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. In this episode, we're excited to introduce Juliet Nash.
At age two, Juliet's baby book stated that she wanted to work with animals when she grew up and that her favorite animals were cats and whales. Her family and friends readily confirmed that she was trained by her cat, Love, when it came to detailed behavior observation and studies of vocal behavior. Honestly, not much has changed.
After 15 years and a master's of science studying killer whale social behavior and its relationship to vocal learning, she found herself unable to give up her first love of working hands -on with animals. She began working with San Diego Humane Society and is currently the community animal training manager overseeing a team of community animal trainers and all the organization's public-facing behavior support services and training classes for dogs and cats.
In this role, she expanded on the existing services and developed several unique programs, including the cat training classes and the pet training assistance fund. When possible, she still finds ways to sneak in the occasional research project. Animal welfare wasn't where she expected to be, but it turned out to be exactly where she needed to be.
She has a passion for working with fearful and poorly socialized animals, training using choice and cooperative, fear-free approach, and talking about behavior. She receives daily training from her cats, Amethyst and Sapphire, who appear satisfied with her progress most of the time.
When not working, she's still probably thinking too much about behavior, eating all the things, or nerding out on one of her many craft -based hobbies, which frequently involve, quote, it comes in pints, quote, levels of glitter, far too many feathers or rhinestones, and sometimes all three if she's in the mood for P-plus crafting. Welcome, Juliet. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me, Shelley. It's a pleasure to be here. And it is a pleasure to have you here.
I am really excited to talk to you and to dive into your background, learn a little bit more about you, and also learn a bit more about the work that you're doing today with San Diego Humane and maybe about some of the work that your cats are doing with you. So let's get started and please share with us a little bit about your story and tell us how you started working with animals and what you're spending your days doing today.
Yeah. So I got started working with animals before I really knew what I was doing. And I am astounded I have all of my fingers as intact as they are. I grew up with all sorts of pets, cats, dogs, birds, small animals. I grew up outside the woods of Boston. So I always had wildlife in my yard that I was attempting to befriend. And I just kind of fell into it.
I was always watching animals and trying to take what I learned by watching them and apply it to my own body language and my own behavior and just kind of fell in love with it. It wasn't until I began working with my own pets, I had a very fearful, very poorly socialized cockatiel that I got comfortable with body handling and basic handling. I was that kid who would teach my dogs new tricks and my family come outside and sit down and watch me show off their behaviors.
And then I hit middle school and was almost legally old enough to start volunteering and begin working with my local Audubon Society. So I had through college years of working with wildlife and towards the end of high school began doing behavior mod with their fearful owls that were in care that were non -releasable but had to be handled every day. So I really just fell in love with the BMOD process with more fearful animals.
In college, I was absolutely shocked to find out they did not have a degree program in feline behavior and communication studies. Like utterly shocked. That was not a thing that existed. So I went into whales instead because, you know, that seemed easier and I loved them. So I spent about 15 years studying social behavior and killer whales and the way all of that related to vocal behavior and in particular for my master's vocal learning. So that was amazing.
And I'm one of those weird humans who really enjoys the super tedious like detail-oriented parts of like field research and like lab time where you're like watching videos one second at a time. I went through 42 hours of video for my thesis and it took me like years, but it was amazing and I love it. But at the end of the day, I realized that I could either go into a life of research and grant writing or I could do hands-on work, but I couldn't do both.
And I really couldn't give up that first love of having direct impact on animals and their families because while going through my master's, I was working full-time as a dog trainer in a retail pet store and I fell in love with that also. So I made the shift after my thesis. I went to San Diego Humane almost six years ago and it's probably one of the best decisions I've ever made. It's pretty neat.
I came in as the only public-facing member of our behavior and training team, which if you're not familiar with San Diego Humane Society, we are extraordinarily, I guess, blessed as a shelter. We're one of the largest in the country and we have a behavior team that at the moment is, I believe, 30 people strong across our five campuses, four of which are domestic based and three of which have permanent behavior training staff at them.
So I started as the only public-facing member of that team, which has grown significantly since I started. And within about two years of me using my superpower of always having new ideas for new programs and expanding the programs we have, we realized I was, in fact, just one human and could not, in fact, do everything that I wanted to do. So we brought on an additional team member for me and now I have a team of five trainees in the community animal training team.
So it's been an incredible ride and journey. We oversee all of the public-facing behavior and training programs and services. So that's our behavior helplines. Last year we answered around almost 1900 calls and emails from the public and that's a free helpline. It is currently limited to Southern California in the San Diego area, sorry all. But we do take in those free helpline calls constantly.
