Dog Management

Hello, this is Ralf from Happy Dog Training and welcome to another episode of Dog Talk. Today we’re going to talk about dog management. We touched on this in the animal welfare episode in 2023 and I wanted to add a little bit more detail to the management side of things because management has become somewhat of a pandemic in the dog training world.

Everything’s always managed. Obviously, some things must be managed. It’s not that management is always a bad thing, but it shouldn’t always be the go to for everything. It should be what we do for the things that we cannot change in some way. So let’s give it a couple of examples that maybe drive the point home.

Let’s say you have an older dog in your home and you get a younger pup. And the older dog likes the puppy, and they play together, and they have a good relationship. But then, your older dog, develops some joint issues, or maybe some hip dysplasia, or he’s just more sore getting up in the morning because he’s older, his joints are older, it’s not any particular disease.

It’s just a little harder for him to get around. Not that uncommon. And now, when the younger dog wants to play with the older dog, well, it hurts. The young puppy’s wild, the older dog can’t handle it, so he’s trying to put that dog in its place. And maybe that’s not, supported by the family in some way and the dogs just have to sort it out on their own because nobody’s stepping in, nobody’s helping the dog and it escalates and it becomes to the point where when the young dog even just looks at the old dog, they start to get into a scuffle.

The old dog really doesn’t want it because it’s uncomfortable. It hurts when they interact with each other and he just really doesn’t want to do it anymore. So now even a look from the young dog, that looks like could go into play, the other dog goes and charges the dog or tries to pin him down or stop him in some way.

Now you have two dogs that are getting into arguments in the home. They’re not real fights at this point. And they’re often not real fights. It just looks like it because it’s loud and they scuffle. Well, as long as nobody has holes in them, and is bleeding, and has to go to the vet, you probably didn’t have a real fight on your hands, but still, it can look pretty concerning.

And it is not something you can just ignore. But now that’s the situation. So, how would we approach that from a dog training perspective? Most likely the dog owner is going to do one of two things. They’re either going to understand it for what it is and try to manage the pain better.

That’s the less likely scenario. Or, they’re going to hire a dog trainer. Or they do a combination of those two things because they think they managed it, the pain, and now the behavior persists. Now veterinarians and dog trainers get involved in this endeavor. So what’s the answer here?

Is it training? Or management? Is it a combination? The lines become fluid. In this particular scenario, you have to manage the dogs until you get the pain under control in the older dog. And depending on where the older dogs is at, maybe they can’t play with each other anymore. And maybe the behavior that developed during the time when it wasn’t addressed, lingers.

Now you have to deal with that and that’s a training issue. But it can become multifaceted quickly. You have both aspects in this particular equation. It’s management up to the point where the pain is managed and they can play again. And then maybe you have to adjust some of the behaviors in the older dog, because they’ve become ingrained more over time.

Or, the older dog is now just too old to play with the younger dog. Because the young puppy is too wild. We can try to slow the younger dog down and show him that playing less intently could help. But maybe we can’t. Maybe we just have to keep him more separate.

Or have to keep him more defined and give the younger dog different types of outlets. Because they can no longer play together the way they used to. And that becomes a management situation because the dogs, the older dogs, are obviously not going to get younger. So it becomes management and training in this scenario.

Let’s take another scenario. A dog who is generally anxious, insecure, has always been insecure, starts developing aggressive behaviors towards other animals. Now, again, it’s a multifaceted solution. But what are the facets? Let’s Right, so we don’t have to accept the behaviors the dog’s displaying towards the aggressive behavior towards other dogs when they’re out on a walk or whatever scenarios may be, or even aggression toward people.

We could certainly rein that in. But can we make the dog So much more confident that he does or she doesn’t see the need to act in this way. Probably not. We can make them more comfortable. We can always make fear and anxiety better in some way. It’s rare that you can’t make any progress. It’s usually just a matter of time and figuring out the right approach.

