Enrichment for the Real World

#113 - Q&A: Enrichment Overload- When Is It Too Much?

• Pet Harmony Animal Behavior and Training • Season 10 • Episode 113

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Ever find yourself second-guessing if you’re “doing enrichment right”? You’re not alone—and this episode is here to clear things up. In this Q&A session, Allie Bender (she/her), Emily Strong (she/they), and Ellen Yoakum (she/her) tackle real questions from listeners who are curious (and maybe a little confused) about enrichment.

They break down common concerns like:
 👉 Are some behaviors “bad,” or just not helpful for my goals?
 👉 Can too much enrichment actually hurt my pet?
👉 How can I tell if my pet is overtired, overstimulated, or just plain bored?

With warmth, clarity, and real-life examples, we talk about what enrichment really means (spoiler: it’s not just more activities), and how to confidently assess what’s working for your unique pet.

Whether you’re new to enrichment or knee-deep in rotating treat puzzles, this episode will leave you feeling empowered to do what’s best for your individual animal—without the overwhelm.


TLDL (Too Long, Didn’t Listen): 

  • Enrichment = Improvement in Welfare - Enrichment isn’t a checklist or an activity—it’s an outcome. The question isn’t “Did we do something enriching?” but “Did our pet’s well-being improve as a result?”
  • Behaviors Aren’t Good or Bad - Instead of labeling a behavior, ask yourself: is this helping us meet our goals—or pulling us further away?
  • Outcomes Tell the Story - Does an activity leave your pet content, or chronically stressed? Only they can tell us if enrichment is working. Use your observations to guide your choices.

Links & Resources from the Episode

Going Down a Rabbit Hole?

  • 🎧 Episode #50 – Q&A: Species-Typical Behaviors - How do breed and species shape enrichment? This one’s for the “why” behind the wiggles.
    Listen here →
  • 📚 The 14 Categories of Enrichment - Print this poster, stick it on your fridge, and start exploring enrichment beyond treat toys.
    Get the blog & poster →
  • 🧠 When Is Enrichment Not Enriching? - Emily goes deep into recognizing when enrichment is just another box to check rather than a goal achieved.
    Read more →

More from Pet Harmony

We’ve got a lot more to share—join the conversation!

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[00:00:00] Emily: I would say I'm even simplifying the definition of enrichment to like improving welfare and wellbeing. Because that kind of is all encompassing , we're talking about an improvement of physical, behavioral, and emotional health. We're talking about meeting needs. We're talking about empowering them to perform species, typical behaviors to make choices and, and have influence over their environment. All of that lives under the umbrella of improving welfare and wellbeing. So I think we could simplify our own definition. By just saying enrichment improves welfare and wellbeing.

[00:00:31] 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...

[00:00:49] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:50] 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.

In today's q and a episode, we are talking about Emily's new puppy, Miley, showcasing desirable versus undesirable behaviors in real time. My startle response also in real time, and my professional wives discussing my behavior while I'm just dying in the background. And when is watching out the window healthy or not healthy?

Let's dive in. Ellen, what is the first question for today?

[00:01:35] Ellen: Our first question is, how does enrichment relate to desired behaviors? 

[00:01:39] Emily: All right, so before I answer this question, I want to just refer you back to the enrichment 1 0 1 episode, because I'm gonna be using a lot of terms that are defined in that episode.

But when we were first translating the spider framework to be more applicable to the companion animal community. We didn't realize that we needed to split the steps out more, and so we are working on that. That is a project that will happen someday eventually, but one of those steps that needs to be split is the first one because.

We did not do an adequate job of explaining how defining goals and articulating desirable and undesirable behaviors are related to each other. And I think that is at the root of this question. So when we're talking about desirable behaviors, what we're really, what we're really saying is we need to know what our goal is, what outcomes we're hoping to achieve from our enrichment plan, and then when we're looking at that goal, which behaviors are helping us further that goal? Which behaviors are getting us closer to that goal and which behaviors aren't, which behaviors are, are preventing us from reaching that goal? And that's really what we mean when we talk about desirable and undesirable behaviors.

I'm sure you could. Come up with a nearly infinite list of behaviors that animals do that are desirable, like my puppy kisses me on the face, and I think that's adorable. And it is adorable, when my puppy kisses me on the face, my heart melts, and also it has no bearing whatsoever on her enrichment plan. So that's really the relationship between enrichment and desirable behaviors. I think maybe we can reframe. Desirable and undesirable to mean which behaviors get us closer to our goal or our desired outcomes for that animal, and which behaviors are preventing us from reaching that goal. And we have to, to change those behaviors in order to reach the goal.

