Brewing Better Animal Behavior: Shelter Science with Dr. Erica Feuerbacher, Part I

ABA on Tap is proud to present Dr. Erica Feuerbacher (Part 1 of 2):

Grab a cold one and pull up a chair! In this episode of ABA on Tap, we’re joined by Dr. Erica Feuerbacher, BCBA-D, to explore the fascinating intersection of behavior analysis and animal welfare.

Dr. Feuerbacher is an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech and a leading expert in applied animal behavior. We dive into her groundbreaking research on what truly reinforces our four-legged friends, their social connections, and how we can use the science of behavior to improve the lives of shelter dogs.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Reinforcement in the Wild: How to identify what actually functions as a reinforcer for dogs and horses.
• Shelter Science: Interventions that reduce stress and increase adoption rates through evidence-based practices.
• Human-Animal Bond: The behavior-analytic perspective on why we (and our pets) do what we do.
• Humane Training: Moving beyond "jargon" to practical, compassionate care for all species.

Whether you’re a BCBA looking to expand your scope or just a dog lover curious about the science of "sit," this episode serves up a refreshing look at ABA beyond the clinic.

Always Analyze Responsibly. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

Welcome to ABA on tech. I'm Mike Rebio with Dan Lowry. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly. All right, all right. Welcome back to yet another installment of ABA on tap. I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Mr. Dan. Mr. Dan, how are you doing today, sir?

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Doing great. Super Bowl Sunday. Excited for a special Super Bowl Sunday episode.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Well, we do have something very uh special coming up. Absolutely. They have the uh puppy bowl, right? That's one of the alternative. Yeah, maybe uh maybe our guest has something to say about that. One of the premises that I think helped us develop our idea for this podcast and this idea of ABA on tap and sort of a behavioral brew, if if if you will, was this notion of our experimental and empirical validation, the lab, and then for our everyday lives as practitioners, taking that with a margin of error into somebody's living room. And today we've got that. We've got the lab, very, very strong uh lab background here, and then not just the living room, but people's backyards and the dog park and the beaches, and so there's gonna be a lot of parallels, I think, to explore today. Really, really excited for our guest today. So, without further ado, we've got Dr. Erica Feuerbacher.

unknown 1:50

Dr.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

Erica, thank you so much for your time. It's part of your weekend. We hope to make it a very casual, very invigorating conversation for about two hours. And again, learn all about the world of animal behavior. There's there's a lot of crossover here. It all stems from the exact same premise, if you will, our concepts. And then obviously the applications are are are different with different applications. So we we like to start with the origin story here so we understand where our guests come from and their background, and then land on what we're doing now, and that'll open up the whole conversation. So tell us a little bit about what got you into animal behavior sciences and where it all got started.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Sure, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting. So I grew up in Arizona and my parents were very indulgent. I was an animal person through and through. They let me have just about all the animals I wanted. So we had horses and goats and sheep and parrots.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Let my girlfriend listen to this episode. Sorry, go ahead. She's from a farm too, and she just wants all of those in our backyard.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Yes, exactly. Yeah, we had guinea pigs and rabbits, pigeons, anything. It was fantastic. I feel really lucky. And I just loved being out working with my animals and interacting with them and watching. At that time, when I would say I want to do something with animals, it was, oh, you're gonna go to vet school. And I was like, ah, I don't, I don't know. I really that doesn't quite click with me, but I'm not closing any doors yet. So I did my degree at Arizona State in biology and ended up working a lot in ecology and physiology, studying honey bee behavior and genetics and things like that. And I had a successful project got published, and I was like, Well, I want to, I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, but I didn't really stop to think about what did I want to go in. And I liked the bees and it was successful. So I went in insect physiology to Berkeley. At the same time, I gifted myself as my graduation gift to myself, a working line German shepherd puppy. And I wanted to do competitive agility with my new dog. That was my goal. And we were out in California, which was a really a lucky strike there because it has an amazing dog training community there. And I had, she was the dog that I had to run to catch up to, training-wise, that she had lots of lots of ideas and lots of behaviors. And I needed to figure out how to work with her effectively. And I started doing some basic manners classes, and I was lucky enough to come across a really fantastic agility trainer who I ended up training multiple dogs with for nine years when I was out in California.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Where in California?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

And I just uh Bay Area. So I was living East Bay and then later on moved down to the peninsula. And yeah, and they had the San Francisco Dog Trainer Academy there, which I started attending. And I realized that I didn't go home and read about insect physiology. I went home and read about dog behavior and training. And I eventually had to admit to myself, even after passing my qualls at Berkeley, that this was not my path there. And so I left and was lucky enough to get a job at Peninsula Humane Society in the behavior department. And I started working with shelter animals, helping assess adoptability, try and add skills to animals' repertoires that needed it, did off-site adoptions, mobile adoptions, and also started doing some dog training classes on my own, uh, some group classes, and then eventually some private consultations. And I just loved it. And I also had so many questions about am I doing the right thing? Is there a better way to do this? How could I enhance my training? And that really drew me back into graduate school. And I was lucky enough to attend a clicker expo and Dr. Jesus Rosanos Ruiz was there and talking about his lab. I was like, he has a lab studying animal behavior and learning. And I was just dazzled, that was everything I wanted. I didn't know that was out there. Uh, so I eventually went to University of North Texas for my master's, got to work. My my thesis was on concept formation and dogs. And we also did some work at a sanctuary with some lemurs and other exotics. And by the time I graduated, Dr. Clive Wynne had opened up his canine cognition and behavior lab at University of Florida. So I was lucky to continue uh into another throng behavior analysis program, and I got to do dogs again, and it was just amazing. So, along, you know, along the way, and this is something I'll come back to when we talk about getting into the field. I didn't just have a behavior analysis background, I had a biology background, and I was going to all the seminars and webinars and workshops I could get my hands on about dog training. And that gave me these amazing practical skills, and then behavior analysis gave me the science and let me know what I'm, you know, how to enhance what I'm doing. So from University of Florida, I was lucky enough to get a job at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, as an assistant professor in the anthrazoology program. I ran the dog program. And so I taught classes to undergraduates and then also had essentially a 20-dog rescue. So I would go out each fall and select 15 to 20 dogs, depending on the number of students we had, that my students fostered for the year and trained them in some, again, basic manners, and then a specialty task like service work, hearing dog work, or scent detection. And then those dogs were either placed with organizations, a few of them, most of them went on to be pets, and then I moved to Virginia Tech, where I get to continue uh studying animal learning and behavior and trying to spread the good word.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

Wow. You've been everywhere and good place, great places too. You mentioned the rescue center in the peninsula, is that in San Mateo?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Is that it is yeah, it was in San Mateo, and now they have a campus in Berlin game.

