E465: Amy Cook, PhD & Josefin Linderström - "The Power of Touch in Dog Training"

Transcript

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Dr. Amy Cook and Josefin Linderström about the power of touch in our relationships with our dogs. Hi, Amy and Josephin. Welcome back to the podcast.

All: Hello. Good to be back. You timed that perfectly. You both said it exactly the same moment, but we are very behaviorally in sync. Oh yeah. Behavioral synchronization across nine time zones. How about that?

Melissa Breau: That's particularly impressive. Before we dive in, I just want to have you guys each kind of remind listeners a little bit about who each of you are. Maybe give people an idea whose voice belongs to who. Amy, you want to go first?

Dr. Amy Cook: Sure. Amy Cook. Dr. Amy Cook for the fancy. I am a longtime instructor at FDSA and always grateful to be here. I'm the developer of the Playway and now co-developer of the Social Approach with my colleague here, Josephin, who will introduce herself in a sec. But I teach a number of classes at Fenzi and I'm down to my one dog Caper, who is over there sleeping, who is my almost 10 year old little toy terrier, who, who are our lovely Melissa here actually helped her name.

So I don't know if you can believe it's been 10 years. I cannot. There it goes. Doesn't say that we've known each other 10 years, but I know it's crazy.

Melissa Breau: Josephin, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Josefin Linderström: Yeah. So I'm Josephin and I'm a Swedish dog trainer. So we are. It's evening where I am and it's like midday for you guys. It's a little bit weird. Amy and I are used to it.

I have a Belgian shepherd named Salvia is my current dog and I do a lot of just. I get a lot of the rowdy, loud, drivey type of dogs. I own one of those dogs. I love them. I think they are amazing teachers. Everything worth knowing I've learned from a dog or a child. And Salvia keeps teaching me new stuff all the time.

Melissa Breau: Awesome.

Dr. Amy Cook: It's true. That makes us a nice half and half fit because like I have all the little, the shy retirings and she gets all these like, you know, rowdy, you know, big dogs and we get to the crocodiles, the T-Rexes from these two perspectives. It's such a great partnership.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. So we're gonna talk about touch. So what role does touch play in canine social relationships? What role doesn't it play? I mean, you know, just what don't we do a lot? What don't we do with our hands? They're tactile beings, right? They don't have the verbal language, right. And so I loved when we first started talking about it.

It's like, you know, the natural language of the dog. And she and I are very much both about what is the natural language of the dog and how can people be better at it. So I know, Josephin, that you have like, you have pre-existing feelings about how we touch our dogs and what that kind of means to them. I know that, that, that you even started this conversation with me.

Josefin Linderström: I'm certain about it. I have a lot of thoughts on it. I have just. There's so much that happens whether we're aware of it or not and whether we like, whether we like it or not. Even just something like clipping on the leash, we're gonna grab their collar a little bit, maybe twist it. We do something we, with our hands. So like, it's not just a touch in itself, but also how do we grab them?

Are we approaching them like, like that? You know, a lot of dogs are going to be not. They'll talk, it's okay. You know, it's not a big deal. But it would be like we could do it just a little bit nicer maybe if we realized that it was in fact a thing that they cared about. I have yet to meet a single person who just, you know, doesn't care at all.

That generally most people have empathy. They like their dogs, they want to be nice to them, they want their dogs certainly to like their hands. People, I mean, as humans, we love petting dogs. We like, who doesn't? And so being mindful of and just aware of how they read us, how they, how they experience our hands in general, both when we handle them, when we pet them, when we approach them to do different things.

Dr. Amy Cook: It's such a huge part of the relationship. And who doesn't have an opinion about touch themselves? Like all of us, we know inherently that we have a way, we like to be touched. And you know, even if we couldn't articulate it at a moment's notice, I don't think there's a person listening to this that doesn't have a feeling about what kind of touch, how much, who does it, you know, how the hands move and all of this.

And I, you know, it's maybe about time that we really expand the vocabulary and expand the analytical lens around your. Dogs have the same opinions, but often we don't solicit their opinions. Often we are doing what we like. We pet dogs, how we like to pet them. I mean, not everyone, but, you know, it's common. And if you think about it in the framework of what a person would be like, it stands to reason that a dog would have very similar opinions.

And so Josephin and I kind of want to put a closer lens on how we can do things that are in alignment with. With what dogs like and then what we can do with that, which I know we're going to get into more, but that's kind of the framework from where we started.

Melissa Braau: So you. You're talking a little bit about, you know, different log, different dogs. Like, different things, maybe a little bit in there.

