Suzi Walsh

Yeah, and it's funny because we grew up in a society where we punish people, but that's not necessarily effective either.

So it's very, very hard to punish an animal that you can't talk to and you can't explain why you're punishing them.

So generally it just causes confusion a lot of the time because our timing isn't often great.

So in order to punish a dog for a behavior, you'd have to do it in milliseconds and often we're too delayed in that and it gets lost in confusion.

So you're far better off rewarding them for behavior you like

and try and disengage or prevent them from behaviour you don't like by management until we get the rehearsed behaviour that we want.

But punishment is a very complicated thing when coming with dogs and often you'll just get a dog who ends up nervous of you or avoidant of you or even suppresses behaviour and that's how you often get bites and

dog aggression emerging.

There is, unfortunately not, but there is a shortage of regulation around shelters and most of the shelters are run by volunteers.

We don't have a very good system here in Ireland.

So you're usually liaising with, apart from the major charities, you're usually liaising with somebody who is doing it in part-time, spare time.

And because they're inundated, actually, in fact, it's not a case of they don't have enough dogs, but the case is they have too many dogs and too many dogs to be dealing with.

and not enough people, and there are strict criteria around it, and they sometimes do come in with more complicated history, but not all rescues are equal either.

So you also need to check out your rescue, make sure your rescue that you're working with

is, you know, has the capability of, you know, meeting your needs too.

Yeah, yeah, no, everything is slowly with a dog.

it's a really hard discussion but lifeless in hindsight if we all had that that would be amazing and sometimes we you know it just like any relationship it doesn't work out even if you try your very very best and often if you're unhappy with your dog often actually your dog is probably likely unhappy with the situation too and it's a sad sometimes that does happen but there are you know for the little things there are ways to fix it but sometimes it can be very overwhelming and it

for people to have to then part ways with their animal.