Decoding Dog Bites and Aggression: A Deep-Dive with Janice Bradley from the National Canine Research Council

Imagine a world where our understanding of dog bites and aggression is rooted more in fact than fear, and where we can coexist harmoniously with our canine companions, regardless of breed. Welcome to that world, as we navigate it with our guide for this episode, Janice Bradley, the eminent author and revered Director of Communications and Publications at the National Canine Research Council. Graced with her depth of knowledge and wealth of experience, we dissect the misconceptions shadowing dog bites, and unravel the truth underpinning aggressive dog behavior.

The Aggression in Dogs Conference

The Bitey End of the Dog Bonus Episodes

The Aggression in Dogs Master Course and Expert Webinar Bundle --- LIMITED TIME SPECIAL OFFER

https://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/the-truth-behind-dog-impulses-what-they-mean-and-how-they-shape-behavior/

ABOUT JANIS:

Janis Bradley is a science writer, specializing in the role of bias, particularly related to breed, in policy making regarding canine/human relationships, and serves as the Director of Communications and Publications at the National Canine Research Council. She has written a peer reviewed policy paper on dog bites, which contains a full literature review of the scientific papers on that topic. She has authored papers in peer reviewed journals on various related topics, most currently having collaborated with a veterinary epidemiologist on a series of studies reviewing the use of behavior evaluations administered to dogs living in shelters: “No better than flipping a coin: Reconsidering canine behavior evaluations in animal shelters,” “What is the evidence for reliability and validity of behavior evaluations for shelter dogs? A prequel to ‘No better than flipping a coin,’” and “Saving Normal: A new look at behavioral incompatibilities and dog relinquishment to shelters.” 

Additional peer reviewed publications include “Who is minding the bibliography? Daisy chaining, dropped leads, and other bad behavior using examples from the dog bite literature,” and “Defaming Rover: Error-Based Latent Rhetoric in the Medical Literature on Dog Bites.” All of this comes from an abiding interest in finding the very best information about the remarkable relationship between dogs and people. S

Limited time offer! The Aggression in Dogs Master Course and Expert Webinar Bundle! Only 50 will be made available.
https://aggressivedog.thinkific.com/bundles/the-aggression-in-dogs-master-course-and-expert-webinar-bundle-2024

Learn more about options for help for dogs with aggression here:
AggressiveDog.com

Learn more about our annual Aggression in Dogs Conference here:
The Aggression in Dogs Conference

Subscribe to the bonus episodes available here:
The Bitey End of the Dog Bonus Episodes

Check out all of our webinars, courses, and educational content here:
Webinars, courses, and more!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Did you know that dogs bite, but balloons and
slippers are more dangerous?
In this episode, I have thepleasure of chatting with Janice
Bradley, the author of the book.
With this title, we not onlydiscuss dog bites and the many
misconceptions that often swirlaround them, but take a
historical deep dive into dogtraining in general.
Janice has a wealth ofknowledge and I'm sure you'll

(00:24):
get some nice takeaways fromthis conversation.
Janice is a science writerspecializing in the role of bias
, particularly related to breed,in policy making regarding
canine human relationships, andserves as the director of
communications and publicationsat the National Canine Research
Council.
She has written a peer reviewedpolicy paper on dog bites,
which contains a full literaturereview of the scientific papers

(00:46):
on that topic.
She has also authored papers inpeer reviewed journals on
various related topics, mostcurrently having collaborated
with a veterinary epidemiologiston a series of studies
reviewing the use of behaviorevaluations administered to dogs
living in shelters, titled noBetter Than Flipping a Coin
Reconsidering Canine BehaviorEvaluations in Animal Shelters.

(01:07):
She maintains a researchlibrary for the National Canine
Research Council for use byacademics, dog professionals,
media and the public.
Janice first pursued a careeras a college teacher, counselor
and administrator, leavingacademia in 2000.
She took up her passion for thehuman canine relationship
professionally, teaching morethan 400 aspiring dog trainers

(01:28):
over a 10 year period at the SanFrancisco SPCA Academy for Dog
Trainers At that time, the firstscience based program of its
kind.
And if you are enjoying thebuddy and the dog, you can
support the podcast by going toaggressivedogcom, where there's
a variety of resources to learnmore about helping dogs with
aggression issues, including theUphubbing Aggression and Dogs

(01:49):
Conference happening fromSeptember 29th through October
1st 2023 in Chicago, illinois,with both in person and online
options.
You can also learn more aboutthe Aggression and Dogs Master
course, which is the mostcomprehensive course available
anywhere in the world forlearning how to work with and
help dogs with aggression issues.
Hey everyone, welcome back tothe bitey end of the dog.

(02:12):
I am very excited for thisweek's episode.
We have got a lot of differentthings we're going to talk about
because I've got Janice Bradleyhere from the National Canine
Research Council not only fromthe NCRC, but that's kind of how
I learned about Janice andthey're doing such wonderful
work there.
It's this wonderful think tankworking against things like BSL
and other major misconceptions,especially when it comes around

(02:34):
dog bites and dog aggression.
So I'm very, very, very excitedfor this episode.
Welcome to the show, janice.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Thank you so much, Mike, for inviting me.
After our last conversation,I've really been looking forward
to having an opportunity tochat with you again and talk
about things of mutual interest.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yes, and that's the thing.
We have so many things and Iknow we were chatting like what
are we going to talk about?
There's so many rabbit holes wewant to go down.
But of course, since thispodcast is around aggression and
dogs, I'd love to first kind ofdive into your work and your
background around dog bites.
I'd love to learn about whatgot you interested in that in
the first place, likeresearching dog bites and dog

(03:12):
bites statistics and all yourwork at the NCRC.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, I mean, my interest actually predates my
joining NCRC and goes way backto the time when I was teaching
in the Academy for Dog Trainersat the San Francisco SPCA, and
that was when I did my firstdeep dive into this area of
research on dog bites, whichseems like a strange thing, I

(03:38):
think, to focus on, to research.
I mean, there's certainly lotsof more pleasant things to read
about and talk about,particularly with regard to dogs
.
But what happened was, since Iwas in the position of teaching
people who were aspiring tobecome professional dog trainers
and we were giving them intheir curriculum and we were

(04:01):
definitely giving theminstruction on how to work with
dogs who, you know, bit peopleand growl and snarled and
snapped at people and how tokeep themselves safe and what
was safe and what wasn't, and atthe same time there was an
absolutely horrific incident inSan Francisco where a young

(04:22):
woman she was a lacrosse coachat a local college was killed by
two enormous dogs in thehallway of her own apartment.
Her name was Diane Whipple.
All of those events dog biterelated fatalities are horrific.
This one was, I think, in manyways particularly ghastly
because of all of the backgroundstuff around it.

(04:45):
I mean you couldn't.
If you'd written the scenarioas a movie of the week for TV,
nobody would have taken it, youknow, because it would have
seemed so, so bizarre.
And what happened in SanFrancisco at that time was that
quite soon, I mean, there weremultiple news stories about this
every single day in the localmedia.

(05:06):
It became headline news.
If anybody's big dog barked atsomebody over a fence, if you
walked a dog 50 pounds or moredown the street, people would
cross the street.
Any dog people would cross thestreet, you know, to keep their
distance.
I mean, people were absolutelyterrified and this often happens

(05:26):
when you have one of thesehorrific, very, very rare events
.
And there were many, manyarticles talking about dog bite
epidemics, which was a phrasethat had been revived from the
1980s, when it had first startedappearing.
Hadn't heard a lot about it,you know, in the interim.
This was in 2001.

