OK, good evening everybody. Thank you for joining us tonight, for the vet nurse series on the webinarett. I'm Sean McCormack.
I'm chairing the, the session tonight. And I just wanted to welcome you along for, what promises to be a really, really exciting and educational webinar by Stephanie Hedges on the practise role in addressing problem behaviour in dogs, diet, pheromones, and pharmacology. Just a little bit of admin to start.
If any of you have not been on a webinar before, you may not, See what, or how to ask us a question. But if you just hover your mouse over the screen, you should see a Q&A and a chat box come up in the bottom of the screen. You can type your questions if you have any for Stephanie, that she can answer at the end of the session, just in the Q&A box, and I'll make sure we try and get through as many of those as possible.
The other thing I'd like to do is just thank our sponsors tonight at Tails.com, my own employer, and JHP recruitment for sponsoring the Vet Nurse series for 2019. And then I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about our presenter tonight.
So Stephanie Hedges is a veterinary nurse. She qualified in 1992 and worked in first opinion referral and emergency critical care practise for nearly 20 years. And she studied applied animal behaviour at the University of Southampton and started accepting behavioural referrals in 2006 alongside her work as an RVN.
Stephanie then retired from nursing nursing in 2009 after being accepted as a full member of the Association of Pet behaviour counsellors and has since been accredited as an ASAB certificated clinical animal behaviourist and registered as a clinical animal behaviourist with ABTC. She now focuses wholly on animal behaviour work, including clinical practise, speaking and writing, and her first book, Practical canine behaviour for Veterinary nurses and Technicians, was published in 2014. So, as I said, I've had a sneak peek at the, slides tonight and we're in for a treat.
So it's over to you, Stephanie. Hi, thank you very much and, and welcome everybody. Yes, so tonight I'm gonna look at, the general practise role in addressing problem behaviour in dogs, utilising diet pheromones of pharmacology.
And in order to do that, to look at how we can do that, we first of all need to get a little bit of background about, the link between physiology and behaviour. Now, to be honest, all of the, the, the systems in the body can have the potential to impact on behaviour, but the two that are of particular interest are the endocrine system and the nervous system, including the special senses, because these are the ones that obviously the nervous system brings the information to the animal, to guide what its behaviour is gonna be, and then it's the nervous system processing and the hormones and the endocrine system. That then trigger the appropriate behaviour.
But as I say, any system can have an impact. You know, if the dog has a heart problem or a breathing problem or has itchy skin, all of these things are gonna have some degree of impact on behaviour, so we need to keep that in mind. So just a little bit of revision here at the endocrine system, it's obviously responsible for the production of hormones.
And the hormones that we're particularly interested in regulate things like metabolism. So that's the availability of the, the food that the animal is eating, things like growth and development, which can indirectly affect behaviour if the animal, isn't growing normally or developing in a normal sort of way that can impact on behaviour. It, it, they affect tissue function, so making sure that the, the body is processing normally.
Particularly in, of importance in behaviour of things like sexual function, and, sexually dimorphic behaviour. So the difference between behaviour that you typically see in a male and a female and reproductive behaviour because obviously they can have a big impact on the, the, the kind of behaviour of the animal. It can impact on sleep and mood.
So there's lots of potential there for the endocrine system to affect how an animal behaves. And then the nervous system, obviously, initially it controls behaviour by receiving information through the special senses. And then that will trigger physiological responses, a lot of which may be involuntary or, subconscious, so things like elevating heart rate or elevating respiratory rate, and sending more blood to the muscles, all of these sort of things will then impact on behaviour, whether or not an animal is capable of performing a behaviour or whether or not that perhaps has an impact on its emotional state.
But also it facilitates behavioural actions. So obviously the nervous system. Will at the end of the day, control whether or not the dog runs away, snarls, plays, whatever it is they're doing, it, it is controlled by the nervous system, moving the muscles and, and, facilitating the behaviour.
Now, to understand the nervous system and how diet and, particularly medication impacts on that, we need to have a little bit of background into nervous, neurotransmitters. And my pretty little pictures here that I hope are going to help, make it a little bit clearer. So basically, again, this is probably revision, but the neurotransmitters are produced at the nerve ending, and then they're released into the synapse when the nerve fires.
So you can see the little, little pinky purple triangles here that are indicating when the neurotransmitter has been released into that nerve synapse. And then they will bind with the receptor on the next cell. So you can see that some of these little purple triangles attached to this receptor on the next cell, which then enables that cell to fire.
So it is simplest that that's what's going on. Obviously, the different neurotransmitters will either increase or decrease the likelihood that the next cell will fire and that will then, impact on what the behaviour is gonna be. Now, there's lots of different types of neurotransmitter and receptor, but they can only bind with a matching.
So a neurotransmitter can only bind with a matching receptor. A benzodiazepine can only bind with a benzodiazepine receptor. So you can see here that if you look at the little two blue triangles will then only fit onto the receptor that has space for the two blue triangles.
Just, just to cut these are just indicative to kind of give you an idea of how different receptors have to match to the different neurotransmitters. But what's important is to remember that although they have to match their diff each neurotransmitter may have more than one type of receptor combined with. So you can have different types of benzodiazepine receptors, and the benzodiazepine can often bond with a bind with different receptors, but it may have a different effect depending on which receptor it's binding with.
And each receptor can sometimes accept different types of neurotransmitters, so they have to match, but there's quite a lot of variation between them. The important bit to remember about this as well is that exogenous sub substances such as drugs can also bind to these receptors, and what the drugs are effectively doing in some cases is acting as if they were a neurotransmitter or blocking the ability of the neurotransmitter to attach to the receptor. And in that way they can affect the animals, whether or not the nerve fires and then the animal's behaviour.
Once the neurotransmitter has bound with the receptor and the nerve has either fired or been inhibited from firing, the neurotransmitter is then released and typically it's then taken back into the presynaptic neuron. So you can see here with the little pink triangles have released from the receptors on the post-synaptic neuron. And are passing back into the presynaptic neuron where they're either resorbed and reused or they can be broken down.
Receptors are also resorbed, recycled or broken down. So the, the number of receptors available at any one time is constantly changing. So it's a very dynamic process and this is one of the processes that when we're working with, with drugs and with diet that we're trying to manipulate.
So just running through some of the basic, neurotransmitters that we're specifically interested in when it comes to behaviour. First of all, we're looking at adrenaline, which is one you're probably very aware of. It's the fight or flight.