And, like, so how much variation do we usually see? You know, dogs are domesticated critters. You know, part of that is letting us get to the point where we're touching them and handling them and all that fun stuff. So how much variation do we see between, you know, dogs in how they feel and what they like in terms of touch?

Josefin Linderström: I think that's why. Yeah, yeah. There's, like. There's. There's like. I think of it as, like a scale. And on one end, we have the Labrador puppy. Oh, look, we have a dog here who wants to be touched. She's like, touch me. What a surprise. Mom, you're animated. She's like, oh, she. She must be talking about me. Amy knows that phrase because it's on the phone, like when we're on go lie down. But she's like, I don't think I will.

You sound like you have a lot of energy, and I'm sure it's for me. What was I say? Oh, yeah, like the scale, right. On one end is the Labrador puppy, and then on the other end is like an injured street dog that would let nobody touch them anywhere. And then the rest of all dogs just fall somewhere in between. I do find that generally most dogs are closer to the Labrador puppy than the owners think.

Like, when we get into it and start asking more nuanced questions of the dog, they're actually like, you know, I kind of would actually really like those shoulder scratches. As long as you just don't do the other thing that I don't love, I'm very much going to opt in. When you do the thing that I like and you just stop doing the thing that I have feel icky about, or like, maybe the dog has some pain and like the.

In somewhere and you can't know that. And maybe, or maybe they've been injured in the past and had pain. And so now they're a little bit like they have a learned worry about it. And so if they, if they can go into the interaction and feel in control, then a lot of, a lot more dogs opt in and enjoy it. And I think that, like, styles, you know, can really vary. Although I don't think we're asking the question enough.

Dr. Amy Cook: Right. Because, you know, I want to say there are dogs who like this kind of petting more than this kind of petting or this style matches the way they kind of act. You know, I wasn't terribly thumpy on my sighthound. I wasn't scruffily scritchy and thumpy with her body because she seemed to be a dog who liked a certain thing.

But I'm not certain those impressions that we tend to have will always bear out because much of the time we are just petting dogs how we like to do it or what we're guessing about and not exactly asking as many questions as we could about what they would like. And so I'm kind of excited to find out if some of our impressions bear out and, and, you know, I would expect a wide variety of opinions, but I don't know that we have pre.

Known, pre-assessed their opinions accurately. And, you know, a dog is the final expert on what they like best. Yeah, there are teachers always, don't listen to, don't listen to me. Listen to your dog. Keep telling people, I don't know anything. Your dog knows everything about your own body. You are the one who knows. Right. But, you know, until people can ask a finer question about how should my hands move?

You know, have you given a lot of thought to how fast your hands should move and should, in quotes, should as. As far as according to what your dog likes best. And then to expand that idea, there are a lot of things you can do with touch, which maybe we'll get into. And, and you know, the class isn't only about touch. It's about all the ways we use our hands.

But there are so many styles and ways, and I don't know that, that people go beyond what their hands naturally do. But, you know, we can pet dogs to help them feel calmer or to have a loving, affectionate, bonding moment. And we can pet dogs in ways that are more arousing and more fun and more about stimulation, but that requires vocabulary, that requires us actually exploring which things do that for.

For our given dog, because it's just, you know, it's just our dog that we're asking or the dogs that we're petting that we're asking. We're not making grand claims about dogdom, right? So. So there. There's so much communication that happens there that is so much their natural channel that to. To not have it really deeply developed and deeply asked about feels like a kind of a. A big open field, an open.

An open door for us to walk, you know, a wide open door for us to walk through. Especially since us humans are such handsy creatures, like we're little monkeys. We interact with everything through our hands. Our. Like, they are very sensitive instruments, finely tuned sensors. They pick up tons of information, and they also convey tons of information to those around us, both through visual things and gestures and stuff, but also through touch.

So, yeah, I mean, you make a good point. I mean, I'm sorry, Melissa, I know you. You have like 10,000 more questions to ask us, but as I famously said, press the play button on my chest and you'll have. We'll just take the whole hour.

Josefin Linderström: But you make a good point that our hands are listeners, right? We are or should be receiving information from our hands. And I would love to implore more of us as dog owners, guardians, or whatever it is to think that way.

I don't know if enough people, if enough of us are really thinking about not just what we do with our hands, but how we receive the information our dogs are telling us through touch, not just through our eyes. So I just want to highlight that for us because I think it's something we. I don't know, a channel that might be atrophied a little. Our hands are good at telling those things.

