#138 - What Horror Films Teach Us About Behavior

What do horror movies and your pet’s sense of safety have in common? More than you’d think.

This week, Ellen and Emily get delightfully spooky as they unpack how elements that make horror films terrifying, like the lighting, sound, movement, and unpredictability, can actually teach us how to create safer, more predictable, and more empathetic environments for the animals (and humans!) in our care.

From jump scares to dryer growls, to “Don’t be Michael Myers,” this episode explores how understanding fear responses across species can help us support our pets’ well-being and strengthen our bond with them.

If you’ve ever wondered why your dog hesitates in the dark hallway or why your cat bolts at a strange noise, this episode will make you see your home through their eyes. Listen in to learn how to turn your pet’s horror movie moments into feelings of safety, security, and trust.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 
1️⃣ Lighting, Sound, and Movement Matter – Subtle environmental cues like dim lighting, rumbling sounds, or direct eye contact can evoke fear. Adjusting them can help your pet feel safer and more relaxed.

2️⃣ Predictability Builds Safety – Just like we find comfort in rewatching familiar movies, our pets thrive when they can anticipate what’s coming next. Predictable routines and clear communication create calm, confident learners.

3️⃣ Don’t Be Michael Myers – How we move, approach, and present ourselves affects how animals perceive us. Softening your body language and giving clear, consistent cues helps your pet know you’re safe to be around, even when you’re stressed.

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ellen: back to horror kathy Sado talking about the elements of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. And one of my biggest goals for my life with my creatures is that I am not Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. I do not want them to question who showed up for me today to Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? I'm gonna make it very clear. Mr. Hyde is the one who is pure evil, so I try to not be Mr. Hyde. I'm, I'm, I'm not evil, but sometimes I'm overstimulated, overwhelmed, burned out, and tired. but that lack of predictability, who's here? Dr. Jekyll. Mr. Hyde is so much worse than saying, you know what? Today I am Mr. Hyde.

[00:00:36] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:53] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:54] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:01:15] Emily: In this episode, you're going to hear Ellen and I talk about how horror video games helped Ellen turbocharge her empathy. Don't be Michael Myers, y'all. And how Ellen explained myself to me in a way that blew my mind. Alright, let's get to it.

Tis the season for watching Scary movies. And Ellen, you made a brilliant comment the other day about how we can actually learn a lot about working with animals from horror films. And at first I was like, what do you mean? But then you explained it to me and I was like, oh yeah, more people need to hear you say this.

So please explain for the benefit of our listeners.

[00:01:52] Ellen: A few years ago I got into horror video games actually, instead of horror movies. I grew up love scary movies. I was in elementary school and Alfred Hitchcock was one of my favorite types of movies. For a very long time. but I had gotten into horror video games and I, I was there, I was in my home, I was safe. I had my partner, I had my dogs. And the visceral response that I was having, like the physiological response I was having to this made up environment was fascinating to me. So I went and I started to look at what are the elements that are layering in to scary horror, video games, horror movies? What are we, what are they intentionally leveraging to build that sort of fear and anxiety in us to elicit that fear and anxiety?

And then how can we adapt that for individuals who may be safe in our home and may not feel secure in our home, so they may feel as though they are unsafe in our home. What are elements that, like if I wanted to make somebody anxious and fearful, what could I lean on? And then what is kind of the opposite of that?

If I'm trying to create that sense of safety and security,

[00:03:01] Emily: That's abs absolutely beautiful and I love that you took something like a video game and said, oh, I'm, I can learn not only more about myself, but I can also learn more about. How to be a better support system for the animals in my care. How to teach my clients how to do that for their pets, how to teach our students in pet pro to do that, for their clients, for their clients' pets.

so I love that, that empathy work that you did. So tell me, talk, talk me through like what are the different things that you learned? What are those layers that we can pay attention to in the environment that actually can impact the physiology of the learners in our care?

[00:03:44] Ellen: I think to start. we we're doing this podcast episode because I just started a book called Our Polyvagal World. I got turned onto Polyvagal theory from an episode of the Feminist Survival Podcast that I will put in the show notes. They were like, Hey, if this interests you and you want something that is a little bit, more sciencey but still easy to digest this book, our polyvagal world is by the original researcher of Polyvagal theory and his son wrote it, and I believe his son is like a journalist.

So they are able to articulate these really dense, complicated neuro neurosystem ideas in a way that's relatively digestible. And what I found fascinating as I'm getting through it, is they use dogs as an example throughout the book. And there's a little note at one point that's like, we're not just using dogs 'cause they're awesome.

They're just also very similar in the. In the way that their nervous system processes the world. And so it's been really interesting to learn from that. I wasn't entirely off base by trying to do it this way years ago before I read that. But one of the things that stuck with me and the reason that this idea came back up was because in the book they talk about how once you start the process of eliciting stress and anxiety and fear, your body becomes more attuned to those things.

So as you are stressed and fearful, you become more aware and your body keys me and on the things that make you feel anxious and fearful. And the opposite is also true. So when our body is safe, our body finds more things to indicate, yes, it is safe, you are okay, everything is fine. Wanted to give a little background there.