It increases cardiac and pulmonary function, it decreases smooth muscle function. And it's very fast. It, it's something that kicks in very quickly, but it doesn't last very long.
So it's that kind of sudden rush you get when something spooks you or frightens you or, or massively excites you and and makes you want to react. No adrenaline goes with it. That's also triggered during fight or flight, but it has other actions that we're particularly interested in.
It's the, it's the neurotransmitter that makes you very alert and aware of what's going on around you. It increases attention and arousal. And it also increases the function of the internal reward system.
So when something good happens, you get a sensation of pleasure or reward, and your adrenaline enhances that and increases the likelihood that you're going to get a sense of excitement from that. So the bungee jumping that you're seeing in this picture, the buzz that they get that comes from the noradrenaline. Dopamine also fits with this all three of these are catecholamines.
And what dopamine does is it increases the motivation and pleasure from reward. So that intensifies the behaviour response to reinforcement. So if, if an animal gets a reward for a behaviour that we want to encourage, dopamine will increase.
The pleasure from that reward and therefore the motivation to perform the behaviour. So that kind of jolly happy feeling you get when you've done something well, and that comes from dopamine. It will also increase exploration, attention, approach, interaction.
So it's a very positive outgoing sort of, neurotransmitter, and it's also plays a big part in confidence. And as part of that, that reduces apprehension and also speeds up recovery from fearful, situations. And because it enhances the reward, it will also improve learning, memory and problem solving.
So it has quite a positive impact on animal behaviour. Whereas serotonin is the more chilled out sort of neurotransmitter. So it reduces feelings of anxiety.
It elevates mood, but in a calm, relaxed way. So rather than in the positive, more excited way of your adrenaline and, and dopamine, this is a much more at peace with the world sort of, neurotransmitter. It helps sleep.
And because it, it has this kind of calming and positive effect, it tends to reduce aggression. It can also improve memory and it increases sociability. So it's a much more chilled out, loved up sort of of neurotransmitter.
And then the other one that's of particular interest is Gabba. gamma amino bitaric acid, bit of a mouthful. GABA will do.
And what this one does is actually inhibit the activity of the neurotransmitters. So you can find that dopamine or noradrenaline would cause, excitation and increase the likelihood that the next cell will fire. But then GABA will reduce and inhibit that firing.
So this one's depicted in green. And so it can have a balancing effect on whether or not the nerves likely to fire. And again, that's something that we can manipulate when we're trying to calm an animal.
So, so it's just saying it's particularly useful in inhibiting anxiety and arousal. So how can we manipulate these hormones and neurotransmitters to try and modify behaviour when needed? Well, the, the main things we're gonna talk about tonight are dietary manipulation.
Basically, diet feeds natural processes and so we can modify it to trigger the preferred processes. So by changing diet, we can, we can encourage the behaviour we want and discourage the behaviour we don't. Pheromones can also be manipulated.
They work slightly differently to neurotransmitters, but they are still something that we can manipulate to change behaviour. And then exogenous therapeutics, which I've kind of used as a general term for looking at both nutraceutical type, products and also, naturally occurring herbals and your prescription drugs. So I'll look at diet first.
I'm gonna be focusing purely on manipulation of behaviour really here. Diet's obviously quite a wide subject, but for the purposes of this, we're just gonna look at how diet can be used to, impact on behaviour. So what it does, obviously diet is the building blocks for physiological processes, and so the diet that an animal has and their ability to metabolise that will affect processes regulating behaviour.
Obviously for nervous system to function, for hormones to be produced, they need those building blocks. And so if the animal's getting the right diet. We will produce the right hormones and neurotransmitters that we want for the behaviour that we need.
It's also important to keep in mind the animal's ability to express normal feeding drives because that will impact on day to day behaviour. So we have to remember that the domestic dog came from hunters and therefore we will see a certain degree, usually modified of hunting behaviour. And if the dog's ability to express that behaviour, is, is affected or prevented from doing so, that can also have a detrimental effect on behaviour.
Whenever we look at any type of behaviour that we have or anything that we are, looking at to try and manipulate it, we always have to consider the impact of illness first. So we always eliminate or consider illness, when modifying behaviour. And obviously, when we're looking at diet, one of the biggest ones of those is going to be any form of malnutrition.
So that could, you know, just be because the animal has not been fed or whether that's accidentally or deliberately or for some reason hasn't been able to get access to food. So I don't know, I, you know, has got shut away somewhere and isn't able to actually get out and get at the food. Conditions affecting the ability to eat.
My dog here, Rufus, eventually we, we had to let him go at about 17 because he had, dementia and he forgot to eat. So he would pick up the food and then it would just fall out of his mouth because he, his brain could no longer process the, the, the, the system of chewing it and swallowing it. And so anything that affects them, but that could be dental work, you know, dental problems, that could be, vomiting.
Anything that's affecting their ability to eat is going to affect physiology, which may affect behaviour. Conditions that are causing them to not want to eat. So obviously, anorexia.
We also have to keep this in mind if we're withholding food for treatment, so if for some reason the animal is not being fed, whether that's pre-surgery or because, you know, they, they have to have food withheld whilst they're undergoing some kind of treatment, that is potentially going to have a behavioural effect. We also have to keep in mind things that will interrupt metabolism, so it may be that they are consuming, but they're not actually processing normally, metabolic disorders, diabetes is one that would spring to mind, but anything that interferes with normal, processing of the food, disruption of the normal digestion or absorption of the food. So EPI or something like that would have an impact.
Allergies or sensitivities, so if the animal is unable to process food or foods causing upset tummies, that can again have an impact on how that food is utilised in the body. So we always think about that kind of possible medical cause or medical effect on behaviour. Once we've eliminated that, we can look at how the different dietary components tend to affect behaviour.
And I think when we're looking at this, it's, it's good to keep in mind. How much we understand about the effect of what we eat on our moods, and how, for example, I recently attempted a low carb, high protein diet, and I was amazed at the effect that it had on me and my mood and my, how I felt in myself. People who stuck to it for more than about the 5 days that I managed often say that after a couple of weeks, they become much more alert and much more active.
And again, that, that just demonstrates that actually the components of your diet will have a big impact on your mood, your energy levels, your behaviour, etc. And that's exactly the same for dogs. So again, a little bit of a recap protein is primarily used for growth, for maintenance and for repair of tissues, producing the enzymes and the hormones that are needed for normal function of the nervous system and the endocrine system.
