#157 - Haylee Heisel: Why Giving More Doesn’t Fix Resource Guarding

Resource guarding is one of those behaviors that gets treated like it’s one simple problem with one simple fix.

Just add abundance.

Just countercondition it.

Just follow this protocol.

Except… it’s not that simple.

In this episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Emily is joined by Haylee Heisel to unpack why “guarding” is a label, and why treating it like a one-size-fits-all issue can make things worse.

We talk about:

• Why dumping a trash bag of tennis balls into a yard is not the same thing as creating security
• How pain, stress, attachment, hormones, neurochemistry, and environment all influence guarding behavior
• Why prescriptive formulas fall apart in real life
  
  

And what it actually looks like to take a descriptive, needs-based approach instead
From sanctuary dogs guarding light switches and metal buckets… to puppies guarding during heat cycles… to cases where angry voices were the real trigger, this episode is a deep dive into the messy, nuanced reality of behavior.

Because treating guarding isn’t about “the thing”, it’s about the why. When we slow down enough to find the why, the path forward gets clearer.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ “Guarding” is a label, not a diagnosis - Many different behaviors get lumped under resource guarding, and they can happen for completely different reasons. If you treat them all the same, you’ll miss the actual unmet need driving the behavior.

2️⃣ Abundance is not the same thing as security - Meeting needs absolutely matters. But more stuff doesn’t automatically equal safety. Pain, stress, attachment history, hormones, environment, and neurochemistry can all fuel guarding in ways that extra resources won’t fix.

3️⃣ Prescriptive formulas break down while descriptive thinking holds up -  Instead of “if guarding, then do X,” ask: What’s driving this? What changed? What does this individual need right now? When you treat the root cause, guarding often shifts.

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Haylee: I think it's a good thing that like there's more to think about than just counter conditioning because counter conditioning is such a fragile process anyway, and it's so like dependent on these very, like the training. Environment in which you do it, and you have to think about all these, every single like possible variation and you have to train for those variations.

In theory it's simple, but in practice, getting it to actually work for every day real life people, it's pretty challenging. And so I actually think that like, that the answer is more complex and you have all these other things to think about is a good thing for resource guarding, that it's not just this one thing that you have in your toolbox.

[00:00:44] 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...

[00:01:02] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:04] 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.

[00:01:24] Emily: So today I have a special guest with me to talk about resource guarding everybody. I would like to introduce you to my dear friend Haylee. Haylee Heisel. Haley and Allie and I worked together at the Sanctuary that shall not be named. there were a very high percentage of dogs at that sanctuary that had some kind of guarding behavior.

Many of whom had really intense and scary guarding behaviors. And so I thought if we're gonna talk about resource guarding, who better to bring onto the podcast to talk about it with me than our, our ride or die? Who's been through it and, um, has so much experience with working on this kind of thing. And I think there are a couple things that I are really important facets of this that I thought Haylee would be the perfect person to discuss this with.

First of all, the guarding is a label, like any other word that we use to describe several behaviors. The word guarding is a label that that is used on a lot of different behaviors that happened for different reasons and therefore have different solutions. So, um, we do not treat guarding prescriptively, like if guarding then use this strategy and, I think Haley knows this.

More than anybody I know because she came from the same background that we came from. The second reason that I thought Hay was the perfect person to, to talk to about this is because when we worked at that sanctuary, a common belief in animal welfare was that you fix guarding with abundance. And there's a kernel of truth to that, but how that was often implemented was definitely not.

It was not it. And so, um, I thought Haylee would be a great person to talk about what abundance should and should not look like for these guarding kiddos. So, Haylee welcome. I'm super excited to have you on to talk about this talk.

[00:03:42] Haylee: Thanks, Emily. I'm glad to be here.

[00:03:45] Emily: So I think we can start with giving a couple of, of examples of what we mean by like, the attempt to use abundance to solve resource guarding problems was not it. My favorite example of this was a dog I can't even remember. Which dog it was. Maybe you'll remember Haylee but there was a dog that used to guard tennis balls from people and other dogs.

And so the solution was to bring a gigantic trash bag full of tennis balls and just dump them in this dog's yard. And the dog did not feel less guardy. The dog was so anxious about like, how do I guard all these balls? Like, what do I do? Like, do I need, I just need to get them in a pile, right? And then guard the whole pile.

It was like sad and also funny. It was like sad, hilarious. Like, I see y'all trying to solve this behavior in simple ways and like you just made it so much worse. Like this did not help at all. This is not what we mean when we talk about abundance in relationship to guarding. So that's my example. Do you remember which dog that was?

[00:04:50] Haylee: I don't remember that dog. I think I vaguely remember when it happened, but I don't remember the dog. But yeah, that dog was probably just like, wow, my, my goal in life just got so much harder.

[00:05:03] Emily: How am I possibly going to protect all of these tennis balls? There's so many of them.

[00:05:09] Haylee: Like I have so many dependents now to file on my tax return.

[00:05:13] Emily: Exactly, exactly. Haley, what's your favorite example?

[00:05:17] Haylee: I don't think I have an example of when we did this because I never did to treat resource guarding. Don't think any of the people that I directly worked with did. But I can give an example of like an example of how it would really not work if you're subscribing to that as a method to treating resource guarding. So we had this dog named Kelly, and she was just kind of an odd bird in general, and she resource guarded a lot of strange things. One of the, one of those things was the light switch on the wall. I don't know how you create abundance with a light switch, just like cover the wall and light switches, but if you did that, it wouldn't have solved the problem. She just would've resource guarded all of the light switches. So, I think that's a good example of like, you know, you can't, even if you subscribe to the methodology that you just provide them a ton of whatever it is that you're assuming the function is that they're worried about, you know, it's not gonna always solve the problem.

