Dr. Kristina Spaulding PhD

Stress, hormones, emotions, impulse control, arousal, cognition --- a lot of different words that get thrown around in our conversations about dogs and behavior.
In this episode with the incredibly informative Dr. Kristina Spaulding, we unpack many of those terms, and why they are so important to define correctly when discussing aggression in dogs. Kristina does an amazing job of breaking down these concepts in the show, and I hope to see the conversation continue in the dog training community.


For additional resources on helping dogs with aggression, visit:
https://aggressivedog.com

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https://aggressivedog.thinkific.com/courses/aggression-in-dogs

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https://aggressivedog.com/conference/

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About Kristina:

Dr. Kristina Spaulding has been in the dog training and behavior profession for over 20 years. She has a PhD in biopsychology—the study of the biological basis of behavior—and is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist. She also has a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She is particularly interested in stress, neurobiology, cognition, emotion, and wellbeing and how to apply these concepts to the prevention and early intervention of behavior problems in dogs. In addition to working with behavior clients, Dr. Spaulding teaches a variety of online courses and webinars on the science of behavior through her website, www.smartdogtrainingandbehavior.com. She also regularly presents on canine behavior science at conferences and other events. 
In 2019, Dr. Spaulding received the Association of Professional Dog Trainer’s (APDT’s) Member of the Year Award. She currently serves on the IAABC Foundation Board and the Fear Free Advisory group.

https://smartdogtrainingandbehavior.com/online-services/
https://www.facebook.com/KristinaSpauldingPhD
https://www.instagram.com/science_mattersllc/

Transcript

Michael Shikashio: 0:02

Stress, hormones, emotions, impulse control, arousal, cognition, a lot of words that get thrown around in our conversations about dogs and behavior. In this episode with the incredibly informative Dr. Kristina Spaulding, we unpack many of those terms, and why they're so important to define correctly when discussing aggression in dogs. Christina does an amazing job of breaking down these concepts in the show, and I hope to see this conversation continue in the dog training community. And if you are working with aggression cases or plan on taking aggression cases as a trainer, or maybe you're even struggling with your own dog, we have a variety of educational opportunities just for you, including the upcoming aggression in dogs conference happening from September 30 Through October 2 2022. in Providence, Rhode Island with both in person and online options, you can learn more about the aggression in dogs master course, which is the most comprehensive course available anywhere in the world for learning how to work with and help dogs with aggression issues by going to aggressive dog.com Special thanks to John masala for editing the podcast the season and bringing the production to a whole nother level everyone welcome back to the by the end of the dog. I am so excited for this episode. This week, we're going to super geek out because I've got the amazing Dr. Christina Spaulding. I'm super excited for this episode because we're gonna geek out about a lot of different terms that we throw around in the dog training community, which we're gonna get to in a minute, but let me tell you a little bit about Christina. She owns the science matters Academy of animal behavior LLC, and has been in the dog training and behavior profession for over 20 years. She has a PhD in bio psychology, which is the study of the biological basis of behavior, and is a certified applied animal behaviorist. She also has a BS in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She's particularly interested in stress, neurobiology, cognition, emotion and wellbeing, and how to apply these concepts to the prevention and early intervention of behavior problems in dogs. In addition to working with behavior clients, Dr. Spalding teaches a variety of online courses and webinars on the science of behavior through her website. Science matters llc.com. She also regularly presents on canine behavior, science at conferences and other events. I've seen a bunch of her talks and I always love watching all the information she shares. In 2019, Dr. Spalding received the Association of Professional Dog Trainers APDT, member of the Year Award, she currently serves on the IW, ABC Foundation Board and the fear free advisory group. And she's writing a book on stress called the stress factor in dogs, which we might hear more about later. So welcome to the show, Christina,

Unknown: 2:49

thank you so much for having me, I'm excited to be here, this is going to be an

Michael Shikashio: 2:53

awesome conversation, because there's so many things I want to talk about. And I was just mentioning, you know, in the dog training community, we like to throw around a lot of terms and labels, things like arousal, or impulse control, or stress and reactivity, even in all of these can be confusing sometimes, because they're not always defined necessarily the same depending on who you're talking to. So I'd love to start talking about stress, because it's obviously something that's very important to recognize and understand in dogs, especially in aggression cases. So let's start with that. If you could kind of tell me, you know, in your mind, when somebody says stress, you know, Christina, what is stress? How do you define that if you were to give your elevator response?

Unknown: 3:34

Yeah, so stress is, it refers to a physiological response to a particular trigger. And the types of triggers that cause stress is anything that causes a disruption from baseline is the easiest way to put it, or even just I simply often say stress is change, essentially. So there are two different physiological responses that occur. There's the release of epinephrine or norepinephrine, well, epinephrine and norepinephrine, which many people know better as adrenaline and noradrenaline sometimes, sometimes scientists like to change names on things. And that is that very sort of rapid response that you get, and then you get a somewhat slower release of stress hormones. So I think when a lot of people think of stress, they think of the release of stress hormones, but it also involves the sympathetic nervous system response. Frequently, we think of stress as being bad, but stress is not actually always bad. So researcher Bruce McEwen talks about three different categories of stress. There's good stress, tolerable stress, and toxic stress. And it really has to do with how is the animal responding to a particular stressor? So good stress would be something that is challenging, but not just stressing, so this podcast for at least for me, you do this a little bit more often, right? But this is my first time being on this podcast. So this is a little bit stressful for me but not in a bad way, right? It's just, it's just like going to a conference is stressful, you might enjoy it. But it's a disruption from your normal activity. So going for a walk is stressful. You know, we don't think of it as being stressful, but it's not, you know, your physical activity is stress. So, when we start getting into concerning stresses, when we're talking about to some degree tolerable, but especially toxic stress, so tolerable stress is something that is challenging, but the animal's able to cope with it. So this could be going through, you know, moving or a change of job, you know, there's all kinds of different things that could fall into that category. And it may be distressing, but the individual comes out, okay, on the other side, and then you have toxic stress, which is what we're usually talking about when we're talking about stress. And that is stress that exceeds an animal's ability to cope with it. And that is the kind of stress that leads to all kinds of problems down the road.

Michael Shikashio: 6:14

And so just to jump back to the physiological aspects you're talking about, and what has happening in that toxic stress level when you're looking at this physiological responses and what's happening from a chemical response.

