#170 - Q&A: How to Multi-Pet Household

In this Q&A episode, Allie, Emily, and Ellen tackle the questions they hear most often from clients, mentees, and the internet: Should I get another pet? How do I treat my pets fairly when they all need different things? And how do I actually bring a new animal home in a way that sets everyone up for success?

Of course, in true Q&A fashion, we may meander a bit (look, we are who we are 😂), but we packed this episode full of real-life examples, how we guide clients through the process, and reflection questions to help you answer these questions for yourself. 

Because while we are behavior consultants, we probably aren’t YOUR behavior consultant… at least not yet. 😉

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

1️⃣ Caregiving isn’t additive; it’s exponential – Budget, bandwidth, physical space, and the needs of every current household member all compound in ways most people don't anticipate. 

2️⃣ Different needs ≠ unfair treatment  – Meeting each pet as an individual is equity. Use the enrichment framework to stay grounded. 

3️⃣ Make your deal-breaker list before you meet the pet – Decide your non-negotiables before you're emotionally attached to a specific animal. Treat the first phase like a foster. It protects the animal, protects your existing pets, and protects you from shame-driven decisions later. 

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

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Allie: One of the most important things to remember when we're talking about this question is that our pets don't necessarily see fair in the same way that humans do. So I'm going to answer a tangential question, which is how do I make sure I'm meeting all of my pets' needs when they all have varying needs?

Because I think at the root of it, that's really, like, w- what people are asking when they're asking that question. Like, that's the spirit of the question, is how do I make sure that, that everyone is happy and healthy and safe, and I'm not putting so much focus on one of my pets that it's to the detriment of somebody else.

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

[00:00:57] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:58] 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.

[00:01:19] Emily: Ellen, a little birdie told me that today our Q&A questions are all about multi-pet households. And by little birdie, I mean you. You were the one who told me that. would you like to kick us off with our first multi-pet household question?

[00:01:35] Ellen: Sure.

Our first one, we get this a lot. We get this from mentees, we get this from clients, we get this on social media, we get this from friends and family. This is a very common one, is should I get another pet, whether that's another cat, another dog, another bird, another guinea pig, another hamster. Should I bring another animal into my household?

[00:01:55] Emily: Okay, I'm gonna give you my facetious response first, and then I'll give you the real response. My tongue-in-cheek response is, I don't know. Should you? you? tell me. Okay, but now here's my real, my, my real answer is I don't know. Here are some things to consider when when deciding for yourself whether or not that's a good idea. Do I have the budget to bring on another animal? Because the initial purchase is, like, literally the cheapest thing about the animal, and pets are, have the potential to be/almost always are expensive AF. Secondly, do you have the bandwidth and capacity to accommodate another beast in your home? And I will...

Like, o- one of our first episodes was with Peter Amelia, and they said something that has stuck with me ever since from four years ago when our podcast started. They said, " The way I decide whether or not I can bring a new animal into my home is I ask myself how many trips to the fridge will I have to make?"

Do I have to make another trip to the fridge, right? Because if you have multiple animals of the same species, you can grab all of their food at the same time and dole it out. But if you've got multiple species with multiple diets and multiple infrastructure needs, then y- that's, that's a very different consideration than am I adding to a current population of a specific species, right? And then I think the third thing is how is everybody else in the household going to feel about that animal? Will that animal be able to be successfully integrated in the home, or will there be humans who resent them or don't like them? Will the other animals resent them? A- are you creating more work for yourself because you're gonna have to compartmentalize new animal and old animal? And I'm just gonna say this because this is my life right now. If you have a geriatric pet or even a senior pet and you are thinking of bringing a baby animal of that same species into the home, you need to think long and hard about that decision. Because I am a behavior professional who has been raising critters of multiple species since I was literally in diapers, and I knew what I was getting into, and bringing Miley, my cute little Basenji puppy, into the house with our dog who at the time was 16 and is now 17 by far and away the hardest thing about having Miley in the house was managing the interactions between the puppy and the geriatric dog, and that is still true.

And I, I knew that. I went into it with eyes wide open. I have done this before. I knew what I was signing up for, and I still made a fundamental error in that I didn't prepare my partner for that. I just assumed that, like- I would be taking care of it. I would be doing most of the work. I would be sort of in charge of, of everything.

And so I didn't need to explain to him what this would look like, and I was unprepared for how stressed he is about what to me looks like a really successful setup. But it's still distressing to him because he didn't know what to expect. And so even I, even though I am a behavior professional who has lots of experience doing this, I knew what to do, I have done it successfully, it has still been a whole journey with my partner because my partner was not prepared.

I did not do a good enough job of preparing him for what life was going to look like when you integrate a puppy with a senior dog. And we have lots of management strategies in place, and I've done a lot of work to build their relationship, and they love each other. And also, Miley is 17 months old now, and she's getting better, and she's starting to make good life choices, and she's starting to be able to rein herself in when she sees that Copper is overwhelmed and move away from him and give him a break. And even now we still have lots of management strategies in place because she still can't do that all the time. She can't even do it reliably. She's just doing it much better now than she used to. So I am happy to talk about w- what our setup looks like and how I manage their interactions if that's something that the two of you would like, would find, would think would be a good idea.

