Board-certified behaviorist Dr. Chris Pachel returns, this time to address the all too common issue of the barking fence dogs, specifically when the two feed off each other. On this week’s episode of the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and Dr. Chris Pachel discuss the underlying behavior behind this bark and offer practical advice on how to reduce stimulus and modify problematic behaviors. They also provide tips for veterinary professionals on guiding client conversations about these challenges. This episode is a must-listen for insights and strategies to improve handling of similar cases in your veterinary practice. Let’s get into it!
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Dr. Chris Pachel: www.drpachel.com
Instinct Dog Behavior & Training: https://www.instinctdogtraining.com/
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Chris Pachel is a board-certified veterinary behaviorist and is the owner and lead clinician at the Animal Behavior Clinic in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Pachel lectures extensively worldwide, teaches courses at multiple veterinary schools in the United States, and has authored numerous articles and book chapters for veterinarians and pet owners. He is a sought-after expert witness for legal cases and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for dvm360. He is also a Vice-president of Veterinary Behavior for Instinct Dog Behavior and Training, as well as co-owner of Instinct Portland, which opened in the fall of 2020.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got a super fun one here. Talking all about the neighbors, talking– all who are wonderful people.
They are wonderful people. They have two dogs that have big feelings. As my guest says today, they have big feelings. They are the two dogs that rattle the doors and bark their heads off at the edge of the fence. And one of them jumps over the fence and comes out in the road sometimes. And it’s kind of a behavioral nightmare for some very nice people. And anyway, we wade into this. What do you do about multiple dogs with big feelings? and that’s what we’re working on today. So anyway, my guest today is Dr. Christopher Pachel. He is a board of vet behaviorist and we get into this case. And I love this conversation, a really good one. I, if you like behavior, you’re going to have a good time. Buckle up, let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: (singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Christopher Pachel. How are you?
Dr. Chris Pachel: I am doing fantastic. Dr. Roark, how are you?
Dr. Andy Roark: I am great. For those who don’t know you, you are a boarded veterinary behaviorist. You are a wonderful speaker. You have been on the podcast before. I just, I love having you on and getting to talk with you. I have got a case for you that I really would like to have your insight on. And I was wondering if I could run it by you.
Dr. Chris Pachel: I would love that. Bring it on.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay, there’s, okay, these are, I have some neighbors I have some neighbors, and they have poodles, standard, you know, full size poodles, and they had two poodles, and those dogs. I don’t want to say they were bad, but they were hard to control, you know what I mean? They– it took both owners to walk the two of them, and if they saw another dog, forget it.
They lost, both of them lost their minds pulling at the leash. They have a fenced yard, but it’s a fenced front yard. So whenever you walk in front of the house, if they’re inside, the front door shakes. Like there’s a, you know, like there’s some supernatural force manifesting inside the house. Just, you know, and you hear them Just barking their heads off, and it just, it sounds like a bomb is going off when you walk past.
And if they’re outside, they are all up on the fence, just snapping, barking, just slobber flying, just the two of them together. And then, one of them died, which is sad, one of them died of old age, and they got a Poodle puppy and Chris, this poodle puppy has immediately adopted the exact same behaviors and they were back to having two of them rattling the door.
The young puppy is spry enough that it shoots over the top of the fence at the upper corner and then it’s in the road and I’ve got my bad goldendoodle and skipper who’s bad and then it’s just it’s complete pandemonium and it happens about once a week and everything and I’m looking at these people who were nice people.
But they are so overmatched by these two dogs and I am convinced because of the one going out and the other one coming in and immediately going into this that there is this, that there is this training behavior issue that is 100 percent being exacerbated by the two dogs. They are wi– they’re winding each other up.
I feel like they’re feeding back and forth between the other ones. The people haven’t asked me for advice yet. I don’t think they know I’m a vet. And I’m not telling ’em. But they have not asked for my advice yet. But I do roll around in my head as I walk past dragging my dog behind me.
What do you think about wading into behavioral cases or things like this where you have multiple dogs and they clearly feed off of each other? Can you talk to me about advice on fighting a multi front battle to try to get those things under control?
Dr. Chris Pachel: I love this setup on this, Andy, too. Just thinking about all of these different elements and my brain is sort of piecing all of these things together. Right? Even from the standpoint, I can imagine that sort of sense of like, sadness when one passes and then maybe the, short lived optimism. Like, Oh, maybe this is, and then, no, we’re right back where we started.
