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Understanding Arousal Will Change Your Dog's Life with Elisheba FayDoes your dog have BIG feelings? Are they easily excitable, or have a hard time calming down? If so - this episode is a MUST listen. Behavior Consultant Elisheba Fay has a wealth of information to share about arousal in dogs - what it is, what triggers it, and how to de-activate arousal.
Seriously - this episode is practical, fascinating, and we are sure you will understand your dog better after listening. Elisheba Fay is a Certified Behavior Consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She has worked with dogs for more than 20 years. Connect with Elisheba: Website: https://www.artandscience.dog/ |
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. And I'm Emily. And we are thrilled today to bring you a fabulous interview with Elisheba. Fay Elisheba is a behavior consultant to we at Summit dog rescue rely on a lot. We refer a lot of our adopters to her. And we also use her services for a lot of our dogs who are in foster.
Emily 0:47
Yeah, this conversation was one that I was really looking forward to for a long time when I knew that we had Elisheba booked. We discussed arousal in dogs, which you know, five years ago, I didn't know what that was. And I'm assuming most of you out there don't know what it is. But it's one of them like key components to understanding some of the behavior problems or behavior. I even hate to use the word problems, just some of the behaviors that crop up in our dogs and really often in rescue dogs and shelter dogs because it has to do with like basically, you know, a lot of it is related to stress and lack of routine and youth I think has a big factor. So if somebody's in the dogs that we see are like these adolescent dogs, and, you know, arousal is there like we all have it we all have arousal and dogs in transition. They're going to show peeks of this that can show up in all sorts of ways from aggression to over excitement jumping on people, you know, pulling leashes, ripping clothes, you name it.
Libby 2:08
Yeah, this is like the really big emotions kind of dog, the dog who has really big feelings about everything and can't self soothe. So Elisheba Fay is a certified dog behavior consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior consultants, the IAABC. Elisheba has been training playing with and studying dogs for more than 20 years. She started out raising guide dog puppies when she was only 14 and went on to train service dogs, therapy dogs, pets and sport dogs. She has also trained other animals, including parents, and even cats using the same force free methods used for dogs. Her favorite work involves helping animals learn healthy coping skills for handling fear and excitement. And helping humans learn to deeply connect with and honor the animals in their lives.
Emily 2:57
I think the key part of why arousal is so important for shelter and rescue folks to understand and kind of keep an eye out for is that, you know, we all want calm dogs, that seems to be like we want a dog that calmly walks with us and calmly goes to sleep at night. And you know, greets people calmly. But arousal and understanding it in the dog is like understanding the ingredients of baking a cake. You know, like if you want a sweet cake, you wouldn't dump in like four cups of salt or red pepper flakes. And, you know, throughout the day, your dog's arousal levels, if they get too high, if things are getting too intense for them, it adds up and adds up. And that's where we see behaviors pour over, you know, and then the dog can make bad choices, or it explodes in a fit of reactivity, you know, and that makes that dog less desirable. So you know, to the adoptive public or to their guardians. So keeping your dog's arousal at a nice, easy, calm level throughout the day and understanding what that looks like, is kind of key to having a dog be successful. So I really encourage all folks to listen to this whole conversation with Elisheba because I think it can be life saving for dogs to understand this concept. And that's why we're all in this to help dogs support dogs and ideally placed them in their forever homes.
Libby 4:49
Welcome Elisheba Fay to pod to the rescue.
Elisheba 4:52
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Emily 4:55
We're so excited to have you here.
Libby 4:57
Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time. So you are one of our go to experts on arousal, can you just jump right in and explain to our listeners what we mean by arousal?
Elisheba 5:10
Yeah. So arousal is simply put the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is like to get up and go or be ready for action nervous system. So it's really an important thing, because without arousal, we wouldn't be able to function, we wouldn't be able to get up and go and do the things that we need to do. But usually, when we talk about arousal in dog training contexts, we're talking about hyper arousal, which is when that system gets a little bit out of control, gets a little bit too turned up, and then we have some problems. And so we tend to get big releases of neuro chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. And it causes us to be a little bit less thoughtful and a little bit less in control of our bodies and our actions than we want to be. And when I say us, it's true that this is a system that happens in people too. It happens in all mammals. So it happens to our dogs just like it happens to us. So there's a lot that we can relate to, with this hyper arousal system.
Emily 6:18
That's such an interesting sum up of what it is. And the reason we had you on is because we've, we see it often in rescue and shelter dogs. And it's probably because they're in a state of stress. And you know, they're in the middle of rehoming. They don't know where they are. Can you talk to us a little bit about like, how you see it showing up in some of the rescue dogs that you work with?
Elisheba 6:43
Yeah, absolutely. So arousal and stress to the body are basically the same thing. And you may have heard that there are good stresses and then sort of bad stresses or painful stresses. The same is true for arousal. So those same neuro chemicals that happen in the body, when we're stressed out about a test are also happening when we are going on a roller coaster. So when dogs are in the middle of a re homing process, they're experiencing sort of the stress side of arousal. And that may come out in ways that we're more familiar with that look like stress, we may see cowering or lip licking or yawning or scratching or shake offs that look more obvious to us as stress. But we may also see it come out looking more like that roller coaster arousal, where they're just, you know, out of their minds excited overstimulated all the time. And so we can see sort of a wide variety of responses to the same neurochemical. So it doesn't really matter very much to the body, whether there's sort of a positive valence or a good happy feeling to this arousal, or a negative, unpleasant feeling to the arousal.
Libby 8:00
So what does that look like in the dog in terms of body language or behavior, when it's this rollercoaster kind of high arousal?
Elisheba 8:08
Yeah, so we'll see a lot of leash pulling leash, really persistent leash pulling is often related to an arousal problem. Sometimes destructive behavior, panting dogs that are unable to focus this is probably the most classic sign that you you know, talk to them and they don't even know you're talking to them. They've never heard their name before. They've definitely never heard sit before. They're just like, out of their mind with arousal. We'll see like jumping, mouthing, arousal, biting so it's not aggressive biting, it's just like basically their mouth is running with no brain behind it. Excessive friendliness, so lots of jumping up behaviors and appropriate greetings are related to arousal. Mounting and humping is very frequently, I would say probably most of the time mounting and humping is related to hyper arousal. Let's see changes in how they'll eat or what they'll eat. So whether they will take treats nicely or take your fingers off, things like that. All of those can be related to those that adrenaline and cortisol released that we see with hyper arousal.
Emily 9:22
In a in a rescue or shelter situation, if you're seeing these signs of, you know, arousal or stress in a dog. What would you recommend to people to do you know, the, we've always felt like, Oh, if they're stressed, you know, throw the ball, you know, get them exercise, would that be your go to approach with a dog who's exhibiting these kinds of behaviors?
Elisheba 9:47
So typically, not like almost everybody has heard the phrase, a tired dog is a good dog and definitely appropriate exercise can be part of the go to plan for these guys, but appropriate exercise, so that's going to look much more like what dogs would do if they were free roaming dogs that didn't have people involved and dogs that are free roaming dogs, we see them doing a whole lot of rest, they do very little play. And when they are moving, they're generally sort of wandering, they're sniffing, and they're peeing on stuff. They're not doing a lot of high speed running. And they're not doing a lot of repetitive behaviors like chasing balls. And so when we look at appropriate exercise for these guys, I'm thinking more on the line of sniffing walks or decompression walks, where they get a lot of chances to interact with the environment. But not a lot of getting stuck on the environment. So decompression walks in his natural environment is confined. And generally my rule of thumb for how long that exercise should be is, it takes about twice as long as it takes them to settle. So lots of dogs, when they first come out the door are very hyper aroused, they're like lost to the world, they can't talk to you, they can't look at you, their noses down, or their head is up. And they're just scanning, scanning, scanning, looking for the next thing that they can interact with, or look at or talk to, or peon or whatever. And then sometime during the walk, they usually will settle in and start to do a little bit more curves, and they're walking less straight lines, and they'll start to breathe a little slower, they'll start to notice that you might be on the same planet with them. And at that point, let's say that takes 20 or 30 minutes for your dog, then I would walk another 20 or 30 minutes so that you're getting at least as much practice with that calm and relaxed walking, as you are with the hyper vigilant, hyper aware pulling all of that stuff. So often, it is actually better for these guys to do one longer walk than several shorter walks. Because if it takes them 20 minutes to settle in and your walks are 20 minutes, then 100% of your walks are going to be spent practicing that really wired up behavior, versus if you can combine those walks and find a way to do an hour instead, then you get 20 minutes of that wired behavior, but you get 40 minutes of calm and relaxed and actually enriching behavior that is going to help them sue them settle. So I don't do you mentioned throwing the ball. And that's a really common one. I don't recommend doing a lot of fetch or flirt pole with these guys. Because those are again, high arousal activities, they're very repetitive, and they're very intense. And so those are often going to cause the release of more adrenaline and cortisol, which are those neuro chemicals that we get from exciting activities like going on a roller coaster, or taking a test or watching a scary movie. And those are the ones that we're sort of trying to tone down overall, in these dogs that are struggling with arousal, we're trying to release those and let them go, by the way. And if we're constantly adding more through our attempts to calm the dog, if we're adding more by playing fetch all the time, or playing Flipbelt pole or things like that, even some enrichment toys, I don't do enrichment toys that involve a lot of chasing like the ones where you have to push or chase the toy to make the food come out. I prefer enrichment toys that are slow and calm, like a good stuffed frozen Kong is my favorite for these guys. Because it's not going to be causing them to do a lot of exciting stuff and use guys that are hyper aroused. Even with something pretty, you know, seemingly innocuous, like Kong wobbler, they can get so excited that I actually used to take one on my consults and I've had a dog literally start screaming when they saw it because it was so exciting for them. So we want to we want to stick to enrichment and exercise that's actually not going to shoot us in the foot here that's not going to produce more excitement and arousal and instead is going to allow them to settle into those species appropriate evolutionarily appropriate behaviors.
Libby 14:36
I just have to say I love decompression walks so much they are my favorite thing in the world. Would you have the same approach for both kinds of arousal?
Elisheba 14:48
Yeah, so again to the body, there's really not a difference between what we call hyper arousal which is often that excited looking behavior and And big stress. So they're still to the body having the same releases of the same hormones and but neuro chemicals with some slight differences but but very, very similar to the body. And so my approach is very similar for the sort of outside pieces that we can control working on that same calm enrichment, decompression walks, and just slowing things way down in their environment, I will often encourage people to use things like window film, or a white noise machine or a speaker with sound so that they can decrease some of those little tiny triggers that are a big deal to some of our dogs, that may not result in a full reaction. But over time, just looking outside at the traffic going by or at the squirrels are whatever the that is increasing their arousal, which then is causing us problems down the road in our fear, or our reactivity or our just hyper aroused greetings and things like that, because the dog is just getting wired, wired wired throughout the day, and then eventually, it's gonna come out somewhere. So I would, I would treat very much the same for both kinds.
