Before I became a K9 psychologist, I never imagined.
I'd be sitting across from clients with multiple, level five bites, deep punctures, tissue
damage, and muscle tears.
The kind of bites that lead both physical and emotional scars.
The kind that have most professionals recommending behavioral euthanasia.
Today we're going to walk through this together, from the shock of that first series
bite, through the fear and uncertainty, and into something you might not expect.
Hope.
Before we dive in, if you're listening because your dog has recently bitten someone,
first breath, you're not alone, and you're not a defad dog parent for being here.
Second, ensure everyone is safe right now and get proper medical attention of needed.
We'll be here when you're ready.
Let's start with that moment that changes everything, the bite that came out of nowhere,
or did it.
The reality of severe bites and why there's hope.
Let me be clear about what we're talking about here.
On a bite scale, a level six means death.
A level five bite, that's a bite intended to eliminate a threat.
Multiple punctures, slashes, and tissue damage.
The kind of bite that means business, and I've worked with dogs who have delivered these
bites not once, but multiple times.
But here's what you need to hear right now.
I've also seen these same dogs transform.
I've watched families go from living and separate rooms, managing their homes like a military
operation, to sharing their couch again, from wearing protective gear, to handle their dogs,
to teaching them new tricks, from the heartbreak of planning, euthenasia, to planning
play dates.
Next, I'm going to tell you about a real story, a real case that we took on.
And we're going to call the dog Saturn.
We always change the names of any of the cases that we talk about.
How do we take a dog whose entire life has been about survival and help him feel safe enough
to make different choices?
A dog whose level four bites were touching the edge of that level five.
The answer lies in something that might surprise you.
Systems thinking.
What I'm about to share with you is not just science, though we'll get to the groundbreaking
research.
What I'm sharing is proven through hundreds of cases we've taken on, through the toughest
scenarios you can imagine, through families just like yours, who thought they were out
of options.
So let me tell you about Saturn.
A case that captures exactly what we're talking about.
A Belty Street dog from Morocco, used about 23 kilos of uncertainty and raw survival instinct.
By the time I met him, he had delivered multiple level four bites.
A deep punctures and bruising to both a dog walker and a cleaning person.
The client of bites that make most professional step back and say, well, this is too dangerous.
But what's fascinating about Saturn's story isn't just the bites.
It's what's beneath them.
Here was a dog who watched his mother killed as a pup.
Survived on the streets of Morocco endured four months in a shelter and then found
himself in a boisterous home environment.
While battling, UTIs, parasites, bacterial diseases, all of those things.
A dog whose entire life had taught him one lesson, the world is not safe.
When his doctors came to me, they were doing what so many of us do.
Everything they thought might help.
Prong collars, retractable leads, different training approaches, 60 minutes of exercise daily,
but Saturn's reactions remained lightning-fast from calm to bite in milliseconds.
As one observer put it, his decision making goes from 0 to 100.
But here's what transformed Saturn's story and what might transform yours.
Understanding that what looks like sudden aggression is actually more like a bathtub
slowly filling up.
So imagine a bathtub with me here.
That's your dog's capacity to cope.
For Saturn, that tub was constantly being built.
The trauma of his past, the sensory overload of a busy home, the physical stress of
untreated medical conditions, the fundamental fear of unknown humans, the newness of dog
parenting and natural mistakes that come with that, the territorial pressure of protecting
his new safe space.
Imagine two connected bathtubs.
One represents your dog's capacity to cope.
And the other represents your capacity to understand and support your dog.
And both of those need to be balanced.
For Saturn's bathtub that was constantly being filled, the family's bathtub was filling
two, the pressures of a new rescue dog, conflicting advice from different trainers, uncertainty
about reading dogs their dog's body language.
Fear after that first bite incident.
The emotional weight of managing a reactive dog.
Every stranger, every loud noise, every uncertain moment, they're all like taps, running
into your respective tubs.
Each piece of conflicting advice every failed training attempt, every scary moment, they're
filling up your tub, too.
When either tub overflows, that's when we see bites.
But here's the crucial part.
As you learn to drain your tub through education support and understanding, you naturally
help drain your dog's tub, too.
When you learn to handle your own stress by breathing calmly, knowing your limits, and getting
help when you need it, you'll be better able to stay calm when your dog struggles.
And as you get better at managing your feelings, you help your dog feel better, too.
