Transcript

Jessica: [00:00:00] I am Jessica Wheatcraft and this is Rethinking Reactivity, A podcast designed to educate, empower, and equip the modern handler of reactive dogs. Whether you have a reactive dog or you help people with their reactive dogs, you’re in the right place. If you have a dog who is reactive on leash, you might have wondered if they were feeling frustrated, and you’re probably right because frustration is often a big component for dogs who are displaying leash reactivity.

Jessica: But what exactly is frustration and what is going on inside of a dog’s body while they’re experiencing it? What can we do to help? Dogs cope better with frustration on leash. I wanted to bring in Daniel Shaw, an animal behaviorist with a master’s degree in neuroscience to help us break down the neurobiology [00:01:00] of frustration.

Jessica: I found this conversation really fascinating and I think you will too. Let’s dive in. Daniel, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I am thrilled to have you here.

Daniel: Oh, it’s brilliant to be here. I’m very excited for our conversation today.

Jessica: You have a master’s degree in neuroscience, and for somebody who doesn’t know what neuroscience is, if you were gonna explain that to a 10-year-old kid, how would you explain neuroscience?

Daniel: Yeah, so. It is a tricky one to be fair because it’s quite a new science and it’s really does a job of kind of integrating loads of different other sciences into this kind of one field where we look at trying to understand behavior, trying to understand how, particularly our brains and our nervous systems, so some of the cells that are coming out and connected to our brain.

Daniel: Work to drive some behavior and as well as looking at kind of how our brain works and what it does. So really sort of a link between [00:02:00] lots of these different things. It brings in aspects of psychology, brings in aspects of behavior science, brings in aspects of biology, what’s going on in the body. We’re not.

Daniel: A lot of neuroscience, although we do mainly talk about the nervous system when you kind of define neuroscience. But actually, if you look at it, a lot of it doesn’t really necessarily always just restrict itself to the nervous system. It sometimes expands to other systems in the body. So it’s really, I mean, I think it’s as a field, perhaps you could argue an excuse for people that like studying lots of different things and wanna give themselves a label maybe.

Daniel: So it, yeah, it’s covering a lot, but. I think one of the things that really interests me about it and sort of I would say that I would focus on within the field of neuroscience and have the most interest in, is really thinking about behavior, why animals do what we do. And I think that’s probably a big part of perhaps why people are listening to the podcast today.

Daniel: You know, getting to the bottom of why our dogs in particular are doing what they do and sort of tying [00:03:00] that into what’s going on in the dog’s brain. And how that might be influencing the behavior and also how understanding that can help us both predict the behavior of the dog, but also work with that dog and get interventions in place that may help that dog.

Daniel: Particularly obviously we’re talking reactivity today on this podcast, right? So help that dog find strategies to cope better with the environment, the, that they find themselves in, whether that be coping better with. Things and stimuli they see outdoors things that might cause concern or excitement or frustration for them.

Daniel: And I think there’s a lot that we can learn from looking at the brain and kind of integrating all these different sciences to, to really get some, you know, just to really, yeah, I suppose make some really well-rounded behavior plans that that work for both the human. And what we need as owners or guardians, whatever you describe yourself as and what the [00:04:00] dog needs as well.

Daniel: So I think really coming together from that point of view,

Jessica: it’s fascinating to have all of those different components in it. Of course, you know, we’re here to talk about Leary activity, and one of the things that I wanted to dive into was the neurobiology of frustration, because for a lot of dogs who are reactive on leash, there is a frustration component to this.

Jessica: Sometimes I’ve seen it’s because they are really social and they’re seeing a person or a dog that they wanna have access to and they can’t because of the barrier of the leash. And so therefore, you are seeing some frustration related behaviors that then comes out as leash reactivity. And that’s what I really wanted to dive in today is how can we unpack that and better understand.

Jessica: What is going on with dogs who are experiencing frustration, especially if there’s some sort of barrier such as a leash.

Daniel: Yeah, and I think one of the challenges here, as I’m sure you know, and anyone that has a dog that struggles with leash reactivity, now if you’ve [00:05:00] got a dog that is reacting on leash, it can be so difficult to identify what is the cause of that for this dog.

Daniel: Now, is my dog fearful? Is my dog frustrated? Is there some other component going on? And I think one thing we know about frustration, and in fact if we kind of perhaps start off with defining frustration, that frustration tends to be thought of as an emotional response that occurs when an animal cannot do what it has decided it wants to do.

Daniel: So as you described in all those examples, the animals seen their friend, the animal’s trying to walk around, the dog’s trying to walk around off leash, and because, primarily because of that leash, in all those scenarios, the dog is struggling to do those things that they may want to do. But is unable to because of that restriction.

Daniel: And there are a number of things that goes on in a dog’s head or in any animal’s head, really when they experience that frustration response. One thing we know is some of these limbic [00:06:00] system, limbic regions, sorry, of the brain start and what that means. But I’m talking about when I say limbic system. Is these regions of the brain that are involved in some of our emotional responses.

Daniel: So when we are feeling frustrated, when we are feeling fearful, when we are feeling excited, these subcortical regions. So by subcortical, again, I’m meaning further down in the brain, sort of deeper inside the brain. If we sliced up the brain, we see them kind of further inside as opposed to on the surface.

Daniel: These regions play a big role in those emotional responses and they start lighting up when. The animals experiencing that frustration response and they lead to a number of things happening. So the network that lights up is the A region called the amygdala, and that’s a region that plays a big role in threat detection.

Daniel: And I think threat detection’s an important term here because I think people often think about, [00:07:00] or sort of perhaps even conflate the idea of threat detection and the animal feeling fearful. And those aren’t necessarily the same thing because you can detect a potential threat to your wellbeing or a threat to your ability to be able to meet your needs without being fearful of that threat.

