Welcome to Dog Pro Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Dog Pro Radio. This is your co-host, Fabian Romo, vice President of the IACP. Here on the call have Jason Purgason, president. We have our board member Matt Covey as well from Suburban Canine, and Jason from Highland Canine. And today I wanna introduce Dr.

Melanie onto the show. But before we get started into obviously I’m very excited about this podcast because I look at it a little bit of a private lesson with a, someone with that is very smart that we don’t have to pay for. So that’s exciting. But before we get started, how’s everybody’s, how’s everybody’s week?

Jason what have you been up to? I know we talked earlier in the week. How’s Kalan, how’s the students? So far so good. Training, trying to plan a trip [00:01:00] to India. Right now. I gotta go over and do some detection training there. April. Cool. April. So trying to get that nailed out. Cool. How about you, Matt?

Man, see Jason goes to India. I go to Indiana. Yep. And that’s like a big trip for me. Same thing. I’ll tell you what, I’ve spent a little time this week reviewing Dr. Melanie’s Instagram page and some other things, right? And I saw a video of yours the other day called de Deifying Science-Based Training.

First of off, I almost spit my coffee out and second of all, I was like, I like this lady already. She sounds incredible. Yeah, she sounds great. I saw that title. I was like, in my office cracking up by myself. Love it. I know. Matt keep focused. Okay. We don’t wanna, we warming up the conversation here.

Things here in Chicago are good. We have Cameron here for the back half of the, we did canine cognition earlier this week with Cameron Ford and then Melanie, he is a good friend of you guys. I guess you guys are in that area, right? Yeah, we are. So you had some, we are hanging out all the time because I’m in Santa Rosa now too and hang out at the [00:02:00] facility where he is.

So that’s probably why he says some very positive things about you being that you see him all the time. But yeah, so we’re here with the send detection program, the results driven detection. So that’s gonna be running all the way to the weekend. So we’re, we got some stuff going on here.

But Dr. Melanie, I’d like to properly introduce you. I did some digging on your bio and so I was able to pull this. So guys today’s guest is Dr. Melanie. She’s a canan behavior expert, certified professional dog trainer and founder of the Canine Decoded. She’s got a background in neuroscience and a PhD in behavioral science.

Dr. Melanie brings a unique scientific lens to understanding dog behavior. Her mission is to bridge the gap between cutting edge research and everyday dog training. Helping owners and professionals better understand what really goes on inside a dog’s mind. Through her courses, consulting and speaking agreements, she empowers people to decode their dog with clarity, compassion, and evidence-based insight.

Dr. Melanie, welcome to the show. And I was hoping you, you would start by being able to, tell us a little bit about your background. [00:03:00] Obviously we did some digging around. I, as we should for all of our speakers and your social media, like Matt was saying. And also on your bio.

And giving you have such a big academic background. Your research is fascinating and so we wanted to know a bit about your background education and also the catalyst to get you started. Getting involved with dogs, which has been tremendous for the canine industry.

Yeah, thank you. First of all, thank you for having me. Super excited here to talk about things that, not too long ago I never thought anyone would be interested in hearing. So I find myself in a field now where I can literally combine, the fascination for docs and my geeky nerdy brain understanding of the science.

So this is great. In terms of my background, so like you said already, like everyone who hears that probably thinks okay, she probably spend a lot of time in college, university school, which is true. And I never thought I will be not doing directly academia research [00:04:00] work because when I started out in Germany, back then going to college, university, I thought I’m gonna do all the way up to tenure professors somewhere.

Didn’t work out that well because at some point I didn’t like the idea of, doing research behind walls that, oh, no one has access to. Consequently, no one really is interested in that other than those that are also working in it. So I fell in the very early midlife crisis, as in I was in my, what was that?

In my early thirties, I think or 10 years ago or something like that. And I did what everyone does, who has the means to do it. I went on a long trip across the world to Asia and volunteered there because, we also live in a society where you can’t just take days off. So I kinda had to have some sort of purpose.

So I volunteered there in an OSIS clinic and helped migrants get better, like better [00:05:00] diagnostics. And because it’s such a remote clinic, it happened to be a lot of Village Docs did too. And again, coming back to my educational background I did my masters in biology. And then I did my PhD in national Sciences.

That’s what it was called in, in, in Germany. And it includes a whole bunch of disciplines. Then I did my research on brain gut access at Common University in New York. And then here I am in Thailand, this little town in northern Thailand. And I feel like I have no idea how to interact with anything that is actually biology, which means these village dogs.

I didn’t know what kind of plans are around me, maybe because I’m also in a completely different climate and country, but yet they’re like these dogs that I didn’t have at the time yet for myself, but was highly curious because they followed me and barked at me and didn’t seem as friendly as I hoped they would be.

And at the same time, and this kind of happened in parallel at the same time, I was really deeply I. Confused and put my path as in what am I [00:06:00] doing in New York? It’s an Ivy League school behind walls, like lots of money goes in and out. And yet here I am at the other end of the world and they don’t really care about this cutting edge research I’m doing.

All they need is really cleaning up their data and be really hands on and somehow on these kind of things. As you always see in movies, there’s this one sparkly moment and I fly back to New York and quit everything and start things new. That’s not what happens usually. It does take some time to marinate and, but there was this urge that something had to change.

So ultimately I did leave academia had to somehow finance my new path. So I went into corporate for a moment, worked as a data scientist, which, might seem very unrelated, but it’s not because I did work with, I was coding machine learning models, AI related stuff. And that is all rooted in That’s awesome.

