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Setting up your new pet for success

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Tonight’s webinar on setting your new pet up for success is brought to you by PetSure and Dr. Kersti Seksel.

Dr Kersti is a recognised behavioural medicine specialist and is recognised by the Australian American and European colleges. Pitts. He is also an adjunct associate professor, professor at Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga and a fee free Certified Professional. She is fascinated by animals and why they do what they do. She’s passionate about helping people understand animals better so she can improve the lives of people and their pets.

I see pioneered puppy preschool and kitten kindy classes teaches the distance education course in behavioural Medicine at the University of Sydney.

She presents at conferences nationally and internationally brands webinar, right textbook chapter and is written a book training your cat and he’s a regular presenter on radio and TV. So without any further delay, I’d now like to hand you over to Dr. Sector.

Hi everybody, welcome to tonight. And Thank you Dani for the lovely introduction and allowing me to talk about setting your pet up for success. And I thought really the best way to do this is for people to understand why do pets do what they do because that leads to a lot of misunderstandings and I found and I love saying this I’ve been teaching and talking about behaviour in animals since last millennium which makes me feel very wise rather than old. But I think a lot of it is misunderstanding how animals perceive the world. So I think the best way to set your pet up success just for success is actually to understand them. So when I first started doing this, then what I found was that people were saying no, no bad dog stop there. You know, and I always thought that dogs thought, Well, my name is no no bad dog. What’s yours because that’s all they ever heard and really, behaviour isn’t moved along passed along way past that. And really no, there are no bad dogs. It’s just that we don’t understand the dogs that we do have. So this is what tonight is aiming to help you understand your dog or your cat a little bit better and what that really entails is understanding behaviour.

And when we talk about behaviour, we’re really talking about acting in a socially acceptable manner. And I really liked the word socially inept, because as society changes our expectations of animals change, and I always thought that we shouldn’t be talking about responsible pet ownership. We should be talking about socially responsible pet ownership. Because when I was growing up, dogs weren’t walked on a leash. Nobody picked up their poop after them and society just accepted. That’s why it is but nowadays that’s not socially acceptable any longer. And I think if we keep that in mind that what is acceptable at one time may not be acceptable at another. It really helps us I guess work with the pets that we hopefully love and live with rather than live with and not love so much.

So behave it really describes what happens in a specific context at a specific time. So when someone tells me their dog is doing X or Y, it really is only what’s happening at that particular instant time. It doesn’t tell me what happened three minutes earlier, and it certainly doesn’t necessarily predict the future.

And what I want to stress to you tonight is that any change in behaviour may be the first indication of a problem. It may be a medical problem, a physical problem, or it could be a behavioural or what I call an emotional problem. Because really, unless you’re going for a general health check or wellness check to the bit most of the times people will come and see their bid is because the dog or the cat or the rabbit or whatever, something in their behaviour has changed. And as I said it could be a medical or physical reason that needs to be investigated, but it may also be a behavioural or emotional reason that we need to look at.

Let’s look at dogs for a minute and I and there’s a lot of misunderstandings about why dogs do what they do. Because we know that dogs evolved from the wolf. And really they’re not wolves at all.

And this is what I just want to spend a couple of minutes talking about because if we don’t understand where dogs came from, and we relate things to always being you know the wolf in our in our lounge room that’s going to really mislead what our current dogs the dogs that we live to day to day. Behave like feel like and what their emotions are all about.

So, what are dogs? Well, there’s a lamb a number of a large number of species that come under that label of Kennedy. And what the domestic dog is it we do know it evolved from the wolf, but in my opinion, other ancestors and there’s different theories depending on which book you read, of which wolf it actually evolved from. And what we do know is dogs became domesticated over 150,000 years. ago. So when people talk about dogs and wolves being the same, well, they’re really not the same at all.

Dogs were pets about 12,000 years ago. And this picture I really like because it’s from an aloha in Israel, and it’s a burial site where there’s the woman buried with that puppy under her arm. And it’s obvious if you’re gonna get buried with something, it’s obviously something very precious to us. So we considered as a human species dogs as being important in our lives. 12,000 years ago.

The domestic dog since that time has been selectively bred for various purposes. So you can see from that picture, there’s large dogs and small dogs. And what we’ve learned from them is different attributes were selected for now. There’s well over 400 dog breeds worldwide. And if you think about the crosses and the crosses and the crosses, there’s a lot of different breeds that are around, some of which are recognised by the dog breeding associations and some not.

But if we go back to the role of the first dog, it really varied, we really liked dogs hanging around us when we were nomadic. And then we started to set up routes, because dogs are our early warning system they bought to warn us that some danger was potentially coming. So think about this. We actually liked dogs that because they were our early warning system. They were also a garbage disposal system. Okay, so when we had waste, the dogs were there to clean up after us. Hmm. Think about what dogs might do in your kitchen at times. And we also had dogs for companionship and that’s really one of the major reasons I think most of us have a dog. We don’t necessarily want them to clean up the garbage for us. We certainly will. I certainly like my dog barking when someone comes to the door so I have my early warning system, but really my dog was there for companionship.

We’ve also been selectively breeding them for different reasons. So we wanted dogs that would go hunting with us. We want to dogs that herded, kept the sheep all rounded up or the cattle rounded up. And we certainly wanted dogs to guard our territories and I guess guard our ourselves as well at times. So we’ve actually accentuated the trays of certain dogs for various purposes.

domestication is a really interesting thing that’s happened with dogs, what we know with domestication

it involves it’s a process that involves one or more changes in in the morphology, which is the shape or the looks of the dog. It’s also involves changes in physiology and involves changes in behavioural traits and an example of what we have seen with domestication is that dogs not only do they not look like wolves, but they don’t behave like wolves. And when there was experiments done many many years ago looking at different species if they selected for their behaviour, I I’m going to select and this is an experiment down foxes, the foxes that are very, very friendly to humans. The foxes changed in their shape, size colour, they started to look more like Border Collies and instead of just coming into season once a year they came into season twice here which is exactly what we see with our present day domestic dogs.