And also other body functions such as transporting and storage of molecules. Again, if that's not working well, then that can impact on behaviour. Also has a big impact on the immune system.
The minimum requirements for protein levels for dogs that are actually surprisingly low. So for a puppy, we need, they need 28%, obviously that's a little bit higher for growth. An adult dog only actually needs about 18% for maintenance.
Lactating dog needs more of to produce milk. A performance dog will need more, because they will be using more energy and also more likely to cause themselves injury, etc. Which needs to be repaired.
And a very highly active, performance dog, so something like a racing sledge dog would, would need, you know, 35%. Now these are minimums, these are not necessarily maximums, but it's worth keeping in mind that actually their minimum requirement is relatively low. What happens to any protein over that?
Well, some of it is excreted in urine. Some is used up as energy. So my low carb diet, the aim was that I would get all of my energy from the protein and fat.
It's controversial whether or not that excess protein is laid down as fat. But certainly the, the bit that we're probably the most interested in when it comes to behaviour is that any excess protein will be used in energy. So what kind of impact do higher protein levels have?
Because obviously there are quite a lot of, of high protein diets around for dogs now. Well, there's some research that's been shown. Dogs fed a higher protein diet, so we're looking at, when we talk about higher protein, we're looking at over 30%.
In one research study, they were likely to show territorial, more likely to show territorial behaviour. And then another very interesting study, these were 100 working huskies, so up in somewhere very cold where they sledge race a lot. And they were finding that out of season, so when the dogs weren't working, they were getting higher levels of aggression, amongst the dogs that lived in social groups.
And so what they did was they, they used to feed them about a 50% protein, to give them the energy and the, the repair that they needed to, to race. And they reduced that from 50% to 30%. And within two weeks, this high level of aggression had stopped.
So it's interesting to keep in mind, you know, that this high levels of protein can have this kind of impact. Well, why, why would it have this impact? Some of it is to do with the fact that, as we say, if there's an excess of protein above what the animal needs purely for growth and repair and the immune system, etc.
Then that's used up as energy. Undirected energy can lead to unwanted behaviour, so mischief, frustration, irritability. And I always say to clients to kind of keep in mind when they're thinking about how much energy they're giving their dog, how much energy they're prepared to direct.
Are they happy that their dog is going to be active for 6 or 8 hours a day and needs to have lots to do? And if they are, great, but if they give them the energy to keep going. For long periods of time, but then don't direct it, then that energy is going to go somewhere and that might be into problems.
Some proteins also lead to higher levels of catecholamine, so your adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine. And again, it's the last two we're more interested in. So, the noradrenaline and the dopamine increasing attention and arousal, increasing learning.
Now, those can be good things depending on what the owner wants from their dog. They need to keep in mind that with a higher protein diet, that may well be what they're going to get. The next component we're gonna look at is carbohydrate.
Now, carbohydrate goes the other way. That increases serotonin availability. So this is why your granny always used to give you kind of steamed puddings and, and lots of carb-based things when you were upset and unhappy because it gives you lots of serotonin and that makes you feel much more relaxed and calm and at peace with the world.
We know that a serotonin deficiency can lead to depression, erratic moods, obesity, and arrested development or heart failure. So that's kind of more the physiological side. But particularly of interest, the depression and the erratic moods, if we're not giving enough of the carbohydrate and not enough of the carbohydrate is actually getting into the brain where it's needed, or the serotonin, should I say, is getting into the brain where it's needed.
Serotonin comes from a substance called tryptophan and tryptophan is used in lots of different parts of the body. And so if there's not enough in the diet for it to get into the brain to be converted into serotonin, then you can start to get these sort of problem behaviours. There's also studies to show that dogs with lower serotonin levels may show increased aggression.
Now this may be some dogs, as with some people who naturally produce lower serotonin levels. And so it may be with those dogs that we want to try and increase their serotonin levels, and we may be able to do that with, a higher carbohydrate diet. You can also do it through prescription medication, which we're going to talk about later, but you can do it through dietary manipulation.
I don't have time really to go into detail of how this works. But if anybody's interested, if you Google the Vowel strong diet, that explains how it works and how you can perhaps increase serotonin and so help the dog become more relaxed through dietary manipulation. When we're looking at carbohydrate, we also need to keep in mind things like blood sugar.
Because obviously the two are very closely linked. An animal with low blood sugar may become irritable, so dogs can become hangry just like we can. And they may also become competitive over food, if they're feeling, if their blood sugar is low, they will start to see food as a much more important resource, and that can cause friction.
Or if they've got high blood sugar that can increase arousal and can lower anxiety or aggression threshold. So it makes them more likely to behave in an anxious or potentially in an aggressive sort of way. So again, making sure that, the carbohydrates are slow burn rather than fast burn sugars to make sure that the blood sugars are kept reasonably even and, and within the normal sort of ranges.
Another dietary component that's important is filler or fibre. Now, this often gets a real bad rap, and, you know, a lot of the, the grains, etc. That go in may be considered partly to be, indigestible ingredients or low value ingredients because they're filler or fibre.
But what we have to remember is they all play a role. All of these things play a role. So higher fibre tends to make the animal feel more full up, and if they're full up, they're much more likely to relax.
They're less likely to scavenge. They're more likely to settle, less likely to be vocalising for food. And so again, this can have an impact on behaviour.
Being more kind of feeling a sensation of being full can also have an impact on whether or not the dog is feeling anxious, and it's been shown to have an impact on compulsive type behaviours. The other one that I want to quickly mention is additives. I think, I think things are improving in the, the, the dog diet world when it comes to additives.
But what we need to keep in mind is, although there's not been any actual research into the effects of artificial additives on dog behaviour. There was some research about 10 years ago or so now, into the effect on children, and there were certain colours and a preservative sodium benzoate that was shown to increase hyperactivity in certain children, certainly not all children by a long shot, but there were some that seemed to be particularly sensitive. What we have to remember is that these are used in some dog foods.
I think it's getting less. At one point they were very commonly used. I think these are getting a little bit less.
But the bottom line is there still are some foods out there with them in, as far as I'm aware, no research has directly been done. But there is some suggestion, and I certainly felt that I could spot dogs on a certain diet or a diet with this kind of, these sort of colours in. From a long way away because they just had this edginess to them.
And once you took them off that diet, you did see an improvement in behaviour. And the bottom line is there's no harm in doing that and putting them onto a better quality diet. These sort of diets that use a lot of colours also often have tend to be poorer quality and have more fast burned sugars in, so that may well also have been a a factor in the change in that behaviour.
