Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show. I'm your host Ryan Carledge and I'm passionate about helping you master your animal training skills using the most positive and least intrusive approaches. Here at ATA we understand that navigating the vast challenges you encounter in training requires a comprehensive base of knowledge and experience. It's common to face obstacles and rough patches on your journey that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015 we've been on a mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide. We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding their knowledge, boosting their confidence and maximising their positive impact on all the animal and human learners they work with. We are excited to do the same for you. Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant community and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this free podcast episode as we explore new ways to help you supercharge your training skills, grow your knowledge and build your confidence so that you can craft a life that positively impacts every learner you encounter. And what led her to write her first book, Constructing Canine Consent, which we're going to talk more about today.
However, if you haven't listened to that episode yet, you are of course welcome to start here with part two, where you're still going to gain plenty of insights to help you on your journey to have your biggest positive impact on the lives of all the animals and human learners that you work with. So let's dive in.
Just to start with, we'll reintroduce Erin Jones, who is an independent scholar, content editor for the IAABC Foundation Journal, international speaker and educator, and as mentioned, author. She holds a PhD in human animal studies, a MS in anthrozoology, a BS with honours in psychology and anthropology, and researches and writes about the ethical dimensions of the dog-human relationship.
Erin is also a certified dog behaviour consultant and accredited dog trainer with the IAABC, a certified professional dog trainer with the CCPDT, and accredited animal behaviour consultant with Cairns. Her new book, Constructing Canine Consent, is available in bookstores worldwide, and her other publications are available to access on her website, www.meritdogproject .com. So Erin, thank you so much for coming back to hang out with us again on the Animal Training Academy podcast show.
Thanks for having me, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about your book today, and just to be fully transparent with everyone, I haven't had the chance to read it yet. That word yet is important, unfortunately, but I plan to do so soon. The reason I wanted to have Erin on the show, the reason I wanted to have you on the show, Erin, even before I've had the chance to go through your book, is because numerous ATA members have reached out to me directly to share their thoughts.
They've told me how much they've enjoyed it, how much they're looking forward to reading it, and how eager they are to learn more from you. So here we are. So how about you start off by telling the listeners a little bit about your new book and how it came about? Sure, so my new book, Constructing Canine Consent, is about constructing a canine-indexed definition of consent, which I'm sure we'll talk more about. How it came about is, well, interesting. It was sort of an evolution.
It wasn't necessarily something that I set out to do initially, but when I started my PhD journey, I was interested in the idea or the topic or the questions about how people thought about consent, whether it applies to our dogs, and how it can apply to our dogs. And as I mentioned when I was speaking with you before, that my dog Juno was a massive influence in the way that I was thinking about these questions.
She was a very fearful puppy, and I really wanted to consider her agency and her choices in my behavior intervention plans for her as she was growing up. And so that got me thinking about how I can get her to understand about consent and or withdrawal of consent, and be able to communicate that successfully with me, and how I can foster that in our relationship. And so that sort of seeped into my thesis proposal, and into my investigation with dog owners and other dog trainers as well.
And it was definitely an interesting, I mean, the more I thought about it, the more convoluted it was. It was simply, it wasn't simply, you know, this cut and dry, we ask for consent, they give it to us, we pet them kind of thing. There were just so many ethical questions around those interactions that we're having, and whether they're fair, whether the choices we're offering them are fair choices to be to be offering. And considering we're, you know, and we'll get into all those details.
But I just, I guess I got to this point where I thought, wow, I have more questions than I do answers. And that continued to snowball, where I had more and more questions about it. But those questions were really important to me, because it was about thinking about our relationship in a different way. So it was about asking difficult questions that may not have answers, but that can make me think about that relationship more critically.
And honing in on those critical thinking skills was a really big part of this for me. And interestingly enough, I did think about writing a book, I wasn't thinking about writing a book specifically on the topic of consent, because that was only a small part of my PhD thesis. But when I was nearing the end of my PhD journey, I still had a couple of months left, I had the editor from Taylor and Francis, which is the publication company, contact me.