Unknown: 6:27

So toxic stress can be, it can be acute, this would be like a trauma experience, for example, as far as I know, we don't have as much of an understanding of what is happening there. From a physiological perspective, in terms of what how does trauma look, physiologically, or how is that different than just other types of stress. But what is really well understood is the impacts of chronic stress and developmental stress. And so what happens when an animal is experienced chronic stress or toxic developmental stress is that the stress system breaks. So normally, what happens is cortisol levels increase, and then there's an automatic shutoff valve that happens once they reach a certain level that brings them back down again, with toxic stress, what happens is, that system stops functioning correctly. And so there's not an automatic shut off of the stress response. And that leads to all kinds of dysregulation throughout the body, because the stress hormones impact many different systems in the body, because what they're doing is they're preparing the body for fight or flight. So that involves certain things like shutting down growth in a young animal, shutting down many aspects of immune function, shutting down reproduction, shutting down digestion, because if you're running for your life, you don't need to worry about digesting the last meal that you ate. In that moment, all of the body's energy is focused on surviving in the immediate future. And so that's great if you're just, you know, having a relatively short moment of acute stress. But if your GI system, if your reproductive system, if your immune system are shut down for long periods of time, as I'm sure you can imagine, that leads to all kinds of issues with the health of the animal. And then you also have like heightened fear and heightened arousal and startle response. And so that also can lead to all kinds of problems. And ultimately, it actually changes the brain.

Michael Shikashio: 8:48

So lots to unpack here. And what I was thinking about too, was also the sort of the three levels of stress you were mentioning, and let's take your classic, you know, aggressive behaviors, we might see it so dog barking and lunging at other dogs on a walk, we might argue that there could be different depending on the dog, they might be experiencing one of those three levels, right, depending on, I guess, the environmental factors as well as what how that dog perceives that particular antecedent, right? So can you unpack that a little further for me? So like, you know what, I guess I guess the bigger question is, in the vast majority of aggression cases, what kind of stress would you say is happening? Yeah. And

Unknown: 9:27

that can be tricky. It's really it's easy enough to talk about these three different categories, but then identifying what's actually happening in an individual can get very difficult. And so part of what's going on is that stress hormone levels, which is the primary way that stress is measured, they tell us how stressed the animal is. They don't tell us about the valence. And so the valence would I always call it the flavor of the emotion, right? Is it good or is it bad? Is it negative or positive? And so reactive? Dogs are a great example, right? If you're looking at a dog that is barking or lunging on leash, that information alone, right is not enough to tell us. I mean, maybe they're happy, like maybe they're barking or lunging because they're very excited about something that you know, they enjoy. Or maybe they're terrified, or maybe they're actually have some kind of animosity or dislike, you know, other dogs or whatever the trigger is. And so it gets difficult to figure out what's going on there. But I would say that probably in the vast majority of aggression cases, we're talking about some form of toxic stress. And it could be chronic stress. Or you could be dealing with the long term effects of stress during development. Obviously, as always, we have to treat each animal as an individual. So Are there cases where you might see aggression and a dog that's just showing tolerable stress? Yeah, probably. But that's probably not typically what we would be dealing with.

Michael Shikashio: 11:04

Yeah, I was thinking kind of along the lines of once a behavior, well, a couple of different circumstances, once a behavior becomes more practiced in sort of, I guess, what's the word I'm looking for operates in the sense of, you know, it's not quite as a extreme event for the dog anymore. In other words, it's somebody walking by the football, again, sticking their hand in there doing something silly that humans shouldn't do. But it's, we can argue that the distress level might change because of the dog sort of getting used to it for lack of a better word.

Unknown: 11:36

Yeah, so if the aggression is working, and this is, I think this is another important distinction, right? Because if a dog is continuing to aggress, and it's not decreasing their negative emotions, it's not working, right. And so that's a different issue than if they're displaying aggression in a functional way. And it's meeting their needs and decreasing their negative emotions, that's different. And that's actually an important distinction that I wasn't thinking of before. So in that case, yeah, they may not be in toxic stress, right? So and we have to remember that aggression is, in some cases, aggression is simply communication. And so they're just saying, I don't, you know, I don't want you to have my bone. And then if it works, and there's no major Fallout, then that probably is not toxic stress, maybe not even tolerable stress, depending on the situation. So what I'm thinking of is dogs that are being driven by some kind of anxiety or fear, or some other negative emotion that is causing them to behave in that way, those individuals are probably typically under toxic stress.

Michael Shikashio: 12:48

So as as trainers in our observations, what can we do to observe or measure if we were to measure or kind of assign a category of stress? Is there anything like we can observe physiologically or behaviorally?

Unknown: 13:02

Yeah. So I mean, obviously, body language is a big one. So just the typical, you know, read the body language, of course, is important. But there are a few things I look at. So first is gathering a history. Because when we think about stress, there's really two things we're talking about. We're talking about stress in the moments. But we're also talking about developmental stress. Developmental stress changes the brain, and it changes the stress response system, it can if it's severe enough. And so the dog may not be obviously in a stressful situation, but they could still be impacted by stress that they experienced years ago. So that's the first thing is you want to try and get if you can get a history, and doesn't tell us everything because again, every animal is an individual. But I'm going to think differently. I think about a case, if I know that a dog, for example, was born in a shelter, or was transferred all over the place, or, you know, had a really traumatic upsetting event when they were young, or were really, really sick. That to me suggests that there may be something going on in the building blocks of that dog that are going to be different than a dog that didn't have those experiences. Genetics matters, too. But if we're talking about stress, and that counts, prenatal stress counts, too, by the way. So if mom is stressed, that can also lead to issues. So that's one thing, if we're trying to assess stress in the moment, one thing you want to try and look at is how consistently does this animal appear to be distressed? So is are we talking about? A very specific fear that only happens periodically, or a very specific trigger that only happens periodically, or are we talking about some kind of anxiety or fear or behavior that is pervasive or happening multiple times a day, especially in multiple different contexts. If you're seeing that it's very likely, it's much more likely that that animal is under toxic stress, or chronic stress. Again, they're, in almost all cases, chronic stress is toxic, it's just very, very bad. The other thing that you can look at in the moment are things like recovery time, I think, is a really big one. So animals and some of this is individual differences. And we can talk about that too, when we talk about reactivity. But if an animal is taking a very long time to recover from an event, that to me is a sign that their stress levels are too high. And other things like decreased interest in activities, right. So decreased pleasure, decreased food motivation, decreased motivation for play, hyper vigilance, and startle response. Those are other signs. And again, sometimes it happens. And if it's only happening periodically, that's fine. But if you're seeing a dog that is consistently hyper vigilant, that suggests to me that they're under, probably, again, too much stress. So those are the big ones. And then repetitive behavior, which I don't think we necessarily deal with a whole lot like shelters would more. But personally, I haven't seen a ton of repetitive behavior related to aggression in households. I don't know what your experience is

Michael Shikashio: 16:38

not much. No, are very uncommon. Yeah.

