Additional Resources:

In this episode, Simon references a number of behavior concepts, studies, and scientisits. In an effort to help others learn more, I have links for your reference below. If you have any others you think would be valuable to add, email me at podcast@jessicawheatcraft.com.

• Systematic desensitization page on Wikipedia (with Joseph Wolpe)

• Behavior Therapy Techniques: A Guide to the Treatment of Neuroses by Joseph Wolpe and Arnold Lazarus

• Sign tracking and goal tracking on Frontiersin.org

• The Rescorla-Wagner model, prediction error, and fear learning on Science Direct

• Appetitive stimulus definition

If you do a Google search on how to counter condition reactive behaviors on leash, it spits out a simplified version of the process. Use super high value treats, make sure your dog is under threshold, feed your dog when they notice another dog,  and with time you’ll change your dog’s emotional state from a negative one to a positive one. Sounds great, right! So then why is it that some people will do this for years, and not get that result?  Is it possible that people just don’t have a full understanding of processes like counter conditioning, classical conditioning, and systematic desensitization?

To help us understand these concepts, I wanted to bring in Dr. Simon Gadbois. In this episode we cover:

– What counter conditioning was originally designed to do

– Why the identification of the the aversive stimulus (or trigger) can be so complicated

– How we are almost always using a combination of processes, whether we are aware of it or not

– How dogs pick up on our cues, including our pheromones

– Simon’s work in his olfactory lab

– And so much more

About Simon:

Simon Gadbois did a PhD in animal behaviour and non-invasive behavioural endocrinology in the 90’s with Drs John Fentress and Peter McLeod at the Canadian Centre for Wolf Research (1974–2007). His PhD dissertation focussed on lupine socioendocrinology (Canis lupus) but he also worked on other projects in motor behaviour sequences in red foxes, coyotes, wolves (with Drs John Fentress and Fred Harrington), spatial cognition in pigeons (with Dr. Werner Honig), and olfactory learning in rats (with Drs Vincent LoLordo and Richard E. Brown).
In the past 15 years he has focussed on research with sniffer dogs as the common denominator: Reptile conservation (using dogs as research assistants to find the species-at-risk), non-invasive surveys of coyotes with canines (via scent-marking information), and working with sniffer dogs in biomedical applications (early detection of diseases, alert dogs). He also worked with a few fish species in olfactory learning (zebra fish), social communication (elephant nose fish), and behavioural ecotoxicology (mummichogs).
Simon Gadbois integrates ethology, experimental psychology and neuroscience in his research on domestic and wild canids. He favours a synthetic approach that includes a strong focus on the importance of motivational factors in working dogs (and canid behaviour in general) as well as a post-cognitivist approach (including a zoosemiotic approach) to behaviour and information processing in dogs.
In 2006 he founded the “Canid Behaviour Research Lab” now the “Wildlife Ethology & Canine Olfaction Lab” at Dalhousie University where dozens of Border Collies (and other working breeds – mostly from working lines) set paw as volunteer research assistants and experimental participants.

https://simon.gadbois.org

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.

Jessica: One of the things I am aiming for on this podcast is to dive deeper into the nuances of dog behavior and training. Personally, I’m not particularly interested in surface level descriptions. I have always wanted to truly understand concepts and also the whys behind things. Something that has come up for me a lot over the past few years is counter conditioning.

If you do a Google search on how to counter condition reactive behaviors on leash, it spits out a simplified version of the process. Use super high value treats. Make sure your dog is [00:01:00] under threshold. Feed your dog when they notice another dog. And with time, you’ll change your dog’s emotional state from a negative one to a positive one.

Sounds great. Right? So then why is it that some people will do this for years and not get that result? Well, in the specific context I just outlined, there are simply too many conditions that need to be right in order for it to be effective. Why is this the case? Is it possible that people just don’t have a full understanding of processes like counter conditioning, classical conditioning, and systematic desensitization?

What’s missing in regards to our understanding of these and how we teach them to our clients? To help us understand these concepts, I wanted to bring in Dr. Simon Gadbois. Simon integrates [00:02:00] Ethology Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience in his research on domestic and wild canids. He favors a synthetic approach that includes a strong focus on the importance of motivational factors in working dogs and canid behavior in general, as well as a post cognitivist approach to behavior and information processing in dogs.

In 2006, he founded the Canid Behavior Research Lab, now the Wildlife Ethology and Canine Olfaction Lab at Dalhousie University. Not only does he give us a really helpful historical context to concepts such as counter conditioning and systematic desensitization. In today’s episode, he also shares more about the fascinating olfactory work he does in his lab.

He’s one of the most interesting people I know, and you’re in for a real treat in today’s episode. Let’s jump [00:03:00] in.

All right, Simone. Oh shit, I even said that wrong. Okay, hang on. I need to like, woo, get my little French European accent going on here. Simone. No, how did you say it? Simone? Simon. Simon Smo.

Simon: So forget the end. Do as if the end wasn’t there. Just si. Si. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. I like it. Thank you. I wanna make sure I get it right. Okay. All right. Smo, thank you so much for coming on the show. I saw you speak at a conference several years ago and I loved so much of your work and what you do, and I think in some ways, because you know so much that, I’m one very excited to dive into different topics today, but then I’m also a little bit nervous because some of the things that you know are, I think are like way over the average person’s head.

And so I really want to do my best to try to break things down of the things that we’re gonna get into today in a way that our listeners are gonna be able to understand and [00:04:00] get some good takeaways.

Simon: I’ll do, I’ll do my best.

Jessica: Okay, sounds good. So this podcast is on helping people with dogs who are displaying leash reactivity.

So these are dogs who are going out on walks and they will see a person or a dog, um, maybe a car or a skateboard, and they’re barking and lunging, um, really having a difficult time being out in public when they’re coming across everyday things. And I want to unpack how we are trying to help these dogs. And as a trainer and behavior consultant, we are taught that to help a dog develop, quote, a more positive association to something that we should be using counter conditioning and it seems like there are different definitions of what counter conditioning is, and I think it kind of depends on where [00:05:00] you get your information from.

But I’m wanting to ask you, when you are teaching your students about counter conditioning, what is it that you teach them?

Simon: Well, okay, so, it depends because you’re right, there’s actually different definitions in the sense that there’s different theories behind what it may be doing. So one of the theories is close to this concept of stimulus substitution. So it’s the idea that you’re trying to get a dog to react to a different, stimulus or context or situation or change its perspective on it. The other theory takes it more from an emotional conditioning perspective. In other words, what you’re doing is that you’re changing the emotion that is attached to the situation. And actually if you look at Wagner’s theory, this is just one of the many theories in [00:06:00] classical conditioning, it would actually be both.

In a sense. You change the physical stimulus if you want, uh, in a sense, you, you, you displace the reaction but also change the nature of the emotional experience. So this idea, for instance, that if the mailman shows at the door rings the doorbell because you’re getting a um, a parcel and the dog starts barking and that’s a problem that you would start feeding the dog, um, just before or while the person shows up. Uh, is this kind of idea where you saying, okay, let’s change the emotional state of the animal, which normally would associate this with the bell ringing with the negative event, make it more positive and also change a little bit, the whole context, essentially.