Daniel: You could be frustrated by that. Mm-hmm. So you could find that threat, kind of just a little bit annoying. You could find that threat, something that actually focuses you and directs your behavior towards being able to overcome that potential threat. So if we think about something like being on a lead.

Daniel: That could functionally be a threat to the animal being able to. Perhaps go and socialize with another dog. That being a big part of, as we know, big part of dog’s repertoire is engaging in social behaviors. Some dogs are more social than others. Some dogs love to just this idea of being able to go and meet every dog they see, which again, we can talk about a little bit later, may or may not be a good thing.

Daniel: And that lead can kind of function as something that the animal’s [00:08:00] brain detects as this kind of threat to be able to meet that need and engage in that behavior. So again, not saying that the animal is fearful of the lead, I don’t think a dog that’s frustrated from the lead is it gives the impression, right, when we look at their behavior, that they’re fearful of that lead.

Daniel: But it could be a potential source of frustration. And if you are coming from a behavior science point of view, that would tend to be called what’s known as a conditioned inhibitor. So something that the animal sees and it means that they cannot engage in the behavior that they want to engage in. And as a result of those limbic systems lighting up, we then start seeing kind of regions at the further up.

Daniel: So getting towards that surface of the brain starting to light up. Leading to the animal to do things like make decisions and work out how they’re going to deal with this sort of behavior. And actually the structure and the way the animals, the front, those frontal parts of the brain has developed will actually influence how the animal responds to that limbic emotion.

Daniel: So for example, we’ve got an older animal, and again, this is a generalization, but an [00:09:00] older animal will generally have a more developed frontal part of their brain. That means when they’re experiencing that kind of emotional reaction of, oh, I can’t get to that thing that I want to get to that, that greater development on that front or part of the brain can allow that animal to kind of be able to.

Daniel: Mediate some of that emotional response, kind of keep a handle on it. I suppose if you are, if we put this in human terms, you know, when we kind of get frustrated by something to not just blow up in an explosion of frustration, but yeah, kind of keep calm and work out a way to deal with it. And actually that circuitry up in that front to part of the brain plays a really big role in being able to do that.

Daniel: And older animals, particularly animals that have reached maturity, so gone past that adolescence phase, actually have better circuitry or more. More developed circuitry up there that will allow them to better manage that frustration. And again, older being older and younger are big variables here.

Daniel: Adolescents have the poorest circuitry in this [00:10:00] regard. Younger animals and sort of infants aren’t affected as much by this, but adolescents in particular really struggle because that frontal circuitry is really incomplete and that limbic circuitry kind of is complete. So you get this developmental mix mis.

Daniel: Mismatch, sorry, during adolescence. And that can mean that they really struggle in that situation because they haven’t got that frontal circuitry to say, actually, do you know what? You just need to keep your call and we can figure out a solution here because that, again, that frontal circuitry allows us to kind of keep cool and then look at things like strategy switching.

Daniel: Okay. So, you know, I can’t get to my friend. Because I am faced with this barrier of the lead. Is there something else I can do to find some sort of alternative behavior in the situation that might. One enabled me to get to my friend. Maybe if I sit down nicely or if I kind of remain calm and walk in that direction along with my owner, rather than kind of pulling their arm off, I’m gonna be more successful at that.

Daniel: Or if I disengage with them, then that’s gonna [00:11:00] enable me to get a different reinforcer that, or they may not have the same value as that socialization aspect with my friend that I want may be appropriate to me and may be a good outcome for me. So there’s lots of things that. Enabling that frontal circuitry to function successfully can do to modulate that frustration response?

Jessica: Yes. Can we go back to the adolescent part, because this is what I find really fascinating. So you were describing that there is a mismatch between an adolescent dog’s limbic system and the frontal cortex. Am I understanding that correctly? Yes. Can you expand on that a little bit more about. Well, why one, there is the mismatch.

Jessica: I’m just curious, you know, just from a developmental perspective, why would one not align with the other?

Daniel: Yeah, so the short answer is no one is a hundred percent sure why that that mismatch happens. It just seems to be the rate at which the brain develops. Okay. But if there is this difference in the rate at [00:12:00] which the brain develops, then the.

Daniel: The answer that we might turn to, there is some evolutionary necessity for the brain to develop at these different rates to get the limbic system developed before the frontal cortex is developed. And if we look at the functional changes that we tend to see in an animal as a result of that developmental mismatch, and again, we’re talking about dogs here, but thinking about humans can sometimes be a good example here.

Daniel: For anyone that’s experienced being a teenager or lived with a teenager.

Jessica: The easiest time of your life. Surely

Daniel: super chill. You know, really relaxed. Really nothing gets to you when you’re a teenager. So it’s a great example to think back to. And, you know, one thing we see in Teen, well a few things we see in teenagers is more, uh, emotional behavior.

Daniel: And whether that be, if you are experiencing something good and experiencing something positive, actually feeling that event slightly more. It can feel more. Just stronger, I suppose, some of these [00:13:00] events, we can feel these things more strongly and equally if we’re feeling something negative again, feeling that almost more strongly because we’ve got that circuitry that’s sort of fully developed and we haven’t got that kind of infrastructure to be able to handle it quite yet.

Daniel: And some of the changes that we see in teenagers is often a pushing away from parents becoming a little bit more independent. And from an evolutionary point of view, again, we could question actually whether that is something that enables an animal to become more independent and better able to survive long term because they start wanting to perhaps push away from their parents a little bit more.