[00:06:22] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. So. Like, before we even define, like earlier I said that the, the label guarding is used to describe a lot of different behaviors. Before I get to that, I actually wanna talk about like, sort of the, the, the baseline stuff of why people often think abundance is a solution. And I think it starts, let's start with the kernel of truth.

Like, let's acknowledge the things that are true about that. So first of all, um, meeting needs and making sure that animals have an enriched life does actually help with guarding. So that is, that is a a definitely a, one of the reasons that I think abundance often gets misapplied as a solution to guarding.

Because yes, a lot of times guarding gets worse when there are unmet needs at, at the, the core of that, and obviously pain is a, a big one that we know about. If we're not addressing pain, we need, like, we often see the relationship between pain and gardening. One of my favorite examples of that from the sanctuary was this little dog named Milo, who was my, my ride or die.

[00:07:39] Haylee: He was such a good boy. 

[00:07:41] Emily: He was the best boy. I loved him so much. I would've taken him home if I could have, but he had elbow dysplasia and his guarding behaviors got so much worse 

when, when he was having a pain day. So pain is definitely one of the things that we see really contributing to the broad umbrella term guarding behaviors.

Um, Security is another one. If animals don't feel like their resources are safe, they're going to try to protect them. I would argue that's pretty dang adaptive, because that's the whole point of resource guarding the wild. If you're in the wild and resources are scarce, then you know, if you don't protect them, 

you're not. 

[00:08:27] Haylee: Like it's a behavior that makes sense. And I

think, you know, going back to just like their overall welfare, Milo was also a really good example of how not only did pain play a role in his resource getting, getting so much worse, but his overall welfare,

like the longer he stayed there, the worse his welfare got, the more like stereotypy like behaviors he developed. And the more he developed those, the worse the guard got. I mean, he got to the point at the end, the relationship that you had with him had a big impact on how much he resource guarded from you.

But by the end, he would resource guard that he resource guarded items that he wasn't even in possession of from new people. And so again, like the abundance that he needed

was better pain management, a better quality of life overall and in gen in general. And of course the stereotypies were not helping the pain behaviors because he was doing these repetitive motions. And so yeah, he was a good example overall of how the whole picture affects guarding. Hmm.

[00:09:28] Emily: for sure. And I think one, you, you said one thing that I wanna pull out more, which is that secure attachment component that like the relationship really mattered. When, when he had a relationship that was rooted in secure attachment, his guarding behaviors were much, much less. Just in general, he guarded less 

[00:09:50] Haylee: almost non-existent. Like as his caregiver. I almost never had to think about it except to manage it with new people with him.

[00:09:57] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. And when he had office days with me he rarely ever tried to guard anything from me. And the moments that he did were moments of stress. Or when he was having a bad pain day, I could see that his limp was worse. And it was really interesting because he would guard things like my shoe that was on my foot from me. 

And then he would like get this look on his face, like, oh God, what did I just do? And then he would immediately get wiggly and appea and start licking my hands. And it felt, I'm aware that this is a construct, but it felt to me like he was like, this is my shoe. And he's like, wait a minute. Why am I fighting with Emily?

She's my BFF. I'm so sorry, Emily. Like, can, can we be friends? I didn't mean that. And so like, he would, he would interrupt his own guarding process and, and be like, my bad. And he did that because we had a relationship rooted, secure attachment. He knew he could trust me. He knew that I was responsive to him.

He knew that I would, I would meet his needs. I would listen to what he was saying to me. And so that was definitely a huge component of that.

[00:11:07] Haylee: When Milo first arrived at the sanctuary, his guarding was so just like not really present in his day-to-day life that we didn't even know that he had a tendency towards it until he had his formal like shelter style assessment.

wasn't until he had been there for about six months that we started to see it like pop up in everyday scenarios in his run. And then it started popping up with strangers, so volunteers, and then he became staff only. And went to a side of the sanctuary where there's just like less time per dog because they are staff only. And so then his quality of life got worse and then the garden got worse and it was just like a snowball downhill.

But I do think it is like when we say his garden got so much worse, like he went from a dog who did not display gardening in his day-to-day life at all

to a dog who would resource guard things that he wasn't even POS in possession of, which is a big change.

[00:12:08] Emily: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think one of the things that, so there, there are like multiple components to this, but one of the things that I just feel the need to say, and it's probably not helpful but I'm gonna say it anyway, is before I started working at that sanctuary, I was aware of the research that existed that was like, oh, these, these shelter assessments maybe aren't as effective as we think they are.

They're about as effective as a coin toss. So I was aware of those, that research, and also I was like, well, it's better than nothing but it, it was my time at the sanctuary that changed how I felt about that. And I became like. Vehemently anti um, shelter assessments because I saw so many dogs who didn't show guarding until we messed with them in those assessments.

And then the guarding just got worse because we started off like, when you have an antagonistic relationship with an animal, even if you're doing it for the, in the sake of an assessment, you're setting the precedence for that relationship dynamic and how you interact with each other. 