Unknown: 16:41

But certainly in shelters, that would be a concerning sign. And then the other one is just is health issues, particularly unexplained health issues. And sometimes I think we missed the I mean, probably frequently, we missed these. But, you know, GI issues is a big sign of stress, skin issues, you know, things like that.

Michael Shikashio: 17:04

It's interesting, a lot of the things you were talking about is how I also would talk about him when we're talking about emotions, and how to measure or make an educated guess on what's happening from an emotional state as well. There's a lot of parallels there. But you also, you one of the most important things you mentioned to me was the recovery time, or what you might recall, referred to as resiliency. Am I correct there and saying, How long does it take the dog to come back to level of homeostasis? Or is that a broader topic?

Unknown: 17:31

Resilience is broader than that? Yeah.

Michael Shikashio: 17:33

Okay. So let's jump into that, you know, when we're measuring it, you know, and we're because that's an important aspect, especially for us as trainers, when we're crafting our behavior plans, if the dog is still at a high level of stress, or in a high state of stress, and we're not recognizing that we're trying to put the dog back into a training session, we run the risk, a lot of risks, right, we couldn't make things significantly worse for the dog. And we have to think just how much we can make things worse, you were just talking about the health aspects. And when we're looking at the least intrusive approaches to behavior change, think about what could be more intrusive than impacting the health of the animal rather stressful situations? So yeah, so So talk more about resiliency? And because I know you're going to be talking about that in your book as well. But what is something? How would you define that?

Unknown: 18:20

Yeah, so resiliency is is really the idea of how well does an animal cope with stress. And what that means is, what is the individual's ability to experience challenge and successfully overcome it? I think that's the easiest way to think about resiliency. And so there are a number of different things that are associated with resiliency. And I do use human examples a lot, because I think it helps us relate. And so an example of like, you know, if you think of, I mean, COVID is a great example. Right? So obviously, individuals are impacted differently by COVID. And some people that was because of external things that were going on that they were impacted more, but also has to do with how well are you coping? What are you doing to cope, you know, what is your Are you able to adjust to the change in circumstances. So one really big factor in resiliency is flexible thinking and behavior. So if an animal gets stuck, and again, I think of I always think of reactive dogs, when I think of this is if an animal leash reactive dogs, if an animal gets stuck in a particular behavior, and they just have to repeat that behavior over and over again, and that's their only their only perceived option. That tends to be associated with decreased resiliency because you can't adjust if that behavior we talked earlier about is it working? If that aggressive response is not working for the animal and they're repeating it anyway, that's a sign of lack of flexibility. See, and it means that it's going to be more difficult for them to cope with a challenging circumstance, because they only have one tool in their toolbox. And so anything that we can do to increase when we talk about teaching alternative behaviors, effectively, what you're doing is you're increasing behavioral flexibility, right. And if we're lucky, we're also increasing cognitive flexibility. So the animal starts to think through these solutions on their own instead of just being directed to it. So that's one big aspect of coping, then there's things like access to enrichment and exercise. Those are also big components of coping. And these are things we can control, right? There's other things we can't control. But the flexibility we have some degree of control of some of that has to do with genetics and early experience, but we can certainly impact exercise and enrichment. And then control itself is really important for coping, and we can talk about that more, if you want to dig into that. Predictability is another one. So stressors that are more predictable, are less stressful. And then social support. So having the ability, I have a dog that is noise sensitive. And because he's noise sensitive, he's has issues in the car, because the road noise will make him nervous. And so you know, he needs to sit in our lap. And then he feels much better. Well, I mean, I can't I can't say how much better he feels. But the fact that he continues to do it suggests to me that that is reinforcing for him. So that's, that's an example people have asked me what what does social support look like, I mean, it's that dog coming to you for comfort, and you being willing to give them comfort, play possibly, you know, obviously, we have to be careful with plays, so that you're not trying to force a dog that's really scared to play. But if the dog is open to play that, in my opinion, that could count as social support, sometimes other dogs to, you know, depending on how this dog feels about other dogs, but those are kind of those are the big, the big ones control predictability, exercise, enrichment, and social support. And then those things tend to combine to sort of influence flexibility. But there's other things that go into that, too.

Michael Shikashio: 22:22

So many important points to you know, especially the social support aspect is perfect example of you know, why it's okay to comfort a dog that might be showing signs of fear or anxiety or stress as we're talking about. And then the other really important aspect to me, too, is the agency or choice in the environment. And it's something I've actually shifted to significantly more in my setups over the years. So you know, with aggression cases, of course, you have to be safe, and you want to make everybody safe. But that comes at a cost because the more you know, restrictions you put on an animal's movement in the name of safety, the less choices and agency they have in their environment. So I've actually created a whole presentation on just staying safe and aggression cases, while giving that dog the most opportunity for freedom of movement, freedom of choice, so that they can, so we can do couple things there too, is that we are giving them more flight options, more choice, but we can reinforce many other alternative are other behaviors, and not necessarily focus on just one particular behavior. That is desirable. So when we talk about its Differential Reinforcement procedures, definitely der Rohe is something I've shifted more much more than, like, for instance, the DRI, so getting geeky there but the you know, getting basically saying you can go do whatever you else you want, except bite me in the face. Rather than I just want you to sit or one particular behavior, because that doesn't present a lot of choices and also doesn't serve the function of the behavior a lot of times So, yeah, it's it's definitely, you know, all these things that I think about it and the way you're talking about them. So you're gonna say something else?

