If it’s not working out, what are your options?
In some cases, you can be doing ALL the right things to help your pets coexist, but everyone is still stressed and unable to live together peacefully.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of pressure on well-meaning pet parents who are struggling. And that really sucks.
In my chat with fellow pet professional Gia Savocchi, we talk about:
how external pressures might cause people to keep their pets in a less-than-ideal situation
the unhealthy double-standard: adoption = good, rehoming = bad
how to intervene in conflicts between your animals (instead of relying on one to stand up for themselves)
why educating the general public about normal dog and cat behavior is so important
To listen to the full episode, click here to open it in your podcast player or press play below:
Gia’s Pets
Neon
Cassidy (cat) and Lev
Lev
Georgi (left) and Vera (right)
Education via social media
Gia posts tons of great videos and explanations of behavior concepts to help teach the public about dog behavior (we discuss this more in-depth in the episode).
Here’s a peek into Gia’s Instagram (@thinkingcanine) - I chose a few reels that feature her cats!
Resources Discussed
This episode’s guest: Gia Savocchi
Gia is dedicated to helping both people and dogs, taking pride in her ability to coach owners. She enjoys training puppies just as much as she likes working with more difficult cases.
Her Certifications:
University of Edinburgh MSc Clinical Animal Behavior (2025)
Bachelor of Science in Psychology
CPDT Certified Professional Dog Trainer
IAABC Certified Behavior Consultant
The Third Way Certified Trainer
Fear Free Certified Professional
Absolute Dogs Certified Pro Trainer
You can get in touch with Gia here:
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I mean often people. can't adopt out their pet or find them a new situation because they feel so much guilt. Like it would be terrible. And then people are judgmental. Often like in rescue bios you'll see like, oh, they had a new baby and now they can't have their dog. And I'm like, well, what do you want them to do?
Maybe the dog is aggressive to the baby, or maybe the dog is miserable with the baby around. Like, is it better to keep the dog locked up for the rest of its life? probably not.
Today, I'm bringing you a conversation I had with a certified dog behavior specialist on long island, New York. Who's been a dog professional for over a decade. As an iwi, ABC certified dog behavior consultant. She works with dogs with behavioral issues, including aggression and anxiety. She's currently working through our MSC in clinical animal behavior.
She works in both her training, business thinking canine as well as the animal control in her area. You'll learn how JIA intervenes, when her young dog doesn't get, or just ignores the, I don't want to play memo from her cat. Her opinions on the role of social media in educating the public about what normal dog and cat behavior looks like. And the strange double standard about rehoming an animal versus adopting one.
Without further ado, let's hop into my conversation with GEA.
Hi, GIA. I am really, really excited to have you on the podcast.
Hi. I'm excited to be here.
We are going to just hop right into the thing that everyone loves at the beginning of this podcast. If anyone has heard any episodes, they know that I like to self-flagellate with a small game of two truths and a lie about my wonderful guests.
In order to get to know you, GIA, a little bit as a human, . Before we talk about your dogs and cats and all of the behavior things that we love to talk about, let's play two truths and a lie. Are you ready?
I am ready.
Alright. Hit me.
Number one, my favorite cases to take on are stranger directed aggression.
Hmm.
Number two, I lived in a school bus for four years. three, I lived in Italy for a
Wouldn't it be cool if those were at the same time? Okay, let's think. Stranger directed aggression towards humans. I have seen you do many of those cases on Instagram and such, so I'm gonna say that is true.
School bus for four years and Italy for one year. I'm gonna go with school bus is the lie, but it, you may or may not have lived on a school bus, but not for four years?
No, I lived in one for four years.
Okay, cool. So what was the lie?
I have not lived in Italy. I lived in France.
Oh, so close. That is a lot of cool life experiences. So at least I figured out the dog related ones. So I'm gonna pat myself on the back for that.
So tell me a little bit about when you lived on a school bus.
So when I was 18, I bought a school bus. And I traveled across the country in it and then lived in it for years. I even lived in it throughout my bachelor's degree.
That's amazing. So did you do your bachelor's like online or did you just park your bus in the same place?
I parked my bus in the same place in Portland, Oregon.
Well actually different places, but in the end it was parked in the same spot for a few years.
that's amazing. And I'm very impressed that you had the gumption to do that at such a young age. What a cool adventure.
It was an adventure and you know, I'm good in living. I'm good at living in harsh conditions with no heat or electricity or water. and I had pets during this time. I had two cats and a dog.
