Meet The Dog In Front Of You with Kim Brophey

What if the most loving thing you could do for your dog is stop trying to “fix” them? I sit down with award-winning dog behavior consultant and author Kim Brophey to challenge the default story we’ve been sold: that dogs should effortlessly adapt to our busy, indoor, highly controlled human lives. Together we unpack a simple but radical reframing that changes everything from training to daily routines: “Who is this dog, and what do they need to thrive?” 

We talk about autonomy and how modern pet life can quietly shrink a dog’s world, especially in cities, on-leash living, and single-dog households. Kim explains why trust and control are not the same thing, and why true self-control works best when it’s built on safety, predictability, and an environment designed for dogs. We explore welfare science, the meaning of “behavior problems,” and why issues like barking, reactivity, destructiveness, and anxiety can be evidence of welfare deficits, not stubbornness or “bad dogs.” 

Kim also shares practical ways to widen your dog’s behavioral world using an ethogram of natural dog behaviors, including how to support needs we often block like investigating, scavenging, social connection, and sensory exploration. We dig into genetics and breed traits, why certain dogs struggle more in modern settings, and how to set humane expectations without lowering safety standards. If you want a clearer lens on dog behavior, enrichment, and what a good life for a pet dog actually looks like, this conversation will stick with you. 

You can Check out her website here :https://dogdoorcanineservices.com/kim-brophey/

Meet Your Dog: https://amzn.to/45qS2XN

if you enjoy this show please subscribe, share with a dog-loving friend, and leave a review so more people can find us!

Transcript

Meet Kim Rothhy And LEGS

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi, I'm Charlotte Bain. Welcome to the Bureau. My guest today is Kim Rothhy, an award-winning dog behavior consultant, author of Meet Your Dog. She's an educator and she's the creator of the Legs model, which helps us understand dogs through their learning, environment, genetics, and self. Instead of asking, How do I fix my dog? Kim encourages us to ask a different question. Who is this dog and what do they need to thrive? So let's jump into this chat. I'm super thrilled that you took the time to chat with me because I'm a big fan of your book and of your work. And one of the things that I I love about your work is that you encourage people to stop asking how I can fix my dog. And instead you are asking, who is this dog? Like looking at the dog in front of you, who is this dog? So how did you come across that philosophy? What was the inspiration behind that?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

I mean, if I'm really honest, I think that I as a kid kind of felt that way about animals. Like I always felt really connected to the natural world and had that curiosity that you're kind of describing about like, who are you? About like every creature, you know? Yeah. But particularly dogs, because I grew up in a major city and the dogs were what was most available to me. And so I think I ended up looking at them through that lens very young before I ever thought about controlling their behavior, getting them to do things or whatever. I was a fan of Lassie, the whole nine yards, right? Like that whole generation. Um, and I just kind of believed animals were magic and I thought dogs were magic. And I just had this wonder that was overwhelming for me about that. And then as um I went into college and I kind of approached dog behavior from that lens of applied ethology about like the history of the human-animal relationships, human-dog relationship, the different breeds of dogs, how we work with them in all these different contexts and capacities, and then was trying to figure out how to make that fit with the fact that I was going into the world of dog training and behavior with the goal of optimizing the relationships, but then of course running into case after case of dysfunctional relationships between people and dogs, where misunderstanding predominated everything. And um uh finding out like how much tension existed between people and dogs left me again and again looking back at like, but what are we missing here? You know, why are we continuing to try to get the dogs to change for us? And all of our effort is how to change the dog instead of who is this dog? How do I see this dog? What do they need? Are they happy in their life? Are they happy in the relationship? Is there anything that they're wanting that they're not getting? And um, you know, frankly, it's been it's been kind of a sad experience just living at this time, this day and age with dogs, because in my childhood, dogs were still loose in a major city, and I've watched the change to the average lifestyle of pet dogs change before my eyes. I'm sure you have too. Yeah. We're just seeing these dogs go from having that autonomy in in our early lives to just losing a piece of it, you know, every year subsequently, um, to where now the vast majority of dogs, over 90%, live in major cities and are in single dog households and rotate between indoors and you know, leashes and small fenced areas if they're lucky enough to have that. And it's no judgment to any people in the public or to even people in the industry because we just didn't know better and we've kind of bought this whole idea that like this is fine, this is a dog's niche, everything is fine, you know? Right. When that's just not actually true.

Autonomy Lost In Modern Dog Life

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Do you think we've swung too far the other direction? I just had the the episode prior to you, I had Eriet Bloom on, and we were talking about kind of control versus trust. Yeah. And she was talking about how she feels like the puppies nowadays or dogs now are more stressed than they were growing up. I mean, my dog, I don't I I in hindsight, I don't I don't know if any of my dogs were stressed. I was too young to have any concept of what that looked like. But yeah, he would just run outside and run around the neighborhood and come back. Yeah. Yeah. Every once in a while he got picked up by the animal control because they're like, there's and then they'd be like, Your dog's here, and we're gonna go get him. And then that was normal, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Like it kind of happened. Our neighbors would bring our dog back because they'd, you know, the dog would be outside and the neighbor would be jogging, and the dog would go with them on the jog and then stop wherever and end up wherever, and then maybe catch up and finish the dog with them on the way home. But they had that autonomy, and then they came back and were also our companions and pets, but they they still had their own lives. And I do think her characterization of that, that now we've we've really gotten so fixated on control, and people talk about trust and dog training like it's a buzzword, but I I wonder whether we really know what that totally means for dogs, like what that really looks like, because I think real trust requires also letting go of a lot of that control.

