Fixing the Why, Not Just the What

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. 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 I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck? 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 go, had you met one before?

They go, no. 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, just a dog training enthusiast. But of course, as always, we are joined by the expert who is Max O'Neill from the Down Under Dog Trainer. Max, we recently chatted about your dog Nelson. He had a regression where he destroyed a A sort of cushion. And there was a sort of brief discussion as to the why.

Yeah.

And you wanted to sort of broaden into that whole subject of the why.

So when I see an unwanted behavior in a dog, whether that's reactivity, destroying something, inappropriate toileting, whatever that may be—

He's only saying that because my dog Kira just peed on his dog's bed.

Both of our dogs this week, man.

Cheeky rib punch there from Max. But I was saying why, but I said to you, and I hate being that person, but Because you always hear this, but I was like, she has literally never done that before. She's never peed on another dog's bed or even her own bed or any beds.

The worst times.

And I'm going, why? Why did you just do that? I don't understand why you're doing that.

Yeah.

Nelson only ever pissed on like one person's leg and it was maybe like 6 months, 12 months ago or something like that. And we went round to these like friends' place we'd met, like they're really good friends of ours. First time we'd met their parents, we're like, hey, can we bring our dog? Because I'm coming back from this thing. And they're like, yeah, I'm sure he's really well behaved. You're a dog trainer, right? I'm like, yeah. And he walked straight in, he's like, what's up? I just pissed on this man's leg who owned the house.

I'm sorry, he's never done that before.

I was like, I swear to God, and hasn't done it since. And that's kind of what brings us to today is sometimes we can really dive deep into these behaviours and look at the why, and sometimes it's important to, and that's what we want to chat about today. So one of the questions I, or, you know, ask a lot of questions when I see a behaviour, what is the dog doing? When is it doing it? How is it doing it? And most importantly, why? And it's so important to understand the why behind a behaviour, because if you don't, and if you don't address that, quite often you can get into this little loop of just doing what we call like whack-a-mole. You've got the reason why, or the psychology, or the driving force behind a particular behaviour, but if you don't address that why, the behaviour that you squash will just rear its ugly head somewhere else. For example, if your dog's digging holes, the reason why might be that they're bored, they're, you know, Separation anxious, they've got too much energy, they're trying to escape, and there's all these reasons why they're doing the behaviour. Now you can pretty quickly and pretty easily train them out of digging, be like, hey, don't do that behaviour, and they'll be like, sure, but this doesn't address my need of wanting to escape.

And they'll just take it to something else.

Exactly, take it to something else. If they want to escape, the digging could turn into trying to climb the fence. If they're anxious, digging could turn into chewing. If they're bored and restless, digging You know, could turn into, I don't know, let me try and do something else. So in those situations, and in a lot of situations, it's really, really important to look at that why, 'cause quite often once you address it, if you can go, all right, the underlying cause of this issue is separation anxious or restlessness, frustration, et cetera. If we can change that whole thing in the dog's mind and change the way they feel, therefore we're gonna drop that behaviour altogether. And that's the way I like to approach it most of the time.

So, so anyone who's listening to this and they do have an issue that their dog is doing something, whatever that might be, and they're going, okay, right. So why is my dog doing that? Is there a way in which they can start eliminating or start trying to get to that why?

