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Ep. 15 Transcript
Episode 15: Reactivity in an Urban Environment
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Welcome to Unpacked, an open-minded podcast taking a clinical, not political approach to helping pet parents around the world. I'm Sailor Jerri, Certified Dog Trainer, Virtual Dog Training Revolutionary, owner of Tulsa Pack Athletics and creator of The Open-Minded Approach. And I'm Mattison, her friend, certified dog trainer and behavior consultant. Together we have nearly three decades of experience in behavioral dog training.
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We've been working with real dogs and the humans who love them to create solutions to problematic behaviors that feel too big for them to tackle on their own. In this episode, we are fully unpacking a new case, diving deep into a behavioral topic that you, our listeners, asked for. If you're along for the ride, here's how it's going to look. First, we'll introduce the incredible and dedicated humans we've been working with, and explain their intake process while we describe their dog or dogs and the behaviors they're experiencing.
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Then we'll walk you through our assessment and explain how we got there. Lastly, we'll break down the management and modification plan. If you're ready to dive into this unique case, settle in with us and unpack.
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And I'm excited for us to get into a new case, a whole new case, a whole new dog, a whole new person. I feel, do you feel a little bit like a little bit, just, just tell me that you do a little bit like Scooby Doo mysteries. When you just said that it's time to get into another case folks. Like, absolutely. Sure. I love Scooby Doo mysteries. Why didn't you get the mysteries? All right. Jinkies gang. Jinkies gang, we got a new case this week. Go get your Scooby snacks.
02:25
Uh, no. We have long since called training treats Scooby Snacks in this household. Little Scooby Snack for me, little Scooby Snack for Rem. Well, we have a new little Scooby Snack to introduce today. LOL. And he is, he is just a sweet, sweet boy, Mr. Lucy, and we have, is this our first, is this our first lab? I think this is our first Labrador coming on the unpacked scene.
02:53
Oh wow it is Lucy short for Lucifer. Lucifer. I don't think we've had any retrievers. Um, and that is quite, quite a strong genetic line. What y'all talking about? I was thinking about it. I think that you're right. I don't think we've had any. No. And so it's definitely a different ball game. See what I did there. Well, Lucifer is about three years old.
03:21
He is a big boy with some big feelings and the big behavior, we see that often come along with them. And him and his person, Allison, they're living in a tough environment. And it's not that his behaviors are exclusive to their current very urban environment. Even when they were in a slightly more suburban setting, he was still definitely experiencing some of this.
03:51
Cities are tough, man. Cities are really tough. I give a lot of props to my clients and my friends and my colleagues that live in these really condensed areas. And this is something I talk about with my students, too, of how tough that is for a dog, just for the concentration of people and dogs and smells and sounds. And there's a lot of unseen, I think, in cities, things that are high up. And
04:18
and far down below that go kind of beyond other settings. It could be tough for dogs that aren't soundsensitive. I think any dog would be potentially impacted in that environment. But Lucy's also dealing with, like I said, a soundsensitivity that he experienced even in a less chaotic environment. The city is overstimulating.
04:43
as being in the middle of an arcade, like a busy arcade or then being in the middle of Chuck E. Cheese. You know? I lost it in a casino. A casino? It's not for me. Yeah. That's what it was. I once saw Coco lose it in a casino. She was like, listen, I gotta get the F out of here. And she wasn't saying it, but I could see it in her eyes. It's just some people cannot handle.
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that level of stimulation. And if they can handle it, some people can't handle it for a prolonged time. I'm one of those people. I can handle the city. I actually really enjoy the city, but, longer than a few days, and I start feeling like I'm going to start committing crimes, and they're going to be violent. You know what I mean? I genuinely will get to the point of where I either feel like I need to act out or I need to escape and do drugs and not...
05:36
Like it's that serious for me. And you know, there are other people like me and there are other species like us that, that share that in common when they get overstimulated, they start making a whole series of bad decisions. Um, the result then. And the input with other species is perhaps more intense than for us. You know, dogs hearing is four times stronger than ours. I know you are.
06:06
very, very conscious of your car radio and Enzo. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said that. Thank you for, I can't, I love listening to really loud music and I won't do it when Enzo's in the car. So I either will turn it down or I won't listen to music at all. Yeah, like podcasts and audio books when I'm using the car with me, yep. Well, buddy, like when I see, I used to date this guy.