She had been speaking with a friend of mine who was writing a book for her, and they had somehow gotten on to the topic of consent. And she suggested contacting me about this, because she thought it would make a really great book. And so we had our meeting. And I was super excited, but a little bit nervous, because I'd obviously never written a book before, although I did write a thesis, which was 300 plus pages, the same thing, I guess.
And but and I definitely wanted to, it just wasn't something I had, I wasn't there yet in my journey, I wasn't really thinking about that yet. But that I decided to do it. And so I really kind of took the chapter that I had written on consent in my thesis and expanded it. She wanted just a short book on the topic. And that's kind of what I did.
But I also wanted to write about the ethical questions about consent, not just like how it's applicable, or not just like the mechanics of it, although that's part of it. I really wanted to ask those questions about, well, can they always consent? And what if they can't consent? What then? How do we navigate those situations? And are our dogs actually autonomous? Or are they not because they are living under human care and control?
So as much as some of those questions were slightly painful, and difficult to think about, they became increasingly important and all play into how I've constructed a canine indexed definition of consent. Thanks for sharing all of that. And I feel like you were talking about my podcast show when you said that you've always got more questions than you have answers for. So I've got a lot of questions written down.
But I'm curious about the editor's interest in a book on consent, and how the title has resonated with our audience and whether this topic of consent has always been of interest, will always be of interest, or is consent really relevant to now, in terms of how the culture of our specific community, and when I say our specific community, what I mean is a community of trainers, people interested in behavior, who focus on positive reinforcement, and have been since the 60s in the use of
positive reinforcement in zoos, Karen Pryor's contribution, clicker training, to where we are in 2024. Is consent a topic of interest now? Or has it always been that way? And do you think it's always going to be? Or are we in the space now where we're really starting to explore this more, and it's more relevant now now that it hasn't been relevant? Do you understand my question? I do understand your question. And I think, yeah.
So I think it sort of became apparent to me anyway, in the last maybe 10 years, where, I mean, I think there's always been some elements of the ideas behind consent, when we're talking about things like cooperative care, for example, or we're talking about voluntary cooperation, when we're talking about positive reinforcement, and, you know, creating behavior change through choice, those kinds of topics have been around for a while.
But putting that together in an idea about consent, I think is relatively new, especially when it comes to other animals. I mean, it's a difficult topic in and of itself, even when we're talking about humans, whether they have the capacity to consent or not, we're talking about children, or maybe people with diminished mental capacity, you know, there's a lot of debate around that in the academic world.
And so applying the idea of consent to non-human animals is definitely, I think, a relatively, I mean, there was very little literature about it. That's for sure. And so I think it's a very new concept in that sort of exploration of how it could apply to our relationships with other animals. But like I said, I think it's been there, and it's definitely a word that I had heard before going into all this. It's definitely not something I, you know, I just conjured up.
It was definitely like I heard about consent behaviors, for example, in cooperative care, consent tests, and our interactions with other animals. And I've always advocated for lots of, you know, freedom to communicate in those regards. But I think in how it's applied, I think it's just starting to come together now. Well, can you give us a brief literature review of what you found in the literature and what were for you some of the most insightful pieces of literature that you found?
Yeah, so I think for me, it was about pulling the pieces together. So looking at literature on, for example, autonomy in other animals was something that I looked at pretty significantly. And so there's sort of two sides to the coin. There are other animals autonomous if they, A, are living under human control. And even if they're not living under human control, some people believe that they need the ability to reason in order to be fully autonomous.
And so they argue that other animals aren't fully autonomous for that reason. But I would argue that that's not the case. And there's certainly arguments like Lori Gruen, for example, in Entangled Empathies, her book Entangled Empathies is a really great read. And Donaldson and Kimlica wrote a book called Zoopolis, which I absolutely love.
And, you know, they'll talk about how other animals absolutely can be autonomous, that they are making decisions about and choices about their lives in a way that matters to them, then they have the ability to be autonomous. And I would argue that our dogs do have the ability to be autonomous, although they're not fully autonomous, because they are, I don't want to say are captives, but they are living in our homes under our control.