Emily 16:20
Victoria Stilwell has a great article about this, and she shows a bucket and you know, every incident fills the bucket more, and then at certain point, you get to the top of the bucket, and it just spills over. That would be that whole concept of threshold. And it's interesting, because we've had a few dogs in the rescue who had like, really severe hyper arousal. And I think it's more common than we would like in the rescue shelter world, where like, their behaviors become so inappropriate, that they're returned, and they keep shuttling back through the system. And, you know, I just listen, listening to you, I'm thinking like, your analogies are amazing. And I think if we can just think about it as like a spa environment versus an amusement park, you know, like, yes, your dog is barking out the window, or yes, you just had some visitors over, but you're adding water to the bucket. And so eventually, you'll see a kind of bubble over. And then you're like, Oh, my God, I can't have this dog, this dog is not able to settle, or it's biting me or just chewed through the couch.
Elisheba 17:23
Right. And, of course, you know, particularly in the rescuer sheltering environment, we really want to try and make those placements stick, whether it's a foster placement or an adoptive placement. And, you know, people are so kind and thoughtful to these dogs that they're bringing into their homes, they really want to do the nice things that the dog has never experienced, they want to give them all the best, they want to socialize them. So I often see overstimulation in the name of socialization, that they're taking them to the dog park, or they're taking them to the brewery. And the dog is having to experience these really big experiences. And sometimes it looks like they're handling it in the moment, but then they come home and fall apart or they fall apart the next day or something like that. Because all of those experiences even though you thought you were being really kind, those were really intense high arousal situations for that dog. And that arousal, unless it's got time and space to come down is going to come out somewhere. And cortisol in particular, we don't have really good numbers on how long it takes. But adrenaline tends to go out of the body pretty quickly. But cortisol tends to stick around longer. And so when we keep getting new hits of adrenaline and cortisol all the time, it doesn't have a chance to diffuse and go out of the body. And so it adds up just like you were talking about in that bucket analogy. It adds up until there's a critical point where the dog can't handle it anymore, and they can't self regulate anymore. And they start doing wild, weird, wacky things that we don't usually like,
Emily 19:07
Oh my God, that's brilliant. I'm having an aha moment here.
Libby 19:13
So if going back to this bucket analogy, what are some ways that we can see we can spot the arousal building in our dogs over time and intervene before it gets to that? That state of overflow?
Elisheba 19:30
I would look for those low level signs of of stress things like lip licking, yawning, scratching and shake offs are the four that I encourage people to pay the most attention to because almost all dogs will do them. And they tend to be fairly easy for the novice to be able to see. Those tend to be our sort of entry level stress signs and there are some dogs especially in the sheltering or rescue situation that are Doing those signs kind of all the time, we are already way past the point where they are, you know, add a little bit of arousal or a little bit of stress. But looking for those, especially in your own dog, you may be able to notice like, oh, you're a little bit uncomfortable with this, or you're a little bit stressed out by this, or you're a little bit too excited by this. And then just responding by saying, You know what, you need more space or more time from this scenario, you maybe don't want to go to the brewery or the dog park or the daycare, you can't. So my, my general rule of thumb, even for fun things that we think we're exposing our dog to is if they're not able to handle it with a thinking brain. So they're not able to respond to cues that they know really well, they're not able to respond normally to the environment, they're either scanning or they're getting stuck on one thing, maybe they see a dog 1000 yards away, and they're like, I'm going there, or you get out of the park or get out of the car at the dog park, and they are zoned in and dragging you across the parking lot. If you can't engage in in a calm way, so meaning you're able to engage and disengage from things and move from one stimulus to another in sort of the way that we would expect for thinking being, then this is not a good place for you. So looking for those signs that they are checked out that they are zoned in that they are just lost to the world, we're already pretty far down the line at that point. But you can still make the choice to say you know what, if you can't get out of the dog park, get out of the car at the dog park and look at me and take a treat nicely and walk without ripping my arm off, then maybe this is not a helpful place for you to be and doing some simple tests. One of my favorite is the food behavior test. So checking throughout the day for let's say, you know, three or five days to see how does my dog eat different kinds of foods? Can they eat kibble in different environments? Can they eat hot dogs in different environments, and just get a feel for what normal looks like for them. And then trying out like on a walk or in a dog interaction or in a person interaction? Can you still eat normally, because one of the interesting things about arousal is it's designed to help animals survive really challenging environments were like, being chased on the savanna, right. So it's designed to turn on that fight or flight response. And when you are in that fight or flight response, you really should not be eating or digesting. So your body adrenaline and cortisol and all of those other host of neuro chemicals will turn off the digestive system, at the same time that it turns off, the higher parts of the brain are about the same time. Because you also shouldn't be sitting around doing calculus when you're running your life. So you want to really be aware of those changes in digestive function. And we noticed this too, like if you are getting ready for a big test or a big presentation at work or something like that, you may get butterflies in your stomach, you may not want to eat breakfast, same thing happens to us same thing happens to dogs, that their digestive system is actually getting turned off because it is not appropriate for them to be spending energy or to be putting things in their gut when they may be in a potentially life threatening environment. Now, the dog park hopefully is not actually a life threatening environment. But those same those same neuro chemicals are going on that tell the body be prepared for something big. And so we may get that same digestive response. So checking out their food behavior to see are they snatching treats when they were taking treats nicely, are they only able to take steak when they normally can take kibble, those kinds of things. That's one of my favorite early warning signs that we're getting you over our heads with with arousal.
Libby 24:18
I love how you reframed that of like, you know what, maybe the dog park isn't the best place for you today, because I'll go Okay, so I'm going to tell a brief story about Daisy. The info This is the infamous Davidson Mesa incident. Em, do you remember?
Emily 24:37
I do remember this? Yeah.
Libby 24:40
So when I was first fostering Daisy, who was an Australian cattle dog. I took her for a lot what I was, you know, I was planning a nice long walk at Davidson mesa. And it's a very strict on leash area. So I knew that off leash dogs when You'd be running up on her, but it's also very popular with cyclists. And what I should have done was as soon in that first half mile when I noticed she was taking treats roughly, I should have said, You know what? This isn't a good idea today and turned around and gone back to the car and said, Oh, well, I blocked out my morning to do this. But that's okay, we'll do something else, we'll go, we'll go eat a Kong instead of, you know, my long planned walk. I did not do that. And I ended up at the far end of the trail, out of treats, sobbing, crying with a totally hyper aroused dog.
Elisheba 25:45
Yeah, I have been there too
Libby 25:48
I called my boyfriend, I need a ride, I can't handle this. It wasn't good for either of us. And it would have been way better for DAISY way better for me if we had just said, You know what, not the best choice today and turn around. Because sometimes I think that we we do get this idea of like, I'm a bad dog owner, if I don't take my dog on this five mile hike, if I don't take my if I leave my dog at home instead of going to the brewery. But sometimes it's the best thing to do.
Elisheba 26:24
Yeah, we got this message, I would say kind of starting in the 90s, that dogs are bored, and they need to do more stuff. And they need to go to the dog park and they need to go to the daycare. And they better not be sleeping during the day and all of that stuff. And it's led us to a really overstimulating way of being with dogs. And a lot of cases that, again, if we look at those free roaming dogs, so domesticated dogs, but that don't belong to anybody that dogs that are living on the street, or living on the reservation, or whatever, when we look at those dogs, because they're a really good barometer for us about what is biologically natural or socially natural for dogs. When we look at them, they're not doing a lot of social interaction, they have a fairly small, pretty stable social group that they will interact with. But it's not a lot of play, except in pretty young dogs. And it's not a lot of movement, it's they are doing a ton of resting and just standing still and sleeping. And when they are moving, it's with a purpose. It's not just to be moving. So they're not just spending calories and spending energy for no reason. And those dogs, I try to keep as a memory for my own dogs that I want them to have some appropriate species appropriate activity, like those decompression walks that we talked about, I want them to have some stimulation, I want them to have some social interaction. But I don't need them to have interaction with every dog on my block, I don't need them to have interaction with 15, to 30 to 45 dogs in a daycare, I want to keep their world as best suited to what their brain is built for as I can. Because I think that's going to be the way that we get toward that behavioral health is when we make their world more of what their brain can handle.
Libby 28:25
I love that so much. And this has me you know, talking about dogs in more natural environments, something that's striking me is the freedom of movement, and the fact that they can move away from anything that comes into their space that they don't want in their space. Is there something about the equipment we use to restrain dogs to keep them underneath our table at the brewery, you know, the tight leash, things like that increased arousal in both this negative? Well, right and both the roller coaster and the obvious stress kind of way.
Elisheba 29:04
There definitely can be because we are removing their ability to escape. And that is stressful for kind of anybody, right? All the way down to in humans like true claustrophobia, but almost anybody if they are kept in a space without being able to leave for a period of time we call that prison, right? So we don't like that inability to express freedom of movement and we find it stressful on ourselves. And the same is true of dogs. And so when it is safe and when it is possible for those decompression locks, I really like to use a long line rather than and that's not a flexi I don't use retractable leashes but I like to use a longer leash to allow them to have more of that movement and more of that freedom of choice. So that they can kind of make more decisions about what's going on in their lives. And we know that choice and control are primary reinforcers for animals, not just food. So that means that they, you know, being able to make a decision can be as important as getting a cookie. So thinking about ways to offer more choice and control can be really, really soothing and settling and healing for the nervous system. Because often dogs don't have a lot of choice or control. One of my favorite analogies for this is imagine that somebody puts you in the trunk of a car, and then 10 minutes later lets you out and gives you 100 bucks not worth it, right? 100 bucks means nothing, because during that 10 minutes, you had no choice or control, you didn't know how long it was going to last, you didn't know what was going to happen when you got there, are they going to let me out? Are they going to leave me in the trunk of the car, are they going to chop me up into tiny pieces, 100 bucks doesn't seem like it's even on the list of things that might happen when you get there, right. And so our job, our dogs are living in that situation, very often, they have no knowledge of what's going to happen when we get there, how long something will last, they have no way of controlling the outcome. And that's very stressful and scary. So our job is to change that as much as possible. So imagine now, in the context of a bachelorette party, let's say your best friend puts you in the trunk of a car and says in 10 minutes, I'm going to let you out and give you $100 Here's a timer. And when we get there, we're going to have a party. Now, you may still be pretty stressed about this situation. And you may have a really big talking to with your best friend at the end of it. But it was very different situation because you know where you're going, you know how long it's going to last. And you know what's going to happen when you get there. And you have a way of kind of telling how long things will last. So we can use some of our protocols, we can use some of our choices, with how we set up these situations to start to give them more choice and control, which again, you know, promote some of that relaxation that can be really, really helpful for these hyper aroused dogs.
