When "Let them work it out" Doesn't Work Out - Part One - With Ran Courant-Morgan

Naomi [: 00:00:00

Hey you cat and dog people. This is it's training cats and dogs, your source of practical strategies to keep everyone in your multi-species household, safe and sane. I'm your host, Naomi Rotenberg and today we're bringing you part one of our chat with Ran Courant Morgan, another pet professional about how they've used their expertise to manage the relationships between their own pets Ran is the co-owner of dog behavior Institute with a mission to provide a behavior analytic approach to dog training, to support both families and professionals in living and working with dogs. In this first part of my interview with them, we talked about their in-depth process in designing a training plan to help their dogs live safely with their cats.

Let's get started. Hi, Ran thanks so much for joining us.

Ran [: 00:00:49

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Naomi [: 00:00:51

I look forward to nerding out with you about all these concepts, but we need to get some important business out of the way. First, number one, we need to introduce your animals individually so that we can kind of get a sense of the lay of the land that we're talking about. And then kind of hop into their history a little bit and the conflicts that you may or may not have, uh, been around that you've had to deal with and how you, you know, went through that. So tell me about the history of your animals.

Ran [: 00:01:25

Excellent. And I actually sort of have two sets or generations of animals that I'm thinking we'll talk about today. Um, but I'll start with who is in our household now. So right now we have one dog who I like to think is sort of famous on the internet. Her name is Beacon, she's a Brindle blockhead mixed she's two and a half years old. Um, and then we have Noah Simon. I should just tell you everyone's middle names, right? This is very important. So it's Beacon Hopper is her full name. Uh, and then we have Noah Simon who, anytime I type his name in my phone, it auto-corrects to have his name in all caps, which is generally how we talk about him. Like, we're always like, no, ah, and then we're like, oh right, that's your name.

Like, that's why that's happening. And he's, uh, large. He's a rotund, um, gray Tabby who is about eight years old. And then we have a little orange Tabby who is about seven years old and his name is Twig Notaro. Um, and he is quite the character. Thank you. I can see you laughing. Some people totally miss the reference and other people love it.

And I appreciate, I appreciate all of those possibilities. So Twig is a cat that we adopted when way back when, before we had beacon, we had another dog and another cat and Noah and my wife was just like, no, we're not getting another dog. We're not getting another dog. And I was like, fine, can we get a kitten?

And so that's how Twig came to live with us. Um, so both Noah and Twig came into the household while we had another dog who was just totally cat neutral. She just did not care. Um, but when we got Beacon, it was super important that whatever dog was coming into our life was also incredibly cat neutral.

something more interesting? [: 00:04:00

We had two cats who were really used to dogs and a puppy who really could not care less about the cats.

Naomi [: 00:04:19

So did the puppy really not care about the cats? I feel like there's a development.

Ran [: 00:04:23

She really did not care about the cats. Over time she became a little bit more interested in, um, I mean, Noah just sort of opts out. Like if she's interested in him, he just leaves. But with Twig, Twig is really curious. And so he started to be interested and over time they've started to play together a little bit, like not full on play, but I have a couple of videos that, you know, if I post it probably looks like that's how we live all the time. But they routinely sort of start playing with each other and then are like, oh, you don't speak my language.

And one of them - one of them is too enthusiastic and the other one then goes and hides under the couch. It's always Twig under the couch, but I feel like maybe this is a time... I mean, I'm sure you have many more questions, but I talked about how important it was to have a cat neutral dog. And that came out of our previous experience, which I think I suggested at when we talked about doing this episode, with our last dog who is part of the other cast of characters.

So. We, so I will say that I have had dogs and cats, my entire life. I apparently literally started asking for a dog when I was two. I got my first dog for my fifth birthday. And I recently called my mom and I was like, is this a myth? Or did I really start asking it too? And she was like, it might've been one and a half.

Like as soon as I could talk, I was asking for a dog. And so my family always had dogs and cats and they always live together. And the way we introduce them was you brought the new pet home and you were like, here's everyone work it out. And that was fine. We never had any issues with our dogs and cats.

Like they got along, they ignored each other. That was it. And when I got my first dog as an adult, she had lived with a cat before and same thing, like we just put them together and they were sort of like, who are you? Who are you? This is fine, this as neutral? And so. Uh, one year to the day after my wife and I got married, she finally let me get a puppy.