Trust Versus Control In Training

SPEAKER_02 5:08

I just they're a little mutually exclusive, right? Like, right. If you talk to me about my marriage and I start thinking about trusting and controlling my husband in the same space, they cross ears real quick, you know. Um I I think we are obsessed with the idea of control and obedience in dogs. Yeah, uh, and I think us dog trainers, frankly, have contributed to that narrative and then competed with each other about which method is best to accomplish that control. And it's just not that sometimes don't warrant it. The dogs do live in a modern world that they need help navigating, and there's certain things for safety, practicality, respect of other people, etc., that we need to have some certain stops in.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Um, places where we can say, okay, like in this situation, I need you to um self-control. But again, I'd rather see self-control built on the back of trust rather than I control you. You know, I feel like they're very different. I want to focus on controlling the environment in a way that helps my dog to control themselves appropriately.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

And what does that look like? What does that mean for like a pet parent? What does that mean controlling the environment? Yeah.

Dogs As Captive Animals

SPEAKER_02 6:18

So I think on a large scale, um, controlling the environment is realizing that we are literal keepers of captive animals, which nobody talks about when it comes to pet dogs. So, in that controlling the environment is building a habitat that actually works for your dog as the species that they are. And that's a whole can of worms we can get into. Like, what does that look like? All those natural behaviors, what are the things that they need to have that biological integrity? Because a lot of dogs just don't have that. Um, and then on a moment-to-moment level, especially when we're encountering things for them that are not well fit for their genetics and their biology, um, navigating, you know, busy city streets and traffic and all kinds of conditions that they are not biologically prepared to understand or know what to do in the face of, uh, then it's a matter of us saying, I've got you, let me drive in these moments because I have the intel, the understanding, the skills, et cetera, to navigate these in a way that makes you feel safe and things feel predictable and under control. And I can teach you skills that help you to be able to make better decisions in those conditions so that you feel more comfortable in them. Um, but we're making sure that, say, before that person comes running up to our dog, and then we're expecting the dog to go into a sit stay to be pet by someone that they never had any interest in interacting with.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

That we're controlling that environment saying, I'm sorry, my dog doesn't really like uh being approached by strangers. That's just not just not his jam, you know? Um and so, like, thank you so much for you wanting to interact with my dog. I really appreciate your interest, but like we're just gonna kind of stay in our own space. Just reading all of those layers with the dog's interest in mind, as opposed to some random expectation that we've put on dogs of like what they're supposed to do and tolerate.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, yeah, that makes complete sense. If and that's kind of answers my next question, which is if there's one thing that we needed to understand about dogs like tomorrow, what would that be that we don't that the average pet parent doesn't understand?

SPEAKER_02 8:28

I think the biggest thing is that your dog is a captive animal and you are his keeper, whether you know it or not. And that doesn't mean that I'm saying we're all terrible and we've imprisoned these animals. Like a dog's natural niche is as what's called a synanthrope, right? So they are dependent on human conditions and environments and even relationships, right? Like we've co-evolved with them for many thousands of years. And so living alongside humans is absolutely the nail in the head. The thing is, that picture doesn't look anything like what it did even 100 years ago, even 30 years ago, right? Like for 40 years ago. And so we haven't accounted for that gap, that rate of evolutionary change and the degree of captivity that dogs are now as a standard living with that they were not 30, 40 years ago. And that's it that is like completely shifted the power balance. Because instead of it being that we are kind of partnering with this species that we're taking care of, who lives with us, but they also have the ability to walk out in the morning and decide what they want to go do for the day, yeah, who they want to go visit, right? The way they want to have their own interactions and relationships and activities, they don't have that autonomy and agency anymore. And so now it's up to us to give them, just like an animal in a zoo or on a farm, would be dependent on us humans to give them every single element of what they need in their life to have good welfare. Dogs are equally dependent on us to do the same. And so that's something that I think does need to shift in the mainstream pet industry and marketplace. Yeah. Where we're saying that not because we're trying to make ourselves or each other feel bad, but because it is ours to shoulder that burden in the same way it would be the zookeeper's responsibility to take care of the animals and their care. Each one of us is in that position by deciding to have a pet dog in our life.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

That makes perfect sense. Why do you think we expect dogs to just automatically like adapt to our lives?

