In this episode we referred to a number of resources, and they are listed below for easy reference.
Get on the waitlist for the next leash reactivity mentorship!
Washington area folks – sign up for the seminar with Micaela and Mercedes here!
Exploring insurance for dogs:
Pet Insurance Advice Facebook Group
Courses and additional learning on postural assessments for dogs:
Support for private gait analysis and pain:
Canine Conditioning and Body Awareness Facebook group
Tethered Cord Syndrome
- How discomfort and pain present themselves in dogs
- What to do when you suspect something is wrong, but the vet thinks the dog is “fine”
- How changing assessment procedures in the veterinary office setting can have a big impact on more accurate diagnoses
- Resources that pet parents and pet professionals can use to help diagnose discomfort in dogs
- Why you can’t “rule out pain” in dogs
- And so much more
About Micaela:
Micaela was a trainer before going to vet school and has always approached veterinary medicine through a behavior lens.Her business, Happy Lead Pet Behavior & Vet Care, which focused on in-home behavior & veterinary care for behaviorally-challenged pets, operated until she recently joined Urban Animal, a worker-owner veterinary cooperative in Seattle, WA. She now leads Happy Animal, a program that integrates virtual, ambulatory, and in-practice behavior consulting to maximize success with changing behaviors that happen in or out of the practice.
Micaela uses her experience as a human with chronic pain that’s been difficult to navigate even with an ability to verbalize the situation to help animals who are unable to advocate for themselves.
About Mercedes:
Mercedes Sonnier ABCDT, CPDT, CBCC, FMD has extensive education in posture and gait analysis. She operates her own business, The Motivated K9 near Tacoma Washington.
Offering private lessons, adventure days, board and train and specializing in boarding for dogs that are not suitable for traditional boarding.
Passionate about approaching behavior problems holistically. She believes that there are often many factors influencing a dog’s behavior and we should try to address as many as we can. She competes in a variety of dog sports and currently shares her home with an APBT and a GSD.
Mercedes and Micaela have bonded over their shared passion for approaching behavior cases holistically, with a particular focus on addressing underlying internal physical factors that often go overlooked or underaddressed.
Transcript
Speaker 2: [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: If you’re only going to listen to one podcast episode of mine, I hope it’s this one, and here’s why. There is a very high number of dogs experiencing physical discomfort and expressing that discomfort via what we would label as a behavior or training issue. Conversations around pain and behavior in dogs are becoming more widespread, but it’s not nearly enough.
Too many dogs are falling in between the cracks, and I think we have a long way to go in developing standard [00:01:00] practices around identifying, diagnosing, and treating pain in dogs. Behavior issues in dogs are almost always symptoms of other underlying issues. So when we focus only on the behavior issue itself, we’re missing the bigger picture, often excluding interventions that would likely make a bigger impact on the dog’s behavior than training ever could.
That’s why this is such an important conversation, and it’s also why I am thrilled that I was able to bring in Dr. McKayla Young and Mercedes Sonya to help us unpack this topic. McKayla was a trainer before going to vet school and has always approached veterinary medicine through a behavior lens. I’m going to bet you’ve never heard of veterinarian.
Talk about approaching cases the way she does. [00:02:00] Mercedes is an accomplished professional dog trainer who competes in dog sports with her American Pit Bull Terrier. She’s passionate about taking a holistic approach to her behavior cases, and she has a really keen eye for posture, gait, and biomechanics.
And dogs. Before we get into this amazing episode, I want to remind the dog trainers out there. That the next cohort for my leash reactivity mentorship opens for registration February 15th. I only offer the cohort twice a year and spots are limited. To get on the wait list, check the show notes for the link.
All right, let’s dive in.
So Mercedes and Micaela, you guys are my first duo that I have on this podcast, and I’m so excited that you guys are both here and since our listeners are gonna hear a couple of different voices, I’m wondering if you could [00:03:00] just. Introduce yourself with your name so they can hear each of you and be able to distinguish them.
Micaela, you wanna go first?
Micaela: Yeah. This is Micaela Young.
Jessica: Thank you.
Micaela: Hi, I am Micaela Young. I’ll give you options. Hi, I’m Micaela Young.
I love it. We’re gonna keep all three of those in there.
Mercedes: And this is Mercedes, Sonnier.
Jessica: Welcome. I’m curious how you two got started working together?
Micaela: I
just cold called Mercedes out of the blue genuinely.
Yeah, no, I was driving around working cases and actually it’s weird that I actually have a visualization in my mind of where I was.
And I had a case that I had recently started where the dog had a multi bite history and Mercedes had seen them almost a year before. And I just really needed to talk to someone [00:04:00] about. The safety component of things and, almost to be like, am I crazy or are they not really being safe here?
Yeah.
And it would, it was great because she was able to tell me what they had talked about and they were doing almost none of it from like a basic management standpoint. And so that I was able to have a good follow-up conversation with those clients about what the reality of the situation was.
Yeah. And then she started sending things my way and I started going and actually like spending the night at her house and seeing cases the whole next day, which has been great.
Mercedes: Yeah, that’s, it’s been really fun. And I think that was like, the first one was like in 2021.
Yeah. And I think you remember where you were because we’re like work soulmates.
Like
Jessica: I love that you [00:05:00] guys found each other like that, that you each had this mutual
client
and then you just bonded over this and then became, as you said, work soulmates, which is, I would think it’s rare in the dog training world to meet someone and then you just totally vibe and I’m sure you guys geek out on dog stuff all the time.
I kind of wanna come to one of these sleepovers. Because that sounds really fun actually.
Mercedes: Yeah. Yeah. It’s been really special.
Jessica: Yeah,
Mercedes: But we want more trainers and vets or other type of medical related staff, even vet techs, to have relationships like what we have.
We think it’s really important to the case success too. Yeah.
Micaela: And I think part of why it works so well is because neither of us takes an attitude toward the other’s lane.
And, this is just because we’re at that personal level, Mercedes can call me and [00:06:00] say, what the heck are you doing in this case?
I need this from you.
Yeah.
I’ll hear her and I’ll, really take that in. Obviously if you cold called your GP vet down the road and said anything like that, you’d be blacklisted. Maybe part of it is because I approached things as a, trainer lens first, because that’s where I had started.
Yeah.
And so that that’s, more weaved into my identity where other vets don’t have that lens necessarily. And it’s, hard to get a vet’s time to build that personal relationship. It takes a lot of effort. And Mercedes is a person who will make that effort. But yeah I think it’s a really unique relationship that we have.
Mercedes: Yeah. And there’s a very big push for trainers to stay in their lane
Jessica: Yeah.
Mercedes: In our industry. And I, do totally understand why that is, but I also think that it’s can [00:07:00] be harmful or it just doesn’t allow things to go as well as they could. And Micaela’s not the only vet too, that I have this kind of relationship with.
She’s just, she’s the one that I work with the most, been working with the longest. But I really enjoy the fact that I can call Micaela on a mutual case and be like, especially ’cause I also do boarding, which is cool. Because then I get to see the dogs really how they are. And I can call her and be like, Hey, I’m seeing these kind of behaviors and I know with the previous dog we did X, Y, or Z Med.
Can I try that? They’re at my house, right? And we always have the owner’s like pre permission for making any med changes when it’s a mutual client. And so I can go, Hey can we try this? Where I think in the industry that might be frowned upon, but it really works well for us. And I love it.
’cause two, I can call her anytime I have a lesson with a client and I’m like, Ooh I don’t, know if this med combination is [00:08:00] working the way we want it to. I called Micaela, I said, Hey, we had this session, this is what happened. What do you, think we should try something different?
Jessica: Yeah.
That’s really cool. And it sounds like you guys have a lot of trust between you two, which is why it makes this relationship work so well.
Micaela: And
honestly, I think a, good part of that is that Mercedes has a really good eye for things.
Yeah.
Not that I was like super skeptical to begin with, but it just took time for me to see that.
She’s oh no, there’s something going on here. And there was something going on there. And that happens a couple of times. And then you go, okay you’re reliable. I trust what you have to say. And then she comes to my house and she tells me that my dog is stiff.
Uhhuh
What are you talking about?
My dog is fine. She’s just goofy. And she says, no, your dog is stiff. And I took x-rays and my dog has a bullet lodged in her ass.
Jessica: Has a bullet lodged in her ass.
Micaela: So,
that’s a trust building exercise.
Mercedes: Uhhuh, that was great. I think we, we had a tea [00:09:00] party at your house with a bunch of other professionals and I hollered from like the other room, Micaela, why is your dog stiff?
What?
Micaela: I get distracted driving sometimes because I, this literally happened to me yesterday. I am seeing these people dragging this poor shepherd across the road who’s barely gonna make it ’cause it’s hind into such a wreck. And it’s everything I can do not to unroll my window and holler at them.
