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'm thrilled to welcome back to the ATA podcast for part two of our conversation the awesome Debbie Martin.
Now if you haven't listened to the first part of our conversation you can find it as the previous episode on whatever app you're listening to this show on. In that episode we explored Debbie's journey and getting started with positive reinforcement animal training all the way up to what she's doing now in that 2024. It's definitely worth a listen. However if you haven't listened to it yet you are of course welcome just to stay here with us for part two.
We will still gain plenty of insights to help you grow your skills, knowledge and confidence in animal training. So let's dive in. Our guest Debbie Martin is a licensed veterinary technician in Texas USA and one of only 30 veterinary technician specialists in behavior. She's also a Karen Prior Academy certified training partner and faculty emeritus. Debbie has been a full-time registered and licensed veterinary technician since 1996 and she spent 14 years in private practice.
Since 2005 she has been in the animal behavior technician for veterinary behavior consultations LLC. She owns team education in animal behavior and Debbie Martin animal behavior and coaching. Additionally Debbie is a contributing author and co -editor of the textbook canine and feline behavior for veterinary technicians and nurses second edition. Alongside Dr. Martin she co-afforded puppy start right foundation training for the companion dog.
Her extensive experience in both general practice and behavior specialty fuels her passion for a team approach to behavior preventative behavior medicine and the fear free initiative and she's honored to be a subject matter expert for fear free and fear free happy homes. Debbie thank you so much for coming back to hang out with us again on the animal training Academy podcast show. Ryan it's great to be here always good to have a conversation with you.
I'm looking forward to this one because Debbie in many parts of the world if not all animal training is pretty unregulated industry. This means anyone can call themselves a trainer this leads to a lot of unknowledgeable and unskilled individuals offering advice that can both be bad and in some situations dangerous and unfortunately this can often result in the end users the animals suffering which is pretty upsetting and it simply is not right.
You've been in the field for nearly three decades now and you've had incredible career as we talked about in part one.
So much you've done so much in your career we couldn't even fit it into a single episode I had so many questions at the end and as you mentioned in part one you've undoubtedly seen both the good and the bad throughout this time and this makes you the perfect person to share with the listeners of this show how they can be as effective as possible with the resources they have in spreading the message about positive reinforcement focused training and listeners I'm thrilled to share
that Debbie's put together some thoughts on this five ways that we as a community can ensure that our message reaches as many people as possible in an accessible way. Debbie can we get started on these five ideas with idea number one.
Yeah well I'm going to preface this by this is just my opinion and I was hoping you guys would come up with like what are the five ways that we can actually make this happen because I don't know that I actually have them but when I think about bringing a community together and trying to spread a message and have people be open to that information these are just some things that came to mind.
So the first one was really about collaborating so collaborating with fellow trainers that have somewhat of the same mindset but not necessarily right like I think that it gets it gets tricky if we're not careful but I think a reminder that regardless of how we train it's all on a spectrum and we all love animals and so that love of animals the thing that we think that we are helping even if some of the information we have may be faulty it's just a reminder
to have empathy for other people that are still along their journey and a reminder that the techniques that maybe I don't that I choose not to use can still be effective in changing behavior otherwise they wouldn't continue to be utilized and so do I realistically think that we will have a world where the only way that animals are trained is with positive reinforcement?
I don't I don't believe that is actually possible like I I mean I remember hearing Ken Ramirez talk about how you know he gave this presentation he was overseas somewhere and some of the trainers came to him afterwards and said you know you're asking us to be kinder to the animals then our bosses are to us you know like right you know and that's true you know if if we aren't applying these same concepts with all species are like are we really positive reinforcement
trainers and then it's a whole like whole balloon we can get totally get off topic on that but step one with collaboration so working together like what you're doing with ATA you're bringing lots of professionals together and letting them have a voice you're like I'm here on your podcast talking about the things that I'm doing and what I'm passionate about and so that collaboration helps spread that message it gets that information to other people it instead of it just being a local area that
we can have an effect and and certainly because of the internet I mean like this is amazing right Ryan you're it's early morning for you in New Zealand why we're recording this and for me it's you know early evening and the day before you in Texas and so the fact that we can we have this cool tool where we can network and collaborate together instead of trying to do everything ourselves I think that that's important so finding ways to collaborate with each other and
I'll give just an example like we have the puppy start right for instructors course that's available through care and prayer Academy and that launched in 2012 well it's it's about teaching group puppy socialization classes so guess what happened in 2020 when the pandemic hit and no group classes were happening you know nobody was able to teach puppy classes so but there were still puppies in this world and a lot of people were getting puppies actually because now they had the time to have them
and and a friend and also colleague Rose Brown who's in st.