We do post adoption services and support for all of our San Diego adopters, whether it's dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, whatever you're adopting, we're here to help. So all of our adopters get a free one-hour consultation to set them up for success. We have articles and videos that are free. We have an extensive YouTube channel, an extensive article library that we're in the process of completely overhauling and rewriting.
We are in the process of converting all of our articles and videos into Spanish. The videos will take much longer, but we have a Spanish-speaking trainer on our team, which has been a very long-held dream. We are just so delighted to have him there. So yeah, we're just doing tons of stuff with the community. We're engaged in events, providing behavior and training support, and we have training classes.
We have between 35 and 40 different types of classes that we offer to the public at any given time. And that is something I'm particularly proud of because I have a team of contract trainers, many of whom have been working with me since before COVID. And when COVID happened, we all sat down, I think over Skype, if anyone remembers what that is, and we said, all right, how do we deal with this? What do we do? And the answer was, we move online. We picked our platform, which was Zoom.
We took a week off of classes, moved everyone online, and within a week, we were back up and running again. And that allowed us to expand our training catalog to include classes for reactivity and impulse control and move our Shy Dog class online. I developed our Shy Cat class as part of that process. We offer classes for operative care online that are both for dogs and cats. How do you train your pet to be more comfortable in emergency situations of any type?
Here in California, it's like fighting for evacuations and things like that. But it could also be having family suddenly go into the hospital during COVID, the early days of COVID. So any sort of emergent situation, an animal who slips their harness or something like that. So really, really cool courses that we couldn't offer safely in person. To dogs, we couldn't offer classes to in -person. Adult cats.
And really neat, what kind of came from that is we had students joining us from all over the world. So that was a real neat, I guess, side effect of moving our classes online. And it's been an absolute pleasure to work with students from New Zealand and France and Mexico and Romania and Italy and just all over Canada and the US. So it's been a very cool ride. And we're still going. We're still building more programs, still finding new ways to engage with our community.
And one of those was the Pet Training Assistance Fund that we mentioned, which was the first of its kind. It's a pay-what-you-can program for San Diego County residents. It's a SAFIRE, where we can support them getting the training they need for their pets if they can't otherwise afford it. And if we need to keep those pets in their homes, behavior and training keeps pets from coming into the shelter in the first place. So that's, in a small nutshell, where I came from and where I am today.
You are definitely a very busy person, aren't you? Just a little bit, yeah. I was struck by what you said. You said something when you were talking about your decision to go into hands-on work instead of research because you realized that you couldn't do both. And then later, when you were sharing about your experience at San Diego Humane, you mentioned that you all realized that you were, in fact, just one or you realized that you were, in fact, just one person.
I was like, I see a theme here, I think, of being very passionate about lots of things and wanting to do lots of things. Is that right? That is correct. It was really funny because when I finally talked to my director about it, she was like, I was wondering when you would notice. And every year we do our annual check -ins and reviews, one of my goals is to not say yes to all the things and to not add new programs, even if I develop them, until all the current ones are launched and running.
But I mean, what a gift that is in my field to be able to have that innovation and have that drive in such a compassion fatigue-heavy field where I'm always like, let's do more, let's do more, let's do more, let's help in this way, let's serve in that way. I love that. It's been really rewarding, even if occasionally I work too much and don't sleep enough and need to hire more people. Absolutely.
It does sound like a gift and also like a gift that you need to pay attention to for your own well-being, and it sounds like you're in touch with that, so that's great. I loved hearing you call it, as you were talking earlier too, you mentioned coming up with being a person who is coming up with new ideas all the time, that that's your superpower. I loved hearing you say that, that is indeed a superpower.
When we spoke before, I always catch up with a guest a little bit before the show to chat and get to know each other a little bit. I told you at that time that I'm a social worker and a lot of the things that you were talking about were making my social worker heart so happy. You've mentioned some of those today, including getting all of your materials so that they're now available. They will be available in Spanish now, as well as English, which is wonderful.
Then you also mentioned that all adopters get, I think, one hour of free training. Is that right? It's a consultation. We try to call it a troubleshooting session as opposed to a training session because we want to make sure folks are coming in with, I guess, appropriate expectations, right? We can't train your dog or solve all of your problems in one hour. It's a free session. It's not meant to be like long-term continued support. We do have private lessons and group classes for that.
Let's get you started. Let's get you those next steps. Let's get you some resources right now in the moment to help begin to address this, whether it's management and environment or whatever else it is, referring to a vet. It's really that initial, what do you need? Because it never expires, we have folks who contact us within 24 hours of adoption. We have folks who are like, it's been two years. Can I still use this? I've just run into challenges. The answer is yes. The answer is always yes.
