Hello and welcome to the Animal Training Academy Making Ripples podcast show, the show where we share the stories of the ripple making extraordinaires with behavior nerd superpowers who make up the Animal Training Academy membership. I'm your host and one of the happiness engineers at Animal Training Academy, Shelley Wood from Drop Your Jaws Dog Training in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in the United States. We're absolutely thrilled and grateful to have you here with us today.
Make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss a single episode. This show is brought to you on behalf of the Animal Training Academy membership. So if you like the conversations in these episodes, then we want to invite you to continue them with like-minded people in the ATA membership, which you can find out more about at www.atamember.com.
Within the membership, you can get access to twice monthly live web classes, the back catalog of previous web class replays, plus a huge library of videos and projects to help you problem solve your training challenges. And we're a sociable bunch with an exclusive private Facebook group and forums area. It's like a Netflix social media platform for animal behavior geeks. Today, we are excited to welcome Carmelita Ofterheide to the show.
Carmelita or CARM is a positive reinforcement force -free trainer in Springfield, Oregon. She holds a master's degree in conflict resolution, CREZ, is a graduate of the Karen Pryor Academy, KPA, CTP, is a certified professional dog trainer, CPDTKA, and is a certified separation anxiety trainer, CSAT. In 2016, CARM completed graduate studies in conflict and dispute resolution or CREZ at the University of Oregon.
Her academic journey included research exploring the potential restorative impact of prison animal programming through interviews with incarcerated individuals, working with and sharing their confined living quarters with dogs nationwide. She has contributed insights from her research to a chapter in the book Prison Dog Programs published by Springer. It was this research that inspired her career working with dogs. From 2016 to 2020, she dedicated her time to transformative initiatives.
She co-directed and facilitated an innovative education and restorative justice program with adults in custody at Oregon State Correctional Institution with the Insight Development Group or IDG. Her work with IDG allowed her to witness firsthand the profound impacts of education and restorative practices among individuals who often conflicted with themselves, their past, present, and future.
Drawing inspiration from her research and work with IDG, CARM applies lessons from these experiences to bridge better connections in her work with dogs and their families. Today, CARM owns North Star Training Solutions, where her work focuses on canine separation anxiety. Building on her CREZ background, she specializes in using mediation and facilitation skills to navigate challenging conversations and enhance training outcomes when communication becomes difficult.
She will be presenting on this topic at the 2024 Aggression and Dogs Conference. Welcome, CARM. I'm super excited to have you here with us today. Thank you so much, Shelley. I am thrilled that you found me and I feel really honored to be on the podcast with you. And I've followed this podcast for a long time, so it's a real honor to be here. Oh, it's great to hear that you follow the podcast. I love that. And I'm thrilled to have found you. And I can thank we can thank Ryan Cartledge for that.
He pointed me in your direction and I'm just I couldn't be more excited to have found you. And I really enjoyed our conversation when we had a chance to catch up before. And as I'm reading your bio right now, I mean, you are just speaking to my social worker heart with a lot of this a lot of your background here. I love the the work you've done with the prison dog programs. I'm really excited about all of your CREZ work and just really looking forward to diving into all of that with you.
It's great when we have people on this show. One of my favorite things about Animal Training Academy is that we not only focus on training the non-human animals who we work with, but we also focus on that human side of things sometimes. And I love it to have guests like you on the show who are so focused on this end of the leash, I guess, for those of us who work with dogs.
So let's have you get us started today by telling us a little bit about your story and how you came to do the work that you do with animals and with CREZ and what you're doing with your time these days. Yeah, no, it's it's kind of a longer path to dog training for sure. I it's a very circular thing. I never really planned on doing this for a living. This was never really on my radar. And I began professionally working with animals when I was 53.
So much, much later in my life, I consider myself a late bloomer for sure, in retrospect. And I'm thankful for that, though, because I wouldn't want to do the work I'm doing with either behavior consulting with difficult behaviors in dogs, anxiety, reactivity, aggression or separation anxiety without having the benefit of a conflict resolution in my back pocket.
Quite honestly, I don't know how to do it any differently because it's always been part of what I've brought to the table when it comes to dog training. And as I think retrospectively, I wouldn't want to do it any differently. So I'll take you on a little journey with me with how we ended up here. But I consider dog training to be my third career in my life. I started life in my first career in my early 20s as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse. And so this was my first career.
And it was the first place where I really had some hard lessons in learning how to hold space for people in crisis, went on a lot of really difficult deliveries. And it was also the first place that I learned never to make assumptions of what you thought the outcome of something was going to be, because we would have tiny little premies in our NICU that I would be caring for, that I would think in my head, this baby's never going to make it.
And damn it, if that baby wasn't the one that actually thrived and made it through. And it was the one that I thought was going to just, you know, fruise through the NICU that ended up with major complications and not such a great outcome. So I really learned early on in my first career to hold space for people in crisis and then not to make any quick assumptions about what I thought the outcome was going to be or the course was going to be.
My second career was after my husband had finished postgraduate work, we had moved from the East Coast where he had completed that work and come to California. I had left nursing, so I was in nursing and the NICU nurse for a long time. I had left nursing and was just an at-home mom. And I really dove into raising three girls and being present in there for them.
So then later, you know, I'm kind of like facing my youngest daughter, the house was emptying out, you know, as everybody's going on and going to college and things. And the house was emptying and my youngest daughter was getting ready and preparing to leave the nest for college. And I started to think to myself, well, I'm going to have to figure out my next stage. Like what am I going to do with my time? I had, you know, nursing was pretty far in the distant past for me at that point then.
