Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs Podcast, the show for dog lovers who
see dogs not as toys or tools, but wise souls worth our respect and care.
I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.
I talk to poor some humans, people who do great work for dogs and their people.
So come and join us for today's conversation.
Cathy: Okay.
I
Anke: always love it when we start off with a giggle.
So hello and welcome Cathy, I'm super excited to have you here.
Cathy: I think we should just sit here and laugh for the next 15
minutes and give people some joy.
We could.
We probably could.
Oh, so much Anke for having me here today, uh, for this conversation.
I'm excited.
I'm excited to see where this gets to go.
Yeah,
Anke: exactly.
That's always the good thing when it isn't, you know, when there's all
the possibility in the air, right?
So I really like it.
Um, okay, let's just start.
And Why don't you tell people where, where on earth, literally, you are and um, you
know, what's your connection to dogs?
Cathy: Well, in the latitude longitudinal sense of things, I am,
uh, most broadly, well, I'm on planet earth, which we'll start there.
I am, I am on the landmass known as North America in the portion called
the United States, more specifically in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
So it's, uh, in between Charles, uh, Charlottesville and Richmond for those
who are listening, who may be geography nuts and want to, want to find that.
Um, as far as dogs are concerned, um, they're my earliest memory.
Um, literally my, or one of my.
Earliest memories, which my mother thought was impossible for me to
have, but it is a memory from infancy.
It's a memory from my nursery and it's a memory of our dog.
His name was Pepper.
He was a mixed breed of some undeterminate.
origin.
I'm guessing there was probably beagle, probably lab, probably pit,
probably some random sort of retriever.
He was a roughly 40 pound or so brown dog with black spots and white
spots and gray spots and floppy ears that were kind of cockeyed and
a pointy nose and a whippy tail.
He was kind of ridiculous.
Like somebody took parts from various dogs and just kind of glued them together,
but he'd sleep under my crib and, um, he would rouse himself when I was awake.
And we would stare at each other through the slats of the crib and he'd lick
my hands and nuzzle me and I'd pull up on my elbows and um, I only cried if
my diaper was dirty or I was hungry.
Which, if you think about it, were the two things that he couldn't resolve for me.
So, my mom said she would often look into the nursery because I was
so quiet for extended periods she wanted to make sure I wasn't dead.
And um, and so she'd glance into the nursery and uh, she would see
us just staring at each other.
Just staring at each other through the slats of the crib or me giggling
and grabbing his nose like we were, you know, deep in conversation.
And um, he was hit by a car in front of our house when I was four or
five years old, deeply traumatic.
Um, I didn't see him and I didn't, I didn't see him hit by a car, but I can
describe to you in meticulous detail the office at the, the veterinarian's
office, the room they brought us into where they had attempted to save him.
They had just cleaned it.
And so I can, in acute detail, describe the smell of the room,
the angle of the light in the room.
It was fall, so it had kind of the, the sun had that kind of faded.
sunlight and it was coming in at a weird angle through the window and they had the
cabinets like the old apothecary cabinets.
It was an old veterinarian's office and the stainless steel
table had just been cleaned.
And so the light was refracting off of that.
And so oddly there were rainbows all over the room, which of course
now I understand as an adult.
You know, well, I understand also, you know, light refracting through things
creates rainbows, but I also know now that it was likely the rainbow, kind of
the rainbow bridge, him, him in the room.
Because I could feel him.
I could still feel him in the room, even though he was gone.
And that was confusing to me.
And, uh, and I said, where is he?
Where is he?
And they kept telling me he was gone.
And I kept saying, no, he's, he's here.
And as an adult, you know, I, I came to work with dogs as a professional.
Um, About 12 years ago, formally, formally, I had been working with
dogs in some capacity as a, what I would call a hobbyist trainer.
Uh, no certifications, no, no license.
Don't come after me.
I have one now.
Um, you know, and, but just, Um, I, I got my own first, it was years before
I would have a dog that was my dog.
We had another family dog who came into the family when I was about
nine, but he was never really, mine.
He, he really, um, I don't think he really belonged to anybody except maybe my dad.