As I was going through the, the thing, the video game, if anybody is interested, it's a ghost hunting game. It's called fasm phobia. You can find it on steam and console. It was a grand old time. Uh, it was a 2020 escape for me

as I was playing it. I went through and I adjusted different things. So like, if I changed the brightness of my screen, how did I perceive that experience? If I turned off the sound, how did I perceive that experience? If I went with multiple people, how did I perceive that experience versus by myself? I will tell you, it is VR compatible.

Tried it on vr. Terrifying. It's too much. Still can't do it. But the things that I saw that people really lean on in the horror genre are lighting, kind of ambient sounds. So there are things that. Maybe primally, like deep and evolutionary history are going to indicate we are unsafe growls, you know, across the animal kingdom, the way that they make quote unquote the bad guy or the villain, or I guess we could leave it with that threatening, how do they direct the positioning of the body?

How do they direct the way that they move? How do they direct all of those things? And then also in all of them, there's a strong lack of predictability within the entirety of the thing, which is all stuff that we know can play a role. So if we were to go back for, say, lighting, we tend to see lots of shadows, we tend to see it, it's probably pretty dark.

And this is for individuals that perceive hu. Perceive as humans do dogs have a different perception range when it comes to lighting, so we have to take that into account, but humans are gonna probably feel more threatened in the dark with lots of shadows where you may or may not be able to tell, is that a person behind my curtain?

Or is it just folding the curtain? Is that a coat on my vacuum cleaner? Or is someone here to murder me? You know, fear and anxiety.

[00:07:19] Emily: Yeah, I love all of that. And, and I was thinking about when you were talking about that, I was thinking about, uh, I can't even remember which movie it is now, but back when DVDs were still a thing, and they had those like special feature disks. I used to like nerd out and watch all the special features.

And I remember like one of the scary movies that I owned, I can't remember which one. They talked about how they got the sound of a growling dog and they just like slowed down the sound and that was the sound that they were using for the house, like the, the sounds that the house was making. And I was like, that blew my mind because I remember when I watched the movie the first time, I was like, that is the creepiest sound I have ever heard in my life.

The like, just the sound of the house. And it was just a very, very ultra slowed down. Maybe it was a cat growl, like a large cat growl instead of a dog growl. But it was some, some mammal growling that they like slowed it down. So when you were talking about that, I was like, yeah, that's, that is so, um, it's so true that like there's a reason that those things elicit fear from us.

And also it's kind of incredible how. Easy it is to hijack those sort of like evolutionary survival mechanisms, um, to either, um, cause fear, anxiety or to reduce it. So like, yeah, let, let's talk about, um, leveraging what we know about those things to reduce fear and anxiety. And I think the first one you mentioned was lighting.

So, so dig in, dig in more to lighting and talk more about, about that and how that, uh, translates to working with the animals in our care.

[00:09:01] Ellen: Yeah, and some of it, again, perception ranges matter. So I'm well versed in dog. I'm well versed in human ish. I'm well versed in avian. Other things I don't know. But in general, darkness is threaten. I think across the board most species, darkness is going to be threatening in some way, shape, or form.

Again, perception matters. Moles probably wouldn't agree with me, but it's fine.

[00:09:29] Emily: The nocturnal animals are, are, are into the darkness, but everybody else, everybody who's not nocturnal probably 

right. 

[00:09:37] Ellen: darkness is gonna be one of 'em. Or dimness. So dark itself may be, I think for dogs they see better in actual dark versus that slow transition when it's kind of dusky and all of those things. So for them, if I was trying to elicit fear and anxiety, I might dim the lights. I might make it kind of that will, they want the darkness for them.

If I'm trying to build safety and security, I might go either fully dark if I see that, that preference in whoever I'm working with or I'm gonna do turn on some lights. And I think humans are probably on that same perception range in some, some way, shape or form. Again, perception matters. It's gonna change things.

[00:10:20] Emily: Yeah, so I actually, um, watch, I, I used to use this video when I, when I used to teach body language, on a regular basis. I would use this video that somebody had posted on YouTube of their cockapoo, and they were like, why does our cockapoo walk in slow motion every time?

He wants to go eat. And they filmed this dog, and the dog is walking down the hallway in absolute slow motion, just like the creepiest crawl. It takes several minutes for the dog to walk like maybe eight feet. And the first time I watched this video, I was like, what is this dog doing? Like, what is happening?

And then the, they turned the corner and the dog's food bowl is in the laundry room, which is pitch black. And the dryer is making the most horrendous banging noise with the low growling like engine. Like I'm not engine, but what's the word motor with this like loud, growling motor. And like everything, like shoes are knocking around in there.

And. I was like, the reason your dog is walking in Slowmo is because every time he's hungry and he wants to eat, he has to enter the pit of hell to get food. Like, yeah, your dog has to live a horror movie every time he wants to get a snack. That's why your dog's walking in slow motion. Slow motion is a really powerful body language example.

But I think it's a really good example too, of how, what you were just talking about, like we have to remember that we are perceiving things from our human mve, from our human perspective, and we understand what a dryer is. And so we may not be aware of the sounds that it's making or the, the unpredictable movements as it's kind of shuttering from side to side and the like.

The dog doesn't understand why it's dark in there. We understand we turn the lights off to save energy, right. Or to save electricity. So I think it's a beautiful, what you were just talking about with that lighting. That video is a really good example of how all of that stuff, is from our perspective, it's just a, it's just a normal day.

