Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show. I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate about helping you master your animal training skills using the most positive and least intrusive approaches. Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the vast challenges you encounter in training requires a comprehensive base of knowledge and experience. It's common to face obstacles and rough patches on your journey that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we have been on a mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide. We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their positive impact on all the animal and human learners they work with. We are excited to do the same for you. Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this free podcast episode as we explore new ways to help you supercharge your training skills, grow your knowledge, and build your confidence so that you can craft a life that positively impacts every learner you encounter. But we will start today's episode where we'll be talking to one Sarah Strimming.
Sarah is a Certified Dog Behaviour Consultant with nearly two decades of experience in dog training and behaviour, along with 25 years competing in dog sports. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Colorado State University and is committed to a continuous education, attending numerous conferences and events annually. Sarah's extensive hands-on experience spans various professional settings, including daycares, boarding kennels, veterinary clinics, and shelters.
She started her career teaching group classes and over time has refined her program, always striving to better serve her clients. When she's not busy transforming the lives of dogs and their people, Sarah enjoys exploring the deep woods of the Pacific Northwest with her Border Collies and Icelandic Sheepdog. So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Sarah back to the show today, who's patiently waiting by.
Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with us at Animal Training Academy. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much, Ryan. And Sarah, it's been nearly four and a half years since you were last on our show. So it's absolutely fantastic to have you back to discuss a topic that I know challenges many of our listeners and their clients, including not multi-dog household, but multi-mini earthling household that I live in.
And this topic arose after one of our fabulous members in our Animal Training Academy Members Only Facebook group asked a question about the challenges they were facing with their multi-dog households. And you shared a link to your online course on this topic called Household Harmony. So that's what we're going to talk about today, everyone, how to achieve that household harmony in a multi-dog household.
Now, Sarah, can you start us off by just talking to us about what counts as, in your own words, because I know this question is self-explanatory, what counts as a multi-dog household? And give us a little bit of your thoughts on how natural this is for dogs to be living in this kind of context. Well, multi-dog, quite simply, is kind of more than one. If you have more than one, it is a multi-dog household.
It can range, though, from I've had two up to the most that I've lived with at one time was eight. And it's not natural at all. It does not appear to be something that most dogs would choose if given the opportunity. And that doesn't mean that dogs can't form really strong and important relationships with other dogs in the same household. They definitely can.
It just kind of varies by personality and background, how strong those connections are going to be, and whether those connections are kind of a net positive for the dogs or not. I've recently been into Sindoor Pangal's work, if I said her name correctly. Gosh, I hope I did. She talks a lot about the free-roaming dogs of India and talks about the really complex, amazing relationships that they form when they're all free to move about and they're not forced to live in the same space.
But also talks about the conflict that arises and the fact that most of them solve conflict by simply not coming into contact anymore. They might develop a rivalry or some sort of conflict, and then they simply choose not to occupy the same spaces. And when we have dogs that develop a conflict in our own homes, typically that's not an option unless somebody goes to live somewhere else, which happens. Sometimes that's the choice that a household makes.
But asking them all to live together in close quarters and share resources, I just kind of catalog that as one of the amazing things that dogs do and one of the incredible adaptations that they have living alongside us. So they're kind of like us, that if they get into conflict, the best solution is just to come into contact with each other, unless you're on social media. We all know about that. But how big is the challenge? Like when you're working with clients, how often do you see this?
What are the reasons that people end up in multi-dog households? And asking this question to also dig into what led you into creating this course, I'm assuming you saw a need for this information. For sure. The course is centered on kind of fostering harmonious relationships between the dogs. It isn't in and of itself going to be a fix for any major conflict. It's more of a prevention for conflict situation. People have multiple dogs for any number of reasons.
A lot of my clients have them because they compete in dog sports. That's one of the reasons that I have. I have four dogs of my own, and they're all just, you know, they're at various ages and stages in their kind of sport careers. When conflict arises, which is usually about some kind of resource, even if the resource feels intangible to you. I think food is a really obvious one that people are very clear about.
People see if their dogs are arguing over food, and then they take management steps to not have them fight over food. And then that's usually very cut and dried. It's when the dogs are experiencing conflict around maybe one of the humans in the household. Like, this human belongs to me. You don't get to be near it. Sometimes dogs also do that with the other human in the household. So sometimes guarding of kind of one partner against the other one can show up.
This can be exacerbated by guarding of the human against some of the other dogs in the home. So typically there's some kind of resource situation that's easy to pinpoint. But what I do find is that those resource situations show up when steps have not been taken to keep everything harmonious. Because you're asking them to share resources. You're asking them to share space and frequently other kinds of resources as well. They usually all share the same water source.