So that's my, like just off the cuff thoughts about that question, what do y'all think? Do y'all have anything to add? Do you disagree? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

[00:03:47] Allie: You said everything that I wanted to say. Emily, I'm curious to hear from Ellen.

[00:03:51] Ellen: No, I think Em nailed it. I think it comes down to language because D desired and undesirable. our words that we picked, you picked. I wasn't around at the time because framing matters the way that we think about it matters. Desired for the creature, participating is different from desired by the poor pet parent who's getting woken up in the middle of the night, or some other thing. It depends whose lens you're using, I think.

[00:04:20] Emily: Yeah, I mean, really we picked that terminology specifically to move away from the kind of moralistic framework that people typically have, which is like, the behaviors are good or bad. And, and the point is there's no good and bad when it comes to behavior. It's, does it, does it help you reach your goal or does it get in the way of you reaching your goal?

So, but yeah, I, I, we see now, five years later how that. Wait, is it six years later? Six years later. We see now, six years later that we did not define those terms well enough to connect the dots for people. So we're working on that. We're working on improvements. 

[00:04:59] Allie: Yeah. I think we're running into the same problem that we see in behavior analysis where, we, we talk about a positive and negative reinforcement and punishment, and we have our own feelings attached to those words, and I think that's happening with desirable and undesirable behaviors that that.

We attach a bad quote unquote feeling to undesirable when it's, it's just like what you were saying, Emily, of does this get closer to our goal or does it not get closer to our goal and, and there's no moral attached to it. One day we'll find better words that don't have any meaning. We should just make up a word. No, that'd be bad.

[00:05:39] Emily: Well, people have already tried making up words and, and then humans still attach meaning to the new words, and then they still get into fights over those meanings. I think this is just an ongoing. Issue of communication being complicated as hell, and that's just a reality of being human. So as long as we all just define our terms, we'll, we'll muddle through together. 

[00:06:01] Ellen: So the TLDR desirable, moving closer to our goal, undesirable moving as farther away from our goal enrichment. Meaning all of creatures, I'm gonna put creatures need in healthy, safe, and appropriate ways, ideally promoting species typical behaviors.  

[00:06:17] Emily: I would say I'm even simplifying the definition of enrichment to like improving welfare and wellbeing. Because that kind of is all encompassing of, like, it improves, we're talking about an improvement of physical, behavioral, and emotional health. We're talking about meeting needs. We're talking about empowering them to perform species, typical behaviors to make choices and, and have influence over their environment. All of that can lives under the umbrella of improving welfare and wellbeing. So I think we could simplify our own definition. By just saying enrichment improves welfare and wellbeing.

[00:06:50] Allie: When we improve welfare and wellbeing, we also, more often than not, are getting closer to our goals and seeing more desirable behaviors and undesirable behaviors. 

[00:07:01] Emily: Pardon We me while I remove my now deceased pothos before my dog poisons herself. Standby. She removed it for me.

[00:07:10] Ellen: This is a podcast and y'all can't see, and I might actually leave this in because what an excellent learning opportunity of what enrichment is, improving welfare and wellbeing by not letting the puppy eat the toxic plant. Emily has a new puppy who was being a very typical, very healthy puppy, making all the choices that will not result in goodness desirable outcomes for her.

[00:07:36] Emily: Yeah. She's gonna have a grand old time with the entire quart of soil that she just dumped onto my nest. I'm not gonna have a grand time cleaning that up later.

[00:07:46] Ellen: Desirable for her, undesirable for you. 

[00:07:49] Emily: Undesirable for me. But you know what it did. Further our goals because my enrichment plan for this hour of our lives was to be able to get through the podcast episode while she entertained herself and that it was successful at that so, so one could argue that even though I'm not thrilled about it, it's still desirable behavior. 'cause it's still furthered that goal.

[00:08:12] Allie: and y'all. I wish you could have seen it because it was hilarious watching a puppy pull an entire pot off of a shelf.  

[00:08:21] Emily: It's great. I think this is my Lee's debut on the podcast. So she's, she's getting off to a strong start. By the way, friends, for those of you who don't know, I named her Miley because she comes in like a wrecking ball and she just lived up to her name, so there we go. 

[00:08:35] Allie: we watched the carnage. 

