Avoidance Behaviors Reveal What Your Dog Cannot Say

Your dog doesn’t need to “act scared” for stress to be real. Sometimes it shows up as lip licking, yawning, panting, sniffing, looking away, refusing treats, or that sudden moment where your dog seems distracted and checked out. Michael Parker and Chris break down what avoidance behaviors actually look like, why they get misread, and how fast they can slide into reactivity, fleeing, or biting when the dog feels trapped or overloaded.

We dig into the difference between avoidance vs escape behavior, including passive avoidance like a dog planting its feet outside the vet after a negative experience. We also share real training stories, like a young dog screaming at nail clippers before a single nail gets cut, and what that tells you about learning history and what the dog has been allowed to “get away with.” From there, we challenge the common advice of “just avoid the trigger” and explain why that can become a band-aid that keeps fear alive instead of building confidence.

Because we’re balanced trainers, we also talk honestly about “good avoidance” in dog training: teaching boundaries with tools like wireless fences, using fair corrections for digging or barking, and proofing service dogs around food for safety. The thread that ties it together is relationship-based training, clear communication, and reading full-body context instead of clinging to one sign like hackles or a tail wag. If you want better dog body language skills and more effective behavior modification, hit play, then subscribe, share the show, and leave us a review with your biggest training question.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Welcome

What Avoidance Looks Like

SPEAKER_02 0:54

back to another episode of the TalkShit Get Bit podcast. I'm your host, Michael Parker. I'm your co-host Chris. And today we're going to talk about avoidance behaviors, which, as we were discussing before we went live, this could be a slippery slope to a lot of places, right? Very, very broad topic here. Impacts a lot of different areas of training that you and I both do. So we'll kind of just give a higher altitude, higher elevation outlook on this for today, just to kind of paint a picture for it. And you know, it's one of those things we can always go back and dive into more later. But definitely a key thing to look out for whenever training a dog, whether it's a working dog or a pet dog. Quick list of some of those signs that I wrote down, you know, of avoidance behaviors, things like licking the lips, panting, yawning, hypervigilance, food refusal, moving away from something, sniffing, avoiding eye contact. I wrote turning away, but that's the same thing as moving away. Well, oh yeah, no, turning away, like turning away from you. That is different. Tuck tail, stiffness. I'm sure you've got others, uh, and that that's not all of them. That's just a few off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah,

Avoidance Versus Escape Behavior

SPEAKER_01 2:14

and that's um, so avoidance. It's a lot of times it's confused with escape because avoidance and escape kind of go hand in hand. Usually escape can stem from avoidance, right? The dog becomes overstimulated on the the avoidance part. So a lot of those are are very accurate. And one of the biggest ones that I see on the working dog side is the dog becomes distracted. It would look like the dog is distracted. And essentially what's happening is that you have to be able to decipher is the dog confused and doesn't understand the task that you're asking, or is the dog mentally overloaded and going into avoidance? You can also have passive avoidance, which all of those are signs of active avoidance. Passive avoidance would be things that relate to like place association or site picture familiarization. So a good example would be you take a dog to a vet. If the dog's had a negative experience of the vet, you know, the dog, a normally confident dog, may start to shelter seek, may plant itself and refuse to go in. So avoidance. When I explain avoidance to clients, because we do have a lot of dogs that come in with shelter seeking behaviors, and and you know, again, it goes hand in hand with other behavior issues and like the low confidence with the fear aggression, things like that. All of that stems from avoidance. That's my favorite part about dog training and and dog psychology is everything connects at some point. It all goes back to one point.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

And that's that's why I said it's a slippery, this is topics a slippery slope to everywhere. Reactivity, fear, aggression, which I don't like using the word aggression because uh again, aggression is rooted in fear, lack of confidence, all of that. Like you said, it all goes hand in hand and loops back together somewhere, which is why I tried to to keep the signs kind of generic, because some of those are like licking lips, panting, moving away. Those are also the same signs you would see in a dog that's getting ready to potentially bite, that discomfort. They that's it's all a very can be a very quick slope, right? From avoidance to reaction and into you know biting, fleeing.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah, and a good uh a good example that I use for a lot of clients is especially if they're not understanding, or maybe it's a first dog and they haven't had a lot of experience with dogs. Uh I mean, realistically, I I train dogs professionally now, and I have probably a dozen dogs that technically belong to me through my company here at the kennels. And conveniently, my parents, when I was growing up, were allergic to dogs for the first, you know, 16 years of my life until I moved out, and then boom, they got a dog. So I I didn't grow up around my own dogs in the household. I grew up around other dogs, but I didn't really understand a lot about

Metaphors That Explain Dog Avoidance

SPEAKER_01 5:17

them. So something that I break down to my clients and and try to explain is avoidance would be similar to you speeding down the interstate, and about a mile, half a mile ahead, you see a cop sitting in the middle of the road. So, what do you do? You hit your brakes, you slow down, you check your speed, you get back to the speed limit to do what avoid getting a speeding ticket, right? So you displayed a change of behavior based on the stimulus of that cop. That's a visual stimulation. So that's the exact same thing the dogs are doing. They've recognized something because it's usually caused by negative reinforcement. So when a dog is pulling on a leash and you're using a slip lead and you apply pressure, or you're using a prong and you apply a pop or a pulse and the dog bounces back. Eventually, what's our goal? Our goal, we pair that with a marker word, nay, pop, dog falls back. So the goal is to be able to get it to where we just say, nay, the dog anticipates the correction and preemptively makes the decision to back up. So another good metaphor that I use is an alarm clock. Alarm clocks are annoying, nobody likes them. They were literally invented to piss you off, irritate you, and get you out of bed from a state of rest. So when you're laying there and the alarm clock goes off, you reach over, boop, you hit the alarm. That's or you hit the snooze. That's escape. That's escape training or escape behavior. So that's how you stopped that annoyance. Same concept applies when we use stimulation from the e-collar for communication, things like that. Now, to transition that over to avoidance would be when your body naturally starts waking up. If your alarm's set for six, and your body naturally starts waking up at 5 50, 555. So you can reach over and turn that alarm off before that happens.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Yeah, you can conditioning yourself to have a response to wake up early or or through operant conditioning. Yeah. Yeah. That I you brought up a really good point earlier that kind of wanted to hop back to, you know, the association with the vet. We see it from time to time when when we have dogs, and I technically only own two dogs, but I've got another four in here in the kennel room that technically belong to me through the business as well. So not quite as many as you, but got more. And you can pick up on those. It's you especially being a trainer, you you learn to pick up on, oh, you've been allowed to avoid this, you've been allowed to avoid that. A lot of that is due to fear or uncertainty, which which kind of those indicators like to the signs that we were talking about. What those different signs indicate, you know, things like discomfort, fear, stress, overstimulation, prior negative experiences, like the vet, or I got a great example that just happened earlier today. We were training

