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Chris, welcome to The Dogs of our lives podcast with me, your host, Chrissy Messick, in these short digging deeper episodes, we'll dive deeper into interesting topics that arise from my guest interviews, those areas of dog training, behavior, consulting and interspecies communication that provoke more questions that I'd love to answer for you as an expert in the field. And speaking of questions, how well do you really know your dog? Why not try out my quiz, which is linked in the show notes, the questions and the answer might surprise you. Now let's dig in. Hello and welcome to our digging deeper episode on gut health and behavior. And last week, I talked with Dr Alexia Mellor, who is a canine nutritionist. And if you didn't hear that conversation, go back to episode number 20, and you can hear in detail more about that. What I want to talk about today is the gut brain axis. Now I know I'm not an expert in canine nutrition, but I do know what to look for in dogs that have behavior issues that could be related to gut health, and I do learn and talk with the experts in those fields. Now, from my own experience with our two boxers that we had, they both had terrible gas and big poos, so we ended up switching them from high end kibble to raw, and the gas went away, and the poos were beautiful. So now with our current dog, ginger, she came from my rescue, and we started out with kibble, what she came with, but she wouldn't eat it. And then we went to raw, and she ate it, but it was super messy, so we ended up going to gently cooked food, and this is perfect for her. She lost weight. She has gorgeous poos. So what I want to say before we get started is every dog is different, and their bodies are different and have different needs. And so just keep in mind to work with the dog that's in front of you for this episode. I'm not going to give you a course nutrition, but there are some important things that you should know when it comes to your dog's Gi, health and behavior. Nutrition is a hot topic in the canine world right now, and as it relates to behavior as well. And Dr Amber Batson is doing some interesting research, and Dr Daniel Mills is doing some interesting research and studying how gi health affects behavior. So a lot of what I'm going to talk about today was, I guess, presented by Dr Batson in a webinar that I watched called the angry gut. So today I wanted to talk specifically about the gut brain axis. And so the gut and brain are intimately and consistently connected, and they both drive behavior. And there's lots of resources and research on this, but some external
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factors, include in the environment, diet and temperature, digestive health can affect behavior, and this behavior can show up as aggressive behaviors, fearful, stress, anxiety. And there's five different areas that can attribute to this, so pain is one of them, and this can include cramping, inflammation, excess of stomach acidity, ulceration, pancreatitis, liver, etc, and this can make our dogs feel more defensive and make them want to protect themselves to prevent them from experiencing pain. The second aspect would be inflammation, so gastritis, which is in the stomach, enteritis, which is in the guts, pancreatitis or hepatitis, which is in the liver, and this can become systemic and affect our whole body. The third aspect would be malabsorption. So this would be our gut not functioning properly, and it can't break down our food and absorb nutrients, and so we become nutrient deficient and our sugar levels increase. In this respect, our dogs could feel the same way and think of yourself when you get hangry, or when you get irritable. The fourth aspect is our micro flora, and this can be dysbiosis, which means there's an unbalance in our gut biome. And this is our gut bugs. So the population of bugs gets out of balance, which affects chemicals in our body, inflammation in our body, the immune system, and they're finding this with dogs too. And the Fifth Aspect is metabolic dysfunction. So an example would be the liver, where we get too much ammonia, and that affects our brain in our body. Another thing to think about too is that behavior can affect our dog's gut health as well. And so think about the environment and things that our dogs are going through. So if our dogs living in a chronic stressful environment, that's going to definitely affect their gut health, if they have negative experiences, if they're living with an individual who they are scared of, that can be chronic stress and that can cause changes in their gut health and behavior, learned behaviors, if they are repeatedly taught through aversive training, or if there's a sudden change in their diet, or if their exercise changes, like there's an increase in exercise that is more than normal for them, or if there's an exposure that is really hard on them that can change their behaviors. And their gut health. And then lastly, we have comorbidity issues, and this, this