[00:08:36] Emily: We did watch the Carnage in real time. All right what was the next question, Ellen?

[00:08:41] Ellen: I think we have probably segued very nicely into this one. When is it too much enrichment and how do you determine over tired, or overstimulated, instead of bored?

[00:08:53] Allie: I, so my brain has to, reword this question in order to answer it, because in my brain, enrichment means meeting needs. We just talked about that. Improving welfare and wellbeing. And so if, if we're using enrichment with that definition, the answer is like, it, you can never meet your needs too much? Maybe that, that there's a possibility. I don't know. I have not seen it yet, if that. If that is a possibility or not. So for me, I am rewording this to when are certain activities too much. 

So I am. friends, it's four o'clock and I am trying to be a better work life balance human. And so I have an alarm on my computer that goes off at four o'clock to tell me to start wrapping up my day, and that's what happened to me.

[00:09:59] Emily: Cool. 

[00:10:00] Ellen: That's a beautiful demonstration of what we were talking about. When is it too much enrichment? Because Allie tried to do this thing that was really kind for herself and set an alarm so that she would work better, which was in alignment with her goals, thus a desirable behavior. But it scared her a lot, and so we can assess whether or not that was meeting the goal, of the desired behavior. Allie, do you feel that your needs and goals have been met with the alarm that you set for yourself?

[00:10:32] Allie: I physically can't answer this question, right.

[00:10:35] Emily: I would, I would say that ideally we would find an enrichment strategy that would not evoke a huge fear response. So I would call this not actual enrichments. It was an attempt on enrichment and we trial and eval it, and lo and behold, we have assessed that this was not a successful strategy. So Allie's going to need to adjust her strategy. Readdress, reassess, and do it again.

[00:11:03] Allie: All right. I am done dying enough that I am able to participate in this conversation about my own means.

[00:11:11] Emily: Excellent.

[00:11:12] Allie: I'm going to trial it again tomorrow. One of the things that was so jarring is that I have my headphone in for podcast recording, which I never do except for podcast recording. And so there were suddenly birds in my ear and that was alarming. In addition to the thing popping up and, and I'm trying to talk like a human being who actually knows how to do things. And so, I'm going to try again with slight modifications that are more similar to my, my normal environment and we'll see if I have such a large startle response tomorrow. And if so, then we'll, we'll figure out how to make that activity more aligned with enrichment.

[00:12:02] Emily: Yeah, I, I accept that trial and eval. The, the difference is having, not having the earbud right in your ear, right? So you're still adjusting your plan, but you're not scrapping the plan entirely.

[00:12:15] Allie: Yes. Awesome. 

We're just getting perfect examples left and right of we say a thing and then the universe is just like, Hey, here's an example. And so I just said that you can't have too much. And then a timer went off and was like, you were doing this to meet your needs, and it scared the living daylights out of you.

And

[00:12:35] Emily: I am gonna argue that point because it still, it still wasn't enrichment in the moment, right? It still didn't improve your welfare and wellbeing in the moment. So it's not that the. It's not that you had too much enrichment, it's that the thing that you attempted to enrich yourself with wasn't actually enriching because it, it was too much sensory stimuli for you, right?

So you can have too much sensory stimuli, you can't have too much food, you can't have too much rest. You can't have too much, all lot of things. But then if that happens, it's not improving your welfare and wellbeing. Air go. It is not enrichment.

[00:13:11] Allie: That summed it up perfectly of why I originally started answering this question of I have to reword it to enrichment activities or activities that people often think of when they think of enrichment.

[00:13:24] Emily: Yeah, so then the, to to kinda more directly answer the specific examples that this person asked is if an animal is overtired, then it probably. Was not enriching as long as we clearly define what overtired means, because I don't, for me, overtired means that they can't meet their needs, right? So if they're so tired that they can't settle down and relax and actually get sleep, that is, that is, that is not improving their welfare and wellbeing. So in that situation, it was not. Enriching, but that doesn't mean just like what just happened with Ally. It doesn't mean that you just scrap whatever activity you did that made them overtired. You just adjust the activity so that it makes them appropriately tired, which means that they're tired enough that they can rest.

They're not so tired that they become wired and they can't rest. So that's how I would, I would answer that question is like. It's enrichment if it improves welfare and wellbeing. But that doesn't mean that the activity itself needs to be scrapped. If it doesn't provide enrichment in a moment, it just means that we need to assess why it didn't improve welfare and wellbeing and make adjustments to that activity to see if the adjustments actually do a better job of truly improving welfare and wellbeing.