And we adopted this little pit bull puppy who was 12 weeks old. Um, I saw this dog across like a field and I was like, that's my puppy. That is my puppy. And I met her and I just fell enormously in love with her. Um, her name was Lenny and at the time we had two cats at home. Different cats than we have now. And both had been living with our other dog, Daphne - this is so many names.

w any of this, but you know, [: 00:07:00

You say, here's the dog. Here's the cat. Um, and that did not go well. Lenny immediately like started chasing him, cornered him. And at the time this was over, it was over 10 years ago. Now at the time I was like, okay, he's going to whack her on the nose and then that's going to be that like, that's how it's always been.

mber the early days all that [: 00:08:00

So the dogs lived fully downstairs behind the baby gate. Then there was a stairway and then at the top of the stairway, which they couldn't see was another baby gate and the cats lived upstairs. And so we just had the... these totally separate lives. I feel like I could talk just about this for hours, but I'm talking a lot.

Should I keep going? Do you have other questions?

Naomi [: 00:08:44

This is the, I mean, yes, but this is the important information that we can then build on. So. Excellent. So you have this intense management, no one sees

Ran [: 00:08:54

Yeah. Except for training. So we did try to do training. It was sort of these two different behaviors because she was screaming when she heard them, but she didn't see them. But also when we tried to work on training where she could see them, she was just like totally already wired. And in retrospect, I think that's because she wasn't sleeping enough because she was constantly on alert. But we just couldn't even... I wasn't even working with a dog who was calm enough to do training to see the cats and it got worse and worse.

And the two sort of final straws were when at one point she - I'm not sure why I hadn't crated her that day. I think I was running an errand for like five minutes. Like I was driving out and coming back and I got in the car and I turned on the car and then I heard the screaming from inside the house, like in a way that I hadn't heard it before.

to a corner. And the cat was [: 00:10:00

Um, but it was, it was the closest call and that was sort of the...you know. And there's always something I'm sort of beating myself up like, oh, I should've crated her. I can't believe that happened. And we're all human people who sometimes make a five minute mistake or cross their fingers or think it's okay.

And so this was a moment where I was like this small lapse almost just resulted in my cat dying. I will also say that this is Lenny, the love of my life. I'm not saying I ever saw her kill any squirrels, but I think it's pretty unlikely that she just found dead squirrels in the woods. She would go off chasing squirrels occasionally and 99% of the time they got away.

And every so often she would come back with a dead squirrel. And so it was a real fear. It wasn't just a like, oh, maybe she'll chase the cats and then they'll realize they're playing. It was a real fear that she would in fact kill the cats. At the time I was in my master's degree program, or maybe I had just graduated.

I got her right at the beginning of my master's degree. So I did a lot of projects with her. I was working closely with a PhD level BCBA who worked with dogs. I was also working professionally with behavior analysts and I was connected with other dog trainers. So I had a lot of people that I was asking advice.

And no one had answers for me. I can't tell you how excited I was to see your website. Like I wish I had found you 10 years ago because people were like, oh, just give your dog treats when she looks at your cat, but we couldn't even get to a point where she could be calm enough to look at the cat, or I don't even remember what else they offered, but I was like, this is so much bigger.

What we're dealing with is so much bigger than just like click and treat when she looks at the cat, because she is wired all the time. I believe we started her on anti-anxiety. Um, and then at some point, I think after this close call, and I honestly don't remember if we did start her on anti-anxiety meds, my other dog was on anti-anxiety meds and one day Lenny got into it and she ate two weeks worth of Daphne's anti-anxiety meds and...

Naomi [: 00:12:13

Like, I really need anti-anxiety meds!

Ran [: 00:12:16

So she's like sort of wobbling and like shaking a little bit and we're on the phone with the vet, like, do we need to come in and do we watch her do induce vomiting at home? Is this an emergency situation? Like trying to assess the situation. And she lies down on her bed and she, you know, heavy eyes, she just had two weeks of like basically sedative medicine.

emphasized for me again, how [: 00:13:00

And like also how little support I had that the only people I could find to talk to were saying, you know, click and treat when she looks at the cats, when she was having these big reactions without the cats even being visible. So somewhere along the line with all of the. We finally decided that this was too stressful to live with.