Unknown: 23:59

Yeah, well, and I don't know, I don't work. I work with leash reactivity. I stopped working with all forms of what certain forms of aggression a couple years ago because I just wanted to specialize in certain things. But the other area, the other one of the other ways that I utilize control a lot in terms of being able to give the dog more control and more agency. And by the way, the difference between control and agency, usually, the way I tend to see it defined in the literature is that agency has to do more with the perception of control, which is actually that's the important thing. And then control is the objective measure of how much control do you actually have. So you can have an animal that has control but doesn't perceive control, that's going to be more stressful. It almost doesn't matter how much control they actually have. What really matters is how much control they perceive themselves to have. For one thing that I utilize a lot for fearful dogs that I think is really important for managing stress is doing a lot of shaping work with them. And I have And this may be I'm curious if you do this as well, because this is something I have really transitioned to naturally over the years is much more shaping and my training, you know, it was never forced based but I would lower a lot more. And and now I do a lot more shaping be cars have that additional control that the animal has an I actually find it's faster, but I think it has these other benefits as well. And I don't know, I don't know how much you use shaping in terms of working with aggressive dogs, but certainly for fearful dogs. It's huge

Michael Shikashio: 25:35

die 100% agree because the aspect of learning and can be, you know, so I want to make that distinction to for the listeners is that yes, you know, happy go lucky dog. There's not we're not worried about underlying, you know, emotions impacting the behavior or significant stressors, I'm not worried about learning. So learn can work perfectly fine for many excuse. You run a lot of risk with dogs that are fearful, especially with alert joining them into a an event in which our arrangement in which they're going to not be happy about. And that can obviously impact the behavior. So yes, giving again, going back to shaping is giving the dog more choice on what they're doing. So you've already done some great defining of terms already some of these buzzwords in the dog training community, we've defined stress, and choice and agency, which you did really well there. So I'd love to jump into the topic of emotions next in defining that term. But before we do that, we're gonna take a short break here, word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back. Hey, friends, it's me again. And I hope you are enjoying this episode, you may have figured out that something I deeply care about is helping dogs with aggression issues live less stressful, less confined, more enriched, and overall happy lives with their guardians. Aggression is so often misunderstood. And we can change that through continued education, like we received from so many of the wonderful guests on this podcast. In addition to the podcast, I have two other opportunities for anyone looking to learn more about helping dogs with aggression issues, which include the aggression in dogs master course, and the aggression in dogs conference. If you want to learn more about the most comprehensive course on aggression taught anywhere in the world, head on over to aggressive dog.com and click on the dog pros tab, and then the master course, the course gives you access to 23 modules on everything from assessment to safety, to medical issues to the behavior change plans we often use in a number of different cases, including lessons taught by Dr. Chris pockle, Kim Brophy and Jessica Dolce, you also receive access to a private Facebook group with over 1000 of your fellow colleagues, and dog pros all working with aggression cases. After you finish the course, you also gain access to private live group mentor sessions with me, where we practice working through a variety of cases together. And if you need to use we've got you covered. We are approved for just about every major training and behavior credential out there. This is truly the flagship course offered on aggression in dogs, and is perfect for pet pros that want to set themselves apart and take their knowledge and expertise to the next level or even for pet owners who are seeking information to help their own dog. And don't forget to join me for the third annual aggression and dogs conference either in person or online from Providence, Rhode Island on September 30 Through October 2 2022. This year's lineup includes many of the amazing guests you might have heard on the podcast including Suzanne Cole the air, Jen triack, Simone Mueller, Dr. Amber Batson Kim Brophy charisma noir, Laura monocle. tirelli, Dr. Simone Gadbois, and many more, head on over to aggressive dog.com and click on the conference tab to learn more about the exciting agenda on everything from advanced concepts and leash reactivity to using positive reinforcement to work with predatory behavior. And if you like to show up your support of the podcast this year, we teamed up again with the folks over at Wolf culture for some catchy limited run conference merchandise. Wolf culture is known for their witty, nerdy and no nonsense apparel that was created in 2019. To spread more awareness towards the use of humane training methods. Their apparel is here to help you start conversations, advocate for your animals and rep force retraining in a different way. So don't forget to get your conference gear. It leaves the site after 1231 2022 If you want 10% off your order, use the code bitey 10. At checkout that's bi t y one zero. All right, guys, I'm back here with the amazing Dr. Kristina Spalding. We are talking about all kinds of geeky things. Today we're talking about stress and agency and choice and now I'd love to jump into emotions because that's another hot topic I think and understanding since we're kind of concentrating on what's happening inside the door. Dog in these cases and behavior as well as aggression cases, emotions, of course, are very important. So let's define that first. Because in my research, my limited research on you know, I've, you have a lot of human models for emotions and categorizing emotions, but even there, they're all over the place. I mean, there's it depends on who you're looking at, or who you're talking to. And certainly with animal emotions, it's not as well researched as the human emotions, of course, but so I'd love to hear it get your take on how would you define emotion? And which model would you kind of lean towards if you were to, to lean towards any model?

Unknown: 30:37

Yeah, so I'll start with defining emotion, that's a lot easier. And then we can talk a little bit about the models. So I think emotion is really interesting, because I think a lot of people aren't familiar with how emotion is actually defined. So many people think of emotion as the feelings like being sad as an emotion, being angry as an emotion. That's actually not the full picture of emotion, though. Motion, I'm going to talk about what emotion is. And then I want to talk a little bit about what the function is because I think it's hard to fully understand what emotion is without understanding the function of it, or what we believe to be the function of it. Emotion is, it has three components, maybe four, depending on who you're reading, but there's a behavioral aspect. So that's body language, facial expression, you know, tone of voice or tone of vocalization, and we're talking about dogs, that's one, then you have the physiological component, which is essentially the stress that we were talking about earlier. Maybe physiology varies from emotion to emotion. But we really haven't been able to find consistent or convincing evidence of that. And then you have the subjective component, which is the feelings. And then some researchers talk about a fourth component, which is cognition. So I think everyone agrees that cognition plays an important role in emotion. But whether or not they consider it a fourth component or not, seems to vary. But definitely, body language and behavior actually should put those two things together, physiology, and then the subjective experience, when you

Michael Shikashio: 32:20

meant you mentioned cognition, can you give me an example of what what you're talking about there, if you were

Unknown: 32:25

observing, yeah, and this is one I have to do in human terms, because it's harder to understand it, we just don't have a lot of understanding of, of how that works in animals or as much. But a perfect example is, someone has an experience. And then they interpret it in a particular way. So you have an interaction with someone, and you leave that interaction, and you could think, Hey, I think that went pretty well, I think this person really liked me, and maybe they're going to be a new friend. And that is the cognitive aspect of it, and then you're going to maybe feel happy, you could leave that same interaction, and think I was so stupid, and I said, all these terrible things, and I, they probably hate me, and you could leave feeling very anxious. And so that's the cognitive aspect. It's that cognitive appraisal of interpreting the situation. So one of the things that they're starting to look at an animals that has a little bit to do with cognition and emotion is do animals have an optimistic or pessimistic bias. So if they tend to have an optimistic bias, they anticipate reinforcement in the face of uncertainty. If they have a more pessimistic bias, they tend to anticipate punishment in the face of uncertainty. That is a cognitive bias. But from research in humans, we understand that that tends to be linked to mood. So people that have a more optimistic bias tend to have more positive mood, and people who have a more negative bias or pessimistic bias tend to have more negative mood. Now, that's not the whole story. But that's sort of the the general idea. And so researchers are starting to look at this in animals in terms of ways of assessing well being is the assumption and this is I mean, it is somewhat backed up by research, but I would say at this point, it's still an assumption is that animals that are more pessimistic are also going to tend to have more negative mood, more negative emotions. So that's one way in animals that that cognitive aspect comes into play.