Emily 32:24
I love that. And I think when you were speaking to that I was loving the idea of like the predictability of the second scenario. So even though you're talking about choice and control, can you also speak to like how that fits into like a pattern or predictability throughout the day with a new dog?
Elisheba 32:43
Yeah, so definitely giving some predictability to your routines can be really, really helpful. And keeping things really pretty light doesn't mean that you are throwing out that routine. So it doesn't need to be regimented so that every minute of the day is planned. And in fact, I recommend that dogs that are struggling with arousal or that are in transition and you know, are at risk of struggling with arousal or fear, I recommend that they get a lot of downtime, just quiet time in a confined space so that they are able to come down from that arousal. And I like to see them have opportunities to come up and those might be our walks or things like that our interaction times and then followed by some time to just think about what happened. Right? So with that predictability, you know, you're giving them a chance to be like, Yeah, to understand what's going to happen next, which is a really big reducer of stress. Because if you have just moved into a new house, and you don't know again, are they going to cut me up into tiny pieces here? Are they going to make me interact with a bunch of dogs and people that I'm not ready for? Are they going to you know, shock me or prod me or whatever, lots of dogs have no knowledge of what might be coming next most dogs then we give them a little bit of a lifeline to say you know what, I do know what's coming next and I can handle it.
Emily 34:20
Like maybe doing the same walk every day for the first week or something like that just so that there's not a lot of like new things popping up would you recommend something like that?
Elisheba 34:29
Yeah, often for when I bring new dogs into my home I often don't even walk them for the first few days or even a week depending on the dog I'll things just in the home until they can kind of figure out what's going on at home and then we'll start to take very short walks and then we'll gradually increase from there, but I want them first to be able to to be okay with the house in the yard and all of because I have a pretty busy Full House. And so just acclimating to my house is a big thing to do. And so I want to give them a chance to meet the people that live here, meet the dogs that live here to the extent that that's appropriate and safe, and make sure that they understand some of the patterns and routines that are going to happen here. And then I'll make their world bigger. But I don't want to start with a huge world, especially for a dog that may have come from a hoarding situation or a dog that may have come from like, you know, I've worked with some retired racing greyhounds that spent the vast majority of their life in a box. And people again, want to immediately give them the whole world, they want to give them all the beds and all the treats and all of the outings and all of the walks and all of the hikes. And it's just too much and you need to start with or a dog that may have come from a situation where they were created too much, instead of immediately going to, I'm going to give you free rein of the house because I feel bad that you were created before, I'm going to gradually increase their time out of the crate and gradually give them more to acclimate to but not give them all of that at once because it's just too much for them to handle with their nervous system being, you know, as uncertain as it is.
Emily 36:28
So some of our listeners are shelter workers or, or volunteers and shelters, what what suggestions would you have for them to try to monitor and decrease arousal in a shelter setting?
Elisheba 36:40
Oh, it's so hard to do in a shelter situation, obviously, like, my first preference for a dog that's really struggling with arousal and is in a shelter would be to try and find a foster situation where they can be out of the shelter. But that's not always possible. So I would be focusing really heavily again on that homing enrichment. So this is licking, chewing, shredding thing, things that are going to be fairly stationary. But getting give them a lot of opportunity to do species appropriate behaviors, I would be trying to get them out of the shelter for decompression locks, as you know, if you can do it every day, that would be ideal, and as close to a natural environment as you can get. So not necessarily in a busy Park. Not necessarily in a busy neighborhood, if you can even get them you know, drive 15 minutes and find a quiet neighborhood park that somewhere that just doesn't have a million dogs and people in it all the time. Getting them you know, to the calmest lowest intensity environment you can and just letting them be a dog for an hour would be a really big help with dogs that are you know, if you have a training and behavior team, I would be working on things like mat work, reinforcing any calm behavior that they show. And sometimes this means starting with just blinking and breathing because they have to do those things, right. But you know, anything that they do with their bodies, that's a little bit calmer, I would be reinforcing those things. And I would probably be trying to do as much environmental management as you can in the shelter environment, I would be trying to minimize the amount that they're seeing other dogs walk past minimize the amount that they are exposed to just the hubbub of the shelter, maybe there is a you know, a kennel that is you know, a little bit less busy of a spot than right next to your food prep station. For example. Lots of dogs, especially in the shelter environment can get very hyper aroused about food. So watching you prep the the meals for 50 dogs in the shelter, and then they only get one meal after they've gotten hyped for 40 minutes while you were getting all those bowls ready can be really hard for them. There's some evidence that using music and shelter environments can help reduce some stress and reduce some arousal. There's quite a bit of good stuff that especially Maddies fun has produced on how to help reduce stress and shelter environments. And I think most of that, if not all of it would apply to hyper arousal behaviors as well.
Libby 39:41
That's super helpful. Can we circle back a little bit? So I can ask a follow up something we just okay. Yeah. So you mentioned choice and control as primary reinforcers. Can you give some specific examples of what that would look like in a pet dog or are a foster dog home? Like, how do you incorporate that?
Elisheba 40:04
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest ways that I incorporate this for dogs is just allowing them to make more choices on walks. And I also teach a lot of activities and behaviors that are run by the dog. So I think Emily has been doing some really cool stuff with free work, that's another good option. So you can set up some enrichment options where there is no right answer, where they just get to choose how they interact with a situation or an environment, I like to use a lot of protocols that are initiated and continued by the dogs, so they have the choice to opt in or out. And that one gives me a more durable attention behavior, it gives me more durable, whatever it is, because the dog is choosing to do it rather than me having to nag them and beg them and remind them all the time. But to it does build that, you know, I choose to do this, and I choose to interact with you in this way. For the dog.
Emily 41:20
You're making me think we hired Elisheba with otter, who's part of our program who has some hyper arousal, I'm wondering if we could link the videos, or even one video of the work that you did with him, because you were doing I think, like the was it the ping pong, I can't remember which one
Elisheba 41:41
Yeah, I love Leslie McDevitt's pattern games for the for lots of dogs. But those are described in her book, it's control unleashed reactive to relax, it's the third book in the control unleashed. Series. And those are a great way to give predictability and control because the dog starts the game and they continue the game going, you know, both both ways. It's a great communication technique. And it allows them to know exactly what will happen when they do their part. And their part is doable. So they have control over it, it's not asking them to do an entire, you know, obedience sequence to get the next part of the game. It's asking them for a very simple behavior that they know they can do and be successful with every time. And that continues the game and keeps the connection going.
Emily 42:36
I love that because they have to think, you know, I think we don't give enough credit to giving the time to dogs to think and problem solve and sort out what the right answer is. And, you know, just our culture and myself included, like we used to think it was good for dogs to be like, sit down, come stay. And it's, you know, it actually is so relaxing and empowering for a dog to be like, what's the right prop? What's the right answer here? What does she want? And be like ding, ding, ding, I got the right answer. So yeah, you can see him learning. And that's what we want. We want a dog that thinks rather than a dog that just like gets into this, like wild hyper aroused state.
Elisheba 43:16
Right?
When dogs are we call that sometimes throwing behaviors when they're just like, I don't know, what do you want, what do you want, you want this, you want this like this? You know, that can look very flashy sometimes. But it's also kind of out of control wild. And it's, it's a little bit more controlled than just jumping up on you. But it's still not a thoughtful way to interact with each other, or the environment. It's just like, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. And that that isn't a way to calm yourself or to get really good information. Because you may be so busy throwing behaviors that you miss the one that actually does work, or you're not able to respond in a thoughtful way when when the time comes.
Libby 44:04
You know, that's actually a signal that I look for in Daisy, when we're doing triball. Specifically, if we're in class, and I'm cueing her to come by, and instead she spins or gives me a touch or a sit or a down or she goes to her mat. I'm like, okay, all right. We're we're kind of getting a little frantic. Here. Let's take a little break.
Elisheba 44:33
Yep. Yeah. And looking at we talked earlier about that inability to focus those dogs that may act like they've never heard that before, things like that. So when you have a pretty good reinforcement history for a particular behavior, sit is a really good example because lots of dogs have a strong set when they are in their brain. But responding to their name or responding to a hand touch is probably My favorite, but building a couple of really, really solid, very simple, very easy behaviors for them to do eye contact is another one that I love. If they're not able to do a behavior that otherwise they wouldn't be able to complete competently and you know, easily. It tells me that they are not having much in the way of the frontal lobe and I don't want to work a dog that doesn't have a frontal lobe, I want to work a dog that is fully engaged with their brain. And so at that point, I would slow things down, take a step back, move away from the trigger, whatever it is, so that we can get them back in their brain pattern games are another really great way to kind of transition between that like I'm fully with it. And I know all of the stuff to moving into a slightly more difficult environment, but keeping that brain
Libby 45:55
Elisheba, what is it about sniffing that is so helpful?
Elisheba 45:59
So sniffing one is one of those species appropriate behaviors, one of the core four that I really work on with enrichment, which is licking, chewing, sniffing and treading. It is a behavior that is rooted in the evolution of the dog. So it was a survival behavior, in order to find food, you have to use your nose. And we know that a huge amount of the dog's brain is devoted to sentence scent processing. But also that those some of those areas that are involved with scent processing are also butted right up against the dopamine reward system. So dogs are actually getting a dopamine release from sniffing, which is, which is important because they need to do it, right. It's a survival behavior. And so you're getting an internal reward from sniffing, because you may not always get the external reward of actually finding food, but you're getting an internal reward that feels really good. Dopamine is what people get from doing cocaine. And obviously, when we're sniffing, we're looking for a little bit less than that. That gives you an idea of how good it may feel to get that kind of that kind of release of neuro chemicals. Other Other neuro chemicals are also involved. I'm not a total expert on all of the biology of scent, but there are some really excellent books on it. But it is a way to prepare the brain for learning. So dopamine is also really important in learning. It's also a way to feel good. So it can be really good on those decompression walks to get a fearful or, or a an anxious dog. Just some relief to give them some time where they don't have to be so worked up.
Libby 47:57
Yeah, as a person with ADHD, I'm all I totally get it like dopamine, the dopamine seeking? Yes, it just it clicks. For me, it makes sense. So So would you say that sniffing on a walk is like a self soothing behavior or?
Elisheba 48:13
Absolutely
Libby 48:13
Okay, yeah.
Elisheba 48:15
The way that dogs can both soothe themselves when they're struggling. And it's also can be a way that dogs communicate to other dogs or to people that they need something to change in the environment so often, especially with with sort of anxious or fearful dogs, we'll see them start sniffing the most interesting spot in the world when they're asked to do something that they don't feel comfortable or confident with, right? This is a classic on agility, start lines that you'll put a dog on the start line, you'll put them in a stay, and suddenly they have a really, really important sniff to do. And it's because they were a little bit uncomfortable with the pressure there and they didn't know how to handle it. And they're they're both self soothing by doing the sniffing, and they're communicating to us. Like I can't really deal with this right now. I need something a little bit easier.