They usually see the human as a resource. They often share sleeping spaces. So even if you're never asking them to share food, which a lot of folks understand not to, their lives, just like all of us, are governed by the resources or reinforcers in our environment. And they can start to defend those resources against the other dogs in the home. Sometimes people attach kind of contrived thoughts to this. They'll say, well, these two dogs are fighting simply because they are the same sex.
Or simply because this one had a hormonal change and therefore fighting happens. That's not really consistent enough for us to say, like, if this, then that. And also if two intact males are fighting, they're still fighting over a resource. It's just that the resource is a female, even if the female doesn't even exist. They both know that it does in the world. And so this is what happens.
And so in my clientele, a lot of people have large numbers of dogs who have very complex personalities and really big feelings about their stuff. Because dogs that have a lot of tenacity, and we'll unpack that label, tenacity, meaning that they will push through adversity to get what they want. They won't kind of back down when they are faced with adversity. Those dogs are the dogs we like for sports.
Because they will run faster and do the rep three more times than the other dog would want to do the rep. And so forth. And so when they care a lot about their stuff, we like them in sports. And also when they care a lot about their stuff, it's harder for them to live in harmony with a group. And so this is definitely a big deal in my life. I work very, very hard to maintain the peace between my dogs. And that's why it's also, it's a really big deal in my client's life.
And when that conflict does arise, it can be really difficult to get back to a place of peace. So prevention is very important. So an unnatural setting, first off. Especially if we compare what our observations are with regards to street dogs in more, air quotes, natural settings. And it's largely around resources and these enclosures that we call our houses. I've got a zoo background, so that's where my mind goes.
And obviously limited resources that can lead to the conflict that you've talked about. Let's just take a second before we push on. We've got a whole lot to talk about today. To talk about our clients. I mean, this is if you've got animals in your home environment. And before those animals lived there, you had this visualization of how great life's going to be with multiple dogs. And then you've got aggression, you've got conflict, you've got potential fighting.
And that's a stressful situation to be in. Honestly, I rank it up with really severe separation anxiety in terms of stress on my clients. I don't see, I don't work with separation anxiety. I'm very grateful to have a lovely referral list for those cases. And so in my clientele, this is the thing that causes people the most distress. Is when their dogs are fighting between themselves in the home. I have lived it a few times and I can vouch for how much stress it is. It is because you live in it.
You can't get away from it. If your dog barks and lunges at people on bicycles, you can arrange your life to avoid walking the dog past people on bicycles. If you've got dogs living in the home that fight, it feels unavoidable. It also, even if we put management measures in place, which we would to prevent the fighting, it feels dangerous. It feels risky because somebody might leave a gate open. A dog might jump over a gate, like things happen.
And so it makes people feel very stressed in their own homes. And anytime you can't get away from the stressor, the chronic buildup of stress in a situation is absolutely enormous. And it's a huge impact. And it is a big part of what I talk to clients about as far as, okay, what measures need to be taken to help everybody feel better tomorrow? Sometimes that is, you mentioned your zoo background. I got to go and visit a big cat exhibit that a friend of mine was working in.
And when I saw the measures that are taken to make sure that a latch is always latched and that a lock is always locked and that this gate is always closed. When I saw all of the measures taken to make sure that a lion does not wind up in the same enclosure as a keeper, I got so many new great ideas to bring to these cases. As far as double checking systems, color coding systems, things like that. When the cases are really severe, we put more things in place to make sure that everybody's safe.
And I talk about soft and hard barriers. And a hard barrier is something that the dog can't breach. So if they can't breach it, you're safer. But if a human can leave it open, I want two of them. If the case is really severe. So things like that. When we put measures into place, before we dive into changing the actual behaviors that are going on, we have to make sure that everybody can kind of take a breath and breathe it out and relax a little bit more.
Because nobody learns well under high stress. And also just nobody deserves to live like that. It's a really good point to bring up. Yeah, we call that an earlock in the zoo world. My wife thinks I'm nuts. Sapphire thinks I'm nuts. Because every time we walk away from the car, we get a car lane for a while. I'm like, oh, I've just got to double check that the car's locked. And I go back and check it. But there's a decade of learning history for doing that behavior. And it's very ingrained in me.
But let's paint a picture, Sarah. Because we've talked about the problem. We've talked about some reasons behind the problem. We've talked about the internal problem as well. The stress and how that can influence our humans. And like you said, people shouldn't have to live like this. Paint a picture for us. How can we work with this? This is something that we can progress towards from wherever we are. Towards a more harmonious household, as you put it.