But are our minds used to receiving that information and doing something with it? I don't know that we are. I don't know if you relate to that, Melissa, but, I mean, I certainly understand where you're going with it. I'd like to go a little deeper on it if we can. You know, what. What are some of the ways that our dogs communicate what their preferences are, you know, kind of are around this stuff, especially those things that maybe people kind of miss because maybe they haven't been taught to pay attention to this stuff.

And then, you know, how can we, as caring, loving, you know, dog handlers, owners, become more observant, become more responsive, you know, actually get better at this stuff with our dogs? I feel like there is, like there. There's so much variation in that as well. And there's never a lot of people worry about things like lip licks and yawns, but those can happen while the dog is absolutely loving the thing that's happening.

And like the pets, it could just mean that, it could just mean that they were a little bit excited and they're coming down from a high and they'll do a yawn on the way down because it, it just, that just happens to be what it looks like for that dog. And so it's a little bit dangerous to get caught up in very specific like signals. It always has to be about the whole dog and what it's doing, like what it is responding to.

But I will say when dogs have confidence that they're going to be heard, they get very expressive. Salvia is very confident and I also have a 5 year old son who they have just kind of recently started to interact more with each other. Right, because he's been little and she's been feral. So it just hasn't been a thing. Right. They've both been feral. It's been an interesting couple of years.

But the thing is that he's not very intuitive about it and he's five. But Salvia will make it happen the way she likes it. She will, she will do an interpretive dance where she twists her body a certain way, nudges her hands so that his hands flings and lands right where she wants it. And she'll do this thing where she picks up her back leg and gets him to kind of like, like he has no choice basically but to do it the way that she likes it.

Like there's no mistaking it. And she'll do that to anybody. But I'm very impressed that she manages to provide instructions to my 5 year old because I can't do that. So like, he doesn't listen to me, but he'll listen to her. So if we again like listen to the dog or like if we do our best and they kind of feel the intention of like, oh, I think maybe it's, there's a little bit more to it.

There are certain signs, right? Like quite often if they orient towards the hand that you are actively petting them with, it's a sign that they want to change something that that hand is doing. Like that might be a good time to try something different or do consent check or something. But it's, there's so much variation in how dogs communicate and what they have to say. So it's really tricky to try to say like this.

Dr. Amy Cook: Yeah, it can Be tricky. And, and, you know, we'll. We'll start it with a place of like, you know, what is your dog's pattern? Right. Because we don't want to just take any errant lip lick or any, oh, my God, your dog yawned, therefore definitely stop or they licked your hand, definitely stop it. But we can ask that question. We can say, hey, dog, I thought I saw a signal from you.

I'm going to interpret it this way. Here's your chance to tell me whether you liked that I, that I did that or didn't. We can add. We can build the communications or not. Not build the system so much, but build our understanding of the system that they use by responding to what we think they said. Right. And that doesn't mean constant consent checks. I think we've gotten, I think we both think that we've gotten a little far out in, in, in the, the consent check world, which we will definitely be exploring and unpacking in the, in the class that we have coming up on this.

So I don't mean to imply that that would be the way we would do it, but, you know, we could say, oh, when you attend to my hand this way, I'm thinking, maybe you'd like me to move my hand to a different location that you like better. How about I try that? Tell me what you think about that. Right there is that. And then also patterns over time like, oh, always when I stop, you lick my hand, but lick and nudge it in a way that I'm starting to interpret means you want me to try again rather than that you want me to stop.

Because licking does sometimes mean please stop. I like to dismiss. We can ask these questions instead of applying a rubric of dogs do X when they, when they think X. Nobody is that nobody is that cut and dry. No, no animal is that specific. Yeah, like there are, there are certain. Like, as. For every general trend, there are as many dogs who don't follow it as there are dogs who do follow it.

Josefin Linderström: So. Right. And, and we have to, you know, we want people to be able to ask their dogs. So, so we want to bring lessons to them, bring exercises to them that allow them to ask very accurate questions and get good information. You know, and a dog will, if we allow them put the body part that they want pet available. Right. They. They will do that. But we often aren't limiting ourselves that are listening to that and saying, oh, your butt is here.

I'll pet your butt. It's, I'll pet your butt. And now I'll just let my hands wander to all the places I wanted to pet. And the dog is like, but I gave you my butt. Hang on. And Josephin has this really interesting video with her petting a goat that is like, the goat is like, and also here, please. And then please pet that part. And here's another part.

You know, I treat it. I've done it. I do the same thing. I do the same thing. When I ask dogs that I do with horses, goats, bunny rabbits generally seems to. I have. Most dogs who are squishy, scratchy, tactile animals seem to understand that line of communication. So I tend to test it whenever I happen upon a new species. And it generally works really well. I have yet to meet a dog who doesn't respond to it at all.

