Dealing With A Reactive Dog In Your Home: A Q+A. Plus 3 Special Announcements

Annie was recently browsing her local dog Facebook group, when she came across a post by a woman named Michaelle who was reaching out for training help with her reactive foster dog. Several of the replies recommended a trainer in the area who was not professionally certified, and Michaelle posted that she had decided to work with. When Annie, perhaps a little too aggressively, responded with critical questions about this trainer, Michaelle called her out on it. By way of apology, Annie offered to coach her through some of the issues she was dealing with, gratis.

They discuss her foster dog Baozi's reactivity in the home, including his, growling, barking, sometimes sudden biting and lunging, his many triggers, and health issues that may be affecting his behavior. Rather than focusing on quick fixes for these unwanted behaviors, Annie approaches the issue by suggesting ways to get to the root cause for lasting and mutually beneficial behavior change.

Note: School For The Dogs Podcast is going on hiatus for a few months!

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Transcript

This transcript was made automatically from the audio, so it may contain small errors.

Hey everybody, Annie here with a couple of quick announcements. First, I am so excited to announce that we have launched our new online campus. This is a virtual gathering place where we are hosting Q&As, webinars, support groups, and on-demand courses. It is Pretty awesome, and I hope you will join. If you use the link schoolforthedogs.com slash podcastfan, you can get a month of free access, and we have some pretty cool things happening in the next month there, so I hope you will join.

Once you're on the inside of the online campus, if you post something and mention that you are a podcast fan, I will gift you access to our Body Language Basics course, a $47 value. This is an on-demand course by my School For The Dogs co-founder, Kate Sinisi. Super valuable information. I think you'll get a lot out of it. Second announcement is that the podcast is going on a brief hiatus.

I hope to be back in September, but I'm taking a little time off because I am writing a book about dog training. It will be published by Source Books in 2024, and I am trying to finish it up this summer. So I am going to be... Turning my attention to that for the next couple months, but I will be going live and doing some Q&As in the online campus, so I hope you will come join me there. And I should also mention, if you haven't done my master class, which is free, it's about an hour long, I suggest you check that out.

If you are jonesing for more Annie Grossman while I'm gone, you can get there at AnnieGrossman.com. Masterclass. It features a special offer where you can get a year of access to the online campus plus a 90-minute session with the School For The Dogs trainer and all of our on-demand courses for a very special price. And just for doing the Masterclass, you also get a 20% discount right now to storeforthedogs.com. So make sure to check that out.

And I will see you on the inside, or else I will see you back here in September. And, oh, wait, third special announcement I almost forgot. I got a kitten. It's sort of an interesting story. I wrote up how this tiny cat entered our lives earlier this week.

You can read all about it in the online campus again today. Join at schoolforthedogs.com slash podcast fan and you'll get a month free. Magnolia, I'm telling everybody about the new kitten. You want to tell them? We got the kitten.

And what's her name? Sarah. And where'd she come from? From the beach. And what do you like about her?

We love her and we have something for her. Alright, tell everybody they should go to the online campus and they can read all about it. Can you say that? Go to the online campus to read all about it.

School, school for the dogs, for the dogs. School, school for the dogs, for the dogs. So just for background for anyone listening to this, Michelle and I, I don't know Michelle, but Michelle and I are in the same neighborhood dog group. And she posted something about an issue she was having with her dog. And I said, you know, hey, if you want to do a free consult, here's the link.

We're doing free consult right now at School For The Dogs. And a couple other people recommended another trainer in the neighborhood who, I've heard this person's name before, but I don't really, I don't know much about them. So I googled around and saw that this person wasn't certified and by any... Well, by any organization other than this one local dog training trainer program that I don't think has a very good reputation and being aware of the fact that it's like, I think most people don't know that it's not a regulated field and that there are, that there's like a lot of different, I guess you could say different kinds of dog training, some things that could be effective, but actually ultimately Ultimately, don't like address the root cause of the fear. I reached out and to Michelle, I really reached out to you just because I was like, hey, I was wondering how it went with this trainer because I don't know anything about this trainer.

And I said kind of like a shortened version, I guess, of what I just stated. And you wrote back like, basically, like, I don't think it's appropriate, you know, for you. I don't think you used the word appropriate, but you were just like, it's sort of weird that you're like denigrating some other trainer, you know, rather than. Just promoting your business and leaving it at that. And I realized right away, you were kind of right.

I shouldn't have said anything. I really didn't mean to. I didn't really mean to put this guy down because I don't know the person or the methods. But I was pushing you to tell me what you did in your session, which was not appropriate. And like I said to you in the message, I could just call this person and ask about their methods.

