#109 - Assessing Risk for the Safety Enrichment Category

We're asked all the time about enrichment that isn't related to food. Well, here we are, folks! Today's episode is all about the safety category of enrichment. We'll discuss how to perform a risk assessment for your pet's enrichment strategy. 

You can find the full episode show notes here.  

Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: I think that a lot of times people restrict opportunities for animals in the name of safety, and in doing so, it doesn't increase welfare and well being. It decreases welfare and well being because it's overly restrictive. Safety is important and it is threaded throughout all enrichment. And also the point of a risk assessment is so that safety enhances welfare and well being instead of detracts from it. We want things to be as safe and enriching as possible. It doesn't have to be a war between safety and enrichment. It doesn't have to be either or. So that's why risk assessments are important and why it's important to be able to do a risk assessment because that allows us to take smart risks to improve overall welfare and well being while still being reasonably safe.

[00:00:55] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:13] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:15] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Last week, we heard from Debbie Martin, and one of the topics we discussed was the Behavior Specialist You Didn't Know You Needed. This week, we're going to dive further into assessing risk for the safety enrichment category, and talk about implementation with the animals in your life. In this implementation episode, Emily and I talk about the categories aren't real, but they do matter, logical fallacies that lead to internet fights, When it's time to just not, and ta da!

So, so, as always, let's start with defining our terms. I think we've done that for like every implementation episode this season, and I'm not mad at it. So let's start with first, what is safety? What do we mean by when we talk about safety? When we're talking about safety, we are specifically talking about being out of harm's way physically.

We're talking physically not being in danger. And for those of you who have read our book, we section out safety and security. So security is psychologically or So security is feeling like you're out of harm's way, whether that's true or not, whereas safety is physically being out of harm's way. So that is what we were talking about when we were talking about the safety enrichment category.

People ask us all the time for enrichment that isn't based on food, and y'all, this is one of the categories. sometimes it does have to do with food, but very often it doesn't have to do with food. So if you are looking to bolster your enrichment strategy for your dog, or a client's dog, or a shelter kiddo that you're working with, whomever it is, this is a category that you can look at for that. And I want to be clear that safety is intersected with other categories. So today we'll be talking about safety in relation to physical health, physical exercise, mental exercise, calming enrichment, all of that good sort of stuff. And that's ultimately because the categories are, are not real. The points are made up. For those of you who watched Whose Line, I think it actually might still be on air. I don't know if that's true or not. It was a fantastic show, though. Anywho, the categories are made up. We do that as a teaching and learning strategy because our human brains really like boxes and putting things in boxes, and so it's helpful to start out learning. By putting things into boxes, but know that the boxes are made up. And so really when we're talking about safety, we're talking about safety in relation to whatever activity, which you might be categorizing as something else. And that's not wrong. It's just a factor of the categories are made up. They do matter, though, unlike points and who's line. 

[00:04:27] Emily: Yeah, safety is a lot like agency regarding enrichment or in relation to enrichment, and that it's an underpinning of all of it. Because the, the whole Point of enrichment is that a learner has choice, control, and predictability.

They can influence their outcomes. They can interact in their environment in a way that empowers them to improve their own welfare and wellbeing and being safe is a part of that improving welfare and wellbeing piece of that puzzle. So I really think that like. Safety is kind of like agency. It's not its own category. It's more like one of the criteria for all of the categories. And the reason it's hard to categorize it is because, like you said, the categories don't actually exist. They, we, they're just constructs that humans create for us to, to learn about things. But. I think where it does become important is that a lot of times people restrict opportunities for animals in the name of safety, and in doing so, it doesn't increase welfare and well being. It decreases welfare and well being because it's overly restrictive.

And I also think that a lot of times behavior professionals can um, End up making work too hard for their clients because we're trying so hard to be safe and and cover our butts and all of that, that we make enrichment really unsustainable for our clients in the name of safety. So safety is important and it is threaded throughout. all enrichment. And also the point of a risk assessment is so that safety enhances welfare and well being instead of detracts from it. We want things to be as safe and enriching as possible. It doesn't have to be a war between safety and enrichment. It doesn't have to be either or. So that's why risk assessments are important and why it's important to be able to do a risk assessment because that allows us to take smart risks to improve overall welfare and well being while still being reasonably safe.

And as always, all of these contexts exist on a spectrum, nothing in life is 100 percent safe or 100 percent unsafe. Safety can also have a lot to do with privilege. So, so we have to really be able to look at the big picture and do a really scaled out. Risk assessment process. I think there are three reasons or three situations in which you would do a risk assessment.

Because if you're having to do a really in depth risk assessment for every single thing, thing you do with your pets, every decision you make that also would be unsustainable. So, I'm not doing that all day, every day but the times when you really want to do a full blown kind of risk assessment is when you have multiple options to choose from and you're struggling to decide which option to, to try first.