Your dog needs help.
Yeah.
And I’m living with this dog who needed help and I, I couldn’t see it because I’m too close. Yes.
Mercedes: That happens sometimes. Yeah, for sure.
Micaela: I think that happens a lot, especially with low grade, chronic things. Is it, your eye just adjusts and so you need somebody who’s really close to it that can give background information and then you need someone who’s not close to it at all to, to look and talk to each other.
Mercedes: And I feel like we need to have a little warning for people too.[00:10:00]
Piggybacking off of what, Kayla was saying of once you can see it. You cannot unsee it.
So there’s our warning that if you do educate yourself in pain and, behavior and gait and posture, that you can’t ever unsee it. And for some people, I’ve had people come to me after doing our workshop and go, you ruined me.
Because now where I used to see just like a happy dog on a walk, I now see a dog who’s really uncomfortable and I see them everywhere and so there’s our little warning.
Jessica: But it’s a good warning. I think it’s a good warning because this sort of stuff is everywhere, and I think we’re just now starting to become more aware of it on, all the different levels.
I’m curious then, Mercedes, where did you learn about the gait analysis and the posture and stuff? Do you wanna share some things over your journey that you found [00:11:00] helpful that other whether it’s a pet parent or other dog professionals out there could go find some of these resources on their own?
Mercedes: Micaela also probably has some as well. So I started out as a horse chick.
Jessica: Yep, me too. So
Mercedes: that is part of where my ability to see things comes from. And so that’s a big piece of it. And then I have done several different courses in posture and some more formal, some informal and gait.
And then just experience watching lots of dogs plays into it. And working with Micaela now for the last five or six years has also we, watch a lot of video together of different dogs, like both our clients and not clients. And it’s really cool because it definitely is like a, an equal playing field for us.
It’s not like, I’m always teaching her, she’s always teaching me. It’s always like she might see something and I don’t, [00:12:00] or she might not see something and I do. And it’s really cool that we can just study the stuff together.
Micaela: This is gonna come out really awkward. Don’t feel any obligation to use this audio.
Is either of you familiar with the Swiss cheese theory of large scale disasters?
Yeah.
It’s almost like we have our own Swiss cheese stack going on and I’m like, am I having a bad day missing something on this video? ’cause everything else about the history is screaming pain. Then I’ll ask Mercedes and she’ll say yeah, it’s right there.
I go, okay. I wasn’t seeing it. I see it now.
Yeah.
And it, it takes a good eye. It doesn’t take a degree. True. And if you work together enough times to learn that you can trust someone’s eye, then I can use the degree for what it’s for. But I, didn’t necessarily need that to see the problem.
So I don’t think anybody should feel like they can’t [00:13:00] advocate for an animal that they think is in pain and say, Hey, there’s, it really seems like there’s pain here.
That’s everyone’s lane. The figuring out what the diagnosis is, then the lane narrows down.
But just being an advocate and helping to list out clinical signs is, that’s everyone’s realm. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Yeah. Great point. Yeah. You don’t need a degree to have a good eye. Because if I can swing that back to what you were saying, Mercedes, that you were a horse girl, right?
You started out with that. Same here. I’ve been around them since I was a child. Anybody who has a horse, or most people that have a horse can tell when their horse is lame. And the first thing you do is walk ’em, trot ’em out, and. None of these people have degrees in horse gates.
But it’s like you’re around it enough that you can tell pretty quickly, Hey, I’ve seen this enough times. It’s this leg. You can tell potentially what it is, but then like you [00:14:00] said, Micaela, like that’s where the diagnostics come in, right? You’re not gonna be able to look at a lean horse and say, yeah, he’s got ring bone.
We can’t say exactly what it’s gonna be just from the outside. You have to do more of those diagnostics. But you can certainly tell when a horse is off and you can tell what leg it is too. You don’t need to be a veterinarian to be able to do that. If we did, then there would be a lot of horses all across the world that would be working through more pain than they.
Probably already are. ’cause it is very much to you in the horse world too. This is my opinion. And I’m curious Mercedes, what your opinion is. I feel like a lot more of the horse world has changed in the sense of being a lot more aware of horses being comfortable and not being comfortable. That there’s a lot more awareness of that now compared to when I was a child and riding horses.
Mercedes: Oh, totally.
Jessica: And so ride it’s different, but I don’t think the dog world has caught up to that
Mercedes: yet. It hasn’t caught up. I totally agree with you. I don’t think it’s quite caught up because we don’t ride dogs. It’s, [00:15:00]
Jessica: that’s true.
Mercedes: People do. It might not be as, as relevant in the immediate scheme of things.
And I also think even the idea that discomfort and pain influence behavior is relatively new’s, not brand baby new, but it’s relatively new. Okay. And, but then there’s this whole other side of that too. It’s not just going, yeah it, can influence behavior. It’s also going okay, but what do we do about it?
How do we find that out? What what steps do we take? And the reason we do this workshop is because most veterinarians don’t have a super great education in the more subtle signs. Like Micaela can talk about if you take a dog to your average GP and what that looks like.
If you’re like, Hey, my dog’s having behavior problems and my trainer wants me to ask you about pain, and what that might look like versus what it might look like, that Micaela might [00:16:00] do differently if that same person came to her.
Micaela: Say try not to assign percentages. I’m tempted to though, but a large portion of that scenario that first scenario where you take your dog in, you going back you, schedule your appointment on the phone or by the internet, how many times do we tell you how much time we plan for you to have or how much time the vet’s gonna be in the room?
Actually,
yeah.
15,
20 minutes at at the vet in the room, or maybe even less, maybe less than 10 minutes.
And. Most of that time the animal’s like in the corner, hugging the owner’s legs or frozen, being examined, palpated, but not comfortable emotionally. And that’s even before they walk in the exam room, they walk in the lobby and who [00:17:00] knows what happened five minutes before.
An adrenaline rush is super common. Adrenaline is a painkiller.
A five to 10 minute interaction in an eight by 10 exam room on a single is a terrible way to find chronic pain. It’s even with lamenesses that just happened and 10 minutes ago the dog was not using the leg. They walk through the door, they get in the exam room and the dog’s walking around looking fine air quotes for people who are audio only
uhhuh
because they just got this huge adrenaline rush and their body is telling them, don’t look weak.
So I, almost never start in person. If I have started in person, it’s because they’ve accidentally come to me in that GP model because I offer both.
Jessica: So
Micaela, you were saying that your first time with your patient is not always in person. Do you do something virtual first or how do [00:18:00] you first get information about the dog if it is not, for example a, referral from Mercedes?
Micaela: The,
first thing I do, I’m so lucky to have somebody that coordinates my appointments for me these days.
So I, my very first interaction most of the time is watching videos that they sent to me of their dog moving Oh. I don’t read the vet records. I don’t read the history they gave me. I watch the videos.
Oh,
so if I’m seeing something and then I read the history, I, it wasn’t because I biased myself. And it’s funny and it’s really satisfying when it happens and I go, oh, that dog probably has stifled disease.
And then I read that they’ve had bilateral TPLs. I’m like, okay, I’m not crazy. But that, helps me to not be biased. And all those videos, I ask ’em to take them where the dog is comfortable, where the dog has good traction. Veterinary exam floors are great to be [00:19:00] cleaned, terrible for traction. And so that allows me to catch so much more than I do when I do it in the reverse order.
And especially when I do it where I do the exam in an exam room first, and then they send me videos because I can’t really look for the nuance of the area of interest if I’ve done it. Example.
Jessica: Yeah.
It’s almost like you don’t know exactly what you are gonna be looking for because if the dog just shows up in the exam room, it’s almost like you’re bombarded, you, everybody’s bombarded with so many different things and it just makes it even harder to actually know which path to go down.
Where, are you, what are you gonna start looking at? And the fact that you get the videos ahead of time. And then later the dog comes in, you already have an idea of okay, I think it might be this. So then that exam is more fruitful because now you’re actually looking or potentially doing some better [00:20:00] diagnostics where you have a greater chance of finding some answers.
Micaela: And
if they only had five minutes of tolerance for me, or five minutes before they were gonna shut down or get defensive, I can use those five minutes in the best way possible. Rather than spending those five minutes getting the dog’s temperature and then running out of tolerance for anything else.
Yep.
So we also we talked about like I see cases at Mercedes House where we have an open field to work with. And I will also meet clients at sniff spots or I’ll go to their house. And that gives me a chance to watch even more. I was just at a house the other day where we were just, we were doing some dog intros and I was like, I’ve seen your dog skip on their back leg like 20 times throughout this appointment, and it didn’t happen on the videos.
