, doggy daycare behaviors at the vet, or we also do, you know, things for CGC. So that's kind of where our school is too. We wanted to do concept training with the school, but again, that's, that's probably a little bit higher level than most of our, our clientele like are interested in. Yeah, I could see that. It does definitely take some commitment and some playing with things and a pretty solid understanding of training mechanics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I think we, we kind of have a view of our view is we look at it through rose, rose colored glasses and like, oh, everyone will love this. And people are like, yeah, but I really just want my dog to sit when he says hello. So I mentioned in your bio that you're a science writer, dog trainer and kinder nutritionist. So which came first? How did you originally kind of end up in dogs as they say? Sure, sure. Well, I came by it very naturally. I actually grew up training. So I guess training came first. My mom was a dog trainer and, and she showed dogs in primarily in obedience, some tracking, a little bit of confirmation. And then she was also the leader of our 4-H club when I was a kid. And that was a dog training club, which was pretty cool because back then there, those things were pretty rare. So I started out with a Sheltie and then I, I, when I graduated from undergrad, I had, that's when I got into Goldens.

And so my mom and I did a lot of training and showing kind of around the country together because when I started moving around, she would meet up with me. We'd go to seminars together, we'd go to shows. So that was a lot of fun. It was something really special in my life. So training definitely came first. That's awesome. That sounds like such a unique opportunity to really both have family bonding type stuff, but, you know, enjoy your dogs too. Yeah. Just actually go travel around and do stuff with them. I know. Yeah, it was, I felt really, I feel lucky to have had that. So how'd you get from that to kind of focusing on nutrition? Well, that was, you know, I would like to be one of those people that say, would say, oh, it's been a passion of mine all my life, but that would actually not be the truth. The truth is that I was animal science major at Cornell. And at that time, most animal science majors, if you were interested in companion animals rather than farm animals, you went to vet school. And I wasn't that interested in vet school, but because I was training and showing dogs a lot and I knew I really wanted to do something with behavior and training, but this was a while ago. And at that time, I think things have changed amazingly in the years that followed. But at that time, there really were no academic graduate programs in canine and feline behavior or training. So I went back to my advisor and he's a great mentor at Cornell and said, I want to go back to school for something with dogs. What is there? And at the time he said, Linda, go into nutrition. You'll get a job that way. And he was right because nutrition, it was in the mid 80s. Nutrition was taking off as a field of study. And luckily, my mentor here at U of I was actually also a former student at Cornell and a good friend with my advisors. She took me under her wing and was both my mentor as a dog person and in nutrition. So I did that and did find that it did become a passion, even though it wasn't originally a passion. It was just, I want to do something with dogs. So looking at that, is there a best or right choice when it comes to nutrition? I know that's kind of jumping straight into things, but. Sure. There probably is not a single right choice. But what I can say with confidence is that there are too many choices today. And that's what baffles people and frustrates them and makes people finally throw up their hands and say, you know, how do I choose? And in my view, there are really two problems with where we're at right now with nutrition.

One is that owners and consumers are not provided with adequate information about the foods that they are available to them in order to choose well. And that's a drum that I beat very hard in dog food logic in that book. You know, things such as the food's digestibility, ingredient quality, even ingredient sourcing. Many of those factors are hidden from pet owners and they shouldn't be. We should have full access. We should have full transparency. And we do not have that in the pet food industry. In fact, a lot of the regulations are set up to hide many things from, or at least to not make them available to pet owners. So we don't get the information that we need to choose. And the second is that there are so many choices and there are such small differences. I call it a distinction without a difference among these foods that it makes no difference. And people don't, they get confused because there are such small and subtle differences among these many choices in the different categories of foods. So that's the long answer to say there is no clear choice. And even if there was, it'd be hard for owners to choose because of the information they're given today. Thinking about that, are there factors they should be considering? I mean, what should they be looking at when they're trying to make a nutrition decision for their own dog? That's actually the primary focus of my book, Dog Food Logic. And the four primary factors that you can break that down into are first and foremost, the dog. And that's what I'll be talking about primarily in the upcoming webinar. Your dog's life stage, their activity level, their health. And then the second would be the owner. And in that, those factors really have a lot more to do with the owner's values, what they think is important, what they'd like from a food. And also, sadly, economics. You know, lately I've been exploring some different types of foods, just exploring, you know, their digestibility and how valuable they are and how in terms of their nutrient content and their quality. One thing you'll find is that there's such a huge range in price point in these foods. So economics can affect a person's, you know, decisions. The third thing, of course, is the food itself. You know, the type it is, the ingredients, the information the owner's provided with and can have access to. And then number four would be the manufacturer, the manufacturer's size. You know, are they multinational? Are they a small private-owned company? Certainly their long-term reputation. How many recalls have they had? Again, a big one. This is my drum. I keep beating. How transparent they are.

