Speaker 1: You're listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, good morning or good afternoon, depending on what part
of the country you're in. I'm kind of like right
in the cusp because right now I am sitting well
now in my hotel room, but about ten minutes ago
on the beach in Cancun, Mexico, where it is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately,
got to get back to reality, go back to LA today.
But anyway, having a wonderful time. And I'm your host,
doctor Jeff. Where we're here on ascivetts with Doctor Jeff
here on pet Life Radio. And this is a live
broadcast here on pet Life Radio. I think one of
the few where we get to interact. I get to
take your phone calls and I want to hear from you.
So give us a call at eight seven seven three
eight five eight eight A two, or you can also
just join us online. Go to pet Life Radio, click
on the ask the vets and you can just join
in our chat room. Last that you can send me
a quick text or an email to doctor Jeff. That's
Dr Jeff at Petlife Radio dot com and it will
get photed to me while we're here live on the air.
One thing we have to thank our sponsors of course
pro Sens Pet Products cong as a matter of fact,
just for setting in a question, giving us a call
here at eight seven seven three eight five eight eight
eight two, we will send you out a free pro
Sense and or a con product for your pet that's
for your cat or dog, and just call in and
ask anything. I mean, it's the chance you have to
just get free advice. Let me hopefully put you on
the right track if we're having a real tough dilemma
or problem with your pet, and in exchange, other than
getting some free information, you'll get a free pro Sens
in con product.
Speaker 3: You can't beat that anyway.
Speaker 2: As we are are here at Sunday, the twenty ninth
of June, approaching July, and this Friday, as we all know,
is fourth of July, and this is when I start
getting so many questions about Fourth of July and pets.
And but sort of, you know, I kind of laugh
inside because when I should be getting these questions is
probably in January. And I'll explain that in just a minute.
So I want to tackle some Fourth of July issues,
and I want to hear from you if you have
a pet that is great, okay with the fireworks. If
you have a pet that is scared to heck with
the fireworks, I want to know what you've done, what
you've tried to do, what kind of advice you've gotten,
and let's sort of all learn from each other some
of the best ways to deal with this problem. And
let's face it, it is a problem. There are so
many dogs that are terrified from the sound the crackles,
whether it's the Fourth of July, whether it's construction going
on next door, and you hear the loud noises, whether
it's thunderstorms, lightning, thunder these are all sounds that for
some reason, many dogs get freaked out. And you know
what's amazing is when you think about thunderstorms, I can
often now tell when a storm is heading our way.
Why when I start getting numerous phone calls from clients
that are concerned that their pets are acting really weird.
They're hiding, they are not as energetic, they don't want
to go outside and play. And I've heard this for
so many years, and now I know is that when
a storm is coming, a little meteorology or when a
storm is coming barometric pressure drops. We get usually low
pressure well, what happens. We can't, at least I can't
feel this change in barometric pressure, but animals can. So
we talk about association. So what does the association? The
dogs start feeling this change in barometric pressure, and then
within a day or two or three, whatever it is,
we're gonna get thunderstorms. So now the old Pavlovian response
the longer reacting as much or as early to the thunderstorm.
It can only act when it happens. But now they've
made the association that that change that they start feeling
in pressure starts leading them to expect, anticipate, and thus
fear the ensuing thunderstorms. So it's amazing what they said.
You know, we talk about our senses, our six senses.
Oh my god, I think dogs have way more than that,
not to mention being able to read us, way better
than we can read them. So let's talk for a
second about fourth of July. Well, first of all, we
make a big mistake, most of us. How do you
behave How do you react when you see your dog
starting to shiver and shake, hide under a couch or
a table, and you can tell they're afraid. So what
do we do? Come on, we love our pets. We're
the best mom and dad in the world.
Speaker 3: So what do we do.
Speaker 2: Typically, it's oh, poor baby, comme here, coime me here,
and you start coddling them, you start hugging them, you
start petting them, and they're saying to themselves.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is right, this is great.
Speaker 2: I hunted the table a little bit and all before
you know it, I'm getting all this affection and attention.
Speaker 3: I think I'm gonna do this some more.
Speaker 2: So what we don't realize is by the mere fact
that we are paying this kind of attention to them,
we are in fact reinforcing this behavior. We are actually
letting them know that it is okay to react so fearfully.