Or when the decision makers are not in agreement, like, decision makers within a household or within a facility within an organization where there is, there's differing opinions on, What is actually the appropriate enrichment strategy or enrichment plan? And then I think the third reason to do a risk assessment is when concerns have been raised and you need an objective way to navigate those concerns.

So I think those are the times that it really merits sitting down and doing a full blown investigation, and nope, sorry, not investigation, a full blown risk assessment, and the rest of the time, I think we can just keep doing what works for us and our, and our individuals and not have to worry about it too much.

So one of the most important tools in our toolbox for doing

risk assessments is critical thinking. And the reason for that is that I often see that when people are struggling to do risk assessments well, it's usually because there's a logical fallacy or a cognitive bias at play or both. So, we're going to talk about the kind of, the most common cognitive biases and logical fallacies that end up tripping us up when we're trying to do risk assessments. I am sure there are more.

I don't think, I know there are more. But these are the four that I most commonly see impacting risk assessments in animal welfare. So we'll start with a selection bias because I, I chose these critical thinking errors based on my own selection bias, which is my own experience with the world. We all have selection biases because none of us can know everything that happened in the world.

None of us can objectively see. Every data point. In existence, and so, we all are limited by our scope of experience and knowledge and the communities that we're in and the, the populations that we work with, the people that we work with, and there are many different types of selection bias. So I'm just going to use this as an umbrella term to say that we often do off the cuff risk assessments based on our selection biases, what we see, what we don't see, what we have access to, what we think is important.

So all of those are, are, a factor in our perception of how risky something is. So I'm going to give you an example of a selection bias that skewed my own risk assessment regarding raw food. So when I was a veterinary technician before I went into business for myself, I primarily worked in small animal kind of traditional practices before I started my business. So at that time, My many years of vet teching had been valid. I had a lot of experience, but I was only seeing a particular type of veterinary medicine with a particular population. And at that time I was strongly opposed to raw feeding.

Because I only ever saw when it went horrifically wrong. And the thing about raw feeding is that when it does go wrong, it usually goes horrifically wrong. And so I had seen over and over and over again, these nightmarish cases where raw feeding had gone really wrong. So I was, I was adamantly opposed to it.

And this was also before, I knew how to handle myself on the internet. So it also can do a lot of passionate arguments with people on the internet about raw feeding. When I realized that I wanted to start focusing on behavior, I quit my full time vet teching job. I started pet sitting for medical and behavioral special needs animals.

That eventually I just branched out into like pet sitting in general, but my focus was medical and behavioral special needs. And then I started relief that teching, which meant I. started opening up to a lot of other types of practices, including holistic alternative medicine veterinarians. When I got these different perspectives from these different types of veterinary practices and from pet sitting, I started seeing many, many, many, many, many cases where an animal had had kind of chronic inflammatory issues of some kind or another, and they started raw feeding and those issues completely went away.

I started working with vets who were recommending raw feeding to their clients, not. Unilaterally, but in specific situations. And what I also started realizing is a lot of my pet sitting clients who were raw feeding either went to vets who supported that, or they lied to their vets because they had been shamed in the past for feeding a raw diet.

I now have a much more nuanced understanding of this, and I'm neither for or against raw feeding. I think there are, are risks and benefits to it. I think there's nothing magical about the food being raw. I think you can get the same effects from a home cooked diet. But, At the time, the profoundly impactful lesson for me was that my perception of raw feeding, just being incredibly risky, almost guaranteed to cause major problems and being something that you would have to be totally unconcerned about your animal's wellbeing in order to feed them that diet was because of my selection bias.

And as soon as I had a different perspective, And I started working in other types of veterinary practices and working with pet parents outside of the veterinary process altogether. My perspective expanded, which then also shifted my selection bias. So I think that is a really good example of how selection biases can influence our risk assessment because if we only see when something goes poorly, that is a type of selection bias where we are, overestimating how dangerous or how risky something is based on the population that we work with.

Conversely, if we're only working with and seeing animals, that do well with a raw diet, that's another type of selection bias where we're only seeing the survivors, we're only seeing the animals who succeeded with a raw diet, and we're not seeing all the cases where it went horrifically wrong. So, Both of those communities, when they stay insular, when they don't talk to each other, when they don't work with each other, when they don't ask each other questions in good faith, they're seeing very different outcomes.

They're seeing a very different Transcribed ratio of success to failure and what they're saying is valid, but what they're missing is the conditions under which those outcomes are true. So when you're doing a risk assessment, that's one of the things to be aware of is that you have a selection bias and that you are seeing outcomes based on the selection of the population that you have access to.

And it's important to try to step out of your own selection to, to get a broader perspective of what's actually going on. 