Dr. Andy Roark: Optimist and then yeah, she’s
Dr. Chris Pachel: Now here’s another 14 years where we’re just destined to go down the same pathway all over again.
Dr. Andy Roark: And the young one is limber. He can get out of the fit. It has not gotten better. It’s gotten worse because now he’s in the road and I have to wrangle him.
Dr. Chris Pachel: So, a couple of things that come to mind for me here is, you know, we know that, you know, first things first. So we mentioned, you know, the fact that these are bad dogs, right? Probably not the best terminology on that, gonna call you out on that.
Dr. Andy Roark: No, they’re, yeah, they’re not.
Dr. Chris Pachel: I’m going to invite you into trialing to a different terminology.
One, I would say these are two dogs that have very big feelings about the world in find themselves.
Dr. Andy Roark: They do. Exactly! They have very big feelings. I agree with that. They manifest their presence in a large way.
Dr. Chris Pachel: Um, the interesting thing about that is whether, you know, even before we get into the two dog scenario here is that when we have a dog who has really big feelings about the world that they’re in, they’re going to be motivated to behave in certain ways. So, in this case, if we have a dog who is concerned or really worked up by a passer by the goldendoodle coming down the walkway, right? So they have really big feelings about that and that creates some stress. They get really worked up about things. They do what comes naturally for a lot of dogs, especially in that scenario you described with that fenced in front yard That they rush out to the fence line and then by, you know, they carry on and we’re running the fence line. And eventually, what do you and your dog do? You go away. Yeah, you, of course, are going to go away anyway. But the dogs on the other side of the fence don’t always know that. And so what can absolutely happen, either just by the rehearsal of going through the motions, or worst case scenario, not only did they go through the motions, but it worked.
And so now we have an outlet for arousal and a reinforcement loop that the thing that was stressing them out went away, which strengthens the behavior that immediately preceded it, which means we are more likely to engage in that sort of running, barking, charging, —everything. I almost required a little bleep there, but there’s a, you know,
Dr. Andy Roark: (laughter)
Dr. Chris Pachel: The BLEEP show that is that front yard in those moments, right, is something that is sort of being reinforced based on the circumstances they find themselves in and that could happen whether we’re talking one dogs or two with the two dog scenario where that often gets into, you know, especially when we see this kind of perpetuating of the same problem or the repeating of the same problem that either means that we have an environment that is shaping the animal’s behavior in that same direction, whether it’s this dog or the next one, the environment is more conducive to these behaviors emerging than it is anything else.
Or and we may have some social facilitation that’s happening there as well, where if you’re a naive little puppy who comes into that world and you say, I don’t really know what the lay of the land here is, but my big brother or sister seems to be really worked up about that thing when they go by. So I guess that’s what we do here.
I’ll come along for the ride and lo and behold, boom, we’re right back where we started from with that reinforcement history and we’re off to the races.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah that, so okay, so a hundred percent I actually you hit me like a ton of bricks because you were spot on. I and again, I’m walking my dog. It’s like– I don’t, I can’t, Chris I don’t have time to stand in front of their house until everything I got places to be I got stuff to do but to your point like I am captive and positive reinforcement and it just never dawned on me that me dragging, my own dog past their house was, supporting this.
But it totally makes sense. Can you unpack for me a little bit more what you mean when you talk about, is the environment conducive to this behavior? Give me an example of what that looks like, if you don’t
Dr. Chris Pachel: Yeah, absolutely. So it was the thing that jumped into my head when you first mentioned fenced in front yard when you need to be walking by, you know, and you’re out in the public. So you’re in the public space. You have the right to be there. You have the freedom to be there in that public space. You’re not intruding.
And yet. Having that fenced in front yard puts those dogs right up close to where that trigger would be for them, and whether that trigger is a person or a dog or vehicles going by or any other arousal stimulus, the environment allows them to position themselves right up next to it, which is really helpful.
You know, it’s going to be a more challenging situation for a lot of dogs to navigate. So in that scenario, just the freedom to put themselves there would be an example of that. I would say the same thing if we had a client who was concerned, and maybe these clients have the same reaction here that if somebody comes through the front door and the dogs are jumping all over the visitors. The environment is allowing that to happen. And again, when I say the environment, I mean all of the pieces, right? The fact that the dogs are not on a leash, that they’re not behind a baby gate, that they’ve not done proactive training. All of these things now create an environment in which the behavior that comes naturally to that dog in that moment is allowed to occur based on the lack of environmental control being exerted at that moment.