Yeah. And you answered some of my questions already with that. I was wondering when people typically use that. Another question that I have about that is how frequently is it used? Is it something that a lot of your adopters use or does it go underutilized? Oh, it is heavily utilized. I think we did 490 post-adoption consults last year. So it's a lot.
The math I did for my team this year is if everyone on the team does between two and three a week, we should be able to cover our numbers from last year without anyone having to take on too many or be too stressed about that. Because our job, as you may have gathered, involves a lot of different pieces. And it can be very interruptive. You're getting pulled away into helpline roulette, which could be a five-minute call or it could be an hour and a half long phone call.
You have classes that you're running. You have services that you're doing, events that you're going to. So making sure that my team is keeping a good work-life balance is really important. So we're trying to make sure that folks are doing things that both fill their cups and also things that are a little bit harder with our community. So we try to make sure that we keep that balance.
Because in this field, we know how important it is to have that balance and be aware of compassion fatigue and different things like that. But yeah, it's very heavily utilized. That's wonderful. It's awesome that you all are able to provide that resource.
And then for people who do take advantage of that resource, if they're needing more in -depth training and maybe they don't have the financial resources for that, is that something that that pet training assistance fund that you mentioned would help with? Yeah. So if they mentioned during our chat, anytime we talk to anyone, they mentioned that they are having trouble affording classes, we'll refer them to the PTA fund.
We do have a dedicated budget for that every year, which allows us to help depending on how much we're putting in a minimum of like 23, 24 families, which is amazing. And usually we're able to help more than that because they're usually able to contribute something towards the cost of classes. So that's a wonderful opportunity. But yeah, we can direct folks to that program. Again, it's a pay what you can program.
So we encourage folks to contribute what they are comfortable and safely able to do. And then we make up the difference. It's a really neat program. Those are amazing resources. And I'm curious, do some of the classes that you've come up with that now are available online and to people everywhere, do some of those help to generate funds to support some of these other programs? Yes. So our classes are one of the few, I guess, revenue generated incomes that our team has.
Most of our resources are free. Again, the articles, videos, events, support, post adoption consults, all of those things are free. The classes are basically what we do to generate revenue. We try to keep pricing really reasonable. We're doing checks usually about once a year to keep it in line with what we're seeing trending locally. But yeah, they've been just a wonderful resource for the community. They've helped us build our team in the way that we have.
And we're trying to expand it to all of our main three campuses and hopefully continuing to build that as we go. I mean, for humans, excuse me. I'm sorry. Oh, I said we're trying to expand it to our four campuses. Okay, gotcha. And when you were talking about your classes earlier, you mentioned several really great sounding classes and a lot of different kind of creative type classes or classes that are certainly more than your standard basic manners for dog sort of classes.
So I have a couple of questions about that. I'm curious about, do you have a favorite of those classes? Because you were a part of, I guess, creating them, right? Is that right? So yes and no. When it comes to our specialty classes, many of those were brought to us by our contract trainers. The contract team that I work with is a phenomenal group of folks, several of whom worked with San Diego Humane Society as internal trainers before going off on their own.
So we're so thrilled to still have them working with us. One of them has been through Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed program and offers Control Unleashed classes. We work with two trainers who are CSATs through Magana Martini's certification program. We work with trainers who have ABA backgrounds. We're really, really fortunate to have a really skilled range of trainers who just always come to me and they're like, hey, can we offer a class on this? I'm like, heck yes, we can. Absolutely.
We're actually, one of our trainers who's also a CSAT is one of, I believe, two Rattlesnake avoidance trainers in San Diego, which we love. No more aversion training. So we love that. Oh, we also have Nosework. Oh my God. We have a phenomenal Nosework trainer who is an AKC Nosework judge and just travels all over with her dogs. She does basic Nosework, competitive Nosework. She does search and rescue with people. She does missing animal response with dogs.
They were one of the first teams in the country, one of the first handful of teams in the country to do that. Just super phenomenal trainers. So it's impossible to pick a favorite out of that list. Out of our internal classes that we teach, my favorite is probably Shy Cat because it was such a labor of love and everything to build that class. And there's such a need for it because one of my favorite little soapboxes is your cat's experience shouldn't be living under a bed.
That's not who your cat is. Your cat isn't shy. Your shyness is not a personality type, right? If I say my cat is shy, I'm accepting that that's who they are, but that's not who my cat is. My cat is experiencing fear. So if I think about it in that light, that's actionable. I can change my cat's experience so they don't have to live a life where they're experiencing fear.