So I wasn't planning on returning to that. And I started looking at the, at that point, we were now in Oregon. So we had moved to Eugene, Oregon. And I know that in Springfield, which is just a suburb of Eugene, but I started exploring kind of what my next options might be, what I would want to do. And I was looking, the University of Oregon is just down the road from us. It's a major university here. And it wasn't, you know, it was close.
So I started looking at programs and it's weird that conflict resolution was what caught my attention because I'm fiercely conflict diverse, like fiercely. I have never been put on my feet to defend myself or make points in a debate that I ever felt smart or successful with. And whenever I would, you know, find myself in a situation of conflict or a difficult topic or conversation, quite honestly, I would walk away feeling pretty demoralized.
And it was not a skill set that I felt successful at or that I really, really had. So why study it, right? So why put myself front and center in the target range of this topic? And the curriculum piqued my interest because it was an entire three-year graduate degree, master's degree dedicated to learning those conversational engagement tools specific to difficult dialogue.
And most of the people that I were in my cohort with me, they often go on to do public policy work or ombuds work or, you know, something in that realm. And while I was in the program, I did a year internship with a family mediation center. And I did a lot of divorce mediation and facilitation. And so, you know, that's kind of like where people in CREG usually go. So how do I find myself and transition this to dogs? It was at this crux of life changes, I'm applying to this program to do CREG.
I had a golden retriever that was my first kind of big dog. Honestly, I'd had little dogs up to that point and I'd had so, but Jake was my first big dog and his golden retriever. And he was, you know, what everybody would describe as their heart dog. And he had just turned four and was at my side when I was taking the GRE and applying to the program and interviewing for the program. And all of those things. And we shook on it. Like when I got accepted, we shook on it.
This boy stole my heart from the moment that I met him. And he was my wingman, a hundred percent. If I went somewhere, Jake was with me. If he couldn't go, I didn't go. So he showed up without hesitation during one of the most difficult periods of my life prior to applying to CREG and I leaned in hard and he never fell short. So I knew I was experiencing something with this dog that was very special. And I, what I had always heard about and read about, about the human animal bond.
So I'm applying to CREG and I get in surprised to me because I've truly thought that they were just going to go, Oh yeah, you know, that was a nice try. And they, they accept me. And I was just like, Oh God, now I have to actually really do this work. I'm going to have to put myself front and center in conflict resolution. And so I look at Jake and he's sitting next to me and I shook his, he shook my, you know, I shook his paw and I said, okay, buddy, we're in this together. This is it.
You're going to be at my feet. We are, when I'm studying, when I'm writing papers, when I'm reading, you know, as I'm doing this program, like we're a team, we're going to do this. And so a week before classes were set to start, Jake started coughing just a little bit, take him to the vet. And he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and he was only four years old. And in the blink of an eye, just a few days before starting the program, he was gone. And I, I just felt sucker punched.
I was devastated. I'd never felt a loss quite like this. And my grief just consumed me. And I kind of shrunk into myself. And I actually thought about withdrawing from the program. I thought I'm not going to do it. I can't do it without him at my side. He had been pivotal to this entire experience. And so unbeknownst to me. So what I did is I took a, I took a beat.
It took a minute and I pivoted and I decided that I was determined to find a way for Jake to be present in what I did in conflict resolution. And unbeknownst to me, that was the launching pivotal point that put dog training on the horizon for me. So I'm going through the program and my research in CREST, you know, in my CREST thesis was on the impact, as you had mentioned in my intro and the impact of prison animal programming. And I dedicated that thesis and the debt when I defended it to Jake.
And what was interesting is that when I was in the program and I was trying to figure out how to bring dogs into CREST, into conflict resolution, I had talked to my program director at the time and he looked at me and he kind of chuckled and he said, well, good luck with that because nobody's ever done brought animals into conflict resolution. I don't think it can be done. And I was like, bring it. That was the wrong thing to say to me because I was just like, I am no longer this wilting flower.
I had gained some confidence in myself and I was just like, okay, this is going to happen. I don't know how it's going to happen. This is going to happen. And then I found, you know, prison animal programming and I knew that that was going to be my conduit because what I really wanted to know was I wanted to research that human animal bond further and the restorative effects that can happen from that or not happen from that.
And so what I did was I was looking at inmates who were raising and I was speaking with inmates who are raising dogs for service organizations because they're with them for 18 months. They're with those dogs for a year and a half. And I wanted that timeframe in order for to really explore the connections that they were making.
So as the years go by, so I, I finished CREZ, I get out, I start, I'm, I start working in the dog industry with some local trainers, some positive reinforcement, local trainers that were also friends of mine. And I go ahead and get my, you know, KPA, CTP. And I start to realize that the skills that I had developed in CREZ, these things that I had learned were not only important to me, it was the only way that I knew how to interact with my clients.
And it was something that I always brought to the table. And it was, I was very heavily focused on the connection that I was able to make with my clients in order to bring them in as full training partners with me and get better training outcomes. Because I think we all got into this industry to help as many dogs as possible.
And I realized really quickly that if I can't connect well to the clients that are coming to me with a dog that's having very difficult issues and they're struggling with it, and maybe they're in crisis. If I can't help them and I can't connect to them, I'm going to lose my opportunity to help the dog that I really want to help. And so that's really what fueled it. And I started to realize that the things that I had learned are transferable and would be beneficial to other trainers as well.
And our industry is ready for this. Our industry is on the precipice of these conversations. In fact, there's some new research out on it that was published in 2023 in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, and it is on client-centered interviewing. And I was thrilled to see it because this research has been happening in healthcare and in helping other helping professions. It just hasn't kind of made its way until recently into the dog training world.
