AN OPEN-MINDED PODCAST.
Ep. 10 Transcript
Episode 11: Resource Guarding
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00:04
Welcome to Unpacked, an open-minded podcast taking a clinical, not political approach to helping pet parents around the world. I'm Sailor Jerry, certified dog trainer, virtual dog training revolutionary, owner of Tulsa Pack Athletics and creator of The Open-Minded Approach. And I'm Mattison, her friend, certified dog trainer and behavior consultant. Together we have nearly three decades of experience in behavioral dog training.
00:28
We've been working with real dogs and the humans who love them to create solutions to problematic behaviors that feel too big for them to tackle on their own.
00:37
In this episode, we are fully unpacking a new case, diving deep into a behavioral topic that you, our listeners, asked for. If you're along for the ride, here's how it's gonna look. First, we'll introduce the incredible and dedicated humans we've been working with, and explain their intake process, while we describe their dog or dogs, and the behaviors they're experiencing. Then we'll walk you through our assessment and explain how we got there. Lastly, we'll break down the management and modification plan. If you're ready to dive into this
01:07
In any case, settle in with us and unpack.
01:13
Well, I am very excited to get into this one. Our first new guest of the second season. We literally 30 seconds ago got some exciting news. I can't stand this. I just want to know more and I want to know it now. I know, but we need to record this episode. This is very important. Okay, let's do this. It may or may not have been put off already. Mattison, we can't leave the people waiting. So our new guest is about.
01:39
just had a baby like three days ago and we rushed to onboard her and get through her plan and literally went through it with her less than a week before she popped. So we are thrilled to announce a new baby girl. We don't have more information than that. What do you think it's like being a baby that grows up in Coachella? I'm missing so much. I'm missing like so much lived experience to be able to answer any of that question. I can answer that for you. Okay, please do. I really want to hear your answer.
02:09
Well, I think probably it's not really that cool in terms of like that there's music, a music festival there. I think it's probably just Coachella Valley itself is beautiful. Yeah. But I think it's kind of like those people that grow up in places where there's all the snow and they ski all the time. And I'm like, that's weird. They're probably just going to festivals in Coachella as kids. Or like living in Orlando. You just kind of go to Disney on the weekends or something. You just put your roller blades on and skate down.
02:38
I don't know what it's like to live in Orlando. Do you? I don't know. Now I want to go to Orlando though. Let's go skate. Okay, so let's get into the training plan. We are talking about Taz today, Isabelle and her dog, Taz. And this was a selection that we made. We chose to onboard Isabelle. When I say that, I just mean bring her into our space, take her through the intake process. We decided to have her go through this before anybody else.
03:08
we knew that she was expecting a baby. And so we did put a little bit of a rush order on everything to try and get to the point of being able to go through her plan with her before she gave birth, which we were thankfully able to do. Now, the main behavior that Isabelle reached out for was a resource guarding, which really, when you looked at the intake information at all, you could see there was a lot more than that going on. And Isabelle knew that. And I think this is...
03:35
Jerry, we talked about this ahead of time. We really want to make it clear to everyone out there that if you have a dog or dogs and you're dealing with some behaviors, some of these big words that get thrown around, reactivity, resource guarding, separation, anxiety, aggression, any of fear based behavior, any of these, you get into multiples and you're feeling overwhelmed because you don't know where to start. This is going to be a really good episode to listen to. When there's something coming up in your life as
04:03
as big as having a child, it's very easy to not pick up on all the things that need to be worked on in some other area. So I think that that's why initially she's like, I'm here for resource guarding. And then we get in there and it's like, you know, she's like, well, actually all of this stuff too, because, you know, you're, you're putting a lot of your, your energy into, you know, bringing a child forth into this time space continuum that we are in here. Big deal. Yeah, big deal. Big deal.
04:31
And I think it's easy to also, and this is just coming from just me being a mom, like most people will nest and go through these things where you're overly nurturing everything in the coming months before you're pregnant or before you give birth. And that also can lead to lapse in management and in imbalance. So it's common. It's common that she showed up to the table with one problem and there are multiple things.
