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.
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And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this 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 I'm excited to continue my conversation with Simone Muller.
Now, if you haven't listened to the first part of our conversation, you can find it in the previous episode on whatever app you are listening to the show on. In that episode, we explored Simone's journey and getting started with positive reinforcement animal training and what led her to her current focus on predation substitute training, which we're going to talk more in depth about today. That one's definitely worth a listen.
However, if you haven't listened to it, you are of course totally welcome to start here with part two, where you're going to gain plenty of insights and knowledge to help you grow your skills, knowledge, and confidence in animal training. But let's dive in by quickly reintroducing our special guest, Simone, who is a certified dog trainer and dog behavior consultant in Germany.
She specializes in force-free anti-predation training and is the author of multiple books in the predation substitute training series. Simone is proud to be an associate trainer at the Scotland-based Loflorian Dog Training Club and a member of the Initiative of Force -Free Dog Training, the Pet Professional Guild, and the Dog Trainers of Europe. Simone, thanks so much. I know it's late for you there in Germany, just before you're about to jet off to Canada after the weekend.
So thanks so much for coming to hang out with us again at Animal Training Academy. Thank you very much for having me back. I'm excited now, Simone, to focus in on your speciality, and that is predation substitute training, which we touched on briefly in part one. But I was wondering, to get us started, can you, for the listeners, offer a definition of the term predation and unpack this label for us?
Yeah, so predation in dogs, this is something when my clients come to me and they say, I have a dog with a high prey drive, what they normally mean is two things. One is my dog is chasing, chasing animals. And the second thing is my dog has attacked a sheep or a deer or something like this. So in the perception of a wider public, predation or predatory behavior is either chasing or grabbing, bread biting and killing. But in fact, predatory behavior in dogs or in general is much more than that.
So we have a lot more going on. And it starts way before the chase. So would you like me to go through the behavior chain? Yeah. So predatory behavior is a behavior chain. So it's not one thing that you can pinpoint. And it all starts with orientation behavior, orientation in the environment. Is there something to hunt? So you might know this from your own dog when you come out of woodland into a field or you reach the top of a hill that your dog stops and looks around.
And this is the start of predatory behavior. The dog scanning the environment with their eyes, looking for something interesting in whatever direction. But if they spot prey, it goes into a predatory direction. My dogs especially love listening. So we have a quite dense woodland. So when we walk on a forest path, they cannot see into the forest, but they sometimes stop and they listen. So you see their ears twitch.
Sometimes they tilt their head and they try to figure out, is there something inside the forest that is worth running over and chasing? If you have a spaniel or a hound, you might know the tracking, the searching behavior in order to get oriented in the environment so that your dog runs into a bush, nose down, zigzag, watering the bushes, trying to find, is there something to hunt?
So the dog can orient or show this orientation behavior with all their senses, with the eyes, scanning, with the nose, searching, air-sensing, with the nose high in the air, or also with their ears, listening. And then this is the start of it. And then when the dog finds that there is something in the environment that is interesting to check out, then they slide onto the next step. You can imagine predatory behavior being a staircase or a ladder.
And once the dog has entered the first step with the orientation behavior, they are very likely to slide onto the next step and so on to walk through this whole ladder or this whole staircase. The next part of the predatory motor pattern, that is the term for it, is creeping. Sorry, not creeping, stalking. So the dog has oriented, has seen, okay, there is something, and now it gets serious. So this is when the dog is fixated on this other animal.
So their eyes are glued to this animal, and the dog gets really arrow-shaped and tense, pointed towards this other animal. And then they start to creep, to creep forward, to bridge the gap between themselves and the other animal. Because what comes next is the chase, but the chase is very calorie-consuming. It's very exhausting for the predator.
And so the dog or whatever predator wants to get as close to the other animal as possible before he goes into the chase to save energy, to save calories. Chase is what we are all familiar with. And this is when we finally realize, oh gosh, predatory behavior, hunting, dog is chasing, so everything is going south. And if the dog is, let's call it lucky, they get to grab bite the other animal and kill bite the prey animal. And then they start to dissect and eat.
And this is when the predatory motor pattern, this behavior chain has come to an end. So we have the hole from the start, from the orientation behavior, and it all starts with the dissection and eating. And can you explain how this all works? So they stop and they start scanning around the environment, whether with their eyes or their nose or their ears. And you said once, tell me if I've got this wrong.
I think you said once they start that sequence, they're very likely to slide onto the next step. Yeah. Can you unpack for the listeners the why behind that? Like how does this all work? Yeah. This all has to do with the hormones and neurotransmitters that are released during the whole behavior, not only during the chase. Already when they start orientation behavior, it gives them a lot of hormones and agents into their body that feel really good for them.
