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Behavior, Why We Train, Medication, and More with Dr. Christopher PachelIn this episode, Libby and Emily sit down with Veterinary Behaviorist Dr. Christopher Pachel.
Dr. Pachel’s way of viewing our companion animals is spacious, generous, and compassionate. This is a conversation that has us considering the larger questions of animal behavior, the why of how we train, and more. Visit the Animal Behavior Clinic here. |
Episode Transcript
Emily 0:09
Welcome to pod to the rescue.
Libby 0:11
Rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with everything that comes next.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to pod to the rescue. I'm Libby.
Emily 0:22
And I'm Emily.
Libby 0:23
And today we are bringing you an interview with Dr. Christopher Pachel. He is a veterinary behaviorist, the lead clinician and practice owner of the animal behavior clinic in Portland, Oregon.
Emily 0:34
Dr. Pachel's kind of a big deal in the animal behavior world. So I was really excited that he came on the show and we had such a fascinating conversation with him. I think we could have spoken for hours.
Libby 0:47
Absolutely, we covered everything that is veterinary behaviorism, you know, from what it is to why rescues and shelters should have an a veterinary behaviorist in their tool bag when it comes to addressing behavior issues. To learn more about Dr. Pachel you can visit animalbehaviorclinic.net We'll put that link in the show notes.
Right Welcome to pod to the rescue. Dr. Chris Pachel.
Chris 1:25
Thank you for having me. It's, it's exciting to be here. I, I've been wanting to chat with the two of you. And I've been looking forward to this on my calendars. This is awesome.
Libby 1:34
Thank you so much for taking the time. We're really excited. Could you please describe what a veterinary behaviorist is and how you work to help companion pets?
Chris 1:44
Sure, you know, it's funny even at this point. So I've been a veterinary behaviorist since Gosh, since 2010, the college or the organization has been around Gosh going on. I think it's 25 years or so now. And still we find people who saying and you're what, and part of that is because there's really not that many of us, right, there's still fewer than 100 board certified veterinary behaviorist from the American College. And so it's no surprise that we're still a little bit of a mystery for a lot of folks, especially pet owners, who thankfully perhaps have not needed to cross paths with us yet. But by training, I'm first and foremost a veterinarian. So I went through veterinary school as you know, any any other veterinary professional did, and then went on for additional residency specialized training, just as you were if you were going to be a surgeon, or an internal medicine specialist, or radiologist, or whatever that specialty happens to be behavior is one of those disciplines. So that residency process that includes multiple years of mentored supervision, managing and treating cases, as well as primary research and getting that published in a peer reviewed journal, as well as case reports, as well as academic certification that's roughly the equivalent of a master's degree. It's not a master's degree, I want to be clear about that. But the amount of coursework and academic rigor that exists there is is comparable. So we've got sort of the academia as well as the clinical practice. And then at the end of all of that you sit a two day exam, cross your fingers, and hope that you put in all of the right time to get that certification at the end. So that's kind of who we are as a group. And as far as what we do, you know, gosh, it really depends on who you ask, meaning folks like myself work primarily in the companion animal space, and we're working with clients who are presenting an animal that they say, gosh, there's something going on here, I don't understand, I think we need some help. I think you've got the tools, the tool set the toolbox, you can help us out with that. And so I'm working primarily in that space, as well as as an educator through conferences and horses, through veterinary schools, and so on. And then we've got some of our other members who work very much in the sheltering community, and others that work more in academia and research as well as in the industry and guiding sort of the marketplace as it relates to animal care. So lots of different options, depending on where somebody chooses to follow their passion,
Emily 4:15
what repertoire of skills and knowledge that you bring to the table. So we're thrilled to have you. My question for you would be we've discussed a lot on previous episodes, that dogs and rescues since that's our focus here, rescue and shelter dogs. Just that process of being in a shelter or being rescued being in a new home can be traumatizing and destabilizing for a dog. So we were wondering if you could share your thoughts on that concept and how the shelter rescue process can affect a dog's behavior in your experience.
Chris 4:50
Oh my gosh, there's so many layers to this question. And I love that you're thinking about this and not only just thinking about, Gosh, how do we place animals? How do we sort of move Have them through. But hey, what does this experience look like and feel like from their perspective, from start to finish? And how can we really work with that? So number one, kudos for even thinking about that and bringing it to the conversation here. I love that. You know, I think for me that the place that I come at that is really thinking about the places where I see animals struggling, when I say the places I don't mean, the physical locations of the home versus the shelter versus the Foster, I think about sort of the emotional center. And where I see animals struggling is often from a place of fear and anxiety. That's not the only places where we can have big feelings. But that's often the place where we see it, in my opinion, where we see some of the biggest emotional conflict for animals. And so, you know, gosh, when we think about that anything that's novel or unfamiliar, has the potential to elicit a fear response, right, and there's so much that's novel and unfamiliar about that entire process of, you know, being transitioned into a new physical space with different social contacts that you don't really have a relationship with. And, you know, gosh, you're at risk of anthropomorphizing here a little bit, you know, I don't want to project all of my feelings on onto the animal. But yet, we do see animals who seem to be struggling because of that, that novelty or familiarity aspect. And then I also find that a lot of animals really are thinking about the anxiety side of things, it's less about novelty and more about predictability or feeling like you have some degree of well control or agency over what happens next. And again, gosh, as we're transitioning animals, whether it's on transport, or admin, or open admission, or, you know, even if we're really trying to do the best we can, the reality is, is making those transitions from the animals perspective isn't coming from a place of predictability or structure, or necessarily the feeling of agency or choice or control. So we're likely to see anxiety, even appropriate levels of fear and anxiety that probably shouldn't be there for an animal who's experiencing something new or unpredictable. And yet, the moment we start to really tip into that emotional center, gosh, that can really drive the bus in some really problematic ways. If animals get over a threshold, and especially if that environment is just not perfectly meshed with that particular animals needs. At that moment in time we can we can really go sideways in a hurry.
Libby 7:28
Wow, that's a big perspective, to consider whenever we're thinking about our dogs. And your experience, what are some of the behaviors that you see in rescue dogs often?
Chris 7:42
Yeah, you know, it really varies, you know, and I think in some cases, we could probably paint in broad brushstrokes, thinking about, you know, breed types, or breed groups or specific breeds, you know, and then we narrow down to the individual based on their unique learning history. And, well, what has worked from their perspective to give them a sense of safety or security or predictability or control. And so it can vary really all over the map, I tend to think about the shelter population much the same as I do my companion animal or, or owned population, and that I see animals who tend to gush for lack of a better way of putting it tend to stress up, where we tend to see all the visible signs where it's barking, and whining and drooling, and sort of the outward expression of stress or distress. And that may include destructive behaviors or elimination problems, or, you know, kind of putting it out into the world, versus the animals that tend to stress down, where we tend to see more of the shutting down the avoidance, the learned helplessness in severe cases, where we see animals who, quote unquote, look fine, or, you know, up here calm, and gosh, aren't they doing well with all of this, and then when you look a little bit closer, we're not seeing any of the normal comfort behaviors that we would expect to see, we're not seeing normal eating patterns, we're not seeing normal elimination patterns, we're not seeing soft, loose body language with intermittent play bouts or any of those sorts of things. So I really kind of want to think about it as sort of which direction does this animal go? And do I need to try to create a sense of safety or perhaps give them outlets for some of that, that energy that needs to go somewhere for that animal to be able to sort of discharge that and, you know, kind of move through that stress response and get out of the tunnel,so to speak?
Libby 9:33
Yeah, I think that, you know, you mentioned the elimination patterns. I think that's kind of our number one tell that a dog is kind of freaked out, you know, whenever they're coming into a new foster home or their new forever home. How, if that's not going well, like, that's a big sign for us that Oh, okay. We need to, you know, do some interview engines in helping this dog be a little more comfortable. And I love how you're talking about predictability and control as really driving behavior in these situations. Can you say more about that? That's fascinating. And I really want our listeners to, to kind of get this.
Chris 10:23
Yeah, it's it's such a rich topic. And when we really think about it, I'm gonna kind of bring it back to kind of, I'm gonna say, my perspective, that's the only human perspective that I can truly speak to, you know, but in my experience, if something is, you know, again, back to that, you know, is unfamiliar, it's novel, I don't know what's going to happen next, or there's a, an apprehensive anticipation of danger, or a worry that I just, I just don't know what's going to happen, or Gosh, things are happening. And I don't know what I, you know, that is kind of that whirlwind of emotion and anxiety. And again, I want to stress that just because we're feeling fear, anxiety, doesn't mean it's pathology. Right? Those are normal survival mechanisms, we'd all be dead if they weren't there. So, you know, I'm reminded of some of my colleagues, Susan Friedman being one of them kind of has this way of going, Gosh, isn't my body amazing, but it has the ability to alert me to the fact that this is new, indifferent? And, gosh, if I could just sit with that for just a second and figure this out? Wouldn't that be cool? And it turns into more of a sense of amazement versus Oh, my God, how do I get rid of this feeling? How do I get out of this? How do I just block this out of my world? Now, that's way easier said than done. And I'm not in any way meaning to diminish or negate the more significant levels of fear or anxiety that perhaps some of our listeners experience, oh, I don't know, during a global pandemic, perhaps, or, you know, looking at some of the the issues that are that are companion animals experience, as well, we see fear and anxiety as as normal. And it can also be pathologic. And so I think about that whole spectrum, and what I see clinically when I'm working with an animal to really help them through, and what I mean by that is that if I'm dealing with an animal that has more of a fear response, where they are, you know, alerting or aware of a thing, you know, that child, that unfamiliar dog, and we see their attention either sort of focused on or focused away from the thing. And then the thing goes away, and they start to shake off and relax, where we see that direct stimulus dependent response. In those cases, I can really help that animal out by, in some cases, just giving them enough time to process and get comfortable and habituate. In other cases, I can work more with counter conditioning and trying to create a positive, conditioned emotional response by helping them to understand, you know, hey, when that unfamiliar child shows up, that's a predictor of playtime, or a food treat, or something along those lines, which, in getting that classically conditioned Association, I am establishing a sense of predictability, right. And as soon as that starts to happen, what we start to see for the animal is even think about how we might be doing that in the shelter even, you know, unfamiliar child, treat from the handler, child treat child treat, when they recognize the child, if you pause, just that little moment, they oriented the handler, right, we've accidentally or sort of, in tandem, we've conditioned this operant responses well, and so if that's the goal, if we want them to look up, or if we want them to gaze away, or if we want them to sniff the ground, we can start conditioning that and what I love about is that even at that moment, at that basic level, the animal is starting to gain a bit of control. If I do X, Y will happen. Right? So we're starting to get this behavior response contingency. That's what predictability is, right? The ability to have enough learning history that the animal the learner is able to say, Gosh, this leads to this. Cool, if I like this, I'll do more of this. And we start to see that positive conditioning, that reinforcement loop that starts to happen, right, so and you know, and really what happens there's the animal is learning the predictable relationship. So we can leverage that all the way throughout the process, whether it's an intake, whether it's during our housing phase, wherever, whatever that looks like, or whether it's moving those animals into foster or long term care. We have the ability to leverage those associations, to not only help them kind of recognize new and novel or different as predictors of good things, but also establishing predictable outcomes and giving them that sense of control at a basic basic level. And I know that the two of you have seen this. I just know this based on what you've shared with me already is that you get that moment where the dog goes.
And you see them kind of start to get it and they give that big relaxed sigh, or they start to see the easy little light bulb moment going on. And then they give that Big full body shake off for the first time. And you're like, cool. Now we're talking the same language. Awesome. Let's build on that. That's what I'm talking about with all of this conditioning and predictability and control and agency, and how it can really show up to benefit that particular animal.
Libby 15:31
Yeah, and that also, it makes sense to me why some dogs almost have. We might refer to it as a setback. But I'm using that with air quotes listeners, when they move to a new home, because they don't have the learning history with their new people. And it's maybe not quite as predictable. Or maybe the new handlers timing is a little bit different and something like that.