And I want to be front and center in helping us get there. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with us so far, Karm. And I want to just take a brief moment, too, to say thanks to Jake for all the ripples that he has spread through you. And thank you for sharing that story about him. I was in tears as you shared it, and I'm in tears right now. So I know that that's got to be emotional. I would imagine it's got to be pretty emotional for you still to talk about as well.
So thank you for taking that grief and taking it with you on your journey and respecting Jake and everything that he gave to you. So thank you for that. So much I want to ask about everything that you've shared so far. Right before we met today and I hit record, I ordered the Prison Dog book. I forget if that's the type. Prison Dog Programs, is that the title of it? Yeah, I just ordered it.
And I'm really looking forward to reading that and would love to hear just a little bit more about some of the work that you did through that program when you were working on your thesis and what that entailed. If you have any stories that stand out from that time that you'd like to share. Yeah, sure. It's not easy to do research inside prisons.
It's quite difficult, quite honestly, because there's a lot of red tape to get through, not only institutionally from the university that you're at, that I was at, but also every prison system has their own institutional review board. A lot of my approval hinged on getting approval from the Secretary of State of each state that I went to. So I went to three prisons. I got more rejections from prisons than I got acceptances. And so I had to fight.
It took me an additional year to complete this research in the program simply because I was trying to go inside a prison setting, an incarcerated setting. And the thing that really struck me was the impact that these animals, that these dogs, that these inmates were raising dogs for service organizations. They were raising dogs for canine companions and they were raising dogs for leader dog for the blind. And I went into Dixon Correctional Institute in Louisiana.
I was welcomed into Fort Dodge Correctional Facility in Iowa, which had been featured on America's Toughest Prisons several years before. And then I had been welcomed as well into Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, which was the only facility, and that is local to me, that's in Portland, Oregon. And that program, it was the only program that was a female prison, was a women's prison. So all the other people that I had spoken to that were puppy racers on the inside were men.
And I think that one of the things that struck me most about bringing dogs into a prison setting in this way and having these puppy programs was not so much the impact that it has on the inmates, which was profound on the puppy racers, the men and women that were sharing their living quarters with these dogs, but it was the culture of the prison that changed. And for me, I was surprised by it. I was not expecting it.
And I was really primarily focused on looking at what is the impact that's happening, what's happening for the men and the women on the inside that are handling these dogs and spending the first 18 months with them before they leave for professional training. And those impacts are profound, and they influence the way that these men and women are making decisions and responding to impulses.
And because the risk of losing their opportunity to hold that leash in their hand and have to give up that dog to somebody else and end up in potentially isolation or in the hole was at too great a risk. And so it really helped them do a lot of self work in their own impulse control and the things that they wanted.
So they really worked hard at being the best that they could be, which helped how they interacted with correctional officers, one another, how they collaborated, because they didn't always want to collaborate together. And they were kind of forced to come together and work together with these dogs. But more than anything, it was the impact to the setting of the prison that made it made a huge, a huge imprint on me. In fact, it changed Fort Dodge, the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility.
It kind of did a 180 on them. Like I said, it had been that prison had been focused on the show Americans toughest prisons at one point. And it was where Iowa used to send all of their most violent offenders. And when I was there, I was getting a tour of the grounds. And there was one unit where the dogs were dogs were living with with the guys that were raising them.
And this unit, you know, like they had to work hard to get into this had to be like, discipline free for a certain amount of time they had to there were certain very rigid requirements to being eligible to working with the dogs and being a handler. And so as I'm walking around, they're giving me a tour and I'm not getting a tour from correctional officers. I'm getting a tour from a puppy racer on the inside. And so he's taking me into his unit. And he's walking me around the grounds.
And on the outside, you know, the typical thing you would say, there's like a weight area. And these big guys are like, you know, tattooed and scared looking men are lifting weights. And it's, you know, a very macho kind of environment. And we walked by with a puppy. And I'm not kidding you, this like 250 pound guy drops his weights into those. And it just changes everything. It changed the culture. It changed how the CEOs were interacting with the inmates at the adults in custody.
And it's based. So once they started to see that effect, the warden was committed to expanding the program there. And they were raising, oh, God, that was the largest program I had seen inside a prison. And I think at the time I was there, they had about 45 dogs in on campus. And it was super impressive. And it made a huge impression on me. And I'm forever a huge believer in the restorative impacts.
But at the same time, knowing that I'm working with people that have committed some pretty violent crimes, I want to be really respectful to anybody that might be listening. That's been a victim of violent crime. And I'm always respectful of that. And I'm not discounting anything in their accountability to anything they've done. I'm specifically just focused this, you know, focused my work on in what ways did it help them address the harms that they had caused?
And in what ways did it help them make those hard turns in their lives to do something better that would have a ripple effect, not only on the inside, but to the outer community? That's amazing and really wonderful to think about all of those changes that come through programs like that for the individuals themselves, the restorative component like you were just talking about and that changing of the culture. Just fantastic.
And I'm going to guess just from a practical standpoint, that the training of the dogs would be pretty effective in a situation like that as well, where you have somebody who's dedicated to their training just 24-7 and different. You can really kind of control the environment for them in that setting, I imagine. So I'm sure they're turning out some really nice service animals. They really are.
And I think one of the other couple of things that were very impactful to me about these programs was that inside a correctional setting, it's not easy to make human connections because it's, you know, any kind of physical touch, any kind of emotion, it's just not welcomed in that environment. In fact, you're quite vulnerable if you express those things.
