Speaker 1: Live. This is Pet Life Radio.
Speaker 2: Let's talk pets.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Human Animal Connection Show, where we believe
we can communicate with all animals. Join us as we
explore the thirty three principles and healing methods of the
Human Animal Connection. As animal lovers, we know that you
share our commitment to making the world a kinder place
for all creatures. Together, let's embrace the transformative healing power
of the Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 3: Hi, everyone, welcome to the Human Animal Connection Podcast. I'm
your host, Genie Joseph. I'm the executive director and founder
of the Human Animal Connection, and today I am delighted
to speak to Kim Stole and she is the dog
training program manager at Soul Dog Lodge.
Speaker 2: Kim, thanks for being with us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Great. So we're going to talk about the five types
of dog enrichment and why they're important, what they are,
where they important, and how you do them at Soldog. Well,
first of all, before we get into that, just tell me,
like the one sentence in case people don't know Soldog
what do folks do over there?
Speaker 4: Soldog Lodge is sort of a multi service organization. We
have We're known for our dog boarding dog grooming and
dog training. That's at our new facility over on Tangerine Road.
We also have a nonprofit mission to just help keep
dogs with their families, and so we do several different
things to help keep pets with their families, whether that's
emergency boarding for people in different situations where they need
to bore their dog, or helping people find grant funding
to help train their dogs so that they can keep
it in their home. So stuff like that.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful, dog, that's great. Well, we know how important
enrichment is, but I think we're going to do kind
of a deep dive here so we really understand all
the different levels of it. So, I know you talked
about five different types of enrichment. Let's start with physical
because that's the most obvious tell us about why physical
enrichment what it is and why it's important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, physical enrichment is you know, it's sort
of obvious, but it's doing different things with their bodies.
So that could be having I mean some some different
types of enrichment sort of overlap with each other. But
physical enrichment can include stuff like having toys to play with,
having stairs to climb, different things, in their like kennel
enclosure to interact with. You know, it's having pools to
splash in, and hoses so things to run around, tunnels
to go through, stuff that they can in their environment
that they can interact with and be physical with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. So I mean one of the I
guess the main concepts is that you know, all humans, animals,
all beings need enrichment and without it, something like boredom
can set in and lethargy can set in and all
kinds of negative consequences behaviorally and health wise if they're
not getting a certain amount of enrichment. So yeah, so
physical is the most obvious. What do you mean by
occupational enrichment?
Speaker 4: So this is giving your dog a job. So you know,
lots of dogs are bred for specific purposes. They have
genetic hardwiring to want to perform certain types of behaviors.
These could be you know, you're hunting breeds of dogs.
These can be your hurting breeds of dogs. So it's
finding ways for them to have an outlet for those
sort of hardwired instincts. And it can be stuff like
doing those dog sports, getting your dog involved in agility,
doing doc diving for your water breeds could be going
out and doing sheep hurting, doing an instinct test with
your your hurting dog, and just yeah, those sorts of
things that will be fulfilling and also a good partnership
with you because they're you know, they're learning not just
to go crazy running after the sheep. They're learning to follow,
you know, the different commands and work with you towards
a specific goal. So it can be the dog sports,
it can also be you know, stuff like you know,
if you have a terrier breed who loves to dig,
it might be creating a space in your yard a
sandbox for them to dig in. Uh So, yeah, it
could be things other than sports as well, as long
as it's trying to provide them that outlet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really important. I think for those dogs who
maybe have those genetic drives, if they're not getting those
drives met, they could it could result in behaviors that
you don't want, right, you know, like a herding dog
that doesn't have any sheep might start to hurg you right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, definitely those things will you know, pop up
in different areas and I think a lot of people,
you know, they are the reactions maybe to try to
suppress the behavior, but it's it's going to be the
pressure cooker. When you have a high drive dog that
needs something to do, it's going to pop up. You know,
you might suppress it digging in the yard, but it's
going to pop up in chewing the couch. You know,
it's it's going to be a game of whack a
mole if you don't provide the proper stimulation, give them
something in partnership with you to go do together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's a wonderful concept. You mentioned partnership.
So it's not just like we're trying to uh, you know,
put them on a ramp or leave them alone. It's
we want to really make this a connected experience between
the person and the animal so that they so that
they're reading each other's signals and paying attention to Yeah, great, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: And also, you know dogs are so you know, they're
kind of made to look to us for direction and
they love having interaction with us. So I think that's
a big part of enrichment. It's not just giving your
dog a cang every day and walking away. If your
dog gets the same enrichment every day, it kind of
ceases to be enriching, so it's varying it up and
also being an active participant and in some of what
they're doing.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, that's excellent, excellent, And what about nutritional enrichment
what do you mean nutrition?