05:00
lying just underneath. But it was a really important exercise with the slightly urgent timeline to prioritize. And that's something that I think we're going to talk a little bit about today, because this is a heavy management situation that we are going to be starting with before really diving into any significant modification. I remember the look on both of our faces when we
05:30
to her. I was like, I'm a little bit concerned and really I was kind of terrified on the inside and I think she picked up that we were worried about the safety of everyone in that house not because we think that there's anything inherently wrong with Taz, but because I could see very clearly very early on that this was like Mattison, like you said, this was a major management problem.
05:59
And I got to be honest with you. I think the majority of issues within the home are management issues and not training issues. Yeah, it's very rare that the issues that the dog doesn't know something and that that's all there is to it, not if people are coming to us, realistically. So I think it makes sense for us to now work our way through our full plan. So start with the intake because for one of the first times, I know in season one, we stopped to pause and look at the medication.
06:30
Daisy and Duke. But this is the first time that we really saw some things in the medical information and the medical intake that made us feel pretty confident that there was something else that at least needed to be investigated deeply and soon. Do you want to kind of talk about what stood out in that? Because I know that was something that you and I spoke about very early on when we saw this plan was trying to get to the bottom of a medical situation, which is your area of expertise.
07:00
This is the urinary thing, huh? The reason I'm saying it like that, you guys, is because it's so easy to be blase about something that your dog is doing. If your housebroken dog is pissing in the house, that's something's wrong. If it's your fault and you were gone for hours and hours and they just couldn't hold it, that's one thing I would encourage you to look at that and not repeat that as much as you possibly can.
07:30
could be something else. I think when you're seeing like dribbles. Yeah, if you're seeing what we would call incontinence. So a dog's inability to hold their bladder or their urine, it could be tons of it, it could be everything. You'll see that a lot in older dogs when they get up, they're incontinent now and their whole bladder is expressed while they were laying there. You'll see incontinence in...
07:56
and sometimes younger female dogs who have some issue, the hormones in their body, because, and this is a fun fact for everybody listening, the sphincters in our body are controlled by hormones, by the hormone system. So you have a sphincter in multiple places in your body. You know, you've got one in the end of your stomach, you've got a sphincter in your bladder, you've got a sphincter in your bum, you know, you've got tons of... I knew that one. Yeah.
08:22
When they lose the ability to like contract or to open and close essentially, that's generally a hormone issue. And so dogs will have sometimes hormone supplement that they'll take or they'll take something that has a very real phenolpropanolamine for incontinence. But it's not normal for an adult dog to be dribbling urine, to be inappropriately urinating, to have pink urine.
08:50
or blood tinged urine, all of those things are like immediate, vet, immediate, because you're looking at things like UTIs, you're looking at things like potentially diabetes, you're looking at things like different bladder issues, I don't wanna freak anybody out, stones, crystals, those are incredibly common, more than people know. And so- And very uncomfortable and painful.
09:18
It's very uncomfortable and painful. And it sounded after talking to Isabelle like this had been something that she was seeking some help for and using some supplements, which is great. If you're not seeing progress in an area or your pet is having symptoms that they didn't have after treatment and now they are recurring immediate vet, immediate recheck because the vet is the only one that can tell you that. Yep. Full year analysis.
09:46
That would even, I mean, I'll go real crazy and be like, you know, because I want somebody that specifically reads your analysis all day long to look at that. But there's many ways to do that. And your analysis are inexpensive, inexpensive. They're generally less than $50. And then you'll get an exam fee with that. But it's something I don't want people to not go and get things like that because of cost because it happens to be.
10:14
one of the more inexpensive things. Yeah, that's really good advice to give because I wouldn't have known, it is hard to know within that care what is gonna be more or less expensive unless you've worked in the field. So that was really good insight, thank you. And just another tip, you guys, if your dogs have something like that and they get put on a supplement, they will be on that for life. They'll be on that for life. It's not something that like when they develop it, generally you need ongoing maintenance. And so hopefully Isabella is gonna-
10:43
that check out and get on something that works for us. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the other things that really stood out for us and, you know, the primary behavior that Isabel was reaching out about was a resource guarding resource aggression, mostly towards the cats, two cats. And that was something that we were able to.