[00:13:16] Haylee: I do think that there's something to be said that like potentially it's just something that's there that only comes out when the triggers are intense enough and then when they trigger stack at the sanctuary, then it starts to present because they're so stressed that they're in a state that's similar to the stress that they were experiencing during their assessment. But regardless, I think that there's, if that is true, what you're saying is also true that,

Why set up the potential for this animal to just feel generally unsafe in this new place when there are other ways that are more accurate? Honestly, to assess how an animal's gonna be in a home when they leave and go back out into the community, 

[00:13:58] Emily: This is why I had you on the podcast because you exactly read my mind and you said, the thing I was gonna say next is like I was gonna Yes. And myself. So like, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any kind of behavioral assessment. I'm saying that these assessments where you put dogs in a small room and you put them on a tether and you do a bunch of really stressful things to them, doesn't actually assess what they would have done.

It, it creates, it has the potential to create problems, and, and then you have that precedence because the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. 

if, if, if any learner has that behavioral repertoire, they're more likely to pull that out in the future. So yeah, we just have to find better ways to assess.

And I, I, I, this is not the episode to talk about that, which is why I said I'm not sure it's helpful to bring this up, like drop that bomb and then walk away from it.

[00:14:50] Haylee: that's a long and deep rabbit hole that we're just gonna steer away from.

[00:14:54] Emily: Right, right. But because we're talking about guarding, I just felt I needed to say that I saw so many dogs, like pillow is a really good example that 

she had some. She had some interesting guarding behaviors. We did the behavior assessment. The guarding behaviors got so much worse. I put a training plan in place for her.

The guarding behaviors improved. She went back for a reassessment. The guarding behaviors got so much worse. Again, she got adopted. The guarding behaviors completely disappeared in the home because her needs were met. She wasn't stressed and we weren't constantly putting her in into a combative situation.

So pillow is my poster child for what I'm talking about here.

[00:15:37] Haylee: He's not the only dog. I'm thinking of this other dog. His name was Jax,

displayed some like. Pretty gnarly resource guarding of his food bowl while when he first arrived. And then we set up, and it happened multiple times with different layers of management. And so he basically got set up with like a pretty strong several layer management so that he just wasn't presented with the opportunity to present the behavior anymore.

So we didn't see it, but when he got adopted, we obviously were really transparent with the person who was adopting him, and all those things. And then it was one of those situations where they called us the next day and they said, we did all the things that you told us not to do. And thankfully in this case it went totally fine. did not read horse guard and he never came back. And so I do think probably the stress of the sanctuary was what was really pushing him into those extreme behaviors. And I'm really glad that that was the case for that person when they tested it out at home. But yeah, I mean environment cues behavior and so that's one of the hard things with shelter dogs. I mean, again, this is a rabbit hole, but it can go either way. The behaviors that are getting queued in that environment are not necessarily gonna be the vape behaviors that get queued in the home or better or potentially for worse.

So yeah, 

[00:16:53] Emily: yeah, 

it's super challenging for sure. And again, this is not the episode for that, but but that is, I think one of the kernels of truth and why people think that abundance is a, is a solution for resource guarding, is that there is that underlying issue that we see that when animals have unmet needs it does make guarding worse.

And the second piece of that is that deprivation, especially during developmental periods, can cause or contribute to guarding tendencies. So the opposite of of abundance, which is deprivation, can cause guarding, but that doesn't necessarily mean that abundance is going to solve guarding and I'm using solve with heavy air quotes.

[00:17:39] Haylee: This is one of those situations where I, I haven't fully thought this out, but I do wonder if some of the, you know, sometimes when we just describe, uh, dog behavior to people, we use examples to help that person understand. And this is one of those cases where I wonder if maybe it helps and it hurts because I think people think of it explicitly as like, I'm very worried about losing access to this item.

And they think about resource guarding entirely in that context. And then they think to themselves, well, if I had a bunch of this, I wouldn't worry about losing access to this. Think about yourself as a human. There's a lot of things that we feel that we internalize. Like we have the ability to self-reflect and we can say, I understand that what I'm feeling right now isn't rational,

and yet I'm feeling it anyway.

But the dog doesn't have the ability to say, I understand that I'm feeling isn't rational. They just know they're feeling it. And so even if they are, say like resource guarding a tennis ball and there's 20 other tennis balls, they're probably not thinking about the 20 other tennis balls. They're thinking like very exclusively.

Like, I don't want you to take what I have right now, which is a different thing than I could leave this thing and go pick up something else. Like, those are two kind of very different things if you think about it.

[00:18:57] Emily: absolutely. And I think that that. False equivalents of like, well, if I, if I was really hungry and somebody took the only piece of food I had, then more food would solve this problem.

I think that's both a false equivalence and also it's an availability heuristic cognitive bias of your thinking of an example of like, when you would use the label guarding for yourself, this would be the solution.

But that's one of the problems of using labels like guarding to describe many, many, many behaviors because tho all of those behaviors have different reasons, different causes, and they signify different unmet needs. And so just like, yes, you're right. If you're in a state of deprivation and somebody tries to take your food from you, you're gonna guard it.

That's not a problem. That's smart, right? But there are a lot of reasons that animals do what we call guarding, and they're not, they don't always happen for the same reason. And I can use my dogs as very good examples of why we don't take a prescriptive approach or a formulaic approach. For those of you who are new to the podcast and haven't heard me use or define the terms prescriptive and descriptive.