So I am super passionate about Shy Cat class and it's designed for cats that are both experiencing severe fear where they're always hiding, can't touch them, you can't approach them. All the way to cats who are just situationally fearful, like when the doorbell rings or company comes over or different things like that. So it's a really fun class. It sounds like a really fun class and a really needed class too.
I'm glad to see cats getting more attention in the behavior world and more people like you focusing on cats and building such great programs for them. And you also have a, I believe that you were talking recently on Tabitha Kucera. Did I say her last name correctly? I believe so. Yes. Okay. And you were talking on her podcast. Do you remind me the name of her podcast? It's I believe it's Tales from Other Tech. Chirps and Chatters is her company.
And then Tales from Other Tech, I believe is the podcast. Gotcha. Is the podcast. Okay. But you were talking on there, I believe about your kitten kindergarten program. Is that right? And is that one that you had a hand in developing as well, then the kitten kindergarten program? Mostly. So kitten kindergarten, we had run it before for I think a year, maybe two before I came to the program, but we hadn't run it in probably a year. So I redeveloped the program.
I updated and added some of my own curriculum to it. And that's actually something really interesting that really struck me at that time because I was brand new to San Diego Humane at that time. And I remember starting the research for reworking that curriculum and making it my own. And I remember going to so many websites that were focused on positive reinforcement dog training. And then you go to their cat section.
And these are really well-known, I'm not going to call any of them out, but really well-known pet websites. And their cat section was like, use cans of coins and use a spray bottle. And I was like, you have your entire dog page that's so into positive reinforcement. And then for cats, we go straight to positive punishment, which we know makes things worse and exacerbates the issue, especially with cats.
So that was really shocking to me, how few resources there were out there, even just almost six years ago, for getting cats the help they needed. And I was like, well, no wonder so many of you were calling my helplines. So redeveloping the cat programs was a lot of fun for me. It was very educational. And it's really been one of my, I guess, goals and missions to change the way people are thinking about cats. Your cat's experience, again, doesn't have to be hiding under a bed.
Cat isn't vindictive. Your cat isn't doing this out of spite and just kind of changing the way we think about how cats can learn and how trainable cats are and everything else. So I've really enjoyed having conversations with our community around that and building these different programs. And I have borrowed so heavily in my conversations from Dr. Friedman's Living and Learning with Animals courses.
So I do a very condensed version of how animals learn and where behavior function comes from, or rather how behavior functions as part of those classes to really give folks the tools they need to understand all these pieces and just get them talking about it with their cat friends. Because we all know if you're a cat person, you have cat friends. And I am speaking to you today from rural Southeast Missouri. And of course, we have listeners from all over the US and all over the world.
And you're in San Diego. So I think that the culture is pretty different everywhere. And I would say right now, we're probably mostly lean where I am a little bit more the way that you described things six years ago, as far as cat behavior stuff is concerned. Maybe not entirely, but maybe a little bit more on that direction of the continuum.
So I'm curious, do you have any advice for somebody in a location where things maybe aren't quite as progressive with cats and providing positive reinforcement training behavior work for them? Do you have any advice for somebody in an area like that who maybe wants to work to develop some programs or change that in some way? Absolutely.
Yes. So I've been fortunate to do a lot of shelter consultations and rescue consultations with different groups all over the country and several up in Canada and around the world and other places over the last handful of years. So with cats specifically, what I would honestly recommend is like, let's meet, let's chat about different programs and join one or all of the cat training classes. We can talk about welfare partner discounts or just getting good as an auditor, depending.
But I try to offer that service to other folks who are in those situations. I've had fosters and volunteers from other shelters and rescues reach out to me about taking classes because they're like, I want to learn how to work more with the animals in my care, my rescue shelter, whatever. It doesn't have anyone who specializes in behavior and these cats need help. So I would encourage them to take these classes and take those tools.
And they're welcome to share any of the follow-up materials with their teams. I ask them to share with their communities so we can keep the classes, but I'll encourage them to share it with their immediate groups because we want to get more of that information out there. And we recognize that a lot of shelters and rescues don't have the resources to build programs like this.
And one of the things that we're working on, I'm going to put it in a podcast so hopefully I can make it happen this year, is we are going to be reaching out to our very wide shelter and rescue network and sharing more of our resources with them. We're waiting for our article library overhaul to be finished. We're going to be sharing all these resources and letting folks know like these are available for use. This is Amethyst.
If you don't have a behavior team or person or resources available at your shelter, your rescue for whatever species, reach out to us. Share ours. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to find those funds. You can use what we have. You can direct folks to our classes if you don't have local trainers offering services that you need. If you're in a remote area, these things are available online. All of our Zoom classes are recorded live.
