#173 - 5 Ways You’re F*cking Up Your Leash Reactivity Plan

Dealing with leash reactivity can really be a drag (only moderate pun intended 😂). Jokes aside, if you have a dog that does the whole barky, bitey, lungey thing on leash, to dogs, to people, or to the leaf that blew across the neighbor's roof, and you’ve been feeling like a failure, or are just really freaking tired of still working on this, grab a chair and join Ellen and Emily for today’s episode. 

We’re talking about 5 ways we see leash reactivity plans get f*cked up, and no, it’s not because anyone is bad at this. It’s because we’re complex humans, with complex lives, complex pets, and complex environments. We help clients be human and help their pets every day, and today, we’re sharing what we’ve learned. 

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ You’re interrupting more than reinforcing – If you’re doing more interrupting of the eruption than reinforcing chill beforehand, you might be teaching your pet that exploding is part of the sequence. 

2️⃣ Sessions need to be short – Probably even shorter than you expect. Triggers stacking IS happening, so keep it short, and use your escape routes liberally. 

3️⃣ You don’t know how or when to get out – Before making things hard, get really skilled in easier environments, and that means practicing knowing how and when to get out of Dodge. 

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

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: And so, like, we have, we've heard a lot of times from a lot of people, you know, "But my dog is so good at ta- taking treats while she's barking." We believe you. Yeah, we know. But the, the question is, do you want your dog to rehearse getting really stressed out before calming down? Or do you want your dog to learn how to just navigate a stressful situation calmly? I don't know many people who would choose the former if they knew that the latter was an option. I think people choose the former because they don't know there are any other options. So yes, you can teach your dog to multitask when they're very stressed out, and take treats while also scanning the environment and, you know, warding off s- strangers.

But that's not really what we want them to do. We want them to be able to assess the situation, check in with their handler, real- realize when they need to get out of a situation and it's not a good situation for them to be in, realize when they can stay in the situation and observe, realize when they actually can go investigate or meet somebody or whatever. Those are the decision-making processes we want our dogs to be able to do, and they can't make those decisions if they are in emergency mode.

[00:01:20] 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...

[00:01:30] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:32] 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.

[00:01:52] Emily: Leash reactivity plans fail a lot. Or if they don't fail, they just kind of go on forever and ever, and you're not really sure whether or not you're making actual meaningful progress So today we're going through five specific ways the plan itself breaks down. And yeah, you might feel a little attacked by this episode. Also, welcome. We're attacking ourselves, too. We're gonna talk about when you're interrupting rather than reinforcing, which is a subtle but important difference; uh, when you're doing too much, which is, like, almost everybody all the time

[00:02:29] Ellen: Can't promise a lot, but I can promise you're doing too much

[00:02:32] Emily: Yes. Yes. hard agree. Uh, When you're making it too complicated, again, almost everyone, almost always. When you don't have an out, and when you're expecting too much. And again, we're not just attacking you, we're attacking present us, past us

the entire industry- Future us ... future us. It's all of us, right?

We're all in this together. So, you know, it- it's, it's a totally normal human thing to experience this. And uh, you know, these are, these are structural mistakes, not personal mistakes or character flaws or anything like that. It doesn't mean anything about you as a pet parent or a behavior professional, except that you are human operating within totally human structural mistakes. And they happen because protocols get passed around without understanding the underlying, like, inner workings of those protocols, why they work, and what's actually causing the protocol to work. Which when you understand that, you can uh, also get to understand when it doesn't work and why it doesn't work. Because when we don't have that why, we fill in the gaps with the wrong explanation, and then therefore the wrong solution. So understanding those inner workings helps us to avoid that pitfall. And we talked about this way back in episode 43, Why Your Dog Training Isn't Working, that episode that training plans fail structurally, not because the people following them are bad at this, or because there's anything wrong with the dog, or there's anything wrong with the client if you're the behavior professional, or there's anything wrong with your behavior professional if you're the client. It's, it's just a structural issue. 

[00:04:22] Ellen: The takeaway is if you're feeling attacked, don't worry, because I attack myself in every one of these outlines I write, so welcome. Misery loves company

[00:04:30] Emily: Yeah. Basically, the, this podcast is just a way for us to trauma dump on everybody else.

[00:04:37] Ellen: I am just coming clean. Do not put me on a pedestal. I am a messy human

[00:04:41] Emily: Yeah, okay, maybe it's not trauma d- trauma dumping. Maybe this podcast is just a confessional. Like, it's just where, where we go to confess

[00:04:50] Ellen: We should rebrand Confessions from Your Behavior Consultant

[00:04:53] Emily: Yes. Yes, exactly. Okay. so so let's dig deeper into this as a part of our confessional process. So why do reactivity plans fail at, at probably higher rates than people expect or at least higher rates than people would like?

[00:05:10] Ellen: It's definitely higher rates of people with like

[00:05:13] Emily: Uh, I mean, like, yes, because it's, like, so frequently. And again, when we say fail, we really mean fail and/or just seem to go on forever and we're not really sure. 