Michael Shikashio: 34:38

Okay, so I'm gonna unpack this a little further before asking you which model that you lean towards. Yeah. So in terms of the measurement, again, where you use that question a lot, and this is how do we measure these things? And you had mentioned the behavior which we can observe, when you see when you talk about the physiological or maybe the behavior, do you look at intensity as well? to like the intensity of the behaviors when we're using that as a measure of him?

Unknown: 35:03

Yes. So a lot of researchers add, there's sort of two dimensions. So one dimension is the valence that again, is the flavor, I call it the, you know, is it positive or negative? And then the other dimension is arousal. And that's the physiological arousal, arousal component. And how intense is that emotion? So are you feeling just mildly anxious, or are you feeling extremely anxious to the point of panic, and then anything in between, and so that, that is another component of emotion. And then you also have a distinction between emotions, which are short term, they're really quite brief, and mood, which lasts much longer. And so and just I want to get back because I said I was gonna mention it before is the function, what we believe the function of emotion is, is to motivate behavior. And to me, this makes, I think, emotions really interesting anyway. But if you keep that function in mind, I think that makes it much more interesting from a behavior change perspective is because it's hard to effectively change behavior, particularly in complex cases, without understanding the role that emotion is playing. Because the purpose of the whole purpose of emotion is to motivate behavior. So if the emotion is driving the behavior, and we're not dealing with the emotion, it's going to be very difficult to get real and lasting behavior change.

Michael Shikashio: 36:35

And you guys can't see me on the recording, but I am clapping out loud here because I 100% agree with us. So so important in our aggression cases, or any any behavior cases where again, the emotion is driving that behavior, as you mentioned. And so let's use an example here of before you give me again, the model that you would lean towards, it's the let's say, we have a dog on leash barking and lunging at other dogs. So from the behavioral aspect, we might see, like the behaviors we can recognize barking, lunging, growling, let's say body language would also indicate ears, flats, pulled back lip retraction, you know, the dog darting away, tail tucked. So we can we can reasonably assign fear as the emotion there. But then we could add in other measures the physiological you're talking about. So we might see maybe an elevated heart rate, pillow erection, for instance, things that the dog aren't necessarily controlling from a operant state. Or I should say, it's more just physiological signs, like you mentioned, the stress. The subjective aspect, though, of course, we can't ask the dogs how they're feeling, right. And so that's the one part that can be a little difficult to measure. So am I kind of getting along the lines of being accurate? And how I would assess an emotion without asking the dog actually how they're feeling?

Unknown: 37:54

Yeah, I mean, that is, that's a really good starting point. And that's often one of the only routes we have, I mean, it's really hard, it's really hard to accurately assess emotion. And sometimes in these reactive dogs, leash reactive dogs. I don't know, I mean, sometimes I just cannot tell until you get that arousal level down. And then you start seeing how they're responding when when that arousal level is less than tense, because think that sometimes the level of arousal can kind of muddy things up in terms of interpreting behavior and body language. But it is really hard to get at. One other way of thinking about it is, at least in terms of the valence of emotion, is that negatively valence emotions are punishers, they serve as punishers. And positively balanced emotions serve as reinforcers. So if a dog is approaching a particular stimulus, although this can get a little tricky, but in many cases, that can indicate that there's a more positively valence emotion at play. Whereas if they're avoiding the stimulus, and then there's a more negatively valence emotion in play, of course, the problem that you get is those dogs that are displaying aggressive behavior and approaching and that can get very difficult to determine and again, just, you know, in reactive dogs is, is the dog barking, lunging because it wants to go play? Or is it barking and lunging because it is fearful or some other reason? Either way, they're approaching that other dog. So that perspective can be helpful, but you should certainly never rely on just that as a way to assess the motion because there's a lot of different things going on. And it's hard. It's hard to get at a motion. If you're in a research setting. It's a little bit easier because you can do things like to assess optimism and pessimism, you can go in there, and you can test that in a research facility. But we're not. I mean, that's not what we're doing, we don't have the ability to do that kind of thing in most cases. And so it in many ways, it is still a black box, and we're not always able to get at it, I think what we can get at is a arousal level that we can see and measure much more accurately. And in my opinion, I think a arousal is almost more a more important factor than the valence of the emotion. And so I can use my dog as an example. I have an Australian Shepherd, he's probably, I mean, he's probably in like the top five of any dog I've ever known in terms of his arousal level, they are through the roof really, really, really high. And he does have some aggression issues. But I think for the most part, he really likes other people and dogs. And for the most part, I don't let him greet, not strangers, not like kids, you know, he has, he has a fairly wide social circle. But I believe that he is having positively valence emotions, for the most part, there might be some mixed emotions in there. But he becomes so highly aroused that I think he's not safe, you know, Hill, he jumps and he barks, his favorite way of greeting people when he is really highly aroused, is to he smiles. So he bears his teeth, which is a problem for someone that doesn't really understand dog behavior. And then he likes to leap up and bark and snap on their face, right. So I don't believe that there's any intentionality there to hurt somebody. And I think that is a very high risk situation. And so we were very, very careful about how and who we introduced him to. And so I think that's a great example of how, in many ways, not in all cases, because it's going to depend on the specifics. But I think in many cases, focusing on arousal levels, at least is the first thing to do. And then if we can get the arousal levels down, because remember, a arousal is connected to stress. And when animals are in high states of stress, it's very difficult to change behavior, then we can start worrying more about the valence, and a lot of that goes hand in hand. Like, if you're bringing arousal down, you're probably also working on the balance, but it is it's difficult to get at emotion, I think it's important, but we have limits into how well we can understand what a dog is feeling. Okay, so