From the dog's perspective, it's a major threat, right? That dog, from their point of view, their life is in danger, right?

[00:12:41] Ellen: we can sit in a room as humans, like play an empathy game. We can sit in a room that we feel very safe in just by default and still have those guttural fears elicited by. How bright it is in the movie, how dark it is in the movie or the video game, how bright or dark it is in the room. I mean, I used to play this game in the middle of the day when with a room that was so bright that it took my partner and I probably nine months to stop trying to turn the room lights off because we had such a great skylight in there, like beautiful daylight, and I could still have that elicited by how dark it was in there.

And so if we think about how this might impact us, like in evolution in the dark, you don't see threats that's clearly, so everything is gonna be a little bit more threatening because you're not gonna be able to make that really accurate assessment whether or not something is or isn't a threat.

Proximity is gonna play a role in this of course, because a threat, a football field away is typically very different than a threat 10 yards away and. That's gonna make a difference. But a threat in the middle of the day at 10 yards may not be as threatening as a threat at 10 yards at night because we have more opportunity to both assess and to respond before something happens. That poor little creature.

[00:14:00] Emily: Yeah, I felt very sorry for that dog, but I used to tell people when I would teach the body language course this dog is not suffering in vain because he, his fear is teaching has taught so many people

how to assess their, their, their learners' environments. Right.

[00:14:18] Ellen: Think about how it would actually be threatening in the, like you can put yourself in a jungle.

How would I feel if I was in a jungle, didn't know anything around there? Would I feel more or less threatened by this level of light? And then does my creature, whoever I'm working with, show me that they are more or less threatened under certain light structures? And this will change. As someone with senior dogs currently, you may notice changes in their comfortability as they age and as their eyesight changes.

I will say for me at this point, I am very blind without my corrective lenses, and it's pretty much a wash, whether it's dark or not.

[00:14:56] Emily: Yeah, I'm, I have been surprised at how I was, I realized I was so much more anxious when driving at night. I was like, why am I, I've never been an anxious driver asterisk with, with some very specific exceptions. but just in general, that has not been a thing for me. And it took me a really long time to realize that the reason I was anxious about driving at night was because my night vision has gotten worse.

And so I, it's harder for me to see, and I didn't, I didn't it, I didn't realize that that was why I had anxiety, and I am a human capable of that metacognitive process. So like, think about dogs who aren't capable of understanding that they're losing their night vision and they're not capable of connecting the dots between why they're anxious and the fact that they're just aging and their eyesight is deteriorating.

Right.

[00:15:51] Ellen: It is amazing what our body can process without our awareness. It is beautiful. He calls it, um, poly vehicle world. He calls it Neuroception. Your nervous system is assessing while you're just existing in time and space.

[00:16:07] Emily: Yeah. That's beautiful. All right, so next up we're talking about, we talked about lighting. So next we're talking about, uh, sounds.

What you got for me? Uh.

[00:16:15] Ellen: I think back to there are gonna be things that are species typical. The threat call of different types of birds is going to sound different to different types of birds and dog threats and cat threats are gonna sound a little different in certain ways, shapes and forms. And at the end of the day, across the animal kingdom.

And what we see in horror films is low rumy sounds hit different. Those are gonna be the things that start to elicit some of the, the fear and anxiety. And those are the things that we can become more attuned to in particularly they talked in our polyvagal world about becoming very attuned to low frequency sounds when our body is in a heightened state of stress.

Those are the, some of the things that we will, we will perceive and pick up on, and we will also filter out sounds of safety in order to prioritize the things that are threatening to us. So if we think about scary movies, they tend to have a lot of rumbling, low background noise throughout it. Like the ambient sound is there and it will knock you off kilter.

You may hear little things like. Ticking clocks are used frequently. I don't know why ticking clocks, but they work the house that you mentioned in that horror film that has that low grumble throughout the thing. If we're talking about like, the hounds of Baskerville, we have that really low guttural deep hit, straight to your amygdala threatening growl.

And the same is gonna be for our creatures. So if you have a kiddo who is not acting in alignment with the rest of the population, because body language is individual, there's things, I have met some dogs that everything about them visually says, I am friendly. I am here to have a good time. And if all you heard was their voice, you would be like, that dog wants to kill somebody.

And it is just not setting us up for a good thing. So if you see a dog that looks really friendly and your dog's having a hard time, you can also assess how does that dog sound Like? Does that dog actually sound safe or does that sound sound threatening? Is it low? Is it guttural? Is it growly? Is it thundering?

Almost.

[00:18:30] Emily: Yeah, I'm just gonna out myself here and, and, um, admit to being scared by my own puppy Miley, who's like the harmless. The harmless, that's not a word. The most harmless, cutest, sweetest, little nugget of my whole life, whom I absolutely adore. And I, I just. Like, you just look at her and you're like, how could you ever be scared by this dog?

But I was, I was, she was curled up and I put my head down and I was kissing her tummy. And all of a sudden I just heard this like low grumble sound, and I just got this immediate like, gut clenching, like reaction to that. And I was like, and then I was like, wait, it's Miley. Like what, what? Why am I, and then I realized that she was purring.