So even the videos are not foolproof. So I combine the videos with in-person open field, as many opportunities as I can get, [00:21:00] and we may or may not ever do an exam in an exam room. If I can examine that dog in the open field where they’re comfortable and I can send it to go take a break and come back and.
Not overwhelm their system.
Yeah.
But that’s, it is a privilege as a very specific way I’ve set up my business. I do not expect the whole veterinary industry to do that. And so that’s why teams are so important because there are not enough vets, there is not enough time. And so what we need are more people that feel comfortable being advocates and bringing that information prepackaged into the exam room so that the vet can process things more linearly without having to sift through everything themself and then hopefully arrive at the conclusion we’re hoping that they do, which is dog meets pain medication trial probably.
But if you’ve got five, 10 minutes with a vet to [00:22:00] convince them that your dog has this like nebulous pain syndrome that’s really only presenting with X, y, and Z behaviors, and they’re not limping, please give me six weeks of a medication that could cause them bloody diarrhea, vomiting, X, Y, z, adverse effects.
That’s a hard sell, and we’re all trying to protect our license.
Jessica: Yeah.
Yeah. It goes both ways because the vet doesn’t want to, it’s the do no harm, right? So it’s like they feel limited by that. But then the client is there and they are really seeking out that help. And so sometimes those two things don’t align.
And I also like how you noted how not every vet can do what you do, but I think it also goes to show how maybe the whole veterinary model is one that is perhaps not as conducive to dogs as it could be. And I know there are more vets who [00:23:00] are doing home visits. I think specifically because of the cost of being a veterinarian and running a vet hospital and so forth.
I have known some vets who, who left that? And then they just went back to home visits and that’s what they do. And Avett who does that could totally do what you’re doing meeting at a sniff spot or where the dog is more comfortable. And of course there’s gonna be some limitations there, right?
You’re not gonna do an MRI in a sniff spot. Of course, we all know that. There’s other medical professionals that you can go to get that done. But from what you’re saying, there are also a lot of other ways that veterinarians can look at dogs. Is how i’ll, is how i’ll, I will word that.
Mercedes: We need, I think we need more Micaela’s in the world for sure.
And I’m sure she would be willing to chat with any veterinarians who are curious about that, about getting started down that road [00:24:00] of, being able to especially help the, behavior guys and the chronic pain and, that kind of stuff. ’cause yeah, we need, there’s not enough.
Jessica: I could not agree more.
I could not agree more. And I love that you guys are you’ve done some seminars and you have another one at the end of, February and I’m gonna make sure we get the link to that in the show notes so that people are aware that you’re doing that seminar. But of course we’ll also put your contact info so that other people can contact you guys.
But yeah, I could not agree more that we need a lot more Micaela’s in the world. And the fact that you and Micaela are so open to sharing what you know is really a gift.
Micaela: Thank
you. If there is one person in the world that you can become best friends with, it is your veterinary pt. I will say that.
True.
Mercedes: Yeah. Yeah, we have veterinarians, veterinary PTs. Yeah, those are like Micaela mentioned, like a team earlier, and it really is so helpful to have a team. So we have some veterinary PTs that we refer to locally [00:25:00] and chat with. And then there’s a local neurologist that we refer to a lot.
And it’s really nice to have sort of a group of people and there’s some GPS as well that we work with a lot. And it’s nice to have people that we can refer to and bounce stuff off of and who we know are not going to be dismissive, so that’s what our workshop was born of is just so like you have the issues in the exam room, right? And that’s just how the industry is. But then there’s just this lack of understanding of how subtle pain can be and how hard it can be to get things diagnosed. And that’s why we created our little workshop seminar where people could come and learn about. What are some red flags?
And there’s video and pictures and case studies of [00:26:00] Hey, like these things aren’t normal. Here’s what is normal. So that people can be better armed to to advocate and go, Hey I know the exam was normal, but something isn’t right. And I’ve had lots of personal experience and experience professionally with this and my now 6-year-old American pit bull terrier that I have.
I think I thought something was wrong with him from maybe like 20 weeks old, I would say. I kept doing gait videos of him and sending them to my friends and being like, am I crazy or is something wrong? And people kept going, oh he’s just so awkward puppy. Just an awkward puppy. And I was like, okay, he’s just an awkward puppy.
And then we started doing heavier training. We were training in agility and bite sports. And he had a couple episodes where his, like his back got sore. Like it was very [00:27:00] obviously like just an acute back soreness. And I think in total I had gone to three or four different gps, three different PTs.
And we’ve seen two neurologists. And the first neurologist so the first one of the PTs that I went to was finally okay I think you might wanna consider an MR mri, and I wanna clarify that he was never lame.
Like he was never limping. So I take that back. So he was what I would consider to be lame and what some people would consider to be lame, but he was never limping.
And it was very, subtle. 98% of people could not see it. In fact, I don’t ever think I had a single GP say that they could see it. And when we went to the first neurologist on the direction of the pt Hey, you could try, she actually warned me that they might not even wanna do an MRI.
And I went and I said, we are doing the MRI [00:28:00] and I actually got pushback. They did not want to do it, and I, had to push to get them to take my money and do the MRI. And it turned out that he had lumbar sacral disease. So the disc in that area and the lumbar sacral, which is the very last disc before it goes into their hip, was bad.
And it had, it was interesting ’cause the neurologist upon the exam and initially seeing the, MRI said, oh he doesn’t have any nerve impingement. I thought, okay, that’s interesting. And then the radiologist report came back and it said that he very clearly, did have nerve impingement.
So it was also a case of where I think the physical exam of the dog overrode the MRI interpretation for the vet who saw the dog in person because his exam, his neurological exam was completely normal.
Jessica: Interesting. Interesting.
Mercedes: And so that [00:29:00] obviously retired him from all of the heavy duty sports, unfortunately.
And it’s interesting. He’ll have acute episodes. His pain is mostly managed. And then I got a new neurologist who I now send all of my clients to who did a dynamic MRI, which is different, where they actually move the dog in the MRI machine in different positions. And she had mentioned that she thought based on the MRI, the dynamic MRI, that he was actually in more pain than he let on, because when she put him in extension, so like the dog might be scrunched up, their legs are close together.
That’s not extension, that’s maybe you’d call it collection. I don’t know. Micaela can correct me, but extension is where they stretch their legs out. And that’s a common position that is painful for dogs with LS disease. And she said that his heart rate and blood pressure skyrocketed when they stretched him out and he’s under anesthesia.
Wow. [00:30:00] And that was like a really big clue to me. Oh, like I need to be very cognizant of his pain levels. And I was chronically dismissed.
And people are just like, oh, you are just seeing things ’cause you wanna see things Mercedes, that’s how you are.
But there was definitely something going on.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that you shared that story ’cause you have this personal connection and the professional connection to it. But also that you just shared more about queso. ’cause I’ve seen him on your, and he is a hunk of a dog.
I will say that. Wow, is that dog handsome? That, so he caught my eye and then I saw that you did competition obedience with him. And I was always so impressed because you don’t see a lot of American pit bull terriers in dog sports. Some dog sports, but not, definitely not a lot in, competition obedience.
And I’m wondering if you shared a little bit about [00:31:00] that. We’ll get back to all the pain and medical stuff in just a bit, but it’s something that they’re underrepresented but they’re totally capable of doing it. I have a whole background in pit bulls and so I know how smart and driven they are and yeah.
And so I guess I just, yeah, for my own selfish reasons, I want more people to know that you could do some high level stuff with these dogs.
Mercedes: Yeah. And he’s actually my second American pit bull terrier that I’ve done dog sports with. So my first one, I started with her like a, when she was a little bit older, more consistently.
So we didn’t go as far. But she was fabulous. And then I actually got queso for the purpose of doing like bite sports and competition obedience and stuff with him. He was very slow to mature. So I I obviously love him and I love competing with him and I love training him.
It wasn’t always like that. I, think it, there’s a reason why they’re not commonly used. And it’s, [00:32:00] it,
Jessica: I didn’t even think about the slow to mature part.
Mercedes: It’s slow to mature and
Jessica: are,
Mercedes: they’re not golden retrievers. They’re not Labradors. They’re not shelties. Yeah. They’re not border colleagues.
And I, feel like the learning curve for many things is a lot steeper. And then you add to it sort of untraditional training methods.
So not training how majority of other people are training, competition, obedience, and maybe lots of heavy corrections, things like that. And so it’s also training it differently.
And then I have a dog who does not have a brain, like a golden retriever. There are sleepless nights and like blood, sweat, and tears sometimes, but. Also when things come together, it’s so much more rewarding too because you had to work so hard for it.
Jessica: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
The slow to mature, like I [00:33:00] said, that is something of course I lived with that with my pit bulls as well where it just, I used to joke that my last pit bull, that it felt like I lived with a 2-year-old toddler for eight years because that’s what my life felt like with that dog.