Some sort of, yeah, neuroscience, how, algorithms work, how decisions are made. And at the same time I was starting to look more into doc training and have my own doc and started to [00:07:00] question things that I see on the internet. And people might say, I am, I’m smart, but I still take some time for me to truly understand things.

And some things I didn’t understand what people said and it didn’t make sense to me with my background. And I tried to answer my own questions and tried it with my, you know how you always have your dog that you experiment with and kind of test and things. And that’s the beginning of canine decoded.

And I started to talk about this more and I started to talk about this on social media and people seemed interesting and they wanted to hear more and it snowballed into what it is now. Yeah. Just, yeah. That’s awesome. That’s an amazing story. There’s a I wanted to ask about Harvey, ’cause when I was reading your bio, it said there was a specific moment with your dog’s name is Harvey, correct?

Am I getting that wrong? And you said there was a very specific moment where you’re like, Hey he set you in a new journey. What are the, some of the struggles or what was some of the impact that he made on you obviously as a researcher, but then, that maybe was a catalyst to your professional career in dog training?

Yeah, so Harvey was our first dog, or is [00:08:00] our oldest dog, and he’s a shelter dog. We got him and he was a puppy and a German Shepherd mix. And, you learn these things that need to be doing what I did. At the same time as I was entering this field, I tried to shadow or learn from as many people, trainers that you find on the internet as possible.

Yeah. The good ones and the bad ones. I didn’t know at the time, what kind of stigma there is. Anyways, and we had trainers also for the eco and for the pro color, and then some from the internet. And some things that didn’t make sense were, and I know now that he was just the easiest and sweetest puppy, like never came across another easy puppy like him.

But it felt not easy at the time. And it felt some advice that I got was quite harsh, as in the persistence on the perfect obedience for a dog that is super easy going and doesn’t really need all that crazy super perfect heel. But at the same time having some sort of, [00:09:00] a little bit of a stranger danger moment when he was in his adolescence where obedience didn’t help but then still loved all the other people.

There were like a lot of this, but not this works, but not this in that context moment where I felt like. I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know if this is the right thing. And from there it spiraled into more research. Got it. Looking into a little bit of the education, your educational background we know that you conducted research on gut immune brain interactions and gastrointestinal and neuropsychiatric diseases. That was hard for me. Sorry. But tell us more about that and how does it relate to dogs and animal behavior? I know that from my vocational background, working with dogs, obviously we know that the field that you give into the animal right, affects their performance, can affect their behavior.

But to what degree is that factual or can you tell us a little more about that research in its application and the animal behavior? So the research that I did hands-on research at Columbia [00:10:00] was about the combination of certain psychiatric diseases. So I was be working with. Not directly, but I would get samples from patients that’s suffering from anxiety, from depression all the way up to depressive patient that, for example, tried to, attempted to commit suicide.

What’s happening? What kind of markers? Like actual biomarkers, not just psychological assessments, but actual biomarkers can tell us what’s going on. And as research goes on, there’s, the gut somehow always plays a role. There’s almost nothing anymore where you can not pinpoint to something in the gut or at least look at this and the brain see there’s so interconnected.

And basically when you do research like that, you don’t just. Learn about things that directly affect humans. You have to have a really big understanding of how the brain works, how the gut works, and it almost always then drizzles down to what kind of animal studies are there. So that then always happens to be some sort of [00:11:00] rodent studies.

And if you then look into what has been conserved in terms of brain areas involved in anxiety, brain areas involved in fear this isn’t anything specific for humans. What is not vastly different in other animals. And that understanding and then combining it with ultimately what in the dark, that’s where basically draw my conclusions from that is rooted in what I learned during that research.

Doing all that, that deep dive into things and then what you actually experience when the dog feels anxious or fearful. Got it. Matt, you had a question. Yeah. Dr. Melanie, so with you mentioning fear and you know everything that goes on in the dog’s brain, is there any way you could give us just a big picture overview of the important hormones and neurotransmitters that affect dogs?

I’ve heard you speak to this on other podcasts, and I think having that for the three of us and our listeners would be great. ’cause then we can put into context the rest of the episode. Yeah, for sure. I think when we talk about fear and arousal [00:12:00] levels and motivation, things that always come up is of course dopamine, our molecule, neurotransmitter of excitement and motivation and pursuit of something rewarding.

Something that goes hand in hand with the arousals. Adrenaline plays a huge role, not just in how intense the dog reacts, maybe in a negative way, but also how fast the dog can learn. To not be afraid anymore or to feel motivated for something else that we usually talk in the context of counter conditioning.

So adrenaline would be one, dopamine one. And then for fear anxiety, it’s often cortisol. And here we often talk about is it chronically elevated, which could not necessarily be mean high levels, but mildly, chronically elevated cortisol, or in general for a very intense fear episode, it spikes and then should then go back to normal.

And we have obviously various brain regions that communicate with each other. It’s never just one, but the amygdala is our fear [00:13:00] center. We have the reward system that is quite complex where dopamine is being produced and where it goes in the brain. But we have a reward center here and then other areas that measure how well the dog, feels in any given moment that determines the behavior.

These hormones, obviously there are more, but these are the ones that we see in research often in particular. Also, when we talk about doc training related research, cortisol levels that give us some indication as biomarkers how a doc feels in a moment. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Talking a little bit about stress, I think one of the things that was very fascinating, and I was hoping I could get some more insight on this, was, I think it was a, I saw that definitely on social media, on something you posted, it was regards to managing anxiety regarding using exercise.

