Working with a Rescue Dog from South Korea

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lead bank member FDIC. Hello and welcome to one minute dog training tips on dog works radio.

I'm your host Nicole Forto and today we're doing things a little different. It's not going to

be a one minute training tip. Instead we're going to talk about Mr. Scooby and his first two weeks

here at Alaska dog works all the way from rebel rescue in South Korea. I'm joined by my co-host

Robert Forto who's going to be asking me some in-depth questions on how we approach training

in a situation like this where a dog has traveled across the ocean to work with us.

Hi Nicole, thanks for having me on your show. Before we jump into these questions,

give your listeners a brief history of how Scooby came to be. So from what I know, Scooby was born

into a dog meat farm in South Korea, which for those who don't know or understand what that means,

that means that he was pretty much essentially a cow over there to them. And as horrible and awful

as that is to think about, that is just the reality of the situation. After that, he was rescued at

some point and put into a rescue, then was given a foster home. After the foster home, I'm not

really sure what happened there before he ended up back in the shelter. And he has spent

from what I know, basically his entire five years of life in some kind of shelter or captivity

situation. And so for me, I kind of was expecting him to be psychotic for lack of a better word,

especially after hearing what we learned from some of the volunteers before the rescue went

ahead and bit the bullet and sent him over to us for training. He had bit to people. He was

uncontrollable. They were putting him in a muzzle. There were only a few handful of people that could

deal with him. So my expectations for him coming over was this dog is going to be crazy. And it's

going to possibly take the entire six weeks he's here just to get him comfortable enough to work

on things like sitting down. Okay, guys, if you're more interested in this story, you can go check

out our sister podcast rescue tales. It's a show that I host with the owner or founder, should I say

of Rebel Rescue South Korea. Her name is Robin Lucas. You can find that right on our feed as well

as on dogworksradio.com. We're going to jump into these questions here in just a second. But before

hand, I arranged to get Scooby over here. I flew down to Seattle to pick him up from Robin.

We brought him back late one night and Nicole was introduced to him there early the next morning

and she took off training right off the bat. Let's jump in here. Number one, what did you expect

from Scooby before meeting him? As I was saying, I expected Scooby to be out of control. Jumping,

biting, growling, all of those things were my expectations. I was very, very cautious because

you don't know in this kind of situation. I had never met this dog. The brief times that you

or Michelle had met this dog, you had told me he didn't seem aggressive or psychotic or anything of

those words. But you also didn't know either because you didn't spend a lot of time with him. I

did get to see a very short 10 second clip of him on a leash. Men, that pretty much just showed me

that he was jumping on the leash and refusing to do what was being asked of him by the volunteers.

So I was going about that first morning with Scooby as if he was an eight week old puppy in a sense,

but also a dog who had never been controlled before. So I had full expectations of

needing to wrestle him if necessary, needing to ensure that he wasn't going to bite me or

run off or so forth. Number two, what were some characteristics you saw in Scooby's personality

that could match what you know of his background? From the get go, the moment I first got

him out of the crate the first day, he seemed pretty much nervous and unsure. When I said I was

kind of approaching him like he was a brand new puppy to the world, that's what I got from him.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm here and I exist. And if you're going to give

me the guidance, I'm willing to follow it. And that's what I got from him. Nervous, but not aggressive

and not even overly fearful, just kind of where the heck did I just end up? And who are these people

that are telling me what to do? And it's really cold here. Speaking of really cold, when we brought

him here, it was well into the negative temperatures. I think we're at about negative 10 at that point.