means other health issues that are going along with the gut and behavior problems. So idiopathic epilepsy, they become more anxious and stressed between seizures. And these dogs have different gut populations, and they found that they train poorly. They have a low learning curve. Then we have skin diseases. They're very itchy, they become irritable, they train poorly. They have anxiety, higher aggression behaviors toward unfamiliar people and dogs, and this is tied to problems in the gut as well. Next is pain, sensitivity or perception to pain, and this may be affected by what's going on in the gut, and then we have musculoskeletal pain that can change behaviors and drive self defensive, aggressive responses. Squirrel moment, I wanted to take a second to do a shout out to my coordinator and a Perez 12 for leaving a comment in the comment section of our podcast, I'm a coordinator. I love that you're enjoying hearing all the relatable doggo and human stories while you're driving around and a Perez 12. I love that you're developing awareness around your pups and growing with your canine crew, as you said. And I think it's so important, because I think so many of us assume that we know so many things about our dogs, but once we start learning about them, it's amazing how much our mindset and behaviors shift as well. So let's talk about the gut bug influence, and how our gut affects our brain and that axis, the vagus nerve, is the main nerve that is carrying information from the gut to the brain and vice versa, and this really affects our immune system, inflammation in the body, bloodstream, chemicals that really affect our brain, and this all can affect behavior and learning capacity, tendencies. There's so many neurotransmitters that we could talk about what but one important one is serotonin. And serotonin communicates with the brain by the vagus nerve, and serotonin actively is known to impact pain perception, sleep, emotional regulation, aggressive tendencies, positive emotional states and appetite. So if our gut and brain are not communicating effectively, and we are lacking the serotonin in our gut or in our brain, is going to directly affect our dog's behavior. So let's talk about chronic stress real quick. So research has shown that chronic stress can show a reduction in the junction between gut cells, and this is called leaky gut, and it can cause bacteria that can cause an inflammation response in our body, and this changes our blood brain barrier, and which this can cause emotional dysregulation and behavior changes. So if our gut health is not good, and we are having these junctions that are open, we're going to have chemicals going into our bloodstream that's going to cause whole body inflammation. There's also a lot of research on this that how it affects learning behavior as well. So what I just want to say, there's no doubt that early life stressors, experiences in a wide range of lifestyles, including our diet, can affect our dog's behavior and gut health. And so the question is, what gut bugs are in our body, and what are they doing in humans? A variety of chronic gut issues have been linked to behavior change, such as anxiety, depression, irritability and sleep disorders, and this makes sense, because for me, if I'm not feeling very good, I'm not going to be in a great mood. And a variety of issues are now being linked to imbalances in the gut, such as epilepsy, type two diabetes, autism, Alzheimer's, and many of these coexist along with behavior change. Research of this has been done with dogs too. Gut pain and inflammation in the form of gastritis, ulceration or enteritis have been linked with abnormal oral behaviors such as pica or pica, however you want to say it, and excessive licking, and this is also to be found to have a direct effect on dog aggressive behaviors. What are some causes of gut disease? So one is chronic inflammation, which can be helped with diet changes or specific antibiotics or a specific steroid. Bacterial infections can cause gut issues. Cancers can or issues related to the pancreas or kidney or heart can cause secondary gut issues, and let's not forget the teeth. Make sure you're taking care of your dog's oral health, and then the stomach that has its own microbiome, and then, like I said, the pancreas and liver. So here we are at the part that I love, and that's looking at how digestive issues can cause certain behaviors. And so some obvious symptoms of digestive issues would be diarrhea or constipation, intermittent, loose feces, and this might look like they have, you know, diarrhea every other day or twice a week or something you. Colitis, blood in the feces, excessive farting or belching, burping and even vomiting. So some less obvious symptoms would be your dog being a picky eater, or their appetite isn't very good. They might have some sort of skin disease,