And as I say, the, the other thing to bear in mind when we're looking at food and behaviour is that, we need to make sure we are fulfilling our dog's feeding drives. So we, we probably don't put a great deal of thought into how dogs naturally eat. Because these days we, we get them some food and we present that to them and they often wolf it down in a matter of a few moments.
And we, we're sure that we've nutritionally given them what they need, but have we behaviorally given them what they need? So keeping in mind. That dogs are opportunists, which I'm sure you're all very aware of.
And so I think that lady took her eye off of her chocolate cake for just one moment, it would be gone. Their glutton feeders in that they will feed till full, and feed to excess, potentially, because they have to compete for food, they want to get as much of it as quickly as possible. And certainly when my dog managed to get the, the lid off of a large tub of kibble, she ate about 1/3 of it, in one go, which is about a week's worth of food.
She was very sick later, but that was her drive. I've got it. I better eat it quickly.
They're scavengers, again, as we know, they will quite happily counter surf and and get hold of anything they can. And they're also hoarders, which is why they will go off and and bury food. And all of this is because they, they are.
Competitive. They have to, they've evolved to try and get food from us. And if they do hunt, they usually hunt cooperatively, whereas cats don't tend to do these sorts of things because they are solitary hunters.
So if they want another mouse, they'll just go and get another mouse and they don't have to compete for it. Now, obviously, the dog's ancestor was the hunter. And we do sometimes still see hunting behaviour in certain dogs.
There are various stages to this, so locating, so this could be tracking, sniffing along the ground, trying to find it, or, something we call giving eye, which is when they fixate on it, as you can see in the collie in the lower picture, that kind of fixation on the, the prey. They will then acquire it, so they're stalking, chasing, and grabbing hold and killing it. They may be competing, posturing or fighting with other dogs over the kill once they get it, and then consuming, ripping it up and chewing it.
Now in the vast majority of breeds, we have now changed this and you just get what we call truncated hunting behaviour or truncated predatory behaviour. So our border collies are very well known for giving eye, stalking and chasing, but generally they don't kill. Other breeds are very good at tracking, but once they get there, they don't quite know what to do with it, or they will perhaps, stalk and posture and hold at bay, but they don't actually attack it.
Others, will go through the whole repertoire, so your terriers and your sight hands will go through the whole repertoire of tracking, getting hold of it and ripping it up. And we'll see a little video of that in a moment. So when we're looking at diet for behaviour, what we need to do is, first of all, address any factors that are affecting normal ingestion and metabolism.
So we need to make sure that the animal is able to consume the food and able to metabolise it, metabolise it in a, a normal way, sorry. And then you need to feed for the dog you want. I think this is the most important thing.
So if somebody is working their dog a great deal, or wants to work, you use them in sledge work or something like that, then yes, they want to feed, a higher protein diet. But if they want a nice calm, relaxed dog, they maybe don't want such a high protein diet. And they need to make sure that they think about what The impact of that diet is going to be on the behaviour.
You know, we often see these prey model diets where they are advertised as feeding for a wolf, because that's the ancestor of the dog. Well, if, if you want a wolf, if you want a dog that behaves like a wolf and wants to hunt and procreate and guard its territory and dig dens and all the things that wolves do, that's fine. But I find most owners actually don't really want that.
And so you need to be a little bit careful about feeding that kind of diet. So you feed to age, obviously, the activity level of the dog and the specific needs of that breed, of dog and the individual dog, because even within breeds, we will get lots of variation. And then the way in which they feed, we want to try and direct the feeding drive.
So activity feeding is really useful and important. It directs the energy. It increases, so, so fullness and makes the animal much more ready to rest if they've spent time.
So we're talking about things like, kongs and feeding toys, activity feeders, snuffle mats, scatter feeding. There's all sorts of ways in which food can be fed other than just plunked into a bowl. Or directing the feeding drives in play, or activities.
So, we're gonna see a little video here of a terrier who is playing, and this, you, you probably would look at this and think of hunting, but the reality is that in that dog's head, that is a rabbit that it is shaking to kill and then would probably thoroughly enjoy tugging on in order to compete for the food and in order to pull it apart so he can eat it. So all of these, sort of when your collie chases its ball and when your, Labrador retrieves, and when you're tracking dog tracks, we are directing their feeding drives. So if we are feeding in a bowl, we need to think about how else we're gonna do that.
So, next we're gonna talk a little bit about pheromones. You may have come across these. I'm sure you've all come across the products in the practise, but there's just a little bit of background in, in what exactly we're talking about here.
So pheromones are semiochemicals, so they're chemicals that carry messengers. They are species specific. So each species has its own pheromones, and those pheromones will only affect the same species.
So if we can inhale a dog pheromone, it won't affect our behaviour and probably more importantly, if we are using a dog pheromone product, that is not going to impact on the behaviour of the owner. Pheeromones trigger a physiological behavioural response. So although they are inhaled, they don't actually go into the lungs.
They go into it or they don't act in the lungs. They go into a special, sensory organ in the head above the nose, and there they trigger the nervous system to respond in certain ways. And those ways tend to be innate and therefore similar in all our individuals.
This is, this is something that they are born to instinctively react to. I'll just focus on the ones that are particularly of importance when it comes to manipulating behaviour because in the vast majority of situations we are unable to manipulate pheromones and and probably not even aware of whether or not the animal is producing them. But the one that we are interested in are the synthetic pheromones that come with a daptyl.
So the idea is that these work in the same way. They have a similar sort of function to the naturally occurring pheromones, and it's said that they have the same sort of effect. So we can use these to support behaviour modification or to manage behaviour.
I think it's important that they are not seen as something that can modify behaviour on their own. They can manage behaviour, so it can be something that helps an animal in a transient situation, or we can use them to support a behaviour modification plan, but fireworks is one where we often use these sort of things and this will not Prevent dogs from being fearful of fireworks going forward. You can use it to manage the fear of fireworks, and you can use it to support a desensitisation programme to fireworks.
But if you were to do nothing else and you were to use this one year, the next year, the dog would still be fearful of fireworks unless you use the product again. The product for dogs is dpy, and this one is, an analogue of appeasing pheromones or appeasings they call them. And these are the ones that are produced, most commonly and, and of, most interest from the lactating bitch.
They start about 2 to 3 days postpartuition. And they're there to reassure the offspring and help them to calm. But they are also found in the ear of adult dogs, which is why dogs are so obsessed with sniffing each other's ears and our ears.