At least negative 10 and snow. And I don't really know if they get snow in South Korea,

but I imagine he hasn't experienced either of those cold things as much as he does and has here

since he got here. Well, I came over with a cool little coat and we put on a leash and a smile

and we jumped right into it. So let's jump into number three. What behavior stood out

immediately? This goes back to the nervousness. He seemed like he just didn't know what he was

supposed to do with life in general. Am I supposed to bark? Am I supposed to not bark? Do I accept

getting pets from people or is that a scary thing? So on and so forth. A lot of the things I saw

from him right out of the gate was under socialization and a lack of any kind of confidence

in doing anything, whether that was leash walking, coming when called, receiving attention from us,

being inside of the house, everything just seemed unknown to him, which strikes true if you

think about the fact that he pretty much has spent his entire life in some form of captivity.

Number four, overall, what was the most important aspect of his training during the first week?

The first week was all trust building. I didn't really care if he sat or laid down. I didn't,

of course, want him to jump on me. He does like to jump, but I wasn't being overly assertive. There

was not a lot of corrections happening. It was simply allowing Scooby to come over to me on his own

and rewarding him for that. And every time he would come over wagging his tail, I was giving him

attention and praise for that and showing him that interacting in a quote-unquote pack kind of

setting with humans or with other dogs can be fun and isn't scary and that he can trust

at least somebody around him to look out for him and advocate in situations that he may have

been nervous in, like meeting other dogs. So speaking of trust with a dog like Scooby in a situation

like traveling and starting training with somebody he's never met, how do you deal with that?

Honestly, I kind of just go right on in and I don't worry about it because if you get too anxious,

the dog's going to feel that, of course. And I was the truth of it is I was worried. I don't know

this dog. I have heard some really crazy horror stories and I had fully expected him to at least

try to bite me once and he hasn't. And so for me, while he was learning to trust us in that first

week, we were also learning what we couldn't trust him on in his first week. A great example is

when I first allowed him to play with another dog, he started out on a long lead because that's

the way to control him, but also allowed him to freely run away from the other dog if he needed to.

And the first dog he met was a very neutral and balanced kind of dog. So if I told that dog to

back off, they would and they didn't overcrowd Scooby, which allowed him to kind of have this aha

moment you saw in his eyes and the way his pupils relaxed that, wait a second, this could be a lot

of fun. And then he got a little barkey and that's okay. And then he was bunny hopping around

and that was my moment of, all right, you're fine. You're just kind of goofy and whatever's going on

over there at the rescue is being misunderstood. I from an American kind of standpoint picture this

as the nervousness of the culture in South Korea as a whole in in their country, not that, you know,

every person in the world there can't deal with a dog, but the culture there is a very shy and

reserved kind of people from my understanding and a dog like Scooby who can quote unquote be explosive

seems very scary to them. And for me, he just kind of seemed like normal dog.

We mentioned that rebel rescue podcast or excuse me, rescue tales podcast with Robin and I do,

we jump deep into the dog culture in South Korea in our last two episodes. I think we spoke

about more than an hour about all the differences between an American dog owner and its perceptions

and a South Korean, which is a fascinating lesson for sure. Number six, how are you introducing

Scooby to new things that have previously been issues? I think the biggest issue we've heard and

had with Scooby is that he is very reactive towards cars. And I at first, I didn't really think

anything of it because up until this point, I had already been like, well, there's nothing really

wrong with this dog other than the fact that he's under socialized and not trained at all. And

that was kind of a rude awakening, but nothing extreme in the sense that we were here in the office

actually learning to settle, having a bully stick. And you happened to drive one of the cars

into the driveway where he could see out the window. And that elicited the first time I had actually

ever seen him be reactive. He was explosively barking. His tail was up and stiff,

hackles were raised. He took a long time to let go of the fact that he simply saw headlights

come into the driveway through a window. So we were at least 50 to 100 feet away. We're in a

building. He couldn't even hear this car because it was a Tesla. That was my moment of, oh,

okay, this dog does has something in there that is reactive, of course, right? So when we started

those things out with him, I kind of was just like, guess we're going to load them in the car

and we're just going to do this and see how it goes because how else are you supposed to do it

besides ripping the bandaid off in this kind of case, right? I don't have time to hold his little

pinky toe paw and, you know, oh, it's okay and cuddle him through it. He's got to deal with it

and he's got to get over it because going back to South Korea, if he ends up doing that and

getting adopted back there, their city life is way crazier than here. Even getting him into

wasola and around heavier traffic is a four million people kind of city with tons of cars going

by him. And so he had to just deal with it and that's how we reproached any of the new things

that he has come in contact with in his first two weeks is Scooby. We're doing this and this is

how it's going to go. And if you have a explosive reaction, I already had the idea in my head of how

