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.
Speaker: Hello and welcome, Andy.
I'm very excited to have you here with me today.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for inviting me.
I'm excited to have a little chat
Speaker: with you.
Awesome.
So before we dive into that, let's, let's people know, let people know
where in this lovely world you're based.
And so what's your business with dogs?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very lucky because I live, um, on a beach,
not literally on a beach.
We live next to the beach, um, with my wonderful husband and we've got
three dogs down in Devon in UK.
So it's a really beautiful place to live and, um, yeah, we have a few too
many tourists probably in the summer.
I shouldn't really whinge about that, but you know, but we're happy
to share this wonderful place.
So that's great.
And we've got Dartmoor nearby.
So it's a really wonderful place, Anke, actually.
So yeah, we're very lucky to be here.
And I've got private practice down here working with dogs.
Um, so, uh, I specialize in working with dogs.
What we might colloquially refer to as reactivity and aggression.
About half of my workload are dogs that we might class as
being dangerous, potentially.
Um, and they're my favorites to work with because, as we'll touch on a
little bit today, they are potentially dangerous because they haven't been heard.
Their stories haven't been heard.
They don't feel safe.
Um, and actually in my 15 years of working with these type of dogs, I've
not met a dog yet that wasn't in pain.
Uh, physical pain, of course, but also emotional or social pain.
So, um, yeah, I love working with these dogs and I, and I spend a lot
of time with my educational stuff, really, trying to push back against
this fallacy that somehow these dogs can only be helped by harsh means.
And I can say to you now, no dog.
is safer to be around by being made to feel less safe.
It's just, that's it.
But, but that's, um, we can touch on some of those little points in a
minute, but that's kind of what I do.
So I'm, I'm the behavioural consultant for a product called
Pet Remedy here in the UK.
I do a lot of work with Pet Remedy.
Um, I'm an expert advisor with Canine Arthritis Management.
I love everything Howard does at CAM, um, really promoting All this
wonderful information to caregivers and professionals about the role of chronic
pain in a lot of behavior, actually.
Um, and, uh, yeah, and I run my dog centered care platform,
which is, um, uh, Facebook group.
And I get a chance to speak to wonderful people, um, and, uh, people who are
leading the way in thinking about moving away from just a training, compliance
based approach to working with dogs.
Because There's a beautiful richness to their emotional lives that we need
to be better at bearing witness to because that's how we really truly
have that wonderful relationship and a lot of behavioral challenges actually
are a dog trying to communicate their safety and relief needs.
Speaker: I love that.
I love that.
Oh boy, Devin, like we'll have chat about that afterwards.
I love Devin.
Um, so I'm curious, how did you get started with dog training?
Like that wasn't your first career.
So what made you make this, make the switch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no.
So, um, I've got a human psychology background and,
um, this is why I'm really.
The one thing that goes straight through everything really is a real interesting
in a real interest in the individual lived emotional experience, whether it's
the human, whether it's the dog, whether it's the cat, whether it's the horse.
Um, and, uh, you know, the emotional experience is a powerful lens to look at
the world because one is we all have one.
You have one, I have one, the dog has one.
And secondly, they're all unique to us as individuals.
So there's a lot that we share, I know, but, but, um, uh, but we are all
a unique combination of our genetics, our early experiences, especially
our secure, insecure attachments, our trauma, you know, all these things.
So that's why we can all be in the same space, experiencing the same thing,
but be affected by it very differently.
So actually, uh, and our brain wants to project a safe world view of the
world based on our own experience.
And that's why we judge so easily.
We love to judge, right?
Um, judging often with the flimsiest of information.
And there's two things about us humans.
One is we love to judge, uh, and secondly, we hate to be judged.
And why?
Because we're our own behavior.
Guess what?
We know it's complicated.
So that's the thing.
Same for adults.
So, um, then, so I was, I was working in, in the kind of human side of things and
then, and then I had my own breakdown.
That was, that was the big thing for me.