So if you're already in severe conflict with the dogs, or even just minor conflict. If the dogs have had fights, that's basically what I would label conflict. If the dogs have had actual altercations with each other, the first thing you need to do is orchestrate your life so that those conflicts are less likely to happen. And so the first thing that happens is taking a really detailed history of each event that has happened so far and finding the common denominators.
And usually the fights happen in the same place or around the same type of resource. Or sometimes the same time of day. And when we find those common denominators, we put measures in place to make sure that the dogs aren't together or are highly controlled by something. Maybe they're both on leashes. Maybe they're both wearing muzzles or something in those scenarios. So the first thing that has to happen is that.
But then we look at how can I foster what I'm going to call a culture of abundance in these dogs because they are having conflict over the fact that they're living in an unnatural environment. And I'll come back to that. But also the resources are limited. The resources have to be limited. They can't be just free-flowing fountain of kibble in the middle of everybody's house. That's not super realistic. The access to the person is a big resource. People have other things going on in their lives.
They can't constantly be with the dogs. All resources have to have some kind of limitation. So helping the dogs to feel as though this environment is rich with resources and that they then as individuals do not need to worry about protecting any of their resources is a huge part of what I'm going to do next. But circling back to that unnatural environment, I think that whatever natural or unnatural means, an environment that is challenging for dogs is the one that we are.
That's what we care about. Whether it's natural for a dog to live in a house with a person is kind of irrelevant. It's where most of them live. So we can call it unnatural or we can just identify what the challenges are within it. And I love talking about it as an enclosure. I love talking about it as them being captive animals that we are tasked with taking care of because I think when we adjust the way that we think about it that way, we do better. We do a better job.
So things that are hard for dogs, kind of universally, certainly not all of them. You always want to look at the individuals. But if you live in suburbia and you've got big front-facing windows and the dogs are seeing traffic and joggers and other dogs and things like that all day long, and they are screaming at the front window all day about those things, that has to get solved. Your intra-household conflict will not get better if that's still happening.
Those things feel unrelated to your clients. They're not unrelated because the environment is too challenging. So making the environment in which the dogs live as conducive to what I call behavioral wellness as possible is always going to be step one in I think any program that you are embarking on. It's helping reduce the challenges in the environment, then helping increase the enrichment in the environment.
And that goes along with this kind of culture of abundance, so helping the dogs to see that really everybody's needs are very met and nobody needs to be too freaked out about anything happening. And if there's a scenario in which this is always going to feel like a scarce resource to the dogs, then that scenario is always going to have a wall around it. It's always going to be very protected.
An example of that is that I work really hard to make sure that my dogs want to work and train and play with me more than they want anything else. It is a big part of my sport life with them and my enjoyment of them. It's easy to do in my border collies. It has not been easy to do for my Icelandic sheepdog, but she is just as gung-ho about it as they are. And everybody wants to have their turn and train with mom. That is very, very important to everyone. And it's always going to feel scarce.
I could do it 20 times a day and it would feel scarce because it's so, so important to them. So what that means is, number one, I do it as much as I can. I provide it to them as much as I can. But also, I don't expect them to be calm about it around each other. So if I am packing the training bag, getting the tripod out, they all know. They all know what's going to happen here. I am paying attention and making sure that they are maintaining peaceful behavior with each other as I'm doing that.
I'm seeing that as a hot resource. And I'm not expecting them all to kind of do it together. I see training videos sometimes where one dog is being trained and four other ones are running around with toys in their mouths, anxiously awaiting their turn. If all of my dogs are together for a training session, three of them are stationed and one of them is working. And I have training projects that are too exciting for me to ask for that. And so I don't do it in those projects.
So I do feel like I'm talking in circles a little bit, but all of it matters. So back to inspiring that culture of abundance, it's kind of seeing what's important to them and making sure there's plenty of it. So plenty of really nice sleeping spaces. Plenty of water. I don't think that people think about water enough when it comes to domestic dogs. The more water bowls I provide in my environment, the more water bowls are used and the more water they drink. This is a newer one for me, Ryan.
I've been thinking really hard about providing water for a couple of years. And I am noticing that they all have preferences about it. I'm noticing that it is a rare occasion for them to all drink at once. They've all got to be pretty thirsty for them to all drink at once, which tells me that it's not their preference to share a water bowl. So I'm thinking about water bowls the way that I think really smart cat people think about litter boxes.
When you think about cat behavior and in intra-household conflict with cats, a major thing to do, I think one of the rules I heard from somebody who knows a lot about cats, I've actually never had a cat, but I think they're great and fascinating and interesting. And one of the things I heard is at least if you've got four cats, it's five litter boxes. It's the number of cats plus one at least was something that I heard. And now I'm trying to do that with water bowls.