Right.

[00:14:49] Ellen: And I think in all of our tangents, we might've lost the heart of the second part of the que. I think they were, I think they were submitted together, but might've been slightly different unrelated questions, so we can circle back to that one. But on the, what is it Too much enrichment, it's outcomes, as Allie and Emily have said, the thing that.

I saw click for me, for people who are concerned about this was that in the, in the best intentions to provide our animals with fulfilling species, typical driven lives, letting them be who they are and all of those things, we don't allow them enough discomfort to express their needs. And so it's all day, every day I'm giving you things because I'm afraid that you're bored and all of those things.

And one of the kindest things that we can do is let them tell us what they need instead of interrupting before they need it. And I see this a lot and it's the most well-intentioned thing, but there is nothing more beautiful to me than a creature that is like, I am hungry. I am tired. Make it happen. They may not have the skills or we may not enable them to have the skills.

Like I will never give my dogs, teach my dogs to use a can opener. That's a terrible idea for so many reasons. I am going to control their food for the rest of their life. That is what it is. But if they come to me and they're like, I need a little extra snacky. Please and thank you. Within reason, because I do observe and know my two dogs and know one will puke and rally and one will satiate and be good.

I can meet their needs in various ways and help them do that. So the first one to me is when is enrichment too much enrichment? When have we done too many enrichment activities without indication from our creature that they need, want or desire them? Two different questions. 

The second question, how do you determine over tired or overstimulated instead of bored?

I think is challenging because boredom is a construct over tired is a construct. Overstimulated. I think I could operationalize. But again, that's a sensory perception experience. And so what my body feels like when I am overstimulated is not going to be the same, my guess as what Emily feels when she is overstimulated.

And in those it comes down to trial and eval individual in front of me. What do you look like historically when you are overtired? Did a nap, fix it? Did a nap make it better ?If a nap made it better, I'm just gonna say, when you look like this, I'm going to assert that you might be overtired and your cranky toddlers screaming, I'm not tired in the middle of the grocery store aisle is a good indicator that you are in fact tired. And so let's see if we can get you towards a nap.

[00:17:36] Emily: Yeah, I think. I wanna, I wanna go back a little bit to the first thing that you were saying because we just got back from Clicker Expo Chicago and Susan Friedman said something in one of her presentations that I was like, oh my God, this is the perfect way to say this and I'm stealing it. She said, we need to get out of our learner's way.

And I was like, oh, like, oh my gosh. That is such a perfect way to say it. It's not that we're, there's a balance to be struck, right? It's not that we're just totally neglecting our learners and letting them do whatever they want and run rough shot and practice skills that actually don't help them and develop habits that actually hurt them, right? I mean, I think a tendency that we have in our industry, especially in the like positive reinforcement or whatever you wanna call us, side of our field we tend to be like helicopter moms and not want them to ever get stressed, not want them to ever feel deprivation.

And there is a huge difference between allowing a learner to experience the natural consequences of life. There's a huge difference between that and intentionally depriving them of food or intentionally neglecting them and letting them hurt themselves or like letting them run out in traffic and being like, well, if they get hit by a car, that sure will teach them.

Which Allie and I lived in a place where that was the cultural attitude. So, you are still responsible for your learner, but you're getting out of their way and you're just guiding their experience rather than controlling their experience. And I think that was a beautiful articulation of Ellen, what you just said.

I just had to bring Susan into the conversation for that part, but also thank you for reiterating the second part of that question because I I did totally miss it. 

And yeah, I'm just gonna agree with you that like we can't really talk about those concepts of overtired, or bored, or whatever without operationalizing them. And I imagine that if you asked 20 people, they're going to operationalize those things in 20 different ways. 

So I operationalize what I consider, how I assess overtired as if the animal is so tired that they become wired, and they can't rest, and instead they're just running around and getting into things, there's this frenetic energy. That is how that is, I use the label overtired to describe that set of behaviors. 

For boredom, I would operationalize that by saying that the animal is pacing around and just grabbing things at random, and there's not really a direction or a purpose to their activities.

So when I see an animal who is working on a project, right, they're they, they have a mission. They're on a mission, right? So just now, Miley was sitting and chewing on her. Her little collagen chew, and she was just working very diligently at that chew, and then she got bored of it, and we're still recording the podcast episode.