So that’s one way of breaking disassociation in a sense. But if you think about it, there’s a lot of things going on there, and especially depends how you do it. And this [00:07:00] is where it gets complicated because you look at how people do counter conditioning and there’s all kinds of different sets of rules.

The sequencing of things will change as well. And in some cases it’s very close to systematic desensitization. And there there’s another level of complexity because that’s different in itself. Because it’s more systematic. It’s a slower method and it also includes an operant dimension to it.

But anyway, this is where it gets really complicated, to be honest. And I think there is a, an historical confusion around both concepts actually of systematic desensitization and counter conditioning. They’re not the same. But they’re trying to get to the same, um, to the same result, essentially.

Jessica: Yes. I’m glad that you were saying that it’s complicated because I, yes. I also think that it can be complicated, and that’s what I really wanted to dive into in today’s [00:08:00] podcast, because I would love to shed more light and also some more clarity on some of these and how they, they are two different procedures, but we often use them together.

And so then there’s a lot of overlap. And so I wanna see if we could break some of these things down. When you referenced earlier, I believe you said, more of the emotional conditioning. I think that’s also what most of us who are behavior consultants are probably gonna go with that version of mm-hmm.

Yes. We’re trying to help change this dogs emotional response to something. And we are, I will also say primarily using food to do that when we are thinking, okay, we’re wanting to change their emotional response and then we’re wanting the dog, to feel more positive about it, so then therefore we’re using food.

I think one of the first questions that I’m curious about is why is it that it’s food and not something else like play?

Simon: Or it could be something else, right? If, if you see it as classical conditioning and [00:09:00] this idea of stimulus substitution mm-hmm. Is what you do is the condition stimulus in one case is well, it doesn’t change actually.

It’s the, the person showing up at the door with the example I gave before. But instead of being, an aversive uh, unconditioned stimulus, you make it an appetitive conditioned stimulus essentially. So food is one easy one. It works with some dogs, but again, if you have a dog that responds better to play or although see that, that starts being a little bit more like a distraction.

But look, it works because again, the idea is that you are offering a different behavior. Right to be produced during that time. And I’ve heard some people say, if you use counter conditioning, what you’re actually doing is you’re getting the dog to consume the food and you know, to, to chew it.

And while you can’t bark while you chew. So it’s almost as simple as that in a sense. Okay. Now a new behavior is taking over. But yeah it’s a combination [00:10:00] of different things, and again, it depends how you do it. And it may depend on the dog too, in terms of its reactivity and the way that it chains behaviors while that event is actually occurring.

So, to be honest, again, it’s not, it’s not simple and I think. Most people end up doing more than one thing. You know, like you said, a combination of, uh, systematic desensitization with with counter conditioning. Yeah, I can see that. But it gets to a point where it, it’s so much more than just counter conditioning.

I think the way we, we will try to distract the dog in that situation, for instance, um, with a different activity. But you’re right, it can be food, it could be play. But here I’m trying to see how different that becomes from literally just distracting the individual, which is something that you do often, uh, in, in a procedural anxiety, for instance, with kids in [00:11:00] hospital environments, you would do that as well.

So taking. The focus on this situation away, right. With something that is very appetitive or very reinforcing. So, um, it could be also verbal praise. It could be comforting the dog by, by hugging it. I have a dog here that reacts very, very well to thunder shirts. And, uh, uh, this kind of like, you know, uh, it’s a bit counterintuitive, but just like the hugging hard calms her very, very, very, very quickly.

So in some of those situations that’s what I’ll do. Is that a form of counter conditioning? Absolutely. If you do it while what’s normally perceived as a negative event is occurring and that’s actually changing the emotion of the, uh, the animal in that situation, yeah. That would, that would qualify.

Jessica: Okay. So let’s talk about that sequence of events.

Simon: Yeah.

Jessica: Because earlier you mentioned. The example of the mailman, if they’re coming and you [00:12:00] start feeding before the mailman shows up and then feeding as the mailman is there, and then I’m assuming stopping feeding when the mailman leaves. And there are some rules where someone might hear that and they would think, well, I thought you were supposed to have the dog notice the mailman first and then start feeding.

So if you started feeding before the mailman showed up, then couldn’t it be that the dog would associate eating with the mailman showing up, which then might devalue the food or make them feel worse about the situation?

Simon: Yeah. And that’s why I said that’s where the people don’t agree on the sequence of things, right?

Yeah. So, uh, you’re right in a sense, you want the dog to notice the mailman you wanna address the negative. Feelings or emotions as they start occur. But at the same time, you don’t want to linger either. So you have to be pretty quick. I think this is why people tend to actually start, get the attention of the dog before the mailman [00:13:00] shows, but then you’re right, you’re actually, you know, you’re doing something else there.

So, yeah, that’s why I’m saying that the sequence and the timing is really important here in, uh, what you’re trying to do. That being said, with some dogs, as you probably know, if you wait for the dog to notice the mailman is there, it’s game over, it’s, you’ll never get their attention back to you unless you completely remove them away from the situation.

So that’s why I think some people maybe innately, instinctively start getting the attention of the dog. Before the mailman shows up at the door or rings the bell. But you see every dog is going to be different. Every situation is going to be different. That may actually require a change of a strategy, in which case then suddenly you’re getting into systematic desensitization.

And that’s where the operant and conditioning, uh, or context comes in. That means that you’re teaching the dog before [00:14:00] if you look at the original definition of what systematic desensitization is you teach a form of relaxation. That’s what humans, the old Wolpie stuff.

The original paper actually. And they have to engage in that activity before they’re presented with the stimulus. So that’s where, see, we’re transitioning here towards systematic desensitization and assuming that a dog has some experience with that unquote relaxation, uh, it could be for instance, sitting, uh, sitting in a very specific location close to the door.

So you see this is starting to get. In that gray zone there where people often use a mix of counter conditioning and systematic desensitization because they already have a little ritual in place to get the dog to know, okay, this is what you’re going to do. Now you’re going to sit on that little mat, and then they hear the ding-dong.

But they know this is a different situation than if they’re taken by [00:15:00] surprise. Right. So, so that’s, again, when I say there’s so many different rules and versions of this, and sometimes even for me, it’s difficult when I read some of the protocols or the procedures that people come up with, it takes me a while to figure out, okay, what is this?

If we bring this back to the actual theory. Is this counter conditioning or is this something more, and it depends a little bit. How much of that sequential stuff has been changed over time? How much prep you have, and if there’s a lot of prep with some operant stuff happening before then that becomes systematic desensitization, which obviously is a process in itself.

Right. Because the normally what you would do is that you would start with a relatively weak version of the aversive stimulus. So that’s usually where you need to work with people that will, uh. We’ll be [00:16:00] willing to, uh, approach your house or, stand in front of the door, knock gently at the door, then ring the bell, uh, until the dog is actually fine with it.