So I think a question that I had was in relation to when do you know a dog needs medication for anxiety management, and when do you know that it needs just exercise? [00:14:00] And then what is the I assume based on what I saw, that there’s a right amount of exercise, right? And the right amount of exercise and and how often the dog’s exercise to what degree.

So yeah, I would love to hear some more about that and, just the background of that and just for our listeners and they’re professional trainers need to help people and Yeah. Exercise. It’s definitely justice as valid for us humans as it is for dogs is a cure to a lot of things.

Maybe not cure, but definitely a very important element that can replace some of the immediate decisions to medication. What is the right decision, when is the right time to put a dog on medication? That’s a very difficult question. And whenever we talk about this or whenever I talk about it as you can imagine, there are like people who swear by medication and they say without it, that dog would not be able to have a good life.

And this might be true, there’s certainly some conditions. There are like certain things that might have happened in the [00:15:00] dog’s early life that led to a very chronic, very high anxiety level that the dog has a very hard time ever coming back to normal or just relaxing, unsettling.

But it also might not be true. I don’t know, have you tried? Because I never know what have you tried? How long have you tried it? And it’s very difficult to deal with a very anxious dog for a long time. And any kind of behavior intervention takes a little bit longer. Coming back to exercise, I think most city dogs are not exercised enough.

We think of exercise as, yes, I’m playing fetch with my dog, or I’m going on long walks. And these are like the extremes of duration, but slow intensity or very short bouts of super high intensity exercise. But neither of those might be optimal to treat anxiety. Why is that? Because it needs to have some sort of moderate in intensity, which usually is, and this is me doing the math and looking [00:16:00] into the research of what they use with rodents.

How long were they on the wheel running the intensity given their metabolism and heart rate, and then converting it into how it would like for a dog and the anatomy of a dog and the muscle composition. All these things happened behind. Oh wow. And hence my recommendation of 20 to 25 minutes trotting.

And trotting is a place to be for a dog. I think it has some mental impact too, of the PAC movement of we are trotting, we are moving forward together. But at the same time has some sort of mechanical impact, almost the contraction of the muscles that put enough stimulus for long enough.

Onto the muscles to produce certain things that then signal to the brain that we need A, B, and C. One of the factors is brain derived neurotrophic factors, super healthy, super important, helps to strengthen certain brain areas that then downregulate the stress response and that can carries forward to situations in the future where the dog might be [00:17:00] stressed, which is normal.

Because we’re strengthening the parts of the brain that help downregulated the dog might not stay up there and the stress response doesn’t get stuck, but comes back down. And that’s the theory around the exercise. Got it. So basically the, you’re strengthening some sort of mechanism within the marine that helps regular stress and that can be basically tracked down to very specific exercise, say like the trotting, for 20, 25 minutes.

Is there like a, because that’s actually something I’ve recommended a lot. Sometimes I say substitute and this is made at this point, given bad advice, substitute the length of exercise. Like for example, sometimes they say, I walk my dog for an hour, right? And say walking your dog for an hour isn’t really a fulfilling amount of exercise, say for an Australian cattle dog right.

Or a Belgium, you need to do a level of a. Intense exercise, fulfill their natural instincts. And you see it because, I own quite a bit of malawa and you’ve had my cattle dogs. And so my experience, I’ve also created [00:18:00] neuro neurotic behaviors around playing intensely with the toys and stuff like that.

So I find I have accidentally found that, you have to create that level of control for the dog. But what do you see why is maybe not intense exercise ideal, but why does it not say work or maybe not as effective? So it was really intense exercise, like sprinting, like hot course, sprinting the dog not gonna be able to do this for 20, 25 minutes.

But the, how the muscle brain connection works is the brain thinks I’m not gonna, there is no need for me to, change anything long term if you’re just in this, I don’t know, 30 seconds, one minute state of change. It has to be long enough. Just going to the gym. One. One time I dunno, biceps curls until you can’t lift anymore, won’t necessarily give you the Popeye arms.

But it has to be a continuous kind of impact. And that’s why, just fetching or printing is necessarily giving the right stimulus. It has other benefits, right? It does something [00:19:00] else to the muscle activation per se, or the fitness level of the dog, or even the sense of fulfillment if you have a sports dog or a high energy dog needs to sprint every now and then.

But here we’re talking specifically about changes that could impact positively anxious behavior. Got it. Matt, you have a follow-up question? Yeah. So as trainers and Fabian mentioned this, we’re always talking to clients about exercise your dogs. It’s gonna make all their problems easier to fix, but we’re not giving them a scientific speech on this.

Or at least I’m not. I’m curious what, what is actually happening? Why is the exercise helpful? Is serotonin being released? Is dopamine being released? What is it about exercise that is actually helpful from, I guess a biology standpoint? There, there are a lot of things happening. The ones that I looked mostly into is muscles contract for 20 minutes, right?

Trotting and certain muscles contract the entire time. So the impact of the exercise [00:20:00] signals something to the body. Muscles actually release certain molecules that have a huge impact on the brain chemistry and these muscle molecules there. Specific ones, they doesn’t really matter. They basically tell the brain, it’s Hey, something is happening.

Just letting you know we might wanna change something so that we are prepared in the future. It’s like how everything always happens, and it is related to fitness, but what happens is it changes. There’s an arousal level happening. Adrenaline obviously there’s a focus, some sort of focus happening on what’s happening to the body.

And the brain is okay, that helps us making changes. It helps us staying fit. So we have to make sure that everything is working properly. And some, one of the molecules that I mentioned just earlier was BDNF. So what BDNF does, brain derived, neurotrophic factor, brain derived. So it happens in the brain.