Michael Shikashio: 42:39

now the model that you would lean towards

Unknown: 42:43

you Yeah. The models are really interesting. So, emotion research right now is very messy. You have a lot of researchers looking at the same set of data and coming up with different interpretations. And I'm kind of in a position right now, honestly, where I'll read one paper, and I think, oh, yeah, that's it. That's definitely what's going on. It makes so much sense. I'm totally on board with this explanation. And then I will read a paper that has an opposing argument and perspective. And I'll think, oh, no, wait, this one's definitely the correct one. This one's definitely right. And so I think we just don't know, there are different models out there. And we won't have time to get into the details of the different models. And I don't know which one is right. I will say that I think that to some degree, it comes. It's just semantics, like, it gets very, very, very technical. There are several researchers that sort of argue that there's basic emotions. So this is Panksepp and Ekman are the two kind of biggest names. And that is the older classic, dominant view of emotion, then you have a couple newer people that are coming in and saying it's kind of more, and I don't have a super strong understanding of the newer theories. So I may get this a little bit wrong, but it's it's kind of more of like a cognitive construct where there's not necessarily basic emotions, but has more to do with response to the environments very difficult to explain without spending an hour getting really technical. But their argument is that there aren't basic emotions and that the animal sort of responding to the situation and assigning an emotion to it. Not intentionally, but that the brain is constructing an emotion based on the animals environment. And I don't know I don't know which one is right. I mean, I don't think anyone knows

Michael Shikashio: 44:52

you're gonna make kind of thing right? Yeah,

Unknown: 44:54

it's, yeah, it's, I don't know. I just teach this in my emotion course. Which will I will have already taught by the time this podcast comes out. But I do think it's important to understand the distinction between the different models, because each one of them has something to add and to offer. But I don't know that for us, deciding on a model is critical. Right to have that emotion research to be helpful. I mean, obviously, I would love to know which one is right. Ultimately, I hope that we get there. But right now, I think we just don't know when the scientists don't know. There's a lot of discourse. There's a lot of conversation right now. And if they don't know, then, I mean,

Michael Shikashio: 45:33

yeah, that's my ask you as the scientist.

Unknown: 45:36

So what? Yeah, I know. But I'm not in there, like in the trenches doing the detailed research. And I don't know, I think they the two main models, the constructivist theory of emotion and the sort of basic emotion, I think they both have strengths. I will say, coming from an evolutionary background, I have an extremely hard time believing that there's not some kind of brain derived, naturally selected for system in the brain that drives emotion. So if you forced me to pick, I would go with the more neurobiological explanations. But I am open minded to other options as Yeah,

Michael Shikashio: 46:21

yeah, you had mentioned like Paul Ekman and Jaak Panksepp, the two models that I follow a lot and apply to, I think they're just easier for me to wrap my head around.

Unknown: 46:30

They're definitely easier to understand.

Michael Shikashio: 46:33

Yeah, that's, you know, when I talk about, you know, emotions and dogs, and its relation, especially to aggression cases, you know, those models are definitely, it makes sense, you know, when you're looking at the aggression cases.

Unknown: 46:46

And I think there's a lot of truth to them. I mean, my guess is that this newer constructionist theory, will modify those, and we'll add to them and make them stronger, but I doubt that you're going to see those theories totally thrown out, because there's a lot of evidence to support them.

Michael Shikashio: 47:03

So if we get all the scientists into a room, and we were to say, let's help these dog trainers out and give them a way to measure emotions, more rigorously. So is there. Have you seen anything where people are using looking at the heart rate monitors, the cortisol level measurements and things in, in your research or your come across your desk?

Unknown: 47:24

I think if you got off the side, you're gonna hate this answer. But I think if you got all the scientists in a room, and asked them that question that they would say it's complicated. And because, again, we can measure a arousal, which is stress is a way in a sense of measuring arousal. I mean, technically, when we're talking about arousal, we're really talking about sympathetic arousal, which we can also measure using heart rate monitors, and, you know, respiration and things like that. But they've done, there's actually been quite a bit of research on trying to get at distress in dogs, primarily in shelter dogs, but there's also been a little bit of research in in working dogs and therapy dogs. And the most consistent results is that we can't measure that yet. We can measure arousal, you can measure stress. But that is not enough for us to understand the valence, you know, is this dog happy or not happy? Or, you know, what's the well being? And it's a problem. I mean, it's, it's really a problem, the closest thing that we have is these cognitive bias tests. And the way that they test this is they train the animal on a particular signal. So it's like a go no go test, essentially. So one of the ways that you'll see this setup is that they teach the dog that if the bowl is in the left side of the room, there's always food in it. And so every time the dog goes to that bowl, they will get food. And then they'll have another bowl on the right side of the room that never has food in it. And they repeat that until the dog learns like, they won't even bother going to the one on the right, because they know there's no food, they'll go to the one on the left. And then they'll place a bowl in the middle of the room. And they'll see what the dog does. So the more optimistic dogs that anticipate reinforcement, are going to approach that bowl probably more quickly. Whereas the more pessimistic dogs are going to approach it more slowly, because they're not anticipating reinforcement. The problem with that test, it works fine. It works great in a research setting where you have a group of dogs that have received two different treatments and you can compare between, you know, group A and group B, and which one seems more optimistic, you know, these dogs got more enrichment? Do they seem more optimistic? Typically, the answer is yes. But when you're looking at An individual dog. We don't have enough data, like it's just there's too many factors, right? So you can't take an individual dog and run that test and say, Oh, my dog is optimistic, because what are you comparing it to, you might be able to get some idea. But it's not going to be like, you know, if it's faster than 30 seconds, or faster than five seconds, then they're optimistic. But if it's slower, they're pessimistic. We don't have that kind of benchmark. So it's, it's a problem. I don't I wish I could give you a nice, clear, easy answer to this question. But we just don't have it. I mean, we can come back to body language, you can come back to know all those things we talked before about how do you assess toxic stress? That's very similar to looking at negative versus positive emotion, right? Like, you know, how much does the animals seem to enjoy their typical life? How frequently? Are they engaging in pleasurable activities? Do they want to engage in those pleasurable activities? What is their recovery time is all of those same questions, I would pose for emotion as I would stress because stress is very closely tied to emotion.

Michael Shikashio: 51:08

Yeah, you're gonna hate this response. But it's, it's almost like intuition. Like, you've got to be intuitive. No, I don't hate it. I mean, it's, you know, your own dog sometimes. Yeah,

Unknown: 51:17

we don't have a lot better than that. Right now. It is intuition. I think if you I mean, some dogs, it's very obvious, right? I mean, sometimes it's very obvious that they're happy dogs, and other dogs, it's very obvious that they're extremely unhappy. But a lot of dogs are in between. And it's hard. I mean, it's, I look at my own dogs sometimes, like, Are my dogs happy enough? You know, my husband asked her that question sometimes, and it drives me. But yeah, I mean, I think when we talk about science, I, I am really hardcore into science. I'm about as geeky as you can get. And I do think there is also an art to it. And I think what you're getting into, at least right now, I mean, hopefully will change as we get more and more research, but at least right now, that judgment, is more of an art, I think is looking at that dog in the moment and making a judgment call is this dog, who cares? This dog not okay. And again, there's going to be times where it's really obvious. And there's going to be a lot of times where it's not. And because I understand the impacts of stress so well, I will always, always err on the side of caution, because you're very unlikely to do harm. If you stay in the same place for too long, or at least the harm you do will be very minimal. But if you push too hard, you could do serious damage. Right? So yeah, I wish we had better answers to these questions, but we don't yet

Michael Shikashio: 52:57

on that topic of harm. And you know, these Well, again, going back to the toxic states of stress. So you mentioned the connectedness of trauma. Can we talk about that in a little bit too, because I think it really impacts again, aggression cases, especially right now with with, you know, the number of dogs we're seeing that are experienced trauma coming from difference scenarios or environments. Yeah, what's the connectedness there? Can you explain that further stress and trauma?

