99% Of Dogs in the U.S. Have Behavioral Problems | Weekly Pet Roundup

0:00 And. Welcome to the weekly Pet roundup. Hi, guys. Hi, we are talking about. I know I feel like it's been forever. It's only been a week, but I feel like it's been forever. Yeah, well we got to take advantage now before the summer gets crazy. So we have a great topic today, mostly dog related. I'm sure a lot of the advice we will give is definitely going to apply to cats and probably your rabbit and your what else, your bird acting out and stuff. But welcome to the weekly pet roundup. I'm Isabel Alvarez Arana of Covered in Pet Hair. And joining me today is Jessica Fisher of the Pet Parenting Reset.

0:46 Yes, ma'am. So we are talking about dog behavior problems and so Texas A&M. And we have a barking dog in the background for fact. For fact, totally planned Texas A&M posted More than 99% of US dogs have behavior problems, Texas A&M researcher finds. This was also posted like a full length article in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior in the December, November, December 2024 issue, and that the study posted in the journal is called The Prevalence of Behavior Problems in Dogs in the United States, posted by Bonnie Beaver. I didn't make up that name.

1:38 And she is obviously a researcher with Texas A&M and she obviously knows what she's doing because she's publishing articles. So, yeah, this is, to me, really interesting. So we kind of alluded to it at the end of last week's episode. The study pulled data from over 43,000 dogs enrolled in the dog aging project, which is nothing. I mean, we're fairly familiar. I think Isabel and I, because with the dog aging project, because I think a lot of the information that Ronnie Habib and Dr. Karen Becker talk about or is also pulled from the dog. This is probably one of the biggest, like most expansive pieces of like data profiles ever on dogs worldwide, I think. Yeah.

2:34 And it's it's, I believe it is worldwide, but they just pulled from the United States for this particular piece. And you can actually go to dogagingproject.org if you want to learn more about the dog aging project. You can donate to it. You can actually enroll your dog potentially. If you said, I don't know how all of that works, but it says they are discovering the keys to a healthy lifespan. Obviously that's what Karen and Rodney talk about all the time, not just quantity of life, but quality of life. And that is so important and behavior. There's actually one part of this research that I found to be the most interesting.

3:18 I'm going to save it for later on in our talk. But I mean, as a professional pet sitter, like you having been a professional pet sitter for so long, I'm sure you know, we talked about behavioral, behavioral issues all the time. It's, it's something that like you have seen day in and day out, like regardless of the situation, regardless of the number of dogs, regardless of where they live, regardless of if there's kids in the homes, they're not kids in the homes, what they're eating with their walk schedule, like it doesn't matter. Across the board, there are behavior problems. Yeah. And actually I will say that my clientele was like highly educated, very responsible. They were doing the best they possibly could for their dogs. They were in a financial place where they could afford dog training for the most part.

4:16 We had, you know, very successful professionals and families with disposable income, dual income families who really could do anything they really wanted to to a point for their dogs. And still we saw a lot of behavior issues. So it is definitely something that you can't really throw money at. That's the first thing I will say. Behavior issues are not going to go away with a pill. They are not always, you can't always tell that they're they're going to happen. When you're choosing a dog, a breeder, a rescue, you can't. There are no guarantees with the pet no matter how you acquire them.

5:09 I know that some people like to say that you know, if you get the perfect dog from the perfect breeder, you will have a perfect dog as far as behavior and that is just not true. I mean, nature versus nurture as much as they can. You know, a really good breeder does use genetics and genetic testing to support the lineages that they choose. There's no way to know what you're going to get. Genetics is is it does its own thing. So you might be, you know, breeding the best temperament, but you may not know what the history is there or be able to control the history of separation anxiety.

5:54 And you can't also control that that perfect dog with perfect lineage and no separation anxiety can't, won't develop it for whatever reason. So there's no, there are no guarantees. And that's a huge thing to think about when we talk about all this is that this is about dogs, just dogs. Anybody who tells you that you have to get a specific dog, a specific breed, a specific long hair versus short hair versus wire hair to get a great dog is, is, is blowing smoke up your bottom. And it is really important to recognize that there's no preventing bad behaviors. In some cases, like separation anxiety can be made worse. But if your dog is genetically predisposed to separation anxiety and you just may not know that until they start showing signs.

6:44 And not a lot of people really kind of do their their due diligence. Maybe you could see a little sign here and there during the adoption process. Maybe you didn't ask about that stuff, but once your dog is showing these symptoms, they're your dog, they're staying with you, and now you have to respond. So feeling like you can throw a pill at it, it doesn't exist, throw money at it, that's not going to work. Really, when it comes to these behavior problems, the solution usually starts with you as the pet parent. Well, and you have no way of knowing, you have no way of knowing how any individual dog is going to respond to any stressor that comes about in their lifetime.

7:29 We do know that the gut microbiome is very much like the, the gut brain axis is real. The gut microbiome absolutely can determine how an animal behaves, how an animal reacts to stressors to anything going on in their environment. So just like a, a dog that was quote, UN quote, perfectly behaved at a breeder's home, right? With when they were with their siblings, when they were with their mother, and then they're taken away from everything they knew. I saw a name one day or they're real or something. It was like, like, we literally just kidnapped these animals from the only family they've ever known. And we're like, we're your family now, all right? We're your family now and pee outside, don't go. Yes.

8:28 You're doing it. Well, and so, yeah, I hear that all the time too, like all the time. People, people who have like an affinity to a certain breed of dog. It doesn't really matter what breed of dog it is. They just are like so steadfast in their belief that you have to get a purebred dog. And that is going to be like the solution to every problem everybody ever has with a dog. That is so not the case. Just like you said, it is absolutely not the case. And yeah, maybe they have had fewer stressors in their life being bright. You don't know, especially if like you're not doing your due diligence and you're getting from like a backyard breeder or something.

