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 have 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 maximizing 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. We will start today's episode where I will be talking to one Angie Madden.
Angie is a certified Control Unleashed instructor with a career spanning three decades, including roles as a trainer and performer in the Pets Ahoy show at SeaWorld Orlando, and as a carnival keeper at Central Florida in Denver Zoos. These experiences provided her with a solid foundation in the role of enrichment in training and how they play an important role in building strong bonds and healthy development.
Her training philosophy focuses on relationship building and communication, which is why she loves Control Unleashed, which we're going to be talking a lot about today, and uses it with her own animals. After leaving the zoo field, Angie began her dog training career as an intern with the Training and Behavior Center at the Boulder Humane Society in Colorado.
She later resumed teaching classes and started her dog training company, Dogspeak, offering Control Unleashed classes and private training online in the D.C. area. Angie's passionate about spreading the word about Control Unleashed and mentoring young trainers. In her free time, she enjoys gardening, reading, and spending time with her family. So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Angie to the show today, who's patiently waiting by.
Angie, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with us at Animal Training Academy. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited. This is my first podcast. Awesome. Well, I can't wait. And I love that we have similarities in our journeys, starting off in the zoo world and then transitioning more into domestic species and dogs. So we already feel connected to you in that way.
And know that there will probably be things that we've used in a similar light because of that. So I'm excited to hear a little bit more about your story and get your perspectives and insights on things. Let's dive into that, though, Angie. So I was hoping you could take us back, take us back to where you got started, where you first learned about training, positive reinforcement, and share some of your journey with us. So I actually thought I wanted to be a vet.
I worked as a vet tech and realized that I really did not want to be a vet because they very they didn't spend very much time with animals. And it was only sick animals in a building. So then I had to figure out, well, how did I want to work with animals? And I sort of fell into the Pets Ahoy show at SeaWorld because I could not pass the swim test to work with dolphins.
So I did that for a while, but unfortunately, I'm allergic to cats, so I did not last very long because there are 100 cats in that show. And I ended up with eight colds in 10 months. So I found a small zoo in central Florida, Sanford, Florida, and was able to become a zookeeper there.
And I worked with an amazing zookeeper named Rain Westgard, who mentored me and was really passionate about enrichment and taught me really everything I know about enriching an animal's life and how important that is and being creative and thinking outside the box. And allowed me to pursue my interest in training because there really wasn't a strong training program at that zoo.
And I actually had previously had a position at Disney's Animal Kingdom, and I used my connection there to get a meeting with their trainers. So Lisa Davis and Michelle, I cannot think of her last name, but their boss was part of the AZA training course that they did at Disney for five years. And so I was actually able to take that course as well and meet Ken Ramirez and Steve Martin and all of these fabulous trainers.
And after that, I ended up working at Denver Zoo and doing more with training and enrichment, but ended up leaving the zoo field entirely, taking a break to have some kids. And then I did an ABMA conference where I saw Lindsay Wood, now Lindsay Wood Brown, give a talk about helping dogs who resource guard at the shelter, working through that so that these dogs became adoptable. Because obviously dogs who guard their food are not great candidates for adopting out.
And so it was an amazing presentation. I went up and talked to her afterwards, ended up being an intern with them. And that's where I really started my dog training journey and first heard about Control Unleashed. Wow. There's a lot in there, and I'm upset that we only have one episode because I just have so many questions about all of the cool things you've done. Michelle Skursky, is that who you're talking about? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Michelle is amazing.
You can find an episode with her in our back catalogue. No idea what number it is. And you got to spend time at Disney. I mean, that's an amazing institution. And the Pets Ahoy show, I've seen that at SeaWorld in San Diego. It's a pretty, I mean, I was blown away by that show. I was like, oh, what's this? And it just, I love that show. I think it's one of my favorite shows I've seen. Yeah, I'm trying to remember. It's a different name at each one because I was at SeaWorld Orlando.