(05:48):
And so I really kind of feltlike it was that I had an
obligation to look into it andtry and find out what was real.
I and my colleagues and ourstudents, part of our purview at
the San Francisco SPCA at thattime, part of our brief, was to

(06:08):
see what we could do in terms ofinfluencing behavior of dogs
that were grouchy around people.
You know how far you could takethat.
What could you do with that ina shelter?
That was.
That was part of what we wereassigned to do and I really
wanted to know if we were givingpeople reasonable advice,
particularly the people that Iworked with who you would expect

(06:31):
would have been a, you know, atparticularly high risk for
injury since we were, you know,knowingly dealing with dogs who
had conflicts and issues withpeople.
So I started diving into theresearch and the ultimate
outcome of that research wasseveral years later I came out
with a book called Dogs Bite,but Balloons and Slippers Are

(06:52):
More Dangerous.
So that gives you a bit of anidea of where the research led
me.
The first place that it led mewas to realizing that most of
the research at that time andstill to this day this is pretty
much true the quality of theresearch was pretty poor, with

(07:14):
very, very, very few exceptions.
The epidemiological front,which is just everybody knows
what epidemiology is now, sincewe've lived, you know, through
our COVID pandemic nobody knewbefore, everybody knows now.
The quality of that research,to my unschooled eye in this

(07:34):
particular area, seemedextremely, just, incredible.
It wasn't convincing.
It was very, very unconvincing.
It was almost unknown foranyone with any expertise about
dog behavior whatsoever to beinvolved in any of the research.
So it was being treated as ifit were influenza or some other

(08:00):
kind of injury modality, whichdidn't appear to me to be
appropriate, since it's clearlyso much more complicated than
that, because it's not aone-sided event.
It's about an interaction, youknow, between at least two
entities, often more, with allsorts of complexities, and so

(08:22):
none of this seemed to be beingaddressed in that literature.
And I wanted to know, I reallywanted to know, how scared we
should be of dogs.
You know, were we beingcavalier with our students and
not pressing them to be, youknow, extremely, extremely wary
of every dog that theyencountered, found out that no,

(08:46):
we were not being cavalier.
Also found out that people tendto be extremely impressed.
You know, sort of generalpublic, people in general, that
human brain tends to beextremely impressed by rare
scary events and to read everynew story about an event like

(09:08):
that, and on this particularevent there were hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of stories, as if each story represented
another event, because it's howhuman brains work, it's what we
do.
So that's how that book cameabout, which was an attempt at a
critical thinking approach towhat we knew, how concerned we

(09:32):
should be and what we might doif we wanted to change the
situation as it was Once I'dbeen through all this research.
At the time, I really wanted totitle the book Dogs Bite.
Get Over it, but no one wouldlet me.
I think the world may be readyfor a title like that now, but

(09:53):
it wasn't then.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I don't know.
I think I liked it.
I think I liked the originaltitle because it really hammers
the point.
Oh, hearing you talk about itkind of gives me the chills
because of just how much of animpact it had on my journey
early on, you know.
So I read that book, gosh.
I don't want to put a date onit, but I've definitely read it
a long time ago and influencedhow much I teach my students and
how I spread information aboutthe awareness of dog bites and

(10:18):
dispelling some of the hysteriathat can happen when dog bites
happen in the media.
It made me think about whenPresident Biden's German
Shepherd bit somebody at theWhite House and all the
interviews I was doing, all theinterview requests, and
everybody wanted to alwayssensationalize it.
You know the reporters tried tomake something out of it like,
oh my gosh dogs, so they got tokill somebody tomorrow.
They tried to really push thesensationalist story that we see

(10:41):
in the media when dog biteshappen.
But you know, again your bookreally helped to educate me
around we don't need to sharethe same hysteria that we see in
the media.
It's just the, as you mentioned, it's like these rare incidents
that cause so much attention,especially in a tragic case like
Diane Whipples.
But yeah, so kind of along thelines of this is I would love to

(11:02):
hear more about, you know, thedata that's out there, a lack of
the data when we're looking atdog bite statistics and what
influences that so broadquestion.
But I would just love to hearyour thoughts wrapped around
that.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
I've lost the name of who it was who said this.
It was somebody really prominentin behavior and I've lost it.
But there was one phrase thatoften comes to mind for me is
that dog bite statistics aren'tstatistics at all, and to a
great extent that's true.
It's very, very, very difficultto get a handle on this.

(11:35):
The best source of informationthat we have about prevalence,
about incidents, comes from theCDC, the Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta, and theydon't attempt to track the whole
thing.
But what they do track is dogbites that are presented for
treatment in emergencydepartments all over the country

(11:57):
, and they've been doing thiswith the same methodology,
surveying the same kind ofsample and analyzing and
reporting their statistics inbasically the same way for more
than 20 years.
And this is very, very, veryit's rare.
It's unique in dog bitetracking because as soon as you

(12:21):
change who you sample or how yousample them, your ability to
infer any kind of trend iscompletely out the window.
You often see studies on dogbite incidents that are based on
reports to public agencies likeanimal controls and police

(12:42):
departments and those kinds ofthings, but it's not to put too
fine a point on it generallygarbage data.
The reason that it's garbagedata is that it's an attempt to
is Tommy making too much noisethere Usually?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
he's not too bad.
Barking dogs are always a goodpart of the podcast.
Okay, usually they have sales alittle.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
But there are a number of difficulties.
One of them is that all kindsof different things go into a
person's decision on whetherthey're going to report a dog
bite to some official agency.
That's because the system wasdesigned to track exposure to

(13:27):
zoonotic disease, particularlyrabies.
That's what it was for, okay,and it's fantastically
successful at that.
Rabies transmitted fromdomestic dogs has been
eradicated in the United Statessince 1975.
There's not been a case of ahuman being contracting rabies
from a domestic dog, while inthe United States since 1975.

(13:52):
There have been dogs that havecontracted rabies and been
identified.
And there have been people whohave gone to countries where the
vaccination rates are not asnearly universal as they are
here and have contracted rabies.
And there are animals among thewild population that transmit
rabies but not from a domesticdog.

(14:13):
It's an incredibly successfulsystem, but people know that's
what it's for.
So part of their decision inwhether they're going to, say,
report a dog bite injury isgoing to be related to whether
or not they know the vaccinationhistory of the dog.
So if they know the dog's beenvaccinated and it's a very
slight injury, a lot of peopleare going to say why bother?

(14:34):
But if the dog is one that theydon't know, then they're going
to say, maybe I need to go seeabout this.
But every community has adifferent way of tracking these
as different requirements.
It just doesn't give youanything.
The CDC reporting doesn't giveyou everything, but what it does
give you because the severityof an injury is not the only

(14:56):
driver of whether a person seeksmedical attention, and this is
about people seeking medicalattention specifically in
emergency departments.
It's not going to be everyinjurious dog bite, but what we
can track from it is trends indog bites that are presented for
treatment at emergencydepartments, and this is a

(15:17):
remarkable finding.
The trend in this, in theUnited States at least, is
remarkable because it's flat.
It's been flat for 20 years,more than 20 years.
So anybody who says to me thatrates of dog bites are
increasing or more dogs areinjuring people, gets a response

(15:40):
from me of show me the data.
The only source that has trackeddog bite injuries in the same
way consistently over a longperiod of time shows no change.
This is particularly remarkablebecause, when you think about
how people live with dogs in theUnited States, do we think that
it's changed over the lastquarter century?