9:10 But maybe, you know, a really wonderful, incredible breeder out there and you're getting your dogs from them. You still like, you have no way of there's no way to decide that that dog isn't going to react to even though it's maybe fewer stressors in their life versus a dog who was born on the street and wound up in a shelter and then wound up in a rescue. Like some of those dogs have incredible temperaments. It's not like it's not 100% genetic. There's a lot of, you know, epigenetics involved in both health and behavior. And we just don't just like with humans, you know, you can have a human, 22 humans and they do, you know, they do twin studies to show these things that grew up exactly the same. Their their DNA is identical and yet they have two very different responses to the same stimulus.

10:09 It's the same with dogs. Well, I yeah, Speaking of of my experience as a pet sitter, I remember having this client who had a yellow lab, like the sweetest yellow lab who like lived to 16. And of course, once that lab was gone, she had to have another female yellow lab. I don't believe that the breeder was around anymore, so she couldn't go back to that lineage. She found a great breeder, blah, blah, blah. The dogs could not have been any different, like any more different, like they were completely different. And she was actually really disappointed by the second dog because she was expecting to get the exact same dog that had passed. And so this happens a lot where people are like my my soul dog was a Doberman Pinscher.

10:56 And now I can only have Doberman pictures. And I'm going to be so disappointed when you know that next dog is not the same temperament, even if you get it from the same breeder in lineage as yours, Your your soul dog who who you know, changed your life. And I get it. Like it's hard to to recognize that that was a one, one being that you had probably some sacred contract with that really made an impression. And you're not going to be able to duplicate that, not with genetics, not with the breeder, not with anything. And the most important thing is when you think about how things have changed, especially in the, let's say in the case of my client, who is a 16 year difference between when her first dog was born and her second dog. Dog food has changed, the environment has changed, stressors in the environment has changed, have changed. She has changed.

11:51 Her energy has changed, her socialization approach may have changed. So much has changed. So even if you were to clone that original dog and just bring her 16 years into the future, you don't know you're going to get that same result, right? Because everything around that dog has changed. So one of the things that I think is so important when we talk about behavior issues is the recognition that those first like 8 to 12 weeks of life are so important for socialization. And people hear socialization and they think like doggy play dates. And that is not at all. You know what it is, whether or not you're dog is predisposed to separation anxiety, barking, hurting because of their genetic makeup when you expose them to stimuli, whether it's noise, storms, touch, other dogs, other humans, other pets like cats. Whether you do that in the beginning of their life or not, whether you travel with them during that time, taking them to new places.

12:59 And even if you pass that initial like 1218 weeks, I mean, depending on who you ask, there's different lengths for different things. But even if you pass that initial week like let's say 1215 weeks, the first two years, they're going to be a lot more adaptable than they are potentially the first five years versus the 1st 10 years. And so everything that we do to kind of prevent these behavior issues that we're going to talk about is really only in our control if we have the dog from day one and everything goes perfectly. Because even if we're socializing a dog just at the right period, we might over simulate them. We might scare the heck out of them with a noise like the trash truck comes by and that dog will forever be scared of the trash truck.

13:49 You might get a dog who's two years old from a rescue and they're happy, go lucky and then something traumatic happens and now they're scared of whatever it is that, you know, they relate of that traumatic experience. So there is really no guarantee to how we can prevent these behavior issues. We can set them up for success with socialization during those key periods. Yes. And if you are getting a puppy, you need to be aware of those key periods. And if you have a dog under, you know, 5, you can still really like usually socialize and recondition and things like that. When you have an older dog like Mike Kira, who's 14, I'm not going to recondition anything. I'm going to manage now, right? I'm going to make sure that I make it so that she's not more afraid of things she already has a fear of. So recognizing your dog's age, their developmental periods, yes, their genetics, which we have no control over, and all the unknowns, right?

14:42 We don't know before we get them from a breeder what that experience was like, especially if you're not doing your due diligence and you don't know what questions to ask. You don't know how they were. Well do you don't know what they were like, what training they got? Cuz there's some really great breeders who start potty training from day one, right? Like you know, they're starting to do socialization from day one, touching them, moving them, you know, fiddling with their toenails, all those things on purpose initially still in the Breeders home. Then there are other people who just have them in cages and they're completely, completely ignored until you buy them. And now that dog at 8 weeks hasn't done anything, hasn't seen anything but their, you know, initial experience with the, the litter mates. Yeah, they're, they're lucky if they even spent time with their mom.

15:29 So we don't have a lot of control over the things that happen before we get our dogs. We do have control based on, you know, their age, their willingness, their personality, their temperament and our time too. Because a lot of, like I said, there's no, there's no throwing money at this. There's no magic pill. Behavior issues are solved with consistency and compassion and understanding and a heck of a whole lot of patience. My gosh, yes. And interestingly, in the actual study that was posted in the the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, they said they also reference a Spanish survey which was only 232 dogs entering a veterinary hospital for either medical or surgical services not related to behavior.

16:23 And it was estimated that 92% of those dogs had some kind of behavioral problem as well. Also, an Iranian study of 401 dogs showed 86% showed at least one of the 13 common behavioral problems. Danish survey, Danish survey of 502 dog owners reported 34% of the dogs should at least one behavioral problem. So it's not necessarily like worldwide like Spanish was pretty like pretty close to us. Even the Iranian was similar, but then like the Danish.

17:04 Is really low. Yeah. Well, and I also think that these surveys, we have to recognize that some people and some cultures are going to see things differently. So like we might be like, we're so busy and we're so like easily irritated by little things that are out of our control that maybe we think that 99% of our dogs have behavior issues where a Spaniard might look at that or a Dane might look at that and be like, it's not a big deal. Depending on the culture, depending on the expectations and the standards. So, you know, separation anxiety is something that is a spectrum, right? So somebody who says, yes, for sure there's separation anxiety. Maybe a Spaniard says, Oh yeah, they whined when I got get home, but that's not separation anxiety, right?

