Why Mood Matters in Aggression Cases With Karin Pienaar

A dog can be “aggressive” on the outside while living a totally different emotional story on the inside, and that mismatch is where so many training plans break. We sit down with Karin Pienaar, author of Mood Matters, to talk about what behavior is really made of: mood, emotions, arousal, and the dog’s lived experience day to day.

We get concrete about definitions first, then go deeper into why mood is the starting point for everything we ask dogs to do. Karin explains the difference between emotion and mood with a simple visual that sticks, and we connect it to the reality of reactive dog training and aggression in dogs. If arousal is too high, learning fails, and “progress” becomes trigger rehearsal. We also talk about how to read thresholds in real time using responsiveness, food, and clear physiological signs.

From there, Karin walks us through her MHERA framework (Mood, Hedonic Budgets, Emotionality, Reinforcement Assessments) and the role cognitive bias plays in how dogs interpret novelty and ambiguity. We explore why enrichment and exposure are not automatically helpful, how agency and consent cues can change outcomes, and why two dogs displaying the same behavior at the end of the leash may need completely different behavior change plans.

About Karin:
https://mhera.org/about.html

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Transcript

Looking Beyond Barking And Lunging

SPEAKER_00 0:01

What if the behavior we're seeing is only a small part of the picture? When we're working with aggression, it's easy to focus on what we can observe the barking, lunging, growling, or biting. But what about the dog's mood? Or their emotional state, or their level of arousal? And perhaps most importantly, how they're actually experiencing what's happening around them. My guest today is Karen Pinard, author of Mood Matters, and we get into the fascinating connection between emotion and behavior. We talk about mood and cognitive bias, how emotional states can influence learning and behavior change, and Karen's mirror framework for looking beyond behavior to better understand the individual dog in front of us. We also explore something especially relevant to aggression cases. Two dogs can show very similar behaviors on the outside while experiencing something very different on the inside, and that distinction can completely change how we approach the case. Before

Training Resources And Conference Plug

SPEAKER_00 1:02

we jump into today's episode, a quick heads up. If you're looking to learn more about helping dogs with aggression issues, head on over to aggressivedog.com, where we've got something for everyone. For pet pros, there's the Aggression and Dogs Master Course, which is the most comprehensive course available on aggression, packed with expert insights and CEUs. For Dog Guardians, check out Real Life Solutions, which is a practical course for everyday challenges like release reactivity and dog-to-dog aggression. And if you want full access to expert webinars, live mentor sessions, and exclusive discounts, the Ultimate Access membership is just $29 a month. You'll also find info on the 2026 Canis Conference happening in Schaumburg this October, which will be the world's largest dog behavior conference with tracks covering training, behavior, science, vet care, scent work, dog sports, and shelter and rescue. That's all at aggressivedog.com. Check it out after the show.

Defining Mood For Real Dogs

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Bitey End of the Dog. This week we are talking about things like moods, emotions, and feelings, all these things that really do matter for dogs. And I have the best guest that I can think of for this Karen Pinard, who is the author of Mood Matters, is joining me this week. So welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Oh, thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. Really one of my favorite subjects to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, and this matters so much for me when it comes to aggression cases, because you know, when I first started out, we were talking a lot about from a behavior lens, looking at observable behaviors, which is obviously important in the work we do, but not a lot of people were talking about what's happening within the dog, the emotions and the mood and how they're feeling. So for the sake of um the audience here, we have a very broad audience, as you know. Uh let's define some of these terms first. What is mood? Because some people are like, oh, how do you really know what kind of a mood the dog is in? So can you define mood for us and then we'll talk about a little bit more about that as well?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Okay. So the easiest straightforward way to define mood is to say how the dog is feeling in general at this point in time. Mood is typically measured in days or weeks. Um, and it's something that fluctuates. You know, sometimes you're in a good mood, sometimes you're in a bad mood. There are a lot of things that affect mood, you know. So when we're looking at mood through the mirror model value, what we're assessing is essentially the degree of arousal and the valence that the animal is in, the state of valence. So is he in a good mood or is he in a bad mood? And because mood is pretty much something that should be considered before you do anything else, um, you know, if you think about it, I always say to people when they say to me, well, why does mood matter? It's because that is your starting point. Any experience that you have, any emotional reaction that you have to anything that's happening to you is influenced by the mood state that you're in. And if you are in a good mood, I I know I certainly am like this, if I'm in a good mood, that's when I time it to have to go shopping, because I hate shopping malls with a passion that is difficult to express. And I know that if I go shopping when I'm in a bad mood, road rage is a very real possibility. So the same thing, the same courtesy should be extended to our animals when we are doing any kind of work with them. You know, if they're in a bad mood, that is not the time where you make changes to their life. That is not where you ask them to solve complex situations and complex um challenges. If there are things that we can do to make them feel better about them, their life in general, so take them from a bad mood to a good mood, it sets them up for success. And it also sets the people working with them up for success. So mood is pretty much how you feel in general at that point in time. And then mood is also influenced by a whole bunch of alone standing things that we'll, I'm sure we'll get to discuss that as we go through today's chat. But um, yeah, that's the short version of what is mood.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

And and of course, your book is called Mood Matters. And you talked a little bit about why it does matter. We want to make sure that the dog is in a good state to before we start working with all these protocols and fancy training strategies we might have out there. And um tell us some other reasons why that our assessment of how a dog's mood might be is so crucial in our training strategies or just life in general.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Well, I think one of the reasons for me why mood should always be put at the forefront of anything we do is mood is a really good indicator of the animal's lived experience in terms of what is happening to them, the care that they're receiving. If you have an animal whose needs are being met in a way that makes it accessible, fine, enjoyable for him or her, that animal is likely to be in a good mood. Obviously, there are things that affect it, like pain or nutrition or uh weather, things like that. But in general, even though we're cognizant of the fact that you can't always be in a good mood, uh that's you know, if you are, there's probably medication for that, but not that you want to mess with that. But it's also, you know, largely because we want to make sure that animals at least have enough things to make their lives worth living instead of just being in it. And mood is a really good guiding factor for us. If we can see that an animal's mood in general tends towards the positive, it's it's a good indicator that, you know, he's got he's getting everything that he needs in the right quantities for him as an individual, as opposed to, well, this is what I think this dog needs to make him happy. And so, you know, the reason why I called the book Mood Matters is because I want to put a lot of emphasis for people on the fact that just as much as our emotions influence our behavior, um, animal emotionality, it drives everything that they do. And the starting point for anything that they do comes from how they're perceiving the care that they're they're receiving and how that influences their day-to-day life. And also, uh, I think to draw a little bit of attention to the fact that sometimes they're in bad moods and that's okay. You know, it's okay for them to say, you know what, I'm having a really bad week. I'm cranky, I've woken up on the wrong side of the bed, it's cold outside or whatever. I don't feel like going for a walk this week, or I don't feel like doing agility or training or whatever. And not to look at that as a behavior problem, but to look at that as recognition of a complex emotional life with a creature who's allowed to have good and bad moods, and that's perfectly fine and perfectly normal. And I think it's something that we kind of skip over sometimes is the acknowledgement of the complexity of their emotional lives and how that affects their day-to-day behavior. And to not just automatically go, oh, well, you know, he's doing this behavior and it's a problem, and I have to fix it, without understanding the role that the underlying emotions play in why he's doing stuff.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

And I bet the listeners are thinking right now, well, how do I know what mood my dog is in? I want to get into that in just a moment. So the assessment aspects and also how it impacts welfare and well-being. But let's let's go to the other couple terms that are labels that we might use uh when we're talking about this topic is emotions or feelings. We could talk about that as well, and then arousal, because you talked about measuring those, and we'll talk about the axis