So it is what is called an intrinsic behavior. So it's intrinsically motivating for the dog, which means in simpler words, it feels good. It is self-rewarding. This is why we can hardly stand a chance to keep the dog from hunting with a dry cookie because he's not interested in the cookie in this moment. It's all these stuff going on in the dog's body that makes them feel even euphoric. So the first thing that is released is dopamine.
Dopamine is how to call this an agent that is a neurotransmitter. It's a neurotransmitter. Yeah. That is in humans. We have dopamine release when we have anticipation. So for example, if you plan for a new trip like me going to Canada, this is dopamine driven. I want to go on this trip.
I have my travel guide and I search the Internet and I read a lot and I watch videos and I cannot wait to go on this trip because the new experiences that I want to have there and that I expect to have there releases dopamine in my body. And the same for the dogs, anticipation. So there could be something to hunt. There could be something to chase. And this dopamine makes you even addicted. So we know from, for example, gambling or drug-related problems that they give you a dopamine boost.
And it's the same with our dogs. So we could literally say that they somehow can get addicted to this hunting behavior because it feels so good. And then we have also adrenaline because it might be dangerous to face a stag or a boar. And adrenaline is also released into the body during the hunt. And this mixture of adrenaline and dopamine and endorphins that are released creates a state of euphoria, a state that even reduces the pain perception.
This is why we, for example, have dogs that get badly wounded during the hunt, but they still persevere. They keep on trying to finish off the wild boar or something like this, because at this very moment they are so high, they cannot even feel the pain. And then when the dog has made prey, the dopamine eases off. And what kicks in now are the endorphins, the happy hormones. And here we mainly have endorphins. Just forgot. What kind of endorphins? There is one special serotonin. Sorry.
So we have the serotonin kicking in. And, you know, it's getting late here. We already have 10 o'clock here, so my brain is trying to go away. Okay, so we have the serotonin kicking in the endorphins. And these are the agents that are responsible for indulging into something that you love, that you enjoy.
So, for example, when I am then finally in Canada and I am on a nice hike with my husband and my daughter and we sit down by a lake and we have a picnic, then this is where endorphins kick in, because now I can enjoy what I have prepared and fought for so hard. And, for example, when you get a raise in your job and you take the money and you buy yourself a new car or you go on a holiday, this is where endorphins are released into your body. And the same happens to the dogs.
So we have dopamine, we have endorphins, and this all creates this kind of very intense experience for the dog. And the predatory sequence, is that the predatory sequence that is generally speaking the one that predators on planet Earth go through? Or is there some nuances that are specific for dogs and what you've described? I'm glad you asked, because this is what I just explained.
The predatory sequence is what a normal wild canine would do, for example, a wolf, a fox, a coyote, whatever wild canines we have. Even the cats go through a similar predatory motor pattern, the wild cats and the big ones as well. However, what makes life really difficult for us humans is that our dogs come with special effects and they do not go through this whole predatory motor pattern anymore, or at least most of them. This happens because we have altered their behavior to our advantage.
For example, when you need a dog for tracking, you highlight this part of the predatory sequence to an enormous extent. So you need the best dog for tracking, you make those dogs who are perfect at tracking. But at the same time, when you are a hunter, you do not want your dog to kill and maybe kill, but not dissect and eat the deer or the rabbit. You want the meat for yourself and you don't want it to be destroyed by your dog molding it.
So again, these parts of the predatory sequence have been bred out. So we want to highlight certain parts for our tasks that we want the dogs to do. Retrievers retrieve and hounds track and spaniels flush. So we take those parts of the predatory sequence that come convenient for us and highlight them to a massive extent. But the others, we don't want them to perform. So now we have the problem that we have dogs that do not stand and stalk and then creep. They go into the chase immediately.
So we have a dog that orients in the environment, sees something, chases off, and then they do not stop after a reasonable amount of time because a wolf always has to make the calculation. I'm burning energy here. Is it really worthwhile to keep on hunting and chasing this deer? Or when the deer has gotten away, is it really worthwhile tracking it again? Because I will lose a lot of calories.
They also have to make the calculation is safe to do because there is no vet for me, putting me back together when I get wounded. Whereas our dogs, they do not make these calculations. They just go for it. And for example, I always remember I was out in the woods with my own dogs. And then suddenly I heard a deer bolting out of the forest. I could just simply grab my dogs and hold on to their harnesses. And the deer was running from left to right.