Chris 16:03
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Right. And what we understand really, within the behavior field is that behavior is very context specific. Right? When we're doing an intervention, when we're doing an assessment, we're often saying, hey, what's the behavior that I'm focused on? And what are the antecedent conditions or those those triggers, if we want to call them that the the conditions under which that behavior is happening? You know, that's really where we see another relationship that exists. And from the animals perspective, yeah, if all the antecedent conditions are different, or just not exactly the same, it's enough for a lot of animals, especially those who might be a bit more on the worrisome end of the spectrum. It's enough for that animal to go, Whoa, I don't know if I can trust this, the way that I've trusted my previous environment, so I'm going to need to really pay attention, I'm going to need to perhaps even be on guard, or maybe even defensive until I know that I can trust and trust comes from learning, right? We can't just say, Gosh, I'm a really nice person, and you should trust me. I wish it was that easy, right. But that's not where it comes from. It's actually, you know, getting in the trenches and establishing that trust. It's actually one of the reasons that I love working with even for a couple of foundation skills, like a hand and target, or a sit cue or a watch. There's nothing magic about any of those things. But it allows for a dialogue so that, you know, me, if you've been working with a dog, for example, you can hand that leash off to me, and I could replicate some of what you've done for an animal to go, oh, you speak the same language as they did. That's amazing. I can trust this. Which is amazing to me. And we can really kind of generalize that learning across environments, not because I'm trying to turn that dog into a perfect obedience dog. It's not about my control over, it's about communication with. And that's what I love about it.
Emily 18:09
You're making me think about videos I've seen where at the shelters, they put little treat stations on every gate. So when visitors come, they are instructed, like throw a few treats into the dog, regardless of what the dog is doing. So it establishes that predictability. And I'm sure there's some learning that happens that like if the dog moves a little bit closer, more treats come, you know, and so, yeah, that that is just an easy thing, in addition to maybe some hand targeting or teaching set that shelters can do to try to ease some of that pressure and also teach them some patterns and predictability in that upside down world that they find themselves in. Yes,
Chris 18:51
yes. And it's it's such a, I don't want to trivialize it and say, oh, gosh, it's such an easy thing. But in most cases, I'd argue that it is, it's really not that challenging, unless we're working with an animal who has either experienced significant trauma or abuse or even has already perhaps been through a lot of change. You know, or, and even in some cases, I find for some of my patients that I work with, who have who have been through a lot of training already that hasn't necessarily been successful, I actually get really skeptical learners. You know, they're like, Yeah, wait a minute, someone brought food out before and that didn't end so well. So I get these dogs where we really almost have to work even harder to establish that predictability before they again really start to trust us in the way that we're hoping for.
Emily 19:44
Well, we've listened to you before on the positive reward podcast and on that podcast you discussed a lot being adherent to the principles of Lima Can you describe what Lima is and how would you use Lima to code With rescues and shelters to create training and behavior plans, just kind of like we were discussing there.
Chris 20:05
Yeah, yeah, I think we're always this is a natural segue into that, right? When we kind of put start putting some, maybe some labels or some constructs around some of these concepts that we've been talking about. So Lima, or li M A, really is, it's another construct, right? That stands for at least intrusive, minimally aversive, which is sort of some big jargony words in and of themselves, which is why we typically call it Lima. But it's basically saying, hey, if I'm going to kind of apply my agenda, or attempt to manipulate or modify the behavior of an animal, another sentient being who has a well an agenda all their own, right, I want to do the best I can to rather than just walk in and say, Well, I'm the fill in the blank pack leader, Master alpha, you know, and so therefore, my agenda matters the most. Rather than going in that direction, I'm going to take the primacy of saying, Well, if I want you to do something different, either because it's problematic or dangerous, or gosh, there's just a better way to handle this. What would it take to help you realize that in the least intrusive, minimally aversive way, so it's really a structure or a framework that we can go through every time we're thinking about applying a behavior change program to a particular animal, to say, Gosh, scale of, you know, whether it's one to 10, or whether we're working through the humane hierarchy of behavior change construct, we can say, Gosh, how intrusive is this? And what I love about that, even just looking at intrusive, and then getting into the minimally aversive piece, it allows me to start first in any situation by saying, Have I met this animal's needs, as best I can, as well as I understand them in this moment, right. And then when we're coming into, let's say, a sheltering situation, we're meeting a dog for the first time, we don't have learning history, maybe they were a stray that came in without any history whatsoever. I don't really necessarily know what that animal needs in that moment. So that first question is actually a pretty big one that we can't always answer, right, but I'm going to do the best I can to say, hey, if I'm going to, again, try to change your mind, or change your behavior, or change your emotional state, I want to start from a place of meeting your needs and helping you to feel safe, and comfortable, and free to experience and display normal species typical behaviors. And I'd say that whether we're talking about dogs, or cats, or horses, or parents or whatever, whatever species that we're talking about, that ability to display normal behaviors, to feel safe, to be well fed, to be cared for, to be free from pain or distress, then we can start to move forward into cool. And now let me give you some guidance. Ideally, maybe starting with some positive reinforcement, catching you in the act of doing some things I like and giving you some reinforcement for that. And I think, you know, even though we look at that as quote, unquote, positive, I don't want to overlook the fact that even at that level, it's mildly intrusive. We're setting an agenda we are inherently describing or labeling certain behaviors as good, or better or more desirable, and other characteristics or behaviors as less desirable or bad or dangerous in some cases. But even at that level, even though we're using reinforcement, there is a little bit of coercion that can sneak in there. And so while I fully support going in the positive direction, and using this structure, I don't want to overlook the fact that the moment we set an agenda for the animal, I want to I want to be as mindful as I possibly can that I'm moving that in a direction that again, is still is in alignment with that animals needs, their learning history and kind of what's the what's going to set them up to be successful in the long run.
Libby 24:19
Yeah, I think that's really important to remember and kind of harkens back to what you said earlier about some dogs, you know, the food comes out and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, been here before this is a trick. So remembering that, yeah, even using positive reinforcement and in food as a reinforcer, is intrusive. That's a really important thing to keep in mind as we work with animals.
Chris 24:46
Yeah, it really is, you know, and then of course, when we move our way up that hierarchy if we start talking about some other interventions, whether that is limiting the animals freedoms, which you know, even putting them on a leash limits their freedom, right? That's not well, we could go down a rabbit hole on that one. But you know, and then we can start to talk about some of the applications where we're using, let's say reprimands, or at least corrections there, we're definitely moving up the aversive category. And the thing to remember there is that aversive is something that's from the animals perspective. And we can read their body language, they'll they'll tell us what they liked and what they didn't. And if they found a particular stimulus or response, or outcome or consequence, if they found that to be positive, we tend to see more anticipation and sort of the dopamine pathways really start to flow within the brain. And if they found it to be aversive, we tend to see them going in the opposite direction. Or we may see signs of stress, which may include if we're talking about dogs, for example, years back, had lowered, tail tucked, quiet body posture may be seeing startle responses, or other emotional indicators that that was unpleasant. And here's the real kicker, when it comes to moving up that aversive Vnus category, if you will, is that whether we're using positive met positive air quotes, methods or aversive methods, predictability matters, right? So even if we're using food, but applying it in random, inconsistent ways that can actually be stressful for an animal. And it's even worse if those consequences are happening in unpredictable ways. And the reverse is, right. So you have now an animal's experiencing unpleasant or perhaps pain inducing outcomes in a way that is unpredictable or uncontrollable to them. It's always their perspective that matters, right? If it's unpredictable to them, and it's unpleasant, whew, that's essentially a recipe for situational or generalized anxiety. Right? That's what happens. And it's why it's so important. You know, when we talk about some of the methodology, and the need for consistency and the need to establish this conversation. It's not that it's something that you know, I've been, I'm going to use the word accused at various points of time with just sitting on the moral high ground of saying, Oh, you're doing positive reinforcement, because of some moral superiority thing like, No, I mean, maybe a little bit, you know, it's the nicer thing to do. But no, when we look at the science behind it, and the way that the animals in front of us respond, it's better. It's, it's just better across the board. And again, and we can talk about that, and really looked at the science behind it, but it's just, it's something that's so important for all of us to understand, when we're working with animals in the shelter population, or with the companion animals that share our homes. Yeah,
Emily 27:53
yeah. Oh, I love that our rescue has been around for over a decade. And we, you know, we didn't know anything about training or behavior when we started it. And, you know, we did try pretty much, you know, not anything, like terribly, you know, abusive, but we didn't know anything. So we thought we had to be the pack leader. We tried it all. And then when we learned the science, like eight years ago, we're like, oh, you know, why would we want to make a dog who's already in this transition and unpredictable state, feel less secure, more unsafe, more anxious. So I really appreciate your talking to that. Because, you know, when, when we know better, we do better?
Chris 28:33
It's exactly right. You know, and I want to be clear, too, that if someone's listening to this, and if they're coming at it from the perspective of, hey, I'm not so sure I agree with this guy. I'm not so sure that I'm necessarily there, I get it. And please note that I'm not I'm not trying to, to be judgmental, or to cast any sort of shade. As you just said, the one we know better, we do better, right. And we do have options there. And, and truthfully, for our brains, if we see a behavior that we don't like, or that we think is dangerous, our brains naturally go to how do I stop the animal from doing that? Which short, short cuts us right to those punishment options, right? It's the way our brain naturally solves the problem. Jumping up is a problem, cool, stop the jumping, versus taking that extra step to say, hey, what do I want that animal to do? Instead of jumping, then I can really build a learning framework around that. But you know, I started there, too. You know, I started from the standpoint of stop the unwanted behavior. And once you've done that, then you can teach appropriate things. And, you know, gosh, there's so much fallout potential along the way. And we know that it's just not the most effective way to learn. And so we can we can really do just some almost magical things, but But yes, when we're teaching before we're correct doing versus trying to teach through corrections. We can just arc or we can we can. It just gives me chills, right? There's so much we can do that. It's amazing.
Libby 30:13
And going back to the science based bit a little bit, you know, I, it's important for us, for our listeners to understand that again, we're not only talking about this because we're hippies in Boulder. But because there's a lot of science behind these methods. And in fact, recently, I got a lot of attention in the training world the American Veterinary Society of animal behaviorist, did I say that? Right?
Chris 30:49
Yeah, animals and yeah, the American Society of animal behavior.
Libby 30:52
Yeah, animal behavior. Thank you really released a position statement basically, on LIMA? Can you speak a little bit to just the body of science behind all of this?
Chris 31:07
Yeah, it's one of the things that I mean, there's many things that that particular organization has done just incredibly well over the years over the decades that they've been in existence. But what I think they've done really, really well in this particular case, is pulling the science together. And again, rather than sort of getting on some sort of a moral high horse and trying to teach people through finger wagging, which FYI, doesn't work any better for people than it does for animals. But rather than saying, hey, guess what, when we really look at this through a critical lens, this is what really shakes out as the most effective options across the vast majority of circumstances. And they're the options that are least likely to lead to negative outcomes. So gosh, when we put those two things together, least likely to cause problems and most likely to work when we do it. Right. that I want to stress that because you know, the number of clients that I have coming to me say, oh, you know, I tried that food thing. I tried the reinforcement thing that didn't work. My brain immediately says, let's hit the pause button on that, or at the very least circle back around to it. Science proves to us it does work. But I want to understand why it didn't work for your animal. Was it the consistency? Were we using a reinforcer? Or an attempted reinforcer that just wasn't terribly reinforcing for your animal? For example, was it the timing? Was it something else? Were they just too stressed? What was it that didn't allow them to learn? So I want to teach that out. And that's because of all of the research that's referenced within that position statement to be able to say, I actually know that it works, I trust that it works. And when we apply those principles correctly, behavior change happens. And so we get that ability to look at that referenced document and say, Cool, let's actually talk through this and help to understand and, you know, I really want to give a sort of a shout out to anyone who is perhaps using methodology as I did when I first learned and is starting to question that. And they're saying, Gosh, maybe there's, maybe there's a different way to do this, oh, my God, that's a really vulnerable place to be. It's really scary to feel like you knew what you were doing. And you're kind of going out into uncharted territory here, you don't actually know or trust these new outcomes yet. So I just want to kind of put a shout out to anybody who's looking at or listening to this from a place of curiosity, and even just saying, I wonder what that's all about. Kudos, kudos to you. That's, that's vulnerability, right? It's putting yourself out there and who making yourself available to some perhaps unpleasant outcomes and the learning process right outside your comfort zone. So just just putting that out there, I never want to I would never want someone who is using a method that perhaps is on a list of things that I wouldn't necessarily recommend. I wouldn't want someone to hear that and think that that I'm talking bad about them as an individual. It's not that at all, I think the vast majority, I mean, truly, every behavior professional, every trainer certified or not, that I've worked with, is doing what they're doing, from a belief that they're helping the animal. You know, I really tried to come back to that. And so you know, it's for me, it's pulling that lens back until I can say, hey, well, gosh, even if I have to pull the lens back aways, how far do I need to pull back before I recognize that you and I are actually trying to do the same thing. We've just got a different toolbox or a different skill set. And so let's start there. And then let's think about these methods. Let's learn how to use them well together, and really, really do some amazing work. As a collaborative effort, yeah,
Emily 35:02
I love that. I mean, we rescued hundreds of dogs that some of them were choke chains. But we did it with Hulk completely whole heartedly. You know, with the best intentions, we just didn't have the tools that we needed to do better. And now we do.