But I also don't wanna completely bogart this whole episode. So I'm gonna pause right there and say thoughts, feelings, comments, concerns, friends.

[00:06:41] Ellen: that's an entirely separate episode. all on its own and I would say I'm gonna be even more of a Debbie Downer. I think Emily gave some really good questions, but when I have clients that ask me this, the other things I ask are, "What if you have two pets that need the support level that your current pet needs?" So what if you acquire a second pet and we have a dog now that has separation anxiety, and we have a dog that has stranger-directed, human-directed aggression, and so you can no longer have pet sitters over. What does that mean for you? What does it mean if you have to take both of these animals to the VB? What does it mean if you can't leave two dogs home alone versus another? It comes down to me, is someone willing to live in a crate and rotate system? And if you find that you have to live in a crate and rotate system and you can't live like that, are you prepared to rehome one of those pets? Because I have done a crate and rotate in a multi-generational household, so I didn't acquire a dog, but my partner and I moved in, and his mother has a resident dog, and Griffy and that dog will never be together. And as of right now, they live in two separate living spaces, which is a huge improvement over a few years ago. crate and rotate for the rest of your pet's life is a lot to of both you and your if Griffy had to live in a it would be untenable for us

[00:08:01] Emily: And I will say as someone who had multiple birds when we brought Bree into the house it profoundly impacted the time I was able to spend with my birds. Because before her, my birds, I would basically open all the cage doors in the morning, open the bird room door, and they could go anywhere in the house that they wanted to.

So I spent a lot of time with my birds just casually, like when they would fly up to me and be like, "Hi, I wanna hang out with you. I wanna interact with you." And I would be like, "Okay, cool. Hi." Beaky kisses, scritches, whatever you want, and then they would fly off and go do their own thing. When Bree came into the house, they didn't have that freedom anymore, which meant that I had to schedule time out of my day to go give them lovins, and interaction, and social bonding time, and I had to do it in the confines of the bird room. And when we, when we brought Bree home, I had six birds, and so it didn't just double my work. It was six times the amount of work that I had before I brought Bree home. I brought in one pet, and I don't even know what the word is for... Like, I, I think my, my knowledge of like double, triple, quadruple, that's where it ends.

I don't know what six times, what the word is for six times. But, like, that is how much bringing Bree into my house um, increased my workload just for the birds, and I am not talking about all of the work that I had to do to support Bree with her multitude of issues being a fer- formerly feral dog. So I think people think that the work is additive when in reality the work is exponential.

[00:09:40] Allie: That was one of the things I was going to say too, is that every time I talk to somebody and they, they ch- get, you know, their second dog or cat or whoever it is, they're like, "I thought it was going to be double the work, and it's not. It's like quadruple the work." And, and that's true of any specie- like even my friends who have kids say that about children, human children as well.

So I think it's just true of every species, that it's, it's just exponential more work when you, when you add a whole nother life form into the mix and, and we're adding new, you know, layers of relationships and, and all of that. I don't have too much to add to, to y'all, and I have the arguably less, like honestly, I was like, "I don't have a multi-pet household."

And then Ellen, you were like, you had Zorro before Oso, and I was like, "Oh yeah, I do have a multi-pet household." You know, there's the pet that, you know, is within like eight feet of me for the majority of my week. Yeah, that one. I honestly didn't think a ton about it, and it's because when we got Oso, Zorro was in like a fairly typical aquarium, like a 75 gallon aquarium.

But up on a table I mean, it would've taken a whole lot of work for Oso and Zorro to have been in the same space together without a barrier in between. And like at that point, like we have potentially larger problems, like 75 gallons of water just like came crashing to the ground, and there's glass and there

Like that, that level of problem is happening at that point. And and I, I remember bringing Oso into the house, and he like put... I have a picture of it. I think it's up on the website somewhere in a blog po- post, a very old blog post of Oso with his like little nose to the glass like, "Huh, what are you?"

And then just like walked away. And I was like, " Cool. That was easy."

And it got to be that easy because of of just the natural setup of having a semi-aquatic turtle that requires being in a tank and a dog. I also knew Oso very well at that point, and so I was like, "Zorro's not moving fast enough for Oso to care at this moment in time."

I was a little bit worried when we, we changed Zorro's set up and, and, you know, he's now much more at Oso height. It would be easier for something to happen. And let's be real, if something happened, it would be Zorro who escapes his enclosure, not Oso, like, trying to get in. Let's set the record straight here.

But even then, you know, Zoro's like banging around and, and doing his thing and like pushing his little plexiglass out at Oso, and Oso's like, "Dude, what? Why?" Like, just does not care at all. So but that said I love cats. I miss having a cat so much. We had a, a, a cat training day for our team at a local shelter several months ago, and there was a cat that I absolutely fell in love with. And they're like, "Well, you know, she's available for adoption." And I was like, "I do know that." I also know how much work it would take to integrate a, a cat into my household and to keep everyone safe, and I know how difficult it would be in my house to like do baby gates and, and all of that.