So wherever you are, if you're in New Zealand and you're joining us at six in the morning for classes, you can watch those recordings if you want to sleep in on one of those weeks. You don't have to be there live. So we try to make those resources as accessible as possible, both for folks living in those areas and folks working in those areas in animal welfare or in behavior and training in general. Our goal is really accessibility and helping get that word and those resources out there.
Wonderful. Thank you for that. And I should also say that we have an amazing local shelter here in our community, and they do focus on positive reinforcement training with the animals in their care. So I wasn't speaking about, I don't want anybody to think I was speaking about our shelter in any way, just a little bit more about the culture generally as far as cats are concerned, more just kind of the general public.
But of course, being a smaller shelter than what you all are out there at San Diego Humane, I'm sure some of the resources that you have to offer could be very valuable to them and to others in our community. So for anybody, anywhere listening who's interested in accessing those resources, I'll give you a chance to do this again later in the show.
But before we move on here, could you just kind of share where people might go if they were interested in finding out more about some of these resources you've been talking about? Absolutely. The landing page to find all things BNT that my team work on is the web address SD, so San Diego SDHumane.org slash training. That will bring you to all the things. Wonderful. Thank you for that. And thank you for everything that you have shared with us so far today.
I've really enjoyed getting to learn just a little bit about all of the amazing work that you are doing with San Diego Humane. And I'm sure we're going to learn more about that as we continue talking to or maybe we will. We'll see.
For now, I'd like to shift gears just a little bit, though, and ask you to share with us about a training related challenge that you've experienced and maybe share a little bit about how you've worked through the challenge or how you are working through it and some things that you learned from it. Yeah. So I started in behavior super young. And when I was reading books about animals, I wasn't really reading books about training. And if I was, it was like 30 some odd years ago.
And they weren't really using you know, they weren't technical training books. So I didn't actually learn any of the professional technical language around training methods and all of those pieces until honestly, most of it was after college. There's always been interesting to me. I remember learning these words, you know, either piecemeal or in chunks and being like, it has a name.
And that was always really exciting for me, realizing that other folks were doing things the same way that I had been doing it. And that we, it was well documented and well established. I was like, thank God I'm doing the thing the right way. But not having the technical language, the more of it that I learned, felt like I was missing a lot. Like maybe I wasn't doing things as professionally or whatever else.
And then when I worked in retail pet training, I gained a lot of language from that experience and quickly realized both through the training program itself and through interactions with guests that I had to be really mindful of the language I used because coming from a research background at that time, I was very used to speaking technically about behavior and very objectively about behavior.
And I was learning all this wonderful training language that I wanted to use to kind of show what I knew and be professional about it. But no one knew what I was saying. So I had to make sure that I was using language that was accessible to the families I worked with, which came in all different education levels around behavior and training and their first time pet owners to people who were teachers and ABAs themselves who had never owned a pet or had owned many pets.
Like it's just, you all know, it's a huge range. So learning how to adjust my language where I was both communicating what I needed them to know, but in a way they could understand it has been an interesting bit of imposter syndrome that's continued through my professional career because I have the language, but I don't get to use it very often. And even when I'm talking with other trainers, I'll default to language that is more accessible because it's just not part of my everyday.
Even if I kind of know what it is and I know it has a formal name, I'm like, you know, it's such an interesting thing where I will, you know, it's like almost like code switching, right? Between like this conversation and that conversation. And I always have those moments of, am I using the right word? Should I be using this language or are they going to judge me if I don't? You know, when I am having conversations with the professional training community.
So while I know that I know the things and I know the language, it's always interesting kind of having that little moment of like, does this seem professional? Does this seem legit enough to bring into these conversations? If I don't use this language, does it make a difference to someone? So occasionally our trainers in their classes will use a technical language like antecedent or something like that. And I'll be like, I love that you're using the language.
I love that you're trying to educate your families and they're never going to remember it. So if you're going to use a technical term, tell them, you know, here's what it's technically called, but you don't need to remember this or describe it in a way that they can really easily understand where, you know, they're able to pick up on what you're saying without having that really technical language because they're not going to use it themselves.
And as much as I enjoy being able to show what I know and like demonstrate my knowledge, I've learned that with the communities I work with, the most effective way to do that is by showing them that I know what I'm doing. And through the work I'm doing with their paths, through the way I'm explaining things in ways that that individual person with their experience, their own learning history can understand. That's how I show what I know.
And I'm learning how to be less concerned with the imposter syndrome feelings that come up for me and more focus on the individuals that I'm talking to and just making sure that they can see it and understand it. I think that is a really interesting challenge to talk about and something that I think that a lot of people will likely relate to.