(16:01):
I think we do.
I think the dogs live in muchcloser proximity to human beings
than they did 25 years ago.
In the aggregate, many morepeople call their dogs members
of their family, which usuallymeans the dog lives in the house
and sleeps on the furniture andwith virtually any kind of

(16:23):
injury that epidemiologiststrack.
What you expect to see whenthere's more exposure is more
injuries not with dogs and onepossible conclusion from this is
that, since we're giving themmore opportunities to interact
with us, to develop what theethologists call social

(16:45):
competence thank you, adamMcClosie.
A wonderful addition toliterature to develop social
competence with human beings.
They're getting better andbetter and better at getting
along with us.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
So I'd love to pick your brain a little further here
along those lines.
In the last, let's say, threeyears, so pandemic dogs and the
anecdotal notes from trainersand consultants is that they've
seen a significant increase indogs that are displaying what we
classify as aggressivebehaviors or fearful behaviors
from, perhaps lack ofsocialization, perhaps

(17:19):
restrictions on their freedom ofmovement in the environment.
So not having that exposure ornot being able to meet their
enrichment and physical exerciseneeds.
Anecdotally, a lot of trainersare saying we're seeing a huge
increase in business for theseparticular types of cases and
shelters are also in some placesreporting an increase in dogs

(17:40):
being returned or surrendered tothose shelters or rescues
because of the behavior issues.
So what are your thoughts there?
Wow, again, lack of data.
But if we were to, that's abouteight questions.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yes, I mean, since we've had a long period of time
where people didn't go out much.
What you would expect that thatwould mean in terms of
interaction between dogs andhumans would be that it would
result in more contact, peoplestaying home more, so, people

(18:14):
having more contact with theirown dogs and dogs having less
contact with people outsidetheir own immediate inner
circles.
Nobody's looked at whetherthat's true.
It's too bad that that hasn'tbeen part of the sociological
study that's gone on, but itseems almost certain that that's
the case, that that would bethe case in general with pet

(18:36):
dogs, and so what you wouldexpect to have happen then would
be to have more dogs who arewary of unfamiliar people
because they've had lessexposure, so more worried about
that, and it's very difficult tospeculate about what effect
that might have on conflictsbetween people and their own

(19:01):
dogs.
Most of the research that's outthere it's the opposite of what
you see in reported dog bites,by the way of any kind is that
there's a higher incidence ofdog bites to people that dogs
live with, which makes sensebecause, after all, that's who
they're around, so they havemore opportunities.

(19:25):
They have more opportunities tohave conflicts of various kinds
or to do scary things.
So you would expect that youmight see more of those kinds of
incidents of people reportingincidents with their own dogs at
home.
But it could go the other way.
It could just as well go theother way and say, OK, dogs got

(19:46):
better and better and better atbeing with their own people, but
could be struggling a bit withpeople outside their homes.
There's just no data on it andwe don't want to conflate fear
absolutely with aggression.
Now, this is my opinion andthere are opinions about this
all over the map.

(20:06):
To me, if you were to draw aVenn diagram, what we call
aggression would fall entirelywithin the circle of what we
call fear.
But there's a lot of stuff thatfalls in the fear circle that
doesn't result in dogs warningor biting.
So I'm more and more convincedand I have yet to see any kind

(20:29):
of analysis or study anywhereand I pretty much read it all.
Heaven help me that convincesme that there's anything
involved in growling, snarling,snapping and biting.
But self-defense I just thinkthat's the whole story.
It can be a circuitous form ofself-defense based on events

(20:54):
long past and things that we ashumans know do not actually
represent a physical threat tothe dog, but that doesn't make
any difference to the dog if thedog feels the need to defend
himself or herself.
But in terms of the effect ofthis kind of period of
semi-isolation, nobody knows.

(21:17):
Nobody knows, and it could bethat there's been no change at
all.
But since people are stuck athome with their dogs, they're
more likely to seek somebody tohelp them out with it if they
have conflicts.
I wish I could give you abetter answer, but we just don't
know.
At some point we probably willhave some data.
So in another couple of years,for example, we'll know whether

(21:37):
the CDC numbers have had a bigspike.
I'd be astonished if they did,but it could happen.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Does the CDC track the relationship with the dog
and the victim?
No, just the dog bite, forexample.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yes, yeah, they've really abandoned trying to do
all that at pretty much the sametime that they abandoned
tracking dog bite-relatedfatalities, because they just
don't work.
It's too small a number to beable to say anything meaningful
about in terms of annualepidemiological studies.

(22:10):
You just can't do it.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
So is nobody tracking dog bite-related fatalities at
this point in terms of thenumbers.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
There's not official tracking, no, no, no, I mean
National Canine Research Counciltracks it, looks at it and
looks at the numbers over thoseyears.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Is it done through just media reports, or how does
data get compiled there?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Usually the first piece of information is media
reports and then those gettracked down and really
investigated, and thoseinvestigations are the source of
what is.
I don't think there's anyargument the gold standard study
of dog bite-related fatalities,which was the one that Gary
Petronic was the first author onin 2013.

(22:55):
Because it was the first onethat wasn't based on media
reports per se, that it wasbased on in-depth analysis and
investigation of every singleincident that happened over a
10-year period and nobody haddone this before.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
So lots of other questions that are swirling
around in my head right now.
There's so many things.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
We don't need to talk anymore about dogs killing
people.
The takeaway needs to be adog's not going to kill you.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's extremely rare, so go read the book.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Unless you have a much larger audience than I can
possibly imagine.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah, so yeah, dogs rarely kill people.
There's the takeaway messagethere, so it's not something we
have to necessarily worry about.
So, in terms of statistics andgathering data and information,
obviously there's just such athere's so many limitations to
it and I get a lot of questions,whether it's from if I'm doing
a media interview or a podcastinterview.
There's questions about whichdogs bite more, or what about

(23:54):
spayed or neutered dogs or thisparticular breed of dog, and the
answer is always there's justnot a lot of data for this and
that kind of segues into thistopic of BSL and why it's not a
good thing to have and all ofthe amazing work NCRC has done
over the years to explain whyBSL is not a good thing.

(24:15):
So let's dive into that topic alittle bit more.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
I'll give you my own armchair sociologists sort of
idea of why this comes about,because something like it has
always been the case.
There's always been a demonizeddog, at least in the United
States, going back quiteliterally hundreds of years, to
even before breed meant what itmeans now.

(24:39):
You know it was a much morecasual kind of label.
There's always been one, andit's fluctuated all over the map
.
The most bizarre one that Iknow of was spitz dogs being
banned in New York in the late1800s.
Yes, yes, they were banned andpeople were encouraged to shoot

(24:59):
them on site.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yes, what was the reason for that, just real
quickly?
Why were they banned?
What were they doing?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
There doesn't really have to be a reason.
Somebody didn't like them, orone bit somebody.
One medium-sized fluffy whitedog bit somebody and therefore,
and there was all of thischaracterization of them as evil
and malicious and peopleshouldn't be allowed to have
them.
And if you see one, you know,shoot it immediately.
This was in New York in the19th century and I think when

(25:32):
you see that kind of, there's noother good name for it than
scapegoating.
When you see that kind of thingoccurring repeatedly with a
moving target, the onlyreasonable explanation is fear,
displacement.
So as a way for people to feellike, OK, I'm scared of this,
because I've heard about scarythings happening and therefore I

(25:56):
will put my fear on this object, that's not part of my life and
so I don't need to worry aboutit.
And I think, with the pitbulllabel has been the one that's
attached to this kind ofscapegoating since the 1980s,
which is particularly sticky,and I think it's probably been

(26:17):
more sticky than some of theothers, because it's a label
that's so easy to apply toalmost any dog, so nobody can
tell you what it actually meansor how you can tell if it's
appropriate to call this dog apitbull or not.
So it's whatever anybody saysit is.
So that makes it very, very,very convenient as a way to

(26:40):
displace a fear that wasunwarranted in the first place.
And I think dog professionalshave some culpability in this
fear in the sense that wesometimes present any version of
a dog saying cut that out as aslippery slope to being, you

(27:06):
know, a dog that's going toseverely, you know, hurt
somebody.
I actually one of the few timesI've ever walked out of a
presentation at a dog trainingconference in my life and I once
heard a very well-known speakerpresenting slides, pictures of
dogs and talking about aparticular case and I won't go
into any details and being verypleased that this presenter had