And as much as I love this cat, I am just not able or willing to put in the work right now. 

So, a cat will happen one day, and Oso will not be here when that day comes because I know what it will take

[00:13:40] Emily: And I do want to just acknowledge the outliers because yes, there are absolutely times where bringing a new pet into the home makes things easier. That is true. I had a client with an incredibly anxious Italian greyhound. We had been working for a while on giving this greyhound skills and more agency, and we had made progress and, and they were doing well. And then the next time I went to the client's house, lo and behold, they had adopted another dog, and the two dogs instantly fell in love with each other. The new dog was just this confident, happy, friendly dog and had become the emotional support animal for the Italian greyhound. And my client was so excited, and she was like, "I don't need your help anymore because we've solved the problem."

And she's like, "I just, I didn't know that, like, getting a dog would solve the problem." And I was like, "I am super glad that this worked for you. I am so happy for everybody involved. And also please know that you are incredibly lucky, and this is usually not how it works out. And getting a dog more often than not, not only doesn't solve the problem, it compounds the problem. So I love this for you, and also in the future if you have another animal with a behavior issue, please work with a behavior professional instead of just trying to get a dog as the solution because there are no guarantees that you will have, this magic moment will happen a second time." And y- it, it's not, it doesn't go this beautifully always, right? and and so, like, I mean, like- It's, it does happen sometimes, and I think that's why people are so optimistic about it because people are like, "Well, I knew this one person who got another dog or another cat or another whatever, and it solved all their problems." And it's like, well, yes, and you have to look at all of the extenuating circumstances that made that true in that context w- where it's not true in most contexts, right? And even when you're talking about social species that really need companions like kitty cats and guinea pigs and rabbits most of the time, more often than not, if you just throw them together, it's not gonna go well because that's not how it works. Like, you can't, you can't just throw two members of a social species together and be like, "It's true love, right?"

Like, imagine if that, if somebody tried to do that to us humans. Like, all right. I've actually... I feel like this has been a reality show at some point, like just smashing two people together in a house and being like, "You're a couple now." Like, it just doesn't... That's not how it works, right? So even when species technically need conspecifics to have their needs met and be happy, it's still a lot of labor.

It's a whole process to integrate those animals together more often than not. Sometimes the, you know, lightning strikes, but more often than not it doesn't strike, and it's just a lot of work, right?

[00:16:43] Ellen: Yeah, we had no qualms. I mean, I had qualms. I had qualms about bringing Griffy home. And none of it was related to Leica. Leica was gonna be fine, 'cause we had had dogs in and out of the house. She had... She was very social. She still is very social, all of those things. Integration went really smoothly. And I will not be bringing another dog into this house until there are no more dogs into this house. Because now Leica is of an age where she loves puppies, and the stress of a puppy is not something that she gets to consent to.

And Griffy, there's just, that mom stress level would be so high.

[00:17:18] Emily: And I will say that the only reason I made that decision to bring Miley home when I did, there were a few reasons, one of which is I was not okay after Brie was gone. I have two fish tanks with over, you know, 200 animals in them because I was so not okay. I was like, " I'm going to just make poor life choices."

No, I'm, I'm kidding. I love my tanks. I don't regret them at all. They bring me joy every day. But I was not okay after my after Brie passed. But also more importantly, the reason that I made the decision to get Miley when I did is because Copper in his whole life has been incredibly pro-social, and when he is a single dog, he does get depressed. We see that he is sad when he doesn't have a companion. That's why we got Brie in the first place, because he really missed his doggy friends in Austin when we moved to Utah, and that was a big reason that I decided to get Miley is that Copper, the first couple of months after Brie passed away, he was like, "You mean I get all the snacks to myself?" And then we started to see that he was getting lonely and depressed again. So I made that decision. The opportunity arose for me to get Miley. It wasn't wasn't something that I had necessarily planned, it just, the stars aligned. The timing was what it was. I really needed another companion dog, and Copper also needed another companion dog. So I made the assessment that it was worth the risk of integrating a puppy with a geriatric dog because my geriatric dog was sad and alone. And he wanted... And he does, he loves Miley. The only issue is teaching her when he's had enough and he needs a break from her, and making sure that he gets lots of opportunities for those breaks and he gets as much rest as he needs. But he does love her, and they are best friends now. But it has been a lot, it was a lot of work, and it took a lot of expertise to get them to that pl- point.

[00:19:22] Ellen: The second question that we get very often is not about whether or not we should acquire a new pet. It's more often for people who have multiple pets in the household, and that is how, how do I make sure that I am treating my pets fairly? How do I make sure that I am not building strife between the two or three or four of them in the way that I care for them?

[00:19:45] Allie: One of the most important things to remember when we're talking about this question is that our pets don't necessarily see fair in the same way that humans do. So I'm going to answer a tangential question, which is how do I make sure I'm meeting all of my pets' needs when they all have varying needs?

Because I think at the root of it, that's really, like, w- what people are asking when they're asking that question. Like, that's the spirit of the question, is how do I make sure that, that everyone is happy and healthy and safe, and I'm not putting so much focus on one of my pets that it's to the detriment of somebody else.

