#161 - The Difference Between Safety and Security

Have you ever watched your dog happily bolt toward a car, completely unbothered, while another dog trembles in a loving, calm home? Both dogs are caught in the gap between being safe and feeling safe, and it turns out that gap matters enormously. In this episode, Emily and Ellen unpack the critical distinction between safety (objective protection from harm) and security (the felt sense of being protected), and explain why mixing them up is one of the most common reasons behavior plans stall.

Whether you're a pet parent exhausted by a dog who barks at the neighbor for the 742nd time, or a behavior professional struggling to get traction on a difficult case, this episode gives you a concrete framework for digging in, figuring out what’s going on, and what to do about it.

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

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: that has been a huge thing for me to be able to go if my body is reacting in a certain way, despite the fact that my prefrontal cortex is telling my body that I'm being ridiculous.

Instead of being ashamed by it, I need to, that it to me is a signal that I need support and I need to figure out where that support needs to happen. And I think that has really helped me to be better at doing that for my clients and their pets, because a lot of times. Clients are, feel that way about themselves or their pets.

Like, why is this so hard? Like, I don't understand. And that's such a, those, those feelings are so real. Like, yeah, why is it so hard? And also it is hard. Whether or not it's logical to be hard, it is hard. So let's, let's take that seriously and address it right.

[00:00:45] 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...

[00:01:03] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:05] 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.

[00:01:25] Emily: So I'm going to contrast two scenarios that I, I think probably most people who have lived with dogs can identify with. So, scenario one is the dog who is just living their best life. Ha no idea that they are. Trying hard to unli themselves, like Miley, for example, just rushing up to gigantic dogs and being like, play with me.

And I'm like, that dog does not want to play with you. Please don't, don't worry y'all. I don't actually let Miley approach. But she would if she was allowed to approach dogs who are telling her no. And also she's a snack, she's snack sized for these dogs.

[00:02:08] Ellen: I worked with enough juvenile animals to know that the fact that evolution can happen is really, really incredible because I am, it is evolutionarily beneficial for juveniles to make really poor decisions and, uh. we're more robust than we give ourselves.

[00:02:27] Emily: Right. Yes. Like if you've spent any time working with adolescent animals or humans for that matter, you're like, how is a species. Are, have they survived? Like how does any species get past the adolescent phase? Right.

[00:02:40] Ellen: I don't know. I still don't know.

[00:02:42] Emily: I don't know either. But I mean, it doesn't just happen with adolescents, but Miley is a perfect example of the adolescent who's living her best life, actively trying to unlive herself.

And I feel like my job half the time is just keeping her alive. But we also have, like, I worked with an Australian shepherd whose favorite pastime was trying to herd moving vehicles and biting at their tires. That's why they hired me to help them with their Aussie. So there, that's category A, the dog who's living their best life and also like in imminent danger.

And then category B is the dog who is absolutely convinced that it's the apocalypse and that death is imminent and. Like the thing that has convinced them that life is coming to an end is I don't know, they, somebody put a leash on them or they got adopted and went to a home, or people exist outside the house, right?

So those, those categories are how we differentiate between safety and security. Because in category A, these animals feel quite secure. They have no concept that they are in danger but they are in fact, in danger. They are not safe. And category B are the dogs who are actually quite safe in a loving home.

On a leash with somebody who has good leash skills and knows how to take care of them on a walk. But they don't feel safe. They feel quite insecure. They're wholly con convinced that life is coming to an end. And so today we're going to be talking about that distinction, which may sound subtle, but it actually super duper matters because.

Feeling safe and being safe are two very different experiences that are related, but very different as we just illustrated. And super important.

So let's talk about why this matters. There have been many times in my past as a behavior professional and a mentor of other behavior professionals that I have seen. Either the clients or the behavior professionals themselves feel like their plan is failing and they don't know why, and it's.

Because they haven't yet learned how to distinguish between safety and security, and they haven't been able to identify because they can't distinguish them yet which one is at play. So if you don't know whether your animal, the issue is a safety issue or the issue is a security issue, it's going to be harder for you to troubleshoot the plan that you're working on.

I also think that knowing this distinction helps people to, be more targeted in what they recommend, and instead of just throwing more management or more enrichment or more training at a problem they're able to assess what do we need to shift about our current existing plan to either improve safety for everybody involved and or improve security for whoever is.

Feeling insecure. And that sometimes is our human learners. Sometimes it's the clients who feel insecure, not the dogs. Right. And I think a lot of the times when I'm helping behavior professionals like work through a really difficult like leash reactivity. Case that they're really struggling to make, get traction on or make progress on, it's because the client is feeling insecure about the plan, even though we have created a plan that keeps both the client and their dog safe.

