Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs Podcast, the show for dog lovers who
see dogs not as toys or tools, but wise souls worth our respect and care.
I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.
I talk to poor some humans, people who do great work for dogs and their people.
So come and join us for today's conversation.
Anke: Hello and welcome, Annie.
I can't believe I've never had you on the podcast.
So I'm very excited to have you here.
Me too.
Happy to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Alrighty, so let's start out how I always start out.
Let people know where in this lovely world you're based and
what's your business with dogs?
Annie: I am currently based in Utah, which was not part of my life
plan ever to be in Utah, but we moved here from Colorado years now.
This is the longest I've ever lived anywhere.
And I escaped from Texas.
I'm sorry to The patriots who love Texas.
It was not for me.
I lived there 46 years and did not like it.
I don't like the humidity.
I don't like all the things trying to kill you like fire ants and rattlesnakes.
And I'm a mountain person.
I have to have mountains and I don't know why.
I just am.
So we moved to Colorado and then we ended up, because of my husband's job
change here, we're kind of near Park City, if people have heard of that.
It's a big ski area.
We're not, we're in the town below.
Um, and I like, I like Utah.
I like cold weather.
I like mountains.
It's, people are outside more because it's all, you know, we, we say it, well, we
took it, I think, from maybe the Swedish.
There's no bad weather.
There's only bad clothing.
So we get literally outside four, four seasons a year, unlike Texas, which is
in the south to me, which is hot eight, eight or nine months out of the year.
So.
That's why I ended up in Utah and, um, I really like it.
It took, there's a culture adjustment coming from flatlands of Texas to
the mountains and snow and all that.
And I have been working with dogs for 25 plus years.
You start, stop counting after a while because that's just rude.
You don't want to add all that up.
And I came out of rescue work.
And I say that the rescue, um, animals, I was the person in Central Texas.
Rural, going to rural shelters and picking the dogs that we
would put into our program.
It was through Austin Dog Rescue back when they started.
in the 90s to 2010, a while ago.
And, um, there I saw a lot of my favorite breeds, German Shepherds, Big Guardian
Lifestyke, Guardian Dogs, lots of Great Pyrenees and mixes, and Herding Dogs.
And, um, the hard thing was, well it's all hard, rescue is very
hard, and they're overwhelmed is deciding who to take home that day.
Generally puppies, because they have the, you know, the longest life ahead of them.
Because I'll never forget the eyes of the dogs that I didn't take.
Because it wasn't back then, it wasn't sheltering like it is now.
I mean, it's, there's overwhelm, but at least there's talking about getting
the dogs into homes versus just you're here so you're not making it out.
Um, and I'll never forget those dogs.
And that's who I learned the most from is the shelter dogs.
My husband and I, poor man, never had a single dog in his life.
He lives on a ranch in Texas and we, together, we fostered
400 plus dogs over 10 years.
And that's what I learned.
That, that, if you can take a dog in the most stressed out environment, and
I never got bitten, because they taught, I've never been bitten, they taught me,
it doesn't mean you're a bad trainer if you've been bitten, because it can happen
like that, uh, but those dogs taught me about stress and trauma, and because they
were the most stressed out in their lives.
Even the best shelter can be very, very traumatic for the most resilient dog.
It's like a kennel that's loud, they don't know where they are, they've lost
their home, their whole world is turned upside, they've lost their person,
uh, anything familiar to them, and so.
Helping shelter dogs.
I wish trainers had to do it.
I wish it was a requirement.
You have got to go work two months in a shelter or over the summer or whatever it
is because they give you the most valuable training to me that I've ever learned.
And then I wrote along the way to best selling books.
Uh, this is my earlier one from 2015, which is hard to find, it's out of print,
but you can still find it, and then this one I wrote in 2021, and I almost didn't
write it, because I was, writing a book is not easy, and you don't make a lot of
money on it, even though this has been a bestseller for three years, including
a year before it came out, but this book changed my life, because it's way more
than, the title is Aggressive and Reactive Dogs, I didn't get a choice on the title.
So, But that's the most common problem is reactivity.
So this book is everything, almost everything that dog owners have
told me over the two decades, what they have problems with.
Excessive barking, chasing, prey drive, fighting with the other dog
in the house, you know, hurting the children kind of thing.