But again, even that definition of systematic desensitization, I see people often don’t use it that way. But if you look at the original conceptualization of it, that’s what it was supposed to be. Systematic means a very, very well planned exposure to the averse stimulus. There’s a lot of confusion out there and there’s probably different ways to approach this. To be honest with you, I don’t think that there’s necessarily just one way to do it.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad that you brought up that dogs are gonna respond differently to these strategies because even if we circled back to what we were referring to with the counter conditioning, how, for some dogs, the moment that they perceive the mailman, they’re already having such an intense reaction.

So some of those dogs actually do respond better if you get their attention a little bit before the thing [00:17:00] happens. And for another dog, they might not respond that way. And so, yeah, I think that we do need to think about employing some of these strategies with having flexibility because every dog is perhaps it’s gonna be different than the next.

But I am curious if we could go back to the counter conditioning that. Let’s say somebody decided that even if their dog was still having a strong reaction to the mailman, but they’re still playing or feeding treats as this event is happening, and they saw minimal progress after, let’s say three weeks.

After doing this, you know, every day or every other day for three weeks, they’re, they’re still seeing minimal progress and all they’re doing is the counter conditioning. They have not tried to decrease the intensity of the aversive stimulus. IE the mailman. If they’re only doing that, is counter conditioning really supposed to [00:18:00] by itself somehow change that dog’s emotional response?

Is that what this was intended to do?

Simon: Theoretically, yes, but the, the problem here is, uh, well there’s many levels to it. Um. One thing that’s well known about it is that it’s very context specific. So one example I give my students is that you may actually succeed to at least reduce the response of the dog.

Uh, but then for some reason the mailman shows up at the back door and then suddenly you’re back to square one, right? Yes. So, so that, that is the problem with this is that it’s and that’s not every dog that’s like this. And this is really what’s interesting about this. I think it’s, um, uh, it depends how they perceive the situation and the context.

And it could be a difference between what we call sign [00:19:00] trackers and goal trackers as well. So, in other words every dog is different, and every dog will look at different cues and they don’t perceive the context the same way. For some some of them it’s the front hall, right? It’s, okay, this is the front of the house, this is what it is.

For others, it may just be extremely specific to not just a mailman, but which mailman, if it’s a different mailman, they have a totally different reaction. So again, we’re back to this idea that it, it depends. There are so many different factors, but if you have a slow progress, I would say with counter conditioning, well, there’s two things.

Either you do it wrong or it’s just not going to work for that dog, in which case then probably systematic desensitization a more planned program would actually work better with time. And to be honest with you, I think with some dogs, it’s, uh, I’m afraid to say this, but I think I’ll say [00:20:00] it. If the negative emotion is so strong it may be really hard in some cases for it to fade away completely.

Unfortunately. And you know, I’ve known people that have struggled with the person coming at a door, for instance. It’s suggestive maybe of even close to trauma kind of situations for some dogs. And the behavior did not change until they moved. And then in a new house that behavior disappeared.

I mean, it’s, it’s really that strange. The problem is, we’re. Trying to figure out what is the trigger with our dogs, but we may not always be able to identify the right one. Sometimes it’s us, it’s our own reactions. When somebody’s at the door, that triggers the whole thing. Right. That’s the problem.

And if we don’t acknowledge this, then we’re wasting a lot of time. Yeah.

Jessica: Yes. Well, I mean, moving and being in a whole new house is a, [00:21:00] definitely a contextual change. So I can see how that would, how that would influence that dog’s behavior. And I really love how you shared that it, it. Is very contextual because I think that has been my experience with counter conditioning as well.

And especially when I go and I work with a client who, they read something online or they watched a YouTube video on here’s how I can help my dog feel better in this situation and you know, therefore decrease the barking or decrease the lunging. And they have reported very similar things where, okay, my dog was okay, but it was only with this one dog, or it was only in this one situation and I can’t seem to get my dog to generalize it somewhere else.

So I can see the limitations of only using counter conditioning. Which is also, I’m really glad that we’re gonna talk about systematic desensitization today because I remember a couple of years ago when I consulted with you, I was putting [00:22:00] together a presentation for a conference and I was going to talk about counter conditioning and some of the limitations of it.

And I had. Walked you through, I think, very basic protocol of what I do with most of my reactive dog clients. And I had asked you like, well, what is this? Like, what does this fall under? And you said, well, this is mostly systematic desensitization because of the fact that I’m teaching the dog a calmer response before I put them in the situation of having to be exposed to a greater aversive stimulus.

And you had shared that was part of the original theory was that the humans, part of the, of the experiment were taught how to relax and then gradually exposed to something. And to be totally honest, that was news to me. Because I never heard that before, that that was part of it. We have, at least we, I’m speaking as if this is everyone. I have always. Understood it and have been taught that. It’s just the [00:23:00] gradual exposure part. I didn’t know that it was also this relaxation part taught ahead of time.

And as soon as I learned that, I’m like, oh, well, duh. No wonder why I’m seeing such good results with what I’m doing because I am also building in that component.

Simon: So if you’ll, uh, excuse me here because I don’t remember the date. It’s Wolpe and then later Wolpe and Lazarus that wrote the original papers on systematic desensitization.

Even the Wikipedia article, if I’m not wrong, actually gets it right by saying the first thing you do is you teach the relaxation, then you do the gradual exposure. So yeah, that, that is important, but somehow people don’t seem to know about that first part. And actually, I blame a textbook for this.

There’s a relatively popular textbook by chance that unfortunately gets it wrong. It actually not describing the original version of systematic desensitization when, uh, most other books like Batan, [00:24:00] Lieberman, uh, Missouri, and a bunch of others that I that I use, uh, do it correctly. And yeah, I don’t know why historically that was forgotten.

I think it may have been in transferring this to animals and not really knowing what to do with the operant part. If, if you. If you define it as such. But yeah, this idea of teaching something, right, I mean, it, I guess with animals it could be relaxation or it can literally be something else.

And that’s why I mentioned sitting on a mat or, uh, sending up a context, right? Which is usually associated with calm would probably do it with the dog fairly well. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I agree that there could be many different behaviors that we would, that we could teach that teaches a calmer response that is not the dog escalating their behavior when they see the averse stimulus.

So what is it then, when it comes to counter conditioning and systematic [00:25:00] desensitization? What is it that trainers are getting wrong in terms of their understanding of those two things?

Simon: Well, in a sense, maybe it doesn’t matter, you know , the reason I say this is that there are so many terminological deviations from what textbooks will tell you in the dog world that, I’ve, sometimes I wonder, okay, I should just shut up and, and stop wanting to correct people because there’s literally a parallel universe there in, in, in a way, right?

The way that people use the word marking or keep going signal and all that, that we have equivalence of this in our own jargon in academia and classical and operant conditioning for a long time. But sometimes also the definition changes with change, with time. It took me a while to figure out if there were like even correspondence between some of those terms over the years.

So I’ll say [00:26:00] maybe it doesn’t matter.

So then maybe another way that I could phrase that question, how about what? Is what is the goal with these procedures? Because when we think of you know, counter conditioning, it’s supposed to be, you’re gonna change this emotion to be positive is like the most basic way that you tend to read about this. Now the dog is gonna think other things are positive and, you know, systematic desensitization means then you’re gonna get the dog to have a more neutral response or neutral feeling to something.