So safety is present, but security isn't in the humans. I see that a lot with leash reactivity in particular for some reason. And I also think it's why a lot of people get exhausted without seeing a lot of relief from their efforts, because we're not, we're missing that, that piece of the puzzle.

[00:06:32] Ellen: I 

think I see that most often with like, alert, barking, the exhaustion

because it, there's a point where you're like. We've lived here for years. That dog has barked every day

for the last 742 days, and you are fine. Like ob fine is a four letter word, whatever.

I don't care. But at the end of the day when you're exas, exasperate, exa,

[00:06:53] Emily: You got this. I have in you.

[00:06:55] Ellen: I don't know that I do exasperated. I did get it. Okay.

[00:07:02] Emily: You got it.

[00:07:03] Ellen: All you wanna do is say you are fine. And in my house it usually is. That was, that was disproportionate. You are fine.

I know you don't feel fine, but like no harm is coming to you right now. No harm has come to you in the past. No harm is coming to you now as a result of the dog six houses down barking about whatever they're barking about.

And I think that's where. I see that exhaustion the most often.

[00:07:29] Emily: Yeah, that was certainly my experience with Brie is, she definitely improved by leaps and bounds over the decade that we, we haved her, that we lived with her. Even like towards the end of her life, there were some people, for whatever reason, that she just had a problem with them existing outside of our house.

And the thing that I heard myself saying to her all the time is like, people are allowed to exist. Brie.

[00:07:51] Ellen: I say, how dare they?

How dare anyone else exist in this world?

[00:07:57] Emily: So by the end of this episode. You'll be able to spot whether you're dealing with a safety issue, a security issue, or both, and what to actually do with that information.

[00:08:07] Ellen: So I think the found the place that we have to start with this is getting at what are. Safety and security, and we we already glazed over it, but let's get really clear, ideally about what they are. Safety is no physical, emotional, or mental harm will objectively come to you. Security is, I feel as though no emotional, mental, or physical harm will come to me, and those two things are not interchangeable. Like we said, you can have a dog that feels incredibly safe and also can we get away from the ledge? And then you can have a dog that feels like they're on the ledge of the Grand Canyon, and realistically they're sitting in the middle of your bedroom, but a thunder clap just went and they think that everything is terrible and this is how we all go and we're never gonna be okay again.

[00:08:57] Emily: Yeah, and I think understanding the difference between being protected from harm versus feeling protected from harm. can be really helpful with the exasperation that you mentioned earlier, because I, I hear a lot of people saying, if my dog is safe, they should feel safe. They should feel okay. Like, what is wrong with you?

You're safe. There's nothing There's. There's nothing going on here. And then the corollary to that is things go horribly wrong. And people have a lot of guilt about that and they're like, I didn't realize it was a problem 'cause my dog was looking happy. They were living their best life. It was good times.

It's never gone sideways before. Right. and so I wanna just pause here and say, we have done an episode on risk assessment and if you are. Hardcore resonating with that second one of like, everything seemed like it was going great and then all of a sudden it wasn't going great. I think that the risk assessment episode can be really helpful because one of the things that makes that so hard is all of the hindsight.

Critics that are like, well, you should have known that's what you get for putting your dog in this situation. Like, I would never put my dog in that situation. And those people can take several seed. But, but it is helpful to be able to make a meaningful risk assessment because if you take a calculated risk and you know the ways in which safety is compromised, it can help to prevent, the risk from happening more often, you can actually mitigate that risk. So I wanna just throw in that nuance because yes, sometimes we take calculated risks and sometimes those risks don't pay off, and that's not the same thing as not being able to recognize when a risk is present. Right? Those are two very different experiences, 

[00:10:46] Ellen: When we're talking about the feeling of security, I think it can be really easy for people to think about this as a conscious assessment of things. And that's where I see people get in the most trouble. Because our bodies are not logical in so many ways, and so it can be really hard to say they are objectively safe from harm.

I have no reason. I have never in my experience, seen a reason why they wouldn't feel secure in this condition because all past history says the thing, and this is the time that they have a, a spinal spasm. Then they, for the rest of time are guarded because if you've ever thrown out your back, well, I still, it's been three, almost three years since I threw out my back, and every time I sneeze, I still get a shot of anxiety.

Because of how painful it was sneezing during that

time. So I think the thing that is so hard when we're talking about security is we're not talking about a cognitive assessment. Our dogs, even ourselves, are not looking around and being like, yeah, actually everything's, everything's pretty okay. Like, sure, acts of God could happen.