So now what is she doing? She's wandering around my office and she's like, I'm gonna grab this rag. I'm gonna grab this tea container. I'm gonna grab your pothos and, and pull it down off your shelf and dump half the soil onto your nest. Right? I would operationalize boredom by describing my puppy, her current behavior, I would say she is bored.

And when this podcast episode is over, I am going to spend time meeting her needs. Right. So that, I think in order to, to really answer those questions, we would have to first operationalize the behaviors and then we would have to ask ourselves, what do we want to see instead of those behaviors, what is going to actually improve their welfare and wellbeing?

That's how we would assess what we would adjust about our approach in order to get the outcomes that we're actually looking for. 

[00:21:20] Allie: I, agree with you, Emily, that while on the surface boredom and overtired behaviors can look similar. There's, some, some perhaps hyperactivity or, or some sort of behaviors like that. I think the intention behind the behavior is a part of it that I'm looking for. I also look for what's the best way to say this?

How much they can focus or participate with me if an animal is bored. When I provide stimulation, I see a decrease in those, those behaviors that I'm labeling as boredom versus when an animal is overtired and I provide stimulation through a relationship, training, whatever it is, they're like, nooooo don't, and. They just continue doing what they're doing and, and that for me is a really big indicator that I look for of figuring out is it boredom or is it overtired?

[00:22:22] Emily: Yes. That is so good. Yes. That the difference in their responses. What was the third one, Ellen? There? The, the person asked about three different things. 

[00:22:31] Ellen: Overtired, overstimulated, bored.

[00:22:33] Emily: Hmm, Overstimulated. Yeah. Yeah. Overstimulate. So I think that brings in another, a third thing to think about, which is the context. We can partially assess the difference between them based on the context that the animals are behaving in inside of, right. And so if you're in a really loud and hectic, like some of the dogs that I saw at Clicker Expo were in the, the vendor area, the store where there's lots of vendors and lots of people, and colors. And sight, and sounds, and textures, and people are milling around and, and talking and laughing and. If I saw a dog there that looked a little bit anxious, by which I mean wide-eyed, panting, pacing I would not characterize those dogs as bored,

I would characterize those dogs as overstimulated, even though I don't know those dogs at all, because of the context. It's very unlikely that a dog get receiving that much sensory stimulation is gonna be bored, right? It's far more likely that they're gonna be overstimulated, so, I think context helps too.

I know that Miley is bored, not overstimulated or overtired because she had a beautiful nap right before we started recording this episode. I know she's well rested. She's not overstimulated because this environment is really good for her for the most part. But she finished her chewy and, and, and I haven't finished working. So, now she's like, well, I guess I'm gonna find ways to entertain myself. And that means creating absolute havoc in the office, right? And that's, that's the difference. The context tells me that she's bored, not overstimulated, or overtired, right.

[00:24:14] Allie: And to Ellen's point, I think for overstimulation. That is so, that can be so different depending on the individual. I think of the three of us, Ellen and I have very similar overstimulated behaviors where we shut down and become little turtley creatures. And Emily, you have the exact opposite reaction when you're overstimulated, and I think that is true in a lot of animals that I see where they can have varying degrees of what overstimulated looks like for them. And so especially for that suite of behaviors, we need to look at what's true of the individual in addition to the context. 

[00:24:54] Emily: Yeah, so knowing your learner helps you to make more accurate assessments of what they're actually experiencing and how they're responding to those experiences.

[00:25:03] Ellen: Yeah. And as you two are talking, i, I realized the thought process when I am having these questions 'cause shocking, I ask questions like that's not my entire personality recently. Instead of saying, are you this thing I approach with, what do you need? And so, we might try it if I think that it's been, you are a puppy and we are about to have, wild child time Ed, you are a client of mine and you're like, every night at 7:30 PM I lock myself in the bathroom and cry because he made me bleed. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds like a puppy. We can try some things, and we should see in these cases pretty fast response to trialing some things, and so I can go ahead and say, do you need this thing, do you need this thing? And then I can assess what happened really quite rapidly in a lot of scenarios. 

At least that's my goal, to try things that I can assess quite rapidly to see, are we moving towards a desirable behavior that is making us more in alignment with our goals to bring it back to the start?

Or are we seeing more or the same undesirable behaviors that are moving us away from our goals? And so, I don't need to ask, are you this or are you this? I get to say, do you need this or do you need this right now? And that loops back to letting my creatures tell me what they need, because the articulation of your needs is the most beautiful thing I have seen from an individual.