Um, but he was definitely a companion.
And when I was in my early twenties in California, I got my own dog and
I did all the research and I figured out what kind of dog I wanted.
And, you know, I got the puppy and I raised the puppy.
And it was then when I, I hired a trainer because I knew that I didn't know.
I knew the life I wanted with my dog.
And I, and I didn't know how to get that.
And I found a guy one day, he was in the park, he had a beautiful German
Shepherd, and it was like watching ballet.
I mean, it was really, it was the most organic, connected relationship
I had ever seen between two beings, period, of any species.
And it was like one breathed out, the other breathed in, and vice versa.
And they just, they moved almost like one unit.
So I walked up to him and I said, So how did you learn to do that?
And he said, I'm a dog trainer.
And I said, can, can you teach me?
Because I'm, you know, I have a puppy and he said, how old's your puppy?
I said, well, actually the puppy's going to be born in a couple of weeks and I
get him and the guy looked, he's like, wait, you don't even have the dog yet?
Like, no, but I know that I don't know.
You know, I know enough to know that I don't know.
And so.
Can you teach me?
And I think he, he told me later that he thought I was just a crazy
person in the park, but he gave me his number and said that when he heard
from me weeks later, he was shocked.
Um, because he thought for sure that he'd never hear from me again.
And I worked with him and And we worked together for, uh, we started
when Archie was, um, probably about eight, nine weeks old.
He'd come to my apartment and just teach me how to be with him
since I could, didn't want to risk him in any, you know, public dog
parks or anything at that point.
And then he would have me bring him to the tennis court in the dog park,
where we, he was exposed to sight and sound, but not exposed to any dogs.
And we could see that the, the ground was clean and could keep him safe.
And then we kind of worked up from there, and after about a month
or so, um, he looked at me and he said, you don't really need me.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, you're a natural.
You're really a natural.
And but I, why don't I, you know, it's ridiculous for me to take money from
somebody who doesn't really need me.
I just.
I don't feel good about that.
Feel free to, you know, call me anytime, ask me questions.
I'm happy to meet you here in the park and we can work our dogs together.
And so we, I did that and it was about a year and a half later and I was in
the park with Archie and I was just like having him jump up on things and sit.
Like just, we were just horsing around having a good time and someone come
up, came up to me and said, excuse me.
I said, yeah, yeah.
How can I help you?
They said, are you a dog trainer?
And I said, Why do you ask?
They said, well, I just got a puppy, you know, and I just brought him home
yesterday and I don't know what I'm doing and you're really great with your dog.
So I nodded my head and I said, uh, yes, yes, I am.
I immediately called Mario.
I said, so I just told someone I'm a dog trainer.
He's great.
I said, but I'm not.
He said, yes, you are.
I said, but I don't have any certifications.
He said, Most people who have them, you know, and I mean no disrespect, so let
me just say, if you're a CPDK or you have any of the initials after your name,
good, like good, you've put it on yourself to get education, but understand that
the certifications are not something to wave around and say, I'm a dog trainer.
Um, they're helpful.
They're important.
Yes, get educated.
Yes, understand dog behavior.
Yes, understand dog wellness and physicality and illnesses
and pests and things to 100%.
100%.
understand that there are a lot of people out there who slap those letters after
their name who have no more business working with a dog than I do running
a classroom of one year olds, right?
They just, and, and it's, it's It's like that with a lot of things, right?
Like I, I have transitioned my life into coaching humans now through the
lens of, of the dog human relationship.
And there's a lot of people calling themselves coaches out there.
It's just thinking about that.
Yeah.
I mean, they've got fancy, they've got fancy certifications and they've got
ICF certifications and they went to this school and that school and I, they
can't find their ass in a brightly lit room with both hands and like their
own lives are a categorical shit show.
And it's like, okay, so without being in judgment, which I realized all
that sounded super judgy, um, that for me, I know more people who just
know their dog and they know their dog because they know themselves.
That I can't expect behavior outside of me to shift, change, adjust, or move if
I'm looking at it as an outside thing.
If I'm looking at it as everything in the world around me, I am causing the
conditions in the world around me.