Think of prescriptive as a formula. If this problem, then the solution, whereas descriptive is let's find out what the unmet needs are. What is our end goal? What are the potential paths that we can take to meet these needs and reach these goals? Which path is gonna be the most likely to be successful?

That's a descriptive approach rather than a prescriptive approach. And one of the many reasons that we don't recommend formulaic, prescriptive approaches to, well, really any behavior problem, but especially like in this context of talking about resource guarding. Guarding, is because guarding is not one thing.

It's many things caused by many reasons, fueled by many different types of unmet needs. And so I'm, I've talked about copper and Miley on the podcast many times before, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna re-summarize because they are really, really good examples of how their guarding behaviors, the solutions to them, did not look anything like the formulaic guarding, like prescriptive approaches that were often taught to take with guarding, without questioning why the guarding is happening.

So when I first brought Miley Home as a little wiggly beji puppy who had lots of energy and lots of enthusiasm and wanted to play with dogs. 24 7, and we had at our house copper, a 16 and a half year old, very sweet old man who's maybe starting to have just a wee smidgy of cognitive decline. Like, I don't, I don't know that that's true, but there are some things that he does that maybe thinks, makes me think that maybe he's starting to have some canine cognitive dysfunction.

The copper started guarding things from Miley and the, the context in which he was guarding was very confusing to me because he wouldn't guard things from her when she was actively getting, like all up in his grill. He would guard from her when she was kind of minding her own business, but she just happened to be close to him when he was close to something.

He really wanted the solution to that guarding was not any of the like typical counter conditioning approaches that we're all taught are the way to handle guarding. The solution to that was to limit Miley and copper's interactions, except for in situations where they could have really good, safe interactions to build their relationship with each other.

Then when they had a good relationship and I started seeing copper soliciting interaction from Miley, then I started letting them have more access to each other over time, and the guarding just went away because the root of that guarding was a relationship. They didn't have the relationship for him to handle her being in his space around his stuff.

Then fast forward several months, Miley goes through her big girl heat cycle, and overnight she goes from the most affiliative, prosocial, generous, happy, lovey dog, loving dog to guarding everything from copper guarding us, guarding food guarding, object guarding locations. Copper couldn't get close to anything.

I did not. Yeah, it was really demoralizing for me at first. I, I had to process my feelings. I had to process my feelings about my perfect puppy turning into a temperamental teenager. But again, I didn't do any of the typical guarding stuff because for her it was hormones. A moody teenager. She was cranky.

And so for her it was, let's give them space. We recognized that her guarding behaviors got way worse at night when she was sleepy. So one of the things I started doing is as soon as we were done with dinner, I would ask her to snug under, I would put the blanket on the sofa over my lap. I would ask her to snug under the blanket and basically cue her to take a nap, because if she took a nap, she wouldn't be cranky at copper.

And anytime she was grumpy, I would just call her to me, give her lots of love and affection, snacks, whatever I had. And so she started to learn. She's actually really good at it Now, she rarely grumps at copper anymore, but when she does, she'll have her feelings. She gets all squared up, and then she pauses and she's like, wait, I can go to mom to get good things.

And then she'll turn to me and she'll get really wiggly and be like, I almost grump at copper. But actually, it turns out that coming 

you is more fun. I can get more things by coming to you than I can by grumping at copper because grumping at copper yields absolutely nothing at all. Right?

[00:25:05] Haylee: The healing powers of a nap are, in my opinion, under disgust in animal behavior.

[00:25:11] Emily: For real though, for real though, there's a reason that when we made our 14 categories of enrichment that we borrowed from the zoological world, we added like calming as a category because like we need to focus on naps. People more naps.

[00:25:30] Haylee: I know how I bet. Like I, my, I always say, and it's very true for me, my mental health tanks very quickly if I'm not getting enough sleep. Um, and everybody's different, like a lot of people can function on very little sleep, but for me, if I'm not getting enough sleep, oh, things get gnarly really fast.

And I can very much imagine that it would be true for individuals and other species as well. 

[00:25:57] Emily: when I say we didn't use a typical counter conditioning protocol, I mean the, the protocols that were all taught to use to work on resource guarding had nothing to do with the needs, the unmet needs of copper and Miley respectively, and therefore, the approach that we took to address their guarding behaviors.

[00:26:19] Haylee: speaking on how. The same behavior can mean very different things in very, in different contexts. Like my old girl Breyer, she has since passed, but she was a res dog mixed with a staff, American staff rat terrier, she would resource guard from new dogs. Um, but as soon as she had a relationship with them, she wouldn't anymore.

Except, and I have to kind of assess this from body language alone, but I actually think she would sometimes guard pro socially. So I have several videos of Finch. My big super easygoing, chill res dog. He would have something and Brear would come up, all flirty and a peasy, and he would do like a little head duck over the thing that he had, like, don't take it brear. And she'd like get close, like slithering on the ground, like, Hey, Finch

super flirty. eventually he was like, fine, just take it. And she would

take it and then immediately she'd be like, I don't want it anymore. And she was just like so flirty and happy and like loose while she would be doing this. That my best guess, and this is a guess at what was happening, is that she was just like, this is fun.

I don't know that Finch thought it was as fun as Briar did. But he also wasn't super stressed. He was just like lowkey, like, I mean, I'd rather you didn't, but alright.

[00:27:45] Emily: You can take it if it makes you happy.