[00:26:32] Emily: I agree. I. My heart just feels with so much joy when a learner knows how to clearly communicate their needs. To me, I'm just like, oh, look at you telling me what you need. It's amazing. Yes, I will help you with that.  

[00:26:47] Ellen: All right, so the last question we have for this episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts on quotation scanning as enrichment, including whether you think it's healthy, a healthy behavior for pups with strong predatory sequences. Example on the porch, we live in an area where there's frequent wildlife, and my dog will scan indefinitely.

[00:27:05] Emily: Yeah, so this goes back to what we actually, this whole episode. But. I would say, again, go back to that enrichment 1 0 1 episode, because in that episode we talk about behavioral diversity, and I think that really plays in here because again, scanning in and of itself is neither good nor bad. It's neither enriching nor unen enriching.

It really depends on the context and the duration and and whether or not this behavior is happening. In a healthy and appropriate way. And when I say appropriate, what I mean is does it make sense for the learner to be doing this behavior in this context? So, if we are seeing a dog who can't do anything else because they're just scanning constantly and it's, and it is detrimental to this dog's behavioral diversity because they're either asleep or eating or scanning, then in that case I would call that maladaptive. I would say that that is causing harm to that animal. It is not actually improving their welfare and wellbeing, and then we need to figure out, what activities do we need to do to help that dog have a, a, a richer life, right? So what is it? Is it that the dog can only scan and they can't finish that predatory modal action pattern. Do we need to offer them an activity that will help them do the rest of the sequence, or is it that we need to give that dog lots of other options, a larger behavioral repertoire so that that dog has more skills at their disposal?

Or is it that this dog doesn't know how to complete their stress response cycle and actually rest? Or is it any combination thereof? I don't know, because we're talking about a hypothetical situation here, right? But those are the assessments that I would make if I encountered a dog who was doing nothing but sleeping, eating, or scanning.

And, and, and we would, we would hopefully see a greater behavioral diversity as a result of our efforts, as a result of our enrichment plan. But if there's a dog who loves to spend their afternoon, just, gazing out over their domain and maybe like doing a lap around the perimeter and making sure that, their perimeter's locked down and then they come back to the house and they can enjoy their life and do other things and, and be a dog and, be a part of the family. That's great. That's awesome. Look at that dog doing the thing that it was bred to do. Good for that dog. Love to see it, totally adaptive. Carry on, right? That's, that's how I, that's how I think about it. 

[00:29:38] Ellen: Cause we got these questions a couple of weeks ago, I got some video footage of my kiddos. So if you've been on our social media at Pet Harmony Training or at Pet Harmony Pro, if you're a professional on Instagram, you have seen my dogs on my desk. I have a big old desk, sometimes I put a dog bed on the desk next to me because it is a window and it's nice for them to be able to lay in the sun, and watch out the birds, and do the things. But I have two dogs with two very different skill sets, and two very different sets of feelings about other creatures in the world existed.

So, there are times where for Griffey, it's adaptive, it is healthy, it is in alignment with our goals. And then there are other times where it is none of those things, and the desk gets, the bed gets taken off the desk and the climb gets flipped up so he can't jump on it. And we're not doing that because the kids are running around on the street and that's just too much for him.

And so I have both, but I originally did it for Laika because she is the second dog you talked about where she would just watch out the window, and like look at the birds, and then take a little snooze, and then wake up and watch out the window, then go and do something else. And she just enjoyed gazing.

We didn't see increased stress, we didn't see a lack of behavioral diversity, we didn't see any of those. So I wanted to give her that opportunity sometimes because we can't with Griffey in the house to other windows in the house.

[00:31:09] Allie: I, yeah, we have kind of a, a similar situation to you, Ellen, with Oso where most of the time he, and it's so cute, y'all, his, his body length is the same length as the the back of our couch. And so he sits there and he just flops his head over the back of the couch and watches out the picture window behind the couch. And it's the cutest thing. I'm sure I have pictures.

Somewhere of that. And, and it's on in blog posts, I'm sure, and most of the time that is totally fine. He's just watching the squirrels and the birds and people walking past and, and life is good. Every now and then we'll have a situation where maybe like three dogs walk past in a very short secession, and our mailbox is one of the female.