And then already I heard the sound of the dash hound coming behind it. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, with the sound. So chasing this deer and the hound was running after the deer and they were both gone. And afterwards, I found out that in my village, the hunter has lost his dog. So not literally lost, but he found it again after two days of chasing. Because the dash hounds are made to persevere, to flush the deer up again and again and again and not let them rest until they die.
And this would be a totally crazy thing for any wild animal to do. It's completely senseless. But we wanted them to do that and now they do that. Yeah, super, super interesting. You mentioned you wanted to talk about four categories. Is that what we've just covered? Sorry? You mentioned you wanted to talk about four categories. Was the four categories you wanted to talk about, was that what we've just covered?
No. No. Cool. It's yeah, the four categories what you can do about predation when you want to work on it in a prosperous way. Yeah. Cool. So we dive into that. Okay, good. So when you now want to deal with this behavior that is super hard to interrupt and you cannot even get rid of because it's genetically anchored.
It's so great for the dog to perform so the dog will not just leave it be because you asked them and the dog will also not just leave it be because you have a nice dry cookie here and you wave with that cookie. It will not happen because the act of hunting itself is so super, super duper great for the dog. So you really have to come up with more than that.
And I have tried to structure the way how you have or how to deal with predatory behavior if you don't want to use aversive measures, if you want to use reward -based training. And I have structured all the games and training aspects into four different categories. The first category is management and prevention.
And it's about what you can do so that your dog does not stumble across wildlife because a lot of problems just come from the fact that the dog and the owner are not really in contact with each other when they are out and about. So the dog is somewhere, the owner is on the phone maybe or just daydreaming on the path and then the dog stumbles across wildlife. So we need to build a connection between guardian, dog owner and dog so that they both stay in contact with each other for the whole walk.
And this sounds a little bit stressful, but yeah, it is a little bit stressful, I would say. Not really stressful, but you have to, when you are out with a high prey drive dog, you cannot relax. You cannot walk and be on your phone at the same time. So you always have to have one eye on the dog and see what the dog is up to. And this is what we do first. So we work on the dog being in a certain radius around his owner, staying on a path instead of running into the bushes.
Your dog can be happy staying on a path. It's a concept that is also new for a lot of people that your dog does not have to roam in the woodlands to be happy. And that the dog every now and then looks back to their owner and communicates. And also that the dog is able to eat outside because we have so many dogs that are so hyper the moment they walk out of the door that they cannot even take food. And then the owner says, my dog is not food motivated. We cannot use food in training.
But the basic problem is that the dog is too excited. We have to start lowering this arousal, this excitement of the dog and get them into eating. And then the second aspect of this force -free protocol is that you teach the owner and the dog both alternative behaviors, what to do when you come across wildlife. So when you see a deer or a rabbit and it's not directly in front of your nose, so maybe at a nice distance where you can still react, your dog can still think, what do we do now?
And then you teach your dog alternative behaviors. And the clever thing here to do is to teach them alternative behaviors that are also part of the predatory motor pattern. We heard that the predatory motor pattern starts with orientation, then we have to stop, we have to creep and then starts to chase. And now it gets messy. But everything that comes before that is relatively safe. It's quite stationary.
And the dog can still enjoy the fun and the hormones and the neurotransmitters that come with predatory behavior. So the dog is still in this predatory motor pattern, but in a safe way. And this is basically what we teach the dog instead of running off straight away. Why don't you look at the other animal? Might be nice too. And the dog in the beginning is like, why? And then they start to, oh, maybe it's nice too.
And also we teach the clients what to do, because the moment that human beings out with their dogs, see a wild animal, they panic, they get into panic because they know what's coming next. So they grab the leash, they grab the harness, they shout frantically. And this is the cue for the dog to be alert. Maybe the dog has not even seen the deer yet, but the moment the human becomes hectic, they are like, oh, okay, where is it? And so we need to teach the human to what to do in these situations.
They can't handle the leash in this way, talk to your dog in that way. So this is a whole behavior modification for both of them. Any questions or do you like me to go on with the third part? Well, I'm wondering how you teach humans to be calm because I can appreciate maybe we practice in a controlled environment, but then the approximation between that controlled environment and a real life situation are significant. So how do you teach that? Yeah, it's learning by doing.
So you cannot set this up. You can with a stuffed animal or with a fake animal, do it one time, but this is only to teach the client what to do when their dog reacts in a certain way so that they have handled this in a safe environment once. And then the dog knows that this is just a fake stuff, stuffy or something like this. So then we have to go out and we have to practice in real life situations.