The Pet Industry And False Expectations

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yeah. I I think that we have created a narrative in which uh pet dogs are understood in popular concept to again have their natural fundamental niche, that of human environments, and then their lot, their place being that of being frankly a human minion. I mean, you think about something popularized and very recent, like the movie A Dog's Purpose. The entire point of that movie and the book is that a dog's singular purpose for being on this planet is to bring us joy and beer, right? Yeah. And to love us. Yeah. That's a really nice story. Right. And it sure feels like that because we feel like we are the center of our dog's world, right? It's not that they do not love us, it's not that we don't get to have this incredibly rich, deep, meaningful relationship that frankly can transcend most that we would have with other people. It's not their purpose any more than my purpose on this planet is to love my husband, right? Going back to that same analogy. Like I have my own integrity as a sentient being. And so do dogs. So their purpose is to live up to the integrity of who they are at the most optimized level. And yet the market, which is we forget the whole pet industry, is a very new market, right? Like, again, in our lifetime, that whole industry has basically been born and then just like absolutely blown up. It has continued to succeed and grow even through economic downturns and you know, um, recessions and things like that. The pet industry's done very well. And part of that is frankly, the industry, whether intentionally or not, realizing there's money to be made on the idea that a dog's place is absolutely in your family room on your leash, doing what you want them to do. If you just buy all of our products and services, everything will be fine. Like there is a little bit of a motive, which is the same thing in many industries, right? Like everything has the idea that we buy happiness and we can also, therefore, buy the dog's happiness. Um, and so good pet ownership, quote unquote, looks like you know, you tick these boxes of the right products, the right veterinary services, you take them to a dog training class, you socialize them, and then all of a sudden they're supposed to be happy and grateful and everything will be fine. And then when it doesn't work out that way, people are genuinely confused because we as an industry have done a really poor job setting expectations. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Well, along those kind of along that line, we we often hear that we hear maybe it's a misconception that dogs are so adaptable, right? They can adapt to our environment, they can adapt to situations, they can adapt to that. Um but what is the downside to having to to thinking that?

Welfare Science And Behavior Problems

SPEAKER_02 13:22

So I think that dogs are adaptable in one sense and that they're able to thrive in lots of different kinds of environments and ecosystems and things like that as a species. But I thought dogs were much more adaptable at the beginning of my career than I now believe that they are today. And I think that dogs maybe even genetically at this point, there's been enough generations that have transpired in my lifetime that they are potentially even set up with some challenges from the beginning because genetically we don't have natural selection going on. Natural selection would help make sure that the individuals that are surviving are the best adapted to the conditions, right? That's what natural selection literally does. It creates fitness, fitness to conditions. The ones that are the best fit to conditions survive. We're deciding who breeds, we're deciding who stays in the population. So that elemental cornerstone of the natural world has kind of been pulled out from under them as like a supportive structure and framework for their adaptability. And really, when we talk about welfare, the very definition of welfare is an animal's ability to adapt to and cope with the conditions in their environment. And when we have the numbers that we do finally in the published research in recent years about the percentage of dogs in developed nations with moderate to severe behavior problems, it's 50, 60, 70, 80, 90%, depending on the studies for developed nations. And so we really have the statistics now to see that dogs are struggling. And if we're applying the same animal welfare science models for dogs that we do to other species, maladaptive behavior, aka behavior problems, especially things like anxiety, distress, fearfulness, aggression, repetitive, compulsive, like stereotypical behavior, they are all indicators that that animal's welfare is compromised. And the reality is many, many dogs are facing one or more of those kinds of behavior problems, even if it's just chronic frustration, you know? So a lot of the things that people come to us as pros with, calling them behavior problems that they want fixed, things like, you know, excessive barking, jumping, attention seeking, you know, destructive behavior, et cetera, those things can just completely be evidence of welfare deficits in their environment because we haven't created a habitat that is actually designed for dogs. We've brought dogs into our increasingly indoor, sedentary, sterile human environments.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

And that is not a dog's natural habitat. And so they're struggling to cope with those conditions. And when we get evidence of that, we tend to come at it with more training, more expectations that they restrict or self-inhibit their behaviors further in the name of obedience and kind of getting on board with human expectations. But that entire kind of framework has uh potential major deficits in it for the animal, like and can add other layers of pressure for the dogs.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

And when they do these studies, do are they looking, are they comparing them to like free-ranging and free roaming dogs, or are they just looking? Some of them are.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

So this a lot of the studies are just looking at the prevalence of owner-reported behavior problems. I see, and may not be comparing them to free roaming dogs at all. But increasingly, actually, there's a Hanson Wheaton Wynn paper, for instance, that was published, I believe, in 2025 that was looking at the behavioral ecology of free-ranging dogs and comparing that with that of your average pet dogs. There's a Pongras paper that I believe was also 2025 that was looking at like an ecologically valid approach to understanding dog behavior, you know? Yeah. So more and more people are looking at that. But we in Western countries have been conditioned to think that all dogs are inherently pets. Like most people don't even know that 80% of the dogs on the planet are free roaming. And if they do, they feel sorry for them and want to bring them home into their condo when actually those dogs are living in the exact ecological niche they were designed for.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah. That's so fascinating. So how does understanding this and understanding the dog's instincts and understanding their needs strengthen the bond that we have with our pet?

