Ep. 20 Transcript

Episode 20 Special Episode - unPACKing 2024 p. 2

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00:04
Welcome to Unpacked, an open-minded podcast taking a clinical, not political approach to helping pet parents around the world. I'm Sailor Jerry, certified dog trainer, virtual dog training revolutionary, owner of Tulsa Pack Athletics and creator of The Open-Minded Approach. And I'm Madison, her friend, certified dog trainer and behavior consultant. Together, we have nearly three decades of experience in behavioral dog training.

00:29
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. This is Unpacking 2024, a special two-part episode to close out the year and kick off season three. Jerry and I spent time reflecting on our personal clients from this year and each pulled two to unpack for each other and for you. These four cases are jam packed with valuable insights and

00:57
You just may see your own dog reflected back in one of our clients. If you are ready to learn from real behavior cases, settle in with us and unpack. Well, the other case that I brought certainly had need for some different coping skills for her stress. So the other case that I brought is Leah, who is, in my words, a floofy chalmix. 17 breeds came back in the DNA test.

01:27
And you know, I got me a floofy chow mix. 17. 17, Breeze. Oh, that's precious. Oh, wait till I send you a picture. She's real cute. And you know, Remy's my little floofy chow. Oh, I love little indiscriminate fluff butts. Right? Oh, it's totally my type. She is three years old, and they've had her since she was a puppy. Now, they came to me, Jerry, I mentioned this to you.

01:52
you know, after a tough moment and how sometimes we have people who come to us after like events, right? Like catalyst moments. And this was a tough one where Leah had actually snapped at one of the young children in the home and was really had been struggling with anybody new, especially coming into or being around the house. But there was an increased agitation with the young children in the home.

02:21
One and a half and three were the ages. So that looked like growling and snapping which is very scary, right? That can be a really I'm not a mother but that's I imagine like absolutely terrifying and This is really important because I don't want that to be a moment with no hope Because it can be a scary moment, but it doesn't have to be a hopeless moment and it doesn't mean

02:49
that there isn't a potential solution there. So, Leah was described by Jamie as kind of a tough puppy, which like, man, I've met a few sassy chows and yeah, they have very big personalities and they are not, you know, there's a certain personality type to the chow and the chow-like dogs where they're a little bit harder to motivate, maybe a little bit harder to get to engage, a little bit more interested in things going on.

03:18
around you. Oh, and she struggled a lot with the groomer and at the vet. Anything related to body handling for this? I bet she did. Yeah. That is a real struggle for her. I'm just laughing at all the chow. The chow-like tendency, even though she's 17 different breeds. It's funny. But it's, it's, but the chow is ringing true. But she really reached out about...

03:44
the children, the young children. Now, three kids, ages one and a half, three and 13, but Leah loves the 13-year-old, has a very special relationship with the young boy. However, Leah had bit her husband when he tried to trim her nails once, and had recently lashed out to the husband about or around some type of resource. I think it was just her food bowl. But generally, Leah was...

04:13
known as a pretty emotional gal, but started becoming more reactive at around a year old. So one of the first and most important things was really limiting and refereeing Time with the Littles because I only had to watch one clip to see that they were, I mean, I could guess.

04:37
but they were in her face a lot. They were trying to climb on her. Girl, I bet you did see that. I was about to tell you, I bet those kids are all over that dog. And I'm not saying that as a did in any way to the parents. I did that as a trial to our family dog. I know that I did. That's just it. I happened to have a parent who was really, really good with animals and knew a ton about animals.

05:03
And so I did not grow up in a house. I mean, I can't even imagine what my parents would have done if they saw me in my dog's faces or do, oh, like it just, it sends chills at my spine. At every one of those times could be a bite. But my parents didn't know that. Like I try, I remember- Yeah, a lot of parents don't, yeah. Being in my childhood family, the golden retrievers face. I remember trying to ride her like a pony. Like I remembered, I remember doing things that would horrify me.

05:33
today, but you just don't know. And the truth is, is that it can look like a cute, fun, playful moment until you know what you're looking at. And as soon as, I mean, as soon as I saw it, and I could help point out some things, it was very clear that in general, Leah was not happy. She was not happy with it, but was so clingy to her human, to her adult humans. Yeah, she couldn't get away from the kids. But she couldn't.