And again, if you think about what a wolf looks like, well, maybe the dog on the left is as close as we’re gonna get to a wolf, maybe the shepherd, but you can see the others really in shape, size, colour variation don’t resemble their ancestors at all. And

move this along and if you look at these two, well, there’s not much wolf like about about the middle perhaps only you know they are trying to look fierce because of their cute treatments that they brought around their neck and around their ankles. So if you look at the domestic dog now, they come in all sorts of long hair, short hairs, different colours, different ear shapes, floppy ears, prick ears, and the behaviour of all of these dogs is very, very different from the wolf. They are breed differences, but mostly more dogs are bought more really like other dogs than they are like the wolf at all. So a couple of things to think about why dogs fit into our family so well. And what’s happened with domestication. There are some similarities in behaviour with the wolf, but really, I think there’s many many differences and remember as the species they actually separated 150,000 years ago, it’s a bit like, you know, our ancestors might have been what were Neanderthal man but you know, homosapiens are very different from the absolves or so I like to believe anyway.

So it’s very important that we don’t think of the wolf as the same species as dogs. Because over time over that domestication process, things have changed from what we what we used to see in the wolf and still seeing that wolf, but what we don’t see in dogs anymore

oh, the domestic dog.

Let’s talk about it. social behaviour. There’s two dogs having a little talk to each other dogs leaving groups and they’re usually related, but they don’t live in packs. In fact, interestingly now, the research has shown that wolves don’t actually live in packs either they live in family groups. So when anybody tells you that, you know, you have to be the leader of the pack. Probably they haven’t read any scientific literature that’s been written in the last 40 years or so. So dogs are very social. There’s no doubt about it. They like to live in a group. They don’t like to live by themselves, but we don’t think of them as pack animals per se.

Generally, this group of individuals that lives together, you see two to four individuals living in that group of dogs and the group is relatively stable, and they’re often related. Because it might be mom and the kids and when people talk about a hierarchy, the hierarchy in dogs, as it is in wolves, as it is in most social species is based on difference. It’s not about being alpha or dominant. We know there’s no such thing as a dominant dog per se, but really the alpha dog doesn’t exist either. But there’s always going to be a leader in any group. And this is when we talk about hierarchies. We’re talking about what may happen in a group of individuals and in any social group.

Somebody has to make decisions, you know in a family group, it might be that dad makes decisions about one thing mum makes decisions about another the kids make a decision about something else.

You know, in, in, in any sort of social group of any individuals, somebody has to make the decision making person and the same with dogs or wolves. Someone might know where the best food is some individual white know where the best resting places and what deference mean is we follow who knows best. So it’s not like I am going to lead this group. It’s, well actually you actually do know more about this so you can take the group for this particular task that we might need to be doing.

So

social behaviour now if we talk about reading behaviour, whether we’re talking about again, dogs or wolves, but in dogs is I guess we want to be my focus for tonight. It’s highly ritualised, it is in wolves as well, but it’s highly ritualised in dogs because that means there’s less chance of miscommunication.

They know what to expect from the ritual. There’s very complex visual signals that they give each other so they can tell. And if you look at the picture there you can see that those two dogs are communicating with each other.

It’s not necessarily going to be a friendly outcome. It really depends on what the dog on the left is going to do. And the dog on the left to me looks like I’m not really a threat, but the one on the right says I’m frightened. You can see it with the ears back. I’m very worried. And with that highly ritualised breathing behaviour and looking at their body language in general, we can certainly I guess what we’re talking about with ritualised reading behaviour is minimise any sign of conflict. So this is what we usually see with dogs. When they greet each other, they sniff front to back. And you’ve probably seen this lots of times when dogs breed each other. Some dogs find a very personal thing to do, but this is how they step out the other dog to work out, you know, or your friend, wherever you come from, what have you waited, and that’s a very ritualised behaviour if one dog doesn’t know the ritual, that’s where we run into problems.

Same thing sniffing it happens to even royalty. This is how dogs greet people. We as humans often don’t like that. This is actually what happens in dogs. Very important to check out where you’ve been and what kind of signals and smells you might be giving.

Lucky the queen is a animal lover.

So territorial behaviour, that’s certainly very important in dogs. You’ll see in a minute why it’s important in people as well but we see that in, in wolves as well as in dogs. There’s a lot of scent marking when dogs go out and they cook their legs. The male dogs and some female dogs also caught their legs so there’s nothing abnormal about that. What they’re trying to do is put the scent the pheromones up as high as they possibly can. And it’s to say, Hey, I’ve been here and I’m important, and I always joke that when I see dogs going out on on the street on a wall, they should be allowed to stiff and check things out. Because while we get on email, they should be getting on email. There’s very complex visual signals they give each other when they’re marking. This is my area. This is where I live. This is where it’s important for me to be. And again, we’ve got to look at their body language when they’re doing this because they are talking to each other. Usually they’re giving us signals to unfortunately as humans, we’re probably not as good at reading some of those bodies. Language signals as we should be.

So I guess when you look at this stuff, you’ve got a fair idea of what his body language is saying. I’m not comfortable with you. People often think this dog is being aggressive. Well, I don’t know is this dog being aggressive? He’s certainly saying I’d be more comfortable if you moved away.

And I don’t really want you to come and pet me, but he might be protecting his territory. He may be protecting, or he or she may be protecting a mate. It’s all about, you know, how I’m feeling emotionally at any particular time.