[00:14:55] Allie: And I know that for those of us who are professionals, that can be a really, really hard thing. It's hard for me personally to see, for example, an off leash dog because I have so many Stories from clients who an off leash dog was resulted in a, in a bad situation, we'll just put it there. So one of the things to keep in mind is recognizing when you have a selection bias and what part of that is true and what part of that might be anxiety.

So for example, cognitively, I know there are some off leash dogs who are totally fine and it's okay and there are some situations where that is awesome and preferred. And I also know my personal anxiety around it because I have such a long learning history that tends towards a particular selection bias for that, for that type of situation. So when I'm talking with other people or clients, I can say, I see when it goes badly. I know there are situations where that's not true, and also I don't have a lot of experience with that. So when you are talking to people, owning up to what is true, what is not true, and when you're part of the problem, and recognizing that sometimes you're part of that. problem with that selection bias, and that it's okay sometimes as long as you recognize it.

[00:16:18] Emily: Related to selection biases, there's a logical fallacy called the ad populum fallacy, which you can think of that as like, everybody knows this is true. We believe that it's true.

We assess that it's true because everybody says that it's true. And I think that's you can think of that as being to the selection bias because the echo chamber that we are in gives us often an ad populum fallacy, where if everybody in our echo chamber says the same thing, then we believe that it's true.

But it is different in that you don't have to have personal experiences to be influenced by the ad populum fallacy. You can just believe it because it's what you've always been taught. So, a really good example of that in our profession is the belief that laser pointers will absolutely, without a doubt, guaranteed to cause compulsive behaviors, light and shadow chasing behaviors.

And I, of course, I've, I've witnessed or been a participant in. several conversations on this topic before. And what I found interesting about a lot of them was that a lot of the people who were the most passionate about this topic had either never had a client themselves who had this issue or they'd only seen it like once or maybe twice.

But because Our echo chamber that we exist in is so adamant that laser pointers cause light and shadow chasing compulsively. They felt. Really strongly about this, this statement, they really believed that if you give, if you play with a laser pointer with an animal, they will absolutely without a doubt, end up with a compulsive light and shadow chasing disorder and and then on the other side of that I have friends who are in zookeeping, and they were like, they know they don't, they don't cause compulsions.

We use them all the time to to do to train stationing behaviors. So they definitely don't cause compulsions because we use them all the time. There's an element of selection bias to this, right? However, when asked why they use the laser pointers, it's because, well, that's just what you do. And like, that's the easiest way to do station training or cue a stationing behavior through protected, protected contact.

Okay, cool. That's valid. When asking the dog trainers why why they know that it's true that laser pointers always cause compulsions, they're like, well, because that's what everybody says. Like, everybody knows. and no, everybody doesn't know that. If everybody knew that y'all wouldn't be having arguments on the internet about it.

So what actually is true is that the reason that zookeepers rarely or never see it is because they're using laser pointers as a cue. The animal is empowered to perform a behavior in which there is a known and predictable consequence, which is a consequence that they want. So in that, in that scenario, a laser pointer is not frustrating.

The way that laser pointers are often used with pets is To elicit play behaviors that often involve a predatory modal action pattern, but it can be frustrating because they never get to complete that pattern. They never get to catch anything. They never get to eat anything afterwards. So there's a lot of frustration involved in the way that pets are usually interacted with using those laser pointers.

But some individual animals clearly think it's fun. They understand that it's a game. They understand that they're not trying to catch anything tangible. And yes, I know I'm making a lot of assumptions about their innermost thoughts and feelings, but we can observe their body language and see that they're like, all right, good game.

And they like saunter off clearly happy. With that game whereas other animals, we can see that frustration and that it never turns off. And so that's where that light and shadow chasing becomes problematic is they never get to complete that cycle. And so they just keep chasing light and shadow.

It's complicated. It's, it's much more complicated than even what I just said, but my point and even still being overly simplistic about it is that there was that over simplicity in how people are talking about it based on what everybody knows is true. In the zoo world, everybody knows, quote unquote, that laser pointers are harmless, and in the dog trainer world, everybody knows, quote unquote, that they will absolutely cause a compulsion.

And so that's something that we have to assess. How do we know that what we believe is true? Do we believe it because, quote unquote, everybody knows it? Or have we actually seen data? Do we know it because it's been our experience? Or have we actually seen data? So, that's a related fallacy that we have to take into consideration when we're doing risk assessments.

[00:21:19] Allie: And I'm going to chime in once again with the human element of this, especially because you brought up laser pointers as an example, and I think this is a perfect example as somebody whose dog developed light and shadow chasing after a previous adopter. played with him with a laser pointer and he did not have that prior to going to that home.