I know that I certainly do and have been on a bit of a journey with that as well and have found myself historically using those really technical terms with clients and seeing their eyes just kind of fog over. And that's not where we want to be with people. We want them to understand and be able to implement the things that we're suggesting.
But personally, I've come to think that it is a real skill to be able to understand all of the technical language, to know it and have it and understand it, but simplify it in a way that is still accurate and that is accessible and approachable to everybody. So I know you talk about it in terms of imposter syndrome when talking to other professionals, but I think even when talking to other professionals that it's fine to use that kind of more simple, straightforward language.
People can't see you, but I'm laughing for a reason about the expression on your face. That was great. It looked like relief, maybe. I'm not sure. But in my opinion, I think that's just fine. So I love hearing about that. That's really, really an interesting thing to think about the way that we use language. And I do think there's a way to keep our language accurate and precise while still being approachable and not necessarily using that technical language.
Yeah, and that's one of the things that, just kind of to give a really neat example, I guess a clear example of that is I often think about Dr. Friedman's and Lily Chin's infographic where it's labels, right? It's talking a lot about labels. I recognize that in my work, to meet folks where they are, I often have to start with the label that they're using and then add the objective observations around it to either shift that label or just remove it entirely.
It's always interesting catching myself saying things like, oh, this cat is shy or whatever, and being like, no, the cat's not shy because I know the cat's not shy. And I have to meet them where they're at. So it's always an interesting process of hearing myself use things that I have different information on, but still choosing to use those terms or that language or those descriptors or whatever else. Yeah. That's an excellent point about meeting people where they are with that sort of thing.
And I don't know if you have, I mean, sure, I would guess that you have. I know that I certainly have been sitting in meetings places or talking with other professionals, places who are professionals in other fields that I'm not familiar with, and they start throwing acronyms or technical jargon around. And it just, you just can't, you have no idea what they're talking about, you know?
And it makes so much more sense to meet people where they are with the language that works for them and where they are in their journey and then shaping from there. So as needed, we don't need to necessarily shape that language with our clients, do we? Yeah. Right. Being a subject matter expert isn't just having, you know, like you said, the technical jargon, it's being able to really, you know, show and communicate in ways that the client can understand. Yeah. Wonderful.
Thank you for sharing that example with us. Would you share with us now about a training situation that you are proud of and or that you found reinforcing? So I mentioned our ChiCat class earlier and how much of a passion project it is for me. After the class had been running for two years, and as part of my very slow application towards my ACAB certification, I was able to present a poster at the Animal Behavior Society's conference back in 2023.
And we did a owner-based survey of our students who had taken the ChiCat class over the previous two years. And we were able to see over the three different time periods, we had them do assessments using the Kessler ChiCat, or sorry, the Kessler Cat Stress Scores.
We had them look at their cat stress score when the class started for any training, end of the five-week class, and then at whatever point in time it was they were receiving the survey, which for some students was nearly two years later. For others, it was only, I think, four months. And what we were able to show based on the results of that survey was a statistically significant increase in socially affiliative behaviors across a number of different measures.
And a statistically significant decrease in fearful behaviors over, again, a similar set of measures. And this was both over the first two time periods, over the duration of the five -week class, and then continuing on in a time beyond that. And this was most strongly reinforced for me in the story of a cat named Magneto and his mom, Peggy. And Magneto had come to Peggy from a hoarding situation. He lived among a pile of boxes up in her garage.
He would come inside for food, but he couldn't be touched. He couldn't be approached. And over the period of the class, he became more comfortable with approach. They were doing lots of trust-building exercises. And within a few months of the class ending, he was coming into the house and meowing at her and soliciting a little bit more interaction. I believe by six to eight months later, he was jumping up on the couch.
And by the time he passed, around 10 to 12 months after the class, he was soliciting affection for up to two hours at a time and playing with his kitten brother who had come into the home several months after class ended as well. So it was amazing watching this older cat who had had such a rough start for much of his life make such a huge transformation and to follow Peggy's story and updates.
And it was always such a bright bit of joy in my day when I would get one of her emails and be like, I have to show you what Magneto is doing now. He came up on the couch for 20 minutes and wanted me to pet him and couldn't even believe it. And she was just so, so happy that his last year or so was filled with the life we would have wanted him to have had throughout. So it was a real gift to be able to share that with the two of them through that training class.
And we are working on continuing that research. So as opposed to it being a retroactive survey where they're having to look back in time, we're now asking students as they take the class to fill out these surveys so we can continue digging into the data and, you know, keep nerding on. That is such a touching story. It is a shame that Magneto couldn't have a bigger life for more of his life.
