The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell
Humans interact with animals every day of our lives: diet, wildlife, clothes and even medicines, are all intersections we often don’t think about.
This is a podcast about the interactions and connections between humans and non-human animals.
Our mission is to make research more accessible to the public while sharing the voices and lived experience of our human connection with animals.
The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell
81: Expanding Understanding in Canine Behavior Evaluations with Suzanne Clothier (Part 1) S8
"So I'm asking very different questions in how I set up the test, because I want to know what is your native response here? Not a trained response, not a prompted response. I'm not begging you or just simply orienting you to me because I'm doing something. I want to know what you do if I just do my thing and you're in the same space. So the questions are different automatically." - Suzanne Clothier
Episode 7 of Series 8 (Part 1) Transcript
Ever wondered why dogs behave the way they do? Understanding the nuances of the right questions to ask can dramatically influence the lives of shelter animals and their adoption success. Suzanne's insights will change your perspective on how you think about canine evaluations.
We'll introduce you to Suzanne's innovative assessment tool that simplifies understanding temperament, aiding those in the shelter industry to make more informed decisions.
he challenges of working in a shelter can be immense. From matching a dog to the right forever home, to making the difficult choice of euthanasia due to limited resources. Learn how asking the right questions and understanding the psyche of our canine companions can make all the difference. With Suzanne's tools such as the Animal Response Assessment Tool, Relationship Assessment Tool, and the new Functional Assessment Tool, we'll explore how to navigate these complexities, ensuring more successful adoptions and happier shelter dogs. Tune in for a deep dive into the challenges shelter workers face, and the incredible difference they can make in the lives of our furry friends.
Guest: Suzanne Clothier has worked with animals professionally since 1977, with a background includes obedience, agility, puppy testing, breeding, Search and Rescue, conformation, instructing, kennel management and AAT.
Her Relationship Centered Training™ approach blends science and heart to create humane, effective and practical solutions for dogs and the people who work with them, whether professional working dogs or couch warming companions. Her suite of assessment tools provide a powerful framework for trainers and organizations:
RAT™ (Relationship Assessment Tool) – handler/dog dynamics, rapid assessment plus ability to track and compare
CARAT™ (Clothier Animal Response Assessment Tool) – temperament assessment on 6 categories, 21 dimensions
FAT™ (Functional Assessment Tool, release in 2022) – global of functionality/welfare assessment across physiological, social and cognitive dimensions
Book Recommendations: (see part 2)!
Other Links:
Chess and Thomas
Read the Blog! (Guest profiles, book recommendations, trailers and more!)
What to start your own podcast in he Animal Advocacy or Animal Welfare Space? Check out my Podcast Mentoring Services!
So I'm asking very different questions in how I set up the test, because I wanna know what is your native response here? Not a trained response, not a prompted response. I'm not begging you or just simply orienting you to me because I'm doing something. I wanna know what you do if I just do my thing and you're in the same space, so the questions are different, automatically.
Speaker 2:This is the Deal with Animals. I'm Marika Bell, anthrozoologist, CPDT, dog trainer and an animal myself. This is a podcast about the connection and interaction between humans and other animals. Welcome back to series eight and I said welcome back because we've just done a couple of really fun specials and I hope you enjoyed those as much as I enjoyed making them, and hopefully you'll run out and grab both the books we talked about, Whalefall and Magic of Cats. So that's right.
Speaker 2:Series eight, episode seven, or let's call this episode 7.1, because today we're going to explore a different perspective. We will examine the shelter evaluation process, often used to make life and death decisions, from the viewpoint of an internationally recognized expert in canine temperament, Suzanne Clothere. Suzanne has authored a paradigm shifting book titled If Dogs Prayers Were Answered, Bones Would Rain from the Sky, and she also has developed a number of assessments that focus on temperament relationships and functional behavior in canines. As Suzanne readily admits, she's not part of the shelter community. However, she's not only a dog trainer but also a breeder of the most behaviorally stable German shepherds one could hope to share their lives with. I sought her perspective on how shelters utilize canine evaluations to make these life-changing decisions, which extend beyond determining who lives and dies in the shelter system to the type of home they eventually find. This ultimately shapes their success and happiness in their new families. This not only impacts the dog's future, but also how the adopting family perceives and recommends or doesn't recommend the shelter or the entire adoption process. This is significant because, while we encourage people to adopt and assist shelter workers in saving lives, they may be hesitant if they believe animals from shelters are unstable.