Jessica: So at the end when you’ve executed all of these things, this is what you’re going to get. And I tend to find that people don’t always get those things. And so that’s also what I wanna kind of figure out. Okay, well what was what was the original goal?

Simon: So, I think there’s a lot of things there.

First of all, if we’re talking about it in terms of stimulus, uh, substitution, we try to change the attention from one stimulus to the other stimulus always [00:27:00] compete with each other, right? That is problematic even in this context of stimulus competition, for instance, that is competition between stimuli.

That means also if you’re trying to use an aversive us versus a sorry, uh, appetitive us versus an aversive us, you better be right about which one is the most salient, right? It’s all about the saliency of the stimuli here. And I think if you’re trying to do counter conditioning with food and your dog is not terribly interested in food and again, this mailman here is life-threatening problem. Yeah, we’re not connecting right here. I mean, there’s, it’s not going to work essentially. It’s absolutely not going to work. So, you need to identify again, all the elements of that situation. Make sure that you get a very appetitive us, uh, better food, or [00:28:00] maybe it’s a toy.

Here you have the problem of arousal as well, right? Your dog is most likely getting very aroused by the presence of this person at the door. Now, do you want to arouse the dog even more with a toy in that situation? Maybe not. That can backfire. Right? And especially if you are trying to calm the dog.

But you see the, the way they see the world is interesting because I think we miss a lot of the cues usually that are important.

And unfortunately, if you’re doing counter conditioning or systematic desensitization you kind of need to know. What it is, right? Sometimes it can be one object, one behavior that you have. It can be little details that will also determine if they’re triggered or not. Right? And we see the same thing with PTSD, by the way, and what we call trauma cues.

That sometimes some situation will trigger something and other situations won’t. And [00:29:00] yet you see a lot of similarities between the two. And that’s I think why it’s so difficult, even for individuals that react to trauma cues. They often don’t know why and they will often say but this came out of nowhere.

My panic attack came out of nowhere. The problem with the way this. Occurs through classical conditioning, and that’s how you acquire a response to a, a trauma cue or cues, is that it never comes out of nowhere. That’s the thing it is triggered by something you have not figured out what it was or what combination of cues.

Right. It can be a smell with a certain lighting with a thought even, right? Because in modern theories of classical conditioning, we accept the idea that, a thought can be a condition stimulus actually. So it can be all kinds of different things, uh, a specific motivational [00:30:00] need or emotion that you’re feeling, and you’re more likely to be reactive to cues.

If you don’t have those emotions, you’re not right. So it can be extremely subtle, which also makes it very difficult to find the pattern, unfortunately. But I usually try to bring this back to trauma cues, with people or what triggers responses of anxiety so they can actually think about themselves.

You’re trying to understand your dog, but try to understand yourself first. What gets you going, what triggers you and why? Why is it not in all situations? Why is it just here or then or with this person? Right? And that’s the same kind of thing that you’re trying to figure out. And in therapy, that’s what people will try to do.

The role of the psychologist is often to try to identify those conditions, stimuli, those cues. And it’s not easy. It can be very complex because it can [00:31:00] be many different conditions, stimuli many different cues that are also competing with each other. So if one is more salient than the other, or if that cue that day is less salient than usual, it may not trigger anything.

The next day it will because it’s more salient, right? So.

Jessica: Yeah. And that really explains why when people say, well, my dog was fine with this right one day, but then the next day they weren’t. Um, and then they don’t know why because they think everything literally was the same, but it wasn’t. There was something there that was different for that dog.

I mean, I suppose I could throw one out. When people are away at work, they don’t really know what their dog is experiencing.

They think the dog is maybe just sleeping on the couch all day, but they might be listening to different things that are going past their home and potentially getting worried about certain sounds or certain even smells that are coming into the home that they are picking up from what’s going on outside.

And [00:32:00] perhaps the owner literally has no idea what their dog has experienced that day. And then they get home to take their dog out for a walk, and now their dog is just being different for some reason. And they don’t know why, because they think, well, no, everything was the same. We woke up, we did this, I fed them, I went to work, and then we came home, and then we do this.

And they don’t realize there could have actually been many things that the dog had experienced before then that we wouldn’t have any idea about.

Simon: Yeah. And, uh, there’s actually another set of interesting theories from the eighties here that talk about the concept of occasion setter or facilitator Rescorla is actually one of the ones that talked about this, which is really interesting because usually you can see it at least as an internal state.

So it can be an emotion, could be a motivation maybe you’re anxious or you’re hungry. And that occasion setter changes that link between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus. So it, [00:33:00] it’s kind of that magical, invisible thing that changes the nature of the link between the two.

And that’s interesting because it means in a way that, there are so many things that you cannot pick up on that the dog may be picking up on that are literally just invisible. It’s no more, no less than what they experienced earlier today. Their level of arousal already. Again, anxiety will certainly do it right.

So, yeah. And, you know, that complicates in a sense everything and explains why it’s difficult Right. To, uh, to be successful and consistent. If the environment, including the internal environment of the dog is not consistent itself, I mean, good luck. You don’t know what you’re fighting essentially, but that’s a challenge of the kind of work that you do with pet dogs.

Jessica: Yeah. There’s gonna be some conditions that are gonna be different. You know, you are more stressed that [00:34:00] day. And maybe this could even be, if I can relate it to being a woman where, you know, our hormones will change at different weeks of the month, right?

And so then suddenly we’re having hormonal changes that, we weren’t really planning on. You know, it’s like we woke up that day and thought, well, I really wanted to feel like this, but yet now you’re feeling something different and there’s no way that we really have any control over that. And so then therefore behavior is now going to be different.

And whether or not we can uphold what our intentions were for that day to eat this and work out here, uh, it might not happen. Because yeah, the conditions are different. And I’d like to think that for our dogs, they of course experience, different changes in conditions, which then therefore changes their ability to be able to do the things that we want them to do.

Simon: Yeah. Uh, lack of sleep, right? Yeah. If you haven’t slept well, I mean that, that would change how you are reactive to your environment, uh, with the brain gut link that we know about. Now, if you’re not digesting well for whatever reason, that will [00:35:00] also, and we know that happens with dogs put them off completely, their normal routine and, and ways of reacting to things.

So yeah, it can be very subtle or not so subtle from any kind of factors like that.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, if we’re thinking of, okay, we’ve got our counter conditioning, we’ve got our systematic desensitization, what else would we wanna be adding to this mix?

So I would say in a sense there’s more than just counterconditioning and systematic desensitization. I think there’s the emotional bond that you form with your dog is important here as well. And by this I mean that your dog sees you as an anchor as opposed to just a treat dispenser, because that’s not really going to help.

Simon: Yeah. So, you know, and there’s cultural differences here that I’ve noticed. [00:36:00] Um, this can get a complicated conversation here, but yeah I don’t know. French Canadians, for instance, tend to be a lot more reactive by nature than, uh, Anglo-Saxon or Germanic people. And I know because I see it all the time that we’ll take people by surprise often, like, whoa, relax, just, but yeah. Alright, we explode, but two minutes later it’s over. But yeah, pets react to this as well, to be honest. They’re very, uh, very sensitive to those things, but they will also get used to it. I think my pets know I’m quite reactive by nature. But yeah, no, it’s, it’s very complicated.