(27:30):
been able to talk this personinto euthanizing this dog
because the practitioner wasable to convince the person that
the dog was going to kill him.
Nobody can ever predict thatabout any dog, ever, and so we
can bear some responsibility ifwe try and present perfectly

(27:56):
reasonable ways for dogs to saythat bothers me, please cut it
out as a slippery slope to.
This dog is going to tear yourthroat out.
No, he's not.
That's why your clients don'tbelieve you when you try and
tell them that you don't knowhow many dog trainers I've
talked to who complain abouttheir clients not taking them

(28:16):
seriously.
You know about their direwarnings about their dog that's
growling or snarling and if theytry and convince the client
that the dog is going to hurtthem, Very often the client
doesn't believe them and most ofthe time the client is right.
They've seen it happen 500times and nothing bad has

(28:37):
happened.
Why in the world should theybelieve us when we say this is
going to lead to some direconsequences?
Much more productive to talk tothem about this is clearly
making your dog uncomfortable.
Would you like to work onhelping them feel more
comfortable about this andtelling them you know it could
at some point escalate if theways that he's trying to

(28:59):
communicate with you don't seemto him to be working, it could
escalate.
I'm not saying it will Nobodycan say that but it's something
that you need to be aware of.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
I got much more cooperation when I took an
approach like that, definitely,definitely.
And it's also and I remind mystudents as well that if you are
taking a high percentage ofcases where aggressive behavior
has been noted, you are going tohave a little bit of a skewed
lens about what you might thinkmight happen in a case, because
you make an important pointthere, janice, is that we cannot

(29:30):
predict future behavior.
We can make educated guidelinesfor our clients to avoid
anything in the future, right,but we can never predict that
behavior.
Yeah, no, no.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
And you destroy your credibility if you do.
And then, with regard to BSL,there are two scientific areas
where there's been a huge amountof work done in the last couple
of decades on canine behavior,and one of them is the flowering
of ethological studies.
But the other is looking atcanine behavior genetically,

(30:06):
which is a quite new field.
I mean, I'm definitely oldenough to remember when Janice
has thought that there wasnothing worth studying about
dogs, and now it's a gold minefor behavioral genetics.
But there have been findingsall over the map about this,
particularly with regard tobreed, until recently, and so

(30:30):
that's fueled, I think, a kindof a credibility of a debate
that no longer has credibility,because we now have a gold
standard study that has donewhat no other study has done
before, and this was the studythat came out of the Broad
Institute last spring, almost ayear ago now.

(30:51):
Wow, yeah yeah, time definitelyflies.
Incredibly important study,because it did two things that
none of the genetic studies ofcanine behavior had ever done
before.
The first one was that theyused the same sample of dogs to
collect their behavioral data on.

(31:12):
That they collected theirgenetic data on, and it comes as
a shock to people to learn thatthis had not been done before.
Many of the conclusions aboutgenetics and breeds and behavior
had been based on looking forgenetic markers and then
assuming that behavior as it wasdescribed in AKC standards

(31:35):
represented the behavior ofthose dogs, which was a little
bit shocking.
But even the better ones wouldhave say one group of dogs from
a breed that they collectedbehavioral information on and
another that they collectedgenetic information on.
The Broad study is the first onethat did it all with both and

(31:56):
that we're looking at the samedogs through both lenses, and
it's the first one that didn'tlimit themselves to pedigreed
dogs, to purebred dogs.
So roughly half of the dogs inthe study were mixed breed dogs,
which represents the populationin the United States.
Their findings are juststunning.
But one of the most stunningfindings was that in what they

(32:19):
termed agonistic behavior whichwas kind of their attempt to get
away from all the baggagethat's attached to the term
aggression, among other things,among other reasons for choosing
that term they found basicallynothing to differentiate breeds.
They didn't even find anythinggenetic, even on the bigger
picture.

(32:40):
So the most reasonableconclusion there is that from
epigenetics to socialization, toenvironment is where
self-defensive behaviors develop.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
All right, so I'm going to dive a little deeper
into this.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
I knew you'd love that.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
For anybody listening in.
I did have Jessica Hackman onand one of the authors of the
study, when we had a great chatwith Kim Brophy too on the
ethology side of it.
That was last season, I think Ihad that episode, so go check
that out.
What is your answer to somebodythat says all right, janice, so
it's good evidence that why BSLor breed specific legislation

(33:19):
is not a good thing, becauseeach dog is going to be
individual right and we have tolook at the study of one, as Dr
Susan Friedman would say.
But what about then, janice?
What about the ethological sideof things?
Let's say we're talking aboutthe predatory motor sequence, so
the predatory motor pattern wesee in dogs and what we've
selected for as humans in ourbreeding of a particular dog, in

(33:42):
the characteristics we mightask for or see.
So if it's a, let's say, aBorder Collie that sort of has
the biting pattern or style, Ishould say rather, of using
their front teeth to keep theflock in particular locations or
not, maybe they don't use theirteeth.
Or cattle dog, for instance,that might use more the back
teeth.
And then we look at some bullbreeds that might use more of a

(34:03):
heart using the full mouth typeof bite.
So if we look at bite stylesdepending on the breed, how do
you answer that question?
When we start looking at someof the nuances of breed specific
behaviors we've selected for inour breeding to get certain
behaviors and you're a Greyhoundfan, so you might want to use
some of your Greyhounds as anexample.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Okay.
So a couple of answers there.
One answer is show me the data.
So I had an awful lot of thingsthat I believed because of the
conventional wisdom in among dogpros.
Really, that led me down my ownconfirmation bias path and led
me to selectively interpretbehavior that I would see in the

(34:48):
dogs of my clientele accordingto those biases.
Without data you cannot knowthat.
That is simply not all you'reseeing.
You just can't know.
Maybe dogs with a certain skullshape are more likely to bite
if they're biting in fear orself-defense using back molars.

(35:09):
Maybe they're not.
Maybe border collies are morelikely to bite within sizes,
maybe they're not.
You've got to show me the data,because simply being in dogs,
having observations about thosekinds of behaviors, are too
suspect without data, becausethe one that your mind absorbs

(35:33):
and counts 25 times is the onethat confirms what you expect to
see, and the one that doesn'tis the one that your brain says
oh yeah, that's just the anomaly, and I certainly had a.
I wrote an article about thisfor the Bark Magazine Remember
when it was back, when it was aglossy magazine a thousand years
ago about this and about my ownexperience as a behavior

(35:55):
consultant and of having anepiphany moment when I went and
saw exactly the same behavior ina client who had a pedigreed
blue healer and then went andsaw the same thing, you know, a
similar behavior in a clientwhose dog was a pedigreed lab,
and both of the clients told methe same thing.

(36:18):
Both of the clients told meI've had, you know, seven dogs
of this breed, you know, andnone of them has ever done this
thing before.
And what my brain did with thatwas with the client who had the
healer, I said you got a healer, what did you expect?
And with their trailer person,I said, yeah, this really is
kind of strange, okay.

(36:39):
And at some point a light bulbwent off over my head and saying
maybe I've got a filter hereand started looking into that.
And then I had always reallyloved the looks of Greyhounds.
When I was writing the Dog'sByte book, my heart dog, who was
a giant, wonderful mud-of-a-dog, died and I decided that when

(37:00):
so I only had one dog, it's astrange, strange doby girl,
that's another story.
And so I promised myself thatas a reward to myself for
finishing the book, I would geta Greyhound, because I just I
thought they were gorgeous and Ihave absolutely no problem with
anybody deciding to choose adog based on liking the way they

(37:24):
look.
I mean, heck, it's how wechoose our partners most of the
time.
So you're free to do that aslong as you don't read much else
into it.
And so I did that.
And first it was very difficultfor me to adopt a Greyhound from
the rescue because they foundout who I was and they were

(37:44):
afraid that I would try to trainit.
Now, this, now this showed howlittle they knew me, because the
chances of my training my owndogs are very, very close to
zero unless it's a quality oflife issue.
And to them at that time,training meant very coercive
training and they didn't want to.

(38:05):
They didn't want to send one oftheir dogs out to that.
But when I finally talked theminto it, I took my dog home.
I did normal stuff that I dowith the dog that I live with.
He was just a dog He'd had 136races, so he was very, very,
very keen to chase rapidlyretreating little objects, and

(38:27):
so I taught him to do a recall.
I taught him a reliable recallin full chase after a jackrabbit
at a big you know off-leash dogpark.
So people who complained to meabout dogs who are keen to not
being able to put recalls ondogs who are keen to chase don't
get much sympathy from me.
They just aren't willing toinvest enough money in chicken

(38:47):
livers as far as I can tell.
So so there was that, buteventually I became the go-to
person for this rescue with dogsthat were struggling or just to
foster.
So I had many, many, many, manymany fosters through my
household and there's lots andlots of folklore.

(39:07):
Okay, just like with everyother breed people who are into
greyhounds, the first thing outof their mouth will be they're
not like other dogs.
I'm here to tell you they are.
They're just dogs.
Some of them are happy, some ofthem are sad, some of them are
shy, some of them are active.

(39:29):
I would say the only thing thatI noticed anecdotally was a
somewhat lower overall activitylevel, and of course, you know
the things that are physicallytrue about them they're not
sturdy, okay, so they breaktheir legs easily but that has
nothing to do with behavior,except for the fact that they
like to run 40 miles an hour,which is not good if your legs

(39:51):
breakeasily.
So there's that.
But they were just dogs.
Some were growly around theirfood bowls, some weren't.
Some were happy to be aroundcats, some of them wanted to
chase cats.
They were just dogs, and thisis, by the way, a breed of dog
that's had fantastically good PRin the United States.

(40:14):
Okay, so people tend to thinkabout Greyhounds very
sympathetically, and rightfullyso.
I mean, the Greyhound racingindustry is perfectly hideous.
It's indefensible theconditions under which those
dogs live.
But there are things that canbe learned from it.
For example, they livespectacularly socially

(40:34):
impoverished lives.
There may be one person takingcare of 100 dogs.
Okay, that's impoverished interms of human socialization.
I mean, imagine the effect on ahuman being who lived like that
.
And yet you put them in a humanhome and almost all of them are

(40:55):
normal pet dogs in a couple ofweeks.
The biggest challenge isteaching them what stairs are,
because they've never seen thembefore.
You might as well ask a normaldog to climb a tree.
They have no freaking idea.
And no, they are not unable tosit.

(41:18):
They can sit just like anyother dog, but nobody has ever
reinforced them for it before.
That position has been met withsupreme indifference by every
human being they've ever metbefore.
So why would they guess that asthe answer to the puzzle of how
to get the cookie?
Yes, you can, but the UnitedStates, the attitude toward this

(41:41):
breed of dog I'm circling backaround here to breed biases is
not the same all over the world.
There are places in the worldwhere I could not take my dog
without putting a muzzle on him.
There are places where Icouldn't take him at all Because

(42:02):
he is viewed in the way thatpit bull is a meme in the United
States.
If you let him loose, he'll eatyour small pets and small
children, and people have thosesame kinds of feelings.
It's not about the dogs.
That's my sermon for the day.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
I love it, so I'm going to take a quick moment to
take a break and hear a wordfrom our sponsors.
We're going to jump back intothis conversation when we return
.
Hey guys, thanks for tuning inand I hope you are enjoying this
episode.
I have a very special offerthat I'm announcing just before
the Aggression in Dogsconference this year.

(42:43):
You've heard me talk about theAggression in Dogs Master course
on this podcast and, for alimited time, to celebrate the
fourth annual Aggression in Dogsconference, I'm going to be
launching a bundle offer thatincludes the course and all 19
webinars available onaggressivedogcom.
Yes, that's all of the webinars.
The webinars alone wouldtypically cost more than $580 to

(43:04):
purchase together, but I'mincluding them for free in this
special bundle deal with theAggression in Dogs Master course
.
Just some of the topics for thewebinars include how to break
up a dogfight, assessing canineposture and movement, the
genetics of aggression, dog tocat aggression, dog to child,
directed aggression, and treatand retreat with some of the

(43:24):
most respected behavior pros inour field, including Suzanne
Clodier, grisha Stewart, dr AmyCook, dr Christina Spalding,
laura Monaco-Tarelli, jenShriock, trish McMillan and Dr
Jessica Heckman, just to name afew.
You're going to receive all 19webinars, the Master course,
live group, mentor sessions withme and access to the private

(43:47):
Facebook group A value of over$2,700, all for just the price
of the Master course, which is$495.
There's only going to be 50bundles available in this offer
and I'm going to drop a link tothe bundle in the show notes for
this episode.
The offer is going to expire onOctober 8th 2023, which is just

(44:09):
one week after the conference,though the bundle typically
sells out quickly, so pleasetake advantage.
If you are interested, head onover to the show notes for this
episode in the podcast platformyou are listening to and click
on the Aggression in Dogs Mastercourse and Expert Webinar
Bundle link.
I also want to take a moment tosupport Sinthor Pangal, who's

(44:32):
going to be speaking at theAggression in Dogs conference
this year.
Sinthor shared the story of anorganization doing truly amazing
work to help animals.
Charlie's Animal Rescue CenterC-A-R-E, or CARE for short, is
an animal shelter providingtimely medical aid to injured
and ill animals of the streetsin Bangalore City.

(44:52):
They aim to provide life-savingveterinary care on par with
private veterinary setups, toall animals, irrespective of
their ownership status.
Care has a rescue helpline,animal ambulance services and a
fully equipped veterinary traumacare unit.
Care strives to provide dignityto animals who are old, blind,

(45:12):
paraplegic and suffering fromchronic diseases, and allow them
to live out their lives at theshelter in a safe and peaceful
environment.
Care is home to many dogs, cats, rabbits, ducks, hens, pigs,
skinny pigs, birds and eventerrapins.
No animal left behind is theirmain motto.
Apart from rescue and shelterservices, care also provides

(45:35):
adoption services, humaneeducation in schools, animal
cruelty prevention and control,and volunteering opportunities.
You have to check out theirInstagram channel, where you can
see all the wonderful work theyare doing to care for and save
dogs and animals in need.
Their Instagram handle ischarlesanimalrescuecenter and

(45:56):
that center is spelledC-E-N-T-R-E, so it's
charlesanimalrescuecentercom.
You've got to check out thatInstagram account.
It's really wonderful workthey're doing.
Please consider donating tothis wonderful cause.
You can do that directlythrough their website at
charles-carecom.
That's charles-carecom.
I'm going to be sure to drop alink in the show notes for both

(46:19):
their Instagram and a way todonate.
All right, I'm back here withJanice Bradley.
We have been chatting about alot of different things and we
kind of left off theconversation around breed
specific legislation and or lackof breed specific behaviors,

(46:42):
but I just wanted to dive just alittle bit more into that and
because I think we've unpacked,you know how each dog is very
individual.
We have to always look at theindividual dog Dogs.
Of course they're going to bephysically shaped and be able to
do certain behaviors more orless than some other breeds, for
instance, like biting wementioned, and running and
things like that.
But what is your answer to,let's say, now somebody asked

(47:04):
you that question, janice whatabout when you have, let's say
we take a litter of BelgianMalinois and we have, like I'm
just hanging off somebody'sclothes at six weeks of age,
seven weeks of age?
Nobody's taught them to do this, they're already doing it
automatically.
Or we take a bunch of tennisballs, we throw it out into a
field with a bunch of goldenretrievers, they're all bringing
those tennis balls back.
But then if you take a bunch ofgreat Pyrenees, they're not

(47:25):
doing the same thing andnobody's done anything
differently except just we'vegotten these dogs as, let's say,
that's the first humaninteraction ever.
So how do you answer that, likewhen we talk about some
behaviors in some breeds of dogsthat humans might have selected
for over many generations?

Speaker 2 (47:43):
I gotta tell you I'm starting to feel really sorry
for the poor Malinois.
Everybody seems to want tothrow the Malinois under the
breast.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
I love Malinois.
I think the listeners know that.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
There's no question that the likelihood of the
expression of specific actionpatterns can be selected for.
There is no question about thatthat you can increase the
likelihood of specific actionpatterns by rigorously selecting
for those particular actionpatterns.

(48:17):
With regard to a pet dogpopulation, though, that
theoretical truth is mostlyirrelevant.
That kind of rigorous breedingis such a tiny, tiny, tiny
segment of how dogs come to beconceived and hatched that it

(48:41):
just isn't going to impact verymany people and I think even
there we overestimate it.
Okay, I gotta go back to thegreyhounds.
Sorry, but this is.
But remember, I told you myfirst greyhound had 136 races.
Okay, I mean, he definitelyliked to chase and I would

(49:04):
occasionally let him chase ajackrabbit at a local big
off-leashed area of like 40acres.
He never caught one.
The other rabbits are muchbetter at getting out of the way
.
The dogs never catch them.
So I would say he was very,very keen to chase and that's
one of basically two qualitiesthat are Raising.

(49:26):
Greyhounds are an almost uniquepopulation in that they are
rigorously selected for specificbehavior.
If they are not keen to chase,they do not reproduce, okay,
they don't get to make babies,they are culled or, like my

(49:46):
other two greyhounds, they goimmediately into the pet
population.
And therein lies the rub,because the best estimates on
the part of the people in thatindustry and who knows how
reliable those estimates are,but the best estimates that they
have is that they can only raceabout 75% of the dogs, in other

(50:11):
words, only about 75% of thedogs that they breed, are into
it.
Okay, and so the rest they justget rid of.
And this is a behavior that isalready clearly extremely common
across the species.
I wouldn't be surprised if it'sclose to 75% across the species

(50:34):
.
I mean this should be a trueevolutionary bottleneck.
But that's as good as they canget it.
My last two greyhounds, I mean Iam more interested in the
bunnies who cross our path thanthey are.
They like cats.
I didn't teach them to be niceabout cats.
They just say oh hi, how areyou?
Okay, tommy tries to makefriends with the geese, with the

(50:56):
wild geese on the pond out infront of our house.
The geese are not having it andit hurts his feelings, but he
tries to make friends with thegeese.
It would not occur to him tochase them.
So, even with rigorousselection, if you're already
talking about something that'svery common across the species.
It may have been pushed as faras it can go anyway.

(51:18):
So people keep coming back tothis.
You know about what?
About what they were bred for?
A most of the individuals inour current populations were not
now, and never were in theirancestry, bred for these things.
Ray Coppinger was right about anumber of things, and I'm sure
he was right about that, eventhough he was only working at it

(51:39):
theoretically at that time.
He wasn't doing any kind of youknow, statistical analysis.
But he said you know, when youstart breeding for appearance,
which is what most purebred dogbreeding is for, or if it's like
puppy milk breeding, it'sbreeding for nothing at all.
It's going to regress to thespecies normal, and so that's
what you're going to expect,unless you're trying to increase

(52:01):
the odds of a very specificaction pattern by deliberately
selecting a dog who is part of avery tightly closed gene pool
that's been bred for that, andbreeds are not that tightly
closed.
There are no breeds that arethat tightly closed, except for
things like racing grounds,where that experiment has now

(52:23):
been done.
It's pretty much asked andanswered.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Yeah, so all right, and I love all the takeaway from
this now and it's a great wayto you know it's something that
it's much overstated.
When we're looking at breedsand breed specific behaviors and
what we think might behappening when we see a dog of a
certain breed, it's much lesslikely than what we think,
especially, I think again,trainers working with certain
aggression cases or certainbreeds that we see sometimes.

(52:47):
But we have to remember thatour lens could be skewed.
It's really hard actually, asyou were mentioning, it's hard
to actually get those traits,even when we're selecting for it
rigorously.
So, yeah, yeah, lots of.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Breeders never expect to get a whole litter that
expresses the traits thatthey're looking for, even when
they're breeding for appearance,which is much, much simpler
than breeding for behavior, forany kind of behavior.
People in confirmation breedingwill certainly tell you that
it's a miracle if they get onedog out of a litter that
actually meets their criteria,and breeding for morphology is a

(53:22):
walk in the park compared tobreeding for behavior,
absolutely.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
All right.
So I'd love to shift gears nowand I always do this with my
guests that have been sort of inthe game for a long time.
And Janice, you've been in thedog training industry for quite
some time, without saying howold either of us are, but we've
both been doing this for a while.
We see different changes andtrends, but you are from the
what I often refer to as sort oflike the Silicon Valley of the

(53:50):
dog training world.
So the San Francisco SBCAsomething in the water there
maybe, but lots, lots ofincredibly brilliant minds have
come out of that area and thatcity of San Francisco, and still
do.
I think many talented trainersare in the California area, san
Francisco, san Diego area, andso let's get into that with a

(54:11):
focus on aggression.
I think so in terms of our workwith aggression cases over the
years, but we can talk ingeneral training as well.
But tell me about yourbackground at the SF SPC again,
like what did you start theredoing and then how long ago was
that?

Speaker 2 (54:25):
It was.
It was in 2000 that I startedthere, when Jane Dollison
started the Academy for dogtrainers and she brought me on
because my previous career wasin academe.
So I mean she needed a teacher,teacher and somebody who could
design curriculum and you knowthat kind of thing in addition
to having dog skills.
So that was, you know, a bigpiece of my role there and we

(54:48):
taught there together for 10years and so that was a period
that had started, I would say,in the mid 90s, and in the mid
90s it kind of followed my owntrajectory of interest in dog
training of, I think, the firstbig wave of scientific

(55:09):
application to the question ofhow to help people and dogs live
together more comfortably.
Before that it had been, I think, mostly a folklorically based
kind of profession with somestuff borrowed from ethology

(55:29):
that wasn't about dogs, ethologythat was about other species,
that was probably misapplied todogs and led to being, you know,
justifications for various waysof interacting with dogs.
So I think we were really, youknow, kind of surfing that first
wave of this big change of howto influence canine behavior and

(55:54):
so bringing behaviorism intothe mix.
So we spent a lot of timetalking about, you know
quadrants and such, and you knowpounding that into our students
heads as a lens through whichto view behavior and to
influence behavior change, Tolook at behavior and to
influence behavior.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
And we're going back 20, 20 something years, right,
and this that must have been.
We're going back like 20, it wasa long time and it was also
quite revolutionary when youthink about it at that time,
where the majority of trainingwas either compulsion or even
what we might label as balancedtraining, or very traditional is
another word for it.
So it must have been reallyinteresting to experience that

(56:35):
at that time and also theculture.
This was before social media,of course, so I'm sure it was a
little different how theinformation spread and how
conversations took place, butyou know it must have been
really interesting for you tosee that and experience that.
You know here you are with Geneand you know, putting the
school together where thereprobably wasn't a lot out there
like it at the time right.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
And I think we were the first I think we were the
first that worked on this basis,and I was myself I think you've
self identified as a crossovertrainer.
So we're the dog that Idescribed as my heart dog.
I actually knew both of hisparents, so I can say for sure
that his mother was a Rottweilerand his father was a German
shepherd and, oddly, he lookedexactly like what you would

(57:18):
expect if you morphed those twobreeds together, which doesn't
happen very much with F1s, butit happened with him.
And when he came to me in theearly 90s he would yell at other
dogs on leash quite, quitedramatically, and I searched for
somebody to help me with this.

(57:39):
And there were some trainersaround we would probably call
balance trainers now, but theyused food and all of those
people that I asked to help mewith this had me walking around
in circles in obedience classesand told me to kill my dog.
Okay, the only trainer I couldfind who did not tell me to kill

(57:59):
my dog was a trainer who was.
He was a keeler style trainer.
I don't know if anybody in youraudience is gonna remember that
, but I mean this was ferociousstuff.
This was, you know, keeler plusshock and I did what he told me
and I learned to do it verycompetently, even apprenticed
with him for a while, because hewas the only one who didn't

(58:21):
tell me to kill my dog and Iknew I wasn't gonna do that and
I knew it was very challengingto take him out on a leash.
Now, eventually I learned,through a sort of a series of
incidents and mishaps, that thisparticular dog his name was
Willie, he was, you know whatwhat many of us call our heart
dog.
You know, everybody's got aheart dog.

(58:42):
He was my heart dog and he hadthe best dog dog social skills.
Of any dog I have ever livedwith, ever bar none.
He could mediate disputesbetween dogs.
If he came upon a dog fightonce he was off leash and
interacting with dogs, he wouldrun full speed and just blast in

(59:05):
between them, knock them bothass over tea kettle.
They would get up and shakethemselves off and say, well,
okay, I guess we'll quit doingthat.
I guess we'll quit doing that.
I guess we'll quit doing that.
I fed him to a long, long seriesof some of the nastiest bitches
you will ever meet I use thatterm in the doggies, in the

(59:27):
doggies sense until finally oneday we went to and I, you know,
abused him, as people who have agenius dog like this, you know,
dog trainers who have a geniusdog like this always do.
Until one day we got to thegate of the dog park and I saw
him look around and go, oh crapdogs.
I said, okay, no more, onlynice dogs, you only have to do

(59:51):
nice dogs.
So it turned out that he wasfantastic and both of these
groups were wrong about whatthey were telling me to do.
I didn't need to do thishorrible stuff to him and I
certainly didn't need to killhim.
But I kind of lost heart forthe training stuff.
I had done some obedience stuffthat you can do, some the
competitive obedience that youcould do at the time with Mixed
Breed Dogs, and I had done someof that and I'd been very keen

(01:00:14):
but it was just depressing.
And then I happened upon,through a series of things, some
information about clickertraining and this dog, willie,
was what we used to call in thetrade a hard dog.
He was tough as nails.
He used to bite me in the buttwhen he got disgusted sometimes

(01:00:35):
With being you know, with being,you know, jabbed with a prong
collar just one too many times.
He would nip me in the butt andit was all you could do was
laugh.
It was hilarious.
And so I discovered clickertraining and no one would ever
have looked at him and said thisis a shutdown.
You know, miserable, spirit,destroyed dog, nobody ever would
have thought that looking athim.

(01:00:57):
But I started clicker trainingwith him and I didn't know what
I was doing, so I started.
I started with something reallyhard.
I started with like adiscrimination task where you
had to learn the names of fourobjects.
I didn't know, I didn't know, Ididn't know what to start with.
In two weeks he was a differentdog and I never looked back.
He just had a completelydifferent attitude.

(01:01:17):
So I had been doing that for awhile and helping people
casually and dealing withdifferent dogs before I came to
the academy and started teachingthere.
So that went on for 10 years andwe certified more than 400
trainers with a combination ofbehaviorism and classical

(01:01:38):
conditioning.
And the classical conditioningwas what we used in working with
fear and what we weredefinitely still at that time.
You know calling aggression.
So changing the dog's emotionalstate, emotional response to a
particular stimulus, and I don'tthink anything about that has
changed.
And again, we produced 400trainers who were able to frame

(01:02:03):
what they were doing in that wayand many of them have gone on
to be, you know, very, very,very successful and it was
extremely fulfilling.
And I maintained a behaviorconsultation practice at the
same time.
You know, throughout all thattime those are really, really
powerful ways of looking atinfluencing behavior.

(01:02:25):
So I knew a lot about thescience of behaviorism and
classical conditioning, so I'dread deeply there.
I had read deeply in the dogbite literature, to the extent
that it's conceivably possiblethat there isn't anybody who's
actually read more dog bitestudies than I have.
Yeah, it would not surprise meif that's the case.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
It's an ugly talent, but my own.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Not the kind of thing that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
It's a special kind of person that has to actually
really be interested in that,and I'm right there with you, I
get it, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
It's a lesson on not trying to plan your life out too
long, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Like well, the rest of the American public on a
Sunday is watching football.
I'm diving into, like dog bitestudies.
I'm reading dog bite studies.
Alrighty, then.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
People do not find this easy to understand, but
then pretty much unbeknownst tome.
There was very littleliterature at the time about dog
behavior and what there was wasprimarily from a veterinary
behavior perspective.
So it was about pathologizingbehavior, and I don't mean like
arbitrarily pathologizingbehavior, but I mean, you know,

(01:03:41):
looking at behavior that wasconsidered in some way outside
of the norm or even inconvenientto human beings and modifying
that behavior.
But in those early days, justbefore I came to the academy,
there were two events Somebodyshould make a movie about this
that took place at almostexactly the same time.
And one was that Brian Hare wasat Duke with Mike Tomasello who

(01:04:06):
was studying primates andgetting nowhere with an
imitation behavior.
And Brian blesses heart, youknow, little grad student, you
know and it says, well, I thinkmy dog can do that.
And Mike Tomasello, being theopen-minded guy, said, well,
let's concoct an experiment andsee if he can.
And so they did.

(01:04:27):
And at the same time the guy isin Hungary, you know, okay, and
Adam McClosie was a young guythere then he wasn't the head of
the department there.
We're saying you know, we'rekind of tired of studying these
fish.
What if we look at dogs?
How would we do that?
And they went along the road toframing dog-human interactions

(01:04:53):
in terms of.
They took paradigms from humandevelopmental psychology and
started framing it in terms ofsocial competence and that's
been a revolution in the waythat we think about how dogs
experience the world and howthey interact with us.

(01:05:14):
That is yet to find itsappropriate home in the minds of
people who want to help petowners influence dog behavior
and I think particularly I'mcoming back around here
particularly in the area ofconflicts between dogs and
people, of dogs feeling a needto defend themselves against

(01:05:38):
people, however mistaken theymay be in that perception that
it has a huge potential toinfluence that kind of response
in dogs.
To capitalize on the workthat's come out of that last
it's 20 years now of ethologicalstudy of pet dogs, specifically

(01:06:04):
of dogs living in humanhouseholds, with people who
volunteer to have scientists trystuff out on their dogs, try,
you know, benign stuff out ontheir dogs, because people love
to do stuff with their dogs andthey love to have people tell
them how smart their dogs are.
And you know the whole researchendeavor is a win-win for

(01:06:24):
everybody.
But we've yet to capitalize onit enough and some of that to my
mind, having spent a wholecareer in academe is what you
typically see in terms ofdifferent schools of thought in
academe, which is competition.
No, they're wrong.
You know, the behaviorists arewrong and the ethologists are
right.
Or the ethologists are wrongand the behaviorists are right?

(01:06:45):
No, you're both right, you'reboth right.
It's just a different lens forthe same behavior, and the thing
that I think that's importantabout ethology is that it's a
lens through which the averageperson is gonna be more able to

(01:07:07):
see yeah, whereas I mean, I'vebeen a teacher pretty much all
my life, but trying to teach anaverage pet owner something
about quadrants is, I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
seriously, folks.
I think a lot of us are guiltyof that for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
I mean their eyes glaze over, they don't care.
But teaching them that theirdog is like their toddler,
that's different, I think it's.
That's really different.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Yeah, it's crucial.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Or even somebody else's toddler if they don't
have one, and it's a soundparadigm.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Yeah, and it's so important for us to be effective
trainers and consultants is tobe great teachers right, and how
we present information and soyeah, so you gave a nice history
lesson there of kind of howover again, at least in the US
how we've seen dog trainingevolve over the last few decades
.
So we went from traditionalsort of killer based methods to

(01:08:08):
the big splash that you guysmade over in San Francisco
looking at operant ABAapproaches, moving away from the
sort of not that you were there, but the radical behaviors look
, of saying dogs are just blankslate, no emotions.
And then we bring in the workof looking at emotions and to
you were mentioning DrMcClosie's work and Brian Hare's

(01:08:28):
work and cognition labs thatare happening everywhere.
And now we're seeing othersciences brought in neuroscience
.
So I guess, to wrap up, whatexcites you now?
Like, if you had to in terms oflooking at this
multi-disciplinary approach,bring in these different
sciences.
What's the newest one thatyou're kind of seeing?
That's exciting you in the workyou're seeing being brought

(01:08:50):
into the dog training community,especially around aggression
too.
I know we've kind of taken abroad look at all behaviors.
But if there's anything that'stop of my view right now.
What would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
It's really exciting for me to see the kinds of
things that Claudia Fogasa doeswith using imitation to shortcut
teaching particular behaviors.
I'd really like to see that gothe next step Because in the way
that it's presented now it'sreally only accessible to people

(01:09:22):
who are already keen abouttraining.
It doesn't look obviouslyapplicable to the day-to-day
lives of people with their petdogs and I think it could.
I really want to see somebody.
If I were 20 years younger, ifI were 10 years younger, I would

(01:09:44):
probably try and take it onmyself of applying that
information, those kinds oflearning and interaction with
dogs, to pet dogs from puppyhood.
I mean, ian Dunbar gave us onerevolution in puppy training.
He probably invented what wethink of now as puppy classes

(01:10:07):
and he certainly believes he did.
I love Ian, so he published mybook.
But I think we're ready tostart thinking about how we can
apply those discoveries, thoseethological discoveries, to how

(01:10:28):
people interact with puppiesfrom the beginning.
It can't be something that isonly accessible in adult dogs.
That's ridiculous.
It cannot be.
The only rational explanationthat I can come up with for
puppies not being transparentlyimitating.

(01:10:49):
Things that people doconstantly is that it gets
extinguished because nobody paysany attention.
It's like Greyhound's sitting.
It gets extinguished becauseI'm sure when they're puppies
they sit all the time as much asother puppies, but nobody pays
any attention.
Almost every other dog on theplanet has some kind of
reinforcement history forsitting, but nobody pays any

(01:11:11):
attention to puppies imitating.
I think it's the next frontierand it has the huge advantage of
being intuitive for humanbeings because it's like
children.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
You just tied it all together beautifully there.
So anybody who's not familiarwith Claudia Fugaz's work is do
as I do.
It involves imitating andmimicry and social facilitation
aspects to it too, but it'sreally fascinating stuff.
Just to add on to what Jen issaying, you can give your
puppies or even adult dogs learnto follow what you're doing in

(01:11:47):
the behaviors you're exhibiting,or even, let's say it's a dog
that's having a tough timelearning how to increase
distance from a stimulus, that,without displaying those
agonistic or aggressivebehaviors, we can teach them how
to move away from that, becausesome dogs are really terrible
about it.
We can teach them, hey, we canactually follow, maybe move.
Look at what I'm doing.
If we create that relationship,then there's that relationship

(01:12:08):
aspect to consider theiremotions.
It becomes much more broad thanjust like, hey, let's click and
reinforce the behavior ofmoving away.
Not that there's anything wrongwith that, there's, of course,
benefits to that.
But it kind of reminds me.
It takes me back to it.
I remember I was at a conferencevery positive reinforcement
based conference and there was ademonstration on clicker
training.
One of the questions was if youhad one thing to tell trainers

(01:12:32):
to stop doing it, what would itbe?
And the presenter was like itwould be a stop talking to your
dogs.
And it just hit me for sayingit just saddened me so much.
I'm like stop talking to ourdogs.
Why would I want to stoptalking to my dogs?
But obviously it was in thecontext if you want to learn
really good clicker training,mechanics in shaping and
something like that.
So I had it out of context inmy mind when he said stop

(01:12:54):
talking to your dogs.
But obviously that's not meantto just completely stop talking
to dogs.
But it just comes back to this.
I think it's something we don'tthink about enough in terms of
how we work with our dogs, notjust training, but our
relationships and just how muchof an impact we can make to not
just the mechanics of things.
It should be more about therelationship, the emotions.
So, yeah, that's just, I think,a great way to wrap up the

(01:13:18):
episode, but I'd love to givethe listeners a chance to learn
more about where they can findyou and kind of what the work
you're up to next is, janice.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
I am at the National Canine Research Council, which
is actually based in upstate NewYork, and we look at I was
going to say we don't produceoriginal research but we sort of
do.
We used to think we weren'tgoing to but we've actually done
some survey papers but we lookat relationships between dogs

(01:13:49):
and people and particularly withwhat happens when there are
difficulties in thoserelationships and how people
perceive those difficulties.
I think we've come verystrongly to the conclusion that
you have to talk about it as arelationship.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
You're past books.
You cannot simply look at a dogand understand his behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
That's not how domestic dogs function.
Their behavior is inextricablybound up with ours.
So that's what we try and lookat and how to help people think
about having those relationshipsbe as fulfilling and satisfying
and peaceful as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Excellent, and do you want to mention your past books
that we were talking aboutduring the show?

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Oh, I wrote a popular book a long, long time ago
called Dogs Bite.
But Balloons and Slippers AreMore Dangerous.
It's still in print and isstill pretty current, although
there's been some research thathas added to that.
If you look at the NationalCanine Research Council website,

(01:15:00):
you'll see various otherposition papers that I've
authored about dog bites, someabout the relationship between
breeds and behavior and a lot ofinformation about all kinds of
research.
We try to be kind of a sourcefor media, for regular people,

(01:15:21):
for researchers, on thescholarly research on how dogs
interrelate with people, howdogs and people get along, don't
get along, how they relate topeople and why.
Because it's a profoundlyimportant connection in many,
many cultures in the world,certainly in the United States,

(01:15:42):
where almost half of us shareour lives with dogs.
So it's a huge connection andwe want to help people think of
that and see it as harmoniouslyand in as fulfilling a way as
possible.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Excellent.
Well, thank you for all thework you're doing there, as well
as the rest of the team at NCRC.
There's some brilliant folkscontributing to that and it's I
will second it's just such awonderful resource for all of
those topics you were justmentioning.
So I will, of course, as usualfor the listeners, link to those
in the show notes.
So you'll see those links inthe show notes for this episode.
Janice, thank you so much.
It was wonderful talking withyou and, as always, I've learned

(01:16:18):
so much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
Absolute pleasure to have a chance to talk with you,
Michael.
Thank you so much for invitingme.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
I love these conversations with amazing
contributors to our industry.
Janice certainly is one ofthose contributors, and I can't
thank her enough for sharing herknowledge, as well as for all
the work she's doing at theNational Canine Research Council
.
And don't forget to head onover to aggressivedogcom for
more information about helpingdogs with aggression, from the
Aggression in Dogs Master Courseto webinars from world-renowned

(01:16:47):
experts and even an annualconference.
We have options for both petpros and pet owners to learn
more about aggression in dogs.
We also have the Help for Dogswith Aggression bonus episodes
that you can subscribe to.
These are solo shows where Iwalk you through how to work
with a variety of types ofaggression, such as resource
guarding, dog-to-dog aggression,territorial aggression,

(01:17:09):
fear-based aggression and much,much more.
You can find a link tosubscribe in the show notes or
by hitting the subscribe buttonif you're listening in on Apple
Podcasts.
Thanks for listening in andstay well, my friends.