SPEAKER_04 7:41

I I I must have done some I don't know, some level of work there practicum or something. I'm not remembering very clearly. I'm an old guy, but that's how I'm trying to remember out hopefully by before the end of the episode, I'll remember what I was doing there at some point. But I I spent some time in the peninsula from uh '92 to 2001. So good good place to be. You mentioned Berkeley. That's a great intellectual hub. Great, great place to be. You when you were talking, you sort of differentiate. I I like to talk about well, we talk about human and non-human animal behavior. I like to joke that us animals with the big foreheads try to pretend we're a little more exclusive. You use the word exotic, and then when we talk about dogs, I guess those are domesticated animals. It what's the difference in your experience in applying methods and procedures, say to those two different species or types of species in terms of something being exotic versus domesticated? Is there a difference in the way things are implemented in your opinion? Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah, so I think there are a couple of things. I I certainly have more work with domesticated species doing most of my work with dogs, some with horses and some with cats. And that was my main experience with exotics. I have colleagues that that do even more work with exotics. But I think some of the differences are, and to, you know, it might not be great, but our animals are usually less fearful of us because you know we've domesticated them. We also usually typically socialize them when they're young. Of course, we do have feral cats or things like that that didn't have that. So they're domesticated species, we kind of get a little bit of a pass on them wanting to hopefully be near us. Um but I don't think we should also take that, take advantage of that or take that for you know a standard that we're certainly gonna come across dogs that are fearful and we need to figure out methods to help them feel comfortable around humans. So that's one thing is is we might start off a little bit ahead with most of our domesticated that they're going to approach us. The other is so so going back to that, we're gonna have to work maybe a little harder to make sure those animals are willing to approach and work with us. Some of those are certainly also potentially really dangerous animals, and so there's a lot of protective contact. So working across a fence line, and my cat's here.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

Perfect timing.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of work that's done across a fence line rather than going in with the animal. The thing I think that is really interesting is our domesticated species, we are starting to take techniques from the exotics world, but because they really can't be hands-on, they can't be pushing the animal into a sit, right? Or applying aversives, or the animal's just going to avoid them. So the the folks that work in like zoo settings have have had to be really creative in how do we get this animal to approach and work with us. And so they've really been at the forefront of developing cooperative care where the animal willingly participates in like getting a vaccine or a blood draw. And you know, with our domesticated animals, we sometimes take advantage and just like hold the cat on the table, right? Which is really aversive to them. And so I think one of the things that I really love is seeing those amazing things that these folks working with non-domesticated species are doing and saying we should absolutely be able to do that with our domesticated species, right? If you can get a cooperative blood draw from a wolf, I should be able to do it with my dog. So I think there's a lot to learn from them. I suspect, you know, they're gonna have more protective contact than than we will, although my horse was had a lot of behavioral issues when I first got him. And I did actually a lot of training across our the fence line because he was too dangerous to go in with at that time. So I think there's a lot to draw from that we don't actually have to go into our animal right away to work with them. Uh, we can do a lot of work across a safe space until we kind of build up those safe behaviors for them to be around us.

SPEAKER_04 11:37

Will you talk a little bit about what it is you're you're looking for in terms of the animal being ready for you to approach? So I think there's a lot of crossover discussion here. Yeah. Say we talk about building rapport with kids, for example. And and I like the way you put it, and I think that that's something that's gotten us into trouble as practitioners as a whole, not us specifically, but this idea that maybe we take advantage of this authority we have to then prompt into certain behaviors. And then the way the other side you put it is, well, we shouldn't need to do that if we take the time. And then there's this idea of early intervention, so time is of the essence, and everybody wants to train these specific behaviors and responses. But tell us a little bit about uh some of those procedures, protocols in terms of approaching the animal, whether it's you know across the fence line, when when do you know there's readiness? What what gradual processes are involved? That there's got to be a lot of patience. You you're going into it knowing that there's a lot of time to put into this, a lot of a lot of repetition, a lot of time, a lot of effort.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I uh your phrase of building rapport, I use that as well with our animals. That I'm I'm always uh my favorite story about this was I had my students that had been training their dogs in Helena, and we took them downtown Helena to, you know, work in a more busy area and start to generalize their behaviors to new, more distracting environments. And this woman came by to one of my students and wanted to say hi to the dog, and she asked if she could say hi, and the student said yes. And the woman, you know, wanted to, you know, talk to say something to the dog and have the dog interact. And the dog looked at her nicely, maybe came up and then went back to the student. And the woman was offended and she said, Oh, because I don't have the cookies. And I was like, But it's weird to assume that that this animal's gonna interact with you when when it's been living and being trained with this student for like eight months by now. And so I I think it it's weird for us to assume that these dogs or any animal is going to respond to us the way we want them to when we haven't built that rapport. Like you have to create value, right? We have to let them know I have things that are meaningful to you, valuable to you, I have contingencies that are clear, right? I'm not gonna trick you. I'm gonna apply as few aversives or as possible.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

I'm safe.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

And and yeah, exactly. You want to show the animal that you're safe, that they can, you know, what you say you're gonna do, you're gonna do, that you're predictable, and that you provide lots of reinforcers. And and I don't think that's any different than building rapport with kids, right? Is you know, trying to find things that are valuable to them, providing them contingently, pairing them with ourselves with Pavlovian conditioning. So it's the same it's the same with animals. And I'm always sort of flabbergasted when when people don't take the time. And I I have a lab with my students now where it's just building rapport. I said, I don't want to hear you ask that dog to do anything. I don't want to hear you the you asking them to sit or come or anything. You're just there to give them things they like.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Once you do that, then you can start training or asking them to engage in certain behaviors. But we tend to put demands on them really quickly.

