Did you just see that?!

Destroying the house when you’re out; incessant barking in the crate; lunging at people; barking at people…do any of these sound like your dog? I can put “Check!” next to a few. Today’s post is the final one in a three-part series on dog behaviors explained by the experts. We’ll tackling some of the tough stuff – separation anxiety and how you know if your dog has it; fear-agression issues and what that means. We even have some great advice for moms and dads of senior dogs, to help them stay sharp and healthier, longer. A new book, Decoding Your Dog, written by American College of Veterinary Behaviorists-certified vets, Drs. Debra Horwitz and John Ciribissi, is a great tool to get answers on these and many other topics. I talked to Dr. Horwitz to get additional insight for us on some common behavior issues. We are being challenged everyday with our new rescue dog, Jasper, who has separation anxiety and fear-based aggression. I’ve included some of our story, in the hopes some of my readers can relate, and that the advice will help them, too. Here’s the second, and last, part of that interview.

Separation anxiety

Jasper has separation anxiety, so he can’t be crated or put behind a baby gate. We tried and it was awful for all of us. And, we aren’t going to leave Sophie, our four-year-old dog, and Jasper alone together for a while. We just don’t know him well enough, and we want to protect both of them from getting hurt. So, our lives have literally been turned upside down over the past month, since the little guy came here to live. Basically, we don’t have a life. Going out has become a tactical operation, worthy of the Department of Defense. Finding out we have a 10-month old puppy, when Animal Care and Control told us we were adopting a four year old adult dog, didn’t help, either. It poses unexpected challenges of house training, unpredictable behavior and different energy levels between the two dogs. We did buy two small video cameras, so we could see what they do when they are alone for a couple of minutes, while we’re downstairs in our lobby. Just to know.

Some readers may also have dogs with separation anxiety who can’t go into a crate. What do you do? Here’s what Dr. Horwitz had to say.

BaS: If we have a dog that is fearful of enclosed spaces, for example, the crate, how do we deal with that? Is getting them used to it in ever increasing increments or is biting the bullet and letting them howl it out the way to go? How would that affect the human/animal bond?

DDH: A dog that seems to be distressed about being in enclosed spaces may suffer from separation anxiety. If that’s the case, you aren’t going to be able to make them ok about being  home alone or in the crate without treatment. Some people put their dogs in a crate because they’re destructive in the house or for house training purposes. So, you first have to determine why the dog won’t go into the crate. Some dogs feel very frightened to be confined in that way. You can teach dogs to be in their crate, if they don’t have separation anxiety or fear of being in a locked space, by making it a fun place to be. Put great toys and treats in there, bully sticks. Close the door, count to 20, let the dog out. Let the dog realize it’s a safe place to be, whether the door’s open or closed, whether you’re home or gone. And there are a huge number of dogs who do fine in a crate.

BaS: How can we tell if our dog really has separation anxiety?

DDH: Commonly, when a dog has separation anxiety, they bark, they howl, they whine, they urinate or defecate and are destructive while in the crate or while home alone. They may bite at the crate bars or move it around the room. My first question to a client with this situation would be, ‘Why are you crating your dog?’

But, there are other dogs who are immobile the entire time the owner is out. They’re not sleeping.  They, too, might be suffering from separation anxiety.  It’s always a good idea to video your dogs while you’re gone. You can’t know what your dog does when you’re not home, unless you video them. If you have any doubts about what you’re seeing after viewing it, you should take it to your vet, who can tell you.

BaS: The book talks about how some behavior issues may be associated with a serotonin dysfunction in the brain. Is there a test for this?

DDH: There isn’t any general test for this. It’s a very sophisticated test to look at their cerebral spinal fluid to determine if there’s a low level of serotonin. However, we do use serotonin enhancing drugs for the same reasons they might be used in people, when we have extreme impulsivity or we have extreme anxiety that makes it very difficult for the dog to learn. They can’t focus on what you’re trying to teach them because they’re so afraid of everything in their environment. All they can see is danger on all sides. We need to turn that down a little. Medications like these can only be prescribed by a veterinarian or a veterinary behaviorist.

