Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Patricia McConnell and Dr. Kristina Spaulding explore the concept of flow, which is a state of complete absorption and engagement in an activity that is intrinsically rewarding. They discuss how flow can vary among individuals and how it relates to different activities dogs might do. The conversation highlights the importance of providing opportunities for animals to engage in activities purely for their own enjoyment.
They also discuss the importance of providing animals with opportunities for agency and choice, allowing them to actively engage with their environment and gather knowledge. The conversation highlights the need for balance in caregiving, reinforcing ourselves for the efforts we make, and giving animals the space to learn and explore.
For more information on Dr. McConnell, go to www.patriciamcconnell.com or visit her blog, at www.theotherendoftheleash.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
For more information on Dr. Spaulding, go to www.sciencemattersllc.com, or click here for Research Bites or here for the Unlocking Resilience course.
Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Patricia McConnell and Dr. Kristina Spaulding explore the concept of flow, which is a state of complete absorption and engagement in an activity that is intrinsically rewarding. They discuss how flow can vary among individuals and how it relates to different activities dogs might do. The conversation highlights the importance of providing opportunities for animals to engage in activities purely for their own enjoyment.
They also discuss the importance of providing animals with opportunities for agency and choice, allowing them to actively engage with their environment and gather knowledge. The conversation highlights the need for balance in caregiving, reinforcing ourselves for the efforts we make, and giving animals the space to learn and explore.
For more information on Dr. McConnell, go to www.patriciamcconnell.com or visit her blog, at www.theotherendoftheleash.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
For more information on Dr. Spaulding, go to www.sciencemattersllc.com, or click here for Research Bites or here for the Unlocking Resilience course.
I want to tell you that my “big” 16 week course unlocking resilience is starting on August 19th. I love teaching this course. I love the students and the discussions that we have. We get deep into the science of stress, emotion, resilience and well-being. And we talk about how to apply that science to the animals in front of us. This is a perfect course for anyone who only feels like they're scratching the surface of what they can do with behavior and are just tired of seeing the same information on rinse and repeat. This course will elevate your practice, change how you approach behavior, and set you apart from others in the area. Get more information by going to www.sciencemattersllc.com/
Kristina Spaulding (00:01.618)
This episode, I'm going to be talking to Dr. Patricia McConnell, which I'm very excited about. And Dr. McConnell is an author and animal behaviorist who has consulted with pet owners for over 30 years about serious behavioral problems. She taught the biology and philosophy of human animal relationships in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 25 years. Co-hosted Calling All Pets with Larry Mueller on
WPR for 14 years and has spoken around the world about canine behavior and training. Her self-published books on behavior and training have sold over a quarter of a million copies. Her nationally published books, The Other End of the Leash and For the Love of a Dog are considered classics and together have been translated into 15 languages.
Her latest book, The Education of Will, a memoir focused on healing and trauma in both people and dogs, has generated heartfelt praise and helped other trauma victims around the world. Patricia and her husband live with their working border colleagues, Skip and Maggie, and a very spoiled flock of sheep. For more information, go to www. or visit her blog at
Kristina Spaulding (01:25.012)
www. and follow her on Facebook and Instagram. The links will be posted in the show notes. And I have to say that my history with, Patricia goes back, I don't know, a very long time, 20, maybe probably more than 20 years ago, because I was a student at UW Madison and I was there studying
zoology initially and then I switched to wildlife ecology. And when I was taking my zoology 101 class, one of my TAs asked me what I wanted to do with my degree. And I said, well, I want to rehabilitate, rehabilitate aggressive dogs. But I know you can't make any money doing that. So I'm going to do this instead. Whatever. I was probably going to go become a conservation biologist or something. And so that's when he told me he said, well, there's actually a professor here.
UW Madison that does that. And so that's how we got connected. And then I, uh, was an assistant for her classes for a while. And you very graciously allowed me to sit in on several of your behavior consultations. That's how I found out what a certified applied animal behaviorist was. And that was sort of the beginning of my journey to getting here. So, um, so thank you again for all of that wonderful guidance. And I'm very happy to have you here today. I'm very excited about.
what we're going to talk about. But before we get into that, do you want to talk a little bit about what you're working on right now? Because you're still writing.
Patricia McConnell (02:59.917)
I am. And first of all, thank you so much, Kristina. I love hearing the beginning of the backstory. I didn't know the very beginning part of that. I love hearing it. And I just want to say it is so gratifying to watch people go through this evolution, this process growing. And I'm just so proud of you. You've just done so many wonderful things. It's so heartening for people.
Kristina Spaulding (03:08.138)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (03:22.473)
Oh, thank you.
Patricia McConnell (03:28.334)
I've gotten up there and it's just so lovely to see these smart, young, engaged, totally together people carrying the torch. So thank you for all of that.
Kristina Spaulding (03:39.894)
Well, thank you for helping me get there.
Patricia McConnell (03:43.997)
So yeah, so my torch has sort of changed and I'm still, you know, I love doing this kind of thing. I have a blog, you know, I love talking to people about training and behavior. And I just, five, six years ago, retired from seeing cases and just decided to follow this lifelong dream I had of writing fiction. So I've been working on a mystery novel, which is completed and
Kristina Spaulding (04:07.416)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (04:13.669)
Hopefully we'll find a publisher. And I actually started to work on the second novel. I love doing it. I love writing. It's very hard. Fiction is harder than I thought it was. I mean, I know it was really hard. Let me be straight about that. I knew it was really, really hard, but what I didn't realize was the implication of the good part of writing fiction, which is that anything can happen. I mean, it's unlike nonfiction, right? Anything can happen. And the hard part is that
Kristina Spaulding (04:39.459)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (04:43.733)
every single moment of every single sentence you write, anything can happen next. So you are making decisions literally just constantly. But it means I get to do fun things. I just came back from a really great seminar teaching scent detection dogs. The Canine Behavior Consortium put it on. Greg Schulz and some great people.
Kristina Spaulding (04:49.578)
Hahahaha
Kristina Spaulding (04:55.5)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (05:11.633)
teaching handlers to teach dogs to detect a particular kind of scent. They were mostly human remains detection dogs and live find dogs who work for FEMA and law enforcement. Anyway, it's allowed me to sort of expound my boundaries and just do all kinds of fun things. So I'm having a great time.
Kristina Spaulding (05:30.986)
Yeah, I am really excited about the prospect of these books. So they're mystery books. And I'm assuming based on what you just said, that they include dogs.
Patricia McConnell (05:40.781)
Nah, would I write it? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And I want to assure everybody, because some people have asked, it's like, of course no dog dies. There's no way I would do that to myself, much less to the readers. So there are some dramas, there are some times of trouble that dogs are involved in.
Kristina Spaulding (06:02.611)
Right, yes.