And then there's one in San Antonio and then the one in San Diego. And they each have a little twist on the show. But I have never been so mentally and physically exhausted as I was during that 10 months doing the Pets Ahoy show. I mean, it is so fast paced. And you're doing five shows a day. And then you also have to do the cleaning and the husbandry and all of that. So it was intense. It was an amazing experience. Yeah, there's just cats and dogs and pigs and rats. Pigeons and yeah, yeah.
And they're all like rescue animals. So not all of them. A lot of the cats and dogs are, but not all of them. They say that they're all rescues, but there are some that he wanted certain breeds. And you don't often find a Harlequin Great Dane or dachshunds at shelters. And they were part of our show. It was part of the setup and the storyline. But yes, most of them were from shelters. And they did adopt some of them out when they were retired from the show, which was really great.
Yeah, well, I want to move on and talk about control and age. But I can't help but ask just at least one question. When you think back to your zoo career and your zoo time, what memory or experience training related sticks out to you? And what did you learn from it? And what do you still from that time, lessons that you still kind of think about regularly and use today? Oh, gosh, that's a hard one.
So I think Florida sticks out more to me because that was really where most of my learning occurred. Like I was a real newbie. I really didn't have any background in training or any of the concepts or any of that. And at the time, we were having some aggression issues between our two Amur leopards. We had a female and male Amur leopard that were housed together. And they were starting to fight when we were coming to feed them. And we had tried all sources, management.
We tried, you know, coming so that they didn't see us so that there wouldn't be that anticipatory. We tried having two different people come so that they were going to separate places. Actually, that was part of the solution. But I did talk to Lisa and Michelle, and they had recommended station training. And so we did start with both of us there. So we had one going to one side and one going to the other.
And from that, I actually wanted to do some squeeze training because, again, with there not being any training program, historically, when they needed to be examined, we would essentially trap them in the squeeze. Like they would have to go through it every day. But on those days, we closed the doors. And so I really wanted to get a voluntary behavior of and I was working with the female Amur leopard. So of having her voluntarily walk in me, closing the doors, opening it back up.
And so that that was a really fun, amazing journey for me because we got to the point where she actually did voluntarily go in. And they were able to do the injection, which which I just I still I'm very proud of that. I know it's such a simple concept and so many people do that, but it was a big deal for me. I know how that feels. I mean, no one can see you. But just just for me to do the repetition of the happy dance you did at that time when you first got the injection.
I'm a person that like talks with my body and my hands. So I do a lot of movement if I'm I'm feeling the moment. I can appreciate how good that would have felt at a time, especially just kind of starting to get into training. That's what a sensationally beautiful, majestic, gorgeous species to have the privilege to be working with. That's cool. So you meet the amazing Lindsay Wood Brown, who we know and love here at Animal Training Academy.
And she opened your opportunities into some different spaces and shared some knowledge with you that inspired you to move forward. And then at some point you said you found Control Unleashed. Now, I'm going to talk about Control Unleashed today, but there's going to be people who are listening to this podcast episode that have no idea what we're talking about. So can we just get started by sharing with people what Control Unleashed is?
Share a little bit more about your journey getting into Control Unleashed and why it kind of hooked you. So Control Unleashed is an amazing program that was developed by Leslie McDevitt. She has three books out. The first book she wrote to basically share with others the techniques that she had developed working with dogs who were in agility and were struggling in that environment.
Either they were reactive with other dogs or they were so excited that they were not able to focus in that environment. And she had developed techniques that worked really well for this type of dog in that environment. After that book, she released a second book that was called The Puppy Program, which was basically designed to how would you raise a dog to hopefully not have those issues develop in the first place? So how does she work with her dogs, raise her puppies?
And so it took it a step further. And then by the third book, she had really established those pattern games that are so well known. And that was the Control Unleashed Reactive to Relaxed book, which has the most up to date information. And I really like to think of it as creating a repertoire of socially appropriate behaviors for a dog to be able to interact with their person and others. So Leslie has said that she likes to be a lazy trainer.
She doesn't want to have to tell her dogs what to do at all times, you know, in different situations. And this program essentially helps your dog learn to make good choices. There are lots of context cues that tell them what is appropriate at this point in time in this particular environment. And so that's a big piece of it. And then the other piece of it that I love and was mentioned in the bio is the conversational aspect. It's really a two way conversation.