11:06
pretty quickly be in agreement between all three of us that there needed to be some significant and immediate management shifts because we actually decided it wasn't reasonable for the cats to be in and about Taz's space when he has things like his food or other high value items and you know, vice versa, that when the cats are doing their thing that Taz can kind of be set aside from that and creating a little bit more separation and in fact, I think it was really Taz that was getting irritated with the cats.
11:34
not the other way around. So I don't know that the cats needed the break so much as Taz, but by giving Taz his own new zone where he's in a kennel, he's in a room behind a closed door. And that's actually another important thing to mention too, is that after we collected our initial round of intake information, Isabel moved, which is a huge stressor for sensitive dogs. I mean, even for confident dogs, that's going to impact them in some way. It's, you know, their whole world, their whole environment has shifted.
12:02
This actually gave us, I think, a really good opportunity to create that good, safe place for Taz and just say like, the cats don't need to be in here. And now we have two levels of management because we have Taz in his kennel and we have the closed door. So the cats can't even be near his bubble, which is important because we were seeing a lot of breakdown of trust around his food and not having his food and his resources advocated for and him having to do it himself. So one thing we talked about was how...
12:30
a big management shift like this can actually be really impactful to how our dogs feel. Because all of a sudden we've created all this safety that wasn't there before and all these boundaries that we are advocating for them. So I am, that's one of the first things I think we're going to be checking back in with her is, you know, how are these management strategies going? And are we noticing any decrease in agitation from the increased management and also the
12:58
veterinary attention, which was also top of the list. This particular scenario, I wouldn't say is triggering for me. But I get really serious with people about it, because one of one of the best dogs I ever had, one of the kindest dogs that I ever had killed my cat. I mean, I think he just one bite one shake. And that was it. And it was my
13:24
favorite cat that I ever had. He was a Persian, a magical Mr. Mastopheles. And they got along really well. And when he did that, I was like, something is not right. Something is wrong with him. I just came home and the cat was dead and he didn't have there was no blood. There was nothing but I knew that the bulls were out. And I thought, probably walked by the bull because I had noticed that Bam was letting out some low growls, but I only saw it on one or two occasions. It seemed pretty random.
13:53
And so I let it go. I let it go and it cost me my cat's life. And what ended up happening was Bam, there was something wrong with Bam. He was sick and he felt giddy. And that made him act in ways that I don't think he nor ordinarily would have. And I will tell you, I've seen that with a lot of dogs over the years. When they don't feel well, that increases a problem that's already existing. I should have had better management. I should not have.
14:23
let the cat walk around near my dog's food bowl ever, especially when he is eating. I have a client right now who has a similar living situation, different kind of dog, but very similar to Isabelle. And same thing. I was just like, Oh my gosh, please do not let the cats do that. Please do not. You guys need to realize listeners, your dogs are made and not around. They will. They will not. And it just takes
14:51
a simple small mistake to kill a smaller animal. And so management is absolutely paramount. And I lost that dog probably two weeks later. He ended up what was wrong was he had hemolytic. Well, he had auto auto immediately immediately. And it was just, you know, it's a spleen deal. Kind of that's the best way to explain it. But but it was something was wrong with him. And so if anything, if you notice these things, you have to say something.
15:20
and do something, especially if you're going to be bringing a baby in. Especially. On top of all of that. I think something that would be helpful now would be to go through our kind of reframed and prioritized goals for Isabelle and Taz. And then I want to do something that I don't think I did in previous episodes, which is actually read right from our plan, the assessment that we provided, because I actually think that that's really valuable. So looking at the goals.
15:50
We really separated these out into two buckets, our short-term and our long-term, knowing that the short-term is stuff we're gonna talk about and start working on now, and long-term stuff just has to wait. So on the short-term list, top of the list, baby prep. We had to get some boundaries in place that were gonna keep everyone safe. That's that all the way buttoned up management. The second goal is the food aggression. The third goal is something we actually haven't mentioned yet, which is some pretty significant fears.