And a dog is the perfect mirror for us to see how are we doing
at any given point in time.
So, I have my blur on.
You can't see the background.
Um.
If you're just listening to this, you're not really missing much scene
wise because there's, you can't see anything behind me, but there's three
dogs in the room right now, completely crashed out, completely relaxed.
And all three pairs of eyes, I can feel them on the back of my head.
They're just watching me.
And if I were to get up and leave, you'd see movement in the
background because they'd follow me.
And it's the relationship I have with them.
And there are mornings when it isn't like this because I'm not.
like this.
And so, you know, I'll fast forward through.
I worked in the Silicon Valley.
I worked in the tech industry.
Um, I've been in, in and around communications the entirety of my career.
I have a big fancy journalism degree from Northwestern University.
Um, so I'm really good at finding typos on things and editing copy.
Really use, really useful skills it turns out.
Um, also along with things like.
You know, critical thinking and communicating and speaking in
sentences people understand.
And, and I, I walked away from that about 12 years ago, mostly
because I never really particularly liked the tech industry.
The grind of it was always hard for me.
Um, I never really felt like I fit.
I loved the people.
The people are amazing.
I have lasting friendships and fascinating people.
And I got to be witness to a lot of things again, no regret, all great,
but it never really felt like a fit.
And I got an opportunity in 2012, uh, Tony Hsieh, who was then the CEO of Zappos, he
is now unfortunately since deceased, is deceased, um, he invited me to Las Vegas
and he said come to Las Vegas and see what we're doing to redevelop downtown.
And then he invited my dog, Truman, to come with me.
So Truman and I went to Las Vegas in the summer of 2012, uh, on
what was ostensibly a vacation.
I was there for 10 days.
And at the end of the 10 days, I had committed to submit a business plan
for a new take on what a training and educational facility for dogs
and their people could look like.
So it was called the Hydrant Club, and I say was because I, I closed the physical
iteration of it at the end of 2022, um, mostly because the neighborhood, which
had been made, made great progress for development up until the pandemic, then
the pandemic happened, then Tony died, and then after the pandemic what's come
back is, there's a mob of like 300, you know, delinquents on bicycles who ride
around and vandalize, one of them actually just Put someone in a hospital last week.
So there's a lot of vandalism and crime and, you know, not a neighborhood
where you want to be running, you know, a high end dog training facility.
Um, but I, so I closed the physical location, but I opened
the phys, this physical location without knowing a few things.
First of all, I had never run a brick and mortar business before.
So there was that.
Second of all, um, I had worked one on one with a client.
Right, you know, so working individually with clients.
I had never done group classes.
I also had never taught other people how to handle dogs.
And being a dog handler and being a dog trainer aren't the same thing.
You know, so if I own a dog, I am the dog's handler.
I should also be their educator and be part of their educational process.
But there are a lot of people who, like, the relationships are different.
It's like the, my parents aren't my friends.
But I have a friendship with them as an adult, but my parents are my parents.
I have a teacher.
I might be friendly with teachers.
Like there's just relationships that have a certain quality to them in order for the
function of the relationship to happen.
Doesn't make them any less intimate.
Doesn't make them any less connected.
They just have a certain relationship.
And for a dog, I think the biggest mistake we make is we create a scenario
for the dog that is impossible for the dog to actually understand.
A dog is a dog, a human is a human, they are not the same thing.
Are they loving companions?
Yes.
Are they beloved members of the family?
No question.
Do they understand us more deeply than most other humans can?
100%.
They're not people.
They're not our fur babies.
They're not our fur kids.
They are not my children.
I jokingly refer to my dogs as my kids.
Like, hey kids, let's go inside.
But I'm very clear that there's a, a relationship there that gets
to have a certain boundary to it.
in the way that you have a relationship with a two year old
that's different than with a 10 year old, with a 12 year old, right?
With an adult child, right?
So the dog never really goes beyond the toddler phase.
And so there's a way that I get to be with them.
And so I didn't know if I could train people and teach them to handle and
then to also train and teach others.
Turns out pretty good teacher and coach, who knew?