So I have clearly, in just the way that I'm talking about this, I have feelings about this because an individual whom I love a whole lot was affected by this. And I can recognize I have all these feelings because of how that impacted Oso's well being and that it's not true for every individual. And so we're going to talk in a little bit when we get to like relevant factors of like human anxiety, human experiences, and how that impacts your risk assessment.

so keep in mind that your learning history, your experiences are also going to impact how Clearly, you're able to see through some of these logical fallacies and cognitive biases and where you might need to do some additional work on them. 

[00:22:31] Emily: Yeah, I think that's a really good point that we should bring up right now is like your experience matters, your your experience is still valid. And if you are, if you have had like a huge selection bias with something and you have big concerns or big feels about it because of your selection bias, that's not invalid.

The point of this isn't to dismiss anybody's experience. It's to put your experience in context so that you can make an informed decision. So, yes, this discussion about selection biases and ad populum fallacies is not to say that you shouldn't have feelings based on your experience.

We just need to put those, those feelings into context, right? The next one that I see happen a lot is what's called the single factor fallacy, where we're making a risk assessment based on one factor and not looking at the overall picture. I'm going to use another nutrition example. I don't know why. Nutrition is my, like, my availability heuristic.

Like, the stories that I can think of are about nutrition, but In talking with people in the veterinary field about species appropriate diets for cats, one of the things that I have found the most astonishing is that I've had several people in the veterinary industry tell me that even though they know animal, that cats are obligate carnivores and they really should not give very many carbohydrates in their diet and that they come from the desert.

And so most of their hydration comes from their food, which means they typically don't drink enough water to be optimally hydrated. They still recommend feeding kibble to cats because, Studies have shown that cats who eat kibble have cleaner teeth than cats who eat a wet food or a raw diet. That is a really good example of a single factor fallacy.

Because if you are only making a risk assessment based on teeth health, and you're not looking at the entire cat's body and the entire system, And so you're not looking at the risk involved in other parts of that cat's body. You're just looking at teeth. Then, yes, that is a reasonable argument to make.

But I'm, I, my assessment, I'm not just looking at the cat's teeth. I am looking at the cat's kidneys. I'm looking at their pancreas. I'm looking at their liver. I'm thinking about the cat's whole entire body. And so if we had to choose between their teeth or their kidneys, a cat can live a wonderful life without teeth.

A cat cannot live at all without kidneys. So I'm not going to just look at their teeth when I'm doing a risk assessment. That said, that's also a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be either or. And I'm not unilaterally opposed to feeding cats kibble because we have to do risk assessments for the individual in front of us.

We don't. Just make a risk assessment for an entire species of animals because they have different realities. So my point here is not to say the cat should never eat kibble. My point is that people are making risk assessments based on what to feed animals. Nope. People are making risk assessments about what to feed cats based on one single factor, the teeth, instead of looking at the whole animal or the whole picture, the whole environment, which includes the clients and their financial realities and what they can afford to feed.

If that's a factor, then yeah, feed kibble because it's cheaper, right? But But if you're just making a risk assessment based on the cat's teeth and you're not looking at the rest of the cat's body or the environment that they live in, that's not a good risk assessment. because of that single factor fallacy.

The last critical thinking error that I often see involved in risk assessments is the sweeping generalization fallacy. And we got a taste of that when I was just talking about kitty cats. If I were to say that unilaterally kibble is bad for all cats everywhere and no cat should ever eat kibble.

That would be a sweeping generalization fallacy. And we do that a lot. We do that a lot everywhere. Humans do that a lot. But we also see this in risk assessments in animal welfare quite a bit. And this usually happens because of our selection bias. So like Allie was just talking about she has big feelings about her experience with Oso and, and laser pointers. So if she were to say, because this is my experience with Oso, no animal should ever have laser pointers, that would be an example of a sweeping generalization.

We have, we have gotten feedback. That was based on sweeping generalization, which is no animal should ever run or walk up and down stairs because they will develop arthritis as a result of that. And that is, that is a sweeping generalization. It's simply not true. That is a risk for some animals in some situations, but I would never make the claim that any dog who walks up and down stairs is going to develop arthritis.

That is an unsupported claim. So we have to remember that every thing that we see, every outcome that happens happens because of multiple contributing factors. There are multiple things that play that influence risk. And when we are aware of what those multiple factors are, we can really tease apart what's actually going on so that we can do a better and more accurate risk assessment.

So for example with that statement of like any dog walking up and down stairs is going to get arthritis, we can look at multiple factors. Do the stairs have good traction? How old is the animal? Have their growth plates fused? Are they older? How large is the dog? Is the dog overweight or does the dog have good muscle conditioning? In addition to that, is this a dog who is at risk of developing osteoarthritis based on their lineage or their breed or.