What it does [00:21:00] it strengthens neural connections. It strengthens the composition of specific part brain areas. And the more neural connections are strengthened, the healthier the nuances are, the better that region works. Makes sense. And it happens so that it happens in certain areas. The hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex.

These happen to be important for memory. So exercise also helps with learning and memory creation and input control. And these happen to be the main areas also that send a negative feedback loop to the hypothalamus. Hypothalamus is the center of the stress response. And they, the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex, they tell the hypothalamus, Hey, cool down.

We had enough stress happening right now. Cortisol is getting a little bit through the roof. Let’s bring it back to normal. The better the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, the better healthy neurons happen to communicate. The stronger they’re signaling, the stronger their negative [00:22:00] feedback loop to the hypothalamus, which is the stress response.

But again, it also has nice effects on memory building. If you happen to have a good anxiety rehab program, you’re probably also teaching your dog something about natural react, maybe some obedience, maybe some play related stuff. Maybe some, focused engagement drills. That requires memory.

Hippocampus is important for that too, so it has bunch of effects. Ultimately, it just keeps the brain healthy. And if someone is listening who is also very much into these things might also have heard. BDNF, the brain, the factor that we just talked about, can also strengthen neuro circuits in the amygdala and make the anxiety worse.

So how do you know that’s not happening when you exercise your dog? That’s the part of a bigger program. You don’t wanna necessarily put your dog into positions to constantly fail and to constantly have anxiety attacks. And it’s all very [00:23:00] contextual, but overall, that’s like a healthy pathway to anxiety.

We have, I have a a kind of follow up question in terms of medication and, when to prescribe it as a professional. Often here in Chicago, obviously you were said the city dogs have a lot of anxiety. So here in Chicago we have a lot of boarding trainings and we have a full training program.

And the dogs that we typically ask for them to go see a behaviorist or, possibly talk to a veterinarian about medication is dogs. That after you’ve done some biological fillment, you’ve exercised them, they, I. Fail to adjust to the environment or maybe they, their learning curve is quite large.

They’re not picking up on things even though you are very consistent and, anxiety overpowers a lot of the things that they’re doing, even regardless of how much time is spent in acclimation. But, speaking to you, Dr. Melanie, what do you recommend for professionals? Obviously there’s not one answer that fits everyone, but from your experience, when do you feel like, hey, this is a time where it’s time to see behaviors, there’s time [00:24:00] for medication, any specific cases that, that you may wanna share or or advice you might wanna give on that?

Yeah, it’s a good question and I guess I’m glad we’re talking about it because based on my content, it always sounds like I’m so anti-medication. People get really upset with me about that, which is not true. I do think we have an over-prescription problem and it’s being handed out way too easily. There are certainly moments where it can help to start out the program.

If you have a doc that. He has been in the shelter for a real long time and needs to start rehab, it’s gonna this is gonna take some time for the dog to even settle down. Sometimes you just don’t have the time for that. And Doc, like you said, where objectively you can say, this is not what on average I see with dogs in terms of their learning curve, this dog should be doing better.

And the longer the dog stays in this very anxious state and all the interventions haven’t helped, the worse it gets too. You’re working a little bit against the time here. The worse the [00:25:00] anxiety gets, the harder it will be to come out of it over time. And if medication can take the edge off here, then that’s wonderful, right?

Like I never said that this is not an option. And yes, there are trainers who say they’ve never seen a case where a medication really is needed. That also might be true depending on what they’re doing. I think often it’s not so much about, I. Can there be things that we can try before we put the dog on medication?

And more so external factors, do we have the time, are the owners prepared? Is the dog set up for success? The one thing that I do emphasize is keeping in mind that there should be a fading out face at some point. Okay. There’s no need to put the dog on medication and don’t see changes and keep the dog on medication.

Or if you see the changes, they’re not trying to fade it out. And yes, most of the time these medications, they are safe, they are not clear indications that they harm, but more and more research comes out where in certain circumstances they could have an impact later in life. And we are tinkering [00:26:00] with like serotonin levels in the brain.

So why wouldn’t there be some sort of consequences over long term. Got it. So basically overall, like there, there are some dogs that. Can benefit from medication early on. Specifically, you brought up the shelter dogs and Yeah, I imagine, here some of the cases that we’ve worked with where it’s a pit bull that’s been in the shelter system for three years, never really spent a lot of time outside and has brought into a program or even a home, where they’re anxieties through the roof, but they may try to run away, they may try to, just have erratic behavior ’cause they don’t know what to anticipate from life.

Or maybe shut down and, flatten out on the ground. I’ve seen that a couple times. So those dogs might actually benefit from some medication to help them along the road of training is basically what you’re saying? Yes. So if a dog is still stuck in the fight or flight mode, like intense fear, it is preventing memory to happen.

And worse than that, if you can’t get a hang on and the dog can’t settle it the cortisol that is being elevated for so long, [00:27:00] it does make neurons die in the brain that are responsible. Oh wow. Okay. So like prolonged stress causes neurons to die. That With our weight. With our weight. Yeah. Yeah.

They so painful death. No. No. Wow. And it doesn’t mean that, like the brain is gonna be empty or that it can’t be redone, you can really regrow easily neurons that are dead. But you can strengthen new connections, but obviously it is helpful to not having to contract Yeah.

Time. Yeah. That’s a great question. ’cause because I’ve so obviously stress hinders learning, right? That’s something that, that has happened. But also in what cases does stress amplify learning, right? Or is there a, or is there like a right amount of stress? ’cause that’s something we talk about through the learning process, right?