And, um, It was, I wasn't so good at first, it was very, very bossy, um,
very controlling, not particularly pleasant to work for, um, not, I wasn't
particularly patient or tolerant with some of my clients in the very early days.
Um, there were some Yelp reviews at the time that reflected how I was being
for sure, um, and I can laugh at it now as I've, you know, and some of those
tendencies are of course still there, but I can laugh at them now and say, wow,
I'm being kind of an asshole right now.
So that must mean I'm, mean I'm uncomfortable because I'm
typically a very kind person.
I'm a very loving.
You know, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm wearing this fuzzy pink, like I'm
kind of like a teddy bear, really.
And when the prickly part comes out, it's usually because I'm scared, uncomfortable,
or I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
And I just revealed, I've just revealed, I've just revealed my darkest secret.
So there goes all my mystery.
You know, and so what happened when the pandemic hit was I started thinking,
all right, so I've got to get creative.
And besides the fact that over the last seven years, I've really been spending
more time working through with the humans, what's in their way of being their
best guardian for their dog, having the best stewardship for their dog, which
is really what we're here for, right?
Like we get to put our needs aside, put their needs first.
And in return We get the most, I mean, there's just, I mean, I, and if, if
you're listening to this, you know, you get it because you understand what to
have your soul touched by a dog or a cat or a horse or a ferret or a guinea
pig or a rabbit or a bird or your child or your plants like to be in loving
contribution to another thing that you have such love and care for that you
care for it and put your needs aside.
And in so your needs get met.
Like, I don't know how it works.
I love
Anke: how you put that because it is really true, you
Cathy: know, 100%, 100%.
And I don't get to love my dog the way.
I want to love my dog.
I get to love my dog how my dog, each of my three dogs are very, very different.
They need very different things for me.
And when I love them for who they are as individuals, my needs get met.
Not sure how, not sure why, but they do.
And so I, I pivoted a bit, uh, while The 100 Club was still in, you know,
physical brick and mortar iteration, I was spending more and more time coaching,
and I got myself, you know, a, I got myself a certification, um, and no,
it's not one of the big fancy ones, I didn't, you know, spend 15 grand to
have somebody say, yes, you can coach other people, congratulations, um.
You know, when I got myself educated and got myself trained and got
myself, you know, hundreds of hours of experience coaching and,
um, started really figuring out.
So with everyone and their brother saying they're a coach, how does that, how,
how do I really show my differentiation?
It really isn't three.
It's, it's the, the how I do it and, and the lenses through which
I do it, which is really, I, I work with in communication specifically.
So the language you use with yourself, with other people, how do people hear you?
How do they experience you?
Um, how do you work in a group?
How does a group work together?
How do you deal with conflict?
So those.
Those are kind of my main, the main tools.
The lens for the interpersonal communication and one on one is,
is 100 percent taught through the lens of the dog human relationship.
The group dynamics, I do that through the lens of music, specifically
orchestral music, because it's a great example of how groups work together.
And my, my third metaphor, uh, for conflict resolution and how to deal with
pressure and basically hold your shit together when everyone around you is
losing theirs, and that's ice hockey.
Um, so I take these three completely disparate lenses and kind of weave
them together in a way, and look, you can use gardening metaphors,
architectural metaphors, other sports metaphors, cooking metaphors.
They're all just a way for us to view, um, to get out of our own way, to see,
to not take ourselves so seriously, and, and to realize at the end of
the day, if there's conflict around me, it's because there's something
in conflict in me, period, period.
Like, it is literally that simple.
If the world around me is effed up six ways from Sunday, that's the one
profane word that I won't use here, but it's, you know, six ways from
Sunday, um, all I have to do is figure out what's What's awry in my own life?
You know, if there feels like disarray, disorganization and confusion in the
world around me, I go clean a closet.
I don't know why it makes me feel better.
I don't know why my world gets better, but it does.
Or I look in that stack of bills I haven't paid, I pay them.
Or the car is filthy, I clean it.
Or the things I've been saying on, you know, they're stacked on the desk that
I've been saying I'm going to file.
I file them.
The project sitting in the corner that I've been looking.
Whatever it is that I've been talking about doing, I do it.
