Ep. 21 Transcript

Episode 21 LIVE unPACKing: Grace & Stella

​

​

00:00
Today, we are speaking with Grace about her dog, Stella. Stella was adopted from a local shelter last September after being seized from a neglectful situation where she spent a lot of time created with two other dogs. Understandably, she came into Grace's life a bit nervous and unsure of the world. But since then, Grace has been working really hard to help Stella adjust and Stella is showing signs of fear towards strangers.

00:28
some reactivity in public and is finding it difficult being left alone, especially in the crate, again, understandably. But despite these challenges, Grace sees a lot of potential in Stella. She's already made strides in training, she loves to play, she's getting along well with other dogs, really enjoys the outdoor adventures. So Grace, thank you so much for coming on to the show with us for this new format. I know when you first reached out, you were working on some of those.

00:57
kind of key areas with Stella, the fear, the reactivity, the separation anxiety. Can you give us any updates on how things are going? And then we can really dig in and get to the bottom of what's driving this behavior. Oh, we got a little celebrity appearance. We got a little celebrity appearance. He pushed himself in and he's probably gonna start barking and demanding that if I'm sitting at my desk, then it must be time to scatter. Yeah, Stella's over here doing the same. Must be time to do some enrichment, yeah.

01:26
Before I do pass it over to you, Grace, I have to say that that the dog people out there understand on a dog podcast, there might be some barking, there might be some howling and some dog noises, and that's just going to have to be okay. So nobody has to apologize for dog related noises on this show. Good, we're going to practice a little, a little meeting of the needs then on that note.

01:51
And you can continue on while the listeners hear the beautiful sounds of scattering food in the background. Yeah. So, um, Bella and I have been, um, definitely working on like, I would say routine is probably one of the harder things for me personally. And so, but I know it's like super important for her. So we do, we try to get like the main points of the day, the same, um, you know, like her breakfast time and her morning walk and.

02:21
Same with like dinner and she usually gets a nap in the afternoon. We try to do like some crate time, but she's still having a really hard time being alone. So before she was like, when I first got her, if she was left alone for any amount of time, like the first thing she would do is like pooper beat, just immediately. In that moment, really panicked and fearful. Cause it's not that she's having an accident cause she can't hold it. It's immediately upon entering. Yeah. Okay.

02:49
Yeah, like I could be gone for, if I walked out my front door for like two minutes, I'd be coming back and see her in the doorway, like squatting, you know, like she's immediately. But, um, she had, so now, um, she still has a hard time being alone, but she won't poop and pee in the crate. So if she's alone in the crate, what she does is mostly just like she'll bark the whole time or try to escape the crate, which I just, I don't want her to like hurt herself.

03:18
trying to get out. So if I have to leave her now, she goes next door to my parents house. And she's doing a lot better with that because she's pretty comfortable with them. So she likes being over there. We're over there like every day. So she's familiar and feels at home she can nap and hang out with them. My mom is like her second person. She's like loves her as much as she loves me. Like she's

03:47
Enzo goes to grandma's a lot. He's got a pretty, pretty good relationship with grandma. And I think that that's lovely that you have that as a resource. Because a lot of people just don't they don't live by their family or they don't maybe they're not close with their family. So it's so nice to like, here's your fur grain baby. Yeah. Help me please. Yeah. Yeah, they like her and she does. She's been doing a lot better over there. She used to kind of panic. Even over there.

04:16
but now she's like pretty comfortable. And I can just like, I'll be like, all right, you're staying here. And she just kind of like backs up and is like, all right, see ya. So that part's getting better, but you know, there's definitely gonna be times where they aren't gonna be home or like they can't watch her and she has to be alone. So we do still wanna work on that. Definitely. And then with fear of strangers and everything,

04:46
She is getting better with that and she's good pretty much on walks. She never really outside. She didn't really ever like bark or anything, but she would like, she would wait for the stranger to pass and then want to like run up behind them and sniff or like chase them kind of like, she felt like, I don't know. I don't know if that was like, she's just, they're safe because they're going away. And she's like, okay, I got to investigate this now or what, but that's what are the.