I wanted the sequence of counter conditioning that process to go, meaning in the car, he barked

and exploded. The second car started to go by us and I used high value food rewards because he

is food motivated to tell him a negative which would be no and leave it in this case and as soon

as he stopped, he was rewarded. That was the first few minutes and as soon as he started to catch

onto that, he then was being told, good observe as he was actively watching a car go by and no

longer barking or exploding about it. So just in within 10 minutes of being in the car, I had

already started to build a better sequence of, hey, you see this car and you really want to react

to it, but you're not going to. It's going to be more satisfying for you if you just observe it

calmly. And he very quickly started to get a grasp of that, which made it so much easier to do

everything else because he showed me then, oh, I'm willing to learn if I have guidance,

I can do any of it. I don't think he's this explosive psychotic dog. I think he needs

somebody who's going to be a good leader for him and be willing to, okay, you have this bad moment,

but this is what I want you to do instead and that's just how it's going to be.

So that was definitely a breakthrough breakthrough moment for Scooby or have there been any

others in the first couple of weeks? I think the car has been the biggest breakthrough. He really

changed even just with one outing on the way back. He settled in the car. He went to sleep. I'm

sure he was exhausted at that point from the stress, but it's a half hour drive from here at camp

in Willow to Wasilla. And in that half hour drive, it was a lot of leave it and observe and good

boy Scooby when he did. By the time we were in Wasilla where it was heavier traffic, he was simply

just looking at it. And I was able to pinpoint where things became a little scarier in a sense

for him, such as semis or large trucks with large trailers seem to be things where you could tell

his pupils were dilating differently. And those were the moments to catch him as early as I

possibly could, even though I was actively driving to guide him to not react that way. And because it went

so good in the sequence learning that first time, his second field trip had pretty much no issues.

Michelle took him into Wasilla at first and she reported he barked twice, but easily redirected

and calmed down. And then I had no issues when I drove him back out here to Willow. He didn't even

bark or huff or even hit my window, which was great. So I'm very proud of him. And that I think was

the biggest breakthrough outside of he figured out quickly he could trust us as people and us to

advocate for him and scary situations where, okay, I really don't like this, but I have confidence

in this lady who's telling me what to do. And she's going to keep me safe, even though I don't

feel like I'm safe right now. And we're going to talk about that second field trip in just a second.

But what are some of the behaviors you have seen now that trust has been built? Scooby is goofy and

fun. And I wish more people from the rescue got to see him in that light because

it really just seemed like he was this awful scary terrifying dog. And I don't think of him like

that at all. He's very sweet. He prefers his butt scratched rather than his head pet. And that's okay

because some dogs don't like that. And he likes to be silly and goofy. And there isn't a lot of like,

wow, you're making me nervous because he just wants to be a dog. And I don't know if he's ever been

allowed to be a dog. And what I mean by that is who cares if he gets a little barky when he plays

with another dog? That's him being a dog. And who cares if he bunny hops around and wants another

dog to chase him. And then he rolls on the ground and he play bows. All of those to me were moments

of him going, wow, I can be free and I can act this way. And I'm not in trouble for it. And I'm also

not scared to come out of my shell and be this way. Very good. So where on number nine,

can you describe Scooby's body language between his first field trip that you mentioned earlier

and his second one, which was just a couple of days ago? The biggest difference I saw both in

car and in public were that he was much more relaxed. His body language was less stiff. His

pupils were not dilated. His ears were relaxed. His tail was relaxed. That was in the car. And so to

me, that meant I'm not as on edge. I don't feel the need to be as alert. And I can just kind of enjoy

my ride inside the store. The first time he was very nervous, just like his first day here, like

where the heck am I? Why did you bring me here? There's noises. There's people staring at me.