Daniel: That enables that independence to develop. Similarly, we see more risk taking behavior. A reason for this, or one possible reason for this is again, because of this heightened experience of rewards and again, heightened experience of Lowe’s and particularly a heightened experience of Lowe’s if you don’t get that reward that you intended.

Daniel: So [00:14:00] for most of us as adults, if we don’t get a reward, we intend, it’s like that’s a shame, but. We might still be happy with an alternative reward, we might still be happy with something slightly less. I think Scratchcards a very simple example. You know, if you scratch a scratch card and you’re expecting the 10 million and you get like 10 pounds, you know, or $10 for the things of you in the US you might be like, well, I wasn’t really expecting to win and 10 pounds, you know, I’ve made my money back, or I’ve got a few extra pounds of dollars that I can spend on something fun.

Daniel: Whereas generally to a teenager that less than expectation reward can actually functionally be a bit like more like a punisher, in the sense it actually feels quite unpleasant. So there’s just this skew and that tends to lead to, or maybe one of the things that contributes to more risk taking behavior as well.

Daniel: And again, risk taking behavior. If we think about that generally isn’t necessarily gonna be very adaptive. ’cause if we’re taking loads of risks, then we are unfortunately gonna be less likely to survive. [00:15:00] But having that increase during that adolescent period for some reason, again, evolution seems to have decided is important.

Daniel: And again, that might be contributing to that learning to be more independent, learning to survive. Alone, more successfully in the world, learn having opportunities to procreate as well. And I know that’s never a, an exciting one to discuss when we’re talking about at dogs, but I think actually that’s, uh, again, uh, something else we might want to think about when we’re thinking about leash reactivity and the different combinations that we can have between castrated intact dogs, again, that that can be part of that picture.

Daniel: So. That’s kind of one of the big theories really is being part of that developmental process that is important from an evolutionary perspective.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yes. That makes so much sense. And if we were to think of this from, you know, our client’s point of view, especially if they have had their dog since they were a puppy, and normally what I tend to hear from them is.[00:16:00]

Jessica: Well, my puppy was four months of age and I was able to take them to the park and they could walk off leash with meat because they were so, you know, focused on me and you. You were essentially the center of the world. And then once this puppy hit 7, 8, 9, 10 months of age. It almost seems like everything has gone out the window.

Jessica: Even any sort of skills that they may have taught the dog, suddenly they’re less responsive, and I think so many of my clients are not sure what the heck happened.

Daniel: Yeah, I think I. We see a lot of people like that, right? I think it’s, yeah. It’s, especially if you’ve not had a dog before, and I think even to be honest, if you have had a dog before, unless you’re like us and you are thinking about dogs and adolescents and all these things, and kind of day in, day out, it’s very easy to forget this period.

Daniel: Um, and you know, you, you have that lasting image of your older dog that was really good. And you see this adolescent that’s now living in your house and you [00:17:00] think, oh my gosh, what? Is going on, what am I gonna be living with for the next 10 years? This monster. And I think something that is important to remember about that adolescence period is it is a very normal part of development to have that opportunity to start exploring more, to start taking more risks, to start having slightly more emotional behavior.

Daniel: And doing that and experiencing that actually helps you become a well adjusted adult. So, although it’s difficult. The fact that your dog is going through it is in a way a good thing because they need to go through it to become the well adjusted adult dog that you might have seen on tv or you might have, you know, the idea you might have had in your head.

Daniel: And I think kind of remembering that is an important thing. And I think also being prepared in terms of how we support our dogs with that is an important thing as well, because we know when the brain is in that state. It is more willing [00:18:00] to learn new things and make associations very quickly, which is a problem when we are thinking about things like frustration or least reactivity quite generally.

Daniel: I suppose if we say take our dog to the dog park and then the dog sees their friend at the dog park, has a play with their friend at the dog park and then goes home, we could very quickly have a dog that he is immediately expecting. To see their dog and play at the dog park every single day. Not, and yeah, if we, if we suddenly we are not going over to play or we’re not approaching them, suddenly experiencing that frustration very quickly, actually a high learning rate can make you more susceptible to frustration.

Daniel: So again, we think of learning of obviously being, oh, it’s great at dogs picking up on things really quickly. And yeah, it is great if our dog’s picking up on things really quickly, but it does have some downsides as well. So again, being aware of that is important. And again, there’s not necessarily. A huge amount that we can do about that.

Daniel: In every single case, it might be thinking about actually what we expose the dog to in [00:19:00] the first place during that adolescent period because that we know that they’re prone to frustration if needs aren’t met, obviously. Meeting needs generally because social needs are important for adolescents. So if we’re not providing any social opportunities, then we’re kind of setting them up to fail a little bit when we do have that one opportunity for some social interaction and the dog’s not getting it.

Daniel: And then, yeah, on the other side of that, we know that adolescents struggle with unlearning things or what’s known as extinction, so that, for example, again, going to the dog park. Learning that we don’t always go off the lead or we don’t always get to interact with your friend every single time. Could be harder for a dog, always likely to be harder for a dog during adolescence than it is during, again, other life stages.

Daniel: And we are more likely to see those, what’s known as those extinction birth behaviors, those kind of explosive behaviors that we often get or that we might describe as frustration related behaviors.

Jessica: Yes. And you know what’s coming to mind for me as you’re describing this [00:20:00] process is. Few things. So one, there is kind of this debate of whether there is a secondary fear period for dogs in adolescence, and I’m wondering your thoughts on that because on one end, just from the information that I, you know, have learned so far in my career, there is some saying that it does exist.