Emotions Versus Mood With Ink

SPEAKER_00 8:39

as well. So uh first, let's talk about emotions, like your basic definition of emotions.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Basic definition of emotion is the response that you're feeling uh to something that is happening to you. One of the biggest differences between mood and emotion is that mood is what we call free-floating, it is not attached to one particular stimulus, whereas an emotion is. If you uh hit your finger in the door, the feeling that you feel is an emotion. The impact that that has on your overall week is your mood state. So when we're looking at emotions, is how are you feeling in the moment when something is happening to you? And then all of those little blobs of emotion kind of come together to form your mood overall. I like using visual aids when I have this conversation with people. And I normally say to them, uh, imagine you have a glass in front of you, and on the other hand, you've got another glass with a teaspoon and there's water in it. Every single positive emotion that you have, so anything that's tied to something that makes you feel happy, good, comfortable, relaxed, all those good things, is a teaspoon of water that goes into the glass, right? The more clear teaspoons of water you have in the glass, the fuller your mood is leaning towards positive mood. Okay. If you take one drop of black ink and you drop that into your glass of clear water, what do you think is gonna happen?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

And that is the the black drop is unfortunately bad experiences, feeling scared, feeling unhappy, feeling sad, feeling lonely, feeling stressed, feeling anxious, all those kinds of emotions. And as luck would have it, or Murphy's law, uh, your negative valenced emotions are heavier than your positively valenced emotions. They weigh more if we had to put a weight to it. So for every one bad experience that an animal has, you need to provide a lot of good ones to counter the overall impact that that has on their mood. And so, one of the reasons why we place such a lot of emphasis on paying attention to the emotional content of experiences is because we want to make sure that the animal is actually feeling what we thought they're feeling and not what we'd like them to feel. Because emotions are subjective. You know, I know what makes me happy, and you might think you know what makes me happy, but that's not a guarantee. And my favorite example that I use here is uh treats. You know, let's say you're doing an exercise with a dog where you are giving him a treat every time he does something. Because I mean, basic principles of reinforcement here, you're trying to teach him something. The treats are all good and fine, right up until the point where he's full, or if they're very rich, he's starting to feel a little bit sick.

unknown 11:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

If you continue to give him treats, are you actually reinforcing a behavior or are you now doing the opposite of what you intended? And so that is kind of one of the key differences between mood and emotion, is mood is the filter through which you respond to things, but emotion is the what you're feeling in the moment while it's happening to you. And all those little cumulative drops of emotion become the basis to your mood overall.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

I love that visual.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, it works. That's really good. It really gets the message across.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah. Because you think of as trainers and consultants, we might be thinking, all right, so how do I filter some of that out? Is it, you know, because the dog's now mood is affected because of these incidents, these these black drop moments of reacting to another dog at a distance. So now we gotta filter some of that out, maybe through some set work or something else to to to kind of like rebuild or clear our state, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah, and long conversation, this one. Um and also another reason why, in the example that you're giving, uh, why monitoring emotion is so important is because people tend to forget that that emotions are nuanced and they change all the time. You know, where we measure mood in days to weeks to months, emotions are measured in micro to nanoseconds and they fluctuate rapidly. And very often, you know, what I've seen with aggression cases where we're doing rehabilitation, people expect to pick up where they left off last time. You know, if last time we could get a hundred meters away from the other dog before you reacted, the next time we have a session, well, I'm assuming we can get a hundred meters again or less. But that doesn't take into consideration the fact that mood fluctuates and emotions fluctuate, and the intensity of emotions fluctuate because they're attached to where you are from a mood state perspective. So when we do work with them, almost every single time you have to ask, where are you now? Forget where we were last time. Where are you now? And what can you cope with now? Because it's not a given that it's going to be exactly the same as the session we did yesterday or the session we did last week.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Can you define feeling? So you mention that you mentioned that a couple times, the word feeling, and I've seen it described in a couple different ways, depending on who you're talking to. Feeling might be what the individual experience of the animal is from that emotion, or sometimes I've seen it described as how the animal might be feeling, for lack of another word, after they've experienced that emotion. So not quite in the mood state of cumulative over a few days or weeks, even. It's more right after that emotional experience. I just was fearful of that other dog at a distance. Now I'm feeling this way. So how would you actually define it?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

I like to keep things simple and straightforward when I'm speaking to people who are new to the concept of emotion science, but also when I'm speaking, just for the sake of clarity, I I don't think that emotions have a starting and an ending point. I think it's something that is a continuous spectrum that you're on. I think that emotions start a behavior and then you have the behavior, and then you have emotions again based on the outcome of the behavior. So I think it's a it's an ongoing running mean that is constantly present. And where you are on that scale of valence and arousal is going to influence the behavior that you implement to try and either make yourself feel better or make yourself feel worse. And then based on that outcome, you're either going to do it again next time you're in a familiar situation or you're going to try something new if it didn't work. So I don't think it's like for clarity's sake, when I'm talking about emotions and I'm talking about how the dog is feeling, it's the whole experience.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Before, during, and after.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

That's the distinction.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

I find it's easier for people to see the the pattern or the motion of the behavior. It's the whole emotional experience instead of trying to break it down into tiny little bits. I mean, this is complicated enough as it is. We don't need to make it more complicated.

Arousal Scale And Learning Limits

SPEAKER_00 15:40

All right. I like the distinction. Now uh the last kind of term that that I'd like you to define is arousal, because that's a big one that comes up a lot in conversations. How do you define arousal? And then we'll talk about why it matters.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

So when I talk about arousal, I'm talking about it in the strictest emotional or physiological sense of the word from the core affix space matrix, where we are looking at emotional arousal, which also ties in with physiological arousal. But if I'm saying high arousal, I am talking about an animal who may or may not be showing visual cues of high arousal. Obviously, the higher up on the on the scale you are, the more visual cues there are going to be. What I do with mirror, just because you have to put a number on it, is I normally say if you think of zero as you're you're awake but you're not feeling anything. So there's no valence there. You're just, it's, you've just woken up, you don't know what day it is, that kind of thing. And then think of plus 20 as the highest level of arousal that you can think of. Um I know I'm not allowed to say breeds, but think of uh an adolescent malenoir, you know, who's very excited. That's kind of your 20, 20 level arousal. And then the thing that differentiates whether it's good arousal or bad arousal is obviously the valence, the emotional content. So when we're thinking about positively valenced, high, high, high arousal, we are talking about a dog who, like the closer you get to 20, the less the dog is able to learn and retain information. Because at the kind of, I'd say from 15 to 20, the closer you get to 20, the more the the the kind of I can't learn, I can't retain information, I'm just reacting, less thought there is in the emotional response of the animal. And then, you know, if you think about positively valenced, this is I think the best word for it would be mania. If we had to put a human word to it. Uh, if we had to look at negatively valenced, the best word would be absolutely enraged or so terrified that you can't, you're you're almost incapacitated with fear. Uh, this is where your extreme responses of fight or flight comes in. Uh, and then if we're looking at the flip side of the coin, which is zero to minus 20, minus 20 would be your lowest um emotional or physiological arousal. It's not the same as sleep. Sleep doesn't have valence, so it's not really measured on what we look at for emotionality. Um minus 20 from a positively valenced perspective would be I am a perfect example in summer when I'm at the beach. I'm the best example for minus 20, where I become uh pretty much like a cat on a rock. I just lie in the sun and I bake, and I just don't want to move. I am at absolute utter peace. It is the best thing ever. There's no thought process going on. I'm just enjoying the warmth and the sound and all those wonderful things. That's where you have that kind of bone depth level of contentment. And then from a negatively valenced perspective, the the kind of worst feeling that we'll find there would be utter despair. Uh, you know, utter despair is worse than depression. That is where the animal is still feeling everything, but the shutdown is so extreme that very often we need medication to help them because they can't learn. Remember, the furthest you get along the outsides of that 20, um, the further the closer you get to 20, the less likely you are to actually function. And so even with the with the positively valenced example, you know, it's nice to lie on the beach and do nothing for a day, but you can't live there because at some point you need to get up and go drink some water or put on sun cream or go eat something. Uh and the same applies to all three of those different uh examples that I gave now. They are they're tools that are utilized in the moment for an animal to try and cope with whatever circumstances are presenting themselves at the moment. And obviously, for us working with them, we want to keep them preferably as far away from those extremes as possible, because in those extremes, no learning happens. It's just pure, unfiltered, unadulterated emotion. And that is not a constructive place for an animal to be. Uh it costs a huge amount of energy. So an animal who lives in that state of fear or that state of terror and that state of rage or that state of despair, it has a profound impact on their physical and emotional well-being. You know, so that is that's kind of how I define arousal. Yes. You know, we could call that top number 2000 if you want to, but I find 20 works well.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah.