The dog’s learning, you’re teaching behavior, then there’s some applied challenge, whether it’s variable reinforcement asking the dog to do multiple repetitions of behavior before reinforcement to create that level of arousal. Maybe a little bit of stress to then reinforce. I don’t know what I would [00:28:00] call a bit of an extinction burst, right?

When the dog’s like really trying hard because it really wants to be reinforced and then you reinforce that. So do you have some advice on how much stress is too much stress? Is there too little stress? And is there’s just the right amount of stress? So there’s definitely something that is too little stress for dogs.

And this is not a concept that just applies to dogs, it applies to us humans too. We always have this very negative association with stress. Everyone wants to avoid stress because it’s uncomfortable. And we already have so many stresses in our lives and we just wanna be at home on our couch and just relax and not have to worry about anything.

And we apply the same mentality often to our dogs. We don’t wanna see them be stressed. And there’s truth to it when it comes to unpredictable stress or when it comes to stress, that is unhealthy. But in order for our dogs to learn how to work with. Through unpredictable stress, we have to embrace the idea that we can train our doc, set up training [00:29:00] session that challenge them to work through adversity.

And that usually means staying functional, staying thoughtful while being challenged, and whether diseases could mean you’re not getting reinforced right now and with the right or the wrong dog. You get some frustration happening there, work through this and keep thinking about what’s happening here.

One classic example is negative reinforcement to work. Through some unpleasant stimulus you might see or feel in that moment and yet coming out better basically. And what is the right amount? It really, within the training session, usually it’s very short and it’s something that you as a handler have to control in terms of the intensity and duration adjusted to the dog.

We don’t wanna overwhelm the dog, but we also wanna see a little bit of challenge in the dog, right? And owners tend to have much more problems with that [00:30:00] because they overthink it and they’re worried that they’re gonna hurt the dog or have long-term consequences. So trainers tend to be a little better observing the dog and see what’s good.

But that every now and then throw the entire life. And I like things that are just your day-to-day experiences. If you, if my dog is always running out of the door to the backyard, I know this whole concept, we like to make them wait. If we don’t make them wait every now and then we can make them wait longer car rides in the crate.

Sometimes also it can just be some things like, that’s stressful, you gotta be fine, whatever it is that the dog likes to not be in every now and then helping the doc work through and that. Something that is very important that ultimately makes the dog more resilient to our quite chaotic life, whether, especially if it’s an urban lifestyle.

I got a quick one to follow up with that. So [00:31:00] my experience with a ton of owners is they try to avoid those stressors in their dog’s life because I think a lot of times they believe that the dog’s going to associate that stress potentially with them, or, that they’re gonna somehow create a situation where their relationship with their dog is damaged because of these stressors.

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that’s a good question. I get that question a lot too, and I understand why you would think that. The one thing that I say is. You don’t, first, you don’t start out with stressful training sessions with your dog. There’s plenty of history training or engagement or play history where you have a very solid relationship with your dog, with good understanding of each other like you are a team.

If you are a team and you set up the stress exercises, let’s just call ’em stress exercises the right way, even though the dog might be stressed in the [00:32:00] moment, what the dog will do after, if you also provide the outlet needed, will fall back on the foundation You have as an outlet. The social buffering that the dog experience with you with a long history.

There is no reason for the dog to believe that has changed. If you have had a really good relationship for so long and now you have a 32nd challenging exercise set up for your dog, the dogs are not holding a grudge and they don’t think, oh, you betrayed me. They’re like, oh whoop. That was quite something.

Let’s play together. Hey, that was okay. And that is something that where we could sometimes humanize the dogs a little bit ’cause we are so worried. But the dogs, they don’t think like that. They will seek out outlets after. And if we provide them in form of our relationship in form of play, in form of just hanging out together or whatever the dog likes to do, then they will not hold it against you.

In fact, that might even strengthen your communication. [00:33:00] Thank you. A question that come up was, and it happens all the time. So you’re working with a client and they obviously are coming to you as a trainer. And sometimes they’re also. Working with behaviors. Obviously there are times where I’ve worked with both because I’m like, we, we need to throw, have as much input as everything that on the dog so we can help the family.

When should someone reach out to a trainer versus when should someone reach out to a behaviorist? I think that’s a question that comes up a lot. And then also what is the difference in between both, obviously you that are at the vocation side and also have been in the academic side?

What is your feedback on that question? That’s, it’s a tricky question because I personally, I don’t make big differentiation at these from a trainer side, I think. Trainers nowadays work more often than not with behaviors that need rehabilitation, leisure reactivity, anxiety, fear, aggression.

Right? And a good trainer has the knowledge needed that it’s not just based on obedience, but certain things that need to [00:34:00] be evaluated. What’s the motivation underlying, like all the diagnostics that you would do that a behaviorist would do? Now, when I hear behaviorist, my first thought goes into vet behaviorists who then, have, of course their means of helping dog owners, whether this is prescribing medication or setting up their plans.

The problem is that, what I find is that unless the behaviorist is really hands-on and sees the dogs in a natural context and environments, it tends to be sometimes cookie cutter protocols. That can also happen with the trainer, but trainers tend to be then we coming to your home and and now we are going in this environment together, which I don’t see with that heroes because you have to go to the office and even the assessments, and this is not just MET behaviors, this is assessment of shelter docs.

Are they food resource guarding in the shelter, poking them with a hand and then being labeled as dangerous in food, which was guard. Is like completely out of [00:35:00] context and not fair. And the same put apply to assessing a dog and its fear and anxiety in a completely new sterile vet environment.

