AN OPEN-MINDED PODCAST.
Ep. 5 Transcript
Episode 5: Intra-Household Conflict
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Jerri: [00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacked, an open minded podcast taking a clinical, not political approach to help 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
Mattison: Minded Approach. And I'm Mattison, her friend, certified dog trainer, and cynologist.
Together, we have nearly three decades of experience. in behavioral dog training. In this episode and every episode, we will fully unpack a real case. We've been working with real owners and their very real struggles behind the scenes for months to provide this learning opportunity for everyone else out
Jerri: there.
We're giving you a peek into our world and minds following through with our promise of adding transparency
Mattison: in this industry. If you're along for the ride, this is how it's going to look. First, we'll introduce our incredible and dedicated owners and explain their intake process while [00:01:00] we describe their dog.
Or dogs and the problems that they're dealing with.
Jerri: Then we'll walk you through our assessment and explain how we got there.
Mattison: Lastly, we'll break down the management and modification plan. This is something we do a little differently. We're delivering a high level end goal case plan to every single owner.
We believe in their ability to process a lot of information with us as a team to ensure we're all working towards the same goal. So you said that this one, this one is funny to you. This is the funny one. Yeah. It's a Catahoula and a Coonhound. Well, you know what I'm saying? Duke is yeah. Duke is a Catahoula
Jerri: and a Coonhound to be
Mattison: specific.
And Amstaff. Lord have mercy.
Jerri: You're never going to convince me that. the Coonhound aren't going to overrun every single genetic thing that ever happened inside that dog besides themselves.
Mattison: The Staffy didn't stand a chance. Yeah, strong genes. Yeah. So let's talk through the [00:02:00] dogs. We've got Daisy and Duke. Daisy is four years old. Duke is three. Daisy is an American I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. I can do it. Daisy is an American Staffordshire Terrier. Duke is also a Staffie, but he does have the Catahoula and the Coonhound stirred up in there.
Staffies can be high drive too, but they also have a, I think, larger piece of them that wants to be Laying around, being on the sofa, being a cuddle bug. Whereas when you have a dog that has, I don't want to sound like an idiot here. Catahoula leopards. Are they in the hound group?
Jerri: No, they're like in the purr group.
They're like a multi purpose dog.
Mattison: They're in the herding group. Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense.
Jerri: Okay.
Mattison: Daisy is for Duke is 3. They got Duke in May of 2020 and about a [00:03:00] year and a half later, they had an incident over the course of 3 days. It was 2 incidents and they have been separated and create and rotating since then.
They have a ton of management in place, which we will get into as we move through our assessment. I'm excited to finally. I don't know. Dive into some intra household conflict. You see some scuffles when you're dealing with any household that has multiple dogs or multiple or multiple animals. Like you're going to see scuffles sometimes tied into some issues.
But here the scuffle was the heart of the issue. Everything. Kind of changed after a pretty in, you know, in their eyes, a pretty dramatic incident, we have two dogs that lived together fairly peacefully for 18 months without issue or without incident. What do you think? Well, when you hear that things, [00:04:00] um, when happened kind of out of nowhere when dogs.
It's possible. This is why you said it was funny. It's why you said this episode was funny.
Jerri: Well, I don't know I don't necessarily mean really funny. Haha. I mean, I guess I didn't
Mattison: funny and like how how much how much Perhaps simpler
Jerri: whenever I hear somebody tell me that it was okay for a couple of years and then Well, I think that you had a really slow burn in your house and you either had dogs that were really tolerant Or you had dogs that were really sensitive.
We'll never know because what's the way to measure that? I can tell you that two years with lack of structure, direction in meeting of basic needs of those mixture of specific breeds. This is a recipe [00:05:00] for disaster. It just is. So how many ever years, I want everybody to let go of this, and no, this isn't specific to Daisy and Duke's mom, but everybody needs to let go of, well, it just happened and like every single thing up until that moment was perfect and then your dogs just started fucking fisticuffs out of nowhere.
