Ep. 24 Transcript

Episode 24: Training Touchbase (Sofia @FadadosDogsadestradora) 

Case: Stuck in Management Mode

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00:00
Today we're joined by one of our interns, Sophia, who spent a month working virtually with Emma and her two dogs Bounty and Galaxy. If you caught episode 22, you'll remember this case. Bounty has a long history of reactivity, especially towards vehicles, dogs, and strangers, while Galaxy is more generally fearful and sensitive to change. In today's episode, we're going to unpack how they approached the training, what shifted for this team, and what's next. If you missed the original conversation with Emma,

00:30
go check out episode 22 or stay with us and dive right in. Let's unpack. Hey Sophia, thank you so much for coming on with us today. Thank you for having me. We are excited and we talked about it just a moment ago before we hit record that it  is very full circle for us to have Sophia on. And if we took too long to talk about that, we would get very emotional, but just know that Sophia has been a part of our world for the last year. And it's been

00:59
one of the most astounding transformations to watch and be a part of.  And we are just so excited to just have this full circle moment and talk about this case because that was another really beautiful thing to watch. Watching you connect with Emma from literally across the world. second that. I second that for sure. It's a wonderful feeling when people

01:22
get to stick around each other for longer than these short periods of time, because you get to build relationships with people and you get to see them change and grow. And that's what we're all doing here. Yes. And it's full circle in a lot of ways because  I was applied to be  with my dog. That's right. A year ago.  And then I got the apprenticeship  and I focused on that.

01:50
my relationship with my dog transformed, then I learned from medicine too.  And it's just amazing to be able to be helping people with these skills I learned from both of you.  And yeah, I don't want to get emotional.  You have a really  strong ability to take in information and once you've really got it, to be able to then put it back out into the world in a really clear way.

02:19
in a really, in a really helpful way and valuable way for your clients and for the general public and being able to have to have that content for your community. know is actually very important for you. Yes. I always want to give back to the community. And one of the things that made me like the open-minded approach  is how community focused it is and how I was able to feel like  I'm in a community, even though I'm talking to people that

02:48
I never saw a person face to face, but I feel like connected to everybody. And it's my mom knows Jerry in medicine. Hi, mom. Yeah. I love that so much. I love that. So it's a thing. It's a whole thing.  Yeah. And I also think it's because of this connection that you guys are able to,  when you assign the teams,

03:17
In terms of the different cases, because I heard the other podcast, the other episodes,  and like, I do have a lot of things in common with Emma too. Although... They're catching on to us, Uh-oh.  So we have, we both have fluffies with big emotions. The fluffies with big emotions. The sensitive floofs.  There are two...

03:47
smart and too cute for their own good. True pattern cognizant and can anticipate things. And we live in urban crowded areas. We face similar challenges like food on the street, people that might be a little invasive and they might have to advocate a little more strongly for our dogs  and different kinds of

04:16
active management strategies that we might need because of this. So I felt like although she is in the opposite part,  I will probably never be in quite.  It's like, I know her reality, I know the kinds of challenges she faces, and that's why we were able to find  options to help them. Yeah. Yeah. Those are.

04:44
really good sort of parallels to draw to your own  just experience  and an environment. Like you said, it's not  that you are close to her, but you have similar challenges in your environment. Was there anything else specific to  where they were in their journey that kind of stood out to you?  Oh, yes, because I also feel  like... She said, oh, yes.  I was stuck in management.

05:14
And I was stuck in a more passive management  also.  And  the thing that was  a game changer for me  and I tried to apply to them  also that helped a lot was arousal management.  Once this concept,  I started understanding, internalizing and being able to put in practice, it's a game changer.

05:43
And also because the reactivity issues that she faced  are also similar to what I had because  I have a cuvas that's not a dog meant to be in an  urban environment.  The idea, the stranger danger thing like bounty  and some fearful reactions they guard out of fear a lot of times. So it's something that

06:12
clearly made me, made us connect. There might be people listening that don't know what a cuvas is.  Oh, it's  a livestock guardian dog. Looks like  a Maremma shepherd for a lot of people.  And it's a very intelligent and independent dog. It's a guardian dog, but it needs to be very well socialized from a puppy.