Unknown: 53:22

Yeah, so this is gonna get us into the brain. And so trauma is a form of stress. Trauma is just really, really intense acute stress, or it can be chronic too. But it's basically overwhelming stress is I mean, that's how I think of it. And one of the reasons I think that trauma is just a form of stress, is because if you look at the impact if you look at the impacts of trauma, and chronic stress on the brain that are basically the same, at least as far as we understand them. So there's three primary brain areas that are impacted. And some of this is biased by what we study, but there's three really clear standouts, and if anyone knows anything about the brain and behavior, these three will not be surprising. So the first one is the amygdala, which I think everyone is aware of. So the amygdala plays a major role in fear. It is not the only thing that it does. But it is one of the major things that it does. And so animals that have experienced Well, individuals that have PTSD, so we have to make a distinction here, because you can experience a potentially traumatic event, which is typically defined as something that is like life or limb threatening, like something that's very, has the power to do serious damage. Some individuals will come out of that fine in the long run. Most individuals are impacted in the short run. And that actually looks the same. It's difficult to distinguish between who is going to develop PTSD and who is not. But some of them will develop PTSD. So when I'm talking about trauma Ma, I'm talking about trauma that ends up causing long term effects. And, again, we could there's a whole side conversation here about PTSD and non human animals. What I will say is that I will not say that animals develop PTSD in the same way that people do, because they're not people. And we have ample evidence that many of the symptoms of trauma are the same in at least rodents, because that's where they're doing, you know, the studies, many of the symptoms are the same. So they have been able to replicate a large proportion of the symptoms in human PTSD in animal models. And so it's probably not the exact same thing. But there are many similarities. And we know that it impacts the brain in similar ways, because again, these studies are being done on these rodents. So animals that have gone through trauma, meaning have developed long term symptoms of a traumatic experience, have amygdala as that are hyperactive, so they respond much more strongly to fear of producing or potential threats, stimuli that are potentially threatening than other animals do. So they have this sort of hyperactive amygdala and even in, in cases of developmental stress, so animals that are experiencing stress, toxic stress during development, they often will even have like larger amygdalas. So that's one brain areas, this threat, fear system, then you have the hippocampus. And the hippocampus is involved. A lot of people think of the hippocampus as being involved in episodic memory, which is like stories. But it also plays a role in context. So I always use the vet clinic example, it's the easiest, if you have a dog that goes to the vet clinic, and they have something scary done to them there. There's going to be all kinds of stimuli associated with that specific thing, you know, so the syringe, the white coat of the person, but it also happens within a certain context. And it turns out that, that that fear of the context of that low physical location is stored in a different brain area than all of those other stimuli. So what happens in trauma is that the hippocampus is damaged, and it's not working as well. And so what we think is going on is one of the things that we think is going on is that it loses its ability to identify the context of the trauma. And now you have an animal that can't distinguish between safe and unsafe. So this bad thing happened at the park where I got attacked by another dog. So the normal thing that we would expect to happen is that there'll be a strong fear response in that context. But what happens with long term trauma is that that fear response starts to bleed into all of these other areas. And that's most likely because of damage that has happened to the hippocampus. The other thing that the hippocampus does, is it plays an important role in extinction. And it also seems like extinction is broken in individuals with PTSD. And so it's like, if you put people and other animals through an extinction procedure, and when we're talking about extinction, we're talking about classical extinctions, we're talking about decreasing a fear response, not, you know, not reinforcing a set. So if you put them through a fear extinction process, individuals with PTSD or you know, long lasting trauma effects, it just doesn't stick, like you, maybe you'll get a temporary reduction in that fear response, but then it will come back. And that's, again, probably well, it's probably partly because of what's going on in the hippocampus. And then the third brain area that's involved is the prefrontal cortex, which plays a really important role in a lot of things, emotional regulation, and impulse control, and even the regulation of attention, for example. And so this is the part of the brain. I would call it like the thinking part of the brain. And so one of the jobs of the prefrontal cortex is to inhibit really strong emotions to inhibit behavioral impulses, and is also really important for flexible thinking and behavior. And in developmental stress, toxic stress trauma, the prefrontal cortex is damaged and it's not working correctly. So you end up with animals that have an overactive fear center. They have this issue with extinction doesn't work very well, and they can't distinguish between safe and unsafe. And their ability to limit the emotions and the impulses that are generated by those things. is damaged and it's it's like a perfect storm. I mean, it's really I think once you understand the neurobiology, it makes it really, really clear why it can be so difficult to address these issues.

Michael Shikashio: 1:00:08

That is the most excellent response to that question I've ever heard, because I've heard a lot of people talk about it, but you explained it so so well, and it makes me want to segue into something else we were going to talk about was, which was impulse control? Yeah. Because it sounds like a lot of what's happening there in the brain is going to have an impact. And what another buzz term we're going to define here is impulse control. So kind of piggybacking off Richard was talking about, can you define impulse control? And actually how it relates to what you're talking about?