Speaker 2:And I'm definitely not saying all rescue dogs have behavioral issues. Oh dog, Haha, that was good timing, I'm back. And I'm by no means saying that dogs from shelters all have issues, but going through the shelter process, even the most stable dog would be confused and potentially traumatized by the process. However, perhaps even a traumatized, abandoned dog with some behavioral challenges can thrive in the right home.
Speaker 2:Right, Uma, let's delve into this fascinating and highly controversial topic of canine assessments. So, as you know, Suzanne is a friend of mine and we do get to chatting quite a bit. So while I think we actually did really good with staying on topic, this episode did get a little long as we explored the idea of canine assessments. So what I've done is I've separated this up into two different episodes. The first one's about 40 minutes and the second one's a little longer. So if you really love this first episode and want to hear more, I'll be publishing the second one in a couple of weeks. So thank you for joining me as my new dog, Uma, barks in the background and we try to answer the question what's the deal with animals?
Speaker 1:I'm Suzanne Clothier and not Clothier. Sometimes people want to make me very fancy, but I'm not just Suzanne Clothier and she her is how I identify myself, and I am a professional dog trainer and have been involved professionally with animals since a lord. I first got paid at age eight, but we won't count that far back since 1977. So all lifetime spent with animals, working with them professionally and also living with them. Yeah, we have an entire house full. My my hero, of course, was Dr Doolittle. I don't have a duck as a housekeeper yet, but because ducks are very sloppy, so that was a good choice as a housekeeper.
Speaker 2:I think so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, anyway, that's me.
Speaker 2:That's you, and a lot of the listeners who are listening right now to this episode will already know you because they've listened to both the episodes that you've been on before. You have the great honor of being, I think, the only person that I have interviewed more than once on this podcast.
Speaker 1:Huh, is this going to be like Saturday night live that you get a jacket after you hosted five times or something?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'll have to come up with something, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When I get to number five, then you guys send me a sweatshirt. Yeah, I'll give it one of my brother's waistline teddy bears. Okay, Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll look forward to it, but no, thank you very much for the honor of that and yeah, that's cool. I did not know that you know.
Speaker 2:The reason is there is so much to talk about with you and I thought about you for this episode because of your history with tools that I would like to say. They're tools that help people understand dogs better and understand our relationship with dogs better, and not just dogs, but a lot of them can actually function with any animal, because this series is about the world of animal welfare and sheltering, and primarily dog and cat sheltering, and one of the tools that's often used in shelters, for many different reasons and we'll go into that a little bit later is the temperament test or the personality test, or sometimes just the behavioral evaluation, and sometimes these terms are used interchangeably, and so I want to first start talking about that, because I think that's something that we need to flesh out a little bit for people listening to this episode. So what is your take on the difference between temperament, personality, behavior? I know that's a really big question.
Speaker 1:I know it's a very big question, so lucky for you. It's something I've thought about since I was probably about 12. Because when I was 12, I was a barn rat. I couldn't afford a horse, but I wanted a horse. But there's always barn owners who will happily take adolescent girls and say let's trash your joints and your entire body and you can work like a construction worker while you're still growing, so you can ride a horse, maybe for an hour.
Speaker 2:So my husband is terrified of riding horses because a pony jumped on his head when he was young and put him in the hospital for a few weeks. So I just want to say, oliver, don't listen to this part, because I just enrolled our daughter in horse riding lessons.
Speaker 1:And you will probably be injured repeatedly. But you'll get back up and be delighted to show up again for another 12 hour day. That was me, and so I had the fortune misfortune I don't know to this day. I think it was a great fortune.