And so we design their environment for them, we design the choices that are available to them in many ways. And we micromanage their lives, even things like going to the bathroom, or who they get to play with, and when and where they get to eat, and those kinds of things. So they're not fully autonomous. So I think that that part of the literature was an important piece of the puzzle.
And then talking about things like choice, there's lots of interesting literature about improved optimism for animals who have greater choice, although I do recognize that much of that literature comes from captive animal settings, which is a bit ironic, I think, because they don't truly have choice, but offering them some different choices, definitely improved their positive welfare in those situations.
And so, yeah, I think those were the two main things that I kind of tied together with this idea of consent. And then looking at the literature on consent itself was a bit helpful, but also I wanted to construct it in a way that wasn't human centered. So as I was reading through literature about consent in and of itself, or the idea of informed consent is which what most people think of when they're thinking about consent, it was all very, very specifically human.
And so it made me think more of and and when I was doing my own research, a lot of the roadblocks that I found people faced when thinking about whether consent applied to dogs, was that they were thinking about it in very specifically human terms, like, well, we can't, they can't, you know, read and write. So how could they enter this legally binding contract with us about and consent to these things.
And so I really, I, it took me down the path of well, why can't we then take the perspective of dogs and create a definition of consent that's applicable to their realities and their specific capabilities and abilities.
And so that's, I guess, where I ended up with constructing this and then going down and taking pieces of information from the cognitive behavioral research that's out there about, you know, their experiences and their point of view of the world, or what we talked about in the first podcast about their umbels, about their, their sense, their, how they sense their environment and their unique ability to navigate their environment in a way that's inherently theirs.
And so, obviously, we don't know everything, but there is a great deal that we do know about their abilities and capabilities. And so we can understand about their body language, for example, and that can absolutely mean that there's no reason why a fully functioning adult dog couldn't consent and communicate in their own way, just because they can't communicate the same way that humans do doesn't mean that they can't communicate at all. It just means that we are too dumb to fully understand.
And so that is a limitation for us. And so we have to recognize that we have that bias or that limitation, and therefore try to create one that is something that we that can be a two way communication between dogs and humans that we can understand, and that they can try, they can tell us when they consent or withdraw that consent, and that we can understand those communication signals.
So there's a, it was interesting to bring together so much literature, because I was kind of pulling from all of these different fields of study, which is a really big challenge in and of itself, because each of those different fields of study have their own theories and their own language that they use. And so bringing it all together in a cohesive way, isn't easy. It is what I did in my, my PhD thesis as well.
So I did have a bit of practice with it, but it's, it's definitely a challenge in that you have to kind of bring it together to make it sound like you're not, you know, to make it sound like it, it all fits together. Which is, yeah, it can be really hard, but I think I, I hope I did an alright job with it. Well, I, can I share something with you? Yes. I, I use artificial intelligence and chant GPT a lot for lots of different things. And I like playing with it and exploring things of it.
And some of the terms we used about and talked about, sorry, in part one, human exceptionalism, I wasn't super familiar with. So I like to ask artificial intelligence, like that was a question, which is beneficial for me. And it's embarrassing to share it, but it's like, Hey, take, take this thing that Erin shared and explain it to me like I was a five-year-old. And it like really simplifies things. And, and I really liked there that you said, you are trying to make it all fit together.
Cause this is what chat GPT told me, right. And tell me that Erin has like a toy box. And in this toy box is all of these different jigsaw puzzles. Some are square, some are circle, some are triangle. And it would seem that you can only make these individual jigsaws. But what you're suggesting is that you can take all of the individual jigsaw puzzles and put them together and create something brand new. Yes. I love that.
And, but it's hard, it's hard to conceptualize that doesn't fit together necessarily that easily because it's not something that I had, I just read a book about, you know, dog consent and I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
I had to piece it all together myself, but also like learning about the theories and maybe different social sciences and then behavioral sciences and, you know, animal, animal rights theories and the literature around that, which was a big, definitely a big part of, of my research is, is based on the, those philosophical readings or, you know, those, those theories based in philosophy.