Do they already have, start the signs of osteoarthritis? So those are all the things that I can think of with my limited knowledge of things within the dog's body to pay attention to. But we also have to weigh the risk versus the benefits of doing that for somebody who lives in Chicago or in Minnesota.

And in the winter they can't take their dog outside because it's 40 degrees below zero and the dog will die if they go outside to exercise. So we have to weigh the risk of not exercising that animal at all versus using stairs as a means of exercise. But I have worked with dogs in the past whose veterinary physical therapist prescribed walking up and down stairs for that dog's recovery.

So to say that all dogs will get. Arthritis, if they walk up and down stairs, it's a form of exercise, is a sweeping generalization, and there's also an element of single factor fallacy in there because we're just looking at that animals joints without considering everything else, like what other options do they have available to them?

If stairs are the only viable option then Then it's better than no exercise at all. The dog will definitely have a decrease in quality of life and welfare and wellbeing if they have no exercise options. So again, we have to look at the environment. We have to look at the objects that the animals are interacting with.

We have to look at their whole body, not just one particular part of the body that we've decided to hyperfocus on. We have to look at their age. We have to look at their weight. We have to look at their muscle conditioning. We have to look at all the different things that are at play to make a decision about whether or not the risk is worth the benefit of that activity.

So that's another thing that we have to be aware of is oftentimes when we're making a sweeping generalization fallacy, we are reacting based on. our own personal experiences that were painful and ouchy and scary. And we're not looking at the bigger picture.

[00:30:52] Allie: Okay, so let's finally get into how do we do a risk assessment so that we can improve on that safety category of enrichment. So the first step is what Emily was just talking about, and that is to ask yourself, how do I know that what I believe is true? Emily gave a bunch of different cognitive biases and logical fallacies that can get in the way of doing a risk assessment, and so we need to make sure that when possible we have actual data. We like data here. It helps us make decisions based off observable things versus what's in our little noodle noggins, which noodle noggins get things wrong a lot of the times because cognitive biases and logical fallacies. And the other thing with this, in addition to assessing how do you, how do I know that what I believe is true and getting data on that to seek input from people outside of your echo chamber. Emily has told me the situations with the, the laser pointer, like, zoo world versus dog training world. I hate to phrase it that way, but like, it was the internet, so it definitely was that way. And, It was really interesting to me. I learned a lot from that conversation of like, Oh, I didn't even realize that there were other animal professionals who are using laser pointers differently. And of course that makes sense that the way that they are using it is resulting in different outcomes than the way that I've seen other people using it. And so it's like, yeah, had I known that, I would have had a different opinion much earlier on in my life about laser pointers. So, it's really important to seek input from people outside of your echo chamber. And I don't necessarily mean people who have completely different values than you. People who are working towards the same goal that you are working towards. And they're doing it in perhaps a different way, and we should learn how and why they're doing it, and how it's working. 

Your second step. is to compile a list of all relevant factors that you can think of. We want to go beyond that single factor fallacy. We want to have all the factors in play. And there are a lot of factors that can be involved when you are doing a risk assessment. So a few that Emily and I came up with for this topic were learner's existing tendencies. For example, I'm going to use laser pointers again. If I'm working with some kiddo who is showing tendencies towards compulsions I'm not gonna risk a laser pointer with that kid. Like, that seems like it's just asking for trouble. So, if there are already tendencies that are like that's concerning. Maybe let's not see what happens 

if we try this thing that can sometimes be detrimental. 

[00:33:51] Emily: for example, copper and Brie can chew on cardboard and spit it out mostly. Every once in a while. Copper will be like, I'm gonna chew and swallow this, but if he does that, he'll just do it a couple of times and he won't actually ingest a lot of cardboard and he's 15 and a half and he's never had any problems with it, but Brie like never swallowed cardboard.

So for us, for our household. It makes sense for me to have a recycle bin for my animals, for my dogs that just has a bunch of cardboard boxes and or toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, and they can just dig through it and choose something out of it and tear it up, shred it. And then I just sweep it up later.

I've had clients that I'm like, please definitely don't do that because your dog eats an enormous amount of like alarming amount of cardboard. And also you've had. take your dog to the vet multiple times for foreign body obstructions. So, like, please don't have a recycle bin for your dog because your dog's tendencies are to swallow everything they put in their mouth.

My dogs do not have that tendency. So, very different risk assessment for your dogs versus my dogs.

[00:34:57] Allie: That's a great example. Another factor could be the learner's physical status. So for example, I was able to give Oso different chewy things before his dental that I can no longer give him after his dental. After I like took a chewy that had been like fully halfway down his throat and he was like, wait, what's your problem mom?

I was like, You have to chew better than this, buddy, and you physically can't do that, so, like, we're giving this type of thing away, because I do not remember how to do a Heimlich maneuver on a dog. It's been a long time since I learned that. So, That's an example of your learner's or animal's physical status is going to change, and that means your risk assessment is going to change as well.