Like also my wife and my poor other dog are, you know, trying to work or relax. And suddenly there's a screaming pit bull in the house and everyone's stressed all the time. We briefly talked about like, should I move out with my dog? We'd been married for a year and a half or two years. And we were like, we love each other, but like, maybe I should move out.

That was not actually an option but we finally came to the point, like after tears and therapy and discussion that we needed to try to find her another home. And I didn't mention that she was a dog who got like two hours of exercise a day and could keep going. We started running marathons. I started running marathons so I could run with her.

And she would do, like, there was one day where we did a 10 mile run together and then I dropped her off at home and did my last eight mile run. And when I got home from my 18 mile run and her 10 mile run, she was up and she was like, what are we doing now? As I'm saying this, I'm also like this poor dog couldn't sleep.

And in retrospect, she needed to relax and she needed, she needed to relax. And she couldn't do that with these cats in the house. So it turned and she was a resource. Oh, my gosh.

Naomi [: 00:14:31

Sounds like perfect pet for any home.

Ran [: 00:14:35

Oh, right. I cannot tell you how much I loved this dog and how heartbroken I was. When we finally found someone who was willing to take her on for a week, they were like, we'll take her for a week.

We'll do a trial run and then we'll keep her because she's amazing. She's snugly, you know? The best dog in the world, in my estimation, except for these minor challenges, um, a week later, well that whole week I just cried

and cried and the cats had the run of the house and they were so happy and my wife was relaxed and she was so happy.

And my other dog could like chew on her toys without anyone being concerned. And she was happy and I just was a complete mess. And when at the end of the week, they were like, This dog is too much. We can't keep her. My wife was like, Okay. We don't have to try going through this again, but we need to do something because we know we can't live with this.

Like we cannot live under these circumstances. We got a glimpse of what it looked like to not live under these circumstances. And so that is the stage where we decided to investigate using a punishment procedure. Um, and so what we did first was a functional. And I don't know how familiar your listeners are with the functional analysis.

So I will explain that. So every behavior serves a function, right? It contacts, it, it continues to occur because it contacts some reinforcer. So someone, someone, a dog, a person might engage in a behavior for attention, or to escape an aversive stimulus or to access something that they want. And that can be applied across so many things.

Behaviors can also have multiple functions, so maybe attention and a tangible. So like playing tug one might say it's attention. It could also be the toy itself. It could also be sensory reinforcement or automatic. This is not the same as self-reinforcing behaviors that I hear folks talking about, but it's something where engaging in the behavior produces its own reinforcement.

That's a whole other rabbit hole, but basically there are a variety of functions that our behavior might serve and we don't always know what they are. Right. And we can make a guest. So to go on a little side note. Jumping dogs. People often assume that a dog jumps on a person for attention. And so then, you know, a lot of people recommend turn your back.

Don't provide attention and that's either an extinction procedure or punishment procedure, but that's assuming that the function of the behavior is to get attention. A lot of dogs will actually jump on people to. To escape something. So if a D like in puppy class, if a demand is placed, and I say demand, because that's the term that's often used in ABA.

But if a cue is given for example, and the dog, you know, is overwhelmed or doesn't know what it is, or just once out of the situation, they might jump on the owner there too. And so in that case, turning and ignoring the behavior might actually be reinforcing the jumping. So the same behavior or what is topographically. wHat looks like the same behavior can serve multiple functions in different situations. So a functional analysis is an actual experimental tests where we have different conditions. Like for two minutes, you may be looking at jumping. You may be...reinforce or you respond to jumping by turning your back.

And for two minutes you respond to jumping by giving attention. And for two minutes you respond to jumping by giving food. And then we see what is the frequency of jumping under each of those conditions. And that can tell us what's the function of the behavior. That was like a very simplistic, um, definition or explanation of a functional analysis, but it is looking at what is our hypothesized function of the behavior, and then using experimental conditions to show that either it is or isn't that.

And so I did a lot of talking, discussing, answering questions and evaluating the scenario with my behavior analyst, colleagues who were all PhD level folks, um, about what conditions I might put in place and how I might set up a functional analysis. And so I, I did do a functional analysis. We did the video of it.