I apologize. And I totally understand if I came off like a jerk. No, no worries. I, you know, like I said too, it's just been such a stressful week with this guy because, again, like, we have so much affection for him. We know it's not, like, we know enough to understand that it's not like an aggression thing, that when he acts out it's because he's terrified.

Right, right. And so much aggression stems from fear. But anyway, so just to back up, I said, let's get on the phone and we can talk about this. And maybe it'd be a subject for the podcast, but tell me what's going on. So it sounds like you fostered this dog and now you're watching the dog.

And is this a new behavior? Did you see it when you were fostering? Like, take me back a little bit. Yeah, of course. So when we, so we started fostering him, I think we picked him up in February or March.

It was a little bit of an impulse decision, to be honest. Basically, the situation was we saw him and we already have a Chihuahua Pomeranian mix in the house. He's nine and a half. His name is Jiangu and he's an angel. We've never had an issue with him.

So we thought that, you know, we were ready to contemplate getting a second dog and So we spoke to this rescue and we brought, you know, and we were allowed to do a one week trial is what the rescue told us. The rescue disclosed that he did have a heart condition, but really no more than that. So when we brought him home, we realized he had a little bit of a fear aggression issue and realized the severity of his condition. He has a level five heart murmur. Our dog, Jango, actually also has degenerative heart disease.

When we realized all of that, we realized that we were maybe in a little bit over our heads. And so we reached back out and said, hey, we're happy to foster this dog and give him a home until he's adopted out. So we had him for about three months. Ashley, who's now his mother and renamed him Bowser. Adopted him, has had him for about a month.

We've stayed in touch the entire time. And she just is on a trip out of the country. And we agreed to watch him because we love him. So during that foster period, we realized a number of things. The first thing is, you know, Chang was allowed to sleep on the bed.

So for us, it was kind of a no-brainer that we would just put Bowser up on the bed. He got very territorial up there, so we quickly kind of revoked that privilege from him and set up a bed for him next to where we sleep. The territorial aggression was like if one of us left the bedroom and then came back in at night, it would spook him. It was like he didn't recognize us. He would growl and bark, which has now escalated to rushing at whoever, like charging at whoever is coming through the door.

And trying to bite their feet and their calves. And it's not like a warning nip either. It's like a rush, like a panicked rush and attack until you're able to kind of get away from, get yourself away from the situation. He also didn't like being touched at all at night. So if I accidentally, like, my hand, like, brushed him, he would, like, rush up the bed at me and bit my chest, actually, the first week that we had him ever.

I guess to back up a tiny bit, too, sorry, just for his background, he's an eight-year-old Chihuahua Pomeranian mix. He was with a family, I think, out in Queens, and he was rescued when this family was told that he had a heart murmur and wanted to put him down. And the vet said, this is a perfectly, not a perfectly healthy dog. You know, but like his condition can be maintained with medication and he can otherwise live a normal dog life and refused to put him down and surrendered him to the rescue. So we're working with eight years of I'm not sure what kind of treatment.

And you don't know if he had these issues with that family as well? Yeah, we've had no contact with that family. We don't know really anything about his background other than the circumstances of his surrender. So there was a territorial issue. There was also a little bit of just a growling issue.

Generally, he isn't neutered because his prior family decided not to do that procedure. And because of how far gone his heart condition is now, Every vet that we spoke to also backed up the recommendation that he not be put under anesthesia because they were afraid that he wouldn't be able to survive a surgery due to his heart condition. So he also wears a diaper around the house because he marks everywhere. He obviously doesn't like that. So he'll growl when the diaper is being put on.

But otherwise, what we have not seen is we have not seen resource guarding issues. When I feed him breakfast or dinner, I can sit right next to him, I can put my hand on his water bowl next to his food bowl, I can put my hand on his food bowl, and he's fine with that. He also hasn't shown any aggression to Janggu or the other dog in our house, and actually Janggu seems to be the only... Thing in this house that he consistently listens to. When he was here, when we were fostering him, we did some basic obedience training.

So we taught him sit, lie down and roll over. So that was the three month foster period. Since he's come back, he just seems to have more triggers to the point where we're just not even sure what is triggering him. So for example, like basically his second day here, I was in the bathroom and I walked out to the living room. Bowser was sitting on the couch, looked over, saw me and started barking and growling like he was about to charge.

So I started talking to my boyfriend. I was like, just allow me to not make eye contact with him. And just like distract, you know, distract him. That kind of state made him stay where he was and he was just like continued to bark. But then as soon as I turned my head back to where he was, he jumped off the couch, ran at me and like bit my foot and my calf.

He also just... At this point, it's like even movement will trigger him. So in our in-home office setup, we have two desks that are next to each other. If Nick turns in his chair to talk to me, that will cause Bowser to alert and like charge. You know, it's like at the point where it's like standing up will upset him.