So I'm gonna answer that question instead of the one that was asked, like politicians do. You ask the, the question that you wish someone asked, or you answer the question you wish someone asked. If we're answering that question, I, I think you're gonna know what my answer is if you've been listening to our podcast, because it's the enrichment framework, and you go through the enrichment framework with each of your pets, and you make sure that, that their needs are being met and all of that good sort of stuff.

And, and not only being okay with, but feeling sometimes liberated by your pets are going to need different things. And so, I'm... Emily, I'm sure you're gonna talk about this when you talk about Miley and Copper of it's probably great for you that while Miley needs regular exercise, her, her... all of her stuff that she is doing, it's probably liberating that Copper does not need those things to have his needs be met.

And it's not that you're focusing so much on Miley that it's to the detriment of Copper, it's that they're two completely different individuals who need different things, and that is a good thing. That's a, you know... I think about that in, in my household with Zorro, because I just outed myself for, of saying that I forget that Zorro, like, exists even though he l- lives in my office and is within eight feet of me m- most of the time.

But it's because he needs relatively little from me, you know? He is not a domesticated species. He cares that I bring food, and that is truly it. If I die tomorrow, as long as somebody else brought the food... And this was true when I was in the hospital. He and Alex made good friends when I was in the hospital.

As long as somebody else is bringing the food, he doesn't really care about me as a human being.

And that's fine. Whatever. It's not like I've lived with this creature for, you know- 17 years. It's cool. H- but yeah, Oso does get a lot more of my attention because he needs a lot more of my attention.

[00:22:30] Emily: Yes, you absolutely nailed it. I, I love that Copper is 17, and so Miley does all of his exercise for me. Like, the, the amount of exercise that he needs is going out into the yard with Miley, romping around, playing, then napping in the sun, and then getting up and maybe having another romp, and then, like, going to talk to the neighbor dogs, who they're BFFs.

Our dogs and the neighbor's dogs are BFFs. So they have, like, you know, conversations through the fence with each other. And then he's wiped. He's out. He's good for the day. And that gives... That allows me to then go do the other, the additional stuff that Miley needs because he's like, "Yeah, okay, cool.

Peace. I'm gonna sleep for the next 18 hours," right? it is, it's great that I, he gives me the space to meet all of Miley's needs. And my one remaining bird, Kaya, I've had her since she was a baby. We have such a good relationship. We're like an old married couple. But she's got an entire bird room to herself with so much to do in it.

It's w- on the weekends I just set her new foraging and enrichment stuff out, and then she's good for the week. And in the morning I come in, I give her fresh food, I check her water to see if it needs to be refreshed. She comes out. She wants s- anywhere between five to 10 minutes of lovins or playing the boop game or whatever, w- whatever interaction she wants that day. And then she's like, "Okay, thanks. I'm good. I'm gonna go eat my breakfast now." Every once in a while she'll call for me in the evening and she'll want a second lovins session in the evening that is usually even shorter, like just a minute or two. She just wants me to check in, say hi, give her some scritches, and then she's good. And when she first lays eggs, she doesn't even want that. For the first, like, two weeks after she's laid eggs, I don't see her because she won't come out of her little nesting box. So she doesn't even need that much attention when she's on eggs. So she's so easy at this point. She was a lot of work when she was a baby, but at, at a, as an 18-year-old bird, she requires so little effort from me that I- it's

I think the reason I don't talk about her on the podcast a lot is because she's just a v- all of her needs are met, and also she requires very little effort from me. So, and my tanks, my pea puffer just eats the snails and the shrimps that are in his tank. All I have to do for him is, like, make sure his water gets topped off once in a while. And the other tank is almost that sufficient. I have to sprinkle a little food on top, but most of the food is s- is created by the esa- ecosystem. and so, and obviously tank animals don't need any social bonding time. They don't care about me at all, right? I like watching them. They bring me peace and joy. But they could not care less about me as a person. So, like, it, I have, the reason my multi-pet household works is because I only have one animal that needs a lot of individualized attention and support, and everybody else is just kind of, like, on maintenance mode, right? And that's why it works for me

[00:25:45] Ellen: And I think that takes us into our next question. The first question was, should I get another pet? The second question, once I have more than one pet, how do I treat them With equity. And then the third one is, how do I bring a new pet into the household?

[00:26:01] Emily: You know I'm gonna say it depends, right? Ev- everybody knew that. Everybody who has listened to this podcast for more than, like, this episode knew that I was gonna say it depends, right?

[00:26:10] Ellen: I think if they've listened to m- many of the episodes, they either had a guess that you were gonna say, "It depends," or I was gonna say, "I don't know. I'm not your behavior consultant." Congratulations. We've provided you with predictability

[00:26:22] Emily: yeah. Say more about the, like, behavior consultant thing, cause I am definitely on the same page with you about that, but I wanna hear y-what you have to say about that

[00:26:31] Ellen: I think through this podcast episode, we've already articulated that each of us have brought multiple pets in at different times, in different scenarios, in different living conditions, and it has been wildly different for each of us depending on a number of factors. What is the age of everybody in the household?