And sometimes it’s really slow and it’s not always as fast or as quick as we would like it to be. as trainers or owners. But we can usually make it better. It’s not that we can’t make it better. But will your dog be a social butterfly? No. Will your dog like everybody? No. Does that mean we have to also manage the behavior outbursts, the aggressive behavior towards people?

That’s also a no. We don’t have to accept that. So we can certainly insert some training into that has a stop versus. I understand you don’t like other people, but you can’t go by them. And so we, we, we can have both, but we shouldn’t be managing the behavior in this case. We should address the behavior.

What we have to manage is what our dog gets exposed to. So we’re not going to introduce him to every person that comes in the house. We’re not going to have him meet everybody. We’re not going to take him all kinds of strange places all the time and things he has to get along with everybody and be a social butterfly.

That’s not a realistic goal. So we don’t want that. But we don’t have to accept aggressive outbursts towards strangers. We can at least get him to the point where he doesn’t do that and just chooses to walk away. Teach them there’s an alternative. You don’t have to engage in this behavior. So management versus training is always a conversation that sometimes it’s just one. Sometimes it’s the other.

At times it’s both. Sometimes it’s some of one for a period of time before you can do the other. So we should never settle for just let’s just manage everything. Let’s just avoid everything the dog doesn’t like. Let’s just not have him meet anybody, ever. Don’t walk him anywhere, ever.

Or just walk him at night when nobody’s out. Just, we shouldn’t be going into a management palooza from that perspective. So, let’s just put the dog on, let’s say, trazodone, a Prozac variant. or any other medication for anxiety, or whatever the veterinary behaviorists like to prescribe these days.

And hope that that will do it. Well, no, it’s not the best approach either. If it’s drugging the dog, will that calm things down? Maybe. But most of the time, it’s not going to really make a difference. Most of the time, that’s really the wrong approach. We should try to build the confidence of the dog up with anxious as much as we can.

And then we should try to manage what we can’t. What we can always make progress. And if we manage it, Maybe a cannabis approach is a better strategy than the hard hitting drugs because the psychopharmaceuticals that we have out there, they haven’t really demonstrated to work all that well. So if you look at the research, and this is actually something I’m planning on doing a whole episode on at some point, it just requires more research.

I want to actually write an article that goes with it because there’s a lot of intricacies. Um, with veterinary behaviorists prescription on behavior and the psychopharmaceuticals that are being prescribed and used. So that’s going to be at some point a, a larger conversation. But there’s not a lot of efficacy to a lot of those drugs, and a lot of these studies that are out there showing that.

A lot of them have, in retrospect, in, in reviews, been shown to be very biased and very, uh, eliminated certain populations of the test subjects but just didn’t work on to make the drugs look more effective than they are. In many cases, we also don’t know what the long term effects of those drugs are.

That’s also not as understood as you would like it to be. And that goes for people as much as for dogs. But with a person, you can at least ask questions. So if I give a person a Prozac, I can ask them, How does it make you feel? Do you feel any better? Do you feel worse? Are there other impacts on your life?

And they can answer. They can tell me. And the doctor can go adjust or discontinue or try something else. With a dog, you really can just watch their body language and observe their behavior and make a guess. The dog can’t tell you, hey, I feel like crap now. Um, I’m, I’m sleeping because I don’t want to move because I don’t feel good.

They can’t tell you that. You can just say, Oh, he seems more relaxed. He may not be. He may just be like drug up. So management is not the answer, the default answer to everything. It’s the default answer to some things because we know that we can’t change this or that. But we should always approach it from the perspective, any behavior problem, any dog situation from the perspective.

What can we actually change about this? Can we change something about this? If the answer is yes, or if there’s a good chance that we can make it better, we should take that approach first. We shouldn’t start with let’s just avoid everything, lock the dog behind whatever walls, buildings, fences, rooms, and crates, and don’t let him do anything.

That’s not good for this being’s welfare on and quality of life. What kind of life is that for a dog? Just being, you know, In a home every day and not doing anything. So obviously play is, play based training has a huge impact on dogs welfare overall and their well-being and their expression. It can help in building confidence substantially.