The MIRROR Model And Its Roots

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Um, and now you're kind of uh describing a lot of what's happening in in your book in the mirror model. So for the listeners that may not be aware of it, it's the mirror, M-H-E-R-A, stands for mood, hedonic budgets, emotionality, and reinforcement assessments. And um uh I'd like you to dive a little bit into that. Tell us about the background with Dr. Robert Falconer Taylor, uh, and also Jack Panksap and and and sort of how you came about this. Uh so give us the the brief version of that, and then I want to talk about, of course, the access and and how we assess this. So start with Mira first, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Brief version. All right. So I was when I was much, much younger, um, and I started out in this industry, I was fortunate enough to get to know Rob very, very well. Um, Robert Falkner Taylor. And he has been, I think, one of the most important people who have influenced my perception of emotions and emotionality in animals. And with lots of conversations and studying and all those kinds of things, um, Robert had initially with uh Peter Neville that created the EMRA model, which was a combination of the Rolls model and an adaptation on measuring emotionality and then looking at mood and all those kinds of things. And so because I Had a lot of exposure to them and I studied with them and I worked with them. I was entrusted with that legacy when they both retired. And having worked with it for 25 years now, give or take. Yeah, it's been a while. About 10, 15 years ago, I started looking at things differently. And I started paying more attention to the importance of mood as your starting point. And then obviously also cognitive bias, which we haven't touched on, but oof, that's a different subject, but we'll touch on it. And I I started delving into more of Panksip's work and Mike Mandel's work, which I absolutely just I love his work, Man is Brilliant. And so at some point I was having a um I was having a conversation with another good friend of mine, Carolina Westland. And I was saying to her, you know, I've got this idea, and there's there's just one thing that I'm struggling with. And I need the, this is gonna sound, I'm I'm gonna let my inner nerd show a little bit here. This is gonna sound like I need um Tony Stark from Iron Man's Technology, because I can see this picture in my head, but I'm limited to, you know, the constructs that are available to me. And she said to me, kind of in passing, you know, if you looked at it from a 45-degree angle, everything fits. And everything in my brain just went click, click, click, click, click. And so Miro kind of fell into place from that conversation. And the whole point of it and the whole kind of methodology was based on how do we look beyond behavior and beyond trying to fix behavior or even calling things behavior problems to the emotional life that sits behind all the terminology and all the labels and all the generalizations. And one of the things, as Mira has progressed, one of the things that have become more and more clear to me is that there is no such thing as dog behavior. Doesn't exist. There's only this dog's behavior or this cat's behavior. And we can't, with everything that we know now and all the research that is happening into emotion science in animals, we can't in good faith say that all dogs behave the same, or even more or less the same, because the short answer to that is well, it depends. There are so many factors that influence um, and and Ray Carpenter, bless, once said that um you can have two dogs that are from the same letter, that were born in the same house, growing up in the same house, and you will have two different individuals because no individual can occupy the same place in time and space at the same time. And he nailed it. It's a hundred percent true. You you have to take into consideration all the things that make each individual animal so unique. And that is kind of where the whole mirror wheel started turning, where I started looking at things beyond just, well, you know, these are border collies, and we all know they behave like this. To, well, it depends because this border collie doesn't like that, but he likes this, or he needs that, or he needs this. And so that's also why the acronym was created in such a way that there are different levels to it. You know, we start off with mood, which is always the thing that we need to fix first. You need to stabilize mood because everything else that you build is built on top of that, you know.

Cognitive Bias Shapes Expectations

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Um, and then on top of the mood part, and there's a little bit in there called cognitive bias. And cognitive bias is what I call the cement between the mood brick and the hedonic budget brick. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna tell you quickly what cognitive bias is because it just makes the picture work better. So cognitive bias is essentially how an animal perceives ambiguity in his environment. It defines his expectations of things that are happening that are unpredictable. And when we're looking at cognitive bias in animals, we we put it into four quadrants. So we have Q1, which is an animal who looks at ambiguity or novelty and goes, I am a hundred percent sure this is going to be something great. So here we see the reactions of running over to investigate because I'm expecting it to mean good things. In human terms, we would call it an extroverted optimist. Then we have our Q2 animals who look at ambiguity or novelty and go, Well, this is probably nothing bad. So I'm going to stroll over to investigate. This is your introverted optimists. Then we come to the Q3s who would look at something and go, yeah, this is probably not good. And this is our introverted pessimists. These are the animals that will what I affectionately call ostrich whenever they encounter something new or something that's kind of any kind of ambiguous quality to it. If I don't look at it, it doesn't exist, it's not there. Or they're the ones that will very slowly and hesitantly approach, ready to dash away should this thing move or act in any way. And then we have Q4, which is our extroverted pessimists. And these are the ones that look at novelty or ambiguity and go, yeah, this is definitely bad news. And so the reason why this is relevant for us from a managing emotionality perspective is because that bias permeates everything that that animal does and how that animal responds to even to treatment. And cognitive bias is such a hugely overlooked factor because it's not just about how he responds to novelty, but it's how it kind of overall influences his ability to develop behavioral resilience, his ability to bounce back from stress, his ability to cope with novelty. And when we look at just some general advice out there, you know, everyone says, Oh, you should walk your dog, it's good for them. What if you have a dog who is a Q3 or a Q4 animal who looks at ambiguity or novelty and goes, yeah, this is not good or it's definitely bad. Another simple example is enrichment. You know, everyone knows you should give your dog enrichment, or you should give your cat enrichment, you should introduce them to new things. If you have a Q3 or a Q4 animal who doesn't view novelty as a good thing, and you provide tons of shiny movie dangly things or fancy toys that spits out food or things like that, are you actually contributing to that animal's well-being or are you detracting from it? And so cognitive bias is something that influences how fast we work with them, what kind of work we do with them, and how much we expect them to progress. Anyone who's worked with dogs for any period of time will be able to say to you that, you know, I've had a case where nothing I did worked. We tried this and we tried that and we did this and we did that, but the dog didn't respond. I don't know what else to do with him. And very often, if you go and do a bias test on that animal, this is a Q3 or a Q4 animal. And what they need is one thing and three weeks to get used to it. And so they need time, and time is often the one thing that they're not given. And that can influence their receptivity to behavior programs, to rehabilitation, to pretty much everything you do with them. Because if you are a pessimistic introvert, um, being exposed to a ton of things or things that stress you out means that you need that much longer to recover. And you need certain things in your environment to help you recover when bad things happen.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, one clarifying thing, just for when you say time, time in a safe environment or time in the environment that they're maybe trying to learn or adapt to. So when you say time, like a both.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Um obviously you wouldn't, well, not obviously, but let me rephrase that. Um, you wouldn't put them in an in a scenario where they aren't ready for it yet until you've actually made them ready for it. So this is again where it ties back to mood, you know. You would do a mood state assessment on them based on the stuff that you put into place in their safe environment to help them feel a little bit more confident, to help them feel a little bit less anxious or a little bit less depressed or a little bit less uneasy about things. And once they're in a stable mood, so they're in a at a point where they can actually tolerate the stress of change, that's the ideal time to then say, okay, now we're gonna start doing work with you. But we're gonna watch you closely because for the first session that I'm taking you out of your out of your safe space, I don't have any expectations of even you seeing another dog. I am just getting you used to this space that we're gonna be working in. And once you're used to this space, then we can start looking at adding something at a great, great distance and giving you time to get used to that. And I mean, as you know, you are just you're the king of aggression, so you know how this works. And one of the things that these animals are often not given enough of is time at their pace and not the trainer or the behaviorist's pace. And that's where that's where this whole measuring emotions thing comes in, because it quite honestly permeates every aspect of what we do with animals living under human care. It allows us to go from, well, this is how I think it should go, to how are you perceiving what's happening to you? And it lets you as the animal set the pace of anything that we're expecting from you.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

And so that's where the the bias bit comes in.