Speaker 4: So, yeah, that's the food puzzles, the kongs, the frozen
licky matt the different things that they can be consuming eating.
It could also be scatter feeding them, hiding treats around
the house. That kind of overlents overlaps with doing like
scent work. But yeah, anything where they're working a little
bit harder to get their food than just eating it
out of the food bowl. Right.
Speaker 2: So okay, coming from you know, their natural genetics, they
didn't have a food bowl down they had to go
get their food, and you know, we don't provide that
for them. So most of us don't have a forest
they can go forage in. Yeah. Yeah, so you mentioned
we're scattered, just in case people don't know what is
the concept of a scatter pattern. Would like, let's say,
with the treats, what are you doing with scatter and why? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So, I mean scattering food can even just be like
throwing the kibble on your floor or out in the
grass where they can If you have grats right, they
can hunt around to find it and using their nose
they have to sniff it out. It just takes a
little extra brain work. Some people call it feeding the chickens,
you know, where you just scatter the food and you
let them kind of sniff it out, hunt it down.
And also moving food the food kind of moving across
the ground. That's going to be more interesting because it
triggers that you know, visual prey drive instinct to go
chase down their food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really really important to get their nose involved. You know,
if they're in a living with a human, you know,
in a house or an apartment or wherever they're living,
they may be getting the same smells all the time,
and we want to make sure that they're getting a
variety of smells because when they're getting novel smells, their
brain is like oh yeay, something new. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And dogs totally see the world like it's hard for
us to even have the language to describe because we're
so visually focused. That's our primary thing as humans. So
even when we talk about like how dogs see the world,
we're using the phrase c for that. But dogs smell
the world. It's hard for us to even have a
concept of how a dog thinks about its environment because
it is so smell driven and visual is more secondary
to smell.
Speaker 2: So yeah, even if you're into a kind of routine
with your dog food, if you have vary the treats
and so that they're getting different kinds of smells, this
can be just you know, as simple as that form
of enrichment that they they're smelling a new kind of
salmon treat or a new kind of bacon treat or
whatever it is. Is that they're getting variety because the
more their nose is stimulated, the more they're going to
be balanced mentally. I think, yeah, so that's really great, great, okay,
and sensory sensory enrichment. What a sensory enrichment?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is getting the dog's senses involved. So
it can be smell games and like you say, you
were mentioned smelling out food. There's also different scent work
where you can use the scent oils and you can
teach your dog to smell. Go find the smell of clove.
There's different scent kits that you can get online that
are like that. So there's also visual where there's some
dogs who will watch TV put something on that you
know they have make they have dog TV. Now, if
your dog isn't too visually some dogs get too visually
stimulate stimulated by that. Other ones find it pleasant. Yeah,
So like even at at Soul Dog in the boarding area,
we have some TVs where it plays just like peaceful
visuals for the dogs. And yeah, it could also be
like we also are always playing like soft music, like
classical music for the dogs. That can also just help
dampen sort of the fixation on hearing other dogs bark
and what was that and just having that sort of
background noise can help calm them down. So yeah, it's
just getting their their sight, smell, they're hearing, all of
that involved. It can also be tactile, like walking over
different surfaces. This is a big one, especially for I
always talk about it for socializing your puppy to walking
over different surfaces while they're young, because then when they
get older, they're not as fearful of walking over a
grate on the street or grass versus pebbles or crinkly surface.
Having your dog walk over a tarp that crinkles under them,
and that can be really strange, but if you make
it a positive experience where they're finding food on the
prinkly surface. Because what we want to do is build
confident dog who can experience all these different things in
their environment and feel like, Okay, I got this. Even
if they're a little timid at first, if they can
learn to walk over it, then the next time they
encounter something that like that, it's sort of in their
rolodex of like, Okay, this is safe and fine and
I can keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a wonderful thing that you're doing
with the different enrichment things, because what we want to
do is help dogs get used to the idea of
new equals good rather than new equals scary. Yeah, you
know so as and I would you say that temperamentally
that some dogs are more interested in new and some
dogs are less interested in new things? Oh yeah, I
think that.
Speaker 4: I mean there's a lot of factors that contribute into that.
I mean, there is the early puppyhood socialization. If you
have a dog who just didn't have many experiences when
they were in that critical time up to sixteen weeks old,
you know they're going they're likely going to be more
fearful of new things because they just didn't have it
during that brain development time. You are getting your dog
from a breeder, getting it from a breeder that you
know is helping your dog have positive experiences while they're young,
or if you adopt your dog young, getting that started
right away. Yeah, there's just their temperament. Some dogs are
just naturally like don't know, like more confident going out
into the world. Nothing bothers them. Some are going to
just be now naturally just a bit more reserved and shy.