Huge differences you can make with that, things you could never do with food. So it’s worth trying, absolutely worth trying. We should always try it before we resort to the management. Try to improve it first. Try to make it better. We should try to take the dog from where they’re at and bring them to the best level we can bring them to make them the best version of themselves and only then go, well, you can’t handle the five play buddies of our son that come over on Sundays.

Okay, you don’t have to. You can stay in the bedroom, you can stay on your bed, or go watch TV with me, or come in the office with me, and I’ll work with me while I’m there. You don’t have to deal with these five kids. These five, five year olds that are just not, not something you want to deal with.

Understood. Doesn’t have to be. You, my dog, you don’t have to meet every stranger. You’re a cute dog, people want to pet you, that doesn’t have to happen. You’re a family member, we can protect you from random strangers just reaching for you, that doesn’t need to be. So things like that, absolutely, that’s a management task, right?

But can we make it better? Can we make you more comfortable with at least walking by these people, or seeing these people? Then we should do that. Doesn’t mean they have to touch you, doesn’t mean we have to let you being, um, petted by everybody who thinks you’re cute. That’s not necessary. But being comfortable enough or okay enough to walk through the world without blowing up every five seconds, that’s a goal we should strive for, and we should use whatever tools allow us to do that.

Now, with, again with psychopharmaceuticals, I can speak from personal experience as a trainer. I have never used psychopharmaceuticals on any of my dogs, and I don’t see a scenario under which I would, simply based on what I’ve seen over the last 20 years working with dogs. So what I’ve seen, I’ve taken dogs off these drugs during a training process and with the dog’s owner’s consent, obviously, and with them talking to their vet first and after trying, them trying it for two years, three years.

So a lot of dogs have come off before or during training of these psychopharmaceuticals and under vet guidance on, on the discontinuation of the drug and with the dog owner agreeing, this is clearly not working. We’ve been doing this for years and it doesn’t do anything. So let’s just stop and try something different.

And then the dogs got better, especially once the drug was completely out of their system, which takes a while. You can’t just like turn it off cold turkey after. titrate down and do it responsibly. And the, the, the veterinary prescriber can tell the dog owners on how that should be done. And I’m happy for follow those guidelines and get them off the drugs.

But the, the, the difference that I’ve seen over the years doing it, it’s always been better without them. If I’ve done anything, it’s usually cannabis of some sort. And I’m actually very interested in seeing whether psilocybin and MDMA studies that are starting to happen now with animal straw, because that is, that’s Especially the journey of Tina, if you’re, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but anybody who is, who hasn’t seen the videos from Ivan Balabanov and Tina, especially the beginning video and then the, the latest video, it’s just a remarkable transformation.

I know there was some, um, there was some, uh, medicinal mushrooms involved in the, uh, psychedelic mushrooms, not medicinal mushrooms. Medicinal mushrooms are like, um, cordyceps, um, termites, turkey tail lines, man, that kind of thing. They’ve been around forever, used a lot in Chinese medicine. You can buy them.

I mean, I take them, my dogs take them, medicinal mushrooms are good for health overall. But I was talking about the, um, psychedelic mushrooms. So we’re talking about psilocybin, MDMA effects. That are heavily studied in the human world and now animal studies are beginning. So I know there was some of that involved in, in working with Tina and.

The, the change is just dramatic. It’s just unbelievable to see that dog from the nervous wreck she was in the beginning, when she was pulled from the shelter to the calm and completely content and, and. It’s like peaceful animal she is now, it’s just a completely different dog. If you didn’t, I mean, if you don’t know, then you would think that’s a different animal.

But it, but it’s the same animal. So there’s a lot of benefits in, in these explorations of, of drugs of, of all sorts. It’s not that we shouldn’t explore them, but the traditional psychotropic medication that’s out there has just not shown to accomplish these magical results that everybody hoped for. In dogs, I’ve never seen it.

I don’t know any dog owners ever seen it. I never met anybody who was super happy with, with a drug. Some people tell me what’s doing something, um, it’s a little bit less on edge, but it’s not that the dog really got better, it’s doing, there’s doing something statement. It’s kind of rare. It’s really rare.