What’s happened with domestication than they were the similarities with dogs and Wolf behaviour. We’ve seen dogs increase the vocalisations then most of us who own dogs know that dogs have all sorts of different sounds they make for different things. You can tell when your dog’s barking because he’s alarmed. You can tell when your dog’s barking or making some sort of whining those noise when he’s excited. You can tell from the different vocalisations what he was doing but in in the more in the ancestral dogs and certainly in the dog in the wolf, then I don’t make as much noise remember, we wanted dogs as an early warning system, so we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a lot more vocalisations that we have with dogs. And what’s really interesting, a lot of studies now show that domestication isn’t a one way street. It was actually co domestication. We were domesticated along with the dog, and that’s why we evolved to live together so well. There have been changes in their body language. And that’s obvious because if you look at that dog, he’s got floppy ears, you know, and I’m just amazed that dogs are able to speak at least 400 languages. I certainly don’t. But dogs have to be able to read the difference between the prettier dog and the floppy ear dog. The dog with a tail that’s carry high at tail that’s carried low, long hair, short hair, I knew that body language of dogs is just fascinating, and yet most of the time, they get it right. And again, facial expressions are really important. And dogs have learned with domestication, that they’re certainly different facial expressions. And there’s been some really interesting studies looking at how dogs can move their eyebrows so that they actually relate more to the way we can move our eyebrows and have quizzical looks. And that’s something that the ancestral dog cannot do. And if you look at this dog, well, I’m not so sure that he’s going to be able to move his eyebrows quite as effectively as some other breeds. But this is what we’ve done through domestication is to change the body language and the facial expressions of these dogs quite dramatically.

So what similar in behaviour with dogs there and with people, well, our social behaviour, we live in groups usually related. We live in families, not packs, and that’s exactly how the wolf looms in family groups. And while dogs certainly live in family groups, we don’t think of them as living in packs. People generally live in groups of two to six individuals. Though our as our life as changes that is changing a bit as well. But usually in humans, that’s what we live in groups of two to six individuals. And the group is relatively stable. It doesn’t mean we always live with our families. If we’re kids, we tend to move out some of us get divorced, some of us not, but generally most groups are relatively stable. And we also have a fluid hierarchy based on differences no alpha, it’s all about we follow. You know who knows best though Dani is a specialist in dermatology. I would always defer to Dani and say, Hey Dr. Hoolahan, you’re gonna have to help me with this case because this dog is itching but you know, that’s not my specialty. But I’d like to think that if Dani had a dog that had problems with its emotional emotions, or its with its behaviour, that she might listen to me, but neither one was the alpha we just know that we have different areas of where our expertise may be needed. So if I go somewhere or not been before and I want a cup of coffee, I would always ask the local where the best coffee places because I have no idea. It doesn’t mean they’re being dominant or alpha, they just know better than I do.

Similarly, some behaviour with people, we have a highly ritualised greeting behaviour. And I found it quite interesting when I was thinking about this with COVID-19. Our ritual when we meet people is generally to shake hands. Now, obviously, that’s not advised at this stage. But that’s a ritual that we generally do when we meet people we don’t know we Hello, we shake their hands. We don’t generally rush up to people we don’t know and rub noses with them, but in some cultures that’s the highly ritualised behaviour and that highly ritualised handshake when we ever go back to doing it with people again.

What that tells us is we know what to expect if you put your hand out the other person if they want to say hello to you, we’ll put their hand out so it minimises conflict. There’s usually complex visual signals when we greet people, our facial expression and our body language tells people if we’re happy to talk to them or not whether we just need to keep moving on, and humans. Facial expressions are very, very complex. And that’s certainly the same as with our domestic dogs as well. And this is a really nice photo. I love this where the dog and the human shows you how co domestication has worked. They’re both using similar sort of expressions to communicate with each other.

When we talk about territorial behaviour Well, humans are pretty territorial. We mark our territories, perhaps not using the same ways that dogs and cats might do. But we generally put a fence around our garden we say this is my house. We put a door on the front and we put a door on the front of our house to say, Yep, this is inside the house that’s outside the house that we mark the territory if you’ve got kids, they often want to put this as my room do not enter.

Not before you enter, we do all that stuff too. And we use very complex visual signs.

Often signs on our house to say yep, this is my house. And again, there’s a lot of body language when we’re talking about our territorial behaviour. And we’ve all had the experience of meeting someone who stands a little bit too close to hopefully now we all know about the 1.5 metre rule but now that being relaxed, you remember people that they came in, stand too close to their getting into our personal space in our territory. That makes us feel uncomfortable, same as the domestic dog.

So if you understand that your dog and you have very many similarities in the way that you greet each other, the way that you market your cheese, you know you whatever you believe is yours then I think you’ll have a much happier relationship with your dog understanding that we’re very similar, but with domestication, physical appearance and behaviour have been modified and they are still being changed as time goes on. Most importantly, I want you to think about dogs as not wolves. There is different species I separated a long time ago. And as I said earlier, even though you know our ancestors may have been the end of Soul Man. It does not mean that hopefully we behave like that. Things have evolved things have moved on. And wolves are fabulous creatures but we should not think that dogs are the same.

The other thing that I think it’s really important to recognise about dog behaviour is dogs are social animals and I talked about that quickly before and they like to be part of a social group. But even more than that, they have a need to be with their social group. So they’re, they’re obligated in the fact that they have to be with others. They are not.

I guess we embrace it or design if that’s the right word for it, to be by themselves, so they have to be with their owners or parents as I had Dr. Hoolahan talking about. They can’t be just putting the backyard by themselves because that is not natural or normal for dogs they live with company, whether it be people or other animals. One of the things that we do find problems with dogs who are left alone by themselves. That is not natural. Or normal for dogs, so they need company and that’s really, really important to remember.