The Ethogram And Natural Behaviors

SPEAKER_02 17:37

It is amazing to see what happens when the relief starts to kind of dominate the frustration for pet dogs. And when they see that we are actively trying to provide that for them and then they're experiencing that relief, it's amazing how much things can soften as these otherwise points of conflict and tension between people and dogs living together. So, like one of the reasons we're so excited about the release of the Ethogram, which has just come out on our website. Anyone can access that if they go to our website now, is that it gives us an actual list of behaviors with drawings, with descriptions, with video examples of exactly the kinds of natural behaviors that our dogs should be performing, like things that are considered in an animal welfare science model, whether that's the five freedoms or the five domains, as important natural behaviors that need to be expressed, right, for the species. And when we look at that list, we'll notice right away that some of the things on the list are things that we think are bad dog behaviors, right? Like rooting, like sticking their heads in things. Oftentimes it would be our garbage can, right? That they're like rumping looking for something interesting. Sure. Um, scavenging, yeah. Right, exactly. Normal scavenging behaviors, which are like completely appropriate for dogs. And there's nothing wrong with the behavior. We may not like the context, and that's fine. I don't want my dog pouring all my garbage onto the floor any more than the next person. Yeah. But it's a matter of understanding that, oh, that behavior is not only okay and normal, it's good and important. And so we then as stewards, being our little canine zookeepers, right, of sorts, yeah. We think, how can I create an appropriate outlet for that? And how can I promote my dog rooting and rummaging appropriately for things rather than in my trash bins? And so it's kind of like enabling us to be on behavioral scavenger hunts with our dogs all the time, where we're gamifying and getting points for those things the dog's doing. And if people kind of engage in that and they embrace those behaviors and they really start looking for them and trying to find ways to promote them, then our community is also busy trying to come up with more and more practical, hacky ways that people can promote them easily. Um, they will find that things shift tremendously in their relationships with their dogs and a lot of the kind of like edgy frustration, you know, um, base behaviors and then the hyper-fixated behaviors that can happen, like excessive barking is a great example. If you think of it like behavior, you've got these 52 behaviors in the Ethagram, for example. Think of it like you have this behavioral bottleneck of all those behaviors trying to fit in the small space of our little houses and lives and leashes and fences and all that, right? If we don't have but the space for a few of those behaviors to fit in, something like alert barking fits quite nicely wherever you put it, right? Because they can do if we don't like it, you end up with a lot more of that motivational pressure going into a handful of those behaviors than are then kind of expressed at these excessive levels. And we think the dog's just doing it, like because they're untrained and we don't understand the literal kind of physics of it, if you will, of that behavioral current needing a place to go. And the more diversely that behavioral current can be spread among all these natural behaviors, the healthier the dog. And you see it, they just are they're more adaptable, then then they have more of that natural resilience. They actually have done research to demonstrate that the more of those natural behaviors and any animal in captivity is able to um uh exhibit, then the the higher their resilience, the higher their cognitive function, their decision making, their emotional regulation. So things that are really important to us when we're sharing a house and a life with a dog, because we get very annoyed on the opposite. And so when you realize that, oh, if I just build up and I focus on modifying my world instead of modifying my dog, right, everything gets easier.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Right. And where does like, well, first I want to ask for for the was that where like a snuffle mat would come in? Like a for is that a foraging behavior type of a thing? Like if someone had a dog that really likes to forge, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Yep. And and really, so that would be like um, if we're talking about tracking a scent on a surface or an object, right? That would be something a snuffle mat would afford, which is one of the behaviors in the Ethogram. Um, It also might then, depending on how it is and what is in the snuffle mat, the dog might start scratching at it with their foot, which is another behavior to try to like locate a more concentrated bit of that scent. They might start digging at the snuffle snuffle mat, which would then be another behavior on the ethogram, right? Um, and so there are some products out there that do promote some of the behaviors in the ethogram. Right now, though, we've only kind of scratched the surface in that capacity. And we have a few kind of enrichment items and activities that we commonly recommend in the industry that are good, but we're still not getting that rich spread of behavioral diversity of lots of these different kinds of behaviors. We tend to just kind of pigeonhole a half and dozen or so that we tend to

Investigating And The Mr. Rogers Hack

SPEAKER_02 22:48

actively promote while others are underattended. But it's a great start. It's wonderful that the industry isn't recently talking about those types of toys and activities.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

What are some of the things that are like underrepresented as far as like uh instinctual needs? And how does like breeds fit into that?