And all of a sudden, order starts to happen.
And when we look at the categorical shitshow that is our planet right
now, and you can look in every aspect.
The environment, politics, I mean I almost vomit saying the word,
and not a political conversation.
I think a lot of people would be surprised where, where my
inclinations actually fall.
You know, most people think that I'm one way and I'm actually
not the way they think I am.
Um, and.
Because I, because I sit right in the middle and anyone who would
pull people off a center are doing it for their own, for their own
means or from their own discomfort.
Again, it's really that simple because the answer is when you sit down and
talk with people person to person.
We may disagree on how to get to point B, but everybody kind of
agrees what point A and point B are.
Here's where we are.
This is shitty.
That's where we want to go.
That's better.
And then we start tearing each other apart on trying to get there
instead of saying, okay, well, we disagree on how to get there.
Can we each go our own ways there and both get there?
Okay.
We can't.
So we have to find a way for our two ways to have some relative symbiosis.
Okay, well, let's figure that out.
Let's figure that out.
I think
Anke: the let's figure it out is a really powerful approach to anything, right?
It's almost like, oh, the dog doesn't do what I thought the dog should do.
How can we figure it out?
Right?
So it's anything is, I think, helped by
Cathy: that approach.
100%.
And I think that, um, you know, again, you know, when, when I walk into people's
houses, um, you know, I don't do much, you know, just dog training anymore, you know,
um, just because I'm doing other things, not for lack of, of wanting to do it.
Um, you know, but for people who have a dog who are also interested
in upping their own leadership, like, because here's the when I become the
leader who I get to be in my life.
My dog's behavior writes itself.
Most of the really, most of the irritating shit just goes away.
The jumping on me, the pulling things apart, the not getting out of my way
when I'm walking down the hallway or being up under my feet when I'm
in the kitchen or pulling me down the sidewalk on the leash or running
out the front door when I open it.
Whatever the thing is, those are all behaviors that are indicators
of a dog that doesn't see that there is a a leader in its life.
And for all of these people who, um, you know, are like, you know,
and again, there's so many different methodologies, but even in the dog
training world, there's the, you know, they're like, any force is bad with a dog.
I'm like, well, excessive force is bad with any living being, right?
I don't know.
I'm pretty sure the mama dog picks the puppies up by the
scruff of the neck with her teeth.
And that's pretty forceful.
That's pretty forceful.
And they understand it and they like straighten their shit out pretty fast.
When Mama shows her teeth, you know, and snaps her teeth at them,
oh, ma'am, yes, ma'am, they get it.
She doesn't then take her paw, backhand him across the head, you know, charge
at them, tearing fur out of them and slap them around and terrorize them.
But she sure as hell does, you know, give them guidelines,
you know, and I think there's
Anke: also this piece of like, being firm, you know, doesn't have, that does not
mean being, like, punitive in any way.
Like, you don't, you can be like my parents.
like was super strict, you know, there was never a slap or anything,
you know, there was just a very calm understanding that this is, well, you
Cathy: under, but you understood that the potential was there, but you understood
you were now, I was never struck either.
And it had
Anke: consequences.
Like if I was, you know, so it's like, it doesn't have to be, I
think there's this piece that it's easy to misunderstand, like force.
And like, I think firm leadership, calm, firm leadership, like the dog needs to
know and a child and a team member or somebody like it's kind of a grown out,
Cathy: a grown ass adult.
Look at our world today.
Look at our world.
It's a mess.
Anke: You know, this is, this is what, what we want you to, this is how to do it.
And if you don't do it, this is what the consequences are.
And it's really quite simple.
I guess it doesn't have to be, it can be kind, it can be, you know, calm.
It doesn't have to be like, you know, so, but it has to
be consistent and it has to be
Cathy: firm.
Right.
And it has to be followed through.
And this is where, when I look at human behavior, if There is no consequence
for something being I will never forget.
I, um, uh, I had a lot of rules at the Hydrant Club.
The, the, the, the clients were under an enormous amount of strict guidelines in
order to even come for their assessment.
And I could tell you with 100 percent certainty, every time the
people whose dogs were going to fail, and about a third of them did.
