Full Transcript for Practical Guide to Adolescence with guest: Monica Henderson!

think that we, [...] again, we talk so much about socialization and exposure, and of course it's so important, [...] but we really miss the mark when it comes to making these preparations. We know that, [...] and I say no, and what I mean by that is we are sort of guessing, right? Because there's not a lot of published information about adolescents. [...] We know that it occurs potentially starting at around five to 14 months, depending on the individual dog, and it might last until social maturity, which again, depending on the dog, might be 18 months, might be three years. We don't know. [...] Such a wide range. It is. And I think that a lot of times, for some dogs, adolescents is a blip on the radio, radar. [...] You might have a dog that has a couple of off days and then everything's fine again, or you wake up and you go for your regular walk and your puppy last night when you went to bed was this happy, fluffy, compliant thing that loved you more than anything and you wake up ready to start your day with the same exact puppy and then you have a dog that goes, Oh, there's a trash can outside. Been there my whole entire life, but now it's the scariest thing that I've ever seen. There's definitely a monster in there. Yeah, so I think with adolescents, we have a general picture that there is an increase in independence, that there is some increase in impulsivity or that we see a lack of impulse control. We also assume that there are fear periods in adolescents, but again, who actually knows? 'Cause it's not well studied and certainly not published if it is. [...] Is that fear period necessarily fear or could it be that these puppies are experiencing some pain or discomfort because of physical growth and then they see something that is in their adolescent brains novel and then they go, Oh, this thing is frightening. I also don't feel good. Here's a big overreaction of me, Barchy Lungyup, on the end of the leash. Hard to know, but it's all stuff that we see and notice and hear about through the great fine of pet professionals of what our clients and patients are experiencing during this really weird developmental phase. I think it's doubly hard because you don't get a letter in the mail saying, Notice in 15 days, your puppy's gonna turn into a goblin. And it's not even super clear from what you're saying, like in research and settings like that, it's not even clear what's gonna happen if anything. And so how do you prep somebody for a time that they may or may not experience? [...] And yeah. I think this goes back to what Jen A. was mentioning, is that this is about communication, right? Like we can't necessarily sit our clients down and say, Okay, on exactly nine months and four days after your puppy's birthday, expect these changes to happen. But what we can do is say, Hey, listen, this really compliant puppy is awesome and I know that you feel like things are going great and we love that for you. However, we want to prepare you for the fact that these things could happen. Don't get like a day's ago on the fact that your puppy is doing great now and just let this fall off the radar, right? In adolescence. So even if we start at say five to six months old, let's just make that our broad definition of adolescence, it's really important that we continue with consistency in training, right? Like we know that socialization, developmentally socialization kind of ends at 14 to 16 weeks old. Again, not well defined, so we're sort of making a guess, but it's important that clients understand that training and consistency has to continue throughout this time because adolescence is also where we're going to see big holes in our training, right? Like if a six week puppy class from eight to 14 weeks does not a well-trained dog make and it certainly does not make a well-trained adolescent. Absolutely. [...] Yeah, I notice a lot that people are like, Oh, six months, I'm house trained and my dog can now be left out of the crate. And for me, that's just way too early because a bad adolescence will then have a dog learning to get into things, explore their environment more when I'm not there to control what they're doing. Yeah, that's just, we can't have too much freedom too early because if we have a bad run of adolescence or a difficult run of adolescence, then we're just not setting ourselves up for success. We're setting ourselves up for knowing that we're going backwards or feeling like we're going backwards, even though really it was just that we gave too much freedom too early when they weren't quite ready for it. Yeah, I mean, it's essentially like giving your toddler keys to a Ferrari and saying, I don't expect you to make any poor choices with this whatsoever. Yeah. You know, in those situations, it's we're setting up our puppies to be very [...] unsuccessful as far as our human world, right? Like again, going back to what we know that how dogs think and how dogs learn, this isn't about good and bad or right and wrong, right? Like we know that those are human constructs. This is about what feels good to do. And sometimes when you're an adolescent, [...] what feels good for you to do is the exact opposite is what we as humans want to do. Like it might be that somebody didn't close the lid to the trash all the way and you at best you get into the trash can. [...] It's really reinforcing for a dog to do that, but it is very punishing for us as humans to walk in and see that our puppies have done that. [...] It's just a lot about helping these animals in this time frame make really good choices, which puts a lot of pressure and a lot of onus back on clients to do. We have to make sure that our clients are set up to be as successful as possible. And give them as much information as we can to help them help their dogs make really, really good choices. Yeah, and that exactly, they just need to be able to fit into our world that we've created. And this is nothing like what they were actually [...]