And the men and women that are raising puppies, if they get some bad news, or potentially it could be legal news, it could be family news, it could be whatever, they get some bad news and they're really struggling emotionally to handle it. What they would do and what they shared with me is many of them would use their dog as the conduit in the very similar way that I used, you know, that I leaned into Jake, is that they would lean into these dogs for this kind of profound emotional support.
And the dogs rose to the occasion every single time. And it would give them this outlet to have a moment to be a little bit emotional and they could put their head down and they could just lean into the dog. And nobody really paid much attention to it because it was just kind of expected when you're working with animals. If they had done that without an animal, you know, at their side, then it would have made them much more vulnerable in that setting. And I found that really impactful.
The other, the second piece of that is having to say goodbye to these animals, having to say goodbye to them was probably one of the most difficult things and having to do it repetitively over and over and over again, every year and a half as they wrote, you know, as they would do it. And I had one gentleman that I spoke with and he was younger and he's, you know, found himself incarcerated and he's in this setting that he had never really planned on in his life.
And it's hard and it's not, it's, it's emotionally difficult and it's just a hard place to be. And he had raised, I believe, three or four dogs, four leader dogs for the blind. And I remember him breaking down in tears in our interview and just saying, I don't know if I can keep doing this because I feel like I keep losing my best friend over and over and over again. And that hit me. It hit my heart really hard.
So yeah, there are benefits to this, but then at the same time, we're asking them to, you know, to give of themselves and give something up each time that's really hard. And he actually did leave the program. He, he, he decided not to continue raising because saying goodbye to those dogs that he had developed this very strong connection with, you know, and the dogs that are in these programs are specific.
They come from breeding programs, private breeding programs that are, have incredibly, you know, nice temperaments and are more, a real desire and drive to train. And so it was really difficult for him. So on the flip side of that, it's like, yeah, it changes the culture and yeah, there's all the, there's benefits, but there's also heartbreak that comes with it as well that they're, they're having to face on the inside. And it's not an easy place to face that.
It's a really important point and consideration. And it makes me think as well that I don't have any reason to think that the dogs might not also experience some struggles around being losing their person, you know, and reconnecting with another person, you know, so very interesting to think about lots of benefits to these programs, but also I'm sure there's some challenges that come along with them. Sure. The dogs, you know, like I said, they come from very specific breeding programs.
And most of these programs have researched the, their lineages as to like what, what traits create the best working dogs, the best, you know, dogs for service. And they're really, you know, I do think the dogs notice it for sure. They, they know that they're switching handlers. Some of the programs have, do things to prepare the dogs for that kind of setting where once a month in at least at coffee Creek, I know in Oregon, they start once a month, they change handlers.
So the dogs rotate to different handlers. It also created a collaborative efforts among the puppy racers doing that. And then also it prepares the dogs for better, you know, for that switch of different handlers. And then the dogs do go outside the prisons to outside puppy racers, you know, periodically for outside socialization and things that they can't experience on the inside so that they get that well-rounded experience as well on the outside. That's great.
And I imagine in that program that you just referenced, or I don't, I don't know, but it seems like that might make it a little bit easier for the human handlers as well. If the dogs, if they, if they're not with the same dog nonstop the whole time, but if there's a change there, so. They've thought it out. Yes. It sounds like it. Well, I have a lot more questions that I could ask right now, but I'm going to go ahead.
Well, I'm going to shelve them and go ahead and transition to the next kind of big question and maybe come back to some other things at the end. We'll see. But for now, I would love it if you could tell us about a training related challenge that you've experienced and how you worked through it and some things that you learned from it. Sure. So I was, I've, I've thought about like, what story would I tell here? What story would I share?
And, uh, I, I decided that I would, I would share with you this story. I was pretty new to behavior consulting and, you know, had been a trainer for a minute, but, you know, had started, you know, taking harder cases and harder cases. And, um, so I had met with this couple and I, they stick in my mind so profoundly because I met with this couple. They were a young couple and he, the husband was preparing to start medical school. So he was preparing to go to Portland.
They were going to be in Portland, uh, starting medical school. She was, his wife was working at the time, but gonna stop working because she was very pregnant and she was really close to her due date. And they had a pit bull, a young pit bull mix that they had rescued. And the dog, you know, they came to me because they needed a behavior consult because the dog was having some pretty profound fear, reactivity towards people lunging and snapping of, and dog to dog reactivity.
This was the only dog in the home, but it had become increasingly hard for her to walk the dog that she was actually getting. She was kind of, she was afraid of the dog and she felt that there was a risk to her. And she was, you know, that if she got pulled over or she couldn't hold the dog back and she's pregnant and she's, and then there was the additional layered factor that how is this dog going to respond to a newborn entering the home?
And so I meet with them and I have, you know, I have my intake form and whenever I have an intake form, I always, there's, there's three things that I consider in this kind of comes out of press for me is there's things, things that three things I consider one being, what do I know? And that's the information they've given me on the intake form. The second thing is what do I want to know?
And so before I ever meet with people, I take that intake form and I always start to outline some questions that I might want to expand on things. I might want to know a little bit more. It could be antecedent arrangement. It could be how they were feeling about what happened. What are they feeling now? What's, you know, I usually start with, what do you love about your dog? You like about your dog? And then what are you most concerned about here?
Because I want to know like where their biggest concerns are. Mine might be different based on that intake form than theirs. And then there's the, the component of, I don't know what I don't know. And that's the CREZ piece that I'm going to use to finesse information out of people to figure out how we're going to problem solve this together. And so this couple show up in the training room and where we start our conversation.