They like, if they don't want pets, they don't want pets. If you don't. I don't. If they don't know me, they don't like me. Then, you know, but there's always something to learn from it. Yeah, right. And like, if we, you know, we're. We're thinking that if we, if we say, oh, you said very clearly you'd like me to pet this side of your body or this shoulder, like, you leaned it right on my hands and I'm switching it.

And you know, what happens if I don't? Then do the common human thing of take liberties to just now pet you all of the other places you didn't offer me. What if I just said, great, I will pet you here, where you said, and until you say something else, until you're, until you feel done with this, until you tell me something somehow that you feel done with the shoulder scratches, right?

And maybe you want butt scratches, right? And, you know, aside from the shorter picture, the narrow picture of I want to understand how you tell me what you like about, you know, the kinds of scratches you want. But also there's the larger framework of I'm listening to you tell me things. Therefore, are there other things you want to tell me about how I use my hands? Are there other things, messages that you'd like to convey about the way my hands behave around your body that aren't just in how you want to be pet in a time of affection?

Maybe you have opinions about how we pet in times of edge, you know, of recall and greeting and reunions. Maybe you have opinions about how I pet you when we're idle and on the couch. Maybe you have opinions about how I use my hands to put on your harness and to give you treats. And to give me toys at the vet. When you're nervous. When you're nervous, how do you like to be soothed?

Do you want the same kind of petting when you're being soothed as you do when we're just laying around together? And so how we use our hands in communication goes beyond just how we pet. But, of course, petting is just such a big part of our communication that it's a big part of what we're looking at. How much do you feel like kind of what a dog's personal preferences are when it comes to physical contact or influenced by, you know, their personal history?

You know, do you think some dogs just kind of come out of the womb a certain way, or is it like a learning experience? Learned experience, I guess, or what do we think here? It's both. I think. It's. It's. And it's hard to tell. I will say. I have yet to. I was talking with my husband about this earlier about how the dogs that we've owned together. Salvia is the third one.

Two of those dogs weren't necessarily cuddly at the beginning. We just made them. They just had no choice. It took a couple years, but, like, Salvia would never rest next to me when she was younger, but she does all the time now. And so because we're just stubborn, we're just. We just touched, we're handsy monkeys, we enjoy it, but also we're very respectful handsy monkeys in this household.

We're protective of the value and safety of our hands. And so we, you know, to make sure that that's a thing. But of course, like I mentioned earlier, if a dog has been injured and they have, like, memories in their body of flinching and tensing up, that can be really difficult to shake, Right? And so that's gonna influence maybe where, like, they don't know that if, like, maybe they have haven't had the experience yet of, oh, petting my butt would be fine now because I was injured a while ago, but I'm still just gonna, you know, do the safer option.

And so if we don't ask, then they're just gonna opt out entirely, not because they don't want or need pets, but because they have that concern or that memory or that worry of something. And so if I think a lot of it is learned. But then, of course, there's going to be a difference between a dog who has been bred to work really closely with human, who just is like, you know, they're not 70 water.

They're like 70 oxytocin. It's like they're pure. They're just swimming in it all the time compared to something like a Labrador. Yeah, they're just start for touch. No matter how much you pet them, they're just. Just like you. Just like you. Honestly, though, I will say I think that there are dogs that have, you know, we're discussing nature, nurture a bit and you can never really separate them.

But like, I, I think that there are dogs who, who are hyper expressed on the, on the tactile channel. Like, you know, just to throw a dart at it. Like your Vizsla types maybe, you know, maybe your retriever types and types that maybe can like, you know, like it have some opinions, but it isn't, you know, the reason they were put on the planet or, you know, made by us.

And the thing is, it's hard to know when you're looking at that. Like, I can look at a Vizsla and say, probably you want lots of crawling into my skin and laying on my body and so do you. Golden. But that's my, my baseline assumption. But I got to ask you. And there are just as many Vizsla who are like, look, enough with the touching. It's overstimulating. I want to run around outside more.

Right. And so the assumptions we've made about our dogs, about what they're like from their breed type or what we've assumed about the experience we've had with them or seen from them, oh, he never really likes touch. This is my, this is my she, but this is my. I don't know what. But Senji, she doesn't really like to be touched all that much. I want to re. Ask that question.

It's like, is that. Because the touch that this dog has had up until now has been unpleasant and they can, they can do without it. They're like, I don't like that kind. So therefore I don't want anything from you. If, if I changed how I did it, would you change your opinion dog? Right. And also, do you have a sensory system that makes forms of petting that your monkey has tried overwhelming and therefore they're opting out?