[00:05:25] Ellen: Dull or dissatisfying roller coasters, 

[00:05:29] Emily: all of the above, all of the above. The environment is hard to control, and I'm gonna pause there to say one of the, one of the pro- the problem isn't that the, the environment is hard to control. The problem is that the plans that we're operating within require a controlled environment,

and that's not the real world. So, so it's, the problem isn't the unpredictable environment. It's that we need a predictable environment in order for our protocols to actually work. 

[00:06:01] Ellen: Foundationally off to a bad start

[00:06:03] Emily: just off to a bad start, right? The dog and also I'm gonna say the humans involved, pet parent and behavior professional, all, everybody involved is operating emotionally. We're all emotionally activated. By definition, reactivity, it, it indicates a state of arousal, right? And so if a protocol requires a lot of, like, rational thought and future planning and good decision-making, it's gonna be much harder to implement that successfully because nobody's in the thinking and learning zone, right?

[00:06:40] Ellen: From the get, step out the front door, everybody's already holding their breath, dirty eyed jumping at the scooter that just went way too close to us

[00:06:50] Emily: Yeah, super vigilant, right? And then on top of that, by definition, if we are working on reactivity, that means we are exposing our learners to stressors. And physiology is a thing, and when you're exposed to a stressor and you experience a little acute spike in stress, it takes time for your body to process that stress. So if your sessions are longer than, like, I don't know, a, a couple of minutes, or if you are, if you practice with more than one stressor per session, then by definition trigger stacking is happening even though the protocol is attempting counter-conditioning. So that's a thing, too. If you take a dog out on a walk, and you and the dog encounter five stressors on the walk, and the walk is 15 minutes, by definition the dog is going to be more stressed than when they started, even if you had successful practice of your protocol, because they just experienced five stressors in a short period of time. And your, the body just doesn't... Like, that math doesn't math. The body needs more than that amount of time to recover from a stressor

[00:08:03] Ellen: And here's the sad part, if you only encountered five stressors, you're doing great in what world do you live? So it's unlikely that you are going to get to work in an environment where you have one stressor every three minutes that is relatively predictable at a distance that isn't catastrophic

[00:08:20] Emily: that's basically the whole context for this episode. A- and this is why so many times both pet parents and behavior professionals will tell us th- you know, the dog is doing great. The protocol is, quote unquote, working. The dog can, quote unquote, do it. But then they just randomly, quote unquote, randomly. I'm just using a lot of air quotes of, in this sentence. 

[00:08:43] Ellen: Which is super effective on a podcast

[00:08:45] Emily: I know, I know. Also, I'm sure really fun to listen to. So let me just start that sentence over and y- the, the air quotes will be implied, okay? We had a s- successful implementation of, of the strategy. The dog was able to do it, and then they just randomly explode. And a lot of times what we hear is, like, the, the dog gets worse at the protocol the longer the walk is. And so, like, by the end of the walk, the dog can't do something that they were just absolutely crushing at the beginning of the walk, right? So most of these five mistakes become worse or, or just invisible, like people don't see them, when trigger stacking isn't on your radar, when you're not paying attention to the physiological journey that your learners are going on. So we would like to offer this brief reframe. The plan failing isn't evidence that the dog is broken or the handler is incompetent or the behavior professional is incompetent. It's evidence that something structural is off. Something's not working

[00:09:52] Ellen: And your environment is hard, which is a very subjective thing

[00:09:55] Emily: All right, so mistake number one, you are interrupting panic, not reinforcing calm. So what this looks like is you wait until the dog reacts, and then you try to re- redirect or reward. And I'm going to refine that to say that when we, when we say reacting, we don't even necessarily mean that the dog is already in fight, flight, freeze mode, where they're lunging at the end of the leash, they're in tunnel vision, they can't hear you. I see this happen even when we wait until the dog is tense and having a hard time acknowledging, and maybe they take the food kind of sharky, or it takes them a minute to take the food. They don't take the food at all. They haven't gotten into survival mode yet, but they are already clearly experiencing a physiological event. I, that, I'm, that, to me, is still, that still falls under the umbrella of the dog reacting, 

[00:10:54] Ellen: And for my clients, I ask them, "Would you wanna see this more?" And the answer sometimes is yes. So there are times where we're in a situation where it really truly is this or absolute panic freak-out at the end of the leash. I do wanna see this more in this context, and then we can try to fade this out later.

But realistically, most of my clients don't want a dog that is sharking their treats away. They don't want a dog that is, like, maybe if you're lucky, you're getting an ear flick when you say their name, but otherwise they're like, "I can't, I can't do it. I gotta do it." They don't want a dog who isn't breathing. They want a dog who is able to, like, mosey with them through the process

[00:11:33] Emily: And I think the, the, the issue with that is that counter-conditioning is still possible in those situations. The sanctuary where Ally and I worked had over 400 dogs at any given time. Most of those dogs had complex behavior issues. Most of them were stressed by dogs and humans and all they could see all day long were dogs and humans, and not just their caregivers who they had a relationship with, but that sanctuary got, I don't know, I don't remember how many thousands of volunteers every year. So every day they're being exposed to multiple strange, strange humans and other dogs, and cars, and trucks, and, you know, wildlife, right? And so in that context, we had to do counter-conditioning when the dog was that level of physiologically distressed. The issue with that is that when you're doing, when you're doing it at that level and you're interrupting a, a physiological event, what you're teaching them is they have to get all jacked up on Mountain Dew first, and then calm down.