How forthcoming they are with information when they're asked by consumers. So those four factor categories, I think, are the most important when you're selecting food. It's almost like you knew I was going to talk more about manufacturers in my next question. I used to actually cover pet food and pet manufacturing and stuff for my day job. I used to be a magazine editor at a business-to-business magazine covering that stuff. Of course, every manufacturer out there does their absolute best to make a case for why their food is the best on the market. So what research is there that actually tells us what dogs need for a balanced diet? What do we really know from a scientific perspective about what we should be looking for? And of the questions that you sent me ahead of time, this was my favorite question. And the reason is that you present it really well is that it's marketing today. When, you know, 25 years ago when the field was really first taking off, science did govern the day. You know, there were really great small startup pet food companies that were hiring scientists, hiring nutritionists. They were doing really good research. They were partnering with universities and academic institutions to do this research. And food was about the science. But starting probably about 15 years ago, marketing, just as in the human food industry, became more and more the driving force. And it now pretty much owns pet food companies. Everything is driven by marketing. And so while marketing is very good at its job, at selling pet foods to people, it tends to downplay and sometimes even mislead about the science. So what I, in fact, that's one of the reasons the science dog was born, was trying to bring the science to the people that need it. So there is a real disconnect today between the scientific knowledge and the great research that's being done. And I would argue this is true in behavior and training as much as it is in nutrition, between the science that's being done and getting it to the people that need it. The people that are really interested in dogs that want to do the best by their dogs, both in terms of nutrition and training. So in terms of what we know, we know a lot. We know all of the nutrient requirements of dogs and cats. We know age differences, what activity, how activity affects a dog's energy and basic nutrient needs, how certain health problems affect a dog's nutrient needs. So that knowledge is solid and it's backed by good science. The problem is that it often doesn't get where it needs to go or it's, again, misrepresented because of marketing practices.

We also know a lot about many of the ingredients that are used in pet foods. You know, I'm sure you're well of the recent grain-free scare and DCM in dogs. One of the problems was that it's a great example of ingredients that we are relatively new to the pet food market and have not been studied in depth. So things like chicken and rice and even lamb, all of those, certainly meat, pork, have been studied a great deal in terms of their nutrient availability, what happens to them when they're extruded, what happens to them if they're fed raw. We know a lot about those ingredients. What we don't know a lot about are the newer ingredients such as legumes and peas. And they just haven't been studied that much. It doesn't mean they're necessarily bad or they're necessarily dangerous. They just haven't been studied. We also know a lot about ingredient digestibility and safety. But again, does it get where it needs to go? It's in the literature. It needs to just be disseminated in a better way, in my view. To dive a little more into that, it does seem like kind of there are a lot of people trying to put out information, right? Everybody and their dog seem to be blogging about dog behavior, nutrition, kind of all these things. But that doesn't necessarily mean they all are doing their research, where the research that they're doing is very good. So do you have any advice for kind of when you're out there on the internet, figuring out what's reliable, what's not? How can folks tell kind of what is based on research and what maybe is just somebody's opinion kind of dressed up as fact? What you're really describing is evidence-based decision-making or evidence-based choices, which refers to saying, if I'm going to make a choice, what evidence is there to support that choice? And how reliable is that evidence? And reliability, of course, is key. I hate to keep plugging my books, but I have a book called Beware the Straw Man. And that book is, the entire purpose of that book was to help interested dog owners and pet owners too, and professionals as well, to understand how to sift through evidence that is reliable and evidence-based versus evidence that is just anecdote or opinion. You know, of course, you can always go back to the original research, but most folks don't have the time or the interest to do that. So you have to basically find out where that information came from, what the original source was, how it's being presented. But again, as far as the average pet owner goes, it can be really challenging. So I think critical thinking skills and being aware of some of the cognitive biases we have