Hedonic Budget And Daily Needs

SPEAKER_01 32:17

And then the H for Mira comes from the hedonic budget, and people normally say to me, Well, what does that mean? Um, on the hedonic budget, we measure the activation of systems in the brain that contribute to well-being. That's the the kind of short technical version. The plain English version is we look at actions that the dog does in his day-to-day life that comes from certain parts of the brain that is tied with good feelings. That's, I mean, I can't put it any simpler than that. Uh slightly more technical version would be, for example, we look at the activation of the seeking system. The seeking system is one of the oldest systems in the brain. It's the brain's uh motivational system that helps you to acquire resources. And so from the seeking system perspective, we measure two things. We look at any behavior that revolves around food acquisition. So this would be motivational training, this would be scatter feeding, tracking, uh agility, flyball, uh pretty much anything. Uh, food toys, food dispensing toys, chew toys, snuffle mats, everything like that. But then we also have uh the second category, which again ties in with the cognitive bias, and that is um exploring a novelty. The seeking system is the system that helps an animal to map his environment. It's a system that helps him to explore and helps him to learn what is accessible to him and what is not accessible to him. And the seeking system is very sensitive to novelty, and it's it's on the hedonic budget because if you're dealing with a Q1 or a Q2 animal and you provide them with brain toys, let's say you give them enrichment every day and you give them the same toy every day, or even you rotate the toy once a week, but he's had it for the last three months. What happens is, yeah, the food is nice, but it's not the same activation of the seeking system because the seeking system thrives on novelty. Novelty is the thing that makes you go, ooh, makes you sit up and makes you motivated to acquire things. And so the reason why the novelty part is included specifically is because A, if it's familiar, it's not seeking system, then it's habit. So you're not really enriching your dog, you're just keeping him busy. Those are two different, two very different things. And secondly, it's it's tying in with the bias part. If you have a dog who is a Q3 or a Q4 dog, taking him for a walk every day to a new place is not necessarily in his best interest. If you have a cat who's a Q3 or a Q4 animal and he's an indoor cat, and you go, well, you know, we have to enrich you because that's what good guardians do. So we're gonna bring in branches, we're gonna bring in boxes, we're gonna give you lots of food dispensing toys, we're going to play games that you know encourage you to stalk and chase and pounce, and we're gonna move the furniture around. That might be great for a Q1 cat, but it is a Q3 or a Q4 cat's worst nightmare. Because now my safe space isn't safe anymore. And so that's why that is specifically included in the whole mirror formula where we look at, yeah, there's mood, cognitive bias, then there's the hedonic budget that measures all the things that contribute to your well-being. Remember the glass analogy that I told you about the teaspoon with the clear water. So we want to provide lots of opportunities through systems in the brain that produce certain behaviors that also have a kind of feeling attached to them, a good feeling. When I do this, I feel nice. In human terms, we have a saying that goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That pretty much refers to an imbalanced hedonic budget where you're doing too much work and you're not enough, not enough things that make you happy. And so, you know, in humans, we know that if you work 24-7 and you don't have anything recreational, you're gonna burn out or you're gonna get sick. And that's kind of what the hedonic budget does is it looks at actual behaviors. So we say to people, you know, how much time does your dog spend sniffing around outside? Does he get to hunt any lizards? Uh, when you feed him, how do you feed him? Those are all the questions that we're asking. And what we're doing is we're mapping the dog's day-to-day life. In 24 hours a day, what do you do? How do you keep yourself busy? That allows us to measure things from, like I said, seeking all the way through to play to care, which refers to relationships either with other animals or with people. Or, you know, we also look at things like uh grooming, self-grooming, mutual grooming, and grooming that you get from the guardian. Because that speaks to, I mean, if you are stressed or you're anxious or you're bored and you don't have many other options, chances are you're you're over-grooming, you're licking yourself or you're chewing yourself or you're pulling out your fur or your feathers or whatever it is that you've got. And it also speaks to the nature of relationships. You know, if you've got two cats and they never groom each other, they're housemates. That doesn't mean they're friends. And so it helps us to also evaluate the the content of relationships. And then, of course, care is also one of the big things that play a role in separation-related problems. Uh, if you have a dog with an overactive care system, it means that he's just learned all good things in life come from you. And when you're not here, my life sucks. So I get anxious when you're not here, or you are the person that makes me feel safe. And so when you're not here, my life sucks. And then I get anxious without you. Oh, and then we also look at eating, which is the actual consumption part of the sequence. So we've got seeking that helps you to acquire the resource, but then the eating part is the actual consumer part. And then we've got drinking, which you know is a necessary thing. If you don't drink water, you're gonna die. And then we have sleeping and resting, where we want to evaluate how much time do you spend getting proper sleep and how much time do you spend resting during the day? Because all of this gives us a really clear indication of how the dog spends his day, how he feels about the things that are happening to him. And the