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Yeah, so I can actually answer that with um uh one response kind of example just to start us off there. So, for instance, one of my favorite behaviors in the ethogram that I think is so important to the welfare that is largely prevented in pet dogs is investigating. And investigating meaning not just once you have something in front of you, checking it out, sniffing it, poking it, et cetera, you know, pawing at it, biting at it. But the way we are defining investigating for the ethogram is moving closer to the source of a stimulus in the environment to get more information. And our dogs live in environments that prevent them from investigating the source of a lot of sensory information that's happening outside.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

And so when a dog is not able to do that, it would kind of be like if you were in your house in the middle of the night and you heard a really strange sound, right? And it's alarming. You're like, I don't know what that is, I don't know where it came from. Would you be able to just go back to bed very easily? Or would you need to confirm in your mind what that is before you can relax again?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

That happens to our dogs all the time, where some kind of stimulus occurs in the environment and they're not able to get enough information about whatever that is in order to investigate it, right? They can't go and actually get closer to it to gather that information. And of course, some of that is just practically really difficult in like a high-rise apartment setting and things like that. But it's important to put your dog in situations where they have the opportunity to really do that and kind of build that muscle and get that sense of like, I heard something, I can kind of, you know, answer the question of my own mind by being able to go check it out, get closer to it, get the information I need, whether that's a visual olfactory, more auditory, whatever, to be able to be like, okay, now I know what it is and I can go back. And so sometimes training is how we bridge the gap with some of those things. Like if you're familiar with my work, like one of our hacks is the Mr. Rogers hack and where we talk to our dogs all the time about everything. They have amazing receptive language ability that people have only minimally scratched the surface of in most cases. Yeah. And so we can say to them, that's a blah, blah, blah. When they have those kinds of questions about things outside, we can start just like we would for a small child, naming those events, people, places, activities, et cetera, which then creates predictability for what's otherwise kind of scary and unpredictable novelty that um may make them feel distressed. Um, so that's one example of one of the behaviors. Um, a lot of the social behaviors, because so many dogs live in single dog household now, yeah, yeah, are in are prevented. So a lot of the social behaviors that involve a little more intimacy and trust. So like wrestling, restrained biting, mouth sparring, you know, social contact resting and sleeping, things like that that you would do with a bonded con specific, like another dog. A lot of dogs, if they don't live with another canine companion that you know they have a good relationship with, there's kind of a whole heap of behaviors that might be unavailable to them.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

So, us as an industry, reimagining what does it look like for us to be a part of helping and making it possible for even dogs living in single dog houses to have those needs met by redesigning how we approach things like daycares. What if we were much more intentional about the social groups that we built and the ways that we did that? Um, I've got a wonderful colleague named Kathy Callahan who um writes for Whole Dog Journal and has published a few books. Um, she has uh a wonderful puppy pals program where instead of doing like a puppy class, she basically has groups of puppies that come from like months at a time or they're in this critical socialization period and they spend whole days with that same group of puppies and a few other older dogs growing up together, building those relationships. And then once they graduate, those people go on to maintain those relationships for their dogs and go do things together, have dogs come over to each other's houses, things like that. So even though they may be the only dog in a household, they still have that sense of a dog social.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Right. That's great. As you were talking, I was thinking about this morning. I was walking a puppy and he's about five months, and he's just now being able to like go out in the world and like do all of his like walks and whatnot. And we passed a um a stroller. And I don't think that he has ever seen a stroller before. And so I was just wondering if if I did it right through um because he was at first he barked and then he just wanted to watch the stroller. All he wanted to do was just watch the stroller. So I stood there with him and I let him watch the stroller go by. I told him, like, it's just a stroller, it's just a baby and a stroller and a human, and like, like I was thinking of you're Mr. Rogers. Yeah. It's just a stroller. We can watch it go by and then we can move on, and that's fine. And he just could look up at me and then he would watch the stroller, and then he would look up at me, and he would watch the stroller. And even when we would decided to move on, he still kept looking back, like trying to figure out what that stroller was. So clearly that was something that he really needed to work out with with that thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Yeah. And oftentimes we don't let dogs, you know, get the information that they need about something like that. We just are like, come on, let's go, let's keep walking, you know, let's go do this, let's, you know, heal or come or whatever. Like we're not giving them a chance to get the information they need about things in the environment. Whereas even if the dog just moved closer to the stroller at all, took a step towards the stroller, right? The air around the stroller did a little bit of air scenting, right? That's investigating if you move towards it at all to get any additional information, you know? Right. And so something as simple as how could we help promote investigating in our pet dog population, even though it might be difficult in some cases when we're inside, when you're out and about with your dog, if you notice your dog is really orienting on something or alerting on something in the environment, try to see if you can give them the opportunity to get a little intel, get a little closer to it, if at all possible. In addition to you providing some additional intel by using Mr. Rogers and explaining some things. And for those people listening who think I'm absolutely crazy telling you to talk to your dog, you can go look at the research that's now available. There's been some really interesting stuff done by Gregory Burns at Emory University and Adam McClosey's lab and Hungary, looking at dogs' receptive language ability. And it is no longer just complete fiction, right? Like dogs are, we kind of all intuitively know that for those of us who just talk to our dogs. They pick up on the phrases and the words that you say before you do things that they care about. And then that's you know it's why you have to spell it after a while, is because they know what it means. And you know what they're spelling, you have to start spelling just like with kids. Um, and the same thing is true with dogs. So if you're deliberate and intentional about the way that you explain things, it's really remarkable how much it can help.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