And I don't know what that's done. All I know is that they're drinking more water, which is good for them. That's all I know. That's all I observe because I'm refilling all of them once a day versus I would refill the one or two once a day. So that looks like they're consuming more water. And so just kind of going, okay, just because they don't fight about it doesn't mean it's not a resource.
So providing lots of sleeping spaces, lots of water, lots of attention from the person, helping them to have individual one-on-one time with the person to make sure that that need is sort of met. And then when it comes to toys and chew bones and things like that, I think a lot of people don't have that stuff out because they're worried about the dogs fighting. And I think that's a really valid concern. What I try to do is just, I know which ones might be fought over.
And so those ones are not out and everything else is like in huge abundance. So back to like that litter box rule, five, four dogs, there are at least five of the same kind of chew out for them to chew on. I have tons and tons of like stuffed toys and things like that everywhere. And it's just, it's abundant. It's here. There's so many things for them to access. Again, if your dogs are fighting, adding more chew bones to the environment, I'm not saying that that's your plan.
That's not your plan if your dogs are fighting, but preventing fighting has a lot to do with that culture of abundance. But it also has to do with you paying attention to what matters to them and you paying attention to their behavior. So if I have, I have my young dog, she is almost 11 months and she will walk up to my Icelandic sheepdog and take something from her. So if my IC has one of the kind of medium value, like they're called banana bones, they're like plasticky.
They're like a Nile bone. They're not plastic. Everybody don't come after me. Right now my Icelandic is like chewing on one of those Carson, my young border Collie will walk over to her and be like, I think I would like to have that. And she'll just swipe it out of her mouth. Rude. So rude. And my Icelandic doesn't fight her about it. She just goes, Oh, that sucks. And a lot of people would look at that and go, well, they didn't have a fight.
I look at that and go, no, no, no, no that's going to grow into something worse because if you keep taking from her, she'll defend it eventually. And so my job then is to make sure that you don't take from her. So I, it's my job to see the precursors to that behavior, because if you do take it from her and then I scold you and take it away from you and give it back to her, that doesn't do anything. It already happened. The whole thing already happened.
So I watch her if she's chewing her own and she looks at Reyes and she stops chewing her own. That's my moment to put her in her X-Pen with her own bone, put her somewhere else interrupt in some other way to make sure that she doesn't practice that behavior. So it's seeing those little subtle things so that you can provide for them. And then I do all kinds of like cute games with them to have them be sharing stuff, just practice sharing stuff.
Because the bottom line is that if they all live together in the same enclosure, they are sharing stuff. Even if you think that they're not because you put them in their own individual crates, when you give out comms or whatever. I don't even know if I answered your question at all, but here we are. Having a good chat. If people end their answers to questions on the ATA podcast show, I don't know if I answered your question at all. That means I'm doing my job. Thank you for passion talking.
We love it. I think my daughter Summer would say that going by the Catlin and Bolt rule, we need like six of me. I don't think that's going to happen, but I love that culture of abundance. And then some other things you mentioned in there, because I want to talk about some core skills for the learners, the canine learners in your house to learn, or if you're working with other species, whatever species they are to learn. And you talked about stationing.
So you talked about maybe you're working with one of the dogs and the other dogs are stationing. And a word that I got in my mind when I'm thinking about this is the core skill is sharing and patience. And what does that look like? It looks like stationing. It looks like sitting still in one location on something, a raised surface, whatever it is for duration. Can you talk to us about that and about other core skills that are really valuable across a large number of cases?
Yes, for sure. And I I'm really big on this. I think that the more dogs you want to have or the more animals you want to have, the more earthlings, as you say, in one space, the more skills everybody has to have. And yes. So stationing might look like a duration behavior of sticking to a spot while other things are happening. Also name response. So I teach them all that their name means, means them.
It basically means go towards whatever the reinforcer is in that situation upon hearing your name. And they learn this easily and quickly, to be honest, if everybody, if the human can keep their mechanics correctly, because if you are mixing up saying their name with reaching in the tree pouch and things like that, it's, it's the same with like separating a click from the, from reaching for your food. So separating those two events, it's really important.
If you say dog's name, then reach for food and provide. It goes really fast. They learn it really quickly. I release them off the station by name so that they don't all release at once. Cause if I just say the release queue, like break or okay, they all break off of the station at once mistakes happen. It's okay. You just put, you just put the dog back that you didn't call and proceed. And you make a little mental note of working on that with, with that dog.