Nail Clippers And Learned Avoidance

SPEAKER_02 8:19

with one of the dogs that's here. Notice his nails were a little long. So Laura grabs the clippers and is like, hey, we're just gonna trim them real quick. Yeah, real quick was not a was was not happening with this dog. No joke. I I was just kind of holding him just because we weren't sure how he's gonna act, but he's younger puppy, like a year old, still a young dog. She did not even cut a nail, and this dog starts screaming like he's being beat, you know, trying to bite, which that tells me right there, like that's that's a type of avoidance he's he's trying to avoid getting his nose nails clipped. And that tells me right there that he's one had a negative experience in the past. Some somebody probably cut his nails too short and quicked him. But I'm also guaranteeing that after that, when somebody tried to cut his nails, he threw a fit like that and got away with it, right? So he's learned that demonstrating this behavior, I don't have to face that thing that is scary to me, avoidance. It's the definition of avoidance right there. So what what do we do? Well, obviously, I can't allow you to continue to avoid that. There's nothing bad about getting your nails trimmed, right? Like it's it's not gonna kill you. So we had to work him through that. Obviously, tried to give him food. Food, food, food refusal was definitely happening during that. He was all about not getting his nails trimmed. So I ended up just kind of holding him. He screamed for the first three or four, and then he realized that that wasn't gonna get him out of it, and also that nothing bad was happening. And then guess what he did? He he kind of like baby screamed for a couple, and by baby scream, it didn't sound like we were murdering him anymore. Which I was like, dang, the people next door at the brewery are probably thinking we're murdering a dog in here right now, and we haven't even cut his finger, like cut his nails yet. Like we hadn't even cut a single one, and he's screaming like I'm killing him. And then it was uh, and then by like two more after that, he was like, Oh, and he just stopped, right? Because one, he realized nothing bad was gonna happen, and two, that he was gonna have to do it even if he didn't want to. And kind of on that avoidance topic, there's a lot of trainers out there that train avoidance, right? Like they're like, Oh, well, your your dog's reactive. Avoid those things that they're reactive to. Don't acknowledge, like, you know, they they literally train people to train their dogs not to look at the thing that bothers them. Well, you're not actually solving any of the issues there, right? Like you see these things about don't make your dog face things that they're afraid of or that they're trying to avoid. Well, that's just as a veteran with mental health issues, putting a band-aid on it. What's that? Putting a band-aid on it. Exactly. Like, you're you're just it's like as a veteran with with mental health issues, I have to look at it like that, right? Like, okay, I don't like the crowds, I don't like going out and being around people, I don't like doing all these things. And if I avoid them, you end up like where I was before I got a service dog where I didn't leave my house for four months because I didn't want to be around people. I was avoiding those discomforts. And then, hey, I got a service dog, and then I have this like, oh, let me test the waters here, started getting out more, and I worked through that. Was it dis was it uncomfortable to start going out and being around people? A hundred percent. I didn't like it, but I worked through it and realized, hey, nothing bad is gonna happen. And it's the same with our dogs, like you can have negative experiences, you can be unsure about things, but don't avoid it. Just work through it. And that's uh, my same approach with the dogs. And the same way with with myself, you, other veterans, and you know, people that have anxiety and stuff like that. The only way you work through that is by facing that head on, right? It it's the same aspect uh for the dogs. We have to face it head on. And how do we actually work through those behaviors? We face them head on. We don't dive into it 100% right out the gate, right? Like a dog that's fearful of people. I'm not gonna be like, oh, well, go get pet by 700 strangers. No, I'm gonna take you around strangers at a distance, show you that they're not gonna hurt you, and slowly work you work you into that, right? It's it's a process, but we're not gonna avoid things. Avoidance doesn't allowing that avoidance to continue doesn't solve the problem any at all.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah,