John's Newfoundland she was teaching group classes and she developed a online program to teach the puppy start right course their puppy start right preschool online so she could continue helping pet owners with their young puppies and providing them the skills and the resources that they needed and and she also learned like hey gosh they were actually getting a lot more out of this without having to distract me pay attention to their puppy and take care of
their puppy in this group setting that was really so distracting for them that the information and coaching them through zoom online sessions as a group they could learn from each other but they could also really take in a lot more information and so she is now developed it into more of a hybrid class where a lot of the learning still happens online so she can reach people that aren't even local to her but then she has optional dropping classes for these puppies so they
can be coached through some of the experiences like the handling and stuff so because of that I knew she was doing this I even attended with my dog chip who is a border terrier he was a puppy that I got in 2021 and attended her online puppy start right preschool class and so I encouraged her I said like we should put this out there for other people to have access to so we did create a supplement to the puppy start right for instructors course their original course that people who have taken
that can also take this online program that provides them with a curriculum that is blended that allows them to teach online if they want to and also teach in person so bringing her in to do that instead of it wasn't something I was specializing in at the time so why would I write it you know she was the expert in it so let's have Rose write it and and have her bring this program to other people and we did well we should get Rose on the podcast yeah yeah you should have
Rose on the podcast I think you already have that in the works from what I hear what a coincidence collaborating and you talked about and something we talked about and in part one was how you'd gain insights from people that live in this world that we live in and that is that not the one where everyone in the world is going to use positive reinforcement I liked your perspective on that it was refreshing I think because it's true and it's helpful to live in
to remember that like yeah we're not all gonna have the same opinions about everything you know like if there's one perspective there's got to be an opposite perspective everyone sees things differently and and we the I remember Karen Pryor telling me or telling maybe it was a room full of people actually but I felt like she told me but that you you provide that information to people who want it if they are not ready for it you shoving it down their throat isn't gonna
make them more ready for it so there has to be this two-way conversation for information to be shared and so you know I'm really collaborating with each other I think it's the first step recognizing others that are doing things and and I guess that's the second step now I'm getting into actually my second step which is promoting what others are doing you know and and you're doing that as well with this podcast just having different experts in the field on and talking about
what they're doing even if even if it is in direct competition with you I mean certainly like I mean we all have had a little bit of this like you know because we I have the puppy start right book I've seen other puppy books and I'm like who are they to be writing about oh wait okay I'm judging like I'm sure they have great information to like who was I to write the book years ago like I was fairly new on my journey but there's always that feeling of I think earlier
in your career you have this feeling of I've got it I know a lot and then as I get older I keep feeling like there's so much more to learn which is a good thing like it used to be just tell me what I need to know cuz I need to have all the right answers and now I'm like I'll never have all the right answers and we're always gonna keep learning and that's exciting so yeah so step two of getting that information out to the masses about positive reinforcement is promoting
what others are doing and instead of just self promotion really trying to let other people know about awesome things you've read or seen or even just on social media sharing something that maybe you don't have all the information but it looks pretty good you know like sometimes you can get burned on that but as long as you have an idea of the person and their methodology like share it promote it even like I said even if it's a little bit in competition with what
you're doing because we can't be everything to everyone and that's important to realize as well is that a client that finds me I may or may not be a good fit for them and it might be another person in the area or even remotely that would be a better fit for that person that they connect with or feel more comfortable with or have better communication with so just realizing that that is going to happen and so we can promote each other and I love this we have a group here in Austin
called every dog it's a nonprofit organization and their focus is on making sure that training is affordable and accessible to everyone and they give out a lot of scholarships to pet owners through like every year through donations and through money that comes in through people taking their classes and stuff but they have lots of scholarships that they give out they even give money to people to go see a veterinary behaviorist if there's a behavior issue that