when we make decisions can be really helpful. This is why I said earlier, you know, this could be a three-hour conversation really easily. So I'm going to refer them to a book instead. Fair enough. Fair enough. So I know kind of in addition to the nutrition stuff, you occasionally debunk training myths. And I was curious, what are some of the oddest myths you've heard when it comes to training? I was wondering if you could kind of debunk a few for us. When I looked at this question, I thought, hmm, how do I pick? Because I probably have about, probably about 20 that I've written about either on the science dog or in books. And probably one of my favorites, and I think many listeners will already agree with this, but remember there's a difference between what we intuit and what we believe to be true versus what we have actual evidence to be true. And it's pretty common for the evidence to not support what we believe or to at least support part of it and hopefully change our beliefs. But this is actually one that most trainers already are on board with, but most pet owners are not. And that has to do with the guilty look. That, you know, there's the belief, this prevalent belief amongst pet owners that when they come home and their dog is showing guilty, you know, what they call the guilty look, which is really usually just fear or submission, that that shows the dog knows he did something wrong or did, you know, shoot something up, did something they didn't like him to do, and therefore he's showing guilt. There was a series of studies by Alexander Horowitz and Julie Hecht, and Adam McGlosey also was involved in these, that showed once and for all it's not guilt, it's fear. And it's fear of impending punishment. And they did this through a series of very, very unique and creative studies. And I presented in the book, Beware the Straw Man, it's called Death Throws of the Guilty Look. And literally walk step by step through and say, you know, you can actually fool the dog into thinking he did something or to thinking that he's going to be punished rather, and he will show what's called the guilty look. So, you know, my hope is that that information can help trainers then convince their clients who are saying their dog feels guilty and shows guilt to understand that, no, your dog actually has learned to show fear because they're afraid of an impending punishment. The importance of that is not so much what, you know, we don't really need to debate what the internal emotional state of the dog is, because I would argue it's probably the same internal

emotional state of humans when we supposedly show guilt. You know, it's basically fear of being caught at something you did wrong. It's not that. It's not that, you know, we'd say, oh, they're not feeling anything internally. It's rather that when we label a behavior as guilt, when we label it a certain way, that can then lead to improper and, in my view, cruel treatment of the dog. Because if you say he's feeling guilty, that means you can do something about it, which means punishing that dog. And that's where we certainly go awry, you know, rather than to understand your dog's actually fearful, you should manage his environment better so these things don't happen. That belief in guilt gets in the way of actually changing the behavior and changing how you manage that dog in another way. So that was one of my favorites, if we have time. A second one was an essay that I believe is still on the blog, but it's also in, I think it's in Beware the Straw Man, I think, and I also talk about it in Dog Smart. And this one was called The Kids Are All Right. This I just found fascinating because we all know that it's really important to teach children to be appropriate with dogs, to ask before they come up, and hopefully to learn to read a dog's body language. Personally, I had a personal anecdote very recently with this in that I was at our veterinarian's office with Cooper just last week. And Cooper is pretty bomb-proof. He's a very, very stable, easygoing golden. He loves all people. But he was at the vet's office, you know, so he was a little nervous. As I was waiting to leave, I was actually talking to our vet about something. A little girl, about eight years old, came up with her mom, and she came up and she said, can I pet your dog? So I was like, good girl, you know, you ask first. And I said, sure, you know, yeah, he's friendly. Well, that's where it went a little wrong because then she did start to interact with him, but she was very inappropriate in that she started. I'm sorry, that's a dog drinking behind me, if you can hear that. She was very inappropriate with him. She threw her arms around him. She was leaning over him. She was way, way, way too close. And Cooper put his tail down. He backed up. He was showing her every physical sign that he was uncomfortable. And I intervened and said, hey, honey, you know, you're a little too close. He's making it a little nervous. He's at the vet's, you know, so he's a little. And she was having none of it. This was how she interacted with dogs, and she was going to hug him. And mom did nothing.