06:02
have both of those things that she couldn't get away from the kids and also be near her people. So she chose to stay around a stressful situation to be near her people. Now, the stress signs that that Leah exhibited that I was able to point out and you know the way that that we train meant that I filmed, I filmed their clip and slowed it down and paused and showed exact things. So that was panting. That was years back.

06:27
That was avoidance. That was appeasement licking of the kids, you know, which again, if you don't know what you're looking at is kisses, right? Mm-hmm. She's just giving kisses because she loves it. Mm. She doesn't. Ugh. I know. And it was a huge shift though. Like learning this, just learning what they were looking at shifted everything. And once they understood how to read her better, we basically just stopped the littles from being around her.

06:55
unless it was a very intentional and positive experience that we set up where there was a gate and they were throwing- That's the best rule there is. Tax for her to chase, it was great. Cause one and a half is not coachable. It's not even near coachable. One and a half is not coachable. Three is barely, three is not really coachable. It depends, it depends on the three-year-old. Milo was, my youngest son was, yeah. I've known three-year-olds that I'm like, you're hired. But I've met nine-year-olds that I'm like-

07:19
get out of the room. So it's really child by child. And coachable is the quality that I look for. It's the only quality that I look for. And you listen to what I'm asking you to do and not do. That's true. That's a very, very good point. I think it's very difficult for a lot of parents to hear that you, and I'm not insinuating this about this case. I'm speaking in general. It's difficult situations to hear that you didn't understand that your kid was running a muck.

07:49
and pushing past boundaries. Can be difficult for people to hear that because sometimes, you know, that may be the only place that they perceive that their child is doing that. That their kid may not really be, you know, maybe they've got a little kid that follows the rules and is, you know, just doing a great job all the time. And to hear that that child is doing something wrong, I think is what sometimes what people will hear. When in reality, the conversation is actually.

08:17
as the child is being a child and the dog is being a dog. They can't do anything else but those things. And in actuality, it's the parent's responsibility to learn and recognize body language, advocacy, making sure that everybody is consenting to what's going on and putting action steps in place to make all of that stuff happen. I think that's deep down, I think that's what becomes difficult for people in cases like this. Yeah.

08:46
But we allowed there to be really specific and intentional positive experiences and just had a lot of management in place at other times. And then we made her, and this is gonna be, I guess, my through line of my two cases I brought today. Then we made her a safe space, which they kind of already had. So we were able to just sort of, it was a great little, I think it was from, like it used to be the baby's spot, right? So it was like this nice little quarantined section.

09:16
And so what we did was we just practiced sending her there and going there with her over and over and over and over. And then anytime that we saw those early signs of stress, right, we saw the lip licking, we saw the panting, we saw the ears go back, we would just go with her to her spot and just go with her and reinforce her being there instead. And we would leave with her and just show her, okay, we're going to go over here. And we made sure that the little stayed in the other, you know, stayed in the living space.

09:44
and we would just go as a, it was an if, then. If she's stressed, we're gonna go together. We didn't even need a leash. We just grabbed some snacks and just walked over. I think we had a verbal cue. I think it was like spot or something, right? Like, Leah, go to your spot. And we just over and over and over. And then lo and behold, when she was stressed, she would start wandering over to her spot. A dog learns how to choose avoidance. She was actually.

10:09
one of the fastest cases I've ever seen of a dog being like, oh, that's way less stressful. I'm doing that. Yeah. That's how it is. Yeah. I am used. Just give me a better choice. That thing on Enzo for his entire life, because I've always had, I got all these damn kids, you know? Um, and he always, if he knows, got a spot, he avoids every single time. He just knows he can get up. And that's exactly how I taught him. If I saw him looking weird,

10:38
I was like, oh, here we go, here we go, let's go. And I would take him to his spot and he was fine. She would decompress there and then begin to even rejoin the family when she was feeling less stressed. And also that gave the kids an opportunity to kind of like wind down and then she would come back and join. And it was again, a great example of a dog who is ready to accept a new and less stressful behavior pattern. What a great dog, wow. Oh my God, I love her.

11:05
So we actually blew through that pretty quick, to be honest, and started working on some stranger danger stuff pretty quick. Oh, cool. This was a fairly local family. So I knew I could work virtually and then also go in person to work with stranger danger. So we built a framework for Leah to meet some new people and be able to accept them into the home. So this was parallel walks outside, going at her own pace, disengagement before interaction, muzzle conditioning.