SPEAKER_04 14:44

Right, right. I I love your example. It's it's good parallel to some of the things we do in terms of you know helping kids uh engage in greetings. And you know, in your example, the dog did something in response that was that version of the dog's greeting, I will say, and then said, okay, I'm done with you, I'm back. And you're right, we we have this, especially with kids, we've got this ideal vision of like, you know, the child's gonna respond, oh, hello, and wave and all these things. Like, no, if they turn their gaze towards you, that might be it. And then you're gonna come back and try that hello again at some point, or maybe you're not. But I really love that example and the way you you described that because I think that's very valuable for all of us to understand. And some sort of agency in terms of the other organism and saying, hey, that's it, that's your greeting. And yeah, you're right, I don't have the cookies, and I haven't been giving you cookies for uh, you know, over the last three months or giving you other things that are reinforcing to you. So I might I may not be that interesting to you. I have to become interesting to you. So thanks for sharing that, Dan. I've been hogging up all the all the time. So go ahead, sir.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

It's all good. You so you mentioned the the blood draw with even wolves or something like that. I imagine the the stakes can be pretty high when you're talking about some exotic animals like the zoo type of things. And that just hit home a lot with a lot of the kiddos we work with, with things like haircuts or even blood draws for them. A lot of times they consist of, you know, haircut is kid goes to this hair salon or place and they get held down and somebody's cutting their hair real quick, and then they get let go and they're, you know, obviously very much in distress, everything's in distress, and it's this traumatic for them very environment. So next time they even see a hair salon, they're you know, their physiology is starting to get kind of wonky, and that becomes habitual because it's kind of successful in the fact that it gets the hair cut. But we've done a lot of you know work with the desensitization side of just being in these these areas for periods of time without even the expectation of getting a haircut to get your body in a position where then you're able to kind of take the next steps. Do you do similar kind of stuff on the animal side of things? Just expose them to the different areas and the people and slowly get them into a position where they feel comfortable enough. Because I imagine the animal has no idea what a blood draw is or why that's happening or anything like that. So, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, absolutely. We we come across the same issues where you know the dog goes into the vet and it's rambunctious or whatever, and same thing, it gets restrained. Even it might not even be that rambunctious, but it gets restrained, and then a blood draw, like a poke. And so you're absolutely right. It starts to learn very quickly that vet offices are scary. There's studies that that have shown that we start to see stress, stress-related behaviors in our dogs as they enter into the waiting room, right? They they hit that smell of the vet office, and they're like, oh, I know where I'm. This is not pet co, right? I'm not coming to get treats. And and you're absolutely right, it just gets worse. So the more you handle them that way, the worse it gets. The next time they come in, they're worse. And they're and eventually you, you know, get up to the point where they're probably engaging in some aggression to try to escape. So ideally, we'd start with a dog or any animal that has no experience yet, and right, and try and build from a blank slate that this is a good place, that you have agency, you can escape. Sometimes bad things will happen, but they're very rare and they're predictable, and that you can opt out. Uh and of course, then we get the animals that have already had bad experiences, and that's really where it comes back to well, now we have to like start from a negative space and try and work our way back up. And so that is a lot of desensitization, counterconditioning. A lot of vet clinics now offer what they call no-poke visits, which are great. You take your dog in, they get to meet with the staff, they get cookies, they got neat things, and then they leave. And there's been some a little bit of research into that, that that can be helpful, but I think there needs to be needs to be more along those lines. But I I really appreciate that folks are thinking about that now and trying to improve that experience with the animal rather than just thinking, well, I'll just manhandle them and we'll get the job done. One of my shepherds, and I I find that German shepherds tend to uh oftentimes learn fear responses quickly or you know, they're very good at pattern seeking, like that was a bad thing, I'm gonna avoid that. He was gonna go to the vet and have all these nice visits as a puppy, but he ate rocks as a puppy. So he had to go in kind of on an emergent issue. And so he didn't get to get that nice exposure and all the good things. And so he did have some challenges with vets from the very get-go. And I had to be very careful about the vets I found. And I I had one in in Helena that would walk in with a peanut butter jar and she'd just plop the peanut butter jar in in front of him, and he'd start licking. And and then the nice thing was every time we went back in for a visit, his behavior got better. And that's what we really want to see. And it's it's so much better for everyone, not just the animal, but I'm less stressed taking him in. I'm more likely to take him in early if I know it's not going to be a really awful event for everyone. And of course, it's safer for the veterinarians too, if the animal is feeling good.

SPEAKER_04 19:56

Oh, right. That there could be measures they have to take to then guard themselves, and that only makes uh adds more stimuli that may not be inviting. That's so interesting. You mentioned the dentist. I walk into a dentist's office and get the smell or hear that drill, and it that gets me going immediately. And that's one of the things that has been more successful, I think, in our line of work are dentists that are, you know, a lot of our clients would have to go under sedation to do their dentistry work, and there's a lot more dentists that are now doing these, you know, nothing visits. These just come by, sit in the chair, have some fun, get the stickers and the balloons, and then do that two to three times, and then before they try any sort of procedure with the child. And yeah, that's been imagine that, that's been super successful. Sort of bringing bringing down the anticipation, the anxiety, whatever we want to call it, right? I I'm also a victim of a white coat hypertension. So I can take my blood pressure here at home and I'm great. You get me to the doctor's office their concern. I'm like, I'm sorry, it's you.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