needs to be addressed and they have become the place to go to to find out where you need to go right they want to be that resource in this area like hey if I want to work on service dog training who should I contact and so the Miranda workman who is with with the company she has a list of people but she can that she trusts that she can send people to regardless you know like different areas of town whatever specialty they're looking for so I love that she is doing that
and really trying to promote all the positive reinforcement groups and and businesses in our area and and then she also does free webinars that are available online all the time like what several a month that are accessible to anyone and it mainly geared towards pet owners I just did one for them on noise sensitivities and dogs and so it was actually pretty popular because yeah and our part of the world right now it's summer and there's lots of thunderstorms and that tends to be
an issue and we have fireworks coming up for July 4th so promoting what others are doing was another idea I had what are you what do you think Ryan like the first two do those hit well with you collaborating and then promoting with others yeah well I have a question that might that your first two have made me think about might take us down a side road let's see where we go but I love one reason I love this podcast shows I get to talk to you and I get to talk to Ken and I get to talk to
Michelle Julio and I get to talk to all of our biggest and people that have been in the game for decades the game being animal training and behavior related stuff and thinking about the podcast and promoting others and sharing other stories which I which I love doing I love learning about other people's stories and then you sit there that maybe you can just share something on social media but maybe you will get burned and thinking about community and thinking about collaboration and and recently
we we had a subject matter experts table media and this is recently we had a subject matter expert join us in animal training Academy and they were they were a subject matter expert on messaging on how we can use messaging on our websites specifically to attract the right clients and we're talking about talking to your Peter your peer owners and what kind of language you would use and people brought up but that language would sound silly to people in our industry and you know
you've got to be aware and so it was important for people when they're wording things to go well this might not speak to my clients but it's gonna make me look more respectable among my peers and there's this really powerful social reinforcers I think which shape our behavior and when we start to think about collaboration and I'm not brave enough to bring someone on here that's potentially got different perspectives because I am worried about this my
social reinforcers and being punished for that how do we how do we develop how do we how do we navigate the space and evolve in the space and become that collaborative individual and I'm not saying that you go and like say like hey let's invite you know well I'm not gonna name any names I'm not suggesting that we open our arms to anyone and bring him in because like I feel like sometimes that just opens the door for them to promote more of what they're doing which may not be what we want
to promote but I think that thoughtful consideration of maybe this person does it slightly different than me but it still falls within the category of positive reinforcement does that make sense like like yeah so my suggestion isn't to collaborate with someone who's on like far end of the spectrum it's really just to collaborate with our group of people because you know what I see is competition so much competition between people that are on the same team so to speak you know like we're we're
preaching the same things maybe slightly differently different terminology or whatever but we're still using the same methodology for the most part and even then there can be some undermining of others knowledge and or you know perspectives and I think that that does injustice to the whole positive reinforcement field because we're not promoting each other necessarily enough you know like a lot of people do a great job of it but then naturally like there is some competition
and it's hard finding that balance of being comfortable with promoting others and still having a business that is successful especially if it's people local to you right so I don't have all the answers that's for sure but I do feel like collaboration like if I look at a lot of the projects that I have done they have been collaborative and I learned stuff like the fear-free courses that have been written that I either helped manage or helped write we had multiple people writing
on those modules it wasn't just one person's perspective for the most part and so you've got different you you learn different nuggets of information and you bring that collaboration in that's one thing I have really learned from fear free because they have like a whole advisory group and they are trying to get you know the internal medicine specialists and the cardiologists and client service representatives like practice managers they all have important information to help with creating
fear-free content across the profession whether it be in you know boarding and pet sitting or grooming or animal training or in the veterinary field there are a variety of different professionals there that we can collaborate with and promote things together yeah and so fear-free is one that I did a lot of work with I just I had also mentioned bringing Rose Brown in to write an additional supplement to the puppy start rate for instructors course and then like the textbook that I'm