Trees could fall on my house and we would not be okay. But realistically, everything's all right. Your body couldn't be telling you something entirely different. And. Working with the body can be a little bit more challenging than working with the brain for some people

and dogs. 

[00:12:06] Emily: I think you brought up a really good point and where this has really been. Helpful for me is learning how to stop questioning myself because I am, I am a person who has anxieties about things that are seemingly irrational or will just like perseverate about things that should be a nothing burger.

I'm like, why? Why is this something I can't let go of when it, I objectively know it's not that big of a deal. And for me, learning that this, that insecurities and anxieties and all of these things that happen aren't necessarily logical. And also our body is responding the way our body responds. Helped me to first of all stop beating myself up about it, and secondly, pause and, and ask myself what do I need in this situation to help me let go of this or get through it or find out the thing that I actually should be insecure about. Like maybe there is an actual kernel of truth in my anxiety and I'm, and my body has just snowballed it, but let's actually like find the thing that I really do need to address. And so I, just speaking from personal experience, I, I'm so glad you brought that up because that has been a huge thing for me to be able to go if my body is reacting in a certain way, despite the fact that my prefrontal cortex is telling my body that I'm being ridiculous.

Instead of being ashamed by it, I need to, that it to me is a signal that I need support and I need to figure out where that support needs to happen. And I think that has really helped me to be better at doing that for my clients and their pets, because a lot of times. Clients are, feel that way about themselves or their pets.

Like, why is this so hard? Like, I don't understand. And that's such a, those, those feelings are so real. Like, yeah, why is it so hard? And also it is hard. Whether or not it's logical to be hard, it is hard. So let's, let's take that seriously and address it right.

[00:14:07] Ellen: I think the other thing that's helped my clients is when we, when I shifted from saying, do you think they feel safe? Then the client would go to that cognitive, that cognitive point of like, does my dog look around and do they see anything that is fear inducing or anxiety inducing? That is very specific to saying, do you think their body feels safe? I started to get a different assessment, so the clients would then tune into the body language. They would tune into the reactivity. They would tune into the recovery. They would tune into all of the things and say, I mean, I guess not. Because evidence shows me that they're off kilter for some reason given history.

This is the likely culprit. And after some digging

or whatever, while I would assess, yes, what I'm seeing would lead me to say no. And then the answer is, how do we get their body safe?

How do we, how do we address that for them? Because they can't do it themselves. Lots of individuals can do it for themselves.

It is a skill that can be taught. And also the clientele that we get typically need a lot of help because our dogs can't, which is a good thing. Open pill, containers. And so for my own dogs, it is very much. There's the behavioral component, there's the yes, that thing is scary. Yes, we don't trust the world.

And also a lot of their lack of security comes from a physical problem. I feel less comfortable because I'm more I'm more, what's the word I'm looking for? Vulnerable because. I have a back spasm and I can't get away from danger with a back spasm, which means I have to be hypervigilant. Kind of like what we had talked about in the what horror films teach us about behavior, like, I need you to be 200 yards away because I am less capable of protecting myself right now physically in my body.

[00:15:53] Emily: Yes. Yeah, and I think this is where professionals often burn out is when the client or the pet is just really struggle busting with an anxiety, or conversely, like I said, we have an un. Undiscovered safety issue or something like that. A lot of times our sort of knee jerk response to that is, okay, well that's not working.

Let's try something else. Okay, well that's not working. Let's try something else. Or to be like, okay, well now we have to add this management and we have to add this management and we have to add this training plan. And then suddenly your client has their, their house is like, fort Knox and, and their training plan is like, they've got 26 things to work on because we are like, oh, okay, well this isn't working.

We have to add this and we have to do this. And we have, all of these things. Either changing the plan too much or just continuously adding to the plan. And when we see that professionals learn how to recognize the difference between safety and security, identify which is happening. Then identify the source of that and how to address the source.

They can get a lot more progress with a lot less, less effort, and they learn how to tweak what they're doing instead of just throwing. The baby out with the bath water and continuously reinventing the wheel or starting over with a new plan. So it's, it's really helpful for behavior professionals too, not just the people who are living with the pets who are struggling.

[00:17:22] Ellen: It is gonna be really hard to teach a dog that that is not a scary monster. Insert whatever it is. When their body is telling them that they are engrave in mortal danger. And that doesn't, that's not a logical assessment. Often that is not a logical assessment. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it makes sense and we're like, yeah, we can, we can backtrack.