Stop Avoiding The Hard Stuff

SPEAKER_01 13:26

and that's I want to clarify because there are certain things with both of us being balanced trainers, there are certain ways that we do implement avoidance as a training method. So to clarify, what we're doing in the scenarios where you're talking about is we're not going to, you know, like we said, put a band-aid on it and be like, hey, if you're reactive to squirrels, we're we're just gonna stay away from squirrels, we're not gonna look at squirrels, we're not training that. We're gonna train you and we're gonna cap your drives to where you can look at that squirrel and you know that the correct thing or the correct answer is to look at us. Most of the time, that's gonna be through communication and avoidance to teach that. But uh so one of the ways that we would train and teach with avoidance would be, you know, for example, one of the wireless fences. So the wireless fences come with barrier flags. You put those flags out and then you condition the dog to realize and recognize that hey, when I get this close to one of these flags, I get a warning sound. If I continue to go past that warning sound and ignore the warning of sound, I get a correction. So they eventually begin to avoid the area where those flags are because they don't want to receive that correction. That's a positive way to utilize avoidance training. Same thing with dogs that are digging. People call me and they ask me all the time, hey, my dog's digging in the backyard, how much you train or how much you charge to train train that out. I'm not gonna charge you anything. Go buy an e-collar, put the dog outside. I'll teach come by, I'll teach you, you know, we'll do one lesson, I'll teach you how to use an e-collar. Put the dog outside, sit at your kitchen window and watch. As soon as the dog starts digging, utilize that e-collar that we've conditioned the dog to understand what those corrections mean to teach the dog that's an undesired behavior, stop it. Eventually, the dog will put two and two together, understand through communication and avoidance, and be like, I don't want to do that anymore. And there you go, your problem solved. The only thing, and I I know the same concept works with barking. That's literally the that's the entire basis of how bark collars work, is they warn, then they stimulate to extinguish that undesired barking and behavior. However, people need to understand that there's limitations to tools, and sometimes you can be too stupid to use a hammer because specific dogs, especially things like hounds and beagles, they bark. That's just what they do. And if you call me and tell me that you want to pay me to train your beagle not to bark when no one's there, I'm probably gonna respond with the same advice. If you don't want barking when you're not there, put a bark collar on the dog. If you're against that, that's exactly what we're gonna do. So you you might want to figure something else out or look at getting a different type of dog.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah, do do the research before you get a certain breed. But like, yeah, I mean, we'll use avoidance and training, especially like service dogs, right? In certain aspects, like food refusal and things like that. And I'm not talking like food refusal from me, but from other people or on the ground or going out to a restaurant. By nature, a dog is gonna be curious in food, it's gonna want to try to eat the food that's there, put its nose places it shouldn't be. And I gotta teach the dog that that's not okay, that's not an okay behavior, right? Sometimes it's for safety reasons, right? I had to do that with my first service dog, Levi, because people were giving him people food behind my back to the point that it became an issue, and it was just kind of one of those things that it was an annoyance to me. I'm like, wow, I used to be able to leave you in the vehicle and not have to worry about anything. Now I have to worry about you eating my food until one day it was a bottle of doggy pain pills that he tried to get into because they smelt like beef. And luckily he wasn't able to get them out. And so I had to set him up and use an avoidance correction, like you did, right? The moment he went to eat the food, stimulation from the e-collar. And then he was like, Oh, didn't have an issue with that. There, there's a time and a place for an avoidance correction, right? I'm not gonna use that for for every situation, but there is a time and a place for that. So, in a way, we we do use avoidance to a small degree in training. However, when it comes to like environmentals and things like that, I don't teach avoidance. Like

Using Tools To Teach Avoidance

SPEAKER_02 18:17

I shouldn't have to go out of my way for the dog, especially like fearful dogs. Most of the time, the things they're afraid of, it's it's normal. Like, oh, my dog's afraid of thunderstorms or the trash truck or things like that. Well, that's a normal occurrence. Nothing weird or unusual is happening. Your dog might think so. And a lot of times that stems from how people handle it. The dog starts getting freaked out by thunder. What do they do? They coddle the dog. Oh my god, it's okay, fluffy. It's okay, you're okay. Which just makes it worse. Versus me, I'm like, yeah, dude, chill. Nothing, nothing's happening. Thunderstorms are normal. Like, oh, the trash truck comes every Friday. This is nothing out of the normal here. And then guess what? That was it. It's again, it's like a I like to compare it to kids when I'm talking to clients. I'm like, okay, so if you have a kid and they fall down, scrape their knee, if you respond with, oh my god, are you okay? What are they gonna do? They're gonna start crying because they think that they shouldn't be okay. And now you've got to comfort them versus a kid falls down, they're gonna immediately what do they do? They immediately look at you for your reaction on how they should feel about it. And if I'm like, you're good, get up, dust it off, they're just gonna be like, oh, okay, and they're just gonna go about their business. Like you've pointed out in past episodes, dogs have the mental capacity of a between a three and a seven-year-old. They're literally kids, and you have to treat them as such. If you don't want them to be fearful of things, especially normal everyday things, don't make it make it where it's something to be afraid of. It's it's a normal activity.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yeah, and that's uh that goes back as well. The

Normal Life Stressors And Coddling

SPEAKER_01 20:07

first portion of what you said goes back to selecting your dog. So I had bash before I had Cooley. So I had my female before I had my male for probably probably two years. And Cooley is the one that I chose. I would say that that mine and bash's relationship is a lot stronger. She is my very first working dog, she's the one that I I learned with, I grew up with her in this field. And I was actually talking to a buddy of mine about this earlier. Bash was not suited to be my service dog because now dope dog, she's a phenomenal dope dog. Obedience, great, awesome obedience. Uh however, she she has a quirk, she is female dog reactive, and when I attempted to correct that behavior, her working drives began to diminish. That was something you know, her purpose was to work and find dope, so that's not something that I was willing to sacrifice. Uh Cooley, on the other hand, he's completely dog neutral. I've never seen him have an issue with another dog. Big, small puppy, doesn't matter. Cats, squirrels, bears doesn't matter. He doesn't care about any of them. So he's a and he's still a good dope dog. He's a good tracking dog, and he's a good bite dog. So he he fits the bill for my everyday use. He's my EDC dog. So looking at that, yeah, you have to be able to really select what you're what you're doing. Now, that being said, I am extremely grateful that Cooley came along. When Cooley came to me the first thing it was about two months after I got him, I called the my friend that I got him from and I said, Hey, listen, I don't know if this dog's gonna work. Work out. He said, What do you mean? I was well, he's a super, super handler dependent. He doesn't really seem like he wants to do scent work, like he he's kind of bored with it. I can't get him to calm down long enough to focus. And they were like, Well, just keep working on it, keep trying. My friend that I'm mentioning is my original mentor. And I was like, All right, I'll keep I'll keep trying. I'm grateful for him because 90% of everything that I know about dogs and complications and troubleshooting are because I had to do them with Cooley. Because he he's a an amazing dog, but his head is completely empty. Uh he stares at you and waits for a directive. That's it. Now he's a he's an amazing animal. I was spoiled with Bash. She was turnkey when I got her. She was a great dog from day one. Never really had to sweat, never really had to put much work into her. Just a really, really good dog. Cooley, on the other hand, that dude was a psychopath. He was an animal. It's probably the duchy that's in him. But with that being said, I wouldn't go back and change that at all. We use avoidance by means of compulsion when I train him. So again, they'll learn to avoid that pop. When you initially start, we mentioned earlier that avoidance and escape go hand in hand. When you initially pop pressure on, for you know, example, like teaching the sit, you apply upper pressure study, they escape, they find a way to escape that pressure, and then that turns into avoidance. So once we go through there, that's that kind of goes back to the alarm clock. Yeah, you start hitting that snooze, but eventually you condition yourself to just start waking up a couple minutes earlier. Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