How bought in is everybody on that, on this household? How social is everyone in this household? What species are we bringing in? What species are already in the house? What is the skill that we have? What do we have in terms of preparation for a crate and rotate if we need to provide that type of thing? How rusty are your skills when it comes to teaching? 'Cause I'm a, I'm a be honest, I'm gonna be really rusty if I get another dog after these guys, and what it looks like to have to establish all of the skills that are just normal in my dog's day to day. How much time, energy, and bandwidth do you realistically have? Because if I was to bring a puppy in right now, I would cry all the time. I would just be so overwhelmed Having two senior dogs, their needs are very much in alignment with mine and the way that we live our life. Bringing in a new puppy or even just like an adult dog rather than a senior or a geriatric would be an enti- it would require an entirely different routine is my guess 

[00:27:53] Emily: I would say even bringing in a senior or a geriatric dog, you would still have to integrate them into the household, build the relationship, teach them the skills. Like, the

reason that your senior dogs are easy is because you have already done the work of teaching them so m- they are highly skilled animals, and right now they're just on maintenance.

They're just living the life with the skills they have. Whereas even an older dog that you brought in would not have those skills, so you would be starting from scratch regardless.

[00:28:23] Ellen: Yeah. And I would say even with my resident dog, I've had Lyca since she was like between 8 and 12 weeks old. We got Griffy like right around his one-year birthday, at least as it was reported to the shelter. And as they age and enter new life stages, it's almost like getting a new pet because you need to re-meet them throughout every life stage.

What are your needs now? Because your needs now are wildly different than... I mean, Lyca's dietary and GI needs have changed drastically in the last year, and we're still trying to figure all of those things out. So if you really want a new pet, maybe just look at the pet in front of you and say, "Do I truly know you still?" Or, "Is this an opportunity to build a deeper connection?" 'Cause you might have a different pet than you had or that you think you had in your house already. Not in like a dark way, but in a, " It's cool that we get to grow together."

[00:29:16] Emily: we, I've talked multiple times in multiple episodes about how Miley went through her big girl heat cycle and came out the other side of it a different dog, and I had to adjust to my new dog, my new Miley. So yeah, for sure

[00:29:29] Ellen: And then I think the last one is we don't know the makeup of your actual physical house. And so when it comes to integrating individuals, that is-- I don't think it's talked enough how much the actual physical environment is going to make or break how successful you are in being able to do that. Bringing a dog into a tiny home, integrating two dogs in a tiny home, particularly if they're medium to large-sized dogs, it's gonna be a wildly different scenario than integrating two dogs on a ranch where you actually have kennels or you have multiple living spaces and you have a multi-generational setup and all of those things

[00:30:07] Emily: Yeah. I mean, I love Irish wolfhounds and so does my partner. And after Bree passed away well, actually before Bree passed away, we would talk about, like, you know, what dogs would we be interested in getting in the future, and I knew that I wanted to get a dog from a breeder because I've spent my entire life... I've never gotten to choose a pet before. They've always just ki- kind of been dumped on me, and I've, I've had to, you know, support animals with very high support needs. And so I had already, we had already decided that I, we were gonna get a puppy from a really good breeder because I wanted a break. And we were talking about Irish wolfhound versus Basenji versus, you know, a couple other breeds.

And o- one of the, the, really the biggest deciding factor was we don't have a driveway. In our neighborhood, the front yards are fenced off, and you just park on the side of the road,

and we have stairs getting up to our front porch, And

what would it look like for me to have 150-pound dog that I needed to carry to the car because they had an injury or something?

You know what I mean? And I realized that we don't have the setup with my body and my physical needs, we don't have the setup for me to actually be able to successfully and safely transport that dog if we needed to. And that alone was a, a deciding factor. Like, without any other considerations, just looking at our yard and where our car is in relation to our front door was a deciding factor for why we ruled out Irish wolfhounds as a possibility.

So that kind of stuff, I, I don't think that people who aren't in this profession are necessarily gonna know to think about those things when they're making those decisions.

[00:31:56] Ellen: I will also say, like I have ... I was thinking about this recently, 'cause I have worked with thousands of dogs. Well over multiple thousands of dogs at this stage. So I have a huge database of expectations for different bloodlines and different breeds. Breed isn't everything, and also I make de- some decisions based on breed. And so If you don't have that database, I also can't tell you how to integrate two dogs into your house because I don't know what kind of dog are you bringing into your house. There are some breeds that I would not recommend having multiples of in households because I have seen it go so bad. And that's a j- a wild overstatement, but also I'm making wild overstatements because I am talking to the masses of what I would really recommend you not do.