Because when we react this fearfully, we are gonna praise you,
We are gonna pet you. What I mean, come on,
life is grand. What more can a dog do to
get so much affection and attention and love? Right, So,
we really, for one thing, need to start rethinking how
we behave how we react when we see dogs like this.
The age old solution to this problem has always been,
let's go to the net and let's get some tranquilizers.
Let's get either like a little sedative like acepromisin. Nowadays
it's more the anti anxiety because we believe it's more
of an anxious and anxiety issue. So we send home
the valume the day Zapan, we send home the alpraise
of Land, which is xenax, and we want to get
the dogs to start chilling. As I often joke with
my clients, try it on your dog. If they're driving
your nuts and it's not working on them, you could
take the leftover. But the goal here is that we
want to try to minimize the stress the anxiety that
is happening with our pets, and to do so three
or four days before the fourth of July, it's not
going to work. So basically what we're doing is we're
stuck giving them that sedation. If you have a dog
that is or a cat that is so fearful, of
course you need to talk with your veterinarian. There is
really the only thing I can think about that might
work over the counter that you could try would be
one of the old fashion available over the counter non
prescription antihistamines like chlorophenaramine, like diphenhydromene, which is benagol.
Speaker 3: And the reason for that is the way.
Speaker 2: One of the side effects of these old fashion and
by that I mean the not the non drowsy newer
types of antihistamines that's available, but it's the old, good,
old fashioned drowsy ones that they may not work so
well as an antihistamine, or will they do. But the
problem is with allergies, as we've discussed a few times,
I'm sure that histamine is not a major player of
the allergic response in dogs. Therefore the anti histamines are
not going to have the same effect. However, they do
have that setative effect. So when you have a dog
that's a bit sedated, you have a dog that is
itching like crazy, and you give them an antihistamine, you
might see some advantage of the sedative effect and they
probably won't be scratching as vigorously as much as aggressively,
So that might help depending on your dog. And typically
I know you know offhand because I use I offer
it a lot, or I recommend it a lot.
Speaker 3: Is the benadryl.
Speaker 2: It's about a milligram per pound, So you have that
thirty pound dog, give them twenty five milligrams. Now you
can get them in tablets and tewbers, so you can
actually do half. It used to be they only came
in twenty five milligram capsules. Dan, It's pretty hard to
give half the capsule. You'd have to open it up
for about roughly half of the little pellets out and
then put the capsule back together.
Speaker 3: That's not so easy. So that's something you could try.
Speaker 2: To use as a mild sedative just to kind of
chill relax your pet before the fireworks start hitting. And
you know, it's interesting you'll know how they do because
as we know from you know kids or kids, they're
gonna start setting off those firecrackers probably Thursday night or
certainly early Friday morning. They're not going to wait until
the typical eve evening of July fourth, after all the
barbecues are said and done, to start lighting those fireworks.
You know, you want to get the dark skies, you
want to see how beautiful they are. And so that's
what's going on. So firstly, before we move on to
what really needs to be done, what should be done,
something that's going to take several months, which is why
I said something you want to start like in January February,
not wait until three days before. I want to hear
from you eight seven seven three eight five eight eight
eight two. I want you to pick up the phone,
give us a call, get a free pro Sense product,
a free con product. My good pal Mark Winter, who
is our show's producer, is waiting anxiously waiting for those
phone calls. So give us a call, or go ahead
and join our chat. If you go on as I said,
you go on to ask the vets with doctor Jeff.
You can go out to pet Life Radio and there
at the bottom of this big box it says click
here to join the chat, but join the conversation. Go
ahead and give us an idea of what and how
your pets act and react during fourth July during thunderstrumps.
As a matter of fact, the solution that we're going
to discuss, which is a behavior modification solution, which is
the best way to go, is not only going to
work now for the fireworks, but it's going to start
working for any loud sounds.
Speaker 3: So it's really cool. It's great and if.
Speaker 2: It's something that if you can, once you learn, you
can start teaching your dogs.
Speaker 3: How to react.
Speaker 2: Your cat's are a little cats are a little tougher
because you know, let's face it, Kat.
Speaker 3: Doesn't like something, that's going to go to a different room.
