6 Challenges That Made Me A Better Dog Trainer
Using medications to improve behavior and QOL.
It wasn’t so long ago that I avoided having clients talk to their vets about medications for anxiety and behavior modification. My belief at the time, like many other professionals, was that medications should be used as a last resort when dealing with pets.
Why would we drug them when we haven’t tried everything else we possibly can? The answer is simple, to help them.
My opinion, like that of most of the leaders in the animal behavior field, has changed quite drastically.
Part of what influenced my opinion change, was living with anxious dogs with behavior problems. Our midsized hound, Tule, has a severe anxiety disorder. She is phobic of noises including but not limited to, the television, doors closing, and footsteps upstairs. Let’s not even go into dropping something or watching an action movie. Before meds, she couldn’t lay down. She couldn’t receive any comfort from us. She shook, cowered, and cried. For weeks without improvement. Speaking to our wonderful vet about medications to help reduce her symptoms is the best thing that we have done for her. She seeks attention from us. She is able to go outside in our yard and run. She is able to think about things other than her fear. Tule has been medicated for years now, and will likely be medicated for the rest of her life. That is fine! It helps her feel better and it allows me to work with her on cues and slowly introducing new experiences.
Now that the science has changed, I have that discussion early on if I feel that the issue warrants it. I am not a behaviorist and I am not a veterinarian. I want to be very clear that I do not prescribe or suggest medications for animals. What I do do is suggest that clients speak to their veterinarian about psychiatric medications for dogs and discuss if their beloved pooch may or may not be a candidate. If we can use medications as a crutch to boost training results and prevent suffering in a dog, you best believe I am going to look into it as an option.
Dealing with separation anxiety.
Dogs with separation anxiety have full on panic attacks when they are left alone. For some dogs, this means when humans leave and for others it means when THEIR human leaves. Dogs with separation anxiety often chew on furniture, doorways, crates, etc. in an attempt to escape. They often become so afraid that they may urinate or defecate on themselves. In some cases, the dog exhibits self harming behaviors or causes injury to herself in her frantic attempts to escape. One of our past dogs, Danzig, developed separation anxiety after the death of his companion dog. When Senna died, Danzig developed a lot of anxiety and it was painful to watch. He busted out of crates, scraped his nose up, broke teeth, pulled his nails out digging, stained our carpets, and ate our doorknob. Leaving the house and leaving him alone become a dreaded experience that we needed to time to prevent him from hurting himself or from destroying our house. Training and medications helped him but this was something that we dealt with for years. I hated it for him, but it did help show me what dog owners feel when they go through this heartbreaking issue with their pup.
Living with a deaf dog.
For a short period of time we had and loved a deaf pitbull named Brody. Dogs with disabilities are not less than dogs without disabilities, but it can change how we do things sometimes. Training a deaf dog is not for the lazy and does take a bit more work than training a hearing dog. We can’t use our words or sounds to get the dog’s attention, so we often have to get up to gently redirect them from a problem behavior to something more appropriate. I think this helped me develop more patience as a human and as a dog trainer. It also gave me the ability to improvise during training, that I don’t think I would have without.
Euthanizing a dog for behavior reasons.
Brody ended up having seizures and developing pretty severe and truly random aggressive episodes. She was a small dog, but having a dog that it was difficult or impossible to predict her behavior was extremely stressful. Brody would be fine with people, or she would be explosive. She would tolerate our dogs, or she would attack them. When she started biting us is when things got very difficult. She would be soft and sweet in body language one moment and bite us the next. We looked for medical issues that could be causing these behaviors, and none were found. I consulted training colleagues and worked on desensitizing her and teaching her what I could. We did everything in our power to help her. Ultimately, we made the very difficult choice to euthanize her. Being alive was not fun for her, we couldn’t have her out with our other dogs anymore, and we couldn’t take her out in the fear that she would bite someone else. Rehoming her wasn’t an option, even if a rescue would have taken a dog with a known bite history without a predictable trigger. Even if we had rehomed her, she would’ve bitten again. Then what would have happened to her? Would she have been quarantined after the bite, alone and scared and then euthanized anyway? The most ethical thing to do was to end her suffering and set her free. And it was the right decision. Behavioral euthanasia is a very dark part of training and behavior, but it is sometimes necessary and we need to talk about it. I have had to have this difficult conversation with clients both prior to and after we euthanized Brody. I am sad that we couldn’t help Brody, but I did take a lot away from that experience with her, and try to use it to help others. Compassion and empathy are sometimes lacking in our industry when dogs need to be euthanized, but we can’t save them all. A friend and mentor once told me, “there are things worse than death” and I very much agree with this statement. For some animals, being alive is worse than being humanely euthanized. It isn’t an easy decision or one that should be taken lightly, but sometimes it is the only option available.
The smart dog curse.
If you have taken classes with me then you have undoubtedly heard me talk about this one! Having an intelligent dog is great, until it isn’t. (Haha.) For me, it is really difficult for me to be realistic about my expectations with a dog that is smarter. Meaning, it is easier for me to jump to the assumption that they have mastered or learned a cue, when in reality, they are just consistently guessing. This leads to increasing the difficulty of the cue or adding distractions when the dog hasn’t even learned the basics of what we want them to do yet. Setting dogs and families up for success is really difficult, but it is crucial. Learning how to set myself up to be successful was an important milestone for me to reach before I could help others.
Senna’s leash reactivity.
l have already written about the love of my life, Senna, and his leash reactivity. Helping him address his anxieties and overcome his issues was very difficult, especially for a college student who meant well, but didn’t have a lot of knowledge yet. I had to learn so much in such a short span of time. I credit Senna and my experiences with him for much of my training philosophy. It forced me to learn and to read about the science behind behavior, instead of using devises to cause more fear and pain. And honestly, I used a shock collar on him (briefly) at first. I regret this with every core of my being, and it will be something that I regret for the rest of my life. Using this caused him intense anxiety that stayed with him for the rest of his life, and I only used it a few times. Despite my personal regret, I do believe that this struggle makes it easier for me to relate to owners who are struggling with their dogs and what equipment to use. People don’t want to hurt their dogs, and they don’t want to do something that causes them harm, but aversive tools are readily available and the average pet owner doesn’t understand the science behind how they cause behavior change. If we know more, we do better. This is true for everyone.