16:17
predominantly sound sensitivity within the home and again these are actually new based on his move so something that we kind of had to figure into our plan as we were working the plan. We also have some just arousal and excitement when he's out in the world on the leash and I think a little bit inside the house too but it seems to be much more managed inside. So the long term goals that we had to kind of just
16:45
push off into the future, and as long as we have management in place for them, we can delay working on modification because we have other things that are more urgent. This is the leash reactivity, this is an overall confidence and trust, and the new separation anxiety, which again, only really happened after the move. Now I wanna read the full assessment that we gave to Isabelle for Taz, and then we're gonna go deep into our management strategy that we provided to her.
17:12
Taz has a high level of excitement and requires more arousal management. He is reactive on the leash and appears to have a low level of confidence. Taz displays aggressive behavior around food items dropped on the floor and has a long list of sounds that produce a fear response, such as the washer dryer. Following a recent move, Taz is also displaying signs of separation anxiety, such as howling and harmful escape attempts. The number one priority for Taz right now is to be prepared for the new baby who is due on January 13th.
17:40
Side note, who was born on January 15th. Congratulations, Isabel. It's kind of fun to be able to give that little update too. Perfect timing, moments before we started recording. So Jerry, why don't you go into some of the, I'm gonna go ahead and use the word strict, the strict management recommendations and strategies, because really we, this wasn't a deep discussion or question. This was, these things really need to be put into place for safety, because we did feel it was
18:09
situation with a level of risk. Yeah, these are definitely rhetorical statements. And Isabelle was awesome. She was super open to it. She was there for it. She reached out for it. Yeah. Yeah, she really was. So as a mama myself, I really take this very seriously. And I don't know if it's strict or not. I mean, I think it's common sense. I think some people would maybe call it
18:39
But I have a rule about the age of child that can touch my dog, even if it is my own child. So any child that's under the age of about two, three, please don't touch the dog at all. Because if you can't repeat back to me the rules, I can't be sure that you fully understand them. And I'm not going to have something happen to a small child.
19:06
over a moment, a fleeting moment of that child having to interact with a dog. It is complete, senseless use. I think it like froze and stuttered. So instead of using a number as like a threshold for age, I actually use a quality, a very specific quality, which is coachable. Is that human child
19:36
It varies, you know, I've been very coachable for five, six year olds. And I've also met nine year olds that I wouldn't let anywhere near my dog. Yeah, I think it's determining how do you determine if that child is coachable in that one setting, though? You know what I'm saying? Like it depends on a ton of things. Normally, I have to have my thing is that I have to have a lot of data. So I have to be around those children a lot and see them actively following the rules. Are they? Yeah. Then absolutely.
20:06
and what that does what all of this management that we're about to talk about does is that it creates a different expectation in your dog your dog is not expecting that cats are gonna walk through its food bowl anymore it's expecting that it's gonna eat peacefully without anyone in the room and that's what it needs or it expects that maybe a little baby is crawling by on the floor but the baby does not touch the dog
20:33
and there's some separation there. There's all these little, you know, there's reasons why we're doing this and it's not just to be strict or not provide access. This is one of the hardest parts of having a dog for people is they just want it to be a free for all half the time. And that's not what it is. These are beautiful, loving, intelligent, really I think majestic creatures, but they can be very dangerous. And so we just, you know, management above all. One of my favorite resources. Oh, go ahead.
21:02
I just want to make a comment that's like a little bit unrelated to this case, which is that I actually use that rule going both ways. So one of the two parties has to be coachable between the human and the dog. Right. So I just don't think that babies and puppies are a good combination, but for some reason people think babies and puppies are good combinations. I'm like, we have no brain. We got like two brain cells between the two of them and we are not ready for this yet. So for me, it's about one of them has to be coachable.
21:30
And if the puppy's not there yet, the human has to be. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good. That's a good rule to remember. One of my favorite resources or dog and kid dog and baby interactions, education information is on Instagram. And that is dog meets baby. We told Isabel about that. That is an account. So good. It's so good. And most of most dog trainers know. And I hope that they're referring people to it. But.