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that had these big subwoofers and he had this huge like Cummins turbo diesel. And he was real funny and he was great and his dog and Enzo were really good friends. But they would ride in the back of the truck and he would the base would just be and I was always like, dude, like, you know what I mean? It just and so I started sharing that with my clients like, hey, maybe, you know, when we're in the car, especially if they were struggling with their dogs are struggling. Let's watch that.
07:01
the volume or is there something else that's more subtle and you can listen to besides gangster rap, those things like that. I even encourage my clients to turn off their TV. I am a person that is impacted by sound. So I actually struggle with background noises and overlapping ambient sounds. So I'm very aware of those things. And I have to point out sometimes to my clients, all right, you're working on cooperative care.
07:29
So your dog is probably gonna be feeling some stress, gonna be maybe a little bit hypervigilant of what's going on around them, right? And if there's also this sort of varied sound coming out of the magic box in the corner, that could just be the thing that really tips things over. So when we're working on anything or when we're trying to like teach something new, I find that that's just an extra level of distraction that isn't needed. You know, turning off things like the TV, like the radio or whatever you have that is
07:59
maybe comfortable for you might be really pulling away from whatever you're trying to do with your dog. Yeah, I had to ask a client to turn off Bluey the other day. I put on some classical music or something. It was the cutest thing because in her mind, when she was like, that's why I was doing this, it made sense. She was like, okay, dogs are at a toddler level. Let's put on something a toddler would like that's like seemingly
08:27
It nods about dogs too. A little, yeah, just for a little bit of background noise. She was trying to be thoughtful. And her back was like, that's adorable. And it was a little dog. Yeah, it's a pony dog. Kids' shows have all the beep boops. I don't know, I thought it was, yeah, they have all the cute stuff. But I thought it was cute, but you can see how even just something like that, if you look at it- It's very stimulating. Yeah, it is very stimulating, so. Yeah. It's cute, I always think of that now when I think of sound sensitivity is at the top. I want to tell someone to-
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You can't watch Bluey, which is like, who am I ever going to say that to again in my life? Yeah, that's freaking adorable. And you know, I just think that in the urban setting, again, there's constant Blueys. And because of the higher concentration of people and dogs, you have even less control over your environment. You have a lot less visibility, which is, you know, potentially increasing the risk.
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in certain situations, you have normally a higher risk, like more frequency kind of a situation where even getting out to go to the bathroom, you might be exposing your dogs to triggers. Whereas in more suburban rural areas, you might be able to get to some green space without seeing someone in a city, that might not be possible. So I just think that there's a lot of challenges that it's important to recognize on the front end.
09:54
and come up with strategies to counteract that. Because it's not that dealing with reactivity in a city is impossible. That's not at all, people do it all the time, all the time. But it's harder and you gotta get creative. Hopefully this will help people get a better look at what it really is like. And then they can have a more informed decision around, should I go to the shelter and get a dog when I live in the middle of, you know, let's say Boston.
10:23
You know, like how does one make that decision? What if you do decide to rescue a dog and it has issues? Where are you gonna start when you live in the city? This is a really great episode for a lot of those answers to a lot of those questions. Yeah, I think it can create a feeling of being trapped, perhaps more than in other environments, for the human and the dog, which is something that I think just really compounds the issue. I personally...
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professionally have found that frustration is one of the most damaging and aversive things in a training situation. And finding ways to alleviate frustration and or build up more resilience to that frustration is sometimes a really key component, especially when the triggers are inescapable, which is what a city environment can sometimes kind of become.
11:21
Dogs is what Mattison is referring to it, but also, and also she's referring to frustration for owners, but that, that, or dog parents, that frustration leads to resentment. I am really hard pressed to say anything other than dogs can develop something similar to that feeling. I'm not really sure if resentment is the right word, but when you are constantly and
11:51
And the same person is around you all the time. And this goes for dog parents back towards their dogs. And you're having problems and problems and problems and problems. You can't tell me that the seat of that relationship is joy and happiness. In what dimension could that be the actual overarching theme of the relationship? If what's happening most of the time is overstimulation.
12:20
frustration, acting out, you know, having constant firing of your nervous system. That would mean that the seat of your relationship is something other than that. And I think that people want to know that. It may, it may be hurtful to know that, but I think once you know that you have the awareness, it becomes painful to you to not change it because now you know, and you're thinking about it.