There’s no doubt about it. But it’s all about emotions as I often say. It’s about perceptions and emotions. So how they perceive the situation, which is not your perception, most likely, or your perspective. And it’s about emotions, meaning if they’re well anchored with you, at least that’s the first step.

If already they’re reacting [00:37:00] to you as their pet parent then there’s a bit of a problem because they will always take the cue from you. Right? And I think a lot of dog owners don’t realize this. The dog reacts to your own reactions more so than the fact that it’s somebody at the door. You’re already activated and aroused, they respond to that.

So actually you should counter condition them to you, not to the mailman.

Jessica: Yes, it’s hard, right? Because. Like you said, because our dogs spend so much time with us and they have experienced so many things with us we are part of the context for the dog. And so then therefore it’s like we’re trying to change many different contexts and that’s it’s difficult, right?

And I think that also goes to explain why for many dogs who have reactivity leash reactivity, it’s not as if one day they have it and then the next day they’re just magically [00:38:00] cured it. It’s often something where you can see some really substantial improvements, but there’s always gonna be within the right amount of, or the right set of conditions that come about where the dog is gonna react to something again, and I.

Really wish that that could be more normalized for people, because I think they have it in their minds that there’s this goal to just eliminate all of these behaviors without really understanding all of these layers. Like what we’re describing in our conversation that’s layered into everything that, the context that the dog has put in the relationship that they have with one another.

The dog’s emotions. I mean, how are you gonna change all that? Like, that’s like the tallest order. It’s not doable. I think you can modify a lot of it, but I don’t think you can just completely, eliminate a dog’s reaction.

Simon: No, it and there’s even a actually good literature on this, especially in classical conditioning about, for instance, what we call a [00:39:00] renewal effect, which, uh, again, is this idea that a change of environment, may actually be beneficial, but in other cases, it guarantees that a behavior will come back if you’ve actually managed to initially control it. So, yeah. Um, you know, it’s, it’s a bit discouraging because in a sense it’s almost like you’re saying it’s always gonna be there in a sense. I think I often think more in terms of, again, I’m linking this to P-T-S-D-A little bit.

It has the potential of always being there. So you may be doing well in reaction in some situations. But you never know when that one day there’s going to be a convergence of little things that will make it okay today I cannot deal with this basically Right. External, internal cues that will make it hard.

So you have to be always ready, I think especially with a reactive dog that yeah, it can come back resurface [00:40:00] almost at any time. All you can do is try to minimize maybe the intensity of the reaction. Um, have at least a few tools to mitigate the situation in a moment. But it’s never ironclad.

It’s not, it’s not magic, let’s put it that way.

Jessica: Yeah, I agree. I’m curious if we could chat a little bit more about uh, just think how I can word this. There’s kind of like pop science, where certain terms or certain ideas will become like a fad for a couple of years and then it moves on and then it’s like the next thing is gonna be like the thing and this is going to, you know, be the cure for this and this and this, and then it becomes the next thing.

And I know that we’re all biased in one way or another. Based on what we’ve experienced, where we’re getting our education from and [00:41:00] geographically right, who we come in contact with, who we have access to, who we’re learning from. You know, there’s many different reasons why we might be biased towards any one thing, but I think a lot of times, the more that I just think about dogs and behavior, I tend to really avoid getting caught up in, in the newest thing that’s supposedly going to fix whatever or have some huge impact. Because I tend to find that it usually just comes down to the same or very similar concepts, um, if that makes sense. Like it’s not actually really that different, it is just repackaged a little bit differently.

And maybe there’s a couple of things that are new or fresh that could give somebody a different perspective or a maybe a more efficient way of doing something. But I wanna talk about that because I feel like dog trainers, but also people who have dogs, pet parents, right? Like they, when they have a dog who’s reactive or a dog who has other behavior challenges, [00:42:00] they’re troubled.

They are sometimes even desperate to find help for themselves. So they’re, trying to just find anything that’s gonna help give them relief, give their dog relief from this, um, help them live better lives together. And then sometimes I feel like then they’re falling to some sort of, Facebook or Instagram ad on something that’s gonna change, you know, everything in 10 minutes a day.

And it just drives me absolutely nuts.

Simon: Yeah. Well, I mean, this is complicated and you know, as an academic, it’s interesting for me to look at the dog world and, and see what’s out there. But I think part of it is, um. Marketing, to be honest.

Jessica: True. So there’s

Simon: a lot of these fad that starts, they often people reinvent the wheel as well.

There’s nothing new there, but they package it as if it was new. And here we go. Then there’s also the methods that are not so positive, uh, which by the way, since we were talking about emotions, we’ll just add negative emotions to the equation, which is certainly not what you want to do in some of the cases that we [00:43:00] discussed there or some of the situations we mentioned.

And you know, and then there’s this other layer of discussion, which also is not terribly helping. Like I say, sometimes it’s not because you can use the word dopamine in a paragraph that it means you know, what dopamine does and what it’s good for. And, uh, is it changing anything in terms of how you train dogs?

I don’t know. I mean, it’s again, sometimes people. On Facebook, we’ll use some of those terms and I’m wondering, what are you trying to say here? Alright, the word dopamine is in that paragraph, but that’s not giving me anything concrete in terms of what you’re trying to say or do or what you think is actually going on. So yeah, fads are complicated. But, I think it’s more likely to come from people that are new to the area as well. They latch on something that really got their attention, you know, it’s brand new shiny object kind of thing. So they, they genuinely get excited about it and [00:44:00] push it, but I think they may not realize it’s only part of a full toolbox of things and they need to relax a little bit and realize that yeah, it may not be magic again.

Right. I mean, a lot of these things are not going to work in isolation either. You know, I think the landscape of the dog world has changed a lot because social media, when I started doing seminars and webinars in 2007, I think there was a huge hunger for science, but it’s still there at the same time, I think now the science has been appropriated by people that are non-scientists and that complicates things. There’s a lot of pseudoscience that has made its way in there, and we’ve kind of almost lost perspective in some cases of the value of science here. And that worries me. And then there’s the pro-science people that are [00:45:00] hypercritical of science, which.

Adds so much noise to the discussion. And, you know, I’m all for questioning science. Uh, very close to a lot of philosophers of science uh, and of ethics because I enjoy being challenged by them all the time on all kinds of ideas. But I also challenge them on some of their ideas too. Uh, sometimes they don’t know what they’re talking about in terms of the science.

I have no problem telling them that. And it, it’s really interesting back and forth between philosophers and scientists. I tremendously encourage this, but it has to be constructive and not just about closing doors, which I see now as the new trend. We’re closing doors and I understand why. You know, it’s part of that weird polarization that we have on everything now, politics, religion, any kind of ideologies.

And we justify it as, I don’t know, it’s a way of protecting. [00:46:00] Our own ideas, I guess, right? But I think that’s becoming a little bit dangerous. So I don’t know what to think. You know, in the last year or so, I’ve even considered maybe stepping back a little bit from knowledge translation efforts, because I’m not sure it’s helping as much as it used to in a sense.