And often also we get a lot of superstitious behaviors out of those strategies where the dog thinks that the, the freaking out is necessary to get reinforcement. And so we'll see their body language change, and they're, like, not um, distressed anymore, but they're still doing the behavior, but it's eustress now.

They're like, "If I lunge and bark, I get chicken," right? And so then you have to do an additional step of teaching an alternative behavior. When you're in an environment where you have no other option like that sanctuary, that's still fine. Y- we still helped lots of dogs by doing it that way. But the problem is that takes so much longer, because first you're teaching the dog how to freak out and then calm down, and then you have to teach the dog, "Okay, now freaking out is not th- something we want at all.

Now you have to do this other thing." And that's just, M- most people, it's really hard to maintain the morale and keep doing that work if they have to go through this prolonged process. And it's also not physiologically great for the dogs to just be continuously putting in, them in that situation. So fortunately, in a pet home environment, we don't have to do that, so we shouldn't do that. We should just do the thing that helps to counter-condition them without the freakout. That'd be cool.

[00:14:08] Ellen: For my clients, I do it one to 10. So anytime you reinforce something, interrupt something that is undesirable because some- it is gonna happen at some point, we wanna make sure that we counter that with 10 captures. We want to reinforce 10 things that you want instead r- directly after that so that we are creating some balance for this individual, and that works. I mean, I picked 10. There's no science behind 10. 10 just seemed like a trackable number that provides good balance. So when Griffy is having a meltdown because the dogs next door sound like they're, they're fighting, and I interrupt that because I need you to stop yelling while I'm talking to humans, I then put in the effort to capture 10 alternative things that I would prefer him do instead. And then we're adding a little bit of that tip in our favor

[00:15:00] Emily: Yeah. What's beautiful about that isn't just the robust reinforcement for alternative behaviors, but also robust reinforcement for behavioral diversity. So he's learning that he has so many other options, not just one other option. There are so many other things that he could do to get reinforcement, and that's, that's just beautiful. I love that. And yeah, like the rule of 10, it's like, it's somewhat arbitrary, but people who are learning, like our clients who aren't behavior professionals, really benefit from just a concrete rule, even if it is arbitrary. It's just easier for people to wrap their heads around that. 

[00:15:39] Ellen: And I think the great thing for, like, on the client side, what I see developing is a better recognition of that behavioral diversity. So when my clients put in the work to start saying like, "Oops, okay, I can't let that happen. Interrupt that. Don't want that. What are 10 things that I do want?" And I start to see that my clients come back and they're better at capturing signs of de-escalation. They are better at capturing attention. They are better at capturing all of these other things, and they're... If they're able to capture them, they're better able to observe them, and they're better able to respond to them. And so it builds all of this just naturally in the sequence

[00:16:15] Emily: I'm going to even go so far as to say it's elegant, Ellen. Elegant Ellen. Yeah, so it's much, it's far preferable and more efficient to intervene before the dog is in that state. We look for the earliest signs of arousal. We don't wait for the dog to be super high up their ladder of escalation. And I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna tattle on myself here. When I was in Utah, when I had first left the sanctuary, we moved to Salt Lake and I was consulting. I was really sort of, um- Blindsided by the culture. I was coming out of that atmosphere that was very chaotic, and it was like, "Do whatever you need to do to help the dogs," whatever that looks like.

I mean, n- not in terms of y- falling on, on, falling back on aversives. I don't mean that. I just mean, like, if you have to counter-condition when the dog is in survival mode, that's what you have to do, right? That's what I'm referring to. But I, I didn't trust that people would stick with me long enough to go through the journey that I knew would be the better journey for them. And so, I thought it would be faster to just have them do chaos counter-conditioning like we did at the sanctuary. I thought it would be easier to teach them. I thought it would be faster for them to just s- start seeing progress. I didn't have faith that starting with the foundational skills and moving through those systematically and building those skills systematically would work because I didn't think the clients would tolerate it, because I was still just very confused by the culture. And it was actually one of my students, one of my mentees in the very first OG version of the mentorship program, who just sort of like gently asked me one day, like, "I saw these trainers from the UK doing these other, like, preparatory things first." I don't remember exactly what things she was talking about, but she was like, "Have you ever thought about trying something like that?" And I was... It was just such a wake-up call, because I was like, not only have I thought of it, I used to do that. In Austin, that's what I

learned to do. That's how I did it. That's how I was effective doing it. And it was my, my lack of faith in my clients that had m- made me make the choices that were actually harder for my clients and my dogs. And I needed my student to call me out lovingly and gently so that I could sort of get my head back on, screwed back on straight, and um, and s- and start giving my clients the support they deserve. Not, not just my clients, but their dogs too, right? 