When you're not here, something about the smell of alcohol. I don't know what it is, but I'm nervous. I'm sorry. Let's do it again at the end of the visit after I've met you. It's really cool to hear all those procedures of of desensitizing again, even with a dangerous species. Now, does that mean sometimes there's still a fence between you and the animal, but they're able to approach the fence for you to work with them? Is that also a condition that that's common?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah, so in the in the exotics world for sure, that protected contact, they'll have, I mean, those trainers are just super clever. They'll have rhinos come and push their hip up against the fence so they can do a vaccine back there, or they'll have dolphins trained to float on their back so they can get an ultrasound or present a flipper to get a blood draw. It's just, it's amazing. And I and I think that's always inspirational to see if you can if you can get these species that aren't haven't evolved with us and haven't evolved to work with us in any way to cooperate. There's no reason we can't do this for our our companion, our domesticated animals, and just improve their welfare and ours a lot.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

How often are you finding so you mentioned like sedation at the dentist, you know, with the the kiddos that we work with a lot of times, it's Benadryl. If we can kind of put them to sleep naturally with Benadryl, or sometimes the kiddos that we work with, it comes to the point of needing anesthesia at the dentist. I imagine with animals that a lot of times it's just like let's sedate them, give them anesthesia, or the exotic ones probably let's tranquilize them and just get it done. So are you finding that is that changing kind of the view on that in terms of not just using that as the immediate first go-to, or is that still kind of just the easiest way to do it and least painful for these species?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah, so I think it kind of varies by by situation. So I think in the exotics world, the go-to was the tranquilization, right? We're gonna tranquilize you, which can be pretty dangerous, right? When you're dropping thousand-pound animals and then you're gonna have to, you know, have them get back up, and that can always be dangerous. And of course, repeated sedation can be, you know, challenging for them as well. So I think for them, it was really trying to get away from having to tranquilize over routine things, right? Like a teeth cleaning or something like that. Certainly they're gonna still tranquilize for bigger procedures or for animals that that need to have something done but don't quite have the skills to be able to cooperate with that procedure yet. Um, but I think it's trying to reduce the tranquilizing on that front. I would say on the companion animal side, there is, I think, more openness to bringing in like enxiolytic drugs. So giving your cat something before they come to the office or your dog. So not necessarily fully like knocking them out, but just bringing those stress levels down a bit. So hopefully everybody's calmer, safer. They're not learning any new, they're not getting any more fear conditioning and maybe even learning some nice, you know, good behavior. So I think there's a little bit, I'd say overall less on the the tranquilizing side, uh, especially for the for the exotic animals on routine procedures, but still a real openness to using meds whenever we need to to make things better for all parties involved.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

Yeah, gotcha. So you use the term anzioletic to like kind of bring the physiology down a little bit. Two dogs that we had that passed away a couple of years ago. One of them, he was it was kind of interesting because he was just very like on edge a lot. And I think it was because when he was younger, he got picked on and he was never really able sweetest dog, but like very scared until he would get to know you and then he'd be like your best friend. But he would go to the vet and they would give him like multiple doses and just wouldn't like for some reason it wouldn't take with him or his physiology overcame even ansiolytic. Like he just wouldn't wasn't able to calm down in the vet.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Yeah, I think some of some of these animals they have a lot of challenges, right? We don't they might not have had the right socialization. We know epigenetics and genetics play a factor. And so if you're coming from a fearful mother, you're likely to be more fearful. So there's a lot going on with our dogs, and like I said, improper socialization, traumatic events that you might not even meant to be traumatic, right? Bad things happening, you know, things happening in the vet that you know maybe it hurt more than anticipated, or they had to do multiple sticks to get the blood draw, all of those things. And then I think what's challenging is those situations are very salient for our animals, right? It's a very unique situation that they're put in very infrequently. So it really stands out. That is a that smells weird, that looks weird, and they do bad things to me there, right? And so they they get that just infrequently, and it it is hard to convince, and I know I'm one of them. It's hard to take the time to say, well, I'm gonna drop by the vet office all the time with my animal, right? To to try and dissipate that. So it really does become almost a one-to-one ratio of when I'm at the vet office, bad things happen. And so that can it it can be certainly hard to overcome that.

SPEAKER_04 26:04

I'm seeing the uh dog-friendly cafe with the veterinary office next door idea. Yeah kind of developing. That's a great idea. Yeah. Boom. If somebody out somebody out there wants to take it, let me know if you want to give me any kickbacks. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Oh, yeah. So uh about that specifically, and you probably dealt with this a lot when you worked in the Humane Society. So, like you said, this dog was, I guess, kind of picked on by the litter until he was about one, and then uh my girlfriend took him in. And he lived till 12-ish, somewhere in that age. But he still had like this anxiety around the unknown people, unknown dogs, which he was able to overcome. But I mean, this perpetuated for a long time in his life, and it seemed like it was probably it could have just been, you know, nature, like his personality type, but his twin or litter mate, she was not like that at all. So, my question to you is these dogs that maybe have experiences at younger ages, do you find that with a lot of training they can, I mean, he lived a fine life, but they can completely overcome it? Or is it sometimes when they experience some trauma at a younger age, they just aren't able to fully get past it?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah, I don't think there's great research on that. I'll just give you some anecdotes. I I would say generally when I talk to owners that have dogs like that, and we have one of our rescue dogs is like that. He's been with us for two years and is still a little hesitant around my male partner who's like very nice to him, but he's just got probably some history with men, and it it's I don't think it's ever going to go away. So I think when I when I talk to owners with dogs like that, I think there are we can make strides, and it sounds like you did too, right? You get improvements here, they can do more and more, their world starts to open up a little bit, but I think there's always a flavor to that dog that they're just gonna be a little more cautious going working through their world. They might benefit from having a smaller world, they might not be the dog that is going to want and enjoy going to a farmer's market. And so we work a lot with owners who are trying to recognize what their dog enjoys and what it doesn't. And I appreciate that people want to interact so much with their dogs and make their dog so much a part of their family that they want to take them to the farmer's market. And there's certainly dogs that love going to farmers markets, and there are lots of dogs that don't. And I think we have to recognize that that like as much as I want my dog with me, my dog will not enjoy this. And so I have to respect what my what my dog really wants. So I think our behavioral principles are so powerful and we can make such great change, but but it's not complete, right? There are there are many things, and especially fear and anxiety that I think are harder to overcome. It's gonna take a lot of work, and in their lifetime, we're probably not ever gonna get them to be that happy-go-lucky dog. We're gonna hopefully have made them feel safe and they and they start to, like I said, interact more, go more places. But I I that's a dog that I'm always gonna protect as well, because I think if they do have a another bad experience, it's gonna really set them back. There are certainly dogs that are more resilient when something bad happens. It's a well, that was weird, but that's not how the world works. And there are other dogs when one that same bad thing happens, it's like, oh, their world is shattered and that the world is a bad place now. And you know, that probably comes back a lot to genetics and epigenetics and some early upbringing, things that the average owner isn't gonna have any control over. So, you know, I always err on the side of this dog is gonna be really sensitive and one bad thing will could really send us off course. So I'm gonna try and prevent that and and make sure bad things don't happen.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Did you deal with that a lot at the Humane Society where you've got a lot of dogs that had trauma for whatever reason? And it was just really difficult to make them adoptable or even appear to people walking in that made them present like they that somebody would want to adopt them? Like, was that something that you dealt with a lot?

