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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation’s podcast. I’m your host Tony Peterson. In today’s episode is all about canine mental issues and some of the quirky things that we think are kind of innocent but that can become big problems if they aren’t addressed correctly. Look, there’s like a social contagion thing that happens with humans when we start to get exposed to new issues that some of us have. Like a good example is probably like ADHD. Here. Now, when I was a kid, ADHD was probably somewhat prevalent at the rates that it is today, but no one really knew about it. In fact, back then, it was just add Now it seems like most kids have it to the point where a lot of the behaviors are just explained away by that disorder without an actual diagnosis or a treatment plan. A lot of times, the same kind of thing happens with our dogs too, and we use a lot of what we think are just their individual quirks to gloss over behaviors that are probably not only were avoidable, but also might you know, be fixable. That’s what this episode is all about. I recently pulled into the parking lot of the gym and saw that a buddy of mine was sitting in his truck. Hadn’t seen him for a while, so I walked over and started talking to him, and he instantly offered up that he had been gone for a little over a month. Now. Out of respect for his privacy, I’m not going to go into too many details, but he ended up having a pretty real issue with life in general. Took a little trip to a hospital and then a much longer trip to a treatment center. Now it wasn’t for addiction issues, but instead mental health issues. It also didn’t really surprise me. He works in a very high stress job. He spent a few years in Iraq when he was in the army, and he didn’t have the kind of role that kept him out of harm’s way. If you get my drift, he’s been through a lot, and outwardly, if you looked at him, you’d think he could handle a lot. He’s built like a brick shithouse. He’s covered in tattoos and is one of the funniest and most sarcastic people I know. Given his outward appearance, it would be safe to assume he’s kind of a prick, but he’s not He’s one of the nicest people I know, and he was the first person to start talking to me in the gym when I went in there and didn’t know a single thing about what I was doing. There’s a whole lot of don’t judge a book by its cover thing here. But he also has a wild temper, a lot of past trauma from a whole lot of life most people will never experience, and his job puts him in direct contact with people who are having the worst days of their lives over and over, so it’s not surprising that he ended up needing some real help. Most of the folks he interacts with probably wouldn’t have seen that coming with him. We often see what we want to see, and that doesn’t end with people in our lives. Our dogs, our lovable goofball four legged hunting buddies also have issues that stem entirely from the narrow space between their ears, and a lot of these issues either seem to be kind of progressive or worse set in stone, But are they. It’s honestly really hard to say. I had a golden Retriever a few dogs ago who wanted nothing more than to be a human. Now, a lot of folks joke about their dogs thinking that they are humans. So I don’t want to be like that. Except with her, well, it was absolutely true. She took it personally if she was left home alone. She took it personally if you didn’t pet her when she wanted a little scretch behind the ear, she took it very personally. For some reason, I packed up and left without her. That dog had severe separation anxiety, which is the number one stressor for a lot of domestic dogs. We are their conduit to literally everything important to their lives, and when we leave, they are well left alone. I often wonder what mistakes I made with that golden de foster such a deep level of separation anxiety, But when I owned her, I always passed it off as just kind of like a quirk of hers. With quite a few years in the rearview mirror, now I can look back on that dog and think of things I did wrong. I probably didn’t do a terrible job of socializing her, because I, you know, actually socialized her quite a bit. She wasn’t gunshot, she was pretty confident in herself and generally seemed to handle life well, I guess as well as a golden retriever does. But she also would dig into the garbage almost every time I left, or at least she did this quite often, and then she’d carry, you know, a tissue or some other wrapper to the top of the stairs and tear it into tiny little pieces. Now did I think about it. She did that with cash money a few times too, and it was always interesting to see bits of dollar bills in her poop to remind me, a person who was very broke at the time, that that might have been the worst way to waste money any huski. She’d put herself into time out when I got home because she knew she wasn’t supposed to tear up garbage and leave it at the top of the stairs, but she also wanted me to know that she was pissed off at me. What I can think of that I did, or you know, probably did wrong anyway, was just take her everywhere with me all the time I was young, had no kids, had a bunch of random jobs, and really just spent a ton of time with her. She was conditioned to almost always going everywhere with me, so if I went somewhere that she couldn’t go, she instantly got ticked off. Maybe it’s that simple, or maybe it’s something I’m totally missing, like she just wasn’t trained very well, which is also a possibility. I never got a real chance to try to break her of that because she didn’t live long enough, but I think about it often. My labs have never done that trick. But my old dog would often get explosive diarrhea if I left her home alone during hunting season, especially if she’d catch sight of me packing up. Separation anxiety is a term we throw