genetically and historically supposed to do. You leave them with the couch and they might find out that there's fluff inside and that's really fun to pull out. Yeah, and we have to, [...] yeah, I mean, making sure that they are set up with enrichment. I am a very firm believer that adolescents, just like a toddler child needs to have [...] scheduled downtime. So for me, it seems like for the clients that I see, it seems like the witching hours for adolescents, shenanigans is like mid-morning and kind of mid-afternoon. So 11 and three-ish, let's just say. So it is always my recommendation for clients with adolescents that they have their morning routine, which again, we'll talk about in a second, something super important is routine consistency, but you've got your morning routine. And instead of just letting your puppies chase dopamine by doing shenanigans all day, or some downtime, it doesn't necessarily have to be that you're in a crate in a quiet dark room sleeping, but it has to be that you are allowing yourself to rest and not just doing stuff that's just getting you constant hits of dopamine to where you're like a little maniac. It's no longer super exciting to just get in the trash can. Now maybe I might need to go into the trash can, got some dopamine from that. Maybe I should start to climb on the counters because somebody left a loaf of bread out, right? So a lot of the things that we see can be managed as well. Yeah. So what are some things that you think about? Sorry, Jen. Did you have a better idea? No, all I was gonna say I mean, how would you know I didn't finish? [...] All I was gonna say in response to what Monica said was that I think we need to normalize management for longer. Yeah, absolutely. The first time your puppy's successful being out of the crate or loose on their own or whatever it is, doesn't mean that's how it's gonna be forever. Right? Like that first time that they're out is almost a fluke and not a pattern, right? Yeah, I think that And I think if we can help people understand [...] that they're gonna need those baby gates, they're going to need their crates, they're going to need all of their chew toys, they're going to need all these things longer and longer, that should be part of that education too. [...] Yeah, and I think that it's super important for our clients to understand, like not to go into the detail that we understand what's reinforcement and how reinforcement works with animals, but I think that it's really important for clients to understand that like, once your teenage dog starts to, [...] it's very reinforcing to, and we'll just use the trash can again as the example to get into the trash can because there's just like a smorgasbord of delicious grossness in there for me. So that behavior has inherently been reinforced, right? So no matter how much yelling and fussing that you do when you get home, it doesn't matter. We've already developed a reinforcement strategy to get what the dog needs from

the situation. [...] And I think a lot of, I'm a big fan and I know that the two of you know this of the pre-mack principle, right? Like using dogs natural motivations to get desired reinforcement. And while I don't think that the pre-mack principle [...] is necessarily... [...] doesn't necessarily correlate to this. Like what can we do for our dogs to meet the need of sniffing and foraging and doing shenanigans, but in a controlled manner so that this need is met? Yeah. Yeah. Can you real quick explain the pre-mack principle and maybe give an example? Yeah. It's my favorite thing in the world. I have a 16-month-old intact malinois and for all intents and purposes, adolescents has not been bad for who he is and what he is. We have some Lucky. Yeah. Oh my God. [...] We have some barky, lungy feelings on leash and that's okay. But an example of pre-mack principle and I'll use it specifically for him. Again, intact boy, I work in an academic setting where there is a reproductive department right next to me. So there's all sorts of girls and smells. Yeah. Oh boy. Yeah. So one of the things that we that I work on for him is not bolting out the door directly to lick girl pee. It's disgusting and it like it's gross but it's something that he's going to do and I would rather not fight with him about it. So in order to access what he wants, which is a high probability behavior, sniffing girl pee, he has to sit down and check in with me for increasing time duration before I release him to go and pee. So essentially I am rewarding a boring low probability behavior, the thing that he does not want to do, which is acknowledge my existence, so that he can go do the exact thing that he wants to do, which is sniff girl pee. So it's also known It's known as grandma's rule, so eat your broccoli first and you can have dessert or do your homework and play your video games. I think of the Pink Floyd song where he says, How can you have your pudding if you haven't eaten your meat? That's right. And sometimes if people are familiar with that song, it's such a jarring thing to say that they'll go, Oh, okay, okay, I get it. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And I think, again, this is not a time where I feel like we need to create conflict and stress with our teenagers, right? So I think that this is And I heard this on another podcast. Dog training is simple, but it's not easy, right? So I say this, I talk about the pre-mack principle and how I implement it with my dog, that's what I do for a living. I'm a professional, so I understand what it took to get to this point. But I do think that it's important to talk about the fact that we don't We can use the things that our dogs want to do and the things that our dog need to do to reinforce the behaviors that we need and want them to do. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. What are some ways that you help clients with adolescent dogs that they are struggling with? Yeah. [...] So Gen B is very much aware of this as also a certified control and leash instructor. I am a really big fan of Leslie McDevitt's pattern games. And essentially, this just creates patterns and predictability for our dogs to make engaging with us as humans very reinforcing. I want for teenagers especially to always think that I am the key to anything else that they want. So some of the games that I use with teenage dogs, my favorites all the time forever for any dog is the up and down game. Eat food off the ground, look back up at me. That's it. That's all you need to do. This helps heavily reinforce finding my face. But I also like to use it with dogs that develop sensitivities or become sensitized to triggers out in the environment. We can use this as response substitution. We can use this as desensitization and counter conditioning as well. [...] And then variations of that, you know, whiplash terms. I want to send you away to go and do stuff. I'll flip around behind you. You go off and eat your food and then you look and you go, oh, poop. My mom and dad aren't here anymore. So then you have to turn around and find me too, which also helps kind of inform the dog that sometimes when you look up and you see that there's no parents in the world, that is a context clue for you to turn around and find your parents. If there's no parents, where could they possibly be? [...] So those are two of my very, very favorites that I will use for anything all the time. Because again, with with teenagers, we just need to make things as simple and as easy as possible and how much easier can it get than can you eat food off the ground and look back up at me? That's it. It's not a cued behavior. It's voluntary. And I think that for clients, it also gives them a very lot of information about where their dog is kind of mentally or emotionally at that moment in time. I cue people a lot to use it when they're at the vet's office and it's really distracting and they're stuck in one of those big lobbies where there's every animal under the sun and all your puppy wants to do is explore. If you have built that pattern of capturing them, right, because you're basically capturing, because there's no cuing, you're capturing them looking at you and that's what dispenses more food on the floor, then you can utilize it in a high stress environment like you're waiting for a grooming appointment, you're waiting for a vet appointment, you're stuck somewhere and you have your dog with you. I also encourage clients to use it right when they walk outside for their first walk to just stop in the driveway or stop on the porch and maybe do like five rounds. Nothing crazy. And I think too, one of the things that I really like about Up and Down in particular is because this is voluntary on the dog, that if your dog is fully engaged with you and is not very worried about their surroundings, when you're playing this game, it looks like they're nodding their head. Yes, I'm good to go. Everything feels good to me. When and if they start to get stressed out or

upset about their surrounding and they start scanning the environment, it looks like they're shaking their head no. So that is kind of a cue for a client to say, huh, maybe you need a little bit of space and you take your mat, which and then you move to, you know, three or two five feet away, and then play up and down game again. And see, are you able to nod yes and say tell me that you're okay, or do you still need a little bit more space? That's genius. Yeah, like, and I feel like when you explain that to clients, it's almost, you know, because if you if you know much about Leslie McDevitt, she's all about two way communication between us and our pets, right? And what better way to communicate freely with our dogs than them to literally say, Yes, I'm good with my surroundings or no, no, no, no, no, it's too much. And then instead of having to go, you know, the clients