17:47 So like, but here in the United States, according to this result, it is 99% of dogs in the United States show behaviors that are potentially problematic with the top categories being aggression 55.6%, separation anxiety, and separation and attachment behaviors. They don't use the word anxiety, separation and attachment behaviors 85.9% and fear and anxiety behaviors 49.9%. OK, so they're separating separation and attachment behaviors from fear and anxiety behaviors, which often are roped in together.

18:27 Like I know Kira has both. Kira has separation anxiety because when we get home, she's a wreck. Even if I just went down the street for 5 minutes, she's so excited that we're home. That's a key sign that you know, they were anxious while you were gone. They're not exactly happy to see you as we mostly interpret it. It's often times that's like, Oh my God, you're back. What was I going to do without you? And then she has also fear and anxiety behaviors and that she's scared of noise. She's noise phobic. She's scared of any kind of like when we talk loud, she gets very, very scared. She is scared of wind. Any changes in barometric pressure send her into like shakes. So she is obviously she displays both of those things. Thankfully she does not display aggression, but I found the result for aggression high 55.6% and that is more than half of the dogs in the United States.

19:25 And I will say that I from the sample of at the Wag pack, I would say that that doesn't seem in line with my clients. And maybe that's because they were so educated and they did maybe do a lot of like the early socialization and we lived in an urban environment. So the dogs were inevitably, you know, socialize to noises and to other dogs and to other humans. And a lot of people lived in condos and townhomes right next to others. So maybe just automatically they just got used to those things. But it did seem high 4555.6% for aggression. Well, and yeah, and that sample that you're pulling from, these are people who are aware enough as you, as you just stated, they are aware enough to know that their pet needs socialization outside of them, especially when say, if they work long hours. And that is not the case for the majority of pets in the United States and probably around the world. Yeah, but go and I and I think we should touch on the aggression a little bit more and the separation and the anxiety. But I did want to kind of go back to what you were saying about like, how do we know, like how these people are actually, I feel so washed out today.

20:42 I'm just like, looking at myself going, what is wrong anyway? Like, we don't know, like how people are really responding to these questionnaires. And I think they tried to touch on that as much as possible by giving people time. They talked about how like, if you're just talking to like your veterinarian is asking you questions, which is something I want to talk about a little bit later on the whole veterinarian part of this, because that's a whole other topic in my opinion. Like you're just answering questions, spitballing off the top of your head. You're probably not going to come up with a lot of the answers that are relevant to a study like this. But what they're saying is that they gave people a questionnaire and they gave them time to think about it. And I think they also followed up because it says, as an example, I once saw a miniature poodle that came in for a problem with barking.

21:37 This is a quote from a veterinarian. I'm sorry, the the lady who, who did the research in the patient's history, I found out that the dog would routinely urinate on a Persian rug, but that behavior didn't bother the owner as much as the barking. So she was actually like going through the the researcher was going through veterinary records to say, like, does this match up with the reports that that the the pet parents are giving to us because they're finding other things? Because obviously you know, what's the problem to one person, it may not be a problem to another person for it. Example, my dog is on my couch right now and she sleeps in bed with me. Whereas another person may be like, that is absolutely asinine. Dogs do not belong in the bed sleeping with you. You know what I mean?

22:23 So like. My dogs don't get on the couch or sleep in the bed like it's. Yeah, it's just something I don't enjoy. My cat does whatever he wants. Yeah, that's all. Yeah. So Dulce, Dulce's legacy says are we allowed to call it neurotic? Yes. So anxiety. Yeah. I think neurosis is probably something we are pets exhibit. Absolutely. I know I've talked. I've referred to Kira, my apologies, Kira as neurotic. Nucky being a Singleton, he's high anxiety. Ellen is just off the charts because someone breathes. Yeah. And those we, you know, every dog has its own, its own kind of triggers and every pet parent has different levels of being able to recognize that.

23:10 So like Dolce's legacy, Bronwyn, obviously highly educated in pet dog behavior, dog body language, whatever. A general pet parent who maybe has their first dog is not going to know that just people breathing sets their dog off. But the idea is that when this research is done, obviously they guide them as best they can. And we there's surveys, right? So like, it's not really like being observed by the researchers. So it's hard to really say like, yeah, I mean, I mean, I've even seen it with my pets where they're like, people are like, oh, you know, he's fine.

23:53 He's friendly. And I'm like, he'll bite you. Really. Yeah. Just because you've seen it for 30 minutes doesn't mean that he is friendly. He hasn't been you this 30 minutes, but give him, you know, on another day he might. So, yeah, it's it's it's something that we can take from the survey what we take. But obviously in every one of these surveys that they do, they want to make sure they get the most accurate answers in order for it to be like, why do it if you're going to get crappy answers, right. And what they they did describe, like the behaviors and aggression, for example, they asked about growling, snapping and biting. The cause was not known why, but at least they could recognize. Like yes, my dog has displayed that behavior. Well, and to go back to what you we were talking about earlier in genetics it this study does show that it says the the prevalence of breed related behaviors and the prevalence of problems are not globally consistent.

24:59 So in a pretty large sample size over 47,000 dogs, they're saying there is no consistency with behavior problems and breed. So that whole like get this breed a dog and they're perfect. It's just out the window. No, I remember that I, I interviewed Melena De Martini, the the foremost expert on, on dogs, separation anxiety in dogs in like 2021 or 2022. And then I had her back on the show last year and the, the findings had changed. Like at first she was like maybe there's a genetic link. And then when she spoke to me last year, she was like, yeah, we're not that convinced anymore just because there isn't enough research.