It was just like this constant like love-hate relationship where I thought he was the most hysterical dog I’d ever met, but he was always getting himself into trouble all the time. And then yet he was the sweetest and most loyal . so I wanna go back to some of the part of our conversation. So we covered a lot of why if we send a dog to the vet like why they may not get the diagnosis that they, need.
And I wanna ask in terms of behaviors that are indicative of pain. So let’s go back a little bit to what are some of the things that either a dog professional or a pet parent is going to see in their dog that should be a cause for concern, but is likely not a cause of [00:34:00] concern for a lot of people.
I’m curious if we could start there.
Mercedes: Honestly,
you are gonna hate this answer, but it’s everything. Every time I get a dog with a behavior problem, that is immediately where my mind goes Now I would say 80 to 90% of all my behavior cases have an underlying medical component. And so that’s immediately where my mind goes.
So it’s not just one thing. There’s usually what I’ll try to look at a case is from like a holistic perspective there might be like four or five factors that point me that go, okay, that’s red flag for pain, red flag for pain. And especially once I have a couple of those factors, that’s going to dictate how hard I push the owner to go see someone like Dr.
Young.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mercedes: Sometimes I collect the red flags at a virtual consult and it’s like immediate. And I’m like, I need you to go see her right now. And other times I collect those red flags over the course of [00:35:00] working together through a few lessons and I’m like, Ooh, okay.
So sometimes it’s not always right away, sometimes it’s after a couple times seeing the dog in person maybe, or getting more information from the owner that maybe wasn’t given at the consult. And so as some examples, okay behavior that starts later in life. That’s a big one. So maybe they were never reactive or sound sensitive as a young dog, but now they’re like, even, and when I say later in life, it might only be like three or four years old.
Like it doesn’t have to be old dog stuff. Okay. The older they are though, that it starts the bigger of a red flag. It is,
Jessica: yes.
Mercedes: For me. So it might be, yeah. Stuff later in life. Stuff that’s worse towards the end of the day.
Jessica: Yep.
Mercedes: That’s a big one. And then resource guarding body handling something I feel very strongly about in general is that there are multiple factors [00:36:00] that play into a behavior problem at any time.
And I think we could sum it up to be the overall level of the dog’s stress. And so a lot of times we’re looking at ways to reduce that dog’s overall stress load so we can reduce the behavior problem that we’re seeing. And I try to tell my clients and my colleagues that being in chronic pain or even, or acute pain, any kind of discomfort is going to add to that stress load exponentially, which is one of the reasons why it’s so important to look at.
And sometimes much more deeply than we, we think we might need to because that can make a huge difference in our cases of, can we change this problem? So you have all the behavior problems, right? Especially any forms of aggression, intra household aggression, noise phobia or noise sensitivity is a huge one.
Okay? Even separation anxiety. Like [00:37:00] literally just all the things. Okay. But then we look, we go, okay, we have these behavior problems, and then we have a dog who sits sloppy. And for someone who doesn’t know what a sloppy sit is, it’s where instead of having sitting down on their butt with their, hind legs tucked evenly under them, they might like, you have the extreme version where maybe one leg is totally turned out, or both legs are tucked under them and the bottoms of their leg isn’t underneath them, right?
It is like their butts rolled under them. Or you have a dog who’s just even leaning a little bit, one side or the other, right? But
Micaela: Mercedes. Mercedes, but that’s just how insert breed here sits.
Jessica: You’re
right, there’s very special ways that dogs will sit.
Mercedes: So that’s one of our, that’s Micaela and I have some soap boxes, and one of our soap boxes is. Just because it’s common does not make [00:38:00] it normal.
Jessica: Thank you. I love that you said that because I will say my dog is half Chihuahua, and of course they skip a lot.
And what do you know? My dog’s got Luxating Patellas since that’s the whole issue I’m dealing with, but lots of my Chihuahua clients over the years oh, they just walk like that. Oh, it’s just a cute little skip. He’s just excited. Yep. Those are the things that
Mercedes: internal screaming,
Jessica: Those are the things that I’ve heard.
Yes, of course. Because nobody, I think it’s also from the client’s perspective, I don’t know any person who would knowingly ignore their dog being in discomfort I don’t know anybody who would. Especially somebody who seeks out professional training. They obviously are invested in their dog on many different levels, and so I think also part of the reason why this whole topic is harder to land with people is because not only can it show up as [00:39:00] many different things, but then there’s also this element of your dog might really be in discomfort here, and then, of course falls on the owner to take care of it.
The dog cannot. Take itself to the vet, it cannot sign itself up for physiotherapist exam. It, can’t, it’s up to the owner to do it. And of course there are, it could be some issues in terms of what sort of resources they have and, so forth. That could be one factor that’s holding them back.
But I think there’s also a little bit of maybe embarrassment or shame or fear of judgment that like their dog has been uncomfortable this whole time and they thought it was one thing. And I guess also what I’m trying to say is that I think sometimes when people brush it off, it’s also a little bit of a defense mechanism.
Of oh yeah, they just always do that. Because I don’t think that anybody would knowingly want to not take care of their dog.
Micaela: I hear
by give permission for anyone to plagiarize my dog’s, but bullet story great. ’cause it’s so [00:40:00] helpful to be able to share with people. I went to school for this and I didn’t see it and it had been going on for years.
Don’t worry about it. That happens a lot.
Mercedes: Yeah. I definitely had some tears like explaining to owners Hey, like I’m seeing these things and all these things kind of point to that your dog is experiencing pain. And I definitely had some clients like cry and especially when too, when I point out what I’m seeing to them.
In the moment or in a video, and I go they have gait, IM postural adaptations that tell us that something is going on. And then they go home and they start watching their dog more closely. I’ve had some people come back after like maybe a first in person with me and just start crying and, they feel like a terrible pet person.
And that’s sometimes [00:41:00] really hard. ’cause that’s not my goal. I’m not here to shame people or make them feel bad. And so that can sometimes be a little bit hard when they uncover that. And you definitely also have people that just get really defensive. I don’t deal with that as much, I don’t think Micaela does either.
Because usually when they’re coming to see us, they’re a little bit more open to all the possibilities and maybe feeling overwhelmed. And they’re just like, okay, I have a potential answer for this, problem that I’m dealing with.
Jessica: Yeah. And I’m glad that you said that. Yeah. Our, goal when we do any of this is absolutely not to shame the people who have these dogs.
The whole reason why we’re doing this is because we’re trying to advocate for the dog because they can’t express in just plain English to us exactly how they’re feeling. And they are expressing these in other ways. And then that is often why us as behavior professionals are being [00:42:00] called in is because, hey, we’re living with a behavior issue that’s really hard for us, whether it’s leash reactivity or resource guarding or issues being handled.
And so then it is part of our job to figure out, okay, what’s contributing to this behavior? And then what can we do to, start modifying these? What are some interventions and things that we could do? And this is one of the biggest interventions that we have. Because if we didn’t do any of this, then the dog’s behavior would continue, right?
It doesn’t always matter how much training we do. And that’s, I think the hard part of why this can be really challenging to get across is because so many people view this as the dog needs more training. And we are looking at it like, oh my gosh, don’t even pay me to train your dog. Please, take the money to go to the vet.
Like it, that is where your money is better spent.
Mercedes: [00:43:00] I, have cases literally exactly like that where I actually don’t, oftentimes it’s a combination of all of those things, but I’ve definitely had hand a handful of cases where it’s I don’t want to continue working with you right now because I do not think training is actually.
Like the core issue here. I think it is something physical going on with your dog and especially when the client does not have unlimited resources, it’s hey let’s, use those resources in the place that I think is going to do the most good most bang for your buck, so to speak.
And that’s where I push them. And, but then I am also there to help advocate so they can come to me and be like, Hey, my vet said these things and this is what we did. And I can go, okay let’s, go see a PT also so depending on what was said yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. So Micaela, I’m wondering if you could chime in and talk to us a little bit more about pain med trials, because I know that’s often like [00:44:00] some pretty low hanging fruit, right?
It’s something where it’s like, Hey, we could do this to see if the dogs’ behavior changes, if they do a pain med trial. But what I found really interesting with your work and how you do things is that you do pain med trials for much longer than I have heard. From like the traditional do it for 10 days and let’s see what happens.
And I would love for you to expand on that of pain med trials in general, why it’s a great option, and then what are the best, most effective ways to do this, where we’re gonna get the most information.
Micaela: Absolutely.
Welcome to my TED talk.
It was good to say. You can see it on your face right now.
I do find it helpful to think of it in terms of why do we wait six weeks for an SSRI to have an effect and SSRI does not work because it increases serotonin.