I think in case of that puppy, I think a lot of people would just be like, leave it, leave it, because they saw that he would got like a little amped up, you know, and um, or just drag them along. But I was really like in the moment trying to, especially with a baby, like you know, thinking about it in terms of a new brain, like this is what's out here. This is that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Yeah. And and there's some interesting new um papers that have come out. One of our um uh students in the LEGS course, um, uh, her name is uh Agneska Grinkowitz, and she's published two papers just in 2026 talking about kind of these um lives that dogs are living where they are on leashes all the time and they are socially disconnected, and they aren't able to co-regulate with other dogs as their babies, as they're facing those kinds of conditions, and they would be co-regulating with other dogs, right? Yeah. They're not also then able to go investigate, check things out, build that resilience where it takes a little bit of confidence and courage to, you know, face adversity and be like, oh, I'm gonna go get closer to the scary thing I haven't seen before. But those things build up the type of cognitive function, emotional resilience and everything that we're after. And we're often robbing our dogs of those experiences because of this control kind of dominating model that we have, right? Um, and and we don't, it's we're not doing it even because we want to control them. We think we should control them. We think that's what we're supposed to do, and that that will make an obedient, good dog to live with. And we might be pulling the most fundamental stuff out from under them on a regular basis by not allowing them to interact with their world and other dogs more freely than we.

Genetics And Breed Specific Needs

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about like genetics, because often we've been told it's like how you raise them, right? It's like you get a good dog, you get a dog, you do all the right things, and then you have a good dog, you you know, you have a dog that's listening to you, that's by your side, that does all those things, but it's far more complicated than that. It's or more nuanced than that, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

And I didn't actually get to that a second ago when you asked about the genetics. So this brings me back to that, which I kind of lost track of. Okay. Um, so for like, for instance, a good way to think about it would be say, take Great Pyrenees or Livestock Guardian dogs. And there's a lot more of those in the pet dog gene pool than there had been, because people have discovered these white, fluffy, magical creatures and think they're just so grand to have, and they look like enormous golden retrievers, and they're just such sweet puppies and all this, wonderful with kids. Um, but they really can struggle in urban environments, for example, compared to other breeds of dogs more than others, um, because they were bred to roam freely and make their own decisions on large, you know, acreage, uh, taking care of stock and uh territory and protecting it against predators. And so if you took their that square peg and you put it in the round hole of, like, you know, an apartment high-rise or whatever in Manhattan, that dog is not going to be able to adapt to those conditions as readily as, say, a toy breed that was absolutely bred for living indoors on laps exclusively with people. Um, a lot of the behaviors that we really valued historically, like for herding dogs, controlling the movement of other animals for the sake of herding and managing livestock and moving them from point A to point B, not so handy when you don't have cows or sheep and you happen to have a birthday party of small children running around in a disorderly fashion, and all of a sudden those jeans get turned on and you have a quote unquote aggressive border collie biting at the children's clothes when the dog is not actually being aggressive. Not to say that the children wouldn't experience it that way. I'm not saying that, oh, it's perfectly fine, just let them do it. But when we pathologize it as if it's an abnormal behavior, when it is absolutely the standard goal that we bred into these dogs intentionally for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years, that's the mistake, is our interpretation of it. We actually have to think if we have these highly motivated natural behaviors, and they can be different among the breeds of dogs because we turned the volume up on many of them and the volume down on others in the different breeds of dogs, right? So we should fully expect to see more chasing, barking, you know, kind of like um nipping at uh in herding dogs. Um, whereas we would assume to see less of that behavior, say in livestock guardian breeds, I was just talking about. But also I would expect to see a higher level of territorial behavior um in livestock guardian breeds, um, looking at important natural behaviors for livestock guardians or any guardians, just the ability to monitor and perch and watch, observe an environment, right, for potential threats is something very important to them. It would look to us like they're doing nothing sitting on the back porch just watching the world go by. Well, they're actually doing something very important for their wife.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

I was just gonna say, I have a I have a Great Pyrenees that I care for. And luckily she has a huge property, but to me, it looks like like she's not, it looks like she's not doing anything and she's not doing her job. Like she doesn't have those instincts, right? And then in hindsight, when you said that, I was like, oh yeah, she does. She's just quietly smelling and checking out the scene.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

And if there's nothing alarming, yeah, Great Pyrenees spend 90% of their time sitting on a visual vantage point perch and watching and listening and smelling, yep, and only responding when there's something that they think is a potential threat, right? Um, other breeds that can really struggle, you know, uh depending on the conditions, is like scent hounds, for instance, right? Like we've bred them to commit to tracking a scent and you know, then holding it at bay and you know, barking to alert with this wonderful resonating bark whenever they they are on the scent or you know, have identified their target. And then that can turn into a lot of leash drama when they see the neighbor's cat across the street, right? Right. And things like that. And and again, I I understand the practical need to be able to walk the dog in a manageable, safe fashion, but we are not going to take the scent hound out of the scent hound. We need to give that walker hound or that beagle or whatever an opportunity to do those behaviors. And so partly it's about defining for the dog when and where and how they can do the thing.