She was doing like some dogs do this purring sound. But it was the first time she had ever made that sound before. I had never heard her purr. And I, like, after I realized what it was, I immediately melted and I was like, oh my God, my puppy is paring at me. But that, that my initial emotional reaction to that low kind of grumbling sound.

Was like, just reflexive. Like I could feel my guts clench. Like it was, I was like, my face is by her face. I'm like, why am I scared of my own puppy? She's not, she poses no threat to me. But I, that was like, I definitely, like, I don't mind outing myself at what a, what a chicken I am because that it, it's a good message about how powerful those sounds can be and how much they can impact you.

And I will say that recently, copper usually loves to spend the day in the office with me on the nest. And he had a couple days where he just would not come into my office. It took me a few days to figure out that Miley had pulled on the cord of my aquarium heater and it had pushed the airstone over.

So the airstone was, um, up against a rock, and the vibration, the sound of the airstone vibrating against the rock in the fish tank was why copper wouldn't come into the office. And as soon as I fixed it, he immediately just came in and made himself comfy, cozy on my nest. So it's really powerful. It's really potent.

[00:20:54] Ellen: Yeah, I always tell the, the first time we found something wrong with Griffey's back was because my body, I was not awake friends. I refer to my body because it does things without any awareness from my conscious self. I woke up standing across the room, no idea how I got there, but he was growling. My body had gotten me up out of bed and across the room before my conscious brain had kicked on.

And it's 'cause he, he was having spinal problems and like, yeah, that's, that's, I also grow at things when I throw out my back. It just is what it is. But it is, it is guttural. It is meant to keep us alive and keep us safe. So if we think about that in our home, do we have something in our home that is eliciting that low guttural, threatening sound?

Things like, construction sounds or jackhammers or, I know some dogs that move into like New York City where the subways are and that low undercurrent of rumbling is not very helpful for kiddos that have not been habituated to it. There are things in our just general environment that do that. On the flip side, what can we do that is supposed to be non-threatening now, assuming perception.

Matters, individual experience matters. Some dogs are gonna have a real bad learning history with high pitched voices because people get all weird and high pitched, and then they poke us with noxious things at the vet. So you have to assess what is happening. But when I am having, I want to indicate to my dogs that we can be a little loose and lighthearted and all of those things, my voice is going to get a little bit higher.

It's gonna get a little bit softer. It's going to get a little bit more playful. Versus if like, no, we gotta go. Like I, I know that you wanna sniff that shrub and like there's a threat coming, so we gotta go. I might have a different sound. That also means I teach my clients to train their dogs for the guttural sounds if we think that they're going to happen, because they're probably going to sound threatening.

That is normal. But like, um. Particularly when I worked in California, when I work with clients that are in areas where natural disasters might be happening, we prepare for the mom's ugly crying. I call it mom's ugly crying. 'cause I am mom and I will ugly cry voice, which is going to sound threatening.

Like I don't, if I got an evacuation notice, I would like to think that I'm gonna be calm, cool, and collected. And also I might be an epic wreck. So I'm gonna teach my dogs that. Me as an epic wreck is not a threat. It's just mom having feelings. Sorry. So we can teach them that these things are not threatening to some degree as well.

[00:23:39] Emily: Yeah, I think that's, um, something that I've done with a lot of clients where like they can't, it, it's unreasonable to expect a client to control their own knee-jerk fear response to something, and yet their knee-jerk fear response makes their dog's response worse. And so we've, I've spent a lot of time with a lot of clients, um, helping them teach their dog that their, their panic scream is actually a recall cue.

And like when, when mom or dad or like whoever parent, um, your guardian, whoever they are, when they are panic screaming, that means come to them for good things and comfort, not run away from them. It's not a threat. because yeah, that, that's just such a common experience. Like we, we. Exist in our bodies and we don't have total control over everything that our bodies do.

And so we can just leverage it instead of trying to suppress our perfectly valid physiological responses to our environment. Right.

[00:24:43] Ellen: Coordinating two nervous systems is hard.

[00:24:45] Emily: It's

and right. I was gonna say, and it gets exponentially more difficult, the more nervous systems you add to the MI mix. Right. okay, so that was sounds, we've done lighting, we've done sounds, um, what about like, how the bad guys move in horror films? How do we, let's dig deeper into that.

[00:25:04] Ellen: Yeah. I think this is particularly those of us with dogs that have stranger danger or stranger danger. We typically are talking about humans. We can add in any other sort of living creature in that regard. We have dogs that might be resource guarding. There are a lot of things that we can watch the way that someone is directed to be threatening, and then ask ourselves, am I being threatening?

So if somebody was telling me how to threaten a creature is what I'm doing it. And so I always use, um, Michael Myers from Halloween because I think he is such a good example that you can be so creepy and so threatening and actually not be doing much. You can stand a football field away and if you orient your body straight, shoulders staring, little facial movement, little body movement, standing very erected, looking as though you're prepared for fight, it's really threatening.

And we can see that both in the way that humans interact with our dog when we have a really cute dog and they just stare. Like, that's not, can you not, can you move please for both of us? Or if we're out and we have a dog that is being stared at by another, again, that dog isn't necessarily. Trying to be threatening and staring is threatening.

