Exploring the Biology of Dog Aggression with Dr. Tim Lewis

Prepare to embark on an intriguing voyage through the biology of canine aggression, guided by the expertise of Dr. Tim Lewis. Our enlightening dialogue unravels the fascinating interplay of biology and aggression in dogs, offering you a fresh perspective on canine behavior and its management. From the realm of genetics and epigenetics to the tangible impact of environmental influences, we unpack the nuances of dog aggression. We also navigate through the labyrinth of the limbic system, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex, demystifying how they collaborate to shape behavior. 

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About Dr. Lewis:

Tim Lewis has a PhD in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studies a wide range of animals from turtles to domestic dogs. His classes include the biology of dogs, ecology, neuroecology, natural history, and evolution. He is a Professor of Biology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. An award-winning teacher, he gives talks about dog biology around the country. He recently published Dog Biology: From gonads, through guts, to ganglia, available in English and German. Two border collies allow him to cohabitate in their home.

Tim's Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Dogs-Gonads-Through-Ganglia-ebook/dp/B08LQW6PGN

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

We've heard from many different scientists and brilliant people from academia in this podcast, and I couldn't be more excited to announce my very special guest for this episode, dr Tim Lewis. Tim and I chat about aggression from the lens of biology and we take a deep dive into biological influences for aggression and why they matter in our work to understand and help dogs with aggression issues. Tim has a PhD in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin Madison and studies a wide range of animals, from turtles to domestic dogs. His classes include the biology of dogs, ecology, neuroecology, natural history and evolution. He's a professor of biology at the University of St Thomas in St Paul. An award-winning teacher, he gives talks about dog biology around the country. He recently published dog biology from gonads through guts to ganglia, available in English and German. Two border collies allow him to cohabitate in their home And if you are enjoying the bitey end of the dog, you can support the podcast by going to aggressivedogcom, where there are a variety of resources to learn more about helping dogs with aggression issues, including the upcoming aggression and dogs conference happening from September 29 through October 1, 2023 in Chicago, illinois, with both in-person and online options.

Speaker 1: 1:17

You can also learn more about the aggression and dogs master course, which is the most comprehensive course available anywhere in the world for learning how to help dogs with aggression issues. Hey everyone, welcome to the bitey end of the dog. I've got Tim Lewis here this week. Tim has a PhD in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin, madison and studies a wide range of animals, from turtles to domestic dogs. His classes include the biology of dogs, ecology, neuroecology, natural history and evolution. He's a professor of biology at the University of St Thomas in St Paul. An award-winning teacher, he gives talks about dog biology all around the country. He recently published dog biology from gonads through guts to ganglia, available in English and German, and he lives with two border collies that allow him to cohabitate in their home. Tim and I also spoke at the APDT conference together, so I'm very excited to jump in this conversation because we were talking about so I'm looking at the inside and outside of a dog from a couple different lenses that we're coming through. So welcome to the show, tim.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Mike, thanks so much. I'm thrilled to be here. I love working with you when we were at APDT And I love how you regularly incorporate science as a background and a lens to help guide behavior.

Speaker 1: 2:36

I appreciate it. It was a great presentation, that we had to get a lot of fun and we got to kind of dissect what's happening from an aggression standpoint, so we can kind of dive into that during this show as well. So let's jump right into the topic of biology, because anybody who's listened to the show know I like to approach looking at behavior through different lenses, and I don't think we've had a biologist actually on the show. We've had lots of different other sciences and some that are close cousins to biology. But why do you think biology is so important in understanding especially aggression in dogs and animals as well?

Speaker 2: 3:07

Yeah, it's probably the most fundamental question and the reason I wrote the book that I did. When you are looking at a behavior aggression or feeding or any behavior that you're looking at you're seeing a complex result that has been programmed by genetics over millions of years, been impacted over the last several generations by epigenetics and environmental factors, is directly impacted by what the dogs in this case dogs' background is and training, but also what's been happening in the last 24 hours and what its hormone situation is, as well as what it sees at the time And it's so complex. But that background biology sets parameters and limits on what we do, gives us clues as to what tools to solve problems and, i think, helps us know when a situation is significant or not significant. So I think obviously I'm biased, but I think it's the most important lens to have when you're living with dogs or working with dogs.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Yeah, yeah, and I'm already loving how this is going to come out, because you're speaking like a teacher and I'm just sitting there absorbing the information. So, and that's why I love doing these podcasts, because I also learned so much. So let's dive into the brain now and the mechanisms happening there, because obviously that's an important part And we've talked about it a little bit from a neuroscience standpoint and other shows, but talk us through some of what's happening from a biological standpoint in a dog's brain.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Sure. So I have to put a caveat here that neuroscience as a field is relatively new, came about in my career. The tools that make neuroscience work are new and ever-growing, and the generalizations I'm going to make will probably some of them be proved wrong even as we go along, because it's so complex. And to give you a sense of that, this lump of matter inside our skulls takes in information from the outside world, has to process it through these neural networks that grow and change over time, and even between the nerves in that brain there are chemical transmitters, neurotransmitters that affect how the signal is propagated from one neuron to the next, and you might have a thousand connections on a neuron and then you've got on the order of more connections, synapses, than there are stars in the known universe, building this complex pattern. So we talk about how the brain functions and I'm going to make generalizations. We think about the brain as parts being specific locations, but often it's a network inside. The way I like to think about it is the postal system. in your city You've got post offices, but you've got delivery people. You've got gas stations for the delivery vehicles. You've got paper makers, manufacturers for the paper that's going to go into the. this network is all connected and your brain is the same way. So your brain is taking in sensory information. It's taking it in through the eyes, the ears, the nose for a dog primarily one of the primary inputs for a dog and putting those into patterns and doing pattern recognition and looking at how this fits the world around them. And it's brought a sense.

Speaker 2: 6:24

and I don't know if you want me to kind of I want to for what we're going to do later. I just want to discreet two big systems and not get into all the parts. One of the systems would be the limbic system and tied to that are two structures in the brain, the amygdala, that are kind of the security system for the brain, for the body. They're constantly checking inputs, saying whoa, whoa, times out, this one is significant, deal with it. So that's your security system. And then you've got your prefrontal cortex and the cerebrum in general doing executive functions. I think of it like the administration. So my university, we have administrators, we have a security team, we have a whole lot of other stuff going on, teachers and all that kind of stuff For aggression. we're going to really want to be thinking about that limbic system, which is the security system, particularly the amygdala, being the guards at the gate And the prefrontal cortex, largely as the executive functions doing administrative work, planning ahead, doing budgets, all that kind of work.