Jessica: Some say it doesn’t exist, but I could also see how. What you’re describing of what is happening in an adolescent dog’s brain is that they’re more susceptible. To making associations at this age, and so that could also very well explain why you have an adolescent dog who suddenly from one day to the next is going to have a really big change in behavior and it seems like it’s coming out of nowhere.

Jessica: And does that mean it’s some sort of fear period? Or does it mean that they have simply just associated something and it really stuck with them?

Daniel: Yeah, I [00:21:00] think that’s a really good question. And like you say, the secondary, the fear period thing is of quite hot debate. And because I think we, we’ve all seen right, um, these sorts of things get quite heated.

Daniel: So, but I think my. Thinking about this sort of stuff, particularly during adolescence, is there are numerous changes that a dog is going through adolescence, and most dogs won’t necessarily go through them in the same rate. So there’s some, and I’m not sure how much work there is on this yet, but there’s certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence on breed, for instance, and actually large breeds having a kind of a delayed maturity compared to some smaller breeds.

Daniel: So there’s all sorts of things and factors that might be influencing that. And breeds obviously are very. A very general description because there’s a lot of dogs that could fall into on breed, but we could, there’s all sorts of other, you know, more subtle genetic factors that could influence how a dog experiences adolescents as there are even environmental factors from the dog’s early development that might experience how they experience [00:22:00] adolescents.

Daniel: There’s this kind of cocktail of changes. You can think of it. Like a cocktail or a recipe or something like that where there’s all these different ingredients going in. There’s changes in how the dog’s learning. As we discussed. There’s changes in how a dog’s extinction learning takes place. As we discussed, there’s changes in how a dog manages their arousal systems.

Daniel: There’s changes in how a dog processes particularly reinforces the value of the dog signs to particular reinforces. And again, all these things sound perhaps a little bit technical, but. They’re all going on as the dog’s going through that adolescence period. They may not necessarily happen at the same time.

Daniel: And there was a study a few years ago that was released that kind of looked at all the different facts and drew a little bit of the graph of all these can, you can imagine a kind of a line graph of all these going through and you can see the kind of different facts that go up and down and intersect all these different times.

Daniel: And if you can think. And we’re talking about biological or organisms, and there’s all sorts of variables that might [00:23:00] affect them. There’s all sorts of variables that might affect how these different systems develop at different times in different docs. So again, this is gonna seem like a cop out of an answer, but if we think about different docs, we have no idea where they are.

Daniel: In their stage of the of journey for all of those different things, we can be a little bit aware of it. We can observe them and keep track of some things we can observe. Are they super motivated by everything? Are they super motivated by one particular behavior at the moment that decide they’ve decided is the best thing ever?

Daniel: Whether that is humping, stealing stuff, just going off and chasing something and never coming back, you know, whatever it might be. So we can keep a track of some of these variables that might say, oh, actually we’re seeing maybe some more risk taking, or we’re seeing the dog being, you know, finding, chasing things very reinforcing this week.

Daniel: Or it might be something like, actually they’re struggling with managing their arousal this week. When they see something and they get excited by something, it’s taking ages to actually go back down to baseline. Whereas normally we’d go up and down quite [00:24:00] quickly. So there’s all sorts of changes and all sorts of possible combinations of changes that could be happening at the same time, which is why I think again.

Daniel: Even the topic adolescents is quite a broad term when we are talking about a dog that could be finding rewards, very valuable, could be taking quite a lot of risks, could be struggling with, uh, managing their arousal levels, but also may not be, and this is a quick caveat, while I think that what I’m talking about arousal levels and thinking about just their, the tation of their nervous system, whether they’re feeling very active, very ready to go, very alert, or they’re feeling quite.

Daniel: Calm and sleepy. Sort of the difference between us if we’re sitting on the couch, snoozing watching TV compared to out for a run, you know, how long does it take us to go from one state to another, both physically and kind of mentally? So there’s all these different intersections of these different states that could occur, and some of them might equate to what we [00:25:00] perceive as potentially a period where our dog is more fearful.

Daniel: And if we perhaps get kind of a perfect storm in some dogs for two weeks where they’re really struggling to manage their arousal, there may be that attribution bias as well. The way they’re perceiving the behavior of others has changed particularly as well. And this is another thing that can change during adolescence, actually, how we perceive social behaviors.

Daniel: Do you know when we are talking, I perceive your intention really as quite positive and nice, whereas, you know, adolescents are more likely to think, oh God, you know, I think Jessica’s got it in for me at the moment, and I think she’s right. I don’t know what kids do in school these days, but you know, texting something nasty about behind my back or whatever.

Daniel: That’s another thing we see with teenagers, and again, there’s. Evidence of this in animals now that actually they, the way they judge the social behaviors are that others can even change during adolescence. There’s all these things could be changing and I think what we might see as fear periods might be something of a bit of a perfect storm of when some of these things hit certain points and intersect at certain points till we get a [00:26:00] really noticeable change.

Daniel: But actually if we monitor the dog through adolescence, we can track some more of these individual changes and perhaps provide some more kind of personalized support and also prepare ourselves a little bit for when. We do go through maybe these slightly trickier patches because we’ve already realized that actually, yeah, this week they, my dog is really struggling with just coming down from exciting experiences.

Daniel: So maybe we gonna just focus on some calmer stuff this week and not go to the really busy dog park because then he’s gonna be in the zone all day and we’re gonna, we’re gonna really struggle to come down. So there’s a few things again that observation can do to help us really plan ahead and seem really smart and.

Daniel: Predict some of this stuff.

Jessica: I love that explanation. I think that it makes perfect sense how you are describing it. That there are so many things that are occurring during this stage and there’s no way to predict when any one of those is going to become more influential for that [00:27:00] individual dog and that it is very likely.