And it's very clear to me, mainly because of the divorce mediation I had done. It was very clear to me that she was really afraid of this dog. She was afraid of this dog and he wasn't. And he was pretty much minimizing her response to this dog. No judgment on either one of them. It's just what was in front of me. And so as I started this conversation, I realized I've got people in two very different places with two very different ideas of what needs to happen here and what the possibilities are.
And so before I could even address what was happening with the dog, I had to go into conflict resolution mode and I had to really help them kind of self-explore and appreciate and hear and listen and understand what each of what the other person was saying. And mainly it came down to him really hearing his wife and understanding why she was afraid of this dog and what her concerns were. This took a good, probably half or more of our time. And that's okay for me. And I'm okay with that.
I know that we feel the pressure to put actionable pieces in place because that's what people have come to us for. We're the experts in the room on dog behavior. And they're just like, give us the things that are going to fix this problem so that I can go to medical school and my wife can feel safe. And it's just not that simple. And so we spent a fair amount of time working on helping him really understand what her fears were and not judging those fears, but just these were her concerns.
And so then he was very convinced in his mind that he was going to have all kinds of time, more free time than he'd had when he was working full-time while he was in medical school to be home more to help her with this dog. And what he didn't know is that my husband's a physician and I was with him when he went through medical school. And I remember what this is like.
And so I was just taking that perspective and that personal understanding to empathize with what he was feeling and what he thought was going to happen, but also helping him understand that the commitments and time that he thought he was going to have may not actually be as present as he originally had believed it would be.
So we go through this and then, of course, the final piece in this consult was after kind of helping them understand what they're hearing from one another and coming together on what they could decide was going to be the thing that we needed to work on most. Then came in my piece of safety is an issue here. Safety is a real concern and a valid concern.
And I'm going to be very transparent and very honest with you about what I feel needs to be in place and the things that are going to be considered because you will never forgive yourself if you have a baby come into this situation. She doesn't feel safe. The dog is still very reactive to potentially movement of an infant that's random and quick. And she's not able to walk the dog and she doesn't feel safe out in the world with this animal. And so they left that.
We decided on certain things, certain management we would put in place. I wanted them to go home. I gave them very specific things. I wanted them to really kind of have a conversation and be more honest with one another about where their concerns were and what they felt like they were willing to work with. And what was the deal breaker for them? What would be the deal breaker in this dog? So they came back. I was, I'm like, okay, great. They came back, came back for a second appointment.
So they come back and they had had this conversation and we, and I continued to help guide them through. We put some manage more management in place.
We worked on some things and ultimately they decided to rehome this dog and it was a much better decision for them because it was just not the right time in their life to have this situation occurring when their attention was going to be so spread out and spread thin, and they weren't going to be able to dedicate themselves to what this dog really needed.
So in order to help the dog find that better home, I had to help them find their way to realizing this was, you know, what was going to be best for them. And they had to come to this decision. So I think I'd mentioned this to you, Shelley, when we, we talked before, I don't go into any conversation assuming that I, assuming that I'm the only person in the room with something to offer.
I go into every conversation and every consult that I do, assuming that I have something to learn from my clients. And I always approach everything with the perspective that it's not my job to convince or persuade somebody to do something I want them to do. They have to come to that decision on their own. They've come to me for my opinion. They've come to me for my expertise. They've come to me for all of the reasons that I'm a behavior consultant and I'm doing this work.
And it's not my job to persuade you to do what I want you to do. It's my job to help you understand what's important to you and what, how we're going to problem solve and collaborate together. And if I do that well, then I have an opportunity to influence what they're going to try, what they're going to do, and how we're going to help the dog. Thank you for sharing all of that. What a great story. And it sounds like it was probably the best outcome for all involved in that situation.
I love hearing a little bit about your process, like your intake, when you talked about, you know, those three questions that you kind of dig a little bit deeper after you get that intake and you think about, what do I know? What do I want to know? And that you don't know what you don't know. And I think all those questions are really, really helpful.
And maybe not just, I mean, tell me if you agree, but I feel like they're really helpful in somebody not just jumping straight to fix it mode, which as you said, we are the experts. We are there to help people, quote unquote, fix things. But there are some real pitfalls, I think, with just jumping right in to fix it without doing some investigation first on many fronts.
Do you feel like those questions are helpful to prevent somebody from just jumping in and starting to throw, as I've heard others say, maybe spaghetti at the wall? Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm like anybody else. I feel the pressure of the clients that come to me. I feel that pressure and that urgency that they come to me with.
Many people that if you're working reactivity and aggression or you're working a really hard behavior case, oftentimes people have tried things that have failed spectacularly or they've spent a lot of money and I don't know where they're getting their information from. I don't know what their support systems are. I don't know what's coming at them from their end. And so it's really important to me to take the time to develop.
I'm starting to develop a relationship with these people, because if I'm not investing in that, then I'm not actively listening. And the most important thing for me when I'm doing any consult is that my clients feel that I'm in it with them. I'm 100% in it with them. I'm listening to them. They feel heard and they feel understood. And together, we're going to address this together. So yeah, I definitely feel the urgency, for sure, of putting actionable pieces in place.
But I have to, and honestly, I don't know how to do it any differently, because it's very heavily influenced by navigating through hard conversations. These problems people are experiencing are hard and I don't know that they're going to lean into what I'm going to ask them to do. Yeah, they've come to a positive reinforcement trainer. I don't know how they feel about it. And I might suggest something that I get resistance to.