Speaker 1: 7:23

I would love to weave a little bit of an example in here for the listeners to kind of visualize everything we're going to be talking about. So, since you have border collies, let's use a border collie And we've got a dog. let's say the border collie has issues with other dogs and we go out for walks. So what's happening first there? So they're seeing the other dog, maybe from a visual, maybe the other dog's too far away for that all factory system to be in play at first, but they see the other dog and we can argue that border collies are pretty vigilant about seeing things moving. And then so what part of the brain first reacts if that dog has issues with other dogs?

Speaker 2: 7:56

Sure, so we're talking about my dog, blizzard.

Speaker 2: 7:58

You just dredged him up, i missed that boy And he was a border collie with issues And when Blizzard would be out on a walk with me he was more vigilant in his head movements to be scoping in the world, so visual In his visual field, taking in information through his retina. Going back to the visual cortex in the brain, pattern recognition, do I see any shape that looks like a dog? Do I see any shape that looks like a person? That shape looks like a tree, we don't worry about it. That shape looks like the road, I don't worry about it. But as soon as a pattern would fit the dog, now the brain starts processing. Is that a close thread? Is that a far away thread? Is the dog pointed to me Again that pattern recognition and visual field and as soon as it hits any of the criteria for the amygdala, like it's too close, it's threatening me, it's doing standard threat prostrates for Blizzard.

Speaker 2: 8:51

It didn't need for the other dog to give you anything standard, it just needed the other dog to exist. So as soon as his pattern recognition was dog, his amygdala was like times out. And what that does when you get the amygdala involved, it short circuits the signals away from the prefrontal cortex, trace the administration out. So beforehand the administrative functions are going. Eh, road trees, who cares a bird may be interesting, as soon as it's a dog and when Blizzard would see that dog, that would be a threat. Amygdala kicks in, prefrontal cortex is out of it and he goes into a more hard patterned response that's built into the deep memories in his brain and what we often call muscle memory in the cerebellum takes over and he gives some standard responses, in his case, moving right into aggressive posturing.

Speaker 1: 9:41

And that sends signals to the rest of the body. Right, and so what is happening there? You know we hear about parasympathetic, sympathetic. Can you dive into that?

Speaker 2: 9:48

Sure. So in addition to your brain, your brain is connected to the world. Right, you see your eyes, you know? okay, there's a connection to my brain, but scattered throughout your body you've got nerves all over and, broadly writ, there's a system to kind of be a gas pedal, speed things up to arouse. That's the sympathetic nervous system. Connects to most parts of the internal organs and the brain and you have a parasympathetic. That's like the brakes calming things down.

Speaker 2: 10:18

So, as Blizzard is seeing these other dogs, it is kicking in his sympathetic nervous system, which does a mosaic of things. It slows down digestion, it focuses the brain on what's immediately in front and the brain starts processing are we going to fight, are we going to flee? But that system is not just nervous, it also kicks out a lot of chemicals, hormones that come from different parts of the body. For example, once that sympathetic system is stimulated, you've got the adrenal glands get that sit on top of the kidneys and nothing much really to do with the kidneys, but they're sitting right there. They're kicking out chemicals like cortisol, like adrenaline, that just flood the whole body. So you get a whole body wide response. So we've got the nervous system interacting with this hormone system that's just cascading and having physiological effects throughout the body.

Speaker 1: 11:14

And there you have it, folks. That's one of the reasons why a lot of dogs don't take food when they usually would in a particular situation. Right, It's because of the change in what's happening in the systems.

Speaker 2: 11:24

Right, and it changes completely when you flood with those hormones.

Speaker 1: 11:29

And can you talk more about? so we have dogs that might see something and perceive a threat differently than humans. So why is that? Why are sometimes is there something happening different between the human brain and kind of assessing a threat versus a dog's brain?

Speaker 2: 11:43

Okay, how many hours do you want me to go on that one? So, at its most basic, i would want people to understand that all mammals have very similar brains And they're very similar in the parts the stem that runs the heartbeat and the breathing, the limbic system which runs emotions. The more research data we get on things as diverse as rats and dogs, people, we see that they're all pretty well laid out the same. So this emotional part, the most evolutionary old part, is probably pretty similar. We have every reason to think your dog is feeling the same suite of emotions you can feel. Broadly read. What's different in the dog's brain is that cortex, that layer that does associative processing, is much smaller, orders of magnitude, smaller than what our cortex does. So, for example, mike, if I say think of bread, you can go to like I don't know what's your favorite kind of bread.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Something crusty, something crusty, okay, tell me about a place you've had crusty bread, panera, panera. Okay, can you picture a Panera? Absolutely, can you hear it and smell it?

Speaker 1: 12:57

Can you?

Speaker 2: 12:58

see anybody else in that Panera.

Speaker 1: 13:00

In your mind's eye.

Speaker 2: 13:01

Yeah, okay, you just did multiple layers of association on and on deeper. So when you smell that crusty bread somewhere in the part of your brain, the Panera is there. but maybe your mom baked you bread at some point, maybe somebody threw a loafer bread at you at some point. you're doing all those complex associations. Your dog doesn't have anywhere near the ability to do that. those complex associations. They're probably doing much simpler Bread like bread. Hmm, i'm going to go eat that. It's much more immediate. Same kind of emotional response, but without the associated 17 layers of memory going 72 steps out that we have So much more immediate time and effect.

Speaker 1: 13:46

So would I be correct in kind of saying that it's just they have a hard time rationalizing in a sense? I guess that's maybe the wrong choice to word. But let me give you an example, maybe that'll be more helpful. Like a dog that's on an invisible fence, collar right, and sees the male carrier or something that elicits them to go towards that particular person or animal, whatever it is, and then they receive the stimulus of the beep or the shock from the collar. But then they, whatever they're looking at, could be a garbage can or a bush or something like that, and then suddenly the dog has paired that association, whereas humans could be kind of rational about that. That's not the bush, it's actually the collar, because I'm walking towards it. But dogs quickly in many cases latch on to some other part of the environment. So makes sense.

Speaker 2: 14:29

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. We do the same thing. A really interesting study done on learning that if you, for example, suck on peppermint candy while you're learning you the human, not the dog you will associate some of your memories with that peppermint candy And later, if you were, say, taking an exam, if you were sucking on peppermint candy, you would make some associations of the things you learned to the candy, which has no relevance whatsoever. We tag things in our own brain in odd ways as well. But what you said, the rationalization part, that's what's different. We can relearn it, we can go no, that's not relevant, i don't need the peppermint candy. I can associate it with something else And for a dog it's often hard to unlearn that.