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Yeah, there are a couple of challenges, and you've hit on if you one is kennel presentation, and shelters are inherently stress-inducing. You are in small, tight quarters with a lot of other of your con specifics yelling at you, but you might not get to interact with them. You have limited social interaction with humans, it's loud, it's weird, it's unpredictable. So, you know, research has identified a lot of stressors, and and some of the shelter dogs have three to five times the levels of cortisol that your dog at home has. So, really, really stressful. And that can, of course, you know, it's an establishing operation. It's going to induce different behaviors. And so sometimes we see animals really shut down and become really kind of reclusive a little bit and not interact as much. And others go bonkers and they seem like they're out of control. And why would I ever want that animal in my house? And then you take it home and it's like really chill and an easy-going dog. So, what we've advocated for, we've done a lot of research. My colleague Dr. Lisa Gunter and I have looked into fostering, and that we do see that taking the dog out for even a night or two, their cortisol significantly drops, they rest a lot better at home. And I think that's where we're gonna get a more true or more accurate representation of what that dog's gonna be like in a home. It's really hard to predict behavior from this very different environment to you know what they're gonna be like at home when their cortisol levels change, all the environmental stimuli are different. So that's a big one is trying to predict from what they present in the kennel, how are they actually going to be at home? And that's why fostering is wonderful. But certainly we there are a lot of dogs that come in with a lot of fear, fear-related behavior, and that you're trying to overcome and and you don't quite know you know exactly what the stimuli are. You kind of try and piece it together based on what they what you see, like, oh, they've growled at three men, but no women. So maybe it's a man thing. Well, maybe it's a man with hat thing, maybe it's tall men trying to figure out like you know, what are the what are the stimuli that might induce that behavior? And then, you know, sometimes it changes, right? They generalize. So that that's always a challenge. Then can we change how they feel about those people? And this gets back to our prior question. You might be able to change it to some extent, but I think you're always gonna have to recognize that this dog might have challenges around men, and you're gonna have to be really careful and not let men approach. And I always talk about being an advocate for your pet, that you are there as their protector. So if someone's approaching, I will body block my animal, get and you know, separate my animal from the person approaching, and I always let my animal decide whether they want to approach that person. I think we have a tendency for the owner to say, Yes, you can pet my dog, and the dog gets no say in the matter. Interesting. So, you know, if somebody asks to pet my dog, I'll say, if my dog approaches you, you can say hi. But if he doesn't, he's not in the mood right now.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

So Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Sorry, I I probably veered off topic there, but no, this is great.

SPEAKER_04 33:02

This is great. Um I I guess the question that comes to mind, and it's a matter of of pragmatism. So, you know, the idea that you know your dog is a rescue dog and it seems to be reactive to men, and now you are walking around with that dog, and you're you I guess you have one of two options, or maybe more options, but to say, so I'm gonna make sure that no men approach my dog, or can I continue to try it at that exposure? And if a man's approaching, say, hey, not so responsive to dogs. If you want to try, go ahead. So can that do you feel like that training or that exposure can't continue toward reducing that reactivity? Or are we saying that there's just no way to get past that trauma or whatever we want to call it?

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah, I think you're gonna see improvements if you do it really carefully. I think what people tend to do is they push their dogs too far and they they say, well, like, well, let's just have that man approach. Oh, that didn't go well, right? And then and then the dog's even further back. So this is one where, you know, this is again where I'd probably give the the animal more agency of like, do you want to approach? But I have met dogs that also make bad decisions where they're like, I want to go see that person, and then they get up and they're like, holy cow, I'm by this really scary person, and then and then engage in you know, lunging and barking. And so I think as an owner, you have to kind of be ready to support your animal. We do a lot of things like if they start to approach somebody and and it's a nice, a nice response, we'll tell them yes, but throw the treat further away from that person. So they learn, oh, I can I can escape from that situation. And I think that's where we start to see improvement, is where the animal starts to learn, I have some control here. I don't have to approach, or if I approach, I can leave. I'm just making sure that they they know that there's always an escape. I think that that helps a lot. So with careful training, yes, I think you can make improvements. It's again one of those where I would always put in lots of safety hatches for my animal along the way. If I know that it's had problems with men in the past, that I'm gonna have lots of sort of checkpoints to make sure the dog's still okay as we proceed in letting them greet this new man and being able to call the dog away if I think it's not going well. We had a Belgian Malinois who's a rescue, and she had a lot of what we call just general stranger danger. If you're in her club, you're very much in her club. And if not, there she would lunge and bark. And it took me about seven years to figure out how to introduce her to people in a safe manner. And that was we'd go outside, and I would have the person stay outside the house. She said, I'm gonna let Aegis out, and she's gonna run out and I'm gonna throw her ball right away. She was just, you know, gung-ho about her ball. So she'd focus on playing ball and then would kind of sweep past that person, like, oh, you're new, but kind of like do a little sniff and then keep going to just playing with her ball. And then we could move inside. But it took me a long time to figure out sort of that structured introduction, and other introductions for her would not work as well. So I had to find something that was really meaningful, set up a situation where she could engage in this meaningful activity, and that person was just there and could become background to her. So a lot of it is trying to figure out what's going to work for your animal, how can I do this introduction so that you feel safe?