But step one, can I convince your body that you are not engrave, immortal danger?

Before I try to convince you that that's not a scary monster.

[00:17:48] Emily: Yeah, and I think revisiting the two podcast episodes that we've mentioned so far will be really helpful tools for your toolbox. Because one of the things that we have learned to ask our clients to help them assess. If this is a safety issue or a security issue or both, is we're okay. Let's first figure out if there's a safety issue happening.

And, and the way that we do that is by asking can harm happen? Is there a potential for harm for anybody involved? The non-humans, the humans, humans outside the household, like the community? That's, that's the the way, the question that we can ask to help our clients assess if there is an underlying safety issue.

And here's the thing for professionals. A lot of times clients don't tell us the, the safety issues that are going on in their life, not because they're trying to hide anything from us, but because they can't articulate it for themselves. And so it is helpful to ask this question to clients because it helps them discover or realize or identify something that they can then articulate to you, which empowers you to be more effective with them.

So the, I think that's a, a thing that people miss is they assume that their client has told them everything. And or they assume that their client isn't telling them because they're hiding something. And far more often than not, it's just the client doesn't know how to identify these things and articulate them 'cause they're not behavior professionals.

And if they were, they wouldn't need us.

[00:19:16] Ellen: or to get real meta. You haven't built security with your client yet

because I don't know the number of clients that were, a couple sessions. I, it has sped up. It is very rare at this point that I get like a. Four to five session in disclosure, because they were afraid to tell me something,

but it, I don't know, the number of times I've had a client that I could tell was afraid to tell me something, and it was something incredibly mundane, but

like, I know what side of the internet you have been on because of how worried you were to talk to me.

And it's like

my dog sleeps in my bed. I don't care. Are, are you safe? Are you worried about your dog biting you? Are you worried about you hurting your dog in your sleep?

I don't care aside from that, unless it's a problem for you,

I don't, I don't care eating people food. I don't. I don't care. And so we

have to build that same security with our clients and we deserve the same security with our clients is another important part of it. 

[00:20:10] Emily: Yeah. Ooh, I'm so glad you brought that up, because establishing trust is a really important part of working with clients and the, the better you get at it, the faster it happens. And I feel like that's not just true for our. Private clients who have pets. But also I think, over the years that we have done mentorship for behavior professionals, I've watched us all get better at establishing trust.

Much earlier on so that our students feel safe enough to tell us things that they have been shamed or berated or ridiculed for in the past by other people in the industry, or family members or partners, whatever. And so that's true for us too, as, as mentors, we have also gotten better at establishing that trust early on and establishing ourselves as a safe space.

So yeah, that's, that's also super valuable. And then shifting over to security, the question that we have found helpful is, does this feel survivable? Does it feel survivable for you in your body? Does this feel like a survival situation? Does this send you into fight, flight, or freeze? And judging by your pet's body language, do you see that it feels survivable for your pets?

What is their body language telling you about where they're at in terms of survival mode?

Are your pets in fight, flight, or freeze? Like you said earlier, when you ask the questions that focus on the body, not cognition, not the prefrontal cortex, not what we should know in air quotes, it really helps people to identify more quickly.

Where in my body am I feeling unsafe? Or what is my pet's body telling me that they feel unsafe? That that tells me that they feel unsafe? And sometimes we find out that there's both, they like somebody involved, whether it's a human or a non-human, is both unsafe and insecure. And that's good information too, right?

It's not anything to be ashamed about, but it is really good information. Like, okay, cool. So we have opportunities to support their safety and their security. That's great to know. We can be more effective when we know that.

[00:22:21] Ellen: It doesn't have to be that deep. Sometimes it is that deep, but just this morning, like has been having some GI issues and it got to the point where I was like, no, it's time to go to the vet now. It's not resolving on its own. And we went and we were unable to do our pre-visit medication protocol because I did not know what they were going to need.

And so I really didn't want to have stuff in her belly. So we didn't have our normal pre-visit medication protocol. She, I was worried about her. She clearly did not feel safe. I could not tell you that she was safe because I was concerned about whatever was going on. She didn't feel safe, could not promise actual safety.

What I could promise is we're trying to get there and

getting there is going to suck. It's not

gonna be fun for literally anybody

And. In order to get better, we have to, we have to move through it. We can't just wait here until you feel secure enough while your body is clearly not okay. And we built some trust in a situation that we, I have not trained her to do on her back abdominal x-rays

and she's 14. I'm not training her to do that. Now

we got other things to work on.

[00:23:32] Emily: Like appreciating how cute she is right now, curled up behind you with her little snoot poking out.