25:40 And when there is research, it's a small sample. So it's like hard to well, and I mean, nobody really wants to think about how hard it would be to like really do a test separation anxiety research on every single breed out there and in every single situation, like it'd be really hard to do. So we kind of just take what we can based on, we don't have all the answers, but this is kind of that's why we have things like the recommendations where socialization should start early and you know, aggression is going to and we have we talked about dog bites last week. That's why we have the scale so that you know how serious this is. So you can address it because if we rely solely on research, I just don't know when we'll when we'll get all that done and who's going to pay. For it.

26:29 And Speaking of, so we talked about dog bites last week and you sent me, I don't remember how many states it was. It was like a good handful of states have the like first bite rule. Yes, the first bite rule, so this we didn't discuss last week, but the first bite rule is basically the dog cannot like be euthanized or held severely responsible for the first bite that causes like that breaks skin I think is what it is. So that is something that we didn't discuss. But I mean, I guess that many dogs are biting, right? That we needed to legally state that like the first bite, we'll let it go because dogs are dogs and dogs can bite and we know that.

27:21 But after that, you know. Yeah, you. Know your dogs can get in trouble, so you better do something about it. And that brings up a really, really, really important part of this conversation is that dogs are dogs and that too many of us, in my opinion, and I know I don't know if he's still here, but one of Brian, I'm going to say his name wrong. I'm going to say his last name wrong. It's like ban banned fast or something like that. Anyway, anyway, he's very, very knowledgeable, very educated person who spends a lot of time helping educate people on social media. So props to him for everything he does.

28:04 Seriously. Like really a really great person. And he was kind of chiming in on the fact that so many of us are treating or anthropomorphizing our animals and it is causing serious problems for them where they wind up with these serious issues and then they wind up on, you know, really serious medications because of things that we've ultimately probably caused in their lives and. Perpetual. Or yeah, or made worse because we never know what what causes what starts something like separation anxiety, right? Like that's hard, especially when we don't know a dog's history.

28:46 It's like hard to know. We know. How to if we wanted to, if we wanted to 'cause if we wanted to. You want to cause sure separation anxiety, you leave your dog created for way too long, leave them alone for way too long. You're going to cause separation anxiety. And it doesn't take more than maybe 1 bad experience for them to be like, Oh no, it's going to happen again. I'm created, I can't pee, nobody's here, I'm going to die. So we know how to give it to them, but we definitely don't know how subtle these things can be. We don't know how long into that experience they developed separation anxiety. So yeah, we don't really know, but. And, and it's one of the things that like we talk about so much, I know me for sure, I talk about food and feeding them like the species they are so much.

29:34 And I don't talk enough about treating them like the species they are like, you know, making sure they're getting enough enrichment and outdoor time, making sure that they are being like, yes, they live in our homes with us, but they are, we are asking them often demanding of them that they act in ways that we want them to act living in our home. And they have no idea how to do that. Like we're not giving them the road map for how to live in a home with people. We're just saying you live here now and you should know how to do all this. And they don't. They're, they're a totally different species. They are not adapt to live the way we live. They don't want to be trapped inside with, you know, air that isn't circulating with, with these chemicals that you're putting on the floor to clean, to clean your home, that the the off gassing from couches and rugs and carpet. Like these are things that they would never choose for themselves.

30:41 And yet we're at and, and Can you imagine, like I recently went somewhere and the like, it was, it was pretty normal. Like the home was pretty normal. I think an average American home that they use for breeze and they have candles burning in the house. And it wasn't like overly crazy. It wasn't like walking into a bath and body works. But like 2 days in and I feel like I'm getting sick. Can you imagine what this tiny little 9 pound, 10 LB creature may feel like when they are put in that same environment? And it's something we don't often think of that like maybe they are totally fine, maybe they actually don't have any behavioral problems, but they feel like shit, you know what I mean? Well, I mean, we do a lot of that. We do a lot of that.

31:30 Think about just the aggression, like putting a dog in an elevator with other dogs. Like, have we ever thought about how uncomfortable that might be for them coming face to face with an unfamiliar dog in their territory? Because if they're going up and down that elevator every day, they're going to, you know, expect that that's their territory. And unless they've been properly introduced to other dogs, then they've smelled them before. This might proceed be perceived as a threat. And then now we are calling them aggressive because they lunged at that dog who, like looked at them funny. They were on edge because they're on an elevator, which is already an unnatural place for a dog to be, especially if they weren't, you know, socialized to it early in life.

32:15 And now we're expecting them to also be like, yo, what's up? Like they weren't given that like the manners course of you go into an elevator, you don't speak, you nod your head, you put your button. They didn't got to get that training. And like a lot of urban environments, you see that with like, you know, all these dogs together crossing each other on the sidewalk and like there's, you know, the dogs that were born and raised into that situation may be super cool with it. You see that a lot in Europe where most people live in urban environments. So the dogs are used to, you know, being up and down stairs and sidewalks together. But you bring a dog from like, West Virginia, which is something that we did a lot in Northern Virginia, bring a dog from West Virginia was found, you know, in on the road somewhere rural, and you're bringing them to an urban environment and expecting them to just adapt.

33:05 Yeah. That's not going to happen. You're not setting them up for success. And obviously that's where the adopters are. So we need to obviously bring them there. But how are we setting them up for success if we're just throwing them to the wolves and we're unprepared? Like the pet parent who's adopting them is not prepared for how to properly introduce these experiences. Yeah, it is. It's it's, it's so much more than I think most people think about. And also as an animal ages, just like as a human ages, we are less willing to deal with bullshit. We just and we have to understand that our pets are the same way. We talk about, I talk about this a lot with cats. I talk about it less with dogs, but the same thing is true. Like they may be, they may act as if totally as everything is totally fine for most of their lives. And then as they get older, they're just less willing to deal with stuff that makes them uncomfortable. And then you see the snapping and the, you know, parking their floods on the ground, refusing to move because they're just done with it.