around but often don’t really try to understand. The best way I’ve read it described is that it’s essentially a panic attack for dogs. Now, if you’ve never had a panic attack, let me tell you about the only one I’ve had so far. I was pretty convince that I was having a heart attack, and that quite a bit of the normal processes in my body were suddenly going haywire, and that the angels and demons were fighting over my soul and I wasn’t sure who was winning. And well, it was generally not a good time. But is there anything that can be done about this? If your dog is currently going full basket case every time you throw on a jacket and start to head out the door. Yes there is. Some trainers and dog behavior experts recommend a desensitization process. Think about it this way. What if every time you were around your best friend he hooted like an owl, spun in place three times, and then whacked you in the nuts with a pool noodle. I have no idea why that’s my example, but let’s go with it. After a while, that owl hoot would trigger a stress response in you, which would only become more exacerbated with the spinning in place and then the sight of the pool noodle arcing in the general direction of your giblets. Now, let’s say you are an a total idiot and eventually you kick the best friend of the curb, but you are very suspicious of your new best friend. Well, a great way for them to condition you to trust them would be to very softly hoot like an owl and then do nothing else. Your heart rate would spike, but for once, it wouldn’t lead to a smack to the old fruit basket that friend. Then they occasionally spin in place too. Then you go swimming and they pick up a pool noodle and float with it, never once threatening to wallop you in the undercarriage Over time, those behaviors that used to cause you huge amounts of stress would slowly turn into the types of behaviors that elicit no response other than maybe dredging up some bad memories with our dog. Maybe it’s us packing the briefcase for work or a backpack for the gym. Maybe it’s filling up your coffee cup in the morning and grabbing your keys. Those elections can happen at any time and don’t have to result in you leaving, which is what your dog expects. You can run through those things and not always go through with them, since you already have the thing they fear the most happening, which is you leaving. You got to think about it like breaking it down into small pieces and conditioning them to not fear them individually. This isn’t easy, or at least not something that will happen in a couple days. Modifying dog behavior is a long game thing, and fixing a fear that has become well established is certainly not something that will happen quickly. Of course, exposure therapy might not cover at all, and you have to put yourself in the dog’s pause again. If they aren’t getting enough exercise or mental stimulation. Then the odds of them losing their ever loving shit when you leave are much higher, So there’s different ways to mitigate this stuff. A tired dog that has used its body and brain is a dog that will learn to relax much quicker, much more easier. Now I can’t say this for sure, but I think an awful lot of separation anxiety happens not just because of the person or people they are bonded with leave, but also those same people are the only people in the world who take them on walks, or toss the bumper for them, or do the things they absolutely live for. Even that might not be enough, though, and there are anti anxiety meds out there for dogs. But here’s a thing, and I have to say this. I am not a veterinarian, so do not take my word for this. This is just my opinion, but I think whatever we can remedy without using drugs is probably the best route. Sometimes meds are necessary, and that’s up to you and your vet to decide. But just like we do with ourselves, we often look for shortcuts in life. Humans kind of honestly are just shortcut seeking machines, and this has led to a whole lot of technology that makes our lives easier, but it also doesn’t work in every facet of a life, because there are just some things where we should try to fix them the natural, healthy way before we try something more along the lines of get rich quick products. In the case of anti anxiety meds, you know, they might be perfect for some dogs that just don’t respond well to extra mental stimulation or exercise or any of that trigger conditioning training, but others would be just fine, and that means you’re actually treating the root cause of the problem versus slapping a band aid in pill form over it. It varies. You know, these dogs are individuals. But again I have to say this. Don’t trust me on this because I am an idiot who hunts squirrels for a living. It’s also true that separation anxiety is one form of anxiety, and there are other categories that don’t come from just us leaving the house for work. There’s age related anxiety, which is just kind of a cognitive decline that gets really stressful and it’s really tough to watch. And I say that with absolute sincerity now that I have a twelve and a half year old dog at home. There’s fear based anxiety too, which if you have ever been around a dog that is scared of fire, orcs or or gunshots, or you know, basically any loud noises, you know is a real thing, a real problem. In some of these cases, there might not be a clear path to help them without meds. So again it’s also individualized with their dogs and their problems, which go beyond the many forms of anxiety. Like did you know that scientists at Emory University did a study on dog brains and emotional responses and they concluded that dogs not only get anxiety, but they get obsessive compulsive disorder, and some of them even get depression. You might not believe that, but at least when it comes to OCD and canines, I’ve seen it a few times and it is bonkers. Some of you folks who are familiar with white tail