The aim is that they reduce and prevent fear or anxiety-related symptoms. They can reduce stress. They increase the sense of familiarity and security, and so they can help an animal cope in situations that either are new to them or that they are finding worrying.
There's a lot of discussion about whether or not it's actually having the same impact or whether there's some sort of conditioned association to when they were young and safe. So we all have that kind of sensation, don't we have something that we experienced in our childhood at a time when we felt very safe. And when that comes back, that, that brings back that sensation to us.
So we're not really sure whether the The pheromones or the the analogues are having the same impact or they're just reminding the dog of a time when it felt safe and therefore helping to reassure it. I guess it probably doesn't matter. They can also be used to, as I say, support behaviour modification and support desensitisation and counter conditioning, or training.
They're safe to use with other medications, so they don't have any adverse interactions with other medications. And they come in a number of different formats. So we've got the spray, I think I've got the wrong picture there, that's the diffuser, a replacement diffuser, but you can get a spray, and the pump spray enables it to be put on a specific area, so that can be perhaps inside a car or on a bandanna that's put around the dog's neck, or inside a crate or something like that.
It's in an alcohol base which evaporates, so it's important to let that evaporate for about 10 minutes before the dog is allowed into the area, otherwise it can cause some excitation. And I've seen that happen, so we do have to be careful. It's best used to isolated or discreet incidents of fear or anxiety because it only lasts for a couple of hours.
So if it's something that's a bit more ongoing, you wouldn't want to have to keep reapplying it every 2 hours. But with things like car travel for, you know, relatively short journeys, visiting the vet or hospitalisation, you could encourage the owner to put it on a bandana around the dog's neck for the vet visit, or it could be sprayed inside the the kennel for hospital visits when they're initially put in to help to settle them. If they need to be confined for short periods of time, or getting them used to novel or unpredictable situations, so perhaps taking a slightly nervous dog into a new house, you could perhaps ask the owner to just spray this around a little bit to give them a sense of security when they're there.
Diffuser, is where the product's suspended in a carrier base and then it's plugged into a diffuser unit that goes into an electric socket. So it's like the Glade plug-in diffuser, but it, it's releasing the pheromone rather than releasing a nice smell as you get in Glade and those sort of things. This is suited to where the problem only occurs in the home.
So something like dogs that are fearful of visitors, dogs that have separation, problems that are based in anxiety, fireworks when hopefully they're not going out, they're going to be in the home and that's a nice little safe spot. Settling a puppy or dog into a new environment, they often suggest that you have one of these for the first month or so. Whether it's a new home, hospital stay kennels.
There has been a lot of work done to suggest that if you can persuade your practise to invest, they do help, settle animals in hospitals and kennels. The collar is probably the most effective because this is basically where the product is impregnated into a collar and then that's put around the dog's neck. And it means wherever they go, they have a little cloud of adaptual following them everywhere.
And so it can be used both inside and outside of the house when they're going on walks, free of strangers, noise sensitivity out and about, traffic, other dogs, anything that the dog finds worrying outside of the house. And I must admit, as a, a behaviourist, I tended to opt for the column more than the diffuser. Obviously, if the owner will, you, you will get extra benefit from both.
But if it's one or the other, the collar I felt wherever the animal goes, then it will have it. And the problems with the diffuser is, you know, you open a window and a lot of it goes out and that sort of thing as well. Does it work?
Well, there's lots of research that suggests that yes, it can be effective in certain circumstances, but as I say, it's important that it's not seen as a cure in itself. It's supportive therapy or it's something that supports a behaviour modification programme. Physiologically, there's no known contraindications.
Behaviorally, we need to be careful about mixed messages. So if you've sprayed lots of dactyl inside a dog's kennel and then, perform interventions that the dog will unavoidably find distress kennel, it will get a mixed message. So you're far better off to take the dog away from the kennel, so it sees the kennel as a nice safe place.
And we don't get that sort of, issue arising. Also, if you, particularly with the collar, if you treat one animal in a multi-animal household, it can cause disruption of relationships. And the other downside is sometimes we do get this problem of people thinking they just pop a collar on the dog and that's all they need to do.
So it can distract them from the fact that there's quite a lot of other things that they need to be doing as well. So, moving on, we're going to look at our exogenous sub substances. This is broken into two sections.
We've got nutraceuticals, so your AVM GSL, so things that go over the counter. Now there's all sorts of products around and what I'm going to look at specifically are those products claiming to have natural, anxiolytic effects and that there's evidence to support that. .
What I would say is that often with all the different products that you can find online and in pet shops, with lots and lots of different brand names, there's there's masses of them if you start to look around. If you check the ingredients, the vast majority have the same ingredients in, and these are the ones that we're going to talk about. So first of all, we've got alpha quezozepine, which is, ziline, which you may have come from, may have heard of, sorry, .
Zoy or alpha cazozepine is derived from S1caine protein in milk. So basically, it's a, a milk protein that has been modified. This particular protein is known to have calming qualities, and this is seen particularly in neonates.
So babies, puppies, kittens. And the reason why we see it in them and not in adults when they drink milk, is because the neonatal digestive system favours tripsin over Pepsin as a digestive enzyme and the adult digestive system favours Pepsin. And trypsin is far better at digesting milk, so it can release this particular protein, when the adult digestive system can't do the same.
So this is why babies tend to sleep and puppies and kittens and, and all other mammals tend to sleep after a milk feed. And what they've attempted to do with this is to have, try and create the same impact and, and adjust the milk protein in a way that it can be absorbed by an adult, so that it has the same effect. It, it's similar in structure, this particular protein is similar instruction to GABA, which as we said before, inhibits, activity in nerves, so can be quite calming.
Which GABA receptor, remember, as we said, there's lots of different potential similar receptors, contradicting evidence about which one it is. And that what's important there is that, the, you can get more side effects if it attaches to one of the receptors than the other. It's, it generally, the product has less side effects than benzodiazepines, which we'll talk about shortly.
There's no tolerance in that. They don't need more and more of it to get the same effect, which you do get with benzodiazepines and lots of other things such as alcohol and all sorts of drugs. It has less impact on memory, so, benzodiazepines can impact on memory, but zuline doesn't tend to do so.
So it, it can be, as effective but not, have those sort of nasty side effects. Research showed that tests on rats and humans showed a reduction in stress in 24 hours, so that sounds really good. But when they did some further studies of cats and dogs with an established anxiety disorder, so dogs are already distressed, they did see improvement over a 56 day period, but very little for the 1st 14 days.