And we're not sure what's going on. Since he's been here, we tried using a playpen to cut off like half of our living room, which is a ton of space, by the way. It's like we have a huge living room and like we probably had him confined in like 200 square foot space. Honestly, it's bigger than the first bedroom I had. When I first moved to the city, you know, he cried the entire time that he was in the playpen.

And when we let him out, he would charge and attack us every time we would like go to let him out for a walk or for his dinner or water. So we stopped that. We did that for one day and we were like, this is not working. What we do now is we just have him on leash at all times so that if he charges, one of us is able to pick up his leash. And we either try to redirect his attention with a treat and get him to sit, which doesn't always work.

The trainer we worked with yesterday showed us a method where... Rather than saying no or anything, we just walk towards him actually calmly, just like saying no once and then just walk towards him and like into his space and that actually seemed to calm him. But, you know, I'd love to also hear like what actually might be going on there and if there's maybe a better way to handle because we've tried both the redirect with the tree and like the command to just like get him to calm down and get him to do his obedience. Commands and now, you know, our instructions from yesterday. So that's pretty much where we're at at this point.

Nick, my boyfriend, seems to upset him a lot more than I do because Nick has left for the weekend as of today and he's actually been quite calm. Bowser has actually been quite calm today. He's actually on leash and just sleeping on his back, like in cockroach position. That's some good news. No, that's what I'm here for.

So a few follow-up questions. Did the person who had him in this intermediary time tell you how he was doing with her? Yep, so she would keep us updated regularly on his behavior. It sounds like he has not been aggressive with her. She told us there's only been one incident when he bit her.

Otherwise, though, so she lives in Hell's Kitchen with a roommate who fosters cats, and my understanding is Bowser does not have a good relationship with the roommate. So, she generally tries to keep Bowser in the room away from her. And the one time that he bit her was when Bowser was in the kitchen having his dinner or breakfast. Hi! Sorry.

Hello! Having his dinner or breakfast or something. And the roommate was in the living room, like came out to the living room and Bowser tried to charge her and Ashley put herself between Bowser and the roommate. And that's like when he charged and bit her. But otherwise, it sounds like she hasn't had any biting incidents with him.

And I mean, she's been doing an amazing job. Like she's she's conditioned him to, you know, allow. To allow her to do some things that we still weren't able to handle. He would not let us touch his butt when we were fostering him, which was unfortunate because his poop took a little bit to get solid, so we really needed to get at his butt to wipe it, and he did not like that, and he would growl and bite us when we would try to take care of that issue, and she was able to handle that. So, you know, he's made, he's definitely made progress with her for sure.

And, you know, I, I wonder if like some of the stress he's feeling is simply because of the change in location again. And hoping, you know, we're hoping that he'll be better once he goes back to Ashley. But, but yeah. Okay, so my immediate, my immediate thoughts from, from what you're telling me. Oh, sorry, one more super critical thing, actually, is that he's really affectionate and he'll ask for pets, but then he'll just randomly freak out when he's being pet with no warning.

So he doesn't give, like, there's no wailing, there's no lip curl, there's nothing. It just, like, goes straight to, like... Having like a demon in your lap. So it's really sad because I want to pet him and I want to give him affection. But like the last time that I sat on the floor, I sat on the floor, didn't look at him and let him crawl into my lap and then place my hand in front of his face and let him nose my hand to let me know that he wanted pets.

And then I would pet him for like five second intervals and then stop. But then after the second interval, he freaked out and I have a cut on my side from where he bit me. So he gives very little warning. What, you know, like what Mike said to us yesterday was like in the past, it must be that, you know, people have disrespected over and over his other signals. So he's decided that the only way to get people to stop something that he doesn't like is to go straight to biting.

So... So that's what he does. And he wasn't like that when, you know, we were fostering. But since we've gotten back, like every time that I've gone over to pet his head or something, I haven't been able to do so without, like almost every time I guarantee he's like freaked out. You know, after maybe like five or ten seconds of being pet.

In terms of a full like medical thing, actually took him to the vet, did a full workup. He's a healthy dog other than, of course, the heart murmur. He did have a loose tooth that she said fell out. So I'm not sure what's going on there. So maybe like...

If, like, there's an abscess in there or there's, like, still pain, maybe that's contributing to what he doesn't like. Yeah, so I was going to say that I would definitely first rule out any kind of medical reason that he might be behaving this way. He might be in pain. But, of course, you know, one of the things that's so difficult about being a veterinarian is you can't speak to your patients. Right.