Patricia McConnell (06:10.917)
but it is a murder mystery. So there are some people who don't make it, but yep, the dogs are fine
Kristina Spaulding (06:20.898)
That's great. And I enjoy murder mysteries. And I, I know there's a couple books out there that are mystery novels that also include dogs, and I find myself getting frustrated reading some of those because there's so much misinformation. And so I'm really looking forward to the idea of having a mystery novel that includes dogs that's also based in reality.
Patricia McConnell (06:34.318)
Hehe.
Patricia McConnell (06:48.709)
Thank you. Yes, I find myself ripping my hair out of my head sometimes and just wanting to smash my head against the wall, especially the ones that talk as if, you know, the dogs are talking. It's like, no, dogs wouldn't say that. I'm sorry. The one I love, have you ever read the Chat and Bernie series? The dog does communicate, but he says dog things.
Kristina Spaulding (06:53.013)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (07:00.082)
Yeah, yeah. Right.
Kristina Spaulding (07:10.802)
No.
Kristina Spaulding (07:18.358)
That's good.
Patricia McConnell (07:18.753)
It's like, well, I was doing this and then, squirrel.
Kristina Spaulding (07:24.983)
Right? I'll have to look into those. Okay, so, um, today we're going to talk about all kinds of things. I find it a little hard to summarize the topic. But talking about sort of the internal experiences of dogs and what is internally reinforcing to them and then linking that to things like problem solving and choice and
stress resilience, but before we get into that, I do wanna clarify for the listeners that what we're gonna be talking about today is speculation. So yes, we both have PhDs, and yes, we are using scientific data as our starting point, but there is still a lot of uncertainty in these areas, and it's 100% okay, even beneficial, to speculate.
And it's also important that people understand that we are not presenting facts or absolute truths. So I just want to get that out of the way before we start. And why don't we start by talking about intrinsic reinforcement? So intrinsic reinforcement refers to the natural enjoyment of engaging in a task. And
This is typically applied to human beings, but I'm curious about what your thoughts are in terms of whether or not non-human animals can do things for pure enjoyment.
Patricia McConnell (08:57.545)
Oh, I think absolutely. I mean, I thank you for your good point about the fact that we are just speculating. We are basically making this up and making educated guesses. I very much appreciate that. I wish I heard that more often, but I really think we do. I mean, I would pretty much bet the farm that we do that they do. And I think it's important to them. I mean, I think...
Kristina Spaulding (09:05.546)
Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (09:10.327)
Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (09:25.643)
Mm-hmm.
Patricia McConnell (09:26.557)
And I can't, I mean, let me just sort of start from the beginning. How could there be a world, how could there be an evolution of behavior and emotions and physiology that didn't include an animal being self-reinforced? You know, being reinforced intrinsically by something it's doing. I mean, that I sort of can't imagine a world in which that wouldn't happen. Right.
Now we can all get reinforced for things that aren't good for us. And I'm that can, so they're intrinsically reinforcing but they may not be good for us, right? Dogs eat too much fat and it could kill them. We eat too much sugar and it's bad for us. But so much of how animals are designed strikes me that one sort of from an evolutionary standpoint it just makes sense that they would be. And then
Kristina Spaulding (10:07.276)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (10:23.441)
from a practical viewpoint, just watching them. You know, you and I have spent how many decades watching, observing, you know, carefully observing, you know, really paying attention. That yes, there are absolutely things that, we'll just pick dogs for the moment, but the dogs do that don't need any kind of extrinsic or reinforcement. And probably a great example.
you know that I know Kristina, you know I have sheep dogs. One of the biggest mistakes sometimes that novices make is they think, let me put it this way, they don't realize that 90 to 95% of the reinforcement the dog gets is being allowed to take control of the sheep because that's what they want. And so.
Just example, when I started a million years ago, I would watch people use force and authority to call their dogs away from the sheep. So one thing that happens when you're starting a young dog on sheep, you get them hopefully running around in circles around the sheep and then it's time to quit. And you call them off, you recall, and they're like, I hear nothing. And they keep working.
Kristina Spaulding (11:46.602)
Right?
Patricia McConnell (11:50.025)
But you really need them to stop for their sake, the sheep's sake, whatever, and the dog just ignores you. And so I watched people go through all kinds of methods that I didn't find to be either effective or particularly humane or thoughtful. And so I saw people, and of course we all would think of this too as like pre-MAC principle, right? What does the dog want?
So I would do something, body block them, and basically get them to pause for a second. And then the second they would, I'd let them go back to working the sheep. Because that's what they want. And the mistake is made like, well, give them a cookie. And I think a lot of dogs love praise, and certainly I use that. They love physical praise, if you will. But what they really, really want is access to the sheep. So that's what you give them. And when they move...
Kristina Spaulding (12:24.802)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (12:33.42)
Mm-hmm.
Patricia McConnell (12:46.841)
make a mistake, you call them off, then you let them go back.
Kristina Spaulding (12:49.278)
Right. Yep. Yeah, that's really interesting because that's pretty much exactly how I trained my beagle to come. Not with sheep. But we would be walking. He's a beagle mix, but very nose driven. And we would be walking and he would find these little rodent holes and he would dive into them and stick his, you know, snout in there. And I mean, he wouldn't come when called.
Patricia McConnell (12:58.07)
I'm sorry.
Kristina Spaulding (13:16.682)
And if I could, you know, when I finally could get him away from it, I would, you know, I could give him ham and other, you know, meat and cheese and all this stuff. And he just didn't care. So that's exactly what I did is I would just stand there and wait for him to look at me. And then I would let him go back and smell the rodents and do that hunting. And that is the only thing that worked. Um, I mean, I didn't try punishing him, but I don't think.
that was necessary, right? Because we were able, there was a reinforcer that was available, it was right there. And that was so much more powerful than anything that I could extrinsically give him, which means, I know you know this, but this means giving the reinforcers coming from something on the outside of the animal, like giving them a treat or praise or something like that. So.
Patricia McConnell (14:09.657)
Yeah, exactly. And I think this, our observations, our belief that intrinsic reinforcement is something that happens with non-human animals all the time, I think it's still not well enough known by the general animal loving public. We've made so much progress since I started in humane and effective relationship building training. When I started,
Kristina Spaulding (14:34.593)
Yes.
Patricia McConnell (14:39.513)
you know, in dark ages. I mean, everybody was using prong collars and choke chains. And, you know, the way you got a dog to sit was you just kept jerking his collar until he finally sat, right? So we've come so far, but I think we have so far to go. And I think, you know, your point, your brilliant, your simple, but not obvious solution of like, well, what does he want, right? You know, he wants to sniff the hole.
Kristina Spaulding (14:52.034)
Thanks.