Chris 35:20
Yeah, it's and it's hard, you know. And then from that standpoint, too, it's, it's so easy to turn in some of these conversations when we're talking about methodology. And when there's big feelings around rescuing and sheltering, and, you know, I'm not going to dive into some of the the Hornet's Nest, or some of the debates that exist around that. I'm trusting me I'm aware. Yeah. But you know, gosh, when we had those big feelings that comes from a place of passion and wanting to do good in the world around us, for sure. So let's connect there. Yeah, I see you trying to do good work. Me too. Me, too. This is an us situation, not an us versus them. situation. Love that. Let's do it together as best we can.
Libby 36:02
Mm hmm.
Emily 36:03
I love that. That's kind of one of the reasons we started the podcast is, we were just lucky enough to get to learn that information because of circumstances. So we were like, Let's share what we know, with those who are maybe two years into rescuing so that they don't, you know, they get a little bit of a boost that we didn't get instead of repeating what we did for five years.
Chris 36:21
Amazing. And kudos to to you for doing that. I mean, doing the work to put a podcast together and to to get it out there and get the district. It's no joke. It's one of the reasons whatever says, Hey, do you want to guest on the podcast? My answer is always yes. Because I don't have the discipline to do all the organization to do a podcast on my own. So I'm just going to throw all of the kudos at you know, the two of them are putting in the work to make this happen. It's a lot.
Libby 36:50
No, thank you. We appreciate that.
Emily 36:52
Thank you.
Libby 36:54
Okay, so I would like to switch gears a little bit and start talking about meds. Because we are in our rescue. I mean, we're perfectly happy to discuss medication with our fosters with our adopters. It's not something that everybody understands, though. So could you explain how behavior medications can help shelter and rescue dogs in particular?
Chris 37:28
Absolutely, yeah. And I'll sort of backup one step to kind of put the perspective in here in in sort of two different areas. One is when I say medication sort of in the way that I think about it, and yes, that includes pharmaceuticals, for sure. And it includes pheromones and supplements and nutrition, and probiotics and herbs, and, you know, all of the things right? It's basically anything that we're doing kind of, to or within that animal, to facilitate whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish, right. That's kind of where I tend to think about sort of the big bucket of meds. And I always like to start there because I don't want if somebody's coming at it from a, you know, kind of the, you know, pharmaceuticals are bad or scary or woowoo, we would never do that. Know that when I'm talking about meds, it's a much broader category. And we can find the comfort level, we can find kind of what we think is likely to work given what science and experience has told us. So that's the first thing. The other thing that I want to be clear about whenever we have a conversation about meds is when I'm doing an assessment of an owned animal, an animal in the shelter, or wherever that animal is, right? I'm thinking about whatever it is that I'm seeing, and I'm saying, Gosh, if I want this animal's behavior, their operands, or emotional patterns to be different, in some way, shape, or form, that I'm going to have to use some sort of behavior modification tools, right? That's where behavior change ultimately happens. It's the learning history, it's all of that. So for me, behavior mod is sort of the always when our goal is truly changing behavior. And until we've taught that animal through predictability, and consistency and training and all of those things, until we've on boarded those new emotional or behavioral skills, we're going to use management, we're going to keep them out of trouble. We're going to keep them safe, we're going to keep everyone else safe. And we're going to keep them out of situations where they may be practicing doing it wrong. Right. So that's kind of the until piece. So always be mod until that's there. We're looking at management. That's the way I tend to think about it. And then the third piece of that is if needed, then we can augment that whole pattern that whole plan those other two pieces of the puzzle, we can support that with medication, not because medication is the solution, when we use something within that medication Shin umbrella, what we're trying to do in most cases is reduce stress, reduce fear, reduce emotionality and reduce arousal, which are some of the obstacles that can get in the way of an animal feeling comfortable enough to learn or capable of learning some of these new patterns. So medication doesn't teach anything, it doesn't automatically fix the problem, the way we might think about, let's say, antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, where we can say cool, the medication is the solution, give this for seven days and your pet is healed. Behavioral meds don't typically work like that. They're there to augment, they're there to work in combination with learning to really support and facilitate that process. So I say all of that, because when we bring that conversation, then into the shelter space, there's a couple of things that I find are somewhat unique about this, you know, this world that we're talking about.
Number one, we're often dealing with animals that are really stressed out, for all of the reasons that we talked about earlier in the past, they don't have the learning history, they're not in a stable environment, their environment might change again, tomorrow, right? We just, we're not talking about a stable environment in many cases. And so in those scenarios, the expectation that we're going to be able to work only with training and management. I think it's a tall order, right. And in the meantime, if we have an animal who's experiencing big feelings, that is preventing them from taking that breath, or preventing them from feeling safe, or preventing them from learning from their their new caregivers, or their handlers of their trainers, gosh, we can facilitate so much faster progress when we do this well, to try to help them through that process to reduce those those those emotional pieces. Again, not trying to say I don't want them to experience emotion at all. Emotions are normal, right there, it's appropriate to be there nor I guess that's a positive and a negative, right? I even if I tried, I probably can't medicate all of those feelings away. It's not a slippery slope, right? And say, Oh, well, let's just use meds and not worry about training or management. It's in combination. So for me, that's the same perspective that I use, whether I'm working with an animal in the shelter, or whether I'm working with an animal in a home. That's the role that medication has. And there's also sort of the you know, if I think forward a couple of steps, I mean, it's it's tricky, right, you know, and I've got a full form for our workshop that I do specifically around this individual question, where we're saying, basically, what do we see? And which are the situations that might benefit from meds versus not? What are the ways that we can think about meds? How do we present that to the public that were, quote, unquote, medicating our shelter dogs? How do we have those conversations with potential adopters? You know, are we saying we're supporting this animal for them to be more successful, or they were so bad off that they needed to need to be medicated to even make it to the adoption are like, how do we raise that? How do we think about those conversations? And how do we support them afterwards? Knowing that a lot of behavior meds even if they're being really helpful, and even if they're no longer needed? shouldn't necessarily be abruptly withdrawn? And so how are we supporting that animal after adoption, to make sure that even if the goal is to bring them off meds, we're doing that in a responsible way that doesn't jeopardize or potentially risk or regression, even if the animal no longer needs the medication support? So big, big conversation that we can dive down any one of those pathways here?
Emily 43:58
Oh, yeah. Sounds like you, we thought we could really power so like we got before your hard stop.
Libby 44:07
Well, you know, I, as much as we could talk about the behavior, pharmaceuticals. I just, I'm reflecting on the aspect of medication that is maybe addressing other issues within the dog's physiology that could be causing behavior problems. I mean, I've seen amazing things happen when you treat a dog for allergies, and then suddenly their skin doesn't crawl all the time, and they're not terribly uncomfortable. So that is, it's not a behavior pharmaceutical, like, you know, fluoxetine or something like that, but it is a medical intervention in their behavior plan. And that's an important thing to think about as well. So,
Chris 44:58
I love that you brought that in and what We're talking about itch level, whether we're talking about infections, internal or external, whether we're talking about pain from wherever that's coming from, I mean, oh my gosh, I mean, I think almost probably every listener could acknowledge that when they're feeling uncomfortable there level of resilience and stress tolerance is probably not at its 100% best, right? That's just not how we're wired, we are supposed to then sort of guard ourselves to risk further injury and risk damage to ourselves. And we're not supposed to put ourselves in vulnerable situations because our immune function is compromised. And and, and so it's really important to think about that. And I love the fact that you brought that in here, especially when we're thinking about an initial assessment, where I think, you know, I've worked with certain shelters over the years where they say, Okay, well, let's, you know, let's get that animal into Foster, let's get their environment squared, and then we'll address their medical needs. And I get it, sometimes that's the way it just needs to happen. Like, I get it not, I'm not not judging that at all. But I never want to lose sight of the fact that as long as that animal is experiencing those physical sensations, we're probably going to struggle to some degree, or at the very least, we're going to struggle more than we otherwise would, if we could also address those things. In tandem.
Emily 46:22
That's, it's great as why, you know, we always say, go to your veterinarian, you know, like, why we can't just get behavior meds at Target, you know, is like, my, my foster, I always ended up to have the, you know, special in air, quote, foster dogs, Libby adopted her special foster dog. And, you know, I have a really good friend who's a vet, and the first thing that she does is like, full exam makes, you know, blood work makes sure that the dog, as best as we can tell, is not in pain. You know, it's hard to I guess, as a layperson, I don't exactly know how that works, since they don't speak English, but she, you know, manipulates all their joints and looks at every single thing. And then, you know, sometimes she will do some behavior, medication prescriptions, as well, if they're, you know, having anxiety or fear or arousal, you know, so we always start at that baseline. Yeah.
Chris 47:19
And I want to add in there, too, that, you know, the, the educational framework is changing, there is more behavior in the vet school curriculums today, than there was even when I came through my program back in, you know, 98 to 2002, when I was in veterinary school, and yet a lot of practicing veterinarians have not had an extensive amount of education and exactly what you just described me. And so I think it's, it's important if you're working with a veterinarian who may not have that as the, you know, their 10 out of 10. skill level. Number one, it's okay to ask that or to say, Hey, this is my goal, who do you know who can do that? Or if they if they're interested, but maybe they didn't have as much of that education? Gosh, we can do that to vet consults, right through the practice and animal behavior clinic and through many other practices, including a couple that are in in, in Colorado, right, we have the ability to say, Hey, I've got this case, I don't really know what I'm doing here. But I'd love to get some advice. How might we approach this from a medical or behavioral standpoint, which training methods are going to be better or worse, given x, y, and z, we can do those phone consults as well. So if you're in a position, whoever the listener happens to be, if you're either in this position as a veterinarian, or as a pet owner, or caregiver, and you're thinking, Oh, I'd love to tap into the brain of a vet behaviorist cool, we're available, we can do that. Even if we're at a distance, we just need to have your primary veterinary team on board for that conversation as well.
Emily 48:55
And what I love about the vet to vet konsult, and the reason as a rescue we were considering it is it's really a reasonable price, because being rescues and shelters, we don't have a huge budget. So I love that as an option. And then what I also love about that is then that veterinarian has increased knowledge to go forward with her client. Yes.
Chris 49:17
And that is the way that I at least tend to focus on those those consults. And I know many of my colleagues do the same where it's not just what do we do for Sparky? It's these are the reasons why I'm recommending X versus Y versus queue. So that we can make that decision and I can even give you a bit of a decision tree. If this doesn't work, then this if that doesn't help them this or it's this particular combination that may be the next place to go. And these are the reasons why. So that if you're not working with a client who perhaps you know, maybe can't afford or isn't in a position to do that, that knowledge is perpetuating itself throughout the entire industry. That's my goal in the way that I approached them.