So, you know, it's possible that sometimes the first medication that a veterinary behaviorist will recommend is a pain medication to address pain that we might not know the exact source of it. But, you know, what you're describing to me as a non-medical professional sounds like it could be related to pain and And I'm guessing the stress of maybe the stress of living with a cat or having whatever feelings he has about the roommate, the stress of being moved from one place to another. If only there was a little old lady out in the country who could live alone with every dog who needed that. Or it doesn't have to be an old lady, but you know what I mean. The perfect situation.

Like somebody retired. Yeah, out in like a remote area where there are none of the stressors of daily city life and roommates, etc. But, you know... They're not. And so I think it's commendable that you and she are doing your best to figure out these issues.

I would suggest checking out, we have a body language course that's just like an on-demand course. And I can send you some other information too. If you go to schoolforthedogs.com slash courses, I maybe would just do that. It's a pretty quick course, but I think that could help you maybe read some dog body language that you might not be aware of already because it's true that dogs do tend to give us signals they are going to bite, but sometimes they can be things that aren't super obvious unless you've really sort of Studied it a little bit. It might help you sort of learn how to read him a little bit better.

But it's true that, you know, he might go from what seems like nothing to snapping and, you know, the kind of thing like Getting into a space and yelling no if that is actually something that is aversive to him and who knows which part is aversive. Is it the word? Is it the approaching? Is it the fact that you're not then leaving? One of the fallouts of that kind of work, in my opinion, is that you can end up with a dog who's like, oh, I shouldn't bark and growl.

I should just go in for the bite. Which sounds like it's kind of like what that other trainer was doing. So, you know, there's actually a school of thought of, like, you actually want to encourage the growl. Like, you want a dog growls, even though that can seem counterintuitive. For the moment right now, I know you said you have to watch this dog through Sunday and you're really at your wit's end.

So that's really what I want to focus on helping you with because we have a few dozen hours before we get to Sunday at this point and I don't want you suffering. I think our focus is just, I don't want to make this dog... I don't want to create any worse habits for him. And you want to also be safe. You want both of you to be comfortable.

My other follow-up question was, what is he eating and is he eating well? Oh, and just an addendum to the tooth thing. If he had one tooth fallout, did a dentist look at it after it fell out? No. I don't believe so.

Yeah, so I would say probably a visit to the dog dentist is in order. If he had one tooth fall out, probably there are other ones that are on their way. And I don't know very much about dentistry of any kind. But my guess, and again, just a guess, is that if a tooth just falls out on its own, that might mean that there's like... Pain and rot under it that might need to be cleaned and dealt with.

And I mean, obviously we all know that dental pain is no joke. And for humans. Yeah. But is he eating? And what is he eating?

And how often is he eating? And is he using a crate? So I'll do the eating question first. So he eats twice a day with Chengu. They both eat at the same time.

So Chengu's on Pet Plate and Baozi is on Just Food For Dogs. He's either on turkey and whole wheat macaroni or chicken and white rice. And both of those recipes have been signed off on by the vet for being low sodium and healthy enough for a dog with his condition. He also takes a bunch of medications. He takes vetmadine furosemide, sildenafil, and one more, sildenafil, furosemide.

And I can't remember the last one. And what are these? These are for his heart? Yes. Those are all to manage his heart condition.

He has no problem taking those pills if we mix them into the Just Food For Dogs food. What I'm trying to ascertain is he's into the food, right? Yes, he's super into the food. They also both get a greenie after dinner, and he's also had no problem chewing on that. He's still able to kind of chew on something hard like that as well.

In terms of treats, he's just picky, I think. Like, Zhenggu gets chicken heart, turkey heart, like lamb liver, lamb lung, all that stuff. So that's what Baozi eats for training treats as well. And he's into them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, like super into them, yeah.

Okay. My, for the next, and sorry, does he use a crate? Oh, sorry, we don't have a crate, so we do not, and the playpen just like, he upset him, yeah, a lot. And he doesn't use a crate with the person who has them now. Yeah, so for the most immediate issues, I mean, overall too, but specifically right now, I think the focus should be on arranging the environment.

In order to make sure that he is agitated as little as possible and that you are as safe as possible. So, and the fact that your boyfriend is out of town and he seems to be less stressed about you than the boyfriend is probably a good thing. I would even go so far as to say if he seems less stressed, does he seem less stressed or more stressed you think when around the other dog? Yeah, around Jango, he and Jango, well, Jango is more annoyed by him than Bowser. Okay, than the other way around.

I think you're... Bowser kind of likes to follow Jango around the apartment and will, like, lick his dick. Sorry, I don't... He just, like, follows him around, licks his dick, like, does everything he does. It's kind of really cute.