on like we have authors for chapters it's not all written by me it's edited by two people and myself and Julie Shaw and so we review stuff but we find authors to write sections and sometimes we write sections as well so there's a collaborative effort and it I think makes things better if we collaborate because we can learn new ways of saying things and also bring in different slightly different perspectives that are still in line with our methodology and I also am thinking right
now it's just gonna come to me that these two things are so vital and close to the heart of what we do at Animal Training Academy and what we do at Animal Training Academy is community and collaborating and promoting others is and community is so important as an industry as a professional in this industry because it's hard and it's an emotional job some of the things you'll see out there and having that community to lean on is so crucial I'm totally going down some
random tangents here so appreciate everyone staying with me but I'm but what I've now got in 2024 personally just speaking for myself Debbie and listeners from collaborating with you know this is episode 230 or something and promoting and we allow people in our members only group to promote their services and to promote their webinars and to send people to their content but the cool thing now though is that I'm currently studying with Jennifer Shryock and the
family pause and learning and getting accredited there and then finally after years gonna get tagged to certified and then I'm gonna do Leslie's thing because I've been doing all of their things for years and I'm like I better get certified and all these things but like there is always a thing in the community that someone knows about and so now like there's very few problems that come across my days where I'm like the perfect person for you is blah blah blah and we have
a spreadsheet at ATA with like all of these amazing people so community and that comes from those two things I think you've just shared what does that all make you think yeah definitely community that would be another great term that we could have used for the collaboration or in promoting of others is kind of lumped under community I think it's just another way of putting a different word on it which is maybe more of what I was going for even but also then so like number three I have on my list
of made up Debbie lists is emphasizing compassion and inclusion and really trying to open doors for those new to the seed I think it's I think one of the biggest services we can do is for someone who is excited about positive reinforcement but then doesn't yet have all the knowledge or or they could have knowledge but maybe they haven't had as much experience right and so for us to mistakenly dismiss that in some way and forgetting where we came from originally you know it's
all part of the journey and the learning experience and it will continue and you know what I was doing even five years ago is not what I'm doing now you know so it's constantly evolving and changing and and really remembering that for those new people onto the scene wanting to get big knowledge and be seen as well you know so yeah that compassion empathy for it like it's it's not only with the clients that we have but also with people in our field he said it earlier on that there was a
point in your career that I think everyone can relate to in some way I can we you learned about the tools and techniques that one uses when they might label themselves a positive reinforcement animal trainer or whatever label you choose to place upon yourself and you you're like yeah I've got this I got this and then you realize because some client comes along or some learner comes along you're like I said I don't got this and and and so these would I be right in saying to be right it's not the
right way but what do you think about me saying that gaining the experience to understand the value of collaborating with fellow trainers or gaining the experience of seeing the benefits of promoting what others are doing and in developing compassion and inclusion it there's a big difference between listen to this podcast and going okay I've got to be more compassionate and more inclusive and gaining that same conclusion through experience so I'm guessing that that's been your experience
that you're you've seen the reinforcers from what we what you're labeling as compassion and inclusion have you got any stories there that kind of where that's really sunken for you or the opposite the opposite has punished you yeah I will say being on clicker Expo faculty is a huge honor but also can be extremely like early on and still is in a good way challenging right you know because you know that well what I've learned is that it's good to challenge your thoughts like
to always question them in your beliefs like well is that really true where did I learn that why why do we always say that you know and Susan Friedman is a big one on this but you know really questioning like why do we phrase it that way or one of the big things that I've gotten away from is you know calling a dog an aggressive dog or a cat an aggressive cat I will no longer do that it will I will say something a dog who display who has displayed aggression when
being handled at the veterinary hospital because the dog itself is not aggressive like to the pet owner especially like 99.9% of the time this dog is a big love bug for them probably there's one circumstance when he's at the veterinarian that the things don't go so well and so he gets labeled as an aggressive dog and so really putting it more into context and so that weren't or even even when we say fearful as I've gotten away from saying you know it's a fearful cat and I'll say it's a