Honestly, like, I don't know a nice way to say it. It's honestly delusional. So, so you mean to tell me that your kids have been perfectly just best buds for five years, and then all of a sudden one of them punched the other one in the face and you just have no idea what happened, liar. Fire pants on fire, or you don't know what you're looking at, you don't know how to tell, which is the majority of people, but [00:06:00] I also think it's a combination of both with most people.
I think that people see things and they push it to the side because they're not aware of the consequences. Not because they don't care because they're not aware of kind of what could happen. And so while I don't think that, you know, pet parent is doing that to that extreme or doing anything, you know, extreme, but I think that we don't realize that we, most people really don't know anything about dog body language.
So I encourage everybody to look into what you have, look into dog body language because this is exactly the type of shit that's going to happen if you don't. And then you're going to blame your dog. And then that's going to be super lame. I don't like
Mattison: that. Super lame. There's no other way to say it.
Like, I think that you're absolutely right in that a dog or the dogs get blamed, but, you know, perhaps the newer dog gets blamed more often [00:07:00] than. And the existing dog, regardless of, you know, the way that the scuffle goes down and I, I think that we have here in Daisy and Duke, a pretty good example of boundary setting and how things escalate the way that they do naturally with animals that use teeth to communicate.
One thing that we did notice, and this might've been the first time that we had to sort of pause during the medical portion of our intake was we had talked with them about the medication that their dogs were on. Both Daisy and Duke were on an anxiety medication and we discussed what that anxiety medication was typically used for and if they were seeing any type of difference in the dog's behavior.
And we kind of concluded all as a team that it probably wasn't being very effective. Um, and so they are exploring options with veterinary behaviorists to find a medication that would be more appropriate [00:08:00] and, you know, figure out.
Jerri: Did you guys just hear how that's a community move? There's, there's seats at the table for everyone.
So if you don't know a thing, like I don't have a prescription pad, I'm not a veterinarian, Madison's not a veterinarian, like, I don't, you know, Kami, where do you even live? You know, we do everything virgin. I'm kidding. We know where she lives. We do everything if it's outside of what you're there to help someone with.
Make sure that they get help with the person that can really help them. That's the right type of professional or the right type of Support group or you know, there's there's lots of different stuff in inside of the dog training world They can be had for help, but there's nothing wrong with referring to a veterinary behaviorist I think balance trainers, which sometimes shy away from that, and they don't think about that and they think everything can be resolved in every dog with training.
And [00:09:00] I just, after 20, almost 20 years working for veterinarians as a technician, and then being a trainer exclusively these last several years, I think that it's like everything else. It's a, it's a, it could be a little bit of both. We need to really just use it like anything else with being thoughtful and getting other professionals and our peers and our colleagues in on asking the question, Hey, are you seeing what I'm seeing?
Or am I missing something? Because we can't just be throwing every dog on medication for the same reason that we, you know, we can't be throwing every person on medication. We should be looking for, you know, holistic. Answers to these things, but keep our minds open that isn't really helping. Could it really
Mattison: help?
In terms of training, they have both been through their quote unquote basic training, you know, they have [00:10:00] their, their foundational communication. They can do basic manners and they did bring in a trainer after the incident. However, after just one session, that trainer kind of ghosted them and left them feeling like they didn't have any idea how to move forward.
Jerri: Happens to so many people. It's just like, we're all numb to hearing it now almost, and it's just so sad. I'm sorry when people experience that.
Mattison: Daisy and Duke are behaviorally and their personalities very very different dogs. Daisy is super social and she loves people and Duke is a little bit slower to warm up.
He's a little bit suspect of new people. He's gonna bark and get a little bit defensive. Um, and he's been very wary of Daisy. They have a very stable household, no young children, all adults, um, no other animals, and both dogs seem to have really healthy and appropriate relationships [00:11:00] with all members of the family.