There are cultural differences in different places, but at least here in the US and with many of the animals I have worked with, staring full frontal shoulders oriented towards you is a threat.

[00:26:34] Emily: I've seen this in, in many different contexts. And um, when I was in Utah, I worked a lot with a husky rescue. And, I noticed that like most, not all Huskies, but most huskies tend to have a very direct approach.

They run right up to a dog's face. They're really high body carriage, they're very vocal. They do that direct stare and it's not a threat. That's just like the dialect of Huskies. And I've seen how hard it is, um, for so many dogs to, um, develop a good relationship with Huskies who do that behavior. Not, not all Huskies just 'cause they look like a husky, doesn't mean they act like that, but from the pool of all the huskies in that rescue.

The majority of them did that. And also there was a strong correlation between the dogs who did that and how much they struggled to, have good, healthy play with other types of dogs, with other morphologies. And what's been fascinating about, um, Miley is that, what I've learned from doing lots of play dates with Miley, with her siblings and other members of her Biji family, and then her play dates with other breeds of dogs, is that Baji, when they play, they tend to have their mouths closed a lot more and they laugh through their noses.

And it's been interesting to see how many dogs have a, an initial sort of like conflicted feelings. Like your mouth is closed. Like what are you doing? Like the, you're a little bit creepy to me. it's been fascinating to watch that. Like there's like these, um. Breed typical behaviors that can show up, that can actually make it harder for them to communicate with other members of their own species who don't have those same behavioral traits.

Right. So it's not even just about like primates, US primates like doing the frontal approach and the, and the frontal stair. Sometimes that can actually happen with different dogs who speak different dialects of doggies too, right?

[00:28:35] Ellen: I mean, some dogs are gonna be more comfortable with the full frontal and it's not gonna have any mal-intent behind it. Just like some people, I have met plenty of people in my life who come at me arms raised full frontal, very boisterous. Everything about that is threatening to me, and all I want is a hug, which again, I said what I said, it's still threatening to me. But I also recognize in primate human behavior and body language that is in fact not a threat to my direct safety.

[00:29:03] Emily: We need to put in the show notes. we have, we at Pet Harmony have a friend whose name is Carolyn and I, I generally, I believe, firmly in learning how to pronounce people's names correctly. And also I have tried many times and I physically cannot make my mouth make the sounds of her name correctly. So we call her C3, because her, she has a hyphenated last name that both start with C.

So. C3 and her name will be spelled fully in the show notes. Um, made a brilliant video where she demonstrated what the differences are in how we approach. I think cats in particular, her videos focused on cats and how our care, our body carriage and our behavior can actually really impact how the cats perceive us.

And I think that video, I think it's just a much must watch for anybody who works with non-humans because it's such a powerful example of, how our, how we hold ourselves impacts how animals respond to us.

[00:30:07] Ellen: And I think it also does a really nice job of covering more than just the full frontal. So obviously in the video, if you watch it, you will see that they cover that full frontal direct approach. Everything about that says, I'm here to fight you. Whether or not you are, when you're here to fight, you don't like walk backwards over to somebody and then turn around and start a fight.

Like that's just not what we do. I think in most, if not any species. but they also talk about the way that our, our location can make a difference. So while a dog might be really comfortable with somebody walking. Shoulder square coming up, staring down, looming over in a big, open football field. They may not, probably are not gonna feel the same way, cornered in a vet clinic office that doesn't have a collapsible table.

And there's me be 10 feet, 10 square feet of usable space in the room. And so Carolyn talks a little bit about that. And then I think that it also talks about our position in comparison to the individual. So horror films, one of the things that they often do will stay like right out of the periphery and they will be right behind you.

So if we think back to what is threatening to us in surviving in the day and age, typically speaking, you don't walk backwards to somebody before you start a fight. So that full frontal is gonna be one. The other one is it's a really hard for me to perceive and acknowledge and assess a threat. When you are back here, when you're behind me, I don't have as good of a reaction time I am, even if I'm, I may not even be aware depending on what else is happening in the world.

And so the opposite of that is how do we present ourselves in a way that is more safe? We cock our shoulders to the side. We make ourselves a little bit smaller. We try to not loom. We may, we may put ourselves at a disadvantage. We may kneel down, we may turn our back. We may say, you can be in the threatening position to me, and that's okay right now.

And so we can take all of those lessons too on how we can be a little less threatening.

[00:32:18] Emily: Don't be Mike Myers is what I'm hearing. No, no, not Mike Myers. Don't be Austin 

Powers. 

[00:32:26] Ellen: It's a different type of threat.

[00:32:28] Emily: I mean, please don't be Austin Powers. It's fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. 

[00:32:36] Ellen: Yeah, Michael Myers is a great example from Halloween. oh my gosh, it's been so long.

[00:32:42] Emily: Freddie Kruger.

[00:32:43] Ellen: Another great one. I, that's not the one I was thinking of. Friday the 13th. Jason, don't be

Jason lurking behind everybody.

It just isn't a good option.

And then I think that kind of leads us into the last one is a lack of predictability is spooky across the board. Full stop. If you look into research on how to create safety and security, how to reduce the impact of aversive or terrible experiences across the board, layering and predictability can.