Emily 49:58
So put Tricia McConnell, our most esteemed person, we just love her so much. She has the three day three week three month rule. So we talked a lot about about all of this. Can you just give us if you are bringing home a foster dog from the shelter in Portland tomorrow? What would you do?
Chris 50:21
Yeah, it's a great question. And I love that three day three week three month rule, like it's such a tangible guideline, and it's not set in stone, right? We all know that, but it's not okay, we get the three day mark next, right, it doesn't quite work that way. But it's pretty close in most circumstances. So for me, you know, I tend to think about that first three day block really, as kind of a decompression get to know you, let's be safe. Let's just kind of get the feelers let's like, kind of see kind of who you are, like, you know, who I am, I'm not going to bring that animal home and give, like, cool, let's go to the brewery, you know, let's let's, you know, host a family barbecue, let's meet all the neighbors like, whoa, whoa, like, let's take a breath, you just made a huge transition, let me get you a little bit settled in. So that first of all we know for me is really, truly kind of the get to know you, phase. And then from there, we can move into, okay, and here's kind of the way our life works. Here's how I'm hoping our life is going to look together. And I can really kind of start to branch out and say cool, I kind of like to hang out at the brewery down the street, let's do a couple of walk bys. And see if you can handle the environment when we're not sitting out at the patios, maybe I'm gonna go sit out of the patio when they're closed on a Sunday morning and just kind of hang out there and do a little bit of training or even just a little bit of is this in your wheelhouse? Let's ask the question. If you are cool, maybe I'm going to stop by when a buddy of mine is having a beard, I'm just gonna stop by and sit down for a couple of minutes, you're just kind of setting that animal up to be successful. versus, you know, again, it is setting up this scenario. Again, I'm using the brewery example. Because well, you get to know me a little bit in these podcasts too, right? So I love sitting out of the patio tables out in front of a brewery enjoying a beer and talking about all the world. But in that circumstance, the moment I go in with the expectation that I'm going to have a beer on the patio, who if my dog I knew dog, my dog was just getting a feel for the world, if that's not in their toolbox, we've created an expectation conflict here. And it has the potential to actually set us up in the wrong direction where if I'm getting frustrated, or the dog is getting frustrated, is just not effective learning. So I'm not saying we have to take 22 months to get to our goals. I'm just saying, Can you break it down? Can you do a little bit of stair steps to say hey, what would it look like to break that down to just introduce you a little bit more gradually? Because gosh, if you're comfortable in 12 hours, and we did a walk by me pause for a couple of minutes, and that is just go and lickety split, no worries, cool, then we're good to go. And we can kind of check off that box and say, yep, your dog can do that. But I didn't get myself in over our head. You know, and I use this sort of over the head analogy. It's sort of like jumping in the deep end of a pool to find out if you can swim. Right? Wouldn't it be a little bit more comfortable if we got in at the ladder in the shallow end and kind of bogged our way a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, and oh, look, I can do this cool, awesome. No need to engage all of those panic responses in the brain if we don't need to. So So again, that's kind of my process, kind of thinking about that three day, three week, three month timeframe, it's, it's really a way to create a structure around those introductions to the world, we can take as much or as little time as we need. But we're thinking about it in more of a stepwise fashion to allow that animal to be successful, which comes back to meeting their needs to
Libby 54:06
and to me, it's reminded me again of the predictability conversation, you know, a brand new foster dog or adopted dog. There's nothing predictable for them about going to a brand new environment with brand new people with brand new smells. And you know, you have to take some time to build the predictability.
Chris 54:32
Exactly. And I think one of the other thoughts that comes to mind as I'm kind of processing all of this too, is that I think sometimes we may go in the opposite direction, maybe a little bit too far. And it's almost like we wrap that foster in bubble wrap. We're like okay, no, but you can experience the world, right? Because you're so stressed out and it's like, well, maybe, maybe,
but let me look at your body language. Let me see. Are you comfortable? Cool. You're giving me the green light to go a little bit more going a little bit faster, maybe. And there are so many amazing Amazing, amazing animals out there who have all of those things in their skill set. And by all means, let's get let's get them out enjoying life as quickly as they can. But let's also be comfortable putting the brakes on, if that's just not comfortable for them yet.
Emily 55:20
I think he might be like, literally the, like, 50th person on this podcast to mention body language. Like, I just think every single expert we have on says body language, it should be like the ding, ding, ding, you get a prize. Body language.
Chris 55:39
I love that it's so important. Right? You know, before I can sort of, you know, this comes back to the LIMA conversation too, right? Before I can insert my agenda over the top of yours, I'd love to know what you're saying. You know, that that's, that's the bottom line. That's where body language gives us that ability. You know, and I would say to that, you know, when it comes to body language, gosh, this is not just for the dogs and cats, right? It's, you know, being able to read one another and apply some of these LIMA principles over into human interactions as well, which we, you know, we talked a little bit about earlier in the podcast about sort of how we kind of invite folks in and how do we, how do we do all of this together. And I, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a project, actually one of our colleagues in common in common very finger who's also in your area, Marissa Martino, who is also in your area hosted the positive report, podcast, the two of them along with myself and Kathy's today, oh, and Lynn Unger have been hosting a project called the Lima beings, which is sort of a play on the whole Lima principle as a way to think about some of these least intrusive minimally aversive principles, and how do we take what we know or what we're learning about how to apply these these principles to the animals that we're working with? And how do we apply them to conversations, to interactions with our family, with our spouses with all of those things, and, and really thinking about not just behavior change, but really showing up with integrity, and, you know, humility, and honesty and transparency and vulnerability and all of that stuff. And so, you know, if folks are interested in learning more about that, I'm sure we can put a link in the show notes. Yeah, I suspect we can put a link in the show notes. Because,
Emily 57:23
yes, we can't wait.
Libby 57:27
I've heard all of you on a couple podcasts. And I just I love the project. And I love what you're doing. And so, like, good for y'all for getting that going. And, you know, starting that conversation as well. It's really powerful.
Chris 57:41
It's been an amazing project. I mean, I have to say, and you know, just a little plug for this as well, it's, it's been something that's been ongoing for a little over a year. Now. The core membership has been phenomenal. We've got members all around the world, it is available and open to everyone. So this is sort of an open invite to come check it out. If it speaks to you, by all means we'd love to, we'd love to invite you into these conversations. It is something that happens on sort of a monthly membership basis, with the internal conversations that are both recorded and live. There's a discussion board, there's all of this stuff that's happening there as well. So we we'd love to have folks check it out.
Emily 58:21
It's definitely on my list of things to do. I would love to do it, maybe maybe you've just inspired me because, you know, I can always become a more gentle and open person.
Chris 58:31
Yeah. And it's because everybody's got a different learning history, right? The ability to just, you know, think about how these, these these patterns show up for each of us in a really supportive way. Now, it's not therapy, right? We're not there to fix anything. But we're having that safe space to really have conversations about cool stuff related to behavior and how that intersects with others. It's just, it's, it's one of my favorite parts of my day on those those Fridays, where we're recording these calls.
Libby 59:02
This is a little bit of an abrupt transition. But you know, something that Emily and I have been thinking about for the last couple of weeks is behavior pharmaceuticals as kind of a short term support for dogs who are going through something really, really big. You know, we just had a huge tragedy in our community with an urban Firestorm. And there are, I mean, we have, we don't have an estimate of how many dogs and cats are displaced right now. But it's hundreds. And we know that some of our adopters who are displaced right now. They are experiencing, you know, some struggles that Oh, I you know, okay, thought we overcame this a year ago, and now we're kind of regressed a little bit and, you know, in this kind of situation, when would you recommend adopt ers speaking to their veterinarian about getting some short term medical support?
Chris 1:00:07
That's such a great question. And truly my heart goes out to everybody who is who is struggling with displacement and loss and on unknown outcomes and everything that we've been talking about from a fear and anxiety standpoint. I, my heart goes out to everybody who is experiencing even a hint of that, let alone the full scope of everything that has been devastating there in the community. You and I think that the intervention point for me is I maybe I'm a little bit quicker to jump into that, then then some, to me, medication is never a last resort, if I have an animal who is struggling in any way, shape or form, even temporarily, if I can support them. Absolutely, that I'm going to I'm going to do that. And you know, I love the fact that you know, yes, we're talking about prescription pharmaceuticals and needing to have that conversation with the vet. And and absolutely. And there's some really amazing over the counter options as well. And there's also a lot of stuff out there that is a little gimmicky, that may not have really solid research behind it to really justify that use. And if, if you're really trying to figure out, hey, where do I go? What are my options, you know, there are a couple of products that I tend to reach for, you know, just just kind of putting this out there. These are not endorsements of any particular products, but they're ones that I that I use successfully in my practice. Ideally, you would get them through veterinary channels, the supply chain is just a little bit different, reliable, and you can find them online in many cases as well. So we're kind of putting that little caveat out there. I'm a huge supporter of pheromones. So the Adapt over the comfort zone product that's manufactured by the Seba company either as a body heat activated color, or as a plugin diffuser, or even the non aerosol spray. It's an over the counter product. Not every animal is a profound responder. But dang, if you get one of those responders, it can be really, really powerful. And it's a really easy thing to trial. So yes, for sure, try that. There's a couple of other products that are at the top of my list as well, I would say there's a product called zylkene, which is spelled ZYLKENE, which is a milk protein, alpha Josephine products, that has some really nice research behind it, it's really palatable both for dogs and for cats. So from an accessibility, you know, these are all things that you know, I'm reaching for these first, because they may have an almost immediate effect, which is so important when we're talking about you know, we're not talking about a tragedy in three weeks, we're talking about experiencing that emotional distress right here right now. So zylkene is another product that I use a fair amount of in my practice. Another one is called sola, Quinn, S O L. L. i Quin. It's a Nutramax product, they do a phenomenal job again, looking that's more of an L theanine derivative, which is green tea based. So again, we're coming at it from the supplement the natural natural nutraceutical sort of approach to try to support the animals normal coping mechanisms. There's another one called composure Pro, the pro version, I think, is actually only available through veterinarians, but I could be wrong on that. But that's the one that I use based on the blend and the strength of ingredients that are within that, again, all three of those options plus the pheromones, I love those as a trial option. If they help. Amazing, you may not need to use them for very long. But dang, just to get through that initial transition of trying to facilitate everybody just kind of taking a collective breath and kind of regrouping of it. You know, and I say that because we know that when we are in the midst of stress, distress, emotional trauma, whatever the case may be, the way in which our brains process the data around us change the decision process, if we're just trying to get back to safety versus really sort of, you know, finding things to enjoy in the world. And we could have, we could go down a whole lot of rabbit holes here as well. But for the animals who are experiencing all of that stress, who don't have the capacity of understanding how it all fits together. It's really tough. So I tend to be a bit quicker to jump in and say if they are struggling, help them. Please help them.
Libby 1:04:30
Yeah, it's reducing, reducing suffering. You know, if it takes a little supplement, if it takes that Adaptil collar like there's no reason for anyone to suffer more than they have to ever.
Chris 1:04:47
Yeah, it there's no there's no badge of honor here. We're not, you know, just trying to get through it. And again, I know that especially when we're moving folks are struggling. You know, maybe there's a cost issue, right. We're like, well, we don't we have no idea what we're doing right now. out and get it. There may be other reasons why. But if you're if you're struggling with it, should we do it? If you have the means and you have the access? Yeah, I would support them through those those products that are available. And if it helps, amazing, amazing, you're going to be grateful you did.
Libby 1:05:16
Yeah, that's great advice. Thank you. Well, Dr. Chris Pachel, thank you so much for your time, you've been so generous, and we really appreciate you sharing, just, you know, a little bit of your vast body of knowledge with us and our listeners.
Chris 1:05:31
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to and I'm always always interested in having these conversations with folks who are passionate about learning and sharing and disseminating that information out through, you know, those ripple effects that exist that that for me, that just speaks to my heart. So thank you for doing the work you do and I look forward to the next conversation.