Speaker 2: 15:14

So I had a dog, gromit, who, walking in or playing in our backyard, saw a squirrel come down a tree And that squirrel taunted gromit for two or three minutes, just out of reach of gromit. At that time he was maybe three years old until he moved away from that house. When we moved him away from the house, when we moved Eight years later, he couldn't pass that tree without stopping and looking for that squirrel. It never extinguished the association. So, as you say, they're often they make an association and it becomes really hard to get them off that association because their brain doesn't have 17 layers going on of the associations. It's just last time or a very significant time, and evolutionarily that makes a lot of sense. If something is significant enough to get written into your brain and you're living out there in the wild, you want to keep that because odds are. It worked before. It was relevant. It's going to be relevant now.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Yeah, that kind of answered some of my next question there. But it's when a dog is seeking safety or something significantly threatening in the environment, you know it's going to latch on to that particular association. Is it more prevalent because of that? So I guess I should clarify that It means the dog is much more likely to latch on it to some other stimulus in the environment versus some other activities that they might be doing that They don't perceive a significant threat to their own safety.

Speaker 2: 16:38

Yeah, let me take the scientific cop out. I haven't seen a study that actually looked at that and I'm not quite sure how we'd measure it. Having said that, cop out. Everything you said makes sense is reasonable, but there are lots of things that would be difficult to test about that kind of conclusion. It's one of the limits of science. But it's also probably the most common thing I get asked Does this mean this or does my dog do this? And the answer is maybe because we need to run a nice controlled study to do that, and the study you're describing would have to have the dogs in a functional MRI to do that. But it seems reasonable. Well, get on that, tim, let's go.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Here's my grant request for a couple million dollars for some functional MRI time. So, on the opposite side, though, as behavior consultants and trainers, we're often trying to pair positive associations to undo a negative one, and, would you say, it's why it takes so much longer, because it's not as powerful in terms of the associations in some cases.

Speaker 2: 17:39

The best I can do here is to think evolutionarily right Things, that assuming the worst and being wrong. You're alive either way. Failing to assume the worst when you should have, you're dead. And so there's strong evolutionary pressure to err on the side of remembering what worked to keep you alive and healthy in the past rather than unlearning it. So if I have a bad association but I survived it, whatever that association is, there'd be strong evolutionary pressure to hang on to that Because it kept me alive last time. You don't have time in an organism for a controlled experiment. I don't know what that bell ringing had to do with keeping me alive when that other dog was walking by, but my God, it worked. So I'm going to keep that association. It's safer to keep those hard associations that you perceived dangerous situations than to just let them go easily. So you're fighting a strong evolutionary pressure to move things to the positive associations.

Speaker 1: 18:38

And that's why it's sometimes so resilient to changing. That, because it's such an ingrained memory, i guess, is what's happening there. Now talk us through some again. I just want to jump back to the hormone aspect And let's use that Border Collie example. And so we have these hormones in play. And then a real hot topic right now too in the dog training world, is resiliency, so the animal's ability to cope with stress. So talk us through that. Let's say this Border Collie, what's happening from the hormonal aspect? And then why might it take some dogs much longer to recover from a stressful event?

Speaker 2: 19:13

Yeah. So I'm going to go right into the hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal gland complex, the HPA complex, which is where some really fun, interesting research is going on right now. What that is is a specific set of pathways that are associated with what we're talking about right now with just conclude stress responses. So the hypothalamus is a structure in the brain that, amongst other things, takes nerve inputs from the brain and converts them to hormone chemical inputs that then go right next door to the pituitary gland And there's two lobes in the pituitary, sends a chemical signal to them and then they send a chemical signal out to the whole body. So it's the place where you're converting brain neural chemical to hormones that go throughout the body And one of the places these hormones get into the blood. They get picked up by the adrenal gland. For example, for the HPA complex get picked up by the adrenal gland that says, oh, crime, we got a problem here, we need to deal with it.

Speaker 2: 20:12

The interesting evidence that's out there right now is that puppies and young dogs that get aroused and then brought back down and aroused and brought back down more frequently, that practice, the dampening that system, do better throughout life. Dampening that system And so early training gets the brain hormone complex to respond more quickly into that calming position And it's really cool because it's your wiring the brain of the juvenile dogs to build in resiliency And that becomes useful throughout life. So we're seeing how it functions and how training early on adds to resiliency later.

Speaker 1: 20:57

I have many questions.

Speaker 2: 21:00

I love this topic. I love this topic.

Speaker 1: 21:02

So it sounds like it's more difficult, obviously, to build resiliency later on in life.

Speaker 2: 21:07

That seems to be the evidence, and it's true of humans too. Right, you're early on. For mammals It's a great period of learning Your evolutionary advantages. You learn things quickly or you don't stay alive. But once you've learned them, if you've managed to stay alive this long, that added brain resiliency is a lot of extra energy without a whole lot of extra gain for most out there in the evolutionarily relevant world, not in our backyards. So the brain is adapted to learn and rewire more and quickly. Younger Now, learning happens throughout life. It's just you're making more of those connections. In fact there are in the brain. There are pre connections that are close and ready to go. Early in life there are more of those Those result in rapid learning and rapid synapse construction, and later in life there are fewer of those preset synapses that are ready to go for quick learning. So, yeah, it's what you experience and do early has long term impacts, not just on what you remember but on how quickly you can learn most things.

Speaker 1: 22:13

So I have a follow up question to that. But I first want to define arousal. So you mentioned arousal a little bit a couple times, but you elevate a pitch for what arousal is because I think there's a lot of misconceptions or different definitions for that in the dog.

Speaker 2: 22:27

And so when I'm talking arousal, as a biologist, i'm talking about engaging the sympathetic nervous system, which leads to what we would classically call fight or flight type responses to adapt the body for what could be trauma or confrontation. I know trainers use arousal in a lot of different ways, so when I'm talking arousal, i'm really talking about physiological changes and neurological changes that come associated with the sympathetic nervous system. That's not going to be exactly what you would use in your normal nomenclature. That sounds good.

Speaker 1: 23:04

Because it definitely is a definition that I've seen all kinds of different talk about.

Speaker 2: 23:07

Sometimes it's even like a four letter word you know like, oh, arousal is a bad thing, but actually you know we have to talk about it and understand And I get asked that, even like if I'm at a you know an agility trial or something and people say, oh, i'm just trying to get my dog aroused, and I'm like that doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to me. Or was my dog aroused? in that situation I'm like are you asking, are they more aware? or are you asking was the sympathetic system engaged? And that's a different question too.