It works because increasing serotonin triggers the brain to make changes over time. [00:45:00] And time is a factor. We can’t cheat. That’s just biology. So it takes time for gene expression to change. That’s what we’re going for with chronic pain. We need gene change expression or gene expression change so that these things that have been going on for months and months have a chance to rewire.
It’s not the same thing as my dog was limping for the past week. Okay, here’s 10 days of an anti-inflammatory. Let us know if it doesn’t work for some reason.
Yeah.
The brain has not had time to make significant changes, if it’s been going on for a short period of time. So people are really great at seeing and recognizing acute pain and we, really do a subpar job, in my opinion, of recognizing and addressing chronic pain.
Part of why I feel so strongly about this is it took me 10 years to get to a diagnosis of my own chronic pain, and I’m a human who can explain what’s [00:46:00] happening.
So one or two weeks, especially if you’re a working person, is not even enough time for you to really make decent observations.
We don’t really have great standardized outcome measures for what you’re looking for. It’s often not even part of the conversation in the exam room. It’s let us know how they do not. Okay. You sit down and think critically about three things that we’re looking for measurable change. Even the, like very thorough arthritis related research.
There’s not very many that are standardized in terms of outcome measures. So that’s one thing that a trainer can help with if they’ve been seeing X, Y, and Z to help the owner go, okay let’s, measure these specific things. How often are you seeing this? Can you make a log? If you can’t make a log, can you just take a picture of your dog every time they do it and then look through your photo album and see if you’ve been taking fewer photos over time.
So six to eight weeks is where we’re trying to [00:47:00] push things. Three months is more ideal. Again, it’s hard to convince a vet who doesn’t see the problem to dispense medications and prescribe medications for that long with the added layer of a lot of these patients. We’re talking about doing this with being difficult to handle in a traditional veterinary setting.
If you want to be doing the gold standard, which is blood work follow up. So it, it takes a conversation. It takes allowing time for the conversation of, okay, here are the things that could go wrong if we are doing this trial to see their response without a diagnosis, do you wanna do that or not? And it, it depends on where they are in the process.
So for a lot of people, I will do an anti-inflammatory and gabapentin, and then we get coverage of if there is something that’s inflamed, we’re gonna bring that down. We’re gonna reduce the amount of signals that something is wrong going through the spinal cord. We’re gonna reduce the [00:48:00] perception of the pain in the brain.
And we’ve got most of our bases covered, three outta four. Gabapentin is a really safe medication. Some of the anesthesiologists are not so hot on gabapentin right now because it’s not great for acute pain. But it can be helpful for chronic pain. So you’ll see a little bit of conversation around that right now going on.
But if, an owner is willing to accept the risk and the veterinarian is willing to dispense, then you just need time to see how it’s going to work. Because both an anti-inflammatory and gabapentin are working in the brain too. And again, it just takes time for those genes to express differently.
And it takes time for that animal to go through this activity. So many times before, the brain kind of relaxes and goes, actually, that doesn’t hurt anymore. ’cause there’s gonna be this guarding that goes on for a while. I don’t jump down from a wall that’s more than two feet because it’s hurt me so [00:49:00] many times.
Even though I’ve done PT and I’m on pain meds I, anticipate that it’s going to hurt and it would take me going through like intentional exposure to get to the point where that’s comfortable, if it’s going to be comfortable. You can’t talk a, dog through that. So it takes even longer for a dog than it does for a person.
And we know we’re taking something and we know there’s the cognitive element even in human pain treatment. Doing the cognitive component along with the PT takes longer than two weeks. I don’t really know how we ever expected two weeks to do it.
Jessica: Yeah.
That’s good. That’s a good point. And I’m glad that you shared a little bit more about how these behavior patterns, of course, are attached to the gene expression. That’s what you’re, expanding on there, right? The dog’s body has been so used to operating any certain way or has created certain associations of, if I move in this way or when this event happens, or this time of the day, I feel like this.
So then [00:50:00] therefore, even if the dog is technically not feeling that same degree of discomfort, the behavior pattern is still there. Is that what you’re referring to?
Micaela: Absolutely.
And a lot of those postural adaptations will continue on too. If you never seek out pt the brain isn’t the only thing that learns, the spinal cord learns too, and so it will keep going into the position that didn’t hurt as much.
They’re not going to just realize one day, oh, actually I can flex my leg when I sit.
Got, you. Have to practice that with them.
Jessica: Yes.
Yes. Yes. I’m glad that you Okay. Yes. ’cause you’re saying this. And then of course it makes sense from like muscle memory standpoint, right? The way that we use our bodies.
And I did record an episode with Christina Rock, who is a New Zealand, and she is a veterinarian who’s also a physiotherapist. And her and I talked a lot about this. It’s a slightly different conversation, but some overlap. So I’m so excited to [00:51:00] have all these conversations on this. Yeah. I wanted to talk more about the physical therapy part of this with her because, and I’m glad that you brought it up here so we could do a little plug on it, because that’s part of it too. Because if the dog has been using their body a certain way, just because you get them on pain meds, it doesn’t mean that is fixing it, especially if they have been favoring a leg for a little bit.
The muscle tone’s gonna be different on that leg. And so you need to do some physical therapy to balance that out, to have the best effect overall.
Mercedes: Yeah
and I also just like some points to do the most good, the least amount of effort to one really big thing is, I think every trainer should be somewhat educated in pet insurance and like some of the generalities of it and be telling our clients, like even in our consult about pet insurance and being like, [00:52:00] Hey, just so you know, lots of my behavior cases have underlying medical component and sometimes flushing that out can get expensive.
And if you want to do that, it might be best to get your dog under insurance, right? So that if something comes up we have more flexibility financially. So that is a conversation I have with every single one of my clients and I just give them just a general rundown of what pet insurance looks like and there’s a Facebook group for pet insurance that I will send them to a lot of times to compare.
Policy advisor is cool. It’s like PAW spelled so like pause.
Jessica: Okay.
Mercedes: So you’re not really necessarily recommending a specific insurance, but you are talking about, ’cause there’s some of them do things a little differently and you just wanna give them like a heads up of Hey, just so you know, in my experience, like this might matter to you.
This might not matter to you, but [00:53:00] I just wanna make sure you’re aware without them having to read the fine print, you can give them a heads up on what to expect. But I think that can be super like game changer for a lot of people to be able to flush this stuff out.
Micaela: Mercedes didn’t end up at three PTs and two neurologists out of the change in her back pocket.
Mercedes: Yeah. It was all funded by insurance.
Micaela: I gosh, practically got on my knees begging this owner of a 16 week old German Shepherd, they got out of a back of a truck yesterday to get insurance before they’re gonna use it, they will.
And so many cases where we would like an MRI, it’s never gonna be an option because by the time we’re talking about it, it’s preexisting.
And MRIs are really expensive.
Mercedes: And sometimes we don’t need one. So Micaela and [00:54:00] I too, like very fond of is it going to change what we’re gonna do? If we do this diagnostic, is it going to change what we’re gonna do anyway? And sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes and sometimes too, especially if there’s just like a, curiosity isn’t the right word, but a, the owner needs some confirmation.
We don’t always get it, even if we do all the diagnostics, but it sometimes too it could actually influence a euthanasia decision, right? If we’re having severe behavior problems where that’s maybe even already on the table and then we discover the dog has a really terrible degenerative disease that is not going to get better no matter what we do, it might be better to make that decision sooner rather than later.
Micaela: And the funny thing is that goes both ways, right? Mercedes and I have a case of we’ve had multiple conversations about euthanasia because of this dog damaging people that he lives with. [00:55:00] And when they got their MRI results, they made significant management changes, understanding that this was something that was always gonna be at risk of flaring up.
And it helped them to understand that this was not a training issue, this is a medical issue that. Is really complex and if they’re going to live with it, they need to adjust to living with it. And at the same time I sometimes will do my kitchen sink, hail Mary pain management, where depending on what we might see on an MRI, it doesn’t really matter.
If the animal doesn’t respond to pain management, they’re still going to be dangerous. Results of the MRI is not gonna change the outcome there. And so sometimes I’ll take every class of drug I have usually minus opioids, and layer those in as quickly as the dog can tolerate it to get them an answer for whether this is going to respond or not.
And [00:56:00] luckily I don’t have to do that very often, but it is cheaper than the MRI easier on the dog from a visiting the vet standpoint and gives us more information about actual prognosis.
‘ cause if you can only afford an MRI and nothing more, like what does it matter if a steroid injection was gonna help, if that’s the end of your budget or what does it matter if a decompression surgery would help if you can’t take the next step, now you’re just living with the information that there’s something you can do that you’re not able to do.