Make life better. It can make it more enjoyable. There's some research on, if you give individual spoilers for the end of a piece of media, they're able to better enjoy the piece of media. So if we look at across the horror genre, and I think this is also going to be true, whether or not you consider like psychological thrillers or suspense in the horror umbrella, that predictability, that lack of predictability is one of the ways that they keep us quite literally on the edge of our seats.

They keep us attuned, they keep us stressed, they keep us anxious, they keep us waiting for the next bad thing, whatever that happens to be. And then there's the whole realm of horror that includes jump scares, which is a whole, like a whole, a whole thing. And sometimes my nervous system is so outta whack, it thinks the pilot lighting in my oven is a jump scare.

So. There's that.

[00:34:02] Emily: I was doing the thing that I do where I like nerd out about something and just go down the rabbit hole. And I found out that, um, the reason that I love to watch. Like the same movie or TV show over and over and over again is because of something called experiential control.

And that, and also like take this with a grain of salt, because I read this at like two o'clock in the morning and I'm probably getting the details wrong, right? but the, the thing that I took away from what I learned about experiential control is that it helps to regulate the nervous system, especially in people who are a little neuro spicy and benefit from a little more, predictability and structure.

And I was like, wow, this explains so much about me to me, because I only typically wanna watch new shows, like whether it's a TV show or a movie. When I have a certain level of like, energy, mental clarity, feeling in a, in a good mood and like if I'm, if I'm tired, if I, if I'm physically or mentally tired, if I've had a hard day, if I'm, frustrated about something, even if I'm in pain, I only wanna watch familiar shows.

And it turns out that it's because of that experiential control thing where like, I need a predictable, uh, ride. I need a predictable journey that I can go on. So I can go on the journey, but I don't have to worry about. About what's gonna happen on that journey or where I'm gonna end up, right? And that explains why sometimes my comfort movies are still also horror films.

Like I have comfort shows that are horror TV shows or horror films, but it's because I know how I know the story, I know how it goes. I know what to expect. So that experiential control really matters. And I imagine that, that there's probably some overlap there between humans and non-human with that as well.

[00:35:48] Ellen: Yeah, I would assume, I would assume 100% that there is an element of that. One. I don't know. I,

I'm a person, this drives some people crazy. It's fine. Uh, some people are really gonna not like this. I will frequently look up spoilers two things because I don't, uh, find it enjoyable to be in a state of worry about a piece of media. I would rather know, and then I can enjoy it, that some people really don't like that it doesn't affect you.

I won't tell you the spoiler, let me live my life. But I find that it's really helpful and I think that's where relating it back to animal care and those kinds of things, back when I worked with, uh, wild Life or birds. There were elements that I layered in. So if it was a creature that had to live inside, I made sure that the light was good.

Or depending again on perception, but assuming the light was good so that their visual perception of me was good. I made it so that I was clearly narrating or making noise so that they could perceive me in space. There was not gonna be any surprise. Your caregivers here that you don't want anything to do with.

We're not doing that. I'm gonna make it very clear about where I am in space so that they can track my movements to layer in that predictability. And it can go both ways, right? So if we watch horror films, um,

I'm having a hard time coming up with an example, but, uh, what I'm thinking about is when you have somebody Halloween. Is just gonna be my St. I haven't even watched those movies. Of all the horror movies I've watched, Halloween isn't even in like the top 10 that I have watched the most. Like I went hard on.

Here's all right, I got another one. Signs. So they're out in the field and you can hear them listening to footsteps, to triangulate where different individuals are. That is both a way that they are increasing that tension, and partially because they don't know what's on the other side. So the second part of that is, I'm not clunking around trying to flood this individual so that they're just sitting there going, oh God, what's next?

The point is to give them feedback about where I am and there's a predictable sequence of steps, and this is the same when I'm working on cooperative care with my dogs. There is a predictable sequence of steps. If this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then, then we're done.

Same with. Getting into the car because I have free range dogs in my neighborhood and all of that kind of stuff. So that predictability, what is going to happen? How do I know when it is going to happen? Who is going to happen to, who is it going to happen from? All of that takes the scary down a notch. Maybe not out, but down.

[00:38:29] Emily: Yeah, when you provide predictability, it takes the scary out like a lot. Like, and that's, that is the entire basis of all of those spoof films that were popular about 20 years ago of like, they would basically just call out the horror film formulas and in this very kind of self-aware way, and it turned something that was like legitimately scary when you watch the real movie into something that's absolutely hilarious in the spoof.

And that's exactly what it is, is they just like, they, they show their hand in terms of like the, the formula for horror. And that turns it from a horror into a comedy, which I find endlessly fascinating that that's all it takes to, to make, to turn something from scary to fun 

or funny. Right.

[00:39:17] Ellen: Yeah. And when you watch those parodies, the second part of this, they maintain the lighting. They maintain the threatening sound effects, they maintain all of the other stuff that we talked about, all those signs of threat, those typically are layered within the parodies. The big difference is the predictability.

They're like,

they make fun of who's gonna get killed first In the movie, it's gonna be one of three, three individuals in horror films. We all, if you're a horror fan, you know who they are. I don't need to call, call them out here. One of them is gonna go and then they go in the basement and they all say, you shouldn't go in the basement, because terrible things always happen to people as scary movies in the basement, like basement, they read the whole thing and the ambiance is the same.