Emily 49:10
Interesting. I've even seen dogs who were so stressed and hyper aroused that they couldn't sniff and that we walked enough and calmly enough that then they started to and it was like oh, yeah, you're finally sniffing. Yeah, that a second.
Elisheba 49:23
That's definitely something that happens especially when we get that hyper vigilance when I see dogs that are in their eyes more than than their nose. That is a really good sign for me that we're dealing with some hyper vigilance, some hyper arousal because again, sniffing is a way for them to both communicate that they need some help and to get that help at the same time. But if they can't do it, if they are using their eyes, and this is there are some exceptions. sighthounds are bred to be more in their eyes than in their nose for example, but For the most part, dogs are are more going to interact with the world using their nose than their eyes. And if they can't do that, that tells me we're pretty far down the line on, you know, our arousal threshold marker.
Emily 50:14
And I have one other question before we wrap up, which is petting. I mean, we actually call them pets. So people think petting the dog will help with arousal. So can you speak to that a little bit.
Elisheba 50:27
Um, heading can be very physically intense for dogs. Again, it's, it is something that we have, to some extent bred our dogs to tolerate. But it's not something that free roaming dogs do, really. And so it can be really physiologically intense. And some dogs really do love it. But my favorite thing to do for all dogs, I'm a huge fan of the three second rule, which is when your dog has expressed interest in in being petted by you pet for three seconds and take your hand away, and see what they do if they ask for more. And you'll usually know it when they do they'll nudge you or they'll roll on you or they'll you know, come a little bit closer or something like that, then pet for three more seconds. But even my most social, most, you know sweet kind heart dog who loves me and who loves people and loves petting, he'll often go for two or three rounds of three second petting, and then be like, Okay, I've got other things to do now. And we tend to really override that we tend to pet and pet and pet and pet and pet because we get absent minded or because it's reinforcing for us. And even just imagine if your partner was rubbing your shoulder in the same spot for 10 minutes, eventually, you'd be like, Ah, stop, right. And so even if you are not sort of a sensory defensive kind of person, you eventually will get tired of being petted in the same way in the same spot for you know, an hour. And dogs will too. And that can be very stimulating for them, especially if they happen to be a little bit more sensory defensive or a little bit more excitable by touch.
Emily 52:22
And I always try to remind people, you know, even if you enjoy touch, if you flew into Cairo, and you went up like and immediately were forced to go on a date, and then someone wanted to like rub your shoulders, you would not be into it. So a dog in transition is going to be often less receptive to touch.
Libby 52:42
Absolutely. So we kind of have a an overview here of arousal and what to do kind of on a bigger picture. But what can people do in the moment if they realize that they're dealing with a hyper aroused dog who's jumping up who's mouthing, arousal biting? In that moment, what can you do?
Elisheba 53:06
So in that moment, when you're dealing with a dog that we would call over threshold, meaning they can't respond normally to the environment, they can't respond normally to you, you are not in a training mode, then you are in management, which means that you need to make the choices to get the dog to a better place because they don't have the frontal lobe to make those traces anymore. So management is typically going to be something like giving them a break in the crate or on the X pen using supervised tethering for a little bit, removing them from the situation that they're in. So if you went to the brewery and your dog starts leaping on everybody, and you know you're paying and all of that stuff, and they're kind of out of control, and you can see that, it's time to leave the brewery, it's not time to try to work through that in that moment, because they don't have the brain to work through it and you're just going to be frustrating you and frustrating them. So make the choice to get them to a safer calmer spot and then find a way to you know, especially if they're doing arousal biting, I would recommend giving them a break in the crate or the x pen or giving them some tethered time where you can just back away from them if they're getting too excited. And then try to follow that up with some of that calm enrichment. So a stuffed Kong in your freezer at all times is a great thing when you're dealing with hyper arousal
Libby 54:36
and you and that doesn't reinforce the over arousal behavior to like say okay, you know what, you're gonna go in the in the bedroom with a kong
Elisheba 54:49
Um, I would say no, and the reason for that is at this point when they are out of their mind with the arousal they're not really in a place to Make operant learning happen, they have very little in the way of frontal lobe. And so that kind of learning of I do this and I get this is it requires the higher parts of the brain to be online. The other thing that I would say is really, in those moments where they are hyper aroused, and you are putting them in the bedroom with a calm, what they're what they couldn't learn, is in the bedroom, I get a calm, not so much that, you know, they're they're just doing less of the operant behavior stuff, you're gonna get less of the behavior chain, because they just don't have the brain to do that kind of learning.
Libby 55:52
Got it? Thank you. That helps. Yeah.
Emily 55:55
And I don't know if you mentioned it, but I think with otter, you recommended a drag line just so that you can quickly tether or redirect or even would you say like, if you had to step on the on the leash for a second to prevent the jumping up?
Elisheba 56:10
Yeah, I will use a dragline attached to a bat clip harness. And I prefer to not use a leash for that because leashes are gonna get hung up on legs and on cables and whatever, I'll use a coded wire dragline. And that way, if he starts jumping up, or if he wants to play keep away, or if he wants to knock on your arm, you can easily and without a lot of conflict, just step on that line and kind of without conflict without a whole lot of fun playtime, where we're playing, keep away that kind of thing. Just quickly put it into it and get him to a calmer place without the drama of it all.
Emily 56:55
Yep, no fuss, no mas just you're in over your head, buddy, I'm going to help you out.
Elisheba 57:01
Exactly.
Libby 57:02
So you could like lead them behind the baby gate into the X pen, that kind of thing from
Emily 57:08
you know, if someone if a dog was really struggling with these behaviors, would you recommend that they chat with their veterinarian about if medication would be appropriate?
Elisheba 57:19
That's a really good question. And there are definitely dogs that struggle enough with arousal, that it is becoming a quality of life issue for the people or the dogs or both. And medication can be a really appropriate support for that if you have a vet that is really strong and comfortable with using behavioral medicine, that's fabulous to start with your general practice veterinarian. If you have a vet that's a little bit less comfortable, which most our veterinary behaviorist is always a wonderful resource. If you don't have one that's close to you, there are many that will do distance consults or vet to vet consults.
Emily 57:58
Okay, and I have one more question, which is I've noticed that you didn't ever mention punishing arousal behaviors.
Elisheba 58:06
Yeah, so again, punishment is is defined by its results, right. So it's not actually punishment unless the behavior is reduced. And again, when our dogs are in this hyper arousal space, they're really not in a place to make operant behavior learning, they are just running around with all body all teeth, and no matter no brain. So even if we were to try to use punishment in these situations, typically it would not result in actual punishment, it would just be us being a jerk, because we're not getting the results to actually make it punishment. And we also know that again, these dogs are typically experiencing stress, right? It may be roller coaster kind of arousal, but to the body, it's the same kind of thing. And so that puts us at a much higher risk of developing those. The fallout of punishment, which include increased fearfulness, increased arousal, increased aggression, and those are the opposite of what we want, especially if we're dealing with a dog that's already experiencing these things. So we really want to avoid that when we're dealing with a dog that has big feelings.
Libby 59:26
That makes so much sense. Yeah, and I even think it's unfair to to look at a dog who can't handle their emotions in the moment for whatever reason, and punish them for it just just doesn't feel good to my sensitive feels.
Elisheba 59:48
Think the bigger reason for me is the science behind it because to get over my sensitive fields, if it was really the right thing to do, right, but we know that it's not the right thing to do. We know that it doesn't improve outcomes, we know that it doesn't solve behavior problems that are unsolvable with positive reinforcement. And we know that it has the risk of this Fallout, that could create bigger problems for us down the line, even if it looks like a short term fix in the moment, it could be bigger problems that we really don't want to deal with, especially since again, we're really trying to make those those placements count, we really want that first Foster and that first adopter to be the only ones that we deal with.
Libby 1:00:35
So there's really good scientific reason behind why it's not a good idea.
Elisheba 1:00:39
Absolutely. The evidence is outstanding at this point there. It's it's a pretty hands down decision for me scientifically.
Emily 1:00:49
Well, I love that answer. If I could click and treat you from here, I would
Libby 1:00:53
click and treat, click and shop I was beautiful.
Emily 1:00:57
Four week, I guess we should probably wrap it up. We have been chatting for over an hour. And we could definitely talk to you for five. But
Libby 1:01:03
is there anything that we didn't cover that you think is really important to hit on here?
Elisheba 1:01:08
No. I mean, we were gonna talk about whether some dogs are more sensitive to hyper arousal, and we didn't really get there. But I think you know, that's fine. And maybe there will be someday.
Emily 1:01:20
Oh, I think we should have a part two. I feel like this is like one of the missing pieces in the sheltering and rescue world. But I for sure didn't understand. And today, I still feel I'm just learning more and more about it. Thanks to you, and Laura Donaldson. And, yeah, it's just it's something we really need to understand, at least on the most basic, you know, level when we're rescuing these dogs, because they're in the state of flux. And so I feel like it's always bubbling there under the surface. I think, you know, there's probably lots of dogs who have been euthanized for issues related to arousal that had they had some calm decompression time to management. And just that giving them the three months that Patricia McConnell talks about, like, three days, three weeks, three months, you'd see a real shift. I mean, I've had Benny now for two months, and I can't even believe the difference in him in two months. It's unbelievable. And he was such a wreck when he got here, like I wish we had before and afters. So it just takes time. And I don't think people understand the time.
Elisheba 1:02:30
Yeah. And the slow movement during that time. You know, the biggest thing that I try to say to foster parents, when they are starting out is go slower than you ever thought you would ever need to go. Because going fast and giving them all of those things that you think they need or want is actually the opposite of what they need and want. Low everything way, way down.
Emily 1:03:03
And I often think of it almost like cooking, like, if you're gonna change your recipe, you don't change three things. So keep it on the you know, keep the little, you know, pot on the stove and change one thing, and then see how that feels. And change one other thing never change two variables.
Libby 1:03:22
Yeah, I like to tell Foster's that it's almost impossible to go too slow. But it's so easy to go too fast. And it's really hard to recover from going too fast and pushing too much so
Elisheba 1:03:41
and it's really unpleasant. When you've gone too fast and cropped up with a problem, then you know you now you have to go back and everything is going to be really unpleasant while we deal with a dog that's arousal, biting, or that's developed reactivity or whatever. It's so much more pleasant and enjoyable if you can go slow enough that the dog can keep up and not get ahead of themselves.
Emily 1:04:09
All right, well, this was just an amazing conversation. I could listen to you for hours and hours. So we're so appreciative that you came on to chat with us about arousal, and hopefully we will not be sending too many, you know, emergency arousal phone calls your way.