And it's a positive reinforcement way of dealing with that.
Even the scariest so called red zone, which is made up from TV actor, red zone
dogs, um, how to do it with kindness.
And what this book.
opened my eyes to because I interviewed 17 professionals around the world.
Um, I kept learning from them and I, I was retired when I wrote this, mostly.
I had a few consults.
I had removed myself from the industry because it's a very
toxic industry in many ways.
I was having a really good life and then I wrote this book and I got excited again.
And I've been teaching and working with owners ever since, and I've
just fine tuned my life on the trauma aspect of being a dog in this culture
that doesn't make sense to dogs.
You know, back when we all lived on the farm, most people lived rural for
most of our history, and the dog had a purpose, and walked along beside you
without a leash, generally, herding the sheep, protecting the meat cart,
getting the varmints if they were terriers, whatever, livestock guardian.
And then we all moved into the cities, and they have to be on leashes.
And I love leashes for control, but they also limited dogs responses.
Like, I'm getting out of here.
This is dangerous.
And so then you get reactivity.
We're nervous wrecks.
We all have a nature deficit.
Another reason I like living in the mountains, because
I could be outside a lot.
So I, after I wrote that book, I started really seeing.
The effect of trauma on dogs, and it's kind of like canine body language.
Once you see it, once you understand that a dog licking its nose, or wide eyes,
or slow blink, or a paw lift up, or that shake off we talked about, that's low,
low level going, it's going to go up.
Anxiety if we don't respond, and if we don't honor the communication, and
that's exactly how I feel about trauma.
That once you see and understand the trauma that dogs go through, and
those are all my courses, are about puppy, helping puppies, helping a dog
that's been in your life for 10 years.
We can still help that dog, but you, you can't fix it through training.
That's what I have learned.
And I knew that instinctively, but I've really fine tuned it into
programs to say, Sit down stay does not help a trauma response.
Um, I want to give, show you this quote, or say this quote that I really like
from Peter Levine, who, um, is really big in the world of human trauma.
His quote is, trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled,
denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause, he says, of human suffering.
And I will say dog suffering because dogs mirror us and we are not well as
human beings and COVID and plagues and wars don't help us become, you know,
peaceful, more peaceful creatures.
So, um, it's just getting owners to say my dog has had trauma and I mean,
I mean, I'm here to help the dog.
I'm here to nurture it and love it back into healing versus you sit down and stay
and stay on your mat because I'm the boss.
That's weird.
That's hierarchical.
Anke: Yeah.
But that's, that's all.
I mean, I remember when my Kai got bitten, like when Leo got bitten and the other
one, you know, came in this like, you know, sort of just barely escaped with his
life sort of thing from, from this guy.
And the advice I got You know, well, obviously from neighbors, but also from
local trainers, you know, was always like, you're too nice to the dog.
Like, you just spoil them and it makes everything worse.
You have to tell them who's boss, you know, and, and all, and I tried the,
you know, training and this and clicker and, and Leo just looked at me going
like, what the heck, you know, and, and so Everything through that lens, you
know, what I've learned from you, for example, it's like, oh yeah, that makes
so much sense, you know, and you said something when you were at the summit,
the Panic2Peace summit last February, you said something, uh, that I never forgot.
You said a dog can't learn anything until their nervous system is calm.
And that was like, oh
Annie: yeah, you know.
We've reversed it, because a lot of the training comes from military training.
Like, I am not impressed with human male and female macho trainers who say, I can
train a military dog to attack this person wearing a thing and schÃ¼tzen and train.
Good.
Do that.
That is not a pet dog.
That is not the Chihuahua, the Terrier, the Bug, the Golden Retriever, the Lab
that needs, that lives with a family.
They don't need to learn any of that stuff.
It doesn't translate well.
It's completely different from what I do.
And all the training in the world will not solve a problem
that is in the nervous system.
And their nervous system is just the same as ours, which makes sense because
we co evolved over 30, 000 years.
They have an amygdala, They have a prefrontal cortex.
They have a nervous system.
They have a parasympathetic nervous system.
So they can have trauma responses very similar to us, like freezing, um,
fawning, which is a little more hard to see, but we can see it in some dogs.
Um, bite is one.
When I, I hate There's a lot of things I hate on social media, uh,
that are done to dogs for clicks and likes, but I hate seeing a dog
that wants, doesn't wanna walk.