21:58
It's just such a brilliant way to have just a one-stop shop place to go where you can just binge the materials. That's the resource for that, yes, oh my gosh. It's the exact account that you want popping up in your feed if you have a dog and you're expecting, period. You're gonna be like, oh my gosh, this is great, this is exactly what I needed. Let's talk about the food aggression, the resource guarding, AKA whatever you wanna call it. I think that this is the-
22:27
This is really interesting because this has been probably the top area, and disagree with me if you think that this is an accurate medicine, this has been the top area of misinformation that I have seen on social media is what in the hell you do with your dog's food. And their food, I mean, it's up there. It's up there. People can't, but putting their hands in it, letting their baby sit inside of it, you know, bringing their baby over to put, and I'm just like,
22:55
I'm gonna burst into flames. I can't. I can't watch this. I can't take this. There is absolutely no reason under the sun, any circumstance, I don't care, that a young toddler, child, whatever, whatever, should be feeding a dog in that way. It can help prep. It can help purchase the food. It can be involved in
23:24
in filling the bowls, doing all the things. But when they're older, they can help with hand feeding. Yes. There's so many ways to integrate your children into the training aspect of life with your dog, but slow your roll people, slow your roll, because if trainers aren't doing it, open your eyes and pay attention. If you don't see dog trainers doing, I mean, dog trainers on both sides can agree that that's crazy. That's crazy.
23:53
crazy. You have to keep some separation and some management there because little kids have a really volatile peculiar energy and they flop around and they crawl around and they and they throw things and grab things and and they're just being children. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Dogs are just being dogs and that's what they're supposed to be doing. And whether people like to face it or not, when a dog turns around and bites something else.
24:23
because it was a resource and they're regarding it or whatever. That's what dogs do. That's what they do. They're dogs. They're not people. You can't sit down and have a conversation with them about it. So what we do is we don't put them in situations to have to do that. Respect what they are and what they're capable of. And we have healthy management in place. And I do want to kind of take the opportunity also to call out that right off the rip, Isabelle asked like the best perfect question.
24:52
which was, okay, what do I do on day one? She wanted to know, you know, how do I set it up? And she was like, all this talking is nice ladies, but what do I do day one? Right, which is just honestly the best question. And it gave us a perfect opportunity to make it so clear, no interaction, observation, for longer than just a day, right? But like observation only, I was like, you need to remove interaction from even a thought or a worry right now.
25:19
That is not something that is on the immediate horizon. We are looking at neutral calm interaction and building new positive associations to this thing that hasn't encountered before. The smells and the sounds and like you said, the movements. So I think it's- Babies are weird. So I just think it's important to call out that Isabelle knows very well that there isn't to be a ton of interaction, if any right now, and it's all about observation. And she-
25:49
she is putting this management into place. When it came to giving her resources for just the general excitement, which again, I think that's something that we wanted for her to be able to get a handle on sooner rather than later because that's just not something that you want to have to be feeling is that you don't have control and management in place for a physically challenging behavior when you have a new baby. So we wanted to give her ways to be able to
26:16
calm his excitement down if he was getting physically excited, just jumping and being, you know, a big goofy boy. And we were able to pretty quickly and easily point her right to your managing arousal course. That's something that we have such a great resource to be able to funnel people towards to at least, I say at least get started. It gets most people like 90% of the way there. The beauty of it is that it's really just a couple of basic skills that help us engage our dog in repeatable patterns that help regulate the nervous system.
26:45
Awareness is key. I think for a lot of people, once they know that arousal is even a thing, they're like, wow, I feel like so many of the behaviors are making sense now. I didn't know that dogs, like I think everyone gets conceptually that their dogs have feelings and nervous systems. I just don't think that they, it's not been explained to people how that affects their behavior. Yeah, yeah. I think it takes the right.
27:13
message or metaphor for each person to be able to get that right because not every human person has maybe that experience of having felt their nervous system that that dysregulated. I know I have and that was a big wake up moment for me to kind of piece together those two experiences. Same and I did that at about 39 so I mean it took me a really long time.