I will say their routine is create and rotate at its finest. They have these wonderful boundaries up. Um, and levels of management, both dogs are getting walked. Both dogs are getting backyard time. They're getting several small training sessions throughout the day. And one of my favorite things is that even though they do not have the comfort to have the dogs, necessarily interacting.
They have a family cuddle night every night where they sit on the sofa and the humans are between the dogs and the dogs are on leash on opposite ends of the sofa. So in many ways, they had already done a lot of work in terms of just desensitizing each other to being in the same space. It's not like we have two dogs that haven't seen one another for months and months and months.
They still have this opportunity to observe one another every single evening from across. You know, the room, the sofa, they are having
Jerri: conflict in some small way that the body language [00:12:00] is, you're talking about dog, talking to dog, they are communicating all the time, how they feel about each other, how they feel about you.
And then these little baby conflicts start to occur, and then you don't get resolved because nobody really knows that they're going on, or they don't maybe know how to resolve them. And then that festers. And that becomes more and more, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's growing now because we've not done anything about it and it just keeps happening and happening.
And now 1 of them is saying, I really don't like this and still nobody really notices. And this goes on and on and on, until it escalates to the point of Daisy being like, Listen, I need you to get the fuck away from me. I've said it in every nice way that I can think. I've put up with this for years. [00:13:00] I don't want you around me.
Nobody else here seems to be doing anything about it, and today's the day, motherfucker.
Mattison: Man, this is the episode where we need the explicit tag. We have not needed that on a single episode.
Jerri: I forgot that this is the one we don't cuss on. I think it's fine. Because kids don't listen to this, so it's fine.
Kids don't listen to it. Yeah, I think
Mattison: it's fine. I think it's fine. And you know, another reason why those... You know, minor minor conflicts, micro conflicts escalate are the same reason that we see reactivity escalate because they're serving a function and it's working every time she, you know, lashed out in a small way.
At Duke and he gave her space even for a moment that worked, which again is I think why her corrections began to escalate because they may have bought her, you know, a second or two of space, but not, not long term.
Jerri: Which what are those corrections? Say what they are in the four quadrants for the people that are like, [00:14:00] really want to know in that moment, what is she doing in the four quadrants?
And she's lashing out at him
Mattison: positive punishment, right? She's adding something into the equation to decrease likelihood of that behavior occurring again. So people will say that it's
Jerri: negative reinforcement. People will say that that is just extreme negative reinforcement. I used to do that. And I want to break down what the difference is.
So the listener does not try to apply it improperly because it's easy to do. Oh, she's just pushing into his space really fast with teeth. No, no, no. That's crossed the line. That's crossed the line. She's trying to get rid of that behavior in that
Mattison: moment. Yeah, if we have even an air snap, that, that, that is not just spatial
Jerri: pressure.
Right, right. That's, that's such a, that's such an important tip for everybody to hear. You have crossed [00:15:00] the line. When a dog snaps, when a dog growls, when a dog Spatial
Mattison: pressure will be soft. Yeah. And they will, it will not be sudden and explosive like that. That is not how dogs communicate with spatial pressure, nor is it how any human should be communicating with a dog.
So if
Jerri: you see your dogs doing something like that, the growling, the, the baring the teeth at each other, don't let it get to the point of where they're fighting because then you got a whole shit show on your hands. And sweet little Duke, you know, Duke just, he's the life of the party, and he wants to party.
He is. Number one is party. And so he's bouncing around, and Daisy's like, listen, get the fuck out of my face. Like, Daisy... Daisy, I'm on the same wavelength as you. Okay, so, I'm not really gonna, [00:16:00]
Mattison: you know, so. Yeah, she likes, she likes to go out into the world and play, and then she likes to come home to her space and rest.