So most dog owners that come in with these drugs. Tell me, well, this doesn’t really do anything. I don’t really notice any difference. I’m not really sure we should probably stop it. I’m very open to stopping it. I don’t think we should continue it. I have no seen a benefit. So this is more like the statements that I’ve heard over the last 20 years, most of the time, and people have explored these medications because people want their dog to be better, they’re trying everything to make their dog better.

So they’re open to any kind of training and management suggestion. That has a chance of working and if they’d be convinced that this is a path trying, most are willing to try. But, many are also realizing when it doesn’t work, we should try something else and that’s when a trainer is revisited and I’m often times one of those trainers.

So, management and training are two things that sometimes go hand in hand. and sometimes are in direct conflict. So what I’ve heard, um, veterinarians say over the years, and this is, I, I’m not even, I don’t even want to blame them for it. It’s just, they don’t know. They really have, there’s just some things they just don’t know.

They’re veterinarians. They went to veterinary medical school, and that has a certain curriculum, and those are the things they’re experts in. Those are the things they’re great at, and that’s what we need them for. But then there’s other things where, well, a knowledgeable dog trainer with a lot of experience and who has learned a lot over a long period of time will know more when it comes to behavior, will understand behavior better and more, in way more details than a veterinary behaviorist will, because veterinary behaviorists, they read about behavior, they don’t interact with dogs a whole lot, they see dogs for 15, 20 minutes in the office, they don’t, they don’t interact with dogs really outside the clinical setting for 20 minutes or so.

While dog trainers who are actively working interact with dogs throughout the day, all day long, different breeds, different species, um, the average dog trainer works with like, and not, not just like one time, but I mean like multiple sessions and doing a real training. It works with anywhere from 80 to 120 dogs a year.

That’s the average of what a busy trainer who works by himself will touch in working. If you work at a kennel facility or you work at a training company, you may be involved in little pieces with more dogs. But that doesn’t mean you’ve trained more than that, right? So there’s so many, so many hours in the day.

There’s only so many days in a year. You can do the math on how long it will take if training sessions, 10 hours or something. So that’s the average. So if somebody tells you, I have been in business for five years and I work with thousands of dogs, that’s clearly nonsense. That didn’t happen. So, but anyway, so the, the training and the management portion.

of dealing with dogs in the world, in your home and society should always be evaluated from the perspective, what can we change and what can’t we change? I know we had an episode about food aggression, for example, and food aggression is a genetic thing. It’s, it could be not, but it’s extremely rare that it’s not.

So most of the time food aggression is a generic, generic, uh, genetic, it’s a genetic. Problems, and problem is the wrong word, it’s just a genetic reality. The dog’s just food aggressive because evolutionarily that’s a very advantageous trait. So that’s a management item. It just is. If the dog’s now also possessive aggressive over other things like toys and people and water bowl, sofa cushions and whatever.

That’s a different question. So now we should tackle that. That’s a training thing. We can definitely get that under control. So we can deal with possessive aggression in this context and then we’ll see if the food aggression persists or not. And maybe it doesn’t. There is a chance. It’s not a high chance, but there’s a chance.

But if dealing with possessive aggression eliminates also the food aggressive portion, congratulations. You got lucky, but you may very well eliminate the possessive aggression component and then the food aggression persists and that you know for sure of, well, that’s a genetic trait. So be it. Fairly easy to manage.

It’s not like that’s a really big problem. It’s very doable. You just have to have some commitment to it and you have to understand your dog and you have to know what you can safely do in your home. It gets harder when you have young children who may drop food everywhere. Now, a little piece on the ground may not be a problem because there’s nothing for the dog to get committed over.

But, if it’s a bone or something, or something that takes a bit to eat, it could be a problem. You may have to let that be. But it depends on the individual circumstance of when How big of a problem it would be for you to manage that for most people, that’s a very easy thing to manage. And most dogs that are food aggressive are fantastic outside of that particular trait.