I had clients that told me that their vet behaviorist wanted to put a puppy on medication because the puppy wouldn’t settle in that six month old Wow. In that vet environment, vet office space. And it’s obviously challenging, right? It is like we don’t know the dog where the dog is at home. And I think trainers have a little bit more HandsOn experience there and if they have the right knowledge.

I don’t know if you necessarily need to go to vet behaviorist, people will disagree with that. If there is a need for maybe a more medical assessment that also include includes pain assessment and these kind of things that could cause some behavior issues, certainly we need to have then a medical professional.

Having involved, especially when it comes to also SSRIs or anxiety medication. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And at pretty much [00:36:00] every client I see that’s left a vet’s office for behavior is on some sort of medicine. And, especially with vets, I think this, it’s what I call the authority fallacy.

And they do what they can helping someone that comes there and pays money to like, help me right now. And I think a lot of times pet owners themselves give them a lot more authority than I. They might be comfortable taking on, even though this is the narrative and they do what they like you said, they have the hammer, why wouldn’t you do it?

It’s very hard for ave to say, go to find a trainer. You don’t turn them away if they need something. I think it’s really also the educational aspect of pet owners knowing that there is so much more that can be done with things that seems to be a medication problem that can then lead you to the right trainer and, if you have the means, work with all hear hear them out. Hear different voices and different [00:37:00] trainers and don’t be afraid having to find the perfect solution at the beginning. Got it. Circling back to earlier in the conversation, you had mentioned that when you first started, training your dog, there was, you obviously went online.

Just, what everyone is a modern day library of information. That’s right. And there were some things that you saw that didn’t make sense, right? Or some things that just you believe weren’t quite adequate. Based on obviously all your experience now and background, what are some key things that you feel like dog trainers really need to know, as a in the profession?

Obviously, everyone practices a little different sometimes but what are some key things, knowledge-based education that you would recommend for trainers? Ooh, that’s a good question. I think one of my big things is. For dogs and, owners come and say, I want my dog to be a well-behaved calm dog.

These are the, this is seems to be the gold standard. Whether this actually means going to coffee shops or whatever, but it’s always [00:38:00] well-behaved and calm. Yeah. And I have developed such a what’s the word? Like I get I get s cringy to me to hear calm all the time because some docs are just not made to be calm and trainers understand it better.

People with sports docs understand that better. They embrace arousal level, but there has to be something in between, even for pet docs. And I think for pet doc trainers in particular embracing arousal level in the dog, in order to distill or give a dog a chance to calm down in other contexts, you can’t just have one sided calmness all the time.

The dog will climb up your walls. And that’s how we end up sometimes with medication. So here I would say. Finding the narrative to communicate this to dog owners, but also the education to understand how important arousal is for learning, for rehabilitation, for resilience. Sure. There’s an over arousal, but there’s also an under arousal.

And I think we all pivot more to [00:39:00] towards the under arousal when it comes to pet dog owners and pet dogs. So having a little bit more of the arousal does deserve some sort of more attention. Letting the dog be a little wild at times, more so than we do now is one thing. The other thing is, and that is a very controversial topic as well, but I think, understanding a little bit more the impact of early neutering for trainers who can prefer their owners, especially pet dog owners, pet dog trainers, they see the puppies they go to puppy classes, they have Right firsthand.

Communication and I’ve been asked by a trainer, I don’t feel I have the authority to talk about these things. Which makes sense. And it’s true in terms of the medical procedures and I don’t know the medical aspects of it, but you can certainly bring up topics about the importance of testosterone and growth.

Not just the sexual development, but [00:40:00] bone development and health and the same with estrogen and just preparing owners that there is change happening and there’s some other aspects that need to be considered. Whether or not you end up neutering or spaying is one thing, but just having a little bit more of a critical thinking about it.

Some that near and dear to my heart too, exercise, physical activity and those requirements and how they can assist in better brain health, I think is probably my way of put it. That’s not the way you put it, but Yeah. One of the things that, that I see a lot is in working with pet clients particularly is again, that lack of physical activity, but to me more importantly is that lack of mental stimulation that dogs get.

Where do you rank that as far as importance in overall mental health for dogs? I, I know you said the physical activity is important. Where do you see the, that mental stimulation or lack thereof falling into the equation? So going with the [00:41:00] same theme of I want just a well-behaved dog what usually happens is you get a dog and then you invest puppy classes and obedience classes.

So there’s like a a spike in how much mental activity and exercise a dog gets. And then as the dog gets older, it usually. Dies down. We spend less time teaching you things to a dog that is not just old, but just like anything after adolescence. They didn’t just are, they’re just there. They call it on the couch and doesn’t mean we don’t love them any less.

It’s just we don’t really go out our way to train and teach ’em anything. And that is sad. That sad is also a little detrimental because just like we do that too, right? Any kind of mental stimulation the same way, it keeps the brain flexible. Now the brain never loses the capacity to change. That’s what we call neuroplasticity.

And it’s made to adopt and adjust. Obviously there always might be something scary. You need to [00:42:00] learn that you need to stay away from until you die. So there’s never that the dark can’t learn anything new anymore. It’s us who don’t want to teach anything new anymore. But keeping the keeping. The brain flexible one, like one good example in the human species is the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

One big thing, exercise, but also keeping the brain flexible and flexing all the nuances. By mentally stimulating it doesn’t mean you have to learn a new language, doesn’t mean it has to be anything practical. Solving puzzle crosswords and stuff like that helps and for dogs just doing a trick that you’re never going to use for the sake of just teaching something, right?