Dogs are very interactive and play contributes to their social bonding. They like playing with each other and if you have two dogs, you’ll know that if they get on and that’s the year, they will often play. Their play bouts don’t tend to last hours and hours and hours. All in one go. When adults play, they play a little bit then they stop they kind of regroup then you want to play some more. They can go on again. So there’s always that cause in dog behaviours. So when you’re playing with your dog, it’s important to take that pause to

and this is why if you want to bond with your puppy your new puppy or even a dog that you’ve got that’s older um you can use play behaviour for social bonding, because we want to be bonded with our pets. We want to be able to interact with them. But it should be fun and plays lots and lots of fun. Just a comment about cats. Cats don’t play for very long periods of time, you know and often people get frustrated because they used to taking their dog to the park and throwing the ball for it for an hour. A cat would probably not on average play more than five or six minutes at a time. So just remember there’s differences in species in their expectations. as well.

So let’s go on and talk a couple of bad a couple of other things. So why did they actually do the things they do? And for me, it’s really important that people understand the background of where the dog came from where it evolved because it makes it easy for us to understand why they might do certain things if they live with us.

So we’re going to take a short walk and then pause and we’re going to have a look at how dogs see the world. Dogs have the same senses as us. But different. Obviously, we talked about the sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and we’re going to go through each of these quite briefly but again to help you understand why your dog might be doing the things it’s doing.

So if we look at Canine sight, dogs of colour vision people often ask me Do they see in colour? Yep, they do. But they seem more like red green colorblind people do. So if you look at the colours the dog can see and what we can see can see there’s a vast difference.

Dogs are very sensitive to moving objects they’re predators. Often when I take my little dog for a walk there’d be a rabbit across the road. She won’t see it until the rabbit moves the wall then she is on to it.

They have thought or close up vision and I’ll show you a slide on that in a minute that will help you understand that bit better. And they have pulled by an ocular vision again, this is what they see with both eyes. But they have really good night vision and the reason they have good night vision is they can’t see colours as well. There’s things called rods and cones in the eye. And cones are the receptors in the eye that help precede colour and dogs don’t have that many of them as we do so therefore, they are able to see in dim light they cannot see in total darkness but they see in dim light better than we do. And if you look at the spectrum of colours that dogs see compared to us, it always amuses me that a lot of dog toys are red, and if you can see what red looks like to a dog it looks pretty much like green. And it always makes me kind of amused. Most of the dog toys are made for humans because they look attractive to us. But the average red ball on the average green grass, your dog may not actually be able to see it so when we sometimes think the dog can see it. Yeah, actually the dog can’t see it. I love this. This slide I’m sorry, it’s so old, but it’s the comparative vision of man and dogs. And if you look on the left, you can see a dog with a long nose maybe like a shepherd. The one in the middle. It’s got a short nose. That’s like a pug and the human is on the right. So the white area is what you can see with one eye so the dog on the left can see all that part. On the left that wide area with his left eye all that other part on the right with his right eye. The one in the middle again can’t see as far back behind as the dog with the long nose and people we can’t see behind the scene at all we have very small area that we see with our lineup right or left eye. The black area is actually what you see with both eyes. So we see most things in by not to you we can actually see most things quite clearly in front of this because we use both eyes to do that. The patient doesn’t have as much binocular vision but more than the Shepherd does on the long nose dog anyway on the left. But if you look in front of the nose of the dog on the left and the dog in the middle, you can see this kind of a whitish area there. Well that’s called a blind spot that dog can’t actually see anything in front of the nose and often when people drop a bit of food on the ground and the dog can’t see it, but I can’t see it because the nose gets in the way. So don’t think your dog is stupid because it can’t see something in front of it. It physically can’t do it.

Hearing Dogs hearing is thought to be at least four times more acute than that of humans. It means that they can hear ultrasound and infrasound there but is that can move around and you know if you’ve got a dog sometimes and I thought well it’s really cute when the dog is listening something to Ted on one side, Ted on the other side. Because what the dog is trying to do is work out where that sound is coming from. They hear higher frequency nurse and as I said the heat ultrasound. And so often when people report to me that the dog is reacting to something the dog is probably hearing something that we have no ability to, to hear whatsoever. So it’s really important to understand the world that your dog lives in very different from yours.

The canine sense of smell is really phenomenal. I mean I just can’t even imagine what it must be like to live in that world of scents and odours that the dog lives in. And this is its most predominant sense. It’s thought to be at least 1000 times more acute than that of humans. And they can detect very low concentrations and they have really good ways of telling which smell is which and which smell is is as bad something different.

And one of the things that really fascinates me about dogs, and I read a paper published on this and it’s stuck in my mind forever that if you leave your fingerprints on a pane of glass, your dog can tell it’s your fingerprints six weeks later. I don’t even know what a fingerprint smells like. So I just am fascinated that the dog can detect those smells at such low concentrations for such a long time. And the other thing that we’ve got to remember is the donors also have a central organ that we don’t it’s called a vomeronasal organ or an organ of Jacobsen it fits in the roof of the mouth, and that allows the dog to taste smells and it allows them to set pheromones and all sorts of things that we can’t do. And I just think the world that dogs live in must be one of the most fascinating things I can’t even get my brain around what their world must be like, but that’s obviously why we use them for customs dogs.

You know if you’ve ever travelled overseas to doing that again and you don’t have to go overseas. I went down to Tasmania and the customers dogs they were sniffing for fruit. And these folks can tell that you’re carrying through. They’ll let you bring visits in but we can’t have meat. You can’t have cheese, but there’s all sorts of other foods that they have been trained so specifically. And I just think that’s a phenomenal trait that we have and we’re lucky to have dogs that can help us when we are not equipped to do some of that stuff. And don’t be surprised if you leave your pizza on the counter that the dog might help itself. Remember I said at the beginning we want the dogs to be our garbage disposal system. I guess if you’ve left it there, it’s fair game for the dog. And so often we can get upset about dogs doing things that we really, you know, we probably should have learned not to leave the pizza there in the first place. But the bottom line is, this is what we wanted them to do. From the get goes.