Mapping Emotionality And Reinforcement

SPEAKER_01 38:32

how he feels about things that are happening to him brings us to the e-part of mirror, which is emotionality assessment. And this is where we use that graph with the um axes of valence and arousal to plot in exactly the experience that you're having, how do you feel? Are you feeling better or are you feeling worse about what's happening to you? And we we plot that on pretty much three-second intervals. So if I am doing an assessment on a dog, I will just sit and watch him while he's doing whatever it is that he's doing. Let's say, let's make it simple. We have a dog that's barking at the gate. You start off by before he starts barking, you know what his mood state is, you know what his bias is, you know what his addonic budget looks like. Then you go, all right, fine. The moment that you lift your head, how are you feeling? When you run to the gate, how are you feeling? When you see somebody to bark, how are you feeling? When you're barking, how do you feel? When the person walks past and you escalate, how do you feel? When the person has walked past, how do you feel? And so we make a little mark on the emotionality graph. And what that does is it allows us to actually track the whole emotional experience of that animal from start to finish. And the reason why that's important is because I gave you a simple example now with the barking dog. But if you are working with more complex cases like aggression, um people often assume that the dog is reacting towards other dogs because he's scared. And while that might certainly be true in a lot of cases, that's not always the case. Uh, you also have dogs that will start off being scared and then they learn, hey, I have a really effective strategy here for dealing with other dogs. When I bark and lunge and go frothy at the mouth, they back away. And the thing about control is it changes your underlying emotional experience. If I have a strategy that I know works, the anxiety of the behavior often changes. And now I might still look like I'm scared, but I'm not feeling scared. And that in turn will impact the treatment that you do as a behaviorist or a trainer. If you're working with a dog who looks scared, but he's not scared, and you are treating him as a dog who's scared, yeah, you might very well be making it worse. Or it's not going to have any effect at all. And so, what we want to do when we're measuring emotionality is we want to get a real picture of how are you feeling and how is that affecting what you're doing. And also, of course, we want to make sure that you are never over the 15 part on the arousal scale, because the closer you get to 20, the less able you are to retain information and to learn. So it's kind of threefold the functionality of that. How are you feeling when you're doing stuff? We want to make sure that you're never in a position where you cross that threshold of too much arousal. And then the third one also is to map progress. Now I need to clarify here. When I say normal people, I am referring to pet guardians. I'm not talking about professionals. And I'm also not calling the rest of us abnormal, although, you know, that's up for debate. Um, normal people during behavior modification often expect big changes. They want to see a huge change in what we did this week to what we did last week. Uh, we want to see lots and lots of progress. But that kind of progress, I mean, when when that happens, it's like Christmas, but it doesn't happen often. And the small bits of progress, the difference between a 17-level of arousal and a 16-level of arousal is small. And normal people don't often see that. If you map it on a graph, you can put these two graphs next to each other and say, hey, look at this. When we started, this is what he looked like. This is his emotional picture now. It's small, but it's there. Progress is there. And that is an incredibly powerful tool for keeping guardians motivated and invested. Uh, people are as receptive to the influences of emotion as animals. And if I'm working with a behaviorist or a trainer and I don't think I'm seeing progress after two months, I might not maybe want to keep working with them. Or I might reach for what seems to be an instant cure. So it's it's also got to do with creating empathy and sympathy in the guardians and helping them to make informed decisions about the progress that's happening. And so for each one of these parts of the mirror process, the guardian is informed of the function of each of it because I want them to understand, you know, you're dealing with a Q3 or a Q4 animal here. We are gonna move slowly. We can't push him, it's not gonna work. We have to be patient. Don't give him 50 things at once to try and cheer him up because you're doing the opposite of what you're intending. Today is a bad day. We are not gonna pick up where we left off last week. We're gonna do something easier that makes him feel better, that sets him up for success. It's not a step back. We're holding a position. We are not undoing all the work that we've put in to date. And then we've got the bit that goes he is making progress. Or He's not making progress. And if he's not making progress, why not? What are we doing that's stopping him from getting better or feeling better? And that's where the the RA part of Mira comes in, which is the reinforcement assessment. Where we look at from an emotionality perspective, what are you getting out of performing this behavior? When you are barking at the gate, how does that make you feel? Because behavior is driven by emotion. Like I said, it's the thing that starts it and it's the thing that maintains it. And so it's important if we're going to look at an assessment altogether, a holistic assessment, it's important to take the starting point and the end point in consideration. So from a reinforcement perspective, not just externally, but specifically internally, what are you getting out of doing this? Because for you to change any kind of behavior, you need to make sure that the reinforcement that you provide can compete with the reinforcement the dog is already obtaining. Otherwise, plan A is working, so I'm going to stick to plan A. And so kind of that's the framework, and that's what the framework does. It's a start-to-finish layer level up, like a pyramid almost, where at the bottom you've got mood, you've got cognitive bias, you've got hedonic budget, you've got emotionality, and then you've got your reinforcement. But it's a self-checking layer as well. Because what mirror is designed to do is to, you know, if you are doing a mood state assessment and you go, hey, this dog is in a good mood, and he is just life is good for him. But then I look at your hedonic budget, and there's nothing really that meets your needs the way they should be met. So how can you be in a good mood? Then two plus two is four. Is not four, rather. I'm really bad at maths. Two plus two is then five. Uh, and then filling up on top of that, if I know that your mood state is stable, your hedonic budget is balanced, I'm taking your cognitive bias into consideration, and I'm doing emotionality assessments on you during a behavior that is difficult or an emotional conflict situation, and you are not making progress, why not? Why are you not responding? What can I do to support you in such a way that you can make progress? And if you are suffering a regression for whatever reason, okay, great, I got you. Don't worry. We'll take that into consideration. And that's how it works. That's what we do. In a very, very large nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

I'm I'm very impressed with how you summarized your book so well there. That was a really in, especially when you start talking about cognitive bias. It had my mind going to street dogs and and and my observations of street dogs depending on where they are. And I'm like, oh, that'd be like the ones I've seen there would fit in like Q2 or more Q3, and you see like some commonalities. So it's fascinating. This whole discussion is fascinating. I want to get into also a little bit more into the assessment because the behaviorist side of me is like saying, what does that look like? How do we operationalize or what observations should we make? So uh we're gonna take a quick break to hear word from our sponsors, and we will be right back to continue this conversation.

Sponsor Message Dog Academy

SPEAKER_00 47:17

This episode is brought to you by Dog Academy. If you're listening to this podcast, you already know aggression cases need more than confidence and good intentions. They need science, structure, and a commitment to force-free methods that don't wobble when things get hard. That's what Dog Academy is built on. They're a national network of certified trainers working under one promise: teach, love, grow. Force-free, positive reinforcement only, and that policy holds for every case they take, including serious behavior work. Whether a family needs help with a reactive dog, a resource guarder, a fearful rescue who started to shut down, or a multi-dog household that stopped feeling safe, Dog Academy trainers meet people where they are and build skills that actually stick. Skills that survived the move, the new baby, the holiday guests, all of it. Their trainers are spread across the country and held to the same standard, which means a referral to Dog Academy is a referral you can stand behind no matter the zip code. That consistency shapes how they train, how they hire, and how they support every family they work with. If you're a fellow professional who refers out, Dog Academy would love to be one of your options. If you're a dog owner listening because you're trying to understand your own dog, they'd love to help you too. Find them at DogAcademy.org. The dogs in your life, the ones on your caseload, in your home, or both, deserve a team that won't compromise on welfare to get a faster result. Alright, we're back here with Karen Pinard, and we are talking about how do we assess? How do we really know what to look for? So, like, even as professionals, sometimes we might disagree in our observations by saying, Oh, uh, he looks like that was like an ears pulled back, tongue flick, seems a little bit more stressed, or might be feeling feeling this way. And some arguments are go right out to say, how do you really know what a dog is feeling? So let's it's this an aggression podcast, let's get into maybe some examples of an aggression case and some negative balanced emotions and what we would look for to say, okay, this dog might be feeling this way, or this is their potential emotional balance. And so give us some of that. Because you you know, even like thinking of on the arousal scale, like how do we map, okay, this is a 15, this is a 17, or something like that. So maybe some examples of what that would look like.

Reading Arousal In Aggression Cases

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Okay, so uh this is something that I was asked a lot. In fact, it was something that I was asked so often that it got me thinking that uh we need an app for that. And so we actually developed an app that does exactly that based on the input that is given by the practitioner. The first thing we say to them is look for signs of physiological arousal. You know, when we're looking at, let's say, an aggressive dog, there are certain physiological signs that you can't fake. If you are truly at the level of arousal, where let's say we're looking at a 15 or a 16 or a 17 or a 20 dog, there is physiological arousal that ties with that. And that's, you know, it starts with the dog stops taking food. So you've got your critical threshold that's been exceeded. Obviously, there's the it depends because you know, has he just had a big meal and does he like the treats that are on offer and all those kinds of things? Um, but the first thing is they stop taking food, they stop being responsive to invitations to play or being able to distract them with a toy or something like that, away from the thing that worries them. Because, you know, individuals are hardwired for it, doesn't matter how rewarding the thing in front of you is, your brain is hardwired for fear to outweigh good stuff. Because if you're dead, it doesn't matter. So your brain is kind of programmed to go when I'm very worried about things, when there's something that genuinely threatens my safety. My, to put it very simply, my brain is hijacked and all my attention goes to this particular thing that is threatening my safety. And so when we're dealing with animals that are in that state, that emotional state of high arousal, where they're not responsive to being called away, um, they are just emotionally reacting. There's there are physiological signs, like I said, they stop taking food. Um, you get involuntary salivating, uh, you get the pupil dilation, you get the pilo erection, the hair on the back, you get the muscle tension. Those are all very obvious signs of high-level arousal. Now, yes, uh, because we can't ask them on a scale of one to 20, how aroused are you feeling right now? It would be nice if we could, but you know, we're not there yet. Um what you look at is responsiveness. So do you still can I call you to look at me? Are you responsive to me inviting you to come for things? And the moment that you cross that level of I can hear you versus I can't hear you, you know that you've crossed that kind of 15 out of 20 barrier. Below that, you've got the different degrees of arousal. You know, if if you've got a dog who is feeling uncomfortable around another dog, you can see all the body language posturing things, the displacement behaviors that go with that. The more worried the dog is, the more focused he becomes on the object that's causing him worry, and the less responsive he becomes to you as the handler or the person standing behind him. And so that is our sliding scale of your responsiveness to me. Obviously, as a stranger, I mean nothing to you, which is why it's important to first build up that rapport with the animal in an area where they feel safe. But then remember a little bit earlier I was talking about dogs who look scared but aren't?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