Elisheba 1:04:25
Well, we can always hope but the dogs that are in transition or are at risk and so we can hope to help them stay out of that risky situation by taking things slow and giving them lots of opportunities to recover and Sue themselves.
Libby 1:04:43
Elisheba, thank you so much for taking the time today. It was a great conversation, and I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime. Yes, that would be awesome.
Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like For 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. And I'm Emily. And we are thrilled today to bring you a fabulous interview with Elisheba. Fay Elisheba is a behavior consultant to we at Summit dog rescue rely on a lot. We refer a lot of our adopters to her. And we also use her services for a lot of our dogs who are in foster.
Emily 0:47
Yeah, this conversation was one that I was really looking forward to for a long time when I knew that we had Elisheba booked. We discussed arousal in dogs, which you know, five years ago, I didn't know what that was. And I'm assuming most of you out there don't know what it is. But it's one of them like key components to understanding some of the behavior problems or behavior. I even hate to use the word problems, just some of the behaviors that crop up in our dogs and really often in rescue dogs and shelter dogs because it has to do with like basically, you know, a lot of it is related to stress and lack of routine and youth I think has a big factor. So if somebody's in the dogs that we see are like these adolescent dogs, and, you know, arousal is there like we all have it we all have arousal and dogs in transition. They're going to show peeks of this that can show up in all sorts of ways from aggression to over excitement jumping on people, you know, pulling leashes, ripping clothes, you name it.
Libby 2:08
Yeah, this is like the really big emotions kind of dog, the dog who has really big feelings about everything and can't self soothe. So Elisheba Fay is a certified dog behavior consultant through the International Association of Animal Behavior consultants, the IAABC. Elisheba has been training playing with and studying dogs for more than 20 years. She started out raising guide dog puppies when she was only 14 and went on to train service dogs, therapy dogs, pets and sport dogs. She has also trained other animals, including parents, and even cats using the same force free methods used for dogs. Her favorite work involves helping animals learn healthy coping skills for handling fear and excitement. And helping humans learn to deeply connect with and honor the animals in their lives.
Emily 2:57
I think the key part of why arousal is so important for shelter and rescue folks to understand and kind of keep an eye out for is that, you know, we all want calm dogs, that seems to be like we want a dog that calmly walks with us and calmly goes to sleep at night. And you know, greets people calmly. But arousal and understanding it in the dog is like understanding the ingredients of baking a cake. You know, like if you want a sweet cake, you wouldn't dump in like four cups of salt or red pepper flakes. And, you know, throughout the day, your dog's arousal levels, if they get too high, if things are getting too intense for them, it adds up and adds up. And that's where we see behaviors pour over, you know, and then the dog can make bad choices, or it explodes in a fit of reactivity, you know, and that makes that dog less desirable. So you know, to the adoptive public or to their guardians. So keeping your dog's arousal at a nice, easy, calm level throughout the day and understanding what that looks like, is kind of key to having a dog be successful. So I really encourage all folks to listen to this whole conversation with Elisheba because I think it can be life saving for dogs to understand this concept. And that's why we're all in this to help dogs support dogs and ideally placed them in their forever homes.
Libby 4:49
Welcome Elisheba Fay to pod to the rescue.
Elisheba 4:52
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Emily 4:55
We're so excited to have you here.
Libby 4:57
Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time. So you are one of our go to experts on arousal, can you just jump right in and explain to our listeners what we mean by arousal?
Elisheba 5:10
Yeah. So arousal is simply put the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is like to get up and go or be ready for action nervous system. So it's really an important thing, because without arousal, we wouldn't be able to function, we wouldn't be able to get up and go and do the things that we need to do. But usually, when we talk about arousal in dog training contexts, we're talking about hyper arousal, which is when that system gets a little bit out of control, gets a little bit too turned up, and then we have some problems. And so we tend to get big releases of neuro chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. And it causes us to be a little bit less thoughtful and a little bit less in control of our bodies and our actions than we want to be. And when I say us, it's true that this is a system that happens in people too. It happens in all mammals. So it happens to our dogs just like it happens to us. So there's a lot that we can relate to, with this hyper arousal system.
Emily 6:18
That's such an interesting sum up of what it is. And the reason we had you on is because we've, we see it often in rescue and shelter dogs. And it's probably because they're in a state of stress. And you know, they're in the middle of rehoming. They don't know where they are. Can you talk to us a little bit about like, how you see it showing up in some of the rescue dogs that you work with?
Elisheba 6:43
Yeah, absolutely. So arousal and stress to the body are basically the same thing. And you may have heard that there are good stresses and then sort of bad stresses or painful stresses. The same is true for arousal. So those same neuro chemicals that happen in the body, when we're stressed out about a test are also happening when we are going on a roller coaster. So when dogs are in the middle of a re homing process, they're experiencing sort of the stress side of arousal. And that may come out in ways that we're more familiar with that look like stress, we may see cowering or lip licking or yawning or scratching or shake offs that look more obvious to us as stress. But we may also see it come out looking more like that roller coaster arousal, where they're just, you know, out of their minds excited overstimulated all the time. And so we can see sort of a wide variety of responses to the same neurochemical. So it doesn't really matter very much to the body, whether there's sort of a positive valence or a good happy feeling to this arousal, or a negative, unpleasant feeling to the arousal.
Libby 8:00
So what does that look like in the dog in terms of body language or behavior, when it's this rollercoaster kind of high arousal?
Elisheba 8:08
Yeah, so we'll see a lot of leash pulling leash, really persistent leash pulling is often related to an arousal problem. Sometimes destructive behavior, panting dogs that are unable to focus this is probably the most classic sign that you you know, talk to them and they don't even know you're talking to them. They've never heard their name before. They've definitely never heard sit before. They're just like, out of their mind with arousal. We'll see like jumping, mouthing, arousal, biting so it's not aggressive biting, it's just like basically their mouth is running with no brain behind it. Excessive friendliness, so lots of jumping up behaviors and appropriate greetings are related to arousal. Mounting and humping is very frequently, I would say probably most of the time mounting and humping is related to hyper arousal. Let's see changes in how they'll eat or what they'll eat. So whether they will take treats nicely or take your fingers off, things like that. All of those can be related to those that adrenaline and cortisol released that we see with hyper arousal.
Emily 9:22
In a in a rescue or shelter situation, if you're seeing these signs of, you know, arousal or stress in a dog. What would you recommend to people to do you know, the, we've always felt like, Oh, if they're stressed, you know, throw the ball, you know, get them exercise, would that be your go to approach with a dog who's exhibiting these kinds of behaviors?
Elisheba 9:47
So typically, not like almost everybody has heard the phrase, a tired dog is a good dog and definitely appropriate exercise can be part of the go to plan for these guys, but appropriate exercise, so that's going to look much more like what dogs would do if they were free roaming dogs that didn't have people involved and dogs that are free roaming dogs, we see them doing a whole lot of rest, they do very little play. And when they are moving, they're generally sort of wandering, they're sniffing, and they're peeing on stuff. They're not doing a lot of high speed running. And they're not doing a lot of repetitive behaviors like chasing balls. And so when we look at appropriate exercise for these guys, I'm thinking more on the line of sniffing walks or decompression walks, where they get a lot of chances to interact with the environment. But not a lot of getting stuck on the environment. So decompression walks in his natural environment is confined. And generally my rule of thumb for how long that exercise should be is, it takes about twice as long as it takes them to settle. So lots of dogs, when they first come out the door are very hyper aroused, they're like lost to the world, they can't talk to you, they can't look at you, their noses down, or their head is up. And they're just scanning, scanning, scanning, looking for the next thing that they can interact with, or look at or talk to, or peon or whatever. And then sometime during the walk, they usually will settle in and start to do a little bit more curves, and they're walking less straight lines, and they'll start to breathe a little slower, they'll start to notice that you might be on the same planet with them. And at that point, let's say that takes 20 or 30 minutes for your dog, then I would walk another 20 or 30 minutes so that you're getting at least as much practice with that calm and relaxed walking, as you are with the hyper vigilant, hyper aware pulling all of that stuff. So often, it is actually better for these guys to do one longer walk than several shorter walks. Because if it takes them 20 minutes to settle in and your walks are 20 minutes, then 100% of your walks are going to be spent practicing that really wired up behavior, versus if you can combine those walks and find a way to do an hour instead, then you get 20 minutes of that wired behavior, but you get 40 minutes of calm and relaxed and actually enriching behavior that is going to help them sue them settle. So I don't do you mentioned throwing the ball. And that's a really common one. I don't recommend doing a lot of fetch or flirt pole with these guys. Because those are again, high arousal activities, they're very repetitive, and they're very intense. And so those are often going to cause the release of more adrenaline and cortisol, which are those neuro chemicals that we get from exciting activities like going on a roller coaster, or taking a test or watching a scary movie. And those are the ones that we're sort of trying to tone down overall, in these dogs that are struggling with arousal, we're trying to release those and let them go, by the way. And if we're constantly adding more through our attempts to calm the dog, if we're adding more by playing fetch all the time, or playing Flipbelt pole or things like that, even some enrichment toys, I don't do enrichment toys that involve a lot of chasing like the ones where you have to push or chase the toy to make the food come out. I prefer enrichment toys that are slow and calm, like a good stuffed frozen Kong is my favorite for these guys. Because it's not going to be causing them to do a lot of exciting stuff and use guys that are hyper aroused. Even with something pretty, you know, seemingly innocuous, like Kong wobbler, they can get so excited that I actually used to take one on my consults and I've had a dog literally start screaming when they saw it because it was so exciting for them. So we want to we want to stick to enrichment and exercise that's actually not going to shoot us in the foot here that's not going to produce more excitement and arousal and instead is going to allow them to settle into those species appropriate evolutionarily appropriate behaviors.
Libby 14:36
I just have to say I love decompression walks so much they are my favorite thing in the world. Would you have the same approach for both kinds of arousal?
Elisheba 14:48
Yeah, so again to the body, there's really not a difference between what we call hyper arousal which is often that excited looking behavior and And big stress. So they're still to the body having the same releases of the same hormones and but neuro chemicals with some slight differences but but very, very similar to the body. And so my approach is very similar for the sort of outside pieces that we can control working on that same calm enrichment, decompression walks, and just slowing things way down in their environment, I will often encourage people to use things like window film, or a white noise machine or a speaker with sound so that they can decrease some of those little tiny triggers that are a big deal to some of our dogs, that may not result in a full reaction. But over time, just looking outside at the traffic going by or at the squirrels are whatever the that is increasing their arousal, which then is causing us problems down the road in our fear, or our reactivity or our just hyper aroused greetings and things like that, because the dog is just getting wired, wired wired throughout the day, and then eventually, it's gonna come out somewhere. So I would, I would treat very much the same for both kinds.