Fear-based postures in dogs

Fear-based aggression

I explained to Dr. Horwitz about the challenges we have with Jasper.  Getting him in and out of our apartment is very stressful because he’s so unpredictable. If the elevator door opens, and someone is inside, Jasper will go off, shriek barking and lunging. Age, gender, color, he doesn’t discriminate. We can’t go into an occupied elevator with him. Living in an apartment building in NYC, that poses a big challenge. So, we wait for an empty elevator. The next challenge is getting him through the lobby, without an incident. His triggers are strangers, some other dogs, children, anything, really. And, he can be the same way on the actual walk. We have some good days and some bad days. He was making huge strides around his walks, even though we were still having a hard time with the elevator and lobby, and then all of a sudden, for two days in a row, he was in the red zone all the time outside. We just don’t know, and it’s breaking our hearts to think we may not be able to handle this long term. If we lived in the country, it might be easier because there wouldn’t be so much stimulation. So, I was welcoming any insight Dr. Horwitz might provide for us and readers who also have dogs grappling with fear aggression.

Tip: One tip from Dr. Horwitz that we are trying is using pheromones on Jasper. She told me about a product called Adaptil, which is a copy of the pheromone secreted by the mammary glands of nursing dogs. It comes in a diffuser for the home, as a collar for the dog and as a spray. She said it works well on some anxious or nervous dogs. If you get the collar, it needs to be against the skin. They get activated through the dog’s pores, so you need to make sure there’s just enough room for one finger to slip  in between it and the dog’s neck. You can get Adaptil through your vet or online. You take the collar off when you’re giving the dog a bath, as it can’t get wet. The collar remains active for about one month. She said that, in addition to the training we’re already doing with Jasper, it can cut their nervousness enough, so that he might still be moderately reactive when you step into an occupied elevator (or if you step away from one), but he can return to baseline more quickly. I’ll let you know how this works. We just received ours yesterday.

BaS: You talk about the concept of having our dog’s back. Can you explain?

DDH: Let’s take the case of the elevator, but it could be any trigger that feels threatening to your dog. If the elevator door opens with someone inside, you can turn your back on the threat, literally, and even say a key phrase to your dog like, ‘We’re not going.’ You’d move away from the threat, wait until he visibly calms down and then return to the elevator. After repeating this for a bit, he begins to associate ‘We’re not going,’ with you having his back, taking care of the threat so he doesn’t have to be exposed to it. In time, you may even be able to get into the elevator, and saying ‘We’re not going’ will be enough. It calms him right away because he understands the communication tools between the two of you.

One of the things we talk about in the book is having a language system with your dog, so they feel safe. You can’t only do that verbally because, until they learn what those words mean, they won’t understand. Cue that word with an action that makes them feel safe, then they get that you’re going to take care of them and ‘have their back.’

BaS: Do you have best techniques of how people should deal with different kinds of fear aggression, i.e.: a dog fearful of their owner; of strangers; of other dogs?

DDH: I’ll answer that in two parts. There are some dogs who are universally afraid of a lot of things. Maybe that’s because they have a fearful personality. Then, we have dogs who have very specific triggers. Hopefully, the vet’s history taking is going to help differentiate between the two. If there’s a specific trigger, that’s what the dog has to learn is ok. If there are a number of triggers, that may require a different approach. That being said, there are some general recommendations we make for dogs who are fearful, which are somewhat similar across the board. If a dog is fearful of strangers, we tell people to not put their dog into that situation, where you’re exposing him at a level you cannot control.

BaS: That’s not always possible, though.

DDH: It’s not, but it is more possible than you think. If you’re someone who works from home, maybe you choose a time of day to walk your dog when the likelihood of him encountering a lot of strangers is less, so he’s not as afraid. Instead of walking him between 7 – 9am, when most people will be leaving for work, maybe walk him between 5-7am or 9-11am. He has to go for walks, but if you can minimize his exposure to that which makes him the most afraid, over time, he can learn that sometimes he can do this and it’s ok. You want to avoid the trigger, and put as much distance between the dog and the trigger as possible. And that’s true for all fear anxiety issues.