[00:23:38] Ellen: Yeah, she did the hard thing. But I also know that's one of the things for her, we invest so much in safety and security on a day-to-day basis that when I have to make that withdrawal, because life is the way that it is,

she can go do the

hard thing and she comes back and we don't have fallout. She's gonna be more. She's gonna be, show me she feels less safe at the vet next time we go, and probably the time after that, and probably the time after that. But we can build that back up.

[00:24:04] Emily: Yeah. But also I love that her response to having that stressful moment earlier in the day is comfortably resting

in your space in her favorite spot. Like that's beautiful self-regulation.

[00:24:17] Ellen: Back from the x-rays and we could immediately play games. And she was eating, which she was unable to take treats beforehand. And so that stress was, that stress did mask some of the, some of the symptoms that we were having, which was very beneficial to me. I'm gonna be honest,

getting meds into her when we got home was very easy.

[00:24:36] Emily: Yeah, that's a great real world example of what it looks like when sometimes we have to go through a thing that compromises safety or security, or both sometimes. But how we can manage that and protect their o overall experience, even though we have to take a little withdrawal from the trust account, we can fill that back up pretty quickly.

And I think another thing that is helpful is recognizing when our attempts at enrichment can actually increase danger. So actually compromise safety when there's very little security on board. And to me the most obvious example of this is working with, I think particularly. Prey animals are more prone to this kind of neo phobia, for lack of a better term.

I'm sure there's a more updated term for neo phobia. I just don't know what it is, so I'm gonna use the term I know, but the fear of new things. I have seen it in like hoarding and puppy mill dogs, but I see it a lot in the, the prey animals. And in particular, I saw it a lot in very specific species of parrots, like African grays.

That seems to me more of a product of like selective breeding and poor socialization than, than a reflection of the species because it doesn't seem evolutionarily adaptive to be afraid of new things in the environment that, that African grays are indigenous to. So I don't, I don't understand why we see that in some species more than others.

But this, this belief or there, there feels like a lot of pressure on the internet. To provide animals with new and exciting things because that's enrichment. Enrichment and novelty are often treated as interchangeable as if they're the same thing, and novelty can be enriching. But if you have an animal who has neo phobia, for lack of a better term, who's afraid of new things, so they're not actually.

In danger of being harmed. The new things are perfectly safe, but they feel insecure. By introducing those things, you can induce chronic toxic stress. You can induce panic responses where they run a high risk of self-injury. You can. Well, back going back to the chronic, to toxic stress, that can pose harm in multiple ways.

One is just reducing behavioral diversity if the animals just shut down and living in. This constant fear state. But we also see animals like that have physical issues as a result, like chronic inflammatory issues as a result of chronic stress, GI upset as a result of chronic stress. And then the GI issues can throw off the neurochemical balance, which can make the anxiety worse.

And then you get into this like spiral like feedback loop.

[00:27:19] Ellen: That is so hard to get out of.

[00:27:22] Emily: And it's so hard to pull 'em out of that feedback loop. So I think that's another reason that it's, it's really important to recognize safety and security, the difference between the two and how enrichment can and should fit into that or, or address that.

And how enrichment attempts are gonna make it worse instead of making it better. And, and the same can be said for management strategies if we're seeing that these animals are having lots of problems, and our response to that is just to keep a adding management upon management upon management until this animal has a completely restrictive life, again, compromising their behavioral diversity, compromising their agency or autonomy, their, their ability to make their own choices, and just creating this life of chronic stress.

All of the same issues can happen in those, in those situations as well.

[00:28:14] Ellen: part of that is something I, I, think I touched on already, is that like, I am gonna ruffle some feathers. One of the things that I am particularly sensitized to is when we have a creature whose body doesn't feel okay, and our response is to put them in scenarios with things that we already know are hard. For them and say, Hey, but what if I give you a Snickers bar?

Is that enough for you? I know that like you don't, you don't seem great and you're hypervigilant and you're having a hard time. And also I see that your recovery is quite slow and you're not able to rest after one of these sessions. And we have a lot of frenetic energy and all of those things, but like you're technically under threshold 'cause you're eating. She makes a face that you can't see on the podcast. So what if when you are by this thing that your body is telling you is going to maim and murder you, I give you a Snickers bar. How you feel about that?

[00:29:04] Emily: The analogy that I use all the time is like, I don't care how much you pay me, or how many times you, give me a massage in the middle of an interstate highway. I am never, ever, ever going to get to a point where I feel relaxed on a massage table in the middle of an interstate highway. Like you can't counter condition your way out of some things.