[00:27:47] Haylee: and it

did, it did make her happy. So, but one time I saw a relationship fall apart with her was with my old hospice adoption who had pretty severe dysfunction. And as he was starting to decline and his cognitive dysfunction was getting even worse, worse, and he was also starting to have some other health problems sneak in, she started guarding from him more seriously than I saw her guard from any other dog ever. to

the point where just for safety reasons, they be kind of, they went management. Um, they

could be around each other in certain circumstances and in others they couldn't. But, was the function there that she was super worried about that resource? Maybe there was some of that there, but obviously it's a lot more complex the reason that it, the trigger for it starting to go downhill when she once was fine with him

was his failing health.

like I, it is just complex at the end of the day.

[00:28:47] Emily: Yeah. And that was, that's a whole other podcast episode, but I saw so many dogs at the Sanctuary who in general were super affiliative and pro-social. I feel like a affiliative and prosocial are probably synonymous. But anyway, just 

super friendly towards other dogs. And then there would be one dog that all of these dog friendly dogs would just hate and go after the reason I started talking about this actually was because there were so many dogs at the sanctuary where the other other dogs that were normally really dog social would just hate the dog and pack up on, on that dog.

And then later we would find out that that dog had like an actual serious medical issue. And that became a cue for us when we would see a bunch of dogs packing up on a dog who's just minding their own business. We were like, we should take that dog to the vet because the victim dogs usually have, and like there's that big black lab looking dog who ended up having hypothyroidism, and then there was the pity who ended up having diabetes.

So it was like the dogs were, were like picking on them and guarding from them probably because they smelled not right. Right. And so that is a really good example of like groups of dogs guarding from a dog, not because of their own unmet needs, but because of the other dog's unmet needs.

[00:30:14] Haylee: Yeah. They're like, you go the doctor, man.

[00:30:17] Emily: Get out of here. I don't know what is wrong with you, but I, but I, I don't wanna take a chance that it's contagious, so you 

need to get away from me. There is something wrong with you and I don't like it.

[00:30:27] Haylee: Yeah. But yeah, I mean it does like the reasons are so much more complex than just like, I don't have enough of this.

[00:30:36] Emily: Exactly. So yeah, I mean this is like we really advocate for, taking a descriptive approach to all behavior, but like in this context, we're definitely talking about taking a descriptive approach to guarding and figuring out why the guarding is happening, what the unmet needs are, and addressing those root issues rather than all of the superficial formulas that we have been taught.

And I will acknowledge that it can get extra tricky when, when the guarding is weird.

[00:31:11] Haylee: I was just gonna say like there are situations where like the guarding is weird and a lot of times when the guarding is weird, I feel like. There is often other weird things happening

behaviorally with the dog that know if it's, you know, maybe there's a genetic component of some strange things happening. Maybe their welfare is just so poor that they've been practicing strange habits that have kind devolved. But yeah, it can get tough when the whole package is strange.

[00:31:44] Emily: Yeah. And I like, I think also too, there have been some times when we've discovered that it was just like a really intense neurochemical imbalance and meds made all the difference. But we, we have gotten to meet a lot of dogs with really weirdo guarding stuff. Um, one of my favorite examples was this little dog named Butters, who was like this little poodle mix who would guard his water bucket.

[00:32:10] Haylee: Kelly Kelly did that too, but she would only guard bucket. Not a plastic bucket.

[00:32:16] Emily: Plastic buckets are for everybody. 

Metal buckets are just for her. I don't remember his name, but there was a dog that, that Ashley worked with who would guard his own tail,

like the, the black, like lab pity mixed dog. I wish I could remember the dog's name, but he would guard his own tail. 

[00:32:35] Haylee: I do Kelly, for example, so like Kelly and often, like, I don't think sometimes there are guarding behaviors that are mixed with other things. You

know, like 

when Kelly would guard, there really definitely was like a guarding component, but there also was like an overstimulation component to some of her, guarding like behaviors.

And there was also almost like a compulsive CCD component to some of her behaviors. complexity. But she would, like, you could never, you could only enter her run through the outside door. You could never enter her run through the front door. She guarded the light switch, she guarded her bed.

She guarded a metal bucket, but not a plastic bucket. She had like this really intricate feeding schedule that you had to do it perfectly, otherwise something might happen. She had this weird behavior that if you let her lick your ear too long, she would start to like snarl into it. So just like, like was, I don't even know what that is. I could just describe exactly what was happening, you know?

 Yeah, some of 'em, just like the whole thing starts to get weird and you do get this like gut sense that there is like a guarding element to it, but there's also a lot of other things happening.

[00:33:47] Emily: For sure. I mean, I think all, anytime I encounter those, the really weirdo guarding situations that are, are way over the top, I am always going to prioritize, like, let's, let's look at medical causes, by which I mean both physical and mental illnesses. Let's look at neurochemistry, let's get a veterinary behaviorist involved if we can, if we have access to that.

Because the, I think you brought up something really important, which is the really weird guarding is never, or I mean, I would say collectively, you, Allie and I have never seen the, the really weird guarding stuff happen alone. There are always other things happening. So the guarding seems secondary to a much larger problem that's causing a lot of different symptoms.

That's, they're seemingly unrelated. And I have never ever seen one of those dogs improve without the support of medication veterinary involvement. And, 

and I, and I wanna say this. I fully support the organizations that have put out messages about how we shouldn't assume that dogs have, uh, neurodiversity in the same way that humans do.