And, um, I, I share some of this and I, I, I share this quite
freely, uh, if it's relevant.
Um, but I, I had a, I had a, I had trauma when I was, when I was a child,
sexualized trauma when I was a child.
Uh, with non family members, I like to mention that, but anyway, uh, and
that's a really important point for me, you know, because the thing about
trauma, when I experienced what I experienced, nothing around me changed.
My parents were the same, my friends were the same, my school was the same.
What changed was my perception of everything, uh, and
the deepness of unsafety.
And guess what?
That affected my behaviour.
And this is why I'm so passionate, I think, now with dogs, I'll come on to how
I go on to dogs in a bit, about thinking about behavior differently, moving away
from a very heavy training operant y model to just try and change behavior.
So if you change behavior, everything's okay, because it isn't.
So in my case, when I was at school then, um, and my behavior started to get Okay.
progressively, uh, worse based upon the metric of the school, um,
they ramped up their punishment until eventually I got the cane.
So anybody under, I don't know, 30 years old, yes, we used to hit kids with sticks.
Uh, and, um, so guess what?
My behavior did change because I didn't want to get the cane.
So job done.
Tick.
Because guess what?
Punishment does work.
If you're just looking at stopping behavior, it can work.
Tick.
My parents.
took a different approach because, um, I was quite spoiled as a kid, I have
to say, uh, but I was spoiled because, um, my parents worked very hard, and
the problem with them working very hard is that they weren't around much.
So, uh, when my behavior started to change, they recognized maybe
they should be home more, so they said, like, you know, we'll do more
as a family, contingent on, So we love contingencies as dog trainers.
Contingent on you behaving better, because they wanted me to behave better
because I was not being very nice.
So I guess what I did behave, Anke, let's see the point again,
tick, reinforcement, tick.
So the consequence model worked, whether it was punishment or reinforcement,
and my behavior did change.
But my intrinsic safety needs didn't.
I just behaved.
And the real consequence for me was my breakdown some 15, 20 years later.
So this is real, the reality of intrinsic need versus extrinsic motivation.
How many dogs who are trying to communicate need The need for safety, the
need for connection, the need for relief.
Relief is the most important word in the psychology of behavior for me.
It's why we have safety because when you feel that kind of negative thing,
that physical pain, that emotional pain, that social pain, you seek relief.
Um, and if you don't find relief, you get no relief, which
is a horrible thing to feel.
And we've all been in situations where we feel you have to
kind of put up with stuff.
So how many dogs then, because we've judged them, as we like to judge,
uh, their behavior as being the problem, are they either shut down
through punishment or even with reinforcement, because it's powerful?
We end up getting a different behavior that we find more appropriate, but the
dog still doesn't feel safe, or the dog still doesn't get the connection
they need, or the dog still doesn't get the relief they were seeking.
So everything's connected.
Um, when I had my breakdown, um, I ended up moving home.
My father had Sadly, uh, was in the last stages of his, of his
illness and, and he passed away.
And, and I, and I was with my mother, who I adored.
I'm a real mom's boy, , and I adored, I adored her.
And, um, she was getting on a bit herself.
So I, I thought, yeah, I'm gonna stay home and look after mom and
maybe I need to think about change.
And one of the people that was involved in my therapy.
His brother, um, is somebody called John Roberts, who people might have heard of
if they're in the world anyway, um, and he was a real pioneer of positive enrichment
and reinforcement within zoos and that kind of thing with the wild animal.
So I got a chance to spend time with him and I had 18 months with him
actually, which is really amazing.
And, um, and I thought this is quite cool.
And then mom might, it was my late mother, she's not with us now, who suggested
maybe, maybe thinking about doing dogs.
So I went down the normal dog training route.
How to train a dog route and, um, uh, but over time, these thoughts
about behavior started to come back.
That's the key.
And at the time, nobody was around in my circles was really
allowing that conversation.