Yeah, absolutely. You can like, and that's where, again, I'll always encourage clients. I'm like, look, sometimes it is really helpful to, you know, to humanize our dogs, to try and get in their mind and try and understand them and try and think of if your dog could explain You know, or talk to you, what would their explanation be for this behavior? And quite often it's pretty simple to figure out. Like, quite often the dots draw up and the why is pretty easy to figure out. You don't always need to be an expert to troubleshoot and process that. You can go, oh, it's probably because of this. And you can just start a process of elimination. You go, all right, well, like, again, let's use digging example. There's a few possible reasons why it's doing it. So if I had a client call me up and, uh, you know, say they've got a problem with digging, for example. I get in my head straight away. I'm like, it could be this, this, or this. And then from there, like, again, you don't necessarily need to be expert to pick that apart. You could then start to look at it. All right, well, let's, let's troubleshoot. So I might go, all right, it could be that your dog is wanting to get out more. So the first remedy, I'll go, all right, why don't you try getting your dog out once or twice a day and see if that fixes it? That might fix it. That might not. So we go, okay, that's not the reason why. The next one might be, okay, the dog's not getting enough stimulation when you do leave it. All right, let's try that. That might fix it, might not. And then finally might go, all right, maybe this is a separation thing. We address that and boom, the behaviour's gone. So sometimes it is just trial and error, um, just sifting through it until you find that reason why. And, uh, one really important little thing to understand, which might be its own episode, is there's a little sequence driving pretty much all behaviour, is thoughts lead to feelings and feelings or emotions lead to behaviour. So if you can change the way your dog thinks, you therefore change the way they then feel about a situation. you then change the way they behave in a certain situation. And that's really important to tackle for most behaviour problems.

And as you said, 'cause obviously going back to your situation with Nelson, obviously you were saying like, we're trying to rack our brains 'cause he's getting everything he needs. And then you finally got to the point where you're just like, maybe he's actually getting overstimulated. So maybe I need to actually dial it back. So even if you're going, hold on a second, I'm giving my dog everything. They get this, they get that, they get this. Maybe you can look at it and go, maybe I'm overdoing it and maybe they're too amped up and they're trying to release that.

100%.

You're not sleeping enough or something like that.

Exactly. And like we said with the cushion, and if you listen to that last episode, we went through and like, what are the potential reasons why? Because at the time we didn't know. We now know. And Jack's exactly right. It was actually overstimulation. It was— what was funny is what racked my brain on those days, like, hang on, the 2 days that he's done this, because he ended up doing it twice, is he's had like the best day ever. He's had the most textbook day. And we've done this, this, this, this, and this. And what we've actually discovered is since he's turned 2, all his drives have increased. His defensive drive, his like territoriality, his ball drive, play drive, like everything's just gone up another level, which is awesome. Like he's working now really, really nicely, really happy the way he's maturing. But it also meant that like in his head he's like, whoa, I'm kind of riding this wave here, I don't know what to do with. So after we've gone and done this really intense ball session, that was a lesson for me of, okay, I now need to really be strict on his deregulation exercises, you know, like parking him, getting him to do some things like some chewing on a Kong and just decompressing, because I kind of like got him all worked up and thought, well, normally he's really good at de-escalating himself with what we currently do, but now I know, well, that was the problem. I put him back in the yard and he's like, I've still got this energy, I can't switch off, what do I do? So like I said, in that situation could have been a whole bunch of different whys, and in this, in this instance, that was the reason why. And since we've addressed that on our sessions now, we intentionally will spend an extra 5 minutes de-escalating him and Now he sleeps like a baby.

Because I remember I had, I had that similar issue with, with Kira where I was giving her everything. And then I remember one specific thing where I would, we would do all the training, all that sort of stuff and lots of great times, spend time with her. Then I come home, she's out in the yard. And when I should have probably been parking her, giving her a Kong or something just to de-escalate, she was destroying the— we had a trampoline for the kids and the netting around it. She was just ripping it to shreds. And I remember saying to you, I don't know what's going on. And I remember you saying, Imagine you've just gone to like a super amazing concert and you've just watched your favorite band and you are amped and you come home and you can't sleep because you're so buzzed. And you're just like, I cannot get to sleep. It's like, that's like your dog has just had a massive amped up session. It comes home, it just needs a release.

Yeah.