Speaker 1: 23:35

So I'm sure people are listening and be like Tim, this sounds great. So what am I going to do with my puppy? Am I going to, like you know, dunk them in like an ice bath, like we see social media people doing that to like, build stress resilience, Like what are some things going through your mind as far as you know, people saying, okay, i want to build resiliency, i want to have a resilient, stress resilient pup that develops in a dog that can handle situations later in life. What does that look like for you?

Speaker 2: 23:59

Yeah, so there are. There's some interesting. The caveat first I'm a scientist with dogs, so I work with dogs and I train my dogs. I am not a professional dog trainer, right, so I can talk to you about the biology of what's going on and a dog trainer needs to be able to say that's what that would look like in this setting or that's what that would look like with this dog. So in the arousal in that juvenile, in that puppy stage, during that first year and when I say during the first year, i don't have data that says for sure it's you know, i would be careful about like learning periods and somebody's gonna go well, tim said first year and I'm one day past the first year. That's not what I'm talking to saying.

Speaker 2: 24:37

In that younger Period of life, practicing arousal and coming down from it, and it can be. You know you can get the sympathetic system engaged with toys, just getting some high activity going and the dog tugging on the toys or catching a frisbee or something like that and getting him aroused. And then what we're stopping right now and rewarding the calming with, you know, positive reinforcement as the dog calms down, so that you're practicing getting the system aroused and then bringing it back down to a normative state. That is really important practice right now. So people I know people who I know people very well who believe that the most important thing to do with the juvenile dog is just to keep it busy all the time so it's tired. At the end of the day, you never letting it learn arousal, you'll never engaging that HPA complex which gets involved and helps calm the dog down to border call.

Speaker 2: 25:32

I have had five border collies All with on off switches. Right, people talk about border calls other than never calm down. Sure they can. You teach him early to calm down. It just turns out that the physiology behind that is this HPA complex. Practice it. You practice arousal, practice calming down.

Speaker 1: 25:50

I can get inside some my listeners minds right now and that they're thinking maybe like there's some classic exercise like go wild and freeze or playing tug with the dog and then stopping or playing some sort of high, sort of arousing activity They're my meeting getting sort of like you're talking about the sport dog world and then freezing, getting the dog to pause, is that kind of what you're thinking of.

Speaker 2: 26:12

That's exactly the kinds of things, and lengthening the pause It's to move away from the. I have to have my dog's brain stimulated all the time to. I have to teach it to be able to be stimulated and calm down.

Speaker 1: 26:34

How does? how would that tie into getting the dog more acclimated to provocative stimuli, so things that might scare the dog or we want the dog to, so novel stimuli, something like garbage cans on a windy day around the street. so our border colleague example again might have missed that early on. but Let's say we could start over again with that border collie and get it better with the garbage cans. there's a fine balance, right, because we can't, we don't want to overexpose or flood the dog, but at the same time we have to be, we want to sort of habituate the dog to the environment so, yeah, i think there's two parts there.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Right, so you want to habituate the dog to whatever noises are common in the environment so that they learn that these noises are just part of the background, the more you have physiologically. So learning involves brain changes. Whenever I say learning, we're talking about new synapses, talking about new neural pathways. Right, when you have trained the dog to calm down in those exercises, you are working with the HPA complex to build that pathway in and that's gonna help. All evidence so far is that's gonna help. With the, i heard the loud, unexpected noise. How quickly can I get back down to a base level? it's gonna help improve the time, reduce the time From being aroused and concerned about the environment to now I can go back to normal functioning.

Speaker 1: 27:58

I want to jump more into this topic in just a moment, but I'm gonna take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors will be right back with him. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in and I hope you are enjoying this episode. I have a very special offer that I'm announcing just before the aggression and dogs conference this year. You heard me talk about the aggression and dogs master course on this podcast and, for a limited time, to celebrate the fourth annual aggression and dogs conference, i'm going to be launching a bundle offer that includes the course and all 19 webinars available on aggressive dot com. Yes, that's all of the webinars. The webinars alone would typically cost more than $580 to purchase together, but I'm including them for free in this special bundle deal with the aggression and dogs master course. Just some of the topics for the webinars include how to break up a dog fight, assessing canine posture and movement, the genetics of aggression, dog to cat aggression, dog to child, directed aggression, and treat and retreat with some of the most respected behavior pros in our field, including Suzanne Clothier, grisha Stewart, dr Amy Cook, dr Christina Spalding, laura Monaco Tarelli, jen Shriak, trish McMillan and Dr Jessica Heckman, just to name a few. You're going to receive all 19 webinars, the master course, live group mentor sessions with me and access to the private Facebook group a value of over $2,700 all for just the price of the master course, which is $495. Is. Only going to be 50 bundles available in this offer And I'm going to drop a link to the bundle in the show notes for this episode. The offer is going to expire on October 8th 2023. That's October 8th 2023, which is just one week after the conference, though the bundle typically sells out quickly, so please take advantage. If you are interested, head on over to the show notes for this episode in the podcast platform you're listening to and click on the aggression and dogs master course and expert webinar bundle link.

Speaker 1: 30:02

I also want to take a moment to support Sinthor Pangal was going to be speaking at the aggression and dogs conference this year. Sinthor shared the story of an organization doing truly amazing work to help animals. Charlie's animal rescue center, cre, or care for short, is an animal shelter providing timely medical aid to injured and ill animals of the streets in Bangalore City. They aim to provide life saving veterinary care on par with private veterinary setups to all animals, irrespective of their ownership status. Care has a rescue helpline, animal ambulance services and a fully equipped veterinary trauma care unit. Care strives to provide dignity to animals who are old, blind, paraplegic and suffering from chronic diseases, and allow them to live out their lives at the shelter in a safe and peaceful environment. Care is home to many dogs, cats, rabbits, ducks, hens, pigs, skinny pigs, birds and even terrapins. No animal left behind is their main model. Apart from rescue and shelter services, care also provides adoption services, humane education in schools, animal cruelty prevention and control, and volunteering opportunities.

Speaker 1: 31:16

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Speaker 1: 32:01

All right, welcome back. We're here with Dr Tim Lewis. We're talking about biology and aggression and we were taking a deep dive into hormones and resilience right before the break. So I love to kind of keep going in that direction. What influences aggression really and how that differs also? so you know, we can take many deep dives into the different lenses, but if you had, you know let's say, biologists, neuroscientists, ethologists, behaviors, walk into a bar right and we'll go from there.