[00:19:04] Ellen: I think this is a good point to plug in. There's a, functionally, a difference between finding a way to reduce the harm while we are onboarding those skills and making sure that we are not putting too much restriction unnecessarily or too much burden on the caregiver. Because I have a lot of clients in very urban areas right now.

Everybody's just flooded. The dogs are flooded. The caregivers are flooded. It is constant, and there is there is a point where we are not trying to change the leash reactivity. I'm trying to reduce the amount of explosions that we have. And that, by definition, is reducing the leash reactivity, but we don't have the opportunity to not take the dog out into those areas. That just makes things so much worse for them. And so there are the, the differences.

What we're talking about here, because I know that there are gonna be people that are listening to this and saying, "Well, I can't, I can't not. Like, it's not possible for me to avoid the dog getting to the point where that spine is oriented and the eyes are big," and all of those things.

There's a difference between when you have acquired the skills and you are ready to work on the plan and your bandage plan, and knowing the difference between the two. One is for growth, one is for stag- stagnation really is the goal for that one. We want to make sure that what we're talking about here today is how do we work on that growth plan that we want to happen eventually at some point when we have some skills on board

[00:20:39] Emily: I think a really good metaphor for that is medical therapy. I mean, we're talking about behavioral therapy, but when there n- when there's an emergency situation and you are in triage and life-saving mode, and you just need to stop the hemorrhaging, the procedures you use are not anything that you would use once the em- like, emergent situation has passed and you have the luxury of time to do the therapies correctly. Like a tourniquet is a really good example of that. Like, tourniquets are not great for bodies. They're just not great 

[00:21:16] Ellen: In fact, that's a d- that's an equally dangerous problem when we don't have a certain condition

[00:21:21] Emily: Yeah, tourniquets can cause a lot of harm. If there's a lot of bleeding, tourniquet is the least amount of harm. And again, I am not making a case here for using aversive tools. I understand that this logic often leads people to conclude sometimes you have to hurt animals to help them, and that's not the message here.

Because sometimes you do have to use a temporary strategy that's just, let- let's get them out of emergency mode, but that doesn't mean... It's the difference between saying I had to cut off the leg because of a hemorrhage" versus "I had to use a tourniquet because of a hemorrhage."

Like, we're not advocating cutting off legs, we're ad- advocating for tourniquets. And that's the difference between the emer- the patches, the emergency stop the hemorrhaging stuff that we do, versus more coercive and aversive mindsets and how, how that, how they would address that, right?

[00:22:24] Ellen: Do I realistically want my clients to have to have two people and one person walk six to 10 feet ahead to make sure there's nothing ahead and, like, hustle to the car and be stressed the entire time? No. And it's so much better than one person white-knuckling it. The dog is screaming because there isn't even anything there. There's just such a history of things being there. And trying to teach that dog to, like, loose leash walk next to me, that's not, that's not a nicety for anybody.

[00:22:56] Emily: That's not the time and place for loose le- leash walking. 

[00:22:59] Ellen: No, you're gonna fail. You're gonna fail. And then you're not, you're not gonna think that the nice lady on the other end of the screen knew what she was talking about, 'cause I know that you won't kind of be successful there 

[00:23:10] Emily: I think one of the reasons that people do tend to fall into that trap of waiting too long and waiting till the dog gets too stressed is because it does work sometimes. Like I, I just said that, like, at the sanctuary we had no choice but to do that.

And so, like, we have, we've heard a lot of times from a lot of people, you know, "But my dog is so good at ta- taking treats while she's barking." We believe you. Yeah, we know. But the, the question is, do you want your dog to rehearse getting really stressed out before calming down? Or do you want your dog to learn how to just navigate a stressful situation calmly? I don't know many people who would choose the former if they knew that the latter was an option. I think people choose the former because they don't know there are any other options. So yes, you can teach your dog to multitask when they're very stressed out, and take treats while also scanning the environment and, you know, warding off s- strangers.

But that's not really what we want them to do. We want them to be able to assess the situation, check in with their handler, real- realize when they need to get out of a situation and it's not a good situation for them to be in, realize when they can stay in the situation and observe, realize when they actually can go investigate or meet somebody or whatever. Those are the decision-making processes we want our dogs to be able to do, and they can't make those decisions if they are in emergency mode. So teaching them how to make those decisions requires us to be operating with them when they are still way down in the thinking and learning zone. All right, mistake number two, your sessions are way too long. And a lot of times by sessions, we mean your dog walks. People are like, "But my dog needs to walk an hour a day." And it's like, well, your dog may need an hour of ex- physical exercise a day. That might be true. I don't know that that's true, but it might be true.