And sometimes it can be, and this is why again, crate training is great because I know a lot of trainers, I don't know, I'm sure, you know, you may also believe this as well, but I know some trainers say as soon as you've done a big session like that, You get your Kong or whatever it is for them to sort of like take that sort of last bit of aggression out on, but crate them. Yeah. Just come home, crate them and force them to sleep. Because I do have to still do that with Kira because we'll come home and she's just not a dog that can instantly relax. She will just be moving constantly. She's like ADD. She's just, and that's why she's so hard to keep weight on too. She's the skinniest dog. Everyone's like, you don't feed her enough. It's like, no, I feed her heaps, but she just does not stop moving. So sometimes either, whether it's tethering her or crating her. I just have to force her to stop.

Yeah.

So that she just decompresses and sleeps.

100%. It's, um, yeah, it's, it's such an underrated thing. And yeah, as we saw, something even I lost sight of. So, uh, yeah, sometimes you're not, uh, underdoing it. You can quite often be overdoing it. So with any behavior concern, there's always a bunch of reasons why. And I reckon most of the time it's really worth looking at because if you can address that why, quite often you address the what as well inadvertently.

And I think a lot of people— I've been guilty of this in the past as well— can just get frustrated instantly. It's just frustration. You can just get But if you, if you stop that, if you try and just take a breath and move away from the frustration and instead go, okay, choose it as a learning moment and go, okay, why? And I think thinking of it at that angle can be kind of fun in a sense because you're sort of going, okay, I'm going to—

exactly.

It's a problem-solving exercise. You're going to go, okay, we're going to work this out. Why is this happening? And then the process of elimination. And then the, the, once you get it and you crack it, like you get that sense of achievement from like, ah, and you learn more about your dog as well at the same time.

You grow as an owner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

a really good point. We did a post on this on the Down Under Dog Trainer page a few weeks ago, but a saying that I love and live by is frustration begins where knowledge ends.

Yeah.

We tend to get frustrated, we go, I'm out of answers, and that's when we get shitty. Um, and that's a cool learning moment. You can either get shitty and then do something out of frustration, like yell at your dog or do this or do that, or something that's just not productive. Or you could go, all right, hang on, I've reached the end of what I know. Let me find out more. Let me reach out for help. Let me look online. Let me asking my network, whatever. And like I said, that's when you grow. Like, you know, I, I as a trainer still on a weekly basis will have a moment I'm like, what do I do here? And it's generally with Nelson, with my own dog, without like all our protection sport stuff. But man, rather than turn around and go, I hate feeling frustrated, I go, awesome, what do I do here? And let me let it spark for new stuff. And yeah, it's a good feeling. Hey man, you hungry? Let's order delivery. Yeah, I was thinking Italian burgers.

Oh.

Game night just got tense. 2 bros on different sides of the fence. Burgers or pasta tonight? Why can't we have food without the fight?

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Okay, so we've explored the why, but we need to expand on that, Max.

Yeah, exactly. We're now also going to look at it from the other perspective and have a real balanced approach to this and say that sometimes it's, it's also like not worth looking into, and sometimes it's best to actually abandon that approach. Because one thing I really see a lot, right, is you'll see a dog where the reason why will not quite add up and you'll get quite a conflicting thing. I most commonly see this with dogs who are reactive to other dogs. Okay, dog reactive dogs, this is where I see it the most. Sometimes the why is textbook, like, oh, the reason why that dog's reacting is they're overstimulated or they're frustrated or they're fearful or they're just crazy high prey drive or very defensive or nervous. Like, quite often the why is very black and white. We go, cool, that's what it's doing. But a lot of times, you know, probably a couple of times a week, I'll see a dog that does make me scratch my head for a second. I'm like, what the hell is your dog doing? Like, they'll find this situation scary, but that's totally fine. And then they react to that, but not that. And if the— if you— if it sounds like I'm describing your dog right now, I maybe am. You might, you might've tried to troubleshoot this why yourself and go, something's not adding up. There's something a little bit weird here. And that can definitely be the case. One thing we know for certain about our dogs is Their prefrontal cortex, the region region of their brain that deals with logic and reasoning and general intelligence, is it's good in terms of the animal kingdom. It's pretty developed compared to us. It's severely underdeveloped. They say that, and this is debatable, but even the smartest breeds like your Malinois, your Collies, etc., they'll say that their intelligence level is up to a three-year-old, whereas most dogs it really hangs about at one and a half to two-year-old. So that's their logic and reasoning ability is caps out at about that. Which means, as we know, if anyone's ever met a baby or a toddler, quite often they can be pretty unreasonable. One of my friend's kids had a meltdown the other day because his dad wouldn't take him to the moon, even though it made absolutely no sense.