Okay, well let's start there. What did you do , in order to keep the peace in that kind of space?
so I think when you're traveling and you're moving around a lot and when you know, you have a, a bus and, and it didn't have air conditioning, so you have to have windows open and hatches and stuff or it gets really hot.
So the cats will like go in and out, which is always like a little disturbing when you're parked in a random place or at like a festival So one of the big things with moving a lot and traveling like in a, bus with animals is just always having identification on them.
And,
our IDs had multiple phone numbers, so like my number and my parents' numbers. And it also had the name of our our DJ sound system on it so that people like if we were at a festival, would know where to find us.
So the cats were in and out, so they had a lot of enrichment, and very interesting travely lives. What about the dog? How was that in terms of the cats suddenly appearing through windows and things like that? Did you ever have any issues?
No. That dog I got when he was three months old and he was raised with lots of animals and he was raised in pretty busy environments and really well socialized, so it was never an issue. with him to have pets coming and going, and I would also foster kittens and he was always really, really good when I would bring new kittens home and we're talking like a really small space we were in too. And so he easily adapted and he was fine being in a small space with lots of animals, like no resource guarding, no anxiety. He was awesome with everybody.
Do you credit that to his temperament and socialization history or like, would that not have worked with other dogs?
I think it was his temperament and his socialization history. But I think mostly his temperament yeah, like I, I would love to do RVing again with these dogs and I plan on it, but I think it would be harder just because they aren't as easygoing. Happy-go-lucky as him.
Okay. Well, we haven't even talked. What are, what were the pet's names that you started out on the bus with?
My dog was Poppy, like the flower, not like the Puerto Rican and and my cat was Lukey Lucas and Dove
Dove as in the peaceful bird.
the peaceful bird.
Do you have a breed that Poppy was?
I embarked DNA tested him towards the end of his life. And he was a golden retriever. Rottweiler, dalmatian mix.
If you have pictures, I definitely would love to see what that mix looks like. I'll post it in the show notes that we have,
um, ,all the pictures of all the pets. And one of the reasons I ask, breed tendencies, individual tendencies, temperament, all of these things kind of come into play when we're talking about like, oh, these kinds of dogs tend to be... insert "better", "worse", you know, pouncey chasy towards cats. And I find that I do tend to get a lot of like shepherd type herdy type dogs for chasing small cats. And so I wanna talk a little bit about whether you see a correlation in your own animals with kind of those breed tendencies.
Or if you're, you know, thinking it's much more an individual temperament type of thing.
Yeah,
I mean, well, golden Retriever probably good cats, right? Dalmatian, they're kind of nutty, but they generally are really good natured with other animals, I find. My mom and sister have a purebred dalmatian and then Rottweiler. I don't know. I feel. They can be like loyal to their family and good with other animals buty're raised with
But you have Border Collies now
I do.
and do you see a difference in terms of some of their behaviors towards your cats that you have now?
So one of the things that I'm worried with, with Border Collies is them getting OCD and obsessed with stalking cats and watching them like cat tv. and so I'm really careful when I have my dogs around new cats to interrupt and redirect that behavior cuz it can quickly become like, all, all consuming OCD.
Mm-hmm
Obsession.
yeah, they go into that eye-stalk very qu, very quickly.
yeah, it can become a hard thing to live with. When I bring new little kittens home, like eight week old kittens, one of my dogs does like to intently watch them and I post videos about it sometimes cuz he will watch them as if he's watching the most amazing thing on the planet.
And he is . Like drooling and he's like twitching. But as they get older, he, he outgrows it and it goes away. And I manage it and don't let him engage in it too much.
And you have done this many times, and therefore you kind of know the deal with him, I'm assuming? You're like, okay, if I manage this, he's gonna grow out of it. The first time you saw that behavior what was going through your mind?
I knew what it was because I had raised ducklings and he acted the same way with them. So I knew he wasn't like salivating cuz he wanted to eat the kittens. I just knew it was gonna become something where he would be obsessed, like to go in their room and look at them and watch them and interact.
And Right off the bat, I knew I was gonna keep him separated unless he was supervised, and then try to manage him and work with him on being calm around them.
Was he able to eat when he was in that state?
Yeah. He'll eat in any state pretty much.
Even if he's like super duper over threshold?
Oh yeah. Yep.
I just finished up a case where the cat was behind a closed door and the dog would have his nose at the crack of the door for like, the entire day. Like, wouldn't, wouldn't eat, wouldn't take naps. , nothing like had to be pulled to like go to the bathroom.