[00:32:50] Emily: The risk is too high f- for people who don't know how to mitigate that risk

[00:32:55] Ellen: And if you've never met, so I, I I realized I have never acquired a pet without having met at least one of them first. And so the idea that you're picking based on aesthetics or what you see on social media or something else is gonna open you up to an entirely different set of risks, because you don't have expectations of what it's gonna be like to live with this type of pet for a really long time. So I've had clients that come to me and they're like, "Okay, I want another pet. My dog can handle having another pet. I'm ready to bring in a, another dog. Based on what you know of me and my lifestyle and all of these things, what do you recommend that I should look for, or what do you recommend that I avoid to increase the likelihood that integration into my household is successful?" And that's a conversation I have with people frequently, and it makes a big difference

[00:33:40] Emily: Yeah. And then we have the added complication of shelter pets or mixed breed, wherever you get them from. And I wanna be clear, friends, I am not anti-shelter. I am pro-ethical sheltering and pro-ethical breeding, and I am anti-unethical sheltering and anti-unethical breeding. So what I'm about to say is not against

I'm not anti-shelter dogs, okay? But something that needs consideration is that- Not every organization is ethical, and they will put animals out into the world with known behavior issues without telling the adopters because save them all. And so, like, that's one issue. The other issue is shelters and rescue groups don't always know about behavior issues.

And so they are, they are ethical organizations and they make ethical decisions, and still sometimes you can get a, "Surprise, this dog has this issue and I wasn't prepared for this." And, and also, there's, there's so much, not just research, but the research that exists aligns with my own database of thousands of dogs and having worked in shelters and with rescue groups since 1990, that just because a dog looks like a certain breed, if they're mixed, does not mean that they're going to behave like that breed. So if you adopt a dog from the shelter that looks a certain way and you assume that because of their morphology they're going to have a certain personality or set of behaviors, you are setting yourself up to be real surprised because there is no correlation in mixed breeds between morphology, personality, and behavior. And so with all of tho- those, like, unknown factors, any time you are bringing home a dog or a cat or a horse or a pig or a parrot from a rescue group or a shelter they're also... You also need to be aware that you are getting, you know, shelter animals are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get, right?

And so you ha- I, I think that it is worthwhile for people to ask the organization if, if they have a foster to adopt policy, and if they don't have a foster to adopt policy, even if you have to legally adopt the dog or cat or whatever pet is, mentally treat it like a foster and bring that animal into your home with the expectation that you are trialing this pet to see if they can succeed in your home.

Because there are just so many unknowns that if you attach... What, what we have seen over and over again in our job is that people adopt an animal and they've been fed the rhetoric of forever home stuff, and so they just immediately wrap their hearts around this animal, and this animal And they, they have these expectations of this animal's gonna be BFFs, I'm gonna have you for the rest of your life, and then when the animal doesn't work with their home, their other pets, for whatever reason the animal doesn't work out, the humans end up feeling enormous shame and guilt, and they try to force themselves to make it work because the idea of returning that animal to the organization they got them from feels like a failure or feels like they're doing something wrong. And I strongly encourage people to think of it like a trial, a foster situation first. Because it doesn't mean that the shelter dogs are bad or scary or mean or, or inferior in any way. I have in, thousands, thousands of, of animals from shelters that I absolutely have adored and they have been great, great dogs or cats or par- parrots, whatever. But I do think there's a, a layer of caution that people should take of, of understanding that they are getting an unknown entity, and what the dog or whatever pet showed them in the shelter or rescue group is not necessarily what they're gonna see in their home. And if you go into it with that mindset, it's easier to make a good decision that supports everybody involved. If you're not going into it thinking, "You're mine now, and I'm gonna have you for the rest of your life," right? So just that when you... Just be aware that you are bringing an unknown entity in your home, and there, there should be kind of a trial period before you allow yourself to wrap your heart around them, right? Save yourself some grief and shame and guilt.

[00:38:19] Allie: And I would say that's true for folks purchasing from breeders as well. I think that's true for every, every animal who's coming into your home, not just for shelter animals. I've, I've met a lot of clients who didn't know what they were getting themselves into. I'm, I'm Thinking especially of, like, clients who didn't know that there was a difference between show-bred Labs and field-bred Labs. Those are like, they may as well be completely different breeds. 

Like, they're just... No, they are so different. And had no idea what they were getting themselves into and would not have made that choice had they had a different choice.

And, and for some of those people, it wa- the answer was to re- to return that dog to to the breeder and

have that dog find a family who was prepared for a field-bred Lab and everything that goes along with, with, usually goes along with that kind of dog. For the dogs I'm talking about who I met, they got the memo that they were true working lineage dogs.

But uh, since you, uh, mentioned sheltering I have a couple of things. And I don't even know when it started. It definitely wasn't a thing 20 years ago when you and I were in sheltering, starting in sheltering.

Of either I've heard it as the two-week shutdown or the three days, three weeks, three months for, for bringing home shelter dogs. And I've heard the three days, three weeks, three months, I'm gonna call it the 3-3-3 rule because that's what the internet said people are now calling it, and that is way easier to say.

So I'm gonna call it the 3-3-3 rule. Um, I've seen that one I think more often or from at least larger organizations than I have the two-week shutdown, but I hear of both regularly in the sheltering world. The two-week shutdown is in the first two weeks of bringing home an, an adopted animal, you just let them hang out, let them decompress.