It just lays down on leash and ha ha, the owner's dragging it or picking
that could be a shutdown and a freeze.
And so something has happened either in that area to that dog or the smell
reminds them of something to potentially, maybe the dog hurts, hurt his paws, hurt.
Pain has a lot, has a lot to do with behavior and impacts behavior.
But it's not funny when a dog freezes.
It's very serious when a dog freezes.
And that's a trauma response, and so often it comes out of the body,
where the body, because we haven't healed that, and same with people.
You might meet somebody that you have an instant dislike to, and because they
might remind your amygdala, which keeps you safe, it's there for a reason, your
lizard brain, some people have called it.
That, a guy that looked like that was really mean to me when I was a kid,
but you have forgotten that memory.
You just get that.
I say the amygdala says you're in danger, girl.
Yeah.
And it keeps us alive.
And
Anke: I think that you've just hit on something that is, that it feels
to me is probably underneath a lot of why this gets so much overlooked.
Because, you know, people might think, oh, yeah, no, my dog's not traumatized
because they never got Abandoned, they never got sort of shoved out of a car and
you know like how I mean I've seen videos but I'm like oh my god you know when
somebody like opens the car door sort of half doesn't even stop shoves the dog out
and goes you know and just leaves that dog in the middle of nowhere and the dog
you know so or be attacked by another dog you know or my dog's not had a dramatic
experience like that but there's a whole bunch of other things that you know.
Could actually leave a mark that requires some healing before, you
know, your sit plots and all of that makes even any sense at all.
So can you just name a few things that are quite common that, and it doesn't mean
that every dog gets kind of traumatized by the mailman, but some might, you
know, so it's, and I think we sometimes underestimate all the different things
that could cause a dog to have that stress
Annie: in their body.
Yeah, that's a great question.
And it is underestimated.
It's like the quote that said trauma is the most, you know, we just
kind of blow it off in ourselves.
And, you know, there's big T and little t, there's chronic trauma.
What upsets you may not upset me because I have a different life experience
or just a different reaction to that.
So we all respond in our own ways, but genetics certainly plays a role too.
And we know in human studies, you can have the stress of your grandparents.
System and the studies from human, uh, from dogla, dogs that are born in
laboratories, there's a famous study years ago, years and years ago, that
if the mother dog was nervous, the puppies were going to be nervous.
Even if they kept trying to get that nervousness out.
and bringing in a stable sire.
Not every single puppy.
I just had three puppies last year that I fostered.
Um, I took one of them back and he got a foster and adopted immediately because he
was the biggest and he was so much bigger.
Like these puppies were tiny.
They were little, beautiful Labrador mixes that had been severely
traumatized, kept in a kennel.
until they were 11 weeks old and headed towards massive separation
anxiety and other problems.
He was fun.
I, there were 11 puppies and he was big and bold and he's the biggest.
He got all the nutrients in the thing.
He didn't have any worries.
Um, and he was kind of picking too hard on the other ones.
They would scream and squeal, and they were much, I had the runt, and I had
the biggest, and I keep doing that.
Those are my two now, and my two before.
I don't know why, that's a weird thing that I'm doing, but I took him back.
He was here 24 hours, and they were 11 weeks old, and I, luckily, the shelter
understood, and I said, I wanted two, and there were six left by the time I got
there to foster, and they said, the animal math, well, we have a foster for three,
and if you take two, that leaves one.
And I got to pick the three out of the six, and I picked
the biggest and the smallest.
And just the look, I wish I could show you, send in later pictures of him.
He was just like a king.
He was a golden doodle, like just overseeing his thing.
Not a worry in the world.
When I took him back and they had a foster right there to
meet him, she did adopt him.
He went and went to, it was a shelter where the dogs had an open space and then
indoor and they were behind in kennels.
He went to every single kennel.
Hey man, how's it going?
And they were barking and lunging.
A cat tried to swat him and he's like, Meanwhile, I had the two that were
shaking and screaming and freezing.
One of them had a beautiful freeze, which I hate to say that.
It's not, I don't mean beautiful.
I mean, I wish I had gotten it on film.
Because if you went to touch him, he would freeze.
He was six pounds.
And so human reaction is to pick him up and cuddle him because
that's how we comfort each other.