Because I truly think, especially when you're sort of on the dawning of something relatively new or a new concept or a paradigm shift is what I like to think of it as, you know, we've kind of reached this, this place in our understanding of other animals where we can start to, to make this shift into a new way of, of being with them in a similar way that maybe we've done, you know, that we've done in the past with other parallels of oppression that we've experienced.
You know, we kind of get to this point where like, okay, we need to make a shift and it's a process. It's not something that happens overnight, but it's some, and it's not easy. It's not, it's change is very difficult for all of us. And especially when we have to conceptualize something in a new way, when we've been doing it one way for a long time and it seemed to be fine. And it seemed to be fine for us, but it wasn't necessarily fine for the other party.
So I'm hoping that this is a paradigm shift. That's like my aim for everything, I think. And, and so I definitely concede that I do have a lot of questions that may not have answers, but they may never have answers either. They may just be questions that we ask to think about things in a different perspective or a different way. And I think asking those questions, even if they're somewhat rhetorical questions, are a really important part of that process.
And I recognize that it is a process because for me, it's been a lifelong process and I didn't just start here, you know, overnight. It's been a journey for me. And I look back to even what I knew three or four years ago, and I know a lot more now than I did then. And that's always evolving. And that's the same with science, right? We're always coming out with new information that can help us in gaining a better understanding of the way our dogs operate.
And so I definitely say that in my, I think it's my last chapter that, hey, look, you know, this definition is kind of a jumping off point for us. It may change slightly over the years because we are going to get, gather new information, and we're going to glean new information about their abilities that may be important to the way that we interact with them. And we need to embrace that. We can't just resist it.
Even though, you know, just saying the way things we're, you know, the way we're doing things now is the easy way isn't good enough.
Another thing I keep thinking about as you're talking, Erin, is we're acknowledging that the dogs in our lives, the cats, the horses, the pigs, the whatever, the zoo animals, they're captive and they might not be captive in the, and I'm speaking very general here, they might not be captive in the traditional sense of a zoo, but they're in our houses and they're confined within our boundaries and they get fed what they are fed because their humans selected that at the time that the humans
selected it, like this is their world. And I'm thinking, as you're talking about an advertisement piece from a company called Apple, and the ad goes, those who think they're crazy enough to change the world are often those they do and how that can relate to what we do, because for our animals, their world is their captive space and their captive, all the choices we make and all of the restrictions that are placed upon them within that captive space.
So we've got to be crazy enough to think that we can change that world. Because I was so curious, and I didn't know whether to ask it or not, but you answered my question already, as to what is your bigger picture here? How are you trying to change the world? And you said it, you do want the paradigm shift, right? I would love to be able to walk down the street with my dog and people respect her space as much as they respect mine. I don't want them to be petting her.
I feel like everyone has a right to bodily autonomy. You know, I want people to think about the interactions they're having with their dogs at home and, you know, asking them whether they consent to various interactions, whether it's, you know, grooming, or whether it's just cuddling, or whatever that interaction may be. But I mean, I see all over the internet, and I'm sure most of you do too, all kinds of videos where there's so many violations of that happening.
And it's really concerning, to say the very least, I think. And so I think as much as the great thing about the animal training community or the dog training community is that we can be that that medium, we can be that spokesperson for a better communication system with our dogs.
And because we're the ones going into people's homes and helping them with that relationship, and ultimately talking to them about communication and things like, you know, does your dog actually have, you know, fair choices? Or are we forcing choices on them? Are we leveraging our food and attention and love for their obedience and compliance? Or are we offering them lots of opportunity for positive reinforcement?
And are we offering them lots of agency to say yes and no or walk away from a situation? Well, thank you for taking all of the different tricks or puzzles out of the box and trying to put them together and being crazy enough to think that you can change the world. And maybe the crazy piece for everyone listening and for the layman is something you have, and I don't like that I said that, like that sounds judgmental and critical of the average pet owner.