So as a prevention, you may find a fairly short course will help. But if you've got an established problem. Then you will probably need a longer course of treatment before you're gonna start to see any real effect.
Next on the list is Valerians, so you may have come across skullcap and Valerian and other products that contain this. This acts on melatonin receptors which increase sleepiness, basically, and again, effect on GABA. It has a small GABA composition.
It's, it's unclear exactly what effect it has, but the, the thought is that it may again have an inhibitory effect on whether or not nerves fire, and so may help to Increase, or make the animals seem calmer. And it's also suggested to inhibit the breakdown of GABA. And what that effectively does is instead of it being resorbed and broken down by the cell, there will be more of it available to attach to the receptor and therefore increase the likelihood that that nerve is going to be inhibited from firing, resulting in calming behaviour.
Research says that it helps induce onset of sleep, reduction in anxiety or aggression. And low side effects and motor impairment, which we can get with some other types, sedative type products. So it certainly has got some support for it.
What we have to bear in mind is because it isn't a regulated product, the comparison I always use is a little bit like, when you make wine, it's all slightly different depending on which side of the hill it the grapes were grown on and what time of year and people are very clever will know a 46 from a 48 or whatever. And the same is with Valerian, so it can vary according to the environment it was grown in the time of year, regional genetic variations, production techniques, all of those sort of things. So, companies that take more care, to make sure that there is consistency in the actual quantity of Valerian in the product, will probably give more reliable results.
Eryptophan, if you remember earlier we were talking about tryptophan being the precursor of serotonin. And so the, the common sense is if you can increase tryptophan, then you can increase serotonin. But what can happen is the tryptophan can be metabolised into serotonin outside of the nervous system.
And then what it does is it acts on other things like digestion and heart function. And it's not actually having any positive impact in the brain. So on its own, it has limited effect, and manipulation of diet is perhaps more important to try and get this tryptophan into the brain.
And the other one, L-theanine, which comes from green tea, and again, this is reported to have calming properties, and there is some evidence to suggest that it has had a beneficial effect in fearful dogs towards, humans. These are all very mild sort of products, but they can be, obviously they're things with minimal side effects. There are things, things that you don't necessarily need prescriptions to provide and in relatively mild problem behaviours, then they can have some use.
So the final section is prescription drugs, and I'm, I'm only going into these very, just kind of giving a bit of an overview because obviously it is, it's the vet's domain to prescribe the drugs. But I think it's a good idea, as with all other drugs that we have a little bit of an understanding of what they are and how they work. So, why, why do we use prescription drugs in behaviour modification?
Well, sometimes it's just short time management, so the dog that is utterly terrified of fireworks, we might give them something to help them. We might use them to correct imbalances or pathologies. So, if a dog's nervous system has become disrupted due to chronic stress, sometimes we would use drugs to try and get things back to normal.
We might use it to reestablish emotional homeostasis, we call it. So get the dog's emotional state artificially back on an even keel and then wean them off the medication. Or adjusting the emotional state to facilitate behaviour modification.
So we may get some dogs that are so fearful that we can't do the training, with, you know, principles of desensitisation and counter-conditioning, the idea is that we Expose the dog to the thing that is scaring them at a level they can cope with. So, you know, if it's a firework phobia, then just the, the, this quietest possible level that is able for us to manipulate. And we would start with that and build it up.
And often that is below our level of hearing. So you're watching the dog and looking for ear twitches rather than seeing whether or not you can hear that firework. But with some dogs, even the slightest, the sight of a dog at, you know, 200 paces in the distance or any sound of firework gets them so scared that you can't work with that.
You can't help them to get over it. And then we would use medication to help them artificially cope with it and then teach them to cope with it through the desensitisation programme, after which we can wean them off the medication. The sort of cases we would use them for long standing behaviours where you can't avoid or sufficiently control, so where the dog is so scared, even the slightest exposure, it's not physically possible to prevent that or where you've got triggers that just cannot be avoided.
I remember one dog that we put on medication was because it was completely terrified of the man of the house to a point of, you know, it, it, it just couldn't cope with being anywhere near him. And short of him moving out, there wasn't a lot we could do. So we used medication to help the dog relax in his company.
If the behaviour poses an immediate risk, we may use medication just to get over that immediate risk, where the quality of life is severely compromised, so this picture is a dog showing a severe compulsive behaviour. And so we might use medication to alleviate that whilst we're working on it. Severe phobias or compulsions, as I say, where, where it's too strong for us to be able to work with time or owner pressure, it's a little bit of a controversial one, but if it saves a.
The dog from being rehomed or euthanized, that may be something we would consider doing. Before prescribing, it's important to just let the clinical animal behaviours that's gonna be working with the dog, meet the dog and find out the problem behaviour because if it's masked by the time they meet the dog, they're probably not gonna get a very good picture. And also it makes sure that the behaviour modification programme and the prescriptions that are being used are working together, and in synergy.
So, just running through and say this is just a bit of an overuse of, of the common drugs that are used in behaviour modification in dogs. The first category, we've got a tricyclic antidepressants. And what these do is they inhibit the reuptake of serotonin and noradrenaline.
So in this picture, what I've shown is the little green triangle has blocked the channel in which the serotonin. In would normally go back into the presynaptic cell and be reprocessed. And the effect and the net effect of that is that, the cell will keep releasing more serotonin and because it can't resolve it back up, the amount of serotonin or noradrenaline in the synaptic cleft increases.
And over time, the number of receptors also increases. This is why it takes a little while to take effect. It's because we have to wait for the serotonin and noradrenaline to build up and also for the post-synaptic cell to grow enough receptors to, to use it all.
The product that we're looking at, that is, has a, a marketing authority is Clomipramine or Chlomy calm or loyal. And this will elevate mood due to increased serotonin, blocks panic, and it has a marketing authorization for separation anxiety with the behaviour modification programme. But in by utilising the cascade, it can also be used for other things such as aggression that's triggered by fear or anxiety, or where as I say, you know, the, the level of fear or anxiety is preventing normal desensitisation or counter conditioning.
The next category is very similar selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Again, this works by inhibiting reuptake, but it, rather than, whereas with loyal it's serotonin and neur adrenaline, and which, if we remember noradrenaline is involved in fight or flight and arousal and all of those sort of things. The ones that work just on serotonin and don't increase the noradrenaline are gonna be more calming.