Dr. Andy Roark: This all makes sense. When I think about this family, I, this seems like an uphill battle to me, Chris. Because, this is how their house is built. You know, like, this is where the fence is. And they’ve got the, you know, the glass, it’s not really glass. But it’s the clear door, front door that the dog’s gonna kind of see out of.
And now we’ve got these two dogs, and this sort of behavior has been established. It feels like everything is stacked against these two. And the owners, they don’t like when their dogs bark at, because we have a neighborhood where people walk their dogs. That’s what they do. And so I’m certain that their house explodes once an hour.
You know, most hours of the day.
Hey guys, just want to hop in real quick and to let you know about my exam room communication toolkit. That’s right guys. I have team training on exam room skills. I don’t think there is a better way for you to train your team than for the people going into the exam rooms to get together as a group. Get some education and then talk about how they do it in their practice.
Do you guys do this? What does this look like? Can we talk about a time that you saw somebody do this in the practice? What did it look like? If you want to actually get people to change what they say and how they behave, you should train them together so they can discuss it. And that is why this training is made to be done in groups. It’s made for teams.
I have 17 different tools. That I lay down and they’re. Each module, you can break them up, you can tag them onto a staff meeting five minutes, and then they all have discussion questions that will help you get your people to talk about what they do, but you can get the door open. You can get people being honest about the experience they have in the exam room, and you can get them making changes and raising their game in a way they feel good about, and not in a way that they feel scolded or they feel like they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do.
It is a very positive way to learn and encourage. And so anyway, that is at DrAndy Roark.com. I’ll put a link in the show notes, but it is my exam room communication toolkit. I hope you’ll check it out.
Let’s get back into this episode.
Dr. Andy Roark: Can you start to talk with me a little bit if you were in this situation or you were looking at these sort of environmental factors of this behavior is established and, it’s sort of probably been trained you know, early on.
And now we have two dogs in there, both exhibiting the behavior and the environment is set up the way that it is. How, give priorities for me. I, we can’t, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I don’t think we can do all the things at once. Probably these people both work. How, what are the Big rocks that you would sort of put into the bucket first and then we’ll try to fill in around
Dr. Chris Pachel: Yeah, the first thing that I typically look at in cases like that is what would be the practical way to prevent those dogs from rehearsing those patterns. And what I mean by that is like, even if the owners are away at work and the dogs are exploding 15 times throughout the day, they are still rehearsing.
They are still practicing. They’re still going through the motions, getting that negative reinforcement. By, you know, effectively driving away all of those neighborhood intruders, so just going through the motions of doing it will continue to perpetuate the behavior. So all of that to say, what would it look like to manage that problem?
Not because management. automatically fixes it, but what would it look like? And so if I was working with this client, I may say, okay, rather than allowing the dogs off leash in the front yard, could we do off leash in the backyard, but leashes in the front rather than giving access to those front windows, especially when we’re not there to be able to offer any sort of training guidance for those dogs.
What would it look like to put up opaque window blinds, or is it possible to put up a baby gate across the door that allows them into the living room and give them comfy places to rest on the backside of the house where they can still find a sunbeam, they can still entertain themselves, but they’re not going to be triggered and react. So I’m looking for some of those easy wins right off the bat to say, you know what, you don’t love your dogs exploding 15 times an hour. I don’t either. And I’m worried that every time they do, it’s perpetuating this learning cycle for them. So let’s just kind of nip that in the bud as the case may be.
Let’s rather than going down the pathway of corrections and saying no, Why don’t we take them out of this situation at least temporarily? And let’s start onboarding some skills. What do we want them to do or how do we want them to feel when those triggers happen? Let’s avoid it when we’re not training, let’s train those foundations.
And then we can progressively make it more and more challenging until we’re able to reintroduce them to the windows, to the front yard. And for some of our dogs that we’re working with here, you know, some dogs can make that much progress in a weekend. Other times it takes a lifetime, you know, and they never quite know, depending on how that’s all going to come together.
