Arousal in Working Dogs with Liza Rader on K9 Conservationists

First part

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!
  • 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;

Second part