And of course it's in predation particularly difficult because you cannot control the wild animals. So you never know what happens. And this is why it's so important that especially during the laying the foundation period, you have to have a long line on your dog so that you can prevent your dog from chasing if the dog is too close to the other animal or if you have miscalculated to prevent the dog from having success.
Yeah. So a long line on for management purposes, as opposed to training purposes, but you just need that safety protocol in place. Exactly. You cannot or you shouldn't risk anybody getting hurt. And it's three parties that have to stay safe. So it's not just the dog, it's also the wild animal that we are responsible for. It's I think in every country it is not allowed or legally not allowed to track or search for wild animals and follow them. So we have to be really careful here too.
And of course, it's also not safe for the people with the leash in their hands. They can get knocked over or something. So it's always safety first. Yeah. Awesome. Well, correct me if I'm wrong. We've got out of the four categories you teach active supervision and what to do in this situation, both for the human learner and the canine learner. What's next?
Next is the predation games that I play with the dogs, because when you want the dogs to not chase anymore and to put themselves together all the time, you need to give them an outlet where they can have really fun and be a dog and do all the stuff that they want to do, but they are not safe to do. For example, grabbing and ripping apart and chasing.
So what I basically do is I ask the clients to observe their dogs at home when they play, when they play with their toys or play with another dog or play with the humans. What parts of the predatory motor pattern does your dog show? And then we can start to mimic those with games to give the dogs an outlet. Can you share with us one or two games that you might play? Yeah, of course.
So for example, a very, very simple game that most dogs love, I have never come across a dog that doesn't love it, is to give an outlet for grabbing and dissecting. So you can simply, most of the games are super simple so that you can just do them without any training.
You take a paper bag, for example, in Germany, when you go into a bakery, you get a really nice thin paper bag and you can stuff them with treats and then you can wrap them up or close them and then you take this paper bag on your walk.
And the next time your dog is gone or is ahead of you on the path and you recall your dog, then you throw the paper bag into the opposite direction and then your dog can run past you, he can chase the paper bag, he can grab or jump on the paper bag and then he can start to dissect and eat the treats from the paper bag. So we have created an outlet for chasing, for grabbing, for dissecting and eating. It's super simple.
Maybe your dog needs a little help in the beginning because a lot of dogs have been taught not to destroy things. But if you sit down next to your dog and you show them, you rip the paper bag apart for them, then you can see that they really enjoy this noise of ripping paper. It's like, wow, giving them shivers somehow. And then they will start to join in and you can encourage them a little bit to do it on their own. Yeah, awesome. I love the simplicity of that.
And things where our clients don't have to do training are wonderful. What's the fourth category? So when you have done the four, normally I do all at the same time. In each session, I do from each category, one exercise or one game. And the fourth is, of course, recall. So where the traditional training protocols only focus on recall because it is so important. Your dog needs a recall.
It's a solid recall that even works under distractions, under the highest distractions, which might be a little bit tricky. But you can teach your dog a recall that works even in the presence of wildlife. And this is what we also work on. So I give the dog owners options of how to train a recall that is super solid, super strong, because as we said before, you cannot fully control the environment, especially in predation training. And you will need your recall.
So things will go wrong at one point and you will need to call your dog back and out of the situation. Awesome. I love the idea of teaching one aspect from each category in each session. What's an example of something you might teach, say, in an early session with a client in terms of the recall category? You mean for the recall? You were just frozen for a second, so I didn't get the whole... My apology.
What is something that you might teach in an early session with a client in terms of the recall category? In terms of recall, yeah. So first of all, recall is a lot of talking because we need to... What is really important when you want to teach the recall up to such a high standard that it even works under this massive distraction? I would call this the top tier challenges for any dog owner to recall from running prey.
And in order so that your recall works up to such a high level, you have to lay the foundations very, very carefully, very solid. And there, if you, in your training, you do some mistakes, some training mistakes, then your recall will never work to such a high level. You will come to a medium distraction. No problem. Your dog will still come back. But when it comes to this, when it really counts, then the recall will fail. And this often is the case because we have some basic mistakes.
So this is where I first start. I first ask my clients, how did you train the recall? How did you structure the training? Did you structure it at all? And then I asked them to show me how do you recall your dog? And then I already see some things that I think, OK, maybe we start from scratch. We take another cue and we start from the beginning. And this time we do it in a way that it will work and you can structure it and scaffold it up to a top level.