SPEAKER_04 36:18

There's so much nuance in what you just described. I I love it. And I think that you know, for us as practitioners, oftentimes we've we find a little frustration with how we train our technicians in trying to impress upon them some of the things you're talking about. Because we get offended as people, right? So I've made an overture toward a child and they didn't look over at me, didn't say hi, in fact, it didn't even seem like they listened, and now I'm offended, and I have to do something to make sure that I seem like the authority figure. And then what you described there is a whole different you know approach. And and it's again, uh I think a really good crossover. I really hope a lot of our texts or people that we work with get to listen to this, because I think what you're describing is very applicable in what we do. Maybe given our time constraints or just our own urgency self-imposed a lot of times, we push it too hard, and then the child has a behavior and we're blaming it back on the diagnostic trait. Or you know, I'm sure it happens with you too. Well, that dog, that particular breed of dog, or this that must have been the cause of it, but no, at the end, uh you were pushing too hard. You didn't pay attention, you didn't take the time to create build that rapport back to that idea. I'm sure you've got a ton of anecdotes or stories of where you've seen people do this. I don't know if any come to mind, or any situations where you've been in the lab or any circumstance and you're watching somebody push it too hard and you're like, oh, I think this and this is gonna happen, and then suddenly you see them get bitten, or is that something that you come across maybe more frequently than you want to?

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Yeah, and I think when people don't get bitten, it's a credit to the animal that they uh they just like that.

SPEAKER_04 37:49

I were gonna use that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

And I I see people do dumb things so frequently, and you're like, wow, you got you got lucky that that animal didn't do what it could have done there and probably would have been well in its right to have done. Yeah. So yeah, I I see people really not listening to to animals very carefully at all, even not just their own animal, but or other people's animals, but their own animal. Some of my experiences, I had my uh that reactive mouth. He was on a gentle leader, um, so it's like a little doggy halter. We were working in Petco and she was being nice and attentive to me. And I I got her a red gentle leader, hoping that would be like a warning sign. But, you know, she's also these are German Shepherdy looking dogs or police dogs. I wouldn't approach any dog this way, but I certainly wouldn't approach a dog that I know is oftentimes bred for that sort of work. And I would still have people just kind of rush us, just kind of barreling up to say hi to her. And I would always had to have, I just became super aware of my environment, of who's coming where. I felt like, you know, you're paranoid at like who's coming behind me. So they could always find my escape hatch. And if somebody's coming up, I was moving away and creating distance for her. So folks that have had a reactive dog probably know that, where you just have to become hyper-vigilant and really look out for, you know, who's not gonna listen to my dog and who's not gonna ask, stop and ask appropriately to interact with them. So yeah, it happens quite frequently. I had my shepherd at a dog park in Florida and he just loved to carry his toy around. And if you and and he was really obsessed about it, if you asked him to drop it in the right way, he was under stimulus control. I could ask him to drop it and he would. But some random person just came and opened his mouth to get the toy out. And I was like, why would you do that? Right? He's a he's a German shepherd. That's his toy. What right do you have to take his toy away? You didn't ask nicely, you didn't ask me. And if he bit, I'm sure that person would have blamed my dog on biting him, right? And it's like, but I can't believe you just pried my dog's mouth open. And again, it was a credit to him, my dog, that he didn't bite.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

Yeah, that's uh that's uh you've avoided a lawsuit there. Uh good. I mean, they avoided a bite too, but yeah, you're right. They would have blamed it right back on the dog. And it's like, well, those that's a canine, it's got sharp teeth, and you put your hand right where they tend to bite.

unknown 40:22

Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

That's amazing. Yeah, it's it's it's really absurd the the things that that people will do. Yeah. So that's always a big thing that we try try and do is educate people on how to appropriately interact, and that not an not all animals want to interact with you the way you want to interact with them.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

And any uh key points that you try to impose impress upon people with that? I mean, so what what do you think is the inclination? And and we see the same thing with with the population we work with in terms of there's a certain level of authority that people come in with in terms of animals or kids, and it's it's because I say so and I'm the adult or I'm the owner or I'm the human. What what do you think that is? And and what what is it you lend to people in terms of uh education to to really make them realize hey, this is an organism with agency and it's beyond instincts and impulses. In fact, we'll get into that a little bit in terms of uh human, you know, dog connection, which can be you know be and it can feel beyond typical uh just animal human uh parameters or interaction. There's a lot of magic that happens. But what do you think makes people come in with that hubris and saying, like, I'm the authority figure, and even though this dog could really hurt you?

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I I think there is uh luckily I think m much much of our world is starting to move away from that. There are still certain trainers that uh do take that, you know, because I said so kind of approach. And there's a lot of more aversives used to induce compliance. Um but I you know I think we talk a lot more about giving our animals choice, recognizing that they have their their own lives, right? I think about this one when I see my cute cat walking by and I pick him up, and like my cat had his own plans, right? He was on his way to do something. And I just swooped up and picked him up. And it's like, how how intrusive, right? That to think that I I could be wanting to do something and somebody just swooped me away to to interact with them. And and so I think really appreciating all the things that go on for our animals, all the things they like and dislike and engage in, and I think really seeing how unique and individual they are, and that they have their own lives. And I and I think that I think about this a lot when you're walking your dog and it wants to sniff, and it probably and you're like, I don't see anything there, I don't smell anything, but they've got some amazing information they're gathering there, and it's really important to them. And then you'll see some people try and drag them away, right? Because that's not on the agenda. The agenda was walking, not stopping and sniffing. And so I think trying to find some harmony there that yes, sometimes you want to go on an exercise walk. And can you communicate to your dog that we're on an exercise walk? And so we're not gonna stop, but I'll give you time later or earlier where you get to do all the sniffies you want to sniff, right? Still making sure that we give our animals those opportunities. And it makes me so happy when I see somebody walking their dog and especially when I see somebody like jogging, when I know they're out for exercise, their dog stops to sniff, and they stop and let them sniff. I'm like, oh, it just warms my heart that this person, you know that yeah, that their plan was to get exercise, but they prioritize their dog wanting to sniff stop and do something else. And then they went on with their with their dog. And I just think that's really lovely to to see what our animals are interested in. And I think it just I think it's just so fun to to say, like, oh my gosh, you are really into whatever is down there. Or one of our dogs loves just naturally tracks. He will track animals that have crossed through our yard. And it's it's just so fun to watch him engage in that behavior. And yes, sometimes I need to go to work, and so we can't. track fully but then we try and give him other opportunities later to to track what he wants to track.