I don't really like that term, layman, but those who, you know, just have different life experiences and don't know what we know and haven't experienced what we've experienced. But I think everyone, once they know better, generally speaking, wants to do better. That's what I mean when I say that. But the piece that we need to be crazy enough about is to be better critical thinkers. Is that resonating? Better critical thinkers and better activists, I think.
And when you say activists, because just for those who didn't listen to part one, can you define that? Yes. So really, I mean, so advocating for their well-being, I think, is putting the dog first. So centering the dog and maybe decentering the human a little bit in that situation.
And that we're saying we need to consider their perspective and their point of view and understand that we're already coming from a position of dominance and that we need to think about, I guess, advocate for our dog's needs and putting those needs first, or at first as much as we can. Because obviously, every relationship has two people or two beings, right? So the dog and the human. And I'm not saying that the human doesn't matter. All I'm saying is that we're already centered in this.
Our needs are already always put first over the dog. There's lots of situations where we can put the dog's needs first and foremost. So thinking about things from a dog first perspective. So I guess as an activist, it just means that we are being the ones to educate the public in a nonjudgmental way, hopefully, in a way that inspires them and empowers them to have a better relationship with their dog. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
And I'm going to acknowledge that we are like 30 minutes in and I haven't even asked you the questions that I told you that I was going to ask you. So I'm going to do that. Okay. Because I do really want to talk about it.
But in saying that, I'm going to say, before I do, you've said that one thing you've done in this book, because if you take the human, and you say this back to me in a more correct way, I butchered this a little bit, but the human definition of consent is something you mentioned earlier involving a contractual agreement.
And so what you've done is you've tried to see things from the dog's perspective and redefine that from that perspective and came up with, is this correct, the canine indexed definition of consent? And can you please describe to everyone what that is? Yes. So the index definition of consent is, again, just consent from the dog's perspective. So considering their ability to communicate and what that looks like.
So I came up with five subcategories for this definition, so that we can kind of think about the various types of interactions that we have with our dogs and how consent may apply in those different situations. So, and again, like, so consent should be about assent and dissent within that interaction. So it's about agreeing, or agreeing to participate, or saying, I don't agree to participate.
And so that can be communicated through either their natural body language that they use in everyday conversations. Or it can be through a learned consent behavior where we teach them that they can have control over what's happening to them by agreeing or offering a consent behavior, sometimes called an opt-in behavior. Or by either saying, I don't consent or withdrawing that consent at any time by teaching them an opt-out behavior or withdrawal behavior.
And I do think that it's very important to mention here that that opt-out behavior should be taught with lots of reinforcement as well. So we want to make sure that that behavior is well learned, as well as the opt-in behavior, so that we're not just sort of leveraging that interaction by saying, if you opt in, I'm going to pay really well. But, you know, they don't maybe necessarily fully understand that opting out is an option for them. And so I see this happen a lot in cooperative care.
And I just think that's an important distinction to make. But to come back to your question about what it means, the indexed definition of consent, the first one is touch or interaction consent. So this is the one that we probably most often think about, which is just those petting interactions. Are they consensual? Or are they not consensual?
Because I think oftentimes we'll see people ignoring their dogs who are saying no thanks, or their dog is just tolerating those interactions, or we're not taking the opportunity to ask if they consent to that interaction. And I think that's a very important, you know, important thing that we can easily teach our clients. And, you know, that we either allow the dog to come to us, we don't go to them. And this is my rule for all dogs. Personally, I, I'm not ever going to be one to not ask first.
I usually almost always let them just come to me if they want that interaction. I may ask on occasion, but that's most often my default. And then things like never approaching them when they're doing something else, because they don't have the proper information or time to process that information to know that that interaction is coming or and to offer that consent, or withdrawal of consent. And then just having an ongoing conversation. I know lots of people like to use the term consent test.
But I like to think of it as this conversation that we're having with our dogs where we might pause just to check in with them, or we might see that they are starting to disengage a little bit and say, Okay, I'm just going to back off. Or, you know, what is it that you're looking for? Maybe you don't want me to touch your ears, but you want me to touch somewhere else. So always having that sort of ongoing conversation. And then the second would be in cooperative care.