It's not just about you telling the dog what to do. It's about you two communicating and listening to what the other is expressing, really responding to your dog. My favorite Control Unleashed quote is Control Unleashed students never fail. They just change criteria. I like to tell my students that there are no wrong answers in Control Unleashed. If you ask a question like, can you do this? Can you do this pattern right now?
And if the answer is no, that's data that tells us that we need to change something. Is the dog just fried for the day? Do we need to take a break? Is it that the environment is too difficult? Did we increase criteria too quickly? So everything is a question. And it really is that mindset that is really powerful for people just getting into Control Unleashed and sort of reframing the picture of what does training look like?
And it really focuses on a topic that is really important and really becoming more widespread and people are becoming more aware of it. But agency, agency for the dog. And so all of those things are what really make it powerful and what I really love about it. So we've got three books, which if you, the listener, want to learn more, then you can already go and find those books online. They're called the Control Unleashed series. And you talked about loving this conversation part of it.
But can you tell us more about what's involved in Control Unleashed? When they buy the books, what kind of, what are they going to find inside? Yeah, absolutely. I like to break it down into foundation behaviors and pattern games. The foundation side is both teaching dogs how to be calm and relaxed because some dogs really don't know how to do that. They sort of ramp up and they don't know how to come back down. Or they're never really at that baseline of full relaxation.
So it's a combination of that and really building engagement with their person. So those are the two things that I tend to think of. So exercises like mat work help to build that relaxation. Exercises like whiplash turn, where the dog is learning to disengage from the environment and engage with their person. There's a lot of that in that foundation part where it's really about the dog engaging with their person, being able to disengage with what's going on around them.
And then at that point, once we've established that baseline, that foundation, then we start to build in the pattern games. And pattern games are a predictable, repetitive framework that basically allows you to bring the familiar into the unfamiliar. So your dog is able to recognize that pattern. It gives them a structure, a bit more support so that they're able to feel more comfortable. They're also able to predict what's going to happen next.
And that is very helpful for both a dog that's anxious, helping them feel better, or a dog that struggles with focusing. Putting that framework or that support on there helps them to be able to be a bit more mindful. Amazing. And we're going to talk about one of the patterns in depth soon. I love that. What I love about patterns is that predictability.
And we're talking about constructs here, but I'm assuming makes an individual learner, whether it's a dog or whatever other species that you're implementing Leslie's patterns with. And what she teaches in her books is it provides a little bit of control in the situation. You could say that it unleashes control for some of them. So I love Leslie's creativity and how that all ties back into the titles of her book. Leslie's passionate about sharing, and as are you, right?
The information here, which leads me to something that I'm really excited to share with you, the listener. You've got so many opportunities to learn about control unleashing, about these patterns. You've got the books. You can become, you are a CCUI. Can you explain what that is? So CCUI is an acronym for Certified Control Unleashed Instructor. There is a program that you can go through to get certified through Clean Run. There is a application on there.
So any trainer who is interested in becoming a certified trainer can go to cleanrun.com and find information about the certification program. And I'm actually one of the mentors in that program. Amazing. Well, we will link to all of this stuff. So you, the listener, if you're interested, you can obviously just Google it. But if you go to the podcast notes, we'll have it all there for you. And also, Leslie's been, I mean, she's got kids.
I don't know how she finds time for all of this, but she's also putting together a conference, which is happening soon. It's called the Control Unleashed Conference. Its title this year, because it's been run in the past, is called Unleash the Rainbow. Can you share with the listeners a little bit about this exciting event, Angie? Absolutely. So it is called Unleash the Rainbow because it is a mashup of the Resilience Rainbow and Control Unleashed. And those two really go hand in hand.
Resilience is essentially having the ability to bounce back, being able to handle stress, being able to adjust to changing situations. And Control Unleashed really helps a dog to build that resiliency. And that is the main focus of the Resiliency Rainbow. So we are very excited to have those two things come together. And in this conference, Leslie has handpicked 17 fabulous speakers, each with their own experiences.