What am I supposed to do? Now, he wasn't cowering or shaking. And his tail wasn't severely tucked.

But you could tell he wasn't really sure what he was supposed to do in this space. And the

second time he had his tail up, he wanted to drag me inside of those, which of course I didn't

let him because we're working on leash skills. But he was excited. He wanted to go on his adventure.

He enjoyed seeing people looking at him training. He was much more confident to observe carts and

people and loud noises. And the best part of it to me was that a young boy came over and asked very

politely if he could visit. And I simply said, yeah, we're working, you know, I'm not jumping.

So if he jumps, please don't touch him anymore. And I had Scooby sit. He sat. He allowed this boy

to reach under his chin and pet him. And of his own accord, he got up and turned his butt to this boy

and let this boy just get some good scratches in. And he had the biggest smile on his face. And it

was great to see. It was awesome to be like, okay, it's not just me you're learning to trust.

You're getting to see that people in general are a friendly and positive thing.

Very good. Last question number 10, what do you see for Scooby in the next two weeks of training?

And by that time, we will have decided what's next. Are we going to bring him back to South

Korea? Is he going to get adopted with somebody here in the United States? What's left on Scooby's

timeline? So on his timeline, it's a lot more training. And before I get into that, I just want

to say like I personally hope he's adopted here only in the sense that I think if he ends up back

in rescue life for too long, everything we're working on with him will kind of revert back

because that does happen in these kinds of scenarios. So just a shout out on this episode.

If you want or interested or know somebody interested, Scooby is available for adoption.

And he is getting a serious behavior modification board and train. So you'd be getting a dog who's

freshly trained and really kind of just a good pal. So in his last two weeks, however, I plan on

now that we've built trust, now that we've built confidence, the reactivity is much more manageable

that we're going to actually do some more sharper obedience because he needs to improve on his

leash skills. He is okay, but like I said, even at lows, he he was excited. So then he was pulling.

And so he has to get sharper with those kinds of things, but also we're going out more. I need him

to be able to see other dogs. He needs to keep observing cars. He has to not just play with other

dogs, but when I say see other dogs in our two field trips we've taken, he has not seen another

dog on a leash while we're out. And that can be a different form of reactivity. So that's going to

be some things we really work on in the next two weeks before he gets to go possibly to his new home

or whatever the next step is going to be for him. That way he's getting well-rounded in a lot of

the aspects that happen for regular family pet dogs. The only other thing that he is going to be

working on more as well is his house manners. Now he's in the house here often, but so far he's

had very limited freedom, meaning he's tethered or attached to one of us when he is out. Yesterday I

gave him a try and some freedom and he did okay until he found one of your gloves and wanted to

have a glove party. I was able to take it from him. He didn't eat it, of course, but those are

things that, you know, sneaky dogs who don't know how to be in the house do. The only other thing is I

have noticed with Scooby, he likes to jump a lot. And so we are working on reinforcing that when his

four feet are on the ground, he gets whatever he wants. So it stops becoming such a fun thing to do

because I don't care what culture you are. Dogs jumping on you is not my thing. So before you close

out here, Nicole, if you're interested in Scooby or his story, go on over to Rescue Tails podcast.

You can find that wherever you're listening to your podcast. And you can even apply for adoption

for a dog like Scooby at rebel rescue SK dot com. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you

liked Scooby's story, give it a share to a friend or if you know somebody who wants some information

on how to go about dealing with a dog who is in a rescue situation for a long time and how to go

through the first few weeks with them. This is also a great episode to give them a share with.

I hope you guys keep listening and until next time, happy training.