And yeah, again, that's that's kind of how we part of how training dogs is complex. To say that this is how we do it. You and I both know that that's situational, right? Ideally, I like to teach a food how to get teach a dog how to get there with food and luring, but that's not every dog. Some dogs don't give a shit about food, and I still gotta teach you how to do the things. So exactly like you were describing, I gotta teach you how to get there. I gotta teach you how to give in to leash pressure because I need to be able to guide you where I need you to go instead of avoiding it, trying to escape, pull back, all that kind of stuff. I need you to give into it. Like, hey, I I want you to come over here, right? It's not a bad thing. I feel like we dived away from avoidance behaviors into avoidance and training. That's what I was saying. This is a slippery slope into all kinds of different avenues when you talk about avoidance, but it's it's all relevant stuff. And so I guess the biggest thing is there's a difference between there, there's a there's good avoidance and bad avoidance, right? Like you you use avoidance and training, but you also don't avoid aspects like a good way to a good way to break down what you're saying for those of you that that are listening and can't see.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Michael is staring at the ceiling trying to figure out how to word this. So a good way is you know, when I went through, so we've we've mentioned several times that both of us have mental complications as veterans.

Choosing The Right Working Dog

SPEAKER_01 25:24

And when I went through therapy, it was explained to me that every single emotion has a healthy and an unhealthy version of it. So, for example, me being angry when somebody intentionally disrespects my partner in front of me, that's a healthy emotion. We're naturally protective. That's part of my job. That's healthy to be angry. However, when somebody says something in a tone that is confused, I have no right to get angry. They just don't understand that. So there's healthy and unhealthy emotions. If you get happy because you get something that you've really wanted forever, so for example, when I bought my suppressor, I was really happy. I've wanted a suppressor for a long time. That's healthy happiness. If you're happy because one of your friends got into a bad car accident, you're like, ha ha ha, this sucks for you, bro. That's unhealthy happiness, and that's why it's called dark humor. So there's healthy and unhealthy avoidance as well. And that's where you're coming in with the environmentals, especially. We implement and try, yeah. I said something during an interview once with a local station here, and they said, at the end of the day, what do you think? How would you define a dog trainer? I said, honestly, at the end of the day, I'm nothing more than a communication therapist between you and your animal. All I do is break down, I I work with your animal to figure out and break down the communication style of how they or what they need, and then we go from there. And then I teach you through couples therapy or one-on-one sessions on how to communicate with your new partner.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yeah, it's that that's that's exactly what it is. I'm just teaching you how to have clear communication and understanding between you and your dog. And that's like I I feel like being balance trainers, you get a bad rap, but I'm like, at the end of the day, it the focus is the relationship. And there's good avoidance, there's bad avoidance. That's where my job in that relationship with the dog is. Is I I have to be the one that decides if it's a good decision or a good place for avoidance or not. Normal everyday things, we're not gonna avoid that. Now, if there's a dog lunging at the end of the leash trying to eat my dog, I'm avoiding it because that's that's not a good situation. My dog's trying to eat something that it's not supposed to. I don't want to have to pay for exploratory surgery or have to subject my dog to that. That's good avoidance. You flipping out because they came and picked up the trash or somebody rode by on a bicycle or whatever it might be. Yeah, we're not avoiding that. That's normal everyday life. That's like me trying to avoid Walmart because I don't like people. Well, I need this stuff from the grocery store, so I guess now they have where you can just pick it up without going in, so you can still avoid. But you know, like yeah, my wife is my wife's real big on that.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

It's not that she doesn't like crowds, she just doesn't want me to go into Walmart. Do you get angry? Is that where Angry Chris comes out? That is where Angry Chris comes out. That's also where Chris's wallet becomes very empty. I'm a I'm a Walmart addict.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

So again, another situation. Good avoidance. Keep your wallet full and don't spend it all at Walmart. But I I I think the I always tell people that we're we're relationship-based. Yeah, yes, we're balanced trainers, but it's it's about that relationship, building that trust and that understanding. And that's why we're able to have the results that we have. Because first, I build that trust with that dog. I have to have that trust. If I don't want the dog to act a certain way in a situation, I don't want it to avoid those things that it's terrified of. There's got to be a level of trust. And again, back to the kid example. Who do they look to when they fall down and scrape their knee? They look to their parents for guidance. And if I freak out, they're gonna freak out. If I stay calm, cool, and collected, they stay calm, cool, and collected. Our dogs are the same way, but it's because they they have that trust and understanding that I'm going to lead them, I'm going to make sure that their needs are taken care of. I'm recognizing those signs of stress and avoidance and discomfort, overstimulation, whatever it might be. I I recognize that and I take that into account, but I'm also gonna make you work through that in a respectful, healthy way, right? That's that's the difference. Sure, I could be like, yeah, I don't give a shit. I said we're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, right? But I'm like, okay, understand that this makes you afraid, so let's take it on a little by little, right? Like when I when I was working with veterans, like I'm not gonna dive you headfirst into this stuff. We're gonna dip our toes in the water, then our feet, then up to our knees, and we're gonna slowly get in there. You you gotta ease into it. I'm not gonna just have you dive headfirst into whatever it is, and and that's where you get those those lasting changes. But again, like you were saying, it goes back to to the owners and what they're willing to do. If you're not willing to have that leadership role over your dog, give them that guidance and and direction and advocate for them and do what's needed, then you're you're not gonna have that same result. Your dog's gonna go back to avoiding those things that scares it, that it's uncertain of, those things that make it uncomfortable. You you've got to be in charge of it. Yep, I had something else, but it's gone.