Speaker 2: It's going to hide under the bed, or hide in
its favorite bed, or jump up on their scratch post perch,
and they're going to chill. They usually don't typically come
to us for love and affection, unless, of course, you
have cats like mine, which I often joke read the
Dog Book by mistake, and they will come when they
want affection, Trust me, they come and pick for it.
So what we want to do is talk about behavior modification. Now,
behavior modification is a probably one of the more accepted techniques.
Speaker 3: It has clearly replaced.
Speaker 2: Any kind of punishment training, which we all believe is
really not effective for dogs or for kids for that
for that matter, I think makes things worse. We don't
want to do flooding. Flooding is where we take a
negative stimulus and basically bombard the pet with it to
the point where they almost become numb to it. They
realize as this bombardment is going on that their reaction
is not going to help, it's not changing anything, and
they finally almost take the attitude well, I'm still here.
I guess it's okay, So I'm just gonna I'll just
deal with it and it'll be okay. And that's called flooding.
And the reason why flooding has become so out of
vogue is that we have now through the ability to
measure the different physiologic neurologic reactions going on in a
pet through stress, through measuring cortisol levels, through firing of
certain neurons, we've learned that we are really messing these
animals up when we do flooding. We are creating extreme stress,
which we know has very, very many negative side effects
on a pet's physiology. We are causing a lot of unnecessary,
unwarranted brain activity, and it's really not the way to go.
So we are trying really to move away from flooding
as a solution to behavior problems. Many of the old
fashioned non veterinary trainers or I should even use the
term loosely, as they often do pets experts, behavior experts,
mind you, non veterinary some of them have even reached
major prominence on national television, really are over using this
flooding technique and it's really to the issues, the problems
of a dog's physiology something we're trying to guard against.
So we're going to talk about more behavior modification through
a desensitization. It's called desensitizing and counter conditioning. We are
going to actually, if you can believe it, we're gonna
may have a dog look forward to loud noises. And
with that we're going to keep you just with bated
breath waiting to come back after our break. We'll be
back in just a minute here with doctor Jeff Warbron
pet Life Radio.
Speaker 3: Ask if it's with doctor Jeff. We'll be right back
right after these messages.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned.
Speaker 4: It's dinner time in America. We're more pet parents trust
pet Smart for natural and expert recommended foods than any
place else. And now we've added more than one hundred
new varieties to our already wide selection of your favorite
brands like Simply Nourish, Authority, Wellness, Science, Diet and more.
Do what's best for your pet's smart.
Speaker 3: Happiness in store.
Speaker 5: Go to petsmartdeal dot com to find out this week's
keepon code and save up to thirty percent on food, treats,
toys and more, and get free shipping on orders of
forty nine dollars. Go to Petsmartdeal dot com p E
T S M A R T d e a l
dot com.
Speaker 3: I'm who my heirds toer Now what bring home a puppy?
Speaker 2: Your new dog is exciting and he's depending on you
to keep him in good health. Dogs need special care
to keep them healthy as they grow throughout their entire life.
Caring for their health is critical in all stages. With
pro Sense, it's simple and convenient to give your dog
the care it needs with effective, end quality products that treat, prevent,
and provide essential daily vitamins and minerals. Pro Sense products
are veterinary formulated and recommended to ensure the very best
for your pet.
Speaker 3: Try Prosens today.
Speaker 2: Your dog will thank you for best, love life, love
them back with process.
Speaker 6: Pet Life Radio, number one pet radio network on the planet,
joins forces with iHeartRadio to put the power of your
pets in your pocket. Download the iHeartRadio app and rock
pet Life Radio on your phone, on your Tablin, on
your Xbox, in your car, net talk pet Tunes and
fun pet Times, pet Life.
Speaker 3: Radio and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 6: Positively Possum, Hi, this is t O. D.
Speaker 7: Anderson and I'm the host of Get Positive Results on
pet Life Radio. We're going to talk about a variety
of topics canine behavior and training, all based on modern
methods that are fun for you and your dog. We
might be talking about other critters too, so join us
on Get Positive Results. We'll talk about common issues between
you and your dog, answer your questions, discuss different activities
you can do with your dog, and keep you posted
on current canine news and products. All this on Get
Positive Results on pet Life Radio.
Speaker 3: Let's Talk Pass, Let's Talk Past on Life Radio, Netline.