We had separate conditions where we had the cats run. So my lovely wife who is not an animal person, um, but has been sucked into all of this, she had toys and treats and she would be upstairs getting the cats to move, to make noise when I told her to, and then we were implementing different reinforcers for the dog.

Every time she engaged in the behavior. And what we found was that her screaming behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement or the cats stopping running. So they would run, she would scream. They would pause. And even if they only paused for like one to two seconds, that was sufficient to reinforce her screaming behavior.

Naomi [: 00:19:35

She said that's affective for at least giving me some reprieve from the stressor of hearing the rest.

Ran [: 00:19:43

If it was a stressor. I mean, and of course, yes, to some extent, but I also wonder how much of this, and I don't have an answer is like the terrier instinct of like you scream, you chase. Like all of these things are happening.

And the other thing that I didn't definitively figure out is that screaming may have been a precursor to chasing. And so what we did see during the FA, because we're reinforcing the behavior with different conditions to see what happens is that, um, she jumped all the fences during the FA. And so then I was like, great.

Now we know that she can jump the fence. She regularly jumped to the six foot fence in our backyard. So this was unsurprising again. See that she was a very easy dog. Everyone should have a dog like this. And because it's maintained by negative reinforcement, there's not a lot that we can do about that.

Like we couldn't, we can't tell the cats to keep running when they like freeze for that one second. Right. And so with all of that in mind, we ultimately decided to implement procedure.

Naomi [: 00:20:44

I want to say one thing though, you can't ask the cats to keep running because they are operating under their own reinforcement contingency.

The screaming stops when I stop and therefore I'm going to stop because the screaming is theoretically adversive. So you have both sides of the, of the equation inadvertently reinforcing each other, just because that's how dog behavior works. And that's how cat behavior works. It's very difficult. It would be more stressful to make sure that the cats kept moving.

Horrible. Because they need to escape in the way they know how.

Ran [: 00:21:28

Right. Right, right. And we didn't do a ton of work. I mean, there's so many other factors here. So Jake, my like brave, bold cat who was wonderful. He was actually doing a really good job, helping us work with her on seeing the cat. So he would sit on my lap and I could actually do some desensitization stuff with her safely because he was confident and I was right there and we could handle that.

And then he very selfishly got cancer and died. Um, I know, I know. And so then we just had one cat, but she was having none of this sitting quietly near dog. If she saw the dog, even through gate, she would come running up and sort of get big and forward and hiss and spit at the dog who was like, oh, game on.

And so now we also had the situation where I couldn't do any training because they were both stressed. They were both mad at each other. I couldn't do this. Like, come look at the cat and I'll give you treats, because if she was close enough to see the cat, the cat was close enough to try to attack her through the gate.

It was really wonderful. I have no idea how we survived any of this time. And I'm telling this all a little bit out of order, and it was a decade ago, but it was a lot of really stressful pieces for sure.

Naomi [: 00:22:44

Lot working against you.

Ran [: 00:22:45

And no one was out there to help. I think that was the other thing that. When we were looking at rehoming her, I reached out to a pit bull organization and I said, look, here's everything.

Here's this dog who knows how to do a million things. She's the sweetest. She needs to be in a home with no other pets. She needs exercise. I know I'm saying she's the sweetest and that she jumped our six foot fence regularly. And they were like, oh, have you tried giving her treats when she's near the cats, like, when you're sitting on the couch with her and the cats, have you tried giving her treats?

And I was like on the couch with her in the cats? That is a dream that I have that will never, ever. Sorry, I'm laughing. I know. I know. And I felt so hopeless because no one could help us. And I knew a lot. I knew a lot about behavior. I knew a lot about dog behavior and I just felt at my wit's end for what to do in this situation.

Naomi [: 00:23:41

I do want to note that there are some situations where it just is not going to work either. It's because of. The situations with the animals or that the people don't have the bandwidth to deal with the situation. And that those are totally okay. I just want to like put it out to the listeners, hear me, the animals.

Welfare is very important. So is yours. So if the situation. So difficult that you cannot handle it, even if the most wonderful professional says here's a 20 page training plan that if you go through this, it will probably be okay. And your animals may or may not be able to like coexist, not be best friends, but coexist.