When you know what's too much for your dog and can plan ahead, you set up their day to
avoid overwhelming them.
When you learn to spot the early signs that your dog is worried, you can step in calmly
and help before things get worse.
And when you stick to daily routines even on your tough days, you give your dog the sense
of safety that comes from knowing what to expect.
This is why recovery isn't just about fixing the dog.
It's about growing together.
Every bit of knowledge you gain acts like a drain for both tubs, creating a balanced system
where both you and your dog can cope better together.
And it's these efforts to impact the system we control within ourselves.
And for our dogs, we change everything.
And this is how we change Saturn.
Once we understand this system, we can work with it.
Think of it this way.
You can install better drains for both the parents and the dog.
You can turn off some taps and you can create an environment where the tub never needs to
overflow.
Before we dive into how Saturn transformed, we need to understand something crucial.
Every bite incident is like a point on a map.
But to get to your destination, a calm, confident dog, we need to see the entire landscape.
Right?
So we need to look at the physical system.
Saturn's untreated medical conditions and genetics and dog parents resources and accessibility
to veterinary medical care.
Then as we look out on the landscape, we have to look at the environmental system.
A busy, boisterous home and dog parents accountability to meet those safe and calm needs.
The landscape includes the emotional system.
Deep rooted trauma, responses, and dog parents self-awareness.
And then on the landscape as well, we have the social system.
Interactions with family and strangers and dog parents co-regulation.
We also look at the management system, previous training attempts, and dog parents ability
to teach what made Saturn's journey different was that instead of just focusing on the
bites, we looked at how all the systems interacted.
This is where our real work began.
And this is where I need to share something powerful with you.
Over the next few minutes, I'm going to give you the exact framework that transformed
not just Saturn, but dozens of dogs ever to have since.
Let's dig into it.
The transformation process.
Let me walk you through the exact steps we took with Saturn, because this is where hope
becomes reality.
We know how sometimes we focus so much on fixing a dog's behavior that we forget about
the whole picture.
While we Saturn, we turn that approach upside down.
Instead of just saying, stop doing that.
We built a whole new way of connecting.
What we call the human-led K9 parallel language method, which we've talked about in across several
series that we've done so far, think of it like learning to dance with your partner.
But instead of steps, you're sharing a silent language of trust.
Saturn's family learned that every slight movement, every quiet moment, was a chance to
say, I understand you without words.
But here is where it gets really interesting.
Using our bio-colored framework, Saturn's family stopped asking how do we fix this and
start it asking a better question.
What's going on in Saturn's mind and body right now?
Saturn was always scanning his environment.
He's hyper-vigilant to unknown noises and sudden movements around him.
And they learned to spot something really special.
What we call the state of flux?
It's like that moment when you're learning to ride a bike, wobbling between falling
and finding your balance.
Well, that's the state of flux, that uncertainty.
For Saturn, these uncertain moments were met with the dog parents calming him with respect
and understanding.
Those wobbly moments became opportunities for growth.
Tell them understand what was happening inside Saturn's mind.
We used simple brain stories.
Using characters like Tom, the emotional one, Conrad, the underdeveloped superpower, waiting
to outpour.
Reggie, the regulator of the nervous system, and Vib, who is really the vestibular system.
But she's the body readiness consultant, think of her as that, she makes sure that the
body's ready for whatever Reggie the nervous system says to do.
Suddenly, those reactive moments made sense.
They could see how Saturn's brain was trying to keep him safe, even when it looked like
he was just being difficult or aggressive.
They learned that without Conrad being further developed, Saturn's brain was essentially
on-jacked.
They learned to help Saturn.
Helping help his brain regions to be predictable and more accurate and more supportive
of emotional self-regulation instead of alarming Saturn's emotional center, Tom.
Now imagine living in a condo with a dog who finds every sensation overwhelming.
For Saturn, just stepping into the hallway was like walking into a storm of sensations,
the feeling of carpet under his paws under unfamiliar sense, echoing sounds bouncing off the walls.
But here's where the magic of understanding transformed fear into curiosity.
Instead of forcing Sam to just get used to it, his family became sensory detectives.
They brought home carpet fragments, churning them into comfort zones through gentle exercises.
They discovered how the lavender scent could be like an invisible safety blanket.
Now lavender's not for every dog, so don't go running out, trying lavender with your dog,
but sense can make a big difference.