Advice for seniors

Many of us have been through it. Time marches on and our active young dogs evolve into slower moving seniors. Today, there are tools we have at our disposal to help slow the onset of senior symptoms. Advances in veterinary care, nutrition, and behavioral care mean many dogs are living longer lives. There’s a chapter dedicated to seniors and, one of the topics is about CDS (cognitive dysfunction syndrome), a kind of canine Alzheimers that some dogs develop with age. Signs of CDS in dogs are known by an acronym called DISHA. Here’s what we should be watching out for in our senior dogs:

• D: disorientation
• I: changes in social interactions
• S: changes in sleep-wake cycles
• H: house soiling
• A: changes in activity levels

They also say anxiety or agitation may be signs of CDS, but it is important to rule out other causes with your vet, before you determine it’s CDS, especially in seniors where other health issues can be impacting behavior.

BaS: When it comes to CDS, when is it best for us, as owners, to intervene? And, are the cost of these medications or supplements prohibitive or manageable for most of us?

DDH: Cost depends on what interventions you choose and at what level your dog needs them. I told you about my dog, Oscar. What I didn’t tell you is he’s 14 and a half. He’s on nutritional supplements; he gets one tablet a day. The cost can vary between .50 and $1.00 a day. Some dogs need to be on multiple supplements. There are also foods available that maybe, on a per day basis, are a little bit more expensive, but they do help. What I think is important when we do talk about CDS, is that if people are on the lookout for symptoms of aging and get them on these supplements early in the process, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to slow down the decline.

With a senior dog, we want to maximize the quality of life. When it comes to CDS, early intervention with these products seem to really make a difference at increasing that quality of life and in their ability to stay young and pretty healthy. We don’t really have tests to identify CDS, but we talk to owners. One of the first signs is what I like to call ‘the dead dog sleep,’ where you come home and your dog’s sacked out and doesn’t even hear you come in. At the first sign of that, it might be the time to start the supplements, because the dog is not as sharp. You can increase alertness, just as you can with humans, by having the right supplements onboard. So, don’t wait until the dog is so out of it that he’s urinating in the house. When you see that you’ve got to call his name six times, before he goes, ‘Huh? You talkin’ to me?’, that’s a sign that it’s time to intervene. Your vet can help you choose what supplements are right for your particular dog.

In summary

I learned so much reading Decoding Your Dog. It’s given me a framework for working with a local behaviorist for Jasper, and I now feel like I have a bit of a foundation in the issues we’re hoping to find solutions for.

I love my animals, like you. I want to do the right thing for them and sometimes, it’s not easy to know what that is, especially when it comes to behavior problems. You can see we’re struggling with trying to fit Jasper into our lives, where it works for everyone. And, I’ll continue to write about our challenges and our triumphs with him. But, having a book like Decoding Your Dog is a tool I can trust and will use.

For those who want to purchase the book, you can find it here.

Patricial McConnell, PhD and author of many renowned books on dog training and behavior, said it well. “Kudos to the Veterinary Behaviorists! Decoding Your Dog is a welcome addition to the voices supporting science-based and benevolent dog training. Read this book and your dog will thank you for it!”

Do you have a particular behavior problem with your dog? What is it and how are you dealing with it? Tell me about it in the comments.

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I love doing giveaways because it brings everyone together and we all get excited about it. I’m so pleased to announce the two winners of the Bark and Swagger Life’s A Bark book giveaway, sponsored by Larry Kay, author of Life’s A Bark: What Dogs Teach Us About Life and Love. The book is such a fun read and is so heartwarming with awesome, hilarious pictures, that it’s great to be able to share the experience with readers.

Mallory Huff and Shelley Pittman were the winners, and both played at the giveaway game like gladiators! Congratulations, ladies!!

Mallory sent this adorable pic of her three babies, Cleo, Karma and Autumn, getting patriotic around the 4th, and I had to share. Aren’t they adorable? Love how Autumn is acting as the backdrop for the star and hearts display.