05:13
What are the breed guesses for Miss Stella? So actually we, I did two DNA tests on her. Oh, we got data. Okay. Yeah. So I can share my screen with you guys. So you can look. Let's see. Oh, okay. Yeah. So she's a cattle dog. So she's, she's running up behind. And then the Superman. Yeah. Running up behind people. And that, that did to me sound like potential hurting.

05:42
hurting tendons, right? Bringing order to the chaos in the ankle nipping manner. The the ancestry one said basically the same. Okay, cool. Dog staffy beagle lab husky. Yeah, that is quite the mix. Miss Stella's got generations going on. Generations. Okay. Yeah, so that that to me does sound like a typical

06:09
kind of forward herding dog response to stress in the environment, right? Is trying to bring together the order to the chaos. And the good news is that there are a lot of driven breeds in there as well and motivated breeds that will be easy to just kind of tap into either a different instinct or create some sort of different alternative behavior for that moment, because it sounds like the moment right when they've passed and they're starting to move away. Like that's the challenge point.

06:37
So that's probably where I would focus is what else can I ask her to do in that exact moment to give her something else purposeful to focus on? We have been working on that and what I'll do is like I always have a stick. I'll pick up a stick every single walk because she loves to like if I drag it on the ground. I really want to get her a flirt pole because she loves this like dragging the long stick on the ground. She like chases it with her paws. So she loves to do that. So every time she sees a person we play with the stick.

07:04
Like I let her watch them go, cause she's just standing there watching. And then she'll like look at me and then we play. So she knows when she sees a person, she like turns to me and is like, okay, stick. Yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect. Play is one of the best management strategies for that type of reactive behavior, especially, because it's gonna be very, it's very physically driven. So trying to meet that type of behavior with something really calm.

07:33
and asking for stillness and asking for quiet focus. That could be really a big ask for some dogs. So giving them something that kind of meets them where they're at. And, you know, my husband is a cat person, but the first time he met a cattle dog, he was like, whoa. And I explained to him how it's so important to give them high intensity, productive play. And he said, yeah, it's gotta go somewhere. I'm like, it's gotta go somewhere. So giving her that like immediate release is great.

08:02
I would say you could start to add in a little bit of quote unquote structure by using like some verbal cues and getting her to engage in a way that's as repeatable as possible as easy for you to repeat it as possible stick no stick right we want to we want to be able to use this kind of regardless of the environment. Yeah, she will also take a treat at that time too and then she's like okay cool goes and sniffs or whatever.

08:32
she gets a treat. That's great. It looks like, like we were talking about, it's gonna be not terribly difficult to build up an alternative behavior. It's just a matter of getting those repetitions in, right? And working at the right distance. We don't always want to be working reactivity where it's this increasing intensity and then decreasing intensity, right? Where they're coming and then they're going. And it's this huge wavelength. That's life, right? But that's where it's really hard to move the needle.

09:02
because it's that increasing, decreasing intensity, you have this finite moment. So think about opportunities to sort of get to that distance and hang out at that distance and sort of work her in that moment to be able to kind of truly move the needle on the source of that reactive behavior. Does that make sense? It might not, that's okay if it doesn't. The roller coaster thing, I had like a visual while you were saying that. Yeah, it's like trying to get used to a roller coaster.

09:31
while you're on it, you know, as opposed to like, maybe you stand in the line and you get to watch it a couple of times and you get to hear the people be like, oh, that was fun. And like, you know, nobody died or anything versus like just knowing nothing and then getting on it and riding around it. So that's that same kind of intensity for dogs. And we just don't think about it like that. We're almost all of us are, if we're just thinking about it in a quote unquote common sense type of way, we're like, oh, well, I'm gonna just practice this stuff.

10:01
but distance is so important, like Madison said. Yeah, yeah. Think about a slow burn, a slow burn is what you wanna do with reactivity. I don't know if that's the right phrase to use, but that's what came to mind. I also like wanted to ask, like, cause usually, well, every single time she sees someone passing by, and especially if they have a dog because she loves other dogs and wants to like play, you know?

10:30
Um, so she gets excited, but you know, if they're far enough away, she'll usually just sit down and watch them do whatever they're doing. Um, should I be interrupting that? Should I just let her, is that okay? Like, so I find that in most cases, working on reactive behavior, which behavior from a dog can be overly, overly reactive.