cat that displays fear in XYZ context it's not always afraid well sometimes they are actually like there are actually animals that are almost always afraid like some global fear issues those we might be able to call them that if we have identified what we're talking about but yeah so I think that's one of them hopefully that kind of hits to the point and and then I would say also my fear was and this can this can come from my upbringing where I didn't want
to be wrong about something so that perfectionist attitude like I need to know the right answers so that I'm not mistaken but I've started to learn that the right answer in 2010 might not be the same answer in 2024 and so and that's okay right that's actually probably good and that some things will stand the test of time but others will evolve or change slightly and we'll find new technologies to use and methods that are still in line with our methodology so to get
to that point like basically you know like the evolution of wanting to be right and then learning that it's okay if things change and we can give ourselves grace and give ourselves some self-compassion for rewording things because I look at yeah some of the writing that I did years ago I'm like oh my gosh oh you know like really and in 10 years from now I'll probably say the same thing about stuff I've written now like it's it's an evolution in process but
your thoughts on what I've shared well it makes me think that for you the listener if you're considering your compassion then giving yourself grace and being like I am exhibiting behaviors I might label as compassionate in this context and we have to ourselves learn as we evolve in our professional roles to develop and to be kind to ourselves and to shape ourselves and to celebrate ourselves as we develop more and more behaviors that we might label as compassion and so so that these points
in emphasizing compassion and inclusion are individual to the listener of the show in terms of what that means for them yeah well and I'll add like one of the hard things for me was feeling like being under a microscope like I was gonna say something wrong you know but I actually like and maybe this just comes with experience and being there longer now I look forward to that like I actually look forward to finding different ways to phrase things or say things and but
at the same time also recognizing that it is not always possible to say things in a way that will please everyone not not purposely offending someone but it can be challenging to be what's the word I want to be inclusive to the point that you can't get your information across because it's not coming across naturally it's probably what I'm doing right now right like I'm trying to be really thoughtful about my words and it's making me hard making it hard for me to come
up with exactly what I want to say because I don't want to offend someone just accidentally right you know and so that can create communication issues too so I think that one thing that I've tried to find is acceptance that we're all going to communicate slightly differently but as long as our intention is authentic and kind that that's the thing to remember I mean we all have different histories and learning histories and and even like because of the internet and the global kind of
commerce that we have now what is acceptable in one part of the country or the world may sound very off-putting in another part so it is quite a challenge to communicate in a way that is compassionate for everyone sometimes I think your part there about assuming that the intention is good and kind is something that I struggle struggle sometimes I have to remind myself like when you feel yourself get offended think the intention behind what's being said here is is good for whatever
reason it's delivering your personal learning history are struggling with that in whatever way but to remember that to assume good intent that that's I think really powerful hey we're up to number three so we have okay everyone just just to bring us back we're talking about five ways from Debbie these are Debbie's ways as she pointed out as it as a community we can ensure that our message reaches as many people as possible and in an accessible way and Debbie shared with us three
ideas so far the first one was about collaborating with fellow trainers and the value in that second one was about promoting what others are doing and we talked about doing that even if they might be perceived as competition and navigating that kind of space and and thought process the third one it was emphasizing compassion and inclusion can you take us through the last two please TV yeah yeah so the next one was number four is avoiding comparison and judgment this one's a work in
progress for me whenever I see something doing someone doing something kind of like new I'm like oh I can do that right you know like or why are they doing that and I'm not doing that I should be doing that you're like it's not it's really finding what we enjoy and are good at and kind of latching on to that like I shared in the first episode I have basically like four different job descriptions but it's that diversity that helps kind of bring everything in that I like to do without it
being just one thing so for me that works but it can easily make it be like we're comparing or judging ourselves one thing that I saw at clicker expo that I thought was amazing was when they do the backstage pass and they're doing live training so if you've not been to clicker expo or seen backstage pass what this is it's usually they have like four of the faculty up there and each faculty member will work with an audience members dog for like 15 to 20 minutes sometimes they'll do more than one