And we will be talking about things from reactive and aggressive dogs to dogs in sports competition, to service dog training, to prison dog programs, to how does the average pet parent take these games and apply them to their particular needs? How do you tailor it? And so there's going to be a lot of great information. And also, this is the first time that we will be having the conference live and not just online. So we will have, I believe, 27 working teams that will be doing workshops there.
Wow, 27 working teams. That's amazing. Looking at the lineup here now, you've got some amazing people speaking. I've got to give a shout out to Lorenzo Fox first. Got Hannah Brannigan in there, Jessica Hickman, Sarah Owings, Leslie McDivitt. You, I mean, there is a host of amazing, skilled, knowledgeable, experienced people to learn from in this space. How do people, where do people go to learn out more? How do we get involved? When is this happening?
So if you want to find out more information, you can go to UnleashTheRainbow.com and all of the information about the conference is there. It is taking place July 12th through 14th, and it is at the Clean Run facility in Massachusetts. And online as well for those who live down the bottom of the planet like myself. And on the homepage, I see there's a couple of buttons so you can head to the homepage, click on those and get registered for 17 instructors and three days worth of geekiness.
Would that be a good way to sum it up? Absolutely. And you, the listener, are lucky because we have one of the presenters right here on the podcast with me now. Angie, you are doing two workshops and one presentation, I believe? That is correct. I am doing a workshop on take a breath, which is, you would think it is a very simple concept, but a lot of people have difficulty with actually implementing this. And I think especially trainers feel like, oh, my gosh, this is such a simple idea.
Why can't I do this? Why is this so hard for me? And so we're going to be doing a workshop on that because having taught many, many, many Control Unleashed classes, you are not alone. This is something that a lot of people struggle with. And so I'm very excited to be doing that live with some teams. And then I will also be doing a workshop on RAT, which is an acronym for Requested Approach Training.
And this is a protocol that utilizes start buttons to essentially give a dog control over movement, whether it is their movement in approaching something or something else approaching them. And so, again, having that agency and control helps them to feel a lot more comfortable. And so it is something that we use a lot with dogs who maybe are people reactive or struggle with visitors coming into the home or those types of situations.
And it really helps them to feel more comfortable and have us to work through that. Let's talk about this a little bit more. And we're going to talk about I'm really interested to talk about your presentation. These are your two workshops you're going to do. And then you've got this presentation, which I think is really interesting. Let's talk about Take a Breath. For those listening who don't know what you're talking about, I mean, it is what is written on the can.
But let's unpack what Take a Breath is, how someone would go about implementing training, teaching Take a Breath with their learner, dog or other species. And what's your workshop going to look like? How are you going to set that up? What can people expect if they watch that live or attend in person? Take a Breath is what we refer to or what we call Dr. Karen Overall's biofeedback protocol.
And so it is essentially having a dog be able to take a deep breath on cue with the goal of triggering the parasympathetic nervous system. So there is a physiological response to deep breathing. That's why yoga and meditation and all of those things actually focus on your breath, because you can change the physiology going on inside just by taking a nice deep inhale and a nice slow exhale. So that is our goal in teaching this to the dog and essentially being able to put that skill on cue.
How we go about that, there are essentially two different ways that you can approach getting your dog to take a deep breath. The first is modeling the behavior. So the person takes a deep breath and then feeds the dog on the exhale. We're essentially trying to get the dog to mimic that behavior. That's the one that I normally start with. And that is probably what I will be doing in the workshop.
Because when people go to the second method, which is getting the dog to air scent, what often happens is you get a person staring intently at the dog's nose. And especially if this dog is a trainer, like they've done a lot of training. They know that this person wants them to do something, but they have no idea what it is. And so you end up with a dog that's essentially either taking really shallow breaths or almost holding their breath.
And so it becomes really impossible to see that deep breathing. And so I really like to take that pressure off the person and the dog. Have them start with modeling deep breathing. Have them feeling that sensation of calm and have that pass through to the dog. And then really observe the dog's overall behavior. Are they starting to see signs of relaxation? If the dog was standing, do they sit? If they were sitting, do they lie down?