Jessica: Some of those things just happen to overlap at the same time, which is why we’re seeing those changes. And I can also see for our clients why it’s so hard for them, because they might be really fitting in the work, so to speak, of reinforcing their dog. For recall, they had found some sort of food reward that their dog really loved and it was going really well, and then suddenly it’s just not going well and they don’t know why.

Jessica: And it’s so frustrating for them as well because they also have to, you know, essentially. Constantly go with the flow when you have an adolescent dog. But then not all of our clients really have the tools or understanding of what going with the flow actually looks like. And I think one thing that I was also absorbing from what you were describing is that this is clearly a very sensitive time in [00:28:00] the dog’s life, and so.

Jessica: I’m wondering if we could chat just a little bit more about this. ’cause I think it’s so helpful knowing that these dogs are so sensitive and are really prone to developing these associations during this time. I. What are some things that you suggest to your clients with adolescent dogs in regards to what they should be exposing their dog to?

Daniel: Yeah, that’s such a good question. I think there’s a few angles we can come at this from. I think in terms of the environments that we look at. It’s maybe not the best time to be introducing a load of new stuff, and that doesn’t mean not introducing any stuff, but in terms of stuff that you think, actually, this could be quite difficult for my dog, even when they’re a puppy, they might find this a little bit difficult.

Daniel: That adolescence is probably not a time to do that because if you do make a mistake through adolescence, and obviously you may do it and it may go really well. You may think, oh God, what [00:29:00] was Daniel Shaw talking about? That went great, and that’s fantastic. But I think the downside is if it does go wrong, because of some of those changes that are happening because of the way it becomes harder for an adolescent to unlearn some of those things or extinguish some of those behaviors and using unlearning in quite a colloquial way, because you can get into the neuroscience of unlearning and it’s a whole other thing.

Daniel: So if anyone’s listening kind of from a neurosciencey perspective, I apologize for using that term, but to kind of. Address some of those things is much more difficult and the forming of some of those associations, particularly fear related associations, can be really quick and. Fear can build into frustration as well, because if you are not sure about something, if you are uncertain about an environment, that can be quite frustrating for a dog.

Daniel: It can make a dog want to approach something to actually get that relief from the frustration because are they friendly? Is this gonna be good? Is this gonna be awful? I just want to go. That can actually increase that approach behavior because a dog wants to. [00:30:00] Relieve that sense of frustration and relieve that sense of anxiety of not really knowing what a situation entails.

Daniel: So I think being cautious, while it might make things a little bit slower, does prevent things going backwards during adolescence. And for example, if I’m working behavior cases where we’ve got a dog that is perhaps concerned about some things in their environment. We’ll try and always keep the dog at the level they’re at.

Daniel: So we don’t want the dog to get to the point where they’re shutting down their environment so much that they’re not seeing things that they have been seeing before successfully. But we might not, whilst the dog is going through that period, do a load of work to expand the dog’s environment. We might just try and keep it at the.

Daniel: Sort of level its at, rather than saying, this is the period where we’re gonna say, gonna tackle this big new place, or tackle going into cafes, or, we know whatever it is that that is the particular goal of the client that I’m working with. So it’s again, thinking about what is gonna be appropriate [00:31:00] to that period and whether it’s worth it.

Daniel: Because again, there, there are higher risks and. Another slight challenge of that is from the frustration perspective is actually the use of reinforcement as well. Because like I mentioned, if the dog doesn’t get the expected reinforcement, that can be harder for dogs during the adolescent period. So going back to your recall example, or whether it’s, you know, walking appropriate or on leash.

Daniel: Now if you’ve started off with your really high value chicken or whatever it is, that’s your dog’s preference for recall, and then we start trying to taper the dog off that. That can be a lot harder during adolescence than it can be during other periods of life because the dog is so sensitive to moving on to that non-continuous reinforcement schedule where the, where they’re not getting a reinforcer or a high value reinforcer every single time so much.

Daniel: So that may actually make it harder for them to continue the behavior. And it’s not to say it’s impossible, [00:32:00] but if we are kind of looking at moving on to. A reduced reinforcement schedule. We’re gonna have to do that very slowly. I mean, even in adult dogs, we don’t wanna be going down from like a hundred percent of the time to 50% of the time.

Daniel: But in adolescence, you kind of wanna be thinking. I would say probably going down to that reinforcer being like 95% of the time to start off with. It’s I think definitely a difficult one and kind of keeping the reinforcer pretty similar as well, rather than going from chicken to. Like treats to then kibble within a couple of weeks.

Daniel: Again, that’s gonna definitely be quite felt by an adolescent brain.

Jessica: Yes. I love that example truly, and I think that makes so much sense. And also how perhaps the average person with their dog, they might think, well, my dog’s a year old. We’ve been practicing sit for eight months now. You should be able to do this for this reinforcement.

Jessica: And then when that doesn’t [00:33:00] necessarily work, you know, of course there’s frustration on the human end as well, so I love that example. And so for all the pet parents out there, keep up your reinforcement and make sure that you are maintaining that high rate of reinforcement, but then also continuing with the higher value types of reinforcers that your dog has come to expect.

Jessica: You have the whole risk of their life to change that right now it’s probably not the right time.

Daniel: I think that’s the general theme with adolescents isn’t it? Is it’s not always the best time for a huge amount of changes from you because I think that predictability from you is actually sometimes what enables some of that adolescent behavior that the dog needs to do to be able to develop into that well-rounded, mature adult.

Jessica: Yeah, that’s really fantastic. When we were chatting before we scheduled this podcast, you sent me some work from Kevin McPeak. And you were describing that he has a canine frustration questionnaire and that he breaks [00:34:00] down different types of frustration. I wanted to dive into that a bit because there’s certainly different types of frustration.