unknown 36:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

And then let them know. And in these circumstances, please know, like walking around the block, you know, with the neighbor's cat and everything. Right. If I can put the deposit in that welfare bank account for that dog and our relationship, frankly, to say every day you get to go here and do this thing, or at least every other day, you get to go here and let your dog hair down and do all of the things and follow all those inborn signals and instincts and motivations to do your dogging. Yeah. Then when we walk around our little condo block and you see that neighbor's cat, I will reinforce you heavily for minding your own business and moving on because that is not, in fact, a raccoon that we're gonna go right, you know? Um, and they tend to be much more amenable to all of those kinds of asks from our side when those needs are adequately met on theirs.

unknown 37:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

What are what are some subtle signs that our dogs give us daily that we kind of completely miss if we're if we're not if we're not paying attention to our dog or if we're not like understanding the dog in front of us.

Quiet Dogs Can Still Be Stressed

SPEAKER_02 37:30

So interesting enough, one of the things that I think is easy for us to miss is the the dog being a really well-behaved dog, like quietly laying on their place on their mat, like they're told when we put them in the down state, not making a fuss when we put them in the crate, not doing any inappropriate behaviors inside. And we think it's a well-behaved dog, they're relaxed. But that can be a parasympathetic stress response where the dog is not showing on the outside the distress that they're experiencing on the inside. And this is one of the reasons why behavioral diversity is so important. If the dog isn't doing dog things, that in itself is a red flag.

unknown 38:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

If they're not doing the things a dog should be doing. So we tend to look for negative indicators of welfare, right? And of course, behavior problems are negative indicators of welfare. So if your dog is having a lot of behavior problems, that probably points to welfare problems, not just the need for more training, right? Interesting, yeah. Yeah, and we tend to not think about that. We characterize those as training problems as opposed to welfare problems. Um, and so I think that is definitely one thing. Obviously, there could be more overt signals if your dog is doing, you know, if they seem very anxious, if they're pacing a lot, if they're whining a lot, um, if they're, you know, aggressive, defensive, trembling. Like I think we're better at reading those signals of realizing a dog is really in trouble. But I think sometimes we're just missing the lack of dogness that's happening for the dog. We are accidentally pushing things in the wrong direction, looking for more obedience and asking the dog to inhibit more, thinking that's the bar we're trying to meet. When in, as a matter of fact, that might be completely counterproductive for the dog's uh interests and needs. Um, and you know, a lot of the times we end up, frankly, over medicating dogs, not to say that medication isn't warranted in a lot of cases, but I think we tend to think because the dog, the goal is the dog is just calm, right? Right. That we are like, well, the dog something's wrong because the dog's not calm. So I need meds to make the dog calm. And then the dog is calm, and we're like, they're better, but are they better? Or did we just mask the symptoms of the dog's struggle and they're still suffering inside because they're not living a good life that's fulfilled, right? They're being kind of a shell of the individual that they actually are.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Yeah. I've had clients who've medicated their dogs and then they've felt like, but like their personality is gone. And I was like, well, then we we lessen the dose or we go back off of it and you deal with the situation, you deal with the behavior that you don't love, you know?

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Right, exactly. And and we figure out how to kind of get to the bottom of it in a way that is going to be really meaningful, you know, for that individual animal. And um, you know, I I do understand it is really tricky. Like I know that right now, us as a pet industry, we have not supported the general public in this. And this is one of the things that I really hold each of us accountable for as professionals, not to say we should feel guilty. We just need to kind of catch up, right? We need to evolve with the science that's available and realize that we are the perceived authorities in the pet industry that the public looks to for guidance about the care of their dog. Yeah. And so if we aren't talking about these things and we aren't helping the general public not only understand that they're important, but we aren't weaving them into our services, the products that we have available for people, the resources that are available in a given community where people can readily go to help meet their dog's needs. Right. And we aren't doing our part as an industry. We can't just say, hey, general public, figure it out. Your dog needs more. Good luck with that, right? We have to make sure we are really trying to set them up for success. And it's one of the reasons why I ended up moving into education full-time and selling my local business, is because I found myself, frankly, in that position where I was like, I'm telling people to meet needs and I'm not giving them the tools to do it because they don't exist. So I need to try to get out there and work on getting much clearer, more concrete guidance pieces of the puzzle, like the Ethogram, that help make it accessible for folks to be like, okay, I know what I'm looking at here. Like that's the target behavior, and I can start looking for it in my dog and see if that's something that's available. Um, but I I think going back to that kind of beginning of our conversation here, like part of it is really understanding that we've been sold the idea that a dog's place is as our pet, and that is not actually true. The vast majority of dog breeds genetically were not selected to be living in modern pet dog conditions under such high behavioral restraint.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Yeah. We've talked a lot about what we don't what we're not getting about our dogs and what we don't understand and what they need.