And obviously, it's not gonna work out. Because we couldn't get, get to his brain. Like his brain was just completely you know, not there. So it's good that you were able to manage that kind of stuff and insert yourself in there. So what other management do you have when you were supervising him? Is he on leash? Are you actively working on cues or are you just seeing what's happening and interrupting whatever goes down?
Yeah, so with him and the cats, or even the baby ducklings, like one big thing was not letting him sit at doorways and watch them. And so I would basically do like two degrees of separation where it would be like a door and a gate, so he couldn't sit in front of the door waiting for me to let him in.
And then when he is around them, we do a lot of rewarding him for noticing. I didn't have him on a leash cuz I can control him really well verbally. But it was a lot of like rewarding for noticing, calling him away, rewarding him for interacting with me, rewarding him for staying in a down stay while they all run around.
Just trying to show him he can do other things than like have his nose one inch from them and following them around.
Yes. the DRO procedure. is a really, really good one. So DRO is differential reinforcement of other behaviors. So if you have a dog or a cat stuck in some kind of behavior pattern they can't get out of it. Your goal is to really increase their behavior repertoire in some way, and you're just gonna reinforce the hell out of other stuff.
That's not that freaky behavior. That sounds like a really good, holistic way to go about it.
I, I would add that my dog is eight years old, so I kind of know him and I'm a professional. And I know that he wasn't trying to eat the kittens or bite them or even like, pounce them or do anything to them other than like, intently watch them or maybe poke them with his nose. So if he wasn't him, he definitely would've been wearing a muzzle and on a leash and not allowed, you know, near them such a time as I deemed him trustworthy because it takes a fraction of a second to have an accident with a small animal like a cat or a kitten.
for sure. I think that's a really, really good stipulation for everyone who's listening in addition to the, like being professional. and having lots of experience and him having a lot of skills under his belt, just like knowing the animal in front of you is so important. Being able to, yeah, kind of predict what they might do in any given situation.
And that only comes with time and, lots of different data points in a similar situation. So thank you for bringing that up. I don't want anyone to be like, oh, great. Gia, , GIA said I can just do tricks around my kitten and it's gonna be fine. That dog is Lev right?
Yeah. Lev.
First of all, Lev, it means heart in Hebrew, so I just love the fact that that's his name. It's my son's middle name
Oh really? That's awesome.
And so you have a new puppy as well. So can you tell me a little bit about what you've been doing with her? Who are the current members of the household?
So I have four dogs actually. Vera, who's a border Collie, mostly border Collie with some Aussie and Collie, she's a mix. And she is 12 and then Lev is eight. And Georgie is two years old. She's the prick eared, like black and white border Collie that I have. And then Neon is Georgie's full sister and she is almost five months old.
And you are still fostering kittens in and out. Do you have any resident cats?
I do I have a one year old cat, who I adopted from my shelter after fostering her litter. They were like FIV positive, so they couldn't go home right away. So I took them until they tested negative at six months old. And then I kept one kitten from that litter and her name is Eden Sky. I didn't name her and she has one eye.
And then I fostered a few other kittens recently, and I'm keeping one who's four months old and her name is Cassidy and she's gray.
Big, lovely, furry family. So you are having the kittens from an early age, you. , Georgie and Neon who are puppies or like on the cusp of adulthood. Have there been any particular times in any of their development that have been harder than others in terms of dealing with inter species relationships?
Yes. So Lev doesn't like male dogs and he doesn't see puppies as. , he sees them as kind of genderless, I think. And so he does not like a new puppy until they turn like five months old and he suddenly realizes it's a girl. And then he's like totally awesome with them. But until then he's a little pissy.
Like he doesn't hurt anybody, but he's mad about it. He doesn't understand English, I guess, cuz I'm like, look, I got you a new girlfriend. And he, he wasn't buying it.
And then the puppy is like mega abusive to the cats. Like wants to play with them, jumps on them, bites them. They don't tell her no ever.
And so that's like a heavy management and training situation.
but cats are not doing the punishing that we might expect smacking, hissing, all of that fun stuff how are you going about working through that with Neon?
So I have a lot of places for the cats to escape. So they have multiple places where they can go and she can't because of baby gates. And also those like door buddies that keep the door only open a crack so the cat can go through, but a dog can't.
Yeah, I love those.
I'll put a link to those in the show notes too. Yeah, they're really useful.
And then their litter boxes are all in the basement and there's a door buddy, so that they have the full basement, they have cat doors to go out side because I let them go in and out here, which was their original intended purpose.
And. , they also have cat trees and places where they can climb and get away from her. So I think that's the biggest thing, is giving the cats the ability to say like, Hey, I don't wanna do this right now.