Awesome. Well, I love that we've just scratched the surface here. And I think it gives the listeners of this show a tiny little window into all of the exciting, amazing things you have to teach and the depth of what they can learn from looking into more of your content, because we do only have an hour for this episode. So we can't spend the whole episode talking about this one thing because we've got a few other things we were planning to discuss. The next one, Simone, was pseudopredation.
Can we dive into that, please? Pseudopredation is a term that was coined by a colleague from here in Germany. And she was the first one to realize that there is difference in unwanted predatory behavior in dogs that we do not want as the humans. Because when we have real predatory behavior, it's mostly based on genetics. So the dog was bred to perform a hunting task.
But then we have a lot of dogs and these are often the most severe cases that we have in our dog training that were not bred for this task originally. And we start to wonder where does this come from, this behavior. And often we see that there is no real reason for predation. So it happens so randomly and so out of the blue that it doesn't really make sense.
And what we often find is that dogs who are in a conflict or not completely comfortable in their environment due to certain factors that I will talk later about, they show it as a kind of displacement behavior. Displacement behavior is a behavior that doesn't really fit in this context, in this particular context. So it's like, what the hell is he doing at the moment? And then the dogs often go into predatory behavior because it feels so good for them.
So when they don't know what to do, they resort into a behavior that feels nice. And this is predation. So we might have these dogs that, for example, enter a dog park with a lot of dogs and they do not feel very comfortable with all these dogs and people around. So what they do is they are suddenly super, super busy sniffing or tracking or looking at something. And it's like, OK, he's hunting, but why? And this might be a kind of displacement behavior.
And when we have these various factors, we call it pseudopredation because it's not real predatory behavior. And it doesn't make sense to train it with this antipredation protocol that I just explained, because the underlying problem is something completely else. It might be, for example, that a rescue dog comes to a new country and has to adjust to this new culture, this new people, this new surroundings, a new climate.
And what they express is massive predatory behavior because they cannot cope with the environment. So they do something that feels good for them. Or, for example, when we have dogs with a lot of background stress at home, for example, a new baby in the house or a puppy, a new puppy in the house, and the dog does not get enough sleep and is stressed. And then the dog owners take the dog out and the dog immediately starts to chase, to track, to sniff.
And this is a kind of release for this stressful environment that they have at home. Would you like me to talk a little bit more about the reasons? Yeah. Okay. So one thing that is quite common, and that this is also why when I have clients coming to my training and they do not have a hunting dog or a dog that was bred for hunting, but maybe an Australian Shepherd or something, which is not the typical hunting dog. And they tell me that the dog is showing a lot of predatory behavior.
I always give them a checklist with a lot of questions about what is going on at home. And there is often the case that these dogs suffer, for example, from separation anxiety. This is really interesting because when you think about when do you take your dog out, it's when you come home after you've been away because you think your dog needs to pee. So the dog has been alone for about four hours, five hours. You come home, you take the dog out, the dog starts to hunt.
But what really happened is the dog had such a hard time staying at home and really lost all their impulse control and the ability to put themselves together. And then they come out and they release this energy into predatory behavior. We also see this with dogs that have, for example, a very stressful life. For example, dogs with a job who do not have enough rest in between their tasks that they perform.
For example, dogs that go to school with their owners as a school dog or also dogs that do a lot of dog sports that involve lots of waiting and watching other dogs perform. So I love agility, I did a lot of agility with my first two dogs, but I don't like them to watch the other dogs while they run in the parkour and they have to wait because I know that my dogs have to pull themselves together, seeing these other dogs running and this is not good for them.
And if you do a dog sports that involves a lot of waiting and watching other dogs, you might have an eye on predatory behavior as well, because this might be the release after they come home from this stressful event. Might also be the other way around. Dogs with not enough stimulation, especially those dogs that were bred for wide movements, big movements.
For example, a setter who is made to run in big circles in open fields, if they are kept on a leash all the time, this also might resort into predatory or result in predatory behavior when they get the opportunity because they are always on a leash, they always cannot follow their genetic makeup and when they are finally released, they go completely crazy. Do you want me to talk about frustration too? I have some more on my list. Yeah, keep going, this is great. Please do.
So what also a lot of people underestimate is frustration. There is this saying that frustration kicks into the dog's legs. So it transfers directly into the dog's legs. So when your dog gets frustrated and you have an active stress type, a dog that releases stress through movement, and most hunting dogs, predatory or high energy dogs, herding dogs, they are active stress types. When they get frustrated because they are held back, they transfer this automatically into more movement.
So think about where you walk your dogs and at which time you walk your dogs there. When they are always confronted with wildlife scent, maybe also see wildlife a lot, and they cannot follow their genetic makeup, which tells them to go after it, chase them, track them, whatever. This leads to frustration.