Mom just stood there because I think the mom looked at it as, my job is done. And I taught my child to ask before she went up to greet. You know, it ended up fine. We told her, you know, back off. Let him come to you. Here's a treat. And then everything ended up fine. But that story fits right into this essay. It was called The Kids Are All Right. And what they did, it was a series of studies and from different researchers, which is, you know, wonderful because that is a really good way to corroborate information is if different researchers did the studies. So they looked at a bunch of different programs that are available for teaching kids to be appropriate with dogs, for teaching kids to not only approach them correctly, but to pet them, you know, gently and to show appropriate body language and to read also body language from dogs who are unfriendly. And they found that above a certain age, these programs worked great with the kids. They actually, you know, they did a test-retest. So they would test to see how the kids were before they'd had the training. They'd get in the training and there were various types of these trainings. Some were online, some were on site, but there were various approaches. And then they retest to see, okay, did the kids learn something? And sure enough, they did. So this is all good, you know. Then another study looked at the parents' behavior. And what they found was that oftentimes the kids had learned this behavior. But their parents did exactly what this parent did that I saw. They taught their child to ask first. And then it was kind of like, you know, no holds barred. Do whatever you want. And even though their child had been given this good information about good interactions with dogs, the parents didn't follow through. The parents didn't learn anything. And so this essay basically is saying the kids are all right. They're learning. You know, we need to get to the parents and to teach them to really basically teach their kids and to be more gentle, to not encourage their kids. They even had examples in these studies of the parents, the kids doing appropriate behavior, just gently petting the parents, encouraging them to do more. You know, throw your arms around the dog. You know, lean over him. And yeah, yeah. So what that particular myth busted to me was that it's not always the kids, that we really need to educate parents as well. Do you want one more or do we not have time? Sure, sure. Give us one more. Okay, I'll give you one more very quickly. This one has to do with extinction or sometimes negative punishment, which again, I'm assuming

probably most of your listeners know what extinction is, is removing a reinforcer to decrease a behavior. And the most common use of extinction in dog training, of course, is dogs who jump up or dogs who pester for attention. Owners are said to extinguish that behavior, you ignore the dog or you step away, you turn your back to the dog. So we have not used extinction at my training school for many years. I'm not a fan of it. I never have been. So although I know it is still used a great deal, you know, veterinarians recommend it, a lot of trainers still recommend it. I've never been a fan personally because I think it causes frustration. And so that's the short end of the story. So the interesting thing is there's actually some evidence that end use of negative punishment, removing something the dog wants in order to stop a behavior, do cause frustration in dogs. And it's a very quick experiment. They basically taught dogs to offer eye contact for a positive reinforcer for a treat. The dogs, of course, would learn that very quickly. And then they either would just continue to reinforce it or they would use extinction. So now the dog offered the behavior and they stopped reinforcing it and would either turn their back or walk away or just not reinforce the behavior. And what they saw, what, you know, behaviors would call an extinction burst. Most cognitive scientists would cause frustration, you know, that the dogs become very unhappy. They started pawing. They started, you know, pestering for more affection. They actually got a little distressed. Some of them would whine. And so the conclusion of that study, even though it's a very small study, was that maybe we need to rethink, you know, the use of extinction, especially if it's not used with training in alternate behavior, which is, again, the way that a lot of trainers use is they train in alternate behavior and use extinction. I would argue that just train the alternate behavior and don't use extinction at all. So this essay basically talked about, you know, we need to consider the outcome. You know, extinction burst sounds very pure and emotion-free, but actually what we're seeing in an extinction burst is a dog who's becoming frustrated and unhappy. And why do that when we don't need to, when we have alternate approaches, you know, we can just train in alternate behavior rather than the behavior that we don't want. So I know that we were introduced because you've got a webinar coming up at FDSA. It's titled Canine Athlete or Couch Potato Feeding Dogs to Meet Their Exercise Needs. And I wanted to talk about it just for a minute.