Jessica: Yeah,
very true. Yeah. Like you said, or if it is something like a spinal surgery and somebody knows I’m not gonna do that with my dog. If that would have been the only treatment option for whatever, and the way that they would be treating that anyway would be through pain management and physical therapy and maybe some other modalities like acupuncture and so forth.
That if that would’ve been the treatment route anyways then sometimes it doesn’t [00:57:00] make sense to do the full MRI just to learn that yep, it was the spinal thing. But we weren’t gonna do the surgery anyways we were only gonna do these other things. So I think I think that makes a lot of sense.
Micaela: Would
so much rather someone spent $6,000 on PT and acupuncture treatments than spend $6,000 on an MRI and than be able to do nothing.
Very true. Very true. Yeah. ’cause it actually did more for the dog’s comfort and wellbeing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the dog insurance is an important thing, so I’m gonna make sure that I get those things referenced in the show notes too, so people know where to find those.
’cause that’s, that is really important and I would agree. It’s a really smart thing to include in the consultations too. I like how you mentioned that. What are some other things like let’s say if somebody just doesn’t have a lot of financial resources to help their dog if someone’s gonna be like, I can’t afford a surgery, can’t afford a CT scan, an MRI these are things I cannot do. What are some [00:58:00] things that we could point them towards
Mercedes: the big huge soap box for both of us Just to start right off, and it generally can be really inexpensive, is cover up the damn slippery floors.
We cannot say that enough. We cannot say that loud enough. It,
Micaela: your dog does not care about your internal design plans.
Mercedes: And slippery floors can be really a degradation of not only the physical quality of the dog’s life, but the emotional. It’d be like you living on ice all the time.
Like how stressful is it when there’s a snow or an ice storm and you’re trying to walk out to your car from your house when it’s slippery how scary that is. And that is sometimes what it’s like for dogs living on our really pretty, like I have gorgeous vinyl plank floors. Gorgeous. And they are completely covered.
You can barely see them.
It’s, yeah, it’s one of our soap boxes. It’s
Micaela: I think it’s, not only a cause of problems, but it makes plenty of other [00:59:00] problems worse.
I really think puppy appointments, we need to be talking about traction. I wasn’t practicing 20 years ago, but I really feel 20 years ago we probably didn’t have this many back issues in young dogs.
The amount of back issues I run into in young dogs feels disproportionate.
That’s a good point. ’cause we have been really doing away with carpet in the US we all had carpet, I did my houses. We didn’t have
Mercedes: wall to wall.
Jessica: Hey, I even had the green and the blue carpet at one point like, way back.
Remember when that was the rage? And our dog lived outside too. We have to say that at least my dogs did. Like my first spent
Mercedes: a lot of time.
Jessica: Yeah. Spent a lot of time totally in the yard, which of course you’re dealing with dirt, grass, cement not indoor slick floors.
How a lot of dogs are spending more of their time indoors now. You are right Micaela there are probably, yeah. There is a lot more back issues with dogs and you do have to wonder if some of this has to do with the fact that they’re living indoors and a lot of times on really slick floors.
Yeah.
Micaela: And
[01:00:00] I practice in Seattle where there are a lot of three story town homes with slick floors and slick stairs.
And I walk in so many times the first thing outta my mouth is we’ve gotta fix the flooring. Like
I can’t watch your dog live this way. I’m sorry.
Mercedes: And if money is a really big issue, Goodwill yoga mats, man.
A lot of yoga mats you can just throw in the washing machine too so yeah. Finding sales on rugs and things like that too. But yeah, yoga mats can be really really helpful and
Micaela: people will have carpets, but they’ll be placed to protect their furniture and not their dog. So if I’m trying to negotiate with someone who like, feels pretty strongly that they love their hardwood floors, I’m saying, okay, fine.
Can we have a nice good traction mat by the door where your dog gets excited to go outside? Nice. Good traction at the bottom of the furniture where they’re jumping on and launching off and at the landing and the I actually don’t know the word for the [01:01:00] opposite of a landing of the stairs, but yeah, the top and the bottom of the stairs.
And that’s gonna significantly cut down on the dissipation of force being abnormal every time they’re doing those throughout the day for years on end.
Jessica: Yeah.
Great point. Great point. Okay, so we’ve got flooring as being a, a big one, which I will say you’re right.
And you gave some great suggestions. Goodwill and I, I. Furnished my most recent apartment through almost all hand me down stuff. So getting things for free online. Lots of people give stuff away for free. Or I went to Goodwill and I did same thing. I got some yoga mats there and I got some other rugs and runners and different things.
And so you are right, there are some ways that you can change your flooring by putting things on top of it without it being really cost prohibitive. And for those who do have more resources and wanna have something that looks nicer, there’s definitely a lot of options out there in terms of like nicer runners and things like that.
And Micaela gave some great ideas for where to place those too. Okay, so we’ve got that. What else do we have?
Micaela: I have
a client who’s a trainer and [01:02:00] keyed me in on the Galen Myotherapy courses for owners. If you’re a trainer and you wanna do their course and get certified, I think that’s excellent.
But directing owners to their $20 dog movement of the canine online court, sorry, 20 pounds do the conversion. There’ll be more in US dollars. I could
tell you that. Yes, it
not.
Okay. Then that gives the owner a framework for watching day to day and builds their advocacy skills so that when they’re going into their general practice vet, they’re not just saying.
My trainer said that it sounds like the dog’s uncomfortable and it’s sorry, that’s not helpful information. But I’ve noticed when he gets up from a nap, he is holding his head really low for the first three minutes or anything else to that effect that’s more actionable. And so I think that can give them a really good lens.
They also have a massage course for owners, which I think is lovely. [01:03:00]
Jessica: Super cool.
Okay, I’m gonna make sure for the listeners, we’ll put all the links of everything so nobody has to worry about where they’re gonna find it.
Micaela: And then
there’s different, tiers depending on the budget too, for other virtual options. So zero pain philosophy has a 99 euro consultation with an anesthesiologist to do a pain med consultation. So I was thinking about it a little bit. I was like, if you have a vet who’s still terrified of acetaminophen, that might be a good option for you to say, Hey, can I pay for this consultation for you to discuss these things?
They’re much more acetaminophen friendly. They’ll probably share some information that may help to release that prescription to your availability. And then the Canine conditioning coach website will do virtual gait analysis and she is very active in the PT world. And that one’s a little on the higher end, but she’s super qualified.
Mercedes: Yeah.
Jessica: For making those assessments.
Mercedes: There’s also a Facebook group [01:04:00] that’s really, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s called Canine Conditioning Coach. Is that
Micaela: the dog Body Awareness and Conditioning exercises one?
Mercedes: Yeah. Yeah. She is one of the admins for that Facebook group actually. Yeah,
Micaela: I think that’s a, I think that they have been trying to structure the gate questions in that group a little bit more lightly.
Mercedes: But it can be like the search option, like looking or looking through what advice has been given in the past. It’s very, good information and they control very much what kind of advice is being given, which is not always the case in Facebook groups. They shut off comments a lot and just have admins who are qualified to give advice, respond. I really like that group as a resource for people as well, just for general stuff off.
Jessica: That’s great.
Micaela: And
then we should definitely mention, which, let’s try not to step in anything sticky here. There are a lot of behavior, telemedicine options. Because there are not enough board certified practitioners it’s not my [01:05:00] experience that those include much physical assessment.
So if the concern is that they need more physical assessment to address a behavior concern, you’re probably better off starting with the virtual gate resources and then going the behavior route. Yeah. Especially if resources are limited.
True. And if it’s something that needs to be done virtually, right?
There isn’t a practitioner right in their area, and so they’re trying to get more information virtually about what could be going on with their dog and then bring those findings to their own gp, then that makes a lot of sense. That maybe it isn’t about getting the dog on fluoxetine for their aggression, that it’s, there’s something potentially wrong physically with the dog that we need to be looking at first, which, yeah, you’re right.
Especially when we’re doing those consults, those behavior telehealth appointments. That they aren’t seeing [01:06:00] the dog and they’re not seeing the dog from different angles and videos. In fact, I don’t know that I’m not saying none of them do video review. I think some of them do, but I think more of them are reading notes.
You have to submit more paperwork so they aren’t getting that kind of live dynamic view. Not just saying live ’cause it’s recording that dynamic view of a dog
or often
the video they’re asking for is of the problematic behavior.
And I’m sure people would come at me for this, I very rarely ask for video of the problematic behavior unless it seems like I need more context or I need to hear more about the body language.
And the owner has a hard time describing it.
Yeah. And,
but I would very much prefer they spent their efforts getting me video of the dog’s movement than putting the dog in a situation to be able to take a video of a problem.
Mercedes: And it depends on what the problem is. So like I get car riding problems quite a bit, right?