SPEAKER_04 44:06

What a cool on-off paradigm you just described there. So sometimes you're gonna get to sniff around and we'll take the time and then sometimes not. And I think people tend to think that if you give that opportunity to sniff around, they're always gonna do it. But the way you describe that again so applicable to to human behavior and what we do in terms of building that rapport with a child and let letting them know, yeah, well there'll be time for that and then sometimes I'm gonna place the strict demand on you. And then sometimes yeah I you know within reason I'm gonna swoop you away if you're in danger but but otherwise I'm gonna try not to physically prompt you that way because you've got your own plan.

SPEAKER_03 44:42

So again so many so many crossover applications there I love the way you describe that so I wanted to go back you kind of breezed right through it but I think you said in your undergrad you had a really successful project maybe a research project or something like that. Can you uh elaborate or do you want to elaborate on what that was? Because I thought it was pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah yeah my honeybee project we were looking at pollen and nectar foragers and it turns out that it's a really interesting system. So these are our honeybees that there are a couple genes that you can predict whether they're going to be based on their combination whether they're going to be a pollen or nectar forager. And essentially there's like sensitivity. So if the pollen is really low or if there let me start the other way if if there's plenty of pollen in the in the hive you'll still have some foragers that go out and forage for pollen. And the other ones are like well we have plenty of pollen I need to do other things maybe foraging for for nectar but when the pollen starts to drop in like they don't have as much pollen suddenly these nectar foragers might become pollen foragers. And so they're once that that hive level changes a nectar forager might become a pollen forager or vice versa but at certain levels it I I was thinking right like I might have some cleanliness level like one plate in the in the sink might be too much for me. But you know a housemate might not feel like they need to clean until there are 15 plates in there right and so it's just different levels of sensitivity to your environment of whether it's time to clean or not or time to forage for nectar or pollen. So we were looking at that and there were also some some morphological and differences between the standard the the bees that would continue to forage for pollen when there's plenty of pollen they were usually slightly smaller smaller worker bees than the nectar foragers and I think they also had maybe higher metabolic rates slightly so it was those genetic differences came out morphologically as well. So that that was kind of what we were looking at. So you were looking at whether they would forage for nectar or pollen based on the dynamics in the the hive is that yes yeah and so the bigger project that I was working in was that and mine we did some DNA sequencing to identify which alleles they had in in a certain gene and then I did some metabolic studies with them. So looking at their oxygen consumption to get their metabolic rates and found differences between pollen and nectar foragers there.

SPEAKER_04 47:12

And they they adopt different communication systems right within the hive if I remember correctly do you know anything about that I'm sure you had to to get into that a little bit I remember those being really interesting cues that you wouldn't expect bees to emit but they're they're talking to each other.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

It's crazy because my girlfriend got she wants every animal so we got bees for a while. Oh yeah they for a few years yeah yeah they ended up getting Africanized or whatever because they went through a few queens I guess and but like the dynamics of a beehive are just like crazy on like the the society that they form and the like the communication that they have is just she was like really really fascinated by the the whole process and like introducing queens and then like I guess the the forager bees or whatever the the male the I forget the name of them that go out and come back and then some stay and protect the bee and like they got a whole societies going on in there.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

Yeah they do it's it's it's really complex and and the for and they will those jobs will change over the lifetime of the bee. So the foragers are the old bees they are putting out their old bees because it's the riskiest behavior right you're going out where predators can pick you off and so they're putting out usually the foragers are coming up on the end of their life anyway so they're older older bees out there usually yeah the the the communication is really complex it also varies by locality. So I think there's the waggle dance and things like that might not be as pronounced in bees along the equator because that sun you know doesn't ship as much in the sky. And so that communication isn't as useful. So even within honey bees you'll see differences and if you take an Italian honey bee and have it communicate with you know a bee from France or America they might get the distances wrong because their their circles mean a different distance than the others.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

So yeah it's pretty interesting have more gold and and talk with their wings a little more for sure that that is that is so fascinating I I don't know you know how you you got pretty in depth into this but anytime I get into looking at insects I always have to wonder like wow they vastly outnumber us and they seem to be just as smart.

SPEAKER_03 49:27

Like I wonder why they haven't taken over did you ever come away a little paranoid like you know what these bees could probably take over if they wanted to I know they're really impressive for sure so you did another I think you said maybe it was in your doctoral or postdoctoral your thesis was on concept formation in dogs. I bet that was super interesting can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Yeah so that was with Jesus Rosales Ruiz we published that in the journal of comparative psychology or international journal of comparative psychology and it was I was trying to teach my dog match the sample and I I really liked Jesus's way of mentoring students it was go try something with your animal go try something with your dog because I'm like I don't know what I want to study. So I thought well I'll try and train a match the sample with toys and I came back and I said well it's interesting that my dog Arrow keeps making these errors where he won't retrieve so the the match matching behavior was pick up and retrieve that item to me. And I said he keeps making certain errors where he won't do it with certain items. And I said I think those items are things that we haven't played tug with before and so from that we said well there's our question. So we looked at whether uh we did an experimental setup where I would put out different toys that I knew had a history of being played with with Tug with him and toys that were also from my perspective a toy but we hadn't played Tug with and found that he would retrieve toys that he played Tug with not retrieve toys that he didn't play Tug with and then I would we did a multiple baseline with the we had three items that he would not retrieve after getting some baseline I would play tug with them and he would start to retrieve them after me playing tug with them. And then we did a transfer of stimulus control test too so we then asked him to do a nose touch to the toy and put up non-toys next to them and found that when we taught him with a few exemplars to touch the toy with his nose, he would then touch all the toys with his nose at a higher level than non-toys so he seemed to have a a transfer so it seemed to fit into you know a concept not based on physical characteristics because these toys varied in whether they're plushie, they're color their size and so it was really a concept that was unified by the function by the reinforcer which was Tug.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