And I need to be prepared for that and not try to convince them that this is the way to do it, because I'm going to throw all the science that I know at you, and I'm going to tell you why what I do is going to have a better outcome for your dog, because they don't care about the science. I care about the science, but they don't. And so I need to lean into what touches them and what they connect with in order to make that change. And we're going to put actionable pieces in place.
I never let a client leave the room without giving them something and some tools and some things to work on. However, I'm not that's not my starting point. And do you ever experience any kind of resistance from clients who you're working with that you aren't just jumping in immediately as saying what you're going to do? And if so, do you have tips for the rest of us on how who do not have a background in on how to navigate those situations? Yeah, I've totally had that happen.
I've had, you know, people get extremely frustrated. It's just like, I don't understand why I'm even here because you're not giving me anything to work with. And pretty much when somebody comes at me in an unexpected and it can kind of sideswipe you where you're not really expecting it and you have to read the room. So as I'm doing a consult, I have to match the mood and I have to keep up.
So if I start to notice that this is happening and I'm starting to see some frustration, then I'm going to explore that. I mean, I'm going to, if somebody says that to me, I'm going to, I'm not going to feel my job isn't to defend my position. I'm not going to feel the need to defend why I'm doing the approach that I'm doing. What I'm going to do is pretty much just say, okay.
And when I say, okay, and I don't necessarily fight back, which is, you know, somebody's poking at me and they're expecting me to then just jump back in and defend. I'm not going to do that. And I just say, okay. And I pause because now there's a lot of kind of what I call a pregnant pause in the room. There is a pause with anticipation and wait to it.
And then my client, usually the clients that say this, you know, will kind of come in hot at me, will start to backpedal and start to explore like why they need, why they feel this urgency to have actionable pieces in place first. And then I can pivot and be like, great, let's go there. Let's talk about that. Why is this so important? What's the most important thing for you? And let's start that.
And I will pivot and I'll start going down that road with them because I don't need to string them along. If that's not something they're comfortable with. I just need to know what's important to them. And when people get emotional and this is emotions are totally allowed. They're absolutely an approach. The room is ready for it. When people start getting frustrated, emotional, whatever that emotion is that they're starting to express, that's a gift to me.
It's a total gift to me because I'm being gifted by them telling me without verbally telling me where things start to get hard for them. And that's going to be something I use as a tool, put it in my belt, right? It's going to be something I'm going to pull from and how I'm going to work and collaborate with them. So, yeah, I might, I might pivot, but I'm going to pause and I'm not going to argue when they come in. I'm just going to be like, okay, because what they're saying is valid.
That's their feeling. That's what, you know, that's their frustration. I don't need to try to convince them. They need to feel differently. Now I need, I'm going to pause and give them an opportunity to, to express more about why they feel so frustrated. And that's going to, then we can start to pinpoint what's most important to them. And I'm going to pivot and we're going to give them some things to work on.
And then I might shift back into, as we're working on things, what's coming up for them. So it's a very fluid process that I have to be willing to match what's happening in the room with, but yeah, it's happened to me more than once over the years. Well, that's really helpful. And not, you know, that I think that my instinct at least is to kind of push back, you know?
So I think to build this skill of not pushing back, putting a pause in there and kind of leading people to reflect themselves on what's going on is, is really helpful advice. So thank you. Thank you for that. Could you, could you share with us now about a training situation that you're proud of and, or that you found reinforcing? Yeah, I'm going to absolutely, yeah, I'm going to share with you something. It's a case that I'm currently working.
And why I'm particularly proud of this case is because this is a client I had worked with before and I had, I've worked with three times, quite honestly. So this is the testament to making that connection and building that relationship with the client is we have three different dogs that I've worked with them with the first one being more reactivity and aggression-related and fear reactivity -related and some resource guarding. The second one being separation anxiety.
And the third one being more reactivity, resource guarding and, and separation anxiety. So we have a lot of comorbid behaviors happening here. And this is that what I'm most proud of here is that testament to building that relationship with a client way back, like years and years before that each time something comes up for them with a new dog that they bring into their home or they welcome into their home.
The first thought that they have is to reach out to me when something doesn't go well, that they feel comfortable enough in the process that we go through together that they know I'm going to be a hundred percent their teammate and we are going to collaborate. And they're going to be a very active process of that collaboration and problem solving. So I'm really proud of this sort of legacy that I feel like I build with clients. And this is what keeps them coming back.
This is what's money in the bank for me of not dollars in the bank, but money in the bank of credibility that I'm the person that they want to lean into. That I'm the person that they want to keep, you know, asking questions of. So the case that we're currently working with them is they, this is the third dog that they have welcomed into their home and they are the loveliest professional young couple. And God, I just love this couple so much.
And they welcomed a dog into their home that looks very similar in appearance to the first dog that was a Catahoula hound mix. And they saw this, they saw Lachlan, the dog's name is Lachlan. They saw Lachlan on our local shelter site and they're like, Oh my God, look, it looks like Lachlan isn't, we have to rescue this dog. And they're very, very committed to rescues. They're very committed to shelters and adoption and everything. Totally great. Love that about them.
And they also are extremely committed to the idea that, you know, Lachlan was on, well, he ended up on a euthanasia list. And they were committed to not allowing that to happen to this dog. Not really knowing what was, what they were going to be facing. Right. And so they had seen him, brought him home, adopted him, brought him home, brought him home.