Emily 16:20
Victoria Stilwell has a great article about this, and she shows a bucket and you know, every incident fills the bucket more, and then at certain point, you get to the top of the bucket, and it just spills over. That would be that whole concept of threshold. And it's interesting, because we've had a few dogs in the rescue who had like, really severe hyper arousal. And I think it's more common than we would like in the rescue shelter world, where like, their behaviors become so inappropriate, that they're returned, and they keep shuttling back through the system. And, you know, I just listen, listening to you, I'm thinking like, your analogies are amazing. And I think if we can just think about it as like a spa environment versus an amusement park, you know, like, yes, your dog is barking out the window, or yes, you just had some visitors over, but you're adding water to the bucket. And so eventually, you'll see a kind of bubble over. And then you're like, Oh, my God, I can't have this dog, this dog is not able to settle, or it's biting me or just chewed through the couch.
Elisheba 17:23
Right. And, of course, you know, particularly in the rescuer sheltering environment, we really want to try and make those placements stick, whether it's a foster placement or an adoptive placement. And, you know, people are so kind and thoughtful to these dogs that they're bringing into their homes, they really want to do the nice things that the dog has never experienced, they want to give them all the best, they want to socialize them. So I often see overstimulation in the name of socialization, that they're taking them to the dog park, or they're taking them to the brewery. And the dog is having to experience these really big experiences. And sometimes it looks like they're handling it in the moment, but then they come home and fall apart or they fall apart the next day or something like that. Because all of those experiences even though you thought you were being really kind, those were really intense high arousal situations for that dog. And that arousal, unless it's got time and space to come down is going to come out somewhere. And cortisol in particular, we don't have really good numbers on how long it takes. But adrenaline tends to go out of the body pretty quickly. But cortisol tends to stick around longer. And so when we keep getting new hits of adrenaline and cortisol all the time, it doesn't have a chance to diffuse and go out of the body. And so it adds up just like you were talking about in that bucket analogy. It adds up until there's a critical point where the dog can't handle it anymore, and they can't self regulate anymore. And they start doing wild, weird, wacky things that we don't usually like,
Emily 19:07
Oh my God, that's brilliant. I'm having an aha moment here.
Libby 19:13
So if going back to this bucket analogy, what are some ways that we can see we can spot the arousal building in our dogs over time and intervene before it gets to that? That state of overflow?
Elisheba 19:30
I would look for those low level signs of of stress things like lip licking, yawning, scratching and shake offs are the four that I encourage people to pay the most attention to because almost all dogs will do them. And they tend to be fairly easy for the novice to be able to see. Those tend to be our sort of entry level stress signs and there are some dogs especially in the sheltering or rescue situation that are Doing those signs kind of all the time, we are already way past the point where they are, you know, add a little bit of arousal or a little bit of stress. But looking for those, especially in your own dog, you may be able to notice like, oh, you're a little bit uncomfortable with this, or you're a little bit stressed out by this, or you're a little bit too excited by this. And then just responding by saying, You know what, you need more space or more time from this scenario, you maybe don't want to go to the brewery or the dog park or the daycare, you can't. So my, my general rule of thumb, even for fun things that we think we're exposing our dog to is if they're not able to handle it with a thinking brain. So they're not able to respond to cues that they know really well, they're not able to respond normally to the environment, they're either scanning or they're getting stuck on one thing, maybe they see a dog 1000 yards away, and they're like, I'm going there, or you get out of the park or get out of the car at the dog park, and they are zoned in and dragging you across the parking lot. If you can't engage in in a calm way, so meaning you're able to engage and disengage from things and move from one stimulus to another in sort of the way that we would expect for thinking being, then this is not a good place for you. So looking for those signs that they are checked out that they are zoned in that they are just lost to the world, we're already pretty far down the line at that point. But you can still make the choice to say you know what, if you can't get out of the dog park, get out of the car at the dog park and look at me and take a treat nicely and walk without ripping my arm off, then maybe this is not a helpful place for you to be and doing some simple tests. One of my favorite is the food behavior test. So checking throughout the day for let's say, you know, three or five days to see how does my dog eat different kinds of foods? Can they eat kibble in different environments? Can they eat hot dogs in different environments, and just get a feel for what normal looks like for them. And then trying out like on a walk or in a dog interaction or in a person interaction? Can you still eat normally, because one of the interesting things about arousal is it's designed to help animals survive really challenging environments were like, being chased on the savanna, right. So it's designed to turn on that fight or flight response. And when you are in that fight or flight response, you really should not be eating or digesting. So your body adrenaline and cortisol and all of those other host of neuro chemicals will turn off the digestive system, at the same time that it turns off, the higher parts of the brain are about the same time. Because you also shouldn't be sitting around doing calculus when you're running your life. So you want to really be aware of those changes in digestive function. And we noticed this too, like if you are getting ready for a big test or a big presentation at work or something like that, you may get butterflies in your stomach, you may not want to eat breakfast, same thing happens to us same thing happens to dogs, that their digestive system is actually getting turned off because it is not appropriate for them to be spending energy or to be putting things in their gut when they may be in a potentially life threatening environment. Now, the dog park hopefully is not actually a life threatening environment. But those same those same neuro chemicals are going on that tell the body be prepared for something big. And so we may get that same digestive response. So checking out their food behavior to see are they snatching treats when they were taking treats nicely, are they only able to take steak when they normally can take kibble, those kinds of things. That's one of my favorite early warning signs that we're getting you over our heads with with arousal.
Libby 24:18
I love how you reframed that of like, you know what, maybe the dog park isn't the best place for you today, because I'll go Okay, so I'm going to tell a brief story about Daisy. The info This is the infamous Davidson Mesa incident. Em, do you remember?
Emily 24:37
I do remember this? Yeah.
Libby 24:40
So when I was first fostering Daisy, who was an Australian cattle dog. I took her for a lot what I was, you know, I was planning a nice long walk at Davidson mesa. And it's a very strict on leash area. So I knew that off leash dogs when You'd be running up on her, but it's also very popular with cyclists. And what I should have done was as soon in that first half mile when I noticed she was taking treats roughly, I should have said, You know what? This isn't a good idea today and turned around and gone back to the car and said, Oh, well, I blocked out my morning to do this. But that's okay, we'll do something else, we'll go, we'll go eat a Kong instead of, you know, my long planned walk. I did not do that. And I ended up at the far end of the trail, out of treats, sobbing, crying with a totally hyper aroused dog.
Elisheba 25:45
Yeah, I have been there too
Libby 25:48
I called my boyfriend, I need a ride, I can't handle this. It wasn't good for either of us. And it would have been way better for DAISY way better for me if we had just said, You know what, not the best choice today and turn around. Because sometimes I think that we we do get this idea of like, I'm a bad dog owner, if I don't take my dog on this five mile hike, if I don't take my if I leave my dog at home instead of going to the brewery. But sometimes it's the best thing to do.
Elisheba 26:24
Yeah, we got this message, I would say kind of starting in the 90s, that dogs are bored, and they need to do more stuff. And they need to go to the dog park and they need to go to the daycare. And they better not be sleeping during the day and all of that stuff. And it's led us to a really overstimulating way of being with dogs. And a lot of cases that, again, if we look at those free roaming dogs, so domesticated dogs, but that don't belong to anybody that dogs that are living on the street, or living on the reservation, or whatever, when we look at those dogs, because they're a really good barometer for us about what is biologically natural or socially natural for dogs. When we look at them, they're not doing a lot of social interaction, they have a fairly small, pretty stable social group that they will interact with. But it's not a lot of play, except in pretty young dogs. And it's not a lot of movement, it's they are doing a ton of resting and just standing still and sleeping. And when they are moving, it's with a purpose. It's not just to be moving. So they're not just spending calories and spending energy for no reason. And those dogs, I try to keep as a memory for my own dogs that I want them to have some appropriate species appropriate activity, like those decompression walks that we talked about, I want them to have some stimulation, I want them to have some social interaction. But I don't need them to have interaction with every dog on my block, I don't need them to have interaction with 15, to 30 to 45 dogs in a daycare, I want to keep their world as best suited to what their brain is built for as I can. Because I think that's going to be the way that we get toward that behavioral health is when we make their world more of what their brain can handle.
Libby 28:25
I love that so much. And this has me you know, talking about dogs in more natural environments, something that's striking me is the freedom of movement, and the fact that they can move away from anything that comes into their space that they don't want in their space. Is there something about the equipment we use to restrain dogs to keep them underneath our table at the brewery, you know, the tight leash, things like that increased arousal in both this negative? Well, right and both the roller coaster and the obvious stress kind of way.
Elisheba 29:04
There definitely can be because we are removing their ability to escape. And that is stressful for kind of anybody, right? All the way down to in humans like true claustrophobia, but almost anybody if they are kept in a space without being able to leave for a period of time we call that prison, right? So we don't like that inability to express freedom of movement and we find it stressful on ourselves. And the same is true of dogs. And so when it is safe and when it is possible for those decompression locks, I really like to use a long line rather than and that's not a flexi I don't use retractable leashes but I like to use a longer leash to allow them to have more of that movement and more of that freedom of choice. So that they can kind of make more decisions about what's going on in their lives. And we know that choice and control are primary reinforcers for animals, not just food. So that means that they, you know, being able to make a decision can be as important as getting a cookie. So thinking about ways to offer more choice and control can be really, really soothing and settling and healing for the nervous system. Because often dogs don't have a lot of choice or control. One of my favorite analogies for this is imagine that somebody puts you in the trunk of a car, and then 10 minutes later lets you out and gives you 100 bucks not worth it, right? 100 bucks means nothing, because during that 10 minutes, you had no choice or control, you didn't know how long it was going to last, you didn't know what was going to happen when you got there, are they going to let me out? Are they going to leave me in the trunk of the car, are they going to chop me up into tiny pieces, 100 bucks doesn't seem like it's even on the list of things that might happen when you get there, right. And so our job, our dogs are living in that situation, very often, they have no knowledge of what's going to happen when we get there, how long something will last, they have no way of controlling the outcome. And that's very stressful and scary. So our job is to change that as much as possible. So imagine now, in the context of a bachelorette party, let's say your best friend puts you in the trunk of a car and says in 10 minutes, I'm going to let you out and give you $100 Here's a timer. And when we get there, we're going to have a party. Now, you may still be pretty stressed about this situation. And you may have a really big talking to with your best friend at the end of it. But it was very different situation because you know where you're going, you know how long it's going to last. And you know what's going to happen when you get there. And you have a way of kind of telling how long things will last. So we can use some of our protocols, we can use some of our choices, with how we set up these situations to start to give them more choice and control, which again, you know, promote some of that relaxation that can be really, really helpful for these hyper aroused dogs.
Emily 32:24
I love that. And I think when you were speaking to that I was loving the idea of like the predictability of the second scenario. So even though you're talking about choice and control, can you also speak to like how that fits into like a pattern or predictability throughout the day with a new dog?