Their sense of taste is really clearly relatively poorly developed compared to the other senses. They like sweet things, but they shouldn’t have chocolates as we all should go in to see if a dog is going to eat something it’s got to smell right. As probably makes a lot of sense when you think that the most important scent of all is the sense of smell. There’s got to feel right in its mouth. Then the taste comes like last. And if we think about that, it’s probably not that different to us. Always think about you know when there’s a friendship or when I can smell that Apple and it smells so good. And you bite into it and it’s all flowery and soft and horrible. It doesn’t feel right in the mouth. You always sometimes even don’t know what it tastes like because the texture is not what you expect. So it’s the same with dogs. It’s about the smell right? Then the textures got to be right then taste comes after that. There was a paper I read a while ago where somebody called those lazy ages. Basically they like soft foods but not chewy foods. So you know they can get the food down fast, even better.

They eat during the day usually that’s certainly what I was taught at university that’s not always what happens that not in real life. There are some dogs like my dogs, they like to have a midnight snack. So I leave food out for them and they will go in and help themselves somewhere between probably two and four in the morning. And but most dogs will eat mostly during the day. That normal for dogs is to eat at least three times a day. Sometimes we get indoctrinated with oh you see to dog once a day or twice a day. Puppies we feed more frequently but really it’s normal for the dogs to have three kind of meals a day doesn’t mean three meals that are full of calories the calorie content in a 24 hour period should be the same. But it is normal for dogs to have more than one meal a day.

Their sense of touches will develop and they certainly feel pain. There’s no doubt that they feel physical pain just like we feel physical pain.

I put this photo in just to remind me to tell you that not all dogs like being cuddled and it’s one of the the things that we often forget that dogs are introverts. They can be extroverts. But this little puppy is I think what I would call tolerating being in this little boy’s lap, but is he really enjoying it? I don’t know. And not all dogs like to be cuddled. If people think that all dogs like to be cut off. That’s if we’re not reading their body language. That is where we can come unstuck and we can end up getting bitten because just because we like paddling the dog might not nothing wrong with the dog. It’s just like some people, you know, a cuddly kind of people, other people are not. We have introverts and extroverts in our world. We have the same in the dog world. So always important to read the dog’s body language to say what you’re doing with the dog. Is that what your dog likes at this particular instant in time. And when we’re talking about body language, what we’re doing is looking at the position of the years we’re looking at the position of the tail, is it up or down? Is it wagging? Please don’t think a wagging tail means your dog is friendly. Not a wagging tail just means I’m willing to interact. But it doesn’t mean the interaction is necessarily going to be friendly.

The position of the head, the body posture, if it’s leaning forward, backwards facial expression and what the eyes are doing if the pupils are dilated, all those things continue with the the dog is feeling comfortable not in any particular situation. So this little dog, I can’t think of it but this still goes pretty comfortable on his desk chair. And and that’s what we want our dogs to be comfortable when we do things. Body language. Another thing I want to just help you with setting your dog up for success is most people look at that picture and go or have cute, doesn’t look guilty. No dogs don’t feel guilty. And mostly what we’re seeing here is what we call it appeasement gestures. The dogs saying oh, it looks like I might get into trouble. But really, it’s got nothing to do with what I’ve done. I’m just showing you my look this way. So hopefully you won’t reprimand me over the very old cartoon from pretty basic but it probably I guess illustrates what we’re talking to talking about. The owner has come out and said Fred, what have you been up to in the kitchen? Nothing says Fred. Have you been stealing something? You look like it’d been up to no good. I haven’t done a thing. Honestly, this Fred. Well, it’s that harsh tone of yours brings out the guilty looking me and there’s been lots and lots of studies now showing it’s the way we react to things that brings out that guilty dog. Which is that appeasement look I showed you before the dog has no concept of what it is that didn’t necessarily done wrong, but certainly it’s that Oh, somebody’s yelling at me now. It’s time to hide.

So that was a quick run through on on body language. But another thing that I think is important to remember is when we talk about behaviour, behaviour is determined by genetics, learning and the environment. So there’s three things that there aren’t separate scenarios people talk about nurture versus nature versus nurture. It’s not that simple. Genetics is very complex. It’s not just what you inherit from your mother, your father, your parents, your grandparents. In dogs, there’s been studies showing that the way that the dog’s mother the beach was treated during pregnancy will have an effect on the behaviour of the puppies. In other species. It’s been shown that the way the grandmother of that particular individual was treated during pregnancy has an effect on behaviour. Hormones when they’re in the womb, can also affect behaviour. So genetics and epigenetics are much more complex than who I’ve seen what the mum and dad look like. But it doesn’t necessarily mean what their behaviour is going to be like. Learning. It’s obvious we’re all going to learn things from our experiences with things you might you know, you’re more likely to do it again, if something bad happens, you’re less likely to do it again. So all the learning that we’ve had good, bad or indifferent is going to affect behaviour. And the particular environment you’re in is going to affect the behaviour as well. And if anybody’s had a dog with a thunderstorm phobia, you’ll know when the weather’s lovely the dog’s behaviour is very different from when thunderstorms happen. So, behaviour is very, very complex. A couple of things I want to just mention before we start to round off the lecture is when did most behavioural changes occur, and most people have heard of the socialisation period and why it’s really important to take puppies to puppy preschool kittens to getting candy. It’s because that socialisation period that happens between three weeks and four weeks. If this is the time where really it’s easiest for them to be socialised, which means learning to cope with other people in their environment, other animals in the environment. Also easiest to situate them to things get them used to traffic to, to vacuum cleaners and stuff and the socialisation period is when we do see a lot of behavioural changes.