Libby 1:05:52
Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate and review and helps other folks like you find the show. To find out more about our programming and adoptable rescue dogs, you can visit summit dog rescue.org thanks to Mike pesci for the original music and to Alex Lee Ammons and for the love media for graphics production and editing. See you soon on pod to the rescue.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Welcome to pod to the rescue.
Libby 0:11
Rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with everything that comes next.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to pod to the rescue. I'm Libby.
Emily 0:22
And I'm Emily.
Libby 0:23
And today we are bringing you an interview with Dr. Christopher Pachel. He is a veterinary behaviorist, the lead clinician and practice owner of the animal behavior clinic in Portland, Oregon.
Emily 0:34
Dr. Pachel's kind of a big deal in the animal behavior world. So I was really excited that he came on the show and we had such a fascinating conversation with him. I think we could have spoken for hours.
Libby 0:47
Absolutely, we covered everything that is veterinary behaviorism, you know, from what it is to why rescues and shelters should have an a veterinary behaviorist in their tool bag when it comes to addressing behavior issues. To learn more about Dr. Pachel you can visit animalbehaviorclinic.net We'll put that link in the show notes.
Right Welcome to pod to the rescue. Dr. Chris Pachel.
Chris 1:25
Thank you for having me. It's, it's exciting to be here. I, I've been wanting to chat with the two of you. And I've been looking forward to this on my calendars. This is awesome.
Libby 1:34
Thank you so much for taking the time. We're really excited. Could you please describe what a veterinary behaviorist is and how you work to help companion pets?
Chris 1:44
Sure, you know, it's funny even at this point. So I've been a veterinary behaviorist since Gosh, since 2010, the college or the organization has been around Gosh going on. I think it's 25 years or so now. And still we find people who saying and you're what, and part of that is because there's really not that many of us, right, there's still fewer than 100 board certified veterinary behaviorist from the American College. And so it's no surprise that we're still a little bit of a mystery for a lot of folks, especially pet owners, who thankfully perhaps have not needed to cross paths with us yet. But by training, I'm first and foremost a veterinarian. So I went through veterinary school as you know, any any other veterinary professional did, and then went on for additional residency specialized training, just as you were if you were going to be a surgeon, or an internal medicine specialist, or radiologist, or whatever that specialty happens to be behavior is one of those disciplines. So that residency process that includes multiple years of mentored supervision, managing and treating cases, as well as primary research and getting that published in a peer reviewed journal, as well as case reports, as well as academic certification that's roughly the equivalent of a master's degree. It's not a master's degree, I want to be clear about that. But the amount of coursework and academic rigor that exists there is is comparable. So we've got sort of the academia as well as the clinical practice. And then at the end of all of that you sit a two day exam, cross your fingers, and hope that you put in all of the right time to get that certification at the end. So that's kind of who we are as a group. And as far as what we do, you know, gosh, it really depends on who you ask, meaning folks like myself work primarily in the companion animal space, and we're working with clients who are presenting an animal that they say, gosh, there's something going on here, I don't understand, I think we need some help. I think you've got the tools, the tool set the toolbox, you can help us out with that. And so I'm working primarily in that space, as well as as an educator through conferences and horses, through veterinary schools, and so on. And then we've got some of our other members who work very much in the sheltering community, and others that work more in academia and research as well as in the industry and guiding sort of the marketplace as it relates to animal care. So lots of different options, depending on where somebody chooses to follow their passion,
Emily 4:15
what repertoire of skills and knowledge that you bring to the table. So we're thrilled to have you. My question for you would be we've discussed a lot on previous episodes, that dogs and rescues since that's our focus here, rescue and shelter dogs. Just that process of being in a shelter or being rescued being in a new home can be traumatizing and destabilizing for a dog. So we were wondering if you could share your thoughts on that concept and how the shelter rescue process can affect a dog's behavior in your experience.
Chris 4:50
Oh my gosh, there's so many layers to this question. And I love that you're thinking about this and not only just thinking about, Gosh, how do we place animals? How do we sort of move Have them through. But hey, what does this experience look like and feel like from their perspective, from start to finish? And how can we really work with that? So number one, kudos for even thinking about that and bringing it to the conversation here. I love that. You know, I think for me that the place that I come at that is really thinking about the places where I see animals struggling, when I say the places I don't mean, the physical locations of the home versus the shelter versus the Foster, I think about sort of the emotional center. And where I see animals struggling is often from a place of fear and anxiety. That's not the only places where we can have big feelings. But that's often the place where we see it, in my opinion, where we see some of the biggest emotional conflict for animals. And so, you know, gosh, when we think about that anything that's novel or unfamiliar, has the potential to elicit a fear response, right, and there's so much that's novel and unfamiliar about that entire process of, you know, being transitioned into a new physical space with different social contacts that you don't really have a relationship with. And, you know, gosh, you're at risk of anthropomorphizing here a little bit, you know, I don't want to project all of my feelings on onto the animal. But yet, we do see animals who seem to be struggling because of that, that novelty or familiarity aspect. And then I also find that a lot of animals really are thinking about the anxiety side of things, it's less about novelty and more about predictability or feeling like you have some degree of well control or agency over what happens next. And again, gosh, as we're transitioning animals, whether it's on transport, or admin, or open admission, or, you know, even if we're really trying to do the best we can, the reality is, is making those transitions from the animals perspective isn't coming from a place of predictability or structure, or necessarily the feeling of agency or choice or control. So we're likely to see anxiety, even appropriate levels of fear and anxiety that probably shouldn't be there for an animal who's experiencing something new or unpredictable. And yet, the moment we start to really tip into that emotional center, gosh, that can really drive the bus in some really problematic ways. If animals get over a threshold, and especially if that environment is just not perfectly meshed with that particular animals needs. At that moment in time we can we can really go sideways in a hurry.
Libby 7:28
Wow, that's a big perspective, to consider whenever we're thinking about our dogs. And your experience, what are some of the behaviors that you see in rescue dogs often?
Chris 7:42
Yeah, you know, it really varies, you know, and I think in some cases, we could probably paint in broad brushstrokes, thinking about, you know, breed types, or breed groups or specific breeds, you know, and then we narrow down to the individual based on their unique learning history. And, well, what has worked from their perspective to give them a sense of safety or security or predictability or control. And so it can vary really all over the map, I tend to think about the shelter population much the same as I do my companion animal or, or owned population, and that I see animals who tend to gush for lack of a better way of putting it tend to stress up, where we tend to see all the visible signs where it's barking, and whining and drooling, and sort of the outward expression of stress or distress. And that may include destructive behaviors or elimination problems, or, you know, kind of putting it out into the world, versus the animals that tend to stress down, where we tend to see more of the shutting down the avoidance, the learned helplessness in severe cases, where we see animals who, quote unquote, look fine, or, you know, up here calm, and gosh, aren't they doing well with all of this, and then when you look a little bit closer, we're not seeing any of the normal comfort behaviors that we would expect to see, we're not seeing normal eating patterns, we're not seeing normal elimination patterns, we're not seeing soft, loose body language with intermittent play bouts or any of those sorts of things. So I really kind of want to think about it as sort of which direction does this animal go? And do I need to try to create a sense of safety or perhaps give them outlets for some of that, that energy that needs to go somewhere for that animal to be able to sort of discharge that and, you know, kind of move through that stress response and get out of the tunnel,so to speak?
Libby 9:33
Yeah, I think that, you know, you mentioned the elimination patterns. I think that's kind of our number one tell that a dog is kind of freaked out, you know, whenever they're coming into a new foster home or their new forever home. How, if that's not going well, like, that's a big sign for us that Oh, okay. We need to, you know, do some interview engines in helping this dog be a little more comfortable. And I love how you're talking about predictability and control as really driving behavior in these situations. Can you say more about that? That's fascinating. And I really want our listeners to, to kind of get this.
Chris 10:23
Yeah, it's it's such a rich topic. And when we really think about it, I'm gonna kind of bring it back to kind of, I'm gonna say, my perspective, that's the only human perspective that I can truly speak to, you know, but in my experience, if something is, you know, again, back to that, you know, is unfamiliar, it's novel, I don't know what's going to happen next, or there's a, an apprehensive anticipation of danger, or a worry that I just, I just don't know what's going to happen, or Gosh, things are happening. And I don't know what I, you know, that is kind of that whirlwind of emotion and anxiety. And again, I want to stress that just because we're feeling fear, anxiety, doesn't mean it's pathology. Right? Those are normal survival mechanisms, we'd all be dead if they weren't there. So, you know, I'm reminded of some of my colleagues, Susan Friedman being one of them kind of has this way of going, Gosh, isn't my body amazing, but it has the ability to alert me to the fact that this is new, indifferent? And, gosh, if I could just sit with that for just a second and figure this out? Wouldn't that be cool? And it turns into more of a sense of amazement versus Oh, my God, how do I get rid of this feeling? How do I get out of this? How do I just block this out of my world? Now, that's way easier said than done. And I'm not in any way meaning to diminish or negate the more significant levels of fear or anxiety that perhaps some of our listeners experience, oh, I don't know, during a global pandemic, perhaps, or, you know, looking at some of the the issues that are that are companion animals experience, as well, we see fear and anxiety as as normal. And it can also be pathologic. And so I think about that whole spectrum, and what I see clinically when I'm working with an animal to really help them through, and what I mean by that is that if I'm dealing with an animal that has more of a fear response, where they are, you know, alerting or aware of a thing, you know, that child, that unfamiliar dog, and we see their attention either sort of focused on or focused away from the thing. And then the thing goes away, and they start to shake off and relax, where we see that direct stimulus dependent response. In those cases, I can really help that animal out by, in some cases, just giving them enough time to process and get comfortable and habituate. In other cases, I can work more with counter conditioning and trying to create a positive, conditioned emotional response by helping them to understand, you know, hey, when that unfamiliar child shows up, that's a predictor of playtime, or a food treat, or something along those lines, which, in getting that classically conditioned Association, I am establishing a sense of predictability, right. And as soon as that starts to happen, what we start to see for the animal is even think about how we might be doing that in the shelter even, you know, unfamiliar child, treat from the handler, child treat child treat, when they recognize the child, if you pause, just that little moment, they oriented the handler, right, we've accidentally or sort of, in tandem, we've conditioned this operant responses well, and so if that's the goal, if we want them to look up, or if we want them to gaze away, or if we want them to sniff the ground, we can start conditioning that and what I love about is that even at that moment, at that basic level, the animal is starting to gain a bit of control. If I do X, Y will happen. Right? So we're starting to get this behavior response contingency. That's what predictability is, right? The ability to have enough learning history that the animal the learner is able to say, Gosh, this leads to this. Cool, if I like this, I'll do more of this. And we start to see that positive conditioning, that reinforcement loop that starts to happen, right, so and you know, and really what happens there's the animal is learning the predictable relationship. So we can leverage that all the way throughout the process, whether it's an intake, whether it's during our housing phase, wherever, whatever that looks like, or whether it's moving those animals into foster or long term care. We have the ability to leverage those associations, to not only help them kind of recognize new and novel or different as predictors of good things, but also establishing predictable outcomes and giving them that sense of control at a basic basic level. And I know that the two of you have seen this. I just know this based on what you've shared with me already is that you get that moment where the dog goes.
And you see them kind of start to get it and they give that big relaxed sigh, or they start to see the easy little light bulb moment going on. And then they give that Big full body shake off for the first time. And you're like, cool. Now we're talking the same language. Awesome. Let's build on that. That's what I'm talking about with all of this conditioning and predictability and control and agency, and how it can really show up to benefit that particular animal.
Libby 15:31
Yeah, and that also, it makes sense to me why some dogs almost have. We might refer to it as a setback. But I'm using that with air quotes listeners, when they move to a new home, because they don't have the learning history with their new people. And it's maybe not quite as predictable. Or maybe the new handlers timing is a little bit different and something like that.