And some of this also will come from just individual
temperament and then also breed temperament. So there are dogs
that are just naturally going to be more reserved, more watchful,
not as boisterous as other breeds are, more like go
full steam ahead. I have an Australian cattle dog who
is extremely confident, and that is exactly what he I mean,
they're bred to take on bulls. He's see something, he's
gonna be like, I got this, I'm doing it. And
then I have a shepherd mix who's way more reserved, watchful.
He wants to figure people out before he's gonna go
walk up to them and say hello. So I think
knowing a bit about you know, even if you have
a mixed breed dog, having some ideas of who they
are as an individual and how their breed can contribute
to that why they're like that, and it's not anything.
You know, my shepherd mix isn't a bad dog because
he doesn't love running up to people and saying hi.
He's actually really good at his job as a.
Speaker 2: Shepherd, exactly right. Yeah, And I know a lot of
our listeners are you know, adopting from the shelter, and
so they may be getting a dog that's two three, four,
five sixty seven or more. And so for let's say
it wasn't an ideal puppy hood, what what is the
ability to I call him repuppy a dog, you know,
give them experiences that they didn't get we know that
they didn't get them. And what would you say about that?
Is it likely that?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean I think it's always like you should always
try and your dog might not ever be that. Like,
my shepherd's never going to be the super confident run
up to everything full throttle, but he has over the
years gotten more and more confident because he's having positive experiences.
We're going on hikes, we're meeting different people, and it's
all low pressure, very positive reinforcement for interacting with things.
With an older dog, it might be a slower adjustment
and it might be you don't see a change tomorrow,
and how fearful they might be over something. But in
a year and two years you look back and you're like, oh, yeah,
like that situation would have totally freaked him out before
and today he was fine with it. So I think
that definitely always giving your dogs new experiences and not
just being like, well, my dog is, my dog's fearful,
my dog's reactive, so I'm going to leave them in
the house. That's not an ideal solution. That's really limiting,
you know, the box that they have to live in.
And so that's why in Richmond is important and finding
those safe outlets and finding little windows to you know,
if you have a reactive dog, well, where can you
walk them? How can you start building those positive associations
with being outside? You know, obviously you don't want to
be like we're going to the fourth Ave Street Fair today.
You know, one of our trainers likes to take really
reactive dogs too it's a little bit weird, But to
the cemetery because that's an out space per Kark might have.
You know, parks are sometimes there's a lot of people,
there's a lot of dogs are unpredictable. A cemetery is
a nice outdoor space where you might see a few people,
but they're kind of in the distance. You have a
lot of space to work with. So finding those opportunities
of you know, where can you take your dog to
start building up positive associations with new places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a great concept. I just want to
underscore that the notion of building on positivity. So we
don't want to take a scared dog and put them,
you know, at a massively scary, triggery kind of situation.
We want to give them, oh it's just a little
taste of something that's new and different or a little scary,
have them have a good experience, and then build on it. So, yeah,
that's really a really important point. Good well, and last
one on the list is social enrichment. Tell us about
social enrichment.
Speaker 4: S Yeah, this is your playgroups being social with other dogs.
It's also being social with you. That interaction you know,
with its person in it could and playing with you,
being with its housemates if they have housemates that they
like to play with. It could also be going to
doggy daycare, those sorts of things where they get to
be social and interact. And not all dogs love this.
Some people have this in their head that their dog
needs to have dog friends in order to be happy.
But actually a lot of dogs are perfectly happy just being,
you know, with their person. And some dogs, you know,
in play groups, they're fine with it, but they're not,
you know, especially older dogs will mill about, will be like, hey,
how's it going, But they're not there for a big party.
And then there are other dogs that love other dogs.
And that's the same with people, you know, I don't love.
You know, some people just don't love going to parties
and doing a bunch of small dog meeting a bunch
of people. It's exhausting to them, and it's same for dogs.
Some dogs just find it exhausting. And so I would say,
if your dog does it, you're doesn't get this playgroup experience.
It's it's life, is not missing anything, and that you
shouldn't feel like, you know, this dog needs to have
dog friends, right, and don't force a dog that's not
enjoying it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, well great, we'll can take a short
little break when we come back. I went and hear
some of the stories about how these wonderful enrichment programs
that you're doing at Souldog Lodge and Training Center has
really helped some of the dogs that you've been working with.
We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 5: Take a bite out of your competition. Advertise your business
with an ad in pet Life radio podcasts and radio shows.