27:40
Certainly wasn't when I was like a child. It takes so much. Honestly, that's like still the biggest work in progress is just regulation and keeping myself balanced in that way. I think it would be helpful now to move on to the modification and talk about the things that we wanted her to start doing to step forward and start to create a slightly easier tomorrow. The management was really about keeping everybody super safe.
28:10
Reducing a little bit of that day to day stress that she was feeling, but it was also time to start creating less stress for Taz around some of the new aspects of his environment that were really challenging, like the very noisy washer and dryer. Something that we, I don't want to say gave her permission, but encouraged her to start to do some desensitization too, because there's no escaping it. It's something that.
28:36
They're gonna be, you know, it's gonna be used, he's going to hear it. And if it was that distressing for him, then we need to start making steps to make that less distressing because it's really hard to regulate our nervous system when we are being totally freaked out, potentially multiple times a day. This sensitization is long game, you guys. But if you don't start now. A little bit, yeah. Yeah, we just tiny bit each day. All the time.
29:03
tiny bit every day, tiny bit every day. Because you don't make big jumps with desensitism. You can't, you shouldn't, you can't, you shouldn't. You make these tiny little adorable milestones though and you're like, oh my God, I have this dog right now that I'm just, ugh. It's long game because it requires this to stay on the plane. What happens is that people want something that's gonna work in, you know, two times of them doing it.
29:32
And I often remind people, okay, well, if you don't want to do this, we can always just punish them. And they're like, what? And I'm like, right, that sounds psycho, doesn't it? So our option is to do a small amount every day and know that that is going to give us progress eventually, but we have to stick with it. It's a long game for sure. I absolutely agree. But it yields lasting results and your dog has way less stress because of it. Way less stress.
30:00
So there were a couple of specific suggestions that we gave in terms of starting to both desensitize but also create positive associations with things related to the baby. And if you are expecting a baby and you have months and months ahead of you, you can start this months and months ahead of time and it makes it an even more gradual experience for your dog.
30:27
but anything that is going to become a part of your dog's life or your dog's world, you really want it to be introduced before baby comes home, because baby coming home already changes everything. So we want to minimize all the other changes that are going to happen. And it seems silly, but if you're going to be changing products, your soap, things like that, bringing out baby toys and separating them from dog toys and making clear what those boundaries are, because I think baby toys and dog toys do sometimes look alike, and that can be really confusing.
30:56
I don't know that it's a super fair expectation for our dogs to be able to differentiate unless we put them in separate containers in separate areas and we don't have them both on the floor next to each other and just expect them to understand. Things like, and oh my goodness, Jerry, you told me to forget it when I said that she could take the opportunity ahead of time to get on the new schedule for the baby. And you told me to take whatever schedule I had in my head and to burn it.
31:26
I was like, that's cute. Probably really good advice. No one makes the schedule but the baby. Can you tell that I'm not a mom? Schedule. The world now revolves around eight pounds of irrational. OK, I want to ask an interview style question here. If you had a consult with somebody who was, for argument's sake, in their first trimester.
31:55
they were coming to you for baby preparedness. What are the things that you maybe would have them start doing earlier on? Like, would you recommend that they go safely with management, be around parents with babies, play some baby noises? What are the things that they can do ahead of time? My personal opinion on that is, and you know, it's a tough one. It's not tough. It's intense. I think that the first thing
32:23
everyone needs to do is get as much practice as they can in not living the life that they're living anymore. All of the sloppy things that they're doing that may not be sloppy now but will be sloppy when a baby comes. Sloppy management, sloppy training. It's get settled in your soul now. If you try and do this shit when you're eight months along, you're gonna hate everything because let me tell you.
32:49
When you get to 32 weeks and they tell you that you have eight more weeks of that, you're like, no, I don't, I can't even fit. I don't even, I can't walk. Not going to want to deal with this then. So if the issue is, let's just take Isabel, for example, let's say that she could come at three months. Well, we need to figure out how we're going to get those cats and that dog. Wow. We need to get some management in place because I don't want you having to deal with this when you're this far along, which she did great. She crushed it. But I just.