Not if, if, if, if.
You don't know what that means.
And so anyway, there's so much trauma that every human and every
dog responds to differently.
You can have a one time trauma event, like a fight, which is how
we get a whole lot of reactive dogs.
Car wreck, the dog's in the car and scared and saw the owner hurt, whatever.
Um, it's more likely that the genetics, might be there because a lot of our
dogs are genetically whacked out because of our breeding practices.
And then they get transferred from home to home to home.
So a lot of times I'll go see a two or three year old dog and I'll say,
how many homes does this dog have?
And they, if they even know, sometimes they just find it on the street.
But birth home, probably stressful.
Second home got adopted.
Got dumped, got sheltered, got financial reasons, there's reasons people can't keep
dogs, didn't like the kids, third home, shelter, fourth home, you, fifth home.
That's a lot for the body to absorb and dogs like routine, much like children
do, much like, they need safety.
And five homes in two years is not safe for any of us, you know, so this is
why, um, I've been writing and creating courses on trauma because, including a
30 day reset for any dog, either a brand new dog, because you can avoid so many
of these traumatic responses by not, by slowing down, we have, we do too much too
fast, and letting the dog adapt to the new home, and that's not in three days.
I say the first 30 days that animal is with you sets the tone
for the rest of the dog's life.
And particularly important with puppies, because their
amygdala is saying, Am I safe?
Are you safe?
Am I safe?
And the world either proves that they're safe, or they're not safe.
And we have a lot of control in that, because we control everything about a dog.
And so if people would just slow it down and not, and have a
neighborhood party when you get the cute little puppy for Christmas.
And understand that ripping it from its home, you know, it's not
like I'm saying every dog has to stay with the mother dog forever.
That's not feasible, but it is traumatic to take it for many
dogs and how they respond and, and where they land is important.
So if you think I just took you from the only thing you knew,
all the smells, all the sounds, all the noise, all the routine, I
don't know what your routine was.
Maybe in a backyard kennel.
So my house is actually much better for you, but I still have
to prove to you nervous system puppy or adult I'm your safe space.
This is your sanctuary.
We're not going to go on walks on day two, uh, when I in the 30
day reset, I say, don't go for walks for two weeks, maybe three.
Unless you have that very rare, Very self assured guy that I took
back because he was picking on the other ones and I knew he had a home.
Um, he's rare.
I almost thought about keeping him because I thought he would be a fun
sport dog because he was so brave.
But he's also gonna test you in a way that, anyway, so yeah, there's so
many different contributing including vaccines can, as a young puppy, You
know, when you get too many vaccines or you get a Great Dane level for a
Chihuahua, because they don't necessarily put a smaller amount, and then the
dogs soar, and you go to puppy class that's chaotic and out of control.
Um, and my dogs developed car phobia, that Finn and Cooper, who I have now, they,
I created a whole course from them, and they helped me with understanding trauma.
I got them in 2011.
19.
Right.
COVID.
Five weeks of age taken from their mother.
Don't do that.
We want nine to ten weeks of age.
It's illegal in many places to do that.
I never knew why.
I never got to understand.
I never talked to the, I talked to their daughter.
I never met the people who did this to these dogs.
Put them in a car from northern Iowa, uh, Idaho to southern Utah, seven or
eight hours in the car, and so they paired the stress of losing their home,
throwing in the back of a car or truck, no protection, thrown in the backyard,
they got worms, they got fleas, they were fighting over food, there was no human
supervision, they paired that to the car.
Understandably, right?
You did
Anke: that to a child, a kid would do the same.
Annie: Yeah.
And it took me seven months in 2019 to get them to trust me in their bodies because I
didn't know what I knew after I wrote the book from all these other experts who were
doing like Sarah Fisher, who does, she's an expert on body language and body works.
She has a group called ACE, ACE Connections, A C E, Animal Centered
Care, on Facebook that's free.
And she has a program called Free Work, which is part of my healing protocol.
The Phoenix Healing Protocol is ACE work.
Free Work is very, very important.
You can research her and she is in this book too.
She's one of the people, Dr.
Laura Donaldson, who's of course is on Thinkific, um, talks about deep safety.
That's where I got the term deep safety that I talk about a lot.
She created www.
FEMA.
gov And, you know, it's not forever.