Because like I, you know, I. A lot of us can understand neural overwhelm and sensory overwhelm. And so I just want to be able to ask the question anew and say, hey, maybe touch is your primary channel. Am I, am I doing your primary channel the way you like? Or, hey, maybe touch isn't your primary, but is it not your primary? Because we haven't really listened to what you've truly liked.

Is everyone thumping you and you are not the thumpy dog? Or is everybody, you know, butterfly touching you and you really want a good scritch? So nature, nurture, I think it does bend us towards certain answers. But you know, it's it, it sets the stage, but we really have to ask the fine questions. For sure.

Yeah. And I do think, or my experience has been that like the more independent breeds who aren't puddles of oxytocin, the livestock guardians and stuff, they care more like they adhere to the social conventions of dog more so than people.

And so with us, maybe we just patted them on the, on top of the withers, like that's where our hand lands because we are tall and they are right there. And so the hand just lands on top of the withers and the dog is like, well, if you were another dog, I would correct you right now. But I'm not going to do that because you're my person and I love you very much.

So I'll just probably not ask for pets as much because I don't love it. But like I'll, I'll take it, you know. Right, right. Whereas the Labrador. The Labrador might not care. Probably not. Yeah.

Melissa Breau: I think that's interesting to think about and to think about, you know, breed tendencies as far as some of that is concerned and the way that that might, you know, if they can't find a way to communicate, they might kind of just opt out of some things because they can't figure out how to tell you what they'd like better. So how can we foster that kind of, you know, two way conversation rather than just, you know, have touch be a thing that just kind of happens with our dogs?

Dr. Amy Cook: We see that all the time. That dogs would just stop telling you what they want to tell you because they've tried telling you and in ways that are like, excuse me, casting no aspersions on people, ways that are subtle enough that we.

That isn't our channel of seeing the. No. Or seeing the request. But dogs have historically tried to say a thing that we have missed and they stop saying it. We see this all the time. Josephin and I do that once we start asking very interesting new questions, that we get very interesting new answers and sometimes very strongly voiced dogs who are like, oh, oh, oh, oh. The channel is open.

Excellent. I have many things I'd like to tell you and it's wonderful to see dogs open up that way because it's not what we always picture what they're what they're trying to say to us, two way communication, you know, is a thing that, that gets a, gets a lot of coverage right now. It's, it's a lot in Playway. It's a lot in our, in our Social Approach that Josephin and I have developed.

It's in a lot of places. But I think that what the exploration that we've given it has, has led us to is what I want to ask dogs right now. I'm kind of just obsessed with it right now is this handshake protocol, this two layer of communication where I get to say to you, dog, here is my hand. I would like you. And this is, it's formalized. It's not like in mid pet or something.

But we can establish, hey, here is my hand. I would like you to tell me what you'd like me to do with it. And I've been able to do this with a number of dogs now and seen really interesting information come out. Like I can say, here's a treat in my hand. You can have any number of ways it could be delivered. Tell me which one you would like.

It's sort of like a reverse of the location specific marker where it's like, I'm going to tell you how it's going to be delivered. Instead I can say, here's my hand, tell me what you'd like it to perform. And when the dogs get a sense of this, they start going, oh, this is really interesting. What if I tell you to do this with your hand? What if I tell you to do this with your hand?

It's been really neat to have a conversation just about hands that is not solely about I'm touching your body with it, you know, and, and the, the, the field is really open. What about. Do you not like that I put my hand directly in your face when I give you things? Is that your opinion? What do you feel about my hands when they're around your toys? What do you feel about my hands when they're around your mouth, when you have a toy?

What do you feel about my hands when they are performing actions? Right, this, taking the dumbbell and obedience. Can I take it in such a way that you don't spit it out? Oh, I can. Nice. Let me just do it that way so that we don't have to. I can take it from underneath. I can reach my hands in slowly. Just slowly enough that you can process everything that's happening instead of darting them towards your face.

I can do that. If I can give you a way to tell me how this works. And so sort of like it feels to me, I don't think I always convey this well because it feels like maybe a half baked thought or something, but it feels like how. Reverse. It feels like how clicker training felt originally to me, where it's like, oh my gosh, we're communicating via this signaling system.

This is cool. But it's the reverse. Hey dog, click me when I get it right. Tell me what you're doing. They're actually, they're actually in control. Like they're actually telling us what to do as opposed to making us click and treat. They're making us do all kinds of stuff. It's very fun, right? Not just do it. And they do surprise us. They do surprise us behavior all the time.