10:55
even if it's coming from a positive emotion, right? Like I think we typically think of this fear-based reactivity, but what you're describing is just excitement. And even though it's different emotions, it can look the same, right? For her, it's this sort of like intensity and watching. So although it's not a negative emotion, the benefit to positively interrupting that and using these sort of games, activities, skills that you want to use in the more difficult moments, like that's going to help you. Because...

11:24
positive or negative, it's still dysregulation. She's still getting dysregulated and kind of thrown out of whack when she's either really excited or really scared. And it's easier to practice this stuff in the excited than it is in the scared. So my answer is sometimes it probably will be to your benefit to sort of communicate with her in that moment and get that reinforcement history. But if it's not leading to anything bad and there's something that

11:53
that she can be gained from watching, you know, getting that information, then that's also not a bad thing. So it's one of them that if it's not a problem, it's not a problem. But I think it could be an opportunity to practice something in a sort of dress rehearsal type way. Right. Okay. Jerry, do you have a different thought on that? The very last thing that you said was probably the easiest way to say that like, it's not a problem unless it's a problem.

12:18
just edit out everything in the middle. Yeah, like really. I mean, if we're sitting and we're looking, that's great. But if they're- Some dogs actually need it. Some dogs, especially herding dogs, like there is this need for them to visually observe because it's part of their DNA. And sometimes that leads to a problem and sometimes it doesn't. Right, yeah. So if it's yielding results that you don't want,

12:46
Or things are happening that you're like, oh then it is a problem but if she's just looking, you know, then she's just observing and and taking stuff in and like Madison said they they Really need to look at stuff and it helps them determine like patterning and I think Healers are masterful at patterning There that's how they keep their heads from getting kicked. So yeah, I was a really good point Yeah, she's like literally just so smart with all that

13:14
She's patterns everything. She's got everything mapped out in a pattern, for sure. So just keep an eye on, there will be a subtle shift in her probably when the looking goes from a pure neuroception, right? Just taking in, taking in that information from the eyes to the brain to something a little bit different, something that's loading, maybe getting more intense. You might see muscles tense up all of a sudden. Yeah, it's subtle. You might hear the breath stop,

13:44
and then there's no more breathing. The mouth could close too and sort of stop air-senting and stop and just almost locking in. You might see the eyes get more intense. The dog will stand up. Yeah. Or you might see like vibrating. They'll take one step forward. Yeah, they're all very subtle. And she'll probably just have like one or two of those. So just like keep an eye on her and you'll start to be like, ooh, there was a shift there. And read your gut, like listen to your gut on that.

14:12
because that's the moment to interrupt. And in fact, if you do, you're going to have a dog that is ready to orient to you when they start loading instead of continuing to load. Right, okay. Are there any individuals that Stella is struggling with in terms of the stranger danger? Like actually getting her to meet somebody or is it more just this general sort of nervousness at a distance of people that are in her peripheral?

14:40
Yeah, it seems like she so she's been to all of our family gatherings so far we have like a Halloween gathering Thanksgiving and Christmas and I have a pretty big family and she did pretty good. We did a lot of like prep and just being in and out and distance and treats you know all that stuff and it seems like she can kind of tell like

15:09
Some people like my brother or like my mom's sisters, like she's immediately okay with it. Like she's just like, cool. I don't know. You guys are- They pass the vibe check. Yeah. And then other people, she's like, nah, I don't know. I just don't know about you. I'm just so suspicious. I like a little bit of discernment in a dog, personally, because, you know, we don't need to be going up to everybody.

15:36
Okay, right. Yeah, selected. Yeah. And healers are also notoriously selective dogs. Yeah, right. Like, yes, big time selective dogs. I know most healers that I knew growing up, they liked one person. Right. And it was the it was the old dude they were riding around within the pickup truck and everybody else could kick rocks. Yeah. So she in particular, like she will still.

16:03
It's so funny. She'll still growl at my boyfriend, but like she likes him. And so I'm like, why you're literally like, what is the context of the ground? Yeah. What's the context? That's a great question. She's not faking. She's she's communicating something. I know dogs never remember this grace. Dogs never lie. Dogs never lie. They're incapable of lying. They can't fake. They can't lie. Um, so like.