And it was, Meeting the wonderful Sarah Fisher, who's now become a really dear
friend of mine, thankfully, because I love her, uh, who almost gave me permission
to keep thinking along these lines about, we've done very well at moving
the conversation on from punishment to reinforcement, but that's very much
about how to do the task of getting a dog to do something in a nicer way.
I'm really interested now, Anke, about moving that conversation forwards
and thinking, right, That's fine.
We can, we know how we can change behavior, but what's the story
of that dog in front of us?
Speaker: Oh, I can't even tell you how much I love this.
It just makes like the whole journey makes so much sense and the question that
puts the that it puts in the room now.
It almost is like, well, both the harsh approach and the reinforcement
still only work on that surface level.
And, you know, you could see like, well, if there is something underneath
and you know how I don't know, with humans, you always say, well, okay, you
know, if emotional stress doesn't have an outlet, it'll find its outlet, you
know, in illness and it'll come out.
It's almost like you kind of push something down, it'll
come out somewhere, right?
So what I'm curious about now, if we're looking at say, okay, let's just
attack the issue, pun intended, attack, attack the issue at its, at its root.
Right, so if we say, well, if a dog can feel safe.
then chances are the behaviors we don't want kind of dissolve
by themselves, you know, which makes all the sense in the world.
So how, like, what is something that somebody would have to take into account?
Or how would you, how do you go about creating safety for a dog?
Like, how do you help a dog feel safe?
I mean, you know, it's even like, I don't know.
And how is it, is it different from people?
And if so, how?
Speaker 2: I think on many fundamental levels it isn't, because the
first thing is we have to navigate our own judgments and biases.
As the one who is the one seeking to support, and we need to listen.
We need to be available.
We need to be truly available to the emotional truth of another.
And that isn't always easy.
And because as I say of our own, our own belief systems, our own
judgments and that kind of thing, I've got what I call my CAKE acronym.
Which helps us with that a little bit, because it happens to spell
cake, because we all love cake, right.
So cake, compassion, awareness, knowledge and empathy.
These are the foundations of helping us be more available to
the truth of another, whether it's the dog, whether it's the human.
So compassion is first thing, and compassion is important because that
helps us to navigate our own biases.
So, um, I might have an intake form from a client and I might see that they've used
a shot collar, I might see that they pin their dogs down, I might see that they
do whatever, all these kind of things, and my judgy brain will judge that.
And one thing about judgment, we can't not judge, but we can learn to
change our relationship with judgment.
We can change our relationship with our feelings, we can change our
relationship with our trauma, we can change our relationship with everything.
Um, it's not about not feeling stuff.
So we can, uh, judge, Our brain will do it, but we can change our
relationship with that judgment, so it doesn't drive our response.
What will drive my response is compassion, because compassion is not about
condoning, agreeing with, or whatever.
It's about turning up anyway, about turning up anyway.
So compassion is an important one.
And then awareness.
I need to be as aware as I can be.
of that lived experience, whether it's the client or the dog, and
allowing them to tell their story.
I see behavior, especially dogs, like them painting a picture.
I want them to paint that picture for me.
I don't want to keep grabbing the brush off them thinking I can paint it better.
Same with the client.
I want them to tell their story in their words, on their terms, because that's how
you help to create safety, social safety.
And then knowledge.
I have knowledge, of course I do, but that's not the point.
The point at this point is I want to seek knowledge, true knowledge
from that dog or the client.
So it's, it's universal, this stuff.
And that allows you to have more empathy and empathy is, is really the thing.
I think I kind of feel that I can kind of, you know, empathy for me is, you know, Um,
being available to the emotional truth of another and feeling it like it's your own.
But, this is important for any professionals listening, recognizing
that we're not responsible for it.
Very important, that's where boundaries connect.
So when I'm working with a dog then, the first thing we're going
to do is move away from this notion of arbitrarily judging behavior.
It's just behavior.
I invite anybody listening now to think about how often you thought
about your behavior today, and the answer is you didn't much.