And you look at that and you say, there is absolutely no way that I can do this. That is okay.

Ran [: 00:24:30

Yes. Yes. Yes. It was times. Yes. And also, as I said, I was in my master's degree for behavior. I'm nerding out about behavior all the time. I literally was training in my free time. And this is as far as we were getting.

It was hard. I can't imagine anyone else doing, like, living like this. And I still can't believe my wife put up with all of this for as long as she did. Somewhere in all of the things that I've said so far after Jake died, we decided to get another cat and it also felt really important to get a cat that could be okay with dogs because we wanted to continue training. And we also wanted another cat. We did have our other old dog. So at this point her name was Daphne and she was the one who just like, was totally neutral with cats. And so we did a lot of work bringing her into the room with Noah, who we first fostered and then adopted and teaching him that it was safe to be near her.

So like having her lie down, she did not care. She was like, I just lie here and get treats and ignore everyone. This is cool. And then giving him treats just periodically for looking at her, for approaching her, tossing them away so that he could leave again and then ending the session. And very quickly, he, he started like rubbing up against her and purring and she was sort of like, what, I didn't know this is what I was agreeing to, but also would just like stand up and leave.

Um, and so that was when we were like, okay, he's going to be okay for training with this other dog, like he's not going to panic or rush the gate if we're just working on like, look at that click and treat kind of thing. So what we ended up doing in terms of punishment - I have so much to say about punishment.

So I guess I will start by saying, this is the way that we could keep this dog in our home. And no one else was stepping up to take this dog into their home. And for that reason, I...I feel strongly - I'm like nervous about talking about this on a podcast where people will hear it, but I feel strongly that punishment can be something to consider in some situations.

And I also want to say really explicitly that there are guidelines for how to use punishment, they're specific side-effects of punishment and there's guidance on how to mitigate those side effects. But that is not to say there will not be those side effects. Um, and I will say that we saw literally every single side effect that comes with punishment and I was prepared for that.

I was like, here's what we're going to see. We're going to see aggression. Or emotional responding. We're going to see escape and avoidance. We're going to see behavioral contrast and I can talk more about what each of these is. We're going to see negative reinforcement of the punishing agent that is us.

Like it's going to be reinforcing for us that she stops barking. We might see suppression of other behaviors in the response class, and we might see an increase in other undesired behaviors. Like this is what you might see, and almost certainly will see if you're using a punishment per se. So, what we ended up doing is knowing that the precursor to the chasing was the screaming.

And also that the screaming was the behavior that was like getting her up and keeping her awake and keeping her on edge. We decided to tackle the screaming behavior and so I got a citronella spray. It is a collar that you can just walk into a pet store and buy. No one will ask you any questions, which I also feel like it's problematic.

Like I want people to have to go through a check box and be like, and here are my FA results for me to buy this punishment device. And that's a, I'm sure another conversation, but it's a little, it's a little box that fills with compressed air and citronella. Goes on the collar, like it is attached to a collar and it has a little microphone on it.

And so when the dog barks, it squirts the citronella in the face. I'm going to say all the horrible things about this punishment procedure before I keep telling you what we did. One, there's a delay. So it's like a half second delay. So the dog barks. And then if the dog stops barking, it might spray right after that. That didn't really happen.

She tended to scream and keep screaming, but that was real. If there's another dog in the home who say sees someone walking by your house and barks loudly enough while your poor dog is lying on the couch and sleeping in their collar, they can get sprayed for that. Yawning is something that is audible. And so just the things that we had to think about in terms of how do we put this on the dog and make it an effective treatment for the problem behavior without impacting all of these other completely unfair components of her life was a lot.

And we did it like, and also my dog learned how to yawn silently and how heartbreaking is that? Like, it still breaks my heart. That that was the situation. So anyone who's like this sounds so great. I want to run out and get a citronella collar for my dog to deal with my screaming dog. Like, if I can say don't do it 500 times.

I that's, that's an important piece of what I want people to hear from my story is like, this is not a thing to take lightly or do easily or an easy fix or comfortable fix. It was a very uncomfortable and very challenging fix. Some of the guidelines of punishment are that when you first start using it, if not always, you want to punish every instance of the behavior.