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And I don't think that this is Alice and I don't think that this is Alice and Lucy at all but I think that their situation is one that could very easily become that. And I know that people out there are feeling that because in a couple of those like reactive dog support groups and I just kind of see these posts and I hear the words that people are saying and the ones that are being really honest are saying how angry they are.
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and how sad they feel and how trapped they feel with their dog. And it can easily become, like you said, resentment, I think, even builds. So often we have a big old question mark where we don't know a ton of information about the phases of development, the key, key phases of early puppyhood. And in this case, we do know, we do know that Lucifer had a pretty chaotic and impactful
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a couple of weeks during those early phases. And so we feel that that's a likely contributor to his sensitivity and his hypervigilance, his explosive behaviors. It doesn't mean in any sense that we think that he is beyond helping. Just because there's a trauma that you can trace to the behaviors does not mean
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that it can't be helped. You're not gonna find a sentient being on this planet that has not experienced trauma. And this is a topic that's really popular for me right now is how much emphasis are we putting on not only genetics, but the beginning of a dog's life and their beginning experiences. And we all know that part of the whole journey of a being is the resolution of trauma and healing. And how that happens is...
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different for every single individual and humans are not the only species that have trauma. Dogs are not the only species that have trauma. The goal is that we can help each other resolve it along the way and have a better, happier, more joyful life. So that's why I don't, you know, I don't like to put a ton of emphasis on, as we would call it in recovery, the war stories. Well, this is what happened before and this is what like those things.
15:10
are important because they do influence our approach and us looking at it with compassion and empathy for another being like, wow, you've probably been through some shit. You know, like I really need to think about that. We do think about that, but we don't wanna get stuck there. We don't wanna get stuck there. Cause if you get stuck there, then you're really capping the potential of your dog. If you get stuck in the backstory of your dog's rescue and telling it over and over and.
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it becomes a place where you stay and you have a hard time moving forward. You really have to look at that and reach out for some help because you can get out of that loop. And the way you talk about it is gonna tell you kind of where your head's at with it, right? So Alison came to us very, it felt very factual. It felt very, hey, this was the situation. I think it's important information for you guys to know. I'm kind of.
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left it there. It wasn't used as any sort of like reasoning or justification. It wasn't used as a part of like a narrative, right? It was just information. And I think that that's important that the way that you're talking about it is fact-based and where we have question marks, hypothesizing, it's not super valuable. If we were to say fact-based things about where Lucifer came from, a very simple way to say it is...
16:29
Lucifer just came from a situation with a young person that just wasn't ready. And his mom stepped in and just wasn't ready either, but she felt compelled. And I think that this is when I like seeing people step in. When you physically are so overcome that you cannot help, but to physically do something. And I think that that's just where she was at. And she knows that maybe it wasn't the idea situation.
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for her to end up with Lucifer, but they're together now and she wants to do her very best to try and help him. And I really just adore that kind of approach to any situation like, hey man, I don't know how we got here, but we're here and we're gonna get through this together. I'm gonna do something about this. I just loved that. Yeah, I totally agree. Now the behaviors that we are seeing from Lucifer and I guess,
17:26
More importantly, the emotions, the frustration that we think that he's feeling underneath the surface. And I also want to just take a second and say frustration is when you're looking at what it could be doing and the way it could be interacting within their nervous system. Frustration can be a result of certain needs that we might not understand as humans not being met.
17:55
Now, frustration can come about whenever you want something and you can't get it or you can't have it. That's something that I understand. But frustration on a deep level, frustration that can present as really problematic behaviors, that can be driven by deep needs not being met. And I know that this is something that you are passionate about.
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and excited to get into in terms of just drive and how important that is and how when drive is not being met with an outlet, how it can come out in all kinds of sideways ways. Sideways way. In this case, it was coming out of sideways way. One of the first things that I'm going to ask Allison is how often does that dog, that stunning black lab...
18:51
How often does he see the water and get to partake in the swimming of the waters and doing all the things that we know labs and gold retrievers, all the retrievers love to do. They love to swim. It's just something in them that they want to, it's part, I think really part of their work drive is to interact with water. They are compelled within them.