So it's my second subcategory. And I think this is, I talked quite a bit about this in the book about, again, like I mentioned earlier about making sure that we're not leveraging that opt in behavior. So it's about teaching a behavior that essentially says they're ready to begin a more invasive hands on procedure.
So it might be things like medical care, like vaccinations, it might be eye drops, it might be grooming or nail trims, it might be, you know, those kinds of anything that's like, maybe something that isn't just petting. And I use it for almost everything with my dog. And we have to also know that we're ready to say, Okay, if you don't want to do this, we'll come back to it another time.
So just knowing that they can or maybe want to not want to participate at that moment, and that we're not leveraging that participation by only offering rewards for participating. But I also actually offer equally enticing things for not participating so that I know that they are genuinely wanting to engage.
And I would say honestly, 95% of the time my dog, regardless of whether I'm using the same treats or not for both interacting or not interacting or consenting or not consenting, she will often she will volunteer to participate because she genuinely enjoys that interaction with me and is comfortable with that interaction. Because she also knows she has the choice to end that interaction at any point that she feels uncomfortable with it.
So lots of I have a list of considerations about ethical considerations when we're doing cooperative care as well, like setup, environment, reinforcement contingencies, those kinds of things that I think are really important to consider to make sure that we are being fair in our in our interactions.
Because I have seen, like I said, lots of times when like videos of people that putting on the internet of people doing cooperative care, but really only the opt-in behaviors learned or a stationing behavior, or a chin rest behavior is learned. But they don't truly have the ability to walk away from that fairly, unless they're feeling uncomfortable, which I don't think is the best. I don't want to wait until my dog is feeling stressed out to opt out. If that makes sense.
The third one is activity consent, which seems a little bit obvious, I think. And it can be but also I think when we're talking about activities, like maybe playing or doing agility or going for a walk, that they are wanting to participate in that interaction. And of course, if they don't want to, it could be indicating that, you know, they're just tired, or maybe they are feeling painful, or whatever the situation, it gives us information, further information that we may want to investigate.
But I think we do need to consider that. Because oftentimes, we are leveraging, again, that interaction, like we have a dog who's maybe obsessed with playing fetch, and we are continually throwing a ball for them. Are they truly, you know, are they feeling that they're compelled to continue that interaction? Because they, I mean, they obviously want to, but is that, you know, is that are they really consent? I guess it's a challenging one for me.
But I think like, I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are if we took that ball away, would they still want to continue playing that game? Or would they go do something else? Right? Are we leveraging that interaction with them, or that activity by offering something that's so enticing that they feel like they can't say no. Then the fourth is consent-based learning. So, I talk a lot about two, kind of two components, I think.
So, one is that obviously, they have the right to walk away from learning interactions, and know that they do. And that we are offering them as much choice and autonomy in those training interactions as we can. So, but also considering that even if we're using positive reinforcement, that we could still potentially be being coercive in that situation, if we again, are leveraging that reward, or that reinforcement.
So, if we're saying, you only get these delicious treats, if you participate in doing this behavior, then we are not offering them a fair choice. Protect, particularly if we're talking about things like deprivation, maybe we withhold their breakfast so that they are, quote unquote, more motivated to perform what we want them to perform.
So, I think we need to be thinking about whether it's truly something they want to be engaged in, or if we're actually coercing them into that situation, regardless of whether we're using something aversive, or something positive. The other thing is teaching them skills in order to communicate consent or withdrawal of consent. So, part of this would be those learned behaviors in cooperative care.
So, teaching them about opting in and opting out, but also just teaching them to communicate successfully. So, they're really, really great at reading our referential signals and understanding our body language in a lot of ways. So, we need to also be able to read their body language and understand their communicative signals in a way that shows them that they are understood. Because I think that what I'm seeing a lot of is dogs, their consent is constantly being violated.
And so, they learn just sort of to be apathetic in those situations, or they just tolerate those interactions. And they're not, they stop communicating. So, I think we need to foster that communication system all the time so that they know that they could use it successfully to communicate their needs and their wants. And then the last one is substitutive consent.