You want to use a punisher that is salient enough to be effective the first time you use it. So you never want to start with a low level punisher and gradually increase it because you may also then be, um, building tolerance to that punisher. And then you have to punish at a much higher level than you initially.

[

Those are just some of the things with some of those side effects. We also knew that with my resource guarding dog, who's about to be punished and engage in aggressive or emotional reactions the first time and maybe even the second and third and fifth and 10th time that she experienced this, she might turn around and redirect to our other dog.

And that was a very likely situation. I had no concerns about her redirecting towards us. Um, so I will also mention but after we got the collar and we set it all up, we also had remote control treat dispensers. We use manners minders. And so when you're using a punishment procedure, you and I'm not saying go out and do it, but the guidelines are, um, always have a dense schedule in place for an alternative behavior that has been taught, um, or that is fluent.

And so you want to have that other behavior available at the same time. Now I will say we had also previously tried just feeding when we heard the cats. So the cats ran, we would feed, um, she still screamed and that, that was not sufficient to stop the screaming. But what we decided to do was use the collar and feed simultaneously, and so that she would start to learn not to bark and instead to eat. So the alternative behavior was eating. It's an easy behavior. It's a fluent behavior. It's a reinforcing behavior. Um, we didn't want to ask her to go do anything else, but just make it like super, super simple. You looked like you were going to say...

Naomi [: 00:31:43

I was going to say involves the mouth, right? You can't. It's very hard to be screaming and eating at this time.

Ran [: 00:31:49

Yes. Yes. And I remember very vividly setting up the manners minder, putting her collar on her, putting up baby gates, putting our other dog in another space, having my wife go upstairs and make the cats move so that she could contact this punisher.

And, I just remember it so vividly. She screamed, she got sprayed in the face. She startled, her tail tucked, her head ducked. She ran away. It was like right down the list of every single, emotional responding escape avoidance. Um, she ran out of the room and wouldn't come back in for several minutes. And I don't remember the details.

We ran a few trials of like giving her food and having her eat. It listed or evoked the behavior, you know, having the cats move, having her contact punishment. And it was awful. It was really, it was really awful. And she started sleeping. She would, she started getting to the point and this was over, um, months that we were doing this.

We set up a procedure for us because again, negative reinforcement of the punishing agent that is, it's like reinforcing for us as people to have our dogs start screaming. Right. And so the way you mitigate that is you put really strict criteria in place for when you use the punishment procedure. And so we did not have the collar on her all the time, and there are pros and cons to that behaviorally.

I won't go into that, but there are pros and cons to that. We did not have it on all the time. We also shifted to not punishing every instance of the behavior. We did try to continue reinforcing. Any time the cats ran around, we would feed. But if she screamed once we put the collar on, but it was off. And if she screamed again, then we turned the collar on and that was one way that we tried to have it be so that she wasn't getting sprayed when the other dog barked and she wasn't getting sprayed when she was yawning.

And then the other thing is I mentioned behavioral contrast before. So behavioral contrast is when a behavior, when a schedule of reinforcement or punishment is put in place in one setting and the behavior increases or decreases on that schedule, it will change in the opposite direction. In another setting.

And so if we're punishing barking in one condition, we would expect to see an increase in barking in the other condition. And it felt really important to be clear that she should not be barking at the cats, but if she wanted to bark out the window at the squirrels for five hours, like that was the deal that we were making with her.

And of course we couldn't explain that to her, but it was like don't bark at the cats, but you want to scream at the squirrels that's fine. Go for it. And so that was an important part of also taking the collar off and putting it back on. Really clear with our criteria for ourselves so that we could make it more clear for her.

So she started sleeping more. You know, we would put the collar on without turning it on and she would go and lie down and she would sleep through the night and she calmed down and I started to be able to do the things where I, so the cats lived upstairs behind multiple baby gates. And I would put a baby gate in the doorway where one of the cats lived and I had a collar, a harness, two leashes, and a muzzl on Lenny. And we would just open the door for a second click, close the door, give her treats and gradually increase the duration that the door was open. And then gradually increase, reinforce looking at the cat and then gradually reinforced, just standing there, basically existing without barking, while looking at the cat while the cat engaged in increased behavior.