11:33
which ultimately with me was not needed at all. But for the vet work and grooming cooperative care that we did was needed, because again, we were able to just like check off a lot of things to the point where now Jamie can literally comb her entire body, cut out all of her mats. She will shove her face into the muzzle. Still hates the vet, still hates the vet with a like deep burning desire. But they were able to get her there and have a full checkup and you know.

12:03
They had a system in place. So I think this was a really incredible transformation on how Leah handles and communicates her stress, right? So instead of staying in a stressful situation and lashing out, she learned how to regulate and how to communicate her own boundaries in like that whisper, right? Instead of having to resort to getting louder and getting louder until we're throwing bows, she learned that her whispers would be answered. And we were able to, within two,

12:33
One hour in-person sessions, Leah brought me toys inside the house and was pushing up into me for pets. Now I don't think that that would happen with every human that walked in the door. Like I passed the vibe check in a way that not every person is going to and she's more sensitive to men than to women, which is fairly common, I feel like. But their relationship is so good. She still struggles with the vet, like I said, but they have the skills and tools to work through all of that now.

13:02
And again, I got an update. I got this last week from Jamie. Hey Madison, I just wanted to share with you this progress that Leah has made recently where she is coming up to the littles and asking for love. We make sure to keep a close eye on everything to see if it's too much, but she's really starting to gain more confidence around them and she just gets up and leaves when she's had enough. I'm so proud of her. Well, that's got to feel pretty good. It feels very good. And this was, like I said, you know,

13:27
Those initial client calls when you're coming off of a catalyst moment where there's a high risk situation with young children, like that's scary and that's emotional and people feel literally hopeless. Like this is it for me and my dog. And don't get me wrong, sometimes the answer is that that dog needs to not be in a home with young children, but that is not where we have to jump. There is solution if you're willing to work and get to know your dog in a new way. Well, my last case is...

13:56
all the way in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Adriana, and the crew, as I dubbed them. I'm so excited to learn about them. I've seen them, I saw in your stories, and I don't really know much more than that, so I'm really excited to hear this. She is a really cool, interesting person that I watched go through something that was difficult, and she was constantly always thinking about...

14:24
her dogs and what she could do, you know, to do a better job. And she had, um, I think less than a lot of us have when we're on this journey. And she did not complain about it. And she made the most of what she had. And I'm just so impressed with her. So impressed with her. So Adriana has five dogs, five of those little more than either of us has. That's right. So

14:54
Paco is the biggest and he would be like a medium sized dog. So like a small healer size dog. There is Poncha who is slightly smaller. There is Hirilulo, which is Lulo. And he's like min pen size, big min pen size, maybe Jack Russell size. And then there's Bebe who's even smaller. And then our three-legged one-legged. Bebe. Chuchifrito. Which is.

15:23
My favorite dog name that I've ever heard in all of time. You guys, I've heard tens of thousands of dog names. When you're about to have to hear literally every name you could ever think of, but I'd never met a choo-choo foodie. And I thought, that's great. She did a really good job. So she came pretty stressed out because of the situation that was going on in her life, which I'm not gonna go into detail about here because it isn't really relevant, but I will say that many people

15:52
are going through changing an environment, we're moving from one place to another. So this would fall into that category. She knew that she was gonna be moving to a new place and she felt like she had no, she had a system, she had a management system for these five dogs. They stayed outside on a patio during the day and then she would come and feed them at different times of the day, spend time with them, that kind of thing. But she couldn't really,

16:22
It was chaotic and she couldn't, you know, it was just, they were jumping everywhere all the time and barking and you know, kind of just what you would think of when you think of five little dogs, all vying for attention and resource. And sometimes they would fight, you know, cause they'd be resource guarding and one of them would be fighting over a toy and you know, just nothing extreme, but definitely hard to function. And she wanted to do more with them. So she came to me for some help.

