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Ep 96 The Truth About Littermate Syndrome & Multi-Dog Struggles
In this episode, Dr. Tom addresses the complexities of Littermate Syndrome and the challenges of managing multiple dogs in one household. He shares insights on how dogs can influence each other's...
Ep 96 The Truth About Littermate Syndrome & Multi-Dog Struggles
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Stress buckets fill very quickly with exciting things and scary things.
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You've got to realise that with a multi-dog household, each dog is paying into each other's
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stress buckets, so you're getting double for every event. Before we dive in a warning,
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the content of this podcast may not be appropriate for some young listeners. This is real life,
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and that means that sometimes it can be a little bit graphic, so listen on at your own peril.
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As a veteran Aryan dog behaviour is best-selling author and trainer over the past decade,
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I've had an obsession with transforming the behaviour of dogs, understanding their brains and
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creating practical strategies that you can implement easily at home. I know all too well when the
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dream you imagined when you first got your dog is far from your daily reality. In fact, out of the
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blue, a few months ago, my little dog Gorse was bitten by a dog 20 times her size,
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and suddenly our life of stress-free walks, a calm and cuddly household and being teen mates,
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was replaced with reactivity, anxiety and worrying about what's around the next corner.
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I'm Doctor Tom, this is the Help My Dog podcast, and this is me documenting that journey of
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transformation, sharing my knowledge and experience with you and having a few laughs along the way.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Help My Dog Podcast, it is Tom doing a strange voice,
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and we're talking about a bit of a controversial one today, and that is
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littermates syndrome because we've been asked about it. We have three emails about
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littermates syndrome, and I thought you know what, let's do it.
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And I think the first thing that I want to dispel is the littermates syndrome is an unavoidable
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consequence of having littermates, okay? First thing I want to dispel that's simply untrue, and we'll
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talk about that in a second. Second thing that I want to say though is that having two dogs from
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the same litter is very tricky and leaves both of them very vulnerable behaviorally, and I'm going
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to talk about why that is from a concept training and help my dog perspective, okay?
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And because it's down to two things, and then we can talk about what we do about it, right?
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So the two reasons why this can be very difficult is because there are two spirals that can
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easily happen, okay? The first spiral is what I call a skill spiral. In other words, if you've got
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two dogs that both have the same skill struggle, as in they both struggle with disengagement,
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or they both struggle with calmness, or they both struggle with optimism, or they both struggle
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with a lack of a dimmer switch, yeah? And those dogs basically go through life together,
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they just become more extreme in that deficit, because they're effectively both
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struggling at the same time, and with one struggling, the other one struggles more with the other
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one struggles more. Example, let's say they both struggle with disengagement, right? They see a bird,
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yeah? One runs after the bird, the other one now hasn't even had a time to disengage, so now they're
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not going to disengage either. Now the second one is hot on the tail of the first one, because of
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that, the first one is going to find it even harder to disengage, and so on and so forth, and I'd
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get that's an extreme example, but you get the idea. Lack of a dimmer switch is another one,
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and lack of a dimmer switch is basically going from zero to 100 in a row, so level without anything
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in between. If you both kind of have this problem, and the guy next to you goes from zero to 100,
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you're highly likely to go to zero to 100 as well, yeah? And because you're now at 100, they're still at
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100, and you're still at 100, and so effectively they can inadvertently grow each other in the
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direction of their weaknesses, yeah? Let me give another example, optimism, yeah, novelty appears,
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little friend over here goes, oh my god, his novel is scary, it's even harder to be optimistic,
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when there's somebody sat next to you screaming the skies for a little, yeah? And so you can see how
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they end up in a skill spiral, and now the second spiral that they can end up in is an emotion spiral,
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okay? The idea being that emotions to some extent are a little bit, it's called social contagion,
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right? And you, if the, I don't know, if the person next to you is scared, then because we're a
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social living species, we can easily just start to become scared or worried or anxious without
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even realizing you ever have that where you've got like a really anxious person in your life,
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and you spend time with him, you're like, god, I'm feeling a bit anxious now, I don't know why I'm
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anxious, but it's just because they you've been with them so much, and they're really anxious,
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and that's just the way it goes. And so the same thing can happen, and you know, you think about,
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you think about the emotion spiraling, you think the challenge with two dogs that aren't skilled
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had the same level of lack of skill, and this is true, not just of litternates, I should say,