16:30
She gives a lot of mixed signals when he comes in the door. She'll be like, usually she likes it if I go with her to anything. Like, I mean, she wants us to do everything together. So she's not very confident on her own. And so when he comes in, we greet him together. She'll be like, okay, cool, tail wagging, all fine, right? But she watches him to see like, what's he doing? You know?

17:00
And sometimes if we're chilling in the living room, watching TV or whatever, he gets up to go to the bathroom. And then when he comes back, like she's like super alert and she'll grow old. Like, I don't know why she's doing that. If she's policing him. That is super classic. That's absolutely what she's doing. She is, you are the sheriff and she is your deputy and you are patrolling these streets together. And things were one way and now they've changed and she's got to make sure that things get back to the way that they were.

17:29
I think that that's exactly what that is. That's very sort of classic nervous hurting dog behaviors. Like they were fine until the person got up and moved. Then they weren't fine anymore. And as long as everyone's in their assigned seats, everything's okay. Yes. Yeah, and even better if we're all on the same couch. Everyone needs to be in a clump. So, Jerry, what is your sort of go-to approach for this?

17:58
policing of the partner. Well, normally when I see, you always know Jerry's gonna talk cause I'm always like, hell. And a snap. Whenever I see something similar to what you just described, the first place that I stop is management. Because if a dog is having a problem, like let's take away the breed attributes for a moment. If someone is coming in and out of the home regularly, but they don't,

18:28
live there. So let's say a boyfriend, they're coming in and out of the home, there's not really going to be a lot of rules around that, right? And what I mean is the boyfriend's going to come in, he's going to do whatever the boyfriend does, and then he's going to leave. And that is hard for dogs that work off of- That feels like anarchy. It feels like complete chaos. So this dude just comes in and he just does whatever. And, you know, like if you had a lab, it would be a different situation. So now we can go kind of a little bit more into the breed.

18:57
or set of breeds, I guess that you have. Yeah. And that is an attribute of healers and herding dogs in general is they tend to be really great at pattern recognition, which means they're really driven to be anxious because they're anticipating all of the time. So the way that I deal with that is first of all that management conversation about, I recognize that you seem to have a Labrador style in a healer household.

19:25
So the casual nature in which we go about and do things A, B, and C, that isn't the kind of dog that you have. So you just have to make an adjustment to that. But practically what I would do is I would just have your boyfriend throw food to her every single time he walked in. So if he gets up, I would have him put food down as he's getting up, unless she is really intolerant of him or him putting the food down, she would be averse to that. Then I would not suggest that.

19:54
then I would suggest that you do it. So he just needs to say, I'm gonna get up now. And then I would scatter for my dog. And then when he comes back, I would have him say something before he walks down the hall. I'm coming back now, not forever, just while you're working on this. I think that's the moment, right Grace? She's not chasing after him when he gets up. She's freaking out when he comes back, right? Right, like she'll just watch him leave the room.

20:18
She'll just sit next to me. She sits next to me. Is she watching or is she loading? Yeah, I don't think she's watching. I think she's like, that's it, he got up. Now I'm gonna be able to pop off and he comes back. That's why I would suggest doing it when he gets up. Agreed. To try to help her, you know, just do something different. Because that's the first step of the pattern. That's the first step of Stella's pattern is he gets up and leaves and then she does that. You know, it's, so we wanna kind of stop that earlier on.

20:43
Yeah. And then that way, what she's experiencing when he's getting up and leaving is that she's having a little tasty snack. She can expect that every single time. She doesn't have to worry about what he's doing or might do, or, you know, never does in this case, never does anything. Um, you know, it just helps them because without that, you could think of, uh, of dogs that are really smart and really fast like that, hurting dogs. You could even go into like mouths, shepherds. Those dogs are running every.

21:13
possible bad scenario. Like they are preparing for the worst all the time. I mean, I think all dogs are. If something sets them off, they're not worried that like they're going to be late for class. You know, they're worried that there's some like mortal danger or that they need to act in this way to save their life. You know, so I think if we think of it in terms like that and how can we help create different expectations, she would do much better in that scenario.