If they were lying down in a sphinx position, do they shift over to one hip? Does the tail slow down? Do the eyes get blinky? So really watching for that overall relaxation, taking the pressure off, watching the dog's nose and trying to see a nostril flare. And then once they see what that whole picture looks like, are they able to identify something where they can see when their dog is taking that nice deep inhale?
And then at that point, we can sort of backtrack, figure out what is cueing that, and then put it on cue. Beautiful. So thank you for explaining all of that and the reasons why you might train it one way or the other. And credit to, as you said, Dr. Karen O'Rourke. What's she called? Biomechanical feedback. What's it called from here? Biofeedback. Biofeedback.
So you listened to this, and maybe you haven't heard of specifically getting this behavior on cue before with your species, whatever it is. And can you share with those listening where you might then leverage this behavior in a real-life situation? And maybe share with us one of your favorite real-life uses of this behavior. Yeah, absolutely. We use this behavior both as a check -in.
So essentially, in one of the books, Leslie says the first step in any training session is, can your dog take a deep breath? Because if the answer to that question is no, then you're not moving forward because they are obviously not where they need to be for training to occur. So we do it both as a check -in and then also as essentially a decompression exercise.
So if we think about a dog that maybe has a history of reactive behavior, being able to cue them to take a deep breath when they are in the presence of a trigger would be a very helpful skill and tool to have in your tool belt. My personal favorite is when the light bulb sort of goes off and the dog realizes that they are essentially getting fed for breathing. And they start like really emphasizing, like they want you to really see them breathe.
And at some point, they make the connection that feeling calm and relaxed and the feelings that this triggers feel a lot better than that high level of anxiety or arousal. And the dog actually does it on their own. So they're in a particularly intense situation and you see them sort of go, that is my personal favorite.
And that's really true with a lot of the Control Unleashed concepts is there is an ability for the dog to essentially start the conversation or utilize these exercises and initiate them themselves. And when they do that, you really know that you have succeeded in your goal of they understand this concept. They can do it. That is very cool. Thank you for sharing all of it. I love that sharing about the learner choosing to do this skill now on their own.
And makes me think that learning new cues just from their environment to do this behavior. Absolutely. Let's talk about dogs. Let's talk about rats. I was going to say there are CCUIs that have rats and have done Control Unleashed training with them. Absolutely. Leslie shared a video of me the other day of a mouse and I think a German shepherd doing voluntary sharing, which is another pattern we're not going to go into right now. I don't know if you've seen that one. I haven't.
Can you remind us again? I know we've mentioned it earlier, but what rat is and just go through the same explanation that you did of take a breath, how you would train this and share some real life applications of it and some of your favorites. Absolutely. So rat stands for requested approach training. And just a little insight into Leslie. She named it that specifically because it goes with lat and bat and cat. And that is her sense of humor.
So rat is a what I refer to as a cooperative counter conditioning protocol, where it's essentially putting the dog in control of their own counter conditioning. So changing how the dog feels about a particular procedure and situation. In this protocol, we start off by establishing a start button.
So for those who have maybe not heard that term before, a start button is a particular behavior that the dog performs to essentially say, yes, a certain procedure can be done or you can start a procedure. Within the context of rat, the dog would perform this behavior and that would then tell either the person that they could approach the dog or reverse of that.
You can have a protocol where the dog is essentially saying move forward, like move forward with me, take me toward something or someone. So my example that I actually used for my certification was my dog Piper did not like the fly zapper. And the second that I picked it up, she would leave the room. So I did this with her and my daughter as my helper. So I had taught Piper a chin rest. That was her start button behavior.
Chin rest is a duration behavior in that there is a starting point and the dog can hold it and a stopping point. I really like duration start buttons for this because it essentially gives the dog an option to opt out or to say stop in the middle of the procedure versus a behavior that is a one and done. And as soon as the procedure starts, they really can't opt out other than to get up and leave. And we really don't want them to get so uncomfortable that they get up and leave.