Without having to fight back.
Yes, exactly. And then with Neon, I interrupt and redirect her with her name when she wants to play with them and they don't wanna play, and I run and grab her if she tries to grab them. Because they kind of like to play with her and run with her, and then at a point it becomes way too much.
So it's looking for those early stress signals of like, okay, thanks, I'm done. And then you're trying to redirect at that point.
Absolutely. And then I would never leave a dog unsupervised with a cat unless I a hundred percent really knew the personality of the dog. And had a long history of the dog with the cats, so she's never like loose unattended with them.
So kittens can be really annoying and like squirrely and they get through things and managing them can be difficult.
So is there anything special that you did to work on their socialization with the dogs? Or any kind of management tips you have for keeping active kittens outta trouble?
Yeah, so my kittens had their own room, I mean, they still have the room. It's a guest room. So it had like nice cat tree, lots of cat scratchers, tunnels, their toys, some food enrichment stuff, and their litter box. And that's where they would stay if I wasn't home in the house.
So at first, like when they're little kittens, I just don't leave them loose with the dog.
They're like behind a closed door. You're not relying on a gate that they could potentially sneak through or jump over.
yeah, hell no. They have a
door and it's closed and I check it like a maniac to make sure it's closed because. You just don't know. And they're so little and fragile, you know?
so as little kittens, like two to four months old, they're usually, if I'm not directly supervising, they're in their room.
And then once they gain the confidence they are free to come out and meet the dogs on their own terms.
So at first, the kittens are allowed to look at the dogs through a baby gate to get used to them and habituate, because anytime I bring new kittens home, they're typically terrified of the dogs.
And so I'll do like feeding the kittens near the gate and feeding the dogs on the opposite side of the gate to get everybody calm and used to each other. We'll do like treats on opposite sides of the gates and the door. I find with the young kittens they don't try to climb a gate, like the metal gates.
I don't think they're able to, and they have no desire. So if I'm home and I'm not like directly sitting, managing, I will leave like the door open so that they can look through the gate and experience noises and all that.
And then, As they're more comfortable, I let the dogs come in the room and carefully manage the dogs so the dogs aren't chasing or following too much or overwhelming them.
And often the dogs are in a down, so the kittens can come up and investigate or will play with toys. And the dogs are just like in the room, passive. And then when I feel like the kittens are not afraid of the dogs, then I leave the kittens door open and let them venture out of that.
and come down the stairs and like see the living room, but with a gate between them and the dogs. So I start to give them like a little bit more freedom and space.
It's a gradual process.
I think that's a really nice progression. When you're talking about letting the kittens habituate. So being able to see dogs moving around, hear whatever noises are happening. I think this is something that people run into as an issue a lot is that they rely on closed doors for way too long and then it's overwhelming to have all of the stimulus of being able to see the dog , hear the dog not muffled through a full door, and then you're having to overcome that hump, whereas, buty had that kind of filtered access for a while, then, it wouldn't be such an event when the door opens.
Yeah. So you take a lot of cases for dogs that are having some pretty severe "troubs". They're working on some stuff, and I'm assuming that some of those dogs have cats.
Yes, so often what we'll have is somebody gets a new dog and the rescue hasn't cat tested the dog, and it's a giant problem when they bring that dog home.
Yeah. And actually you work with the shelter, so are you called in ahead of time or only when there's, you know, the shit hitting the fan we're like, we thought this might be okay,
I am never, it's usually not called ahead of time. It's usually cuz shit hit the fan.
Ugh.
Which is super dangerous, like with a small animal like a cat. And a lot of these are rescue dogs. A lot of them are breeds that are notoriously not good with cats and they're larger breeds. So it's a very dangerous situation sometimes.
So what do you think could happen in terms of a rescue situation to better prepare adopters who already have cats to make sure that the transition goes much smoother than just like, go bye.
mean,
fun,
if you have a cat, you really need to make sure that your potential adopted pet is good with cats and has been cat tested extensively, and we know a bit about the personality.
Mm-hmm.
So I would never adopt an adult dog that hadn't been cat tested by somebody that really knows what they're doing.
And even but dog has been cat tested, I would do a very long and lengthy separation and really, really controlled meets until such a time as I felt confident.
But people aren't given any resources of integrating, introducing, cats and dogs. It sounds like. It's just kind of like, let's see what happens. And then you get called in when it doesn't
Yes, I, I would say
typically that is the case or people think that they can handle it themselves. Do you see that?