Kristina Spaulding (14:57.025)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (15:08.685)
I tell a story about a dog I had who found a dead rotten bird and a bunch of people who were sitting over for sort of some drinks in the evening on the porch at the farm said, well, let me see you get that. And the way I got the way I trained a leave it in that context is basically I got it from her eventually without using force. And then I gave it back to her the second she did and they were like, what?
Kristina Spaulding (15:35.598)
right?
Patricia McConnell (15:36.993)
So it's very anti-intuitive, but the more we can help people understand that, the more power they'll have, the more control they'll have, ironically. But the happier the dog.
Kristina Spaulding (15:44.211)
Great. Yep.
Yeah, and I think that's a really good point because of course, if we, once we recognize that we believe that animals can experience intrinsic reinforcement, which I totally agree with you by the way, then the next question is, are we giving them enough opportunities to experience intrinsic reinforcement? And I worry that for so many animals, the answer to that question is no.
we're not giving them enough opportunity.
Patricia McConnell (16:20.785)
I agree with you. I do. You know, it's a really interesting time, isn't it? The more we understand about neurobiology and emotions and what's shared with non-human animals and what's not, it's making the life richer, our lives are richer, but it's also, it's making it more complicated. I mean, there's no way around it, you know? And I love this examination that many of us are doing of
Kristina Spaulding (16:27.018)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (16:40.947)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (16:49.197)
What is the life of our pet dogs, of our companion dogs really like? And there's all kinds of good about the fact that care and safety and attention and then, but then there are these questions about intrinsic rewards. And I agree with you. I don't think they're getting enough in an ideal world. And why not strive for an ideal world? You know, when we can, I mean, we're never going to find it, right?
Kristina Spaulding (16:53.431)
Mm-hmm.
Kristina Spaulding (17:15.606)
Right, right. Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (17:18.953)
But why not strive for it? This is one of the few things we actually do have control over in the world. So I'm thinking about, I mean, one thing I think we do pretty well on, but could do better on, is I think chewing is an intrinsic reward. Don't you think? And ripping things up. No. So I was just, Karen and London and I were just talking about how...
Kristina Spaulding (17:24.383)
Mm-hmm.
Kristina Spaulding (17:34.538)
Yeah. Yes.
Patricia McConnell (17:46.897)
Karen was talking about how you can teach dogs to not grip up a fluffy toy, right? But then we also talked about how I buy cheap fluffy toys that are safe for my dogs, and I let them just destroy them in two days, you know, even if they cost $9, it's like one, I can afford it, but that's what they want. They want to rip those things up.
Kristina Spaulding (17:52.778)
Mm-hmm.
Patricia McConnell (18:15.405)
We can speculate as to why, you know, so I think chewing is one. What are some other of the other intrinsic rewards do you think of? I'm curious about your list.
Kristina Spaulding (18:26.826)
So I think definitely I agree with chewing and I do the same thing with my Aussie is he gets toys that he just gets to tear apart. And then cardboard boxes are also very popular for tearing apart. So that's another option. But I think obviously smelling, but there's so many ways that we can engage that.
So there's nose work, there's letting them sniff on walks. Another thing that I started doing a few years ago and I can't remember exactly what it was that prompted me to do it. I think it was looking into research on enrichment and exploration, but I decided that when we bring new things into the house, that I was gonna let my dog smell them.
And I have two dogs and they couldn't be more opposite. So this is the Australian Shepherd we're talking about. But he always wanted to smell things and I initially I was just sort of like, oh, no, that's not yours. I mean, I just sort of did this for years without thinking. And then I thought, well, why? I mean, why can't he smell it? What harm is that going to do? And so I started letting him smell things. And when I open packages now, he helps me and he gets to help.
Patricia McConnell (19:42.773)
Yeah, yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (19:50.862)
pull apart the package and smell everything. And I have been really struck by how incredibly reinforcing this is for him. I mean, when we bring packages into the house and we don't order most of our dog supplies, so most of the things that are in the packages are of no value to him. But he is so excited to sit down on the floor with me and open this package with me and he's sticking his nose in there.
and checking it out and investigating everything. And this has become a very intrinsically reinforcing experience for both of us now. So that's one thing that we've started doing that's pretty easy. I mean, it's almost no work. I'm opening the packages anyway. So that's been really enjoyable. And then I think another big, yes, yes.
Patricia McConnell (20:39.725)
Oh, can I just stop you there before you go on to the next one? Because I wish you could see me because I'm like cheering and laughing. I feel intrinsically reinforced just hearing this story because the image of you guys makes me so happy. I love it. And I think that's something that's so easy that we can do. I too, I do it a little differently. I don't have a dog who likes to rip up cardboard, but I...
Kristina Spaulding (20:47.9)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (21:10.193)
I let them sniff things that I bring into the house now. And I think, and that sort of leads to something else I was actually thinking about earlier, which is, I think, boy am I out on the speculation limb here. But I think for a predatory species, I think newness, novelty is intrinsically reinforcing.
Kristina Spaulding (21:37.823)
Yeah, yeah.
Patricia McConnell (21:38.517)
So part of what you're doing by bringing in like, what's in here, you know? Jim and I, I mean, Jim and I live in border collie heaven in a way. I mean, it would be heaven if we had 300 acres and we only have 12. But nonetheless, I mean, the dogs are off leash, outside all the time, they get walks in the woods and they get to work sheep. But it's all the same woods and it's all the same sheep. And so...
Kristina Spaulding (21:48.119)
Right?
Kristina Spaulding (21:52.17)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (22:07.069)
less often than I feel like I wish I did, but at least once a week we take the dogs off the farm and go on a walk somewhere where most of the time they can walk safely off leash. Not always, but they're getting novelty. They're getting new scents. They're getting new smells, you know, and so, so yeah, so I just, I love that example that you gave because it brings up so many other issues, you know.
Kristina Spaulding (22:22.134)
Yes.
Patricia McConnell (22:35.489)
novelty, interest, getting to rip up the box, sharing something with you because they're so social. I mean, so many intrinsic reinforces right there in that one little story.
Kristina Spaulding (22:47.006)
Yeah, yeah. And I agree that I think novelty is really important.
I agree that it's really important to get animals to new places, obviously. Depending on how that individual responds to it, we always have to keep that in mind, because if novelty can also become very scary to certain dogs. So.
But as long as it's not upsetting and traumatizing to the animal is taking them to new places, I agree. I think that's really important. And that social piece of it, I think, is really intrinsically reinforcing as well. And once we start talking about intrinsic reinforcements, that then brings us to a closely related topic called flow.
which I'm very excited to talk about. So I'm gonna define it first. There was a paper published not too long ago by Sarah Hintze, and she talks about the concept of flow in non-human animals. This is something that scientists have discussed in people for a while now. So she defines it as a state of complete absorption or engagement in an activity that one finds rewarding intrinsically.
irrespective of any end product or extrinsic benefit. And often people refer to this as being like in the zone. You know, you're just doing something, you're really absorbed, you're not distracted by things going on around you and it's a very positive, enjoyable state. So that brings me to my next question, which is if you think dogs can experience flow.