Speaker 1:The only barn that was close enough for me to paddle my little bicycle over to, or get my mom to take me and drop me off, was a sales barn, and not a very good one. They offered riding lessons, but they also, every Thursday night, would take the trailer and they would go to the auction and they'd buy some horses they thought they could flip. So they were not very high end horses as a rule. Occasionally they had a quality horse come through, but a couple of the boarders had some decent quality horses, but mostly these were rough and ready horses that could they safely pack some kids around and not kill them.
Speaker 1:And you can imagine the auction scene. The auction ring is not a particularly sophisticated behavior assessment they're looking for. Is this horse spooky? Does he seem okay? So it was a very abrupt, very weird assessment under very strange conditions. And then come Saturday morning I'd show up and they're like, okay, ride this horse. And I was like, okay, no one knows anything about them. But okay, the rough crewed assessment for that horse's temperament was he probably won't kill this kid, that's a great assessment.
Speaker 2:That's funny because that sounds a whole like the way assessments are done in shelters.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's like, oh yep, we really don't know anything about it. I mean, at one time it was funny because there was a member of lesson horse that they had acquired. They wanted him to be a lesson horse and the kid just gave the horse a weird signal Well unbeknownst to us. He had done movie work and that was the signal to lay down and pretend he was dead. So this poor kid, instead of getting this canter, she gets his horse who kills over and lays there very convincingly. Yes, it was God awful. And of course we didn't know the queue that, like seen, you know, red rover, overcome, hello, yeah, so that was entertaining.
Speaker 1:But I will tell you some of the things we learned in the much more up close and personal handling of the horse, grooming of the horse, riding of the horse was like whoa, this one's got some interesting notes. You know, if this was a recipe for soup, you're like this is not everybody's cup of tea for sure. Wow, sir, some were dangerous, probably won't kill the kid. Sometimes they were wrong about that and sometimes they turned out to be gems. And the other thing that happened over and over was that they had that exams because people would come to buy the horses and then there's a big exam. You know, is this horse not going to break down or become lame? So those fitness fit for purpose. I want this horse to do low level jumpers, or I want this horse to do trail rides. The vets would assess them in the light of that purpose.
Speaker 2:This is a really interesting point that Suzanne made. Let's just say that again. The vets would assess them in light of that purpose. The horses didn't pass or fail an exam. They were looked at in terms of what was this horse capable of physically, emotionally, what experiences had they might already had, based on their current behavior and training? And based on all of that, how would those horses do in different situations? How would they react? How would they behave, were they fit for that purpose?
Speaker 1:So a horse that might not pass as a hunter-jumper who's going to be asked to do a lot of fences might perfectly pass as an acceptable middle-aged lady's trail riding horse. She just wanted to ride three times a week and on the trails and you know, maybe every now and then a blue moon galloped fast, you know, for a quarter of a mile at the end. So that concept got drilled into my head because I was the barn rat who would help the vets, because I wanted to know why are you doing that? Why are you asking that? Why are you turning them in that circle? Why do you do this? Why do you do that? And God bless Dr Lambert and Dr Furlong, both of them are still alive, I believe they understood I was serious and they answered my questions. We hold this leg up for 30 seconds and then ask him to try it off, because if there's anything wrong with his knee or his hawk, it will become evident He'll be stiff in the first couple of steps. We do this because so it wasn't about behavior so much as it was physical but in the horse world, if a horse is uncomfortable physically it's very often going to be demonstrated in a behavior issue or training difficulties. So that whole concept is this animal suitable for the thing that we're hoping, the slot we're going to put him into? That was just drilled into my head because I also got to ride the other end of it, which is no, he's not suitable for a kid, he's not suitable to be handled or worked with or ridden under these conditions. So that not framed a whole lot there was a very visceral experience of this is not a good choice. He's very pretty. I got offered a job once for this very famous horse and I was wondering why is this job available? And I said well, he put his last groom in the hospital. He picked her up by the midriff through across the barn and it's you know, once you're on his back he's great, he's super talented. He's extremely dangerous on the ground. Like you could not go into his pasture, like you would not walk across his pasture, he would come and attack you. Once you're on his back then he would do his thing. So that very visceral experience of this is not suitable.