Interesting yeah I I thought about that actually the other day because we have a a new dog um unfortunately he isn't he doesn't like grab a lot of shoes and stuff like that. But I was thinking about it from a dog perspective of like a shoe versus like a dog toy for us it's like yeah one's clearly a human item one's clearly not but for them or like a chew versus a breadstick like how are they supposed to know which one they can play with and destroy and which one they can't like that's that's an interesting so were there any so in your situation it seems like if they had a history with it then they would continue to engage with it. Do you have any kind of hypotheses on them then extrapolating that to other items if that makes sense on what I'm asking yes like generalizing to similar items. So them to somehow understand that like this stuffed animal is a toy but this shoe or this blanket isn't a toy or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

Yeah I I'd be curious about that my one of our current dogs when my mom comes to visit she always brings dogs to dog toys and our dog will rifle through her her suitcase and find the toy and bring it out and it's like she has she's like that's clearly for me that's a dog toy and so I I'd be curious to know if there is a scent associated with coming from a pet store or something along those lines or if there are some structural features that our dog is able to say that's a dog toy that's for me. Certainly errors are still made right there like that's a cat toy or that's actually an old stuffed animal from my childhood and and so there are errors that you know make sense that they look the same. They're plushy so why wouldn't you think it's a toy for you? So I suspect there are maybe some structural features like plushiness that speak to that maybe there's some scent coming from pet stores or things like that. But I I think you're bringing up a one of those things where again it's a creditor animals that they eventually figure this out, right? Initially they might not they might chew your shoes and everything but usually over time they figure out that's not mine, this is mine. And and it's just it is really impressive because like you said how would how would they have any idea what's theirs and what's not theirs when they look similar and you know you can even get toys in the shape of shoes and different things right and and so it's really impressive that they do eventually s discriminate on on some quality.

SPEAKER_03 54:34

Yeah their discrimination is is crazy because my dog has so many toys and balls and stuff and usually when he wants a ball he wants like one specific ball and like we've got 40 balls that are like the exact same texture whatever but he will go like hunt for this and like bark at us and like like I want this blue ball with the the orange stripes like that's the one that that I want even though I can't find it right now and he'll like go hunting for it even though there's like 20 other balls that are very similar that are easily accessible to him.

SPEAKER_04 55:03

That that's interesting we we deal so much with the idea of visual discrimination and then for a dog the auditory and olfactory piece might be a stronger driving force here. Can you talk about that a little bit like how does that become a consideration in your training because I imagine olfaction for example I mean that's got to be huge for a dog. Uh they can certainly hear much better than we do and then yeah what would the differences be then because clearly they can visu uh clearly they can visually discriminate too but that might be a weaker sense for a dog than compared to a human. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_01 55:35

Yeah yeah I think so and I I agree I think the olfaction is such an important part and we don't get to appreciate that and we don't get to understand then how they're discriminating. So we can't predict like oh you're going to respond this way to this person or this way to that person based you know based on their smell or picking up you know why why that item is the best item and it smells a certain way. And so that makes it hard for us right because we can't discriminate at the same level and be able then to either support them in what they want to do or help train in certain ways. I was thinking back to my my Mal with The Stranger Danger there were a few times when I first had her that she duped me where she would see somebody at a distance and show affiliative behavior and it's like oh oh maybe you do want to say hi and she would approach and I think the silhouette must have just been similar enough to someone else she knew and liked that she's like oh I know that person. And then she get up and take one sniff of them and was like whoa whoa whoa whoa like you're not who I thought you were. And so it was really the old fashion for her that that she was using to discriminate between people. And I and I don't think we appreciate that nearly an enough of how much they might be able to tell us apart individually based on our our sense. My shepherd that I mentioned earlier that had challenges at the vet he was social with everybody and then one time we we were out and there was a veterinarian on campus and we went up to say hi and he barked at her that was the only person he had ever barked at and I said oh you know apologize so sorry and she had just come from the vet clinic and had been doing some like biopsies and stuff and I think he smelled vet. Yeah and he's like whoa you're dangerous well and it looks nothing like the vet office here.

SPEAKER_04 57:23

Why is that smell here right?

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Like what wait a minute exactly and she wasn't yeah wasn't dressed as a vet and so I didn't discriminate her as a vet right I didn't think oh this is gonna be a problem because he has challenges with the vets but he discriminated her as as a vet. And so I think that that's what is really hard right I perceived the person one way he perceived her the other way and so I wasn't able to predict what he was going to do and make better choices for him and for her. And so that that's I think where those differences in our perceptions can really be tough.

SPEAKER_04 57:56

Well and again it makes me think of that you know that in terms of uh now a bad behavior on behalf of the dog if you're not with the right population. Clearly you and the vet probably worked through that or analyzed through that. But yeah you're out at the park and it does that to a total stranger and now suddenly you've got an aggressive dog. And again I I think we go through a lot of the same you know social stigmas or or circumstances with our clients in terms of going to certain places and saying well number one this is pretty typical behavior for any four-year-old and then yes this four year old we're working with might have communication challenges or other things that that they present with that then you know drive that connotation or that speculation a little further.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

So that how interesting to to make that parallel this ends part one for the interview please return for part two with Dr Erica and always analyze responsibly ABA on tap is reported live and unfiltered we're done for today you don't have to go home but you can't stay here see you next time