34:15 Like these things we, we, we call behavior problems, but they're really not. They are just dogs saying I'm sick of this. I'm a dog. I'm not a human. You have not set me up for success. You have not given me the tools that I need to be able to navigate this world that you live in, in a, in the way that you want me to. And I'm just done. I'm just done with this. Fight, flight or freeze, they're going to choose one of those things because they are often in survival mode. We've introduced them to things and places they don't understand. They have no idea what the appeal is of going to a resort hotel for a week and like exploring there. Most of them are like, I don't get it. The one of the quotes that I really like from the article from that we're looking at is animals think, but they probably probably don't think like we do.

35:09 So what we see is this really great opportunity to do spring. I'm using spring break as an example. We took Kira, who was our only dog at the time, and the cat Van Gogh to to Phoenix and with the kids. And obviously we drove there and the the cat's like in his carrier, like what are we doing? Right? Like why are we still in? Why am I still in this carrier? And we get there to this great resort. And now it's probably a pet friendly hotel room. So it smells like other pets and they're both coming in like what is this place? And now we have to like, you know, figure out where to put their litter box and their water bowls. And they're this, then they're that. And they're like, what are we doing? And for us, it's like vacay.

36:00 So for from our perspectives, it's so different. Just like I'm going down to the mailbox for 10 minutes and I stop and I say hi to my friends down the street. Kira's in here being like, she's gone forever. What if she never comes back? And it's the same situation, just seen so differently. And then what we see is these behaviors that are usually caused by something they can't control, right? Like the anxiety leads to chewing, destructive scratching, either from a dog or a cat. You're talking about like, you know, urinating inside. A lot of dogs self soothe by drinking too much water and then they'll need to go quicker than you thought.

36:41 So you're not home yet and they're urinating on your floor. They literally have like their bowels and their, their bladder can't be controlled because of the anxiety they feel, right? Like they become incontinent from the fear, the panic that they're experiencing. And we're mad at them for the urination or defecation in our house. And really they're just like, I could not control that. Like, I know I'm supposed to go outside. Like I would have done that if I had been given the opportunity. But you were gone for the whole day and you were here all weekend. So I have to readjust every Monday to you leaving, right? There's always the people who say my dog hates when I leave and like they pee when I'm gone.

37:24 And it's like, but do they hate when you leave because they're like mad that you left or do they just not understand that you're coming back? Did you not did they have a bad experience that makes them fear that you're not coming back? Did they, you know, did they have an uncomfortable experience in their crate and now you're crating them while you're gone? Do they have a history of having been left alone in a previous life, a previous home, right, like where you adopted them later in life? So all these things, it's not your dog's not spiting you. Yeah, well, and it's like, so my dog Kim, she had separation anxiety when we adopted her. I don't know what happened to her in her first 2 1/2 years of life. I know that she was in a foster home with way too many dogs in the rescue.

38:13 And I know that I worked with her a lot. She did get better. Never. It never went away. Like I don't, I don't know a dog that it has gone away. And I mean, I know I followed Milena De Martini's book like I did everything. It was my introduction into dog training was her book on separation anxiety. And I did everything and it got better. And then when with my life situation and everything that has happened this year, she has just spiraled. It has gotten so much worse. And I don't blame her for that. Her life, I mean our life has been turned upside down this year and I can't blame her for that. But I can like people do.

39:00 Yeah, life changes. Life changes. A move, a move for for humans, a move is just as traumatic as a death. A move like just like a physical move from one house to another. Granted, I feel like the military, I feel like if you're moving every two to three years, you probably get used to it on some level, even though I'm not discrediting how stressful that is. But like, it's not like you have a death every three years now that you've been doing it for 20 years. But for those people who say like they have lived in one home for, you know, however long and now you're moving and it's just as disruptive to like the central nervous system as a loss or a huge like trauma because it's so, so much, it's so much to handle so many things to coordinate.

39:48 It's just the physical, mental, spiritual changes that are happening. And so are and that's us choosing it. That's us calling the movers. So think about when it's completely out of the pets control. Right, they have no idea, they just know your anxiety. Yeah, like, this was done to me. One day. I'm in this house that I've been in for five years, and then now I'm in this other house. It smells different. It looks different. It feels different. When we moved from Louisiana to El Paso, the whole the climate, the landscape was completely different. Like, until we got to our house, there was no grass anywhere. Yeah. So Kira's now learning how to pee on rocks and gravel, which she had never done because we were in Louisiana or Northern Virginia where grass was everywhere, right.

40:37 So all of these things that were just like, Nah, she didn't want to walk on the rocks at first. She was like, that hurts my feet. I don't like that. And so it was like she didn't pee for like 8 hours. We would get her out every. And then she finally got used to it. But it was those things that were, yeah, like if she had peed in the hotel room, would I have gotten mad at her? No, because I was. I'm an educated enough to know that she's having a hard time figuring out what to do. The next step was going to be literally going to buy one of those patches of grass and bring it in inside or something. But we, we, we put our pets into these situations and then we call them aggressive, we call them anxious, we call them all these things. And like there are things that obviously we can't control either. Like if there is an anxiety related to noise and there's fireworks or there are there's a thunderstorm, like we can't control that, but we can manage that and we could try to alleviate that through training.

41:29 But when it comes to like aggression, we can control a lot of those things. Like when a dog bites a child, why was the child even near the dog? Where was the management right? When a dog who is who has shown snapping or growling signs being made uncomfortable by XYZ situation is being repeatedly put in those situations, Those are the times when we can say that was the human error. That was not the dog, and we need to listen more to the dogs so that we can prevent these behaviors. And then there are times when you really do need to get professional help immediately, like a dog with separation anxiety, where they are tearing apart your home.