Speaker 1:I think from a very young age stuck with me as an important framework for is this animal right for this position that we're asking him to fill, or what does it look like when we say we want an animal who can do X and that that could be as simple as trying to pick out a kitten from my mom. I knew she would want a kitten that would sit on her lap happily for hours and watch Jeopardy with her and hang out and and do that stuff. She did not want a cat who was bouncing off the walls and really spend his day trying to figure out how to get outside just to kill birds. I don't want to be an indoor kitty and stop touching me so that there I think from a very early age frame things differently for me in terms of what are we looking for?
Speaker 1:What are the questions we're asking? Because the questions I asked for a kid's dog or an old lady's kitty or what's the qualities you're after. And then, being a breeder, I got to live it. I got to line up dog to home and hope to God that I understood the puppy correctly and I understood the home correctly and if I got it right, everybody thought they got the perfect deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's an interesting one too, because puppies traditionally have been very hard. I mean, sometimes behavioral valuations aren't even done on puppies because everyone kind of says, well, puppies are going to change so much that we just can't know what this puppy is going to be like, or on the reverse side, puppies are a blank slate. So there's no point in doing the behavioral evaluation because we can turn this dog into whatever we want. We can either ruin it or turn it into a star, based on the environment we put it in and the experiences we give it after it's been adopted.
Speaker 1:So all of that flies completely in the face of science. It flies completely in the reality of, first of all, if you said to a parent in this particular day and age especially hey, all children are born blank slate. So if there's anything that's not quite typical or normal with your child, it's really, it's on you, because he was born perfect. He's a little blank slate that you scribbled on. It's just bullshit. Epigenetics alone says that every critter coming into the world is carrying the influence of previous generations, not just mom and dad. And as for puppies, can't be tested and it's not reliable and it has no value. I will respectfully submit that almost all the people who say that are not breeders. Number one they have not lived, they've not walked the walk. Number two I don't think they spent enough time with puppies. So when you look at what Fuller and Scott did, that was back in the 70s. They used dogs, not because they cared about dogs they love dogs but their research was trying to tease apart nature versus nurture, and dogs were a model that they could use to try to get that. So they chose five breeds that were all of the same rough size but with different behavioral profiles. So they had Shelty's Beagles, bessendi Cockers and Wire-haired Fox Terriers All of them under 25 pounds. They could use the same facilities. They would grow it about the same rate.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of what we say we know about dogs comes from the Bar Harbor Research. Jackson Laboratories up in Bar Harbor was where Fuller and Scott did their work. But I don't find a whole lot of people actually go read the original stuff, because I did and I started to say, oh, you guys were only observing puppies for 20 minutes a day Other than you were doing stuff to them and some of the experiments were pretty not very fun for the puppies. 20 minutes a day is an insane amount to observe puppies going through the most critical period of development in their whole lives. So they go from zero to 63 days and they're then roughly the equivalent, neurologically, developmentally speaking, of a four or five year old kid. So can you imagine someone hands you your daughter and said all right, marika, we'll be back in 63 days. So I know she really can't do much today, but by 63 days we'd appreciate it if she can run and jump and play and change directions and speeds and carry things and remember simple games and feed herself and toilet herself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 1:You're like what, what, but that's what happens to puppies before they're nine weeks old. So all the really important stuff happens. And so we have this other part, which is you can't tell what a puppy's gonna be, because somehow this immense chunk of the dog, of who he is, this genetic template, plus that early experience and by that I mean before eight weeks those two are the foundation for temperament. Then you have behavioral confirmation that you literally have motor patterns and responses that are highly specific, depending on if you have a selectively bred breed. So if we have a border collie versus a bassadown, we've got different motor activities right down to different levels of neurotransmitters in their brain and how they respond.