And it wasn't always the dog.
It actually was rarely the dog.
It was mostly humans who couldn't follow basic, simple rules, like showing
up to a place at a specific time.
And the reason it was important is the dogs would arrive between 8 and 9.
45.
Well, 45, that's when the dogs would arrive for day school.
And so they would arrive for day school, and then I wanted, at minimum, a 15 minute
window to get the group settled before a new dog would be introduced for its,
you know, process of introduction because the group was settled and balanced.
I didn't want a frothy, excited, unbalanced group because then the
new dog would have a bad experience and the new, I wouldn't be able to
get a good sense of the new dog.
I could tell as the dog was walking up the sidewalk from the car by how the
dogs, because I had an open fence and all the dogs would come over and stand
at the fence, they would come over.
They would bark, and within about eight seconds They'd stop.
I mean, the handlers would come over, there would be, have handlers
in the space managing them.
But when the dogs didn't settle, it told me everything I needed to know
about what was walking up the sidewalk.
Either the human or the dog was imbalanced and I wasn't sure which.
So I would do things with the dog, with their person there, I'd remove
the person, I'd work with the dog.
I'd just spend time with the dog.
I'd bring a dog in to meet the person.
I'd bring a dog in to meet the dog.
And I'd see where the reactivity was.
And I had someone who showed up 30 minutes.
late for their scheduled appointment.
And we had another appointment that was going to be coming.
And so what we would also do is we'd finish the appointment and I would allow,
I would enforce at least 30 minutes, ideally an hour, before another dog
would come because I wanted the dogs to have a chance to decompress and
all of that and determine which of the dogs needed to be pulled from the group
for deeper decompression because they had been overstimulated or whatever.
And she was 30 minutes late and she showed up and I said, hi.
I said, I'm really sorry, but we're, you know, we're going to need to reschedule.
I rescheduled my day to be here.
And she started yelling.
I said, you know, um, we, here's why I was very, very calm.
And I explained the situation.
I said, look, when your dog is here, I want, you know, I want
your dog to have a good experience.
This won't be a good experience for your dog.
And I'm not going to rush it because your dog gets to have the full time.
And she's like, okay, well, fine.
You know, I'll reschedule.
I said, great.
I said, so, you know, we're going to take the, the assessment payment
in advance to hold the spot.
Cause you missed the first, and it's in all of the paperwork.
And it was 150.
150 to get your dog evaluated to maybe get into my school.
Maybe.
Now, once the dog got in, they got that money right back.
I'd give them 150 worth of something.
I'd give them, you know, a free hour of training.
I'd give them something.
They immediately got that value back.
So they weren't really But if they were like, you know, basically it was my PETA,
my PETA tax, my pain in the ass tax.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's
Anke: also, it kind of makes sure that the people who come there are
like actually serious about it.
Cathy: You know?
The minute I started charging, I didn't charge at first.
And the minute I started charging, like my, my conversion rate went up
to about 88 percent and I started turning away about a third of the dogs.
And that was consistent.
That was consistent for 10 years.
I could have made exponentially more money if I had gone volume.
And I wasn't interested in that.
I think quality always
Anke: trumps quantity, right?
Cathy: Yeah, well, and you can do both.
You can do both.
It is possible to do both.
My facility was physically set up for a specific size.
I never had more than 40 dogs during a day, which is considered relatively small,
you know, boarding was about 30, you know, so it was a, you know, I kept that way.
I didn't have to have as much staff cause we had a one to six ratio, you know,
for dog to handler or handler, yeah.
Handler to dog one to six.
So, um, and sometimes it was more like it could be one to six with three handlers
if they were all high drive big dogs.
Right?
So it really, we really gauged that accordingly.
And by the way, people are the same way.
Not all people need the same things.
And not all people hear things the same way.
I was talking with a client yesterday and she was relating to me an experience
of this team that she's working with.
She's like, I've told them, I've told them, I've told them, and
they're just not hearing me.
I said, so what I'm hearing you say is they're not hearing you.
Because if you're saying the same thing and you're just saying it
louder, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're hearing it.