Like, before we put him on leash at all times, like, he and Jango would just run around side by side because Bowser just wanted to do everything that he was doing. Yeah, I think your instinct to make the apartment as small as possible for him is actually a really good one. You might just need to be putting yourself in that area too. But, you know, not unlike anxious people, I think, you know, anxious dogs appreciate having a manageable environment that is, you know, as predictable as possible. Yeah.

So if you can create a space that's ideally away from the front door, ideally away from any noisy windows, that is maybe like an apartment within an apartment that you can hang out in for the next few days, that could be a good idea. Overall, I think your focus should be on helping him feel as comfortable as possible. We need to be focusing on his feelings before we're focusing on the behavior. To get back a little bit to what we were talking about before, I think a big divide in the world of... Dog training today is approaching the problem versus approaching the root of the problem because there's a lot of things you can do using punishment and punishment is not by the way like a big bad scary thing or like there's not I'm not even saying punishment with like a judgment value to it like punishment simply means we're reducing a behavior reinforcement means we're encouraging a behavior So there are ways you can reduce a behavior, you know, using some kind of punishment that might get rid of the behavior, but it can then lead to increased undesirable behaviors in some other area of the dog's life.

Like, hide his feelings. Or, like, you know, he's like, okay, well, like I said, like, barking is bad, so now I'm just going to go straight to biting. Yeah. Or, you know, scratching at the door got punished, but, you know, biting myself is a way that I can express that anxious energy. Or, it can lead to fallout of, like...

Let's say yelling is something he doesn't like. I mean, a lot of dogs, I'm not sure they even care if they get yelled at, but let's say he doesn't like being yelled at, you know, that person yelled at me, that person must be a bad person. Whereas they started out being, you started out yelling because they were barking at the noise in the hall, and now they're like, oh, I better bark at this person who always yells at me. So... I'm always talking about how we need to be thinking basically about two types of conditioning or two types of learning, the learning by consequence, which is what we generally think of with dog training.

Like if you do this, then this is going to happen. If you do X, then Y is going to happen. You know, if you sit, then you get a treat. If you bark, I'm going to yell no. Like the if-thans that we're doing to control their behavior, and that's like basically traditional dog training.

I mean, and it's dog training that we do at School For The Dogs, right? Anything that falls under what's generally known as obedience. But then there's the much more basic kind of learning, which is learning how to feel about something. So, you know, the example I always think of is like my daughter goes to school. She comes back with a drawing.

I could look at it with my eyes closed and tell her how amazing it is because I don't really care about the drawing at this point. I just want her to feel good about having gone to school and done this thing, da-da-da-da-da. And we have plenty of time to then build on that to the point of me being able to critique her work. I would say he is at the point of like you just want him to be like it was just an amazing time of being with Michelle. And was he a jerk the whole time?

Yeah, maybe. But I think I think like we can't even we can't even ask for behaviors from him yet because he's. He's just like not in a mental space for it. Now, does that mean he can't learn anything? No.

I think he can learn something, but I think what we want him to learn before we think is less about like doing X, Y, or Z and more that just like, oh my God, being at Michelle's is awesome. Because I think if you can get him feeling good about all the things, the behaviors we don't like are going to, a lot of them might just go away on their own because like you said, most of them are probably stemming from fear. But those that don't go away on their own, I think we'll have a better ability to work with changing those behaviors more. Because he just won't be so stressed out. And, you know, I think one nice thing about, you know, what's called reward-based training or positive reinforcement training is, like, even if you're not doing the best job of it, like, even if your timing's not great or whatever, like, you're still basically giving your dog good stuff.

And that is building their trust. Yeah. And aren't we lucky as dog owners in that we control all the stuff. We control where they sleep and what they eat and where they spend their time and who they spend their time with. And the fact that we have so much control over all of those inputs means that we can do a lot to control their behavior.

So that's why I was saying, let's figure out how you can literally set up your environment to be as controlled as possible. Because when there are fewer variables, you are going to have more control over all the variables. So I would suggest, and I mean, on the plus side, this is going to be easy to do. On the downside, it might sound crazy and you might be like, I was on the phone with this woman. So I know that's what it might sound like, but I would suggest like taking his food and it's wet food, right?

Yes. I would like, I would find a whole bunch of treats that he likes and the food that he likes, like figure out what is like the rest of his diet for today, Friday. And make it into like the smallest pieces that you can deliver to him. Now, I know like wet food, it's going to be a little bit yucky, I guess. Maybe like put it on a spoon.

But I would just figure out how far you can get to him without him reacting. How far you can get while he's being comfortable and spend the rest of the day just going up to him and giving him the treats and the food. And you could set a timer or whatever else. Yeah. And I would have your criteria, like the criteria that you're looking for be basically nothing.