And the other dog that he looks like, they're both about, you know, the other dog is about, his name is Hank and he's about eight years old and he's a hound mix. And he had, he still has some resourcey issues. But the German, little German shepherd, Kevin, that they adopted after that was the second dog walked into their home. It was very neutral to this. And so if Hank got resourcey about something, she's like, yeah, fine. You can have it. I'll walk away.
And so there was never really an issue there other than the separation anxiety we worked with and they bring Lachlan home and Lachlan, you know, was a street dog. He was a stray that was found wandering the streets and believed to have been living with a homeless person, but he was found with his sister who his sister was highly reactive, but Lachlan showed some sociability towards humans, towards people.
And so they bring this dog into their home and immediately within, you know, within not probably an hour of them trying to bring these, all these dogs together, there is a large dog fight that occurs because over a resource. And it's between the two male dogs, between the young Lachlan that they've just brought into their home and Hank, who's just like not having it. And they, it required some vet care and it scared them understandably. And they, this is all before they even contact me.
And so they return, they know it's horrible and they feel terrible about it. And they return Lachlan to the shelter and it's just an incredibly difficult decision for them. And the shelter then places Lachlan with their most experienced foster. And he fails spectacularly with experienced foster because, you know, he is a hound mix and he barks incessantly at them. And so he's returned to the shelter and the, the foster is like, I can't do it. I can't deal with this guy.
This is too, too much for me. And he gets placed up for euthanasia. And they had asked when they returned him, would you please contact me? Would you contact us if he's returned and he goes up for euthanasia? Cause we'll come get him again. We'll figure this out. And that's exactly what they did. The shelter stayed true to their word. They contacted them. They went and picked him up and they called me. So immediately, you know, we go through the history.
We go through what we know, what I know and what I want to know and what I don't, we don't know what we don't know. And we start working together. We have now been working with this dog for a year and we have gone through a really large emotional journey together. Lachlan is now at four and a half hours of comfortable alone time, which is impressive. We started at about 20 seconds. So we've made progress on that front.
I had them start to work with, because now my focus is primarily separation anxiety. I had them focus and bring into our collaboration a veterinary behaviorist. And then we also brought in a positive reinforcement behavior, behavior consultants and trainer and to work on the behavior modification side of resource guarding and all these things. And now we're muzzle trained for the two boys. And we've had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of really hard emotional moments.
And they have, we have tried to rehome Lachlan and that's been a very difficult process because we have a hard dog and a hard history. And, you know, they have come full circle at now feeling that maybe, maybe it is possible for the two dogs to live together. And so we're just kind of still navigating that road. And I don't know that that's where we're going to sit.
But the reality is, is that they have hung with me three times in a row and they have stuck with me for an entire year of working separation anxiety and all of the things. And because of my background in CREZ, I'm very, I'm quite skilled, honestly, at the support side of things and helping walk through people, you know, people through crisis. And we've had a lot of those moments where crisis has happened and they have felt like they just couldn't do it anymore.
So although we don't know the full outcome yet of what the story, what Lachlan's story is fully going to be, I am quite proud of the dedication this family has shown their willingness to, honestly, their willingness to sacrifice so much of their life and themselves to saving his life. And that now we are starting to see them regain their life again in a way.
And only, I really only believe that this could happen had I had the type of client that I had, but that also I have the skill set that I have in order to direct them and guide them through it. Well, there is so much there to be proud of for both you and for them. Like you said, I'm just so impressed with their dedication to this situation, this dog to all of their dogs into this situation and how I'm sure how proud you must be of them returning to you repeatedly.
And it clearly shows how reinforcing working with you is for them. I would also like to take just a minute to celebrate with you and them that transition from those all the approximations that went into not being able to leave for more than 20 seconds to being able to leave for four and a half hours. I mean, they can now like four and a half hours is enough time to allow you to go and actually do something. So that's got to be huge for them. So totally celebrate that with you all for sure.
Oh, thank you. It's been really big. I'd love getting just text messages and pictures from them daily of what they're working on. And we're still working together, but like what we're working on, the success they've had with like bringing the two dogs together in the backyard with their muzzles on, parallel walks, you know, all of those things. And I'm incredibly proud of them. Honestly, they've done the heavy lifting. I've just directed it. Very good. Well, thank you for all of that.
And I hope that you'll keep us posted as you continue working with them and let us know what the outcome for Lachlan and this family is.
Before we wrap up, we're getting kind of close to the end of our time now, but I would love to give you an opportunity to share about anything that you would like to share about that I haven't given you the opportunity to share about yet and or your top tips for using the same kind of conflict resolution skills that you're using with people for the rest of us folks in the training and behavior world who aren't, who don't have that educational background.
Sure. I think that if I were going to, and this is, you know, the primary thing that I'm speaking on at the aggression and dogs conference is making those connections with your clients and talking about the people side of training. And I think that in short, if I were going to just give kind of the reader's digest version of what I would want people to consider, I would start with introducing the idea of emotional intelligence.
So regardless of what's happening in the room I can't control what my, my clients are feeling, but I need to make sure that as I'm working with clients that I'm managing and able, and that my emotional intelligence is high enough that I'm able to not let emotions hijack the moment when things get hard, because this happens to all of us.
And this is what used to happen to me when I felt like I was failing spectacularly at debates or arguments, or when somebody, you know, came at me or something triggered me. And oftentimes when clients come in the room, we don't know what, we don't know what their history is. And they don't know my history. They don't know what's going to trigger or not trigger me.
And they're counting on me not getting triggered because they're counting on me having the experience to handle whatever comes into the room with them with me. And so, but, you know, we all have histories and we all come to the table with things that are going to potentially cause us to want to push back.