You just behaved.
And you will behave differently based upon your mood state, your
physical state, your emotional state.
Um, you will behave differently based on your social circumstances,
the social environment.
We just, we know this about ourselves, but we struggle to see it in others.
And actually, your behavior is, because of our own conditioning, is likely to
be less authentic than we think it would be for ourselves, because we feel under
a bit of social pressure to behave.
We feel under pressure to be a bit of a people pleaser, or whatever it is we got.
Sorry to sort of mention that.
But anyway, so coming to those then, um, so Dr Jess, I want, it all comes down
to really good observations with dogs.
I need them to tell their story for me, uh, and I need to try and learn it.
And I need to put away my own biases and think about these things.
And almost always, when we think about the big behaviors, it's about
a dog struggling to find relief.
So that's a nervous system that's struggling to regulate well.
Two really good, Little analogies here.
One is about processing, because that's where the first bit is about
how the brain can effectively and efficiently process what goes on.
So if you imagine the dog's brain has lots of little doors in it, we, this is, the
beautiful thing is this applies to us too.
So, but, um, but anyway, talking about doggy.
So your doggy at home then, your dog's got a lot of little doors in it.
in their brain, and we need as many of those doors to stay open for
that dog to have a chance of being able to process what's going on
around them and make sense of it.
There's something called sensory integration, so it's how that brain
takes on information through the sensory system and integrates it well.
Pain, trauma, and stress, excitement and frustration, or
stress if you think about it.
They're all big door closers.
And, uh, same for us.
So, um, also, if your dog is under 18 months old, there's a part of the
brain that helps modulate, moderate our behavior, really, and kind
of, you know, manage our emotions.
And humans starts in our teens and it's fully formed in our late 20s.
In dogs, it doesn't start till 18 months.
So some of those doors aren't even open yet.
Nothing closes doors like trauma.
So if you've got an overseas rescue or a dog that's had a lot of trouble, you
can't force those doors open the brain.
And that nervous system has to believe it's okay to open them.
You can't teach safety because the, as the wonderful Rachel Leather
says, who's a trauma expert, because you have to feel it.
I could teach you to be physically safe.
And as in, don't put your fingers in the plug socket, but I can't teach you to be
emotionally safe because you have to feel.
So the doors to the brain lunge is a good one.
Now guess what?
Doors that are likely to start closing first when the
animal is not feeling great.
are likely to be the doors you put the training behind, because a lot of
the training has little or no value to the dog other than what we want.
The doors that are likely to stay open are the survival doors, right?
Because that's the ones that have more innate value to the dog.
So, you teach your dog some stuff, they do it, great.
You ask the dog to do it another time and they're not doing it, now
we've got a point of reference here, and we want to judge them, right?
So we're The dog must do it because they've got to be obedient, so
now they're being disobedient, willful, stubborn, whatever.
No, just don't have enough doors open, so they can't right
now, and it's hard for them.
Uh, the number of times I see down on the beach people trying to control
their dogs when they get out of the car.
The dogs?
Just really excited and they want to go to the beach.
They're going, sit, no sit, sit.
The dog's like, can't, that door's not open right now.
And in fact, we're putting more pressure on the dog.
So we're closing even more doors now.
The doors are slamming shut.
The second analogy is the nervous system, which connects in, which
is the good old bucket analogy.
We love a bucket.
Yeah.
Uh, the bucket line.
Um, so the bucket system.
Yeah.
And then, and the water in the bucket.
Is how much the nervous system is engaging.
So in the bucket, elevation out the bucket, decompression.
And if you want to get technical kind of in the bucket, sympathetic system
out the bucket, parasympathetic system.
So the more that's in the bucket, the less doors we have open, less chance of
efficient sensor integratory process, making good choices or whatever else, more
chance of reflexive automatic behavior.
So even for us.
When our bucket's too full, we are more likely, in the heat of
the moment, to say and do things.