Name recognition is huge because then when they all perceive a resource, you can be very clear about who is having it and who is not. So if I am even out on a hike with my dogs and I'm going to stop and reinforce the fact that everybody walked, everybody came over to me. I do names as I feed everyone so that they're not both going for the same treat in my hand, because they will. If I just offer one piece of food, the queue is just that there's food in my hand being offered to you.
And that is a cue that they all understand. And so they'll all go for it at once because I work so hard at this. My dogs don't fight over that, but I recognize that they could. And I recognize too, that that must not feel good, right? Like when you reach for something that somebody else reaches for, that can go kind of one of two ways. You either kind of pull your hand back and go, Oh, I'm sorry. Like you're, you're reaching in the popcorn bag at the same time as somebody else.
And then you bump into their hand, you know, everybody's response to that. Who's like civilized just pulls their hand back out and is like, I'm sorry, go ahead. Right. But we don't like it. Like it's, it's nice to be, everybody loves clarity. I think everybody functions better in an environment that's very clear. So name recognition and, and all of the nuance that goes with that is a big, big skill here. I also like the skill of perceiving that reinforcement and not instantly going for it.
So being at a doorway, choosing not to run out of it until told to run out of it, choosing not to reach for food, things like that until queued. I work on this from just a stimulus controls perspective, just putting things on cues and then being consistent with those cues rather than I think that there's a lot of information out there kind of leaning really heavily on removing access to those things, to teach them not to take them.
So we would kind of classify that as almost a negative punishment situation. And I don't like getting too, too deep in the mud of the quadrants, but basically if, if I, if you try to run out the door and I close it in your face, just teach you not to run out the door. I don't like that as much as teaching you that you can run out the door on that name, because I've taught you to run on your name because I've said your name and then thrown a cookie.
And then I say the other dog's name and throw a cookie. And we're just playing this fun game of, Ooh, when it's me, she says my name and then I get to chase the cookie. And when it's done really well. And when the dogs are really clear on it, nobody runs for the same cookie. Nobody runs out the door at the same time and it looks good. It works well. Some of the other skills are going to involve recalling and also being sent.
So if I can send you away from a situation that you'd like to be in, and this comes back to stationing. I just, I use the stations to teach it. If I can send you away, send you to a crate or to another room or to a platform, then I can get you out of a potentially sticky situation. And if I can recall you same thing. So if I see two of my dogs, you know, like maybe I missed it. And Carson, my young dog is walking over to Ray with her tail up and she's going to maybe take Ray's bone.
She's got a stellar recall. I can just call her. I can just call her and she disengages from that immediately. And then I can reinforce that. And then I can set up a different scenario to prevent that situation. Same deal. She's not as good at being sent yet. She's quite young, but like my dog Felix, if my dog Felix is on the couch and another dog jumps on the couch, something he might do is growl about that. So he might say, I don't think I want to share the couch because it's my couch.
And it's very nice. And I don't need you to be here. He can be told to go to a different sleeping location. So if he growls, he can be told easily to go to a different sleeping location, instantly disengages from the conflict goes to the other place. These skills need to be trained before you're in a situation with potential conflict. If these skills are fluent, then they will hold up in the conflict situation.
So that's why it is a, they are skills that need to be trained ahead of time and skills that are important for multi -dog management. So there's some core skills that if you take the Household Harmony course, you can see some videos of Sarah doing some of this stuff and learning about Sarah was kind enough to give me access to this course. So I could go through it in advance of doing this recording today.
Some of the other things you talked about that I want to use some of the time we have left to talk about Sarah is some of the things you just talked about there, but preventing conflict. So you kind of started to touch on some of that there, but you talked about in the course shared, and then it's great that you talked about this specifically because that word sharing was the word that came to my mind as you were talking earlier, but you talked about shared enjoyment.
So enjoying exercise, enjoying meals, enjoying chewing, enjoying foraging, enjoying training and enjoying it together. Can you build on that for the listeners of this episode? Yeah, for sure. So shared enjoyment is just as it sounds, it's anything that the dogs can do together that they like doing. There's no data on this, right? If you're a grad student and you want to look at this, that sounds great. Hit me up.
But basically what I observe is that family groups of dogs that do things together that they like doing have, I believe, healthy relationships. And it makes sense to me that they would. It makes sense in any family that if you get together and deliberately do things that you all enjoy doing rather than just doing your day-to-day, your daily slog and all of your chores and whatever, it is a good relationship building thing to do, a good harmonious thing to do.
So if you look at your dog's life and the things that your dog enjoys, if you can incorporate the other dogs together and do that as a group, you should. You should do that sometimes. So that is one purpose of having the dogs all stationed while one dog is being trained. My favorite way to utilize that is actually in my kind of body handling or husbandry work because it tends to be low energy. It tends not to be super exciting. So it's easy for everybody to stay stationed.
