Arousal in Working Dogs with Liza Rader on K9 Conservationists

Episode "Arousal in Working Dogs with Liza Rader" from the 27th of February 2024 in the K9 Conservationist Podcast.

• Push in the pet world to tamp down on dog emotional arousal, which can though a morally neutral expression of emotion can be problematic in the human world, which has low tolerance for dogs that are "too much";
• Labelling dogs as "high arousal" is incredibly context-dependent; the environment (and person) plays a huge role in management;
• Arousal is different than drive, though drive is hard to pin down into a definition;
• Can high energy be differentiated from high arousal, the way you can separate high drive and high arousal;
• Instead of drive, you could also use the word "tenacity";
• Silos of conversations within dog world about ethics and our treatment and breeding of them;
• Are you more comfortable installing brakes or building motivation? That kind of training history in the human will guide what they seek out in the dog;
  
• High arousal have correlation with high intelligence;
• Pick your poison: all high drive dogs come with big positives but usually also some big drawbacks (Duck Toller Screaming, Beagle Hounds, etc.);
• Fetch discourse!
  • Fetch is fine; Fetch is bad; Caveats, caveats everywhere;
  • To Fetch Or Not To Fetch
• Related to fetch discourse: it's a requirement for bird dog brains to have moments of being able to push their bodies as fast as they can sometimes; yes there is wear and tear on the body, it's not risk-free, but it's a requirement for their brains to function well
  • This is definitely something I've noticed with Pippin, his best days are days where he can really run off leash and move his body freely — leash walking doesn't come close; while canicross sort of comes close, it's not the same
  • Liza Rader mentions here that she doesn't think that this fast movement is decompressing, definitely agree that Pip does not decompress from running like a wild child, but the gains are absolutely evident after, even if his focus and attention can sometimes seem like they are all over the place in media res;
• Retrieval adds in the sniffing — which can also be thought of as deep breathing, very good for brain + body
• For hunting dogs, sniffing is also arousing: are they coming home and taking a good nap or are they coming home and pacing?
• So much of our frustration with dogs is about how we need them to be less, stop (this is so unexpectedly triggering lmao);
• "Gundogs tend to muzzle punch you in the face" Literally as Liza said that Pippin muzzle punched me lol;