Kristina Spaulding (24:50.322)
And I wanted to add to that one of the reasons I was so interested to talk to you about this is because you work with border colleagues. And I think that is a relatively unique situation when working with herding dogs because of the amount of, and we'll kind of get into this a little bit later, but the amount of
independence that they can have. I mean, not that they're not getting any guidance from you, but it's very different from something like obedience or guide dog work, where they're getting a huge amount of almost really like micromanagement. So what are your thoughts on flow and what are your thoughts on flow as it relates to hurting?
Patricia McConnell (25:36.209)
Boy, that's a great question. Well, here are some thoughts, speculating again.
Patricia McConnell (25:48.417)
Well, here's the tricky part is there is no question that when a sheepdog who is a working sheepdog that they are all in on doing what they're doing. They're not thinking about anything else. And so in, you know, in one sense, it's like, oh, yeah, that's the perfect example of flow, except
Patricia McConnell (26:18.765)
Usually, because I don't live in Montana and have dogs that work massive flocks of sheep with almost no direction for me, most of what I'm doing with my dogs is practicing either managing a flock or practicing for sheep dog trials, in which precision is really important.
So I have, so well, skip is a perfect example. Skip is in the words of a well-known sheepdog handler trainer from the UK. He says, you know, sheepdogs can be divided into three groups of intensity. One is, you know, like, let's just use a drug example, he says, you know, some are weekend cocaine users, some are cocaine addicts and others are crackheads, right? So.
Kristina Spaulding (27:09.998)
Okay?
Patricia McConnell (27:11.513)
He's not a crackhead in that he's happy to lie around the house, but the second I pick up my whistle, he is crazed. He wants to work sheep more than anything in the entire world. There is nothing more reinforcing to him. And yet, when we're done working sheep, he always has to poop.
Kristina Spaulding (27:33.354)
Interesting.
Patricia McConnell (27:33.713)
How many dogs have I seen coming off a sheepdog trial field deposit a watery puddle of stress-related diarrhea? It can also be very stressful for them. So the whole component is intrinsically reinforcing gets really complicated. So yeah, so I think it's complicated. I think, can animals experience flow?
Kristina Spaulding (27:45.176)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (27:51.198)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (28:02.473)
I think actually we're the ones that struggle to find it. I think most animals live much of their life in flow. I mean, I'm involved in meditation. And one of the things that you learn so fast is how our monkey minds are always thinking about the past and the future and rehearsing conversations and planning for the future and not living in the present. Well, I think that's sort of
Kristina Spaulding (28:05.911)
Hmm
Kristina Spaulding (28:24.578)
Right.
Patricia McConnell (28:32.597)
one of the side effects, part and parcel, of our extreme cognition and our very elaborate brains. And I think animals suffer less from that just because their cognition is different. And I think we work really hard to try and become more like they are in some ways, right? So it seems to me that it would be like, well, if anybody can do flow, it would be a non-human animal more than us. But whether it...
Kristina Spaulding (28:49.719)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (28:56.896)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (29:01.317)
fits into the specific definition of flow being something that's intrinsically enjoyable or not, then I think that's where it gets really tricky. I think animals can do things there they're absolutely all in on doing and totally focused on and enjoy it and be stressed by it or not enjoy it and be stressed by it. I mean I think that's the complication with that. I don't know. Does that make sense?
Kristina Spaulding (29:31.934)
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. And I wonder...
I mean, I kind of know what you're going to answer, but I'm sure you're going to expand on it. On what is coming to my mind is, I mean, how does that vary? Like, do you feel like there are dogs that.
where it is more.
Kristina Spaulding (29:57.666)
well, less complicated where they do go out and they just enjoy it more and it's not as stressful whereas there are others that, I mean, I know the answer to this question but I'm curious to hear, because I'm sure you have more depth that you can add to it because I would think that's gonna vary, right? Like for some, I mean, I think, I'm thinking about public speaking and I know people who are very good public speakers, like very, like really, truly excellent.
and still find it incredibly stressful. And for me, I don't know why, I mean, I'm very grateful, but I don't get nervous anymore about public speaking. I'm like, this is this thing I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna go and do it, and I feel like I get in flow when I'm speaking. But you know, there's variation there. So if someone, I should ask someone who gets really nervous about public speaking if they ever feel like they're in flow in that situation. And...
Patricia McConnell (30:31.429)
Right, right.
Patricia McConnell (30:43.185)
Mm-hmm.
Kristina Spaulding (30:57.166)
curious to hear what their answer would be. But how do you think that varies among individuals?
Patricia McConnell (31:04.029)
And I love that analogy. I too, I just actually gave one of the first talks I'd given in a long time after COVID and I got really sick last year. And so I just, yeah, I just gave a talk yesterday and I was absolutely in flow. I was having a great time. I loved it. It went pretty well. I got great reinforcement from the audience. And
Kristina Spaulding (31:11.863)
Mm-hmm.
Kristina Spaulding (31:28.333)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (31:31.693)
And yet I've had time still where, say, something just doesn't go right, right before you're about to go on, you know? I can have moments of like, oh no, you know, where you get sort of stressed and thrown. None of that happened yesterday. But the thing that hit me yesterday is afterwards, I wasn't, I didn't feel stressed. I was exhausted. Just, I mean, really, I mean, I have chronic fatigue syndrome, so it's...
Kristina Spaulding (31:40.066)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (31:45.738)
Yep.
Kristina Spaulding (31:55.807)
Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (32:00.906)
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Patricia McConnell (32:01.377)
So I was absolutely just like flattened, like I literally went home and spent the entire rest of the day on the couch. So, but I was in flow. I was definitely there. And I think going back to the dogs, there are without question, I mean, we all know the answer, right? Of course dogs are different. Skip, as an example, seems to care, talk about speculating, Skip seems to care.
Kristina Spaulding (32:08.799)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (32:29.334)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (32:30.833)
deeply about what I think and how he's doing. And he also, he can get where like, he's doing what he wants to do. And I know perfectly well, say I'm trying to keep the sheep on a line and he's like, wants to work them on a different line, that my signals to him are just sort of tiring. It's just like, oh, just, you know, I'm so into this, just leave me alone. There are some dogs who, no matter what you do, they like, I've got a hold of the sheep, I'm taking them to Iowa.
Kristina Spaulding (32:53.791)
Yes.
Patricia McConnell (32:59.589)
from Wisconsin, just shut up and leave me alone, and sort of no matter what happens, I think they're very much more in sort of the classic standard definition of flow. So yes, it very much depends on the dog, on the trainer. Yeah, there's a famous sheep dog named Alice owned by Scott Glam and they won literally everything. I mean, just...