19:21
to interact with water. And so I wonder what that would do. If you take away, I've been saying this about labs for years, just because I saw so many in vet med, what happens when you take away the work of a dog designed to work, designed to do something really specific? And I grew up in a place where there's a lot of upland game, so like lot of upland gun dogs.
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people are, there are lots of pointers, lots of spaniels, lots of retrievers, because everybody's hunting duck, pheasant, whale, like people are hunting in the places that I have lived, and they're really working dogs. And so my interpretation of what that was like is just so, their lives are so different than what I'm seeing now. And for me personally, I had a really...
20:18
difficult time sitting down and imagining what it really is like for a Labrador, for a real sporting dog, to be living in the city with no access. I'm going to assume that it's little to no. Little to no access to the very environment it was designed to live in. It would be like taking my jeep.
20:46
which was with the big tires and it's designed to go through the mud and get me all these places and then just plopping it down in like the middle of New York City traffic. I know people probably do this. I think you're weird if you do, but you know, I mean, it's a mismatch is what I'm getting at. Or putting... Yeah, if a jeep never sees the mud. Yeah, yeah. It would be like putting an American 18-wheeler on a highway in Italy.
21:16
Oh my God. No, no, no, no, no, no. Why did you end up in a nightmare? It's a mismatch, a complete mismatch to me. But that's where we are. We can't undo the fact that there are dogs in the city. We can't undo the fact that there are dogs in inappropriate environments for them. There are people that are in inappropriate environments for them, and we all have to make do.
21:44
You know, we do the best with what we have at the time. And for many, many people, that's where we're at right now, are realizing, wow, I think I have a dog who might need breed specific things, and they're not getting it. I'm listening to what you're saying, ladies, and I'm picking up what you're putting down. If that's you, listen up. You know, listen up, because labs aren't the only ones. People have healers. People have...
22:12
I see people with house in the city. She got a Catehula. She got a reactive Catehula. The lady that contacted- Well, she's not really reactive anymore. Well, that lady, yeah, hey, that wrote the article in the Washington Post that I was featured in. That's how she found me. Yep, she has a Catehula. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. In Manhattan, I was like, oh my God.
22:36
And that's just the point. We're not saying that all hope is lost, because there are ways to get creative, but that's what it takes, and it takes a ton of intention. And educating yourself on the background of the genetics, because if you can understand better where the drive came from, you can get more creative about how to meet those needs. And, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, you go. You go. Well, you also, you stop taking everything so personally.
23:04
You can help that when you have a team and the teammate keeps seemingly effing up, you're going to go over there. What are you doing? You're supposed to pass the ball over to her and you're not seeing the ball. No, but there, what is the problem? And your teeth is like purple. You're not even like, you're like, what does that have to do with anything? They don't even know what's going on. It's, it's the same kind of thing. Like once she figure out, oh, you thought we were playing a game about colors. No, we're not. We're playing basketball.
23:34
Like it's that, it can be that big of a disconnect for people. When you don't have the information, it's like you guys are in two completely different games, two different worlds and, and you can talk and the other one can't, you know, so when you can get on the same page. Hopefully you'll both be playing basketball or shouting pink at each other. I don't know. One of the- Right. Who knows? You know, taking even like, I guess a step back and looking at just retrievers, right? They are designed to work.
24:04
in partnership with a person, with a human, with their person. And so I think that we see a lot of these retriever breeds with behaviors that are considered like kind of needy, they struggle to settle, they're a little bit hyperactive, right? Like these are the things that I hear. And to me it makes sense, because that's what they're designed to do. They're trying to be a partner. And so again,
24:33
kind of getting creative and finding ways to fulfill that drive to work in collaboration with you, that can look so many different ways. Like y'all could just be a team doing the dinners, doing this. Like you can create so many fun strategic ways to engage. And those in particular, I guess in addition to some of the sound sensitivity, but those
25:02
restless behaviors, which I think can be extra problematic in the city. Those are behaviors where, and I know that this is something that you and I have talked about over and over again from a bunch of different angles, and we will continue to do so because it's important, is these are sometimes situations in dogs where we find that we need to look at some potential medication intervention, where there's an inability to settle. Where there's a...
25:30
inability to get to baseline, where there's no decompression. And in this case, and I think in many or most cases, we're very much going in with an open mind to see how some other strategies work first and giving them a chance before we would sort of circle back to saying, I think medication might be necessary. And that's where we would potentially be thinking that that...