So getting back to that example, I put up some cones for my daughter. Piper did her chin rest on my leg. I told my daughter to come forward with the cone. She was holding the fly zapper. She was able to come up within a couple feet. Piper was fine with that. Then I had her go back to the beginning, and eventually we started adding in some movement with the fly zapper. I have done this with my younger dog with the broom because he does not like that.
So same sort of concept, approaching with the broom, approaching with the broom and sweeping. So you can utilize it for those types of things or, as I mentioned previously, dogs who are uncomfortable with strangers or having people approach them. It can be a person coming towards them. The flip side with the dog movement, there are a couple examples there. So one of the other speakers at this conference was actually my partner speaker at the first conference, and we both did this topic.
And her dog, Flash, she used the barbell that he would have in his mouth. That was essentially his duration behavior. As long as he had that in his mouth, it meant that they would move forward. And if he dropped it, then that would mean stop the movement. And she utilized this for agility, and that was why Leslie decided to have her talk about it because both of us had sort of taken this protocol and tailored it. And so she thought that was really great. So I am very passionate about it.
I love teaching it, and I'm very excited to do a workshop about it. And so how's the workshop going to work? Are you talking to the people that are going to be in your workshop in advance and being like, what is your learner maybe wary of, or are you just going to get them up and just improvise in the moment based on trying to provide those opportunities in the workshop? So my plan is to improvise.
I kind of like doing it on the fly, and I did not even put in any prerequisites so they do not have to have a duration behavior because you can do this with a one and done. We're probably not going to be incorporating something specific that the dog is uncomfortable with in the sense of it'll most likely just be either the dog moving or a person moving. We're not going to be adding anything into it. But I want to see what behaviors the dog tends to offer.
So again, going back to the example with the broom, my dog Obi-Wan offers his paws all the time because historically he has learned that offering his paw makes things happen. So I, in a single session, turned that into a start button that meant that my husband was going to approach with the broom.
So if we have a dog that offers a specific behavior, I'm planning on having a lot of fun turning that into a start button and sort of showing people how you can utilize this and very quickly create a start button and then utilize that for requested approach training. Awesome. Well, that sounds like so much fun. Looking at the time, I do really, really, really want to talk about your presentations. So these are workshops. You're going to have teams there where you're in person.
If those who are joining online, they will be able to watch all of us via the live stream. And then you're doing one presentation and your presentation is called, tell me if I got this right, Unleash Resilient Thinking. Correct. Yes. So you've kind of taken the Resilience Rainbow and the Control Unleashed and you thought about it and you come up with this. Can you walk us through what this means? What is this presentation going to be about? What people expect from that one?
Yes. So Leslie wanted each talk to have a resiliency theme. And because I work with a lot of, I'm going to say average pet parents, so not necessarily. I do work with other trainers, but I also work with a lot of people that just adopted a family dog. And even trainers sometimes struggle with, OK, I've learned these concepts. I know how to do the up-down pattern game. I know how to do one, two, three walking, which is another pattern game. I've taught my dog the mat. Now what?
How do I take these tools and use them to get my dog to stop barking at dogs passing by the window or to stop fence fighting or to be comfortable with visitors in the home? And so I'm essentially going to be attempting to help people tailor to their own specific needs. So if I have this particular issue that I would like to work through, what are the steps that I would go through when I'm either creating a training plan or working with somebody? How would I design this plan?
And also the resilient thinking is how do we adjust that plan? So if things don't go the way that I thought they were going to, how can I change this? How can we adjust to set our learner up for success? And we do a lot of that in Control Unleashed.
Going back to that quote about changing criteria, if the dog is essentially saying no or struggling with something, then we have different tools that we utilize to make it easier for the dog, create more structure, create more distance or add some barriers, something that changes how we do the setup so that the dog is able to be successful.
So the problem that some people have is, tell me if I was right, and kind of what this presentation is aiming towards addressing is that you can listen to this podcast or you can read Control Unleashed or you can attend the conference or do the CCUI program, which is going to obviously be a very deep dive.