Yes. There's a lot of people who are well versed with dog behavior who have a cat and haven't really considered the cat in terms of behavior and needs and all of that stuff. Yeah, and the differences between cats and dogs and how to deal with that, what they should be looking for.
I think there's a lack of understanding of cat body language as well, so they are not seeing those micro issues before a big thing happens. And I think there's a lot of situations that people could be better prepared buty knew what they don't know.
Absolutely.
They think they know. And they'll, oh, I've had cats for blank number of years.
Some
cats aren't gonna wanna live with dogs.
for
So sometimes it's a welfare concern for the cat because the cat is not a dog person themselves. And you know, I even foster some kittens that I, they just are not great with dogs.
Yeah, and I'm assuming that you foster them and then when people ask about their personalities. You say, I wouldn't put them in the house with a dog.
And like I also wouldn't selfishly keep them myself, even if I really like them and enjoy them because they are not confident here among the dogs, it wouldn't be fair.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of guilt as well for people when they do bring in another animal and the resident animal's welfare, quality of life goes down dramatically.
People call me because, not because there's necessarily been like a knockdown drag out fight where someone is, has been hurt, although I have been called for those things.
But it's more like they say, oh, well my cat doesn't come down the stairs anymore. , Or like, oh, I shouldn't have done this. Like my poor 14 year old cat was perfectly happy. And then I got a puppy, what the hell did I do? And dealing with those feelings as well, from the human side of it is really.
important
because then you kind of have to say okay, it's done. Let's try to figure out what to do about it. You know, if you're not in like a foster to adopt kind of situation, which is actually something that I recommend a lot. When we're having these situations where like you have a resident animal, you're not sure how the new animal is gonna take it, you're not sure how the resident animal is gonna take an incoming animal.
I don't want people to feel like they're stuck in a situation that's really crappy for
anyone. You know, give it a good college try, call me. I'm really happy to help and, try to facilitate things working well. But if it really isn't working and everyone is super duper stressed, you have less pressure to make it work if you are going into it. from a foster to adopt kind of standpoint than just like, this is your new dog. Bye. Do you have that kind of program in the shelter you work
we don't, because we are animal control and so we don't want to. place the liability of an animal control dog onto the town buty're in a new family, you know?
yeah. The legal side of it is definitely important to think about.
In our animal control, and it's not so much with the cats, but with the dogs. These are dogs that no rescue wants to take or help. We live in a wealthy area in Long Island You have rescues bringing in hundreds of dogs every week from out of state.
And they're not touching the dogs that we have locally, like with a 10 foot pole. And then the dogs we get in that are easier dogs. Like, I bought a puppy from a pet store and now I don't want it two days later. Those dogs, we get adopted within five seconds, like literally.
and so they don't need a
foster home and they're behaviorally normal. And so the ones that are in our shelter for any length of time are adult dogs with some issues, big or small. And so we just, we don't allow the foster thing. We do do like a three day return window sometimes with dogs.
And if you live in our town, you can, of course, if you adopt a pet and it doesn't work out, be it in three weeks or three months, you can return them to our animal control if you're a local.
Okay, well if it doesn't work out, what are your options? Right. Let's, let's , let's enumerate. In terms of keeping everybody in the house, is doing like a crate and rotate situation forever and ever, which some people choose to do depending on, how their house is set up. And as long as the welfare of each animal is taken into account and no one is super duper sad, they're getting a lot of attention, enrichment, all of that stuff.
Like you do you, if that's what you wanna do,
right? I've had a client who had a three story house and the cat had the full third story and was happy as a pig in shit. The dogs stayed downstairs. The cat slept in the daughter's room and everything was magical and they're gonna do that forever.
Cool. , it's a lovely home. Everyone is getting all the attention they need. And that was what we decided on. Okay. So what would be the next thing? The next thing would be Rehoming. . Rehoming of who? Most people would say rehome the newest animal. And in most cases, and you could tell me if, if you agree that would be the best idea.
But what but newest animal is the least adoptable?
So I have seen cases where it's not the newest pet that does get re-homed. It's a pet that is an existing pet. I've seen it like exactly what you're saying, where the newest pet is not really rehome-able and the older pet is rehome-able and would be super easy to rehome.
And so that's the one that the people end up rehoming.
butre was a resident cat who's very adoptable and you get a behavior dog, then you know, the cat goes to, your mom or the neighbor down the street.
If that cat's welfare is severely compromised by the presence of that dog, and but cats not being there, would significantly reduce the dog's stress so that the whatever behavior problems they're working on, whether they're cat related or not, would be potentially alleviated a little bit, So like, the dog's not constantly trigger stacked because they're reactive outside and they're reactive towards the cat. Then I think that might be better for everyone to do that.