Speaker 1: 32:33

But so when we see aggression, let's use that border collie again. We talked about, you know, impacts of, maybe lack of resilience or learning those things early on, and what else. When you're talking through a lens of biology, what else is going to impact that dog's future likelihood for aggression?

Speaker 2: 32:52

So I get asked a lot this general question what contributes to aggression? I have a list of 18 items that contribute to aggression. You want to go through that list? let's do this.

Speaker 2: 33:03

Yes, yes okay so first some framing the list is not meant to be long to make you throw up your hands and say there's 18 things that affect aggression, i can't affect them. You have very good ability as trainers to affect a few of these and you should be aware of the others because they come into play. Okay, so this should not be despair. 18 items, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? so Tim's list of 18 items that affect aggression and what you can do about them. In the first one is the genetics of the dog. There's tons of growing body of evidence. There's tons of evidence out there about the different behavioral aspects sociability, for example, or aggression and the genetics that are associated with those broadly read That we don't do much about. Right you, we could. We could put most of the dog behavior is out of business if we spent time on Really careful breeding for 10 or 15 generations. I've heard different people estimate. My estimate is 10. Yes, it's a shot in the dark. We know from 20 generations you can turn a wild thing like a fox into a cuddly dog that sits on your lap. If we paid more attention to genetics, we would be way ahead of the curve in all of these situations. I just i have a friend who bred a border collie and the sire in this case was hurting border collie and the bitch was a very sociable, good agility dog but known, have good off switch, really good people orientation, and the hurting instructor who knew this particular bitch said well, what a waste of a breeding because the dog won't be you know, won't be wanting to hurt all the time, won't be a champion herder. We often go for those extremes i want the best fly ball, i want the best herder, i want the best guard dog, i want the best, and we forget the dogs gonna live with us a long time and we don't pick good jeans. So, first and foremost, thinking about the genetic line and thinking about the behavior of the dog rather than just the looks, the breed or the activity that i want, i would do weeks just talking about that. It's not what anybody wants to do and it's not what most people, it's not what many people want to do. But good jeans now it turns out as that Dna gets coated with on off switches.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Dna is what's in every cell, it's the blueprint that runs how your body develops there, on off switches that are affected by certain molecules And the environment. So high stress environment, for example, can load the dna with certain off switches on some jeans and on switches with others. It's a way for the organism to be able to be quickly adapted to a changing environment. The study of this is called epigenetics And we know it goes back at least two generations. And it goes back to generations because the egg for the puppy that was born today was inside the bitch her entire time, since she was an embryo sitting inside her mom. So the grandmother Of the puppy born, the environment she's in, affects how the dna are played out two generations later.

Speaker 2: 36:16

So you want item number two is to make sure that you're the grandmother had a great environment. And people say what does that mean? i'm like i don't know, cuz we don't know what makes for the perfect environment. But we know the grandmothers environment matters and that means the mother's environment matters. We also know the uterine environment matters. If you're a singleton, you get a baby with different amount of hormones than, say, if you're a male puppy surrounded by two female embryos Or a female surrounded by two male embryos. So, as you're dealing with aggression, you want to have a good uterine environment. You want to make sure your neighbors are right Females tend to lower the aggression tend to, and males to increase just because of the testosterone. So litter of three or four or five males would have a very different uterine chemical environment which would affect the behavior of the dogs that come out of it. So That's.

Speaker 2: 37:10

Item four is to have a good uterine environment. We know the neonatal environment, the early birth environment, is really important. We don't. I've heard you know twenty or thirty different recipes of this is the perfect neonatal environment. The data on it are not as clear cut but we definitely need a good neonatal environment. Low stress, moderate stress kinds of things are probably gonna turn out to be better. So a low stress, moderate set of experiences in the neonatal environment.

Speaker 2: 37:38

Good neonatal health care, because the health of the organism affects all the hormones in the body and the brain development. You want to have good neonatal health care, a good pre adult environment, again with enough stimulus for learning and arousal opportunities and calm down opportunities. And that's environment and health care as well as the learning environment. I distinguish those two different ones. Good adult health care in your dog, because we know lots of negative impacts that come from Bad health, from pain, from hormone imbalances. Good adult learning environment that keeps the brain stimulated in learning and then in a new an area. That's kind of exciting. We don't know exactly how it's gonna play out. You need a good gut bio. We know that the micro flora and fauna, the bacteria and fungi in the intestinal tract and in the stomach and in the mouth and in the throat, effect behavior. Now we're just starting to tease it out, but we know it has impacts and you change that, that environment. So what I tell people is the best guess right now is a good, very diet so that the bacteria And fungi in there getting a good are themselves getting a good diet. You have to think of feeding the microbiome as well as feeding the dog.

Speaker 2: 38:49

And then at the time, some aggressive thing like taking blizzard for a walk. What is he been doing for the last 24 hours? has it been low stress? Because that's gonna affect the hormones and some of these hormones don't clear for 24 hours, show something like adrenaline. Functionally is pretty clear after about a dozen hours. But if my dog was in a high stress environment six hours ago, that's gonna affect what's happening right now. Blizzard on a morning walk when he hadn't been exposed to other things that got him worried Was calmer and less likely to get into that stress response. But once he got into that stress response, man, now he's ready to click into it all the time.

Speaker 2: 39:27

And then we want to have the local court aids that are cursing through the body. We want those to be a low amount. We want positive experiences in the seconds before whatever stressors coming. Like you can control. Now we're getting into stuff you can control. Right, you can look at your dog and say, okay, i can give him a better environment for the next six hours before we go outside, and then I can visually be in that environment, help make sure it's a low stress environment And then for about eight tenths of a second you have no control.

Speaker 2: 39:55

That's when the amygdala kick in And you have no control over just recognize that they. For that eight tenths of a second, what the dog is gonna do is what it's been deep seated train to do. We can retrain a dog so that it's amygdala response is different than just bite. But the training that where that happens, is the kind of training that dogs go through, like a police academy training, where it's eight weeks of intensive, nonstop training. It takes that to reprogram that eight tenths of a second amygdala response. Right, so you, your dog, can learn some other when the amygdala kicks in. I'm gonna do something different, but it takes an enormous amount of time for that to happen.

Speaker 2: 40:40

And then what happens right after the stressing event? because that's gonna reinforce the next one If my dog growls and the stressor goes away. Man, i just reinforced that such a positive way that that's gonna be hard to stop it in the next environment. And then what you do over the next couple of minutes that get brought into the learning. So what's biologically? we've got to go everything from DNA To hormones to learning. And then what's hard wire? well, hard wire that's been really heavily programmed into that amygdala response. And then how we reinforce it right after the event. And that's a really hard one, right is you and I talked about that before you're reinforcing that? the dog bites, somebody runs off dogs like hey, that worked.