They learned to help Saturn stay calm during new experiences, but perhaps the most beautiful
transformation was in touch.
The Saturn didn't trust hands coming towards him and why would he?
So we developed what we call can I touch you?
It's a conversation.
It wasn't just the words can I touch you.
It was a whole symphony of gentle gestures, soft expressions and calm sounds.
Saturn learned that he had a voice in this dance.
He could say yes, he could say no, he could say maybe, and all of those answers were okay.
This wasn't just about petting.
It was about building trust, one gentle moment at a time.
Now imagine going from open spaces of Morocco to a Canadian winter, where suddenly everyone
looks like a walking marshmallow in their puppy coats, right?
So for Saturn, this wasn't just confusing.
It was deeply unsettling.
People and dogs he might have been okay with in the summer became mysterious bulky shapes
with hidden faces.
It's like if you walked into a room full of people wearing masks and inflatable sumo suits,
I think you'd be unsure too.
So using our biocolored framework, we could see how these winter transformations pushed
to Saturn into the red pathway.
The space where his brain says danger, his family learned to read those moments differently.
They noticed how he stiffened at the sight of approaching winter-clad neighbors.
Now the Russell of Puffy Jackets could trigger his uncertainty.
So through human-led key-nine parallel-engaged method, they developed a winter early warning
system, spotting Saturn's subtle stress signals before they escalated, and more so, they
learned how to respond to them by co-reculating.
But here's something important about healing.
It's rarely a straight line.
There was a point where Saturn had a significant setback.
Saturn had been making beautiful progress.
Day by day, the trust deepened as he learned to rely on his dog parents' steady presence
and the safety of their shared routines.
Then came that one morning at the elevator, a moment that would change everything.
His dog parents usually so attuned to his needs was lost in urgent emails on her phone.
Gone were the gentle signals they'd developed together.
The soft reassuring sounds, the calm expressions, the careful positioning that told Saturn,
I'm here, you're safe.
When she pressed the elevator button, she stayed right there, still absorbed in her screen
for getting the crucial protocol of stepping back to create space for whoever might step
out.
This wasn't just about distance.
It was about giving Saturn's brain time to process.
When the door's opened and a cleaning person emerged with a mop and rolling bucket, Saturn's
past collided with his present, and in a flash, the man who stood there became every man
who had beaten him on the streets of Morocco.
The bite was swift, tearing through pants, leaving bruises and shattering their careful
progress.
But what happens next shows the true depth of committed dog parenting.
Instead of making excuses, Saturn's mom took full accountability.
She saw, Chris with crystal clarity, how a moment of distraction had let down this dog
who trusted her to be his safety net.
You see, when we fail our dogs, the lesson isn't about failure.
It is how we respond to it.
The incident meant Saturn could no longer stay in the condo, but sometimes what feels
like an ending becomes a doorway to something better.
The decision to move to a home with a backyard wasn't just a physical space.
It was a commitment to giving Saturn the environment he needed to thrive.
Now I want to be clear, moving isn't always the answer for everyone.
What matters is the willingness to adapt and change for your dog's well-being.
And here's the beautiful part.
They didn't just change locations.
They went back to basics, like a relationship that needs rekindling.
They returned to their earlier lessons as if they were brand new.
Every trust exercise, every careful conversation through HLCPM became mindful moments.
They rebuilt it all, brick by brick, because dogs in their infinite capacity for forgiveness
will always meet us halfway when we show up fully for them.
Saturn bloomed in this new environment, but not just because of the backyard.
He bloomed because his family understood that trust is an destination.
It's a daily choice.
They learned that emotional presence isn't something you would achieve once and keep forever.
It's something you choose.
Every day.
Every moment.
This is what transformation really looks like.
Not a perfect straight line to success.
But a willingness to learn from our stumbles, to rebuild what gets broken, and to keep
showing up with full hearts for our dogs.
Saturn's story teaches us that sometimes our greatest growth comes not from getting everything
right, but from how we handle the moments when things go wrong.
Years later, we received one of those updates that makes this work so meaningful.
Saturn, the dog who once found the world so overwhelming, had found his peace.
Inside and out, he became noticeably calmer.
But here's what really shows how far he's come.
He now chooses who he wants to spend time with.
And his family honors those choices completely.
Sometimes he'll quietly slip away.
