Transcript
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Thinking about adopting a rescue dog, but you're worried about their unknown past.
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Although many rescue dogs adjust beautifully and haven't experienced trauma, some do come from difficult backgrounds or have experienced trauma simply by being in a shelter or rescue environment.
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My guest today, kate LaSala, will share how you can build trust with any rescue dog, how you can understand their unique needs and how you can turn initial uncertainty into a lifelong bond, whether your dog has experienced trauma or not.
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So stay tuned.
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You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro, and my guest today is Kate LaSalla.
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Kate is a multi-credentialed canine behavior consultant who specializes in fear, aggression, separation, anxiety and helping families with dogs who are struggling with newborns and toddlers.
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Her passion for senior dogs led her to become a companion animal end-of-life doula which we have to do a whole episode just on that, I think, but we'll talk about that later and she basically helps people with anticipatory grief, end-of-life planning and assisting her clients navigating stigmatized losses such as rehoming, surrendering and behavioral euthanasia.
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She serves behavior and doula clients worldwide via remote one-on-one sessions, so this is a multi-talented person I've been looking forward to having on the show.
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So, kate, thank you so much for being here with me today.
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Thanks for having me.
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I'm excited to talk to your audience.
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Yes, and, like I said, I think we need to do more of these, because there were so many things that we got into discussing about oh, we could do this or we could do this, or I thought about this but we're starting with talking about, and what prompted me to focus in on this idea of traumatized dogs and bringing them home and helping them adjust is two things really.
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Number one as much as we hope that the holidays get people to thinking about, maybe this is a good time you know we're going to be off for a couple of weeks good time to bring a pet home, and I know a lot of people have strong feelings about whether pets should be given as gifts, and I don't believe they should be.
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I just want to make that clear right up front.
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I don't believe you should give a random person like your grandma even your grandma maybe not be random, but you shouldn't just give a pet but a pet.
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But if you are a grown adult human and you have decided that you are ready to bring a pet into your home and you want to make that a holiday thing for your kid, I think with the right planning and preparation, that's fine.
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So we're going to hit on that at the end.
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But the other reason I wanted to talk about this subject is that I think many times people are hesitant about rescue dogs and I've heard this many times over the years.
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Is that well, I don't know what their past is, or maybe they've been abused, and there's a lot of assumptions that people make and some might end up being true and some might not end up being true.
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So I wanted to get into talking about that.
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But first, how did you get so involved and interested in focusing specifically on fear and trauma with dogs?
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So I have been an animal advocate for over three decades.
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I became a vegetarian as a teenager.
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I've really been a champion for animal welfare in lots of capacities rescuer, transporter, shelter worker, foster family.
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We've fostered not as many as you but over 60 dogs, volunteered, processing applications, all sorts of things like that.
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When Humane Society US was going through New Jersey to try to have townships ban new puppy mill stores from opening, I went to all these town council meetings to speak out against puppy mill stores.
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But really my training origin story started when we adopted our my soul dog, boo Boo.
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So she arrived from a transport van in Kentucky.
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We went to go meet her.
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The driver took her out, her collar snapped off and she bolted and she was gone for nine days before we even touched her before we even laid hands on this little dog, and so we spent nine days looking for her.
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When we finally caught her and brought her home, it was clear she was very fearful, and this wasn't my first experience with a fearful dog.
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Our very first dog as an adult bandit was aggressive.
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He had bitten seven people, including both myself and my husband, in the face.
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But that was long before I was a trainer, so I didn't know how to help him and everything I tried really just made him worse.
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That was long before I was a trainer, so I didn't know how to help him and everything I tried really just made him worse.
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And I knew, having Boo-Boo in front of me, that we owed it to her to do better.
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So I really embarked on this journey to learn as much as I could.
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I earned a scholarship to the Academy for Dog Trainers, which is sort of the Harvard of dog training academies Graduated with honors training academies graduated with honors, and from that point on I sort of dedicated my life to positive reinforcement, science-based, very kind training to help these types of dogs.
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So my passion for fearful and aggressive dogs just really deepened and I knew that I could empathize with clients who are struggling with that feeling of hopelessness and anger and fear and anxiety and all that heartbreak that comes with having a fearful or aggressive dog.
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I will point out we lost Boo Boo seven months ago and we had-.
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I know I was following the journey through the blog posts.