But what a gift that he was able to have that sort of a life near the end of it as a result of Peggy's participation in the class and your work on the class. That's wonderful. So the Shy Cat class, that is one of the online classes, correct? Are all of the cat classes online? Everything except for Kitten Kindergarten and Kitten Playgroup, which we do in person, but everything else is online. And for Shy Cat class, the biggest question I get asked, does my cat have to attend?
And the answer is no, of course not. Your cat doesn't want to be there. The class is designed to teach you exercises that are very structured in the sense that they build on each other. You shouldn't be moving to the next exercise until your cat is comfortable with the one that you are currently working on. So it's designed to be, you know, attended by the owner. You know, the owner practices at their cat's pace. And then you just dig into your upcoming recordings, you know, as you need to.
So you attend live, you get the information, you ask the questions, you share progress, but you're always moving at your cat's pace. So yes, they're all online. Wonderful. And I don't know if this is possible or not, but would you be able to share with us maybe what a starting point might be in the Shy Cat class for a cat like Magneto, who was hanging out in the garage and not coming in the home at all? Like what were some of the initial things that might've been suggested there?
Class, the exercises that I send my students home with are honestly mostly based on your behavior as the owner.
I have you practice some eye contact games, which I call affectionately the blinking game, where you just start by blinking at your pet, not making direct, like not direct orientation with your body, but like off to the side, just like, you know, closing your eyes and doing slow blinks and extending the duration of your blink as your pet kind of matches or starts to catch up to how long you're blinking for. And that's a trust building exercise.
A lot of my background is, as I mentioned, working with birds and exotic birds in particular. So I always, always start with any fearful animal I'm working with, with trust building exercises using eye contact. So I teach them that. I teach them how to use their voice. So their voice isn't saying, you're okay, it's okay. Their voice is saying, you're okay. It's all right. You know, we're going to be friends, like whatever it is. I teach them vocal exercises.
I teach them how to use their body when they're moving in and out of a space, getting up and down if they're in a seated position, what your posture looks like, how your posture influences your pet's behavior and how safe they feel. So it's all sorts of, what are you doing exercises? And then the only animal exercises that are involved in week one are the blinking game. If you're able to, sitting in a room and just talking to your cat, because we all know, we all know what cat owners do.
We talk, we sing, we read, we do all those things to our cats. So it's just sitting there and then hear your voice in a calm, soothing way and tossing treats if they are engaging in any way at any distance. You're always working as far away as your cat is comfortable and relaxed as much as they can be. We're trying to keep it as under threshold as possible.
And then we do treat drive-bys, where you start talking to your cat as you're approaching the room that they're in, and that way they hear you coming. They have the option of moving or hiding if they need to feel safer than where they are currently at, so there's no surprises. Assuming the cat is in a closed room, you would crack open the door, toss in a treat, and then just keep going and talking as you walk away.
All the exercises are based on those highly fearful cats that take the class, where we're assuming that you can't approach, you can't touch, you're working across the room or outside of the room, you can't give them treats directly, they may not eat them in your presence. So you're always assuming high-level fear and working with that. So it's like as far away as you can be, here's how you would move through a space. You may not use moving through a space exercises this week.
You may have to get to that in four weeks, wherever your cat's at, but here's how you do it when you get there. You do have to go into the room to change their food and water in their box. Here's how you do it. It's a lot of being aware of your body and then setting your cat up for success with the interactions you do have to have as you approach the space, move through the space, et cetera. Thank you for sharing all of that detail.
And my cat, Wednesday, I would not describe her as a shy cat at all, but I'm really interested in your class now. Would it be a benefit to other people with cats who aren't necessarily so shy? Some of those exercises you talked about, like the trust-building exercises with the eye blinking game and the body language stuff seems really interesting to me. Would Wednesday get benefit from me taking the class? She probably would. We talk about that. We talk about reading body language objectively.
We talk about DSCC and shaping and using shaping at a distance, right? So you don't have to be up close to your pet. So again, all the exercises are based on not being able to handle. So yes, you would get a lot out of it. The shy cat class is a combination of the basic foundational behaviors that we can introduce in Trainable Cat 1 with learning theory mixed in. And then the more advanced training we do in Trainable Cat Level 2, both of which are also online classes for not fearful cats.
So it combines some of the more basic and some of the more complex pieces. Because you're working in a more complex situation. That said, the blinking game, the vocal exercises, and the body orientation videos are all posted on one of our YouTube channels or one of our YouTube playlists on our YouTube channel, which is sdhumane.org slash training videos. You'll find all of our BNT playlists, which are broken down by topic. We have one all on body language.