Cleo, Karma & Autumn getting patriotic

Shelley sent in this pic of four of her seven rescues (some are camera shy).  Bless you, Shelley for being such a rescue advocate!! Here’s Ella, Chanel, Diamond and Itsy, sitting on her husband’s lap. He’s reading Life’s A Bark…are they paying attention? 🙂 All precious and all cutie pies!

Ella, Chanel, Diamond & Itsy

Bark and Swagger wants to thank Larry Kay for contributing the books for this giveaway, and my readers who gamely participate in each one. You are all awesome, and the reason I’m doing this. Thank you!

For those interested in purchasing a copy of Life’s A Bark: What Dogs Teach Us About Life and Love, here’s the info:

Where to buy: Amazon

Price: $11.33

You can learn more about Life’s A Bark on Larry’s Positively Woof FB page!

What does your dog teach you about life and love? Tell me in the comments!

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Taking Notes
photo credit: Seattle PI

Ever wondered how your dog thinks? Are you unsure about how to deal with a behavior issue? There’s a new book called Decoding Your Dog, written by board-certified animal behaviorists, Drs. Debra Horwitz and John Ciribissi, and edited by nationally-syndicated pet journalist, Steve Dale, that can help. It’s easy to read and has great information on everything from choosing the right dog or adding a second dog, benevolent training tips, and solid, science-based evidence on how to treat things like aggression, separation anxiety, even advice on slowing aging in senior dogs. It covers a lot more, too. For me, it’s been a great resource around issues with our new rescue, Jasper, who has fear-based aggression and separation anxiety. And, it’s refreshing to have some common dog behaviors explained in plain talk I can understand, but still based on solid research from the experts. You can find the review I did on the book here. While reading Decoding Your Dog was great, I wanted to get a bit more info from the source to, hopefully, help readers who have similar problems with their dogs. What follows is the first of a two part interview with Dr. Horwitz, who shed some light on why our pups do what they do. Like the book, you can skip around and read in digestible bites! 🙂

Dr. Debra Horwitz
with Oscar

The interview

BaS: I’m going to jump right in, because I was a bit confused about this, so other people might be, too. How do you know when it’s appropriate to seek help from a behaviorist or from a trainer, when it’s not a clear cut situation?

DDH: Issues that have aggression or profound anxiety associated with them, these are not training issues, and they need to be treated by a veterinarian or veterinary behaviorist. Unruly behavior – dogs that are pulling on leashes, jumping on people, barking at the doorbell too much, but without aggression, those are training issues.

BaS: What’s your view on how our dog’s personality type affects how we train them?

DDH: Everything works some of the time and nothing works all the time.  Anyone that works with a dog, or a child or adult, for that matter,  and wants a change of behavior has to understand that individuals learn differently. You need to find out the type of presentation that works best for the type of organism you’re trying to have an impact on. So, personality matters to some degree, but so does the flexibility of the person who’s administering the training. Know your dog and know enough about the way to change behavior, not to be wedded to a single way to do any one thing.

If there’s one thing I can leave your readers with, it’s this: if you take your dog to a trainer or someone who’s working on their behavior, and they say this is the only way that we can teach your dog to do this, I would be very wary. There’s usually more than one way. Maybe this one way is integral to teaching the dog what we want and we’re going to have to work up to it, but you need to have a lot of tools in your toolbox, because each individual dog learns differently.

BaS: How do you know when behavior is genetic vs. environmental?

DDH: Everything has a genetic component, but what we don’t know but try to balance, is how much of the behavior is trait-based, meaning is this an inherent trait in the way this dog looks at the world, or how much is state-based – the environment this dog finds himself in, the training that’s taken place in the past or his past experiences. We look at how a dog responds across a vast array of situations to determine this. For example, if you have a dog that is anxious and fearful of a wide array of things and circumstances, then it may well be that this dog is more prone to respond to the unfamiliar in a fearful and anxious way. It doesn’t mean it can’t get better, but it tells you there might be limits to what you can do and might call for one set of tools to manage it. Here’s an example of state-based behavior. I worked with a dog who had a very scary experience while left at home alone. The fire alarm went off and scared him terribly. He decided, from then on, that being left at home alone was very scary. Despite trying to condition him, he was too anxious. But, his traumatic experience didn’t affect him being left alone in someone else’s house or somewhere else. That’s an example of state-based behavior.