So, my definition of this, and so, I kind of, I think, adapted this from Donaldson and Kim Licka's book, Zoopolis, where they talk about, it's sort of a political animal rights theory of bringing dogs more, or other animals more into our worldview, and considering them as citizens. And in doing so, that they are still dependent on us to a degree.
So, we need to be in the same capacity that we would for perhaps a child or a human who is not able to be fully informed in some situations that we can consent on their behalf. If we're doing that, I think we need to be very mindful and careful about how we're evaluating the choices that we're making and the decisions that we're making.
So, I really think that this is applicable in things like those emergency situations, where we can't necessarily say, hey, you know, Juno, if you have this, if you have this surgery, you're going to live a life that's hopefully pain-free, and you're going to be healthy and happy. If you don't have it, you're going to suffer. I'm going to make that decision for her, because I have that information, and I can use my gift of forethought in order to make her life better.
And so, I'm obviously going to do that. But I can also think about ways of asking for consent as well. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be like everything that happens during that interaction is forced. And it doesn't have to be something that is unpleasant. I think there's lots of ways that we can do things in the least intrusive way possible and prepare them as well. So, just as an example, two years ago, Juno did have a splenectomy, and she was quite ill before that.
And there were lots of tests that we had to do. And I couldn't really say to her, well, she obviously couldn't understand the, you know, the full capacity of what was happening, or why it was happening. But there were lots of things that we could do. She could consent for the injection for her sedation, for example. We could make sure that she was sedated immediately. She could fall asleep listening to music in the car where she was very comfortable.
And she could wake up with me right there as they reversed her sedation. So, there was definitely those things that we could do to lessen the stress that she was experiencing during that interaction. So, just because we're doing something that they might not consent to, or they might, who knows, if they have all of that information, it doesn't mean that we can't be mindful about the way that we're interacting with them in those circumstances that surround the bigger picture. Amazing.
I didn't realise. You go, what were you going to say? I was just going to say that that was the last one. Well, I didn't, again, full disclosure everyone, I haven't read the book yet, didn't realise it was such a comprehensive definition.
So, gratitude for spending the time doing the mahi, as we say here in New Zealand, Erin, doing the work and looking through all the literature, thinking hard, having conversations, no doubt, with lots of different people and putting that together into something accessible for everyone else to get curious about. And that is, do I understand it based on the conversation you and I had when we caught up last week?
One of the outcomes that you're hopeful for in terms of this book is getting that critical thinking, getting questions for people to think about critically, and getting them curious about the topics in your book. And you can't see Erin, everyone, but she's sitting there nodding away. Do you know in the background on the couch, peacefully snoring his head off by the looks of it? Oh, he just looked up as I said that.
And therefore, I think it's a good segue into what are the things you want people to get curious about? I believe you've come up with kind of five main ideas you wanted people to really think and get curious about after reading your book.
Yeah, so I think the first one I had written down was what you just pretty much mentioned was the how we can think more critically about our ethical interactions and what that might look like, and how we can improve, because we're always learning, and we're always gathering new information. And we're always able to improve those interactions. So thinking about how we can be more ethical, and how we ought to be treating our dogs. The second is the topic of human exceptionalism.
So we may not, I don't know, explicitly think, well, yes, I am superior to my dog. But knowing or acknowledging that human exceptionalism is very deep seated in our interactions with dogs, and in just in our understanding of or thinking of other animals, generally, in society, and just understanding that that's part of our inherent makeup, and that understanding it can lessen the bias, I think that we that we have or that we carry. Also, how we can better center dogs in society.
I think as, as our culture expands, and our urbanization grows, and our laws around dogs change, and the population of companion dogs grows, we get more and more restrictive of what they can and cannot do. And that equates to the control that we take over them. And so I think we need to start to think about ways that they can be part of our society, rather than just part of our homes. But part of our whole world view.
And to lead into the next one would be that everyone has the right to bodily autonomy, that it should be our default, that we don't just grope or grab dogs, particularly dogs that we don't know. And I hope that that's adopted by society, more generally.