The easiest way to test for that is if you are doing the, you know, the frothy barky lungy kind of looking like I'm about to eat you a live thing, and I drop a piece of cheese sausage in front of you and you go, cheese sausage, you're faking it. You know, then then you you have a posture that you've learned works, but your emotional state doesn't match that. Food is probably provided the dog isn't full. But if you're still doing this while the dog is full, then you've kind of, you know, you're minimizing your chances here. Um food is one of the easiest ways to distinguish whether or not you've crossed that threshold. Or even just movement. Um, but movement can be trickier because you do get dogs that are highly, highly aroused that if something moves in their peripheral vision, it's a bad thing and they just respond. But generally speaking, like I said, there are some physical things that you can't fake. You can't fake pilo erection, you can't fake dilated pupils. Obviously, light plays a role here as well. If you've got a dog that goes from light to dark, the pupils are going to respond. But it's the whole package. If I can be subjective for a moment, arousal has a feel to it for us as humans. And while my level eight might differ from your level by one or two points, there's always a kind of because remember, well, let me backtrack a little bit. The mammalian brain is the mammalian brain, you know, and we recognize a whole lot of stuff in our dogs because we have similar brain structures, and there are things that we might not necessarily cognitively be able to explain, but we can identify it on an emotional level. Like you can look at a dog and see you are really an unhappy dog. And so when it comes to the measurement of arousal, there are some things on the furthest extremes where when they stop responding, you know you've crossed that threshold of this being productive. But then the bit in the middle is kind of leeway, where we can play around a little bit and we can test to see at what point can I see that your attention is starting to divert from me onto something else. Because that's the point where I know, okay, we're getting too close, back away. Give you space. So if we see an increase in displacement behaviors, for example, as the other dog comes a little bit closer, and sometimes it's as subtle as an ear movement or a quick lip lick or changing from glancing to looking intently, that signifies an increase in arousal. And so for us as people observing their emotional states while things are happening to them, that's information. That tells me, okay, this is we're pushing it, we're getting close to this being counterproductive. So let's take it a step back. And the more you kind of stop them from crossing into that point where it's no longer productive, as far as arousal is concerned, the more they learn almost to regulate their emotional responses. The more they learn, look, when I'm put in this situation, the moment I start feeling, oh, okay, okay, I can back away. Backing away is an option. You know, I can move away, I can come sit next to you, I can look away. That regulates my emotional response to this thing. And then the next time you might find that the other dog can come a little bit closer.

Agency And Consent As Treatment Tools

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Or my preferred method is you know, give them choice. I am a really big fan of agency. I believe that in any kind of work that we do with animals, you you have to do the groundwork first of saying, are you okay with being in this situation? And I know and you know what your signals are for we're done here. And when you say no, I respect that. Because that in itself, the moment you have control of what happens in your life, you feel better. And that should permeate through into anything that we do with them, including aggression work. Uh, you know, as soon as the dog says this is too much or I need a break, respect that and give them that break instead of going, oh, but maybe we can come one step closer today, or you know, push just a little bit longer. I've seen this with, I mean, I work with elephants. I'm very fortunate to work with a large number of things that can and will kill you if you make them do things they don't want to. And to give you an example of just how powerful agency and and the cooperation that that fosters can be, uh, one of the things that we do with elephants is we do voluntary blood draws with them. Where the elephant comes up and says, Okay, fine, uh, you can come up and we can start the process. And some of them will just kind of stand there and fall asleep and they're fine and they don't care. But others, especially the youngsters, will go, okay, wait, hang on a second, before you poke me with a needle, I just need a minute. I need to just take a breath. And they'll step off the mat which we that we use as their consent cue. They don't, I mean, most of the time they don't walk away. They just take a step off, and you can almost see them going, okay, right. All right, I'm good. And then they step back on the mat and then we carry on. But the process is respected, and the permission, the consent, is respected every step of the way. Now, this is something that's very common in captive wildlife management. We do a lot of cooperative care work with them. Again, because they can and will eat you, uh, or do things to you if you're if you're mean to them. We take a lot of we take a lot for granted with dogs and cats for that matter, because they're so willing and so dependent on us, and so so just I mean, they're just gorgeous, soft, lovely creatures. And I feel that we we often skip over the are you okay with what we're doing? Can we carry on part? Because we can.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

Which is not necessarily the same thing as we should. And so I feel that for any work that we do with them, that is a a critical component that should be built in, is the giving them some control over what happens to them. And this is a conversation for another time, obviously, because I mean the whole agency conversation is a long one. But I just want to if it's something that you're not familiar with as a listener, consent is not the same as permissive. There is a difference. You know, there it's not just something that you start, uh, there's groundwork that needs to be done. So everyone is uh to all intents and purposes speaking the same language. But if it's done right, it can become an incredibly powerful tool in helping animals to manage their emotions because they'll know that if this is too much, if what you're asking of me right now feels like it's too much, I can indicate that, and there's emotional relief attached to what happens after that. And that control about what happens to them and the things that they're expected to do becomes a method of communication that builds trust and that also makes them feel better, which as a kind of add-on effect, often helps to change the behavior. So it's a it's a kind of knock-on effect. So that's that's the short answer to that question. We're not doing real well with short today, are we?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Let's let's dive into another question here, maybe to wrap up you know, this this whole conversation around mood and emotions. Um, because you said some interesting things about like the dogs that they start with a fear state, but that can shift,

When Aggression Shifts Into Seeking

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

right? So, an example I use a lot is dogs that resource guard objects, right? So, and I just use the human analogy, you know, you're at your favorite restaurant, you're sitting down, some strange guy just comes up and takes something out of your plate. At first, you might be startled, it might evoke that fear, right? And you're like, oh, who is this guy? What is he doing? Like this is but if that same person keeps doing that day after day, eventually you're probably going to shift over to rage or anger. So if we're looking at the the systems, peg step systems, and we're talking about fear and then rage and anger. Um so that's that's the most common theme. And then it usually, you know, we're addressing it similarly through counter-conditioning strategies, making sure we, you know, all the typical things, making sure we set the environment right, set things up for success, even looking at the mood of the person and saying, Are you ready to work around this strange dude that keeps stealing food off your plate? Um, so we look at those variables, but I wanted to go a step further, and sometimes you hear this argument about, especially some types of dogs, or even some dogs when you talk about genetics, is it actually starts to become it go into a positive balanced emotional aspect because they're having fun doing it, for lack of a better word. Uh I can think of people that fight like MMA fighters, right? Uh may have started like they were bullied as a kid and they got beaten up, so they're fearful, then they got angry about it, and then they turn it into something like I'm gonna do this for sport. I'm gonna punch people in the face because I enjoy it. So, thoughts, thoughts on dogs?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

So, um well, the short answer is yes, definitely, you do get that. Um, remember, the more something works, initially it might start as when I do this, I feel a sense of relief. And relief is effectively positively valenced. You feel better. Um, the horrible thing goes away, and my emotional state changes to you know, the more I do it and the more I feel that relief, the more the feeling that is attached to it changes to when I do this, it starts becoming fun. And I enjoy doing it now because yeah, I long time ago I used to feel frightened, and the relief that I got from doing this was its own reinforcement. But now, because I know I'm good at it, because of that success, now performing that behavior shifts from happening out of the fear system, but happening in the seeking system. So now you've crossed systems and you've got that whole different profile. Um and then of course you get dogs that just skip the fear part altogether and they just go straight into well, I like doing this. I I don't know how many pitbull terriers you've encountered. Um Pitties are I love pitbulls.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

That's what I when I was saying genetics. That's what I was leading towards.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