Oso had been very, very good about chewing his chewies all the way down, and I never had to worry about him swallowing things whole, and then he got three molars removed, and then I had to worry about him swallowing things whole, and now we only have little baby chewies for him. He's not allowed to have the big ones that he used to have. The next factor is the environmental reality. That could be things like human bandwidth, money, time, location, resources available. There's a whole lot of things that go into that environmental reality. So, for example, I think the stairs example is a great one where for one person they might say, You know what? I do not have to ever have my dog go on the stairs. Let's say they live in a ranch house that has zero stairs to get in and out of the building. I've not experienced one of those places, but I assume that they exist somewhere. Or maybe you live on like the 30th floor of an apartment building and you get to use the elevator and you never have to use stairs. So that might be a thing where you're like, yes, I'm concerned about arthritis and I have the ability. In my environment to never have my pet go down the stairs. Y'all, I do live in a ranch house, and there are stairs to get out of my house regardless of which door you use. Granted, it's two or three stairs, but there are stairs. I do not have the ability in my environment for Oso to never use the stairs. So, I am having to work on, alright, he has decided that back legs are for squares sometimes, so how do I safely get him out? out of the house knowing that stairs have to be a part of it. If I had my druthers, my full druthers, bonus points for anybody who can tell me what show that quote comes from, we wouldn't have to do stairs. I don't have my full druthers on this one. 

[00:37:45] Emily: So another good example of this environmental reality one is what I was able to get away with with Bree in Kanab looks very different than what I was able to get away with with her in Salt Lake or in Seattle. Because when the reason I was able to very quickly train a rock solid recall and have her even turn on a dime when she was in the middle of chasing a rabbit or a bird is because.

We, our house backed up to public land. She could get out there. It was relatively safe. There wasn't a lot of risk to her involved in her doing that. And so I could, I could practice. I could call her back. I could give her an ice cube. I could let her go right back out there. If she didn't come, there were a couple times towards the beginning of her training.

That I had to go out there and get closer to her and call her. There was one time when she somehow ended up in our neighbor's yard and I had to extract her from the neighbor's house. So we did have a couple of mistakes and those mistakes were okay because we lived in an environment that was safe to do that.

I could not have done that where I live. in Seattle or where I lived in Salt Lake, because there was not a place that we could regularly multiple times a day, go practice her just being way the heck out away from me chasing birds and rabbits without being in extreme danger.

And so what was safe for me to do as a, as a training process for Bree in Kanab was not at all safe for me to have tried in. Salt Lake or in Seattle. So that was an example of how our environmental reality changed our risk assessment. Would I recommend people just letting their dogs out of their yard and letting them chase rabbits and cats and squirrels and whatever else and practicing those recalls?

Heck no, because that would be really, really dangerous in a lot of places. But I had the luxury of doing that in that location. My risk assessment was much different because my environmental reality was different.

[00:39:44] Allie: So our next factor is your ROI or return on investment for doing this particular thing. If you're like, I'm gonna do this kind of maybe risky thing and I or my pet gets almost nothing out of this? That's not Just don't. Just don't. Like, there's no reason to do that.

If the ROI is not there, then don't do the thing! Which is hard for humans sometimes. We really like doing things that don't get us big results sometimes. A lot of times we like to work harder and not smarter. So this is our I don't know. Work smarter and not harder bullet point here of make sure that what you're getting out of it is worth that risk. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

[00:40:29] Emily: So let's go back to that stair analogy. There's a very different ROI for Ali in the middle of winter in Chicago walking Oso up and down her stairs to give him physical exercise when the snow goes up to her roof.

And so they just can't go outside. That's a very different risk assessment than me in Seattle where like one week of winter, we get a couple feet of snow and the dogs love playing in that amount of snow. Obviously I have more options and during that time of year for exercising my dogs. So the ROI isn't there for me to do that.

Also copper's 15 and a half, his, his joints are creaky and it would absolutely exacerbate his arthritic pain if I were to just march him up and down the stairs. So, so the, the. The return on investment is very different for me because there's, I have more options than Allie does in winter and Copper is more impacted than Oso is by that activity. So there's a very different ROI for Copper and me in winter versus Oso and Allie in winter.

[00:41:35] Allie: And that dovetails really nicely into the next factor to think about, and that is, what does the learner get out of the thing, and are there less risky ways to meet those needs? So using that exact same example of, let's say it's winter, there's a polar vortex, Oso and I can't really leave our home safely, and I can have him go up and down the stairs.

I told y'all I live in a ranch. I do have a basement, and so he can technically go down those stairs. He knows not to, except we've had so many tornado warnings this past year, year and a half, that we've had to break our own rules of him going into the basement for safety, and he's like, I don't understand, and we're like, I know, buddy.