Kristina Spaulding (33:00.782)
Hehehehehehe
Kristina Spaulding (33:12.375)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (33:19.818)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (33:29.441)
She's, I mean, she's literally the greatest of all time. She is the goat for the last hundred years. She's just amazing. And when they were working in sheep dog trials, they, the two of them, were both in happy flow, is the best I can tell, you know, absolutely. I'm not that good, you know, as the best trainer in the country is, you know, for sheep dogs. So anyway, so yeah, I think it varies tremendously, but I absolutely think, well, here's an example.
Kristina Spaulding (33:33.698)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (33:41.79)
Yeah, right.
Kristina Spaulding (33:51.23)
Right, right.
Patricia McConnell (33:59.029)
of I think where a dog might be an absolute float when they're chewing on something, when they're ripping up a cardboard box, right? What else are they, why would they be thinking about anything else? There's no stress there, assuming they're allowed to do it. But when Maggie is ripping up a little stuffed toy, I don't know why she wouldn't be in what we call flow.
Kristina Spaulding (34:03.733)
Mm.
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (34:22.198)
Yeah, yeah. And the other thing that occurs to me is maybe like scent work or tracking could potentially cause flow. And flow is interesting. I mean, the way that researchers define flow, I think is really interesting because it's something that's very specific. And so, hence the lists.
Patricia McConnell (34:28.897)
Yeah, yes, absolutely.
Kristina Spaulding (34:46.866)
several criteria for inducing flow and some of them are really hard to apply to non-human animals just because it's too... I mean, we just don't know what they're experiencing. So she lists that in order... so this doesn't guarantee flow, but sort of the criteria for flow are that the challenge and the animal skill levels have to be well matched.
Patricia McConnell (34:55.225)
Yeah, like what? Tell us. Yeah, what are some of those?
Patricia McConnell (35:14.554)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (35:15.106)
There has to be clearly defined goals, and the animal has to get clear and immediate feedback on their performance, and that they have to experience increased focus and concentration.
Patricia McConnell (35:29.273)
Well, you know, that fits really nicely actually with sheep dogs because it's really tricky to be in a situation, a sheep dog trial, for example. Are you sure your dog's ability, that the challenge, the dog is well matched? Well matched. I mean, Alice and Scott, the challenge in these passive trials where dogs run 600 yards away and then, you know.
Kristina Spaulding (35:33.134)
See, that's what I thought, yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (35:49.699)
Great.
Patricia McConnell (35:58.713)
the challenge is well matched. I think for a lot of dogs, what we're asking them, they're not necessarily, neither the dog or the human is often really up to the task. So I think that's hugely important criteria to take the stress away. Right, right. So if that's critical for flow, then I think you see it a lot more when dogs are free-scenting, for example.
Kristina Spaulding (36:06.541)
Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (36:13.642)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (36:27.276)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (36:27.405)
I mean, I think that example is great or ripping up a toy because they know they can do that, right? There's no concern about, am I gonna do this well enough? So I think that's a critically important point for the kind of flow that people are using for humans.
Kristina Spaulding (36:34.903)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (36:42.782)
Yeah, and when I think about it, you know, is moments when I would identify myself as being in flow. Those are that moments when you're doing something that's challenging and, you know, you have the capabilities to do it well. And that's where that huge reinforcement comes in, right? It's not just doing something that's really, really easy. It's and of course, what's easy is going to vary from individual to individual. But it's excelling at something that's hard or used to be hard anyway.
Patricia McConnell (36:57.391)
rights.
Patricia McConnell (37:02.981)
Right.
Patricia McConnell (37:13.605)
or something that keeps your attention without scaring you. Something that keeps, something that keeps your attention. I mean, how hard is it for a dog to rip up a stuffed toy? Right? You know, so, I mean, that's something for us to think about. Is it, if it's easy, but it's, but it keeps your, but it matters what you do, you know?
Kristina Spaulding (37:17.259)
Yes!
Kristina Spaulding (37:24.863)
Right.
Patricia McConnell (37:40.001)
And she said, there's clear feedback about how you're doing. I am indeed getting to the squeaker. I am capable of finding the squeaker in this. So I think that's a really important distinction. Is it simple or is it easy or is it as much about it's interesting enough to keep your focus on it? If it's too easy, then it gets boring.
Kristina Spaulding (37:46.858)
Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (37:51.668)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (38:04.598)
Right, yes, yeah, I think that's a factor as well. And so it's different. So those are the things that kind of distinguish flow from just straight up intrinsic reinforcement. Like I think one example to me when I think of intrinsic reinforcement that is not flow is rolling around on their back in the grass, right? So that seems to be very intrinsically reinforcing to a lot of dogs, but I doubt that induces flow. So,
Patricia McConnell (38:25.03)
Right.
Yes, yes.
Patricia McConnell (38:33.689)
Yeah, yeah, the way it's defined in humans. Yeah, I would agree with that, yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (38:37.194)
Right, right. And again, you know, I worry, and I think now we're kind of going an even higher level up in terms of where we're aiming in the perfect world. But I think, I worry now, I'm like, oh, well, if animals can experience flow, are they having the opportunity to experience flow?
And I worry there too that we're not giving them enough opportunities to experience it. And my point in bringing this up is not for people to feel guilty that they're not creating flow in their dogs. But I think it's to think about what can we do to bring ourselves and our dogs or other animals closer to being able to have these experiences and widening our...
possibilities in terms of what we can do to give our animals good lives.
Patricia McConnell (39:33.861)
Oh, and one I so appreciate trying to take the guilt away because one of the things we've all found, I know in this new world that we're living in, which is a really, really good one in so many ways, is I mean, I talked to so many people, clients, 10, 15, 20 years ago even, would talk about how guilty they feel that they're not creating sort of the perfect life for their dogs. So many parents now are like, they're not creating the perfect life for their children.
Kristina Spaulding (39:46.018)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (40:00.589)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (40:02.141)
I had really good parents and they opened the door that, you know, they opened the door for us and the dogs. And we went outside, played in the neighborhood all day, came back before it was dark, right? And stayed out of their way otherwise, you know, and that was really good parenting then. So, so I don't want people to feel guilty. And yet, and yet I do agree with you that the more we can.