And when you give them no outlets, the leash is too short, or you always have them on a reflexive leash or something, and they cannot follow their natural movement pattern, this also leads to more predatory behavior when they get the chance to. And this also leads to a lot of leash pulling.
This is why a lot of hunting dogs, a lot of high energy dogs cannot walk on a leash over a longer period of time, because the moment that frustration or excitement kicks in, they want to follow their natural movement pattern, which is, of course, faster and wider than the normal movement pattern that we want them to perform on a loose leash.
So there's been conversation in this episode about breeds of dog and about how some breeds of dog have been bred to have certain parts of the predatory sequence, or the average member of their breed would be more likely to exhibit these behaviors. And when you see the pseudo-predatory behaviors in breeds that aren't typically known for exhibiting some of these behaviors, you go, why is that? And sometimes it could be for some of the reasons you've just discussed.
I'm really curious, I just find myself curious as you're talking about the mechanisms behind all of this, and my level of analysis is mainly behavior analysis. I'm learning a lot now from an area where I'm not primarily using to process information. I'm like, what is the antecedent? What is the behavior? What is the consequence? So help me out here.
In dogs, the predatory sequence is in their genetic code, and then for an individual or a breed that is not breed typical for that behavior to occur, it's something that gets expressed genetically, given the right context. What is the question? Is that an accurate way of thinking about it? Does that make sense? I can restate it. Yeah, maybe you can say it in different words.
So if you have a breed, tell me a breed of dog where you might not necessarily expect so much to see in a typical member of that breed, the predatory sequence. Australian Shepherd. Okay, Australian Shepherd? Yeah, they normally do not express real predatory behavior. Okay, and so you get a client ring you up and they say, I've got an Australian Shepherd, and they are doing these behaviors that sound to you like the predatory sequence.
So this individual dog, who's an average member of that species, because of course, there's going to be an Australian Shepherd who likes to just relentlessly chase because they're an anomaly in that breed, or there might be one that never chases, no matter how much frustration or separation anxiety they experience. But an average, let's say, they are involved in some sport where they're watching a lot of fast moving dogs, and we're starting to see some pseudo predation from this individual.
So my question is about the mechanics of that. What is happening is, is it that this predatory sequence is built into genetic code of that individual dog, and the environment can, and I had the word before, and now it's left me, the environment can make those genes become expressed in that? Oh, okay. Is that what's happening? Like, help me understand this. Yes. So every dog has parts of predatory behavior in them. So almost every dog chases, this is quite natural behavior for them.
And so it comes through genetics, but it's also learning experience. And we cannot know what is what really in each dog, because sometimes a dog that has never chased before comes across a deer starts chasing, and then we do not know, is it now a learned behavior, felt good, great. So I do this again. Or is it something that would have come anyway, but maybe four weeks later, or a month later. So especially in younger dogs, we never know what is genetics and what is learned experience.
So a dog can learn to do all these things. A nice example for learned predatory behavior that I have in Austrian Shepherds, this is why I brought up the example is quite common is that we have Austrian Shepherds that go really far away from their owners. And Austrian Shepherds normally don't do that. They are little gluey things that stick around quite nicely with you. But we have those Shepherds that chase and that run off and that go away from their owners.
Because what they have learned is that when I run fast into the opposite direction, far away from my owner, my owner will start to whistle. And then I come back and then I get a nice tuck game or a nice treat. And so this is a very good example of pseudo predation, where the predatory behavior is not in the focus of the dog. It's getting the interaction from their humans, getting the attention from their humans. Does answer your question? I'm not sure about that.
Yeah, that only makes sense in terms of the behavior. I mean, that's where my brain is. It's like, yeah, that makes sense. Antecedent. Cool. We're out on the beach. Behavior run far away. Consequences, I get whistled. If I get whistled, then the next ABC starts. And so I'm just trying to figure out where that level of analysis becomes the most valuable one to use. Or we use a level of analysis where we're thinking more about what is the natural history of this species?
And how does the predatory component of that influence our thinking? Or does it not matter? Or do we blame them? I'm interested in how your brain works when you're thinking about all of this stuff. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So when you come to a client and they present a problem like that, how much do you reach for your ABCs versus how much do you reach for your predatory sequence knowledge to help you put the puzzle together about that individual dog and come up, most importantly, for an intervention tailored to that individual? Yeah, right. So this is a very good question. I do the background check. I look at the training that people have done before.