Just to prepare you for the future when dogs start to sexually mature which is somewhere between six to 12 months a bit early and cats that’s when you see changes you know this is when they’re starting to go into their teenage years and just like human teenagers, we’re going to see some changes in that period with animals as well. And dogs. Social mature when I psychologically grow up, usually somewhere between 18 months to 36 months. So you might have a two year old dog that’s still acting like a teenager two and a half year old dog. It’s still acting like a teenager if you’ve ever lived with teenagers.

We’ve all been teenagers, that our behaviour is very different when you’re 17 You think you’re invincible to when you’re 27 and you realise that maybe life is a little bit different. So recognise that happens with dogs and cats as well. That we are going to see behavioural changes and that’s a time when you might need a bit of help more than just training you might need more help if there’s other emotional psychological disorders.

So, what’s okay People often ask them, you know, should dogs be allowed to sit on the furniture or sleep on the bed? Is it a problem if they do that? And who’s it a problem too? So let me tell you, I don’t think it makes any difference if the dogs on the furniture sleeps on the bed. It’s up to you what you prefer. My dog prefers to sleep in her own bed at night but she likes to come down usually about 730 in the morning and just hop into bed. With us for a little bit.

Spending a bit earlier now that the weather’s getting a bit colder, but really it’s up to you. There’s nothing about what’s right or wrong about that. It isn’t going to make them dominant and that’s what people used to think. Long time ago. They used to think that if you allowed the dog on the bed, you will have all sorts of problems. But realistically, it’s It’s your personal choice what you would prefer and once you set those sorts of boundaries of what you could expect from your dog or your cat for that matter, then stick to it. But all of those things about eating first going through the door first. That’s just really manners. It’s really got nothing to do with whether the dog was going to develop behaviour problems or not. So most of the things that I see that people have problems with their dogs if the dog pees or poops in places that the owner doesn’t like or the pet parent doesn’t like, obviously being aggressive, who wants to have an animal or a person in their life that’s aggressive, boisterous behaviour. You know, we see this a lot in puppies and there was a study done many years ago that showed that the dog that was both boisterous and bouncing around was more likely to be surrendered than the dog that was very quiet, but was just behaving as normal. We just need to work out how we’re going to teach that dog manners pulling on the lead people don’t like that Quiet quiet. I quite understandably, dogs that jump up, dogs that bark, dogs dig up the back yard. Issues with toilet training is a real problem. When when the dog doesn’t learn that and sometimes it’s the way we go about training them that can lead to issues and and and also we have problems with noises. Cats. Peeing pooping in unacceptable places is the top reason why people get rid of their cat’s aggressive behaviour, scratching furniture, play behaviour. Again, I touched on it earlier that cats sort of play very intensely, and then stop but if the cat doesn’t know the difference between play and primitive behaviour, because they haven’t had the opportunity to learn that that can be a real problem as well.

vocalisation you know, we have lots of complaints about dos that bad but we certainly have complaints about cats that make a lot of noises as well and fearful behaviour that is problematic. So, if any of your pets show any of these problems, and first step see your vet to rule out any medical issues because physical issues will certainly affect all those behaviours. Your vet will need to do a clinical examination they may also need to do some blood tests and other tests. And if they’ve ruled out that everything there physically is fine, then you might need to see a trainer or you might need to see a hopefully a trainer that only uses positive reinforcement, where you might need to see a bit with qualifications in behaviour to help you but just a couple of things about pulling on the lead. This is a very common problem. Don’t do learn to poor but they can learn not to fall but not in five minutes and ideally you teach the dog how you want them to walk on a loose leash. And I think dogs should feel when they take when you take them for a walk. I think dogs should be able to sniff you know, get on the female find out what’s happening in the world.

If there shouldn’t be pulling you from one end to the other. I think it’s really important that if you have a dog that falls don’t put it on a collar like that poor dog on the right front attaching harnesses a break for dogs, those extender leads.

Studies just come out showing that they can cause real problems for dogs you know the ones we like tripping on tip because that can cause physical harm in dogs. So again, just a normal lead that same length front attaching harness most dogs manage really nicely like that. Jumping up. Don’t ignore the behaviour you want. People often tell you to ignore the dog that’s jumping up. Their dog needs to know what you want. Ignoring does not make a behaviour go away because it’s going to be frustrating to the dog and you haven’t actually taught the dog what to expect it it’s always better to teach a different behaviour my dog knows for on the floor. And I teach taught that to my dog when she was calm when she’s all excited. That’s not the time she’s going to learn that. So when the dog is calm, she learns to sit for on the floor and then she can have all the interaction that she wants. And remember if the dog is sitting, it really just can’t jump.

Very important. This applies not only to jumping up but through everything always reward calm behaviour. I think we get so focused on always wanting the dog to sit or stay or do something. In fact when the dog is lying around in front of the heater like my friends dogs he stalks are having a great time this is when we should return what good dogs they are you doing exactly what I want you to do being nice and calm and relaxed and rewarding that rather than paying attention to them all the time when they’re doing the things that frustrate us. Barking fairly common problem but remember, we break dogs to back in our early warning system. I love my dogs when they bark when like someone comes to the house. I also like them to Okay, that’s enough. Now you’ve told me now you need to be quiet. So remember barking is a normal behaviour. It’s a form of communication therefore it can’t be stopped entirely. And in fact, it’s probably detrimental to try and stop the behaviour because not only is it normal and natural, this is what we want the dog to do. The dog just needs to have a stop signal when it knows. Yep, that’s enough now.

Some dogs map more than others. There’s certainly some breeds were bred to back because we wanted them to do that. But remember, it’s a form of communication. So it’s really important we respect that the dog is actually telling us something. So some of the reasons why we see the dogs barking is excitement. My dog certainly Swix as I call it when I come home which is reading me as a warning when someone comes to the door when dogs are scared. People used to talk about attention seeking behaviour. Dog standard attention seeker is looking for information and if you’re not giving them the information that they need. They might vocalise when they’re highly aroused, and certainly dogs in pain will make some noise. So, you know, it’s not just a simple thing. Oh, my dogs barking there’s a lot of reasons why that might happen.