And so it's 3 times more potent than a tricyclic. . And it has less side effects than the tricyclic from the increased noradrenaline, that would, would occur with the tricyclic.
Now there is a licence. There's a product called Reconcile, which is made by Eli Lilly, and it has a marketing authority for separation problems, but only in the EU, as things stand, we've got about 2 weeks. It's also used very widely in America.
So because it's not actually marketed in the EU in the UK, we have to use it through the cascade. So it can then be imported or you can use fluoxetine, which is Prozac, basically, via a prescription. But obviously, the vet has to be happy to utilise the cascade, whereas with loyal, he doesn't need to.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors, is the next one. And this one, prevents reuptake of various other neurotransmitters. The one that we're particularly interested in in this drugelian, is it inhibits reuptake of histamine, which is not so important.
And then dopamine and phenythylamine, and what phenythylamine does, is prevents reuptake of noradrenaline. So what we, what effect we're seeing here is effects of increased dopamine and increased noradrenaline, which we saw at the beginning does things like improved motivation, pleasure from reward, exploration, attention, approach, confidence. And as I say, the increased femine, increases no adrenaline.
And so fight or flight, attention or arousal, and the function of the internal reward system. So whereas the previous two were more kind of chill out, calm down. This is more about improving confidence, motivation, interaction.
It has a marketing authority for behaviours of a purely emotional origin, anxiety or depression, or for other emotional disorders with the behaviour modification programme. It's particularly useful for dogs have strong withdrawal, inhibition, avoidance or freeze behaviours without aggression. So we've got, I, I, I'm not very often used it, but I did use it in a, a very, very placid, red sat.
He was just terrified. And as soon as another dog appeared, they just backed away and hid, and were very, very fearful. And when people came into the house, they would back away and hide.
And so it worked very well to give this dog that bit more confidence and willingness to go forward and interact. But We have to be very careful with compulsive behaviours first of all, because it increases reward and compulsive behaviours are prone to becoming habit forming. If we give them something like this, it will make it worse.
So it's a definite no no in compulsive behaviours. And also, if the dog has any tendency towards aggression, then increasing confidence and approach behaviour can make that worse. At the end of the day, all drugs that are used to modify behaviour have the potential to affect aggression, but I feel this one has a stronger potential because of this approach behaviour and confidence increases in confidence, make it more likely that the animal will use it.
So if there's any potential for aggression at all, I tend to shy away from it. We have to keep in mind that all of these drugs do have a, a, a degree of withdrawal. So if nothing else, they may have become dependent on the increased neurotransmitters to cope.
And so what they potentially need to do is to be withdrawn off them gradually once the desired effect is there. But in most cases, they can, be weaned off them once the behaviour has been addressed. Occasionally, you, you, you find that they have to stay on them for life, but it is unusual.
And then just a couple of others, these are more for your short term problems. So benzodiazepines reduce these work on GABA, so they reduce the excitation and anxiety. They inhibit the the firing of the cells, increase social interaction, and the motor effects because as we know with benzodiazepines, they can cause dogs to kind of become a bit incoordinated.
But they are controlled by a different receptor sets. So with the right dose, you should be able to get the calming without the ataxia, etc. They also have an impact on amnesia, so they can cause anterograde and sometimes retrograde amnesia qualities, which is extremely useful in things like firework phobias because firework phobias tend to escalate, but if they've had a benzodiazepine, then it interrupts the memory formation and makes it less likely that they will learn to be more fearful as time goes by.
However, they can cause inhibited, disinhibit aggression, causing increased aggression. . And they can cause what what we call paradoxical hyper-excitation.
So whilst they're supposed to calm in some dogs, it makes them worse. And that happened to my father's dog, and I persuaded him eventually to stop asking for ACP, for taking the dog in the car and to give Valium instead. And then, of course, the dog became hyper excited and was running around the park.
So, because it had this effect. So it's unusual, but it does happen. Benzodiazepines also inhibit learning, which, as I say with that retrospective, amnesia quality and the inhibition of learning can be useful at times, but it's not if you're trying to use it at the same time as a behaviour modification programme.
They can get tolerant, so they need higher and higher doses and they can have problems when withdrawn. You've got diazepam, which is short acting. We know there's not a marketing authority for it, but it's obviously widely used in the treatment of anxiety, in practise with animals and alprazolam, which is a variation of it, which is longer acting, which is probably more useful for things like fireworks and it's more potent, less side effects, but obviously the vets aren't as familiar with it, so often they're less likely to use it.
Dexedid domain, I'll just rush through these. This is a new, A product that works with no adrenaline and noradrenaline and attaches to the alpha 2 adrenergic receptor and basically inhibits noradrenaline. Obviously, we know, with dormitory, etc.
That it causes sedation at higher doses, but at the lower dose, it has an anxiolytic effect, and I've had some really good feedback from this. It's a gel that goes on the gums, And as I say, at those lower doses, it, it's, it seems to have some good effect. Less risk of addiction and hyper excitation doesn't have the amnesic effect, but if they're not feeling afraid, that perhaps doesn't matter so much.
It's important to teach the dog to be happy with the syringe before you're going to need to use it because if the dog is stressed, trying to get the syringe in the mouth might be problematic. So desensitisation to that and making sure that it's absorbed, not swallowed, so they can't be fed afterwards. And it's, you know, it has to be put onto the gum, not into the mouth.
But it's suggested to be hard to overdose. And then just to control testosterone, we've got our progestogens. So what these do is change the hormonal status.
I'll just skip through that, of the dog. You've got your tardac, dalmaddenone. Which can be used for hypersexuality, vagrancy, aggression, nervousness.
It's something that's been around for a very long time and can work. There's good reduction in roaming, it affects, it's beneficial in some kinds of mounting, scenting. So these sort of sexual behaviours and competition with other males, over females.
Occasionally it may increase aggression, but in most cases it tends to reduce it. But what we have to keep in mind is because it is progesterone that is reducing the testosterone, the calming, the natural calming effect of progestogens means that the effect we're seeing was not necessarily the same effect you would get if the animal was castrated. Whereas using something like this loin, which is the supraorin implant.
What this does is it just reduces testosterone by suppressing follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, without the added progestogen. So that means that the effect that you're seeing is much more similar to the effect you would get from castration. So it makes it a really good way of testing what the likely impact of testosterone is going to be.
There is a transient increase in testosterone, and that goes after about 4 to 6 weeks. So, you have to be aware of the fact that it may have the opposite effect to the desired effect, initially, but, it has been known for this and Tardac to be used together, so that it's, you kind of suppress that increase in testosterone for the initial period. So key point, sorry, a little bit rushed at the end.