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for all of this, any two dogs with the same problems, the same skill deficits, yeah, or the same
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lack of emotional robustness, this happens. And, and if you think like, there's no option for
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medium emotions, there's no option for a little bit frustrated, there's no option for a little
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bit anxious, there's no option for a little bit excited, because you're bouncing off the other
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individual, they're a little bit frustrated, you're a little bit more frustrated, they're even more
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frustrated, we're all frustrated. Same for excitement. And, and so we start to get to this world of
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extremes of emotion in response to things. And as I say, this is true of all multi-dog situations
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where where there's a lack of skills, the challenges that often litter mates, they they have the
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same genetics, they've had the same upbringing up until that point, and they're, you know, they're
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relatively learning naive and that you've not started working with them. And so they often have
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the same skilled deficits to some extent, or they're certainly overlap there, and they just
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become extreme like caricatures of themselves, because they're bouncing off each other. And, and so
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what to do about this? Maybe you'll listen to this and you're like, oh my god, I wish I'd listen to
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this podcast six months ago, I have litter mates, or oh my god, it's like you're talking about my
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multi-dog household and one's a push on and one's a bulldog, right? But you know, they may as well
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be litter mates from what you're describing. It's not specific to litter mates, I can't stress this
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in up, it's just specific to two dogs cohabiting and spending all their time together with the
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same skilled deficits, right? I'm sure we can see that now. And so my top tips for you are, one,
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have separate schedules for them. Part of the reason why the skill spiral can happen and the
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emotion spiral can happen is because they're getting inputs from each other constantly. Try and have
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them on separate schedules where they have time apart from one another. Try and, well, not try,
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must take them on walks individually as well as together if it's appropriate to take them together.
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That's the first tip that I've got for you. Second tip that I've got for you is identify what skills
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are lacking, which are the most important skills that are lacking that are driving most of their
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behaviors. Counteract that by building up those skills individually and then together,
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yeah, teach them separately, then teach them together, then bring it out into the real world,
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yeah? Where are you going to learn those games to teach those skills? Help my dog hub that help my
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dog walk to stressful 10-day plan, right? Those are going to be your places. That would be my
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second tip. Third tip that I've got for you is you've got to realise that stress buckets fill
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very quickly with exciting things and scary things. You've got to realise that with a multi-dog household,
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each dog is paying into each other's stress buckets so you get in double for every event.
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And so stress buckets can take time to empty. And so when chaos ensues and it all gets a little
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bit much and they're over-threshold and you're like, oh my god, lights on no one's home,
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that should be a trigger for you to go right. Time apart, passive calming activities, yeah?
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And if you're in a, the fourth tip that I've got for you is if you're in a multi-dog household
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situation where you're like, I'm aware that this dog isn't helping this dog and this dog isn't
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helping that dog and maybe you've got more than two dogs and so it's even more dynamic than that
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and you're listening, you're like, Tom's right, but the issue is, is I can't separate my dogs.
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This is where you would really benefit from a behaviour clinician actually sitting down and
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untangling this and working out what to do and how to do it so that it's easy, yeah?
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And so if that's you and you're listening, I can't stress this enough, get in touch with behaviour,
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yeah? Skip the, skip the, you know, next 12, 24 months of trying to figure it out and potentially,
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you know, making mistakes along the way. If you go to beh.vt, that's beh.vt, so the behaviour website.
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And just submit an inquiry form. The inquiry form will tell you what the best option is for you
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to get scheduled in with a clinician. It's all automated, but you know, you can schedule a call as well
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to chat to one of the scheduling team to understand how it works and, you know,
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if it works for you and your dog, which it will. But I get that, you know, everyone needs reassurance
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and that's why we have that facility on there. And then one of the behaviour team will literally
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say, right, here's phase one, it's easy. Here's phase two, here's phase three, and let's get you,
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let's, let's guide you out of this, right? So guys, I hope you got value. I hope you can see how
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litter mates syndrome is actually just when multiple dogs get together with a lack of skills.
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And hopefully you got some insights into how to prevent it, how to work with it. If you're like,
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actually, I think it's too serious with my dogs to be able to implement what Tom's describing,
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get in touch with the behaviour, and we're here to help. We want to help. You will get results,
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right? You results are possible for you and your dogs, and we can't wait to see you next time.