And that’s a big one that I think has a pain component. And wanna see a video of the dog riding in the car, like what that looks like. Because it’s odds are they’re not eliciting the [01:07:00] behavior just for me, right? They’re probably gonna have to put the dog in the car for something anyway.
And I’m like, video it. And I wanna see the dog jumping in and out of the car. What does that look like? And is that giving us some clues? Same thing, stairs, sometimes I’ll have, people are like, oh yeah, my dog just doesn’t wanna go up or down stairs in whatever context. Sometimes I’ll be like I wanna see what that looks like sometimes, right?
So that there’s like little exception to that. But yeah, we don’t need to see the dog’s reactivity. We don’t need to see them how they how they react to strangers coming into your home.
Micaela: I don’t need for you to approach your dog to touch them, to show me that it growls at you.
Please don’t do that.
Jessica: Yes. Because
actually as you guys are describing this, when I have my virtual clients, I also have them send me videos and I like to see the dog just in a variety of contexts. Yeah. So I can, the difference in the dog’s behavior, I’m not well versed in gait analysis like you guys are.
I certainly can often see when something doesn’t seem quite right, but I’m not [01:08:00] quite educated enough to know how big of a variant that is. I do bring it up with my clients when I do see it for sure. But certainly when I see my clients and their, dogs on video, it’s more so I can see the changes in their behavior.
Or I can see what does your dog look like when they start to become more stressed, right? What are, what can we start to pinpoint about the behaviors that they use in these scenarios? There’s a lot more that you can get from it than the actual behavior issue. So I’m glad that you brought that up.
Mercedes: And to circle back like a little bit more on some of the like behaviors or posture things that we might see something that is oftentimes a really big red plug. And I totally stole this from another veterinary friend of mine. But saber tooth, butt crickets. She’s gonna have to trademark that one ’cause it’s great, but it’s basically the dog is acting like something is biting it randomly.
Maybe you’re on a [01:09:00] walk and the dog suddenly turns around and maybe snaps at its rear end or bites at its rear end. Or maybe it’s even just laying down, relaxing, and it suddenly looks at its rear end real fast. Call those saber tooth butt crickets.
And that can be a really big red flag. And that’s a behavior that most people depending on the severity of it, might not even notice that their dog does. Oh, they just have a little itch. Or it’s not a big deal.
Micaela: I think that’s one of them that is common. Once we have a conversation about pain, that the second time I talk to them, they go, you know what?
We’ve been thinking about it and this thing tends to happen.
It doesn’t usually come to mind in the first pass, but where they’re doing it, especially if there’s a pattern, can really help in localizing the problem.
Mercedes: Licking on their own bodies a lot, especially in one area.
Micaela: Which is helpful if they’re a light [01:10:00] colored dog. If they’ve been doing it long enough, you can actually see where they’ve been. It’s like they’ve drawn themselves a body map,
Mercedes: right? Reluctance to lay down or get up from laying down those are maybe a little bit more obvious.
Micaela: But there are plenty of people that would just call that dog stubborn and yank on them and force ’em to do it.
Mercedes: Yeah. And laying down on walks, not like acting like they don’t wanna walk anymore, being in a hurry to get back home. Things, like that where we’re going. Okay.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I’m glad that you’re bringing all of these up because a lot of times people think that it has to do with something else, right?
The dog is anxious about being outside, or they’re just tired they get tired really easy. They don’t have really good stamina. They’re heat sensitive.
Mercedes: And that’s a, red flag.
Jessica: Yes.
Mercedes: Yes, the dog can be out of [01:11:00] shape. Your dog can absolutely be outta shape. That is a thing. But what I see more commonly than that is that the dog’s stamina is low because they’re in pain.
And I know we talked a lot about pain in like more of an orthopedic or musculoskeletal way, but I also I’ve had three clients in kidney failure.
Jessica: Wow. And how did that present itself behaviorally?
Mercedes: So one of them the saddest one probably was a 10 month old boxer
Jessica: Oh.
Mercedes: Who was reactive barky lunge towards other dogs, towards people.
Had some interesting like micro triggers. Like I remember the owner, I hadn’t known about this, but the owner handed me the leash so I could demo something at like our second or third session. And the dog had been friendly with me with a careful introduction. And as soon as they handed the leash over, the dog came up the leash at me.[01:12:00]
Which I think was a little bit of a symptom of COVID were the dogs, the only time the dog was being handed over was to go into the vet. But I noticed during our session, the dog was drinking a lot of water and sometimes that can be like a stress response where the dog’s I’m gonna drink I drink water to soothe myself.
Yeah. I was like, man. And one of the issues too, they were having a little bit of house training regression with this dog and some more recent than like the reactivity was some like general grumpiness with family members. Like they’d been saying that she’d lay on the couch next to them and they’d pet her and she’d growl.
I was like, okay, like that. But the drinking. And then I was like, how often, like how much water is she drinking and like, how often is she having accidents in the house and needing to go outside? And I also noticed postural adaptations with her at the time too. So they ended up going to the vet. They initially just did [01:13:00] x-rays, unfortunately like without sedation, which I don’t love.
But so they didn’t have a reason to do blood work, right? ’cause they weren’t, they didn’t sedate her at first, so they did x-rays and the dog also had arthritis in her spine already at 10 months old.
Jessica: Wow.
Mercedes: And then they did end up doing blood work and the dog was in end stage kidney failure, so they had to euthanize her.
And it was really sad. And yeah, and like I said, I’ve had three, three of those cases where that ended up being the outcome. And one of them was just after meeting the dog in person for the first time, I was like, your dog looks like they don’t feel good. The eyes are glassy, the coat’s not great.
I’m like something’s wrong. So I think dog trainers too, obviously we’re not vets and we do still have to tread carefully, but we are seeing dogs in so many other contexts. And the interesting thing is that all of these dogs had been to vets [01:14:00] recently.
Jessica: Yes. Yeah. That it happens all the time, right?
And so it’s not about stepping on anyone’s toes or getting out of our lanes, but it’s about going, Hey, like your dog doesn’t look like it feels good. Like we can’t diagnose legally, we cannot diagnose and we shouldn’t be, but your dog doesn’t feel good or something ain’t right. Or I think your dog is experiencing pain and discomfort is not a diagnosis.
Mercedes: Yeah. I think what else do you have to add to that? To the behaviors and stuff? Micaela or posture, gait.
Micaela: Oh, we could talk forever about the gut.
So common. We’re lucky to live in a region where we have a nutritionist that we can refer to. I’m lucky enough to work with an internist.
The deeper you go, the grayer it gets with all of this, which is really fun. That we have these little doodled things that just sometimes don’t want to eat. We’re all laughing because we all have those [01:15:00] clients.
Micaela: Yeah. And some of those were probably bred that way. It’s probably a behavior trait to an extent.
It’s probably hormones. With genetic reasons, but some of those dogs slipping through the cracks being written off as that’s just how this line is, have gut disease. And we’re just, again, chalking it up to it’s, common for them.
The other thing is eating inappropriate things. There’s a, lot of early stage research around seeking out eating inappropriate things and, gut inflammation. And it’s a little bit of a chicken in the egg situation still. But I recently had a case that was an in incidental came to me on GP where the dog had always had a propensity for seeking out underwear and socks.
But it had recently gotten significantly worse and it was a little bit satisfying ’cause I took one look at that dog and I was like, I can tell you what the [01:16:00] blood work is gonna say. She was hypothyroid.
And so a lot of people will just chalk that up too. It’s a golden retriever and right there are these traits that they’ve been bred for, but then we get diseases that come along with it that just hide beneath the surface and get written up as.
Breed normal.
And then sometimes I ask the questions and then three months later Mercedes goes, did you know this, and this are happening? I said, no, they didn’t tell me that. They didn’t, they weren’t thinking about it at the time.
It happens in a five minute span between my assistant going in to take vitals and a history and me going in and asking the same question.
Yeah.
Which is why teams are great because you can actually end up at the most accurate answer when you ask the question at different times from different people.
But a lot of those pets should have an enteric pain trial, which can include Morant, which is an anti-nausea medication, but has effects on enteric pain too. And luckily it got cheaper recently ’cause it [01:17:00] is no longer just named brand. And I think a lot of the times we just we, throw those in two different bins, behavior and gut stuff and keep on trekking and feeding these poor dogs.
Such a variety of treats is probably not helping the situation. We do need to keep that in mind too. For sure.
Jessica: The, skin and gut is a whole nother thing, right? I know Mercedes, you’re saying we, we focus so much on some of the orthopedic stuff, and I’m glad that you brought up the skin and, gut.
It was something that in my other episode with Christina Rock we shed a little bit of light on that as well, but I almost feel like I wanna do a whole separate episode on skin and gut because I feel like everything has been talking about the orthopedic and it was the same way that me and Christina’s conversation went as well.