Animals often do really well with re-homing, you know? Like I'm pretty sure any of mine, they could go to another home. except one of the dogs I think would be a little sad. And she's super solid and behaviorally normal. I think she just really likes me in particular, but I think the others wouldn't even care.
they'd
be cool with it.
I think it's really interesting too, like Rehoming having such a stigma whereas adopting doesn't, but it's, it's the same thing, right? Like the animal is being taken from a situation and they're put in a different situation theoretically that the new situation is better for the animal than the previous one. What value do we put on keeping an animal in the Even if
it's not the best home for them.
I mean often there's people. can't adopt out their pet or find them a new situation because they feel so much guilt. Like it would be terrible. And then people are judgmental. Often like in rescue bios you'll see like, oh, they had a new baby and now they can't have their dog. And I'm like, well, what do you want them to do?
Maybe the dog is aggressive to the baby, or maybe the dog is miserable with the baby around. Like, is it better to keep the dog locked up for the rest of its life? probably not.
A thousand percent. And because I've focused on coexistence, I see this all the time where clients are so scared, that they're terrified of publicizing that they're even thinking about rehoming.
Like I had a client who was saying that she told her friends that she was thinking about rehoming one of her animals, and they told her she was a horrible person, . And I feel so bad for anyone who is having these feelings and is being shamed and guilted for having completely legitimate feelings of like, I can't handle this situation.
My animals can't handle this situation. And. it's, it's not
No,
anyone involved.
And it can get to
be abusive where, you know, people will have a dog that's terrorizing the other animal members of the house. Or, or injuring them,
you know? And it can be completely
unfair.
I often see people when they adopt a behavior dog that that dog becomes their entire identity and existence. at The cost of every other relationship in their life. So rather than
like considering behavior euthanasia or whatever other options there are out there they feel like they have to just cut out people and animals and isolate.
Yeah. and then if something is really not working out, but animals are not re homeable. They're not adoptable to anyone, and their behavior is causing much stress for the humans and or the other animals in the home. And it is a , a highly stigmatized decision to behaviorally euthanize one of the animals. But it's definitely an option.
I'm thinking of like a few cases in particular,
that we had recently where we had dogs who were in a multi pet family who went on to begin having problems with other pets in the household. And we had multiple cases this year alone, where during dog fights, or I should say dog attacks, cuz it's one dog attacking the other dog and the other dog defending itself.
The attacker ends up redirecting on their owner and doing some heavy damage. And like heavy damage, we had two people call, with broken arms this year from redirections on dog fights. And we had a couple other, like pretty severe nasty bites. And one could say like, oh, if those pets weren't in a home with other animals, they would've never had that happen.
And that's true potentially in those cases. Like if those pets had not been adopted to homes with other animals, maybe they would've never had an attack or a fight. They're showing an abnormal level of aggression and they're doing an abnormal level of harm in a stressful situation, you know, and so those cases, I feel like we can't ignore the fact that regardless of but dog was placed in the right home or not, the dog broke somebody's arm.
And so to me, I wouldn't rehome that dog to a home without pets. Because now we know if it ever gets out of its house and gets into a fight with a neighbor's dog, it could really badly injure somebody, you know? And so in those cases, being in a multi pet household gives us insight into like deep behavior issues within the pet that we might not have seen otherwise until an accident happened out in public.
Yeah. . And also, if this magical unicorn house happens where there's, you know, an elderly human that never leaves the house, cuz there's separation anxiety issues, and there's no other animals and they never leave the apartment complex or whatever it is, right? Like this this ideal household for whatever the dog is needing.
Like you were saying, what buty get out? Management always fails in some way. And having that information, even buty might not be directly put in that type of situation over and over again in the future, if you have a, a dog that is giving level four, level five bites, that dog is dangerous, And I think a lot of things have to be thought about , about in that case.
Absolutely. And then regarding, dogs attacking cats. So a lot of people do say, like, I mean, I've heard it time and time again, oh, it's just a cat. Or dogs will chase cats. It's normal for dogs to kill cats. And we look at cat killers really critically in animal control. We don't just say, oh you know, dogs will be dogs.
And it wasn't on purpose. Like if a dog attacks a cat and somebody is standing there trying to get the dog to stop and the dog will not stop, we say that's uninhibited uninterruptable aggression. And that is not an adoptable animal to me, an animal control. if my
dogs were to like attack a stray cat in my yard, I'm pretty confident they would stop the second they heard me screaming or if I grabbed them.