That later, when we decompress and we have more doors open again,
we're likely to apologise also.
No different for the dog.
So a lot of these big behaviours that we struggle with, A lot of the
dogs I work with, the first thing we notice is that dog's bucket's
fuller than it needs to be anyway.
One last thing, especially if you've got a reactive dog in a vertical house,
being sociable, being able to socially process well, takes a lot of juice.
So if I want to invite your listeners to think, if you're not feeling very
well, if you're stressed, if you're tired, if you're any of those things,
And you're in town and you see a friend, you're more likely to try
and avoid them because you don't have the bandwidth to do the social stuff.
If you're not feeling great and you get dragged to the party by your
other half, well, you're just going to be a miserable gitball, aren't you?
Because you're not, you can't be sociable.
So a lot of these dogs I work with down here who on the surface seem to have a
problem, for example, with other dogs.
dysregulation they're experiencing is the problem for them.
And when we address that, now they have more bandwidth.
And they can process things differently.
Do you see?
So it's just so universal, this stuff.
Um, and actually, it's a lot easier in some ways.
Because I find working with my clients, they don't want to become a dog trainer.
They don't want to spend an hour a day doing stuff.
And actually, this is the move from task to care that I'm so
passionate about communicating.
A task orientated approach is the normal transactional stuff.
So the task is, Getting the dog to learn to sit, getting the dog
to come back, getting the dog to stop barking, whatever the task is.
The trouble with a task orientated approach, and if you have a task
approach, it doesn't mean you don't care, but if your primary focus is to
get the task done, you end up caring less about the other, more about the task.
The trouble with a task orientated approach is, If the task can't be
done, then somebody's to blame.
Dog's not good enough.
Client's not good enough.
Caregiver's not good enough.
And sadly, even for the dog trainer who is stuck in task themselves, they
feel now they're not good enough.
A care orientated approach is just that it's a subtle difference
and it's a big one, which is learning from the other first.
It's a relational thing.
So, um, even my own dog, Molly, she came to us at 16 weeks.
She'd already had two homes, very fizzy.
We learnt from her first.
So my mantra, if you like, is learn, support, teach.
Learn from the dog first, support what you've learnt.
And if you're going to teach anything, try and teach things that you've,
based from what you've learnt, are likely to be intrinsically
valuable for that dog, regarding their safety and regulatory needs.
After that, you can train what you like.
That's a care approach.
A task approach is the other way around.
I'm the human, you're going to learn from me, and I need you to do it.
And I think the general public, especially, have been convinced
that the most important things are well trained, obedient dog.
And we've already got a problem then regarding that relational structure.
Sorry, I went off on one then.
Oh,
Speaker: no, I love that.
I love that.
It's because, I mean, it just kind of makes so much sense.
So in terms of creating
a relationship, creating a situation where a dog can start to think,
well, maybe I am safe here.
I mean, what are some things somebody can do or be?
Or like, how would one, you know, if I have a dog and I had a dog,
you know, he got bitten when he was 11 months old and he was dead.
And he was never quite the same when there was, you know, other
male dogs in confined spaces.
So you could really tell it was a trauma response.
And you know my initial reaction was like, well that didn't help.
But um, you know for him to, I mean he did get a lot better as
we moved away to quieter spaces.
So you know and I saw that with the other dog who was like a real sort
He pulled a lot on the lead until we moved away and everything settled.
Everything was calmer and both of them were like, are these the same
dogs that we brought from Granada?
So, but not everybody can go move to the beach.
Speaker 2: No, and I think we have to, everything's a bit of a compromise.
I love what you said there, especially about pulling, because a lot of
the dogs that come to me, they pull a lot, and they pull a lot
because their bucket's too full.
Simple as that.
And it's, um, because if you don't address the fact that, so when that nervous system
elevates, they're likely to go quicker.