Chris 16:03
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Right. And what we understand really, within the behavior field is that behavior is very context specific. Right? When we're doing an intervention, when we're doing an assessment, we're often saying, hey, what's the behavior that I'm focused on? And what are the antecedent conditions or those those triggers, if we want to call them that the the conditions under which that behavior is happening? You know, that's really where we see another relationship that exists. And from the animals perspective, yeah, if all the antecedent conditions are different, or just not exactly the same, it's enough for a lot of animals, especially those who might be a bit more on the worrisome end of the spectrum. It's enough for that animal to go, Whoa, I don't know if I can trust this, the way that I've trusted my previous environment, so I'm going to need to really pay attention, I'm going to need to perhaps even be on guard, or maybe even defensive until I know that I can trust and trust comes from learning, right? We can't just say, Gosh, I'm a really nice person, and you should trust me. I wish it was that easy, right. But that's not where it comes from. It's actually, you know, getting in the trenches and establishing that trust. It's actually one of the reasons that I love working with even for a couple of foundation skills, like a hand and target, or a sit cue or a watch. There's nothing magic about any of those things. But it allows for a dialogue so that, you know, me, if you've been working with a dog, for example, you can hand that leash off to me, and I could replicate some of what you've done for an animal to go, oh, you speak the same language as they did. That's amazing. I can trust this. Which is amazing to me. And we can really kind of generalize that learning across environments, not because I'm trying to turn that dog into a perfect obedience dog. It's not about my control over, it's about communication with. And that's what I love about it.
Emily 18:09
You're making me think about videos I've seen where at the shelters, they put little treat stations on every gate. So when visitors come, they are instructed, like throw a few treats into the dog, regardless of what the dog is doing. So it establishes that predictability. And I'm sure there's some learning that happens that like if the dog moves a little bit closer, more treats come, you know, and so, yeah, that that is just an easy thing, in addition to maybe some hand targeting or teaching set that shelters can do to try to ease some of that pressure and also teach them some patterns and predictability in that upside down world that they find themselves in. Yes,
Chris 18:51
yes. And it's it's such a, I don't want to trivialize it and say, oh, gosh, it's such an easy thing. But in most cases, I'd argue that it is, it's really not that challenging, unless we're working with an animal who has either experienced significant trauma or abuse or even has already perhaps been through a lot of change. You know, or, and even in some cases, I find for some of my patients that I work with, who have who have been through a lot of training already that hasn't necessarily been successful, I actually get really skeptical learners. You know, they're like, Yeah, wait a minute, someone brought food out before and that didn't end so well. So I get these dogs where we really almost have to work even harder to establish that predictability before they again really start to trust us in the way that we're hoping for.
Emily 19:44
Well, we've listened to you before on the positive reward podcast and on that podcast you discussed a lot being adherent to the principles of Lima Can you describe what Lima is and how would you use Lima to code With rescues and shelters to create training and behavior plans, just kind of like we were discussing there.
Chris 20:05
Yeah, yeah, I think we're always this is a natural segue into that, right? When we kind of put start putting some, maybe some labels or some constructs around some of these concepts that we've been talking about. So Lima, or li M A, really is, it's another construct, right? That stands for at least intrusive, minimally aversive, which is sort of some big jargony words in and of themselves, which is why we typically call it Lima. But it's basically saying, hey, if I'm going to kind of apply my agenda, or attempt to manipulate or modify the behavior of an animal, another sentient being who has a well an agenda all their own, right, I want to do the best I can to rather than just walk in and say, Well, I'm the fill in the blank pack leader, Master alpha, you know, and so therefore, my agenda matters the most. Rather than going in that direction, I'm going to take the primacy of saying, Well, if I want you to do something different, either because it's problematic or dangerous, or gosh, there's just a better way to handle this. What would it take to help you realize that in the least intrusive, minimally aversive way, so it's really a structure or a framework that we can go through every time we're thinking about applying a behavior change program to a particular animal, to say, Gosh, scale of, you know, whether it's one to 10, or whether we're working through the humane hierarchy of behavior change construct, we can say, Gosh, how intrusive is this? And what I love about that, even just looking at intrusive, and then getting into the minimally aversive piece, it allows me to start first in any situation by saying, Have I met this animal's needs, as best I can, as well as I understand them in this moment, right. And then when we're coming into, let's say, a sheltering situation, we're meeting a dog for the first time, we don't have learning history, maybe they were a stray that came in without any history whatsoever. I don't really necessarily know what that animal needs in that moment. So that first question is actually a pretty big one that we can't always answer, right, but I'm going to do the best I can to say, hey, if I'm going to, again, try to change your mind, or change your behavior, or change your emotional state, I want to start from a place of meeting your needs and helping you to feel safe, and comfortable, and free to experience and display normal species typical behaviors. And I'd say that whether we're talking about dogs, or cats, or horses, or parents or whatever, whatever species that we're talking about, that ability to display normal behaviors, to feel safe, to be well fed, to be cared for, to be free from pain or distress, then we can start to move forward into cool. And now let me give you some guidance. Ideally, maybe starting with some positive reinforcement, catching you in the act of doing some things I like and giving you some reinforcement for that. And I think, you know, even though we look at that as quote, unquote, positive, I don't want to overlook the fact that even at that level, it's mildly intrusive. We're setting an agenda we are inherently describing or labeling certain behaviors as good, or better or more desirable, and other characteristics or behaviors as less desirable or bad or dangerous in some cases. But even at that level, even though we're using reinforcement, there is a little bit of coercion that can sneak in there. And so while I fully support going in the positive direction, and using this structure, I don't want to overlook the fact that the moment we set an agenda for the animal, I want to I want to be as mindful as I possibly can that I'm moving that in a direction that again, is still is in alignment with that animals needs, their learning history and kind of what's the what's going to set them up to be successful in the long run.
Libby 24:19
Yeah, I think that's really important to remember and kind of harkens back to what you said earlier about some dogs, you know, the food comes out and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, been here before this is a trick. So remembering that, yeah, even using positive reinforcement and in food as a reinforcer, is intrusive. That's a really important thing to keep in mind as we work with animals.
Chris 24:46
Yeah, it really is, you know, and then of course, when we move our way up that hierarchy if we start talking about some other interventions, whether that is limiting the animals freedoms, which you know, even putting them on a leash limits their freedom, right? That's not well, we could go down a rabbit hole on that one. But you know, and then we can start to talk about some of the applications where we're using, let's say reprimands, or at least corrections there, we're definitely moving up the aversive category. And the thing to remember there is that aversive is something that's from the animals perspective. And we can read their body language, they'll they'll tell us what they liked and what they didn't. And if they found a particular stimulus or response, or outcome or consequence, if they found that to be positive, we tend to see more anticipation and sort of the dopamine pathways really start to flow within the brain. And if they found it to be aversive, we tend to see them going in the opposite direction. Or we may see signs of stress, which may include if we're talking about dogs, for example, years back, had lowered, tail tucked, quiet body posture may be seeing startle responses, or other emotional indicators that that was unpleasant. And here's the real kicker, when it comes to moving up that aversive Vnus category, if you will, is that whether we're using positive met positive air quotes, methods or aversive methods, predictability matters, right? So even if we're using food, but applying it in random, inconsistent ways that can actually be stressful for an animal. And it's even worse if those consequences are happening in unpredictable ways. And the reverse is, right. So you have now an animal's experiencing unpleasant or perhaps pain inducing outcomes in a way that is unpredictable or uncontrollable to them. It's always their perspective that matters, right? If it's unpredictable to them, and it's unpleasant, whew, that's essentially a recipe for situational or generalized anxiety. Right? That's what happens. And it's why it's so important. You know, when we talk about some of the methodology, and the need for consistency and the need to establish this conversation. It's not that it's something that you know, I've been, I'm going to use the word accused at various points of time with just sitting on the moral high ground of saying, Oh, you're doing positive reinforcement, because of some moral superiority thing like, No, I mean, maybe a little bit, you know, it's the nicer thing to do. But no, when we look at the science behind it, and the way that the animals in front of us respond, it's better. It's, it's just better across the board. And again, and we can talk about that, and really looked at the science behind it, but it's just, it's something that's so important for all of us to understand, when we're working with animals in the shelter population, or with the companion animals that share our homes. Yeah,
Emily 27:53
yeah. Oh, I love that our rescue has been around for over a decade. And we, you know, we didn't know anything about training or behavior when we started it. And, you know, we did try pretty much, you know, not anything, like terribly, you know, abusive, but we didn't know anything. So we thought we had to be the pack leader. We tried it all. And then when we learned the science, like eight years ago, we're like, oh, you know, why would we want to make a dog who's already in this transition and unpredictable state, feel less secure, more unsafe, more anxious. So I really appreciate your talking to that. Because, you know, when, when we know better, we do better?
Chris 28:33
It's exactly right. You know, and I want to be clear, too, that if someone's listening to this, and if they're coming at it from the perspective of, hey, I'm not so sure I agree with this guy. I'm not so sure that I'm necessarily there, I get it. And please note that I'm not I'm not trying to, to be judgmental, or to cast any sort of shade. As you just said, the one we know better, we do better, right. And we do have options there. And, and truthfully, for our brains, if we see a behavior that we don't like, or that we think is dangerous, our brains naturally go to how do I stop the animal from doing that? Which short, short cuts us right to those punishment options, right? It's the way our brain naturally solves the problem. Jumping up is a problem, cool, stop the jumping, versus taking that extra step to say, hey, what do I want that animal to do? Instead of jumping, then I can really build a learning framework around that. But you know, I started there, too. You know, I started from the standpoint of stop the unwanted behavior. And once you've done that, then you can teach appropriate things. And, you know, gosh, there's so much fallout potential along the way. And we know that it's just not the most effective way to learn. And so we can we can really do just some almost magical things, but But yes, when we're teaching before we're correct doing versus trying to teach through corrections. We can just arc or we can we can. It just gives me chills, right? There's so much we can do that. It's amazing.
Libby 30:13
And going back to the science based bit a little bit, you know, I, it's important for us, for our listeners to understand that again, we're not only talking about this because we're hippies in Boulder. But because there's a lot of science behind these methods. And in fact, recently, I got a lot of attention in the training world the American Veterinary Society of animal behaviorist, did I say that? Right?
Chris 30:49
Yeah, animals and yeah, the American Society of animal behavior.
Libby 30:52
Yeah, animal behavior. Thank you really released a position statement basically, on LIMA? Can you speak a little bit to just the body of science behind all of this?
Chris 31:07
Yeah, it's one of the things that I mean, there's many things that that particular organization has done just incredibly well over the years over the decades that they've been in existence. But what I think they've done really, really well in this particular case, is pulling the science together. And again, rather than sort of getting on some sort of a moral high horse and trying to teach people through finger wagging, which FYI, doesn't work any better for people than it does for animals. But rather than saying, hey, guess what, when we really look at this through a critical lens, this is what really shakes out as the most effective options across the vast majority of circumstances. And they're the options that are least likely to lead to negative outcomes. So gosh, when we put those two things together, least likely to cause problems and most likely to work when we do it. Right. that I want to stress that because you know, the number of clients that I have coming to me say, oh, you know, I tried that food thing. I tried the reinforcement thing that didn't work. My brain immediately says, let's hit the pause button on that, or at the very least circle back around to it. Science proves to us it does work. But I want to understand why it didn't work for your animal. Was it the consistency? Were we using a reinforcer? Or an attempted reinforcer that just wasn't terribly reinforcing for your animal? For example, was it the timing? Was it something else? Were they just too stressed? What was it that didn't allow them to learn? So I want to teach that out. And that's because of all of the research that's referenced within that position statement to be able to say, I actually know that it works, I trust that it works. And when we apply those principles correctly, behavior change happens. And so we get that ability to look at that referenced document and say, Cool, let's actually talk through this and help to understand and, you know, I really want to give a sort of a shout out to anyone who is perhaps using methodology as I did when I first learned and is starting to question that. And they're saying, Gosh, maybe there's, maybe there's a different way to do this, oh, my God, that's a really vulnerable place to be. It's really scary to feel like you knew what you were doing. And you're kind of going out into uncharted territory here, you don't actually know or trust these new outcomes yet. So I just want to kind of put a shout out to anybody who's looking at or listening to this from a place of curiosity, and even just saying, I wonder what that's all about. Kudos, kudos to you. That's, that's vulnerability, right? It's putting yourself out there and who making yourself available to some perhaps unpleasant outcomes and the learning process right outside your comfort zone. So just just putting that out there, I never want to I would never want someone who is using a method that perhaps is on a list of things that I wouldn't necessarily recommend. I wouldn't want someone to hear that and think that that I'm talking bad about them as an individual. It's not that at all, I think the vast majority, I mean, truly, every behavior professional, every trainer certified or not, that I've worked with, is doing what they're doing, from a belief that they're helping the animal. You know, I really tried to come back to that. And so you know, it's for me, it's pulling that lens back until I can say, hey, well, gosh, even if I have to pull the lens back aways, how far do I need to pull back before I recognize that you and I are actually trying to do the same thing. We've just got a different toolbox or a different skill set. And so let's start there. And then let's think about these methods. Let's learn how to use them well together, and really, really do some amazing work. As a collaborative effort, yeah,
Emily 35:02
I love that. I mean, we rescued hundreds of dogs that some of them were choke chains. But we did it with Hulk completely whole heartedly. You know, with the best intentions, we just didn't have the tools that we needed to do better. And now we do.