session I mean they talk just about what they're doing why they're setting things up and what their kind of goal is and and then they discuss their decision-making while they're doing it some of them and some of them after and oh my gosh when I watched this I was just like well if I had been up there I would have been like well so and so did it this way maybe I should do it that way I probably want to change my whole training plan but then what was so cool to see is they all are amazing trainers
and came about the whole process and the whole setup completely differently but it was all amazing it still worked really well and the animals had a good time they worked with what they had they adjusted things you got to see what they were thinking and it wasn't like one of them was right or wrong they were all right it was just a different way of doing things and I and I thought that was this fantastic and and but it reminded me of if I had been on that stage and I was
gonna be the last one to go I would have this tendency to want to like take all these things that I saw them doing and change my plan and maybe go against what would be natural for me to do so that's the comparison judgment part that can be a negative side to it if we're if we're not careful it can go the other way too we can be too judgy right like someone misspeaks or something I'm sure I've done it several times during our recordings and you know holding on to well
they said this one time and it wasn't quite how I would have said it so you're gonna write that person off for ever or they posted something in the image on social media it wasn't appropriate or you felt it wasn't appropriate and instead of having a conversation with the person and getting their perspective we just kind of write them off as you know they don't know what they're talking about and so avoiding that as much as possible and in if we feel those feelings
if it's a person that we feel we can approach and have a conversation conversation with I think that that is better and sometimes those conversations are really hard to do but I listen to a lot of Brene Brown and when you are vulnerable inappropriately vulnerable sometimes those discussions will just bring you closer with those people and can also be such a great learning experience for you as a person and also the relationship that you build with
that person yeah so avoiding that comparison judgment and then the last one is learning from each other because there are so many different ways to learn I struggle with this too and I hear other reinforcement trainers say this too and I affect I see it in comments at conferences like I didn't really like it's stuff I'd already heard before it wasn't anything new and it's like well you know it probably was said slightly differently it may be the same concept but I think we
can always learn something new if it's just a different way of saying it that might help connect with a client that you're working with always kind of having that ability to take information from other people and learn from them is part of as helping spread that message of positive reinforcement avoiding comparison judgment and learning from each other I have a question that might add number six to this list good yes I'm sure other people are like I was like oh why like when you
asked me what am I passionate about well I'm passionate about us like coming together as a group and working together so yeah community like whether you're in the veterinary field the animal trainer field the pet sitter groomer whatever we're working with pets and animals and we can collaborate with each other to make sure that the life of those pets is is continued you know like there's continuity between the care that they get in different areas of
their lives and so that collaboration is really important as well so so this this number six acknowledges the fact that one you work in the veterinary field and in veterinary veterinarians and veterinary technicians and in veterinary staff we all know under a lot of pressure and under a lot of stress and mental health is a challenging component for some individuals in that space you'll be doing doing this for nearly three decades so you know I see congratulations in power one but part of that
congratulations is you've navigated all of that and you're still here with this big smile on your face helping animals which is awesome secondly to avoid comparison to avoid judgment to to learn from each other too I think if you're and and these are not well thought out thoughts and again like to be said they're just the opinions of an individual that individual happens to be me right now if you're there saying I didn't really learn anything new from that person there's there's this space
there that I think can be challenging to enter that is required for you to be open to learning stuff for new people and that space is space of empathy and the space of compassion and that comes from looking after yourself and re-energizing yourself so that you can step back into your role as a caring professional and have empathy and be open to learning and be open to avoiding comparison and judgment and practicing compassion and inclusion so there's the sixth thing that I wanted
to add here and I'm interested to get your thoughts on considering your longevity and in this profession and that you're coming today sharing all of these great insights is what you have to share with the listeners about how they can get themselves in a space where their mind their mental state is open to all of these things because I think that requires awareness and intentional action yeah and it is hard I don't want to imply like I mean I've been in the field a