Healthy Avoidance And Clear Leadership

SPEAKER_02 31:28

But like I said, on that note, I would say I'll edit out that pause, but I'll forget when I'm editing this. So on that note, you know, looking at I I I think it gets confusing with people like clients and and dog owners and people that don't have dogs, they take certain signs to mean certain things and they don't understand the complexity behind them. For example, you know, kind of like with with horses, if the ears people are like when I worked with horses, the ears are back. Oh, the ears are back, it's gonna bite me, right? I'm like, well, you have to look at how the ears are back. They're not pinned back like a pissed-off cat, they're turned backwards, which means the the horse is listening to you, it's listening to behind it, not actually angry or whatever. Same with dogs, like our husky, his face looks like he doesn't want pets. Like he puts his ears back when you come up to pet him, which people are like, Oh, he's got his ears back, he he's gonna bite me. I'm like, No, he's not. Look at his tail, he's wagging it nonstop, he's super excited to get pets. That's just his face, right? But the having that understanding that, yeah, he's got an RBF, but he he acts like he doesn't want the pets, but it his butt tells you otherwise. But understanding that, you know, those different signs can mean different things in different dogs. Like, okay, panting can mean that the dog is overheating, but it can also be a sign of stress.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

And a good way to notice that is if the the tongue position.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

The the tongue position, yawning, they don't always yawn because they're tired. Or Malinois, he yawns because he's super excited, right? Like some dogs do it out of stress, and they'll they'll yawn out of stress, like Chris right now. But some of them will will also do it just because they're like especially like high drive dogs, like they got so much pent-up energy, they're like, oh, I gotta release it somehow, and they yawn. So understanding those different signs, knowing your dog comes into play, like food refusal. Well, if it's a dog that's not even doesn't even care about treats anyway, it's not food refusal, it's just not a a food-driven dog. But if my dog that'll take anything from me, if Padme is like refusing food, well, that's a sign to me that she's something's wrong there. Either she's afraid of something, stressed out, uh uncomfortable by the situation, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