But that doesn't mean that your dog needs to be exposed to stressors for an hour every day, right? Even 20 to 45-minute, quote-unquote, "training walks" in environments where there's lots of stressors are still way too long. Again, like I said, even, like, if it's three or five stressors in a 15 to 20-minute period, trigger stacking is still happening, right? It kind of becomes counterproductive to, to practice with that many stressors in that short of a period of time, because what your dog is learning is to do the skills until they deteriorate. That's not the lesson we want them to learn either, right? We want them to learn that if they do the skills, they will get relief, and if that doesn't happen, they're not learning the lesson we want them to learn

[00:25:58] Ellen: The systemic structural issue is that, like, for me, I can use my own existence as an example. We live on a street where there are lots of off- off leash dogs. That's just the culture of the place that I live, and that is not a problem for anybody except for me realistically.

For me to take a dog, one of my dogs, on a quote unquote "training walk," that would be three to five minutes of a targeted session. I have to leash up my dogs. I have to get the other dog situated. I have to take my dog and scan to make sure they're not gonna get run up on. I have to get them into the car.

I have to drive two to three minutes to go to a place that are ... at least two to three minutes to get to a place that has sidewalks and is going to be quiet enough for that targeted walk, spend three to five minutes there. I'm now looking at 45 minutes of my day potentially for three to five minutes, and that payoff just doesn't make sense.

I would never. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would... That plan would never work for me. That would be misery. So the way that we can circumvent that to make sure that we have that 20 or 45 minutes is to try and find that more what did we call it earlier? Controlled environment. So that you have 20 to 45 minutes where you might only experience one or two stressors, and you have adequate room to get away and adequate time to process, and you are able to do all of the things that you want to do to make it more productive.

And again, the structural problem here comes down to bandwidth because do you have that in your...

anywhere around you? Is that at all a possibility, or are we really struggling in diversity of environments?

[00:27:33] Emily: I mean, and there are so many ways to navigate around that. An obvious one that we do a lot and we talk about a lot is don't take the dogs on walks. F- find ways to meet their needs in your house, in your yard, other places. Take them to sniff spots, take them to private land somewhere. You know, there are ways to avoid walks while still meeting your dog's needs. Another thing that that works for a lot of clients is doing, like- What's it called? Sniff spot. Taking their dogs to sniff spots. And just getting the, their walk q- the walk experience on property where you know other dogs aren't going to be, or other people aren't going to be. Another technique that I, I used with several clients, although this isn't for everybody, including Ellen, is a strategy that I call rubber banding, where I tell clients, pretend that you are attached to your house with a rubber band. You're going to gradually make the rubber band stretchier by gradually increasing the distance between your house, like, where, where you go and your house. So you walk to the end of the driveway with your dog, you play a little find it game with them. You come back to the house, home base, let the dog relax, reset. Does the dog wanna go out and do another rep? This time maybe go down one house down on the right, come back to home base. or, or, you know, one house to the right, do a little find it game, come back to home base, reset. Does the dog wanna go out again? Go one house down on the left. Do a little find it, come back, reset. And then just gradually increase the distance like that. 

[00:29:13] Ellen: I use rubber banding a lot with clients

[00:29:16] Emily: So many clients have found that really helpful because it l- allows them to do mini walks with their dogs so they can control how many stressors their dog is exposed to. If they go three houses down and they meet two dogs, and that's, that's time, when they come back home they're done with the walk. Other times th- they can go farther and they can just keep going. But I also like that, and m- our cl- the clients that I use this with like that it lets the dog opt in to continuing the walk,

or be like, "That was good, I'm done," you know. And, but it's not for everybody, and I remember when Ellen, Ellen, when you first joined our team, you were like, "I would hate that. That would make me miserable," and I'm like, "Yeah, don't do it. If it's not for you, it's not for you." It's one of many possible solutions or strategies that we can use to get the dog and the human what they need without just that constant exposure to stressors and, and the trigger stacking that happens as a... And the trigger stacking that happens as a result of that

[00:30:17] Ellen: I can't do it now 'cause of all the Opily shocks. Like, going out of the house is just not... We have to time it right. And also my dogs would get so frustrated. But for a lot of my client dogs, particularly the ones that are fearful of outside, I use rubber banding a, a ton. Oh, rubber banding works really, really nicely for the dogs who need to expand their safe space. That, that safety bubble grows really beautifully. And I use rubber banding for, So I didn't use it for my house because, like, right out fr- side my front door is not the, not the safest for a dog reactive dog. High probability of the exact opposite of responses that we want, but I use it constantly with the car as a safe space at parks and stuff. So we may not get very far from the car, and then we go back to the car and take a breather, and then we come out of the car and get back to the car

[00:31:07] Emily: Yeah, yeah. The rubber banding can happen at cars too. I actually, my solution with Bree involved our car, but not rubber banding ironically, 'cause I'm the one who came up with the rubber banding. I noticed that even after Bree learned all of the skills to handle the situation, she still just didn't enjoy going out on walks and, and being out in the world in that way. And so we m- met a lot of her needs at home, but then she loved car rides, and I

would crack the windows for her, and she would just have her nose out, and she's just smelling all the smells as we were driving. And I noticed that in the car she was much more relaxed when she would see a dog or a strange person. She could observe them, check in with me, get a snack. So I started, we would go on a fun drive somewhere. We would park for a little while. We would observe dogs and humans at a distance that she would, felt relaxed about, and then we would go on a fun drive back home. We'd loop around back home through a different route so that she got new smells.