Keeping in mind physiology directly impacts and drives behaviour and any substance that affects physiology can also affect behaviour. Diet needs to be suited to the individual dogs needs, and things like pheromones, nutraceuticals, and prescription medications can also help to affect the physiology, the nervous system, and the endocrine systems, but they need to be used to support a behaviour modification programme, because alone, they don't treat the behaviour they're just managing it. So the idea is that, through behaviour modification, you can make long term permanent change to the dog's behaviour.
So feel free to ask any questions. That's great. Thanks, Stephanie.
I really enjoyed that. We've had a couple of questions come in. The first one was from Hillary when you were talking about carbohydrates.
We asked, does it matter the type of carbohydrate, i.e., sugars, starch, or green carbs, i.e., veg?
Really, we're looking at starch, so we're looking at so slow burn types and the, the sort of thing that they usually talk about when manipulating diet is something like pasta. Because that's generally reasonably well tolerated and it, it's kind of a slow burn carbohydrate. OK.
And she also asked, she often finds owners will say they tried pheromones, but they don't work. They're often very reluctant to engage in conversations about the dog's behaviour. How do you tackle those people that kind of just, I guess, what she means wants a quick fix but not willing to.
Yeah. It, it, it, yeah, that is always the challenge because people do want that. I think with pheromones, it's possibly managing their expectation because I think as we said, you know, one of the problems with them is that people will think that all they've got to do is pop this collar on the dog and, and that's it.
It's going to fix it. Whereas they need to understand that it's a supportive thing. And so it needs to be done in combination with another number of other factors.
And I suppose you could use the analogy with them if they, you know, if they have something like whatever they use, whether they have perhaps green tea or something like that to help calm themselves, that in itself is not it. It's part of a package of things that they would need to do. Getting people to talk about behaviour, I think it, it, it is very challenging, especially if you've just got a 10 minute nurse consult and you can see that there's a problem behaviour there.
People are very often only interested in the behaviour being problematic if it's posing a problem to them at that moment. So, you know, and I, I find one of the biggest things I've always thought with this is people will come in. In October and early November, asking for help with fireworks.
And when I was nursing in practise every year, I would kind of contact them all again in January and February and say, right, let's do some desensitisation. And because it wasn't an immediate problem to them at that moment, because there were no fireworks, they, they'd lost interest and they're not interested in, you know, and it's trying to get through to them, that, you know, to, to, to spend the time on something that may not appear like an immediate problem. I think the biggest thing is trying to get them to empathise with their animal and to understand how the animal from the animal's perspective.
So even if it's not causing them a problem, if you can show them how the animal is feeling, most owners do genuinely care about their pets, and they perhaps just don't recognise some of the signs that we would recognise that an animal is distressed. So maybe just explaining to them the body language and explaining to them how, you know, the signs that you're seeing that suggest to you that there's a problem. But yeah, it is, it is a challenge, especially in a, a, you know, a short consult where you haven't got a huge amount of time to sit and talk through everything with them.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great tip. Someone else has asked, they said, wow, that was great, thank you. And do you, do you have a link to all the papers referenced within the talk?
Are they in the notes? I'm not sure if they are, but I'm sure I could, I, I think we've got email contact, haven't we? So if somebody wants to email me, I can dig those out.
That's not a problem at all. I can probably attach them or give you the references. Yeah.
Yeah, adding them to the notes before you submit them to webinar that would probably work as well. I think I've already sent them, but I could probably revise them. Can't do either, but I, I know, the, I can't remember the lady's name, but she said that.
She will pass on any emails for the next week that people have queries. I can certainly do it that way. Yeah, I had one question actually after listening to that.
You were talking about obviously the herbal, kind of supplements and things and obviously oral or nutritional supplements are one thing, but what's your opinion on these, herbal remedy sprays that are used for pets, . Oh. Aren't ingested, but in the environment, calming sprays and things.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think that the main one that I know of is based on Valerian. And I've not found what, what I'm, I'm interested in, I've not yet been able to find any evidence either way for is whether or not that has the same impact through inhalation.
Yeah. So we know through oral, ingestion that yes, it has a, a positive effect. But I've not been able to find out whether if you breathe in, it has the same impact.
So I wouldn't like to say either way. I've certainly worked with nurses who said it definitely helps, but yeah, I'm not sure. I think with these sort of things, it's always very difficult because it's very rare that you change one thing.
So you know, even if you give a dap till, it may be that you also give other advice. And so how do you know which thing has had the impact? So with, with those, I, I think it's quite challenging if you're not quite sure what has had the effect.
And also, you know, we have to remember the, the human placebo effect. So if they've done it, although you can't have a placebo effect on a dog, if the owner has plugged this thing in, it could have an effect on how they interpret the dog's behaviour or, or something else could have changed. It's very difficult and without, you know, proper independent research, it's difficult to know what has caused that change.
Absolutely, yeah. And the last thing that I was gonna ask, you talked about kind of directing natural kind of feeding behaviours and things. Do you have any recommendations on the types of kind of puzzle feeders or occupiers or things that are good for dogs that are anxious?
Nervous or in certain scenarios. I, I think it just depends on the individual dog because obviously some dogs will have different needs to others. I particularly really liked a product called Conquestish Wishbone, and they've stopped it, so I'm absolutely devastated.
But I mean, Kongs are great, but I find that a lot of dogs have to be trained to use them because they won't persevere. Whereas I loved the conquest because it was quite flat. And whilst it was quite difficult for them to get the food out, it was all within about 1 inch of their nose or a couple of centimetres of their nose.
So the motivation was there. So those, those sort of things are good. Snuffle mats.
It depends how active. So if you want your dog to be calm whilst they're feeding, then you're looking at something like a kong. Whereas if you want them to burn off a bit of energy, then a scatter feed, or, do you know what I mean by snuffle mats?
They're like a deep mat with, what, what's the word like kind of felt fluffy bits in it, and all the food all gets inside. Yeah, and they, they have to kind of rummage around in it to try and find the food. So I think it very much depends on the individual dog's character and also what you're trying to achieve.
You're trying to burn off energy or you're trying to calm the dog down? Yeah, brilliant. OK, that's it for question time, I think.
So, just thank you again for, a brilliant presentation and thanks again to our sponsors, Tails.com and JHP recruitment. I hope you'll all join us again for the next, vet nurse webinar.