So playing running, and we got to the point where I think I was even comfortable removing the muzzle. Not removing the leash um, but working with her in the same room as the cat. And we would sometimes put the cat - he was super chill with all of this - we would put him in a crate on the couch, in the living room, and I would have him in a crate on one side of me giving him treats and he's just hanging out and relax and have her on the other side of me.

And we just watched TV and there was this protective barrier in place. And we were really going somewhere and I should have said this story ends really tragically, which is that she very suddenly got sick and had cancer, um, and, and died just a couple of weeks after that. And that solved that problem.

ng to say. I have to say our [: 00:36:00

Naomi [00:36:44]

those lines, but I know that [: 00:37:00

Or how dare you do this? You know, she would have been fine if you had just done right. I don't want to lose the nuance of the learning theory behind this and try... we'll try to break it down a little bit for people who are not as understanding of behavior chains and triggering. And I, I guess my first question would be something like that, right?

Where it says you very clearly said, all right, the screaming is that kind of a gateway? Behavior that unleashes all of the other under really undesired, like unsafe behaviors, right? The screaming is annoying and it's obviously stressful for her to do it because why wouldn't you stopped it? She started sleeping, but the screaming was the starting point because the other behaviors weren't happening in the absence of the screaming. I want to make sure that is, you know, is that true?

Ran [: 00:38:19

You know, I don't remember. That is one piece that I wish I could say, like, yes, she always screamed right before chasing or no, she never did. And as we're talking about this, I'm wondering if she was screaming because

And so when she saw them, she didn't need to scream. I mean, one question I had at the time too, was, did she even know that these were the cats? Like, did she? And can a dog know? Was she like, I'm screaming at cats now I'm seeing cats that I want to chase or were they two totally different stimuli? As far as she was concerned?

have no idea.

Naomi [: 00:38:53

Like the pitter patter of kitty feet of disembodied kitty feet, right. Is a totally different trigger potentially than the cat that she sees. Who is Jake, especially just sitting there. Right.

Ran [: 00:39:08

Exactly.

Naomi [: 00:39:09

Okay. That's really interesting. And it's, that would be difficult to figure out how to pull those, pull those things apart.

So why do you think when the screaming itself was punished, she then relaxed?

Ran [: 00:39:28

I think, and this is like, not as behavioral as I would like to be, but I think that she was in a constant state of stress. She was like in a constant state of vigilance of. I'm going to have to scream and minute, and now I'm screaming and was constantly there and therefore could not calm down in other situations, like if you're constantly stressed and then someone gives you a complicated math problem.

And I don't know how many of your listeners will have talked about trigger stacking, but like a little thing, a little thing, a little thing makes that right on top of each other, makes that last little thing - that might also be just as little as the other things that were fine - make it seem like a really big deal.

And so I suspect that she was just constantly in a state of stress and she never got a chance to like turn off from engaging in that behavior. I also just want to say 5 million times, because maybe this is resonating with someone and they're like, my dog is always stressed and all I need to do is turn it off.

It is not a simple, like punishment we'll do that. I just want to emphasize again how horrible the side-effects of punishment are. And I still believe it was the right thing for us to do in the circumstances that we were in, but this is not something that I would recommend anyone try on their own. Even a professional, I think, should be working with other professionals and soliciting advice and support from other professionals before trying to do something like that.

Naomi [: 00:40:57

Yeah, there are many, many ways to help a dog calm down that are not related to this that you should try first.

Ran [: 00:41:04

And I think rehoming could have been an option if it had been an option for this particular dog, which also I'm sure this is a whole other conversation about like how to get support around finding, finding a home for a dog when you're not going to give them to a shelter and the foster folks can't, or won't help you, you know?

Naomi [: 00:41:25

Right. If you have a behaviorally... let's call it complex animal behavior, really complex animal that, you know, could, there is an imaginable scenario where they could thrive, but it is difficult to find that scenario. I like to think of them as the unicorn homes. Yes, they exist. I mean, unicorns definitely exist. Right? My five-year-old will tell you that do exist. It's just very difficult to find them. No one has found them.

Ran [: 00:41:57

Right. Right. You know, someone recently asked me if you, out of all your pets, if you could pick one pet and that's the one pet that you have for the rest of your life, and they're the only pet you have, who would it be? And I was like, hands down, Lenny.