All the time. And so I've kind of made this, this protocol, you'll see it in class, where we're behind physics. So I'm behind a physical barrier. And you get to tell me now with this physical barrier up, how I can interact with your body, how I can interact with your food. And so I really like finding new ways to ask new questions of dogs that give them even more versions of power.

And there's a lot they can tell us beyond the yes, no, like I do or I don't want what you did. There's a lot more they can tell us than touch me here or touch me there. These feel very binary. Or touch me faster, touch me slow. But what if it's also about, you know, a compound question? Can we ask a compound question? Can we say, I've opened the door to you telling me stuff, now please tell me stuff?

Dr. Amy Cook: Right. That's how conversations work. So I might be getting in the, in the weeds. I realize people won't know what I mean until they see it, but we are trying to devise ways to, to make sure dogs have a deep and rich say in the way our hands behave around them, the way our hands move, the, the way it feels to be under our hands and to have our hands do a lot of listening and to have us do a lot of listening based on, on this tactile stuff.

I, I don't know if that went weedsy, but, but that's where my mind goes when you say two way communication. No, I don't think it went too weedsy. I think it was interesting to think about just kind of what that looks like or what that might feel like in practice when we're talking about this stuff. You know, how far can we go? Can touch be salient? Enough to use as an actual reinforcement.

Like, what does that look like? Of course. What do we have to. Is my answer. Duh. Talk to me about it. This is my. This is my favorite thing to talk about ever. So now Amy's not going to say anything more for the whole but like, the obvious times when it like. Because it depends, of course, not for 100 of every dog ever, but certainly for almost all dogs in some situations with some behaviors.

Almost all dogs rush to the hallway when you walk through the door when you get home to greet you, and usually then they want to be touched. Right. The greeting ritual is a big deal for dogs, and it's supposed to in quotation mark usually. Typically there's touch involved in that. Not getting touched makes them very frustrated and almost frantic. Panicky makes them bounce off the walls, jump up and like, touch me.

Right. Which is not super fun or nice, but certainly that is a lot of motivation. It's a huge, infinite, almost motivation, it would seem. Right. If it's enough motivation for them to expend that sort of energy just for you to put your hands on them. Right. That's a ton of motivation. Of course we can and in my opinion should use it for things like recall things, particularly behaviors that involve some kind of reuniting.

It makes a lot of sense to bring that greeting ritual into things like retrieves, recalls, a downstate things that include a little bit of a separation.

Josefin Linderström: Salvia. I know I got a little excited. You don't also have to get excited. But like, it's such a. It's a very. It can be a bit of a path to get there. And it puts more demands on you as the person, as the hands haver to be mindful of how you use your hands.

I mentioned earlier, you need to like, we're like in. In my house, we protect the value of our hands. We're very mindful so that we don't accidentally like, we poison them is a strong word. I think you have to do a lot to actually for real poison your hands. Right. They're a domesticated animal. They're usually okay. But if you want to use your toys as reinforcement, you know, there's.

It comes with certain conditions. If you want to use food as reinforcement, it comes with certain conditions. Right. You need to be mindful so that you don't confuse the dog or frustrate them a bunch when you use those things. And the same is true for pets. Since I start, like. Yeah, I want to say since I started using pets more for reinforcement, I have only seen good things come of it. And I love it for my clients. And they love it too, of course, because as a species, we're handsy.

Dr. Amy Cook: We're handsy monkeys. I mean, I think you've also impressed, you know, that it's not about a dog should just receive a pet as the reinforcement for any random thing you've asked it to do and therefore addict. Right. Pet. Pet. And expect that to be the reinforcement now. Yeah. It's not stit.

I pet you heel. I pet you. That's what you get. You know, I dole out my reinforcement as I see fit and you kind of take it. It's the. It's the. The fresher and the, you know, the. The. The. I think more valid, ecologically valid take on it, which is that this is a naturally social moment. This behavior I've asked of you is a. Has a strong social component.

Recall. Has a strong social component. We are reuniting. As the point you made to me earlier, Josephine, of a downstay having a social component of re. Of reunion. Let's say reunite. Reunition. Reuniting reunion. Yeah. You couldn't come up with it. And it helps, you know, because dogs are. They get worried when you leave them and they're relieved when you come back. So let's just acknowledge and lean into that a little bit.

Yeah. And you know, doing a sit for you. There's less of a case for that being a necessarily social interaction you just had. I'm not saying that we couldn't find our way through it, but it's so clear that so many things we ask of them have a strong social bias to them. And not having the physical channel, the touch channel be a big part of the reinforcement picture is like just leaving a bunch of power on the table and a bunch of kind of like it.