Speaker 1:So they're not blank slates and it is not just how you raise them. It's simply not true at all. So they've known this for quite a long time. They've known that early stuff has a lot to do with how resilient an animal is, how well they handle stress. They've also known for a very long time about the genetics and the contribution of previous generations. So right there we have a big flaw and people, well, you can't tell what puppies you're gonna do, and so well. One of my reputations is for being exceptionally good at assessing puppies and looking at those temperaments, but I have different questions. I ask them. I'm more interested in temperament at its truest definition, which is characteristic ways of responding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's talk about that and the tool that you created in order to help other people see that see what you're seeing when you're looking at puppies or dogs or really any animal and how would a shelter be able to use that as well in their organization? When they're getting there's usually depending on the shelter. If you've got a municipal shelter, you've got a half a dozen dogs coming in a day, say, let's just call that an average.
Speaker 1:Let's start first with understanding temperament before we decide how the heck we're gonna get it all into the shelter with open intake.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's understand temperament, right.
Speaker 1:So temperament, and this is where borrowing from some of the great minds in science, borrowing from science and deciding which voice in science you're gonna listen to, is a tricky thing, right? So, as you said, this blank slate and how you raise them and how you train them, they'll be anything you want them to be. This is behaviorism rearing its ugly little head. This is Watson saying give me a kid before he's seven and I'll turn him into anything you want him to be. The arrogance in that is shocking, absolutely shocking. And yet it's woven through our belief that if your dog is this way or that way, it's well, you just didn't train him, rather than we have a characteristic setting. That is who this animal is.
Speaker 1:So at the same time, skinner was doing his behaviorism thing, which became very popular because, boy, the world loves recipes. There was also a pair of child psychiatrists, jess and Thomas, who were doing much different questions. They were like why, if we say to two children let's go to the kitchen, one of those kids takes off like a bat out of hell. No one said run to the kitchen as fast as you can. And his sister grabs his mom's hand and is like you know, you're coming too right mom. Same exact stimulus, two very different responses and two innate responses. It's who they are. Anyone who's had more than one child will tell you their children are different and they are different from the moment they're born. They're different when you're carrying them. If you're a woman, they don't even feel the same inside you. They have different rhythms, they have different things they like to do. So that work by Jess and Thomas. They were really curious about this temperament. What makes this? What is this difference? How do we identify them? And then what does that mean long term for these children? I started to say puppies for these children. So when I found them, I had already developed carrot, my assessment tool. I was like, oh my God, I've been jammeling Jess and Thomas because instead of the some of the weird temperament stuff dog trainers or behaviorists look at, they were looking at different qualities.
Speaker 1:And then that work was picked up by Jerome Kagan who did a very long, 40 plus year longitudinal study that children who exhibit this can play out this way for them further down the line, children that are and there's some great footage. You can find it on YouTube. If you put Jess and Thomas in or you put Jerome Kagan, you put child in temperament. There's some great footage where they show a like a novel little toy rattle to a baby and one of them ah, he gets really really really excited makes like little fists and he's like vibrating and everybody's like, oh, look, how happy he is. And they're like so that's an excessive reaction.
Speaker 1:It turned out those kids were very sensitive to stimuli and they could become overstimulated and would often become shy. So they're like oh, he's so excitable, let's watch that. And there was others that were much duller in their responses, but they followed it out and there's a lot that goes down the road, right. So I'm much more of that school of thought is I wanted to know what makes the differences Like why, if I say we're going for a walk, do four dogs bounce off the walls? I'm using that exaggeration, of course, and you know two more like all right, let us know when you're ready, you're gonna open the door and off we'll go. So that's what I kept looking for.
Speaker 1:What are the differences that I see in puppies the puppies that come out in my hands and they're just feel like live wires, and the ones that can relax easily in your hand, and how does that play out through their lives. The answer is it does, it does, and so, having watched a lot of puppies grow up of multiple breeds and working in a guide school early on, doing temperament assessment is a kind of a. It's a very common test, it's in use and I think it's pretty much not particularly useful. So they do it but they don't actually pay attention to the results. Hmm, and so that at one point they had a whole litter donated and I remember my job was to test this litter, so I did it and I thought well, none of these are gonna be suitable guide box period, none of them.