BaS: How do you best assess methods of treatment when you don’t know the dog’s background?

DDH: We don’t know what your dog thinks; we only know what he does. So, we concentrate on what the dog does, what he looks like when he does it, how he recovers from these behavioral changes and what the triggers are. What made the dog the way he is is relevant in some sense, but we can’t go back and undo that. Maybe Jasper, for example,  came from a environment where he never had to go outside for a walk to eliminate, so his exposure at a critical time was very limited. I can’t change that now, and it’s not really relevant to the way I’d go about treating him.

BaS: Isn’t the behavior going to be different if it’s a socialization issue vs. an abuse issue, let’s say?

DDH: No. It’s very common for people who adopt shelter dogs with fear-based aggression to tell us they were abused. It’s very rare that there’s substantiation that has taken place. In Jasper’s case, it sounds like his exposure was very limited. The prime socialization period in dogs, when you can introduce them to the most things and they are the most receptive, is between six and 14 weeks. Every dog will be socialized during that time. What they are socialized to could be limited. So, to say Jasper wasn’t socialized is incorrect. Jasper may have not been socialized to the things in his current environment in a way that makes sense to him.

BaS: Very interesting. So, once that prime period has passed, can we change behavior or “socialize” them?

DDH: Yes, but not in the same way as during that prime period. That ship has sailed.

Fun times with a sibling

Adding a second dog to the family

Many of my pet industry friends have multiple pet homes. For us, adding a second dog to ours was a first. Did we make some mistakes? Is Jasper the best match for Sophie? For any of my readers who might be considering adding a second dog to their household, I hope this info is helpful.

BaS: Does gender matter when choosing a second dog?

DDH: It is likely that gender matters less than the personality of the dogs involved. The research that we have on pairs of dogs in a home that fight shows that female/female pairs are more common. These are cases presented to veterinary animal behaviorists, but they don’t vastly outweigh male/male pairings, either. What we’re often dealing with in these situations is a mismatch of personalities, more than gender.

For example: We’ve had roomates or worked with people in offices. Some we like and some we don’t. With our dogs, we’ve created an environment where they don’t have a choice. Just like the office, different people resolve conflict in different ways. It’s the same in a household with dogs. If you have a quiet, reticent dog, who would rather sit quietly at the window than play a rousing game of chase or ball, and you bring home a dog that is a go get ’em, I can chase a ball until three of my four legs fall off kind of dog, they’re not going to be the best of buddies, unless they can communicate to each other what their needs are and it’s respected.

BaS: That seems to be the case with Sophie and Jasper. He plays like a locomotive train. She doesn’t. But she seems to enjoy it for a time. When she’s had enough, she’ll snarl fiercely – there’ no real biting that goes on – but he’ll get the message and back off.

DDH: That is totally appropriate. And, you’ve done a good job allowing that to happen. Sometimes, dogs fight in a household because they haven’t been allowed to communicate with each other properly. Humans don’t like hearing dogs make those play fighting loud noises. They think that’s a prelude to a real fight, and sometimes it is. But, if an owner intervenes when there is play fighting going on, and neither dog is in real distress, in Sophie and Jasper’s case, Jasper doesnt have the opportunity to learn in dog language that his behavior isn’t appropriate, and Sophie learns that when Jasper is playing too rough, she’s not supposed to let him know it. You take away the dog’s ability to communicate important  information to each other about their relationship. Sophie can become more anxious about play with Jasper and things can devolve from there.

BaS: We only intervene when we see Sophie run under the sofa and she needs a break. Then, we’ll pull him off, put him on a leash and keep him with us.

DDH: Right. That’s exatly what you should do. And, redirect him to something else – a bully stick, toy, something positive.

BaS: For those readers who might be considering adopting a dog from a shelter, how accurate is temperament testing in a shelter environment?