Humans Humans are weird, and we have really strict rules until we don't have really strict rules, and I don't know. It's, we live in a weird place. Which is just Earth. So anywho, yeah, so I can have him go up and down the stairs. I also have a nice long hallway that is usually how we give him his physical exercise because That does give him physical exercise, just like the stairs would, and it can be less risky for those joints. Also less risky for other safety concerns. We have an unfinished basement. I do woodworking in the basement. We have, like, screws just hanging out on the ground sometimes, that, you just don't want. drop a thing and you don't pick it up because you're the only one down there? I don't know. I'm probably just outing my very messy basement self, but that's fine. So it's, there are other reasons that it's not safe necessarily for him to be down there, and why we don't like him down there. But that could be an example of he still gets physical exercise. There is a less risky way to do that in the winter when I can't go outside and hopefully not because there's snow up to my roof. I, I hope that doesn't happen to me. The next is, I've mentioned this a couple of times and we are finally to this factor and that is human anxiety.

 So there are multiple individuals. involved in a risk assessment. Always, even if we are only assessing the risk for, let's say, an animal's physical health, like we've hinted to in the previous relevant factors, the human plays a really big part in that. You are never making a decision that only impacts one individual. So human anxiety has to come into this. And one of my examples for this, I mentioned previously that I have a learning history of situations in which there are off leash dogs lead to bad things. Now, I will say this was not as true when I lived in an area that you could safely have off leash dogs.

It wasn't 100 percent true there, but it was more true there than it is here. I now live in the Chicago suburbs. The only stories that I get about off leash dogs are not good stories, especially because of the types of clientele and animals and situations that I work with. So, I have a lot of anxiety when I see an off leash dog and Oso is in the area.

I am so, so utterly concerned for his safety that, like, I legit go into fight or flight mode. And I recognize, yeah. That is maybe a little bit extreme and maybe something I should talk to my therapist about. And also, I just avoid situations in which that is going to happen. And so, he and I walk in places where there aren't other dogs, where there aren't people, though my safe space was invaded last week and I was so mad I could have cried.

But that's another story. Maybe I should talk to my therapist about this is what I'm learning right now. But I just go for different situations because, yes, I can logically assess that those terrible situations that I've heard about are probably not going to happen to him if I just walk around my neighborhood, and also, my anxiety can't handle that. And so, we opt for different things, and he has a wonderful life, even with my anxious little brain saying that there are things that We can't do.

[00:45:56] Emily: We also, when we worked at the sanctuary where we met and we were.

In charge of doing dog introductions into the areas to see if they could live successfully in group housing. And so we did a lot of dog introductions, a lot of play groups, and we had a policy that if somebody on the team was anxious about.

The, the introduction that we were about to do they could not be a part of it. They were welcome to watch it, but they couldn't be a part of it because their anxiety actually increased the risk. So the risk assessment looked different when they were involved than when they weren't. Because when we are anxious, first of all, dogs can pick up on that and that can influence Their own stress levels.

And secondly, when we're anxious, we often move differently and we act differently and we may be more likely to come in hot when we really don't, when we really shouldn't. And that can absolutely be. impact the, the individual dogs that we're working with when we're doing those introductions. So it really does make a difference.

It, your anxiety is valid and also it really impacts your outcome. So if you're anxious about something, the risk is, higher by default because if you're trying to make yourself do something when you're really anxious about it, it's probably not going to go as well as if you felt confident about what you were, what you were trying to do.

[00:47:25] Allie: Absolutely. And the last factor that we'll talk about is user skill. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to laser pointers for this one. I'm just gonna keep using the examples that you have already given because those are the only things in my brain at this moment in time. So, user skill. I know. that you can absolutely use a laser pointer as a targeting tool, as a stationing tool, etc. And am I going to recommend that to a client who has zero experience with training their animal at that skill? No! I am not going to do that because there is a lot of room for error and I am not willing to do that. to have the fallout that could come with that room for error. I'm going to give them something that is more foolproof than that particular tool.

So we have to be thinking about user skill when we're looking at risk assessment as well. And that could be something as simple as like, I've had clients who have long hair dogs Who would catch their dog's fur in the harness clip like every time they clipped and it's like we are not gonna be able to make progress on this when it hurts like this. Almost every time you clip your dog, like, that's a user skill thing, and that's not, like, that can be whether the dog is just, like, so furry that it's, like, there is nothing else we can do, like, their fur just gets in the way, that could be, like, a dexterity thing, there are so many reasons that, that could be. And so it's like, alright, let's do another option besides this harness, because It's gonna hurt if you keep clipping hair in there, and if that's where we're at, then that's where we're at. We need to find another solution.