Um I I love pitbull terriers. I honestly think that um, insofar as it's possible, they're what I like to call honest dogs. Like a pit bull terrier will let you know when he's unhappy with you. There's no ifs, buts, and whens about that. There's no wagging my tail and then biting you. It's solidly, you're bugging me. And a lot of the times, um, also I do a lot of work with pit bull terriers as well. And a lot of the times what's happening with them is when you put the right stimulus in front of them, yeah, absolutely, it's seeking system that kicks in and I kill other dogs for fun. It feels good. It needs to feel good enough so that if I am being beaten by a stick or if I'm being injured by the other dog fighting back, I mustn't be able to feel that. And that's where the adrenaline comes in and all those other things, where the enjoyment that I get from this is so overwhelming that it overpowers injury. And that's, you know, that ties in with the very low reactivity threshold and the very quickly disinhibiting into the exhibition of my predatory motor patterns. And being able to perform that sequence within my predatory motor pattern, the thing that I'm bred for, that feels great. And that feels good enough that I'm going to do that in spite of other things happening. Um, one thing that I wanted to add to your example of resource guarding, if you spend any amount of time with me, you'll know that the answer to any question is it depends. Because

Resource Guarding Depends On Emotion

SPEAKER_01 1:05:21

it does. Um, your example of somebody sitting in a restaurant, already their emotions are influencing your response. If you are a certain type of individual, redhead, uh, you know, I wouldn't be startled. You'd lose a finger if you touched my food and I don't know you. In fact, there's a very real chance that you'll lose a finger if you touch my food and I do know you. Yeah, because it's individual variation. Um, the hungrier I am, the less likely I'm toler I'm going to tolerate any kind of behavior like that. Um, and this ties into a lot of kind of personality relationships. Things. When it comes to resource guiding in a lot of dogs, I feel that I mean that is a really complicated subject. And there are so many different reasons why dogs perform this behavior. And it's not always because it's mine and I don't want you to have it. You know, if I'm feeling that there's not enough food in this house, COVID is a perfect example of resource guarding in humans. For some odd reason, everybody decided that toilet paper is going to be a rarity. And people started hoarding, well, at least here, people started hoarding toilet paper for some odd reason. And they would fight each other in the shops to get the last roll of toilet paper. The more valued the thing that's being guarded, the scarcer it is, the more likely I am to employ aggression to obtain it or to maintain control of it. And so that is a really good example of how fluctuating emotions and mood states can influence the expressed behavior. Because if you're dealing with a dog who's guarding because this is just the best food I've ever had in my life, and I don't want you or someone else to take it away from me, that's one set of feelings. Another set of feelings might look exactly the same, dog growling with his mouth over his food or whatever, but the underlying emotional state is completely different. This is a dog who's guarding the food because he's absolutely ravenously hungry and he's just, you know, not been fed properly for the last six years of his life. Or you could have a dog who just overall I'm cranky because the toddler is crawling and no one is sleeping and people are messing with me and my life has changed and everything is upset. And this is the one thing that's mine.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:48

What emotions though would be underlying those examples, though, if you were to put an emotional state?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:54

Well, um, I think the first one of this is something that is really precious to me. This is something that's high value. I believe that in most cases, not all of them, but in a lot of cases, the underlying feeling underneath resource guiding is I I don't want to lose this. I feel threatened by whatever it is that's coming up to me. Or the other part of it is it's a habit for me to do this when people come close to me. Because in the past, every time someone's come close to me, I've lost my stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

Would you say that which system would you say that's in? Like in terms of what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:32

That's a good one. Um I think it can start as if I'm anxious about losing it, that could be low-level fear system activation, but but more likely rage system activation. Yeah.

unknown 1:08:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:49

Far more likely to be rage system. Even though it can be low-level. You know, if you are feeling threatened by somebody because you are absolutely starving, you're scared of losing the thing that you've got. But the thing about the fear system is it can lead to the activation of the rage system very quickly. Those are some of the systems that actually work together. And if you're pushed far enough, you know, there are different degrees of activation within the rage system. So yeah, those would be my and then of course if you're just doing it because it's fun and you like doing it, well, I mean, that's just seeking system. Because I can. Some dogs do it because they can, and you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:36

I mean, you think about your like your livestock guardian dogs, right, that have been selected for guarding property or or flock, right? It's it then we can argue that they're very much in the seeking system in most cases.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

And it's it's fun. I'm always reminded of whenever I talk to people about this, I'm always reminded of um a case that I saw, oh, it's many years ago now. Uh,

Guardian Breeds And Contextual Threats

SPEAKER_01 1:09:57

do you know what a do you guys have bourbal dogs over there?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:00

Um fortunately, not many.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:03

Okay, we have a lot of them. They come from here. Yeah, so there's a bourbal around every block, um, just about. And I remember I was called in because the presenting problem was the dog is very aggressive to Granny who's coming to visit. And so when we got there, I was greeted by this wriggly bum of a big fluffy, sloopy, drooling bourbal who was very nice to me. And he was absolutely fine, no problems at all. And so, as we go through the discussion process, it turns out that when you're there, when the when the guardians are there, if you're allowed in the door, you are welcomed in with open arms, and you are part of the family, and it's fantastic, and I love having you here and wonderful stuff. But if the guardians leave and you don't live here, then you don't belong here. And granny, who had been visiting for four days, did not live there, and so her children went out, her grown-up children went out and left her home alone. And she went out to go hang up some of her washing, and this dog went, excuse me, and basically kept her in the corner of the courtyard for three hours.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:22

Every time she moved, he would just go, and I mean, when that's accompanied by 80 kilograms of body weight, that's enough, you know. And they interpreted this as the dog is being aggressive to Granny. And it's unpredictable because he's never done that, he's never shown aggression to anyone before. It's also the first time somebody has come to stay with them. And explaining it to them in the context of he's doing what he's bred to do. You know, his makeup says if you don't live here, you don't walk outside when I'm here and you're my people aren't here. And that's where the understanding of the function of the dog and the role that emotions play in that. I mean, this dog was not overly aroused, he was not in his rage system, he was quite frankly, he was not even being aggressive, he was just very calmly telling her to stay put. And luckily she had the sense to stay put, because there's never a guarantee that it won't escalate if you push the boundaries. But I think that is why it's so important when we're looking at when these behaviors are happening and the emotions while they're happening, it tells us the difference between a dog that is reacting out of an over-aroused, just pure reflex perspective, or a dog who's purely going, you don't live here, stay put until somebody who does live here can come and tell me if it's okay for you to be here or not. And the reason why that's important is the treatment methodologies vary based on the emotional state of the dog, the emotional reaction of the dogs.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

Tell us more about because that's yeah, tell us more about that, because that's the million-dollar question, right? When you have uh behaviors on the outside, so observable behaviors. I'm growling at this person right at a distance. So we then we have to determine what's the underlying emotion, what's the cause, look at the mood, all the typical variables. And and and so let's say we've assessed Fortin saying, okay, this is not a dog in a negative, balanced emotional state. What is the difference in the tr the approach, your behavior change approach versus the dog that I'm an undersocialized borbell that's never seen a person, I'm really scared of this person, versus I'm a barbell doing what I'm supposed to do as a borbell. So how do you, yeah, how do you how do you address those two different cases? Or really more so the one, the second one.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:42