Chris 35:20
Yeah, it's and it's hard, you know. And then from that standpoint, too, it's, it's so easy to turn in some of these conversations when we're talking about methodology. And when there's big feelings around rescuing and sheltering, and, you know, I'm not going to dive into some of the the Hornet's Nest, or some of the debates that exist around that. I'm trusting me I'm aware. Yeah. But you know, gosh, when we had those big feelings that comes from a place of passion and wanting to do good in the world around us, for sure. So let's connect there. Yeah, I see you trying to do good work. Me too. Me, too. This is an us situation, not an us versus them. situation. Love that. Let's do it together as best we can.
Libby 36:02
Mm hmm.
Emily 36:03
I love that. That's kind of one of the reasons we started the podcast is, we were just lucky enough to get to learn that information because of circumstances. So we were like, Let's share what we know, with those who are maybe two years into rescuing so that they don't, you know, they get a little bit of a boost that we didn't get instead of repeating what we did for five years.
Chris 36:21
Amazing. And kudos to to you for doing that. I mean, doing the work to put a podcast together and to to get it out there and get the district. It's no joke. It's one of the reasons whatever says, Hey, do you want to guest on the podcast? My answer is always yes. Because I don't have the discipline to do all the organization to do a podcast on my own. So I'm just going to throw all of the kudos at you know, the two of them are putting in the work to make this happen. It's a lot.
Libby 36:50
No, thank you. We appreciate that.
Emily 36:52
Thank you.
Libby 36:54
Okay, so I would like to switch gears a little bit and start talking about meds. Because we are in our rescue. I mean, we're perfectly happy to discuss medication with our fosters with our adopters. It's not something that everybody understands, though. So could you explain how behavior medications can help shelter and rescue dogs in particular?
Chris 37:28
Absolutely, yeah. And I'll sort of backup one step to kind of put the perspective in here in in sort of two different areas. One is when I say medication sort of in the way that I think about it, and yes, that includes pharmaceuticals, for sure. And it includes pheromones and supplements and nutrition, and probiotics and herbs, and, you know, all of the things right? It's basically anything that we're doing kind of, to or within that animal, to facilitate whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish, right. That's kind of where I tend to think about sort of the big bucket of meds. And I always like to start there because I don't want if somebody's coming at it from a, you know, kind of the, you know, pharmaceuticals are bad or scary or woowoo, we would never do that. Know that when I'm talking about meds, it's a much broader category. And we can find the comfort level, we can find kind of what we think is likely to work given what science and experience has told us. So that's the first thing. The other thing that I want to be clear about whenever we have a conversation about meds is when I'm doing an assessment of an owned animal, an animal in the shelter, or wherever that animal is, right? I'm thinking about whatever it is that I'm seeing, and I'm saying, Gosh, if I want this animal's behavior, their operands, or emotional patterns to be different, in some way, shape, or form, that I'm going to have to use some sort of behavior modification tools, right? That's where behavior change ultimately happens. It's the learning history, it's all of that. So for me, behavior mod is sort of the always when our goal is truly changing behavior. And until we've taught that animal through predictability, and consistency and training and all of those things, until we've on boarded those new emotional or behavioral skills, we're going to use management, we're going to keep them out of trouble. We're going to keep them safe, we're going to keep everyone else safe. And we're going to keep them out of situations where they may be practicing doing it wrong. Right. So that's kind of the until piece. So always be mod until that's there. We're looking at management. That's the way I tend to think about it. And then the third piece of that is if needed, then we can augment that whole pattern that whole plan those other two pieces of the puzzle, we can support that with medication, not because medication is the solution, when we use something within that medication Shin umbrella, what we're trying to do in most cases is reduce stress, reduce fear, reduce emotionality and reduce arousal, which are some of the obstacles that can get in the way of an animal feeling comfortable enough to learn or capable of learning some of these new patterns. So medication doesn't teach anything, it doesn't automatically fix the problem, the way we might think about, let's say, antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, where we can say cool, the medication is the solution, give this for seven days and your pet is healed. Behavioral meds don't typically work like that. They're there to augment, they're there to work in combination with learning to really support and facilitate that process. So I say all of that, because when we bring that conversation, then into the shelter space, there's a couple of things that I find are somewhat unique about this, you know, this world that we're talking about.
Number one, we're often dealing with animals that are really stressed out, for all of the reasons that we talked about earlier in the past, they don't have the learning history, they're not in a stable environment, their environment might change again, tomorrow, right? We just, we're not talking about a stable environment in many cases. And so in those scenarios, the expectation that we're going to be able to work only with training and management. I think it's a tall order, right. And in the meantime, if we have an animal who's experiencing big feelings, that is preventing them from taking that breath, or preventing them from feeling safe, or preventing them from learning from their their new caregivers, or their handlers of their trainers, gosh, we can facilitate so much faster progress when we do this well, to try to help them through that process to reduce those those those emotional pieces. Again, not trying to say I don't want them to experience emotion at all. Emotions are normal, right there, it's appropriate to be there nor I guess that's a positive and a negative, right? I even if I tried, I probably can't medicate all of those feelings away. It's not a slippery slope, right? And say, Oh, well, let's just use meds and not worry about training or management. It's in combination. So for me, that's the same perspective that I use, whether I'm working with an animal in the shelter, or whether I'm working with an animal in a home. That's the role that medication has. And there's also sort of the you know, if I think forward a couple of steps, I mean, it's it's tricky, right, you know, and I've got a full form for our workshop that I do specifically around this individual question, where we're saying, basically, what do we see? And which are the situations that might benefit from meds versus not? What are the ways that we can think about meds? How do we present that to the public that were, quote, unquote, medicating our shelter dogs? How do we have those conversations with potential adopters? You know, are we saying we're supporting this animal for them to be more successful, or they were so bad off that they needed to need to be medicated to even make it to the adoption are like, how do we raise that? How do we think about those conversations? And how do we support them afterwards? Knowing that a lot of behavior meds even if they're being really helpful, and even if they're no longer needed? shouldn't necessarily be abruptly withdrawn? And so how are we supporting that animal after adoption, to make sure that even if the goal is to bring them off meds, we're doing that in a responsible way that doesn't jeopardize or potentially risk or regression, even if the animal no longer needs the medication support? So big, big conversation that we can dive down any one of those pathways here?
Emily 43:58
Oh, yeah. Sounds like you, we thought we could really power so like we got before your hard stop.
Libby 44:07
Well, you know, I, as much as we could talk about the behavior, pharmaceuticals. I just, I'm reflecting on the aspect of medication that is maybe addressing other issues within the dog's physiology that could be causing behavior problems. I mean, I've seen amazing things happen when you treat a dog for allergies, and then suddenly their skin doesn't crawl all the time, and they're not terribly uncomfortable. So that is, it's not a behavior pharmaceutical, like, you know, fluoxetine or something like that, but it is a medical intervention in their behavior plan. And that's an important thing to think about as well. So,
Chris 44:58
I love that you brought that in and what We're talking about itch level, whether we're talking about infections, internal or external, whether we're talking about pain from wherever that's coming from, I mean, oh my gosh, I mean, I think almost probably every listener could acknowledge that when they're feeling uncomfortable there level of resilience and stress tolerance is probably not at its 100% best, right? That's just not how we're wired, we are supposed to then sort of guard ourselves to risk further injury and risk damage to ourselves. And we're not supposed to put ourselves in vulnerable situations because our immune function is compromised. And and, and so it's really important to think about that. And I love the fact that you brought that in here, especially when we're thinking about an initial assessment, where I think, you know, I've worked with certain shelters over the years where they say, Okay, well, let's, you know, let's get that animal into Foster, let's get their environment squared, and then we'll address their medical needs. And I get it, sometimes that's the way it just needs to happen. Like, I get it not, I'm not not judging that at all. But I never want to lose sight of the fact that as long as that animal is experiencing those physical sensations, we're probably going to struggle to some degree, or at the very least, we're going to struggle more than we otherwise would, if we could also address those things. In tandem.
Emily 46:22
That's, it's great as why, you know, we always say, go to your veterinarian, you know, like, why we can't just get behavior meds at Target, you know, is like, my, my foster, I always ended up to have the, you know, special in air, quote, foster dogs, Libby adopted her special foster dog. And, you know, I have a really good friend who's a vet, and the first thing that she does is like, full exam makes, you know, blood work makes sure that the dog, as best as we can tell, is not in pain. You know, it's hard to I guess, as a layperson, I don't exactly know how that works, since they don't speak English, but she, you know, manipulates all their joints and looks at every single thing. And then, you know, sometimes she will do some behavior, medication prescriptions, as well, if they're, you know, having anxiety or fear or arousal, you know, so we always start at that baseline. Yeah.
Chris 47:19
And I want to add in there, too, that, you know, the, the educational framework is changing, there is more behavior in the vet school curriculums today, than there was even when I came through my program back in, you know, 98 to 2002, when I was in veterinary school, and yet a lot of practicing veterinarians have not had an extensive amount of education and exactly what you just described me. And so I think it's, it's important if you're working with a veterinarian who may not have that as the, you know, their 10 out of 10. skill level. Number one, it's okay to ask that or to say, Hey, this is my goal, who do you know who can do that? Or if they if they're interested, but maybe they didn't have as much of that education? Gosh, we can do that to vet consults, right through the practice and animal behavior clinic and through many other practices, including a couple that are in in, in Colorado, right, we have the ability to say, Hey, I've got this case, I don't really know what I'm doing here. But I'd love to get some advice. How might we approach this from a medical or behavioral standpoint, which training methods are going to be better or worse, given x, y, and z, we can do those phone consults as well. So if you're in a position, whoever the listener happens to be, if you're either in this position as a veterinarian, or as a pet owner, or caregiver, and you're thinking, Oh, I'd love to tap into the brain of a vet behaviorist cool, we're available, we can do that. Even if we're at a distance, we just need to have your primary veterinary team on board for that conversation as well.
Emily 48:55
And what I love about the vet to vet konsult, and the reason as a rescue we were considering it is it's really a reasonable price, because being rescues and shelters, we don't have a huge budget. So I love that as an option. And then what I also love about that is then that veterinarian has increased knowledge to go forward with her client. Yes.
Chris 49:17
And that is the way that I at least tend to focus on those those consults. And I know many of my colleagues do the same where it's not just what do we do for Sparky? It's these are the reasons why I'm recommending X versus Y versus queue. So that we can make that decision and I can even give you a bit of a decision tree. If this doesn't work, then this if that doesn't help them this or it's this particular combination that may be the next place to go. And these are the reasons why. So that if you're not working with a client who perhaps you know, maybe can't afford or isn't in a position to do that, that knowledge is perpetuating itself throughout the entire industry. That's my goal in the way that I approached them.
Emily 49:58
So put Tricia McConnell, our most esteemed person, we just love her so much. She has the three day three week three month rule. So we talked a lot about about all of this. Can you just give us if you are bringing home a foster dog from the shelter in Portland tomorrow? What would you do?