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corophages, where they just are eating all different things. Or pica, pica epilepsy, signs of intermittent pain, and you can tell they have pain, but you're not sure where it's coming from. They might have poor hair coat, or you might just see some behavior changes. And so veterinarians, they can, they can measure stuff, but they need to have an idea of what they're looking for. So many factors can affect digestive health, and one we've talked about a little bit is the diet. And everyone is different. Every dog is different, and everyone has different micro microbiomes. And so we need to work with a dog that's in front of us. Antibiotics, certain ones can be bad, or anesthetics, stress, social experiences, sleep and exercise. You know, is it indoor, outdoor, voluntary, non voluntary, aerobic, anaerobic, and then enrichment? Is it a lifetime of enrichment, or is it short lived enrichment? And so, you know me, I'm very holistic, and go by a multi modal kind of experience, but many things affect behavior, and some that are related to aggressive responses can be pain, which you know can happen in the GI or other body systems, gut imbalance, disease, learning experiences, stress, genetics and sleep like we already talked about. So when a dog is showing some aggressive behaviors, we want to look at pain, and we want to really do our research, and we want to think about disease, dysbiosis, and then persistent, repeated stress. So in these cases, we can remove triggers. We can overshadow triggers. We can look at lifestyle and expectations, and we can create safe spaces, safe relationships and have social support. We want to make sure our dogs are getting good sleep exercise. They're not overdoing it. If you want to look at diet, make sure you're working with a canine nutritionist or a veterinary nutritionist, and then enrichment. Make sure we're using all of the senses. So if you're having issues with your dog and you think there's some GI or digestive health issues, the best thing we can do is work together as a team, the veterinarian, The Guardian and The trainer or behaviorist you're working with. And here's a list of things that you can record or look at and bring this information to the vet so they can get an idea of what they're looking at. But scoring appetite. Is their appetite good or bad? You know, on a scale of zero being terrible and five being the best. Where is it? You know, grass eating on a scale of zero to five. Are they eating grass all the time? Which would be a five or zero, not eating grass at all, licking the environment would be a score such as like furniture or the floor or the walls, licking themselves. Where are they licking, belching or burping or having a soft cough? How often and when, like before or after eating? Is it easy to keep their weight on? Are they gaining too much weight? Are they vomiting? How often before, during or after eating, and what is their feces looks like? Is it liquid, or is it really dry and crumbly? So those are some things that we can kind of score and record to keep an eye on so that we can monitor and compare, you know, over a long period of time, and recognizing if there's an issue is easier to do when it's being recorded and we can keep notes. One big question that people have is, What about probiotics? And so, like I said before, the big question is, which bugs are living in our gut, and how many and in ratio to what. And so prebiotics are food for the current bugs in our gut. Probiotics are giving living bugs in our gut, and then post biotics are the output that the bugs might make. And so we really don't know. It's hard to say, like, unless there's a test that's being done, we can't say which bugs are in a gut, how many are in our gut, and in ratio to what so what we kind of do is just throw the pre Pro and post biotics in there. Another question people have is, how soon do we see behavior change after an improved gut health? And this just depends on what is causing the gut problem. And so this can range from six to eight weeks or up to three months. But if it's gut related, it can take a little longer. If it's pain related, it can be much quicker. And if it's inflammatory related, it just depends on what's going on. And so I guess the biggest question, and hopefully. The answer that people can get from this is, when you have a dog that has behavior issues, make sure you're looking at the Medical pieces. Is there any digestive issues going on, looking at their behaviors, and then approaching it from that way. And if you're going to, you know, look at the micro flora and the microbiome. Look at the dog in front of you. Some dogs do really well with a raw diet. Some dogs do really well, really well with a gently cooked diet, and some dogs do really well with a high protein kibble. So it just depends on the dog that is in front of you. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you discovered a valuable nugget you can implement right away with your dog. If you enjoyed the episode, please follow rate and share with fellow dog lovers who might benefit. Don't forget to take our How well do you know your dog quiz? You'll find the link in the show notes until next week. Happy tales. You.