When a dog comes to you and they either just need to let that
body relax for 30 days minimum.
Can we give them 30 days, please?
Um, at least.
Um, it's not forever.
It's that initial, are you safe?
Am I safe in this home?
And if we prove to the dog they're safe, then we get to the training.
I'm not one of those trainers who's never trained.
I like five life skills that I train, and recall is one of them.
My puppies were heavily traumatized.
They have an excellent recall.
And for me, it was, please like other dogs as much as your genes will
allow you to, and please like people.
In other words, don't want to kill them.
And they're healers, and healers can be very protective, and bitey.
When I tell her trainer, my trainer friends, I'm getting
healers, they're like, Eww.
But
Anke: it's for safety, really, you know, I mean, I don't, I'm not really,
I don't really care about You know, when I look at these kind of police
dog things and sits and plots and whatever, that doesn't really impress me.
It's like, I don't really care whether my dogs, I don't need
you to be able to do that.
What I do need is if you are headed towards the street and I call you
to come back, that I need, you know, or if there's another dog
coming or like if something happens.
To know that you're not gonna, you know, bite their butts
off and that you come back.
So there's like safety stuff that I want them to be, uh, want them to respond
Annie: to.
Which is a much different place.
I want you to be safe and I want to know you'll come back
because our bond is tight.
Versus you come back because I'm the mean bad mom or dad.
I say so.
You're going to be zapped if you, I mean, shot collars are just absolutely
atrocious and are illegal in many countries and should be everywhere.
I'm, I have always spoken out against them because you couldn't do it to a kid.
And if you can't do it to a kid, can you imagine putting a shot collar
around your yard and your kids out there playing and they get You can't do it.
You can't.
Don't do it.
We don't do it to cats.
We don't do it to horses.
We don't do it to giraffes.
But dogs are easy to train.
It's the trauma that's a little trickier.
It's the emotional regulation that's new that we need to help people with.
I can train a dog to heal with his neck up like this and to do
the I went to a schutz in school.
I can train My dog Finn loves bite work.
I can train all the I can train a down stay.
I can do all that.
If I hadn't worked on his trauma And made him feel secure, he would bite.
He would be dead.
If I hadn't gotten Finn, who his response to the world is
a deep grab and then a bite.
And he's put his mouth on me, but he's never bitten down.
And I appreciate that, if I push him too far, you know,
because that's exquisite control.
Um, Cooper, his brother, who's got more healer genes than him, even
though they're full brothers, and Cooper, Finn has more border collie.
and a Portugali Code, which is very interesting.
Cooper is more laid back, but even within Cooper, if he's, he's got some pain.
He's the runt, and Finn's the biggest.
I have a problem with that.
Um, he's got some pain that we haven't been able to
diagnose, which is very common.
He's five years old, and when he is painful or doesn't sleep
enough, we interrupt dog's napping.
He gets grouchy with his brother and, and us.
You know, like, he'll just raise a little lip.
I'm not mad.
I'm like It's like if you're in a relationship and your spouse
just comes home and yells, MAAA!
And you have a loving relationship most of the time.
You're like, he's having a bad day and maybe I could help
him instead of, how dare you?
I'm gonna put a shot collar because you one time yelled at me.
A dog should be able to growl.
A growl is a precursor to a bite and say, what is happening right
now is really distressing to me.
So much so that I'm growling and I say, thank you.
I stop whatever's happening.
Um, Finn growled at me because he didn't want his front nails
clipped when he became a full adult.
He was a little and we did all the puppy stuff.
He was fine as a puppy.
You could hold him and clip his nails.
Acclimate, acclimate, acclimate.
Cooperative care.
I do a chin thing.
Put your head in the chin here.
You had him, uh, you know, put your chin in my hand and
then let me do the vet stuff.
I did all of that.
He got fully mature and, um, growled at me once.
A deep guttural growl that said, do not touch my front feet.
And so many dogs don't like their front teach.
Front Feet Touched.
So instead of saying, I'm gonna drag you to the vet and drug you, I'm
gonna hold you down, I'm gonna muzzle you because I have to do your feet.
I mean it starts from a health problem.
That's confrontational.
It's unnecessary.
It's responding force to force.
That doesn't always work well for anyone.
So I said, I'll get you a scratch board.