So you're going to learn a lot there, but you then have to take this knowledge and this new skill set and apply it to a large, I mean, we all know who listens to this podcast, the uniqueness of each individual learner and context with which that learner behaves. So it's just never ending, the complexity and the variation that you come across in our roles, which makes it so much fun doing what we do.
But this is about kind of going, OK, cool, what kind of thinking do we need to be successful in applying this knowledge across the large variety that we're going to find? Yeah, yeah. And really not necessarily saying this is the formula or this is the recipe. If you have a dog that jumps, you should do this, this, this and this. But more, what are we looking at in the overall picture? What is the end goal that we're trying to achieve?
And how do we break that down and take these tools and use them to get to our end point? So do I want a walking pattern? Do I want a stationary pattern? Do I want to, you know, do I need mat work for this? Or, you know, how do I sort of bring it in and tailor it to that specific dog, that specific person and that specific environment? And that is one of the core concepts of Control Unleashed. It really is meant to be fluid and flexible.
It's not going to look the same when I am using a pattern necessarily than when somebody else is using it because we are able to tailor it to that particular situation or that particular dog that's in front of us. This challenge isn't unique to Control Unleashed. It's people who learn, people being your average pen owner who learn skills and you're the listeners, dog classes and then have to go out and apply that in the real world. So what, this is about, how would you describe it?
Is it about building confidence in yourself? Is it about thinking outside the box? Is it about having the right questions to ask at the right time? Is it something completely different? Is it all of those things? I would say definitely the thinking outside the box and asking the right questions probably hit the right notes.
I was thinking of it as, so there is a Facebook group called Leslie's Friends of Control Unleashed where we have people who essentially write in and say, this is the issue that I'm having. What would you suggest? How should I approach this? And as we were talking about, okay, what topics do you want to see at the conference? A lot of people were putting in things like, how do you deal with car anxiety? How do you deal with this issue?
And so it was, it sort of started off like, okay, well, I could address that. And like, this is how, you know, you could go through and work on that. But it, because there were so many different things and also Leslie, you know, made the point, well, it's not, it isn't a recipe. It isn't, this is what you do to deal with that particular issue. It seemed to make more sense and be a better idea to talk about more of an overall structure.
So if you trying to figure out how to do this, how to, what would be a great analogy for this? It's not, if we're talking about a recipe, it's not the specific ingredients and how long you're going to bake it or how you're going to mix it together. But it's how would you create that recipe for the goal that you're looking for? Sorry, I probably just made that even more confusing. No, no, I understand what you mean.
It's like the other day, I'm not a cook, so, or I can cook things, but I wouldn't label myself as very skilled, knowledgeable or effective. Don't eat my food, people. The other day I was like, I'm going to make a soup. So I just downed things in the cupboard. I made this big brown glob that looked like poo. And it's a running joke in my family now. And I had to throw it away.
So I didn't have the skill to know what ingredients go well together and how to use what was in front of me to make something edible. Yes, that was a much better way of saying the analogy. Thank you. In other words, I became a better soup maker because I learned how to not make soup. I'm never going to put that many lentils in a soup again. That was a mistake. That sounds amazing.
So if you want to watch these, so they are three of the, let me have a look on the website, three of the 27 sessions that are going to be available. And those three sessions in and of themselves would be worth checking out. Remind everyone what they have to do to see you in action and the other 24 presentations and workshops that are going to be part of this Unleash the Rainbow event. So go to unleashtherainbow.com. You can register on, click the button to register on the homepage.
And all of the information about the conference, the speakers, the schedule, everything is on there. Cool. And so when you, when you hit the, like, if you're like me, the first thing you're going to do is click the program button and then you're going to see all of these things. And then you're going to have to figure out how to register. So as Angie said, what you want to do is head to the homepage and all of the information is there. Click the cute rainbow picture, I think, in the top.
Oh no, that doesn't work. Click the home button and that'll take you back there. Hey, Angie, this has been incredibly fun. We are going to head towards the end of this episode now, but I'd like to ask you the question that we've been asking for seven years and we ask everyone that comes on this show. And you've got a unique vantage point to offer perspective and insight on this based on your time in the industry.