Kristina Spaulding (40:09.673)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Patricia McConnell (40:26.725)
The more we can enhance the life, I mean, we do have captive, you know, our companion dogs are captives. There's no way around it. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk lately, which I appreciate about, yeah, well, they're safe. You know, they're not street dogs, they're safe. They have medical care, they get great food, but is that, you know, is that enough if we have any choices? And I think, you know, you brought up scenting and I'm so glad you did because I think that's the one thing
Kristina Spaulding (40:34.346)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (40:55.905)
everybody can do that is so easy. It's so easy. Every day, Maggie is tasked with finding her toy every, you know, twice a day, every day. Maggie's skip is not into his nose. Skip watches Maggie. Maggie uses her nose like a pro, you know, literally like a trained scent detection dog. Skip, Skip just
Kristina Spaulding (40:59.244)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (41:11.597)
Hahaha
Kristina Spaulding (41:16.599)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (41:23.609)
Watch as Maggie, because he's just so visual. But for most dogs, I mean, I think the easiest flow for them to find where, you know, thinking about that criteria, it's challenging, but it's within their ability, you know? That I think, you know, teaching dogs, your dogs to find things, teaching your dogs to distinguish between two cents, it's just not that hard. It doesn't take that much time, you know, you can do it in the living room, you can do it on walks.
Kristina Spaulding (41:37.27)
Right, right.
Patricia McConnell (41:55.445)
I think dogs suffer a lot, frankly. And I don't mean suffering in sort of this horrible way, but I think it's a shame. Let me just put it that way. I think it's a shame that dogs don't get to use their noses more. And it's partly because we're primates and we're like, nose, what, smell, what? I can smell rotten eggs, I can smell perfume. But I think the more, I wish family dog training classes had a whole section on.
Kristina Spaulding (41:58.254)
Mm-hmm.
Kristina Spaulding (42:04.438)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (42:11.478)
Right. Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (42:22.318)
That's, yeah.
Patricia McConnell (42:24.621)
ways to sort of enhance the life of your dog that are doable, that are practical. It's not just playing tug, although that's great. I think that's flow, by the way. But anyway, so yeah, using their noses. I wish we did more.
Kristina Spaulding (42:29.707)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (42:33.978)
Yes, yeah, that's a great example. Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (42:41.93)
Yeah, yeah, play in general, I think, is likely to induce flow and
Patricia McConnell (42:46.271)
Yeah, yeah, I actually wrote a note earlier. It's like, mention play on this little note I have right here. So thank you for that, because I lost, oh, I think play is probably the king and queen of intensive reinforcement, don't you think?
Kristina Spaulding (42:53.811)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (43:01.022)
Yes, yeah, definitely. And it's funny because we were talking about following the nose and you said Skip watches Maggie. So many years ago when they were all younger, my dog Darwin and his litter mate, who my mom has, so they got to stay more or less together, they were running around in our backyard chasing a chipmunk or something like that. And I would argue that those two beagle mixes were in flow.
You know, they're howling and their little twizzle tails are up and going. And Finn, the Australian Shepherd, was, you know, the beagles are running all around and they're sensing and they clearly know what they're doing. And they're very focused. And Finn is running back and forth, head up, scanning like, what are we doing? This is so fun. I don't really know what's happening, but it's very exciting.
Patricia McConnell (43:33.447)
I'm not ready.
Patricia McConnell (43:52.901)
What?
Patricia McConnell (43:56.751)
It's hysterical.
Kristina Spaulding (43:58.046)
Yeah, it was so funny, right? The breed differences is that he just, it was like, there's energy and animals are moving and this is very fun, but no concept of the actual, you know, trailing. But I think both animals, or all three animals, I should say, were experiencing intrinsic reinforcements. And I don't know about the beagles maybe.
Patricia McConnell (44:05.038)
Right.
Patricia McConnell (44:11.097)
reason. I love it.
Patricia McConnell (44:21.443)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (44:24.79)
that wasn't play to them, but I would say for Finn, that was like a very, you know, very enjoyable sort of playful type of activity. So I think, yeah, I think play is way, way up there. And I wish, now I wish we were gonna talk about play today. I don't have it on my list, but there's so much we could talk about with play too. It's such a, yeah, that sounds good to me.
Patricia McConnell (44:28.589)
Yes, yes.
Patricia McConnell (44:45.477)
Well, we'll just do another one sometime. Because yeah, it deserves so much. It's just such an important topic. I'm amused that both of us are like, oh, wait, play, it's really important. So thank you for getting us back on track. But yeah, it's a wonderful topic, you know? So it's a really fun thing to talk about. And I think, I mean, one of the things about play that hits me, you know, how I am into comparing the behavior of, you know, our species.
Kristina Spaulding (44:56.318)
Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (45:00.972)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (45:13.986)
Yep.
Patricia McConnell (45:14.789)
Canine species, I always go back to that. And the fact is that we just intrinsically play so differently than dogs. We can just get into so many problems with it. And it's not rocket science. You just need to know a few things. It's like, don't chase your dog. Dogs will love it if you do. Let them chase you, but don't chase your dog. Don't.
Kristina Spaulding (45:21.45)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (45:35.98)
Yep.
Patricia McConnell (45:37.617)
that don't play face slapping, like one of my clients did with the border collie and then ended up having to give it away because the dog snapped at the kid when he put his hand towards his head. But the dad was having so much fun. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, it's a great topic.
Kristina Spaulding (45:46.847)
Right? Yes.
Kristina Spaulding (45:52.941)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (45:56.682)
Yeah, and I have some students that are really starting to actively teach their students how to play with their dogs, which I think is really amazing and so important. Yeah, yeah. All right, so the last topic I wanted to talk about is agency and choice. And so this is also something that I think is really important and fascinating. And so.
Patricia McConnell (46:09.829)
Yay, that's wonderful. Yeah, that's great.
Kristina Spaulding (46:26.562)
most often agency is defined as choice or perceived control which I think is a I mean that's a good definition but there are several researchers that give much more complex and in my opinion better definitions of agency so Svinca and Wemmelsfelder define agency as the propensity of an animal to engage actively
with the environment with the main purpose of gathering knowledge and enhancing its skills for future use. And I'm curious about your thoughts about the value of that definition compared to simply defining agency as choice.
Patricia McConnell (47:02.833)
Hmm.
Patricia McConnell (47:13.969)
I need to think about that. My first, I'll tell you, my first gut reaction is a little skeptical about the last part, about with the intention or function of gaining knowledge. So, I mean, I can think of a lot of things dogs wanna do. Well, rolling, for example, rolling on their backs, right? Are they doing that to gain knowledge? We don't actually know I do it, right?
Kristina Spaulding (47:20.178)
Okay, tell me more.
Kristina Spaulding (47:27.97)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (47:42.353)
clearly feels good. I actually, I would say you had mentioned that, you know, a dog might not be in flow in that. I would actually, I've considered entering Skip into the Olympic back rolling downhill contest because he can go 25 yards with a look of complete bliss on his face. But so are they trying to gain knowledge when they do that? Well, we don't know. As I said, we don't know why they're doing that.
Kristina Spaulding (47:58.37)
No!
Kristina Spaulding (48:03.885)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (48:12.369)
probably feels good. Maybe they're set marking themselves. Maybe they're set marking the ground. We don't know. But I don't know that they're gaining any knowledge. So I'm that's the part. I'm just I'm not sure about that. What do you said you really like the definition? What do you think about that phrase?