Or doing something practical like you go on a walk, teach your dog to go behind you on the left side or the right side. These kind of things are so important for the mental health. Dogs get older and older. More and more doc do develop some sort of dementia like symptoms. And the healthier [00:43:00] the brain is, the healthier the body is.

And sometimes the, if the brain starts to be not as flexible anymore, you might get stuck in some unwanted behaviors too. I would basically, sorry, your question answer, I would rank them at the same because they support each other so well. With what you mentioned about neuroplasticity, it makes me think back to earlier in this talk when you mentioned a dog who’s too stressed for too long, good seeing neurons start to wither and die.

How would, first off, how would you recognize that, but also how would you go about solving that? So to Jason’s question about exercise and mental stimulation, what would you do to help a dog fix that problem and reach their potential after they were in a traumatic situation? So if we, there are two types.

How you can think about this. If there was like, let’s say a very traumatic situation, accident happened, car accident happened, a dog fight happened, something related to PTSD, these kind of things. Before jumping into any kind of big preventative rehab programs, the dog just needs a couple [00:44:00] weeks to rest.

Cortisol kind of needs to come down and then you just do your normal things that you would do with the dog to expose again, if it was more like a chronically elevated stress and the dog starts to and how you see that. Obviously we don’t have good ways of measuring it objectively, but how you can see this in the dark is it’s a little bit slower in listening or learning or seems a little bit more easy.

Distracted shows a lot of sometimes neurotic behaviors. That’s a good sign that the dark kinda loses focus a little bit on things. And there, what you do is like these, the main pillars of this is does the doc have enough rest little shorts of training sessions in terms of mental exercise, little short of training session in terms of physical exercise and every now and then a little training session that induces some sort of challenge for the doc to work through and.

The good news is it can be five or 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to be hour long. Training sessions at home and lots [00:45:00] of rest in between. Undisturbed rest, I have to say the rest here, what I usually emphasize is it should be rest. That means the talk. The dog is completely excluded from anyone for a little bit.

It could be a rest where the dog hangs out with you in the same room but has no input, variations in how the dog is socially included and excluded, and that way the dog just gets like little maps throughout the day, especially after training sessions and of course during the night and finding a routine.

There is really the way to go. It is no big, oh, I’m gonna have this big intervention for one or two weeks, and then I’m going back to my normal routine more. Finding a routine that works for everyone, not just once or twice or three times, but all the time is important and removing potential stressors that is important.

The dog is not being constantly exposed to it. Some dogs go to daycare all the time, but really hate it. So dogs go to the dog park all the time, but really? Yeah. That’s true. And removing those [00:46:00] incidences will support everything else you do. I have a kind of final question here. Something you said earlier in regards to neutering at a early age, a lot of people neuter a for reproductive reasons, in rescue, I, in my experience of rescue, every rescue is just like under six months. Neutering, they just wanna prevent the reproduction of animals. However, some people do it for behavioral reasons, right? If I neuter my dog, it won’t be as aggressive or, and I’ve, can you, do you have any clarifying information on what is factual about neutering dogs and whether or not that has an effect on aggression?

Yeah. So this testosterone does not cause aggression, period. It just doesn’t, and the way I always describe it is if you have a super. Dull, happy-go-lucky Retriever happens to be maybe therapy dog, like just the sweetest soul on, on the planet, and you inject a bunch of testosterone. This dog will never become aggressive.

This [00:47:00] just testosterone will not do a thing in terms of the aggression. Testosterone, what it does is like an amplifier. It’s turning on the volume of a song that is already running. If the song hasn’t started, you can turn on the volume as much as you want and nothing will come out of the boxes.

So in the same way, if you say the doc kinda went through the growth phase of two years, and then for practical reasons, you wanna neuter the dog. If the dog has already rehearsed aggression for a little bit, testosterone truly will level up the intensity a little bit as the dog is not neutered. Because what testosterone does is it makes the animal lean into the effort of the aggression.

It also boosts confidence. So with the dog that is already very confident, gets even more confident with the dog, that’s shy. Testosterone is important to not become a skittish anxious dog. So the testosterone boosts a little bit of confidence. And if you then neuter the dog, the aggression might be [00:48:00] less intense and might not go away though.

That’s the problem. We come in with the expectations. You have an aggressive dog neuter, the aggression might not go away. Sometimes it gets even worse because now the dog is not confident about himself anymore. It goes into fight light and aggression, and that really depends on, there’s like ups and downs in terms of the results.

There’s no clear line because it doesn’t cause anything right now, if you have a dog that has rehearsed aggression for a very long time, five years, and now the owners decide, let’s try neutering because I have enough of it, nothing will likely change because then the effects of testosterone.

Might be replaced by the pure experience and rehearsal of the behavior. It has not a lot of influence anymore from testosterone, got it. That’s amazing. You said something where a dog may become even more aggressive after you neutered them. In what cases do you see that like lack of confidence?

Dogs that are already don’t have a lot of confidence and say have [00:49:00] more, are more fearful of the environment, then that’s the reason they’re biting. So maybe fear, aggression. If you were to neuter dogs that are already, say, displaying that behavior, you’re saying they may have the potential of getting worse with the aggression after neutering.

Yeah, especially in adolescents, young males that, still don’t understand really how the world rules and testing things out, but tend to be a little bit more conscious and anxious. And react out of fear or react out of discomfort and uncertainty. You take away testosterone that you know, not just makes the animal lean into effort, but also boosts confidence independently.