Dogs I think need to be trained to remain home alone. That’s really important. That their dogs, although they’re obligate social creatures does not mean that they don’t have to learn that some time alone may well be necessary, because we all have to go out somewhere whether it’s to work or the shops, or just for an appointment. And when they’re going to be home alone. They need to learn to be home alone quietly. It’s absolutely fine. And it’s easiest to start with a puppy.

So all dogs need sufficient mental as well as physical stimulation. That’s really, really important.

So walks are a good way to do this, but they’re not the only way to do it. Not all dogs like walks and that’s important to remember some dogs find the big world out there is a little bit scary. But toys, interactive games, agility, things like notice work, fabulous things for dogs to have to help them be mentally as well as physically stimulated. So just some key points to finish up with. I think it’s really important to teach good manners. You know, if you want to go and do obedience training, that’s fine, but it’s a competition a sport. I just think dogs need good manners. And if we think about good manners for people, we say hello and goodbye. We say please and thank you. And if we have those attributes, people think that we’re well mannered people. For dogs. I think if your dog can come, sit, drop, stay and become on cue when you ask them. That’s really good manners for dogs. There’s not much else that we really need to do because that is exactly what we want most well mannered dogs to be training. If you’re going to work with training with your dog. The basic principles is reward is more effective than punishment.

Punishment really has no role in training whatsoever. And studies have shown that some forms of training that include punishment can actually increase the chances of some dogs becoming more aggressive by 25%. And there’s really no reason for that. So lots of rewards, lots of praise, and lots of patients, especially with young dogs, they, you know, we all need people to be patient with us when we’re learning something new saying the dogs to break it into small easy steps. Be really consistent when you work with your dog. Same applies to cats for that matter, never punishment. And always make it fun working with your dog or your cat good you can train cats as well. Should be lots of fun. With young animals, Puppy classes and kitten classes are really good ways to learn some techniques on how to teach a dog some manners, how to handle them. And if we go to puppy classes and kitten classes and we use lots of rewards, we have better behaved dogs and better behaved pets. So with that, I’m going to say thank you for your attention. And if there’s any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

Thank you so much doctor thankful for the webinar. So we do have a few questions that have come through. So the first question is, the attendee has adopted a new kitten and an adult doll from their local shelter. And they’re wondering what the best way to introduce them to each other is.

So it’s a new kitten and a little dog. Wow, that’s taking a lot on Monday. Oh, it’s fabulous that you adopted them from the shelter. But the answer is slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. I’d give them all what I call both of them their core territory where they know it’s theirs. Eat sleep, rest, and where they can play cats. It’s really important that they have somewhere up high to get away from they need an escape route. You’ve got an adult dog, you may not know if it’s ever had good interactions with cats if they have they can live together quite nicely in harmony, but I always think cats didn’t escape route and because cats can jump higher and they actually like being up high. That’s what I’d always make sure, but slowly, lots of rewards, have the dog on leash, give them both traits and so that the association they have with each other is Wow, aren’t you wonderful, great to have you part of my life.

Right and then the next person that’s perfect because then the next question is, is there a good resource for toilet training the attendee leaves in a small apartment and they can’t always take their dog outside straightaway to grow the toilet.

Lots of ways you can do that and there are lots of good resources.

Some shelter websites have that have the mayor with apartment trading with apartments and toilet training dogs. I really like dogs to learn how to ring a bell to say I need to vote. I run the bill can I go out in the balcony or can you take me out so that they actually give you some signal about the fact that they need and that can be done using rewards. Sometimes using puppy pads and pee pads can be useful if you get caught short because sometimes your puppy is going to need to go and you’re not going to be there. Or you can’t stop everything to you know, run the bill and you need to go at that point. So having an area that the dog knows the pup knows this is where I can go if need be, and I’m going to get rewarded for there. So one of the things just to be knowledgeable about I suppose is dogs develop what we call a substrate preference when they’re young, which means they learn to eliminate on certain surfaces. So if your pup as only ever laminated on concrete, it can be really hard to convince them that grass is where you need to take them. So this is why always having treats, treats treats treats that whenever they pee or poop where you want them to do it. You give them treats, not too much. Juicy praise. I think sometimes with young animals they can get easily distracted and

the dog can be distracted so it’s better to wait till they finish time. They’re a good kid give him some praise for doing that. But that’s what I was mentioning that if they get used to puppy pads, then sometimes they may not go on bras if that’s where you want them to go. So that’s why I like to take them out so they get used to being on different surfaces with the puppy pad or the pee pad can be a good place to be fall back on if you can’t be there all the time. But again, a lot of behaviour websites will have good resources on toilet training. I know that ebic The Australian vet new behaviour. Interest Group has that but I certainly know that the American accept group has that there’s lots of different places, but make sure they focus on positive reinforcement, rewarding the training and that’s you know, its patients. The other thing I might quickly mention there is not all dogs have full bladder control. By the time they’re 12 or 16 weeks of age there are some dogs and it’s quite normal that they may not have full speak to control of their bladder until almost six months of age. It’s not common most dogs are able to be toilet trained early in that but some of them you know, it’s like potty training kids, I guess some learn it faster than others. And we just need to be cognizant of that. But always reward the right thing. Never ever, ever punished if they get it wrong. Because remember, elimination is self rewarding. Every time you go to the bathroom, you feel better. You know it’s just emotional responsible relief. And it happens with the animals too. So that’s why you always want to reward them, never punish and certainly don’t rub their nose into

karate Those were great tip and now we have a question about a nervous little dog. So this dog is not a fan of going on walks. The dogs become very anxious when they’re on walks and the attendee has tried giving them treats but the dog becomes so nervous on the walk that they won’t accept the tree and any tips for making walks a more pleasant experience.