21:43
Yeah, um, it's just like, it's interesting because it's just him. She doesn't really do that to anybody else. She doesn't like try to police anybody else. Any other friends or like my other family members. I personally, here's what I always tell people, I really don't think that it's interesting. I don't think that it's interesting at all. And I don't mean that in a mean way. I don't mean like, it's not interesting, Grace. Just listen to me. I don't mean it like that. I mean, it's actually not very interesting.

22:12
It's actually very common. Dogs, if dogs don't have a ton of experience, like who are all of the men that she's seeing? Who are all the men that she has in her life that she has so much experience with, that she understands that, you know, men have carried themselves slightly differently than women. So she doesn't have that a lot in her life. Even if she is okay around one or two other guys that she doesn't see very often, it's actually very predictable that she would behave that way. That's what I meant by not interesting because it's predictable.

22:42
It's, that's common. It's just, if you don't, if you're not helping dogs with behavioral problems, it's not something that you would have access to know, like, oh wow, this actually happens a lot. You know, it's like when I took my little boy to the pediatrician and they were like, he's tongue tied. And I'm like, oh my God, what? And they're like, oh, it's not a big deal. We just clipped the thing and, you know, we clipped the thing under, so it's not a big deal at all. And I was like, I mean, surely this is, and it happens commonly. And so common.

23:12
things that common problems have common solutions. So what I would tell people about that is, you will go down a very strange road if you try to figure out why your dog doesn't seem to like a particular person. It would be like going down the same road of you having to explain to someone why you don't like a particular person. I just, something about the way they, I don't, they could even actually be nice to you. And you could be like, I don't know, they're just too loud.

23:41
Or I don't know, they're just, I don't like the way that they this, or I don't like the way that they that. Dogs have preferences as well, and they like certain things and don't like other things. And I just don't know that you'll ever be able to figure that out. So what you can do is proper management and then helping her learn a different behavior for the things that are, you know, the undesirable stuff like barking when he comes back in the room. But that's good news. Garden variety stuff is good.

24:08
good news. When you have a common problem, that's great. And that is a common problem. Yeah. And I think it's combined with some really great foundational work. Like the fact that you're saying to us that she's already happy to redirect her otherwise reactive behavior onto a stick or a treat. That's great. That's a huge deal to be at that point. That's pretty far ahead. That's a dog that has what I call a pretty high elasticity of behavior. They're really ready and willing to offer something different if they're given.

24:37
that opportunity to do so. We do want to talk to you about some potentials for training with some of our interns and our team. And I really do see three great buckets here, one being continuing to work on the kennel and building some comfort there, building up some duration there. So when we do have those moments that she can't go to grandma and grandpa is that she's much more comfortable in her kennel. The reactive behavior, you have...

25:06
really, really solid management in place there to the point where I think that, you know, given the right sort of setup, there is no reaction. So now, now that the management is solid, now it's about modification. Now it's about truly moving that needle and making Stella that much less likely to react to the next time that she sees that similar trigger. And then it sounds like there could be some specific work on the sort of evening sofa patterns, right? And

25:33
helping her just choose different behaviors in those moments, because what she's gonna offer naturally is not really lining up with what, you know, makes us humans comfortable in our own homes. And that matters, you know? Stella gets to be comfortable and we get to be comfortable too, and your boyfriend gets to be comfortable. Everybody here is a stakeholder and matters. And that's why, you know, kind of finding the right approach that brings all those things together is, that's what Jerry and I always try and focus on.

26:02
So if that's something that you're interested in, we would love to match you up with someone and get you into a program to work on those things. Yeah, for sure. That would be great. Awesome. Well, we have a couple of minutes left. Did you have any questions for us on any of the things that we talked about? We know we can be a lot. Everything that you guys said made pretty much a lot of sense to me because I've been watching you for a while. And like I'm taking some of the online courses that Jerry had and everything like that.

26:32
I'm familiar with the things that you're talking about. So it's really nice to like get specific advice. And we will get you even more specific with being able to work daily with, with one of our, our interns. What we'll do is we'll chat and we'll pair you with someone and then we'll come back together in a month or so and see, see where things are at and see if we can offer kind of next steps from there. Perfect.