But allowing them to continue practicing despite what you’re trying to do from, a training standpoint, it’s not gonna give you the results you’re looking for.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. No, I love this. I’m, you’re, saying things to me that in retrospect seems so obvious and just one of the things I’m always amazed of in behavior is how rarely people think about just removing their pets from the situation. And I don’t know why that comes so slowly. To us, but now that you say this, I’m like, well, of course the solution is we’ve got to, we’ve got to, we’ve got to turn the, volume down here.
Like just continuing to let them look out the windows and do these things that just, it doesn’t make sense. And everything will get easier if we can just cut off 75 percent of the stimulus behavior. That, that, all makes sense.
Dr. Chris Pachel: so many people say in that moment who it’s like, no, but, my tongue really loves that. They really love.
Oh, they do love it!
Dr. Chris Pachel: It’s their entertainment. I’m like, you know what, I love some things that are probably not the best for thing for me to be doing too. so if the goal behavior change, we probably need to, you know, figure something out
Dr. Andy Roark: That. That makes sense. I, like to run after cars as well. It’s a super exciting thing, but my wife has
ended
Dr. Chris Pachel: activity.
Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly, right. The kids just, nobody wants to be around me when I do it. So, anyway, that totally makes sense. But you are right, it is. I think you’re, I think you’re I think you put your finger right on the human element where it sounds ridiculous where people get so frustrated, but they also recognize their dog loves this.
And so it’s like, well, I hate it, but boy, it gives him joy when he barks his head off and jumps over the fence.
Dr. Chris Pachel: Well, and for a lot of people, too, especially with a youngster who comes into the household, they may say, well, if he’s charging around the front yard or in the living room 15 times a day, I don’t have to walk him. I don’t have to do those other things. And so it kind of actually scratches an itch that a lot of owners have too.
And it’s not until we put those pieces back together and say, Hey, wait a minute. I’m not sure that your dog loves this particular activity as much as perhaps they might really enjoy. I don’t know, not being frantic or flying out into traffic and potentially causing some injuries to themselves or others in the process of doing all that they do.
So I think we can probably do better.
Dr. Andy Roark: yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think there’s also the conversation about the damage to the relationship and go, well, he loves it. But how do you feel about this? And do you think you have the healthiest relationship or a relationship that you, could your relationship be better if you did not have these problematic behaviors once an hour?
I think that all makes sense
Dr. Chris Pachel: I love that piece with it within it. Oh, sorry within that relationship piece. I wanted to see that one little detail there too, because. What oftentimes owners do when they’re experiencing frustration in those moments, and you may hear the dogs explode, and then the people explode right after them. And, you know, it almost becomes this sort of dance routine where there’s a trigger, a reaction, and then the, you know, the yelling or the intended reprimand.
And the thing that I get a little bit concerned about when we’re talking about relationships, and even. If I could go all the way to the point of a welfare concern for some animals is that if we have something that an owner is doing, and whether this is verbally reprimanding or giving a leash correction or using any sort of aversive, if they’re going down that pathway, but if the timing or the consistency isn’t spot on for that animal to actually change their behavior, ultimately, the takeaway is the animal is experiencing unpleasant situations.
In an unpredictable, uncontrollable way. And that’s actually a recipe for situational or generalized anxiety. And so I actually worry that in addition to a relationship breakdown, we actually increase the likelihood that animals who are experiencing some of those frustrated reprimands. Are actually going to have other issues that emerge because of the unpredictability or the aversiveness of the environment They’re living in and that’s not what anybody’s looking for their dogs So we can try some other strategies
Dr. Andy Roark: So, so, are you saying, Chris, that, okay, in this scenario, we’ve got the, so we’ve got the two dogs and they’re in the front yard and they’re just absolutely going nuts and the owner of the dogs comes out the front door and she’s like, hey, and she’s clapping, you know, and she’s doing exactly what you expect to try to get them to calm down, which of course is not working, has never worked, there’s nothing about the history of these dogs should indicate that this is going to be a successful strategy.
Yeah, every morning, we’re doing it. So she’s out there, and she’s grabbing the dogs by the collar. And again, I’m not trying to paint this person a bad light at all. I’m just This is hypothetical. It’s generally a picture of kind of what happens. I think everybody’s seen this exact scenario. So she’s coming out, and she’s grabbing the dogs, and she’s kind of yanking them back into the house.