But most of the time, yeah, this is more like a gut feeling. I can't really tell you a certain procedure that I take, step A, step B, step C. So I ask what's the most pressing problem is in this moment for the dog owners. And then we start training straight away. So even when I see that this is a case of pseudopredation, we need to start training. For example, in the case of the training mistakes with the recall, then we build a new recall. We teach the dog and we start before that.
For example, I give the dog owners a task to observe their dog and reward every behavior that they like so that the dog gets the attention that he craves for behavior that is acceptable and that is nice for the owner. And then the dog does not have to run away to get this attention. So, for example, we reward the dog for staying on the path, for waiting, for looking back. And this is more my approach that I go to.
So my understanding is that you follow a strategy that I think a lot of people would follow regardless of focusing on the most challenging thing, if that makes sense, and then start training straight away. And so the predatory stuff is really helpful in those situations though, tell me if I'm wrong, to help understand to the best of our ability what is going on for the dog, what might be influencing this dog, but may not be based on learning history. Exactly.
So it's always the individual dog, but it's also the breed. Of course, we are taught not to see through a breed lens all the time. And I think it's also important to look at the learning history, where does the dog come from, how does the dog live, especially when we come to pseudo predation. But we have to keep in mind that the hound is tracking and the spaniel is quartering. And so these are behaviors that we can expect.
And we need to take them into consideration when we find the training plan, because we need to find outlets for the dog where he can perform this behavior. And this is where, of course, the breed gives us the first hint what the dog might enjoy. And then we can start from there. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing that with that and for your patience with me as I articulate my questions and my thoughts.
I really appreciate that because it was really insightful and I think it'll be helpful for the listeners.
And one insight there that I think was really helpful that really built on where my thinking was before you answered that was that you look at the breed to not necessarily have what you might be using at the end of the program, but to lean on to say it's quite likely that in this situation for this breed with these behaviors that are being presented, this outlet for this behavior has a high chance of helping us in our intervention. Exactly.
Yeah. Now, another term that I've written down here, and again, for the listeners of the show, me and Simone caught up last week before recording this, and we discussed some terms to discuss. And one of them was predatory over-arousal. You can't come up with all the fancy terms. So yeah, predatory arousal is something that goes hand in hand with pseudopredation, but not only. So it also happens to dogs that were genetically bred for hunting tasks.
And it's something that a lot of people find really frustrating. And this basically means that when your dog is in a certain environment that triggers predatory behavior without that even being something around. So here again, the breed is so important because think of a spaniel. I wouldn't start loose leash walking, the teaching of loose leash walking next to a bush with a spaniel, because I know when the spaniel sees a bush, he's already hyper and excited. Same with a setter.
So I have a client whose setter can be off leash in a forest, but never ever in a field because when the setter sees open fields, he's like, whoa, my brain goes through the roof and he wants to start running and circling and flushing and whatever. So predatory over-arousal means there doesn't even need to be a certain trigger and the dog already goes into hunting mode. And this, what does this mean for those dogs? It means more movement, more energy.
And when they are now held back, for example, by a leash and they get frustrated because they try even harder instead of saying, okay, nothing around. So I leave it be, I can walk nicely now. Just the opposite happens. They try harder because they were made for us to, we made them to find prey for us. And if there is no prey and we are hunters, we want them to try harder to get us the prey that we want. So this is what they start doing.
So when there's nothing around, the hunting dogs get even more excited than when there is something around. And this is also something that you need to know when you have such a dog because it happens all the time and people don't understand why it happens. Why is my dog so excited? There is nothing around. Why can you not walk on a loose leash? This is what is called predatory over-arousal. It's the root cause for so many problems.
And I can appreciate that for the average dog owner, guardian, who knows nothing, well, very little to nothing, who knows little, this can seem really confusing, really stressful, really overwhelming.
And I know we've talked about some of them already, but do you have any other ones to talk about in terms of what kinds of problems, for the listeners of this show as well, who work with clients, with their dogs and in the household setting, what kinds of problems are being presented to them that they might not be necessarily thinking about so much how important everything we've talked about today is? What kind of problems?
Yeah. So besides the regular problems that you immediately think about when you hear predatory behavior, which is chasing and herding animals, grabbing, killing animals, it's mainly the orientation behavior in the beginning that makes such a big problem, because this is why the dog is always so nervous. So when the dog is outside, the dog cannot listen to the owner. The dog is completely in their own world, not approachable, cannot react to cues, cannot take food. My dog is not food driven.