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Yeah, I've been chronicling as part of my doula work.
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I've been chronicling my own grief journey to sort of help clients and to get it out there.
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You know, I think it's really helpful.
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You know, death is not a topic that Americans in particular really embrace talking about, so I think being really transparent about my own grief journey has been helpful to a lot of other people.
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So we lost Boo Boo seven months ago.
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We had lost our other senior dog, mr Barbo, the year before that and so, like you mentioned in my intro, senior dogs really drove me to my doula work.
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So that's a separate part of my sort of behavior practice but it's something that I incorporate into my practice.
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And because I focus on fear and aggression, I do have a percentage of clients every year that are faced with rehoming or surrendering or even behavioral euthanasia, and there's not a lot of supportive, positive resources for that.
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So having that be sort of in my toolbox as something that I can offer clients I think is really helpful.
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Yeah, definitely.
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I mean because life with dogs, life with all animals, but we're focusing on dogs today I mean it's a 360 degree thing.
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Things come at you from different directions and you don't know what's going to happen.
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You know you might be in one position at this point and five years later you're on a completely different position, and so, having a resource like yourself, to me the credentialing is very important.
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I know that the dog training world is very unregulated and I know that one of the things, because I've had trainers reach out to me and they want to be on the show and it's like have you done anything to even attempt?
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And it's like, oh, you know, I've learned from this.
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And it's like you know, at least there are resources out there to get that science-based background, and I think there's a lot of trainers that don't take advantage of that.
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So more power to you for seeking that out, for sure.
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Yeah.
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And it's not commonly known.
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I think people just assume that if someone's out there calling themselves a dog trainer, that they must have education or credentialing or licensing.
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You need a license to give someone a manicure or cut their hair, but you don't need any sort of licensing to train dogs, and that's a living creature that you could actually damage.
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So professional licensure is not required to call yourself a dog trainer.
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In the United States, nothing is stopping anyone from waking up one morning and saying I'm going to be a dog trainer today and hanging a shingle and start collecting money from people.
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So there's no legal or education requirements required and that leaves the door open for any method being allowed to quote train dogs.
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So that includes shock collars, prong collars.
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You know there's no overseeing authority ensuring that people are working in an ethical, humane way.
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Yeah, such a good point.
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One of the things that I know I ran into a lot when I was volunteering because, like you, I volunteered at a shelter for many years.
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A lot when I was volunteering because, like you, I volunteered at a shelter for many years and we did see a lot of fearful dogs and many times the staff doesn't know how to deal with them.
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You know, it's like they're less worried about it when it's a little dog because it's like, okay, it's not going to eat your face off.
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But with larger dogs who might have fear or fear aggression, you know, oftentimes they end up getting euthanized or they get pawned off on the unsuspecting public.
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And now I'm an inexperienced dog owner that's trying to deal with these things.
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So when we're talking about fear and trauma, I guess I know what I've seen.
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But what kind of things do you see or are people facing when it comes to this?
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So I think it's helpful to understand why animals are prone to fear in the first place.
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You know it has a role in survival in the wild.
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Fear is an evolutionary advantage to a certain degree.
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So fear is how animals instinctively avoid injury, disease or even death.
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If you're not certain, is that a tree or is that a lion?
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I'm not sure it's better to be afraid of it because if not, if I make the wrong choice, I could end up injured or dead.
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So as long as that animal's fear doesn't prevent them from survival, so mating, procuring food, it has an evolutionary purpose and that animal survives to mate and pass on their somewhat fearful but survivalist genes to their offspring.
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Obviously, domesticated dogs, they don't need to have that because we're bringing them into our homes and we're providing for them, but they're animals.
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There's still that element of fight or flight and survival instincts.
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So in dogs, fear can come from five different places.
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So it can come from genetics.
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It can come from maternal fear.
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Fear can come from five different places.
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So it can come from genetics, can come from maternal fear.
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It can come from maternal behavior, lack of socialization and bad experiences.
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So, contrary to what everyone thinks, oh, I'll get a puppy and I'll raise them and it's all how you raise them.
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That's completely not true.
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You cannot discount genetics or early life experiences.
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So in dogs they have a very sort of spongy window.
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The first 12 weeks of life is what we call their critical socialization window and in that window anything good or bad that happens to them has a really formative impact into adulthood.