And Duke came into the picture and really upset that. Really threw that really
Jerri: upsetting for, imagine how upsetting that is for Cammie. If you're like, Kami, think about this for a minute, you got these dogs and you have all these dreams and all these goals and hopes of having them and one of them hates the other one.
And you don't know even where to start or what to do at all. And now you went from being so hopeful and so excited and felt prepared and, and, you know, thought you had everything. To now you kind of feel like you're in a prison and they might be in a prison and you don't know how to move forward. That is a heavy, heavy thing.
You guys, like, that's a life [00:17:00] changing thing that happens to people. It will, it will kind of turn the course of your life into a way different than it maybe would have been. Because it becomes about really strict management and not you running on the beach with your dogs, like you thought it was going to be.
So, if that's happening to you, you're not alone, but you need to do something about it and doing something about it means getting some help learning some basic things and seeing even if that that does anything because doing nothing and just watching social medias, it's going to be tricky that way. It's going to be really
Mattison: tricky and Duke's personality and his behavior is just a little bit more rambunctious than what Daisy would choose for herself.
You know, her previous housemate before Duke was a senior dog. So she was used to having very mellow energy in the home. Um, and even being able to have, you know, mellow [00:18:00] energy out on the walks, they're obviously walked separately now, but, um, when Duke was having some type of reaction on the leash, because he's, again, was just a little bit more nervous, um, Daisy had the tendency to redirect and correct him in that moment, you know, again, whenever Duke is kind of messing up the way that she wants things to be, Daisy is giving some type of correction, which we just You see those escalate over time, just like in this case.
I think
Jerri: also it's, it's important to note that when Daisy gets that, that causes her to go into arousal, but he's doing stuff and it's just, she, her arousal just shoots up there. And if it's not managed, she's going to do things that an Am staff does. Let's just be honest enough about the Catahoulas in a, you know, enough about the Catahoulas and the coon hounds.
I mean, strong breed in there. You know, I know that the dogs [00:19:00] are nowadays, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of different breeds in there, but when she, if she does not have for a route, like same with, and so if he doesn't have his arousal managed, oh my God. So if a dog has that channeled into. A situation that's kind of been on repeat and they're getting really frustrated and it's not going to look, it's just not going to be pretty.
It's not going to be pretty Daisy decided that she just couldn't take it anymore. And so we have to make some changes for them and the changes in that type of situation always come initially with management. It's the first thing that you have to do, because management is how everybody stays safe.
Mattison: Thankfully, they did have a lot of day to day management in place. The barriers, having rotations for mealtime and exercise and engagement and training, all of that. Um, the muzzles was the area where they needed the most help. Moving forward with the muzzle conditioning, getting the dogs [00:20:00] comfortable wearing them.
Um, and we, we acknowledged very early on how important that was for Kami, for the humans in the situation in moving forward with a plan to try periods of reintegration of having that muzzle in place to know that nobody was going to get hurt to be able to remove that worry from them would allow their body language to send the signals that we need to send.
We've said it a couple of times of, you know, Daisy just had enough and it's not that Duke was being, he wasn't doing anything that is quote unquote wrong. You know, Duke's just being who he is, but that's really irritating to Daisy. And day after day after day that, that compounds. And again, like, There's no problematic behavior from Duke other than he's not really [00:21:00] listening very well when Daisy was asking for space, at least not the degree to which she wanted space.
He may have backed off a little bit, but, um, it wasn't enough. And over time that just kind of built up and he said she, she'd had enough. I think
Jerri: if a lot of people put themselves in that situation, they can think about. Time where they've had a relationship or maybe known a person like that. How do you move forward through
Mattison: that?
I mean, you had a roommate that you butt heads with really, really badly.
Jerri: And the roommate. Yeah. That's why I'm always, that's why I'm always by myself. Cause it's just better for me. And, and I accepted, I have accepted that about myself.
Mattison: You know, I'm also introverted and I also prefer to be alone a lot of the time.