Speaker 1: 41:26

Many questions, but I love that. I love how you went through those and so many things I was going through my head to like I'm gonna be out of job probably in 20 years when the technology catches up. So actually dealing with this at just about the right time because I think things things are gonna rapidly change in advance as we learn more about all those things you were talking about the biomes and tinkering with genetics.

Speaker 2: 41:49

And if you had a gut biome biologist on right now, they would know more than me and they would say, okay, but we know these strains do this and these strains are. They're doing some really exciting work on it.

Speaker 1: 41:58

It's fascinating stuff. Doctor amber bats and was talking about it's a couple seasons ago in the show, and I also want to give a shout out to doctor Jessica hexman's functional breeding.

Speaker 1: 42:08

The site functional breeding has. She's talking about a lot of these things in how we can really change dogs for the better in terms of, you know, focusing on dot just looks, but you know the health, the behavior, all of those things you're talking about. So just to jump back to the in utero aspect, we talked about it sometimes on the show, about how the mother experiences certain stressors. Maybe I'd say a dog that is out on the street somewhere in a very poor environment, how much that can impact the puppies. Can you talk a little bit more about that and sure.

Speaker 2: 42:42

So let me set a scenario. This will be a simplistic way to think about it. Imagine, with my DNA, if I can have a set of DNA that works in high stress environments and a set of DNA that's for calm environments, right? so That would mean that all the litter offspring that I have were in that same kind of environment. And a high stress environment, from a biological point of view, means high competition for resources. Maybe there's a high population of conspecifics, other, if I'm a wolf in the wild, it's other wolves in the wild, and my inner food rich or food poor environment.

Speaker 2: 43:17

Do we have extreme weather, those kind of things, and having a set of jeans that works in one environment and a set of jeans that work in the other? you got them both in the DNA. Now all you gotta do is be able to turn one on or the other on, and it's good for the life of that offspring, right? so a mom who is Herself an embryo in a high stress environment but all of her offspring are in a low stress I mean, all of her experiences are low stress Would allow a switch to a more subtle environment, which would allow those offspring to be more successful.

Speaker 2: 43:53

That's what epigenetics is about is like having two sets of instructions For complex situations and being able to turn them on or off, but not during the life span. It's the set you got for your whole life span. So the high stress environments would cause any embryos there to basically be anticipating they only did that with air quotes can't anticipate anything but to be anticipating High stress outcome and so they're gonna have the high stress sweet turned on and then they come into my house out in the country where it's nice and quiet and calm, but the wrong set of jeans are turned on.

Speaker 1: 44:30

Yeah, and all of this is is a really nice overview of why it's nature and nurture right, That whole nature and nurture argument that we hear about and not so much of argument anymore, but we still hear it sometimes, you know it's all in how you raise them, kind of a viewpoint.

Speaker 2: 44:45

I want to jump in on that and I apologize. but that's the whole reason we have a cerebral cortex, because if you didn't need to learn from your environment, you could have a brain like a turtle. And that does, you know, essentially very little associative processing or learning. It's pretty much what's all hardwired and that works great for their environment. And I pick a turtle because I'm a turtle biologist and done a lot. But we're turtle.

Speaker 2: 45:08

Brains are more complex than that. But let's just imagine if you didn't need to learn, there would be no value to it. The great mammalian addition is this cerebral cortex that allows you to learn anything. That's in nature. With enough deliberate learning, almost anything. You can't say anything. Almost anything can be learned over right. We can come to associate new behaviors with old stimuli with enough consistent training. That's what the cerebral cortex is for. So it's not nature and nurture, it's. Oh, we're mammals. We can, through nurturing, change most every behavior, but that requires a lifetime of consistent, perfect situational control, which none of us have. But that's what your brain's for, that's what the cerebrum's for, so that it's both nature and nurture.

Speaker 1: 45:56

Well, I'll explain my soapbox. Yes, no, well explained And it has me thinking about also. So you're talking about the amygdala and the response there. Let's go back to our border call example. So we have a dog that's maybe a hundred yards away. Our border call sees it and slowly approaching and there's kind of time to process that, but there's still going to be an aggressive response at some point. And then, versus, we're going around a street corner and another dog suddenly just right in that dog's face, snarling, and so you're going to see different responses proportional to the threat. Is that what's happening? So I guess the question is are we seeing a proportionate response from the amygdala Or is this something else happening? It's, i think, the same measured response from the amygdala, but that then gets processed through something else that allows for the proportional response.

Speaker 2: 46:40

Sure, the amygdala is not simply an on off. I've jumped in or not jumped in, and you experience that yourself, right, if I sneak up behind you and yell something in your ear, you respond in a very abrupt, sudden move, whereas if I'm far away and you have time to, you can tell it's far away. Everything's kind of ramped up slowly So you get proportional responses, you even get, you get responses without the amygdala kicking in, right. So the border call you that sees the dog a hundred yards away. The amygdala is probably just still snoozing because you're just taking it in. There's no threat, There's no immediate problem, but it's constantly evaluating the situation at some level, probably below the conscious level. I just talked about consciousness in dogs. Let's just skip right over that.

Speaker 2: 47:27

I don't know if I'm going to let that one go, but you're getting proportional response And once you trigger into the amygdala and you get that immediate fight or flight, that's kind of this build up of awareness from different parts of the brain and setting the stage for the amygdala. So how aroused, how much your sympathetic system is involved in the first place. Sets hate this word because the dog community uses it differently sets a lower threshold for response because I'm already aware that I'm in a high threat environment.

Speaker 1: 48:00

Let's jump into that word there a little bit too, because I think it's important. actually It's another term that gets tossed around and dog trainers kind of define threshold often as the point at which the dog will start displaying undesirable behavior, like the barking, lunching. But from a biological lens I understand it's different. So explain.

Speaker 2: 48:17

Okay, i'm going to jump in first on that desirable and undesirable And in fact this is part of what I'm going to be talking about at the Aggression Conference in Chicago this fall. From a nature point of view, it's all good. Anything that increases reproductive fitness is good. We took a wolf doing superb in the environment with traits that were essential for survival in the environment. Stick them in our house, more in the last 50 years than certainly we've been doing this for 10,000 years of domestication. But even my father-in-law used to comment well, nobody would have a dog in the house. You wouldn't put a tractor in the house, you would never have a dog in the house. It's a tool, this influx in this last generation of humans, that we're bringing them into our house and we're making them a part of it. But they've still got the tool set from being out in the wild.