Speaker 8: Radio, Petlife Radio dot Com.
Speaker 3: And welcome back.
Speaker 2: You are here with doctor Jeff Weerber here on pet
Life Radio's Aspects with Doctor Jeff, the only live call
in show on this wonderful pet Life Network radio station.
So anyway, before the break, we were talking about the
issues with fourth July fireworks desensitization. How do we do
a better job trying to avoid the use of pharmacologics,
drugs like xenax, like valume, which is dizapam, like acepromazine,
tranquilizer to better help our dogs and cats if you
can through these difficult times. And it's not just Fourth
of July fireworks, it also happens with construction noise across
this our next door.
Speaker 3: It happens with thunderstorms.
Speaker 2: How is a better way to try to keep our.
Speaker 3: Dogs calmer during this time?
Speaker 2: And I sort of joke that, you know, often when
I start getting these questions, it's just before fourth of July,
and it's going to be a few days before July fourth,
and that doesn't give us enough time to do it
the right way. So we're going to talk about a
behavior modification technique that is very effective. It takes a while,
and that's why I was kind of joking but not
really starting January. And what this technique does is we
are taking a stimulus and we are going to provide
a very very very barely noticeable level of this stimulus.
So an essence, the goal is to desensitize your dog
to the loud sounds of fourth of July. And we're
not going to stop there. We're actually through this process.
We are going to counter condition them in such a
way that not only will they no longer be afraid
of the sounds, but they're actually gonna like the sounds.
And we're gonna take that same mistake that we have
made over the years, which dogs have learned and therefore
continue to behave the way they do and what is
that mistake. As I mentioned earlier in the show, we
call them over to usk if we see how fearful
they are. They're afraid, they're shaking, they're hiding, and we
call them over. We have them jump up on our laps,
We coddle them, Oh, we come out, okay, we give
them a hugging and kiss, and we, in essence have
been reinforcing the wrong behavior. We have been reinforcing the
negative reaction, the fearful reaction, instead of reinforcing the non reaction.
And that's the counterconditioning. That's what we're gonna change. So
the first homework you have to do. And now with
the advent of the Internet, it's so easy. I mean,
I actually I joke. I still have somewhere in my
archives a cassette tape I know it's gonna aige me
a bit of what we call sound effects. It's sound
effects cassette tape. And I still probably even have a
sound effects DVD, which those are available readily still, but
now you can get these right off of the internet.
And I'm talking sound effects of almost anything, whether there
are bullets, bombs, traffic, screeches, thunderstorms. Of course, fireworks, loud
noise of construction, any type of sound effect that they
might use in a movie is available online. So what
you want to do is you want to download. In
this case, let's start with what we're talking about here, fireworks.
So you're chilling in your den or your living room,
wherever it is that you chill with your pets, and
you want to get your computer out. If you have
a DVD, stick it into your player, turn on your
speakers at a literally a sound so low that you
can't hear.
Speaker 3: It, but trust me, your dogs probably can't.
Speaker 2: And what you're gonna do is you're gonna sit there
and play it for a few minutes, seven, ten, whatever minutes,
and hopefully the dog's gonna be sitting there not reacting
at all, and you're gonna go over to the dog.
Oh my god, you're such a good boy. You're such
a good girl, and you're gonna pet him, and you're
gonna hug him and kiss him and even give them
a little treat reward if they are so treat motivated.
And then the goal is a few times a week
you are going to do the same thing, but each
time you are going to crank that volume up just
a little. It might not even be to the third
or fourth session that you can even start if you
listen really carefully hearing the noise. But every time, after
several minutes of the noise playing, probably your dog not
doing a darn thing, and then you are gonna call
them over. You're gonna give them hugs, you're gonna give
them kisses, you're gonna give them a treat, You're gonna
tell them how good they are.
Speaker 3: And you continue to do this a few times a week.
You don't.
Speaker 2: Now, again, we don't want to flood them, we don't
want to go crazy. We want them to just literally
ease in to this increased volume that you will be
playing on a regular basis, and I mean ease in.
And then what you're gonna do is, every time you
have a training session, it might be three or week
or so, maybe four a week, you're going to be
cranking that volume a little higher, a little higher, a
little higher, and it's going to get to the point
that when they hear the noise, instead of running to
a corner and being afraid, they're gonna come to you
happy with their tails wagging and their ears are wrecked.