He loves it where he scratches the front and he'll let me do the back.
That's when he put his teeth on me because Jeff holds him
and gives him peanut butter.
If he, if he'll eat, if he doesn't eat, we stop.
Don't wrap saran wrap around your head and put peanut butter on it.
Um, we're just kind of diverting him.
And so we've done the front feet, which he loves, it's a game, and
then I'm clipping the back feet.
I'm down on the ground and I see this little paw, little toenail like this.
I'm like, I'm just gonna scooch up in there and do it really fast.
That's when it happened.
I mean, he already had told me he didn't appreciate it, so we'd moved to
the scratch board, but it's sometimes they don't get the outside ones.
I picked it up and he jerked out of the collar and growled and did this to, with
the, I mean he's 75 pounds, he's very strong, he's one of the strongest bites
of any dog I've ever felt in bite work.
And I was like, oh my god, I can feel him release it.
He made that choice.
He had that much control.
And he said, he said, stop it.
Stop what you're doing.
I don't care for it.
He didn't buy, I thought it would bruise.
It didn't even bruise.
To me, as a dog behaviorist, that is fascinating.
He didn't go for my face.
If you were, that's how kids get bitten, because they're
down there messing with the dog.
He said, stop what you're doing with your hand.
I'm warning you.
And I said, scratch board, I will never touch your front feet again.
So what I like, that's interesting.
Anke: Like, what do you think is the difference between when he was kind of
all right with it as a, as a, as a puppy?
And as a grown up, is that like, what, what could be the reason for that?
That's a great question.
Annie: And trainers will tell you, those of us who work in
behavior, the most common age is 12 to 24 months that they call us.
That's a little bit of adolescence.
Fully maturing and they get physically, um, stronger.
So they're like, I put up that with a puppy.
Anke: Oh.
So it means basically I've never liked it, but like now I'm big enough to tell you.
Ah, make sense.
Annie: Might even, they might even freeze as a puppy and you're like,
oh, he's tolerating it just fine.
No, he's frozen in here.
Oh.
And we can physically, he was this big because he was five weeks old.
So, you know, it's not that I manhandled him and made him do it,
it's just that he didn't struggle.
So we think, oh, he can handle it, can't he?
And then he got big enough, and that happens a lot, and it happens a lot
with dogs that fight in between, you know, the puppy might be You know,
the older dog's okay with the puppy and has a puppy license, even though
you're annoying me because I'm grandma over here and you're, you know,
grandchild bugging the heck out of me.
And then the old, as the dog gets bigger, the older dog might say, I said, stop it.
And the bigger dog said, oh yeah, because he's bigger now.
That have, I mean, 12 to 24 months is a very, because we see kind
of more of the permanent changes.
And their personality and that's how we are.
We're not the same people, thank God.
Anke: And teenagers are also like a bit nutty, right?
They have teenage brains.
Yeah, yeah, that makes, that makes so much sense.
So you've got Well, you've, you've mentioned the 30 day reset and we're
going to definitely pop that in the, in the show notes, but for people
who want to just have a little sniff of like what this is all about, you
know, what have you got for them?
Annie: I have, um, to kind of get people thinking about the idea of trauma, I
have a seven day, um, seven day step process that you can get for free, which
I'm sure you'll put a link up there.
Absolutely.
Seven Steps to Healing.
And it talks a lot about some of the bigger topics we're talking about,
but in bite sized pieces, so you can just start thinking and looking
at your own life with your own dog.
One of it is, um, do a whole lot of nothing.
Sit with your dog, read a book.
I want to, I want to know what, if we were talking, I want to know what
your dog loves, what your dog doesn't like, what noises he's sensitive to.
Um, you can't, you won't know that if the dog's in the crate and you go
off to work for eight hours a day.
You need that time with bonding, um, slowing down.
Making the House a Sanctuary, creating that deep safety that Dr.
Laura Donaldson talks about.
How to do that?
Because we don't know.
We don't create safety for ourselves very well.
And I think that's
Anke: the, that's the thing.
It actually works out beneficial for both parties.
You know, so I think we actually, I think you could literally take, it's really
funny, like you could literally take the seven steps or the 30 day reset and
apply it to yourself and you'd benefit.
And you don't need to have gotten robbed before, right?