42:10 They can't be crated because they're a danger to themselves. But then they can't be left in a room because they'll eat the comforter. And you, you know, you're down to like nothing in your room and they're eating the drywall. This is, you know, these things happen. So like at that point, this needs to become like a super important part of your life where you like dedicate time, patience, compassion, understanding and a lot of potentially money into fixing this problem because your best dog trainers are not going to do this for free. And there's a, you know, there's a lot of liability involved in these extreme behaviors, right? Like I, you know, they're going to your dog trainer should have insurance in case, you know, something that they tell you to do, it results in something that you didn't want as an outcome. So those things, when it comes to that point where it's affecting your life and the pet's life, that's when you need to get this immediate attention from a professional dog trainer like now.

43:10 Yeah, absolutely. So we only have like 15 minutes left and I wanted to bring up something that I felt was very contradictory and very important for us to talk about because of course it brings me right back around to what I'm most comfortable talking about. So it says for dog owners, it's important to learn to read your dog's body language and talk to your local veterinarian. If there is any type of behavior happening that bothers you, they can help you identify the cause and find a solution. However, it also says some studies report that only 50% of veterinarians ask questions about behavior during appointments and owners may not think to ask the veterinarian about something they don't like.

43:53 What this to me says is that pet parents are aware and at least to some degree, maybe not all of them, maybe, and maybe some of it is subconscious. But to me, what this is saying is that first of all, I know as a professional that veterinarians, generally speaking, are not trained to help people with behavior problems. Unless they're caused by unless a physical ailment. Exactly. Yes. If they're caused by something painful in the body, if there's some disease process causing an issue, some sort of, you know, pressure on the brain or, you know, who knows?

44:35 Yes, they can. I, yeah, they can identify. Yes, they can identify things that are physical in nature. But what this is kind of saying to me is like, people understand even if it's subconsciously that veterinarians are not equipped to handle behavioral issues. And generally speaking again. Everything, especially now with the rise of dog training online on social media, like all we see of, you know, this dog trainer and that dog trainer. And like, I mean, I hate to give Cesar Milan any credit for anything, but he did kind of hear bring it to that trainer that people recognized as a career, as a profession. So he did do that.

45:20 I didn't like his his approach, but you know, he and Victoria Stillwell and you know a few others that were kind of like the original dog trainers on TV. They did make it so that we recognize that there's a difference between the medical professional and the behavior professional, even though one does go to school. And then there are obviously behavior of veterinary behaviorists, but most people don't know about those unless they're referred to 1. Yeah, and they are hard, hard to find. My kind of hope in this is that people, people also start realizing that veterinarians are not equipped for preventive care and they're not equipped for nutrition.

46:02 Like that's my big one. They are not equipped for nutrition unless again like a veterinary behaviorist, they go out and seek additional education outside of their veterinary degree, their veterinary license. So that's kind of where like my mind went as I was reading this. It's like, oh, that's interesting that we do, even if it's subconsciously kind of recognize that veterinarians aren't equipped to handle behavior, but like we are not yet realizing that they're not equipped to handle nutrition questions and. I've never been asked by vet about my pets behavior to be honest with you. I've gone to them with socks had like crystals in her urine when she was a puppy and she was peeing all over.

46:47 So I went with a behavior concern. I go with a behavior concern like when radar had some kind of neurological issue, I went saying these this is the behavior I'm seeing and I think it's time to say goodbye. We go to them with behavior issues that we know are caused by some kind of right, because like because Socks knew to pee outside, but she would pee every 30 minutes. So it was like there was obviously a medical issue, right? So if we're somewhat educated on human health, we kind of go to those conclusions. But when I think about my like talks with vets, the only vet that's ever asked me what my pets eat was one that was prescribing prescription diets for socks with the incontinence or my veterinarian who came to the house and we told her we do a homemade raw. And she asked so that she could get more clarity on what we did and how we handled it.

47:54 And she was at my house. So we showed her the whole process and how we kept things clean. But that's, I mean, I've been a pet parent since 2008, like my own adult as an adult almost 20 years. And what else have I? Nutrition. No behavior. Never. I mean, never. Like we've gone with Satchmo to say he bites when people touch him around this area, right? Because that's that I know could be physical. But yeah, no, I've never, I've never been asked about just like a regular at any age, whether my pets were four months when I got Titan or, you know, Satchmo's ten.

48:35 I've never been asked, like, how does he walk on a leash? And how does he respond to other dogs? And how does he, you know, behave when strangers come over? Like no, never. And I, and I do think, I mean, I, I definitely see it on social media, people want to avoid the veterinarian at all cost and they don't attribute behavioral issues with medical issues nearly as often as they should. Yeah, we always any, any new behavior that your pet is exhibiting is a reason to go to your veterinarian so that they can either say, yes, there is a physical reason for this happening or no, there isn't. And then you can go down the behavioral issue. I mean the behavioral route.

49:23 That is something I do think that pet parents are not really great about. They it's like they don't want to quote, waste money. It's not a waste of money to get a diagnosis. Would it be a waste of money to just throw prescriptions at it? Maybe. Yeah, Yeah. So be a discerning pet parent and say I'm here for a diagnosis and then I'm going, you know, if it's not an emergency, take that information back home with you. Think about it, research it, figure out what's going to be best for you and your pet. Is behavior modification the the first thing you want to do instead of throwing Prozac at something? Probably right?

50:07 Well, I mean, and it depends on the age too, like at 14 years old, maybe you do want to throw Prozac at it for quality of life. I mean, for me, it's always like when you start noticing a change, if it's like a big change, like your dog bit somebody overnight and they're maybe 1012, that is a really good indication that they could be in pain and defensive, right? They've never bit before and all of a sudden they're biting like, whoa, that's so quick. You need to go straight to the vet. You need to call and you need to like kind of pressure them to get you in soon because that situation can escalate. But let's say that your dog's pacing a little bit right at night, they get up, they pace a little bit, they look a little confused, maybe that's not urgent, but maybe you can observe them for a week, Call the vet and say, hey, this is what I'm observing. If it becomes more frequent or it becomes and it's, it's, it's coupled with like vomiting or releasing their bowels or whatever, then now you're calling and saying, hey, I need to get in sooner.