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So if we think about even dogs coming from a breeder interesting sort of side note during COVID overwhelmingly more than 80% of my dogs that I had as clients during COVID came from some sort of breeder, primarily doodle breeders, because everyone wanted to doodle during COVID and all the rescues and good breeders sold out and they had very long waitlists.
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Good breeders sold out and they had very long wait lists and so what was left were Amish puppy mills and all these places that were very unscrupulous in their breeding practices, pushing out tons of fearful dogs.
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So even getting a dog from a breeder doesn't necessarily protect you from not having a fearful dog.
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So if that breeder doesn't do the right things in those first 12 weeks of life and most breeders hang on to their dogs until about eight or 10 weeks most of that critical socialization window is out of the owner's control, because we're getting dogs usually when that window is closing.
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So, understanding what are the parents like?
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You know, when I have people who want a puppy and they're going to a breeder, I always encourage them to meet both parents, because if mom and dad are showing fearful behaviors, they're they're afraid of strangers.
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You go to reach out to pet them and they kind of pull themselves back or they're not overtly pro-social.
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You know we've all seen bouncy happy puppies that just bound up to you and are like hi, love me, play with me, touch me.
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That's a pro-social dog.
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So absence of pro-social behavior is a huge red flag in dogs.
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So if mom and dad are not pro-social or they have a history of separation, anxiety or resource, resource guarding or body handling issues, all of those things can be passed genetically.
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So genetics is a huge piece.
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Obviously, with rescue dogs we don't usually know their genetic history and it is a little bit of a risk.
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But I still advocate for rescue because there are very few breeders that actually do it right.
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I probably have a list of maybe five breeders that I would say actually do it right, there's a lot of things that are outside of our control, right.
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But the socialization piece is within somebody's control.
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And when you're talking about a person that's a responsible breeder, they breed a manageable number of animals so that they can do that properly at the proper time.
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And so, really asking questions, if you're going to get a dog from a breeder and finding out what have they done, you know, if you're getting that puppy at 16 weeks, let's say what has been done, what have they been exposed to?
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And another thing I've been thinking about the shelter environment.
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I think sometimes people think oh well, if I have to choose between this adult dog here who's two years old, and these puppies over here who are 16, 18 weeks, I'm going to go with the puppy because then I can mold it and whatever.
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But you've already missed that window, you've missed that window and I push for three years and older because then what you see is what you get.
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If a dog is going to have behavior issues barring medical changes or pain or something like that, once a dog reaches three years old they are socially mature.
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There's very little movement in behavior and temperament once a dog is three and older.
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So even if you get a puppy and you do all the right things during that critical socialization window, there are some dogs that when they go through social maturity between two and three they have extreme behavior changes.
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So I've had clients say I've been taking my dog to the dog park or daycare.
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You know his entire life and he's.
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He turned three years old and now he's snarking off dogs that come into the dog park or he's picking fights at daycare.
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And that is just an element of social maturity very often.
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And so you can do all the right things with a puppy.
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It does not guarantee that it's going to end up fine as an adult.
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But if you get an adult dog, you get a three-year-old dog.
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What you see is what you get.
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You can assess if they have resource guarding or body handling issues and then you go into a better educated knowing.
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Okay, this dog guards his food.
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We can work with that.
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We can modify that behavior.
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It's not a deal breaker.
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You got a puppy?
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Yeah, maybe it's not guarding food early on.
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But if you don't do the right things or that dog goes through social maturity, you might end up with a dog who decides he doesn't like people or dogs as a three-year-old, yeah, and that's where that education comes into play.
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And I think too many times people think, oh, it seems like a happy-go-lucky puppy, so I don't have to do anything, all I have to do is potty train.
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Like they're so focused on the wrong things Although I mean, obviously we want our pets to be potty trained, I get it but they're focused on teaching it sit and they're focused on the potty training but they're not focused on socializing it.
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And you know, you talk about COVID.
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I mean that was probably the worst possible time for anybody to get a puppy, because you can't socialize it, because you can't get it around other people and other dogs, and so I'm seeing the fallout of that.
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Now you know, years post COVID, dogs with separation anxiety, dogs with incredible fear of strangers because they were isolated and they were only around their familiar family members and then when they went out onto the streets of Brooklyn they're like, holy crap, who are all these people that look different than my family?