There's no parties. There's no taking them to, to the dog park. There's no taking them over to your friend's house to show off how cute your new dog is. Just let them decompress. Uh, The 3-3-3 rule is a little bit more involved, and the premise is that it takes three days for your dog to figure out their new home and family.

I said premise, y'all, because I'm, I'm putting giant asterisks next to all of these things, and we're gonna talk about that. Three weeks is when they've figured out w- they live with you and, and start learning your routine, and three months your dog has become a part of the family. I'm gonna push back on the 3-3-r- 3 rule.

Actually, before I push back, I'm going to say one of the things that I really appreciate about these two particular recommendations coming out is that I do think it has the, the animal welfare world in general in that prior people are just like... A- and y'all, when I, when we got new dogs when I was growing up, this is what we did of, like, just walk the dog into the house and we're home.

And and that's when we're doing the meet and greet, and that's when they're, you know, like all of that sort of stuff. So, like, I will say that one of the things I appreciate about these, these this rhetoric coming out is it provides- a m- usually a better transition than what was happening before, and because what was happening before was not a transition at all.

So it gives people structure and, and if you haven't introduced an, a pet to your home, or like me, you had only ever seen where, like, you just walk the dog into the house and see what happens no shade to, to my parents on that, you know? Like, that's all they knew.

What I will push back on is less with the two-week shutdown, though two weeks is a, honestly a somewhat arbitrary number. There's, like, a, a, a kernel of truth in that when we look at, like, the literature on, like, stress hormones and half-lives for stress hormones and, like, all of that sort of stuff. And also, I'm not going to presume that a dog's stress hormones just, like, completely stop happening once they get home.

Like, it's still stressful. So, like, I think it's a lot more nuanced than just saying, like, at two weeks you stop being stressed. That's n- not true. I've also met some kiddos clearly, like some of the dogs I grew up with, who were fine just being thrown into the mix, and they're like, "Yeah, I do live here now.

You're right." two weeks is somewhat arbitrary and also, I think, a fairly good general rule uh, if you're not sure about the animal you're bringing into your home.

And by that, I mean I knew Oso for, like, four year- no, I knew Oso for almost three years before adopting him. So, like, I knew Oso before bringing him into my home very, very, very well.

And so that was why there was pretty much no surprises with him, because I knew him for three years prior. Where I push back more is the s- the three, three, three rule. One, because we have no idea what animals are thinking. Like, it's, it's completely talking about covert behavior and, like, I, I'm not even g- gonna g- I've already been on enough soapboxes and rabbit holes that I'm not gonna go down that one.

But the other is that I've just seen it be wrong. Like, my, my internal database of also thousands of dogs does not line up with, with that. We do tend to see, you know, in that, like, a few days they're settling in a little bit more, a few weeks they're settling in a little bit more, a few months they're settling in a little bit more.

I don't usually see it in the very stark timeline that is provided in that rule. But I will say that when clients ask me clients with, with new pets ask me, "How long should I expect it to take for my animal to to, to- Be like fully transitioned, integrated into my house, even if there are not other animals in the house, I tell them probably closer to a year.

And I've seen many, many dogs who were brought home in the spring, had absolutely no issues until their humans put on a winter coat and a hat, and the dog was like, "I have no idea who you are, and we have a problem now."

And this might be six or seven months later. And so especially because I'm in a, in an area that has very drastic seasons, which also requires very different enrichment plans for, for my own pets, for really any of the pets that live here I tell people let them experience a full year of all the things that humans do that pets find weird around the holidays, where they're like, "Hold up. You're saying I can't bring my stick inside, but you brought an entire tree? Like, how is that fair?" Like, w- we have weird rules if you're looking at it from another species' perspective.

[00:45:46] Emily: Well, and I will say something that's gonna sound like it's conflicting with what you just said, but it's really not. I, the, there's, there are expectations that are about the three, three, three rule that are not long enough, and others that are maybe too long. By which I mean when I was working at the sanctuary where we met one of the things I was starting to do is I, I had noticed what felt like a pattern to me that a lot of adopters were saying the dog was fine, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere started guarding, and I ke- I felt like I kept hearing two months, two months, two months. So I actually searched through all of my training plans for all of the u- the dogs that we had adopted out. I searched for t- the keywords two months. Over 100 training plans had two months in the... And I don't even know how many hundreds of dogs I, we, I, I was overseeing their post-adoption behavior support in that, in the time that I was there.

I, I don't know what the total number is. But over 100 of them in two and a half years were seeing guarding starting around the two-month mark, which meant that a, that, that at least for that population of animals, it would take them about two months to realize, "This is my house. This is my sofa.

This is my person. This is my property, and nobody else can get close to it." And it was such a reliable pattern that that actually carried out into me working with clients in the real world after we left that sanctuary. And I saw that pattern over and over and over again, and o- one of the reasons that people would tell me that this was so distressing to them is because they weren't expecting.

Two months at, at the same time felt like too long of a period after they brought the dog home for the dog to start guarding, and at the same time it didn't feel long enough because everybody said it would take three months for the dog to settle in. A, so, like, two months was, like, incorrect in a lot of people's brains, and, and so it was really distressing to them.