So
Annie: it's like you don't need some horrific, you know, Resetting
that, we call it a reset because we're resetting that nervous system.
So if you take your, one of them is stop doing what you're doing.
If you have an inkling that it's stressing the dog out,
you have to know body language.
But reactive dogs, we say they're overreacting, no.
They're saying I'm uncomfortable.
It's really rude to call them reactive.
It's like a reactive hysterical woman when the man's beating her or says, I
yelled her down, you know, you react, just take your blumps and shut up.
So a dog that's reactive, barking, screaming on leash, that's My first,
first of all, the walk starts way before you ever get outside the house.
We can't guarantee their safety in public, um, but most owners just aren't
aware of the signs of trauma, like maybe shutting down and not wanting to go out
the front door, is the dog stubborn, or it's terrifying out there, or they're
noise sensitive, and you're at work all day, and you need a camera in your house,
which is cheaper than ever, and you don't know that he's barking at every single
noise that he hears, and he's exhausted by the time you get home, and then you
take him on a walk, and he's exhausted, he's trigger stacked, he's on a hair
trigger, and And this is how humans get into road rage and even murder each
other because you're trigger stacked.
I mean, there's lots of reasons.
I'm not condoning murder by any stretch or road rage, but we've all
probably done road rage because we've been pushed and pushed and pushed and
pushed and then it's the final thing.
So you take it on a walk and he sees a dog and a reactive dog is big.
I get away because they're like, I am danger.
That's the amygdala.
You're in danger, girl.
You might die if you've ever seen or heard a dog fight.
Among dogs that are leashed or a stray comes bolting out at you.
It's terrifying.
Your heart rate will increase.
You'll probably scream.
You'll stick your hand in there and probably get bitten.
That's how most of my clients get bitten.
Because your dog could literally die.
They go for the neck.
They, you know, even if there's Sometimes they'll fight and scream and they'll
break up and there's just slobber.
You know, they didn't, it's like Finn, they chose not to, or for
whatever reason they didn't wound the other person, but the body
doesn't know, the threat is the same.
And the
Anke: stress is still there because that's what happened to Leo.
Like Leo, like looking at back what happened when he got bitten at 11
months old, it was exactly that.
Like he'd been like, oh I'm cute and you know it, like and he'd be kind
of goofy with everyone, and that dog was probably like, no you're not, oh.
And, and he actually, he did bite him, but just like a little bit,
and the vet said, nah, that dog didn't really want to do anything.
If he had wanted, this dog would be dead.
You know, so the other dog had actually, but that wasn't Leo's reaction.
You know, he behaved as if he'd like, like been killed.
Even like the day when I took him to the vet.
Does that whole thing happen at night and I had to kind of wait till the morning and
he was screeching the vet they couldn't hold like they kind of needed three and
they actually needed to sedate him to even look at what's going on you know and then
he did not ever like big male dogs and in confined spaces after that so he certainly
did not perceive it as oh he didn't really like me you know he literally Perceived it
as like, okay, I almost got killed here,
Annie: you know, and that's the amygdala keeping you safe.
So then the amygdala is like, you're in danger from that dog and that dog and that
noise and that noise and that skateboard.
And that person looked at you funny and it just keeps building
and building and building.
So often anxiety will start with a noise, noise phobia.
We know that that's shooting through the roof.
There's 300 percent and since COVID.
Um, for a variety of reasons, but also natural disasters.
I mean, those divorces moving, grandma moves into the house and she has
dementia, so she's moving weird and talking weird, or you have a baby and we
didn't actually, I mean, all of our human stuff, including putting them in a car,
more dogs have anxiety than people are aware of, I believe, I know that's true.
Um, all of that can build up, and so, first of all, they are, um, worried about
the mailman coming to the door, the UPS guy, and then they're jacked up from
that, so they go on a walk, and then one incident like that, or a growl, or
they're trapped by our leashes, which we, just, it's like, let's set up,
let's create reactive dogs as a society.
We've done that very, very well, and even when I think about rescue work, the dogs
that I rescued, 1990 to 2010, Until I completely burned out and was exhausted.
Um, they were a different, different genetic makeup than the dogs today.
The first part of this book, the first two chapters, is why.
Why are dogs so?
Why are bites through the roof?
Why are people being mauled to death in dogs?