Elisheba 32:43
Yeah, so definitely giving some predictability to your routines can be really, really helpful. And keeping things really pretty light doesn't mean that you are throwing out that routine. So it doesn't need to be regimented so that every minute of the day is planned. And in fact, I recommend that dogs that are struggling with arousal or that are in transition and you know, are at risk of struggling with arousal or fear, I recommend that they get a lot of downtime, just quiet time in a confined space so that they are able to come down from that arousal. And I like to see them have opportunities to come up and those might be our walks or things like that our interaction times and then followed by some time to just think about what happened. Right? So with that predictability, you know, you're giving them a chance to be like, Yeah, to understand what's going to happen next, which is a really big reducer of stress. Because if you have just moved into a new house, and you don't know again, are they going to cut me up into tiny pieces here? Are they going to make me interact with a bunch of dogs and people that I'm not ready for? Are they going to you know, shock me or prod me or whatever, lots of dogs have no knowledge of what might be coming next most dogs then we give them a little bit of a lifeline to say you know what, I do know what's coming next and I can handle it.
Emily 34:20
Like maybe doing the same walk every day for the first week or something like that just so that there's not a lot of like new things popping up would you recommend something like that?
Elisheba 34:29
Yeah, often for when I bring new dogs into my home I often don't even walk them for the first few days or even a week depending on the dog I'll things just in the home until they can kind of figure out what's going on at home and then we'll start to take very short walks and then we'll gradually increase from there, but I want them first to be able to to be okay with the house in the yard and all of because I have a pretty busy Full House. And so just acclimating to my house is a big thing to do. And so I want to give them a chance to meet the people that live here, meet the dogs that live here to the extent that that's appropriate and safe, and make sure that they understand some of the patterns and routines that are going to happen here. And then I'll make their world bigger. But I don't want to start with a huge world, especially for a dog that may have come from a hoarding situation or a dog that may have come from like, you know, I've worked with some retired racing greyhounds that spent the vast majority of their life in a box. And people again, want to immediately give them the whole world, they want to give them all the beds and all the treats and all of the outings and all of the walks and all of the hikes. And it's just too much and you need to start with or a dog that may have come from a situation where they were created too much, instead of immediately going to, I'm going to give you free rein of the house because I feel bad that you were created before, I'm going to gradually increase their time out of the crate and gradually give them more to acclimate to but not give them all of that at once because it's just too much for them to handle with their nervous system being, you know, as uncertain as it is.
Emily 36:28
So some of our listeners are shelter workers or, or volunteers and shelters, what what suggestions would you have for them to try to monitor and decrease arousal in a shelter setting?
Elisheba 36:40
Oh, it's so hard to do in a shelter situation, obviously, like, my first preference for a dog that's really struggling with arousal and is in a shelter would be to try and find a foster situation where they can be out of the shelter. But that's not always possible. So I would be focusing really heavily again on that homing enrichment. So this is licking, chewing, shredding thing, things that are going to be fairly stationary. But getting give them a lot of opportunity to do species appropriate behaviors, I would be trying to get them out of the shelter for decompression locks, as you know, if you can do it every day, that would be ideal, and as close to a natural environment as you can get. So not necessarily in a busy Park. Not necessarily in a busy neighborhood, if you can even get them you know, drive 15 minutes and find a quiet neighborhood park that somewhere that just doesn't have a million dogs and people in it all the time. Getting them you know, to the calmest lowest intensity environment you can and just letting them be a dog for an hour would be a really big help with dogs that are you know, if you have a training and behavior team, I would be working on things like mat work, reinforcing any calm behavior that they show. And sometimes this means starting with just blinking and breathing because they have to do those things, right. But you know, anything that they do with their bodies, that's a little bit calmer, I would be reinforcing those things. And I would probably be trying to do as much environmental management as you can in the shelter environment, I would be trying to minimize the amount that they're seeing other dogs walk past minimize the amount that they are exposed to just the hubbub of the shelter, maybe there is a you know, a kennel that is you know, a little bit less busy of a spot than right next to your food prep station. For example. Lots of dogs, especially in the shelter environment can get very hyper aroused about food. So watching you prep the the meals for 50 dogs in the shelter, and then they only get one meal after they've gotten hyped for 40 minutes while you were getting all those bowls ready can be really hard for them. There's some evidence that using music and shelter environments can help reduce some stress and reduce some arousal. There's quite a bit of good stuff that especially Maddies fun has produced on how to help reduce stress and shelter environments. And I think most of that, if not all of it would apply to hyper arousal behaviors as well.
Libby 39:41
That's super helpful. Can we circle back a little bit? So I can ask a follow up something we just okay. Yeah. So you mentioned choice and control as primary reinforcers. Can you give some specific examples of what that would look like in a pet dog or are a foster dog home? Like, how do you incorporate that?
Elisheba 40:04
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest ways that I incorporate this for dogs is just allowing them to make more choices on walks. And I also teach a lot of activities and behaviors that are run by the dog. So I think Emily has been doing some really cool stuff with free work, that's another good option. So you can set up some enrichment options where there is no right answer, where they just get to choose how they interact with a situation or an environment, I like to use a lot of protocols that are initiated and continued by the dogs, so they have the choice to opt in or out. And that one gives me a more durable attention behavior, it gives me more durable, whatever it is, because the dog is choosing to do it rather than me having to nag them and beg them and remind them all the time. But to it does build that, you know, I choose to do this, and I choose to interact with you in this way. For the dog.
Emily 41:20
You're making me think we hired Elisheba with otter, who's part of our program who has some hyper arousal, I'm wondering if we could link the videos, or even one video of the work that you did with him, because you were doing I think, like the was it the ping pong, I can't remember which one
Elisheba 41:41
Yeah, I love Leslie McDevitt's pattern games for the for lots of dogs. But those are described in her book, it's control unleashed reactive to relax, it's the third book in the control unleashed. Series. And those are a great way to give predictability and control because the dog starts the game and they continue the game going, you know, both both ways. It's a great communication technique. And it allows them to know exactly what will happen when they do their part. And their part is doable. So they have control over it, it's not asking them to do an entire, you know, obedience sequence to get the next part of the game. It's asking them for a very simple behavior that they know they can do and be successful with every time. And that continues the game and keeps the connection going.
Emily 42:36
I love that because they have to think, you know, I think we don't give enough credit to giving the time to dogs to think and problem solve and sort out what the right answer is. And, you know, just our culture and myself included, like we used to think it was good for dogs to be like, sit down, come stay. And it's, you know, it actually is so relaxing and empowering for a dog to be like, what's the right prop? What's the right answer here? What does she want? And be like ding, ding, ding, I got the right answer. So yeah, you can see him learning. And that's what we want. We want a dog that thinks rather than a dog that just like gets into this, like wild hyper aroused state.
Elisheba 43:16
Right?
When dogs are we call that sometimes throwing behaviors when they're just like, I don't know, what do you want, what do you want, you want this, you want this like this? You know, that can look very flashy sometimes. But it's also kind of out of control wild. And it's, it's a little bit more controlled than just jumping up on you. But it's still not a thoughtful way to interact with each other, or the environment. It's just like, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. And that that isn't a way to calm yourself or to get really good information. Because you may be so busy throwing behaviors that you miss the one that actually does work, or you're not able to respond in a thoughtful way when when the time comes.
Libby 44:04
You know, that's actually a signal that I look for in Daisy, when we're doing triball. Specifically, if we're in class, and I'm cueing her to come by, and instead she spins or gives me a touch or a sit or a down or she goes to her mat. I'm like, okay, all right. We're we're kind of getting a little frantic. Here. Let's take a little break.
Elisheba 44:33
Yep. Yeah. And looking at we talked earlier about that inability to focus those dogs that may act like they've never heard that before, things like that. So when you have a pretty good reinforcement history for a particular behavior, sit is a really good example because lots of dogs have a strong set when they are in their brain. But responding to their name or responding to a hand touch is probably My favorite, but building a couple of really, really solid, very simple, very easy behaviors for them to do eye contact is another one that I love. If they're not able to do a behavior that otherwise they wouldn't be able to complete competently and you know, easily. It tells me that they are not having much in the way of the frontal lobe and I don't want to work a dog that doesn't have a frontal lobe, I want to work a dog that is fully engaged with their brain. And so at that point, I would slow things down, take a step back, move away from the trigger, whatever it is, so that we can get them back in their brain pattern games are another really great way to kind of transition between that like I'm fully with it. And I know all of the stuff to moving into a slightly more difficult environment, but keeping that brain
Libby 45:55
Elisheba, what is it about sniffing that is so helpful?
Elisheba 45:59
So sniffing one is one of those species appropriate behaviors, one of the core four that I really work on with enrichment, which is licking, chewing, sniffing and treading. It is a behavior that is rooted in the evolution of the dog. So it was a survival behavior, in order to find food, you have to use your nose. And we know that a huge amount of the dog's brain is devoted to sentence scent processing. But also that those some of those areas that are involved with scent processing are also butted right up against the dopamine reward system. So dogs are actually getting a dopamine release from sniffing, which is, which is important because they need to do it, right. It's a survival behavior. And so you're getting an internal reward from sniffing, because you may not always get the external reward of actually finding food, but you're getting an internal reward that feels really good. Dopamine is what people get from doing cocaine. And obviously, when we're sniffing, we're looking for a little bit less than that. That gives you an idea of how good it may feel to get that kind of that kind of release of neuro chemicals. Other Other neuro chemicals are also involved. I'm not a total expert on all of the biology of scent, but there are some really excellent books on it. But it is a way to prepare the brain for learning. So dopamine is also really important in learning. It's also a way to feel good. So it can be really good on those decompression walks to get a fearful or, or a an anxious dog. Just some relief to give them some time where they don't have to be so worked up.
Libby 47:57
Yeah, as a person with ADHD, I'm all I totally get it like dopamine, the dopamine seeking? Yes, it just it clicks. For me, it makes sense. So So would you say that sniffing on a walk is like a self soothing behavior or?
Elisheba 48:13
Absolutely
Libby 48:13
Okay, yeah.
Elisheba 48:15
The way that dogs can both soothe themselves when they're struggling. And it's also can be a way that dogs communicate to other dogs or to people that they need something to change in the environment so often, especially with with sort of anxious or fearful dogs, we'll see them start sniffing the most interesting spot in the world when they're asked to do something that they don't feel comfortable or confident with, right? This is a classic on agility, start lines that you'll put a dog on the start line, you'll put them in a stay, and suddenly they have a really, really important sniff to do. And it's because they were a little bit uncomfortable with the pressure there and they didn't know how to handle it. And they're they're both self soothing by doing the sniffing, and they're communicating to us. Like I can't really deal with this right now. I need something a little bit easier.
Emily 49:10
Interesting. I've even seen dogs who were so stressed and hyper aroused that they couldn't sniff and that we walked enough and calmly enough that then they started to and it was like oh, yeah, you're finally sniffing. Yeah, that a second.