It’s just one of those things. And you just have to deal with it. And it’s very easy to deal with. It’s not really something you have to. It’s more like the thinking about if my dog is aggressive in some way that freaks people out. And I understand it. I get it. It’s not that you don’t want to think of your dog this way.

A lot of people I’ve had over the years as clients, they just calm down once we have a conversation about what is this? What does this mean? What do you do? How do you manage this? How do you handle the food aggression component of your dog? And once they realize how little effort this actually is and how simple this is, Everybody calms down and realizes, I got a fantastic dog here, and just don’t bother him while he’s eating.

Let him eat in his crate and when he’s done, leave him alone. Done. Problem solved. So that, that’s the something where you’ve got to manage that. No question. Let’s take another example. Also very common. Dogs that start fighting in the home. I mentioned one earlier that was completely medical in the beginning of the podcast, where it’s just a matter of age and pain.

But let’s just say some dogs got into a fight over a squirrel or a skunk or something in the backyard or whatever. There can be so many reasons. They could have lived together for eight years in perfect harmony. And now they’re getting into a fight and now you can’t stop it. And they keep going at it.

This is one of those things that is extremely difficult to turn back. If it persists, if somebody had a scruffle and it’s one time over something specific, and then it didn’t do it again. Good for you, but now you’re going to keep an eye on those guys. Now you’re going to watch them. It’s like, huh, you’ve done this.

You’re not doing it anymore. You haven’t done it in months now. What do we do here? Right. This is a situation where from my perspective, we’ll watch it. But to me, that’s not a problem. But other people may feel that watching their dogs and not being able to just ignore them completely and go about your day is a really big deal.

Well, to me and most dog trainers, this is just part of life. We have usually, most dog trainers have multiple dogs in their home. They know which dogs get along well and which dogs maybe have some issues with each other. And it’s no problem for them to all be out once the person’s home. But, when they’re not, a couple of dogs, or all the dogs go up and in their kennels and that’s it.

And so most dog trainers don’t view that as an issue at all. I thought it’s, it’s something for dog trainers where they just go, Yeah, it’s fine. They got a great life. If you’re hiking with them, they help when I’m here. And if I’m not, they’re probably going to sleep most of the time anyway. No, no need to take a risk when they go in their kennel.

And like this thing, going in the kennel for some people is like the end of their existence. They cannot wrap their head around a dog being in a crate. There’s just too much for them to process. And I can’t relate to that, but I can understand that’s how you feel. And I’m not going to make you change or feel differently, then maybe you can’t manage a situation like this.

All right. So it depends on what you’re comfortable with on what your limits are and what you can manage. But so when dogs, when two dogs start fighting in the home, can you bring that back to a point where you have peace and harmony when you’re there to oversee what they’re doing? Yeah, that’s usually possible.

It’s not that that’s not a reasonable goal. But is it a reasonable goal for your family is a very different question. In the, in the generic or general sense, yeah, I’ve lived with dogs that didn’t like each other for a decade, like, um, and, but no problems because when I’m here, there’s peace. My partner’s here, Sarah’s here, there’s peace.

It’s not a problem. They don’t, they don’t do anything if one of us is around, but we wouldn’t leave them loose if we’re not here. So it’s not a problem to us. We’re here most of the time anyways, even though like for other people that may be a completely. There’s a mount unsurmountable problem. So it really depends on what your comfort level is and what you can manage.

But oftentimes when two dogs get into a scruffle, it is impossible. Or oftentimes it is really impossible to get to a point where you can 100 percent trust the situation to not reoccur. And I met so many people over the years, they had this one time and then it didn’t happen for months and it happened again, and it didn’t happen for months.

But then it happened again. And then they call a dog trainer. Hey, what do we do? Well, if it happens every couple of months. Yeah. There isn’t really a whole lot you can do, especially if there is not a particular thing that they’re doing that for over, if it’s always over the same toy, well, put that toy away.