And, and if that's because they've got generalized anxiety or they're triggered
by the traffic or triggered by the social environment, unless you address
some of that stuff, doing the stuff you do back in the training hall, I guess
what, when in the village hall, the dog walks lovely, when you step outside,
you're being dragged up the road.
And that's because that nervous system is in a different state.
Everything is always about slowing things down.
Removing our own judgments around behavior and recognizing, okay, that behavior,
whilst I recognize it's irritating me, or it's affecting me, whatever,
that that's actually a demonstration that my dog's struggling somehow.
Always get a vet check, always look for pain, physical pain, there's so
many studies on this now, is often a contributing factor, especially
the neuropathic stuff, obviously the acute kind of, um, orthopedic style
thing, uh, you know, like broken bones or it sticking out, whatever,
then that's easier to spot sometimes.
But some of the neuropathic stuff isn't.
I mean, uh, chronic pain is misunderstood even in humans.
And then we have to start thinking about the context and situations where the
dog's likely to be experiencing that.
And, um, start off with something that I like to call management and adaptation.
People used to call that control and management, but I don't
like the term control very much.
So management, how do I manage the situation?
How do I manage my dog's life for now to try and remove
some of these extra stresses?
Maybe.
That isn't the best environment to lead, to take them in, or to do things with,
um, the wonderful Nikki French wrote a book called Stop Walking Your Dog, which
is quite, it's to get people's attention, but it's always giving people permission
not to for a bit, if that will help.
And then the adaptation is about how do we adapt the environment, but
also how do we adapt, how do we make adaptations to our own expectations.
For now, it's not forever, it's just recognizing, and so if, if we
avoid situations, it's not a cop out, it's a sign of a great carer.
You know, um, if my husband was, what, somebody who
struggled socially, he doesn't.
Uh, but if he did, um, and, um, I, I wouldn't go down the pub
with him on a Saturday afternoon, because it's too much for him.
We'd go when it was quieter, because I don't want to see him get upset.
So, it's just how we approach these things, then, There are
three really important words that are foundated in safety.
Processing, engagement, and exit.
Processing, uh, what do we need to process in order to feel safe?
What information would be helpful now?
And, what might be stopping us from having that ability to process?
Remember, if the bucket's too full, we can't process very well.
We haven't got enough doors open, we can't process very well.
Processing, very important.
And then engagement.
The brain wants to feel it has choice.
Process.
And agency over how it engages with the world around it.
Socially, emotionally, physically, mentally, however
you want to think about things.
In the relation to reactive, innovative, reactive dogs, uh, dogs, um, then
obviously that's where thinking socially.
And if we do engage, we want to feel we can have an exit.
Again, emotionally, mentally, physically, whatever.
Or, if we don't want to engage, we feel we can have an exit.
Trauma is very foundated in lack of choice and agency over engagement and exit.
You found yourself in a situation you couldn't cope with, like you were saying
about your doggy, and you couldn't exit.
That is traumatic.
Whether or not it becomes traumatizing very much depends upon
the individual's resilience and robustness and past experiences.
So, um, a lot of the time then we have to think about how, not just
cognitively, But also that nervous system experience of the world around them.
We talk about learned behavior a lot, so somehow that is always
done in a cognitive space.
The nervous system is listening in all the time too, and it learns a lot of stuff.
And actually, when we think about safety, Anke, it's not
the brain we have to convince.
Obviously, the nervous system is part of the brain.
I'm going to disconnect a little bit.
This is the whole polyvagal stuff, of course.
Polyvagal theory.
But, um, uh, the nervous system has to believe it too.
Speaker: I think that's the big thing, isn't it?
Like, you know, logically, you might kind of know, well, yeah,
this is fine, but then in your gut, you're not feeling it, right?
So there's a whole different
Speaker 2: I just want to touch on that, because that's brilliant.
I love this, because when we think about safety When we think about safety in
another, if I'm thinking about you and your safety, we have a physical bias,
because it's what I can evidence base, you look safe, so therefore you're safe.