And he has a private indoor space when certain people are around.
And it's perfectly okay.
It's not avoidance anymore.
It's Saturn exercising his right to say, not right now.
Other times he'll choose to engage with his selected view trusted humans.
Each choice is a win, each decision respected each day adding to a story of transformation.
His family keeps discovering these beautiful moments of progress, not because they're
trying to fix them anymore, but because they learn to see and celebrate Saturn for exactly
who he is.
They gave him the greatest gift we can offer any being, the space to heal.
The time to trust.
And the freedom to choose.
This is what happened when we moved beyond just managing behavior to truly understanding
and supporting our dogs emotional worlds.
Saturn's journey showed us that with the right tools, endless patience and unwavering
commitment, even the deepest wounds can heal.
And sometimes they heal into something more beautiful than we could have imagined.
Saturn's story gives us so much more than hope.
It gives us a roadmap.
When I sit with families looking at bandaged hands, wiping away tears, I hear the same heart
breaking question over and over.
My dog just bit me, really bit me.
How could they do this to me?
Just like Saturn's family learned, it's rarely about betrayal.
It's about a dog whose inner world we haven't fully understood yet.
Remember that superintendent with the mop.
That moment showed us how a dog's past can collide with their present in ways we might
never expect.
Here's what's actually happening in your dog's brain during these moments.
And if you've listened to episode one, you might remember we talked about Reggie, that
part of the brain that hijacks everything else.
When Reggie takes over your dog isn't choosing to bite.
They're surviving.
Their brain literally shuts down everything that isn't directly tied to staying alive.
They can't hear you calling their name.
They can't see your familiar face.
They can't even smell that treat in your pocket.
This isn't bad behavior.
It's neurobiology.
I hear I'm terrified of my own dog now.
What happens the next time they snap?
The fear is real and it's valid.
But here's what I want you to hold onto.
Knowledge and planning are your power tools here.
Understanding why your dog bit isn't about placing blame.
It's about building a past forward.
Your dog didn't choose to bite any more than you chose to jump when someone startled
you.
Their brain misinterpreted a threat so deeply, so instinctually.
That no amount of punishment or harsh treatment could have stopped it.
But as we saw with Saturn, fear doesn't have to be the end of your story.
It can be the beginning of something deeper.
Learning to read those subtle signals before they become screams.
Creating those safety nets of routine and communication.
This is how you build back trust, how you transform a scary movement into the foundation
of an even stronger bond with your dog.
I get questions like, do I have to put my dog down or is there another way?
Let me be clear.
It's rare, extraordinarily rare, that a dog needs to be put down for biting.
Saturn's journey shows us there's another way.
Yes, it takes work.
Yes, it takes commitment.
Sometimes it even takes big life changes like moving into a new home.
But with the right tools, the right understanding and the right support transformation isn't
just possible, it happens every day.
If you're facing this question right now, here's what you need to know.
Find a professional who leads with compassion.
Not gadgets.
No shot callers, no talk chains, no quick fixes that cause more harm than good.
Look for someone certified in force free and fear free methods.
And if you're worried about legal pressure for behavioral use in Asia, connect with a
legal professional who specializes in preventing forced use in Asia.
You have options, you have support, and most importantly, you have hope.
Today we walk through Saturn's journey from crisis to transformation and seeing how understanding
your dog's brain, behavior, and needs can create profound changes.
If Saturn's story resonated with you, you're not alone.
And more importantly, you're not without resources.
It's one of the reasons we're year.
Remember in episode one, we talked about those hidden influences shaping your dog's
behavior and in episode two, how we met Tom Conrad, Reggie, and Viv, the characters in
your dog's brain story, that knowledge becomes your powerful tool when facing behavioral
challenges.
Episode three showed us how everything connects from sleep to family dynamics to the world
around us.
Saturn's story brings all these pieces together.
But this is just the beginning of the journey.
You can visit www.dogparatology.com.
And there you'll find links to all our podcast episodes across different platforms.
All three, removing the barriers across.
Our blog is there where we do a deep dive into these frameworks and methods doing incredible
research to make sure that everything is evidence-based and that you can use it practically,
because here's what I know for certain.
Every bite has a story.
And that story doesn't start with the bite.
It starts long before.
So understanding leads to compassion and compassion leads to transformation.
Just ask Saturn's family.