But throughout my young adult life, there were a lot of opportunities where I had roommates, you know, some in the collegiate way, some in the not so ideal way, whether I had three roommates or 200 roommates. [00:22:00] And sometimes you just got to find a way to make it work. And you can get desensitized over time to the things that bug you.
And you can put up boundaries so that you're maybe not affecting one another quite as much. But Peaceful cohabitation is still something that that that needs to happen unless there's complete separation, which I know right now for Daisy and Duke, there is
Jerri: common. Do you think that this issue is? No, I have an answer, but I'm curious.
Yeah, really
Mattison: common. I think it's really common. I think. Most households with more than one dog have had instances of conflict, whether it's escalated to physical altercations, or just been that tense energy that you can feel, which, um, if you were to roll it back and watch it, you would probably see a ton of body language that's feeding into that, that tenseness.
Um, but no, I think 75 percent or more. [00:23:00] House multi dog households probably have experienced conflict. At least that I've, you know, that I've had personal experience with. I've
Jerri: got just peeking at my client list here. I've got three clients right now have three dogs, a piece that are struggling with different, you know, levels of intensity or inner household aggression.
Mattison: I have a question for you. About those types of cases, so going from 1 dog to 2 dogs, that's where we have the possibility of this multi dog conflict going from 2 dogs to 3, how much more difficult does that make addressing it? And then also going from 3 to 4 going from 4 to 5. I know that sounds like a lot, but we encounter a fair few families that have.[00:24:00]
For plus dogs, and they are struggling, um, and I'm just curious how much more difficult you think it is each time you attack on another dog, another personality
Jerri: way that it's difficult when you add another child generally, when we're adding children. Are in some kind of stride with our other children got it.
We got a schedule. We got a routine. Everything's pretty cool. Another kid comes along, even if it's a surprise and really not struggling with some other major behavioral issue with our child. Some of us are, and some people know that reality. So they would probably be the ones to speak accurately on what it's like when you add another child to a situation like that.
But I could imagine that it becomes exponentially more difficult because a person is only one. When you get to get, you know, big dogs, especially if they are struggling with behavioral problems and you keep adding dogs into the home, you're [00:25:00] sabotaging yourself. They're not going to dig out of that. You will not dig out of that.
You guys. So there's just so many variables. It gets increasingly difficult. I think when you have, when you have mentors and you have people that you listen to, look up to about particular topics, pay very close attention to the way that they live. Instead of paying close attention to what your heart feels.
Because, guys, our hearts are trauma led. I'mma tell you right now. Oh, you do not need to get that fourth dog. No, you don't. That is
Mattison: There will always be dogs that are looking for homes. They will always be dogs that need help. If you get to a really good solid spot with your crew, you can always foster and do things short term.
Jerri: Well, I was going to say, what, what is it? Let let's, so let's not be super negative Nancy's here. What does it look like when you do have [00:26:00] four dogs in your firing on all cylinders? I
Mattison: was going to say that it can be successful. To build a group of dogs when your life revolves around dogs. If your life does not revolve around dogs and you get into this high number of them, your life will become consumed by them.
And that's not a good thing. Your life will not be your own anymore. And that is not a good feeling. That's a loss of agency on your part as a human, as a guardian. And how can you give that to your animals if you don't have it yourself? You cannot
Jerri: give away what you do not have to give. Two dogs manageable.
I'm not out here trying to be like, Screw everyone that has multiple dogs. That's not what I'm saying. I'm trying to help the people that have yet to make the
Mattison: decision. And Cammie is, I'm sure that we've said this about her before, but she has her management together. They have really done a good job. And so, the dogs I think do feel safe.
They do feel safe around one [00:27:00] another. We, we have this now recent history of no conflict. Recent history of separation, but at least they're still in the same household. I think that that's important when you are looking for long term reintegration is to make sure that we don't separate too much. And again, in this case, there's only two dogs.