Speaker 2: 49:05

And you said barking and I don't remember the exact adjective you used, but it was a negative adjective And from a dog's point of view that's a pretty positive thing. There's a stress reduction with barking. It may keep away whatever scary thing it is, and I think it's useful. When we're thinking about dogs and dog training, is that we think that's bad, but to the dog that was probably pretty good And that makes it a. That gives it a little different. It's, you know, my dog's not just being mean and stupid, he's doing something that's good and rewarding.

Speaker 2: 49:40

Did I get to where you were going?

Speaker 1: 49:42

Kind, of kind of, and I wanted to unpack thresholds a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 49:45

Okay, that's right.

Speaker 1: 49:47

And then again, if you were to just define it like from a biological standpoint, Yeah.

Speaker 2: 49:53

So behaviorists would use threshold differently than say so as an evolutionary ecologist.

Speaker 2: 49:58

or look who looks at behaviors from kind of their outcomes. the aggression responses are a sliding scale or a continuum, and you move to the next activity, if you will, on the list, as the first one isn't working, based on your kind of threat assessment. The only real threshold I would think of in terms biologically is did the amygdala kicked in? Did you kick in your fight or flight response? And the answer is no. You're on a gray scale or a continuum scale, and threshold isn't quite, doesn't have quite the same meaning, because the change of the cortisol levels in the blood it's not like they're there or they're not, it's at what level are they and how much of the nervous system is being stimulated, how much other organs are being stimulated, and it's kind of this continuum. And from an aggression point of view, again, as an ecologist, i would use aggression probably differently than the dog community would. But there's a strong evolutionary pressure to minimize threat and contact because that's dangerous. If I can get you to back down, back away, leave me alone. I save a lot of risk And you don't want to put any more energy into that than you have to, because then any energy you put into that threat display is something you don't have for something else, like reproduction or foraging or whatever. So there's strong evolutionary pressure to stay as low on the scale as you can and just work your way up. So not a threshold, it's. did I send you a signal? Did you get the signal? Did you understand? I don't want this Working your way up the line.

Speaker 2: 51:36

Thresholds, from a physiological point of view, typically tend to be things that initiate a positive feedback loop. the one that's easiest to get most people to think about is your. your upset, your little bit angry with somebody, you get a little bit more upset and then you just lose it and you lay into them with a bunch of words that later you regret. You hit a positive feedback loop that just escalated everything in your response. that would be the thresholds.

Speaker 2: 52:02

otherwise, threshold is biologically less important, and i'm gonna say less important Because what's going on in the brain is in fact all thresholds. did the neuron Get stimulated not just by one, but it might be three hundred other synapses that pre adapt that near on the fire, or five hundred, or, based on its learning, fifty, and so Every neuron firing is in fact a threshold, a positive feedback loop of enough neurotransmitters and enough synapses involved that cause an action potential to move down that neuron To the cell body and out the other side of the axon to affect the next nerve. and so at the neurological level nothing exists without thresholds. So i kinda gave for the evolutionary and ecological. did you get enough to get behaviors? but what's going on in the brain is clearly, at the cellular level, threshold level responses.

Speaker 1: 53:00

I'm so glad we jumped into this distinction, tim, because i think it's so, so crucial for trainers and consultants observing behavior not just based just threshold on their observation of overt behaviors like barcoy, strolling, snapping, because the amygdala could be in action when we don't see something sometimes the dogs not gonna be obvious about, and so we have to be very Prudent about paying attention to those micro signals that we might become physiological science right.

Speaker 2: 53:28

And it's not always the amygdala right. So your cerebrum is processing things from a distance and being aware, just those little tiny things, that little extra awareness in a direction a little the ears got turned that way a sniff that direction, whatever that start to say i'm paying attention over there. Now you're starting to go up that scale. Right, awareness is the first step until there is some level of awareness at the physiological or brain level And those are separate things. Right, we don't. It's hard. That's that consciousness that we're dodging and not gonna. You're responding constantly to your environment in ways that are moving you along that scale, that pre amygdala even.

Speaker 1: 54:17

So this is a perfect segue into the topic of offensive versus defensive aggression, because we're kind of also talking about what's happening in the brain And how the dog might respond to that. So i'll give you the sort of trainer community definition of it and then you tell me just how much that's accurate or not compared to biological lens. So You know we talk about offensive. We're often saying the dogs being proactive, so like A dog is. Let me give a good example. Let's use a defensive example first, cuz that'll be probably better baseline.

Speaker 1: 54:46

So defensive aggression would be something where dogs you know somebody's approaching it trying to grab its collar and the dog doesn't want to be touched and so the dog responds By biting that person's hand and because they're fearful that person was offensive is sort of more proactive approach to I see a person approaching. They're not doing anything to me, threatening. They're not trying to touch me, but i'm going to leave my property to go and bite them to make them go away. So the function is still to Increase distance or eliminate the threat, but the overall observations are going to be different. So that's typically what I see in terms of the definition of it. What do you think of that?

Speaker 2: 55:21

So I'm gonna break this differently than you, because when I think of offensive aggression and the predatory type things and the predation response, aggression that you might call aggression The word aggression in the behavior or ethylogy kind of is basically any kind of interference with another Conspecific or other around for a limited resource, right. So anything that interferes with another's ability towards those resources is a form of aggression. Predation is a dopamine learn, reward, behavior game or so you have that, and then you have fight or flight and once you get into fight or flight, this is the body's defense system And you can then take the offense or the defense, and either of those fighting can be offense and defense and fleeing can be offensive or deep. Well, mostly defensive, right, but what the body's really doing is is a functional decision about Am I orienting towards interfering with you with action versus? I'm trying to get out of here and from a evolutionary and physiological and brain network kind of thing, short of learning That offense and defense would from this lens would be defense is getting out of their flight. Fight is offense. But then it takes different forms. Right, i can fight aggressively I hate that word, i shouldn't use it there I can fight offensively, proactively make a move or I can do it in a reactive way, responding to something coming toward me. So I would break it the predatory versus which is game and fun, and dopamine learning Versus fight or flight. And then fight or flight is you either get out of there or you fight and you you're fighting. Moves then become different based on the environmental situation. That might just as if you learned any self defense. You sometimes take an offensive move or a defensive move. You might do defensive because it leads to a better offensive move.