And if he does go into like crazy headspace, I would also have a reserve of like a big bowl of whatever his treats are that he really likes. And you're just going to like throw them on the ground. And that's the thing that I know is going to sound a little crazy. Like my dog is barking like a jerk. And I'm just supposed to, like, dump treats on the ground.

And, you know, when I first started, when I first got into dog training, I was in a program where I was paired with a mentor in upstate New York. And there was, like, two other people there. And one of them had, like, a big Rottweiler type dog with them. And the big Rottweiler type dog, like... I went after this smaller dog that was there, and this senior trainer just took the big dog's head and shoved it into a huge bowl of food.

And I was like, well, that makes no sense. That's crazy. What have I gotten myself into here? This is the person I'm supposed to be learning from. Now I understand it differently.

Then what it seemed like at the time as what you're doing is changing the association. And that doesn't mean you aren't all. I mean, like dogs are always learning by consequence and always learning by association. I mean, it's not like one is happening and then the other is happening and one is happening and the other is happening. Like just and if you break down your own behavior enough, you start to see like, oh, I'm also always learning by association consequence.

Two, like, you know, it's just sometimes it's the consequences or the associations are minor enough that you're not like perceiving them. But if you can change the way he's feeling in that moment, first of all, you're stopping the behavior in kind of a clever way because he's not barking anymore if he has his mouth full of chicken hearts or whatever. Yeah. Right. Second of all, he's learning, oh my god, like that, you know, whatever the trigger was, you know, someone standing up, equaled... Equals treats.

Right, equals a huge amount of yummy stuff on the ground. And so actually when people stand up, it's not such a bad thing. And I mean, what's... A little bit tricky is it sounds like there's a lot of triggers that you're dealing with and that they're not necessarily that obvious at all times. And also he might, we're not ruling out the fact that he might be in pain, which might make him much more sensitive to certain triggers at certain times.

But like I said, the good news is it's an easy enough thing to do or you don't have to be worried about like, oh, did I do that right? Because you really can't do it wrong if while you're doing it's throwing treats at your dog.

So that's my sort of big picture advice. Now, I would also, so like in summary, I would say check out the Body Language Basics course and I can send you some other information as well. Divide up his food and figure out how you can give it in bits and pieces just throughout the day. And actually, I forgot that you have a second dog. I mean, I would be doing it to both dogs, and I would probably give it to both dogs at a distance from each other.

You said resource guarding isn't an issue, and that's good news, but just to make sure that that continues to not be an issue. Yeah, they do this really cute thing after they eat. Sorry, this is not that relevant, but... I like cute things. They do this cute thing because they have two separate feeding areas in the kitchen.

So they have their own mats and bowls and everything. And then when they're done eating, they'll like cross each other. They'll stop eating at the same time. And then they will like cross across each other and then like go finish up each other's leftovers. Like, neither of them seem to mind or have an issue with it, and as long as Jungkook's not accidentally, like, ingesting heart medication he shouldn't be having, it's kind of like, whatever.

If, like, we think that's necessary. Yeah, good. Well, you know, your other dog is going to benefit from it, too, and a couple days of extra treats probably won't harm him. Yeah. And you're nearby, so if you want to go by our store for the, I mean, School For The Dogs, we have a little store there with lots of awesome treats.

That's where I get all of our, that's where we've gotten all of our treats, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, there you go. And Jungle has, like, every puzzle.

My boyfriend's mom came by and was like, it looks like a baby living here. Like, a toy box and, like, seven enrichment puzzles. Yeah, we have these two. We have three big IKEA bins in our kitchen, and one is for soft kid toys, one is for hard kid toys, and one is for the dog. And our cleaning person is always putting the dog toys with the kid toys, and just today I was like... You're like...

Wait, wait, wrong, wrong bin. I will say Jungkook is, uh, the enrichment puzzles are great for Jungkook because he'll just pass out. Like, he'll have the zoomies and he'll do it. Yeah, yeah. He'll just pass out on the couch.

It has made him a much better counter surfer, which I don't know how I feel about it. It's, like, taught him how to, like, open pockets, get containers open. I'm like, you don't need to, it's fine because he, he can only jump so high. That's really funny. My old dog, Amos, was very good at puzzle toys, and definitely it improved his ability to figure things out, and there were plenty of times where I'd have my backpack or some kind of bag on the ground that would have some old dog treat or my treat pouch or something in it, and I could see him trying to figure out how to work the zipper.

Yep, exactly. It's like, that's not what I'm teaching you. He managed to get, like, sorry, we're off topic. It's okay. It's all interesting to me.