You know, when we have a, when we have a.
is uncontrollable. That's a problem, to adopt into our community.
Yeah, I, I wanna go back to the idea of we expect dogs to chase cats. And like a certain level of that is acceptable. You know, but cat is not getting hurt, then it's fine. and I have a big problem with that because like I said before, a lot of people don't know a lot about cat body language.
They don't know how to tell whether the cat is truly stressed out. They don't really notice whether the cat's behavior repertoire is shrinking rapidly. Because cats sleep all day, right? And cats hide. But It doesn't have to be that way. And it shouldn't be expected that it should be that way.
Like one of the things, the crusades that I have for this podcast and like my focus on cats and dogs is I think people need to realize that like they're cats and dogs that are quote unquote
fine, there's room for improvement. Like, just cuz someone's not getting hurt.
Just because a chase isn't happening four times a day doesn't mean that everyone is happily coexisting.
I often find that people say a pet is fine when it's just not inconveniencing the owner. So like pets will go to the vet, right? And people will be like, oh, my dog was fine at the vet. And I'm like, okay, were they happy and wagging their tail and going up to everybody and taking treats. Well, no, but he didn't he let them do whatever. He didn't bite me. He let them do whatever they wanted. And I'm like, if I was shaking and terrified and unable to hold a conversation like at the doctor, that would not be me being fine. That would be me having an episode. You know? And so I think there's the type of pet owner that the dog is fine if it's not inconveniencing them or the cat is fine, if it's not inconveniencing them, the the cat being fine, has nothing to do with the cat's actual, emotional or physical state.
Or maybe they just don't even know, how to read behavior or what it looks like. Or maybe they've lived with animals that are behaviorally abnormal their whole lives, like very skittish cats, very nervous dogs, and to them, that's what a cat does, is hide under the bed when people come over.
Yeah. It all goes back to the question of education and whether people, if they don't feel like there's a problem, are gonna go seek out information, and the answer is they're not. So how do you put it into the zeitgeist, I mean, especially cat behavior. I mean, the, The videos I see on the interwebs are horrifying.
So how can we educate people on, on what pet behavior should look like?
Yeah.
Okay. So one of the ways that I like to show a client what behaviorally normal pet behavior looks like is by exposing them to some pets that are behaviorally sound.
So often my clients do, especially clients that have worked with me for a while. They do get the privilege of having my pets work as helper dogs. And so then they get to see what a pet that does not have anxiety looks like. And it's wonderful to be able to point out differences. So for example, when I've had clients come here with a puppy for puppy play, like with my own dogs, my cat will come like strolling out and walk right up to the puppy and they're always blown away. That the cat like is coming out and like just waltzing around the yard. And so I think that gives them a good look at what a cat can be, you know?
Or the same with my dogs. Like when we, we do helper dogs stuff like my dogs don't pant out in public. They listen, they're happy, they're not hypervigilant.
And I think when a client really sees like their dog that's panting, wide-eyed, looking around a lot compared to a boring dog. It really opens their eyes to the difference.
And then social media is insane for educating the public. Like it's incredible. And it's unfortunate because the bigger accounts other than Zak George all happen to be like terrible.
And putting out really bad information to the public. That's really stylized and well put together, well shot, you know, these are professionals. They have camera crews. And so I think trainers that are really qualified and conscientious and ethical. Jumping on to social media and trying to put out information is like so important.
As someone who does have relatively popular channels, do you feel a big responsibility to keep up the level of education?
I do. I mean, it's hit me. I have like, 142 or 43,000 followers now, which is a lot in the space. And I think people appreciate my content and I really help people and they learn a lot from it. And they tell me that they do, too, which is nice. And I, I feel like compelled yes, to keep up because I have the ability to reach so many people and help so many animals, and I enjoy it, and it's just me showing what I do in my day-to-day life. It's not anything different.
You do have the, the privilege of having behaviorally sound animals to act as good demos. I think a lot of trainers, including myself we have, mm, let's say less than behaviorally sound animals, let's call them projects.
We have this ideas of what body language we wanna show and then like, we take videos of our pets and I'm, I'm like, that's not, it's not what I wanted , it's not what I wanted, man. , I, I have this with, with my animals all the time.
I mean, my dog and my cat coexist wonderfully. But my dog is a weirdo. He's, he's got a lot of stuff. He's much better now, but now he's old and the cat's old and he has health problems. So like I think it's great that you have a lot of footage to show people that is really educational, illuminating. .