There is no other pet related media that is as
large and reaches more pet parents and pet lovers than
pet Life Radio, with over seven million monthly listeners. Pet
Life Radio podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms,
and our live radio stream goes out to over two
hundred and fifty million subscribers on iHeartRadio, Odyssey, tune In,
and other streaming apps. For more information on how you
can advertise on the number one pet podcast and radio network,
visit Petlifradio dot com slash advertised today, Hey friends.
Speaker 1: If you like what you're hearing and want to learn more,
check out doctor Joseph's book The Human Animal Connection, Deepening
Relationships with Animals and ourselves or visit the website The
Humananimalconnection dot org to book an online consultation. Thank you
for loving animals. Now back to the show.
Speaker 6: Let's Talk pets on Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Human Animal Connection. I'm your host,
Jamie Joseph, the executive director of the Human Animal Connection,
and I'm speaking with Kim Stole and she is the
program dog training program manager at Souldog Lodge. So, I
know you interned it at Cell Dog. You've got some
of your dog training. What drew you into this work
and what was your path of learning?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think that I always you know, as
that this is what everyone will say. As a kid,
I loved dogs. I you know, that was my dream
was I was going to own all these sport dogs
and do I was going to do agility. I was
going to do flyball on frisbee. I like, you know,
love watching all these competitions on TV. And then when
I was in my twenties, I got my first dog
from the name Society and he was not a sport dog.
He was So this is my Shepherd mix. He is
extremely fearful, shut down, would hide, tremble, he himself if
anyone approached him. He was sort of a mess. He
was like basically semi ferrell, and so my path to
helping him and figuring out okay, well this is kind
of got me interested in not just the sports side
of dog training, but the behavioral modification and working with
dogs with different sorts of issues. That's how I got
interested in that. And I really wanted to help other
dogs like Bonus that were in the shelter. So I
ended up getting connected with Soul Dog. This was ten
years ago, and I basically just reached out and said, hey,
I'm interested in learning about beaver modification and dog training,
and can I volunteer intern with you or you know,
can I just come shadow? And yeah, Rachel, the founder
of souldog said, you know, she was very generous. She
just said sure, come over. Start you know, working with
dogs in there that were in their.
Speaker 2: Board and trained.
Speaker 4: She worked a lot with different rescue groups who had
pol dogs from the shelter that were having some difficulties
in foster homes. And then I ended up helping to
run one of the rescue groups that was primarily pooling
dogs with different behavioral needs pack. So I got even
more experience sort of working with not just the fearful dogs,
but also the like really reactive dogs, really busy dogs,
dogs that needed a job and had had kept coming
back to the shelter because people just didn't know what
to do with these high drive dogs. So that's kind
of how I got into it. And then of course
I kept adopting getting foster dogs and adopting them with
all sorts of there, all sorts of different behavioral quirks
and just learning to work work through them, and yeah,
it's always fun.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great. I know, that's the the shelter
is the best training ground. I mean, that's where you
really you really see the reality on the ground, you know,
and see. You know, that's how I learned my method
is if it worked with the shelter dogs, I knew
it was going to work. Yeah. Great, So let's hear
one of the stories about working with the dogs with
your enrichment program. What was the dog's issue going in
and how did you work with them and what happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we recently had a dog boarding with us, Gracie,
who had been with her owner for a while. She's
an older dog. The owner went into the hospital had surgery.
She was gonna be recovering for a long time. A
neighbor was watching Gracey, and then the neighbor had to
also travel, so Gracey was with us for several weeks.
It was a while to be there, and Gracey was
just so shut down, like you couldn't even take her
on a walk really, like she would just call it pancaking,
where they just like flat on the ground. She doesn't
want to move, she doesn't want to interact with anything.
She doesn't seem to enjoy you know, she's you know,
just totally sort of and she's not aggressive any anyway,
but she's just totally flat. She doesn't really seem to
like being peaded, you know, nothing seemed to like really
cheer her up. But she's gonna be there for weeks,
so we're gonna keep gently trying giving her time, giving
her space, you know if that meant you know, there
was times where a staff member would just sit with
her outside while she kind of was flattened up against
the wall, and it's like, Okay, we're just gonna sit
here today, Gracie. I guess that's what we're doing. And
so they just our staff just kept being really gentle,
but persistent with giving is like trying her in different scenarios.
So we have this big enrichment room where the boarding
dogs have playgroup. It's also has like a couch to
just like for dogs that just want to hang out.
