Case Study 001 - Oreo and Tommy

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things.

Yeah.

Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck have I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I'd go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, but of course Max O'Neill, Down Under Dog Trainer. And we're going to do something really exciting moving forward. Max obviously is a dog trainer every single day of his life and has been for many years, works with clients and dogs all the time. And he's going to bring us some case studies from time to time on situations that he's been dealing with, how he's working through the issues with the owners and the dogs. And potentially, obviously, if you're dealing with similar issues, it may be very helpful to you to hear how Max is handling certain situations. So you can either, you know, try and utilise them yourself, or if you've got a dog trainer, maybe say, hey, I heard this is how, you know, this trainer's working on it. Can we maybe look at this? Yeah, I just think it's great to get some real-world insights into what people are dealing with and how you deal with those situations.

Yeah, so hopefully you guys from listening to these can, you know, learn a bit and then You know, sometimes it might be 100% of what we're saying speaks to you guys. You go, oh, that's my dog, I'm gonna try it. Or maybe 10% of it does, or you might know someone who you think it's relevant for, or you might just be a bit of a dog nerd like us and just froth out and listening. I know I enjoy episodes like this from other trainers, so we thought we'd start doing them too. And, um, yeah, pump out some little episodes for you guys to hopefully get some value from. So we're gonna do a case study today on a client I actually had only a couple of hours ago, shortly before this episode was recorded. And it's for 2 dogs, Oreo, a 13-year-old cocker spaniel, and Tommy, a 12-year-old beagle.

Wow. So 2 older dogs, which is— is that unusual? Do you do a lot of older dogs?

We do some senior dogs for sure. Not heaps, but they certainly do pop up in it. And I guess the age is definitely relevant here. It affects the case, which is a pretty interesting one. So the owner reached out. They were having a few issues. So Oreo, the cocker spaniel, was showing some aggression towards Tommy. It started off over the last 12 months, you know, with some growling, snarling, but had You know, occurred in a couple of fights or aggression from Oreo towards Tommy.

What breed?

Sorry. Cocker Spaniel was Oreo.

Yeah.

And then Beagle was Tommy.

Okay. Not dogs you would associate really much with much aggression.

Cockers.

Yeah.

Cocker Spaniels?

Oh, God.

Yeah. Oh, really?

Big time.

Yeah.

When people call me up for a cocker, I go, it's doing some sort of resource guarding.

Cocker Spaniels, really?

Oh, my God.

Because they're obviously a hunting breed.

Yeah. Or gun dog. But yeah, just one of those breeds that just, they're always a bit scatty.

Really?

They've always got something a little bit funny there, um, some sort of neurological thing or OCD or just not able to settle, like hyperthyroid stuff, uh, or— but resource guarding almost always. Yeah, people think you're psychic. They'll call, I've got this cocker spaniel, is it resource guarding? They go, how'd you know?

It's just what they do.

Yeah, it's what they do.

Yeah, right.

Um, so the 3 main ways this was presenting was number one, around mealtime, the moment the owner started preparing the meals. She'd be inside the kitchen, the dogs would be outside on the veranda. Oreo would be growling and growling and carrying on. And then anytime Tommy would get too near, she'd lash out. And if Tommy got close enough, you know, and Tommy's a little old lady, you know, she's not pushing the envelope. She's just wandering around. I think she's deaf. Oreo would just nail her and just, you know, and latch onto her neck. The second one that was happening was Oh yeah, around sharing the kennel. So they used to sleep together side by side for 10, 12 plus years. No worries. Oreo just decided, hey, I'm done with this. And it was like, was not letting Tommy in there when he was growling a lot and Tommy was having to sleep somewhere else. And then number 3 was resource guarding of a couch. So if a lot of the time Oreo and Tommy would cuddle up on the couch, no problem at all. But there were times when if Oreo was up there first, she'd growl and not let Tommy up and would resource guard the couch.

So it sounds like Oreo is really turning into a prick.