It tells me that they're not engaged with what you're telling them.
They don't understand why it's important.
So they're not hearing you.
So we get to say it to them a different way.
We get to ask different questions.
She was like, light bulb went off.
She said, great.
So we talked about that.
I said, great.
So go do these things.
And you know, here's, you know, what are some questions that you can ask?
And she came up with some questions.
I said, great.
Those are awesome.
What else can you ask?
And she asked, you know, came up with a gun.
I said, great.
I said, so go do that.
Come back to me in a week and let me know if you're still having the
tone deafness, because at that point.
There's resistance.
There's something else going on.
And then there's something else going on.
But 9 times out of 10 it's not actually resistance.
Most of the time people are just like, I'm sorry, what?
Because
Anke: it's just not obvious where the relevance is,
Cathy: right?
Yeah, I mean, people, most people, most, and like by most, I mean like vast
majority of people are good, decent, want to do a good job, want to belong
to a group, want to know that they, you know, belong there, that they fit with
the group, that they contribute, that they matter, um, that they have a role.
Most people want to be liked in some capacity.
It means different, that means different things to different people.
And that's kind of it at the end of the day.
Anke: That's why I love it when you think, well, we're the kind of, we
are different in many ways, you know, between dogs and people, but like,
boy, there's so many things where we're just the same, where it's actually
in essence, pretty simple, right?
Cathy: Well, I mean, look, I mean, it's not a mistake that 56, 000
years ago, give or take a millennia, the, our species came together.
And, you know, there's some really fascinating discoveries
in the last just 15, 20 years.
that show just how much longer ago, um, you know, it used to be thought
it was like 000 years ago that dog and man started live together.
No, it was, you know, it was tens of millennia prior to that.
And, um, and it was roughly around the time that humans started,
uh, being able to manipulate fire as well as projectile weapons.
And so roughly in that timeframe is when our species.
came together.
And you know, there's all sorts of lore, like, we kidnapped the
pups and raised them as our own.
No, like, there's no data that actually proves that.
What's, what's more likely is we had killed a large beast with our
projectile weapons that we had cooked over the flame in the carcass.
You know, we didn't have Tupperware.
There was no Tupperware.
There was no walk in deep freeze, you know, so we just basically
had the carcass hanging out.
you know, on the spit where it had been cooked and that the wolves that were
large enough to have the self confidence, you know, would draw near, um, you know,
and, and protect, you know, send up a sound when they heard something, giving
us the chance to protect ourselves.
We'd literally throw them a bone and look, positive reinforcement.
Look, see, there you go.
You know, and, and so yeah, we keep going for ages and ages,
like days for days, I'm sure.
I think we, we
Anke: have another, another conversation in here.
Cathy: 100%.
Anke: I think so for now, where, where do we, where can people
go and find out about, you know,
Cathy: about me, you, and your
Anke: work, and where can I get in
Cathy: touch with you?
I strive for ubiquity, so if you type Kathy Brooks into.
A given search engine, the likelihood that the first couple pages are going to
be me is greater than zero, um, by a lot.
Um, I'm easily found on LinkedIn, which is the beautiful place where you and
I got, got a chance to come together.
Um, I also, you can find me, Kathy Brooks on, on Instagram, Unleashed Leadership.
LLC.
The LLC bit is important because someone got to Unleashed Leadership before I did.
Um, that was my, that was my, that was my scary dog growl.
Um, but, uh, yeah, so Unleashed Leadership LLC, uh, and I'm actually
in the process of getting ready to, you know, I do group coaching programs.
Everything's done virtually.
I do in person stuff as well.
I'll go in two companies or two people, um, you know, for coaching,
but my group coaching programs, um, you know, are, are all virtual
and I'm kicking one off in January.
So, um, look me up.
Happy to help.
Happy to support.
We can talk dogs.
We can talk communication.
Um, we can really talk about anything.
I can pretty much talk about anything with anyone about, you know, at any time,
you know, it's kind of a superpower.
Anke: Awesome.
Love it.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for coming.
And, um, yeah, I look forward to the next installment of this conversation.
Thanks so much for listening.
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That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.