And by just putting Gracie in that situation of being
in the enrichment room while other calm, we paired it
up with like calm playgroup. She's in the room with
other dogs, she can see them interacting, but she has
an out like so she can like go get behind
the barrier, she can go into a crate there. She
doesn't have to interact if she doesn't want to. So
giving your dog on your shy dog like that out
if they don't want to be invold. But she could
watch from the far she'd see that the other dogs
are like not a threat. So just doing this a
few times, eventually she started actually acting like a dog,
you know, going out with the other dogs, wagging her tail,
following them around, getting more and more interested in that
social interaction with the other dogs and having that outlet.
I think her learning, Oh, it's so it's safe here,
these other dogs are safe. I'm safe. Then she started
getting more social with people too. And the other part
of this is that Gracie hadn't been She was a
longer hair dog and she hadn't been groomed in quite
a while. So our staff were very careful trying to
give her little bits of like grooming to get the
mats out, just in like really small sections, so we're
not trying to give her a bath and a brush
and all that scary kind of right experience, but it's
just getting those mats out. We discovered one like some
of her nails were so had gotten so long that
they were like curling, so we got her like nail
script And I think that also helped a lot is
that she was grooming. Can call it like grooming issues
like matting, like nails that are crolling. This can cause
a dog pain, which we can cause them to then
shut down and not want to interact with anything. They
have this chronic discomfort. So I think getting her that
little bit of grooming, getting her into those playgroups, just
the staff being really consistent and gentle and give it,
like you know, we bring her into the office area
and just have her sit under the desk while we
went about office work stuff like that. Yeah, it was
just amazing to see that sort of over the course
of maybe two weeks, the transformation between like you know,
pictures of her totally flattened against the wall to running
around and play a group following other dogs and just
seeming like a regular happy dog.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. I mean, so many elements there that were
really working right with letting her take her time, you know,
letting her observe so that she could just get used
to things at her own pace, and the choice, the
ability to choose to opt in, opt out, go and
go behind a barrier, or go over here, stay farther
away until she was ready to make the choice to
come into the group. And I think that is something
you know, people are fostering, are rescuing dogs in those situations,
you know, to kind of remember that formula to let
the dog take their time and if they can observe
the thing that you're introducing them to before they have
to actually do anything, you know, so they can just
be learning by watching, so that all that time that
may look like she was doing nothing watching those other dogs,
she's maybe learning something about social communication, you know, like
oh that's what they do, they do this, or they do.
Speaker 4: That or they you know, yes, yeah, And I also
I think that there's also value in sometimes a dog
watching a human do something first. So if you want
them to go over the jump, if they're kind of fearful,
like okay, you take us up over the dump first
and you show them, Hey, this is how you do it,
and it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's excellent. That's excellent. Well, it sounds like wonderful
work that you're doing over at Souldog. Thank you so
much for the good work that you're doing and that
sol Dog is doing and helping dogs to stay with
their person, you know, even if they're going through different
things surgery or whatever it is, and just helping dogs
that may have had not such a good beginning in
a shelter life. The idea that we don't have to
just accept that this is the way it's going to
be forever, that it is possible for many of these
dogs to make changes. They may not make the kinds
of changes that some other dog might make. You know,
we do have to accept their basic temperament and need,
but we don't have to just simply accept the behavior
as is presented. Whether there are oftentimes many things that
we can do that will allow a dog to have
a fuller life and to have both the human and
the dog also together have a fuller life. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to encourage people to find ways to
do enrichment in your own home. It's not just something
that you know, you send your dog off to boarding
and they'll get enrichment there. Enrichment should be something that
your dog is getting every day, and that I mean
it's also it's everything that you do with your dog.
It's walks and richment can even just be like putting
something new in the living room with them, a new
object to interact with, you know, it can be you
don't have to go out and buy the expensive puzzle feeders.
You can just use some packing paper in a tupperware
and throw scatter some food in there, or using toilet
rolls and crumpling them up and letting the dog tear
them up to get food inside. You don't have to
spend a bunch of money to give your dog novel
experiences with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Well this is very inspiring, so help everybody listening.
We'll think about the different ways that they can do
enrichment and whatever way they can, and so that it's
part of everyday life. That's great. Well, thank you, Kim,
It's been delightful to talk with you. Hey yeah, thanks
for having me and we'll see you on the next
episode of The Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 3: I'm Jadie Joseph, your host, and we'll say aloha for now,
by bye.
Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to The Human Animal Connection Show.
Please visit our website, The Humananimalconnection dot org. There you
can sign up for our free email newsletter, book a consultation,
or check out our blogs and resources. Our best selling book,
The Human Animal Connection is available on Amazon, and your
donation of any amount keeps our nonprofit organization providing life
changing services.
Speaker 6: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on patlightradio
dot com