51:04 But there's a lot that we can kind of observe before we go to the vet, but not immediately just discard the vet. Like knowing that behaviors often are. We talked, we've talked about this so much, like even with the dog bite conversation where like dogs, they're going to bite if they're in pain 100%, but they're going to avoid the bite as much as they can. They don't want to start arguments with humans or with other dogs, so to speak. So if you see that they've gotten to that point where they are urinating inside and that's not something that they've done before, there are they are defecating inside. Like last night, Satchmo woke me up at 5:00 in the morning to go out. He needed to go to the bathroom.

51:47 He didn't go out after dinner. We fed him kind of late. We were at the movies. So I know that that was just, he didn't get to go at night and then he meet like by the time 5:00 AM rolls around, he was ready to go out. But if he's waking me up every single night needing to go out and it's like soft stool, now that there's a problem there, there might be a problem. So having that kind of like moment to take a pause and think about what's happening, you can figure out whether it could be physical, a veterinary thing or a dog trainer thing. But most dog trainers will refer you to the vet first. Most dog trainers will be like, you're telling me he's doing this and when is he doing it and when was the last time he did it and how old is he?

52:29 And when was his last, you know, his last blood work or whatever. And they'll be like, you know what, before we work together, you need to go to the vet because they know that a lot of this stuff can come from just like, like you said at the beginning, just feeling like crap. And one thing I have done is and because you brought up the like pacing at night, I mean, fortunately we have so much more knowledge now like not all veterinarians will. But generally speaking, especially in like the healthy pet space, we know like mushrooms are excellent for cognitive health and we can, we can implement these things on our own without seeking veterinary assistance.

53:11 But one thing that I have done if I'm like really unsure, but I know it's not an emergency is I will call the vet and I will say this is what I'm seeing. I know that like I'm not ready to bring my animal in. I don't feel like it's an emergency. I feel like this is something I need to wait and see. But can you tell me what what I should be looking for? Because if X happens, I know I need to call and make an appointment and they'll kind of advise you in that way. They may or may not be happy about having to take the time for that phone call, but hopefully you have a really. Bad. Well, I. Mean and The thing is you should be going to the vet annually at some point in their life.

53:56 You should be going semi annually. So twice a year you should be, you know, kind of keeping up with what like follow-ups like if your dog had like high kidney levels, you should be following up within three months, maybe with a phone call. My vet's wonderful. I mean, it's not her calling me, but they do call after every appointment being like, how are the medicine? How's the medicine working? Is it working? Is it not? And if I, and most of the time it's yes, it's fantastic, all's cleared up, whatever. But if it's not, then obviously the vet will either ask me to come back in or call me. And I'd rather, you know, when it comes to, like you said, preventive, I'd rather be in charge of that myself. Where I force myself to take my dogs every year. Now it's more often because they're older. But like, Van Gogh's going to go once a year. He's like two or three.

54:46 I can't remember. I can't do math. The past few years have like all they're all meshed together, but he only goes once a year. And if he doesn't go at the year and he's doing great and there's no changes, I don't worry about like going at 14 months or whatever just because we got busy. But when it comes to a dog with a chronic disease or with a who's aging, you know, cognitive decline is something that I think a lot of pet parents don't know about, don't understand and don't really can't really recognize until it's kind of really affected quality of life. And so that's why one of the things that you and I always talk about is making sure you're staying on those six every six month or every year appointments, especially as your dog gets old, because that is maybe when your vet will ask you like, is there any pacing at night?

55:33 Are they still eating? Are they still willing to go for a walk? Do they look kind of wobbly in the morning? What's what about arthritis or whatever? Because that's kind of dates on their radar. It's harder when it's the when it's like an adult dog who may be presenting with issues and there's no physical reason for it to happen. But there could be trauma. And I think that what we're both saying is when it comes to like behaviors caused by trauma, which we all have, I don't think veterinarians are going to all have the most veterinarians are going to have the expertise on that because their focus is behavior and health related things. And again, veterinarians have to learn all animal species outside of humans and they have to learn all specialties basically. So they're not going to know about your dog's trauma and how it's affecting them everyday.

56:28 So that's why we have, you know, Melena di Martini, who specializes in separation anxiety, Michael Chicashio, who specializes in aggression. There's a lot of puppy experts who are going to set your puppy up for success to prevent a lot of these. Dale Ward is one of my favorites to refer to. And she actually wrote a book called Raising the Worst Dog Ever because she did it all wrong. Her book is her first dog that she trained. That dog is why she's a dog trainer. And that's why she, you know, now works with puppies so much, is setting them up for success, for a life where they don't have as many traumas because they are better prepared to adapt to our world.

57:09 But this, I mean, this, I think this is so cool that we're actually taking the time to talk about this because I think the more people recognize that we need to stop, like just letting our dogs live according to our needs, the more we realize that these behaviors are common and treatable, the more we realize that it falls on us to do the right thing, the better, right? So like when we see that 99% of dogs show some kind of behavior issue in the United States, at least we can say like there's a community of us who get it and we can all do our part to help these dogs do better, cope better, adjust better.

57:54 And we have to recognize that that's not going to happen overnight. And maybe it'll teach, you know, people who are thinking about getting dogs that it's a big responsibility. Like it's there's a very good chance that your dog is going to have an issue and you need to be prepared to handle it and manage it and address it. Well, not only a very good chance that your dog is going to have an issue, but a very good chance that you are causing an issue for your dog. And not like, I'm not saying that in a like being mean to you kind of way. Like is it my fault that I moved and my dog is now regressing? I mean in a way, like in a way, but also like, I don't have to beat myself up over that. Don't take that off.