16:50
And I noticed pretty quickly that all we were dealing with was a person that didn't understand how to manage a large number of dogs. The dogs really had very minimal, actual behavioral problems that were stemming from anything other than being with a bunch of dogs and not having the right management system. So that was cool because we got to go maybe a little bit faster than a dog who was, you know, having some

17:18
underlying emotional problems and then that we're, you know, having behavioral problems on the surface. Yeah. So the first thing we did was we got a really great, peaceful management system. So when she would go and open the back door, the dogs would run in and go everywhere. So before she went out there, she was getting their stuff ready. And that's fine. And that's great. And it's important to be prepared. But we also needed to do something about the overall

17:47
cycling, repetitious arousal that these dogs were getting in. They were getting excited. They're in arousal. They're jumping around and doing things that really, I don't think the dogs would really do if they weren't experiencing that level of arousal based on their excitement that they're feeling. So we certainly didn't want to punish it. We didn't want to do any of that. We just wanted to manage it. So we changed to scattering.

18:13
And the dogs learned that they could scatter and get their noses down on the ground. And she would get there and then direct each dog into their crate where they would work on their snuffle mat. And then she would pull one dog out and train each dog at a time, putting the dogs back in, pull another dog out, put another dog back in. And that went really well. We added some play, of course, when that dog was out, not just, you know, working with food, but also spending time together and having time in some structured play, and then once every dog was doing pretty good with that.

18:43
we started grouping the dogs together. So we put dogs together that would do well together. For example, you know, Poncha doesn't really like to play as much. I think she needs that built a little bit in her. And so she would go with a dog that was maybe not so over the top because she really just didn't care for that energy when she was out trying to visit with Adriana. Paco got to be...

19:11
by himself when he played because he's very energetic. He needs all of her attention. He also got to be by himself when she would take the dogs on what we would call mini walks. So we were starting to work with the dogs on the leash so she could get them out and not just individually but can we do two at a time? Can we even do two at a time? But Paco always got to be by himself. So that was perfect because there were five dogs. Yeah. And he did really well. He was a dog that needed a little bit more of.

19:39
the walks and the outside stuff. So during the course of our training, she moved homes. And the place that she moved to, that yard was really cement. And so she had to figure out, what am I gonna do? How is this gonna work? So we got the dogs some raised beds, just whatever she could get, that was fine. And then we put straw all over the ground and she said the dogs really loved it. She sent me a really cute picture of them the other day. But mostly the things that we worked on,

20:09
We're really just basic things like the, like consistently managing their arousal when they're together as a group, making sure that each dog has individual attention and an individual training plan, making sure that she feels competent enough to walk, you know, two dogs together or handle two dogs at the same time, because there's only so much time in the day. And she is, you know, an adult that has to work like the rest of us. And we, I know, bummer.

20:39
We also worked on the new place that she went to, is a, the new place she moved into is a friend of hers. And that friend has been really, really helpful in making sure that she's consistent with some of the things that Adriana is working on. I think because she sees a lot of the benefit, you know, if we go and scatter to the dogs, they're not going to bark at the cats that are walking across the rooftops that they haven't had the opportunity to see in their lives before. So that those were some of the things that she could pick up on easily.

21:09
And Adriana wasn't there. She actually sent me a message. She sent me a lot of really cool messages, but this one was at the end of our training. She said, Jerry, thank you so much. I know I paid for us to work together, but I haven't felt like this experience was transactional. This has been a wonderful experience, and I have felt mindfully guided this whole time. You've been compassionate and empathetic and supportive.

21:36
And this has felt like more than just dog training, which has made me better and stronger and more confident while teaching and handling my friends with four legs. I really appreciate you and what you do. My friends with four legs. I know. Like, it's just so, it's one thing to see dogs, you know, dog parents implement something and then their dog gets it. That within itself is fantastic, right? We see it and we're like, oh my God, you're doing.

22:06
But then when you hear their reflections about like, oh, so I just didn't know, I just didn't know. And I now I know, and I'm trying really hard. And thank you for making this more than just hot dog on leash, bleep, blop, robot, like, you know what I mean? It's more than that. Animal husbandry is one of the most beautiful things, I think, in life, in life.

22:35
is learning how to care for and respect the animals that are here, not as we would have them to be, but as they are. And like really thinking about what makes them successful in our homes and in society, because they're really special. And a lot of people love their dogs, but they don't even know some of this stuff, you know, and it could go to a whole another place of respect and

23:03
reverence and admiration if they just had access to some of this information. Yeah, well that's what we're here trying to do, right? That's what we're doing. Yeah, that was a really fun case for me. It was also really nice to have another client once again introduce me to where they live and their culture and help me learn things that I can take, you know, from that case on to the next.

23:33
Unpacked was created by Jerry Sheriff and Madison 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.

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