get frazzled because the dogs getting frazzled and then the staff at a vet hospital is getting frazzled because everybody's frazzled, you just go, Wow, you're not having a good time right now. Let me move you away and see if that can help. [...] Yeah. Honestly, I feel like vet staff sometimes could use some of the pattern games for a lot of things. Like, should we all become certified? [...] Yes, control and the controllers. Yeah. I lost my brain for a second. Yeah. [...] Yeah. You know, I think I do think that pattern games, other things that I think are very helpful are the look at bat game, where we are essentially, we are essentially asking our puppies to tell us about stressful things in the environment. Hey, I see that your ear flicked because you heard the whatever thing in the background, what's back there, your dog looks, you say, Oh my God, look at that. There was a thing back there after all and we give them cookies for it, right? So like, explore your surroundings, see what's going on in your environment, but tell me about it before you lose your marbles and go off into outer space to where I can't get you back. Right. [...] So, let's talk about vet care. How can we support these adolescent clients when they're patients? [...] Yeah, so this also gets really tricky with us, right? And I'm going to say something that's going to be a bit of a hot take. I think that with a demographic of adolescents, and this doesn't have to mean every adolescent dog that you see, particularly any puppies that have struggled with fear, anxiety, stress, conflict throughout their puppy series, my hot take is that maybe we should wait until adolescents is, and I'm doing air quotes, over before we consider spay and neuter. And I say that because, again, we don't have a lot of information about what's going on, but if we've got a behaviorally abnormal puppy already at this early age, it's likely some genetic component, right? It's not environmental. It's not anything that we necessarily could have done anything about. [...] If we now do an anesthetic procedure where they wake up and they feel weird and then they're potentially in a loud place that smells funny and they don't feel good, I think that there is a likelihood that we can potentially exacerbate some of, some problems that we may have otherwise been able to mitigate during this time. I have no proof of this whatsoever. Obviously, this is just experience and conjecture and just trying to think about ways that we can help adolescent dogs be the best that they can be. [...] Yeah. And I feel like that goes along with my hot take, which is that we don't educate owners on how to responsibly have an intact dog enough. And so those two things go hand in hand, and not everyone is going to be able to put that sort of responsibility first thing forward. And maybe those are the ones that we do stay in neuter regardless. But there's a lot of them that with the owner having proper education about being a responsible intact dog owner, they can get through adolescence just fine and really medically, there's not as much of a difference. [...] Right. Yeah. And this is, you know, Bob Barker really did a number on us all telling us when we were younger to spay or neuter our pets. And I believe in spay neuter, especially for most of the pet owning population, right? And I understand the need to do young spay neuter, especially coming from shelter and rescue environments. But I do think that if it's, you know, like what we've talked about before, if we can make it to where we as veterinary professionals are educating our clients on what to expect, right? Like, I have kept my last three dogs intact until I think my last Rottweiler was about 18 months when I neutered him. I did it earlier than I wanted to because my husband was not comfortable keeping him intact longer. [...] I kept my last female intact until she was about two. And again, my puppy is 16 months and he's still intact. [...] It's really, and maybe I've just been very lucky. It's not that big of a deal. You know, I don't, we keep everybody, you know, there's not a possibility for us for the boys to run around and impregnate every living female in the county. [...] And, you know, I think that with my female, the big thing was just understanding what an actual heat cycle looked like and keeping her away from male dogs during that time, you know? Do I think that it is, you know, it's not as hard as I was led to believe to manage intact dogs. I just think that you have to be thoughtful and responsible. But again, it goes back to us educating our clients about what thoughtful and responsible intact dog ownership looks like. Agreed. Yeah. So yeah. And I think when you consider that it's not just the act of spaying and neutering, these are dogs that are coming into the clinic early in the morning, they're sitting in a cage for an undetermined amount of time. Sometimes they're getting IV catheters and then they might get an IM injection if they won't allow an IV catheter, but now they've been handled twice. And then they feel weird from