They're like, "Why is this happening?" And I'm like, "It's actually really common," at least with the population that I'm working with in this area. It's really common for dogs to take about two months to go, "This is mine. I'm gonna start guarding it." So I agree with you, Ally, that that rule is helpful. It's, it's an improvement on what it was, and also it's not descriptive enough to fully prepare people for all of life's surprises that happen when you bring a new beast into your home, right?

[00:48:23] Ellen: When I'm prepping clients to bring a new pet into the household to the think of this as a foster Be prepared to make hard decisions. Right decisions can be very hard sometimes. I ask them to think about before they have looked at pets, before they have bonded with a pet, I ask them to create a list of their deal breakers so that it is very clear before there is an emotional attachment. When we went and got Griffy, I had a lot of fears this anxious creature, anxious creature in a hard environment. And there were a lot of things I didn't want, and they weren't deal breakers. The thing that would have been a deal breaker is if Laika's quality of life or Laika's safety was on the line. And knowing that, having that hard line already set meant that if at at some point when we were in that kind of fostering phase, Laika's welfare, well-being, or safety was on the line, we didn't have to have a conversation about it, we had already made the decision, because it can be really hard to make the decision about an individual. It can be very easy to make the decision about a scenario, and that has helped a lot of my clients make an actual risk assessment. Whether or not there's so many things on this list that are a deal breaker that are very realistic in terms of things that could happen, then you are not ready for another pet because the list that you do not or cannot handle could be a vast majority of the population that could come into your home

[00:49:59] Emily: Yeah. And I, and I, I, I love that you said that, and I wanna add on to that, that it is helpful before y- you bring each new pet home to reassess what your li- what your deal breaker list is. Because for example, when I was working with pri- private clients in person, I would be gone 12 hours a day m- m- more often than not, five days a week. And so one of the deal breakers for me was I can take any behavior issue except separation related behaviors. I, I cannot logistically accommodate an animal with separation related behaviors. Now I work from home, I almost never leave the house, and our vet clinic is walking distance from our house. I am ideally suited to bring in an animal with separation related behaviors. And so my deal breaker list has changed because my situation has changed and my environment has changed, right? So I think that is another thing to consider is your deal ... You need to re- reassess your deal breaker list every time before you bring a new pet home, because it will change over time

All right, I'll just, I'll do a little summary thing. So in summary, if you're planning on bringing an animal home, the best way to know how to integrate that new pet into your home is to hire a behavior professional. And if that is not available to you, then think long and hard about all of these details that we talked about and make sure that you're prepared to handle those details because there are a lot of layers that most people who aren't behavior professionals don't, don't know how to think of. So do your best to, to put yourself in your pet's shoes and look at your environment and see what it would look like from their point of view. Do your best to think about your deal breaker list and think about the logistics of sharing your home with another beast. But ideally, perfect world scenario, you would hire a behavior professional to help you with that because it's gonna make integration so much easier.

[00:51:55] 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. 

The US is big. Wait, Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, I have a thing

[00:52:53] Emily: What just happened?

[00:52:54] Ellen: I mean, it is a Q&A episode. This is entirely on brand

[00:52:58] Emily: It is. It's true.

[00:52:59] Allie: I learned a thing that I was going to fact-check and then I forgot that I learned it, and so now we're here because my brain remembered it. Okay, because you have been saying forever that maps are liars, and you're not wrong because the way that the map is drawn is legitimately lying

[00:53:19] Ellen: I know Sorry to bust that to you Yeah,

[00:53:23] Emily: You're

[00:53:23] Ellen: I

[00:53:23] Emily: sad that you didn't get to blow Ellen's mind.

[00:53:26] Allie: Yeah

[00:53:26] Emily: think Ellen was anything other than literal when she said that? I'm confused as to why you're surprised that Ellen just said something without m- mean- meaning it

[00:53:36] Allie: Because we s- we say time is a construct all the time, and obviously it's more than-

[00:53:41] Ellen: literally true

[00:53:42] Emily: It's also literally true

[00:53:44] Allie: It, it is, and also seasons exist without us and days exist without us

[00:53:49] Emily: measurement of time is a construct

[00:53:51] Allie: That's what I'm saying. It's nuanced, and so I thought there was nuance

[00:53:57] Ellen: No. Maps are a colonialism propaganda machine, and the reason that the US is always centered is because of colonialism, and also the reason that we look disproportionately sized compared to other things are all mind games.

[00:54:13] Allie: I, learned that while I was learning it, I said, "Alex, I need to tell Ellen this." And then I didn't

[00:54:21] Ellen: Thank you for telling me, and thank you for remembering excitedly

[00:54:24] Emily: And thank you for pronouncing nuanced, nuanced, multiple times in a row. that

[00:54:29] Ellen: You gotta be careful though,

[00:54:30] Emily: day

[00:54:31] Ellen: that, 'cause that could end up being how it permanently is for you. I said brain frog one time as a joke, and it stuck. I have

[00:54:39] Allie: हाँ

[00:54:39] Ellen: conscious effort to say brain fog now