And as someone who is teaching a class, a course on classical conditioning for Karen Pryor Academy. As a part of their behavior consulting program. That's one of the things that we talk a lot about in depth is like, when are these tools useful tools in our toolbox and when do we as an industry tends to misapply them?

All of the ways that that can go really poorly for our learners, which then means that it's going poorly for us as well because we want to be successful, we wanna be effective, we wanna help the animals we're working with. And that's really important. And also, there's a tendency to blame. The science instead of just recognizing that the science is being misapplied.

And so we've got this like bandwagon of people who are like anti behaviorism or anti behavior analysis just because it gets misapplied and it's like, no. These are still universally true behavioral phenomenon, and you should understand them if you work in a behavior related field and you are utilizing them, whether or not you realize it.

So you might as well go ahead and know that you're doing it so that you can do it effectively. And also, you are not wrong that the, the, these scientific principles are often misapplied in ways that are coercive and aversive and. But you have to be able to tell the difference between a poor application of something and a rejection of it and an intentional ignorance of it.

' cause both of those things cause harm and neither of those are the solution to the harm of the other one. So there you go. I just joined you on, on that little

tote box.

[00:30:59] Ellen: You are on this soapbox. We are on the same soapbox

and it's, yeah, so I think the, the thing that is the hardest is when it looks like it was successful.

We have a dog that can now be closer to other dogs. We have a cats that can cohabitate and we have all of these things and we still are in that chronic toxic stress because we haven't dealt with the security aspect. There are a lot of things that I can do and do do on our regular basis, and I would assess that I am okay and I feel, I think I feel safe and my body's. Biologic responses would tell you otherwise. And so it, we gotta, we gotta deal, we gotta deal with that first

before we say, can I give you skills to mask your discomfort?

Can I just get you comfortable?

[00:31:45] Emily: Right, right. I feel like if you're going to put in the effort and the labor to change behavior, you might as well address the issue and not just put all that labor and effort into just putting duct tape over the issue

like that makes the most sense to me. Right. Why bother doing the labor if you're not interested in actually coming up with a solution?

[00:32:06] Ellen: okay. So let's talk about some signs that you're dealing with a safety issue. I think the easiest one is you look around and there is something of actual tangible danger. And so that can be access to toxic things.

That can be plants, that can be any number of things. It could really depend on the dog. And so things that are not at all toxic Can be really dangerous to a dog with something like pica. Where they ingest foreign objects. So looking at a safety issue, we have to look at who is this individual? How do they interact with the environment? What are their risk factors? Do they have skelet to musculo issues? So griffey's risk factors are gonna be different than lekas risk factors.

And because she's got a stellar confirmation somehow we saw that her spine was beautiful today, which makes me pleased. It may be that you have an individual who is a risk to yourself or your dog.

I have plenty of clients that are afraid of individuals in their neighborhood or their neighbors, and so that's something we have to take into account.

[00:33:06] Emily: It's not always just about toxic plants or, or toxic plants or foods or objects versus safe in general, benign. Right. And in addition to, those things that might be perfectly benign for most dogs aren't benign for pica. Also if an animal has an allergy or a food sensitivity, something that could actually be really healthy and beneficial for some animals, it's going to be really harmful for others.

And I think, people tend to get really dogmatic about nutrition and the foods that they feed and. I know nutrition is deeply personal for all of us, and, and so I, I, I wanna be careful as I say this, but I've seen a lot of harm happen when somebody tries to impose their nutritional beliefs or what works for them onto their learners, and that can cause a whole lot of harm.

I was really cautious about this with Miley because there are some lines of biji that have a specific gene cluster that puts them at risk of, of developing cystine crystals if they, if they eat too much protein, so they need a low to moderate protein diet. So if you. Have one of those biji and the internet tells you that you're a bad pet parent if you're feeding them food with grains in it or a vegetarian diet or whatever.

And you listen to that social pressure from the internet and you put your biji with that genetic issue on a high protein diet you can cause a lot of harm to your dog and that will not have been your fault, but. Just because that diet, it can be really, really good and supportive and healthy for some dogs.

It can also be incredibly harmful to other dogs. So, I'm obviously, I have JIS on the brain. That's, that is the example that was most available to my head in this moment. But that's by no means the only. Scenario in which I've seen foods or diets that are really like lifesaving for some individuals, be life threatening to other individuals, and that's why it is so important to.

Identify what is safe and unsafe for your individual pet. Nobody else can make that assessment for you. That is between you, your vet, your behavior professionals, your pet support team, whoever might be on that team. Your, you and your pet support team are the only people who can make that assessment.