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The dogs that I have big concerns about in the rescue world are ones that come from known bad experiences.
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So you know, one of those ways you acquire fear in dogs is bad experiences.
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So if we think of things like puppy mills or meat markets in Asia or street dogs, you know, coming over from wherever they're coming, those dogs are more prone to have fear issues.
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Just because of genetics.
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Probably, you know, stray dogs are probably coming from a dog who was also a stray, so they weren't being raised in a nice comfy house with love and and all the good things.
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But dogs coming from places like puppy mills that are just breeding for money, living in a cage, they're not getting socialized, they're not getting any good experiences in that critical window.
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Even when they get out, if they seem like they're a bouncy, happy puppy, there is a much stronger likelihood that they are going to develop issues later on.
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So puppy mills, meat market dogs, dogs transported from overseas, that were.
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You know, puerto Rico has what has been not very affectionately called dead dog beach, which is basically where lots of dogs get dumped on the beach, lots of strays.
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There's lots of efforts Sado Project and other rescues do lots of efforts to go in and spay, neuter and to pick up the puppies and try to socialize them and transport them here for adoption.
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But you know Indian street dogs, lots of dogs coming from Thailand and other places.
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What about?
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Houston street dogs.
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Yeah, I mean the city of Houston, I mean, and there are groups in our area.
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I mean.
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I could talk all day long about the challenges and you know what the challenges in rescue and the different beliefs and views like.
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I am not a believer that everything can be rescued or saved, you know, and and there are people that believe even more strongly than I do about that and believe that anything that would be fearful, no, we're not going to deal with that.
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And then you've got people on the other extreme that everything could be saved, and I think what it does is it puts the adopting public in a bad position.
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So I'm rounding up these dogs wherever I am, whether it's Puerto Rico, whether it's here in Houston, I'm rounding up these street dogs.
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I'm telling their sad, sad tale on Facebook.
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And then the person I think a lot of times when people are adopting, they're so focused on I want to save that dog that they're not focused on.
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Am I capable of managing the issues that could go along with that dog?
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And I don't know that many rescues do themselves a service, like you know, even just something as simple as even when you try to be transparent, and you know we've had dogs where I've clearly put on there no kids are like I know for a fact, like anything that's going to be at eye level, you know, like it needs to be adult human beings.
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Okay, fine, you've got a 15 year old.
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From the dog's perspective that's probably close to an adult human being.
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But then I'll have like 20 applications from people that have toddlers and it's like how much more clear can I say this dog will probably bite your toddler, you know, maybe.
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And then the question becomes maybe I shouldn't be adopting out dogs that could bite a toddler and it just it spins out into this whole, this whole thing.
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But going back to the issue of when somebody wants to do the right thing by saving one of these dogs, it's a great story, but you got to live with the consequences.
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So what are people supposed to do?
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I think there's some misconceptions.
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You know like it tugs at those heartstrings and people want to be that savior, they want to be that hero.
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Oh, this is her origin story.
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I saved her.
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You know she would have died if it weren't for me.
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But I think the biggest misconception is that dogs just need love.
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Like oh, he just needs a place to land, a soft place to land, and he just needs to be loved.
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And these dogs need so much more than love.
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They need training, they usually need medication, they need a home that is going to be understanding and make their world small and not bring in lots of strangers because that dog is possibly afraid of strangers.
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They need to understand what loving a fearful dog really means.
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And I think that is a big misstep between a lot of rescues and sort of well-meaning advice giving public like oh, you got this sad dog, oh, he just needs love, and similar to the idea of when a dog comes home, how much time do they need?
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Like there's all sorts of well-meaning advice that gets thrown around on social media.
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That is actually potentially very harmful information because it delays people from getting real professional help with these dogs that need structured training in the right way.
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It's not just throwing food at the dog.
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I mean, that's a big part of what we do.
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We use food in training.
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But if you don't do it the right way, you're not going to get results.
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And so people thinking that they're just going to love the dog and our idea of love usually means touching or hugging or or bringing them close to us and many fearful dogs that's the last thing they want.
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They want space, they want distance.
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They don't want you to touch them.
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So you're not proving anything by touching them to prove that you're not a threat.
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You're actually teaching the dog that you are a threat if you're forcing yourself into their space or forcing yourself on them, when most fearful dogs need to go at their own pace and they need to be the ones to decide when they feel comfortable to have an interaction with you.