You also work with many human learners and you're a controller unleashed and you're doing all of this stuff. What do you really want to see in our industry over the next five to 10 years? Where do you see us going as an amazing positive reinforcement controller unleashed community? So I'm actually going to take it more for the person side of the equation as opposed to the actual training. I would love to see less infighting and more the same way that we approach positive reinforcement training.
I would love to see that and how we interact with each other, less fighting online, more working towards the same goals. And I would also love to see a continuation of what we were trying to do with really increasing diversity in the industry. And not just having more diverse trainers, but having that diversity be represented in terms of the voices that we hear as speakers at conferences and all of those things. And really, really utilize what that diversity brings.
It makes me think that you're a great person with your presentation to help create some ripples in the space. Because what I think you're saying, tell me if I'm wrong, that's what I'm hearing, is we need to take our skills and our knowledge and our experience with dogs or whatever species you're working with. And then we need to generalize those to another species that is our peers and our colleagues and ourselves as well.
And our children and our husbands and our wives and our managers and our peers. So that kind of ties into, I think, your presentation. Yeah. And I love that you threw in ourselves, because I think we all tend to be hard on ourselves. We're in this industry because we're passionate about it. We're not in it for money. And so I think a lot of us, because we have that passion, it's really hard to maintain that work-life balance. And a lot of us deal with imposter syndrome.
And so just giving ourselves that same grace, I think that was a really good point that you added in there. Yeah. And you're not alone out there. Angie, do you yourself deal with imposter syndrome? Absolutely. I feel it here. Now, who am I to be talking about this stuff to these amazing people that are your listeners? Yeah. And you're an amazing person and everyone knows that.
And I just asked you not to put you on the spot, but I just feel like it's helpful to know if you're listening, feeling like that, you're not alone. Now, obviously, you got kids, you got to make money yourself. So you got your own business, you got your own stuff going on. Do you want to tell the listeners of the show what your normal day looks like, what your normal week, what your role is, what your business is, and where they can go to find out more about you and your business as well?
I would love to. So my business is Dogspeak. And my website is dogspeakllc.com. And I do both online training classes and private online training. And I also do both of those in the D.C. suburb area. So I will be doing some classes through Clean Run. So if people want to learn about Control Unleashed, I do essentially a Control Unleashed overview class through Clean Run. And I do some of that through another local facility that I do online classes for those that are not local.
But if you are in the D.C. area, I would love to have you take a class with me or reach out, especially if you're a trainer who is interested in learning more about Control Unleashed. As mentioned previously, I love working with other trainers and teaching them this program and spreading the word far and wide. Even though the in-person spots are filled, Monica was considering maybe getting some additional space so we could add additional in-person spots.
And so we want people who are interested in going in person, but who couldn't register to join the waitlist. So she can see how many people are actually like would actually sign up to be in person. And is it worth pursuing that? Amazing. Well, we will link to your stuff as well as the Control Unleashed stuff in this podcast. So what's your dog speak LLC.com? Was it? Yes. Perfect. So if you're in the D.C. area, go check that out. Or if you're in the Earth area, go check out the online options.
Well, this has been so much fun, Angie. I'm glad that we did this. Everyone, we threw this together in the last 24 hours based on some scheduling challenges with. Anyway, I won't go into details, but Angie, just jump straight in here with me. And I'm really glad we did, because I've had a great time learning and getting to know you and forming this new connection in the industry. So from myself and on behalf of everyone listening, thank you.
We really appreciate you taking the time to come and hang out with us. Well, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it as well, and I'm always happy to make new connections because it can feel very isolating. 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. We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox.
Remember, every challenge in training is an opportunity to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery. Embrace the rough patches, learn from them and keep improving. And don't forget, the path to growing your skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this episode. Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive membership, where you will find a community of trainers just like you. Together, we're making a huge positive difference in the lives of animal and human learners worldwide.
Until next time, keep honing your skills. Stay awesome. And remember, every interaction with an animal or human learner is your opportunity to create ripples. We're here cheering you on every step of the way. See you at the next episode.