And also I give the dogs frequent breaks in that anyway. And so anytime the dog kind of starts to say, you know, I don't think I want another rep of you cutting a toenail. I go, that's cool. Go to your station. Good job. Here's a cookie for your station. Next dog. And then we go through that. So I would even classify that as shared enjoyment, even though, you know, I think they don't like having their toenails cut, Ryan, but they all like line up and are like me next, me next. So maybe they do.
So other things I love to take walks with all of them together. There's some caveats to that. If you have one dog that really struggles out in the environment, we always want to be thinking about making the environment in which the dogs inhabit together an easy environment. So if you have a dog that is super barky lungy at certain triggers, you're not going to go take it for a walk with your other dog and have your dog. That's not barky lungy experience.
That that does not then qualify as shared enjoyment that qualifies as something else. And so that's kind of the caveat, but I like having all of my dogs to go on off leash walks out in the world in nature together. I believe that I see them enjoying each other. Sometimes a play session might break out. Sometimes one dog finds something really great to smell and everybody gathers over and is, and is sniffing it. It's like they are out on that walk with each other.
They are not isolated from each other on that walk. And I think that that's important. Other ways we can do shared enjoyment is we can just all have a chewy and I can make sure that if, you know, for instance, Carson might think that she's going to take Reyes. Carson's just on a tether, but we're all in the same room. Carson just can't leave where she is. I also do big kibble scatters out in the grass in the yard.
This is a big thing that I do with my dogs that I believe, I believe is shared enjoyment. They all engage in it until every last tiny kibble is gone. I use a really small kibble. So there's a lot of sniffing. I throw the kibble as far as I can. So there's just so much foraging and snuffling and just dogness going on. And it's so relaxing to me to watch them all do that together.
I have worked really hard on again, Carson, being able to do that because when I got her as a little nine week old, she was exhibiting some behaviors. We might label resource guarding in that scenario. Not everybody would have labeled it that way because it was just kind of chomping at the ground closer and closer to one of the other dogs. So it wasn't biting or aggression, but it was on the spectrum of what I would call guarding.
And so I worked really hard on that and they are all really fully capable of doing this big kibble scatter together. So that's another part of shared enjoyment for them. And just, I think that when we have multiple dogs, we can see it as these are just multiple animals that you're taking care of.
And your job is to take care of each of them as an individual, or we can also care about taking care of them as a group and seeing them get along and have nice things to do together that are group activities. And I just find that at least in my clientele, people don't think about that. They think about building their relationship with the dog so that like I said, I want my dogs to want to train with me more than they want to eat the kibble scatter in the grass. I do want that.
But if I had to sacrifice one, I would sacrifice them wanting to train with me because I need them all to be harmonious together. You just don't actually have to sacrifice it. So usually, so I think folks don't think about building these harmonious relationships between their dogs, especially if they have the type of dogs that like could really take relief other dogs. Like my two older Border Collies, Iggy and Felix both would be perfectly happy to not live with other dogs.
They'll be fine with them. They'd be perfectly happy to never see another dog, just me and them. That's what they need. Raya, my Icelandics, very social, really likes other dogs, really likes people. I think that she would not be as happy if she didn't have other dogs. In fact, I think she thinks, you know, it's actually just, it's a testament to how lovely she is that she gets along really well with my Border Collies who are not as sociable as she is.
But I mean, Felix can be, Felix is the guy who will guard his, his sleeping space and he can be laying with me on the couch and Raya, my Icelandic can jump on the couch and can lick his face and snuggle in with us. And that's a miracle. I mean, the fact that that's fine, I would like to take some credit for that, but I, I don't think I can. I think it's mostly her. I think that she's just a really, really special dog, but incorporating.
And then my young dog, Carson, like she's so young that she loves playing still. And so she loves playing with Raya. So building these situations where they are enjoying each other and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you. You are just kind of the supervisor to make sure that everything goes okay. It's something that we want to think about.
And if you're coming to it with a place of conflict, if you're coming to it and the dogs already are kind of like, no, I wish that guy would move out actually. Then there's so much repair that has to happen to get to true enjoyment, but you can start with doing the shared enjoyment games. Like you can do the kibble scatter in the yard, but both dogs can be an expense that are adjacent. So nobody can get to each other. Nobody's threatening anything. They can even be far apart.