But I don’t know. It’s a very complex industry. Things have changed quite a bit. You know, in 2007 there was a handful of us scientists doing this. Now there’s like, what, 10 times more scientists involved in the knowledge translation stuff. Similar with dog trainers and dog owners you know, it’s ever expanding field.

So. I don’t know. I’m a little bit lost in all of this. I have to say, to be honest, it’s not the way it used to be. Let’s put it that way.

Jessica: Mm-hmm.

Simon: Uh, but there’s a lot of noise there. There’s a lot of distraction. You know, somebody recently was asking me, is there at least less [00:47:00] misinformation now than say in 2007?

No, I don’t think so. There’s just more information and more disinformation on some of that information. That’s it. I, I don’t think we’ve changed things as much as we would like to, unfortunately. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. And I think when you, using the word noise, I think that’s a great way of describing what a lot of this is.

I think that so much of this also comes down to social media, just because that became like the one place that a lot of people were sharing information and. It became a platform where anybody could share anything. And yet before it used to be if somebody was looking for information for something, they were having to go back to textbooks or to some of the online journals and different publications you do some searches of [00:48:00] studies and different things are getting information there or going to individuals.

And it really changed the landscape of information sharing with social media. And I think that, oh man, I think social media is probably one of the worst things to happen to humanity. Um, which is why I feel very conflicted. I’ve always felt very conflicted about it. But yeah, I think that it has not helped us in many, many ways.

Simon: Yeah. And, and the fact checking I think is often, uh, not happening and. And it’s a little bit unfortunate because there’s even a few scientists that have contributed to this, unfortunately, just repeating stuff. I think they haven’t checked or FactCheck themselves. And, that’s why usually if I engage in some kind of conversation on social media, it’s about stuff I know. I never get into something I don’t know. Because then it’s too easy to just bring opinions or I will say my opinion is, but it’s only an [00:49:00] opinion to be clear.

Um. I, I often see people start talking about stuff that you really don’t seem to have much of a grasp on or they don’t have the full picture, which is the other important thing. I think I annoy people sometimes because I will bring the historical context and because to me, this is important.

How did this idea develop? And if you’re going to cite the original sources, maybe you should have read them, because sometimes you’re totally off what those sources are actually saying. Read the originals. They, they are important. I’ve seen people walk right into massive contradictions by blaming Skinner for this or that when actually, he had literally written on that and make the point that they were trying to make. It’s almost absurd sometimes, right? It’s just, I don’t, I don’t understand, but I think you’re right. Social media has contributed to this. We read a meme and we think the meme is truth, but have [00:50:00] you checked the source for it?

Jessica: Mm-hmm.

Simon: You know, and that will get people angry if you say, what’s the source? Or where’s this coming from? Then they give you the angry emoji. It’s like, no, no, no, no. First of all, if you know the source, you should be able to say, oh, hey, here it is. If you gimme the angry emoji that is suggesting me, you have no idea where it’s coming from, and you don’t want to bother trying to find where it’s coming from.

There’s a problem there. Right. I should be producing the angry emoji in that situation. Yes. Like, uh, and, and it’s fine. I, I say things sometimes where people say, source, please. Oh, yeah, that’s fair. Thank you for reminding me here. You want to source, here’s the paper, here’s the textbook, here’s the, whatever that, that’s fine.

You know, keep me honest by asking what my source are. I have no problem with that. But I think we should apply that to everybody and I think that’s the danger also with ai. Now that will spew, you know, half of the time. Half [00:51:00] truths. AI is very good also at trying to please you. So if it already knows what you like, where you’re leaning in terms of your ideology or ideas or theories, whatever, it will answer your questions based on what it thinks you will approve, which is extremely dangerous because sometimes I literally, if I use Chat GPT, for instance just to brainstorm something I will often get out of my account.

Mask my ip because I know it tracks that too. Even if you don’t log into your account so it doesn’t know who I am. So it doesn’t bring those biases in there because I use it more to go like, challenge me here, tell me about something. I don’t know, kind of thing. It rarely works, but when it does, it’s interesting but you have to get out of your account because otherwise it will try to see all of your searches and questions before Oh, you like post cognitivism?

So I will answer that question based on a [00:52:00] post cognitivist theory and it entrenches you even more so in your bias, essentially.

So that’s something that, uh, is problematic. So it’s social media, but it’s the new AI trends as well. Yeah,

Jessica: very true. Very true.

Simon: Because ai, to be honest, you know, we, we teach our students how to use ai. AI can be very good. It can help with a lot of things. You can save a lot of time in figuring things out. It will answer questions in a way that a Google search won’t be able to. You just have to be extremely careful with the information it gives you.

Never textually take it and just regurgitate it because it’s way too dangerous to do this. And unfortunately, it’s only in the area that I know really well that I will know that’s not right. I know right away. So all of these other things that you ask it, that it gives you an answer and you go, oh, that sounds good.

Right? How much of [00:53:00] that is actually not that good? Right? So it’s a guide maybe. But it has to be used very, very, very carefully. I have to say that sometimes I test it just to see what my students are getting in terms of information if they ask on some concepts before an exam. And I’m sometimes impressed, but what it will give back to me.

Other times I’m like, Ugh, this is so bad. So, it’s, uh, it’s a dangerous tool and it’s one that could in principle get better or worse. Right. Because it always feeds on the information that is fed to it, which can be biased as well.

Jessica: Yeah. Absolutely. I will say, just going back to what you were saying how you like to go back to the historical context of where these things have originally come from. I’m not talking about, yeah, I’m talking about [00:54:00] the the different theories and so forth. I just wanna say, I’ve always really appreciated that about you, and we need somebody like you who does that in this industry.

So on a personal note, I don’t think you should stop trying to talk about it because we need people like you to speak up. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you.

Simon: Well, thank you. I think, uh, you know, I’ll say even with scientists, I think the history of science is important.

When you, you try and understand learning theory, for instance, and conditioning, I think it is important to look I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say it this simply, one of the most life changing course for me, I was a biology student. In the eighties, taking psych courses to try to get into the neuroscience aspect of things because psychology was always a bigger neuroscience than biology in many ways, especially in the area of behavioral neuroscience and social neuroscience and these areas that interested me.

But I could not [00:55:00] figure out psychology. I was like, what is this science all over the place? And it is in some ways it’s, you know, you have social psychology, clinical, educational, very applied stuff, very unapplied, very fundamental, very all over the place. Physiological psychology, which is what we call neuroscience now.

Essentially behavioral neuroscience. And I took a history of psychology class a full year, actually it was two terms, and that was the most life-changing course of my bachelor degree because then I finally understood. Okay, this is where this is coming from. Right. So, from philosophy to trying to become a natural science to becoming a natural science to right, and where behaviorism fits in this, how cognitivism came in the different types of cognitivism also that, that’s often forgotten.

The history of psychology is a lot more complex than you would think, but it’s the same with biology, it’s the same with neuroscience. These sciences have [00:56:00] evolved in very complex and interesting way over time, and the way they did is relevant to understand them, I would say. So. Even in the context of, um, systematic desensitization, if you don’t go back to the original paper, it’s easy to be on the very wrong path about what it was meant to do initially.