[00:49:14] Emily: Yeah, I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with that Just really struggled with using a marker appropriately and then what would happen is the dog would get frustrated. We get confused would bounce would not want to do training sessions anymore. So with those people, I would. Very quickly pivot and be like, okay, I see that since our first session, this has been a struggle and we can tell because your dog doesn't love this and you feel frustrated.

And so let's just not use that at that tool. So, I think we've talked in the past about. the affect heuristic where we make a judgment about how risky or how beneficial something is based on our personal feelings about that thing. And I think where risk assessments go wrong a lot is when we feel good about a tool like a clicker and we think that it's a good thing.

And so we under evaluate How risky that tool can be if it's not used correctly. And so if we have a client who's really struggling with training mechanics, I'm not going to, I don't care about their training mechanics. I care that we're able to like get them to their goal and improve everybody's quality of life in that house and reduce harm and increase welfare and wellbeing.

I don't care about their training mechanics. So if the marker is causing the problem, More problems. I'm going to get rid of the marker because even though it could, it has the potential to increase welfare and well being in general. In this particular case, it does not. So we're going to give it the boot.

[00:50:48] Allie: Okay, so the second step was to compile a list of all relevant factors that you can think of. We provided some of the things that we thought of, which included learner's existing tendencies, learner's physical status, environmental reality, your return on investment, what does the learner get out of the thing, and are there less risky ways to meet those needs, human anxiety, and user We have all of that. Our next step is to imagine the worst case scenario for each option and pick the least worst. Because y'all, there is nothing that is 100 percent safe in this world. 

There is going to be risk associated with anything that you choose. And we want to pick the least worst. The thing that's going to have the least amount of fallout. The thing that has the least worst case scenario. We also, then, want to imagine the best case scenario for each option and pick the best.

And hopefully, the best and least worst are in alignment, and ta da! That's your answer! That's the thing you should do! That often doesn't get to happen, especially because what's good for physical health is often at odds with what's good for emotional and behavioral health, and what's good for other types of health. And it's very sad when that happens. So if they are not in alignment, we have to repeat the risk assessment with just those two options, with just the least worst of the worst case scenario option and the best of the best case scenario and see which one of those is truly the best case option.

Okay, and then once you have that option, you are going to trial and eval. You should have known that that was coming as the last step here because it's always the last step. Well, it's always the second to last step and then you do it in continuum forever. 

So you're going to trial and eval and see. Was it true? Do you have a kiddo who ingests a lot of cardboard and you did not think that they would ingest cardboard? In which case you're like, hmm, I need to go back to the drawing board for what my kiddo can destroy. If that is your kiddo, heads of lettuce and cabbage are a good way to go with that. Assuming they can eat those things. I don't know your dog and their nutrition and gut health. So. Just saying, but that might be an option for you. Anywho, so you're going to trial and eval, see, was your hypothesis correct? Is there anything that you need to change? And, I mentioned that this is cyclical, this is going to be something that you do as your pet's physical health changes, as your environment changes, all of that good sort of stuff. 

[00:53:29] Emily: I, I would just like to add that the emphasis in trial and eval in this case is on the eval part. And so, like, if you're trying something new, that has an element of risk to it, watch them while they do it. And that will be a good way to reduce risk. Because if you're watching them, you can maybe catch them before they do something really detrimental. 

[00:53:52] Allie: you. 

can pull the big Chewy out from their gullet before it goes all the way down and trade them for some peanut butter. And they're like, hmm, that was that was a thing that was weird, but peanut butter is awesome. 

[00:54:05] Emily: Yeah. I did not start training Bree on her rock solid recall by letting her outside and being like, I'm sure she'll be fine out there.

She'll come back. We've only, we've already had her for three whole days. She definitely loves us and knows where home is. Like that, the eval part's kind of a big deal. Just putting that out there.

[00:54:24] Allie: So today. We talked about assessing risk. We're talking about the safety enrichment category, y'all. We talked a lot about what risk assessments are, why you should do them, when you should do them, a whole bunch of reasons your little noodle brain is going to get in the way of doing this well, and why eval that a lot because little noodle brains. The first step is to ask yourself, how do I know that what I believe is true? The second is to compile a list of all relevant factors you can think of, because there are a whole lot of factors that go into risk assessment, including several individuals who are going to be affected. Then we're going to imagine the worst case scenario for each option and pick the least worst, and conversely, imagine the best case scenario for each option and pick the best. If they're in alignment, awesome, go forth. If not, we'll want to repeat that risk assessment with just those two options. And then finally, we're going to trial and eval.

Emphasis on the eval. We want to make sure that we are actually accurate in what we thought was going to happen, that our hypothesis is actually true for this moment in time with this individual in this particular environment, before we just do that. Make it like a standard thing that we are doing with this particular individual.

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.