Speaker 2: 57:32

I don't see any evidence that we should be thinking of aggression in terms of it's a fear response or it's a defense versus an offense. It's a fighter flight which is the sympathetic system aroused and working. And once the sympathetic system is aroused and working, your brain is doing complex calculations At quicker than you're thinking about him, about whether it's better to move on or not, and from a sliding scale point of view. You start with threat displays because if I can get you to do nothing, that's safer than if you do something right. So that's where you start doing Teeth bearing and growling and posturing.

Speaker 2: 58:10

That's basically let's not fight right now. That's kind of how countries interact with each other right, let's not fight right now, let's just act tough, because that's a lot safer, and then, once the situation warrants, behaviors, is that you cross a threshold? I don't see the positive feedback loop that's there to see a ratcheting up, a sliding scale. Neither one back down, one didn't back down, the other gets more engaged, so that's a. It's a different way of thinking about it Because, again, from nature's point of view, this is all good stuff. This is all positive because it leads to Either more access to resources or more survival in the long run.

Speaker 1: 58:49

And it's great way to really help us understand our dogs as well. And then it's not. You know, aggression is not a bad thing, not from their point.

Speaker 2: 58:57

I mean it can be a painful thing.

Speaker 1: 59:00

You can put it it's it's.

Speaker 2: 59:01

It's like saying is your nation good or bad? what the dogs got a urinate on my carpet? no, out in the yard, yes. So it's. It's like your nation's not good or bad, it's gonna happen because you have kidneys now. It's how well does it fit into my lifestyle? I would argue that aggression by itself is not good or bad. It's what's the setting and what's the result, and it makes a difference so good analogy.

Speaker 1: 59:26

I'm gonna have to steal that one.

Speaker 2: 59:29

That question a lot too.

Speaker 1: 59:33

So a couple more questions just before we wrap up is what are you gonna be talking at the aggression in dogs conference this this year in October, late September, early October in Chicago, which I'm Super looking forward to that? you're gonna be doing a talk with Sue Sternberg as well, so do you want to talk more about the two talks that you're gonna be giving?

Speaker 2: 59:49

Sure, i'm very excited about the talks and I thank you for the opportunity that both kind of come out of some conversations with you, mike, that you and I had at a PDT and kind of talking back and forth this thinking of the biology of aggression, as every animal in nature, except for sponges sponges are an animal, except for sponge. There they don't have any behaviors. Every other animal has behaviors. They all have forms of aggression. It's a basic evolutionary need in a world of limited resources and I want to give the biological lens of aggression and different kinds of aggression activities, regression, associated activities, to see where they come from an evolutionary point of view. Understand that wolf that lives in your house, why it has this set of tools And how those come into play in nature, so that you can start thinking about well, what am I doing in my house? that actually ties to the second talk.

Speaker 2: 1:00:45

What Sue and I are gonna be talking about Is how the environment drives a lot of our dog behaviors and trains our dog right. So my dog learns from the environment, gets these smells, it learns what these smells do. I'll give you an example. I was at a conference in Miami and there were 10 ish high rises of 40 or 50 stories each, all around a very small park And everybody's dogs had to come out there. If they didn't have a pee pad inside they would come out there for their biological eliminations. And that noise environment of that high rise and that smell environment of the park are constantly training our dogs and if we're not paying attention to that They're getting a whole lot of lessons we didn't intend.

Speaker 2: 1:01:33

So we're gonna look at some of those environmental cues and impacts And then soon we'll be bringing in the behavior, describing the behaviors and what the dog is doing and what to be watching for. So you can start thinking about How do you out train the environment. So one talks on the biological lens and looking at aggression. That strip away all the negative connotations we use And let's look at the biology of it. And then the other is looking at how the environment trains the dog. For example, elevates cortisol levels or something like that, and leads to different suites of behaviors.

Speaker 1: 1:02:09

I'm so looking forward to. Both of those can be exciting. It's like the perfect marriage to you and Sue doing a talk together. Love that, love it. So one more final follow up question here is to Let's say you have a new class at the university and you it's all dog trainers gonna be telling pet guardians having issues with your own dogs resources that you would recommend for that class if you were to say all right, you guys have to learn about biology and aggression.

Speaker 2: 1:02:32

Yeah, so for the class I could pick. Two books are both by Alexander Horowitz. She's fabulous, and her writing inside a dog what dogs the smell and now Is fantastic. She also did decoding your dog, explaining common dog behaviors and how to prevent and change unwanted ones. I think anything she's written is fantastic, but those two books Read those and I would like this is she's a behavior. She's a behavior is, but not like dog training every time. That's her science, that's what she studies and she knows that so well and she does such a good job Putting the biological lens from a behaviorist point of view and understanding what's going on in your dog's head. It's like I take you up to that spot. She takes you beyond that spot. So the third book I recommend, of course, is my book, because I don't know of anything else that's out. There is why I ended up writing the book to give you the biology of what's going on inside your dog, up to that point where we start translating it into behaviors. And then anything by Horowitz is just the way to go if you want to get into the scientific literature.

Speaker 2: 1:03:35

There's only been one Really good study of controlling aggression techniques that came out in 2021. It's a multiple author one, but didn't what he did. The publications called An investigation into the effectiveness of various professionals and behavior modification programs, with or without medication for the treatment of canine aggression, and, using a large sample size, looked at different outcomes from different behavior modification techniques, different physical techniques, different chemical techniques, medications and nutraceuticals. It is the best study if you want to get into the science of what do we know. What do we know, but it'll leave you with 10,000 questions that will say, well, we need more funding for science to get some of those answers. Absolutely a great scientific paper, pretty readable. If you're not in the statistics, you can just skip the statistical analysis. But those are the tools I really like to recommend to people.

Speaker 1: 1:04:35

Excellent. I'll be sure to link to those in the show notes for everybody as well. Tim, thank you so much for coming on. This has been very, very educational for me, and I'm sure the listeners will agree so, and I look forward to seeing you at the conference this year.

Speaker 2: 1:04:47

Mike, thank you so much for having me on your show. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:04:50

All right, excellent. I hope you enjoyed this enlightening conversation with Tim as much as I did and appreciate you tuning in to hear more about the science of biology and how it applies to aggression and dogs and other species as well, and head on over to aggressive dog com for more information about helping dogs with aggression, from the aggression and dogs master course to 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 and dogs, and don't forget about the help for dogs with aggression bonus episodes that you can subscribe to. These are solo shows where I walk you through how to work with a variety of types of aggression, such as resource guarding, dog to dog aggression, territorial aggression, fear based aggression and much, much more. You can find a link to subscribe in the show notes or by hitting the subscribe button if you're listening in on Apple podcast. Thanks for listening in and stay well, my friends.