Unknown: 1:00:38

Yes. So impulse control, has two components to it. So the first component is what I think most people think of, which is poor response inhibition. So that basically means that you engage in behaviors, to put it very, very simply, right, so the animal has a hard time inhibiting its behavior. The other aspect of impulse control, which I think is really interesting is impulsive, individuals have an aversion to delayed reward. So what that means is that they will go for what some of the researchers call smaller, sooner rewards more than later, larger rewards. And I think that this also drives a lot of that frustration, right. So impulsive, individuals tend to get very frustrated when they don't get access to reinforcement. And that can also drive aggression. So that's frustration. So that's one aspect of it. But then if you have an animal that is having strong emotions, and on top of that they have poor impulse control. Remember that emotion motivates behavior. So if you're having strong emotions, if you haven't strong negative emotions, or positive emotions, and arousal levels high, so they're very intense, then that is going to motivate behavior. And the animal is going to have a hard time inhibiting that behavior, even if it's inappropriate or maladaptive. And then again, if you think animals that are under stress, animals that have a history of stress, that have a history of trauma, are going to have a more difficult time with that impulse control. And then if they're also experiencing higher levels of fear and anxiety, you're going to get a lot of impulsive behavior, which is going to make that behavior change even more difficult. And I'd like to bring one other thing in here if I can, which is this emotional reactivity component. So emotional reactivity is one of those things that has many different definitions, both in the dog training world and in the scientific literature. So when we're talking about reactivity, sometimes we're talking about dogs barking and lunging unleash, some people talk about reactivity more as emotional reactivity, when you have a dog that's reacting to a lot of triggers in general, there's just different ways of thinking about it. And to my great frustration, you see this in the literature as well. But I do think I feel like I'm starting to see some convergence in the literature on this concept of effective style that's effective with an A. and effective is another word of talking about emotion. So effective styles refer to how an animal responds emotionally. And it's, it has to do with individual variability in emotional responsiveness. And so there's three components to emotional reactivity using this perspective. The first one is how easily are those emotions triggered? So sort of how reactive or how responsive is the animal to emotions? The second one is how fast do those emotions rise? And what is the ceiling? So this has to do with intensity? And then the last one is duration is how long do those emotions last? How long does it take the animal to return to baseline? So before I was talking about stress, and I said that stress plays into this, but there also seems to be an underlying just individual variability in this that is separate from stress. And so some animals seem to be naturally more emotionally reactive, which means they have lower thresholds, stronger responses, and a longer duration. And those individuals then are prone to more behavior issues, right? Because, I mean, most a lot of this research is in people, but there's no evidence at all that it doesn't apply to other species, especially mammals. And in fact, all the studies on this that have been done in other species, replicate the results in people so I have no Oh, no reason to believe that a lot of this isn't true. And dogs and the stress research in particular has been done on all kinds of species and replicated. But if you have a dog that tends to trigger faster, has more intense emotions, and they last longer, you also have an animal now that tends to be in, in a negative emotional state more frequently. And that is going to lead to increased emotional reactivity to because they're stressed a lot of the time. And interestingly, that we haven't figured this out yet. But it's possible that those emotionally reactive dogs, that it may not be just limited to negative emotions, and that some of these guys may also have stronger positive emotions. So I was talking about my guy before Finn, the Australian Shepherd 100%, this is true for him, he has some very scary, impulsive aggression tendencies where he can become very, very aggressive with other dogs. And he's like, the happiest dog, I mean, I've never seen a dog gets as excited about life as he does. But for him, and it's not gonna be this way for every dog that has aggression. But for him, I think his primary issue is that he has incredibly intense emotions. So when he's happy, he's really, really happy. But when he's frustrated, he's really, really frustrated. And if you look at individuals that have that profile, it requires an intense amount of coping skills, to be able to deal with that and kind of live a successful life. And I suspect that we see a fair amount of dogs with aggression issues that have that kind of profile. And then if you throw stress, chronic developmental stress trauma on top of it, or bad genetics, then you really can get a dog that's struggling a lot.

Michael Shikashio: 1:06:55

It's an amazing way to tie everything together to talking about Finn. And it sets kind of a good picture of, you know, everything we were talking about. So, Christina, I can't thank you enough for helping us define all of these different labels that do get thrown around a lot in the dog training world. And where can people find you now? What are you up to? I know, you've got the book coming out. So talk about that, and your website as well.

Unknown: 1:07:19

Yeah, so this journey kind of started for me, because I started to get interested in stress. And because I was working with dogs that were coming to me, kind of late stages of behavior issues, and had experienced a lot of stress early on. And I knew from graduate school, that stress could be very, very damaging. And I felt like I just wasn't seeing a lot of that information out there. And when we talk about stress and dogs and why it's a problem, but we don't go really, really in depth into it. And this is a topic I was really interested in, I naively decided to write a book. And I think it took me I haven't gone back and looked, but I'm pretty sure it took me about three years, and it's very heavily researched. And is you know, pulls from a lot of these different areas that we've been talking about. And so I talk about the impacts of stress on learning the impacts of stress during development, the impacts of stress on fear and anxiety. And then we spend quite a bit of time also talking about how it impacts the brain. And then that resilience components and how can you build resilience? And what are the different factors that affect resilience? And how can you help animals cope with stress. And all of this, of course, really comes down to well being. And in my opinion, if we could improve Well, being in our dogs, a lot of these issues of aggression would go away. And so we really need both sides, right? We need people, of course, to be out there working with dogs that are already having aggression issues. And I think we also really need people that are working on that prevention side of things. So that's what the book is all about. And then I also have and probably, well, the book, hopefully it will be out by the time this podcast is out. It's called the stress factor in dogs. And then I also teach courses through my website, which is science matters llc.com. So there's two there kind of two things that I do. There's I have a membership program called research bites. And once a month, I present a webinar on a recent dog training or behavior study. And I kind of go through it and I break it down. So it's understandable to everyone and I present it live. So people come you can ask questions, we have discussion about it. And then part of that I also have a podcast that's part of that some of that podcast is available for free but the research bytes members get more of it. And then we also do little like coffee break discussions where we all get together and just talk about out, we just geek out about dog behavior science. And then. So that's one thing. So that's a subscription membership program. That's a little bit sort of lower price point. And then what I'm working on right now that I hope will be coming out this fall is a much more in depth course, that talks about really all the things we talked about today, and how everything is interconnected, and how stress impacts behavior and how emotion impacts behavior, and cognition and behavior, and how we can combine all of these things to working with dogs, and treating behavior problems and promoting well being really looking at this as a really, in depth, holistic approach to behavior. So that is in the works and should be available this fall.

Michael Shikashio: 1:10:54

I am so looking forward to see more about that as well and the book and I'll be sure to link to all that stuff in the show notes, which you guys can find more about, Christina, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope you can come back in the future.

Unknown: 1:11:08

Thank you. I really enjoyed this as well and I'd be happy to come back.

Michael Shikashio: 1:11:13

I hope you enjoyed this amazing conversation with the always insightful Christina Spalding. If you liked the show, please don't forget to subscribe, share and give us a rating and hop on over to aggressive dog.com For more information about helping dogs with aggression. From the aggression in dogs master course two webinars from world renowned experts, and even an annual conference. We have options for both pet pros and pet owners to learn more about aggression in dogs