58:39 Don't take that off. Is it your fault That is it Is it my fault that Kira is more anxious than she would be if I gave her more exercise for her breed? Yeah. Like I know that her her breed needs a lot of exercise and a lot of outlets, right? Am I giving her enough outlets? Probably not. So yes, that's my fault. And like that is the fault of a lot of us. That's a very common fault. That's one of the reasons that I, I'm so passionate about dog walkers. Dog walkers to me are such an underutilized resource for dog parents because you, if you find the right dog Walker, not only will there, they tailor their services to your dog's energy levels and fitness needs and breed demands. They're going to, you know, come over and make sure that your puppy gets potty trained properly, efficiently, right? That it doesn't take a year, it'll take three months because there's, there's going to be consistency, There's going to be, you know, you could work together to say, you know, I want my dog jogged.

59:43 I need my dog jogged while I'm at work, not just walked around the block. That's not enough for my like, you know, Siberian Husky. So those are resources that are so underutilized. And if you cannot afford a dog Walker, guess who's the dog Walker You are or don't get that breed. Yeah. Well, I guess my point is like just realizing that we are part. Like we have to realize that we're part of the problem to be able to address that we're part of the problem, if that makes sense. Instead of burying our head in the sand and saying, oh, this dog, that this dog does this and that and I hate it and blah, blah blah. We have to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and say what am I doing to contribute to it and what can I do to change it instead of just blaming the dog for everything.

1:00:34 Yes, 100%. And you know what the the reason I'm doing that is because that's literally parenting of any sort. That's literally parenting of any sort. Our kids, our dogs, they react based on us, what we put out, the boundaries we set or don't set the the needs we meet or don't meet, the examples we set or don't set right. So like if I'm like, you know, acting crazy and completely unregulated, my dog is going to be and my kid is going to be completely crazy and unregulated. I need to teach what I want for my children. I need to teach my dog to settle, right? Like so many dogs, puppies don't know how to relax.

1:01:16 And it's like they don't know how to do that because that's not normal for them. I'm like, you're going to, you know, you take them to the dog park, you want them to be wild there. You take them to your backyard. You want them to just relax while you have a beer. Like it looks the same to them. So you have to teach them these things. And one of the conversations I have with my husband all the time is he's kind of like military and like, this is right and this is wrong. And I'm like, your job is to teach them. They weren't born knowing that. Like, I get that you understand that they shouldn't do that because agreed, they shouldn't do that. But when did they learn not to do that? Like we taught them not to cross the street without looking right? We taught them that, but we didn't teach them to maybe, you know, I don't know, make their back because it hasn't been something we're teaching them. Where, where are they going to learn that if if they're not learning it from us?

1:02:04 So it's the same thing with our dogs. Like if we're teaching them to, you know, walk on a leash properly, they're not going to naturally know that. If we teach them to, you know, not steal the food from the other dog in the house, then they might, there might not be a fight over the food, right? But like, we've got to teach them. We've got to manage it. And I think pet parents just want things to be easy. I just like parents. They just want to be easy. And like if anything, these numbers show that it's not easy and that us not being proactive is making it worse is leading to a place where then it becomes a lot harder to manage.

1:02:45 Girl OK. Well, thank you guys for joining us. It was awesome to talk passionately about another topic. We will see you next week. Next week is. We're we're going to be in June next week. June 3rd. OMG what? June 3rd, June 3rd. I know I'm so slammed with work too. So this week I do have the CEO of Care Credit on the show. So TuneIn Thursday at 3:00. We've been talking a lot about, you know, finances. I know you had him on the show. So if you want to listen to something about Care Credit today, go check out the parenting reset. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:03:32 And then I have him on my show live on, on Thursday at 3:00 PM Mountain Standard Time. And then we'll see you next week, Wednesday. I'm sorry, Tuesday, the 3rd of June for a conversation. We haven't decided what we're talking about. Yet no, I need to figure, I don't know, I need to go in my inbox. And that's how I that's what I do. I go through my inbox and I'm like, what? Looks good, let me send this to her. I just, I, I listen to people talking in the pet industry and I say everybody's talking about money, let's talk tariffs, everybody's talking about this, let's talk about it. Yeah. I haven't seen anything like really trending to be honest with you.

1:04:12 Yeah, I think people are are getting really, I think people are already getting worn out this year. I. Really do well, especially like for me as a parent now the school year is kind of like, yeah, like that's, that's kind of like I, I almost, I almost operate on like 6 month periods now. So January to June is like one period and then like August to December is another period and like summer is like a break time for me. Thank goodness I still work, but I still kind of like reduce my workload. And I do think that anybody who has like, you know, even even if you don't have kids, like kids in your family, like graduations and end of school activities and presentations and all the things that you highlight games and all the stuff that is happening.

1:04:57 So I think people are kind of tired, but we've talked about pet sitting, we've talked about what to do. You know, one thing I don't know that we've talked about is like boarding facilities, maybe for boarding for cats, maybe the, the, the pros and cons of boarding for cats and like, because there are people who travel for a long period of time and maybe can't leave their cat alone. So maybe we can talk about boarding and some, some degree because I, I'm a big believer in in home pet care, but I recognize that it's not for everybody. So finding the right boarding facility is something I think pet parents really need to think about.

1:05:42 I think also boarding options for your cat there there there are trends now where there are really nice luxury boarding facilities for cats only popping up all over the US. And that's a really good tool for people who are traveling long term or have like a social puppy that just wants more attention. So if you're cool with that, we can talk about something like that, since summer's coming and people are going to have to make decisions, if you haven't already, about your pets, yeah. You should have, you should have made decisions about those months ago. But OK, I'll talk about. It well, it depends on when you're leaving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. We'll talk about that and.

1:06:22 Then cat boarding. Let's talk about cat boarding. OK. Yeah. All right, Awesome, guys. Well, thanks for joining us again and we'll see you next week to talk about cat boarding. We gotta get to give some love to the cat people out there too. Yeah. All right, guys. All right, have a good week.