And it's just when you start to see the dogs anticipate and get excited about they're like, Ooh, yeah, we're going to do scatter time. That's when you start to understand that enjoyment's happening and they're together while it is happening. Very cool. I like all of that. We're looking at the time, got lots of things we could still talk about, but I wanted to, I think, jump to another subtopic.
And that is those who are listening, or maybe they have clients who are considering adding to their family. So they've got a dog at home or they've already got multiple dogs and they're thinking about adding another one. And you've labeled that part of the household harmony courses, make me a match, assessing compatibility. Can you talk about some considerations for the segment of the audience who might be in that boats choosing that word, because part of your course is called rocking the boat.
So absolutely. It is really important to try your best to choose compatible housemates. If you have no idea what kind of other dog your dog enjoys or, or best tolerates, because that might be where you are, then you don't have much information on this. Something that comes up for me repeatedly in my work is that I want people to know their dogs as well as possible. And you get to know them well by having experiences with them out in the world.
If your dog is fairly isolated, does not go very many places, or maybe only goes to a class where they don't interact with dogs or something like that, then you might not know what the most compatible type of dog would be for your dog.
I'm looking at things like play styles, choosing dogs that have similar play styles to each other, looking at things like just personality, just is this dog boisterous and loud and, and bouncing off the walls or is this dog reserved and quiet and understanding that like tends to get best, get along best with like they, they do do best usually in groups that are like them. There's even dogs will even in groups in groups that have multiple breeds.
So like people will post videos and pictures from dog daycares and things where the dogs have segregated. And like the retrievers are all over there playing with each other. And the herding dogs are all over here, lying down, just monitoring the situation and all the little toy breeds are bouncing around with each other. Like this is observable enough that I think people should think about it. I think it's best for people to think about.
So for instance, you know, when I think about bringing a dog into my household, I'm looking at who is going to, who has the potential to have the biggest challenge with this because I have multiples and what are those challenges? And can I make my choice based on those challenges? So for instance, my dog Felix struggles most with other males. And so he is quite intentionally the only male in the house and females, you know, when females fight, and this is, this is pretty documented.
It's true in my life, but it's also documented that one of the, the basically the only data that exists states that the most difficult to resolve conflict in a house is going to be between two females. My, my experience that I would add to that is that that tends to be because the females don't fight as early the males. And again, this is like such a generalization and your household might be totally different.
But my experience is that the males might have a little argument, a little fight, and then go out in the backyard and play with the ball and everybody's fine. Whereas when the females fight, they don't forget it and they still want to pull a knife on you the next day. And so it gets really severe really quickly.
And so knowing that you might think that it's silly for me to choose to have three female dogs in my house, but it's about the individuals and the dog that's most likely in my household to struggle is Felix and who he's most likely to struggle with is a, is another male, especially another male that's like bigger than him or a breed of dog or a type of dog who is that boisterous, gregarious kind of loud type would be, would be hard for him.
So for instance, when I was getting Raya, my Icelandic sheepdog, I was really clear with her breeder Scotty Harvey, ATA, ATA friend, Scotty Harvey. I was really clear with her that I didn't think there was a male puppy that I also really liked. And we were talking about this male puppy and I was like, I love him. Felix will hate him because he is very confident. He's a picture of masculinity and he, Felix will hate him.
So I got to, so I got Raya's little girl and Felix and Raya are the most friendly compatible. Like they're the best two friends of dogs that I, that I never imagined Felix would have an actual friend in one of the other dogs in my household. So it's looking at your individuals and looking at what their particular challenges are. I have, I experienced a lot of people who this is a very common experience.
People have some sort of, I'll put in quotations, normal type of dog, like maybe they have golden retrievers and they decide that they want a faster agility dog and they buy a border Collie. And then before they know it, the border Collie is terrorizing the two gold retrievers and the goldens whose lives were good and fine.
And they thought it was fine to just bumper cars off of each other as they ran through the house and ran out the door are now scared for their lives because the border Collie will dart out from under the table and tell them that they cannot move that way. They have to walk in an orderly fashion and who told them that they got to be so chaotic. That's an incompatibility issue.
The border Collie thinks it's unacceptable that these two goldens are so chaotic and the goldens are like, dude, we're just trying to live. We're just living our lives and happens enough that I bring it up to people like people will say, people will have some, some lovely breed of dog will say, I'm thinking about getting border Collie. And I'll say, well, let's really talk about what that will change in your life because of the different type. That is the inverse is also true.
If I got, I just, you know, I keep, I pick on the same, like three breeds all the time, because it's, it's easy to generalize. But if I got some lovely boisterous gold retriever, Ray would get along great with it because Ray will get along with anyone. And Felix would hate that dog because Felix doesn't appreciate anybody who is Felix doesn't, you know, like Felix is that guy who is like, you're walking too hard. Like, so I don't need to hear you walking in the house.