And in the last few years of her life she had improved so much that she started choosing to go walk on, go on walks on the Sound with me and explore the beaches because she got to practice all those skills in the safety of the car, and that was what helped her to feel more comfortable doing it out, like, with, infr- let's call it partial protected contact from, you know, other dogs and animals.

And so, like, it, that is not, that's not a solution that I have ever used with any client. I have never asked a client, like, "Put your dog in the car, roll down the window, drive around, see what happen." That was just me experimenting with my own dog.

But, but that was helpful for her. That's how we were able to, to get her to a place where she was-

[00:33:00] Ellen: And it gives you the break. So you're driving, you stay at a light for... Lights typically don't last very long. You do a quick little session, and you move on, and you're getting all of those little tiny sessions in between the same which takes us to mistake number three. You are desperately searching for a neutral dog instead of working with the environment that you have

[00:33:21] Emily: I, I hate to break it to you. Prepare for your mind to be blown. You don't need a neutral dog. You don't need a stuffed dog, a fake dog. You don't need a dog at all except the dog who needs your self-support. That's the only dog you need 

[00:33:37] Ellen: I don't even want to elaborate. I just wanna leave it there put your questions in the, in the, in the chat box. 

[00:33:44] Emily: I have never ... No, the that's not true. I got, I uh, I recruited a neutral dog one time, and the reason I recruited a neutral dog is because I needed to film how I use the flight cue and lat in combination, and how I move between them so that I could demonstrate it to m- people. At, at the time it was for, like, workshops and my mentees or whatever. But it was like, let me show you how quickly we can close the gap between a reactive dog and another dog when we use these strategies. That's the only time I've needed a neutral dog, so that I could demonstrate it on a video.

Otherwise, I've never in my entire career needed or used an, a, a neutral dog or a stuffed dog or anything like that

[00:34:31] Ellen: I used to run reactive dog classes with a whole gr- class of reactive dogs. I didn't need a neutral dog

[00:34:36] Emily: I s- this is one of the reasons that I am such a strong believer in teaching dogs and humans to opt out first, to escape first, teaching them that they can move away, and that moving away has two consequences, positive reinforcement, treats, snacks, party, pets, lovins, and a negative reinforcement, relief. Because if you teach that first and your learners know how to escape, then regardless of what's going on in the environment, you have the option to utilize the the escape when you need it, and, and then you can practice with whatever real world stressors are happening when the dog can handle it, and when the, when the dog and the handler can handle it, right

[00:35:21] Ellen: Here, here's my, here are my thoughts. Number one, if you are requiring a neutral dog, you are asking your client to coordinate a ridiculous amount of things in order to work on their goal, and you have set that goalpost way too far. And if we are insistent that we need to practice with a neutral dog, and we can only practice with a neutral dog, we're doing a terrible job of generalizing.

Three, there are plenty of distractions, low-level triggers, even high-level triggers that are existent in the environment that teach this, that we can practice the exact same skills that we might encounter with a dog, reactive dog on leash that is gonna give us a significantly higher probability of practice and a much more diverse set of experiences.

And at some point, that dog is going to encounter a non re- a non-neutral dog. So we also need to bake exposure to harder stimuli into our plan. And yes, we could say, "Well, we're starting with a neutral dog 'cause we can control the environment and do all of those things," and also I can do that with a tree that is blowing in the wind.

I can do that with a flag on a flagpole. I can do that with the car that just pulled into the park. I can do that with the kids playing baseball in the baseball field. Like, look around, scan your environment, and see where your dog is orienting. You can practice those exact same skills that you need for a dog with all of those other things.

I've gotten so much good advice from Ken, but one of the things that I took away is if you want your animal to be comfortable with medical procedures, they don't need to be comfortable with a stethoscope, they don't need to be comfortable with an otoscope, they don't need to be comfortable with a needle, they don't need to be comfortable with this XYZ thing, they need to be comfortable with weird things touch me.

So go around your house and collect 75 items that you can practice with, and by the time your dog has hit item 50, the stethoscope means nothing. And that's how I feel about bleach reactivity

[00:37:09] Emily: Shout out to Ken Ramirez for just being a constant source of wisdom. We love you, Ken. I don't, I don't think he listens to the podcast, but I just had to put that out into the universe. We love you, Ken Ramirez

[00:37:19] Ellen: Oh, Lord, if Ken has time to listen to the podcast, I have questions.

[00:37:23] Emily: Right. Yeah, I know. I already have questions. 

[00:37:26] Ellen: How he manipulates time is one of them

[00:37:28] Emily: I think he has a time turner because I, it, that man's capacity is superhuman. But anyway, that's not what, that's not what we're here for, to talk about. That really beautifully segues into mistake number four, you aren't teaching what we call a flight cue. But to any skill about moving away from the stressor, escaping a, a not great situation, right? We use flight cue because that's the protocol that Ally and I kind of manufactured when we were at the sanctuary.