Speaker 1:They were very nervous. It took them a long time to recover. If anything startled them, they mostly just slunk around the room, were terrified of the room, not particularly interested in working with a person, and and they placed every single one of them Into the program because it had been a donor. So my job was to travel around and meet like every other month or so with these people and I remember watching those puppies grow up because they were on their bellies, just terrified that, they did peel them out of the car and then drag them into the training class and I thought and that was those crystal clear evidence at eight weeks old that the qualities you want for a potential guide dog were not there. And it was clear and I couldn't understand why, if you're gonna do the test but then the test results say not suitable, you go ahead and do it anyway.
Speaker 1:So, that that stuck in my mind, as that doesn't seem right, like good assessment would get you answers that are meaningful and applicable. Not what we'll run through that, but who cares?
Speaker 1:hmm, so that stuck in my head. What makes this different? What are these qualities? You know, one of the classic puppy test things is hey puppy, hey puppy. So they put a puppy down and then someone claps and calls. I'm like, well, that's like going out on the street and yelling hey lady, hey, hey lady. That a person turns around has nothing to do with whether or not they actually want to have a conversation with you. And yet, and Same thing, get the puppy to follow. You, get his attention, you're slapping your leg. And I'm like also, why don't we ask the dog, what would you do?
Speaker 1:So my puppy test goes a different way. It puts the puppy in a situation where there's a person sitting quietly and the puppies, they're really social, like oh, hello, person. Sometimes they're a little. Something else will get their attention. First they're like oh, that's interesting or that smells greater, what is that sound which also tells me something which takes priority over the sociable sort? And then how do they react to the person? Without being prompted? So the person will greet them if they come over, and then they stand up and and then they'll just walk across the room quietly. They don't encourage the puppy. I want to know does the puppy, keep the person on the radar. So I'm asking very different questions in how I set up the test, because I want to know what is your native response here? Not a trained response, not a prompted response. I'm not begging you or Just simply orienting you to me because I'm doing something.
Speaker 1:I want to know what you do if I just do my thing and you're in the same space, so the questions are different automatically. And when I teach it to people that have worked with me and there's not many that are doing this because it's it's hard to learn my approach, which also makes it not very popular, but I'm what I want them to know is each little aspect of the assessment. What is the question that you're asking? What are the actual questions we're posing to the dog? And so in that first one is is the questions we're asking are, when you're put into a novel space, how do you sort that out?
Speaker 1:There is a social Component, there's a person available to you, is of that, is that of interest to you, and sometimes they'll go over and say hi, but then they're the puppy, will wander off because it's much more entertaining to Explore the room. And sometimes the puppies will explore the room and then be like, oh, my goodness, I didn't even know you were there. And then some puppies will just climb into the person's lap and said, dear God, I hope, I hope you're a nice person, because it doesn't appear to be anything else in this room that I know and there's some scary things over there. So I'm asking this big, broad question of when I put you in this situation, how do you sort it out? Hmm, and very specifically with a person involved, is that of interest to you, and of how much interest? Because sometimes they'll come over, they'll greet someone, then they'll they'll go off and Investigate. But when the person gets up and moves across the room without saying a word, the sociable puppies clock that and they're like oh, they notice where the person went and will follow them.
Speaker 1:The really sociable animals are like well, where are we going? We call it the we thing. You know the puppies, so what are we doing now? And it's you got to know what the question is you're asking and then make sure that you've got a really clean question, or that there's several being asked, know what they all are, hmm, so you can see what the answers are. And this approach, once you learn it, it's so clear that this framework, even watching a poorly constructed puppy, test you instantly, or any assessment, you instantly start to say like You're not asking the question you think you're asking.
Speaker 2:How do you think that this could translate into a shelter environment?
Speaker 1:I Think it could if you knew what the questions were that you really wanted to know the answers to.