But our own brain is just as if not more focused on emotional
And that's why you can be safe physically and not feel it.
That's the problem.
And I said earlier about the doors that are likely to start closing
first for the dogs are the ones who put the training behind.
For us humans, the doors are likely to start closing first.
is our more human cognitive parts of the brain, that prefrontal cortex.
The doors that are likely to stay open for us are again our survival stuff.
So this is why, you know, when people say, oh, you know, you're okay, get over
it, or you know, just think positive thoughts, it's like, okay, I'll try that.
But if the nervous system doesn't believe it, It internalizes quite
a lot of conflict, actually.
Uh, and, uh, so it's interesting, and it's the same for the doggy.
And what's also interesting, if anybody might think, oh, well, you
know, they're dogs, and why is he talking a lot of human y stuff?
I can tell you now, when I did my human psychology degree, A
long time ago, 30 years ago.
Um, most of the stuff we learned about attachment theory, everything's
about attachment for a social species.
Seeking secure attachment is everything.
Attachment theory, social pain, social processing.
We learned from studies on monkeys and dogs.
And the trouble is our human ego back then didn't allow us to think about
the animals, just what does it tell us about us and we're somehow special.
Behavioral science is now kind of saying to us, maybe we're not that special.
Maybe on a very deep, visceral level.
There's a lot that unites us because we're social mammals and, uh, the need for,
to feel hard when you're communicating need, the need to feel safe physically,
emotionally, socially, and the need to find relief, especially away from
physical, emotional and social pain.
Speaker: That's such a, like, it kind of like, oh, this makes so much sense.
And I would imagine, like, if you work with a dog and their person, I bet
my last dollar that there's impact on the dog and impact on the person.
Speaker 2: Oh, always.
I think, um, for the majority of my clients, When they start to connect to
their dog in a more relational way, they see beyond the judgments of the behavior.
They recognize that there is an animal generally trying to communicate, and that
behavior, that's the only way a dog can communicate is through their behavior,
and we allow them to paint their picture more fully, and we understand their relief
and safety needs, and we support them.
They can't help but mirror their own, and they're like, you know what, I can see
where the damage was done myself with my own insecure attachments, where my, where
I was shut down, where I haven't felt safe when I was in that relationship.
And it's really all these kinds of things that come out and
you can't not, you can't not.
There are some clients, of course, who, because of their own, we
have the three A's, awareness, acknowledgement, acceptance.
That's what, that's the journey we all have to go through.
So my role is to support the awareness of my, of the, of the
client, support the awareness of the client, of their dog's experience.
And then, so for example, they might start off by thinking, oh yeah, well my dog's
being naughty, disobedient, my dog's being dominant, of course, that's a good, so
I'm helping to support their awareness.
So then, uh, Then they might become aware, well maybe my dog isn't those
things, maybe my dog's stressed or uncomfortable or not coping.
Then I need to support their acknowledgement of
that, and that can be hard.
That can be hard acknowledgement, especially if they've been brought up, for
example, in a very um, very controlling environment as a child, very strict,
there has to be a consequence, you know, you can feel what you like Anke,
but don't show it, that kind of stuff.
That can be hard for people to navigate, so some people can't.
The big one for acknowledgement is guilt.
Speaker: I was just thinking it's like then, then your mind goes, Oh
my God, I messed up my dog, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we can just kind of touch on that before we finish actually
Gil, because I think it's a really important, remember I said earlier,
everything is okay to feel, it's how we change our relationship with them.
So with guilt.
If we allow it, it will, it will keep us chained to the past.
So if that client thinks, Oh God, I put that collar on my dog now
and I feel really bad about it.
If they stay thinking in the past, they will stay chained to the past
and guilt can eat away at you.
Whereas if we, instead of saying to clients or anybody
saying, well, don't feel guilty.
I don't say that.
I say, feel it.
Because, but we can change your relationship with it.
Because, uh, what that tells us is that deep visceral feeling tells
us we've learned something really important and we can allow that to
drive our responses moving forwards.