They don't change the ambiance, they don't change the other stuff. It's just that predictability piece. So that is the biggest takeaway, I think, is. Like, let's not have a haunted horror house for our dogs and our birds and our cats and all of that. We should be attuned to that. But if you can add that predictability, it makes such a big difference.

[00:40:17] Emily: You know, we've been talking about this and I, I kind of had an aha moment. So, again, take this with a grain of salt because this is a very new thought for me, but, I, bear with me 'cause this is gonna sound totally unrelated. When I first started learning how to train animals in a, like through positive reinforcement, the rules that I learned were many.

But, but, um, some of the kind of like strictest rules were like, quiet body, quiet mind, quiet hands, like still body, still mind, still hands, right? Like you're, when you're training, you're supposed to like not move and not talk and not move your hands so that your cue is crystal clear and your learner knows exactly what you're asking them to do.

And one of the reasons that I. Thought of myself as a sloppy trainer or a bad trainer for so many years is that that flies in the face of who I am as a person. I am a chatty person. I gesticulate a lot, which is why I picked up sign language, rapid fire, and like really fell into deaf culture, like a, a duck in water.

Um, but I realized that like I have, I had spent my entire life working with wild animals, traumatized animals, scared animals, and the reason that I had been more effective with them than, And, and what we've been talking about now, I think I'm realizing that the reason that I was typically more effective with those animals than the other people that I worked with or alongside of is because.

I was constantly verbally checking in with all of these animals. Like I would, I would do a play by play of like, okay, I'm coming into the kennel. I'm gonna open your gate now here I come. Do you wanna go for a walk? We're gonna, I just need to get you leached up. And I would just have this running commentary with every animal that I worked with, which made it very hard for me to do the training thing.

And when I tried to do the like, quiet mind, quiet body, quiet hands thing, animals would get more awkward around me. And it was harder for me to be successful as a trainer. And so eventually I just let go of that. And I went back to, I just became comfortable being myself in training. And I identified that as being a sloppy trainer or a bad trainer.

but now I'm thinking that maybe it was the fact that I was so predictable and like letting them know where I was and letting them know what I was doing and using that kind of like harmless voice, that gave them that predictability. And then I could still. Make the cue clear. I never had a hard time with, communicating that cue because I would always just like pause for a second between what I was chattering and the cue that I was offering, whether I was doing that verbally or with my hands, and then I'd go right back to chattering again.

So like that, you just helped me understand. I mean, I'm not, I don't know that that's true. Like I said, I just had this sort of like, thought or revelation, but, I do, I'm, I am thinking now that perhaps that's why it was so much easier for me to work with fearful animals than some of the other people that I worked alongside.

And also why that training mechanics rule never worked for me because I would go from like light and chattery to like still and serious, and that was probably really creepy for my learners.

[00:43:27] Ellen: No. Yes, tangent, sparkles appeared. Welcome. Cooperative care. It. This is an issue I have often with folks is that like I, we can practice and your breathing and your normal, and then we get into the real deal and. You dear human have completely changed everything about you. You are no longer predictable.

You are stoic, you are stiff, you are having a hard time. And so it is one of those things where back to an earlier conversation, we have to decide does it make more sense to change you or does it make more sense to train them that this is gonna be normal? So like I just had to do a er vet with Leica and we and my family go kind of by the medical queue type scenario that we talked about in Lisa Clifton bump episode that I will link in the show notes where we have, we have a clear cue that, there is an agenda.

I'm really sorry friend. You're not gonna like this. It is happening. We gotta do the gods. And we have a whole routine leading up to and after that to make sure that they are safe. So we are not safe. We are safe. We are not safe. We are safe. It is very predictable. My dogs do not question. When their safety is on the line, barring, you know, catastrophic disaster or whatever.

But like if my dogs aren't going to feel safe, I let them know that that is gonna be the case because I wanted to bring a dog home. We gotta do vet stuff. Um,

I taught them stoic me is the threat versus more playful chattery. And to be fair, as playful and chattery as I can get because Griffey is, they always joke that if you wanna be a really good trainer, you should go train a chicken 'cause they're too fast. And Griffey makes chickens feel like slowmo.

And so like I'm very hyper-focused when I'm talk, I'm working with Griffey, but also it is very different than I'm not breathing. I'm still breathing in those moments. So I think there's that predictability of who is my human today. And I remembered, uh, Kathy. 

Back to horror. Kathy Sado talking about the elements of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. And one of my biggest goals for my life with my creatures is that I am not Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. I do not want them to question who showed up for me today to Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? I'm gonna make it very clear. One, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be the bad guy at all, but if I feel like I am maybe teetering towards the bad guy, that means it's an indicator to go do some self-care.

So my dogs don't experience the bad guy in that house, but that lack of predictability, who's here? Dr. Jekyll. Mr. Hyde is so much worse than saying, you know what? Today I am Dr. Jekyll tomorrow. I'm Dr. Mr. Hyde. Being able to tell them makes a big. Sense.

[00:46:09] Emily: Yeah, and I, I mean, I wanna just say for like the, the human, this human side of that, like my neurotype and my learning history, set me up to really struggle with emotional regulation. And, I am much better now after years of therapy and learning coping mechanisms and learning about behavior and learning about my own brain and neurotypes and all of that.