And don't let anybody else bully you into compromising your pet safety. And so, and I'm using nutrition. Right now, because we were talking about foods that could be toxic, but that's true for so many things. I've seen so many people bully other people on the internet into trying to do a specific dog sport or a specific activity, or a specific type of enrichment game because they're convinced that it is.

The necessary good right way to enrich a dog and for individual dogs that can be really harmful to their joints or to their body for some other, for what, whatever reason. Right. So, nutrition was a good place to start that conversation, but that, that's just true across the board.

[00:36:04] Ellen: So we talked about access to poisonous foods, medications, plans, household items. And or dangerous to your pet. All of those things doesn't have to be poisonous to be a problem for any individual. Are they able to interact with animals who would cause bodily or psychological harm, including domestic species, predators, or wild life? So do you have two individuals in your house that are getting into scuffles? Do you have, we usually work with urban families, so this is less of a thing, but do you live in a place where there are actual outside your house predators that you need to check out for? I know my partner talked about taking a job in Manitoba for a while, and he's like, we could have polar bears. And I was like, you mean, and I have to check outside to make sure Leica isn't going to run into a polar bear.

That's what I just heard.

That's terrifying.

[00:36:53] Emily: I feel those feel so hard because we have raccoons in our neighborhood and the, the raccoons use our backyard as like a pathway to get from the there's like a wetland protected area to like our street. And so we frequently have rac raccoons using our, our backyard as a, as a highway and, i, we have historically not let our dogs out after dark because if I can't see that, there's no raccoons.

I didn't wanna just assume that there wouldn't be raccoons. But we started taking that risk with Miley because Miley's response to threat displays from any species is duck, dodge, and get, get outta the way.

And she is so adept at the dance and dive, that, that thing, and her recall is so much better than coppers because we've been working really hard on it.

That she's actually less at risk of it. If, even if there is a recruiting in the backyard and the raccoon offers a threat display, she has, she's better equipped to avoid being injured than copper is. She benefits from having one last nighttime romp around the yard so she can come in and complete her stress cycle and go to sleep.

And so that's a really good example of how for copper, it would be really dangerous to let him out in the backyard after dark unattended. But for Miley, I. I trust her skills and I have seen her, how she responds to animals threat displays enough to know that it is a much lower risk for her than it is for copper, even though copper is twice her size.

[00:38:25] Ellen: Yep. The same risk assessment for Leica and Grippy. 'cause we live in an area where there are a lot of off leash neighborhood dogs. There are, they're all dogs that like. I know where they live. But for Leica, I can take her out and if any of 'em come up, they're not gonna bulldoze her or do any of those things. If I take Griffey out, it is go out, scan, make sure that there are to the best of our ability, no off leash. Dogs take him out. He can pee on two spots, and then we get in the car and we leave because that's the way to keep everybody safe. The next one is. Leading into this, not able to run into the street or other harmful environments.

Again, just because it's a street doesn't mean it's actually a risk. I have clients that live in the middle of nowhere and

they don't see, they're the only cars that happen

there. So you have to take into account your situation. Are they able to interact with humans who would cause bodily or psychological harm as another one to think about and. Are they exposed to harmful husbandry or, and or training methods and or tools for? Again, them you have to ask, is it harmful for them? So if we were to think of like, let's take nail trimming for an example. There are some conditions. I could not tell you what they are. What I can tell you is that they change the structural integrity of the nail. And so for those dogs, something like a Dremel may just shred the nail versus give you a nice clean emine. A Dremel may not be safe for all dogs. Nail clippers. May not be safe or lead to security for all humans. I know a lot of people that are afraid of nail clippers, and so you can also hand file for some dogs.

They hate that. It really depends on the duo you have.

[00:40:04] Emily: I have that by the way, because of the electrolyte disorder, I can't file my nails 'cause it just shreds them. Instead of, I have to use nail clippers and I can't file them in any way. It just shreds my nails.

So I'm a human with that.

Yeah.

[00:40:17] Ellen: If we're talking about signs that you might be dealing with security, the things that we think about is do they have at least one space in their environment to retreat to where they're exposed to minimal stressors? So if the individual has nowhere where they can go and like collapse into a puddle and breathe deeply and truly rest and. Feel safe, then we might have a security problem. We have a security problem, so let's just

say we have one. Do they know how to move away from stressors when necessary? So do they have the skills to moderate their exposure to things that stress them out? I'm going to add a secondary. Do they have an environment that enables them to practice those skills?