They're going to be so excited because.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I heard the noise.
Speaker 2: I'm getting a treat, and I'm gonna get love, I'm
gonna get affection, I'm gonna get attention. And you're now
going to be reinforcing a different kind of reaction. It's
not going to be a fear for reaction. So if
you're not there, you know they're not going to be
sitting and hiding under a bed. And pretty soon, as
we all know, that hug and kiss and good boy
is going to be just as good as the hug
and kiss and good boy and.
Speaker 3: A treat, you don't even need the treats anymore.
Speaker 2: The goal is that we're using sort of more of
an operant conditioning, and their association now is going to
be that good boy is going to bring the joy.
It's going to bring the affection back. And you're gonna
have a dog or hopefully cat aff I say, Cat's
gonna be much.
Speaker 3: We're difficult, as we know, to do this.
Speaker 2: But certainly a dog who will no longer be afraid
of fireworks, they'll no longer get this bad stress response, which,
as we have learned, is very deliterious to dogs. And
if anything, it's going to be a response of happiness,
a response of joy, and it's going to be a
lot of fun. They're going to, in essence, look forward
to the fireworks, just like your kids do. Obviously, they
are not going to go out on the balcony and
appreciate the beauty. They're not going to go to the park,
but they will no longer fear or care about the
negative effects. So I want to know, by the way,
anyone who's ever tried this, I want to hear from you.
I want to know if you've tried it, is it working?
Did it not work? We need to hear your stories.
In fact, next week when we sit and talk about
the after effects, not even next week, on Sunday, two
days after fourth of July, on Sunday, the sixth, we're
going to go. I expect to hear back from you.
I want to hear not to mention your free pro
Sense product. You're a free Kong product, but I want
to know have you tried how did your dogs fare
on this fourth of July? You know, this morning I
was on my Facebook page and my Twitter page. I'm
always plugging the show. I want you to guys to
join me on the show. I want to hear from you,
give us a call at eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight eighty two. No reason why we don't
hear from you. And one of my very long term
friends now actually lives out of Los Angeles, moved up
northern California. But a dog rescuer, a dog lover, and
we've talked about this before and she said it so well.
Speaker 3: It's a picture of.
Speaker 2: A dog sitting in an oven and it says, whether
it's an oven or it's a car, dogs can overheat
and die from the heat. And that was so well said.
And what a great visual to see a little dog
sitting in an oven. And you can imagine what it's
like when they're sitting in your car. It's really not
that different. So don't think for a second that it's
okay to do that. I'm going to mention a lot
during the summer, because you'd think by now any of
you who know about this would know by now that.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, how crazy. Who's going to do that?
Speaker 2: And I got to tell you, I get dogs in
I hear stories. And the other one is the exercise thing.
Of course, we want you out there in exercising it's
great fun, but you got to remember where you live,
how hot it gets, how human it gets, how much
a little shade there is, and we can't do it
for dogs. I actually was doing a segment and I
was in a news station in Maryland, where Maryland gets
extremely hot and humid during the summer, and we talked
about the exercise thing, and you want to do a
first thing in the morning, and you got to wait
till seven or so or after the sun is down.
And one of the weather man actually came to me
and he says, Doc, I gotta tell you. Here in Maryland,
it can stay. It can stay eighty five degrees even
up till eight or nine pm. So they recommend not
even running or exercising your dogs that late until after
nine pm, so it's already dark out. So if you're
going to get if you're in an area like that,
or if you're in Florida, where I know because I'm
here in Cancun right now and it is still pretty
warm even into the night, very hot, Muggy that if
you're going to exercise, the best time to do it
is really early in the morning. You know, get up
at five six in the morning, take your dog for
that run, give them plenty of time to cool down
and enjoy the beautiful weather. Anyway, that's it for us
for today. I want you all to have a very
safe Fourth of July. Remember, if you have not done
made a plan to desensitize and countercondition your dogs, you
can resort to seeing your veterinarian a little benadryl, a
little medication. If it doesn't work on them, you can
take it so they don't drive you nuts. And we'll
see you here on Sunday here on pet Life for Radio.
Ass events and doctor Jeff have a great region.
Speaker 1: Let's talk bets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com