I have so many skills that I, I don't struggle with emotional regulation nearly, nearly as much as I used to. but I, I will say for people who are like me and who have that struggle, The point of this conversation is not to make you feel ashamed about something that is incredibly hard to control when you, when you don't yet have the skills and the right medications and the right therapy and all of that stuff.

but for me, the way that I handled that before I had a better grasp of my own, my own self, my own person, is when I could feel my, is it, wait, is Dr. Jekyll the bad guy? Or Mr. Hyde?

[00:47:05] Ellen: I don't know. That's why I switched to, I don't want them to experience the bad guy because I dunno which switch.

[00:47:10] Emily: My family used to call me Katie. Kaboom. So I will call my, my alter ego, Katie. Kaboom. When I could feel Katie kaboom starting to, to surface, the way I would handle that would just be like walking out of the room. So if I know I'm about to just lose my mind and start yelling, I'm gonna walk out of the room as fast as I can so that I can yell away from them.

And that was a very successful strategy until I got to the point where I didn't need that strategy anymore. but I like. You can be you again. I, the unexpected recurring theme of this episode is we're not trying to change the humans. We're just trying to help you navigate how to make it work for everybody involved, the humans and the non-humans.

and so if that's something that you're struggling with, you can use my technique of like, when you feel ca Katie kaboom taking over. Just leave. Just walk out. I would shut myself in the bathroom and scream in the bathroom because it was like the most insulated room in the house, right?

[00:48:04] Ellen: Yep. It's Mr. Hyde is the one who is pure evil, so I try to not be Mr. Hyde. I'm, I'm, I'm not evil, but sometimes I'm overstimulated, overwhelmed, burned out, and tired.

[00:48:16] Emily: Yeah. Katie. Kaboom is just the part of me that had to vent the, the overstimulation when I didn't have better stress response cycle. Strategies available to me.

[00:48:29] Ellen: I've been there, done that when I jumped two feet and shriek like a banshee because my pilot light went on in my oven. This is a new recurring trigger. By the way. This has not just happened once. It's happened multiple times in the last couple months.

[00:48:44] Emily: Okay. But you know what, though, like this, that's a real thing because when we lived in Salt Lake, I got to experience my very first earth earthquake. And, I, it wasn't entirely unpredictable, even though earthquakes, by definition are unpredictable, but it wasn't entirely unpredictable because everybody was saying, like, all the geologists in the area were like, we're way overdue.

For one, we're having these little like, pre quake tremors. So when it finally happened, and fortunately for us, it was a, it was not a, a very damaging one. So because of that, I got to enjoy it. Like it, it was novel for me. I mean, okay. I am not a base jumper like that's, I, my, my adrenaline junkie comes out as somebody who chases tornadoes, not as somebody who jumps off cliffs.

So like when I was in Texas, when I lived in Texas, I would chase tornadoes. So getting to experience this new natural phenomenon that I'd never experienced before was not scary to me. It was actually exciting. So I was surprised to discover that all of the little aftershocks that happened for weeks, possibly months afterwards, I became very sensitized to them because they were. Unpredictable, they were that low resonant sound that we talked about. And also because I couldn't tell if they were, if it was like the earthquakes or if it was, um, a precursor to a vertigo attack for me, because when, uh, like before I get a vertigo, I get this like rumbling sound in my ears. And so it was terrifying to me. The, the, like, the earthquake itself was fun, but those little after quakes became, I became so sensitized to them. They were really stressful for me. So like, that's the thing.

[00:50:27] Ellen: Yeah, when I lived in Florida, I was like, y'all sign up for hurricane suit? Like you just, you just consent to hurricane. Season all the time. Every year you're just like, yep, this is what it is. And they're like, you, you come from Washington, you're just waiting for the big earthquake. And I was like, I don't, I don't understand.

They're like, at least we know the hurricanes are coming. And I was like, that's an interesting, how different are we? Because you just have enough paved life six months out of the year. I'm just waiting. 

[00:50:54] Emily: It's about everything we've been talking about. What sensory things are the most disturbing to us?

How much predictability do we need? All that stuff plays into the risks that we're willing to take for ourselves. And also, I think we need to be aware that. By virtue of being caregivers of these animals, we are making those decisions on their behalf, and they don't have as much of a say in it as we do.

And that, that matters, that, that plays a role. Right? Okay. To recap, we can learn how to reduce fear and anxiety and create more relaxing spaces, um, for our pets or the pets in our care by observing how horror movies and, and horror video games are effective. And the things that we can look at and include lighting, how well a room is lit, ambient, or direct sounds, especially those low rumbling sounds. How we carry ourselves, our body carriage, how people are approaching our pets, and, um, what their body is doing in relation to our pets. And predictability is a big deal as well.

[00:52:00] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony. 

[00:52:53] Emily: Here's a little bonus enrichment tip to thank you for listening to this episode. One easy way to increase predictability in your pet's life is to name different stimuli activities or options, and then consistently use those names before they happen. For example, I say loud noise before turning on the blender so copper can decide whether he cares enough about the blender noise to retreat to my office, or if he'd rather just stay where he is in the living room.