There is this brief, like, I remember there was a briefcase and, like, it was one of those briefcases with two pockets, two on the outside with little flaps with the magnet closes. And there was a cookie that was inside of a wrapper, inside one of those plastic wrappers that you, like, is taped closed and you, like, open it. Anyway, so all of that was on top of a bookcase, and he jumped up on top of an ottoman, onto the trash can, and then onto the bookcase to get this briefcase, knocked it onto the floor, somehow opened the flap, and then ate the entire sugar cookie. Oh my god. Panicked, took him to the vet, whatever, he was fine.

Didn't even have diarrhea or anything, but I was like, this is not, this is not what you're talking about. Have you tried toys with Bowser? I have. He's not nearly as clever, and he gives up pretty easily. So have you done a hand touch with Bowser?

Have you taught that? What is a hand touch? So I think, I mean, if you have time over the next few days, I think that would be a really great thing to work on with him. It's just, you know, a simple exercise where what you're going to do is hold out your hand to him. And it could be, you know, or it could be the end of a pencil.

It could be a wooden spoon, whatever. I mean, if you're worried about having your hand near his face. And the second that he touches the end of your hand or the stick or whatever, you're going to say yes and then bring a treat out from your pocket or wherever. It's important to not have the treat visible until after you say your word yes. Actually, if you're working with two dogs, you could even have your fingers out or your hands out and reward them touching it for the same time.

That can be sometimes a way to introduce two dogs, I found. I mean... Not dogs with issues, I wouldn't say, but two puppies or whatever. You could have them both touch the same object. And that could just be a really easy thing that you could do to help build up his confidence.

I'm a big believer in training things that might seem pointless, but solely for the reason that it's a way to build up a dog's vocabulary. And something like the hand touch or targeting, we sometimes call it, But it's just such a building block behavior because once you have a dog who knows how, like, oh, you know, when I touch my nose to her hand, some good thing happens. You know, your dog is just kind of at a later level of that, right? Like when I touch the thing with my nose and knock it open and pull this open and da-da-da-da-da, good things happen. But the starting point, the starting point is just that hand touch.

And it's also creating good associations with you. It's creating good associations with hands, which could be, could very well be an issue. It can also be used ultimately to help teach some sort of opt-in behavior, which for the kinds of issues that you're talking about with him, sensitivity to handling can be really helpful, you know, so he could learn, you In order to indicate that I'm feeling okay enough for you to, you know, pick up my paw and look at my paw or whatever. Yeah. That kind of consent work is something that I think can be really valuable.

I really think that a hand touch, if you never teach any other thing to a dog, it could be useful for a lot of things. It's also a way to teach come. He could start, like I always say, in the beginning he might only be coming an inch, but it's still a start, and you could build up on that to him coming and touching your hand across the room. Yeah. I've done at least one podcast episode on teaching touch that kind of breaks it down.

I'll share it with you. I also did one which I reposted last week. I think it was on how to teach a look, which is kind of similar in that it's a very easy thing to teach. And it's a very it's a way that you can be very generous. That you're like, you are picking a criterion, you know, eventually, you know, I want, I'm going to wait for you to touch my finger, I'm going to wait for you to touch my eyes, but you're setting, you're setting the bar so, I mean, not touch my eyes, you know what I mean, look at my eyes, eye to eye touch, but you're setting the bar so low that they're really going to get it right.

And at this point, with the kind of You know, anxiety that I think you're dealing with with this dog. We don't want to be setting him up for anything that could be hard. Yeah.

So the first thing is, is it, so when he freaks out, it's always very directed at a person. So it's never like a generalized, I will like kill anyone who comes near me right now. It's always like that person. I don't like them and I don't like what they're doing. So when we're throwing treats, is it important that the person being barked at is the person to throw the treats or is it okay if like he sees Nick and freaks out?

Nick like happens to not have treats because he was like walking from the kitchen to the bedroom or something. Is it okay that I'm the one to throw the treats or would that become an association where it's like, oh good, like she wants me to bark at him rather than like, oh, when Nick, Nick is like an okay person. I think ideally if he's barking at Nick, it should be Nick, but I don't know, keep it simple, stupid, you know, like just like whatever works. Just like get the treats in his mouth. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I even like, I like to use a, again, are you, I mean, are you rewarding the behavior of him barking? Like I said, both things are happening at the same time, so you could, you could, You could say you're rewarding it, but ultimately if he is not fearful, the behavior is not going to happen. I mean, he's probably barking in order to get the person to go away. Right. But if you lose the desire to have someone go away, then there's not a reason to be barking.

Right. I mean, I don't know. He might be scared of it. I don't know. But I love actually using remote treat dispensers.

I have a treat and train that I use all the time with my dog. And in that case, I'll trigger it. Like, for instance, it's just like a little thing that sits on the floor that spits out treat with the remote. Right. Right.