So not only can they do it. Like, do they, as an individual, are they able to, do we allow them to do it?

Do they know how to investigate novel stimuli? 

[00:41:05] Emily: We already talked about it. We already talked about neo phobia, so

that.

[00:41:09] Ellen: and then do we see fear or avoidance related behaviors only in response to reasonable novel or extraordinary stimuli? So I think I'm, I mentioned at the very beginning that there are times where I will just look at Griffey and be like, that was disproportionate. Because the amount of response we get is way bigger than the thing that happened. And there are times where the amount of response we get totally matches whatever just happened. So for me, the easiest to think about is when you get for those of us that live in places where people really like fireworks, if you have ever been just hanging out in your home and somebody shoots off a firework and it's the kind that like shakes your chest.

For a dog to have a meltdown over that when the human jumps up and goes, what was that? Very reasonable to me.

Then the question is, does the recovery seem reasonable?

[00:42:02] Emily: Does it take them a week to get over something that startled them?

If so, there might be a security issue there.

And that's not exaggeration. I've had multiple clients where if the, their dog encountered a stressor, it would literally take seven days for the dog to return to baseline.

[00:42:17] Ellen: Yeah, I knew a dog that that are living through chemistry friends. We got this, this dog working with a vb and but after a stressful event, would not eat for 72 hours

clockwork and its entire life was stressful events.

Security issue, medical issue, many

issue, but with better living through chemistry that dropped down to like two hours and that was fantastic.

[00:42:38] Emily: Yeah. Well, and I think you brought up a good point that it's, it's both, in that case, it's both a security issue and a medical issue, and I think this is a good opportunity to remind people that these categories don't exist in real life. Humans create categories to help us learn, make sense of, and organize the information that we're receiving from our environment.

But it is, more often than not, there are overlaps. There are multiple unmet needs. There are multiple facets to an issue. And so even though we are separating out safety from, from security to help people be able to see and identify what's happening. Multiple things can be going on at the same time. You don't have to choose between is this medical or is this security?

Sometimes it is medical and it is security.

[00:43:25] Ellen: So I think building off of what you just said for professionals, for pet parents, and if you want the actual, the, the things that I just mentioned. How do you think, how do you know you might be dealing with safety?

How do you know you might be dealing with security are from the, our needs being let, oh my God. Our needs being met. Checklist from canine enrichment for, for the real world. We will put, I will put a link in. The show notes where you can download that and a walkthrough for creating an enrichment plan if you're interested about the rest of it. I think com Compar compartmentalizing. I am done with words today apparently.

[00:44:07] Emily: I can tell.

[00:44:08] Ellen: Is that it makes it really easy to say, okay, I'm gonna focus on this for now, assess what happens, and then do a reevaluation, and then I'm gonna focus on this and assess what happens, and then do a reevaluation. So if we were to say, I think this is a security problem, and we put good, good things in place, and we do a little trial and eval, and then we see no change, then that says, Hmm, we might be missing something. So let's go and revisit what else could be at play. It's not about having. Confidence or feeling really certain that you got it right. It's about being able to trial an eval and go through like a differential diagnosis type process with behavior.

[00:44:44] Emily: Yeah, I think that's such a good point that it's. You don't have to know ahead of time whether or not there are multiple categories at play. You can, the one that you strongly suspect is at play, you can start with that and then see what's left over to assess. Are there additional things, right? So in your earlier example where you described something that's both security and medical, if you wanted to start with security, let's say the client doesn't have a lot of funds or they're not.

Totally sold on the idea of a vb you can start with the security part and. Create a management plan, create an enrichment plan, reduce stressors, teach them skills to deal with stressors. And if that addresses the issue, ta-da. Great. You, you've also somehow addressed the medical thing.

If the whole, if the whole problem is solved, you don't need to keep looking for solutions, right? Or vice versa. If you do the meds and then suddenly the, the security issue goes away, ta-da. You did it, you did the thing. Right. So I think that's just such a, a good point that like this, separating these categories out helps us to be more systematic and methodical in our diagnostic process.

Even though they don't, they, they, they just exist for us. Like they don't exist in the real world, but they still have value. They're, they're, it is useful to separate things out in that way.

To recap, safety and security are not the same thing. Safety is the act of being protected from harm.

Security is feeling like you're protected from harm. Confusing them creates effort without relief and naming the right problem. Identifying what's actually going on, unlocks better and more effective decisions. So the question to ask yourself as you're encountering situations like this is, what is one situation where you might be trying to make something safer when what your dog actually needs is to feel more secure or vice versa?

[00:46:43] 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.