falling asleep, waking up, their abdomen is painful when maybe their body was already painful. Yep. And it's just a whole lot for them to go through at a time where they could be so sensitive. Well, and then too, so we have that and then we have 10 to 14 days of recovery. Exactly. So there we've got, so during that time, I do think that that recovery, spaying neuter recovery is kind of a, for some owners, they're like, oh yeah, give me all the drugs. Let me, you know, keep my pets sedated during that time because it kind of gives them a break from having to constantly be bothered with their teenage dog. [...] But recovery, I mean, recovery is not easy. If you've got active, young, active dogs who can't do much with their bodies, what are you going to do? So then we've got to start thinking about how we can support post-op for these dogs, which goes into enrichment and mental enrichment and olfaction and things like that with them to help brain, keep their brains going while their bodies can't. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot compounded. Yeah. [...] And I think it also occurs during this time where they've had their last rabies, or they've had their rabies vaccine, and now we're waiting for almost a year before we see them. And there's all this time that they aren't getting support from their VEC staff unless it's an emergency or an urgent situation. [...] Yeah. And then we, you know, at best, we have a dog that comes in for vaccines. [...] And they're just a, you know, the typical wriggly, schmiggly adolescent that can't be bothered to hold still because maybe they've never been taught that. And then also, hey, I haven't been back to this place since I was a baby and I was still, I still have pliable brain, you know, and it wasn't scary then. Now I come back in and you mean somebody's going to hang on to me while other people do pokey stuff in my butt? No, not into that. [...] That's never happened before. Never. And, you know, I think in these situations too, what we can do as staff is perhaps during this time, we start from the top, you know, the first time that the first interaction with our clients, the CSR says, you know, oh yeah, I see that fluffy is, you know, just over a year now, how are things going? You know, do you think, and I don't know, maybe this is too much for a CSR, but this is also pillars of good communication, right? Like we have our entire staff educated on what to expect with our, with the patients that they are also a part of the team for. Yeah. And we tried to, from the top, from that first communication, we ask, how are things going? How have things been going? Have you noticed any, [...] you know, behavior changes that you would like to speak with Dr. Jen about? And maybe with those appointments, we can give them 15 extra minutes so that we have a little bit of time to take breaks with these patients instead of, and, you know, hopefully it's not, I work in a bubble right now, so I don't see a lot of over restraint anymore, but

I am very specific to stay in my bubble. [...] But I don't, I don't necessarily, I believe that over restraint still happens, but I think it's also really important for us as veterinary staff to remember that these, these situations, if we're putting our pets in situations, especially teenagers who are kind of behaviorally, emotionally fragile anyway, if we're putting them in situations that they can't escape from, all they learn to do is fight harder, which makes the situation worse for literally all of us. It makes it worse for the pets. The client is probably getting stressed out and mortified. The staff is certainly getting upset. [...] So why can't we just give them a little break with a licky mat or a food scatter, even just a food scatter away from the staff? And then we can try again instead of continuing to force issues and just making everything worse. Each bad experience is going to be get another bad experience, right? And then if we, you know, if it gets too bad, if we have to do more than two people to try to handle a patient for a vaccine, maybe we should think about rescheduling with a little bit of chemical support. [...] Yeah. And if you have the ability to have them work with someone on cooperative care so they can get gradually introduced to it, that's even more ideal. Yeah, that man, what I wouldn't give, there's so many technicians and trainers out in the world that are doing such amazing work with cooperative care. [...] And I've, you know, when I don't teach group classes anymore, but I did a couple of group classes on cooperative care and I exposed my puppy classes and certainly my teenage classes to the concept of what cooperative care is. And it really, you do too. Yeah. And I think for these, for these pets and for just to define cooperative