But I... It doesn't have to be our protocol. Because again, it's not the, the protocol isn't the important thing, it's what the protocol is doing for your learners. And I think BAT 2.0 does that for people. Emergency U-turn can, whiplash turn can. Any of the protocols that teach humans and, and animals to move away from the stressor has, has the potential to teach this skill. I'm saying has the potential because no protocol is guaranteed to work 100% of the time, because s- lots of factors. But the, the escape, the moving away from stressors is the, is the goal. And like I said earlier, if you don't teach that first and your learners don't know that they can escape, it's going to be harder for them to stay in the situation, stay in proximity to the stressor, and process it. I mean, it makes sense, right? I also don't wanna stay somewhere if I don't know I can leave again. Not gonna bring up my childhood trauma, friends. 

[00:39:02] Ellen: We already established this is not a trauma dumping podcast

[00:39:05] Emily: Right. I was about to say, because this is a confessional podcast, not a trauma dumping podcast. But yeah just knowing that you can leave a terrible situation is such a foundational skill for so many other things. So teach that first. Or, I mean, BAT 2.0 teaches people how to do it all at the same time, and that's great. If that works for you, go for it.

[00:39:31] Ellen: I would love me some Mark and Move

[00:39:32] Emily: doesn't have to be first, but it does have to be a priority. Let me put it that way. Doesn't have to be first, but it does have to be a 

[00:39:39] Ellen: I'm okay with you setting the hard line, do it first. If you don't know that that rule can be broken under certain conditions, you don't know the rules well enough to break them

[00:39:46] Emily: Ellen Yocum. Look at you dropping some hard truths. Love that.

[00:39:52] Ellen: Teach, the pet to disengage or walk away and find relief

[00:39:55] Emily: And then once they know how to do that, it's gonna be so much easier to teach them how to hang out and observe and check in with you and process. 'Cause they're like, "At any time, if this gets a little too dicey, we can bounce." We did a whole mini episode on this way, way back in the day, in the, in the dark ages of the podcast. Episode number 16, I think it is aptly titled flight Training. 

[00:40:20] Ellen: Flight training minisode

[00:40:22] Emily: we, we discuss that a lot, in a lot more detail in that episode, and it's a short episode. So yeah, it won't take you long. Check it out

[00:40:31] Ellen: Mistake number five: you are expecting the dog to have skills that the handler doesn't have. So what we mean by this is you're expecting the dog to know how to disengage and walk away, but the handler doesn't know how to disengage and walk away. You're expecting the dog to take a deep breath, but the handler doesn't know how to take a deep breath.

You're asking the dog to assess and hold it together when the handler can't assess and hold it together. So if you are struggling out in the real world with your leash reactive protocol, like, maybe go practice those skills without your dog and see what has traveled up the leash. Lots of people talk about what travels down the leash.

I've seen so much, and I have experienced so much traveling up the leash. The amount of sensitization I have to Griffy's triggers is gross. Don't love it. It is what it is at this point, and we can work on it, but I caught it a little late, so now I hear things and prepare for him to yell at things. Sirens, it's sirens

[00:41:32] Emily: Yeah, and I wanna, I wanna say, I wanna add to this that, like, if you are that handler, this is not n- this is not an attack on you at all, because even seasoned behavior professionals struggle with this. I, I will say this is an a leash example, but um, with Bayou, my male eclectus who passed away, like, two weeks after Bree passed away, the last four years of his life or so were rough pumpkins. It seemed like he had cognitive decline and um, he had a lot of issues, and one of them was just he was stressed a lot and making these really obnoxious sounds f- all the time. It was not, it was not awesome to live with. And um, my partner observed and reported to me that I had gotten sensitized to Bayou's behaviors, the, the, the, the screeching, when I noticed that it was upsetting to my partner. And so, like, I wasn't as bothered by it when it was just a dynamic between my bird and me.

I could tolerate it, but when I noticed that Bayou's vocalizations were causing Chuck to get really stressed out, that's, that caused me to get really anxious and upset by Bayou's vocalizations. And, and

he had to point that out to me.

I didn't see that about my own behavior, but I... But it was, like, a really, It was one of those moments where I was like, "Wow, you really can't always be your own behavior consultant," because I didn't realize that about myself. And then it, it... When, when he said that, I was like, "Of course, that makes so much sense." And also, now I know what it feels like when I see my clients, their dog is reactive, and they're handling it, and then they go out in a public place where other people are watching. Other people can see you and your dog, and y- and then suddenly you are so much more sensitized to your dog's reactivity. It is so much more anxiety in- inducing. There's just all these additional factors that make it so much a more emotionally potent, and that matters. It matters. You can't just tell people, like, " Don't worry about what other people think." That's not how humans work. That's not how we work at all.