Jessica: You know, certainly we’re talking about frustration on leash, and earlier we alluded to, well, maybe the dog is frustrated because they want to have access to something, but then they can’t because they are restricted by the leash. And so that could be a form of frustration. In terms of one of the ones that was on my list here, the frustration that’s due to unmet expectations, I wanna dive into that one because I think that’s one that can happen on leash, but can also occur in other areas of the dog’s life.

Jessica: And this overlaps, so to speak, is what I tend to see a lot with my reactive dog clients who are displaying a lot of frustrated behaviors on leash. Is that I tend to see a lot of frustrated behaviors in other areas of their life. It’s not just the leash. This is popping up perhaps that maybe around [00:35:00] mealtime or maybe.

Jessica: If they are having to be confined, whether in a crate or an X pen or a change in their routines where they have a really hard time coping with it there as well. In my experience, I’ve had the most success with my leash activity cases when we address frustration across the board in all aspects of the dog’s life.

Daniel: And I think that’s interesting as well in terms of the work that you mentioned. ’cause I think they, they look at this kind of overall frustration score as well at the end. And obviously in fact, that these all can contribute to the, that overall experience of frustration, how well the dog manages when experiencing frustration.

Daniel: And those are great examples of. Difficult situations that a lot of people see with their dog, right? And as you say, if you’ve got a dog that is struggling on lead, then it’s quite common to see difficulties with frustration in other parts of life. And in those examples, I think there’s often an overlap [00:36:00] between a bit of barrier frustration, which ties into both being on leash and things like X pans and crates and all those sorts of things, which can be a challenge for dogs.

Daniel: And then un the expectations being in terms of if something that the dog is expecting to happen doesn’t happen. And, and this is where we again, have to be aware that our dog’s brains are very predictive. They are very good. At learning about what happens in the environment and learning to respond appropriately based on cues and signals and little signs in our environment that tell them what they can expect is gonna happen.

Daniel: Even the recall example is a good one of this in the sense of the dog learns. I come back and then I get that food that I’m expecting. But if that doesn’t happen, then we get what’s known as this idea of a prediction error in the dog’s brain. So the dog, we can have negative and positive prediction errors, right?

Daniel: So if the dog comes back and then doesn’t get that food they’re expecting, we experience that negative prediction error where the dog’s brain says, actually, do you know what? That wasn’t as good as you [00:37:00] thought. Which means, well, we’ve got a couple of options here, which means we can just have less motivation.

Daniel: When as of next time when we are faced with that behavior or we could look at a bit of a strategy change and see if there’s something else we can do to get that behavior. Like, ah, I’m gonna, now I’ve come back. Maybe if I jump up on the, and maybe that’s gonna work for me and that’s gonna resolve the issue.

Daniel: Which for most people, I think when we’re talking about a muddy dog hurtling towards us and jumping up is probably not their favorite option for how the dog can deal with that frustrating situation. So. Again, that unmet expectation and piece is a big part of it, and how the dog responds to those expectations not being met because again, there’s, it’s very common for dogs, whatever we are doing in an environment to form an expectation and not always have the expectation met.

Daniel: It could be that we’ve got a friend in the house and if the dog. With another dog and the other dogs can’t play [00:38:00] for whatever reason, got a medical situation, something like that. And again, we can’t play with ’em like normal or same with kids or something. We normally play and do rough and tumble with the kids in the house.

Daniel: And we can’t do that because the kids have gotta do homework or what, whatever it might be. Social unmet expectations I think can be a really big one and a big struggle for dogs and, and that comes into separation behaviors as well. And again, there can be a barrier element to this, but. Also unmet expectations by being, perhaps not being able to access, access their caregiver at a given time.

Daniel: Just looking at, is the dog able to adapt to this? Is the dog able to successfully cope with these situations where they can’t do that thing that they want to do? Adolescents may struggle a little bit more, as we’ve said, and if a dog is experiencing that frustration, if it is struggling with that, are the things that we can do to.

Daniel: Help them cope better in the scenario where those expectations aren’t met. And I think as you’ve alluded to, if we support them with coping with a range of [00:39:00] situations where those expectations aren’t met, then that can have a good effect more broadly in terms of the dog’s emotional regulation, ability to cope just in the home, but out on the leash, out in the dog park in all these different environments.

Jessica: Yeah. I also like to think of it that. From the dog’s perspective when they want something, but they cannot have it for whatever reason. I like to explain it to my clients is that we’re gonna start with smaller wants because if your dog is on a leash and there’s a dog and they really want the dog, that’s pretty big want.

Jessica: If we were going to maybe rank the things that the dog finds most valuable and that it’s easier to do this when we start with a much smaller want inside the home and teaching the dog those skills that way. And one of the things that you mentioned, which I’m really glad that you brought up, was how much dogs perceive all the cues in the environment that [00:40:00] tell them what is going to happen?

Jessica: One of the things that I have found really helpful when I’m trying to set a dog up for success when I know that for example. With feeding time. Let’s say this dog has a habit of barking until the person puts their food bowl down, and my client is like, I don’t want my dog to be barking at me as I’m putting the food in the bowl, but they stop as soon as they put it down.

Jessica: One of the things that I have found helpful in those scenarios is to do what I call changing the picture, so giving the dog a completely different context to learn the very similar behavior, but one where it looks very different. For example, going in a completely different row. That the dog is normally fed in even using a completely different container that the dog is fed in maybe even using completely different food that the dog eats.