Kristina Spaulding (48:28.33)
do. So, so what I wonder, I mean, I guess the way that I think about it is that they're really.
Kristina Spaulding (48:39.79)
To me, I read that is that they're making a distinction between agency and choice, and not saying that it's the same thing, but that agency is something that actually goes further. So that choice is good and choice is reinforcing, but agency is something more than just choice or perceived control. And it's actually involves developing the skills
Patricia McConnell (48:51.447)
Okay.
Kristina Spaulding (49:10.094)
to interact with the environment and problem solve competently enough that the animal is more likely to be able to attain reinforcement from the environment.
Patricia McConnell (49:22.757)
which sort of turns it into flow in a way, right? Right, very closely related, yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (49:26.078)
I think it's related, right? Like all of these things, yeah, yeah. And so, so it is, I guess it is a different definition of agency than just choice. And I mean, I don't wanna speak for them, but it's, I think what they're saying is it is different, right? They're not saying we're just expanding on what choice is, but they're actually saying there's something more going on here.
Patricia McConnell (49:48.61)
Uh huh, uh huh.
Patricia McConnell (49:52.897)
Mm-hmm.
Patricia McConnell (49:56.274)
Okay.
Kristina Spaulding (49:56.786)
And I also think, I mean, it's interesting that I think it's interesting that you queued in on that point that the main purpose is gathering knowledge and enhancing its skills for future use. And there may be it like maybe the animal doesn't necessarily know, like they may not be intentionally gathering knowledge, but the evolutionary function. Of, for example, environmental exploration would probably be together.
knowledge.
Patricia McConnell (50:28.977)
I mean, I can certainly think of a lot of cases where animal is allowed to choose, for example, to be on a walk, for example, where it is free to move at its own pace and sniff the environment. That's definitely gaining information. Absolutely, you know, without question. And I get your point that choice would be, in this scenario, choice would be the umbrella and then agency would be as kind of a subset of it.
I don't know enough. I'm now wanting to go back and look at other definitions of agency because it is being used absolutely as just sort of another word for choice recently and lately. So I'm interested in this potential for a distinction between just choice versus agency. I think in welfare.
Kristina Spaulding (51:04.054)
Hahahaha
Kristina Spaulding (51:11.233)
Yes.
Patricia McConnell (51:26.093)
You know, the agency has been using welfare for a long time. If you look at like laboratory animals, for example, people talk about agency a lot. Oh, you know, when I was at UW, I was on some panels and committees. We talked a lot about animal welfare, both in agricultural settings and laboratory settings. And so agency then is used in terms of it being a choice. They're basically relatively synonymous. So that's part of the history of it, as far as I know.
Kristina Spaulding (51:38.21)
Hmm. Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (51:49.313)
Interesting.
Kristina Spaulding (51:54.53)
Right. Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (51:55.801)
You know, it's, I'm sure, you know, have I done the deepest dive possible? No, but you know, as far as I know, that's how we use the term when we were talking about animal welfare issues. Um, it was just another word for choice. I mean, we all love, you know.
extra words that sound cooler.
Kristina Spaulding (52:15.597)
It's...
Patricia McConnell (52:18.481)
I was just, this is an aside, but it amuses me at the scent detection seminar, which was great by the way. It was actually phenomenal. I learned a ton of stuff, great people, wonderful dogs. But dogs who looked for, and I'll just blurt it out, I don't know any other way to say it, but what used to be called cadaver dogs, dogs looked for dead people, like in disaster zones, you know, after they'd given up trying to find somebody.
Kristina Spaulding (52:29.261)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (52:45.085)
looking for human remains. So they're not called cadaver dogs now, they're called HRD dogs, human remains detection dogs, you know. And we love coming up with different words. And sometimes I think it really serves us and other times I'm not sure. But now you, I'm going to think about this a lot now, Kristina. It's like, because I think, I think you really write that you sort of hit this intersection between flow and this, this new or different
Kristina Spaulding (52:55.041)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (53:13.573)
definition of agency, which overlaps a lot, sort of a big Venn diagram all squished together with a really big fat middle in between there. And it just gives us something to think about. And you and I, and a lot of people, love sort of that intellectual conversation. And at the same time, we both know that what we want are for dogs to be happy. You know?
Kristina Spaulding (53:19.9)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (53:40.438)
Right, right.
Patricia McConnell (53:41.905)
And whatever we call it, when they're sniffing at their own pace or ripping apart a cardboard box, you know, whatever, that's what really matters.
Kristina Spaulding (53:51.722)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think the reason, what really grabs me about just this topic is this idea about the function of exploring and interacting with the environment. And that actually has the, that, what that does is it helps give the animal skills to deal with challenges later on.
And I never really thought of it that way. But once that started falling into place for me, and here we're getting really speculative, right. But what I thought of immediately was these puppies that people are walking their puppies. It's not always puppies, but it's frequently puppies and the puppies pancake, or maybe just stop.
And so my clients would come to me and they would say, how do I get my puppy to keep walking on the walks? And I would say, oh, well, what you do is you, you know, you reinforce them when they move forward and you encourage them and blah, blah. But then when I started reading this research, I thought, well, maybe what you do is you just wait.
Because I think, and it, like, I just want to be very clear. It's not, there's not one explanation for why dogs stop moving on walks. It could be medical, it could be fear. There's a lot of different reasons. But I think, especially with younger dogs, often what's happening is that they are simply needing to gather more information about their environment. And I have a concern, don't have any data to back this up, but I suspect
Patricia McConnell (55:14.488)
Of course.
Kristina Spaulding (55:36.514)
that when we force our animals to keep moving, and when I say force, it could involve still using treats, like throwing treats ahead of them to keep them moving. So maybe for, you know, encourage, whatever. When we don't give them the space to take in their environment, I worry that we're setting them up for things like leash reactivity later on, because they haven't had practice in seeing something.
Patricia McConnell (55:44.453)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (56:05.186)
Just like you said, you have to think about this definition for a while, right? They're seeing something new, they need to observe it, they need to think about it, and they may or may not go up and smell it directly, but I think they need to process that information. And I'm not, again, I'm talking in big generalities here and it's gonna vary from individual to individual, but that's where my brain goes with this concept of,
Patricia McConnell (56:10.289)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (56:34.994)
Environmental exploration being important for competence.
Patricia McConnell (56:42.478)
Oh, I love this track that you're on. I think this is really, really important. And I think, you know, getting back to animals processing new, needing to process new information and then being sort of forced out of it. Do we have another hour? There's so.
Kristina Spaulding (57:03.659)
Sure.