Are you saying that because these dogs are out and they’re in a hyper aroused state and then Sometimes the owner shows up and sometimes she doesn’t because sometimes she’s not there or she’s in another part So sometimes she busts out the door and sometimes she doesn’t and sometimes she grabs them by the collar and sometimes she doesn’t that I’m more likely to see possibly generalized anxiety in these dogs because they’re having Situations like that.
Is that what you’re saying?
Dr. Chris Pachel: that is what i’m saying That’s exactly what i’m saying andy and it’s something that’s that I think is really misunderstood by a lot of owners And especially if I were working with that particular owner and if I was really trying to tease this out A response that I get very often is an owner who says, Oh, but I only do those things when the quote unquote bad behavior is happening.
So I am being super consistent about what I’m doing. I’m only squirting the cat with a squirt bottle. I’m only grabbing for the collar when that particular behavior is happening. And in those scenarios, I usually try to flip the conversation a little bit and say, Okay, I love the fact that you’re being mindful.
Of when you do that particular thing as an intervention if I were to ask your dog Whether you do that thing each and every time the behavior occurs How do you think they would answer me?
Dr. Andy Roark: That’s great.
Dr. Chris Pachel: Because that’s the learner’s perspective. That’s ultimately the one that matters It’s not whether I think i’m justified in punishing or reprimand.
It’s Does the animal have a clear correlation between a behavior that I do and a consequence that’s positive or negative? If I can’t make a one to one connection between those things, it is inherently unpredictable to me as the learner. And it’s the unpredictability that leads to confusion. And if the outcome is something that causes pain or distress or any sort of emotional conflict, now it’s something that is unpredictable.
And unpleasant. And that’s where anxiety comes from.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. All right. I love that. You know, you are so great at validating pet owners when you’re talking to them. It’s just something you do so well. And I love, the way you phrase that and you flip that sort of question over. I think you make the point of what is consistent. I think you make it really clearly.
I also really love this, conversation because you’re, sort of validating one of the beliefs I’ve sort of acquired in my life and practice. When I was a young doctor, I had this idea that sometimes chaos happens, like rodeos sort of happen sometimes, and as I’ve gotten older, I have come to believe again and again, if you ever find yourself in a rodeo, meaning a chaotic situation you need to stop.
You need to stop and you need to step back and you need to get your people out of there because somebody’s gonna get bit, but you need to stop and you step back and we need to look at this and say, wait a second now, what’s going on here? and this in the, exam room, this sometimes is this is a overly stimulated patient.
This is an anxious, this is a afraid patient. And we just have back. Or, maybe working with an inexperienced assistant, maybe our, handling skills are not where they need to be. It should not have this chaos, and, I’ve just, I, it’s not even a conscious thought, but I feel chaos, and I go, this is, what are we doing here guys?
Let’s step back. And so, when I see this front yard scenario, and the dogs are barking, and one of them’s trying to jump over the fence, and the neighbor’s running out, and she’s yelling, I get that same feeling of, This chaos can’t be good. It just it can’t be good and you have validated that is as what you said everything fits with that of We’ve got to turn the volume down on this.
We have got to let’s step away from this Let’s get let’s get some baby gates in place Let’s just reduce and let’s start to work through this. Oh, man. This has been such a great conversation chris I really appreciate you being here Where can people find you online? Where can they learn more?
Where could they hear about your speaking engagements? Things like that. I’m sure people are gonna want to learn more from you. I do.
Dr. Chris Pachel: I love that, Andy. So the easiest place to find what I’m up to and what I put out there for, consumption, so to speak, is on the website, drPachel. com. So www. drpachel. com. And that’s where any podcasts like this one, or webinars that I’ve recorded, or articles that I’ve written, all of those get linked to the media pages there.
You can also find what we’ve been up to at the Animal Behavior Clinic or through Instinct Dog Behavior and Training, which I’m also a co owner of. So we’ve got all of these different ways. All of it’s all of it’s curated right through that website. So it’s a one stop shop. That’s where you want to go.
Dr. Andy Roark: That’s great. I’ll put a link in the show notes down to the website. Thanks so much for being here, Chris. Thanks for listening to everybody. Take care of yourselves.
Dr. Andy Roark: And that’s it. That’s what I got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this. I did. This is a real fun one I love it. I have pages of notes from my conversation with Chris. Anyway, thanks to him for being here Thanks to you for being here Take care of yourselves everybody. I’ll talk to you later on. Bye.