Jessica: So that way it appears as different to the dog, and that gives us this wiggle room to start building that skillset and then slowly [00:41:00] moving more towards what this looks like in more real life. That is something that I have found to be really helpful with helping dogs learn alternative behaviors to barking, whining, whatever they’re doing when they’re feeling frustrated.

Daniel: Yeah, and I love that you say that because there’s just so many things that we can build on and dive into there. Firstly, one thing we know that drives behavior are these little cells in our hippocampus, which is a region that have brain involved in memory that recognize. Place and recognize location and recognize some of those contextual cues, and actually changing the room and changing the picture, as you say, actually takes away.

Daniel: Some of the activation that will get of those cells that will drive some of that behaviors. And this can be so valuable across so many cases. It’s good for dogs that are struggling with kind of some of the re repetitive behaviors or habitual behaviors around the home. Actually, if we change that picture, just change the layout of a room even, or change the room that the dog’s spending [00:42:00] a lot of time in.

Daniel: That can really be a useful thing to give you that blank slate as you say. And then changing some of those food related cues as well can be really good and. With food related cues, you’ve got the external cues like the bowl, like the. Type of food, the smell of the food, the way the food is administered, if the dog sees the person in the kitchen beforehand.

Daniel: You know, another one you can think about is if you can prepare the food bowls beforehand. The dog doesn’t have to hear you pouring the kibble into the bowl and you know, scooping that. It’s slightly more difficult if you’ve got wet food, but if you’ve got a big enough fridge, it might be possible.

Daniel: Depends. So there’s so much that you can do there to navigate and circumnavigate some of those cues to give you a leg up when you get started unchecked, you know, resetting that and building up a routine for feeding or whatever it may be that doesn’t evoke that frustration response from the dog and the other cues for frustration.

Daniel: Some of those more internally driven cues, like the signals that we’re getting from our gut that are saying that you’re quite [00:43:00] hungry Now we have hormones like ghrelin that come up from our gut, and that’s the hormone that makes your stomach physically rumble. That lets the brain know that it’s hungry.

Daniel: And there’s this little satiation center in the brain that turns on and off. And when it turns off that the brain starts actively looking for food more so actually, if we work with a dog that when we’re first introducing a new feeding routine that isn’t getting as many internal signals that they’re hungry because they’ve already eaten and we’ve given them an opportunity to feel full.

Daniel: And that’s also can help with that. That changing the picture as you describe. Because it takes away some of those cues that the dog is detecting that we can’t necessarily detect so easily, but they’re experiencing that saying, you’re really hungry. Try barking. We say internal external cues. All cues are internal in a way, because you could argue things like smell is chemicals coming into our nose and being detected, but it’s things that we can’t detect these hormones coming up, but they function just like cues.

Daniel: We know as humans, when we’re hungry, we start looking around and thinking. Which [00:44:00] cupboard did I hide the snacks in and how long is it till dinner? You know, all those sorts of things. So our dogs do the same. It’s just they can express it differently and it might be with something that’s maybe not our favorite thing, like starting to bark us or starting to pour us or you know, whatever it is.

Daniel: So we need to give them some different strategies and different ways to express that as well.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah, that’s really great. Thank you for expanding on that. I wanna circle back to the leash frustration. And what we could do to help our clients who have a dog who’s displaying these types of behaviors.

Jessica: I’m wondering if you could share a little bit more of some of the interventions that you do with your clients for dogs who are feeling frustrated on leash, and what are some things you’ve found that are helpful for them?

Daniel: I’m so glad you asked this after the conversation about food, because I think we can think of almost like that social picture.

Daniel: It’s a bit like food, social needs. Again, as I’m sure people have realized, if you’ve got a dog, [00:45:00] dogs place a very high regard on their social needs and social deprivation is the same as food deprivation as far as the brain’s concerned because social behavior and social interaction is such an important thing for survival.

Daniel: If we are going to put our dog in some scenarios or we’re gonna practice maybe dealing a little bit better and finding some ways to manage and respond. I’m thinking about dogs that are experiencing frustration around seeing another dog. That’s the biggest one we see. If we’ve got a dog that’s thinking about seeing another dog, actually having that opportunity to interact with a friend reasonably soon beforehand is good.

Daniel: Ideal situation is if we’ve got a calm friend or perhaps a bit of a slightly more mature dog that can then go with us. On that walk, and we can do some social learning actually, if we disengage from another dog. And again, we’ll talk about distances again in a second, but if we disengage from another dog, that provides us with an opportunity to continue engaging with our other dog and continue the walk [00:46:00] as part of a group and continue enjoying this nice social experience that you are already having.

Daniel: You didn’t really even need to interact with that other dog. You didn’t really need to fixate on that other dog. We want to set this up in a way that’s manageable for our dogs. We don’t wanna be going up really close and saying. Oh, look at this dog. You just can’t touch him because I think that’s kinda the worst situation where you’re just walking by another dog.

Daniel: You can’t touch him, you can’t sniffle their nose, you can’t take a look at their bup, and we gotta go. Obviously finding what works for your dog. So either it’s maybe seeing another dog at a bit of a distance. In the UK we’re quite lucky that there’s lots of places where you can go for a walk and you maybe see a dog at a fair distance away.

Daniel: And the dog has the opportunity to notice that. But you can play around with a distance enough that you know that they’re not gonna get to the point where they’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta go and see ’em. But they are gonna be at the point where they’re aware of them in their environment.

Daniel: And you can use that as an opportunity to practice saying, oh, let’s come over here and then we’re all gonna walk off together. And you get that social outlet from. Engaging with your group, [00:47:00] whether that is with another dog. Ideally, if you’ve got another dog, that’s a bonus. But even if it’s just with you engaging with your group mm-hmm.