We don't have a third personality, but now we need to help the humans feel safe too, and to do that. You know, reintegration sessions can be stressful if, if the human counterpart is on guard waiting for an attack, that's going to communicate to the dog. Hey, be ready, be on guard for something. So we need to make sure that those feelings of safety transfer over to the humans.
So we need to incorporate management into Our reintegration sessions, and that looks like muzzle, leash, tether, gate, pen. We have all kinds of options, and she's really incorporated a lot of those into her home and spent the time conditioning both of the dogs to muzzles over the course of, at this point, many, many [00:28:00] months.
So there's really no negative emotion or negative association with the muzzle at all. They're both very, very happy. Conditioning
Jerri: is a huge part of. It should be of most trainings, especially behavioral stuff. Cause you don't want to get into a pinch where you need that thing and your dog isn't conditioned to it and it freaks them out.
They don't just wear muzzles. Don't. You can put it on them and they will, but that doesn't mean that they're comfortable. It could mean that they're really, really scared. Um, and then, you know, when you start doing things. In that emotional state, you start trying to train with a dog that's already scared because it's got a muzzle on and it's not sure what that is.
It's not comfortable with that and not practice with that. Now you've just added another component that's going to make it more difficult. So I think. Muzzle training is something that you should address right in the beginning because you can get started right away and really make some [00:29:00] good progress over
Mattison: the course of training.
You know, you really don't want to get into a position where your dog won't do the things that we kind of need them to do in order to really modify behavior and change emotions. And so if your dog has never really. Moved around with the muzzle on or taken food with the muzzle on. It's going to be really difficult to put these skills into use.
So whatever skills you are wanting to use for your reintegration session, you need to be practicing them with your dog, with the muzzle on, without any of the stressors around, right? Sending your dog to their station, giving them food rewards, giving them an opportunity to break from the session and go get a drink of water, making sure the muzzle is.
Fit properly so they can do all of those things so they have proper pant room and they can physically work through the stress of the situation. Unless you've done that ahead of time. Like you said, it's not going to be a useful tool. It's going to shut the dog down or it's going to frustrate them.
Jerri: Frustration is real too. I mean, [00:30:00] a lot of people don't think about the component. Of a dog, even being frustrated with the dog that a dog could get frustrated and that that would play into not only the training, but their relationship together and how their dog feels when they're working with their doggy parent.
Mattison: Our priority for muzzle conditioning was Daisy, because she is the 1 that has initiated the conflict in the past, at least in the eyes of of her humans. Those are the moments when they were most on guard. So having Daisy wearing muzzle created a lot more. Created a lot more comfort for her humans when they were holding the leash and she was around Duke.
Now, another thing that Cammie and her family have done, which I think is tremendous and has done a world of good to set us up for these reintegration sessions, is they do have a period of time every evening consistently where the dogs are in the same room. They're on leash at the opposite ends of the room.
Um, I think opposite ends of the sofa and they're having family time and [00:31:00] everyone's decompressed and they're looking out for any signs that either one of them could be uncomfortable. And that's something that they've done for months without issue. So I think that's really important that when you're doing this type of training.
That you still look for opportunities for a few moments here and there. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. It doesn't have to be, okay, they're integrated. They're together. Five minutes a day is a great place to start.
Jerri: The integration process for me goes in these little tiny baby steps. We take another little tiny step each day.
Sometimes we're just standing there. It's a lot slower than people think. We're looking for. His body language, if you move too quickly and you skip steps, this is why people say things like it happened out of nowhere. No, it didn't. Oh, it didn't. It didn't happen out of nowhere. Happened and you didn't know what you were looking at.
That's so we're taking [00:32:00] time during that process point out. All of these things that we're seeing that allows us to know, we can move forward. We do that. We're instilling that knowledge in the owner instead of gatekeeping it and then just going, okay, we can move to the step. Now. We're telling them why, why is it okay for us to move on?