Right? Yeah. Which is again, like, teaching some relaxation methods and then use them in the context of what’s basically a form of gradual exposure. Systematic desensitization. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. One thing that popped in my mind that I realized we didn’t actually get to was operant conditioning and counter conditioning because.

I think some people think that those two are completely separate and other people will say well, they’re always occurring at the same time. Um, some people will say, [00:57:00] oh, I’m doing more operant in this, or, oh no, I’m doing more classical in this. How would you separate those two? I mean, I, I can think of some really obvious ways, but from your perspective, when we’re thinking more of we’re doing operant versus counter conditioning,

Simon: so first of all, in counter conditioning is using a, a classical conditioning kind of method where actually you are.

Well, it, see, it gets complicated here because it’s about emotional conditioning in a sense, or, reconditioning. But by operant usually in this context, I think you’re suggesting you have trained a behavior, a new behavior, or at least modified one.

Which again, brings us back more to, uh, systematic desensitization because that precedes the, the actual exposure procedure. In counterconditioning it’s more like you’re playing with that competitiveness between stimuli. That’s [00:58:00] why it’s often seen as a stimulus competition or substitution kind of procedure.

So that’s a little bit different because now you’re working on a response that is already in place. But you associate it with the different stimulus. So by definition, that’s classical conditioning. So if you say you’re doing it more operantly, okay, but that means what, what’s the new behavior you introduced here, right?

That would be the question. And I can see how that can be the case. Like I said, some people will literally ask the animal, for instance, to sit in a specific location or, uh, on a specific mat next to the door. Okay, that can be considered then the operant part of this, but it would most likely proceed the actual exposure.

But see anytime you do something operant. Especially with the modern theories and the ones that are subscribed to the incentive theories of learning and incentive theories of [00:59:00] motivation. You always have classical conditioning present. Right. That old saying that Pavlov is always on your shoulder I think works for most of the operant stuff that we do, even if we’re not fully aware that we injected some, uh, Pavlovian stuff in there, but it’s usually true that it’s very much present.

Yeah. Because again, it’s all about the cues, including cues that predict reinforcement, by the way. Right. So we, here we could talk about sign trackers, which again, are these individuals that are much more likely to pay attention to condition stimuli that predict an appetitive stimulus or food for instance.

Or even actually how sensitive they are to the clicker. Right. Sign trackers would be much more sensitive to clicker than goal trackers. Theoretically, at least. So they hear click and they go like, oh, right. I could get something here. Right. And that’s, is how their brain responds to that situation.

Jessica: Yeah. When sometimes I hear trainers trying to separate these [01:00:00] two, they think that they’ll kind of put a little bit more of changing that dog’s emotional response or reconditioning this and operant meaning more of you’re either reinforcing a behavior or punishing a behavior.

But then of course, I don’t know how you really could do either of those without also getting emotions involved. And I think another way that I like to just think about this in terms of how I approach my work with dogs is that even if I’m trying to recondition a dog’s emotional response to something, and I am doing a significant amount of teaching new behaviors if I’m really careful to pay attention to the conditions and what I can observe from the dog in terms of how I might guess how they’re feeling, right?

These are just observable behaviors that based on my experience, I can say, well, dogs that are feeling really relaxed look like this, or dogs that are, looking happy and really eager to engage, they look like this. So then [01:01:00] therefore I can assume that the dog’s feeling pretty darn good about what we’re doing right now.

Rehearsing behaviors that I have trained using positive reinforcement, but also under conditions where the dog feels really good about it. Right? The context of everything that we are putting together for this dog is one where the dog is relaxed and eager and what I might, you know, label happy.

Um, so then therefore I would think, I don’t know that I need to do a lot of like straight classical conditioning protocols when I’m building all these other things in where the dog is already, I’m assuming, feeling pretty good about what it is that I’m doing.

Simon: No, I think you’re right. And, and again, it’s, it’s, it’s dog by dog kind of, decision I think in terms of how you’re going to proceed.

But knowing that every dog is different, obviously, uh, and, may also react to different kind of reinforcements, differently. I mean, yeah, I think. One problem I see sometimes is trainers that seem to have [01:02:00] one way to do things, one protocol, and that’s it. Not really thinking that will need to be adjusted based on the dog you’re working with.

Like in my lab for instance, I spent a lot of time telling my students, look, we’re not working with rats or pigeons in a Skinner box here. Every dog is different. So why is this dog not working out with this setup? And then the students will say, well, it looks like the setup. They don’t like the setup.

Well, there you go, let’s change it. And they go, oh, we can do that. You can do that. So sometimes it’s us that need to adjust to the dog, not force the dog to adjust to us, essentially. And that’s, I think, an important lesson. But yeah the level of rigidity of people at that level is, uh, varies as you know.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. You know, I did wanna ask about your lab, if you’d be willing to share a little bit more, because I know that you do a lot of really cool olfactory work both in your lab, but then also out in the field. And [01:03:00] I had read recently where I saw that you were doing some work of the dogs being trained to find the remains of the indigenous people that were in your area. Is that anything that you could share more about?

Simon: So the, so first of all, we have two research programs in the lab.

One is the biomedical stuff where we did, uh, hypoglycemia detection. That was with Catherine Reeve and with Laura Caria. We’re doing the PTSD stuff. So the volatiles associated with, uh, panic attacks or anxiety attacks with people with PTSD. And the other program has always been wildlife conservation canines.

That’s the first one actually, where we look for species at risk in the field. And a number of years ago I forget actually exactly how it started, but there was a convergence here because of some serious issues with First Nations. In Canada, although it’s happening in the US too, it’s just not known or advertised.

But the Catholic [01:04:00] Church having buried a lot of young first Nation people, babies, often in unmarked graves, and we know of many different locations in Canada where this would’ve happened. And so that’s important to me because I have first Nation ancestry, but also another thing that’s attached to this is with Acadians.

So I’m Acadian on my mother’s side. And, uh, Acadians were the so it’s the people from France, they’re different from Quebecers just because they come from different areas. And they were here in the maritime, so that means Nova Scotia, new Brunswick. And there was essentially, uh, ethnic cleansing of Acadians.

They were all deported. 10,000 of them put on boats and sent all over the world, including some that ended up in, uh, new Orleans, in Louisiana. And they’re known as Cajuns. And Cajuns is a quick way to say, so it was mis, [01:05:00] uh, misunderstood. Anyway, that’s, that’s the theory behind why they’re called that.

Uh, there’s a lot of them on the Norton, Eastern Seaboard of the US as well in New England, for instance. And there too, there’s some interesting stories of unmarked graves. And so all of these things came together and there’s a lot of Mitty people that come from Acadian and First Nation as well here in the Maritimes.

So, um, yeah we are looking into it, but it’s complicated when you work with First Nations in Canada. It’s a long process. It’s difficult to have everybody on board on this. It’s sensitive as well because the question is to confirm the locations, but it does not mean that we can easily verify if there’s indeed something that is present in those locations.