care, this is where we are giving our patients the opportunity to cooperate in their own veterinary care, right? Like we teach very specific start buttons. For instance, a chin rest on the owner's lap. And as long as the dog's chin is rested on the lap, they're comfortable with how things look and then the staff can proceed. The dog gets to start and start procedures oftentimes, and I found this with some general practices locally and certainly with owners and staff, where they go, well, we don't want to do this because all the dog's going to want to do is just stop. And I think it's really important for everyone to understand that the more opportunity the dog has to say, I just need a break for a second, the more likely it is that they're going to opt in sooner because they know if they, if they are feeling overwhelmed, or if they're, if they're feeling too stressed out, they can stop it at any moment. Right. And they don't have to reach or escalate to anything else. Right. And that's the evidence we have from zoos because zoos do so much cooperative care that because they have to, right? You can only try to hold a tiger down like one time. Correct. Before you don't get to do that

again. Right. Yeah. So they have to do things cooperatively. And so we see the animal opt in over and over and over again because they've made a good deal with the keeper that says, yeah, this might be uncomfortable, but if you say no, we'll respect it. But if you say, yes, there's X reward in it for you. There's X reinforcer in it for you. Yeah. And you know, I think that bringing in the zoos in the sanctuary is super important. And does that happen in a bubble? Absolutely. It's a very specific, very controlled environment. And it, we can't always make those experiences as controlled, right? Because at best, we're working on a 15 to 30 minute appointment trying to fit a year's worth of information into 30 minutes. [...] But, you know, we do the best that we can by giving the animal the out so that they go, okay, well, this doesn't suck as bad as I thought. And then when they're finished with my butt poking stuff, my mom will let me play tug or the technician just gives me a whole scoop of peanut butter. [...] So, you know, and I think it's also very worth it to say cooperative care is a long term ongoing process, right? Like it's not something in general that is correct. And I think this kind of plays into anything that we're talking about as far as training or behavior modification goes that it's not a quick fix. And it's not going, you know, you're not going to be able to practice it for two weeks leading up to an appointment and expect for this to be fluent during this appointment. [...] So for the trainers and the behavior consultants out there, like get ahead of this now, like start asking for chin rest, let's start practicing, go to your mat and relaxing on your mat so that then we can take our mat to the vet and the mat has a conditions response to, oh, I go on this and I just sit here and I take deep breaths, right? [...] You know, and I think another thing veterinary staff hate this one simple fact is that clients should be clients should feel comfortable advocating for their own pets well-being. Absolutely. Yep. You know, I don't I know that there are a lot of staff out there that are, you know, rolling their eyes and sucking their teeth and they feel the rage building and I get it because we are on such a time crunch with our things, but it is going to cost your hospital less manpower and it is going to save additional appointments from having to send this pet home with PVPs to try to come back if we listen to our pets and we listen to the owners. [...] And for nothing, these are living breathing creatures. We owe it to them to not torture them. Yeah. And you know, it's something that it's a weird thing, right? Like, and I don't I don't mean to imply that everywhere all the time are like bullying animals, but we do it because we can, right? Like, we do it because we know that we can put a muzzle on a dog and my favorite thing and I say this like with chills down my spine like where you grab the lens closest to you and like pull them out from front of the dog and lie them on laterally so that we can do all the things. [...] Like, what if we just didn't didn't do that? Like, we can't like we do this because we know because it's reinforcing for us as humans and we can get the desired outcome. We can't like we can't bully pancreas is into doing what we want, right? Like we can't bully bad hips into fixing themselves. Why are we bullying the entire animal to get the outcome that we want? Like I can't make it make sense. Other than that, we just don't have time right to wait. Or sometimes the skills. [...] Like sometimes we just don't have the skills to know how to do it other than the way we've done it. Yeah. You also won't ever learn those skills if you don't start trying here and there. Yeah. Like