It. It sense making on the table. Right. This makes sense as the way I would connect to you over this behavior rather than, oh, oh, here's a cookie. Right. So you know that I. I think the. You make a good point about that. Some behaviors are lean very strongly into. Into petting as reinforcement. And. And like every reinforcer, if you're not really kind of looking at how you do, may indeed not be reinforcing the way you did it.

Yeah. Right. We all know that. Yeah. And. And I mean, how many. I don't know. You know, I give cookies with the intent to reinforce things that end up not reinforcing that thing. That also definitely happens. I mean, it can happen. Right. But the oxy that we get from it. I, I would love for us to eventually get to this. Oxytocin. Oxytocin have. From this. If that's, you know, oh my God, time for it.

If we have time for it in the, in the, in the questioning, Melissa, because we'd love to get to.

Melissa Breau: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was intending to kind of go from here to like, what benefits are there to using touch in building our relationship with our dogs? So that seems like a natural bridge. So go for it. Talk to me about it.

Dr. Amy Cook: Perfect. We found neat stuff. I really want just. Josephin, I know that you get like a way of explaining this, but we found some really neat stuff. About what? Starting sessions, starting anything you're about to do with your dog, you're about to train, you're about to go out on your walk, you're about to do something with your dog. Starting it with a touch moment, a moment of bonding and connection through touch has these wide ranging effects that like, we did, like a crazy rabbit hole dive of papers.

And by we, I am speaking of the royal we. By we, I mean Josephin read and summarized for me and pointed me toward the key things to read. But it's really neat what she found. So I really, I would love for you to talk about some of the oxytocin and effects that were found.

Josefin Linderström: I mean, the, the main one that kind of blew me away a little bit or surprised me for sure.

Like, we know oxytocin as this bonding hormone and that's, you know, it's. It feels good. Maybe the opposite of stress. Right. We think of it like oxytocin here and cortisol here. But it also helps communication. It helps us actually understand each other. Like, they've shown that when you raise oxytocin in humans, we are better at decoding dog barks and understand the meaning behind them and we don't get as annoyed.

Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. Bonkers. Like, can I just get. Can I just pet my dog and become nicer and more empathetic? Like, what a magic pill for any relationship. Right. But like, that was studied. It was studied. People interpret their dog miscommunications. Yeah. They gave them a nose spray with oxytocin. They took a bunch of men, a bunch of dudes, gave them a nose spray with oxytocin in it.

And then all of a sudden, like, they played dog bark recordings. And the first time they heard the recordings, they were like, that's annoying. And they didn't understand it very well. And then they gave them the little nose spray and then they understood it better and they were less annoyed. Like, it. It's not that it gave them telepathic powers or anything, right. It just gave them access to the part of the brain that does social stuff and empathy.

And it works this in a very similar. I can't say that works the same way for dogs. I don't know how it works, but like, it does the same thing when we give we. As if I do it, I don't give oxytocin the royal doctor. I just pet them. But like, when, when they do that, there's tons of studies on this stuff where they just give. They take a bunch of dogs, they give half of them an oxytocin nose spray, they give the other half a saline nose spray, and then they see if they are now suddenly the oxytocin dogs, what superpowers, magical stuff that they gain from it.

And it's all kinds of stuff. Like it's being able to settle faster. That's not a no spray one. That was a petting one, though. But like being able to settle when the owner sits down. Yeah, being able to settle when the owner sits down. Being better at understanding, pointing, like following where, going where you point. Even if it means they lose. Like, if they get. If listening to you means I get less food, I'm gonna do it anyway because I care what you think now.

And I want to be aligned with you and I want to synchronize and do things together and stuff and collaborate. So it does that. Like, it has the reverse effect. So it makes both of us better at understanding each other and more trying to do what the other one wants for free. Like, imagine not having that in a training session. Why wouldn't. Like, that's crazy. We're leaving that on the table.

No, absolutely. Leaving it just fresh on the table. Where you can increase a dog understanding what you want of them, and you can increase your understanding of what your dog is telling you, and you both can increase your kind of tolerance around some social misfires or, you know, really wanting to collaborate, all of that. If we if from some oxytocin being raised, and we know that we can start off a session by doing some oxytocin promoting behaviors like petting and socially connecting.

I don't know why we wouldn't. I mean, I really want to say that that that is the way we should be starting anything we're about to do with our dog. Any walk, we're about to have any training. We're about to do anything we're about to do that requires us to be more empathetic, a little more sensitive to what's going on, just more tolerant and just understanding each other better.

I mean, there's no stronger case to be made. And we know that on the topic of greeting rituals, they also checked. There's the, the oxytocin high lasts a lot longer if you pet them properly when you greet them. So that's another, like a very good reason to just drop everything you have when you get home and just. I love you too. Just right. And, and I'm so glad you missed you too.