Yeah. Well, basically the first and most important thing here is time. Again, you know, the undersocialized borable who's never met a person in his life, because his emotional response is going to be that much closer to our 20 mark on the arousal scale, it means that for him, they're your counter-conditioning protocols, your changing your perception of other people becomes important. Uh, for him, it's a case of learning the emotional restraint to cope with the new information. And instead of seeing somebody as a threat that evokes that feeling of fear, you can differentiate and go, Well, you don't live here, so you shouldn't be here. So I'm gonna just keep you here, but I'm not going to go hysterical and attack you and maul you and do some serious damage. So, from a treatment perspective, the calm dog who is doing what he's supposed to do, that dog doesn't need remedial socialization with people. That dog needs guardians who understand his type specific behavior and manage accordingly because he's not doing anything wrong. You don't want to have strangers climbing over your wall and tossing treats at him because that kind of also defeats the purpose of why a lot of people have bore balls in the first place. So if you then go, well, you know, he's growling at strangers, so now we're going to embark on this lengthy process of counterconditioning and desensitization to strangers, you are doing unnecessary work, but it wastes time. People today don't have copious amounts of time to do nothing or to waste on things that aren't necessary. And you know, if you look at the scared dog, that dog needs careful management, he needs better support, he needs more time to be able to process the information. So for this dog, just the basic management principles will be different because this is a dog who is likely to be unpredictable when he's pushed too far. This is a dog that actually poses a bite risk because he might have that emotional overreaction and make a mistake. And so the safety protocols around him is a lot stricter than the one who's a big goof who loves everybody, provided the guardians are there. And so that's why we want to take all of these things into consideration because you know, we don't want to waste time with people who have to do this work, but we also don't accidentally want to be teaching things we don't want to be teaching. Uh and we also want to, if we're going to do behavior modification and treatment with them, we want it to be targeted to actually address the problem to help the dog to do better. We don't want to muddy the waters with unnecessary stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:36

Yeah. So let's lean into the actual case you're talking about. So this dog's not fearful. We're not worried about that type of management and addressing fear, like the emotions of fear and giving the dog more time. So we got this other case, or you could talk about other cases in general, where there's no negative balanced emotions happening in those contexts. And the dog's like, living a good life. I'm a South African Borble, I'm a great Pyrenees, protecting my flock, I'm I'm happy, and you're assessing everything looks good. But there's been incidents of, oh, I growl that this stranger because I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Or so you you obviously have the management component is educating the guardians of okay, you can't just leave your livestock guardian dog in your apartment in New York City every time there's a delivery, it's gonna bark, right? So what do you do for your is it much more of an operant strategy for those clients that do want to go the step further and saying, I'm gonna be there to manage this, but when Uncle Bob comes over, I want to be able to say to my dog, you know, no need to growl at Uncle Bob, he's a friend. So can you get into some of the details of what that looks like for you in those cases?

Teaching Cues For Friendly Visitors

SPEAKER_00 1:17:39

Dogs are very good at contextual cues.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:42

And, you know, you can have a dog of any age who can learn new things. So what I, when I'm working with Burbilles, uh, or when I have worked with Burbals in the past, is I make it very clear to people that first of all, we want a dog that isn't hairline trigger reactive towards anything new. So we want to socialize them extensively until they're two years old, not just the normal time period. We want to make sure that that dog is taught from the get-go the signal for this is a friendly person, and this person is allowed here, and this is somebody that's not allowed here. Because generally speaking, I mean, the more experience you give these kinds of dogs with friendly body language, they can recognize it in whatever context they find it. Uh, somebody who's climbing over your wall to rob you is unlikely to go, oh, hi, puppy, come here, boy. You know, they're they're unlikely to do that. They're going to look different. And so, from a preventative perspective, it's to teach these dogs what friendly looks like in any context, not just at puppy school, but out and about, having people coming over to your house, uh, you know, having them walk in and out, making sure that the dog understands that if they come through a door from inside to out, or I have introduced you to them, they're part of the this is a familiar person who's allowed to be here, as long as they show body language that correlates with friendly and relaxed people. Dogs are not mind readers, and so you know, I think it's important to give them as much information as possible and equip them with as many skills as possible to differentiate between allowed to be here and friendly, allowed to be here and nervous of dogs, because if you're allowed to be here, but you are nervous of big dogs because you were bitten by a big dog, uh, that's asking a lot of the dog.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:51

To go, okay, well, you know, you were invited, but you look shifty, so uh it's okay, they're there. Um I think it's also important to look at both sides of the experience there and be realistic about you know, teaching your dog yes, what friendly looks like, coming in and out of the house, coming in and out of the gate, all those kinds of things, and not have it purely contingent on your presence so that they learn when somebody, like I said, a simple thing. Um I'll tell you what I did with border collie of mine many years ago. Um and border collie is aren't, I mean, they're not bourbons, right? But they can put up a good show if they wanted to. And I had this lovely boy that I he was my sole dog. And I had taught him that if I put my hand on your collar when I open the door, that is the cue for look like you're about to eat whoever's at the gate. Because very often I would have people coming to my gate who, as living alone at that point, could be dangerous. And he also knew because he had been taught, the moment I let go of your collar, everything is fine. And then, I mean, he was ridiculously friendly, put on a good show, but it's just cues that he's been taught. When I do this, you do this, and the same thing would apply to the context of that verbal. The groundwork is important, socialize him properly, let him learn what friendly looks like in all the different contexts. If he hasn't learnt it and now he needs to learn it, well, you know, we start off easy. We start off with people walking in and out when I'm there. Or we start off with a verbal cue that if you are a stranger, or granny in this case, what we did is we taught the guardians taught the dog a cue that said, I live here, it's okay. And whenever he was given that cue, he would go, Oh, okay, because I know what that means. And so, I mean, it took a while because this was an adult dog. But he quickly learned that if they come from inside the house, when they open the door and they give this cue, this means they're friendly. And she could come and go as she wanted to. If you open the door and you don't give the cue, well then you're fair game. Because then you don't live here, you don't belong here. So it's all about just providing consistent information to the dog about what we expect from them. And repeating it and getting that cemented in. I mean, yeah, absolutely, operant learning all the way, uh, while managing uh the emotional responses.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

Yeah, yeah. I'm really, I'm really glad we got it to that towards the end of the show here, because that's a that's a question I get a lot too, and the differences and the in the approaches. So yeah, but it's been a fascinating conversation, Karen.

Where To Find Karen And Wrap

SPEAKER_00 1:22:41

Um, I'd like to give you a chance to tell listeners where they can find you and what you're up to next.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:47

Oh, well, um, for my sins, I'm busy with my second book. Uh it's taking a little longer than expected because there's just so much information that needs to go into it. Um so that's keeping me pretty busy along with all my other mirror work. I do this a lot and I teach people and I, you know, present and do conferences and all those kinds of things. If people want to get hold of me, the best way is just to email me. Please don't ever phone me because my phone is always somewhere. I don't even know where it is now. Um my email address it's Karin with an I, so K-A-R-I-N at mirror, and mirror is m-e-ra-a.mira.org. Yes.org. There we go. Sorry, brain hiccup. So Karin at mirror.org. The website is mirror.org. And then obviously you can find us on Facebook. And um, yeah, that's me.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:39

Amazing. And as usual, guys, I'll make sure to link these in the show notes if you want to reach out. Karen, thanks again. It was so great chatting with you, and I'm looking forward to working with you again in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:51

Oh, likewise, I enjoyed it tremendously. And yeah, I'm a little over time, but I did warn you, so thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:59

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Karen as much as I did. One of my favorite takeaways from this episode is the reminder to ask, where are you now? Rather than assuming the dogs we're working with today are in the same emotional place that they were yesterday. Mood fluctuates, emotions fluctuate, and our behavior change strategies should be flexible enough to account for that. I also really appreciate our discussion towards the end about dogs who may display very similar aggressive behaviors for very different reasons. What we see on the outside doesn't necessarily tell us everything about what's happening on the inside, and understanding that difference can have a significant impact on the choices we make in an aggression case. You can learn more about Karen, her work with Mira, and her book Mood Matters, through the links in the show notes. And if you're ready to go deeper into understanding and helping dogs with aggression, visit aggressivedog.com. Whether you're a professional or a dedicated dog guardian, you'll find everything from the Aggression in Dogs Master Course, which is the most comprehensive program of its kind, to expert-led webinars, informative articles, and the Canis Conference happening October 7th through 10th in Stromburg, Illinois, with both in-person and virtual options.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:16

Thanks for listening in, and as always, hi poppy, coming up the way. Sorry, John, you're gonna have to edit this up.