Daniel: Rather than that other dog. And equally it could be, we’ve got some situations where you’ve got dogs that actually struggle more at a distance, do a little bit better, up close. I don’t know if you see dogs like that, where actually further away dogs seem to be more of an issue. If they’ve actually been there and said hello to the dog, then we’re doing a little bit better so we could practice.

Daniel: Walking by other dogs saying hello to a few dogs. That can sometimes be a good thing. Doing a really short hello for dogs that are appropriate to say hello to that doesn’t necessarily mean running up to every single dog. If you’ve got, uh, someone that’s happy for their dog to say hello, you wanna do a three second hello and move on again, that can be a really good thing to practice.

Daniel: I think that’s a good thing to practice for puppies of getting into the habit of you can interact with them if you want. There is the opportunity to interact with certain other dogs where you’re given a cue that it’s appropriate to do so. Uh, because again, we don’t want our puppies to be interacting with every single dog they see because that’s [00:48:00] not necessarily safe for them or the other dog.

Daniel: But, you know, there is the opportunity to interact with some dogs we see on a walk, but again, we quickly can move on from that and again, stick to that group. So I think building those sorts of skills, building skills of being able to engagement appropriate at being able to disengagement appropriate work at the distance that suits your dog.

Daniel: Again, it depends where you live and how much you’re able to play around with that. It’s a lot tougher if you are living in sort of like a big urban city and you don’t know what’s around the corner. It could be like five dogs attached to a dog walker coming round, and then that’s a little bit harder. So you know, it, it depends on your environment and that’s where if you are in those busier environments, sometimes you have to think a bit more laterally to come up with some strategies that are gonna work and also really focus on thinking about what we can do to build some of that.

Daniel: General ability to cope with frustrating situations, because if you are a city dog, unfortunately you aren’t just by nature of where you live, likely to be exposed to more frustrating situations than if you’re not a city dog. But I think having those opportunities, [00:49:00] especially when it comes to social frustration too.

Daniel: Be able to practice short engagement, being able to practice disengagement and being able to practice non-engagement and all those being skills that are rewarding for you because you get to do something nice with your group, whether it’s social praise, social interaction, whether it’s bringing in some little enrichment games that we disengage with him and then we get to check out this, or then we get to snuffle in the grass or whatever it might be, so there’s a positive outcome for that can be a really good thing.

Jessica: Love that. I also really like how you mentioned allowing some of those greetings, especially if you happen to have a puppy. So for any of those people who have puppies out there and are listening to this, I do think that it’s important for puppies to have the ability to meet some dogs while they’re on leash, and at the same time, keeping those interactions fairly short and then practicing a lot of the three seconds, call them away and make that part the calling away.

Jessica: The time spent with you pay off huge. I think that’s where some [00:50:00] of our clients miss this major opportunity that they have to create an association of, Hey, I know that was also really fun, meaning you gotta engage with that other dog really briefly. But I’m also really fun over here and we’re gonna do a lot of really fun game.

Jessica: Then move on to the rest of the walk. I think if the vast majority of puppy owners did that, I think that we would see a lot less frustration on leash.

Daniel: Yeah. And exactly as you say, it builds that predictability that we were just talking about, how much brains love predictability and we can bring that sense of, you can say hi to this one, or we just say, oh no, let’s move on.

Daniel: Whatever term you want to use. That just means, oh actually we’re not gonna interact with this dog, but we are gonna do something fun over here. Like you say,

Jessica: yes, love this. Okay, we’re gonna wrap up here, but I’m curious if there’s anything about leash frustration or frustration in general that we haven’t covered that you think is important.

Daniel: Uh, I think it’s difficult.

Jessica: Thank you.

Daniel: It can be, it can definitely be a difficult one [00:51:00] to manage, and I think having strategies in place is always good. And as I say, just being aware of how it fits into the total picture. Of your dog’s emotional wellbeing is really important as well to be able to understand, is this a dog?

Daniel: Am I working with a dog that actually gets to that point where they do get heightened, do get aroused really quickly, and they struggle to come down from that? Are we working with a dog that just seems to really want to approach other dogs and just sort of figure out what they’re doing? And that’s kind of some of the emotional drive because again, that can tell us about what we can do in terms of that dog’s life to actually.

Daniel: Meet their needs, you know, find out what it is that’s frustrating them. Provide that elsewhere in their life as well, in an appropriate way. So we are making sure we are come, coming at the issue with a dog that’s not frustrated because they haven’t seen a dog in five years and, and just desperately wants to interact when we’re dealing with frustration.

Daniel: Whatever it might be that’s motivating for that [00:52:00] frustration or even whatever core need it might be that. Is not directly linked to that frustration, but could be a source of frustration if we wanna make sure the dog’s coming at that situation with their needs generally being pretty well met, because that means that their brain’s gonna be more able to learn that.

Daniel: There are some situations where they don’t get that particular environmental reward that they like, but it’s okay because there’s lots of fun, other fun opportunities to get that in the environment. That means that if they don’t get that, it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Jessica: Yes. I like that. If you don’t get that, it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Jessica: If we could just teach them that, that would solve a lot of this. I loved this conversation, Daniel, really, it was really fascinating. I think you’re such a gem in the dog train world truly. You can come in and you can explain these really complex topics like neuroscience, and you can explain it in a way where it feels reachable, [00:53:00] where somebody could.

Jessica: Listen to what you’re saying and be like, oh, okay, yeah, I understand what he’s saying and how this connects to my dog. So thank you so much for coming and having this conversation with me today.

Daniel: No problem at all. It’s been great chatting.

Jessica: All right, we’ll talk soon.

Daniel: Okay. Talk soon.

Jessica: I might edit out the toxin part.