Right? So that’s, that’s the answer. What, what training are you going to do for something that is that rare, that random and doesn’t really have anything that needs watching besides put that thing away. And that is not a magical bullet. There’s nothing to fix. Those dogs have developed issues over specific items or specific situations.

You gotta manage that. There’s nothing you can do to create the peace you had before and create the safety. It doesn’t matter if your dogs have lived together in peace and harmony for six years, seven years, whatever. Now they’re not. And they’re not going back to that easily. They may never go back to that.

It may become you have to oversee it. You can get to the point where they coexist peacefully. Will they ever play again? Maybe not. Is that a problem for you? Maybe it is. Wouldn’t be for me, it may be for you. I’m not the gatekeeper, so you have to decide what you’re comfortable with. And in these situations where dogs start fighting in the home, the best answer is often the one that nobody wants to do.

I totally get why I would have a really hard time myself if this was my only choice. I totally understand why this would be very difficult for people, so I don’t fault anybody for not wanting to pull the plug on this. But the simple answer would be like, separate the dogs, one goes to another home, and find a relative.

Maybe they live with their parents or their grandparents or friends, or you can still see the buddy. It’s not that you’re completely gone from your life, but they’re no longer with you, they’re no longer your dog. Separating them and having both dogs live in peace in separate homes for the dogs would be better.

But you may miss them, obviously. It’s not that anybody died here either, right? It’s just like they get separated and split up in separate homes. If you, if that’s an option for you, if that’s possible, it’s oftentimes the best answer. In these scenarios where fighting all of a sudden started, and it’s not something that’s constant, it’s not something that can be easily reproduced.

It’s just all every once in a while now, if it’s constant, it doesn’t get any better because now, yes, we can suppress it in the moment. We can do all kinds of stuff and teach the dog to teach both dogs that you have control, that they trust you, that you have control over the other. I mean, there’s all kinds of things that we can do in training that will give you peace while you’re present, but I would never trust that when I’m not there and I don’t recommend anybody would trust it while you’re not there because they’ve clearly shown they can’t.

If nobody’s supervising them, there’s going to be a problem. So, you would have to be comfortable with a crating situation, or separation situation. And if you’re not, there isn’t a great answer somebody can give you. You can grasp all kinds of straws and drug those dogs up, but will that stop it? That’s unlikely.

So, you have to decide. In each scenario, obviously talk to professionals about your problems, talk to vets, talk to veterinary behaviorists, talk to dog trainers, talk to multiple trainers, talk to everybody. And then decide from there, from what you’re hearing, what are they comfortable with? What’s the best approach in my view on this?

Because everybody will have a different opinion. Your vet will probably just send them to a veterinary behaviorist. And the veterinary behaviors have a very specific protocol and most of them include, um, positive reinforcement training, which for these types of scenarios doesn’t do anything, it’s really pointless, and, and medication, which in these types of scenarios also is not gonna really help you a whole lot, there’s not really any evidence that it ever would and I’ve never seen it work.

So, a trainer will not go and say, hey, we can, well, some trainers will say we can fix everything, there’s those, but. And in those types of scenarios, it’s realistically, if to keep, if you want to keep the family together and keep everybody in the home, it’s going to be some management involved. And if you’re not comfortable with that, then separating the dog and putting, putting one on a different home is probably your best bet.

In this, in this case, so it becomes complicated is my point and you have to always look at every aspect of the situation of your particular home situation, of your particular comfort level, of your particular challenge and get a broad spectrum of inputs from different sources and then go with one what you feel best about, but also if that doesn’t work, don’t hesitate to revisit the others before you give up.

Right, so don’t just like, hey, I thought the veterinary behaviorist and his approach that sounded the best to me, seems great, let’s try it, doesn’t work, well, let me then just use a nice one. I don’t recommend you do that. Right, so that’s not the way I would go. If you went with route one and it didn’t work, maybe reevaluate route two and hire a skilled trainer to take a look at the situation, give you some additional thoughts.