And you know what, properly is right? When you, when you pet them in a way, maybe not actually squeeze them like a hug, but. Right, right. No, but like, but you make a good point about that. The research says petting them. Petting them properly, meaning petting them in the way that does the most promotion of oxytocin means petting them in a way that is satisfying to you. You like it?

We are. I'm doing what you like, you're doing what I like. It's not just I pet you and you get oxytocin. It is about the sort of the sensitive responding and the, the knowing what your partner really likes best. And so even more motivation to, to, to know what that is to, to do it when it's available and to, and to seek it out. At least seek the connection first before embarking on anything new so that, you know, it's, it's the.

We would do it. We would, we would put away our daily thought before we would start a training session. We would make sure we were present. We would like put aside, you know, our multitasking in our heads and say, I need to think about what I'm doing. Well, in that setting of the stage, also think about. I want to make sure our communication channels are open socially and that my hands feel safe to you and that we both remind each other that we love each other.

And then you get these side benefits of I will read you better, you'll read me better, and neither of us will be as frustrated with each other. Like, it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. So if you guys could take all of this that you've kind of learned through studying this stuff and looking at this stuff and really change, you know, one thing, thing about how people think and touch their dogs, what would you want them to understand?

Just one thing, man. You can give me two or maybe three. Go for it. See what you got. I know what I get, dare I say it, we're supposed to be touching each other. We like it. And they generally like it and don't like it. Usually that's not a permanent innate state of like. It's not necessarily part of their character. It's worth investigating if they often opt out because.

And it's worth it because there's so much to gain from investigating this a little bit. Yeah, that's great. And I would say that what I would like people to take away is that you have a contract. You have to write an agreement you have to reach. You are responsible for using your hands in ways that are respectful and that are liked by your dog and understood by your dog and that your dog has some say in that.

You need to put as much thought into that as you do in your other training mechanics and your other enrichment contracts. You write, you have a sense that you must fulfill, you know, the rest of your dog's life. I think your hands need to be something you put thought into that you use carefully and correctly in the relationship that you have with that dog in specific. And you two write this contract together.

Melissa Breau: Okay, so we're talking about this because, you know, I think Amy mentioned it in passing, but you're offering a three week class specifically on this stuff. Get in touch. The social approach to hands and communication. Do you guys want to talk just for just a minute like about the class specifically, like what's going to be covered, who might want to sign up, who could really benefit from this? What are we going to do in this class?

Dr. Amy Cook: It's been tough to keep all of this stuff basically. I mean, asking better questions or not more nuanced questions. Get extracting information from the dog. Going to be petting dogs. Like, who doesn't want to take a class where the homework is to pet your dog? I give this homework to clients all the time. I've never had any complaints about it.

They all love it. But so it's going to be that. But it's also going to be other things that we do with our hands. Yeah, you're going to communication. The handshake. We are the handshake program. We want you to be able to be able to ask these questions and, and interpret your answers. We're not going to get to, you know, every answer there could possibly be in three weeks, but getting used to the idea that your hands can communicate a variety of things.

There are ways to pet that are stimulating ways to pet that are, that are bond promoting or relaxing. And to ensure that you have some vocabulary on both sides and a way to understand your dog's yeses and nos that are, that are your dog's yeses and nos, not just dogdoms writ large, yes and no, which might not apply to you. And then maybe how to take some feedback, how to, how to have your hands be sensitive, sensitive, sensitive around your dog's body and around your dog's behaviors and so that your dog can understand your consistency around it.

We want to teach you how to take feedback and, and feel what you should do next, you know, with our, with our coaching. So it's, it's, it's been tough to winnow out what, you know, what not to, you know, what you can just do in three weeks. Right. We can't get into an entire reinforcement protocol for retrieves. We don't have the time this time around, unfortunately, the whole green protocol.

But we can get you sensitive to the feedback your dog is giving you. We can give you some options of things to try. We can ask your dog what they do and don't like and get sort of get used to that, the communicating in that way and see what people kind of bring to us. And I think I'm super excited about it. I cannot wait for it to start.

Awesome. Absolutely fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for coming on the podcast to talk about all this stuff. Thank you for having us. Absolutely, my pleasure. And thank you to all of our listeners and our viewers for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time with Irith Bloom to talk about demand marking, what it is and what we can do about it. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast either on itunes, the podcast app of your choice, or over on YouTube to make sure you never miss another episode.

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by BenSound.com the track featured here is called Buddy. Audio and video editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!