Right. If I don't, I don't, you know, I haven't met this dog, though, and, you know, I only know you from this conversation, so I don't know how stressed he is. He might be too stressed to eat. Like my dog, my dog with a very little amount of stress will be uninterested in pretty much any food. Which, you know, makes things harder.

If he is, but it sounds like he is able to eat even when he's agitated. Now, food is not the be all and end all. I mean... It's also really important that we're keeping him under threshold whenever possible, which is why I was like, yay that your boyfriend's out of town, yay for making the area smaller. I mean, I'm not suggesting wait for him to go bananas and then toss food at him.

I'm suggesting more like toss food all the time, toss food before he's going bananas. But if he does get out of control... That certainly is one way to manage it. And also a way to, you know, keep you safe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

So, I was going to say, he, like, he does, he's much calmer around me and I also have been... Every time I come around the corner and he has been calm and he hasn't gone apeshit, I've given him a treat. I'm like, that's great, that's good behavior. Yes, thank you for doing that. So it's cool to see that what you're saying is something that I feel like that hasn't been the intention or the thought process we've been doing, but it's been working.

Well, you know, I like to tell people, you know, you know more about animal training than you think you do because you are an animal who's behaving all the time. Yeah. And he's an animal who's behaving all the time. And, you know, the behavioral science is not species specific. I think a big shift that I know happened for me as I learned about dog training was thinking about focusing on...

The associations before focusing on the behavior. So the only edit I would make to what you just said is maybe keep treats in the bathroom and as you come around the corner, just throw treats on the ground. Rather than waiting to see if he's going to be good or not. Because then he's just going to be like, oh, it's great. Every time she comes around the corner, I get treats.

It's fine. And you're not always going to have to have treats. That's the thing. Other thing. That where, where, you know, eventually, which, you know, could be sooner rather than later.

Yeah, you forgot to put treats in the bathroom. He's still going to be like, he's going to give you, he's going to give you one or two or three or five. Because he's going to, he's going to learn that it's, you know, that it's no big deal. Yeah. So I guess the other question I had is as much as I would like to write, like for my approach since last night has just been his leashes on my wrist at all times, including when I'm sleeping.

And like the I have had to leash him to the desk a couple of times. And when I do, he cries. So do we ignore him when he does that? Or do we Because like when he's crying, we're not trying to approach him. We're just trying to like get something done first.

So I guess like what's the correct approach when he's clearly distressed that he's been, you know, left alone? So like you're having to strap him to the desk so that you can go somewhere else and you don't want him to be like charging you and biting you out of nowhere? Is that the idea? No, it's just that, like, I don't know, like, if I'm, like, in the shower or something, I don't want him in the bathroom with me. Or, like, if I have to go out and run an errand, like, I've canceled all my plans for the weekend so I can just be home.

I would say give him the good stuff, you know? Again, like, pack a Kong or whatever full of... His food, you know, smear some peanut butter into something. I like the topple actually as an alternative to the Kong. I don't know if you know what those are.

They look kind of like rubber, like upside down thimbles. We have them in the shop. T-O-P-P-L. Yeah, I would just like, you know, give him something really good to tide him over while you are going to be doing whatever it is you need to do. Yeah, I mean, it's...

I don't think you have to crate train a dog or train a dog to go in a bag, but I was going to say if he was comfortable in a bag, you could even put him in a bag and bring him with you while you need to do whatever. But yeah, again, just, you know, my big picture suggestion is to like, think about how, think about the associations he's making and how he, and how those associations might be leading him to feel one way or the other, and then think about how you can change those, that association in order to In order to, you know, affect behavior change. Right. Which, like I said, takes a bit of a deep breath sometimes because there might be moments when you're like, I feel like I'm rewarding a bad behavior here. But you just have to have faith in like the long term, which might be short term, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It might be a quick change.

I heard from Michelle the day after we recorded this, and she wrote, We've had zero incidents since yesterday morning, by the way. His leash is just on my wrist at all times, and he seems way calmer and happier than I think I've ever seen him. I pass down a treat to him every half hour or so to reward him for being quiet and calm. All right, folks, see you in September or else see you in the online campus. You can get there at schoolforthedogs.com slash online campus.

I am going to go play with my kitten now. Bye.

One of my favorite things to do with dogs is to watch them figure out how to problem solve. I like watching them figure out how to navigate the world that we're asking them to live in and to have fun while doing it. At School For The Dogs we specialize in selling enrichment toys for dogs. These are also sometimes called work-to-eat toys. They can help a dog refine Their problem-solving abilities can help them burn off physical and mental energy in a way that is not destructive.

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