25:57
that trauma that we talked about could be impacting, right? Could be impacting him in a way that we really can't move forward without a little bit of help. Just being able to have him engage in training. Now, I know that you and I are both of the opinion that we are not keen to jump to medication. That's not our first suggestion whatsoever. But if we see a dog struggling to engage with even basic.
26:24
basic training principles and we've already tried a couple of approaches and absolutely nothing seems to be clicking. Sometimes that's the key to even being able to take that first step. But again, we kind of don't know yet because we have to go through the process of trying some other things first, like getting creative and meeting those needs in different ways, deeper ways.
26:52
Helping people fix a problem with medication is fixable with something else. And what I mean by that is, if I haven't made sure that needs A, B, and C are being met, and I am like, well, A and B is met, and then we'll just do meds, that's never going to be appropriate for me. Now, if I'm like, wow, we've tried these things and you really are...
27:17
You know, meeting your dog's needs as best you can. You're trying, you're putting forward this effort. I see you showing up. It's not that. I just think that the environment is really overstimulating and I don't know how you're gonna really make a lot of headway there because you have to go to work every day. You know, like those kinds of things where I really see the effort being made. That's the time that I'm gonna suggest that they go talk to their veterinarian or-
27:46
It's harm reduction. And I know that if I didn't have a harm reduction model in an area of my addiction, I would still be on opiates. I had to have medication. I could not get off of opiates without it. Many people do. There's lots of people that do, there's lots of people that don't, there's lots of people that everybody, these different models are out there so that people can grab them as a life raft when they need them.
28:16
You know, that's what harm reduction is supposed to be used for. So I think using medication as harm reduction is a great idea. I think using medication as maintenance is a great idea if it's right for that dog. I think jumping to an over-prescribing medication in lieu of meeting the needs of dogs or their parents or jumping to that instead of.
28:42
actually working with people in a more holistic way, I think is a mistake. Well, and that's a personal choice that I make in my life for me and for my dog. So Remy has allergies, but rather than give him allergy medicine four times a year, I boost his immune system. So at the time of year when the seasons change, that's when he is susceptible to those seasonal allergies. So we do a 10-day cycle through a natural immune boost.
29:12
and he comes through without any symptoms. They're also tracking it, tracking and paying attention to being able to notice that that's when it happens and kind of getting ahead of it. There's a lot that goes into it. Yeah, for sure. Enzo's an allergy baby, so I get it. He's on an expensive allergy medication, but it's the same thing. It's about four times a year. Yeah, I know. Well, I know that we have some plans for Lucy, which we're going to go through with Allison.
29:41
Definitely starting with managing arousal. That's, to me, that's teaching skills to both the human and the dog, right? So for the human, we wanna just get some of the mechanics there, you know, build some of the habits. And for our dogs, we just wanna get that strong reinforcement history. Starting some decompression patterns in the home, we're seeing, and working on reducing that impact of the sounds because sound sensitivity is often where we start because they are.
30:10
being thrown into dysregulation at a high frequency and without being able to really escape it. So we really like to start there. And then working on some of that barrier and leash-free activity and potentially working on some cooperative care as we get through some of those other goals, but really just helping Alison feel more confident in getting through the day-to-day with Lucy because I know it's a real challenge for her right now and I'm excited to be able to go through this with her.
30:40
and hopefully bring some relief and put our heads together. I was thinking, that's the way. Relief, relief, relief. Relief. And we can put our heads together and come up with some creative ways to meet his very specific needs, because it can be hard when you're just you and your dog and you're living in this cycle that feels inescapable, you know, to see another way. And that's where bringing not one, but two, but two crazy people.
31:10
So it's a double sensation. But really being able to approach meeting these needs in a creative way and finding solutions that are realistic and sustainable. So we will be back in the next episode to unpack this plan with Alison.
31:32
Unpacked was created by Jerri Sheriff and Mattison Simpson, edited and produced by Josh Wasta under the supervision of Straight Up Dog Talk, LLC and Emily Breslin. If you are enjoying this podcast, follow or subscribe to be sure you don't miss an episode and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Looking for more honest and relatable dog content? Check out our sister podcast, Straight Up Dog Talk. See you next time.