Spots. And so they're lingering for quite a while. Or we have like screaming kids running down the street or something like that and he'll yell at them. And in those situations it's like, alright buddy, you need to get off the couch because you cannot handle what is happening right now. And the really nice thing is he knows he can't handle what's happening and so he gets off the couch and asked to either go out in the backyard, which is one of hi his ways of decompressing, or he goes and shreds something, which is another way of decompressing. So yeah, for him it's, it's totally fine and healthy, until it isn't. And then we suggest he, he makes a different decision and, and he does, at this point, we've, we've. We've been working together long enough that he also knows when he needs to make a better decision.

[00:32:53] Ellen: I look at Griff and say, is that really necessary? And he like cries a little bit more and then walks away. Apparently my flight cue is just really, I.

[00:33:01] Allie: I, when Oso really is like, no, but I'm comfy and I'm on the couch, and we'll be like. No, stop your nonsense. And then he'll do his like, like, I'm not barking. I'm fine. I'm not upset. It's like, okay buddy, you are fine.

[00:33:17] Ellen: Yeah. The way I talk about this with clients often is, are they watching a horror film? Or are they watching their comfort show? And for a lot of people that resonates for y'all that love to watch horror, I am one of those people. It may not be as good of an example, but I'm just gonna make an assumption that most dogs don't find getting scared, therapeutic in the same way that humans do. 

[00:33:41] Emily: I think I, but I think even for people who don't get stressed by horror films, it's still an analogy that makes sense because for me, I have to be in a certain mood to watch horror films. And when I am in that mood, I enjoy them. I don't find them stressful. When I'm not in that mood, I find them depressing, not scary or stressful. Ironically, comedies that are like, based on pain, or frustration, or thi, like efforts being thwarted, like Ben Stiller comedies are incredibly distressing for me. I cannot watch, it's not funny to me, it is so stressful like that, like being thwarted or being hurt. I don't find, I don't get any kind of pleasure out of watching that.

And so, even though, I don't experience that level of distress when watching a horror film. When you just said horror film versus comfort show, I was able to convert that in my head and be like, oh, you mean Ben Stiller comedies versus, versus comfort shows. Like I, I can relate, even though the genres don't map over completely, right. So, so yeah, I think it's an apt analogy because like, are you watching something that is increasing your chronic stress level, or are you watching something that is decreasing your chronic stress level? And it can even be, like temporary tolerable stress or eustress like with just the good excitement stress. It's not that we're anti-stress, it's that is the thing actually contributing to chronic toxic stress or not. And that's, I think that's a really good way of assessing whether, or not the scanning is a net positive in this animal's life or not, right.

[00:35:24] Ellen: And I think the next question that follows that was not submitted was, how do I know? Where my learner we're just gonna put learner might be in their experience in that. And I think that's a good place for people to come join the Behavior Observation Practice sessions that Emily hosts to get really good at reading Body Language of Creatures. I think you primarily have dog videos. 

[00:35:47] Emily: It's mostly dogs, but we do other species as well. And what I find interesting is that, even knowing nothing about those other species, we're still able to learn a lot and extrapolate from those other species. Really helpful stuff for when we are reading dog body language. So yeah, we do a lot, but everybody learns in those sessions.

I think a lot of people come into them. They're like, well, yeah, I already knew this. I, I already, I could, I could tell like, so the, the format that we use is like, we watch it first, get our first impressions, then we slow it down and really operationalize, like just look at the overt behaviors. And then at the end we're like, okay, what I. What can we be confident in interpreting and what information do we lack? That, where we don't actually have enough information to confidently interpret what's going on here. And I think commonly what people experience is they're like, well, I already, I, I, my first impression was right. And I think that's great, and also that's a little bit of a missed opportunity because even I, I run these sessions and even I get more nuance and more detail from this practice. And today's BOP session was with my own. I, I'd used the film. I filmed Miley and Copper meeting each other for the first time. And yes, technically my first impression was correct with quotation marks.

Right? Sure, my first impression was right. But in going in and slowing it down and looking at the, the body language and very clearly I actually caught some details that I had missed when I, when we were actually doing the, the, the introduction itself and I realized that I was seeing the precursor to some communication foibles between copper and Miley that have have exacerbated since then, and I had missed that at the beginning.

So I think I would say yes, please come to those BOP sessions and also be prepared to deepen stuff you already know rather than necessarily learning new things.

[00:37:48] Allie: Thank you to everybody who submitted questions either via email or social media. We love getting your questions. We love answering your questions, so please keep them coming.   

I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

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Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.