Okay, I don’t think dogs need to go for walks. I’ve said it. I’ve said it 1000s of times. Dogs need physical and mental stimulation but some dogs are really fearful and nervous and anxious on walks and they literally don’t enjoy it and the best thing is don’t take him for a walk. I used to think that was sacrilege because I was brought up in Australia and we’ve always been told you know, if you don’t take your dog for at least 20 minutes twice a day. You’re a bad dog owner. But I lived in upstate New York for a while and I can tell you it was minus 16 We’ve been chill Snow was up to the eaves of the house. Nobody walked their dog didn’t mean the dogs didn’t get physically and mentally stimulated and exercise. Walking wasn’t the way to do with it. So don’t feel bad about not taking your dog for a walk because sometimes you’ll just see the relief in the dog’s faces and too worried about that there’s too much traffic there’s too many other things. You know I’m scared of heights. I feel so much relief not having to go BASE jumping or abseiling. making me do those things is not going to make my fear any better. And treats if your dog won’t take tricks. It tells you that your dog is too scared and too nervous and the easiest thing is just don’t do it. The dog doesn’t it doesn’t need to go out for a walk. And that’s kind of a fallacy that we’ve where I just see a lot of dogs really, really struggle and a lot of owners are really really guilty and you know, it’s okay for the dog to say no, I don’t want to do that. But it doesn’t let you’re off the hook of giving that dog physical and mental stimulation. You can play games you can do all sorts of you know, Hide and Seek games. You can get the dog to chase balls and all sorts of things. And it doesn’t have to be in that big scary outside world out. There.

1:00:18

Hope that helps you make feel better.

That’s great advice, Kersti. Yeah, now we have another question. We’ve got a young puppy these pups only 12 weeks old, and our attendee would like to know if that’s too early to start training.

To start training.

But when I hit training, that’s right. Yeah, absolutely not. I mean, I would start training the puppy. If I was breeding dogs, I would start training them to do basic things. In fact, they know how to do most of the things we just haven’t, you know, words to them, like sit and stare they can do that as soon as their eyes and ears open, but no 12 weeks. It’s absolutely not too young, eight weeks. It’s not too young. In fact, it’s never too young to start teaching manners and that’s what it’s all about. So, no 12 weeks is a good time to go to puppy school. Good time to learn things that don’t want to make them too complex. I mean, it’s like you know, if you have a five year old child, probably not going to teach them Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Well, maybe for some five year olds, five year olds I know don’t get to do that. But basic manners. Absolutely. For the 12 weeks of age, go for it. Have fun, lots of treats. Oh, you’ll enjoy it. It’ll be fabulous.

Okay, and then our final question, but this evening, we’ve got another attendee who has a young puppy who likes to bite and bark when they get excited, and they’re wondering how they prevent that from becoming a habit.

Yeah, that’s a very, very common problem within puppies and this is why I like to be calm. I think you know, we’re so focused on coming and sitting and dropping if you actually work on teaching calm and rewarding, nice calm behaviour. That’s that’s really important thing to teach. And most good puppy schools now teach that as their number one thing to teach the dog would go to your mat, nice and calm. And then you don’t have that escalation into nipping, biting, jumping. And the problem is when you got a young puppy they got really sharp little teeth, but their doors aren’t very strong. When they get bigger, they got sharp teeth, its doors are stronger. So I like to, if you’ve got a dog who’s really mouthy, make sure there’s lots of chew toys around for the dog to chew on. Remember, as young puppies, they’re actually exploring their environment with their mouth. If you have had young kids, you know, everything goes into their mouth, they’re exploring with their mouth and dogs are the same. Then they go through that teething period. They need stuff to chew on. So always make sure there’s toys that are suitable that are not distractible that they can chew on, sometimes swapping them when you see that puppy coming up with it getting really excited. Take a few steps Great. Here’s your toy, go and play with your toys so you can actually use that excitable behaviour but get them to divert on to a toy teaching them some manners you know apart from Tom sick here’s a trick have the toys that have you cheat tend to toy. One of the things I think that’s really hard when you’ve got a very excitable puppy it’s very hard not to get excited yourself. And you know when they do that, the best thing is to stay very calm. I really like to whisper to dogs because I think that really calms them down. And as I said, teaching calm top of the list that I would teach any puppy that they go to their mat. They can be Craig trained somewhere that they can be calm and quiet, and then have some excitable time when you’ve got a toy that you can play with them.

Good luck.

Thanks so much, Dr. Kersti. So thank you all once again for all of those questions. Good evening, everyone.

About the webinar

Recorded: 17 June 2020

Many people have acquired new pets while they have been at home during COVID-19. These pets, as well as those that have been part of our lives for much longer, have provided us with much comfort and companionship during these difficult and unprecedented times. However, as the restrictions are lifted and we are able to go back to ‘the new normal’ (whatever that may be), we need to help our new pets transition too. This webinar will discuss how you can help your new pet during these times.

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Dr Kersti Seksel

Dr Kersti Seksel is a Veterinary Specialist in Behavioural Medicine in the Australian, American and European Colleges and Adjunct Associate Professor at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga NSW. She is a Fear Free Certified Professional.

She is fascinated by animals and why they do what they do. She is passionate about helping people understand animals better so she can improve the lives of people and their pets.

Kersti pioneered Puppy Preschool® and Kitten Kindy® classes, teaches the distance education course in Behavioural Medicine for CVE (University of Sydney). She presents at conferences nationally and internationally, runs webinars, writes text book chapters, has written a book Training Your Cat, is a regular presenter on radio and TV and is a consultant on Veterinary Information Network (VIN).