No, it makes perfect sense. I would be annoyed too. Yeah, I'd be pissed off at that.

Are you serious?

My son once was little, wanted a banana. I gave him a banana, I peeled it, and he absolutely lost his mind because I peeled the banana for him. And it was like I'd literally just punched him in the face. He was so upset. But anyway, yeah, so children can be completely unreasonable.

Yeah, and so can our dogs. Like, a lot of their reasoning lacks a lot of logic. And what I like to tell clients, I'm like, look, you've got a reactive dog, right? They react to this situation and that situation, but not that situation. It doesn't make a ton of sense, but sometimes, again, the why is not important. I like to say to people that even if your dog could speak your language and explain to you, hey, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm feeling in that moment. Even if they could get those words across, you would probably sit there and go—

It still wouldn't make sense.

What are you on about? That doesn't make— like, that doesn't make any sense. You're clueless. And again, because they lack those reasoning skills, sometimes it means that they therefore— like, we know that little sequence: thoughts create feelings and feelings create actions. Incomplete or irrational thoughts can make them think and feel irrationally, which can make them behave irrationally. So again, I always like to— my first point of call is focus on the why. But if you feel like you've exhausted that, going like, this isn't making sense, abandon that and just focus on the what. Some of the best trainers I know in terms of dealing with behavior problems don't really focus that much on the why. They just go, cool, like, that's not super important. I'm just going to focus on the what and just target the behavior through training. And that can be enough. And like I said, especially if your dog doesn't have any real depth to this reactivity, they don't You know, again, it's an incomplete or irrational thought. It means focusing on the what's generally sometimes all you need for those dogs. So I just want to get that across because I do quite often get clients who have really tried to do the right thing and exhaust all options. We think it's this, but it's also this, and then it's not adding up. Sometimes it's best to leave that.

And so, so just to clarify, when you say focusing on the what—

Yeah, as focused, like what's in front of you. Okay, what have we got? The behaviour. My dog reacts to these situations. So again, rather than focus on why, why, why, who cares why, let's just start to look at, okay, My dog will react to a dog who's behind a fence, but not one who is in front of a fence. Okay. Sounds a bit weird, but rather than focusing on the why, let's just focus on, let's do some scenario creation and just target that situation there. My dog barks at dogs behind fence. That's the what.

Yep.

Another what might be, my dog is happy as Larry for a dog to do this, but not that. That's cool. Don't focus on the why. Let's just focus on the what. We know what your dog does. Let's look at training it out. How can we motivate them into doing something new in that situation? And how can we motivate them out of doing the unwanted behaviour in that situation? And rather than focus too much on the dog psychology, just look at purely behaviourally and be like, all right, let's get rid of this and let's teach this and not really focus on the depth.

Okay. So just as a quick recap, when your dog is doing something, look at the why first. If you get to the point where you're exhausted to the fact that you're going, I don't know why, then you're saying, okay, that's when it's time to just focus on what is happening and fix that particular thing. Yeah.

Not look at it too deeply. You would just run yourself in circles. And if we sometimes try and jump on their level, we find ourselves getting tangled up just as much as them. And then it can really just screw that training approach. So sometimes don't overcomplicate it. Focus on what's in front of you, focus on training it out, and often you'll find your answer. Simple approaches sometimes are best.

Fantastic. All right. Well, as always, any questions, the Dog People Podcast on Facebook is where you need to be. We'll catch you in there with any questions and we'll get them answered for you soon. 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.