The root course, again, is not an ominous food drive that doesn't exist. It's the predatory overarousal, that the dog is in such a heightened state of, I need to find prey, I need to go for it, that he cannot take food. It's the same as when you are about to go on a bungee jump, you are full of adrenaline and dopamine, and then your partner wants to give you a cookie. It's like, what the hell? I don't want this cookie. So it's the same for our dogs. They even spit a steak in front of your feet.
There is this video on the internet with a dog trainer bathing a steak in front of a dog's nose. The dog is lunging, screaming because he sees sheep in the steak. He's not interested a bit in the steak. For this dog trainer is the proof that positive training, reward-based training does not work. So the consequence would be aversive measures. But this shows that the basic understanding of predatory behavior is not really given here, because eating and food does not drive predatory behavior.
It drives predatory behavior in wolves, but it does not drive predatory behavior in our domestic dogs. So we need to come up with other things. And this is what a lot of clients come to me that they say, my dog is completely unresponsive outside. For example, he stares at every bird he sees or needs to flush every bird he sees, jumps into the leash, drags me around. So these are the main problems that I hear from my clients.
Well, I get really excited learning from you, because I think today's episode is such a reminder to me about how much there is to learn. It reminds me of how little I know, and I get to add the knowledge from today's episode.
But also in saying that, with the fact that we've only just scratched the surface on these topics and the tools that we can add to our toolbox to help maybe our own dogs or our clients who are struggling with some of the problems you've just talked about, it makes me excited to know that you've got all of these other learning opportunities online that we can go and learn from in your books.
And it's strikingly stressful for me, because now my list of things that I want to learn gets longer and longer. But I want to thank you, Simone, for answering my questions today and for helping build my understanding and the listeners of our show's understanding of the topics we've talked about. Looking at the time, I've done what I always do, and I ask too many questions. We need to wrap up.
So I'm going to ask you one of the questions that I ask all of our guests, and I just want to hear good and especially really interested in what you had to share, being from Germany and the culture of Germany and the culture around dogs in Germany and how that's different than other parts of the world and the knowledge and stuff you have in your local area. What do you want to see happen in our industry, Simone, over the next coming while, over the next five to ten years?
Yeah, so what I would love to happen is that we normalize predatory behavior as normal dog behavior, because it's such an essential part of our dog's personality. When you think about what dogs do in their free time, let's call it when they enjoy themselves, when they play, when they just do what dogs do, it's often predatory behavior.
They're displayed in play, and yeah, it makes such a big part of their personality and what they are, and it's an amazing skill that we have, that they have, sorry, and it's so sad that we simply want to get rid of this, because if we find it annoying, we find it scary, and I can totally understand why we find it scary.
I'm scared to hell when my dogs fold off in the woodland, and I know there is maybe a street 200 meters away or something, but still it is a natural part of them, a big part of them, and it's a beautiful part to observe, so I would really like if we normalized it more and accepted and embraced it more to work with the dog instead of against it.
Yeah, well, I think if we think about that future, the work you're doing, Simone, is contributing to that vision, and so with that in mind, before we wrap up, I just want to, on behalf of all of the listeners here listening, and myself and Animal Training Academy and our global community, express gratitude to you for the work that you're doing to create this paradigm shift. It's very appreciated, thank you. Oh, thank you very much, yeah, thank you.
And just point the listeners where they can go to continue learning from you. Okay, so I'm on social media, so I am on Instagram, on Facebook, you can find me if you just type in predation substitute training, I think it should come up, and then of course I have a website, predationsubstitutetraining .com, and on this website you can hop on my newsletter to get a lot of training tips and all the new things coming up.
So with this newsletter comes a freebie, which is a nice little game for dogs that love to observe things with their eyes, it's called the stalking game, and it's very beneficial for dogs to teach them a concept that they can actually chase things, but only with their eyes, not with their feet.
So this comes automatically to your mailbox when you sign up for the newsletter, and of course on Amazon there are the books that we talked about, Hunting Together is the basic book that I would recommend starting with when you want to learn about predatory behavior, and then you can add on from there.
And then I have on my website a very comprehensive course on predation substitute training that gives you all the information, really all the information that you need about predation substitute training, about the tools, the games, the management, and also recall how to build a super strong recall. It's called Call of the Chase, it's a self-learning course, and I have put a bonus code into the show notes that gives you a nice discount on this course.
Wonderful, we will of course link to all of us in the show notes. So Simone, let's end there, and once again thank you from myself and on behalf of everyone listening, appreciating everything that you're doing and making time to hang out with us at Animal Training Academy, thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation Ryan, I really enjoyed being here, thank you. 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 trainer's 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.
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