Speaker 1:Hmm and I think that's the problem. I think, a lot of assessment In the shelter world and, to be fair, I am not involved in the shelter world. I'm on the other end of it as a trainer, trying to help people that have either gotten a dog from a shelter, out of a rescue situation who are very poorly suited to their lifestyle or expectations expectations who really are behaviorally not a good fit, and that ranges from unbelievably anxious, really behaviorally fragile animals that are just being overwhelmed with the environment, to Way too much dog With way too many needs that these people cannot possibly meet. And in order they intend to. They didn't intend to buy a project, they wanted a dog.
Speaker 1:Yeah so knowing what are the questions we want to ask. So, as far as I can tell, a lot of the behavior assessments that are done are Really circling around this one big question Is this dog aggressive? This dog hurt somebody?
Speaker 2:and the reason for that right? Yeah, there's a good reason for it. Well, there's the obvious one, which is you obviously don't want to send a dog home. That's gonna bite anybody or actually really hurt anybody. But there, the underlying one for a lot of shelters is Unfortunately, can we euthanize this dog? Because of the shelters that are full and have a whole lot of Dogs and cats and not enough space are Are especially at the moment post COVID.
Speaker 2:A lot of the shelters are very full right now and his through my conversations in this series, it's become very evident that any progress that was made towards Shelters really getting animals through the system Alive and quickly and into good homes, that they are matched with any kind of progress that was made, has really backslid quite a lot Evaluations, if and when they're being done.
Speaker 2:Even if it's just somebody going, I don't have a good feeling about that dog, or I do have a good feeling about that dog, or that dog's just been passed up too many times or returned too many times. It's an excuse to get them on the list, right? The list is the list of animals at the end of the night that are gonna euthanize, so there's space for more dogs to come in and I'm talking this is worst-case scenario open-admission, shelter, municipal style, that really have to take in any animal that's brought to them within their Jurisdiction and they can't turn them away. They can't, and a lot of them don't have a process in place for managed intake either, and often that behavioral evaluation is used to weed out triage. Even the dogs that are Are iffy. This is one kennel that we're gonna have open because this dog did not pass this, whatever evaluation we've got.
Speaker 1:Yep, so it was a municipal open-admission Shelter that I watched some assessments and and this dog still haunts me, because if I'd known they were gonna do that, I don't know if I would have tried to figure out how to get in the hell out of there. Anyway, it is a little corgi mix. He has maybe 30 pounds or so and it was a the final assessment. So they have the cherry pickers, the, the pure bread and partial bread rescue groups that come in. They're like we'll take them, thank you. And so this was the group that would come in at the last minute and make their thing and once they said, yeah, you're Nate, that was it, that was gonna be it.
Speaker 1:So they, you know, the little guy was pretty good in the in the kennel where it's very crowded Space, and she took him out to a smaller little yard and it was pretty small, like the size of most people's living rooms, I think, and he is pretty agreeable. Who's interested in chatting with her and interested in sniffing. If she interrupted him or tapped him, he was okay and he would look up from what he was doing and be like what, oh, hello, okay, I can follow you. And Then other clear blue skies. She just charges him and she just charges at him and she crowds him into a corner and he's like what the hell, like what the hell? And defensively he's snapping and she just keeps coming and crowds him right into a corner. He never makes contact with her, he just makes himself really small while doing a lot of defensive lunges.
Speaker 1:And Then she walked away and and literally I don't know 15 seconds, 20 seconds, he shook it off and carefully watching her, he still followed her and was willing to approach her again and the trainer and I the trainer friend of mine and we're like nice resilience, because we're thinking in carrot terms which was he was just pressured hard For no damn reason. He could tell I mean the woman from his perspective was a nut job, but he bounced back from it and that that sociability that he possessed and his resilience and his tolerance. He was defensive and he was snapping, but he made no contact. She was close enough. He could have landed a lot of bites on her if he was really dangerous move to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was.
Speaker 1:I thought, well, if this goes bad, so she finishes this up. And he's, he's still tentative about her, for good reason. I would be if I was talking to you and suddenly you went off on me. I'd be like whoa. And so she's like, I suppose, alicia, I'm just gonna walk her back to the kennels and I said, so you're gonna take him. She's, oh no, I was like what she goes, not with that kind of aggression. I was like but what?