And it could be as simple as they come into the room with a prong collar on their, on their, you know, dog's neck, and they're doing some really harsh corrections or they're using an e-collar or they believe, you know, they're pushing back because they really believe they need to be the boss of their dog. And there's the philosophy of dominance in their head and their history and things that might be extremely triggering to us.
And so what I would say is I want you all to work on, I would want people to kind of learn to observe without judgment. So observe, just take in the facts. It's not my job to judge. It's my job to just make sure I'm taking in the facts and that I can pause in long enough when I feel triggered to not allow my emotions to take over the conversation.
Because once I've done that and I've engaged in something that then I making my clients feel like they need to defend their position on, I have all the safety that I want to create in the room is gone. The safety of that space is no longer there. And so I would say, I want you to observe, take in information, suspend judgment, manage your own emotional responses, and just honestly be present. Because if you're present in the room, find out what's important to them.
And then you're going to have, you're going to have the footing in order to know where you're going to want to start and work forward from. Because what, like I said, in the beginning, my goal going into that, and the things that I might want to start working on might not be what's the most important thing to them.
And I'm going to try to merge these two things in a way that we're going to collaborate so that I get a little piece of what's really important to me in there, because there might be a safety piece and I need that in there. And then I'm going to also address something that's primarily important to them that could be a deal breaker. We're going to start there.
But I would say suspend judgment, work on your own emotional intelligence so that you don't feel like when you're triggered, you get emotionally hijacked and things derail. Great advice. Thank you. And when you were sharing this story, you were sharing a story a while back, and I had actually written down that you had said you go into things with no judgment, just what's in front of you, you know, recognize things in that way.
And what I'm hearing you say right now is that some skills we could all really benefit from are observing without judgment and then pausing before moving into any kind of action, as well as working on our own emotional intelligence. And all of those things, I think, can help to create safer spaces, which will allow people to be more open so that we can get that information that we don't know. Sure, sure. Suspending judgment's hard. We're good at it. I'm super good at it.
I'm really good at throwing shade. I can judge with the best of them. And, you know, judgment in our lifetime has kept us safe, right? Like something feels uncomfortable and we're judging the situation and we're jumping to a conclusion. It's the thing that maybe has kept us safe at certain parts of our life. So it's a pretty natural thing. It means we're human, that we're doing it.
It's just a matter of in that room, in that situation, I want to be able to suspend judgment and just observe and just look at what's in front of me and respond and keep up with the conversation that we're having, match the mood, stay in the game. Carm, thank you for everything that you have shared so far. For folks who want to catch you at the Aggression and Dogs Conference, how can they do that?
For people who want to reach out, learn more from you, all of that, where should people go to find out more about you and what you're doing? Yeah, thank you so much for that opportunity. So at Aggression and Dogs Conference, I will be walking the halls. I will be there. Please feel free to find me. Please say hi. I want to meet all of you.
I want to know what are the challenges that you're facing because that helps me develop what I can and how I'm going to share that information with the public and with other trainers. And then you can find me at my website is North Star Training Solutions. And you can email me at carm at North Star Training dot info. I have not yet. And if you go to that website, what you're going to find is it's my separation anxiety page. So you'll be like, this isn't the CREZ stuff that I'm looking for.
However, if you email me, I am just now starting to develop a consulting side to the work that I do. And I just don't have a page up on my website yet for that. But I am starting to develop consulting for doing, you know, working with other trainers that are finding themselves in situations that are really hard and not quite understanding or knowing how to navigate it and what they need to do. Because every situation is different, just like how we're working with dogs.
No two dogs do reactivity or aggression the same way. No two dogs do separation anxiety the same way. We are independent beings. And so every situation we find ourselves in, I'm not going to approach in exactly the same way. There's no specific algorithm that I'm going to say, you're going to do step one, two, three, four. There are things I want to consider. And so I'm starting to develop a consulting side of that.
So if you want to reach out to me and you're already having some issues or some problems or something you want to discuss, email me at carm at North Star Training dot info. And I would love to speak with you and help you. That is super exciting. What a wonderful resource that you're going to be bringing to the industry with this. So I'm super excited to hear it as you develop this. Thank you for sharing that with us.
And as far as the Aggression in Dogs Conference, I assume that folks can register for that at Aggressive Dog dot com, probably. Yeah, at Aggressive Dog dot com, there's an online option. And then there's also an in-person option. And I believe it's in Scottsdale. It's in Scottsdale, Arizona this year, which is wonderful for me because I grew up in Arizona. So it's a homecoming for me. And I get to enjoy the desert again, which I love. And what what month is that? Is it October? October.
Okay, wonderful. It's in October. And I hope to see all of you there. Please join me because I think that in our industry, we're ready for this. And I want us to be I want us to set the standard for how we as trainers are making better connections and getting those outcomes that we really want and and improve that for ourselves. Thank you so much for this time. Thank you for being interested in what I do. And I'm very excited to be here and get to share this.
Thank you so much from myself, from everybody listening on behalf of ATA. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to share about the important work that you're doing with all of us. Really excited to have had you here with us today. Thanks so much, Shelley. This has been really, really fun. We do, of course, appreciate all of you tuning in as well.
And if you have enjoyed this episode and are interested in carrying on the conversation about working with the animals in our lives in the most positive, most fun and most choice rich ways, then as mentioned at the start of this episode, the Animal Training Academy community is waiting for you. Head on over to www.atamember.com and click on the membership button in the main menu to learn more about what members are describing as the Netflix social media platform for behavior geeks.
That's it for this episode, though. Thank you so much for listening. You'll hear from us again soon.