Like if she didn't live with. Interact with other animals. She was just a dream, but there just aren't that many people out there who want like a little pit bull that can't be around other dogs and cats and, you know, needs to run 10 miles a day. I'm really selling her

Naomi [: 00:42:31

Right. All of these things affect behavior that you have absolutely no, no effect on when you get them at 8, 10, 12, 14 weeks old. And what's important. The reason I'm bringing this up, at least for me is that I see a lot of pibblish block headed dogs who struggle with either leash reactivity, general small dog or small other animals, squirrels chasing, right? Because that's in them. There are many, many dogs. They have no problem. They love everyone. It's not a big deal. Right. And, oh my God, I'm so oversimplifying this, but...

Ran [: 00:43:54

Nope, but I'm everything you're saying...no one can see me like nodding frantically over here. Like yes. Yes.

Naomi [: 00:44:01

I just want to be like, don't ask me about this, but right. There's so many reasons like Lenny came to you really young. But from the beginning was major strugs in this particular area. Even the first time she saw a cat with struggling, right. So it's not like, oh, things, you know, got screwed up immediately, uh, on the training side of it.

That's a tangent. Go ahead. So we were talking about, um, the lack of sleeping, um, as a huge behavioral um, let's call it set up, right. A setting. That's a motivating factor in why her behavior was probably so intense, right? It was a chicken and egg kind of thing. It seems like, right. If you're chronically sleep deprived, there's a reason that they use it as torture.

Um, because you go a little bit nutty. Right. So if she was already inclined to be slightly nutty in this, in this particular scenario, especially, I mean, it's not going to be helped by this constant feedback loop. Um, so did you think, cause you did really think through this FA and this, you know, punishment procedure and I really commend you for that because it's a very important step that a lot of people don't really write out or conceptualize. Um, they say I'm going through Lima: Least Invasive Minimal procedure, but they don't really. Figure out the actual steps in between as they're going through towards this punishment zone. Um, and I really think that it's important to say, why am I doing this and then stopping and putting it away and then coming back and saying, do I still do I still believe what I wrote down?

Like, this is why I'm doing this. Do I really think it's going to work? And then yeah. Talking to colleagues and really turning it over. Trying to anticipate what might happen. So my question, I guess, would be, did you anticipate that she would be able to sleep when you punish this behavior? Is that like an unintentional...

Ran [: 00:46:32

Yeah, I know that was an unintentional side effect and, um, No, I think I was just focused on how do we make this stop? And then can we train some other things? Now, I also want to say like, punishment can result in the suppression of behavior. Uh, of course like decrease in that behavior, but also a suppression of behavior generally.

And so we did see an increase in sleep. We also saw an increase in that escape avoidance, where. If she had the collar on and she heard the cats, she would leave the room and go to the farthest corner in the house from the stairwell and curl up and lie there. And I'm not sure that she took a nap then, or if she just like lay there and rested, um, to escape from the scenario in which she had contacted punishment before.

And so I wasn't surprised to see that, but I was surprised to see just that she was able to sleep more and that she was able to relax more. And I think that, yeah, it was just a shift in that feedback loop that she wasn't constantly on edge because in those moments where she would have gotten more and more worked up, instead, she went and rested in a corner.

And so she never reached that peak stress level that she had been contacting before.

Naomi [: 00:47:48

Yeah. I think also you were talking about behaviors that have their own reinforcement contingency built in barking. I think a lot of people might say is one of them, um, You're the expert in this, but the idea is if vocalization in and of itself has some reinforcement aspect to it, if you S which then reinforces the internal feelings of stress, general scientific term, everybody general scientific moment, then stopping the initial behavior that contributes to that cycle would then make that cycle less likely to happen because the same forcement contingency that starts at all is not there.

Ran [: 00:48:46

Yes.

Naomi [: 00:48:48

Okay. I'm like thinking a lot of things you can, you can see cause we'revideo chatting you can see my brain just go wiggly wiggly wiggly. Okay. So we might have to like, do many follow-ups on this because there's so much to talk about.

Ran [: 00:49:01

Yes. Oh my god I would love that.

Naomi [: 00:49:07