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Yeah, If I am just Joe Public and I'm going to get a dog and I don't see that bouncy happy-go-lucky and I want to try to give that dog.
00:21:18.791 --> 00:21:22.847
Maybe it's kind of sitting quietly in the corner of the cage like how should that progression work?
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Because you mentioned the social media and I know you wrote a blog post about the whole three, three, three.
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You know there's there's different numbers that get thrown out you know, three days to do this, three weeks to do that, three months to do that.
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And I know where some of that comes from, because we have we have a 72 hour joke around our house and the 72 hour joke is in the first 72 hours it's going to seem like a really quiet, well-behaved dog, because it's terrified and it has no idea what it's doing here.
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And I'm not talking about a fearful dog, I'm just talking about a regular, regular dog.
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But it's a completely new environment and it's like, wow, this dog is so mellow, this dog is so quiet, this dog is so good with everybody.
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And boy, a couple of days later it's bouncing off the walls and eating the sofa.
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And boy, a couple of days later, it's bouncing off the walls and eating the sofa.
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It's like where did that come from?
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There's reasons for that, yeah, yeah.
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So the 3-3-3 rule, kind of what you said.
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It sort of suggests that it takes three days to decompress to their new surroundings, three weeks for them to learn the routine and then three months for them to feel entirely comfortable.
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And I think it's a very oversimplified way of setting owners and dogs up for the trajectory that they should be on.
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And the harm in that is one if that is what people think is normal and their dog doesn't fit into that mold, then they're going to start to think, oh, there's something wrong with this dog.
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That alone can affect that relationship and bonding.
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But really, more importantly, if people are sort of waiting out these timelines, it delays them in getting actual help.
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If you have a dog who is so terrified that they're not approaching, they're not eating in front of you, that you're not able to touch them, and that goes on for more than a couple of days them, and that goes on for more than a couple of days, you shouldn't be waiting for weeks or months to wait it out and think, oh, I just need to get through this period of time and then he'll be totally fine If that dog is showing incredible signs of fear or aggression or anxiety, we need to get that dog help immediately.
00:23:21.683 --> 00:23:40.108
We don't want to wait and let them rehearse that anxiety and rehearse those unwanted behaviors and you're probably doing things along the way, like you said, reaching out and touching them, or I think people try to talk their way through a scenario with a dog and it's like I tell people, dogs don't understand intent.
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Your intention might be good.
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Oh, I'm going to give you chicken, I'm going to reach out and hand feed you.
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And I tell you, do not hand feed fearful dogs.
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By definition, to hand feed a dog you have to invade their personal space.
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You have to get close enough to their mouth to deliver food.
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If a dog is not approaching you, they're fearful.
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They don't want to be close to you.
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So if you're coercing them to come closer because you have food or you're trying to approach them with food, I've had clients come to me after they tried that and they said the dog took the chicken and then he bit my hand.
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Because once the the chicken is gone, then all that remains is this scary hand in my personal bubble and that makes me uncomfortable.
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So I want that to go away.
00:24:24.263 --> 00:24:29.963
So I'm gonna bite you, remembering in those early days you're a stranger to the dog.
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They've been bounced around, they were astray.
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They got picked up.
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They were by animal control.
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They got put in a shelter, then they got picked up by a rescue, then they went into a foster home and now they're with you.
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Like these dogs have had such a journey and by the time they get to you.
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They don't know that that's the last stop on the train, that this is supposed to be their forever home.
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So you're a stranger to that dog.
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You have to let the dog call the shots and go at the dog's pace and I said it before, keep his world small, you know.
00:24:59.300 --> 00:25:00.625
Don't force leash walks.
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Don't think, oh, I'm going to put a leash on you.
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We're going to walk around the neighborhood.
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There may be cases where that dog is pottying inside for weeks or months because they're too afraid to go outside, especially if they've come from a rural location you know, they've from down South and they get transported to Brooklyn or or DC or wherever, and these are really busy urban areas and this is not what the dog is used to.
00:25:24.358 --> 00:25:27.507
They probably don't want to go outside because that's loud.
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There's cars, there's buses, there's people, there's all sorts of things that they are not acclimated to the average person is probably not equipped to acclimate them to it.
00:25:36.603 --> 00:25:40.156
Right and so forcing them to do those leash walks is going to make them worse.