DDH: They’re really behavioral evaluations, not temperament tests. What they’re looking for is some indication of how safe the dog is, the reactivity level of the dog. Most shelters do not test the dogs the day they come in. They do try to give them a little time to acclimate, and many shelters test them more than once. Some research has been done on dogs and behavioral testing in shelters. Dr. E’Lise Christensen [who contributed information to this book], did research that showed that some dogs, who passed the testing in the shelter, could then go on to show aggressive behavior when they were in their adoptive home. This is because temperament tests do not do well in testing for certain types of aggressiveness, mostly fear-based aggression towards strangers, territorial aggression and the types of issues you’re dealing with with Jasper. These behaviors are not easily tested in a shelter enviroment because no one’s trying to put him in an elevator, walk him through a lobby and generally expose them to specific lifestyle situations they might encounter outside the shelter. Other testing showed dogs who exhibited food-based aggression in the shelter, but did not in their forever home or, if they did, it was easily managed. They’re not fool proof.

Training tips

I wanted to know if speaking to our dogs, something I’ve always done with mine, or if the environment they live in with us has any effect on training or on being well-adjusted.

BaS: I’ve always talked to the dogs I’ve had in my life. And they seem to understand. Can language or how we talk to our dogs help in training or managing them?

DDH: Dogs can learn between 250 – 300 words; some can learn more. Chase, a Border Collie, knows over 1000 words. But, dogs also respond to vocal information. The story I often use in my lectures is, I used to have a Labrador Retriever named Chelsea. Like most Labrador Retrievers, eating was the highlight of her day. If you asked Chelsea, ‘Is it time to feed the dog?’, she would jump up on the counter and start barking. If you said, ‘Is it time to weed the hog?’ with the same inflections in your voice, she would jump up on the counter and start barking. So, you could manipulate things based on tone of voice. The dog I have now, his name is Oscar and he’s a West Highland White Terrier. He knows the phrase, ‘I’m going to pick you up.’ You can see a change in his body, it relaxes, and he let’s me pick him up. I think it’s absolutely true that our dog’s learn what we say, but they watch what we do, as much if not more.

Little dogs in the big city
photo credit: Getty Images

BaS: For those of us living in big cities, is there any science-based conclusions that this amount of stimuli could be too overwhelming and detrimental to dogs?

DDH: I’ll go back to the issue of temperament and personality. I think sometimes we do small dogs a disservice by picking them up all the time, because we don’t allow them to experience what’s going on on the ground. For dog’s that live in the city, it’s very importnat for owners to be aware of what their dogs are experiencing. It’s the idea of ‘I’ve got your back.’  If you’re  on your mobile device while walking your dog, you’re not watching as to whether a bigger dog or another dog that could be threatening is approaching, and that you need to move your dog to protect him. Because they’re leashed to us, the dog’s ability to respond and escape is limited, and we need to be involved and cognicient of what’s being presented to them.

I understand that having to walk your dog in the city is a time commitment, so what I tell people is this: take elimination walks and sniff walks. An elimination walk is when you leave your apartment or house and you let your dog know the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to empty your bladder and empty your bowels. And, if time permits, we are going to walk.

BaS: How do you teach them to go to the bathroom fast?

DDH: One way to do that is via verbal control. You stand by the spot where the dog needs to go, and you say whatever you decide that means go potty. When they do, you reward them with food. Elimination is rewarding in and of itself for a dog, but that’s not what you’re rewarding. You’re rewarding do it here and do it now. In the end, it’s worth the extra boring time standing by the spot until it actually happens until they get it, so you can then walk your dog to that spot and say ‘Go pee,’ walk a few feet and say, ‘Go poop,’ and they do!

BaS: Wow, that’s like, ‘Died and went to heaven,’ advice! Rain, snowstorms, loud noises like the 4th of July we just went through…what a great tool that would be!

Dr. Horwitz gives some great advice on handling fear-based aggression, separation anxiety and helping our senior dogs. Come back tomorrow for Part Three, the final segment, of my Decoding Your Dog interview.

Where to buy: Amazon

Price: Hardcover – $20.53; Kindle – $9.45; MP3 CD – $26.99; Audible book – $23.95

What are your behavioral challenges with your dog? Tell me about it in the Comments.

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