Speaker 1:And his resilience? Even though you just scared him pretty badly and acted psychotic, he forgave you and was willing to interact with you again in a very short period of time. Doesn't that speak to his resilience? And she's like now, if he was less than 20 pounds, we'd take him, no matter what. Even if they've been, we can always find homes for them. I thought, wow, okay. So we are working on very different criteria.
Speaker 1:The questions I would ask is how sociable are you? Because, however cute you are and however non aggressive you are, a lot of people actually want a dog to interact with. Some people just want a dog to hang out in the backyard and stay happy all day while they're gone, but many people they do want to interact with the dog. So are you sociable? Are you tolerant? How do you use space? Are you a dog who is going to clover everybody that walks in? Those are all settings that the dog has innately, and that's not the question they were asking. But she wanted was a dog, probably, that would just simply shut down and go passive and not defend himself, although, again, he did it without ever laying a tooth on her.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I did. It still haunts me. I can still see that dog, hershey, I can still see him Wait what? But you'll take the 20 pound or less dog who actually will nail you, who has bitten people. Well, he can't do as much damage, but I would actually bet on this dog not right In a supportive home. It doesn't even have to be a special home.
Speaker 1:So what are the questions that are being asked?
Speaker 1:If all we're asking is is you know? Are you aggressive if I provoke you? Okay, that is definitely you know. It's like saying it's a vegetarian pizza, I'm gonna put some bacon on it so you can have. A dog is great in all other ways, but as soon as I put bacon on vegetarian pizza, it's not a vegetarian pizza anymore. And this dog's lovely in all ways, oh yeah, but he also. He bites if you do this to him.
Speaker 1:Okay, now we probably have a problem. That's the deal breaker for many people's aggression. Although resource guarding, the research has shown, number one, that many more people would not hesitate to adopt a resource garter. And, number two, some of the resource guarding in the shelter setting doesn't always translate into what that dog does at home. So that's that's.
Speaker 1:The other problem with the assessments is they're clunky because they're all built around this aggression piece. And there's many other questions we need to ask, and I understand there has to be something, because you can't keep everyone alive. They're just simply. It just isn't possible, unless we're going to start opening thousands of acres of sanctuaries where everybody gets to live out their life like a zoo animal, and that's for some dogs, I think that would be a preferred setting to being placed or stuck in a shelter. So I get that, but I think we need to change the questions we're asking and they need to become much more nuanced and perhaps feared. It's more like real estate, right, it's okay. Do you want to live in the country? You want to live in the city? Well, if I say I'm going to live in the country, don't show me a city apartment, don't even show me the listing, don't even discuss it, right? So, like, what's the big sort? Is this dog aggressive or not? And what do we mean by that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's so broad and and can mean so many different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a dog that growls. And this is the other problem I see with the people that I work with that work in shelters or in rescues. Their hearts are ginormous. I don't know how they do the work and not be torn apart and I think they often are but their knowledge of behavior does not match the size of their hearts.
Speaker 2:Very often that was Suzanne Clothier. Author. If dogs prayers were answered, bones would rain from the sky. And the training assessments the Clothier Animal Response Assessment Tool, the Relationship Assessment Tool and the new Functional Assessment Tool with accompanying very handy app. If you want to hear more about the conversation between me and Suzanne, jump back on in two weeks from today and you can get all of the fantastic Suzanne talking about canine assessment. Goodness, thank you for joining us as we tried to answer the question what's the deal with animals? I'm your host, marika Bell. I'd like to thank Kai Straskov for the theme music and Natasha Matzart for sharing her skills to help grow the podcast. You can see links to the guest book recommendations, as well as their websites and affiliated organizations in the show notes and at thedealwithanimalscom. This podcast was produced on both historical tribal land of the Snoqualmie and Quenalt Indian Nations. The Deal with Animals is part of the IROAR Animal Podcast Network. Now, what do you think is the deal with animals?