What Pet Parents Get Right

SPEAKER_01 42:33

What are pet parents getting right these days? If there's one thing a lot of things. If they're one thing, because there's a lot has changed. So, like, yeah, what what are we getting right these days?

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yeah, no, I mean this is the great irony, and frankly, this is also the opportunity in front of us. Yeah. I would say we've never loved our dog in my life. Right. People have never been more willing to refinance their house or move or break up with a bad boyfriend or whatever over their dog, you know, like dogs, especially for this generation that in some cases is choosing not to have their own children, dogs are very much becoming more than ever our family members. And we are willing to invest in them our time and our energy and our money. But I think people have been getting led in a direction that training is the answer to everything, trainingslash drugs, you know, and more products that may or may not be ultimately helpful, right? And and really not being given the tools they need to understand who their dog is and what that means in terms of how we need to provide for them in the environment. Um, so it's we have this stage set for success because we have all of this willingness and demonstrated investment. And we have a whole new generation of pet parent, if you will, that is wanting to prioritize the needs of their dogs. If we're not setting them up for success as an industry, right? They're going to end up kind of challenged there. So, kind of all at once, we're trying to turn this ship towards a new goalpost, which is the welfare model. Um, and and all of us have a psychological point of reference for that, even if we don't think we do. If we've ever been to a really, really great zoo, you know what the difference is between that and a really, really bad zoo, right? You know how horrible it is when you see a tiger in a small cage pacing back and forth versus a really phenomenal enclosure where they have all of the these, you know, built-in structures and trees provided and obstacles and even the way that the food is given to them and everything is so thoughtfully done so that it gives them an opportunity to actually be the species that they are. Yeah, it's still captivity and they still will always have a certain degree of loss of agency, but we can optimize those conditions and captive environments, and then we can get kind of excited about being creative with what we do with our environments to make them more suitable for our dogs. And frankly, it's fun. Going about living with dogs from a behavioral diversity and welfare lens is like what can I do so that my dog can have more fun and then bonus, they won't have so much behavior problems and they're easier to live with, right? Totally. It's that's great.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Absolutely.

What Dogs Teach Us About Love

SPEAKER_01 45:18

My last question for you is something that I ask most of my guests. And since you work with dogs, you study dogs, and you have your own dogs, what's the most enduring thing your dogs have taught you?

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Um well, the first thing that came to mind, um, I'll give you two. Um, the first thing that came to mind is if you want your dog to listen to you, become someone worthless. We listen to people we respect. And we look and like people that we know have our back, right? Like we know they have our best interest at heart. They have information that's valuable to us, they inspire us, they motivate us, they excite us, we want to be with them, right? And a lot of the times we're accidentally putting on these hats that are not inspiring net for our dogs, right? Yet we're expecting them to listen to us and they're like, really? So that's definitely one. And that ties in with the second one, um, which is there's almost nothing more criminal than losing yourself in love and asking dogs to give themselves up for their love for us. It's not a fair ass. And we don't realize we're asking that. But we are we're asking that a lot. Like you give up being a dog and be in my human world. And I love you. You meet my needs. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna meet my emotional needs, and I will endeavor to meet yours. But I it's not necessarily a healthy relationship, you know. Um, as a matter of fact, part of why pet keeping is a thing and partly why it is grown the way that it has is because of our own suffering welfare is the social species that we are in the 21st century and our increasingly isolated and disparate lives and living online and not in community and stuff like that. Dogs are human enrichment, pets are human enrichment. And so we have to recognize that about ourselves. Like there's a hook for us psychologically, emotionally, even evolutionarily, and why we feel this huge swell of love and attraction to these relationships with our dogs and how it feels so good to take care of them. But there is a cost for them that is unaccounted for. It doesn't have to be. We can fill their cup and have that amazing love affair.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

And that is just the best of it.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

And seeing your dog happy and fulfilled, I think makes you feel amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

Yeah. That is where the belly laughs come from, is watching dogs do dogs doing all their wonderful antics and all of their glory.

unknown 48:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Yesterday with my dog and my daughter and her dog to a sniff spot that was close by that had a pond and the amount of laughter watching her little cattle dog Chiweeney puppy, who is just an absolute force, as you might imagine. She's like a little mini Malinois. She's like 15 pounds of just sheer, you know, brute ambition and enthusiasm. And watching these dogs just be dogs and celebrate their dogness was the most wonderful feeling in the world. You're just laughing, and it comes from this deep place of joy and wonder in us that makes our lives better in a really it gives a sense of makes me feel a little free, a little freer when I watch that, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:54

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, like you can be a kid. Yeah, totally. I so appreciate this chat. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was

Final Thoughts And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_01 49:03

lovely. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you followed the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who loves dogs. You can find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes. And I'd love to connect with you on Instagram at Baroo Pup. If you have a story you'd like to share, you can email me at Charlotte at the Baroo.com. Thanks for listening to the Baroo and let's chat soon.