Elisheba 49:23
That's definitely something that happens especially when we get that hyper vigilance when I see dogs that are in their eyes more than than their nose. That is a really good sign for me that we're dealing with some hyper vigilance, some hyper arousal because again, sniffing is a way for them to both communicate that they need some help and to get that help at the same time. But if they can't do it, if they are using their eyes, and this is there are some exceptions. sighthounds are bred to be more in their eyes than in their nose for example, but For the most part, dogs are are more going to interact with the world using their nose than their eyes. And if they can't do that, that tells me we're pretty far down the line on, you know, our arousal threshold marker.
Emily 50:14
And I have one other question before we wrap up, which is petting. I mean, we actually call them pets. So people think petting the dog will help with arousal. So can you speak to that a little bit.
Elisheba 50:27
Um, heading can be very physically intense for dogs. Again, it's, it is something that we have, to some extent bred our dogs to tolerate. But it's not something that free roaming dogs do, really. And so it can be really physiologically intense. And some dogs really do love it. But my favorite thing to do for all dogs, I'm a huge fan of the three second rule, which is when your dog has expressed interest in in being petted by you pet for three seconds and take your hand away, and see what they do if they ask for more. And you'll usually know it when they do they'll nudge you or they'll roll on you or they'll you know, come a little bit closer or something like that, then pet for three more seconds. But even my most social, most, you know sweet kind heart dog who loves me and who loves people and loves petting, he'll often go for two or three rounds of three second petting, and then be like, Okay, I've got other things to do now. And we tend to really override that we tend to pet and pet and pet and pet and pet because we get absent minded or because it's reinforcing for us. And even just imagine if your partner was rubbing your shoulder in the same spot for 10 minutes, eventually, you'd be like, Ah, stop, right. And so even if you are not sort of a sensory defensive kind of person, you eventually will get tired of being petted in the same way in the same spot for you know, an hour. And dogs will too. And that can be very stimulating for them, especially if they happen to be a little bit more sensory defensive or a little bit more excitable by touch.
Emily 52:22
And I always try to remind people, you know, even if you enjoy touch, if you flew into Cairo, and you went up like and immediately were forced to go on a date, and then someone wanted to like rub your shoulders, you would not be into it. So a dog in transition is going to be often less receptive to touch.
Libby 52:42
Absolutely. So we kind of have a an overview here of arousal and what to do kind of on a bigger picture. But what can people do in the moment if they realize that they're dealing with a hyper aroused dog who's jumping up who's mouthing, arousal biting? In that moment, what can you do?
Elisheba 53:06
So in that moment, when you're dealing with a dog that we would call over threshold, meaning they can't respond normally to the environment, they can't respond normally to you, you are not in a training mode, then you are in management, which means that you need to make the choices to get the dog to a better place because they don't have the frontal lobe to make those traces anymore. So management is typically going to be something like giving them a break in the crate or on the X pen using supervised tethering for a little bit, removing them from the situation that they're in. So if you went to the brewery and your dog starts leaping on everybody, and you know you're paying and all of that stuff, and they're kind of out of control, and you can see that, it's time to leave the brewery, it's not time to try to work through that in that moment, because they don't have the brain to work through it and you're just going to be frustrating you and frustrating them. So make the choice to get them to a safer calmer spot and then find a way to you know, especially if they're doing arousal biting, I would recommend giving them a break in the crate or the x pen or giving them some tethered time where you can just back away from them if they're getting too excited. And then try to follow that up with some of that calm enrichment. So a stuffed Kong in your freezer at all times is a great thing when you're dealing with hyper arousal
Libby 54:36
and you and that doesn't reinforce the over arousal behavior to like say okay, you know what, you're gonna go in the in the bedroom with a kong
Elisheba 54:49
Um, I would say no, and the reason for that is at this point when they are out of their mind with the arousal they're not really in a place to Make operant learning happen, they have very little in the way of frontal lobe. And so that kind of learning of I do this and I get this is it requires the higher parts of the brain to be online. The other thing that I would say is really, in those moments where they are hyper aroused, and you are putting them in the bedroom with a calm, what they're what they couldn't learn, is in the bedroom, I get a calm, not so much that, you know, they're they're just doing less of the operant behavior stuff, you're gonna get less of the behavior chain, because they just don't have the brain to do that kind of learning.
Libby 55:52
Got it? Thank you. That helps. Yeah.
Emily 55:55
And I don't know if you mentioned it, but I think with otter, you recommended a drag line just so that you can quickly tether or redirect or even would you say like, if you had to step on the on the leash for a second to prevent the jumping up?
Elisheba 56:10
Yeah, I will use a dragline attached to a bat clip harness. And I prefer to not use a leash for that because leashes are gonna get hung up on legs and on cables and whatever, I'll use a coded wire dragline. And that way, if he starts jumping up, or if he wants to play keep away, or if he wants to knock on your arm, you can easily and without a lot of conflict, just step on that line and kind of without conflict without a whole lot of fun playtime, where we're playing, keep away that kind of thing. Just quickly put it into it and get him to a calmer place without the drama of it all.
Emily 56:55
Yep, no fuss, no mas just you're in over your head, buddy, I'm going to help you out.
Elisheba 57:01
Exactly.
Libby 57:02
So you could like lead them behind the baby gate into the X pen, that kind of thing from
Emily 57:08
you know, if someone if a dog was really struggling with these behaviors, would you recommend that they chat with their veterinarian about if medication would be appropriate?
Elisheba 57:19
That's a really good question. And there are definitely dogs that struggle enough with arousal, that it is becoming a quality of life issue for the people or the dogs or both. And medication can be a really appropriate support for that if you have a vet that is really strong and comfortable with using behavioral medicine, that's fabulous to start with your general practice veterinarian. If you have a vet that's a little bit less comfortable, which most our veterinary behaviorist is always a wonderful resource. If you don't have one that's close to you, there are many that will do distance consults or vet to vet consults.
Emily 57:58
Okay, and I have one more question, which is I've noticed that you didn't ever mention punishing arousal behaviors.
Elisheba 58:06
Yeah, so again, punishment is is defined by its results, right. So it's not actually punishment unless the behavior is reduced. And again, when our dogs are in this hyper arousal space, they're really not in a place to make operant behavior learning, they are just running around with all body all teeth, and no matter no brain. So even if we were to try to use punishment in these situations, typically it would not result in actual punishment, it would just be us being a jerk, because we're not getting the results to actually make it punishment. And we also know that again, these dogs are typically experiencing stress, right? It may be roller coaster kind of arousal, but to the body, it's the same kind of thing. And so that puts us at a much higher risk of developing those. The fallout of punishment, which include increased fearfulness, increased arousal, increased aggression, and those are the opposite of what we want, especially if we're dealing with a dog that's already experiencing these things. So we really want to avoid that when we're dealing with a dog that has big feelings.
Libby 59:26
That makes so much sense. Yeah, and I even think it's unfair to to look at a dog who can't handle their emotions in the moment for whatever reason, and punish them for it just just doesn't feel good to my sensitive feels.
Elisheba 59:48
Think the bigger reason for me is the science behind it because to get over my sensitive fields, if it was really the right thing to do, right, but we know that it's not the right thing to do. We know that it doesn't improve outcomes, we know that it doesn't solve behavior problems that are unsolvable with positive reinforcement. And we know that it has the risk of this Fallout, that could create bigger problems for us down the line, even if it looks like a short term fix in the moment, it could be bigger problems that we really don't want to deal with, especially since again, we're really trying to make those those placements count, we really want that first Foster and that first adopter to be the only ones that we deal with.
Libby 1:00:35
So there's really good scientific reason behind why it's not a good idea.
Elisheba 1:00:39
Absolutely. The evidence is outstanding at this point there. It's it's a pretty hands down decision for me scientifically.
Emily 1:00:49
Well, I love that answer. If I could click and treat you from here, I would
Libby 1:00:53
click and treat, click and shop I was beautiful.
Emily 1:00:57
Four week, I guess we should probably wrap it up. We have been chatting for over an hour. And we could definitely talk to you for five. But
Libby 1:01:03
is there anything that we didn't cover that you think is really important to hit on here?
Elisheba 1:01:08
No. I mean, we were gonna talk about whether some dogs are more sensitive to hyper arousal, and we didn't really get there. But I think you know, that's fine. And maybe there will be someday.
Emily 1:01:20
Oh, I think we should have a part two. I feel like this is like one of the missing pieces in the sheltering and rescue world. But I for sure didn't understand. And today, I still feel I'm just learning more and more about it. Thanks to you, and Laura Donaldson. And, yeah, it's just it's something we really need to understand, at least on the most basic, you know, level when we're rescuing these dogs, because they're in the state of flux. And so I feel like it's always bubbling there under the surface. I think, you know, there's probably lots of dogs who have been euthanized for issues related to arousal that had they had some calm decompression time to management. And just that giving them the three months that Patricia McConnell talks about, like, three days, three weeks, three months, you'd see a real shift. I mean, I've had Benny now for two months, and I can't even believe the difference in him in two months. It's unbelievable. And he was such a wreck when he got here, like I wish we had before and afters. So it just takes time. And I don't think people understand the time.
Elisheba 1:02:30
Yeah. And the slow movement during that time. You know, the biggest thing that I try to say to foster parents, when they are starting out is go slower than you ever thought you would ever need to go. Because going fast and giving them all of those things that you think they need or want is actually the opposite of what they need and want. Low everything way, way down.
Emily 1:03:03
And I often think of it almost like cooking, like, if you're gonna change your recipe, you don't change three things. So keep it on the you know, keep the little, you know, pot on the stove and change one thing, and then see how that feels. And change one other thing never change two variables.
Libby 1:03:22
Yeah, I like to tell Foster's that it's almost impossible to go too slow. But it's so easy to go too fast. And it's really hard to recover from going too fast and pushing too much so
Elisheba 1:03:41
and it's really unpleasant. When you've gone too fast and cropped up with a problem, then you know you now you have to go back and everything is going to be really unpleasant while we deal with a dog that's arousal, biting, or that's developed reactivity or whatever. It's so much more pleasant and enjoyable if you can go slow enough that the dog can keep up and not get ahead of themselves.
Emily 1:04:09
All right, well, this was just an amazing conversation. I could listen to you for hours and hours. So we're so appreciative that you came on to chat with us about arousal, and hopefully we will not be sending too many, you know, emergency arousal phone calls your way.
Elisheba 1:04:25
Well, we can always hope but the dogs that are in transition or are at risk and so we can hope to help them stay out of that risky situation by taking things slow and giving them lots of opportunities to recover and Sue themselves.
Libby 1:04:43
Elisheba, thank you so much for taking the time today. It was a great conversation, and I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime. Yes, that would be awesome.
Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like For 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