So we are working with somebody right now that, uh, uses ground penetrating [01:06:00] radars to do part of the work, and we’re trying to see if we can add the dogs on top of this to confirm based on, uh, essentially volatiles that would be produced by bones, which, uh, if you look at that literature, it’s a little bit.

Nebulous exactly how that would happen because usually people will say bones don’t produce organic volatiles, but we have evidence that dogs can detect them somehow. And right now in the lab, we’ve demonstrated that they can certainly detect old bones. And by old bones, I mean really old bones, although not human.

We’re working with dear bones because they have. Apparently a very specific smell. And the idea would be that if the Croatians are right about this, uh, or the group that did the research in Croatia, I should say, sorry, that yeah, they could technically detect bones that have been around [01:07:00] for, uh, a few centuries in principle.

So if that’s true they will be an interesting tool for us to identify some of those mass graves and uh, unmarked cemeteries, et cetera. Yeah,

Jessica: that’s fascinating. And I just love that about dogs. Right. I think sometimes we tend to forget, what amazing creatures they are and like the capabilities that they have.

And I mean, yeah, just what you just said, like the fact that they can detect that. I mean, it makes us wonder, when we live with our own dogs, how much. Of their world that we literally have no idea that they are experiencing.

Simon: Yeah, I agree. Uh, and especially this, you know, we were talking about emotions earlier and, and their ability to detect pheromones, for instance.

Right. Smell your emotions literally. Which is a big part of what I do, in my lab, because that’s really the focus. Uh, we do this all in vitro, by [01:08:00] the way. So it’s not, it’s not with the people. It’s literally just with breath samples from them. And it, it’s remarkable that they can do that. And Wow.

How much information that we’re not aware they’re picking up from us right. All the time. Yeah, it’s just absolutely fascinating. At the same time, it makes sense, you know, they’re predators. So I often say in talks that it, if you’re a wolf that’s following a moose in, uh, six feet of snow meter and a half of snow, two meters almost it may be useful to know if that moose is going to collapse.

In the next hour as opposed to 24 hours from now. So what are you going to pick up on? Well, hypoglycemia for one, because that’s when you know they’re starting to get fatigued and, uh, spending way too much energy trying to get away from you. And also all these stress [01:09:00] hormones would start being produced especially cortisol, but also adrenaline if they’re very stressed.

And if it’s sustained, that will eventually lead to a, uh, adrenal collapse, literally. So it makes sense that they would be able to pick up on these things because it’s information that is all about survival for them, essentially. So yeah, they monitor how we feel all day long and literally can smell it quite remarkable.

Jessica: Yes, of course it makes perfect sense, right?

That we would emit different scents, uh, because these hormones, the dogs can perceive those. They can smell those. But then it also makes a lot of sense of why dogs behave differently with different people as well. I mean, you, there has to be an olfactory thing to that, right? Um, of why even, like, some dogs will just target one person at a party and they don’t like that person.

And people don’t know why, ’cause it’s, oh, it’s like the nicest person. But you’d have to guess that it’s something olfactory going on that that dog is picking up on.

Simon: Well, it could be [01:10:00] also with visual stuff. There’s no doubt in my, this is why in my lab we do it in vitro, is we wanna remove the visual stuff, right?

Mm-hmm. Because obviously if somebody’s fidgeting or, um, you know, that that could cue them that something else is going on. But yeah, there’s no doubt uh, you know, they, they have such a developed olfactory system. They have a bone marrow nasal organ that’s well developed as well. So we know they do process for Pheromones.

The question is, do they always understand a context that maybe not right? And it’s interesting because if you look at the work of Catherine Reeve with hypoglycemia, I think we had two dogs finishing that project out of 40. And with RIA it was two out of 25. So here’s the thing I think they do detect these things.

The question is, do they know. In our situation, what you’re asking them to do, because we know these volatiles are more complex than we thought. We also [01:11:00] now have indications that they are not all picking up on the same profile. So if you look at a grass gas chromatograph and mass spectral, you’ll see peaks and, uh, humans often.

Assume that the peaks is what you detect, right? That’s the, the most salient, uh, volatile in there. But there’s evidence starting to come in that’s not the case. So it’s the whole pattern of all the different peaks, including some of the smaller ones that is the signature they are looking for.

And we’re starting to think that not every dog is looking at the same profile either, which complicates things even more. So yeah, that’s really fascinating. But most likely trust the dog that responds to you. Your dog. Your dog knows you. Could they generalize to other people the chemical signature that you have when you get stressed for [01:12:00] example?

I would say at this point, probably not, or at least not all dogs can do it. We’re pretty sure of that now. Yeah.

Jessica: Super fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Well, gosh, um, I wanna respect your time ’cause I feel like I could talk to you about, uh, we could go down a lot of different rabbit holes on like this whole factory stuff and all the different things.

Probably gonna need to have you come back on the podcast at some point if you’re open to it, because I really am fascinated about the the work that you’re doing with the dogs, being able to pick up the scent on people with the PTSD and and so forth. Because I think there’s so much of a correlation with that when you have pet parents taking their dogs out for a walk, right?

And they themselves are so anxious because they don’t know what their dog is gonna do. And then it’s this whole, uh, feedback loop, right between the dog responding to the person and the dog and so forth. And that would be a really interesting topic to dive into. So maybe something for us to think about.

Simon: Well, it links back to what we were saying earlier that I think [01:13:00] sometimes we are the cue, right? Yes, exactly. They’re reacting more, yeah, they’re reacting more to us than the actual situation. The mailman is only, you know? Mm-hmm. We, we could be anticipating, oh, there you go. The mailman is showing up. This snow gonna be good.

And the dog is picking up on that more so than Right.

Jessica: Yeah. It

Simon: may even explain why they seem to know that the mailman is coming before the mailman has showed up. It could be that point. They know the schedule, or they’re already feeling that you’re getting stressed about it.

Jessica: Yeah.

Simon: Yeah, it adds a layer of complexity to interaction with dogs that is quite remarkable because I think it’s often forgotten, you know, um, even with uh, what we call, um double-blind procedures in the lab. Uh, what’s interesting about double-blind procedures is that usually it, it will mask the handler or the trainer. They’re behind a screen or behind a door or on the other side of a wall. But what we forget is that maybe sometimes there’s also [01:14:00] VOCs that are produced there.

That could be cues as well, right?

Jessica: Yeah.

Simon: So, uh, yeah, and I think sometimes when things don’t go well with a dog during training sessions, people get frustrated. They get probably a little bit anxious. The dog is feeling it. I know my dogs feel it from me in the field. I try to stay calm. I try to monitor all my gestures, take deep breaths.

But probably exactly because I do that, they go like, yeah, okay. This is not going the way you want, is it? And I know they know, right? We’re looking at each other and they’re like. It’s not a good day.

Jessica: Can’t hide it. I know. We try. We try. But yeah, you’re right. It’s hard. Yeah. Oh, well I love this conversation.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on.

Simon: Yeah, it was fun. Thank you very much.

Jessica: Hey listeners, if you found this podcast helpful, there are a few different ways you can support the show. First, you can subscribe [01:15:00] wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you’re feeling extra awesome, you can also rate and review the show to make it easier for other people to find it. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next time.