That's that's why it's so important. Well, you know, uh on every episode, we usually, and it goes back to everything connects. We usually touch statements that we've made before, and there's two of them that are extremely relevant to avoidance and escape and and this psychology, because essentially that's what it comes down to is psychology for the dog. That is one why the the evals are so important and knowing canine body language is so critical. Two, we train the dog, or there's three actually. Two, we train the dog in front of us, and three, that is why it's so important to make sure that your trainer has experience with these things. I've been to several different schools, and none of those schools, all the schools have touched on classical conditioning, all the schools have touched on operant conditioning, they've all touched on escape, they've all touched on avoidance, but none of them have broken down into multiple examples, into the science, into the metaphors that really make people comprehend and understand it, to where that's why I use so many metaphors because it allows people to relate it to something they're familiar with already and they can understand what you're trying to say as a technical person. And that's why I tell people, I'm like, Yeah, man, I can sit here and tell you about titration all the time, uh, and I can use words like that. And they're like, Cool, yeah, I get it. Hey, what's titration mean? So I can waste my time and I can waste your time by sitting here and going through the book smart stuff, where I can say, Hey, listen, we're gonna test your dog's titration, which means essentially the dog's amount of stress level, the the stimulus that the dog can receive, good or bad, before it interferes and shuts the dog down or kicks the dog out of zone before it interferes with training. And they're like, Okay, that makes sense. We don't want to put shit into training that's gonna mess the dog up and make the dog not want to do it. Cool, exactly. That's titration. So when when we go over and we talk about stuff like this, yeah, it's a rabbit hole, it's a it's a slippery slope, but I think it's important to to reach out and touch all those different facets so people can understand, like you said earlier, it's a very intricate skill. It and I I talk to my trainers all the time up here, they they're rigid and they're robotic when they start. I tell them I'm like, man, listen, relax. One, love what you do, have fun. If it's genuine, the dog knows. If it's fake, the dog knows. So just be genuine. If you make a mistake, it's fine. We'll fix it, we'll keep building. You're dancing with the dog, go dance with the dog. Because in dancing, you both partners have to have good communication without verbal. So we have to be able to read each other's body language. I need to know what that dog's doing. You know, an old wives tale, you know, if a dog's hackles are up, it means the dog's aggressive or it's mad about to bite something. That's not a fact. The fact is, is if a dog's hackles are up, it means that the dog's received some form of simulation that's caused that reaction. That's it. Same thing with your husky that's got RBF. Just because the ears are back doesn't count for the totality of the body language. Look at the body language. Schoolie, when he has other male dogs around him, he gets along fine with them. He plays with them or he holds his position. Depends on how much I want to irritate him. But his hackles go up every single time. Breach, the service dog that we're all throwing in together to sponsor and and throw out here and train to the for the community. They interacted together the other day. And while Breach was sniffing him, I had Kulina down. Breach was sniffing him, checking him out. He's still a puppy. He was kind of batting at his face and trying to get him to play with. Man, he wasn't mad. He was just overstimulated because he was being held to a standard of hold your down position no matter what is coming in. There's reasons for that because that's how we've trained. So he had an environmental stimulus, but he was staring at me the whole time, getting that tail going, like, just give me the word and I'll go play. Give me, just let me go, let me go. He was just waiting, waiting, waiting, and eventually I let I released him from his down, and he was able to go play and and frolic like two little, two little happy dogs out in the out in the backfield.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Well, well, to that point too, like tail wags. People are like, oh well, the ta tail's wagging, the dog's happy. Not necessarily. You have to look at how the tail is wagging to to determine that my dog's tail will wag right before she's when she's about to bite you. Like, which I'm sure she is happy. I'm not gonna bite you, right? Like, but you know, it if if it's you have to look at how the tail tail is wagging, uh, to to identify that people just like generalize different signs with meaning certain things, and they're like, Well, that's not actually true. You have to look at it more in depth than that. Uh yep, I'll let there went, there went the thought. Tailwags, hackles. Yeah, dude, there's dogs all the time. People will be like, Well, it's hackles went up. It it must be angry. I'm like, no, dude. Every every other aspect of that dog says that it's okay with this interaction, it's just stimulated. Like you said, the dog's actually excited. His hackles just doesn't know, don't know what to do in this situation, right? Like he's like, Oh, and the hackles go up. But that dog's not mean, and there's not a an indication of meanness or aggression on that dog. The the same with one of the dogs we have in here that they're like, Well, it tries to maul our cats. And I'm like, watched it interact with cats today. And I was like, There's not a single indicator on this dog that it wants to do anything bad to any of these cats, and the cat swatted it in the face multiple times, and it was like, oh shit, I did too much, and it was doing too much, it was a fair swat in the face from the from the cat, but he his tail's wagging all happy. He's super excited. Yeah, sure, he wanted to chase the cat a couple of times. Why? Because the cat leapt and took off real quick. Guess what that was? That's the prey drive kicking in. But guess what I did? I told it, yeah, no, just because the cat takes off real quick, we don't chase it. We don't have to chase the cat just because it took off that direction. And guess what? A couple little pops with the and I say little pops because this dog takes correction very easily, very little pops on the prong, and he was like, Oh, and then guess what? By the third or fourth time that that cat jumped down off of something and took off, he just sat there wagging his tail. He was like, Oh, you know, he tried to jump up, get all up in the dog in the cat's business. And I was like, Yeah, hey, we don't jump on things. I I know you're excited to see the cat, but don't do that, or you're hey, you're doing a little too much. I gave what did I do? I gave him direction on how to inter have that interaction. But I'm like, this is not a dog that wants to maw cats. This is just a dog that is excited by cats and doesn't know how to appropriately play with them, right? Or interact with them. And he's yeah, he he started the bark one time. That was the other thing that they said. Well, he just sits there and he like he aggressively barks at the dog. I was like, or at the cats. And he did it one time while Laura was holding the cat. He was like, Whoa! Was he barking out of aggression? No, it was a demand bark. He was like, Hey, I want to see that cat. I was like, I'm willing to bet their cats sit up somewhere high, and he is frustrated and wants to see them, and demand barks at at them, and they mistake that for aggression. But I was like, There's not a single indicator on this dog that he's not okay with cats. Quite the opposite. Whereas the other dog in here that supposedly has issues with cats, he's like, he's scared of them, he doesn't want shit to do with them. And I was like, well, probably got the shit smacked out of them by a cat. And he's like, he's like, I'd rather be over here minding my own business, which I'm like, okay, well, if you're not gonna mess with the cats, then again, that's that's fine. If you don't want to be around the cats, you you can still coexist. You don't have to, you know, but you have two different extremes there. Well, this this dog is mean to the cats. Well, it's because he's afraid of them. This one's mean to the cats. He's not actually being mean to the cats, he just doesn't know how to play. So, you know, you have to that's one of those aspects of being a dog trainer. You you listen to what people say and you decipher down to what actually is going on with the situation, which, like you said, evaluations are a critical part. Like, I won't take a dog for training until I do an evaluation with it. People are like, well, how long for training? I don't know. So bring them in for an evaluation. I need to see the dog. Like I can 95% diagnose what's going on with your dog just by having a conversation with you and hearing what you say, because I have that experience that I can figure out that this equates to this, and I can kind of put the pieces together and figure out what's going on. But I'm still need to see your see your dog so I can make a hundred percent sure. And exactly like what we're talking about here, looking at those body indicators, whether it's avoidance, excitement, fear, again, they all just kind of blur together because avoidance can tie into. Excitement. You can be excited and not know how to react, right? Like a dog can be avoidant even though it wants to go up to you. Maybe it's unsure, right? Like, well, my dog doesn't like people. Actually, your dog really likes people, it just doesn't know how to approach that, right? Like we see that from time to time, where it's like, well, my dog is is scared of people. Your dog's not actually scared of people, it's just not sure what to what to do. Your dog actually really likes people, and you just have to teach them, just like with the puppy that we worked with today and the cats. Like, your dog is not mean to cats, he really likes them and just doesn't know how to act. Okay, well, your dog is avoiding people because it's not sure how to approach people and how to do so appropriately, so it's choosing to be standoffish. All of these signs can correlate back and forth between different things, but it it comes down to context.