Because a lot of harm can come from people just chalking something up to A DHD or autism or whatever, and being like, well, that's just how they are. I hard agree with, with the stance of like, we don't know enough to say conclusively that this is what's going on with this animal. And also, having said that, I have worked with so many animals whose behaviors, if they were human, would fall very much in line with our constellation of, of like the, the behaviors that we look at to assess autism or A DHD or whatever.

And I have had a veterinary neurologist tell me about a bird that I brought to her with very, very clear, it's like, be, I would say clearly abnormal behaviors. I had a veterinary neurologist tell me, we don't really know, we can't really explain autism in humans, so we can't confidently say that it doesn't exist in non-humans.

[00:36:10] Haylee: Or something adjacent, like it doesn't have to

be. But that's just the framework with which we can understand it. But the idea that like humans have these diverse brains and other species don't, just like, doesn't make any

sense. Like if you think about, 

so like, would they fall exactly under the constructs that we have for ourselves?

Uh, maybe, maybe not, but I think we can all agree that like there are diverse brains

and how exactly you categorize those in dogs, I guess remains to be seen. But yeah, I can a hundred percent agree that I have seen trends in dogs that I recognize as A DHD or autism trends in humans, whatever you wanna call that in dogs, you know?

and yeah, 

and like thinking about that when you go to treat them is important because, if you're thinking about how do I improve the overall welfare of this animal? And you're taking an overstimulated animal and you're throwing enrichment at them that are ultimately not enriching and actually just stressing them out more because you are taking a prescriptive to what a dog needs, then you may find them slipping in the other direction as opposed to improving.

[00:37:22] Emily: That is so beautifully said. And yeah, I think, I think our own constructs, like the fact that we have this binary label of autism and A DHD is a sign of how much more we have to learn. And I think in a hundred years we're gonna think that our current classifications and, and the constructs and the labels that we use for our ourselves is like charmingly over overly simplistic.

I think in a hundred years we're gonna have a much more refined understanding of neurotypes and NeuroD diversities for ourselves. And I also strongly suspect that as we learn more, we're going to de pathologize that more and more and more. And the reason I am bringing that up is because I think it is true that a lot of harm can happen.

When can people can be like, oh, my dog is just autistic. There's nothing we can do about it. That's just how they are. And but conversely, treating a beha, assuming that a behavior is maladaptive just because it's quirky and you're not, and you're not familiar with it or it's not typical, can, can equally cause harm.

What if, what if we just looked at these behaviors and said. What does this animal need to fully support them and help them successfully navigate their environments, and how can we meet those needs instead of deciding that this is a pathology that needs to be fixed? But, but in order to do that, you first have to do the part where you take them to the vet and actually rule out and or treat any actual medical issues going on in the same way that my anxiety disorder is definitely caused by slash influenced by my neuro type.

And anxiety disorders are really common in people with a DHD and autism. I still have to treat the anxiety disorder just because it's a function or a, a byproduct of my neurotype doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated.

[00:39:18] Haylee: Well also the op, like the, another side of that is that my anxiety so bad for so long and I got thrown every anti-anxiety bed, every SSRI under the planet, which I do need those, I was giving, giving to them in higher and higher doses and I just would never get any more effect than I did at the lower doses.

And I was still just like my quality of life was bad. And then finally I was like, okay, I'll go fight with a doctor with about a DH ADHD I was avoiding for a very long time. And starting on Adderall, almost overnight my anxiety was 90% better. Which if you

look at Adderall and what it is like should not make anxiety better.

But if you have raging A DHD, then it will, especially if the ad untreated A DHD is really like. The driving force of the anxiety, like the overstimulation and and so, yeah, I just think like, yeah, it's true that, and I don't think you even need to necessarily, you don't need to label a dog as like being autistic or a DHD or anything.

You don't even have to bring up those words when looking at a dog. But I do think it is beneficial to really look and think what is helping this animal and whether or not like daily runs are gonna help that animal or if they're gonna hurt that animal.

you know, I've got this dog that I've worked with and he's one of those complex cases where he just has a lot, he has a lot of medical, medical stuff that hasn't been able to be figured out. He's been benefited to some degree by psychiatric medications. Um, he's got a lot of GI stuff that they haven't been able to figure out. They've found like some weird bacteria, but then treating that didn't fully solve the problem, et cetera. He's a resource guarder, he's got some other things. He's had some trauma in his past and the conversations are ongoing.

Just trying to get people to understand that, like, based on things that I've seen from this dog, like. Daily walks around the neighborhood where he's exposed to things, where he has a reaction to that tell us through body language that those things are unpleasant. Even if the rest of the walk is fun for him, there may be a component that's like adding to his overall stress levels and how do we address that and how do you like balance working with the owner based on what they really feel their dog needs, while also achieving what you think the dog is at least worth trying, you know?

And so then you get into the weeds that stuff. But you know, like I've helped them set up some training plans that help them manage the guarding, but ultimately I don't think this dog's guarding is a result of, you know, like that he is just got this very simple and straightforward concern about doorways, it's so much more than that. And treating that is looking at the entire picture like pain. He definitely gets worse when his GI symptoms are worse. And so walking the owners through recognizing that and being more. Strict about management and keeping things like less stressful for him when they start to see GI symptoms crop up.

Like it just gets very weedy about how you live with and manage dogs like that.