Can you share a little bit on what you'll cover, the type of person you might be interested in the webinar, that kind of thing? Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me to give that webinar. I'm really excited about it and really happy to be part of the FENSI Dog Sports Academy. I'm going to focus on exercise because I know that many of your audience are interested in dog sports and that that's an important topic for them. So we'll start off with just a small discussion of obesity. That's, again, you know, recognizing it, looking at different foods that are on the market that are marketed as light or low calorie. And then we'll really spend most of the seminar on exercise, looking at the three factors that impact nutrition and exercise. And those are the intensity of the exercise, the duration and its frequency, and how these three factors influence the energy and nutrient needs of the canine athlete. And then we finish with choosing the best food for a canine athlete. And once again, that whole idea of there's so many choices out there, how do you distinguish among them? And what are the factors that someone who is interested in feeding a canine athlete should pay attention to when they choose a food? Well, we're getting close to the end here. And there are a couple of questions that I usually ask first time guests. So I'd love to kind of go through those. The first one is, what is the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? Oh, that's a nice one. I think, can I say two? Sure. Because I would divide these into an accomplishment that reaches a larger audience versus an accomplishment that reaches a local audience. And I guess one of the things I'm proudest of is my writing, because I think science writing that's brought to interested people, to everybody, rather than just to other scientists, is what I've really tried to do in my writing, especially in recent years, in that I feel like it reaches many people outside of my local area, and hopefully to many dog trainers and dog professionals who are interested in learning about the recent science. And the second would be my Autumn Gold Dog Training School for the local audience that hopefully we've brought, we strengthen the loving bond that people have with their dogs and hopefully increase their understanding of positively-based training to our local area, because that's, we only serve, of course, the local area with that. We kind of talk about it at FDSA as making a ripple, and you've got to start with your ripple where you are. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

So my second question here is, what's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Well, I think the best piece of training advice is also the best piece of life advice I've ever received, and it started with my dad, and it's come from other mentors, and that is just simply be kind. That's it. I like that. It's short. Do you mean two words? Yes, be kind. It's very easy to remember. It is. All right. Then last one here, Linda. Who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? Right now, I'd say, because I've been thinking about a lot and using his methods, is Ken Ramirez is way up there. Certainly, of course, Karen Pryor. And one of my personal mentors was, who I mentioned earlier, who was my advisor in graduate school and who now actually is also, she's an amazing nutritionist, and she's also a KPA certified trainer. So we connected on many levels, and that was my mentor, Dr. Gail Zernecki, who is in the St. Louis area now. She's no longer here, but I would say she's definitely one of my most admired personal mentors as well. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Linda. This has been great. It's been wonderful. Thank you so much. And I'm really excited about the upcoming webinar. And again, I'm very grateful and happy that Fenzie Dog Sports Academy has invited me. Yeah, we're thrilled to have you. And for everybody who's listening, just so that you know the details on that, it's November 15th at 6 p.m. Pacific time. And it is up on the site already. So if you guys want to, you can go ahead over and take a look. She's got a full description up there. And we've got a link to her bio and all sorts of good stuff. So anybody wants to go take a look at that. All right. Well, thank you to everybody for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Barbara Currier to talk about teaching your dog to love weave poles. In the meantime, guys, I have a special request. For this year's anniversary episode, we want to do something special. We want to feature you, our listeners. I'd love it if you'd consider leaving us a voicemail that we can include in that episode. To do so, just go to speakpipe.com forward slash FDSA underscore podcast. I'll have a link to that in this episode's show notes. So you guys can go there and click on it to be taken to the page. There'll be a record button there and you can leave us a message. Have a burning question we haven't answered? A brag you want to share? Your own best training advice? Well, we want to hear about it. And 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. We'll see you soon. Thank you.