33:19
that changing your lifestyle is the hardest thing. It's not picking up your phone and playing YouTube sounds of babies crying and feeding your dog. That's the easy part. It's in you. It's the things that have to change in you. The place that is maybe sloppy is a little unfair, but lacks the places that are lacks can no longer be that way. Because
33:49
Talked about like buttoning up every single butt all the way to the top button the one that makes you feel like you can't breathe But not one too. The tornado is coming. It's coming and it's in shape of a sweet little baby. Oh And you know what also just as on a personal note if you have a baby and something happens That's not the time to be dealing with your dog being ill And I'm one of those people that had a baby and something happened and I went back home and I didn't have my baby with me
34:19
You know, so I know that that's a little maybe morose, but it's happens to many, many, many women. And you do not want to come back home in a state where you're fragile and confused and scared and have an out of control dog because we didn't deal with these things. Prior. That is also something that can happen when you have a baby and not to scare, you know, not to scare people. Just that's my story. And it's many other people's story too.
34:46
And I had sweet little Nanny. And then just real quick, my parents didn't know what they were doing with him. And he would lay against the wall and go like this. And so there's his teeth marks and some of the sheetrock in my old house in Tulsa. I don't know. Everything else was fine, but he was just so like, probably- He just liked to chew the wall a little bit? Well, I mean, they're old people. Like, they were just like there to help take my daughter to school and like make food for her and stuff while I was in a different city in the hospital with Milo. And they don't-
35:16
You know, we're running through the woods every day. So you just never know what's going to happen. You want to be as prepared as you can, as early on as you can. That's really good advice. While we did talk through a basic framework for modification of the emotions behind resource aggression. We also discussed the fact that we weren't going to start working on that until we saw what the impact of the updated management strategy was. And we also
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probably at that point are gonna evaluate if that's even worthwhile. If we even are going to have opportunities for that to be an issue. If the cats are never allowed around Taz while Taz is eating, then that's never an issue. If there's a desire to have some sort of more integrated situation, then we have options and plans that we can start working towards that. With management, we talked through always having two levels of management when we're starting something like this, where there's a high risk and there's been a previous physical altercation, nothing significant.
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but enough that we felt it was risky and either needing like a leash in a gate or a leash in a muzzle or a muzzle in a gate, something, two levels, always. Not something we're immediately focused on because realistically, until we get this really significant management shift in place, it's just not even time. It's not even time to start looking at that. We gave her the framework to do the noise desensitization, which again, that's impactful because that is
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causing significant stress in his day-to-day life. And we wanted to do our best to try and reduce and then remove that. We've got some sound-sensitive babies out there. Y'all just don't understand. I mean, same. Same. I don't like loud noises. So I get it. If you went inside an arcade, if that bothers you, that's how a dog feels. Don't it bothers them? Very similar, overwhelmed, and they don't know why.
37:08
having these reactions to seemingly small sounds because they're just sensitive, damn it. Well, their hearing is better than ours. It really is. I believe it's like four times better. I don't know. I just know that I don't play music in the car when Enzo's there because it's paranoid and it's really bothering him. It's really important to mention too. Yeah. Yeah. People like roll by with like the, I used to have this boyfriend. Oh my god.
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just the system was so loud. Enzo didn't seem like he cared but like also he was in the back of the pickup truck so who knows. Well maybe that's a topic for a different day. I know we could do an entire episode on sound sensitivity probably. Yeah yeah I think we could. Well we will definitely have Isabelle back for a future follow-up episode and you will be able to hear us going through her entire case plan with her on her unpack episode.
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Aww, with the one bebe. I'm so excited for her. And just know we're literally going to hang up from this call and go check and see what she said. How cute. I'm so excited. I want to know names. I want to know stats. Chunky baby stats. We are going to go find the chunky baby stats and we will see everyone next time. Bye!
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Unpacked was created by Jerry Sheriff and Mattison Simpson, edited and produced by Josh Wasta under the supervision of Straight Up Dog Talk, LLC and Emily Breslin. If you are enjoying this podcast, follow or subscribe to be sure you don't miss an episode and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Looking for more honest and relatable dog content? Check out our sister podcast, Straight Up Dog Talk. See you next time.