hunting medium might know who Lee and Tiffany Lakoski are. They are a married couple who have built an empire around their hunting show, which primarily focuses on whitetails, but they are also dog lovers. I spent some time with them a few years ago at their lake place, and happen to notice that one one of their male labs was in the water, standing on his hind legs and spinning in circles while feverishly slapping the water to a froth with his front paws. I asked them what it was all about, and Tiff said that when he was a pup, he got caught in a rope in the water, and now she thinks he’s always looking for that scary rope that might try to drown him. I don’t know that’s as good of an explanation as any, but the behavior was extremely compulsive. He did it so much that she said people who were fishing nearby would stop at their dock to see if the dog was okay. It was quirky, but also attestiment to some infinite loop running over and over in his black lab brain. Now, I’m not smart enough to figure out how to cure that in a dog, and I’ve seen it in one human who I was close to for a long long time, And I know how much OCD can dominate someone’s life. Because of that and the lives of those around them, A lot of people joke like they are oh germophobes, or they like to wash their hands a lot, but when you witness real unchecked OCD, it’s not much fun. In the case I just mentioned in my life, it felt more like dealing with an addict who didn’t want treatment than someone who likes to have clean hands or all of their stuff in a specific order. Now, when it comes to depression in dogs, this is kind of a wild one. I have two labs, so they don’t seem like anything other than you know, adorable muppets who really want a belly rub, and then about five hundred retrieves, oh and food of all types. It’s hard to imagine them being depressed. But I guess I’m kind of like a human version of a lab, and I have had no shortage of issues with depression. I think a lot of us have now. In dogs, this manifests itself in just less life. They take on a little blah vibe, They sleep more, they sulk around, they just aren’t as playful, and they just appear to be kind of sad. For most dogs, the catalysts for this would be, you know, a person or another dog dying or going away, or some other really big meaningful change in their lives. Since they don’t have financial worries or marriages or I don’t know, bosses who yell at them and somehow climb the ladder while we stagnate away in the same position for years and seed. Anyway, curing a dog’s depression is probably about as simple as you think it is, and it’s mostly important to know that these mental issues can happen to our four legged besties, because that gives us the option to remedy them, either after they’ve occurred, or, if at all possible, to try to get ahead of them before they even happen, which is really the secret sauce. You know, it’s all good dog behavior, and while it’s not always possible, you can do yourself and your dog a lot of favors by building in healthy habits into their lives. The dog that just knows it will get to go out and train or do some fun retrieves a few times a day is a dog that just generally seems to learn how to relax more quickly at home. You know, there’s a reason elementary school kids get recess. That wasn’t an accidental development in the education system. Those kids needed reward for sitting at their desk for hours learning to spell and do simple maths. Dogs are no different. Hell, none of us are think about going to work all day long doing dumb stuff to make just enough money to not be homeless, and instead of doing something cool after work, like going fishing, you have to go get your taxes done. That whole day is probably just going to kind of suck. But the day that you do get to work and then go fishing afterwards with your buddies, that one’s going to feel different. Look this again, is a way to condition our dogs to understand that life is not only pretty decent, but also somewhat predictable. Structure is good for dogs, and if they learn that, you will for sure take them out a few times a day to do their favorite things. They usually learn that they don’t need to chew up the couch cushions or run through the wall kool aid Man style to catch the squirrel in the backyard that is their primary source of entertainment all day long. There are a hell of a lot of other mental issues and quirks our dogs may have, you know, from innocent stuff that might just be kind of cute, to moments of aggression or resource guarding. Are not so cute things that could spin up into something really not good. What we tolerate, or I guess choose to not really understand is what could bite us in the ass if we aren’t careful, which is maybe a little too on the nose of a statement, so I guess I’ll say this. My final parting thought here on this stuff is to try to always read our dogs, identify the moments when something is just off with them, and if it is, try to dig into the root cause. And whether we find it or not, our job is to figure out how to either fix it or manage it so that our dogs can have the quality of life we want for them, and honestly, so we can have a better life with them. That’s it for this week. I’m Tony Peterson. This has been the Foundation’s podcast. As always, Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for listening. We truly appreciate it. Here if you need some more hunting content, maybe you want to listen to some podcasts on a road trip out west to hunt some sharpie’s or something. Maybe you need a new rest for woodcock or grouse, I don’t know, Maybe just want to watch a hunting film, whatever it is. If you like outdoor content, and I know you do because you’re listening to this. Head over to the mediater dot com and you will see that we drop new content every single day. Thanks again for your support.
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