if we only ever if we only ever do it the way that we've always done it, we are only ever going to do it and we're going to be stuck from, you know, I started in vet med in 1998 when we had daily heartworm prevention, you know, and I can't it breaks my heart to think about what I was taught was the right thing to do to help you know, to do stuff with animals. And now and I a lot of it is because how much education experience and I have but the first time that the first moment that my dog seems like it's too much. I'm like, right, we're just going to take a break and that's just how it's going to be. I don't I want for my dogs to know that I am their biggest advocate. I don't want for them to I don't want for them to feel stress that is directly related to me not feeling brave enough to say to a veterinary professional, I think my dog is having a hard time. Can we can we just have a second? Yeah. [...] Speaking of the time crunch, I've talked about it before, but do you remember the study that was presented at VBS a couple years ago when it was in Philadelphia, and it was about if you give dogs accommodations in their exams. So there was a group that had no accommodations. They were just examined like six times the regular old restraint way. And then they they timed it. They filmed stress signals. They did all these things. But suffice to say the dogs that were given accommodations such as oh, you don't like getting on the scale. We're going to put a rubberized mat on the scale. So it's not slippery. Oh, you're a little bit worried about the veterinarian listening to you. We're going to let you lick a licky mat while they listen to you. And they timed the appointments and the ones that had accommodations. The accommodations took a little bit longer in the beginning, but at the end of six visits, they were about four minutes longer. Yeah, then the restraint. Yeah. And you know, and this goes back to especially this is a whole other [...] That's all right. But I'm just going to say it, especially now that so many practices are corporates. And the bottom line will always be the most pets in the shortest period of time. Not that I'm not advocating for this whatsoever. But I am saying that

like if this is how we're going to run things, it is it is going to be more efficient for our staff to understand what low stress handling looks like, especially with dogs who are already having bad experiences, right? Like there also is such thing as a single learning event. So if your dog comes in and they're having, you know, they're in one of their fear periods for lack of a better knowledge, I guess, of what this looks like for them for real, and they have a bad experience. Their next experience is going to be so much worse and it's going to take up so much more. And it's not even just the physical time, right? Like it's the emotional time. But so now as soon as the vet gets the, excuse me, the client gets the confirmation text, they're stressed out because they've got to do it again. Jen sees the dog's name on the schedule and she goes, Oh, shit, here we go again. Yeah. You know, so it's just this, it's just this rolling downhill effect that it just makes it so it just is not good for anybody. [...] And this is just going to reinforce the dog's anxiety and conflict around veterinary stuff. Yeah. And thinking about like a dog coming into ER, for say. Yeah. So when I see a dog come in through ER, urgent care, and we're thinking about how and what we're going to do with this dog, I'm always wondering how old is the dog? If they're an adolescence and we can't get them to eat through what we're doing, we should probably just sedate them. Yeah. Because we don't need them to learn that they should just fight harder or give up. Like that's also not kind to them. Yeah. And I think that this is another one of the things where you mentioned the giving up part of this, right? Like so often we hear from our clients and we hear from our staff that, oh, you know, they were a little bit stressed out at first, but then they wound up just kind of, they were fine. What does that actually look like? Yeah. I think it's the word fine. Oh my God. I do too. And like, you can't define what that looks like. And so to me, fine would be like, you're still engaged with the environment. You're, you're tall. Like maybe you don't love having venipuncture and having your, your rectal temperature taken and having these things done, but you're like, you're tolerating. You're still able to eat. You can still engage. I think fine, oftentimes looks more like maybe shut down. The patient didn't struggle as hard. Right. So that has to be a good thing. Yeah. [...] So, and that's like, that's a whole other thing, especially if we're doing this to adolescents, right? And so for, so for an animal to be shut down means that they, every bit of space, every, every communication tactic that they have has been implemented to no avail. So