Yeah. And that's, and that's exactly, and that was exactly it. So one of the first things I had to explain to the owner was like, the way I look at it is there's 4 main stages to our dog's life. There's their puppyhood, their adolescence, that nice plateau of adulthood, and then their senior years. And we can see pretty significant behaviour change from one stage to the next. And generally we have this nice 10-year period of a dog reaches adulthood round about 2 or 3, they start to finally settle down, as people say. We've got a nice even temperament for quite a while, and then we can see some pretty drastic changes again as our dogs reach their senior years. For some dogs, their senior years are at 6 to 8 if you've got a, you know, Great Dane and a Mastiff. For some dogs, it's not till they're 13, 14, 15 if you've got one of these crazy long-living breeds like a Jack Russell. Most breeds, it's sort of in between. But, you know, when your dog reaches old age, you start seeing changes.

They slow down.

Yeah.

And some of the things we see, it can be lack of comprehension. So things that they previously understood, they maybe not are doing as well. So like, comprehension and reasoning can dip. So too can impulse control dip again. But also their irritability can increase, their tolerance can decrease, and they can just turn a bit cranky.

Hmm.

As well as that, there's also some instinctual things with dogs. There's, again, some people agree with this, don't disagree with this. I'm, I'm sort of in the middle somewhere. But there are like, you know, observable behaviours and instincts in our dogs where some dogs in the wild will eliminate older dogs. They'll go, hey, you're consuming resources. I don't want to share with you. You're not a member of this group. We're not able to reproduce and we'll either bully a dog out or wipe them out. And I'll see that sometimes. We will see dogs who have coexisted for years. You'll see people who say, hey, like my 4-year-old German Shepherd has just started attacking the shit out of our 13-year-old Labrador. They've been best friends for years. And just as this dog's gotten older, the dog's now really starting to do that because in nature, weakness attracts violence. It's just a principle.

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

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Ba da ba ba ba. Um, but you can also see it the other way around is they go, hey, our dogs have gotten on for years, and now as our older dog's gotten more old, they've started becoming really aggressive to the other dog, which is what was happening here. So we had a few kind of things. We had number one, the food one, and that again, just like some, some resource guarding, some like, hey, starting to feel really like I don't want you around my food. And these were dogs who for 10+ years ate side by side. Your bowl's here, your bowl's a metre away, no issues at all. And now she was showing a lot of stuff. So with any issue, we've got the option of training this or managing it out. And with a few of these issues, we had different approaches. For this one, we said, no, no, we can We can train this out. When I got to the owner's house and she talked about what happened, we had a look at it. The dog wasn't doing it particularly that day, but the owner was really knowledgeable and described it well. So we're able to really accurately put in place a plan. And this is one that we simply use both positive and negative punishment to show, hey, this behaviour is going to be counterproductive. The dog was ultimately growling because they go, well, I want to do this to get more of my resource. If I growl and keep Tommy away, Tommy's not going to take my food. She'd have no reason to think Tommy's going to take her food, but again, getting to that old age and feeling a bit vulnerable and weak, she started to be a bit more resource guardy of it. And then just the way our dogs think, because she sat there and growled and Mum had continued to chop up the food, put it in the bowl, open the door, bring it outside— because Mum had continued to go through the process and the motions, at some stage along the way the dog had likely thought, hey, my growling is a part of this. Every time we move from one step forward and we show our dog progression, progression is reinforcing to our dog. So she goes, hey, I growled, mum still served me the food, maybe my growling is all a part of this too. So all we did in that instance, we put a slip lead on the cocker, attached a long lead to it so we could stand in the kitchen, have the dog on the balcony. And anytime she starts to show that hostility now You know, we're going to put them each in place as well. So you're on your place, you're on your place. Anytime that happens, we've got our leash to correct the behaviour. So we mark it, correct it, and then the whole process stops. So this behaviour not only gets positively punished through a physical correction, but also gets negatively punished through, hey, like, you think this is going to bring you more food? It's not.

That's actually going to stop it.