[00:42:41] Emily: for sure. I will never forget, one of the most extreme kind of weirdo guarding cases I ever worked on outside of the sanctuary was the, this client had adopted a dog from a local shelter, and the dog was kind of like a Spani lee type dog. This dog was like Jekyll and Hyde to a terrifying degree because they adopted him because he was like really happy and wiggly and like, seemed to be unbothered by anything and was really like dog social and human social.

And he seemed like the perfect easy dog. And again, not faulting the shelter because like we discussed, if you don't see a behavior in the shelter, you can't predict it outside of the shelter. I think this was a really solid adoption decision. But they would just, they described as the dog's, like a flip would switch and the dog would start guarding wherever the dog was with a terrifying ferocity and would actually like, charge at people and bite them.

He wouldn't just bite if they came into his space, he would go at them and bite them and like bite them out of the room. And it took a couple of sessions for us to finally figure out that the couple was having relationship problems. And every time they were, they would fight. The dog would, would freak out and be like, everybody, get out of my space.

And one of the reasons it took a while to identify that is because there was a second trigger, and that was that the, the partner, the the boyfriend really loved listening to really loud, angry metal. And the, and the dog would like not, would be totally fine with any other type of music. The dog was not a metalhead. It took us time to identify why the dog was flipping a switch like this. Because it wasn't one thing, it was two things when like, angry voices actually it was one thing. Angry voices.

[00:44:45] Haylee: Spoken or scream, saying

[00:44:49] Emily: Exactly. I stand corrected. It was one thing. Angry voices.

But in two different contexts, right? And the way the dog would react to this was just like, get the hell outta my space. I will, I will do whatever it takes to get you out of the space. And he would guard wherever he was. So like he chased them out of the kitchen. He would chase them outta the living room, like wherever he was.

They weren't allowed in the room. And he would bite them if they tried to enter. That dog was a really good example of, I'm realizing that I'm kind of contradicting myself because I said I've never had a weird gardening case that didn't have multiple issues. And then I gave this example.

So, okay, I was wrong. I stand corrected earlier what I said was an overstatement. Usually weirdo guarding cases have other issues, but this dog probably 

[00:45:35] Haylee: That's pretty, that's a pretty weird one. Good job figuring it out. 'cause there are times when like the trigger is so minute that like, it takes a while to figure out what it is, especially because, you know, you could be like digging and asking all these questions and you just don't ask the right question in the right way. And they have this perfect revelation of this information that they haven't given you yet and that was just the one piece that you needed, there's so many things, there's so many internal behaviors that we can only read through body language.

And no matter how good we are at reading body language, at the end of the day, we're like interpreting a foreign language, you know? and the same behaviors mean totally different things in different contexts so much of the time. Like I just think that there's a lot that we don't understand about their internal landscape, 

[00:46:23] Emily: Those are our weirdo guarding stories and how like none of them would have been effectively addressed by the resource guarding formula that we're all taught when we first enter this profession.

And I think that is a, a really important thing to bear in mind that just because if you try something and it's not working, that doesn't mean that positive reinforcement doesn't work. That doesn't mean that you are defective as a trainer and there's anything wrong with you. It doesn't mean that that dog is beyond help.

It means that we need to take a descriptive approach and do more investigation into what, what do exactly do we mean by guard guarding? Can we describe the actual behaviors that we're seeing? Can we assess the context in which those behaviors are happening and can we use that information to figure out.

Why the guarding is happening, what the unmet needs are, and what we need to do to address those unmet needs.

[00:47:29] Haylee: Honestly, I think it's a good thing that like there's more to think about than just counter conditioning because counter conditioning is such a fragile process anyway, and it's so like dependent on these very, like the training. Environment in which you do it, and you have to think about all these, every single like possible variation and you have to train for those variations.

Like it's a difficult process, you know, like in theory it's simple, but in practice, getting it to actually work for every day real life people, it's pretty challenging. And so I actually think that like, that the answer is more complex and you have all these other things to think about is a good thing for resource guarding, that it's not just this one thing that you have in your toolbox.

[00:48:18] Emily: The take home point is that let's make it easier on ourselves and be more effective. So that begs the question like what does abundance actually look like when we're talking about guarding and, and how does an enrichment framework.

Make sense for this? Like how do you apply an enrichment framework to a situation like this? A situation that we would label as guarding? And I think there are three core components to that. The first is, like I've said so many times in this episode, meeting needs, identifying the unmet needs and, and addressing them. The second is providing predictability, and the third is building trusting relationships. Really making sure that secure attachment is the foundation that the relationship is built on. And so, okay. We've talked, I think we've talked about meeting needs to death, I wanna circle back to the providing predictability part because I think this is a part that gets really easily confused for really good reasons. So what I mean by that is that there are, there are a lot of trainers who believe that the solution to guarding is to, protect the alpha dog status and make sure that the beta dog, the, the submissive dog stays in their place.

And I, I totally get that, that line of thinking for a couple of reasons. One is they're not wrong that dominance in dogs is defined by allotment of resources, right? So like the dominant, the dominant dog in an interaction is the dog who controls access to those resources. And the submissive dog in that same interaction is the one who defers.

So there is quite a bit of overlap between how dominance works in dogs and resource guarding as like a behavioral profile, right? So it makes sense because Yes. And in a stable, dominant submissive relationship or interaction in dogs. There is no conflict because there is an agreement on who has priority access and who has to wait in line.

So, this idea of dominance, aggression is, does not apply to stable relationships, which is another reason, by the way, that building trusting relationships is an important component. So that's part of it. That is a, that is a, a reasonable mistake to make because there's a lot of nuance and the difference between. Guarding related conflict and a dominant submissive relationship between two dogs.