You take that away. Now the dog feels even more helpless in that sense. Yeah. That’s all they have. Yeah. Yeah. And then react more. Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you. That’s great information. Before we wrap up, I wanted to talk about canine decoded. So that is the name of your company. Can you tell us a little bit about the services you provide?

What is canine decoded? [00:50:00] What Canine Decoded is from like a content creation and program perspective, literally what the name says, through understanding a little bit more of broader scientific concepts, mainly neurobiology of behavior to understand your dog better, right? And depending on how deep, how nerdy one wanna be, it could be more for dog owners who just wanna learn more, or dog trainers who really wanna dig in.

In terms of behaviors, not so much actual obedience training, teach my doctor focused here, these kind of things. It’s all mainly related to anxiety aggression activity in a broader sense. What I am trying to instill with my content and programs is how to create a healthy lifestyle with a dog that is not just part of a small obedience program, but literally spans the entire 13 years.

That allows the dog to be a dog that [00:51:00] allows the dog to be healthy and safe in today’s society. And that allows owners and trainers to sometimes do little nuances and little changes here and there that can have a huge impact on the dog’s life for the better, obviously. And that kind of sprinkles in a lot of scientific things, A lot of like little nerdy notes.

What has been done in other animal models? And then obviously includes who’s your dog and what kind of time do you have in helping owners and trainers That way to not get hung up on certain discussions that we often see, but really dial into the lifestyle. Got it. And for our listeners is do you seeing that you do consulting, is this consulting for owners, for veterinarians, for other dog professionals?

So is this something where if someone’s having a really challenging situation or they need advice on behavior or something in relation to to what you do, this is something where you provide that through canine decoded, correct? Correct. Yes. Most of the time people book sessions with me if they wanna have one-on-one [00:52:00] sessions.

They’re virtual. So I talk to people all over the world. It’s usually people who have already tried certain things and just feel like they’re stuck and need some new inputs and ideas. And that way we can just have a chat. And it happens with dog trainers having, with dog owners. Some people they work with me long term, even virtually.

I at some point thought this is not gonna be a good idea. But some people are just really good at listening and then putting it into action and trying it out, and then coming back with feedback. And giving videos that works that way too. But most of the time, yeah, it’s these bigger programs for trainers that I have once or twice a year, and then smaller ones for dog owners.

Got it. And then on the project side of things, I see that you’re working on the dog personality guide, is that a project that you’re currently working on? I. The dog personality guide is more like a freebie that, that kinda explores the facets or the nuances of a dog’s personality. These are related terms, introvert, extrovert, how trainable a dog is, and comes really from psychology.

[00:53:00] And everyone just should think through this and see on the scale where the dog lands and then see if the lifestyle that they have created actually aligns with it. So an introvert dog going to a dog park might not be the best idea or retrainable dog not getting any mental stimulation, probably not a good idea.

These kind of things. And it puts the dog on these five traits. And I have a Belgian melanoma and a German Shepherd. And you would think they’re like related, they’re cousins in terms of their breeds and should be very similar, but they couldn’t be, they couldn’t be more extreme in their personalities.

So they’re vastly different lifestyles, more or less, even though they’re living in the same household. That was more like a fun project that kind of helps the people to relate to their dogs a little bit better. And then from there you can dig deeper and deeper into the science of it. Got it. And this is for a dog a certain age, or this is ages, all ages.

It can be done with a puppy or is this for, all owners and anybody that basically wants to participate in it? No, this is for [00:54:00] all owners. I would say a dog that has matured enough where the personality really comes through. Puppy personalities change. A puppy that might look anxious, could be super confident and vice versa within a year.

But it’s really just a guide for everyone who wears multiple dogs. One dog, any dog you can do it with. Maybe other animals, a cow or sheep, I don’t know, potentially. Yeah. No, that’s awesome. And then so you’re gonna be speaking at our conference coming up in July to August. Do you have any any tidbits, anything, what you’re gonna be speaking on?

Yet or is that as a little bit of a surprise? I would like to say it’s a little bit of a surprise because it’s also a little bit of a surprise for me. I haven’t cloud yet. That’s hilarious. I do have obviously a little bit of an idea and that kind of comes mainly from as we approach the timeline.

Don’t worry, I will be completely ready for my presentation, but what I hear is being discussed a lot and you know how certain topics they flare up and die down and [00:55:00] what is now a big topic. And I try to incorporate that part. It will be certainly about the bigger theme will be calmness versus arousal, but then there will be other topics that kind of feed into that you might not expect.

It might be surprising that this is also a topic that falls into that bigger or under the bigger umbrella, but ultimately the lifestyle of the dog and how calmness arousal plays role. That’s awesome. And before we wrap up, where can people find you? What is the best way to contact you? What are your socials?

And then, what’s the best way to get ahold of you? So the best way is, and I was, I would say smart, that I literally labeled everything, all my hand notes the same way. It’s always, can I decode it on Instagram where I live, basically. Canine decoded my website, canine decoded.com. So everything canine, decoded and I should pop up on various forms.

I’m not on TikTok. Gotta say that. Okay. Sounds great. Dr. Melanie thank you so much for being on the Doc Pro Radio show here and we look forward to senior conference. [00:56:00] And guys, for anybody that is listening here, part of the ICP, remember get your tickets, book your rooms. That’s gonna be, closing pretty soon and you might miss out on some great lodging there.

Again, Dr. Melanie, thank you so much for being here and we will talk to you again soon. Sounds good. Thank you for having me.