Google dog, dog maulings.
It used to be so rare.
It's still very rare because they have exquisite control, many of them, but every
animal can be pushed to defend itself.
Yeah, and that's what we've done to dogs, is we're saying, I'm leashed, you're
not my safe space, and here comes this big bad dog that's going to kill me,
and then it transfers to the little dog, and that dog, and then the, even the
collar, the metal collars on a, um, tags.
I say, don't get metal.
That becomes the clanging.
One, it hurts their ears, because they're so sensitive,
can, and two, that's the cue.
When I start to use reactive dogs, I help them acclimate to the metal clanging.
I mean, that's
Anke: the stuff that I find fascinating because there's the kind of detail that
you wouldn't even think about, you know, so, so that's why I, yeah, definitely, you
know, if, if you're listening and there's like, Oh my God, that would explain a few
things, or maybe like definitely start with the seven steps and do yourself
and your dog a favor and grab the 30 day reset, because it literally will.
Change your dog's life, you
Annie: know, and your relationship.
And I feel so strongly about it that I've created an offline, off Facebook
community because I don't Like Facebook for a variety of reasons including
them killing groups off just for their algorithm is strange And it's called
the trauma canine trauma clinic and it's a private community It's a paid
membership because that enables me to keep creating courses and writing books
Absolutely, we keep it as low as we can possibly keep it and they're free If you
join the VIP, you get all my courses.
So if you have a puppy, you can start from puppy and go grow through the dog.
Um, and I walk through the courses, um, in the VIP section live and
answer questions and you send videos.
So it's a way for me to help hundreds of dog owners.
in a group setting where people understand because they have the same
problem or they're learning about it, um, versus one on one on one, which
is also why I wrote books, because I reach thousands of thousands of
people, versus there's only one of me.
Anke: That's the thing, and he only has 24 hours, so there's that little
tight limit to capacity, so it's this, and you still get the Like you can
still get Annie's eyes on your like, what's going on with my dog, right?
So it's, it's the win win win situation.
So I'll pop, obviously pop the link in the show notes below the
video and wherever you're watching.
So it'll be like right below and grab yourself a copy.
And um, yeah, let's just slow it down a little bit.
Annie: So I'm going to take a little break.
It's also for people who've tried it all.
I've tried the shot collar.
That didn't, that made my relationship worse.
I've tried spraying with a water bottle.
I've tried this trainer.
I've tried that trainer because you can get 4 3 trainers who are
not behaviorists and have not, they don't know how to heal the trauma.
They can do a beautiful heal, but the healing will not, healing your
dog past something it's terrified of does nothing for the dog.
It does something for you because you don't look, you're not
being pulled down the street and you feel like we have control.
Humans want to feel like we have control.
Anke: Yeah,
Annie: but without connection it means nothing.
Without healing the trauma and then you do all the training you want.
Like I have gotten so deep into trauma and I'm working with puppies again
recently that I forgot I like training.
I put so much training on my other dogs because that was my focus.
Like they had all the titles and the therapy dog sit downs.
Oh look they can sit on a blanket for five minutes.
I don't care anymore.
Because my dogs were so traumatized, I needed to help them.
But now that my dogs are five Now they can go in the car.
They helped me write that car phobia course.
Um, that dogs don't understand.
They're like your, they're like your mentors, right?
They're the teachers.
Sarah Fisher said that, that we are the students of the dog.
And I think so.
We should be.
Yeah.
So much about trauma.
And if I had done sit down, stay with them, their minds were shot.
Their bodies were shot for seven months.
And I know that because I took photos.
And it was seven months before I could help them.
And that was in 2019, and I've learned so much since then.
Those foster puppies, I had six days with.
In six days their coats relaxed.
Anke: Yeah.
Wow.
I mean, that's good news too, to know that it doesn't have to take forever,
but you just can't rush it, you know?
Yeah.
So thank you so much.
Uh, yeah, I think we, like, I think we could talk, we could talk about this
forever because I find it fascinating.
We'd have been through all of this with these two.
So, so it feels like, oh my God, like, I wish I, I wish I'd
known you a few years earlier.
But, um, you know, second best time is now, so here we are.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming, and I can't wait to have you back.
Thank you.
Thank you for your podcast and everything you're doing for dogs.
Annie: Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
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That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.