Reading Body Language In Context

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Everything comes down to context when it comes to dog training.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah, and that's uh you mentioned the eval and giving us the time to be able to do that. You should expect that with any any honest or reputable trainer. Don't don't expect prices, don't expect time, like a length of training over the phone. Do it in person. You should expect one, you should expect to pay for an e mail. And two, especially if it's a a local or a small company, if it's a franchise, you know, those guys are. I had someone tell me one time, they're like, Well, you know, Walmart doesn't charge me to walk in and go look at stuff. I'm like, correct, they don't. However, if you want some sort of product from that visit, you do have to pay for it, correct? They're like, Yeah, I said exactly. So we're in it for us primarily, or us specifically, we're a small business that I started out of pocket. And to date, we've never taken a loan, we've never borrowed a dime. It's all completely self-funded, and we have staff. So you have to take into consideration one, how much all of my experiences cost. Two, we have bills, we have facilities, we have staff, we have payroll, we all have families that we have to feed the same as you do. So, yes, if we're taking an hour out of our day to be able to do that, that's an hour that we didn't get to train another dog, or that's an hour that we didn't get to spend with another client. So, guess what you get to do? You get to pay for that hour of time. What we do in exchange for that is make sure that that person has at minimum three to four times more information from that eval than they paid for. So our evals here at the shop are a certain price, our evals are a little bit different when we go travel out and do them at people's homes. But all that information we go into diagnosing things like avoidance. Does your dog have an environmental avoidance going on? Does your dog have any kind of issues going on? What's going to be the training tools that I'm going to use? What are what's going to be the best training method? What does your dog already know? Because something that I found through this road is everybody in the world either has the best dog or the worst dog. Like you said, my dog's trying to maul my cats. The dog's not trying to maul your cats. And honestly, the issue that's going on is not a big issue. Now, to somebody who thinks that the dog's trying to maul their cats, that's a huge issue. And I can respect that. I understand. The reason I understand is because you don't have the knowledge or the education to know what exactly is going on. And just like barking, well, my dog is barking aggressively. That's because you've been taught for the last four decades through TV and movies and and social media that if a dog barks, that means aggression. They show police dogs, they're barking. They show guard dogs, they're barking, they show junkyard dogs, they're barking. They show dogs chasing the mailman, they're barking. The dog's leaking. That's what's going on. Cooley will absolutely bite your ass cheek off your body, and he will be completely silent until he gets to you. That's it, it is a task to get that boy to bark because he's so honed in and so focused that it's just not a thing he does. I have no desire for him to bark before that happens. On the other hand, Bash, she's a different dog. She will sit there and let you know that she's gonna come for you before she goes on a bite. She barks, barks, barks, barks, barks. And the only reason that I allow that is because in the middle of barking, if I give her a command, so if I if I go from a left heel to a right heel, she will go to a right heel while barking. So she's still focused, she's still paying attention, she's not overstimulated. She is leaking, but that's she's still doing everything she's supposed to and focused in. So she's not the same way. Yeah, we don't need uh we don't need to escape anything there. There's nothing that needs to be avoided.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Yeah, Pat mains the same way. Like uh she'll stealth bite, but also if she she she'll bark sometimes. And it's one of those things I tried to cut out, and it's like, whatever, dude. Like she she knows how to be stealthy and just go bite without making a noise, but also situationally, dude. She can she will stay in a heel by my side and bark. I can tell her to down, and she'll stay in her down and bark or sit and bark and until I I release her. Other times she'll be absolutely quiet. Again, it's situational, and I I'm cool with that. Like you said, she's she's leaking, she's like, I I I'm letting you know that I'm about to fuck you up, right? Then there was a protection dog that we trained, and they're like, Well, I want him to bark. I was like, This dog will not bark. I you could not draw. He's he's like you described cooley, like he was he's laser focused, and that dog will fuck your shit up, and he won't make a sound. And he he's coming at you at Mach 10, and you're getting bit before you knew what the heck happened, and it's absolute quiet. And I was like, Yeah, I was like, Yeah, your your dog doesn't want to bark. He laser focuses and he's locked in. And it it is what it is. It's that that dog there. Whatever dog, again, what gotta train the dogs in front of you. I every dog's different, just like every one of us is different. You know, again, back to the to the eval, you brought up a good point there. Like, for the longest time, we did ours for free. At first, I it was completely free, and then people would like no-show, and I'm like, dude, that's an hour of my time. Like you said, that's an hour of my time that I could have been training another dog, I could have been doing sessions with another client. So then I started charging deposit on it. Now, yeah, now we do paid because I'm like, dude, my time is valuable. I don't have enough hours in the day to do everything I need. What again? That's why you and I are sitting here at almost 10 o'clock my time, 11 o'clock your time, recording a podcast. Because we don't have time during the day. We got dogs to train, we got clients to work with, we got business things to do. I don't I don't have time for my time to be wasted. And for obviously, yeah, like like you, we we built this out of our own pocket. And though money is not the most important thing to me, time is. Money is important because it keeps the business going, right? Allows us to keep having those positive impacts on people's lives and their dogs' lives. But my time is my most valuable asset. I can always make more money. I know how to bootstrap, get stuff done, get the bills paid however I need, but I don't get more time. That's that one thing you can't make more of. And so I don't like my time being wasted. And again, you're paying for our experience. So when I charge X amount for a consultation, it's because I'm gonna tell you exactly what's going on with your dog and what needs to be done to fix it, whether you choose to train with us or not. You're you're paying for my time, my experience, and and going from there. But again, I've we've got the experience to be able to tell you that stuff. Again, that's why I stopped calling clients. I'm like, yeah, just come in for a consultation because I was like, dude, I'm not gonna talk to you for 30 minutes on the phone, tell you what's going on with your dog for you not to bring them in, or you know, like that's 30 minutes I could have spent working with the dog. That's a whole training session with the dog that I just spent talking to you on the phone. Book a consultation, come in, we'll evaluate it then. I'll give you our outline on how long it's gonna take for training and the price there. Prices are set, I don't make them up as I go along. That's not why I won't give you the price over the phone. That's not like yeah, just I'm gonna charge you this amount and I'm gonna charge you that amount. It's it's set, but I need to know how we just don't want you to feel misled. Yeah, because I don't want to tell you, oh, it's gonna be a four-week boot camp and it's gonna cost X amount of money, and then get here and be like, eh, actually, it'll be six weeks, and this is what's up.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Yeah, people misdiagnose their own dogs or overexplain things all the time, and that's why I use that example with the cat thing. The the issue that they're experiencing isn't an issue, it's just confusion and misunderstanding on their part, and it's nothing that can't be fixed. So there's gonna be a major time and price difference if a dog is legitimately reactive towards a cat and trying to kill it versus a dog that just needs to be taught how to interact with a cat. That there's there's a big difference there. So if I tell you on the phone, like, hey man, that sounds terrible, I think it's gonna be like a two to three month boarding train, and and your price is in the double digits, it's not looking good. I could have potentially lost that on one, helping someone, and two working with a new dog, gaining that new experience, and loss of business opportunity, all on the fact that I just took an assumption over the phone from somebody who called me for advice about a dog, but I'm diagnosing it based on their advice. Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Because again, most people don't know how to read those those signs, which I kind of do miss having the phone call. I don't miss the time I spent talking to people, but I do miss having that because I again I'm 98% of the time spot on being able to diagnose what they're saying and breaking that down into what actually is going on with the dog because you learn how to read through people. Again, that comes from my work, my past experience working with people and understanding how people operate and and and such forth, and my experience with dogs and being able to understand how dogs react and what's going on with them, to where 98% of the time when they come in for a would come in for a consultation, it was spot on. Very rarely was it, it was like, okay, I would diagnose it and I'd say, okay, it's either A or B. And generally I would tell I would give them multiple options, even if it I was like 98% certain that it was this one thing, I would say it's either this or potentially this, but I'm leaning towards this, but we need to do the consultation, even though I'm listening to it, I'm like 98% sure that this is what's going on. There's still a 2% chance that I'm wrong. But again, that that comes with that experience and doing it so many times.