they've, they've done the polite, gentle ways to ask for space. That didn't work. So they escalated. That didn't work. So they escalated again. So now they've got on a muzzle and they've had the over restraint happen. And now they're just no longer behaving because behaving doesn't work. That is not the sign of an emotionally healthy dog. This is a dog that is way beyond what we want to see as far stress in a hospital goes. Right. And like, I don't know that I can think of many patients who love to come to the vet. They love every single solitary aspect of it. But I think that there are plenty of patients that can come in and can tolerate and cooperate with it. But these animals that we've pushed so far to the point that they are unable to do anything anymore. Like, that's real bad. And especially real bad when we start thinking about what this looks like, with an adolescent dog. So back to Jen A's point, let's just use drugs. We have drugs. We should use drugs. Yeah. We, because of where we work having both ER and primary care, we get to see how their handling and primary care directly correlates to how things happen in ER or vice versa in a way that normally those two things are completely separate. And ER texts are not thinking about what's going to be happening for the rest of this dog's primary care life. And primary care texts are not thinking about what's going to happen when this dog has an emergency and needs to go to the vet. Yeah. And this is like, this is a whole, I mean, this might, we could do a whole other episode on just one, just what the difference in behavior from a primary care standpoint and behavior from ER standpoint looks like. But I think the overarching thing of it is that we want to be thoughtful and we want to be respectful of our patient's emotional state and normal circumstances, but particularly in these very, very challenging developmental things, right? Like when we can use gentle restraint and we can use food, we do it. And then when we can't, we are fortunate to live in the modern world and we have the, we have access to lots of really good pharmaceuticals that are largely unharmful, short acting and can prevent a lot of emotional trauma, physical trauma for everyone involved, the entire care team. Yeah. I tell ER techs, if they're blinking, they could be learning. And so also thinking about, oh, they're mostly asleep. So let's just take care of this nail evolution. But their body is still learning, even if their mind isn't. And so then that dog goes on to never be able to get nail trims unless they're sedated. Yep. And I think, and I mean, I say this from personal experience, I do think that the overuse of chemical restraint is potentially a thing too, because we were with one of my personal dogs, we had to sedate her for nail trims. Now she's correlated the weird feeling of Gabba/traz with nail trims and she fights like crazy through her stuff. So it's made it even more challenging for us. So to the listeners, be better to be better than I was. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Top tips. [...] What do you think your top two tips are for owners of adolescents? [...] Monica, what have you got first? Yeah, I will just, I'm going to say this, I'll just jot it down really fast, and you too tell me if this is fitting into what you think. I think that be consistent. [...] And what is my other thing? Be consistent and patient. I think are my top two things, right? Like that's that's that sums up adolescents consistent and patient. Yeah. Yeah. My top two tips are this too shall pass. [...] And just keep on keeping on. The only way out is through. That's right. Oh, I like that. I think my two are keep prevention handy, keep your management handy. Don't let go of it and look for community, look for help, look for support. Reach out to other dog owners, reach out to other people that may be able to help you care through this stage and don't do it alone. Yes, that's good. All right. Perfect. Yeah, that's great. We did it. We did do it. Monica's our first virtual guest. Yeah. We did it. Yay. We got through the technical hiccups mostly. I think it was great. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, have a great time. Good night. Thanks so much and good night. Bye. [...] Talk Dogs with us is an informational podcast and not a substitute for qualified medical advice. Are you a pet professional or parent looking to learn more and challenge your current assumption about our pets? Then let's go on this journey together at our website, talkdogswithus.com. Give us a bark at Facebook and Instagram at Talk Dogs with Us. You can help keep the conversation going by subscribing to our Patreon, patreon.com/talkdogswithus or buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/talkdogswithus. Art Direction by Alex Oren, Theme Song and Audio Engineering by Steven Rosplock. Check out more from him at StevenRosplock.com. Thanks for listening.