And maybe you talk to a couple of different trainers about it and get a couple of different inputs and see what makes the most sense from that perspective and then try one of those, right, maybe two of those, two different, if you have like, talk to like five trainers and there’s basically in these five people you talk to, there’s two completely fundamental different approaches, maybe you try both and see where each of them, each of them leads.

Thanks. Bye. And then you’ve tried a whole spectrum of things, and maybe one of them will get you what you’re after. And then if not, well then you go back to square one and you have to re evaluate your situation. But at least you tried different things and you explored different options. Hopefully one will lead to the desired outcome.

When it comes to management, don’t accept everything has to be management. And don’t also accept that everything can be fixed for training, because it can’t. There are things that cannot be fixed through training. Genetics is in play. Background is in play. There’s like the, the upbringing experience of the dog.

There’s some things that are not realistic in your home. They may be realistic in the home of a fantastic trainer. If that dog would become the project of a highly skilled trainer. And that’s how most dog trainers get a lot of their dogs. So a lot of my dogs became part of my family because somebody else couldn’t handle them.

And then they live all here in peace. So it’s, but that’s a dog trainer. We’re dog trainers. So it’s, it’s different, right? We have completely different, like, way of living with dogs than most people want to live with dogs. And we have a dog here. Her name is Deshka. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about her, but she’s a black German shepherd female.

And she was surrendered to us. from Alaska, and she was actually surrendered from my German Shepherd Rescue at the time, and we enrolled her in a training program. We thought, well, let’s see if we can make her a service dog for, um, for Sarah. That was the original plan. But we were fully going into that with the understanding that may or may not work, and if it doesn’t work, she just becomes our pet.

We had a trainer, so we can make this call and be fine with it. It was like, yeah, she’s a cool dog. So let’s just see where it goes and see what happens. And she became one of the best pets in our house. She is one of the two best dogs that we have. And. We still have random contact, we haven’t had in a while now, but we, we kept contact with the original owner who realized this dog is not in the right home.

She was fully understanding this is not the right environment for this dog and was looking for a better, better situation. So we were in touch with her for quite a while and we told her that at some point she is the best dog here. And she’s like, wow, I’m, I’m, wow, I’m glad she’s with you, right? Cause she, she wasn’t thriving in the environment she was in.

She was simply in the wrong home. And the choice that that dog owner made, I’m sure was incredibly tough because she loved that dog. I know she loved that dog. She wanted the best for Deshka. And she made the right call for Deshka as hard as it was for her. And Deshka is fantastic. Maybe we’ll have a video with her at some point.

She’s awesome. She’s an awesome dog. And, um, she lives here in perfect harmony with all her friends. She has no problems with other dogs. When she lived in the other home, she had a lot of problems with other dogs that she met out in the world. Here she lives in perfect peace with, with everybody. And. It’s, it’s sometimes the wrong home also creates problems and the right home, all the problems just go away.

So re homing is not something you should feel bad about if it’s really not the right situation. It can prevent so much, so many problems, so many heartaches, but it’s hard to give up a dog, obviously. I mean, I’ve never had to give up a dog besides them passing away over the years, which is tough enough.

And we recently lost, uh, over the holidays, we lost one of our dogs. And, um, 2023 was Titan, it’s been with me for 11 years and it’s also my buddy. Hi, he passed away. Um, so, but that’s, that’s life, I can’t change that, but giving a dog up that otherwise is young and there’s no problems, it’s just like not the right fit.

It doesn’t get along with the other dogs, not the right home, not the right environment. It’s incredibly tough. It’s a really, really hard decision to make. But it can lead to the dog having the best life ever and your life becoming way more, way easier, way calmer, way better, way more manageable. So it can be a great choice and it prevents management and prevents things from being managed and everybody being miserable about it.

So think of management as something that should be applied. When you absolutely have to, when you can’t change it, when it’s just the best approach. Think of training as something you should always try. Talk to a couple of trainers, see if what you’re dealing with can be addressed with training. How far they think it can be addressed with training.

If somebody tells you, On every aggression problem, we can fix everything. But the greatest trainers on earth were the best ever. They’re probably not that experienced. Because the experienced trainers will tell you, we can fix a lot of things. Your situation looks good. There’s a very good chance that we can completely resolve this.