So we show our dog, hey, like, my hands are down. I'm standing here in front of you. This is not happening anymore. We want her to see, hey, normally my food's been served up by now. It's taking a lot longer. Mum isn't moving. I've not got any progression from this. So then we go back inside, start doing again. We get to the next step, it's all good. Next step, but she starts to show it again. No correction. Process stops or process goes back to the beginning. We're showing her that this will ultimately give her less and it will go completely punished. And we're doing it that way because Like, you know, Tommy was not really trying to get— was not at all trying to get any food. She was keeping her space, keeping her distance. But this dog had just started to really do this pretty strongly and was probably enjoying the behaviour to a degree too. Again, cockers can be— love them, but they can be little assholes. Like, they can, you know, be pretty hostile at times. So there's an element of it where it's probably somewhat self-reinforcing and she's enjoying it.

So addressing the resource guarding of the couch as well, or is that— do you think it's all part of it?

Yeah, so the couch was the same thing. So what happened with the couch was Um, you know, she said what we did is before. Problem is the owners then went to shoo her off the couch, and then she showed aggression to the owners, like, hey, if you move me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fuck you up.

Yeah, right.

The dog realised that, hang on, if I show hostility or aggression towards dogs and people, I get this couch all to myself. Oh, how good's this? So now she wears a house lead so that when she does it, we can correct her properly for it. So we go, hey, if you do that towards Tommy, you'll get a physical correction, positive punishment. You're going to lose access to the couch, negative punishment. And we've actually got a tool now to make that possible where we can grab that lead with keeping distance so we don't have to stick hands near our face and risk getting bit. And yeah, we did that today and that worked well. And I've done that with plenty of dogs and it, yeah, that works really well. So those are the 2 issues we decided to train. The last one with the kennel was one I actually, we decided was more of a management thing. I said, hey, look, your dog's old. They're probably a bit stiff. They're probably a bit sore. They kind of just want their space.

Mm-hmm.

We're not going to convince her to enjoy sleeping with Tommy overnight, both because the— like, how are you going to do that? Hey, can you, can you love sharing your bed again? Probably not. But also too, it's like they sleep in there overnight. What are you going to sit up all night and reward her for letting Tommy in there? Like, tell her off when she growls overnight? That's just not happening.

So pick your battles.

Get, get, get them a kennel each and just go, hey, like, they're at that point now where they probably just don't want to share their thing anymore. And that's, that's cool. Lots of couples move to separate bedrooms in their old age. Like, It's one of the things where I said, you do have to be just a bit accommodating your dog's needs. Like, we can't and won't work on and train out everything. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge, like, dogs aren't just these potatoes. Potatoes are these sentient beings with their own, you know, complex little needs and wants. And it's okay to accommodate for that. That's totally fine. I know when we had Turtle, our greyhound, um, you know, there was a point in time where her and Nelson loved sharing a bed. And then there was a point in time where she got a bit older, a bit sore. I could see she wasn't enjoying it. She never showed that, like, hostility towards Nelson, but I could just see that when he came and laid down on the bed, you just see her just go like, oh yeah. And you see her like start to try and get up and go, I don't want to share. And we go, no, no, like, it's all good. You have your bed, you have your bed. We're just not sharing anymore. And we prevented any issue. Any, any issue went away. And we use the same approach for these dogs.

Fascinating. Well, I mean, hopefully if you're dealing with a similar situation, maybe that's given you some food for thought. I mean, because that's that same process. And this obviously can be applied to younger dogs, not just older dogs who are suddenly not getting along.

Yeah, exactly right.

Similar situation. Yep. Any questions, as always, make sure you jump on the Facebook group, search Dog People Podcast, and we'll get them answered for you. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

You're either all in on this model, or maybe you're building with another. You're either speed, or is it security? You're either custom, or are you ready to use? Or you're AWS AI. With hundreds of models, ready-to-use agents, speed and security built in, You don't have to pick a side. You can have them all. How will AI revolutionize your business? AWS AI is how.

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