Why Consultations Cost Money

SPEAKER_02 55:51

But like you said a few moments ago, you know, everybody has either the best dog or the worst dog. And part of what my job is is to manage those expectations, whether it's your dog's not that as good as you think it is, or your dog's not as bad as you think it is. And an example of this, and I have a feeling that part of the reason why they didn't send their dog for training is because they probably thought I was full of shit when I told them that their dog wasn't as bad as they thought. It was a German Shepherd. It's always a German Shepherd, at least in our case, it's always a German shepherd. And they're like, it's so terrible, it's doing this and it's doing that. And I was like, Oh, yeah, like your dog's not that bad. And they were afraid to give us the leash. We took the leash, no issues with this dog. You could tell it was unsure. Typical German Shepherd traits going on with it, things that I've seen in every single other German shepherd that's come through here. At that point, I had two other shepherds and in kennels in here for training, and they were like convinced that they're gonna either have to put this dog down or re-home it. And I was like, Your dog's not that bad. And they thought their dog was the worst dog out there. I was like, it's not that bad. And they're like, How long to fix it? I was like, four weeks, which they are saying this dog had behavioral issues. So if I'm saying four weeks, that tells you that it really didn't have much behavioral issues, it was just misunderstanding on their part. And they looked at me and they're like, four weeks, and I was like, Yeah, like your dog's not that bad. Yeah, which they're uh I'm sure if I had told them six weeks, they probably would have psyched up right then. But I was like, I I'm I'm honest though. I'm yeah, sure, I could tell you it's gonna take me six weeks, but if it's not, I'm not gonna tell you that. I'm gonna tell you how it is. And the fact I told you it's four weeks means it's four weeks. I'm positive that it's gonna be four weeks. But again, like it's you either have the best dog or you have the worst dog. So if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I have these issues with my dog, whatever it is, or there's those those situations that you're just unsure of what's going on. Highly recommend studying, studying up, looking into different signs, understanding what those different signs can mean. Like, like, like we said, a lot of the signs for avoidance are also signs that a dog is fearful, overstimulated, stressed, they they all kind of blend together, and you have to be able to read the situation and know. So do some research into it if you're you have some issues going on and and assess your dog. Figure out what its normal looks like when those things aren't going on, and then assess those stimulants, determine what's going on.

Expectations Fear Phases And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_02 58:32

One of those big things when it comes to avoidance is especially young dogs like Iceman, my service dog in training, he's going through that fear phase. Crucial stage of development for a puppy. Pretty much every dog goes through some sort of fear phase to where normal shit starts to freak them out. I kind of opted the easier route. I didn't take him out as much during that period. I still took him out sometimes, but I stopped taking him out for like public access and and stuff like that, like I was prior. Because at this point, he's pretty much fully trained as a service dog at nine and a half months old, ten months old. But I was like, yeah, I could keep taking him out, but then I have to micromanage him, you know, well, during that that's that that phase, because if I let him run away from things, or then now we have big issues. So I just kind of gave him that time off. Uh for the most part, I took him out a couple times. You know, I'll take uh I dropped it down that I was taking him out like once a week in a controlled environment where I'm focused only on training him so that he's still seeing things, but I kind of slowed it down so that he's not getting reactive to all kinds of things in that period. I'm not having to fight uphill battles, and he's starting to come out of that. Like, took him to the movies on Tuesday, kind of a little like, oh, and then he worked through it very easily, did really well, took him to the airport for training this morning, did really well. But it's all all in that approach, right? Like, I could have taken him out, I probably could have made things worse. Kind of one of those gambles. Sometimes taking them out during that period is the best, sometimes just letting them chill in that period. So I guess I kind of did avoidance with him to avoid the the reactions, right? The fear, which again was a gamble, like but you know, kind of paid off. But it it wasn't just a willy-nilly decision. It was I assessed my dog and determined what I thought would was the best approach for training him. But knowing knowing your dog comes that's again why I say we're relationship-based, because it comes down to the relationship. If you don't know your dog, then how can you lead it and advocate for it and help it work through these things? You you have to know your dog. There has to be that relationship there, there has to be that trust when it when it comes to these different aspects. So really do your homework, look into to different sci different signs of avoidance, fear, kind of learn the difference, learn your dog. I feel like that's all I got without us diving even deeper than we already did into this topic.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:19

Yeah, it's it's it's pretty well covered as far as what would not only be relevant, but also fit. I mean, even going deeper into it and branching off, we would have to explain so many of the other things to be able to explain how avoidance matches to it that it would it would turn into like a six-hour episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

Yeah, yeah, we could we we could talk a whole work shift on this. What again? This is something that we can always come back and and dive into those different aspects. And uh as I'm sure you guys are noticing, if you follow along with this podcast, we'll talk about certain topics and they all segue into other aspects of things that we talk about. Everything is related. As Chris said, it's comes down to psychology, psychology of the dogs. And that's kind of our our whole goal here is to just kind of cover every angle so that you guys can have a better understanding of your dogs and and how those segues happen. Again, so you can have that better relationship with your dogs. But on that note, it's getting late here, so let's uh wrap it up. And we will see you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Talk Shit Get Bit podcast. If you enjoy the content, make sure you like, follow, subscribe, share it with your friends. That way they can they can learn from us as well. But you guys have a wonderful week.