We have one on, um, oh my gosh, our playlist on sociability, reactivity, leash handling, and play is like 50 some odd videos, I think. Um, and includes a lot of them on there because all those pieces roll into it. We have a playlist on choice. We have playlists on body handling and grooming, like all those different things. Um, so you will find those videos on the, um, reading body language playlist among many others, because it all, it all ties back in.
I just, the amount of resources that San Diego humane has is just amazing. Wonderful work that you're doing. I'm going to, uh, dig into those YouTube videos for sure. So thank you for sharing about that. Yeah, I, I loved hearing you talk about the, the research that you were doing too. And it made me happy for you that you were able to engage in research.
Um, but it's really cool that you're continuing those studies, um, or collecting that information about the, uh, shy cat class and going to build from there. Are you able to be involved in some other research right now with your work or is that the, the big research where you get to get your big research fix right now through that? That's my research fix right now. We, I do have, cause I can't stop myself. I do have a couple other ideas for some really cool research studies that we could do.
Um, no spoilers here though. Sorry. Um, but yeah, we, we have a few other ideas for ways that we can utilize our behavior helplines to do some research on, um, yep. On different types of calls that we're getting and topics related to that. It's still very much in the early planning process. Um, and we're hoping that we can do some, some, some grant writing to get a position funded to do that research. So we'll, we'll see.
That's a very big, if we've just started talking about it, so I probably shouldn't even be saying it yet. Um, but we are hoping to do more research and, and dig into all the many resources that we have, cause we have so many data points on why animals come into the shelter, what type of help people need. So if we're able to get information from that, you know, we, I think we can use that in really powerful ways. If there are, um, results that we can pull from it that are beneficial.
Well, I will look forward to hearing more about that for sure. Give me a few years. Um, we are going to move on to wrapping up here pretty soon, but before we do that, I want to give you a chance. If there is anything that we haven't talked about yet that I haven't asked you about that, uh, you would like to share about before we wrap up, I would like to invite you to, to do that now. If there is anything that I have missed or that you just want to add to anything.
Gosh, I don't think there's anything you've missed, Shelly. This has been wonderful. Um, I just want to reiterate that we are always available for other folks in rescue, um, and animal welfare. If you have questions, if you need resources, if you need help building programs or finding ways to build programs that do work for the resources that you have, um, just reach out to us. We're always happy to help. We're always happy to talk to you.
I speak for both myself with my public facing BNT programs, but also our internal team. They do a lot of shelter consultations as well. And we always invite shelters and rescues and folks like that to come visit us. And if you're a volunteer with a shelter, a lot of volunteers and fosters take, um, just for example, the cat printing classes as well, because it gives them more tools and resources. Always welcome to reach out.
We'll always do our best to help you because it's really important to our communities to share this information. So thank you so much for having me. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for your generosity. You and San Diego humane's generosity and sharing all of those resources and being so open to helping others.
And, uh, before we do wrap up, could you remind everybody, I know you shared earlier about where folks can find all those resources from San Diego humane, but could you remind everybody of that and also share with people how they could connect with you if they were interested in catching up? Yeah. So the place to find all of the BNT resources created by my team from classes, articles, videos, and our behavior helplines, if you're local to Southern California is SD humane dot org slash training.
If you're looking for more specific resources or links, we make it really easy. SD humane.org slash training gets you to everything. Training classes gets you to classes. Trading articles gets you to articles. Trading videos gets you to videos. And if you are in Southern California, um, training or trainer directory, excuse me, SD humane
.org slash trainer directory gets you to our local, um, vetted positive reinforcement trainer directory, which if you don't live in Southern California, it might still be a valuable resource for you because that page includes information about how training is still an unregulated, unstandardized field. It includes position statements from IABC, CPDT, APDT, PPG, and a few others in English and in Spanish.
And it includes a link to our presentation called how to pick a trainer 101, which walks you through a little bit of what to look for in a trainer, why credentials and education and all those different things matter, um, how to read websites and look for different types of red flags by looking at language use matters, what types of questions to ask. Um, and that's useful to everyone. It also includes a very brief run through of, um, very brief run through of learning theory and training methods.
So you better understand why we're making the recommendations we do. And I think it's a really powerful resource for anyone trying to guide folks towards someone who can help them in ways that feel gentle and, um, educational without being, well, it is certainly biased. It is, um, it is also very clear as to why that bias exists. Can you, wonderful. Thank you for, thank you for all of that. I was muted there for a minute. Sorry about that. Well, yes, thank you for all of that.
And Juliette, thank you for everything that you shared with us today from myself on behalf of everybody listening on behalf of the ATA community. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join us and share just a little bit about all of the amazing work that you are doing and the ripples that you're making in the animal welfare world. Thank you. Thank you so much. So I think you ATA have a great day. 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.