Why can we take the next step in
Mattison: reintegration? So, for example. Looking specifically at Daisy and Duke. We've conditioned them to muzzles. We've built a little safe space for Daisy and her, you know, she's the one with the big feelings here in the corner of the living room. So we can have her behind the next pen and on a leash just as those extra levels of management.
And the X pen is not for confinement. It's just to set that boundary, uh, more for Duke than anything else. And our first exercise could just be that Duke walks into the room and we're watching Daisy. Okay. I'm watching Daisy and what she does. And every time Duke walks into the room, we feed Daisy. And then Duke walks out of the room.
Maybe Daisy stiffens up every time Duke comes in the [00:33:00] room. Okay, then we know we're not going any further. We're not going any further because she's still getting really stiff in response to him coming into the room. But one day. Duke walks into the room, Daisy does a little tail wag and kind of perks up, her ears go up and she's very loose.
Okay, now we're seeing something different. Now we can talk about the next step. So I totally agree with you if that's the type of, that's the type of information and communication that we need to be highlighting to the guardians to say, this is what your dog is telling you. This is the sign you're looking for.
This is what it means. I told a client the other day. Because we've just gotten started working and this particular client hadn't sent in videos of the training exercise. They just described to me what their dog did. And I said, this is like you watching somebody speaking in ASL and you do not speak American Sign Language, but you are trying to translate it to me.
You're getting [00:34:00] maybe, yeah, like you're getting a few things right, maybe, but... You do not speak the language, so we're losing so much in translation. And that's why the way that, that, that you trained and the, the revolutionary way that you approach training, that of course I implement with all of my virtual clients has that daily touch point where we are making micro adjustments.
Every single day to make sure we're not going faster than the dog can tolerate. And perhaps more importantly, we are getting that visual of exactly what the dog looks like in that situation. So we can say for sure, if it's time to move on, we can point out specifics, roll it back, roll it back. Let me, let me point out this tail leg.
Let me point out this lip lick. Let me point out this whale eye. One of my favorite things to do is specifically go back through their videos with my voiceover and say, here's this. Here's this, here's this. It's so eyeopening. It's like a translation.
Jerri: I love it when they [00:35:00] see what I see, when they can finally see it from my perspective.
I don't do voiceovers. I do minute markers. I'll be like at one minute, 32 seconds,
Mattison: but it's great. So for Daisy, one of the biggest things that we want to teach her. Is that her boundaries will always be respected, but they're going to be respected by the dogs and the people in the house, and they will be advocated for her by her humans.
Oh, she no longer has to worry about it. And we use that as a physical clear boundary of nobody's going to cross this. No, 1's going to mess with you separately. We're working on Duke's decompression. He is an excitable dude, and that's not going to. Stop or change anytime soon. So we need to help him deal with that excitement and help that not impact Daisy as much by creating really easy to repeat decompression skills for when he gets too excited that way.
If he's getting too excited and they're in the same [00:36:00] space, we can help him calm down. The goal then, eventually, right, long term, this could be six months, this could be a year from now, would be for Duke to be nice and calm outside of that safe space that we've created for Daisy, and to give Daisy some opportunities to come out of that space only if and when she's ready.
We're looking for peaceful cohabitation. I'm never going to tell you your dogs have to be best friends. That's not fair. That's not realistic. But, peaceful cohabitation, being able to exist in the same space, with at least a neutral response, and by that I mean no outward signs of agitation. None. Zero. That is an achievable goal.
No matter how many knock him out, drag him out fights you've had. That is an achievable goal. If you put good management in place, you learn to read what your dog is saying and you go at your dog's pace.
Unpacked [00:37:00] was created by Jerry Sheriff and Madison Simpson and produced by Lushik Lotusley. For full episodes and transcripts or to be featured on the podcast. Visit us at www. unpacked. stream and find us on Instagram at SailorJerryTheDogTrainer and at FreedByTraining. See you next time!
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