Patricia McConnell (57:05.573)
There's so many things that come to mind, and I'm gonna go backwards a little bit and then go forward back to the puppies, lying on the rocks. One of the things that this conversation, we were talking about intrinsic reward earlier on, I was talking about novelty and how important that is. And I think it's one of the distinctions that sheep people make all the time is that dogs love novelty as most predators do, right?
around the corner? Am I going to find something to eat? Dogs seek out novelty. Prey animals do the opposite. What's going to be around the corner is a wolf. My sheep will just hang out where they are in the barn during the winter. There's no food anywhere. They're perfectly happy standing all day in the same place because it's safe.
So, I mean, that's sort of the big, massive generalization. But then when you go down into the weeds there, when you start drilling down a little bit, that doesn't mean that every predator species is comfortable with novelty at any point in time. And I love your point about animals needing to gather information before they can do anything. I mean, when I got...
Maggie, when she was about a year old, she was shipped to me from Idaho on a plane. If I had known her afterwards, I would never have done that. I still feel badly about the look on her face when she got out of the crate. She looked like a war victim. And she just, and she still, when I take her to a new place, she doesn't, I mean that sounds, I shouldn't say still, let me just put it this way. When I take her to a new place, I have learned
Kristina Spaulding (58:33.643)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (58:38.19)
Right? Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (58:52.185)
Just let her, don't ask her to do anything. Let her out. She goes to tons of new places. Let her out. Let her mostly sniff. She needs to get her paws on the ground. I just give her time. I never let her out if it's not, if I need to like call her back to me instantly unless she's on a leash, you know? So yeah, she needs to like gather information, like you say. And I think the fact that...
Kristina Spaulding (59:11.423)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (59:22.813)
One of the things we have taken away from dogs, companion dogs, is a kind of choice where they're gathering information before they act. And I think that's so important. I don't know about you, I would love to think that I'm a patient person. I can be very patient in some circumstances, but I'm not always as patient as I would like to be. It's hard for me to stand.
Kristina Spaulding (59:34.222)
Mm-hmm.
Patricia McConnell (59:50.649)
for three minutes and let a dog decide what he or she's gonna do. But I think your point is not only good in terms of sort of welfare, but it's also really good as you were saying, in terms of the animal learning on its own, gathering information, figuring out how do I deal with this? One of the best sheep herders say, your job is not to teach your dog lessons, your dog is to set situations up.
Kristina Spaulding (59:52.13)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (01:00:11.295)
Yes.
Patricia McConnell (01:00:20.133)
where your dog learns from the sheep. That's it. That's your main job, you know? Anyway, so I think that's a really important and interesting point.
Kristina Spaulding (01:00:25.368)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (01:00:30.838)
Yeah, and I love that is, you know, we're setting up situations for our dogs to learn in. I think that's I love that way of looking at it. Because that's another thing that I think that we have lost in many ways with our dogs is that we are no longer giving them space to learn how to cope with things on their own. We're just telling them this is how you cope with it. And then if we're not there telling them how to cope with it.
they can get a little bit lost.
Patricia McConnell (01:01:02.937)
And I think about this all the time, reading advice columns about, and articles about parents who are, I mean, who are so concerned. There was one like some, their child's friend doesn't like them anymore and they were gonna call the child's parents and try and figure it out and fix it. And it's like, no, this is an opportunity to learn that this happens. So I think there is a.
Kristina Spaulding (01:01:06.856)
Hahaha!
Kristina Spaulding (01:01:23.819)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (01:01:30.673)
kind of helicoptering tendency among caregivers, you know, in a way, you know, that the balance gets out of whack easily, you know, too little, too much, too little, too much. Yeah, finding the right balance, I think is.
Kristina Spaulding (01:01:33.079)
Yeah.
Kristina Spaulding (01:01:41.431)
Right.
Kristina Spaulding (01:01:45.546)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Okay. So given that we've talked today about a lot of the things that we are not doing well for our dogs, I do wanna stop on maybe,
a little bit more positive notes. And so do you have any parting thoughts on what we can do right now with our animals today that can really help improve their wellbeing?
Patricia McConnell (01:02:34.917)
Oh yeah, and I think this is a great place to reinforce all of us. I mean, literally anybody and everybody who's listening to this podcast is already going just heads and shoulders above how we used to take care of our dogs. And I think we need to stop and reinforce ourselves far more often. I had so many clients who felt so guilty and I was like, your dog is good.
Kristina Spaulding (01:02:39.763)
Yeah
Kristina Spaulding (01:03:03.506)
Yeah.
Patricia McConnell (01:03:03.993)
You know, I mean, it's so easy. I think our expectations now are so high that, you know, we're such perfect pet parents or such perfect, you know, caretakers of our dogs and our other animals. And so one, I really think we need to reinforce ourselves about what we're doing and sometimes hold it a little more loosely. You know, sometimes...
Kristina Spaulding (01:03:09.39)
Mm-hmm.
Patricia McConnell (01:03:28.761)
you know, it doesn't serve our dog to feel guilty because you only go to agility once a week instead of three times a week. You know what I'm saying? So I think holding that loosely is just sort of a good way to look at it. But as we were talking about earlier, for specifically and practically, I really, if there's one thing that I would sort of was left with saying, it's like, if you want to enrich your dog's potential in intrinsic reinforcement, if you want to create flow.
Kristina Spaulding (01:03:35.134)
Yep, yep.
Patricia McConnell (01:03:56.229)
You want to sort of do all those things, give your dogs more choice, one, give your dogs more choice when you possibly can. And introduce scent work, introduce nose work, you know, let your dogs have freedom to use their nose, learn about the environment, you know, get into that positive flow state and then do something fun with it. It's just not that time consuming. And, you know, we're all constrained by our by our lack of time. Most of us, right?
So that's sort of my, you know, the one, if there's one thing to choose, that's what I would choose.
Kristina Spaulding (01:04:31.826)
Yeah, and I love scent work, right? Because it is so easy. And there's formal scent work where people go and they put scents and tins, and they train their dog to identify that particular scent and then find it. And that's great. But if, if that seems too much for you, you can do things like go out in your yard and hide, you know, some treats or a toy, and then let your dog go find that, or just take them to new places and let them explore those new places. So there's definitely.
Patricia McConnell (01:04:51.545)
The toy, right.
Kristina Spaulding (01:05:00.722)
really low input ways to add that to our dog's lives.
Patricia McConnell (01:05:06.286)
Agreed.
Kristina Spaulding (01:05:08.054)
Well, thank you, Trisha. This has been lovely. It's so great to talk to you and hear all of your wonderful thoughts on these things. I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today.
Patricia McConnell (01:05:19.001)
Well, we obviously have nothing to talk about, Kristina. I could talk to you for hours. Keep up the good work.
Kristina Spaulding (01:05:21.482)
Hahahaha
Kristina Spaulding (01:05:26.07)
Thank you, you too, and I look forward to seeing new books from you.
Patricia McConnell (01:05:31.365)
Thank you.