Right? The second part of, of why that line of thinking can be so compelling is because one of the solutions that I have seen multiple people who are of that mindset and that methodology use is that you feed the alpha dog first and then like the dominant dog first, and then you feed the submissive dog.

Second, not only have I seen multiple trainers do that who are of these methodologies, but when I, before I learned, learned the behavior sciences, I also did that and I also experienced success with it.

However, the reason that that is successful is not because of the dominance hierarchy. The reason it's successful is because you're providing predictability.

The animals in that context know what to expect so they don't feel like they have to guard because they are secure in what to expect from the process. And the reason that I know that is that I've had clients who couldn't let go of the dom myth, and most of the time I don't really care about challenging my client's stories.

The only time I intervene with a client's belief system is when it is directly impeding our ability to progress and to succeed to reach their goals. Right. So I've had multiple clients who can't let it go. And also it was impeding our ability to move forward towards their own goals. And so I had them do an exercise like, let's, let's do a full management so that they can't, if they have mistakes, they can't actually access each other.

Let's separate them during feeding, but make sure they can still see each other. And let's switch the feeding order. So what happens when you feed the dog that you think is the submissive dog first, and then you feed the dog that you think is the dominant dog? Second, let's do that for a few days. So the dogs have a chance to learn the routine and let's see how they respond.

And sure enough, the dogs, we got the same results because it wasn't about dominance, it was about predictability.

So providing that predictability is really, really important.

[00:53:00] Haylee: predictability is absolutely our friend in a lot of ways. You know, I do think you have to think about like, layers of management to make sure that if that predictability falls through, that you don't have like an explosive situation But as long as you're aware of that, it can be so useful and honestly, like so much more accessible to a lot of people than like a really long training plan

because at the end of the day, like, yeah, we would all love everybody to like do our beautiful, like textbook training plans, but getting buy-in is so difficult that sometimes just like if it's easy and effective. They're gonna do it. It's better than like the most beautiful plan in the world that they're not gonna do.

[00:53:49] Emily: I mean, We've talked a lot on this podcast about caregiver burden. In other words, what is their even capacity to do extra labor and adherence, fatigue? In other words, how long are they gonna have to keep this harder routine, in order to reach their end goal? And if it's not sustainable, it's not, it's not the solution that we hoped it would be. And I think that's a really important thing to consider when, when you're the behavior professional coming up with a plan for a client.

But also I think it's an important thing for clients to understand is that like you have the right to advocate for yourself and tell your behavior, professional, this plan is not sustainable for me. Can we please try something else? And I, I will just say that like I've had so many clients, not just my own clients, but team member clients and student clients and people who aren't even my clients, people that I've heard express this online about their own behavior professionals, whom I don't know at all say if I have, but if like, I do this management strategy now, am I gonna have to do it forever?

And the answer is maybe. So a lot of times, like there may be some level of management that needs to be in place. I'm never gonna leave copper and Miley alone with a single high value. Long-term project that's setting everybody up to fail, right? I'm never gonna leave the house for six hours and be like, good luck sharing that Himalayan chew. Like, I'm sure you've got this right. That is never going to happen. So in that way, that manage, that aspect of the management strategy will be lifelong, but the rest of our management strategy we don't need anymore everything else has been addressed.

[00:55:34] Haylee: Yeah. And when they're not getting like, pushed to feel that feeling over and over and over and over again, whatever complex feelings they're feeling that kind of push them to resource guard. you know, a lot of times you have more room like to give yourself a little leeway over time when their brain isn't practicing. Like, I have to feel this way. I have to feel this way, I have to feel this way, I have to feel this way over and over and over and over again. Like, you can get like a little bit of a head start from management in and of itself.

[00:56:02] Emily: Let's recap. So first of all, there's that myth of abundance being the solution to guarding, and there's kernel of truth to that myth, but overall, the solution to a dog who's guarding is not to just give them lots of the stuff that they guard. And in many cases, like with Kelly, that's just not a possible strategy because you can't give a dog a hundred light switches.

oddly enough, you, you could, but why would you? That's a very expensive and ineffective approach. Secondly, guarding is one label that can refer to multiple things. So because it's multiple things with multiple causes and multiple unmet needs, there are going to be multiple approaches that are appropriate, based on the context. So just bear that in mind. A prescriptive approach to guarding is going to be less effective.

Next, there are absolutely weirdo guarding cases. Haylee and I have, have worked with more than our share of just really bizarre guarding cases. And almost always they are accompanied by other issues as well. And almost always that is because there is some kind of health issue, physical and or mental health issue that needs to be addressed by a veterinarian and a veterinary behaviorist.

So if guarding is one of many things that a dog is struggling with, I would say let's just go straight to the vet or a VB and get the support that dog needs. Every once in a while you might encounter the dog who's just really set off by angry voices, probably because of a traumatic history but for the weirdo guarding cases, let's, let's address medical stuff first.

And finally, abundance actually looks like in the context of guarding, meeting needs, providing predictability and building trusting relationships. So there you go. Haylee thanks for joining me. It's been a delight to talk to you about this and reminisce. 

[00:58:08] Haylee: they, they taught us all a lot

[00:58:11] Emily: Oh, yeah. They were definitely amazing teachers. For sure.

[00:58:14] Allie: 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.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

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