Chris 50:21
Yeah, it's a great question. And I love that three day three week three month rule, like it's such a tangible guideline, and it's not set in stone, right? We all know that, but it's not okay, we get the three day mark next, right, it doesn't quite work that way. But it's pretty close in most circumstances. So for me, you know, I tend to think about that first three day block really, as kind of a decompression get to know you, let's be safe. Let's just kind of get the feelers let's like, kind of see kind of who you are, like, you know, who I am, I'm not going to bring that animal home and give, like, cool, let's go to the brewery, you know, let's let's, you know, host a family barbecue, let's meet all the neighbors like, whoa, whoa, like, let's take a breath, you just made a huge transition, let me get you a little bit settled in. So that first of all we know for me is really, truly kind of the get to know you, phase. And then from there, we can move into, okay, and here's kind of the way our life works. Here's how I'm hoping our life is going to look together. And I can really kind of start to branch out and say cool, I kind of like to hang out at the brewery down the street, let's do a couple of walk bys. And see if you can handle the environment when we're not sitting out at the patios, maybe I'm gonna go sit out of the patio when they're closed on a Sunday morning and just kind of hang out there and do a little bit of training or even just a little bit of is this in your wheelhouse? Let's ask the question. If you are cool, maybe I'm going to stop by when a buddy of mine is having a beard, I'm just gonna stop by and sit down for a couple of minutes, you're just kind of setting that animal up to be successful. versus, you know, again, it is setting up this scenario. Again, I'm using the brewery example. Because well, you get to know me a little bit in these podcasts too, right? So I love sitting out of the patio tables out in front of a brewery enjoying a beer and talking about all the world. But in that circumstance, the moment I go in with the expectation that I'm going to have a beer on the patio, who if my dog I knew dog, my dog was just getting a feel for the world, if that's not in their toolbox, we've created an expectation conflict here. And it has the potential to actually set us up in the wrong direction where if I'm getting frustrated, or the dog is getting frustrated, is just not effective learning. So I'm not saying we have to take 22 months to get to our goals. I'm just saying, Can you break it down? Can you do a little bit of stair steps to say hey, what would it look like to break that down to just introduce you a little bit more gradually? Because gosh, if you're comfortable in 12 hours, and we did a walk by me pause for a couple of minutes, and that is just go and lickety split, no worries, cool, then we're good to go. And we can kind of check off that box and say, yep, your dog can do that. But I didn't get myself in over our head. You know, and I use this sort of over the head analogy. It's sort of like jumping in the deep end of a pool to find out if you can swim. Right? Wouldn't it be a little bit more comfortable if we got in at the ladder in the shallow end and kind of bogged our way a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper, and oh, look, I can do this cool, awesome. No need to engage all of those panic responses in the brain if we don't need to. So So again, that's kind of my process, kind of thinking about that three day, three week, three month timeframe, it's, it's really a way to create a structure around those introductions to the world, we can take as much or as little time as we need. But we're thinking about it in more of a stepwise fashion to allow that animal to be successful, which comes back to meeting their needs to
Libby 54:06
and to me, it's reminded me again of the predictability conversation, you know, a brand new foster dog or adopted dog. There's nothing predictable for them about going to a brand new environment with brand new people with brand new smells. And you know, you have to take some time to build the predictability.
Chris 54:32
Exactly. And I think one of the other thoughts that comes to mind as I'm kind of processing all of this too, is that I think sometimes we may go in the opposite direction, maybe a little bit too far. And it's almost like we wrap that foster in bubble wrap. We're like okay, no, but you can experience the world, right? Because you're so stressed out and it's like, well, maybe, maybe,
but let me look at your body language. Let me see. Are you comfortable? Cool. You're giving me the green light to go a little bit more going a little bit faster, maybe. And there are so many amazing Amazing, amazing animals out there who have all of those things in their skill set. And by all means, let's get let's get them out enjoying life as quickly as they can. But let's also be comfortable putting the brakes on, if that's just not comfortable for them yet.
Emily 55:20
I think he might be like, literally the, like, 50th person on this podcast to mention body language. Like, I just think every single expert we have on says body language, it should be like the ding, ding, ding, you get a prize. Body language.
Chris 55:39
I love that it's so important. Right? You know, before I can sort of, you know, this comes back to the LIMA conversation too, right? Before I can insert my agenda over the top of yours, I'd love to know what you're saying. You know, that that's, that's the bottom line. That's where body language gives us that ability. You know, and I would say to that, you know, when it comes to body language, gosh, this is not just for the dogs and cats, right? It's, you know, being able to read one another and apply some of these LIMA principles over into human interactions as well, which we, you know, we talked a little bit about earlier in the podcast about sort of how we kind of invite folks in and how do we, how do we do all of this together. And I, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a project, actually one of our colleagues in common in common very finger who's also in your area, Marissa Martino, who is also in your area hosted the positive report, podcast, the two of them along with myself and Kathy's today, oh, and Lynn Unger have been hosting a project called the Lima beings, which is sort of a play on the whole Lima principle as a way to think about some of these least intrusive minimally aversive principles, and how do we take what we know or what we're learning about how to apply these these principles to the animals that we're working with? And how do we apply them to conversations, to interactions with our family, with our spouses with all of those things, and, and really thinking about not just behavior change, but really showing up with integrity, and, you know, humility, and honesty and transparency and vulnerability and all of that stuff. And so, you know, if folks are interested in learning more about that, I'm sure we can put a link in the show notes. Yeah, I suspect we can put a link in the show notes. Because,
Emily 57:23
yes, we can't wait.
Libby 57:27
I've heard all of you on a couple podcasts. And I just I love the project. And I love what you're doing. And so, like, good for y'all for getting that going. And, you know, starting that conversation as well. It's really powerful.
Chris 57:41
It's been an amazing project. I mean, I have to say, and you know, just a little plug for this as well, it's, it's been something that's been ongoing for a little over a year. Now. The core membership has been phenomenal. We've got members all around the world, it is available and open to everyone. So this is sort of an open invite to come check it out. If it speaks to you, by all means we'd love to, we'd love to invite you into these conversations. It is something that happens on sort of a monthly membership basis, with the internal conversations that are both recorded and live. There's a discussion board, there's all of this stuff that's happening there as well. So we we'd love to have folks check it out.
Emily 58:21
It's definitely on my list of things to do. I would love to do it, maybe maybe you've just inspired me because, you know, I can always become a more gentle and open person.
Chris 58:31
Yeah. And it's because everybody's got a different learning history, right? The ability to just, you know, think about how these, these these patterns show up for each of us in a really supportive way. Now, it's not therapy, right? We're not there to fix anything. But we're having that safe space to really have conversations about cool stuff related to behavior and how that intersects with others. It's just, it's, it's one of my favorite parts of my day on those those Fridays, where we're recording these calls.
Libby 59:02
This is a little bit of an abrupt transition. But you know, something that Emily and I have been thinking about for the last couple of weeks is behavior pharmaceuticals as kind of a short term support for dogs who are going through something really, really big. You know, we just had a huge tragedy in our community with an urban Firestorm. And there are, I mean, we have, we don't have an estimate of how many dogs and cats are displaced right now. But it's hundreds. And we know that some of our adopters who are displaced right now. They are experiencing, you know, some struggles that Oh, I you know, okay, thought we overcame this a year ago, and now we're kind of regressed a little bit and, you know, in this kind of situation, when would you recommend adopt ers speaking to their veterinarian about getting some short term medical support?
Chris 1:00:07
That's such a great question. And truly my heart goes out to everybody who is who is struggling with displacement and loss and on unknown outcomes and everything that we've been talking about from a fear and anxiety standpoint. I, my heart goes out to everybody who is experiencing even a hint of that, let alone the full scope of everything that has been devastating there in the community. You and I think that the intervention point for me is I maybe I'm a little bit quicker to jump into that, then then some, to me, medication is never a last resort, if I have an animal who is struggling in any way, shape or form, even temporarily, if I can support them. Absolutely, that I'm going to I'm going to do that. And you know, I love the fact that you know, yes, we're talking about prescription pharmaceuticals and needing to have that conversation with the vet. And and absolutely. And there's some really amazing over the counter options as well. And there's also a lot of stuff out there that is a little gimmicky, that may not have really solid research behind it to really justify that use. And if, if you're really trying to figure out, hey, where do I go? What are my options, you know, there are a couple of products that I tend to reach for, you know, just just kind of putting this out there. These are not endorsements of any particular products, but they're ones that I that I use successfully in my practice. Ideally, you would get them through veterinary channels, the supply chain is just a little bit different, reliable, and you can find them online in many cases as well. So we're kind of putting that little caveat out there. I'm a huge supporter of pheromones. So the Adapt over the comfort zone product that's manufactured by the Seba company either as a body heat activated color, or as a plugin diffuser, or even the non aerosol spray. It's an over the counter product. Not every animal is a profound responder. But dang, if you get one of those responders, it can be really, really powerful. And it's a really easy thing to trial. So yes, for sure, try that. There's a couple of other products that are at the top of my list as well, I would say there's a product called zylkene, which is spelled ZYLKENE, which is a milk protein, alpha Josephine products, that has some really nice research behind it, it's really palatable both for dogs and for cats. So from an accessibility, you know, these are all things that you know, I'm reaching for these first, because they may have an almost immediate effect, which is so important when we're talking about you know, we're not talking about a tragedy in three weeks, we're talking about experiencing that emotional distress right here right now. So zylkene is another product that I use a fair amount of in my practice. Another one is called sola, Quinn, S O L. L. i Quin. It's a Nutramax product, they do a phenomenal job again, looking that's more of an L theanine derivative, which is green tea based. So again, we're coming at it from the supplement the natural natural nutraceutical sort of approach to try to support the animals normal coping mechanisms. There's another one called composure Pro, the pro version, I think, is actually only available through veterinarians, but I could be wrong on that. But that's the one that I use based on the blend and the strength of ingredients that are within that, again, all three of those options plus the pheromones, I love those as a trial option. If they help. Amazing, you may not need to use them for very long. But dang, just to get through that initial transition of trying to facilitate everybody just kind of taking a collective breath and kind of regrouping of it. You know, and I say that because we know that when we are in the midst of stress, distress, emotional trauma, whatever the case may be, the way in which our brains process the data around us change the decision process, if we're just trying to get back to safety versus really sort of, you know, finding things to enjoy in the world. And we could have, we could go down a whole lot of rabbit holes here as well. But for the animals who are experiencing all of that stress, who don't have the capacity of understanding how it all fits together. It's really tough. So I tend to be a bit quicker to jump in and say if they are struggling, help them. Please help them.
Libby 1:04:30
Yeah, it's reducing, reducing suffering. You know, if it takes a little supplement, if it takes that Adaptil collar like there's no reason for anyone to suffer more than they have to ever.
Chris 1:04:47
Yeah, it there's no there's no badge of honor here. We're not, you know, just trying to get through it. And again, I know that especially when we're moving folks are struggling. You know, maybe there's a cost issue, right. We're like, well, we don't we have no idea what we're doing right now. out and get it. There may be other reasons why. But if you're if you're struggling with it, should we do it? If you have the means and you have the access? Yeah, I would support them through those those products that are available. And if it helps, amazing, amazing, you're going to be grateful you did.
Libby 1:05:16
Yeah, that's great advice. Thank you. Well, Dr. Chris Pachel, thank you so much for your time, you've been so generous, and we really appreciate you sharing, just, you know, a little bit of your vast body of knowledge with us and our listeners.
Chris 1:05:31
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to and I'm always always interested in having these conversations with folks who are passionate about learning and sharing and disseminating that information out through, you know, those ripple effects that exist that that for me, that just speaks to my heart. So thank you for doing the work you do and I look forward to the next conversation.
Libby 1:05:52
Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate and review and helps other folks like you find the show. To find out more about our programming and adoptable rescue dogs, you can visit summit dog rescue.org thanks to Mike pesci for the original music and to Alex Lee Ammons and for the love media for graphics production and editing. See you soon on pod to the rescue.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai