Redefining Dog Aggression with Dr. Daniel Mills

In the season finale of The Bitey End of the Dog, we sit down with Dr. Daniel Mills, a leading authority in clinical animal behavior, to unearth the complexities of canine aggression. Dr. Mills challenges the conventional wisdom that labels dogs as aggressive, advocating instead for an objective observation of their behaviors. 

Our journey continues with an exploration of the emotional lives of dogs, guided by the influential work of Jaak Panksepp. We discuss how miscategorizing aggression can lead to misunderstandings and ineffective solutions. Dr. Mills emphasizes the importance of distinguishing context, motivation, and emotion to address behavioral issues effectively. We also touch on the broader impact of training techniques, revealing how addressing emotional states like frustration can resolve a multitude of behavior problems!

About Daniel:
"I am a RCVS, European and ASAB recognised specialist in clinical animal behaviour, as such I have been developing and exploring new interventions for behaviour problems, such as: The use of semiochemicals to control the emotional reaction of animals (pheromonatherapy) The use of mirrors to control stereotypic weaving in horses Psychometric profiling of animal behaviour Over the last 25 years, I have led the development of what has become known as the "Psychobiological approach" to clinical animal behaviour at Lincoln. This synthesises contemporary behavioural biology and psychology with neuroscience to develop a systematic scientific approach to the assessment of problem behaviour in animals. I still consult at the University Animal Behaviour Clinic (https://animalbehaviourclinic.lincoln.ac.uk/) I have a strong research interest in the comparative psychology underpinning problem behaviour, particularly emotionality and how this contributes to individual differences. This links both my applied and fundamental research, for example by examining how we and non-human animals recognise and respond to the emotional state of another More recently I have had opportunities to scientifically explore my interests in the potential value of our relationships with animals. My research in this area focuses on the benefits from pet keeping using a multidisciplinary approach, for example collaborations with biologists, health care professionals, psychologists, lawyers and economists. Recent projects include: The effect of pet dogs on human health and well-being Investigations into animal emotion Semiochemical signals in the dog Improving performance in scent detection dogs External influences on human decision makign that impact animal welfare In 2022 I was listed by Stanford University in their data base of the top 1% of cited scientists globally. In addition to accepting students on funded projects (generally advertised on th

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
In the season finale of the Bitey End of the Dog, I
have the honor of chatting withnone other than Dr Danny Mills.
Danny is someone I could talkto for hours and hours and we
have a more free-flowingconversation in this episode on
everything from the definitionof aggression in his mind to the
emotions of dogs to effectiveneuroscience.
He truly is someone with alifetime of insight and

(00:25):
experience and I'm sure you'regoing to enjoy this episode.
Danny is an RCVS, european andASAP recognized specialist in
clinical animal behavior and hasbeen developing and exploring
new interventions for behaviorproblems, such as the use of
semiochemicals to control theemotional reactions of animals.
Over the last 25 years, he hasled the development of what has

(00:49):
become known as thepsychobiological approach to
clinical animal behavior atLincoln.
This synthesizes contemporarybehavioral biology and
psychology with neuroscience todevelop a systematic scientific
approach to the assessment ofproblem behavior in animals.
He also consults at theUniversity Animal Behavior

(01:09):
Clinic.
In 2022, he was listed byStanford University in their
database of the top 1% ofsighted scientists globally, and
if you are enjoying the biteyend of 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 theupcoming Aggression and Dogs

(01:31):
Conference happening fromOctober 11th to 13th 2024 in
Scottsdale, arizona, with bothin-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.
I also have a wide variety ofwebinars, upcoming courses,

(01:53):
videos and articles, all fromthe foremost experts in training
and behavior.
We really are your one-stopshop for all things related to
aggression in dogs.
Hey, everyone, welcome back tothe Bitey End of the Dog.
This week we have a guest thatI've been trying to get in touch

(02:14):
with for a long time.
I think it'd be easier to gethold of the Beatles than it is
for me to get hold of DanielMills.
Dr Daniel Mills is here to joinus and I'm really excited to
jump right into thisconversation.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Thank you.
Thank you for the invite.
Sorry if I'm harder to get holdof than people who are dead.
Not a good start, is it?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Well, you're obviously in high demand and I
appreciate you taking the time.
I know how busy you are.
I was reviewing some of thepapers that you've written and
didn't realize just how manyyou've had.
I mean hundreds of papers andstudies that you've done, which
is just amazing and so importantto us as trainers and folks
like me that are practitionersin the field to be able to

(02:54):
extrapolate the science thatyou're able to research and find
out for the rest of us.
So thank you for the workyou're doing.
Let's start off really quickly.
I have had a lot of differentguests on the show with
different lenses of science,coming from different
backgrounds, and I kind of liketo ask the question how do you
define aggression?
If you had an elevator pitch,somebody's asking like Daniel,

(03:14):
how do you define aggression?
What would it?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
be so, perhaps controversially.
I don't think of aggression asa behavior.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
There we go that got you straight away, didn't it?

Speaker 2 (03:26):
of behavior.
There we go.
That got you straight away,didn't it?
To me, aggression is somebody'sinterpretation of behavior,
because it's basically somebodyreporting that they think that
harm is going to happen fromwhat they're observing.
Whether or not that's the caseis another matter, and that's
one of the big problems withstudying aggression.
I think that people often thinkit's a behavior, but when we've
looked at the literature andthe way that people do the

(03:48):
research, sometimes they don'tdefine it and for some people
aggression means a bite, otherpeople it means a growl.
If you're playing with a dogand he happens to catch his
tooth on you and draws blood,people say, well, that's
aggressive, well, it can be.
So I've actually made a largechunk of my career out of
looking how we use words andtrying to just get some

(04:08):
standardization into it, becausewe often make the assumption
that when somebody uses a term,they're using it in the same way
as us, and it's a big, bigproblem in relation to behavior,
I think, and behaviorconditions right across the
board, not just with aggression,things like separation, anxiety
, as well what it actually means, and we have got to be really,

(04:30):
really careful.
So I talk about aggressivebehavior and I try and I know I
still slip into it.
But I try and avoid the wordaggression itself because it
makes people think that it's adefined behavioral unit that you
can link to a particularstimulus or anything like that,
and I think that's misleading.
As I said, aggressive behavioris a style of behavior.

(04:52):
It's a way of responding to aparticular situation in a
certain circumstance and oftenit's somebody's interpretation
the observer's, you know, athird party, or sometimes it's
the person who's the victim orpotential victim, or feel that
they're going to be thepotential victim even if they're
not, and that you know.
I think failure to recognizethat can lead to all sorts of

(05:13):
problems.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
I agree, actually, and you know now that you've
kind of dove into that a littlebit more, even though my website
is called aggressivedogcom, Itry to actually avoid using
those terms aggression oraggressive when describing a dog
.
You know, and like you, I'drather just focus on the actual
observable behaviors, becausethe interpretations when people
start labeling things like thatcan really be unfair for the dog

(05:38):
, right?

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, you touch on the second point, which is the
aggressive dog.
And as soon as you label thedog, then people see everything
that dog does through that lens.
It's an aggressive dog and Iknow we're probably going to end
up talking about dangerous dogsat one point.
But immediately everything thata dog does gets labeled as
being done because that dog isan aggressive dog done because

(06:00):
that dog is an aggressive dog.
And when it does things thatordinary dogs do well, people
still see it as well it'sbecause he's an aggressive dog.
I don't know if you're familiar.
There's the classic experimentby Rosenhan where he got some of
his students to go intopsychiatric hospitals saying
that they could hear noises andafter that they were to behave

(06:21):
normally and they kept notes andhe wanted to see how long it
took for them to get discharged.
Well, after several months hehad to go and rescue some of
them because everything they didthen was seen through them
having mental illness and peoplecouldn't see the normality of
it.
And the same will go with anaggressive dog.
You know, once somebody labelsthat dog as aggressive, then

(06:43):
everything it does, every timehe makes the slightest little
groan or anything like that,he's always growling and you
know that's because he's nastyand it all becomes that sort of
self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think one of the things youknow about as humans, we
naturally fall into a thingcalled confirmation bias.
It's where we see what we wantto.
That proves our point.

(07:04):
It's where we see what we wantto.
That proves our point as ascientist, what I try and do not
always successfully, but youtry and step back from that and
you try and look for theevidence that can disprove an
idea and that's how you make theprogress sort of.
Well, I know it can't be thatyou can never prove your point
in science.
Science is always about dealingwith uncertainty, never dealing
with certainty.

(07:24):
So you know, just that sort ofnudging things along and trying
to make those incrementalchanges and not just seeing what
you want to see.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
I already like where this conversation is going,
because the way you're framingthis is we really need to
empathize more with the dogs tounderstand truly what's going on
versus what we're labeling them.
That creates that bias that youwere just talking about.
So let's dive into that alittle bit further the reasons
for aggressive behavior that wemight witness in animals and

(07:55):
I've really been looking atemotions in dogs you know, much
more so over the last five to 10years than I would have earlier
on in my career because I'dfocused much on behavior and
sort of a behavior analyticsstandpoint, looking at just the
observable behaviors and notreally thinking too much about
the underlying reasons ormotivations as much as I do now,
especially with emotions.

(08:15):
So in your book Dog Bites,which I actually have on my desk
here, you have a number ofother wonderful authors in that
book, so it's a great referencefor anybody listening in.
Get that book Dog Bites,because it's got some
fascinating read.
Just don't read it while you'reeating lunch, because there's
some pretty gory pictures inthere.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
be warned, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
the bit on fatal dog attacks yes yes, but you do talk
about emotions, and from aneffective neuroscience model as
well.
You had mentioned some ofPangsepp's work, which I often
reference when I'm talking aboutemotions, but is that sort of
similar to what you're focusingon now?
Are you still seeing emotionsin dogs the same way?

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, I mean, science makes progress and I had the
good fortune of meeting JackPangsepp a number of times and
he's a very inspirational figure.
One of his most remarkableachievements was he brought
respectability to talking aboutemotions in animals and it might
surprise people, you know,until 1998, when he published
the first edition of that dog itwas considered bad science.

(09:15):
A lot of the time to talk aboutthis.
What I've been trying to doover the last 25 years or so is
trying to develop a moresystematic approach, exactly
because of some of the issuesthat we've already touched on.
When I looked at the sort ofliterature on dog aggression in
particular, what I saw was thatpeople were using a number of

(09:37):
terms as if they were differentforms of aggression, when
actually they representeddifferent psychological
constructs, and let me justexplain what I mean by that.
So somebody might say that thisdog has got football-related
aggression, he's got possessiveaggression and he's got
frustration-related aggression,as if they're three different

(09:58):
things, whereas protecting thefootball tells you the context.
The protectiveness is themotivation and the frustration
is the emotion that is linked toprotectiveness in that
situation, and it can be linkedwith other emotions.
We're not ever in one emotionalstate.
There's always a mixture ofthem, and you know, the first

(10:19):
thing that I really wanted to dowas try to separate those
things out so that you know werecognize when we're talking
about context, ie the situationin which it occurs.
We recognize when we're talkingabout motivation, and that is
what the specific goal of thebehavior is.
We use an adapted version ofapplied behavioral analysis, as
a lot of people do there.
However, the step that we makethat is different is the sort of

(10:44):
thing that will make appliedbehaviors turn in their grave,
which is we use that not toidentify or just look at the
contingencies.
We use it to make the inferenceof the internal psychological
state, the motivation.
What is the motivational stateof the animal?
And that's important becausethat becomes a hypothesis that
we can test.
We say, well, if it is tryingto protect, then we predict this

(11:08):
, let's test that and let's seewhat goes on.
The issue of emotion so whatemotions are unlike?
People sometimes talk aboutemotivations as if they're the
same thing, and I see them assomething quite different when
you think about the organizationof behavior.
The emotions first of all.
They tell you about what isimportant, they set what is
important to you as anindividual.
And emotions is what makesindividuals different.

(11:31):
Two things we value themdifferently.
We look at that dog.
We look at that dog differently.
He belongs to you.
You know he's your dog.
I might think he's a cute dog.
You love him.
Yeah, they're different.
It's the same dog but it'sprocessed and that's what the

(11:53):
emotion does and it sets thetone for the behaviors that we
do in relation to thatparticular stimulus.
So, yeah, the problem is thatthese are internal psychological
states that we can't measuredirectly and people say, oh well
, you know it's unscientific todo that.
Well, you know what?
I've never seen an atom or ahiggs boson, but people can
study it scientifically and theyinvest a lot of money on it.
So just because you can'taccess something directly, we
need to get over this idea thatit can't be studied

(12:15):
scientifically.
I think that it's important tounderstand emotional states.
Sometimes we get a dog andthey've got a range of behavior
problems and you can see thatthey're all related to
frustration.
So if I address the frustrationof the dog, the problems
disappear.
I don't have to address everysingle problem, whereas if the
dog is very food bowl protectiveand it's the only thing that

(12:37):
he's aggressive over then, yeah,treat the behavior, treat the
motivation, don't worry so muchabout the emotion.
And that's the beauty of thatsort of approach, that it gives
you that level of insight.
You know that you can start todevelop protocols that make
sense at a emotional level or ata specific behavioral level.

(13:00):
Again, going back to what wewere saying earlier about people
seeing what they want to see,any given behavior therapy, we
don't know exactly how it worksand it's easy to frame it
according to what your beliefsystem is.
That's all, well, do that.
And it works because of this?
Well, we don't know, it works,great.
But it's only by testing it ina range of situations do we

(13:21):
start to say, actually, you knowwhat?
That's changing the emotion,that's not just changing the
motivation.
We talk about developing thingslike impulse control exercises.
Impulse control exercises areabout reducing impulsivity
across the board, and some ofthe work that we've done, where
we've trained the animals usingsome of the exercises, we see

(13:41):
that they become less impulsivein areas which they've never
been trained to, and that showsyou that it's having this effect
on the general behavioraltendency rather than just
addressing particularmotivations, and it becomes much
more efficient that way yes,there's a lot I want to unpack

(14:01):
there.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Well, first, I'm feeling very validated because I
talk about emotions a lot in mypresentations, especially some
of the negative, balancedemotions and the sort of
motivations for some aggressiveresponses.
So fear or, if we're looking ata pancest work, the systems of
fear, or maybe rage or anger,probably the two most common
underlying emotions or systems,I should say, for the cases I

(14:23):
see, and then we could talkabout some of the other systems,
or positive balance, or seeking, which I wouldn't actually put
into the aggressive category orthe aggressive behavior category
, so like predation, or a dogguarding their livestock or
something like that.
Can you give me a few of yourthoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (14:39):
So okay, let me give you the controversial one.
First of all, there is anargument, a philosophical
argument, to say that aggressionis not related to fear.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
I've heard that.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
And let me unpack that for you then, because, if
you think about it, when ananimal is scared, it wants to
avoid harm.
That's what fear is about, youknow, preventing harm.
Fight and flight and freeze arethe three Fs that are often
talked about in that situation.
Well, flight takes you out ofharm's way.
Freeze and the important thingwith freeze is freeze is not the

(15:12):
same as behavioral inhibition,and I think people confuse that,
but I'll come back to that onelater.
But freezing, the purpose offreezing is not to be detected
and not to provoke.
Yeah, fight means those safestrategies are not working.
So therefore I have to defendmyself.
It happens when frustrationkicks in on top of the fear.

(15:34):
So the aggression itself,whilst it has its root in being
in fear, the actual controlprocesses for the aggressive
acts may well lie much moreclosely aligned with frustration
.
Because I can't escape, I needto take some control of the

(15:54):
situation, which is whatfrustration is about autonomy.
Therefore, I have to defendmyself.
So pure fear, some people mayargue, doesn't result in
aggression.
It's when I've got no escape Iam frustrated, whilst I'm scared
.
Again, picking up on thePanksepp thing, people sometimes

(16:14):
think oh well, the animal's inone of these emotions.
Our brain is made up of livingcells.
All our emotions are active.
They're held in control byinhibition.
And again, you know one of thethings that sometimes falls out
from the behaviors approach.
People think about stimulusresponse and they think about
behaviors being triggered andstimulated.
No behaviors happen because theinhibition is released.

(16:36):
So those things are all there.
Those emotions are there.
It's just a question of howintense they are.
In fact, I've got the thing atthe moment which a friend of
mine is building of a dog brain,which is all these different
colors which represent differentemotions, and you change the
brightness according to thestate of the dog's head, and I
think it's a great way ofactually visualizing what we
mean when we're talking aboutemotional states in animals.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
I want to kind of jump off that question too,
because I'm sure you'reapproached with many different
new technologies and strategiesfor assessing all kinds of
things in science.
But especially when it comes toemotions, Do you see anything
on the forefront where it'sgoing to help us as
practitioners or scientists toassess truly what's going on?
So kind of thinking of Dr GregByrne's work with the MRI scans,

(17:20):
those kinds of tools.
Do you see anything else on thehorizon that's going to say,
okay, this dog is probablyexperiencing this emotion.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
So I'm involved in some work at the moment with
colleagues at the University ofLondon and the University of
Cambridge where we're looking atmobile EEGs so looking at
brainwaves, and we can do it ina remote way and we can look at
synchronization of EEGs betweendogs and their owners.
Now this is an ambitiousproject.
If it works, then I think thatwill be quite interesting to

(17:50):
look to see, because there isthis idea of emotional contagion
and how dogs may potentiallymanipulate situations in order
to unify the emotional states.
I'm not saying they're thinkingabout any of these things, but
it's just what they do.
You know you try to operate ina happy emotional situation.
Life's better for you in thatand that seems to be sort of a
dog's mission in life.

(18:10):
The technology is there and wecould do it.
What we don't have is theinvestment.
That's the problem is.
Just before COVID we actuallygot some funding from the
European Union for somebody tolook at developing a whole
battery of physiologicalmeasures that we're going to try
and triangulate differentemotional states in dogs.
Covid hit we couldn't accessowners and their dogs and

(18:31):
unfortunately, you know it wasreally soul destroying for that
poor researcher and you knowshe's pretty much left the field
now.
It's a real shame I mean, wemade some good progress there
and when we think about emotion,that there's so many different
elements of it.
So you're probably aware, youknow we did stuff on.
First of all, one of theexperiments that we did was to

(18:52):
demonstrate that dogs must havesome sort of concept of emotion
in their head, and it's becomequite an important piece of work
just trying to show that theyhave some categorization, have
some concept of emotion.
To what degree they think aboutit is a different issue.
We, then, have done a fair bitof work, starting to look at the
communication of emotions,which is another element of it.

(19:14):
I have a phd student at themoment who's looking at the idea
of the importance of regulationof emotion, because that's
another important property thatyou can.
You use various mechanisms.
In fact, I was talking to oneof my other students earlier
this afternoon and talking toher about what we call auto
communication, so the idea thatyou give signals out that are
for your benefit and help you inregulation, and they help to

(19:37):
regulate your emotions.
So she's actually studying catsand we're talking about rubbing
and how that information mayactually help reassure.
I don't know about you.
But you know, if I go to ahotel and it's all pristine,
first thing I do is empty mysuitcase or backpack and just
spread stuff around so there'smore familiar stuff for me to
look at and I feel morereassured and less at sea, and

(19:58):
you know that sort of autocommunication.
But it serves an important roleas far as regulating our
emotions go, because you're inthis strange room that seems
just too sterile and you want tomake it more familiar and make
yourself more relaxed as aresult.
And it's not an area that we'vereally looked at and I think
partly because we've not givenemotions the attention that they

(20:21):
deserve.
But now that we are starting toconsider emotions much more,
then we can start to think ofcommunication, not just in
relation between two individuals, but also the things we do that
help us regulate our emotions,which can include elements of
auto-communication.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, because it's something as trainers.
We talk about it all the time,but do we really know?
So we talk about things likedisplacement behaviors or even,
well, calming signals is adebatable term, but in terms of
you know the dogs calmingthemselves or trying to calm
somebody else, which is againdebatable.
But we talk about it all thetime, but we don't really know
for sure if that's truly whatthe dog's intent is.

(20:57):
Are they trying toself-regulate?
Are they doing it forthemselves?
Are they doing it tocommunicate to something in the
environment?
Right?

Speaker 2 (21:03):
yeah, so one of the things again you know, the more
I've studied dogs and dogcognition and I've increasingly
saying this that the more Ithink that dogs are not very
smart, and what I mean by thatand I say that deliberately, to
be provocative and just makesure- anyone is drifting off at
this stage.
Thought what I hope they're notjust switching off.

(21:24):
But dogs do not, I don't think,do that much by way of thinking.
What they do is.
They're incredibly perceptive.
Now they do very human-likebehaviors, but not with the
rational thought I think thathumans use.
They're very in tune to emotion.
I don't think that requiresthem to actually analyze it, and

(21:44):
I think one of the traps thatwe easily fall into is because
we're capable of rationalthought.
We think that most of ourbehavior is controlled by
rational thought.
That's not the case.
I mean, it's quite clearly not.
But most decisions we make areactually made for us and our
brain decides to make us awareof a few of them.

(22:05):
If you're driving along andsomebody steps out, you say,
well, I put my foot on the brakebecause I saw somebody step out
.
No, before you were aware, youprocess that somebody has
stepped out.
Your foot had already moved tothe brake, your brain had made
those decisions and thenbothered to tell you, create a
little bit of consciousness thatyou're aware of that, and

(22:26):
actually responding in that sortof time allows you to respond
very, very quickly in emergencysituations.
And whilst we can actrationally, I think a lot of the
time we don't.
We are driven by our emotionsand we go for those sort of very
overt associations, and that'sa very efficient way of
operating most of the time.
Now, if it's a dangeroussituation, then we do need to

(22:48):
slow down.
We do need to think aboutthings because the cost of
getting it wrong.
I'm naturally an optimist, forwhatever reason.
That's just sort of the waythat I've developed and I've
been very successful.
I've been very fortunate in thepeople that I've known and the
people that have helped me in mycareer.
Being an optimist means thatyou're very good at potentially

(23:10):
exploiting resources if they'rethere, but what it means is I'm
really bad at judging risk.
I've nearly been killedmultiple times.
I've been run over.
I've nearly drowned twice inthe space of about 10 minutes
because I did exactly the samething again after the first time
.
I've fallen run over.
I've nearly drowned twice inthe space of about 10 minutes
because I did exactly the samething again after the first time
.
I've fallen from heightsbecause I misjudged things.

(23:31):
I've had a gun pulled on me.
I do not recommend the strategyof laughing at the person who
pulled the gun, but it workedbecause I couldn't believe that
it was happening.
I'm really poor at that becauseI tend to be fairly spontaneous
and, yeah, I open my mouth and Isay things that perhaps I don't
really mean but I'm thinking ofat the time, you know, and that
can get me into hot water.

(23:52):
But so you know differenttraits and different
personalities, and whether ornot you think things through
vary with the environment andthe circumstances.
I can stop and think well, Ithink I can, otherwise I
wouldn't be able to write thepapers that I write.
But most of the time I'm justoperating in this free world
where I'm just drifting from onething to another and just

(24:12):
enjoying it.
And dogs, I think, are veryperceptive.
They're very good at picking upon cues.
They like happy people.
Happy people are good for you.
If you're a dog, the chancesare there's something in it for
you if somebody is smiling.
However, angry people aregenerally not good news.

(24:33):
Now, the dog doesn't have toknow that it's angry, he just
has to say this is not thesituation that you know, that I
want and I will try and dosomething about it.
So, depending on who theindividual is, dogs will respond
differently with an angryperson or where there's negative
emotion.
In some situations, if, forexample, you've got an owner,

(24:56):
you know who's trying to gettheir dog to recall and they're
screaming at their dog to comehere and eventually the dog
comes, screaming at their dog tocome here, and eventually the
dog comes.
The dog keeps himself about twometers away and he does that
for a number of reasons.
Two meters is about thepersonal distance of a dog and
it means that you're out of mypersonal space, but it's also a

(25:16):
safe distance.
And as the owner goes to grabthe dog, to chuck him on the
lead, because they're absolutelyfuming that the dog has been
chasing rabbits, what does thedog do?
He runs off.
And he runs off as an act ofplay.
What he's trying to signal isand they say doesn't it take any
great thought?
But you're my human that I hangaround with.

(25:36):
You've said come, buteverything else in you is saying
you'd better stay away from me.
So maybe if I use play, then wecan all be happy and I can
bring the system back intobalance.
However, if you've got asituation whereby you've got a
dog in a home and two people arearguing, whether that's
teenagers or the two ownersthese people the dog has a bond

(26:00):
with how am I going to resolvethis?
Well, the dog might just takehimself off.
But dogs don't understandwhat's going on in an argument.
They pick up on the tension andsome dogs will say, well, I'm
going to try and resolve this,so I'll go and bite one of them
and then we'll make up.
And from a dog's point of view,sometimes you bite and then you
make up, because it justresolves the tension and it

(26:22):
moves things on.
And that's why, you know,sometimes people get bitten by
their own dog, often having anargument with somebody else in
the house.
All the dog is trying to do isjust trying to create some
stability in that situation.
So it doesn't involve greatthought.
It's just a question ofresponding to relatively simple
situations or being in tune withcertain situations.

(26:49):
There's a lovely bit of workthat was done quite a few years
ago now you may well have seenit of some dots on a screen and
one dot is one color and thenthere's four or five dots that
are a different color andbasically when you watch it it
looks like these dots arebasically hunting the bigger dot
, let's say the red dot, and itvery much predicts, yeah, this
sort of hunting movements whenyou've got wolves with a deer or

(27:12):
something like that.
But all it requires is that theyellow dots are attracted to
the red dot and they try tomaximize the distance from
themselves.
So what you get is youinitially get pursuit and then,
as they get closer, so theystart to fan out and eventually
they circle.
Well, if you add another rule,which is, if you're at the head
end, you bite the throat, you'rehunting.

(27:33):
It doesn't involve anycommunication between the
individuals.
It looks like such anintelligent thing and we would
say, oh well, look, they'recoordinating themselves and the
way they do it.
But you just need very simplerules and you don't need, let's
say, the complexity that wesometimes impose and sometimes
people say, oh, you know, isn'tit?
Don't you find it sort ofdepressing if it's like

(27:54):
unmasking the magician?
And I think no, actually, whenI see how a trick is done, I
actually think that is so, howsomebody thought that, that, how
to do that.
I find it just as amazing, andI find it just as amazing that
you can do things with reallysimple rules without having to
be complicated about things.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yes, and it's got me thinking.
Do you think you know in termsof dogs' thought processes and
how much they can actually thinkthrough problem solving
something?
Do you think dogs are capableof deception or lying?

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Can you define for me deception and lying there we?

Speaker 1 (28:30):
go let's.
Maybe we should use an example.
We've seen videos.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
If you're on social media.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
You might see it.
You know, the owner comes homeand they see the mess on the
floor and there's two dogs andthe owner's like you know who
did this?
And then one dog will like pokethe other dog or put their paw
over the other dog as to say itwas them.
Right now, obviously there's alot of other ways to look at
that.
Yeah, something like that wheredog is maybe purposely trying

(28:56):
to shift their owner's behaviorthrough their actions, but it's
actually, in a way, deception.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
I don't have a problem with the idea that they
manipulate their owner'sbehavior for their benefit.
So you know, it's a little bitlike the issue of jealousy.
Yes, yeah, is the dog jealousor is it sensitive to reward
inequity?
So you know, the classicexperiment that was done is you
train a dog to give you its pawwith a piece of kibble yeah, and

(29:23):
the dog reliably gives its pawwhen you ask it.
You train another dog to giveits paw in response to a liver
treat, and the dog reliablygives its paw in response to the
liver treat.
Both dogs perform really welluntil you bring them together
and you get the dog that you'vetrained with the kibble to give
you the paw on command.
He gives the paw, you thekibble to give you the paw on

(29:44):
command, he gives the paw.
You get the other dog to giveyou the paw and he gets a liver
treat.
And then you go back to thefirst dog and he says what, hang
on, he's getting the livertreat.
Now.
You can anthropomorphize thatall you like, but actually they
are sensitive to that.
Now.
That has real practical value.
And actually a number of yearsago I had a master student look

(30:06):
at this in puppy classes.
Because what happens if oneperson is training with cheese
and one person's training withkibble?
The person who's training withkibble, are they having a harder
time training their dogs?
We started to look at it and wedidn't publish it.
It's a shame because it's abeautiful piece of work.
It's just it needed a fair bitof work to get it ready for
publication.
But we did find evidence thatthe dogs in the classes that

(30:28):
were receiving the lower valuerewards might be affected by the
observation or something thatwas going on with other dogs
receiving higher rewards.
Now there has been work whichsuggests that it's not about
reward inequity, it's about theinaccessibility of reward that
affects it.
But I mean, that's a more sortof nuanced scientific issue.

(30:51):
The important thing, I think,from a practical point of view,
is, yeah, the dogs behavedifferently.
Exactly why they do it?
And that's a much harderquestion to answer and we
mustn't jump to a conclusion,because the problem is, if we
jump to the conclusion, then weset our expectations for the
dogs.
We have to recognize yeah, thedogs do this, dogs behave
differently here.
Let's just accept that withoutreading too much into it.

(31:14):
Or, if we do, start togeneralize it because we believe
it's for a particular idea.
We have to approach that withan open mind and say, if, if I
tried in this situation, if hedoesn't respond, then actually
it might well be that my beliefin why he's doing it is wrong,
not that the dog is being nastyor anything like that.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yes, it's something that comes up quite often in my
intra-household dog-dogaggression cases when the client
might assign jealousy or someother reason and competition
over a particular resource.
But it is something you cannotice when one dog is not
receiving the same resource asthe other or it's a different
level of value that you start tohave problems and sometimes we
witness frustration typebehaviors from the dog not

(31:56):
getting those particularreinforcers.
So it's an interestingconversation we're getting into
here because it matters in ouraggression case, especially if
it's an intra household case.
I think, going along exactlywhat you're saying, just to
recognize the context orrecognize that this is happening
, what can we do to adjust it?
Be careful about what we assignfor the actual reasoning.
Would that seem like the rightthing I'm saying there?

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, we try to recognize and acknowledge the
emotions of the animals.
We're not saying that we knowwhat's going on in their head,
we're not saying we know howthey feel either, but it allows
us to generate hypothesis thatwe can test in the real world
and, as I said, developtreatments that are potentially
more effective.
And it allows us potentiallythen to predict risk better if

(32:40):
we recognize that this is notsomething that is just
controlled by a particularstimulus, but if we recognize
that this is not something thatis just controlled by a
particular stimulus, but if werecognize that, yeah, the animal
perhaps struggles with thisparticular emotion.
That's why we developed anumber of the temperament scales
that we've developed in orderto look at behavioral
predisposition, because if theanimal has got that
predisposition as you know, adog that is scared of something

(33:01):
specific you can train it todesensitize it to that
particular stimulus, countercondition it as well, and that's
fine.
But if the dog is alsotemperamentally fearful, then
it's almost certainly going torelapse.
So your whole strategy of howyou manage the dog in the future
needs to bear that in mind, andit might be then that you need

(33:21):
to think much more seriouslyabout the use of medication to
prevent the risk of relapse andhelp the dog generally cope and,
yeah, improve the resilience ofthe dog.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Very well said and I'm going to take a quick moment
to hear a word from oursponsors and when we come back I
want to talk more about kind ofthe issues we're seeing with
aggression cases in general andare we seeing an increase, are
we seeing about the same andwhat factors are influencing
those things?
So we'll be right back.
Thanks for tuning in and I hopeyou are enjoying this episode.

(33:55):
I have a very special offerthat I am announcing again just
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(35:44):
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All right, we're back here withDr Daniel Mills.
We've been chatting about a lotof really interesting topics,
but I want to dive now into, youknow, post-pandemic a lot of
trainers have been talking about.
Are we seeing an increase inaggression cases?
The general synopsis is yes,we're seeing a significant

(36:07):
increase, or is it just becauseof, maybe, where we're getting
the dogs from more mediacoverage, more talking about it,
more blaming it on the pandemic.
What are your thoughts on that?
Do you think, at least in theUK?
What are you seeing there?
Are you seeing an increase inthe number of cases of
aggression or is it about thesame?

Speaker 2 (36:22):
in your experience, Well, most of the cases we see
in the clinic are aggressioncases, so it's difficult to
increase but the impression thatwe've gotten, as it happens,
this summer I have a studentwho's going to look at this
specifically.
She's going to look at thecases that we've been seeing the
phrase pandemic pups and wecertainly seem to be seeing a

(36:44):
pattern there.
Now it seems that I don't knowwhether it's more frequent, but
certainly we got the impressionthat it's more severe now.
Is it because these dogs arenot well socialized and there's
an issue there?
Is it the stress that ownerswere under when they were

(37:05):
looking after?
And this is?
You know, it's so easy to latchonto one explanation, but we're
going to be looking at the casesthat we saw during the pandemic
.
We're going to be looking atthe cases that we see now, the
cases before the pandemic,trying to control for age of the
puppies.
Are we seeing more younger dogs?
My feeling is I think we are.
Historically we tend to seeanimals after several years that

(37:30):
the problem's been going on.
We're seeing many more.
Is it because owners are betterinformed?
I don't know, but I don't thinkwe know the full extent to
which the pandemic has affectedall of us, dogs as well as
humans.
I think we are probably seeingmore, and I think we are
probably seeing more and I thinkwe're seeing a slightly
different profile in the natureof it and you know, their

(37:51):
ability to regulate theiremotions and the nature of the
aggressive behavior that we'reseeing in particular types of
dogs.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
we see a lot of cockapoos why do you think we're
seeing it's more intense at ayounger age, if I'm paraphrasing
that correctly, or do you thinkit's a function of where we're
getting the dogs, the breedingpractices?
I know last time I was out inthe uk they were seeing more
dogs brought in from differentcountries and some of the

(38:19):
romanian street dogs and thingslike that.
Do you think that's a factor aswell?

Speaker 2 (38:22):
yeah, we have a.
We do have a big issue withpotentially Romanian street dogs
and things like that.
Do you think that's a factor aswell?
Yeah, we do have a big issuewith, potentially with street
dogs and I do understand thereason why people like to rescue
of these dogs.
But one of the reasons we get adog is because the emotion of
it.
The problem is when we thinkwith our heart rather than our
head, we don't necessarily makegood decisions.
As I I said, I make some prettypoor decisions in those

(38:44):
situations.
So issues like the street dogsand certainly pre-pandemic, that
was a really big issue.
People were rescuing in invertedcommas dogs from the streets of
romania.
Now, I fully understand that.
You know a dog that walks thestreets in romania could easily
get run over.
But if you think you'rerescuing it when you take it off

(39:06):
the street and keep it withinfour walls for eight, 10 hours a
day, I don't think that'sactually rescuing it.
That's taking it from Romaniaand changing the risks the dog
faces and imposing otherstressors in that situation.
They're not adapted.
They're used to having thatmuch more freedom.
In fact, when I first graduatedas a vet, I worked in a place

(39:28):
called Plymouth, in theSouthwest of this country and a
couple of doors down there werea couple who came from Liverpool
and it was very much a culturalthing for people in Liverpool
around about that time that whenyou went to work you, your dog
out on the street it'd be cruelto leave your dog shut up during
the day.
And this couple were fromliverpool and they used to do

(39:49):
that with the dog and I thinkyour dog's gonna get run over
and I said, what else would wedo?
This is pre-dog sitters beingwidely available or anything
like that.
And you think, well, actuallyyou know they got a point there.
You know, if the dog isstreetwise, does it have a
better life?
We've got, you know, dogwardens and whatever.
But it's an interesting sort ofscenario giving them that much

(40:11):
more freedom, and certainlybeing in the home and not having
control can be reallyproblematic for a lot of dogs
that they will struggle in thosesituations.
So we did look at what happenedwhen the pandemic happened and
we looked at people both in theuk and the us, worked with a
number of colleagues in the usto help us gather the data and

(40:33):
it just did seem that aslockdown happened, the dogs
started to get frustrated andthey got increasingly frustrated
as time went on.
Now I've had another studentagain we've not it, but she
looked at what happened whenpeople started to go back to
work.
Interestingly, what she seemedto find and we need to look more

(40:54):
closely at the data is we gotproblems again.
So going back to work didn'tsolve the problem and it seems
that actually the really bigissue for dogs was the change.
So when people stayed at homemore, it wasn't that they were
at home more, it was the factthat there was a change in the
routines, a big change in theroutines.

(41:15):
This is my take on it at themoment and I know other people
have got studies going and itmay not be right, but as far as
I can tell, it looks like whenlockdown happened, that was a
big change.
That caused a lot morefrustration in the dogs.
People were at home for a while, assuming they got over that
first hurdle.
Then there was an increasedrisk with time spent at home,

(41:38):
the quality of the relationship.
They started to get tensionwith increased time in that
situation.
Then, when they went back towork, when you think, oh well,
you know those frustrations willbe relieved.
No, it's another big change inthe routine, another big risk
period at that moment as well.
So there was a lot ofunscrupulous breeding that went
on during the pandemic as well,and maybe that's one of the

(41:59):
reasons why we're also seeingincreased problems as well.
So I think we should resist theurge to just hang it on one
particular explanation.
There's a whole myriad offactors that went on.
People were stressed, peoplewere out of work, not
necessarily being able to getbenefits or anything like that.
It was an incredibly stressfultime.
I don't think we've seen theworst of it yet, especially when

(42:22):
it comes to children.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, definitely a couple of ways.
I want to go with the next partof this conversation.
I'm just trying to think of theone that's the best, because
there's two.
I'm being kind of selfish and Iwant, for my own information,
to hear your answer.
But you know, when you thinkabout the behavior problems that
we see with dogs in modernsociety and you think about with

(42:44):
some locations of street dogsobviously being the exception,
but the vast majority of dogs onthe planet not being
necessarily owned or beingcontained in a particular
environment, they have much moreagency in their environment, in
their world.
We don't see the levels ofbehavior problems in those dogs.
Now, again, it it could belocation-specific, depending on
their environment, depends onhow the culture treats dogs, but

(43:06):
most of the time you're gonnasee very behaviorally healthy
dogs, maybe not physicallyhealthy because of being hit by
a car, but even then, the otherpart of the argument is our
breeding practices.
If we're breeding for shape andlook versus function and health
, pain underlying medical issuescould also be influencing this
problem we're seeing withpain-related aggression and

(43:28):
things like that.
So sort of a broad questionjust to get your thoughts on all
of this.
You know, in terms of what arewe doing in modern society that
can be creating many of theseaggression issues that we may
not necessarily see, or behaviorproblems in general?
Not just aggression, butbehavior problems, problems in
general that we may not see indogs that are in a more natural
they're quote naturalenvironment for those dogs so I

(43:50):
think the first thing toappreciate is that the dogs in
the natural environment, thefree roaming dogs there is
massive selective pressure goingon.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
So, yeah, you don't see the problems because they're
dead.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
No, nature takes care of that very efficiently.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
You know, the vast majority of free roaming dogs
don't make it to three years old.
Yeah, so that's the brutalreality there.
One of the things which andagain I'll just throw this out
here I'm probably going to takeon a new phd student.
We're just checking thateverything's going to work out
and we're going to look at theissue of the concept of love

(44:25):
with owners and how thattranslates to caring, because
what we say and what werationalize going back to being
rational, you know what we sayand what we rationalize and what
we actually do I often don'tmeet up.
In fact, one of the papers wepublished earlier this year, I I
would love the title.
A student came up with thetitle have you Seen this Drivel?

(44:46):
And basically what we did is wewent into social media groups
and we went into thebreed-related groups for
different types of breeds andyou know the title is just to be
provocative and just to getpeople to read it.
We say the most important thingin any scientific paper is the
title, because that's all thatmost people will read.
So if you try and catch them.

(45:08):
But it's absolutely fascinatingbecause what we found was that
when you went into the groupslike the Labradors and the
German Shepherds, they havehealth problems.
We were interested in how theydiscussed health problems and
what they would do is they wouldtalk about the health problems
and the nature of them problems,and what they would do is they
would talk about the healthproblems and you know the nature
of them, and it was very muchabout, well, these are the
issues and this is what can bedone.

(45:28):
These are the options and therewas a discussion about options
very much more.
When you went into the smallerdogs and we focused particularly
on brachycephalic supply I'mnot saying this is unique to
brachycephalics you saw some ofthe same, but you saw much, much
more social support.
You know, you poor thing, assoon as somebody said they've
got this problem with animals,there's much more emotion in the

(45:50):
whole situation.
Now, one of the things we'redoing at the moment is we're
trying to work out why some ofthe campaigns welfare
organizations have launched totry and regulate or reduce the
popularity of dogs withbreathing problems,
brachycephalics that have notbeen bred.

(46:10):
Well, you know, first of all, Ilove pugs.
I have a life-size pug.
Actually, I've not got it inthis room because I love pugs,
they find them so cute, but Iwon't get one, because I can
just about, with my rationalbrain, say no, it's not a good
thing to do, the risks are toogreat.
There are some very responsiblebreeders who will breed good

(46:31):
dogs, but there are also somepeople who will exploit.
And what we think is going on isthat when you do a campaign,
you tell people these dogs havethese problems and therefore we
shouldn't be breeding them.
Okay, which seems a veryreasonable argument which most
people can say.
Yeah, I can relate to that.
You know, if you said that ifyou took a different species,

(46:54):
you know, would it be right tobreed an animal where there was
this risk of these harms?
Most people would say no, it'snot the right thing to do.
However, if you are attractedto these dogs and there's lots
of reasons why you'll beattracted to these dogs there's
a deep biological reason.
Some of the facial features wefind intrinsically attractive,
they remind us of some of thechildlike features.

(47:17):
But even things like poor gait,being lame, actually may bring
out the nurturing in us.
Poor gait, being lame, actuallymay bring out the nurturing in
us.
So when somebody says thesedogs have these problems, they
don't hear these animals havethese problems.
This is a welfare problem.
They hear these dogs aresuffering, they need special
care.
I like these dogs, therefore Iought to get one, because they

(47:50):
need special care and I'm aloving person.
And so the campaigns have thecomplete opposite effect of what
you would predict.
And that's the differencebetween being rational and being
emotional.
When you process informationemotionally, it takes on a
completely different paththrough our brains.
You know, it still makesperfect sense, but it's just not
the outcome.
And the danger sometimes, asscientists, is like economists.
You know.
Historically, economists justassumed for too long that people

(48:10):
act rationally and thenrealized that no, they don't.
Actually People go and buystuff that's completely useless
for them.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Now, speaking of campaigns and maybe rational or
irrational thoughts, can we talkabout the XL bully ban?
I think that's recently takenhold there and your thoughts on
that?

Speaker 2 (48:32):
I think it's desperately sad.
That's my starting point, infact I don't know how much time
we've got.
I nearly failed my veterinarydegree because of the Dangerous
Dogs Act.
I was actually asked in myfinals about a particular breed
of dog and I thought, oh, dogbehavior is one thing I can talk
about, but I'll spare you thestory for another time.
But the problem that I havewith the legislation?

(48:54):
I have several problems with thelegislation and I'll just
outline a number of them tostart with.
Firstly, I have a moral problemwith banning breeds.
A breed is a group ofindividuals that share a
particular characteristic,usually a particular visible
characteristic, that tend tobreed with each other.

(49:14):
In humans we call it races.
In dogs we call it breeds.
In sheep we call if you banbreeds, you are racist.
The two are the same.
That to me is a problem thatyou distinguish between
individuals on the basis of whatthey look like as opposed to
what they've done.

(49:34):
I have a number of other issueswith it, in so much as in the uk
, the legislation.
Originally it came with amandatory death sentence with no
discrimination.
Well, we don't have deathsentences in this country as a
rule.
It also came that you wereguilty until you prove your
innocence.
The burden of proof was on theowner to show that their dog was

(49:56):
not of the type, which again iscompletely contrary to the
legislation.
So you know, there's a numberof real problems, ethical
problems I have with thatlegislation.
Quite apart from that, I thinkthere are a number of other
issues with the legislation, notleast of which is, as I said,

(50:16):
the idea that first of allyou've got to try and prove your
dog is not of the type.
Well, how are you supposed todo that Because of the type when
we don't have a breed standard?
I used to do an exercise withthe students where I'd give them
the American pit bull standardthat was often used as being of
the type and say you know, wecould argue that if it's got
over 50% of the characteristicslisted here, then it is of the

(50:37):
type.
And a Dalmatian fits that.
If your Dalmatian got seizedand somebody said that's of the
type, you'd have a real jobtrying to prove that it's not,
in fact even a chihuahua,potentially you know, might meet
the type, I don't know, but youcan do it with real dogs, with
a whole variety of dogs, andshow that it's very difficult.

(50:58):
So it's not a clear criterion.
But the other real issue hereis that labeling a dog as
dangerous, as we mentionedearlier, as soon as you label a
dog as dangerous, you see it ina certain way, but equally, from
a public health point of view,you create the impression that
some dogs are dangerous, whichmeans that some breeds of dogs

(51:19):
aren't, which completelyundermines the idea of sensible
behavior and safe behavioraround dogs.
I'm the youngest of five kids.
My mom had five of us under theage of five.
You know she didn't hang aboutwhen she got married.
My two brothers were born firstmy two sisters.
There was a gap about she lostone in between me and my sister.

(51:40):
I had the dogs to play with.
If I got bitten by the dogs itwas my fault.
You don't do that.
Leave sleeping dogs lie.
Every child getting bitten is atragedy, absolutely.
But to put the blame just on thedog is completely insane and
does not encourage good behavior.
So making it about the breed ofthe dog I'm not saying you know

(52:00):
, genetics plays a role inbehavior.
But when we talk about breedsand breed related behavior,
we're talking about averages,and that's the midpoint, if you
like.
Yeah, the variation around thatis enormous.
So just because it is a pitbull does not mean that it wants

(52:20):
to kill you.
Some of them do.
Some chihuahuas want to killyou, some Dalmatians want to
kill you.
One of the most aggressive dogsthat I had in the clinic that I
can remember it's the only timeI've had to drop physically on
top of a dog was a goldenretriever with a dietary allergy
and it just had these explosiverages and in those days I used
to have the students in theclinic with me and the dog had

(52:44):
got hold of something on its wayto the clinic and it just
started to explode and Iliterally dropped on the dog to
stop it from biting somebody.
So you shouldn't make laws onthe basis of averages and ban
everybody of the type you know.
As I said, that is racist.
So that's where I come from.
I'm not denying that there aregenetic factors, but equally the

(53:06):
idea that a ban is going tosolve the problem is naive.
And originally, you know, withthe Dangerous Dogs Act, it was
said oh well, these people arefighting dogs.
Well, I don't know if you'veever seen a dog fight, but in
the UK typically they mightoccur in something like a pub
cellar.
If your dog is remotelyinterested in people, your dog
is going to lose the fightbecause the other dog will rip
its throat out while it's busylooking at people, because the

(53:29):
other dog will rip its throatout while it's busy looking at
people.
So it's a completely illogicallink that dog fighting is linked
to aggression towards peopleand you actually create a badge
of having one of these types ofdogs.
So you create a market for aparticular type of dogs.
Yes, they're banning Americanbullies.
Yes, they're banning Americanbullies.

(53:55):
We will be back in five, 10years time with the XXXL
American Dr Bordeaux orsomething like that.
They're going to go forsomething bigger and beefier and
they'll just move on tosomething else.
It's not going to solve theproblem of irresponsible
ownership.
It's not going to protectpeople.
Sadly, it's not going toencourage safe behavior and
responsible ownership.
So, sadly, I think it is just apolitical move which is going

(54:20):
to harm people and harm dogs.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, we see kind of the mirroring of the issues here
in the US with the banning ofpit bulls in some small
jurisdictions, which we areseeing, of course, are not
working.
You know, and I think yousummed it beautifully with just
saying, you know theirresponsible ownership and
that's really the main problem.
And when we look at mostaggression cases, we sometimes
see that in some of our caseswhere we're seeing something in

(54:45):
the environment or somethingthat people are doing, or
somehow the people are breedingfor certain things, you know,
and I'm certainly not blamingthe owners here- you know, I
want to make sure that thatclear.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, and irresponsible ownership begins
with irresponsible breeding.
So it's not saying it's allabout the environment.
No, people are breeding dogswith horrendous characteristics
and with certain tendencies.
But, as I said, with anythingyou've got the average and
you've got the variation aroundit.
I don't know know if you know,a number of years ago we looked
at Labradors compared to BorderCollies and impulsivity and the

(55:16):
interesting thing is, yeah,there was, on average, some
differences between the breeds,but the really big difference
was when you looked at theworking lines versus the show
lines.
In the show lines there wasvery little difference between
the two breeds.
In the working lines there were.
So, yes, you can breed forbehavior, absolutely, but to
think that behavior isdetermined by genes is so naive.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Yeah, I love how we're talking about so many of
these nuances and I want to takea step back, if you don't mind
to.
We were talking about therelationships, so the study of
love, for instance, and how muchour relationships with the
animal in our care or the dog inour care is going to impact
their behavior.
So, looking at kind of theattachment theory or the

(56:05):
different types of attachmentbroad question, I know, can you
talk more about that as maybe inrelation to the aggression
cases where we see a particularattachment style or something
going on in the relationshipthat typically impacts the
likelihood of aggression fromyour observations?

Speaker 2 (56:22):
So again, it's not that complicated.
If things are predictable as adog, you've got an easy life.
You know.
If things are good andpredictable, you've got an easy
life.
You know.
If things are good andpredictable, you've got an easy
life.
Now you want a degree ofvariety.
I don't know very few peoplewant to just lie on the beach
all day, every day, for manyyears.
You know it gets boring.
After a while you want to reada book or something.

(56:44):
So if everything is good, thenatural state of the brain is to
go and learn or play.
You know and you learn throughplay and investigate.
That's the default situation.
So if you've got a secureattachment with your owner, you
know you can depend on them,which means you can switch off a

(57:05):
lot of the time.
Now, if you've got an insecureattachment and there are many
forms of insecure attachment,but if you've got an insecure
attachment, depending on thetype of insecurity, you may make
the prediction that my owner isof no value to me when it comes
to social support, in whichcase you become quite distant
and you do your own thing andyou don't take much by way of

(57:28):
point of reference from theowners.
The really harmful type ofinsecure relationship is when
your owner is unpredictable.
Sometimes they love you,sometimes they seem to hate you,
and I think it's interestingand you've got to be very
careful.
But well, we've got some datawhich we are writing up and, who
knows, by the time this comesout we might even have it

(57:49):
submitted.
But yeah, this style ofattachment whereby, or
caregiving, the owner is thecaregiver rather than attachment
, for me attachment has severaldifferent meanings, again, even
within the scientific literature.
But for me attachment is thebond between a care receiver and
a caregiver, and I make thedistinction between attachment
styles so and a caregiver, and Imake the distinction between

(58:11):
attachment styles so.
A dog is attached to its owner,or an infant is attached to its
mother.
The mother is not attached tothe infant, she has a caregiver
bond which has differentcharacteristics.
But if you look at thecaregiving style that leads to
insecure attachment in the carereceiver in this case the dog,
that inconsistency wheresometimes they're raging and

(58:32):
sometimes they're loving forwant of a better term then
they're the dogs that are reallystruggling because they don't
know what's going to happen.
And we know, for example, inchildren where they've got
parents in that sort ofsituation, they're the ones that
really struggle with mentalhealth issues and that means

(58:52):
that you're going to get a dog.
If they are highly stressed inthat situation, yeah, they're
more likely to use aggressivebehaviors, absolutely.
As I said, the data we've gotseems to indicate that as well.
That that's where the problemis.
Now we've got to be carefulagain.
Just preface this, becausecorrelation is not causation.

(59:12):
But when you start to look atthe literature on risk factors
with aggressive behavior, peoplehave focused on the use of
punishment or aversives in dogtraining.
One of the problems with a lotof that work is it's
epidemiological.
You know, if your dog isperfectly well behaved, you have
no reason to use punishment.

(59:34):
So you know it's not surprisingthat you see the relationship
that dogs without behaviorproblems are less likely to have
suffered from aversion.
But some of the more nuancedstudies what they're seeing to
show is that people who use amixture of methods, of using a
lot of positive reinforcementand using aversive methods

(59:55):
they're the dogs with the realproblems, and that is very
consistent with this idea.
Now, as I said, there's a lotof caveats there and we would
need more evidence, but on thebalance of probabilities, I
think that makes a lot of sense,and I think this is where we've
got to be careful about thatmixture.
What the dog wants from theowner is that secure

(01:00:19):
relationship, and if you engagein physical punishment of your
dog, how do you expect your dogto trust you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that'sreal problem, and what we need
to be doing is teaching the dogsto do what we want to do and
guiding them always towards that, and there just isn't the need

(01:00:39):
to brutalize the dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Very well said, and you know I can agree more
because I always talk aboutsafety and the feeling of safety
.
You know the lack of safety orfeeling safe breeds aggression
in so many cases, and so ifwe're doing things to the dog
where they're not going to feelsafe from us, then it only makes
sense that you know it's ahigher likelihood of them to
resort to aggression becausethey're not feeling safe.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
They've got to look after themselves and if they
feel threatened, they've onlygot one way of looking after
themselves.
You know, they've got fourwalls, they cannot run away.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Yes.
So to wrap up here, I wouldlove to get.
Because you're somebody with somuch experience and you've been
in this industry for so long,studying dogs and so many facets
, I feel old.
So, I always ask you know, whenI have somebody of your caliber
that's had so many experiencesjust studying things at such a
high degree, but in so manydifferent, not just one

(01:01:32):
particular topic.
I mean I find it fascinatingand the question I ask is if you
have one takeaway from all ofyour life's work and experiences
to help the dog guardians thatmight be experiencing, let's say
, behavior problems oraggression issues, or they're
trying to fix things with theirdog.
What would your takeaway be?

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
I'm not sure if this quite answers the question, but
I think one of the things thatwe don't say enough and I think
isn't recognised enough is yourdog needs a safe space in the
home, and safe space is not abolt hole.
A bolt hole is somewhere you gohoping you will be safe, and
we've developed protocols forwhat we call safe havens.

(01:02:13):
A safe haven is somewhere yougo knowing that you're going to
be safe, so you have confidence,and it's a spot that you set
aside and there's a number offeatures of it.
I don't know whether I've gottime to go through, but
basically you never impose onthe dog in that space.
So the dog knows that if hegoes there he's in control and

(01:02:35):
he also knows that because he'sin control, no harm will happen
to him.
So even if some scary stuff ishappening around him, he is safe
.
And whilst we call it a safehaven, it is actually a very
powerful tool for giving the dogsome autonomy in the home and
we see a lot of problems startto evaporate in that situation.
So the dog that is scared offireworks.

(01:02:56):
He goes to a safe haven.
He's not that happy, but he'llchew his toy and when the
fireworks go, he'll stop andhe'll startle.
That's normal.
It's a sudden noise, but he'llthen go back to chewing his toy
and that's so much easier to doset up a safe haven with the
right rules than it is todesensitize a dog.
Likewise, if you've gotvisitors, the dog takes himself

(01:03:17):
off.
The key things about a safehaven is it's clearly demarcated
.
The rule is when the dog isthere, you do not impose on the
dog.
So you do not go and put thelead on him.
You do not go and give him atreat.
Now, if he's off his safe havenand he's in another room, you
can put a treat in his safehaven for him to find.
That's absolutely fine.
But you do not impose yourselfon your dog.

(01:03:39):
If you want to go for a walkand your dog is in the safe
haven, you can hold the lead andsee if he chooses to come off.
We don't say walkies.
You give him the choice.
He can see the lead.
He knows what that means.
But if you say walkies, you'reimposing your.
Well, you're not actually.
You know most of the time it'snot a choice.
When we give instructions todogs it is obedience, and the

(01:04:03):
other key rule is that anybodywho doesn't understand those
rules and can follow those rulescannot be left unsupervised
with the dog.
Then your dog has a way also ofcommunicating that actually you
know, we do this a lot with ourclients and they start to say,
yeah, I've noticed that hestarts to use it in these
situations.
I didn't realize that he wasuncomfortable.
Then you start to open up adialogue with your dog.

(01:04:26):
So that's one thing.
The other thing I would say isthere is so much fun and joy to
be had by watching your dog andjust watch, let your dog make
choices, and just observe,formulate your own ideas and
then test them and see ifthey're true.
But don't set them up to tryand confirm them, to say, well,

(01:04:46):
okay, let's see how things go.
We spend far too much timedoing and not enough time, I
think, looking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Very, very well said and an excellent way to wrap up
the show.
Daniel, thank you so much.
Where can people find you andwhere can people learn more
about the research you're doing?

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
I have a presence on Google Scholar so if anyone goes
into Google Scholar, if you putdogs and mills, you'll probably
find one of my papers and thenthat will take you to my whole
profile so you can find it there.
You can find my webpage at theUniversity of Lincoln under the
staff pages.
Somebody set up a Wikipediapage about me.
I saw that Came as news.

(01:05:23):
I'm not sure how up to date itis.
Somebody has to teach me how todo it.
During COVID, I started to do aseries of interviews with people
who had inspired me, calledwhat makes you click if you go
into youtube and you put my nameand what makes you click what I
really loved?
I was so lucky to meet somereally great people early in my
career and I just use it as anopportunity to catch up with

(01:05:46):
some of them during covid andbeyond, and I haven't done
anything for probably over ayear now.
I really ought to do some more,but some people aren't aware
just how important some of thesepioneers are and how important
they have been in shaping thefield.
One of the things that reallykicked it off was I was
lecturing to the students aboutsome of the protocols that we
use in managing problem behaviorand I mentioned Vicky Voith and

(01:06:09):
students just looked at meblank.
I could have said well if I saidmickey mouse, I would have got
more recognition and I thoughtyou don't realize that she's the
person who wrote all theseprotocols and really codified
and actually we've become reallyquite sloppy in the application
of the original protocols.
So there is one with vicky the.
The first one I did was withKathy Howell, who's been very

(01:06:31):
good to me, people like Ben andLynette Hart and many others.
So if people are interested injust hearing me rabbit on and
chat to other people who I findreally inspirational, then
there's that presence there aswell.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Excellent, and then, as usual, be sure to link to
those in the show notes.
I highly recommend that as well.
The YouTube channel isexcellent.
I was listening in on some ofthose earlier on.
So, historically it's alsofantastic because, as you said,
some of these protocols getshifted, so it's great to hear
from the original pioneers.
So absolutely, daniel.
Thank you so much.
It's been wonderful and I hopeto see you again in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Yep, hope to see you again soon.
Thanks a lot, bye now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
What an amazing way to wrap up this season.
I'm incredibly grateful for thechance to connect with so many
talented, knowledgeable andpassionate individuals in our
community, and Danny was noexception.
A special thanks to you fortuning in and supporting the
show.
Your support means the world tome and makes all of this
possible, and thank you foreverything you're doing to help

(01:07:33):
the dogs in your life.
I'm excited to kick off seasonsix with more fantastic guests
and hope to see or hear from youat one of the upcoming
AggressiveDogcom events.
As always, stay well, myfriends.