long time it doesn't mean that it's all been enjoyable right you know so I've struggled with compassion fatigue and and you know there have been times I've been like oh you know like I should just leave the field and do something else it would just be so much easier right so even though I have had a almost three decade long career in animal behavior and veterinary medicine as well it's it those thoughts have been on my mind at times they come and go and I will say that in the past couple
years I actually have gotten much better about time management as well as saying no to things or postponing things as needed for my own mental health and also finding outlets that aren't just hobbies that are actually things that can produce more mindfulness and calm in my life so a big one of that for me has been introducing yoga and also meditation practice every day and that is different than what I used to do to to blow off steam so I used to do more
adrenaline type things like dirt bike riding motorcycle I couldn't think about work during that time because I was focused on not dying and that was the way that I would get away from work which is not the healthy way to do it I'm looking back now and realizing yeah that was fun and I didn't think about work and there was a stress release but it also wasn't sustainable or something that I could do when I have a five minute break you know and so I need is to find a way to
to open up that that mental space for myself more frequently that didn't involve having to wait until the weekend or another time when there was a big block of time to be able to disconnect and so hopefully I'm answering the question I'm getting it like well yes it's setting that foundation of having a way that you can be open and that is what I have found for me is finding where I can find my recuperation re -energizing and that is through things like yoga
and meditation and that's not for everyone I mean everyone has to find what works for them but if you had told me five years ago that I would be meditating every day I would have been like doing what I don't think so but if you haven't tried it not that I'm suggesting everyone should do it it's not for everyone but actually there's a lot of science behind it so it's quite amazing for me yeah but that that has allowed me to have some of that more mindset of avoiding comparison and judgment
and being comfortable with uncomfortable feelings that come up and being more open to what people have to say looking for and and I found this through Karen the Karen Pryor program was looking for the good instead of always just trying to find where's the mistake right I think that a lot of us grow up you know thinking of finding the error as opposed to recognizing all the good things and commenting on those and yeah so that has helped me find that balance in my
life well I think that was a beautiful way to wrap up those six people in the audience please like yes we want to hear from you I'm sure there are others we could keep adding to this list well I think it helps it was actually seven eight nine because you see a bit of time management and you said I'm saying no more yeah postponing things so yeah there was a there was a lot packed into the DB thank you so much for sharing everything over the last two episodes this does sadly
now bring us to the final question with all of the experience and knowledge and projects that you've gained over your career I'm really curious to see and everything you've shared in this episode to hear sorry what you would really like to see happen in our animal care animal welfare animal training industry over the next five to ten years oh yeah so I would really like to see trainers and veterinary professionals starting to work a little closer together and this is a really hard balance
because the trainer is there they're kind of the authority figure on the training part the veterinarians an authority figure as well and so the two personalities coming together and collaborating cannot always feel like it's gonna mix very well it's more like oil and water as opposed to being able to mix well and so I would really like to see that happen because I think that for pet owners that collaboration can be very influential especially if there is an issue that is potentially a behavioral
concern as well as a medical one so I think that that is happening more and more now we're definitely since that I'm seeing it discussed more and recommended more and now with our clients with our members with our animal training academy community well thanks again so much Debbie do you want to just quickly maybe share with everyone listening where they can go to find out more about you and then maybe get in touch if they are so inclined yeah so I've got a whole
bunch of free webinars on the team animal behavior.com website so it's team animal behavior
.com you can also find out more about Debbie Martin animal behavior and coaching on that same page there's a link to that there as well and yeah that's probably the best way to contact me as to the that website well awesome we'll link to everything we've talked about in the show notes as well maybe this has been so much fun so from myself and on behalf of everyone listening thank you so much and we really appreciate your time and hanging out with us at
Animal Training Academy much appreciated thanks Ryan 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 trainers 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