And. , you know, my pets aren't perfect. And I think one thing that is a little different about me than other accounts in this space is that like, I'll show it.
Like I have nothing to hide, you know? and so I find on social media, a lot of people do not feature their own animals or show like what life is like with their pets the larger accounts.
And so like my dog's got into like a fight in my lap a few months
ago. I happened to have, have had a camera running at the time and I'm like, you know, screw it. I'll post it.
Like people can see what I did.
yeah.
it is not, I have a lot of animals. It is not all sunshine and roses here. I have other videos like of Lev being really mad when I brought home the puppy.
Which he, he saw that the puppy's carrier, her airplane carrier, when I walked in the house with it, he thought it was another kitten and he was so excited. And then he realized what it was and he was like, God damn it. But you know, I have like like, do you watch the office?
Yes.
Do you know when Toby when Michael
Oh.
is back and he is like, no, God no. That, that was literally my dog when he, when he looked in the carrier and was like, this is not a fucking kitten. But Yeah,
I, I like, so I have stuff like that. I have neighbor dogs that like to fence fight and I work with my dogs on not fence, fighting with these other dogs. I have video of like Neon struggling meeting other dogs.
I have video of my dogs getting spooked by things.
I think it's important to be honest, you know, so while my dogs aren't like, I mean, I'm happy with them. I don't know. But they're not perfect by any means. I think every animal has a behavior issue of some kind, you know, unless it's like a guide dog or something.
I think there's a lot of value in showing problems and I'll be showing neon, biting the crap out of my cats and working through that. So that people can see like, this isn't acceptable and this is what we did instead.
Yeah. I'll find some links for those and we can post those. And I, I actually was thinking now that you're saying this, that one of my, most popular posts was of my dog humping my cat... it's real life, right? It's like, you know,
95% of the time they are happy as clam together.
And then there's the time when the dog is over aroused and says, Ooh, cat must hump things like that. It's like real. So this is an action item for me. I'm going to play around with being less picky about what I post. I hope people will enjoy that.
Yeah. I think people appreciate, like honesty and getting to know the person behind the account, you know?
Yeah.
So I wanted to check butre's anything else before we wrap up that you wanted, we, we talked around a lot of , a lot of things. And this has been an amazing conversation. butre's anything that you want to say to people who have cats and dogs who are already struggling with something or they're thinking about adding new animals.
Any food for thought for them that you would suggest?
Yeah. So I would say that anybody adding a new pet to the household really should seek professional guidance. And even me, myself, I go to puppy school with my puppy and obedience classes with my puppy with you know, a friend that is a professional because I feel like it's important to get help and have a second set of eyes on your dog and to like be objective with.
So my puppy, for example was like struggling with dog to dog interactions where she likes dogs, she lives with and my friend's dogs. But she gets very funny with other puppies rushing into her space and like, Because I'm a professional, it would've been very easy for me to, to go off the rails, and be like, oh my God, my puppy has a problem.
What is she doing? Why is this happening? How do I fix it? But I had another qualified professional, seeing me every week in puppy class and being like, you know, you need to calm down and this is this and you know it's this and let's just work this way. And so I think it's really important not to think that you're gonna do it yourself, even if you're a professional, like you really should work with other people that can be objective about what you're doing and what's going on with your animal.
Yeah. More, more minds are better than one. Especially in something that's so emotional. Like you, you can't divorce yourself from the stress of noticing that something needs to be worked on.
I am so appreciative. Gia, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and I know that everyone is gonna get so much out of this conversation.
If anyone wants to contact you or get a hold of you in some way, what's the best way for them to do that at?
email. Dms get lost cuz I get a ton. So always like going to my website, thinking canine.com, and then connecting with me via email.
Awesome. Yes. The larger the account, the more dms, too much, too many
things
it it quickly went off the rails,
Understandable. It's totally understandable. Well, I had such a great time talking to you and I look forward to potentially chatting again,
Absolutely.
It was so cool to talk to JIA. She's got such a pragmatic approach to how we can train and live with animals. And I'm really impressed with her ability to cut right to the heart of what matters, how our animals are feeling. So, if you want to learn more about JIA, head over to the episode, show notes, that's linked in the episode description.
And listen up you pet professionals. If you are working a cat and dog case, and you would like a second set of eyes on your training plan or some troubleshooting help. I've got mentorship and consulting options for you. Because working solo on a case is fine, but it's much more fun and usually more successful to have someone to bounce ideas off of. So you can go to praiseworthy, pets.com/services for pet pros to get more info.
And the link to that page is also in the episode description too. I can't wait to talk nerdy with you.
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