And I think it's interesting for me in my limited experience with street dogs is that they are they have the ability to interact or not in very, they have a lot of autonomy or agency around that ability to just walk away if someone tries to go and touch them. But our dogs don't, they're literally tied to us, and we will stop and talk to someone and almost offer them up as like, yes, of course you can pet them.
And so they have very diminished agency even, I think even in, you know, Juno's situation where I try to offer her lots of agency, she's still attached to me by a leash. I mean, that's still, you know, her agency is still conditional on my desire to give her that agency. So that's something to think about, I guess. And I guess, how can we have a bigger impact on the well-being of our dogs?
How can we create an environment that considers their perspective and their needs and their desires and evaluating their continually fluctuating motivations? And I just want to see people embrace the natural behaviors that dogs have, and be okay with the fact that dogs can sometimes disagree with us, and that if they growl at us, they're simply communicating with us and telling us perhaps that they don't appreciate what is happening to them in that moment, and that that's okay.
So I think those would probably be my top five, although there's just a lot to choose from. There is, and I could continue this conversation because I'm enjoying it so much, and I feel like we're just scratching the surface of so many different, or rabbit holes are passing by, rabbit holes, whatever the best way to say that would be.
But you listening, if you're still driving and listening to this podcast, I'm no doubt you're getting to the end of your drive, or your dishes are probably pretty clean by now. So I think we've nearly hit an hour, we should think about wrapping up.
And I see a new question, and it's a question that I love to ask all of our guests, but I often come to the end of the podcast episode and realize that the whole episode, and sometimes, and as is the case in this time, both episodes have already answered this question, and that is what you want to see happen in the next five to ten years.
So I'm curious therefore, Erin, and because I've said that to you in advance, and maybe you have something that you would like to share here, and I don't want to say don't share it if you do, you're more than welcome to, but I'm just curious maybe if we can modify that question just a little bit and think about the listeners of this show after having listened to this episode who may or may not have read your book, or maybe they're partway through your book,
but what is it as practitioners going out, and I know we've got a lot of different people that listen to this podcast, but let's say for those who are working with clients in some capacity, what would you like to say to them about your paradigm shift, the change that you're trying to make in this world? What do you want to say to everyone? Well, I mean, that's a good question.
I think that I would love, I love seeing, I should say, I love seeing so many, even if you don't think of yourself in this capacity, that I love seeing so many dog activists in this industry, and I think, first of all, you're doing a fantastic job advocating for the well-being of your dog clients, and to, I guess, continue to think about how you can better engage the human part of this relationship to motivate them to want to embrace these ideas, because it's a very big change to the way they
think about dogs. Perhaps you're somewhere else in this journey of thinking about dogs and the human-dog relationship, but, and everybody's going to, even your clients are going to be at different starting points. However, I do think that very few of them have ever thought about whether their dogs can or should consent, and so if you're just bringing up the idea, it could be a really big, kind of shocking thing for them to take in.
So, I think we need to be mindful that we're breaking it down in a way that shows them how important it is, and how much it will benefit their relationship with their dog, because ultimately, that's what they want, is to have a strong and happy and healthy relationship with their dog, and so I think when we phrase it in that way, that's when we're going to have the biggest impact. That is a perfect place, I feel, to wrap up part two of our conversation.
Thanks so much, Erin, for joining us and sharing all of your insights and from parts from your journey and your knowledge with us. Before you say goodbye, though, just remind everyone listening, please, where they can go to find out more about your work, get in touch, find you on social media, etc. etc. Yes, so my website is meritdogproject.com. You can find my links to my books, as well as articles, podcasts, all of that stuff, and services, etc., or you can find me on Facebook.
It's at Merit Dog Project. Fantastic, and we will, of course, link to all of us in the show notes. So from everyone listening, Erin, and from myself, thank you again. So much gratitude to for hanging out with us here at Animal Training Academy. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've had a great time. And thank you so much for listening, as well. This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off from this episode of the Animal Training Academy podcast show.
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