It's not about the past anymore.
And that's the power of it.
It tells us, you know, I feel this very deeply.
And so, so, and I'm going to use that feeling to now make sure that.
It's that whole kind of know better, do better.
It drives us forward.
So now we break the chain to the past, actually.
So those feelings, they're uncomfortable for a reason, Anke.
Because we've learned something pretty important, I think.
And, and
Speaker: that's, that's a beautiful way to look at it, because then you acknowledge
it, and you don't have to sort of shove it down, but it's also like not gonna
run the show now, and it is so true, like if you can feel guilty, profoundly
guilty, and kind of embarrassed about some things, because you've really,
you know, it's kind of like almost like your notification bell that you've had
a massive insight, and really, because at the end of the day, we always do What
makes sense to us, given what we know, given how we understand the world, is
we always do what makes sense to us.
You know, and I think understanding and giving ourselves like that, like
slack for that, like whatever we did, like, that's what made sense given
how we saw the world at the time.
So I think the main thing is to, well, let's just not take it as
a given and be open to for new insight to, to, to change things.
Yeah.
That makes all the difference.
Speaker 2: If we get through the acknowledgement and get to acceptance,
where the person think actually I accept my dog as they are now.
And I accept the limitations now.
It doesn't mean that's forever, but I accept this.
We also know from, um, studies and surveys done with humans and with
children with various behavioral needs, that when they get to acceptance, it
unlocks the advocacy part of the brain.
And that's a beautiful thing because a lot of the time people feel very
vulnerable with their dogs because of the fear of judgment of others,
you know, if your dog's barking.
The beautiful thing about getting to advocacy is it's the best shield to that
judgment because then you're like, you know what, I don't care what you think.
I will hold space for my dog.
I know what my dog needs and that's my primary role as a caregiver,
whether it's the dog or the child.
So it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker: I love that.
I love that.
Thank you so much.
There's so much food for thought here.
This is just a beautiful space to.
hang out in, actually.
So where can people go and get more of you, find out, get in
touch, find out about what you do?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a big thing, you know, because when you do have a mindset
shift, we've touched on it a little bit today, it unlocks a lot of stuff, right?
Because it's like, oh, because we're so conditioned into seeing
behavior in a certain way, not just in dogs, but in each other, actually.
Um, so, uh, we need safe spaces to unpack this.
And that's what I've tried to do with my dog center care Facebook group.
I do Facebook lives in there.
Um, and Um, I've had about 90 so far, and these are with leading experts
on trauma, pain, learning experience, neurobiology, um, attachment, all
the things we've discussed today.
These are leading experts in their field, um, and all those conversations are on
the Dog Centre Care YouTube channel.
It's all free.
Um, I do some stuff to camera myself occasionally, uh, if I, if I feel
I want to have a bit of a break.
But it's mainly my guests and I really value them because it takes many voices.
This is the point.
And I think we have to have all these threads together.
Uh, so yeah, so those are two things.
Also, um, my website for this kind of stuff is, um, www.
dogcc.
org.
And that's where you can find, if you're interested in hearing more of me, uh,
when I've been on podcasts or articles I've written or, or things like that.
So that's all in one place.
But yeah, I think it's just.
I just love it.
I love, I love the gift of compassion and empathy.
We have to sadly tap into it sometimes because it doesn't come easily with the
kind of way that we are living our lives sometimes because of all these things.
But I think when we can have those moments and those safe spaces to
tap into it, and we become more available to the truth of others.
It allows us to learn our own truth more.
And that's a hugely beautiful and valuable
Speaker: thing,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker: Love that.
That's such a beautiful place to land.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and such, such a breadth.
But I think there's so much depth to it that it's just like, ooh, can't
wait to dive in more into that.
So thank you so much.
And I would, I'm kind of already thinking, ooh, I want you back for another episode.
It's been a great pleasure.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
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That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.