[00:43:51] Ellen: fundam- if you believe in species typical behavior, you cannot tell a human to not do a human thing. That's not how this works

[00:43:59] Emily: Right, exactly. So that, I mean, it's not, it is not a failure on the part of the client to be having a fundamental human experience, right? We have to accommodate, we have to plan for humans to be having those experiences, and our protocols need to support them through those experiences. Because

if a seasoned behavior professional like me experiences that with my own bird, expecting your client to not have that e- experience is unrealistic is an understatement

[00:44:33] Ellen: I had, just this last weekend I was meeting with a client, is a hard sit- it's a hard situation. Very reactive dog to lots of things, and there is a ton of social pressure And so the client is like, "I don't know what to do when he's barking." There's a golden retriever on the floor, and every time the golden retriever ... We don't like the golden retriever. We really don't like the golden retriever, and we don't know why we don't like the golden retriever, but we have decided that the golden retriever is Satan incarnate here to kill our family.

Okay. We all have our things. Um, She's like, "I don't know what to say because I, I don't want my, I don't want my neighbors to think I'm not taking this seriously, 'cause it's not okay. Like, it's v- it's just not okay. What do I say?" And I was like, "Well, the good news is he doesn't speak English, so you can say whatever you want, and it doesn't really matter.

Because if you're worried about him perceiving it or being fearful of it or any of those things, we can teach him that you sounding however it feels good for you to be perceived by the neighbors doesn't mean horrible, terrible things are gonna happen to him." And so that is one of the things that I work with my clients on, is like, how are you going to feel good responding in that social situation?

Because we can work on your dog not having that fear, forceful, frightening experience when you are being a human for the other humans. Like, we can put on the show for the other humans to signal, like, "No, I know this is messed. We're working on it. We're really trying." And also, we don't have to scare the dog to do that.

[00:46:02] Emily: Tiffany wrote a blog not too long ago that like she just had this little sidebar in there that kind of like high-key blew my mind, where she was talking about like if you're having feelings when you're out with your reactive dog do some vagus nerve stimulation activities like sing to your dog about what a terrible dog they have. Like, I mean, nobody thinks their dog is actually terrible, but do you know what I mean? Like, I can't remember exactly how she phrased it, but she's like, "Sing to your dog about these things, or do..." You know, she had these recommendations about like how to take care of your own physiology while you're dealing with your reactive dog out in public,

and it blew my mind 'cause I was like, I do that all the time, but I didn't... I I wasn't aware of why I was doing it. I didn't... I never paid attention to the function that it was serving for me, which means that at no point in my career did I ever recommend that to a client. But I do that all the time. When I'm stressed about my animals, I'll start singing like a play-by-play narrative of like, " Okay, friends, we're gonna do this now because I'm tired of hearing you scream." It's response formation. But it never occurred to me that I was doing that take care of my own physiological health while dealing with the animals, and it never occurred to me to, to recommend that to my clients. Brilliant. Tiffany Holmes, brilliant consultant

Love it. So I think another episode that w- will help sort of like bolster this particular concept is, again, wait, we're doing some, like, throwback Thursday today, I feel. Episode 42 way back in the day with Christina Spalding talking about stress. That episode is really relevant here too. I think that's another one that you might benefit from checking out, because the handler stress is a physiological reality as much as the dog's stress is, and it can be a feedback loop. The dog and the human can kind of get each other worked up which obviously is going to wreck that session. It's going to make that session not productive. So we're not being soft and squishy and you know, touchy-feely. I mean, I am, I have the capacity at times to be a soft, squishy, touchy-feely human, but this is just based on biology. It's not about warm fuzzies, it's just facts

[00:48:21] Ellen: All right, to wrap up, five ways you're effing up your leash reactivity plan.

The first one is interrupting panic instead of focusing on reinforcing calm or desirable behavior. Your sessions are probably far, far, far, far, far too long from a physiology and functional standpoint. You're setting the goalpost at practicing with a neutral dog, which means that that picture may never come to fruition.

Find other ways to practice the same skills with the idea of what you want from a neutral dog. You have not taught your pet to disengage and walk away and find relief. We use the flight cue. There are other options. And then there might be a handler skill gap, and it might be you don't know how to handle the leash when you are feeling the stress.

You don't know how to respond in a way that makes you feel good about the way that you're treating your dog and also social signal to others. There are any number of things here that can really get in your way, and that's where that professional help and that opinion can be helpful from somebody who is kind, compassionate, empathetic, and has uh, truly been that person.

No stones at glass houses on our team, friends. So run through your plan or your client's plan if you're a behavior professional, and look and see if any of these five things are present. Pick one if you have found it, and focus on trying to implement some of the changes that we talked about here. It is very common that there's going to be a combination, and you may need to kind of play Whac-A-Mole with it.

But pick one, because taking one step in 20 directions is going to get you right in the same place versus 20 steps in one direction.

And again, if you have been listening and nodding, we know that caring is not the problem. It's a structural issue, and we see this time and time again, and we can fix structural issues with very small tweaks usually

[00:50:11] 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.