That's how Felix is like, he would be bothered by, he'd be like, you're walking too hard. These are the hours in which you are allowed to use the blender. Like, I mean, that's just how he would like the world to be organized. And so some lovely dog that's just kind of carefree and running through life would be harder for him to deal with. And he does great with the other border Collies. He really does.
So thinking about that compatibility situation is something that I don't think people pay enough mind to, they just kind of get the dog that they think that they want next without paying enough attention to what their current household would appreciate. If you have, if you have female herding dogs, adding another strong female herding dog can be a problem. So that's something to pay attention to.
But if you have, and again, all of these generalizations, but there's enough anecdote here that I think it's just, it's important for everyone to think about who is my dog as an individual and who are they likely to get along with as an individual? And then can I try to find that for them and meet my needs too?
And if you can't meet your needs doing that, like you really do want a totally different kind of dog, then what can be done to ensure peace and ensure harmony from the beginning, which is where this course comes in and where, you know, we talk a lot in my membership, people will join the membership when they're getting a puppy and we'll kind of handhold them through the introduction process and things like that. Cause there's a lot that can be done to help foster good relationships.
I've got a good friend of mine who has two intact male working line, German shepherds that are so peaceful together. And this is shocking to everybody who has those types of dogs and, and yet the younger dog is three and she has spent the last three years working up to this goal. They were not loose together in the house until very recently. I mean, she has spent three years working on this.
So the less, you know, the lower the likelihood of the dogs being harmonious, the more work you're going to need to put in, the more skills you're going to need to train the more challenging to the environment in which you expect the dogs to live. Cities are hard for dogs. Suburbia is hard for dogs. Like I think we need to just start saying it out loud. It doesn't mean you shouldn't have dogs in those situations.
It means you've got to fill in the gaps for them and provide for them in those scenarios. You know, zoos are hard for most of the animals in them as well. It doesn't mean, in my opinion, it doesn't mean don't have zoos. It means we got to do our best here to help fill in those gaps. And if we don't know what those gaps are, then we're not going to do our best. And so recognizing why cities and suburbia and things like that are hard for dogs.
And then helping to fill in those gaps wherever we can is really important. So I did it again, but I think I answered it. Well, we're grateful for that. If you are in this situation and you've found value in the things Sarah's talking about today, and you want to learn more about the integration progress for once you've chosen your dog that fits your household and your needs, how to integrate that, then heading over to the harmonious household course would be a valuable thing to you.
Can you tell people listening, Sarah, you mentioned your membership there as well, where people can go to check out the course, check out your offerings. Where are you hanging out online? Everything is at my website, which is my name, Sarahstriming.com. I do have all of those. I have that course and several others for offer as self-study, but I also have this membership. That you get all the courses with.
So you can jump into the membership too, if you would like, or instead, if you would like in the membership, we've got this really great community where people share and they share, they share as they're working through the courses, they get feedback from me and they get feedback from other very, very smart members that I have. And other than that, where I hang out online, I do have, I am on Facebook as the cognitive canine, as well as cog dog radio. That's my podcast, cog dog radio.
If anybody wants to hop over and check that one out when they're done, when they're done here and let's see, Instagram is cognitive underscore canine. And then my name on TikTok at Sarah Strumming would love to see any of you all there. And yeah, if you come over to the website, I have shout out to Melissa bro, who recently revamped it and built it up for me.
If you come over there, there is a video tour of the membership and you can get your answer, your questions answered in regards to any of the offerings. Wonderful. We will link to all of that in the show notes as well. I have a ton more questions, but I am respectful of your time. I know we've been going for an hour. We could go for hours, but we will wrap it up there, Sarah. Again, this has been so much fun.
So from myself and on behalf of everyone listening, we really appreciate you taking the time to come and hang out with us. Let's do this again in four years. What do you say? About another four years. And I need to get back down to New Zealand cause I think it's been almost as long, but thank you so much, Ryan. And thank you so much for listening as well. This is your host Ryan Cartlidge signing off from this episode of the animal training Academy podcast show.
We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped you with new tools for your trainers toolbox. Remember every challenge in training is an opportunity to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery, embrace the rough patches, learn from them and keep improving. And don't forget the path to growing your skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this episode, visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive membership where you will find a community of trainers just like you.
Together we're making a huge positive difference in the lives of animal and human learners worldwide. Until next time, keep honing your skills, stay awesome. And remember every interaction with an animal or human learner is your opportunity to create ripples. We're here cheering you on every step of the way. See you at the next episode.