Or we can mostly resolve this. But here’s a couple of possible scenarios. So this would be more like the way an experienced trainer would talk to you about your situation. They would give you maybe a couple of caveats. Or they would tell you, What you’re having has a pretty clear beginning. There was an event that set her on.

We can in most, most likely we can reverse that. Your dog was not in a transformer in an early development phase was not a critical period happened later in life or scared there was a dog attack. There is a good chance we can reverse that. There is a chance we may not be able to, but the chances are in your favor.

So it’s like an 80, 90 percent chance of success. That’s a reasonable conversation. If somebody just goes, I can fix anything. And the greatest trainer I ever are those people who think of the greatest thing in sliced bread. Right. Um, probably not realistic. Probably lack experience. I, I was cocky when I was younger as a trainer, I said stuff like that when I was younger as a trainer, , I thought I could fix anything when I was a young trainer.

Five years in or so. I totally get it Right. I understand. I’m very, very capable of admitting that. But I learned and I kept learning and I kept learning. I never stopped learning. My, my dog trading journey has always been learning and it will never stop. It’s always more to learn. Now learning is, I mentioned this before, learning for me at this point is not about learning like a new, a new fancy dog trading method.

I understand dog training. It’s about evolution. About ethology. It’s about all aspects of dogs to understand them better, to understand behaviors better, to, to maybe tweak a process or something. It’s, it’s now fine tuning at this stage of my career and it’s looking at other aspects of it.

Versus hey, here’s this new fancy thing we found because there are probably no new fancy things. There’s going to be advancements, there’s going to be new learning, there’s going to be new discoveries, there’s going to be deeper understanding that will change things and refine things. Absolutely. There’s new things all the time, but we learn about dogs, but it’s incremental learning at some stage when you’ve been, um, in it for a while, you’ve learned a lot and obviously there’s those trainers who’ve been doing this for 20 years and haven’t learned anything, that’s that too.

But obviously you don’t meet all of those, but okay. So that’s management, um, dog management, my thoughts on dog management. So some things have to be managed. But a lot of things not. So think, think of it from, from both angles and have conversations with everybody in the dog world that you feel comfortable talking to.

Talk to dog trainers, talk to multiple, talk to vets, talk to multiple, talk to behavior, veterinary behaviorists, talk to multiple and see what they think. They may disagree. There’s some veterinary behaviorists who have very good education, who have a lot of understanding. And then there’s a lot of veterinary behaviorists who are more mediocre, right?

Just like with dog trainers, just like with veterinarians, just like with any profession on earth, there’s going to be the really good ones. And then there’s going to be a lot of mediocre ones. And then there’s going to be a couple of crappy ones. I suppose, like, no matter what the profession is. Man, I’ve been to crappy dentists.

That sucks. You wake up and learn that later. I was a crappy dentist. You don’t necessarily know that in the moment, unless they really mess up right then and there. Any profession has people who are excellent, who are people who are the medium, and the medium is the majority, and then there’s people who are, uh, the bottom of the barrel.

Man, no matter what the profession is, all professions have those. So talk, talk to a bunch of them, and, Decide what you feel comfortable with and don’t hesitate to make a course correction if something doesn’t work out the way you hoped or thought. So, explore other options. I had people come back that wanted to go another route first and then I saw them a year later and say, Yep, uh, didn’t work.

Let’s, I think what you said, I want to try that. So, it’s perfectly fine and reasonable. Go down the path you want to go down and adjust as you see fit. Ultimately, your buddy is your dog and you make a decision. I’m not the gatekeeper. Nobody else is. You are. You are in charge of your dog’s welfare. In charge of making decisions for your dog.

They need you to be their advocate and pick the path that you believe is best for them. And that’s ultimately what needs to happen, because you’re responsible for your dog. Okay. That is all I wanted to say on this topic of management. And I hope you found it informative. You got something out of it. And I see you again next time.

Bye.