Yeah. And I think part of that is, ’cause a lot of times we do tend to look for the orthopedic, right? Okay, the dog has a hard time jumping in the car, but then, like you said, Mercedes, is it because the dog has some hip issues or is it because the dog [01:18:00] is really anxious because they get car sick.
So they’re like resisting getting in the car in some way and it just looks they move a little funky, but it could be because of their stomach doesn’t feel well. And so that’s what it is. So I, gosh, I do feel now, that we’re talking about this and we’re running low on time, it’s yeah.
But that is definitely an episode that I really wanna dive into because I do think it deserves its own episode because Yeah, it’s so common for. It to happen, for like skin and gut that it’s becoming more normalized that dogs have they all got allergies or they all need to be on special diets and it is.
Yeah. It’s crazy.
Mercedes: It’s and sometimes it’s all of it,
Jessica: right?
Mercedes: Like you said, the dogs wanna get in the car, maybe ’cause it gets car sick. Or maybe ’cause it has pain. Like sometimes it’s both.
Jessica: Yes.
Yeah.
Micaela: I think
the orthopedic stuff is the easiest for people to wrap their mind around true ‘
Mercedes: cause
Jessica: Cause and effect are pretty close together and time.
It’s I don’t wanna get [01:19:00] in the car because when I jump up it hurts. And then you go into the gut stuff and it’s I don’t wanna get in the car because 10 minutes later I get nauseous. And then you’ve got these allergy skin things, which are even like more delayed. And it could be like, I feel anxious when I go outside, but I don’t really know why.
And the underlying reason is because two hours later you get really itchy every time you go outside. But dogs don’t make that connection necessarily. It’s all happening in the background. And even as humans who know that there’s an allergy going on, it takes us months to figure it out a lot of the time.
Yeah,
very true. Very true. Yeah, that makes so much sense because you are right from the human perspective that we can correlate those two events close
to one another. We’re like, oh yeah, that’s what it is. But yeah, something that seems just a lot more ambiguous, that the scratching like much later we think is potentially related to something completely [01:20:00] different.
Mercedes: Yeah. If, the resources are not super limited, sometimes getting more than one opinion, it’s okay. It’s okay to go to different gps. A lot of people sometimes feel very strong loyalty to their vet, and that is also great, but it, is okay to go and get different opinions about different things whether it’s at the same clinic or different clinic.
That is also okay. It’s okay to go to different types of professionals and don’t, be afraid to get more opinions. Wanted to share kind of a. Case study. It’s one of my favorite ones. I didn’t actually work this one with Micaela but they had been working with a VB that I, worked with a couple of times too.
They’d only had one consult started on some behavior meds. They’d worked with previous trainers, lots of different methods Doberman, who very sweet with people hyper aroused and reactive to dogs. And very much getting to like the point, like she was trying to take agility classes [01:21:00] and the dog was getting too aroused or was even stopping working in agility class altogether.
So we did like a couple sessions and, at first there wasn’t anything obvious to me. And then she mentioned something about the dog laying down on walks randomly or being hesitant to jump in the car, or sometimes he jumped in the car and then hold up one of his hind legs after he jumped in.
I was like okay. And she had asked her regular bed about that stuff and didn’t really have an answer. And I remember one time I was throwing cheese back and forth for the dog. Like we were doing a little exercise and I was throwing cheese back and forth and he’s chasing it, grabbing it, getting another piece of cheese.
And all of a sudden mid run, he freezes and stopped and looked like. Somebody had just kicked him. Like he didn’t go and pick up the piece of cheese I threw. He actually came over to me and wanted me to cuddle him and just completely shut down when anything else for the rest of our lesson. And I was like, okay, that.
And she’s yeah, he does that sometimes. She hadn’t told me [01:22:00] that before either. And I was like oh, boy. Okay. I really think that you like, need a better workup. And so I suggested options including like a rehab vet, a neurologist.
Like what, where do you wanna go first? The dog had insurance, which is great. And she ended up going to a neurologist who diagnosed the dog with Wobblers, which is a very common disease in Doberman’s. And she wasn’t satisfied with that, partly because the consult was like 10 minutes long. They took the dog in the back, he did an exam, he came into the room, spent 10 minutes with the owner, was like, your dog has Wobblers, here are your options.
She ended up going to the neurologist that I now almost exclusively work with. She spent over an hour with my client talking about what was going on with her dog. And she was like, I wanna do an MRI and a spinal tap and all these things. Okay. She also mentioned that this dog would go days without eating.
Intact male doberman. No one had really thought anything of it. Okay, so he is [01:23:00] intact. It’s oh yeah, he goes, stays without eating. Okay, so side note that so he does the MRI and the dog has tethered cord syndrome, which people can Google that, but it’s basically an abnormal tethering of the spinal cord and it is extremely painful.
And it’s like a come and go pain. It’s not that the dog is in constant, super high levels of pain, probably we can’t ask them, but it is definitely like he would get saber tooth butt crickets. And then you had the car jumping issue in the laying down and the suddenly stopped training. And so they worked with a tethered cord expert, opted not to do surgery though, and managing his pain and his behavior problems, actually got better.
He was less hyper aroused. He was less reactive. His recovery was better. But he still wasn’t eating great. And so she had him neutered. She, because he had a retained testicle and then obviously with tethered cord both of those things. Not gonna breed this dog, right? Had him neutered and he had a, [01:24:00] retained testicle and that retained testicle was like, they had to go on a scavenger hunt to find it.
It was up in his abdomen, wrapped around stuff like it was bad. And so fast forward. Not long after his neuter, he’s eating normally. Wow. So the moral of that case study is you can always get multiple opinions and there can be this huge, big, glaring thing that’s obviously very wrong, but there can be another thing that’s wrong.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mercedes: And had she not been so diligent, maybe never discovered either of those. Yeah, so that’s probably one of my favorite case studies.
Jessica: Yeah. That’s a fascinating one. I’m glad that you brought up the tethered chord syndrome, because I only know a little bit about it [01:25:00] from Anthony Demartini who has a dog with it, and he wrote some really cool blogs on it, so I’ll just throw that in the notes too.
Might as well make it a little documentary of places people could learn about all the things.
Micaela: And
I’ve actually had a very similar case with a crypt orchid dog who would quit on walks. Oh. And things have gotten significantly better since he was neutered. And I told them, I really think that you should neuter him before we go too much further because of Mercedes case.
Oh, interesting. Interesting.
This is all really amazing and I feel like we could talk for three more hours talking about all these cases. Oh, we can, I
Mercedes: know. I’m sitting here thinking Jessica’s gonna have to make this a two-parter
Jessica: potentially when I start to edit it. We’ll see where I get with it.
But is there anything that we didn’t cover that you think is really relevant here?
Micaela: My [01:26:00] thesis statement is probably pain doesn’t have to make sense to be relevant.
Love that
Micaela: it doesn’t have to have a cause you can point out to be present.
We can do all the diagnostics in the world and we can still not say there’s no pain here until we can talk to animals.
We cannot say there’s no pain here.
I can just move it further down on the list. Sometimes it’s so down on the list that I don’t write it down, but it’s still always possible. Yeah. And so going to an eight by 10 exam room for 10 minutes poking around and not causing the dog to scream does not rule it off the list.
That so important and I, think we collectively as an industry need to stop saying, we need to rule out pain because we cannot rule it out. It’s impossible.
Jessica: Yes, Those are some real gems. Dang, I’m glad I asked this question. Thank you so much for coming on [01:27:00] and
Mercedes: thank you for having us.
This has been great.
Jessica: For all of the awareness that you guys are creating and the workshops and seminars that you guys are starting to do together. You’re, creating a really big ripple effect here and. I love that we had a chance to have this conversation and I know people are definitely gonna wanna learn more from you.
So of course, as I said, I’m gonna get everything in the show notes so people can learn more from you guys as well. But thank you. ’cause you guys gave so many tangible things in today’s episode, like go here, do this. And I think that sort of stuff is so helpful when somebody listens to this, that we’re not just talking about the theory of dogs being in pain.
Here’s the things that you can actually do about it. And I am so thrilled that we were able to do that today. So thank you both so much for coming on.
Mercedes: Thank you. Yeah. And if people are local to Seattle, we’re gonna be teaching this workshop only in person, sorry. February 28th. So in [01:28:00] Seattle.
Micaela: And it will not be the last time, but I’m gonna pause and have a baby and then we’ll do it again later in 2026 probably. Yeah.
Just gonna pause and have a baby. That’s okay. Micaela, we can let you take a little break. Okay. We’ll understand. And congrats too. I didn’t know that you were expecting
He is.
Yeah. He is been kicking around this whole time. Oh,
that’s special. Oh, see, he was part of the podcast too. Congrats you guys.
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