06:41
to  everything you want to present to them in the world. Otherwise their reactions can be not beautiful to watch.  yeah, so I think this is something challenging because I got my dog when she was about two I think you're being modest.  Yeah.  for everyone that is listening, if you were to put on a spectrum of guardian dogs,

07:10
from the least  forward and aggressive to the most, Kuvos is going to be  very high at the top,  probably  above Great Pyrenees, above Anatolians.  They're just a  really intense dog. And so if you,  think that she's being modest about what she's done with her dog, because I, that would be difficult for anyone to have any type of.

07:38
understanding and recovery in that particular area where you are. It's a tall order. And so I think that if you are succeeding with that, you have so  much  to offer clients, the community, and we should be listening. We should be listening to people that have this  very personal firsthand experience about what they've done to help their dog recover. Just as much as we listen to people that have a lot of

08:07
academia behind them or a lot of experience hands-on with a lot of dogs. The singular stories, I think are incredibly valuable because you're going to find action steps in there. So I,  along that vein would have a question for you, Sophia, unrelated to the case, which is  what was the biggest  shift for you related to that arousal management? Because I think that is something that can change anyone's life. If they don't understand it and they come to real.

08:37
it will change their life with their dog immediately because it's actually not something that's on the dog. It's actually on us. So you have to learn it as a human and understand it. So what was that kind of aha light bulb moment and how did that change how you go through your day and your week in your life? I think it was when I really actually learned how to read my dog because also another thing that might be challenging for

09:05
people when you want a cuvas is that the ears are floppy, the tail has a different carriage, the fur  might look  messy all the time and you cannot see the heckles going up in an obvious way or something. So you can, you really have to look at the specific and learning how to read my dog, how her ears move, how her tails move. There's no movement.

09:34
She's very expressive in her face too. So learning to read my dog and intervene before the arousal goes to a level where it's jokingly say the dog's in Narnia. Yeah. dog is in Narnia. It's like there isn't that much to do other than. on. Yeah, hold on tight. hold on to that leash. But if you actually read

10:04
learn your dog,  learn to read your dog, and then you act, more things go down.  So you have the time and you get better each time to anticipate what the dog is seeing. And you also learn about the triggers and about the reactions and the distances. And then you can train and prepare your dog for that. Because another thing that I did  is I took note  of everything that was

10:34
trigger for my dog and I prepared lesson plans  and I took her to specific places to practice the skills I wanted. So I think that's the way to go. The combination of learning to read your dog and acting on what that needs to include me. Yeah, I think that's the piece about the body language is so significant  and

10:59
Something I've said for a long time is that if dog body language is a language, which it is, it's a totally different species with a totally different language, each breed and each  unique individual dog is going to have their own dialect that you have to learn. And when a new dog's in front of you, that's going to be a new language to learn. And that's a phrase that I think gets thrown around in the wrong way or used to justify things. But for me, the phrase train the dog in front of you has always meant that.

11:26
of like, you're always starting at square one with a new dog because you need to get to know them. And the way that they communicate is going to be a unique, very specific thing to them. Yeah, definitely.  I have trained many helped clients train  hundreds of dogs Tulsa pack  has seen thousands.  Madison has trained thousands of talks.  We've got a lot of hours,  a lot of hours looking at dogs and their behavior.

11:56
and  they are really different.  takes me, man, I feel like it takes me two to three weeks to be confident that I know a little bit about the dog. But what I love about that is I love saying that to people.  I love for people to hear out of my mouth that I have truly taken the time  to say, you know, I think I'm starting to get  to know your dog a little bit and that I didn't say it before that, that I didn't assume that their dog was this way or that way.

12:25
that I showed them, like, we can just watch  and then we can tell what your dog is saying through their body language and in their tendencies and their patterns that they're doing over and over. Let's just watch.  And then we can gather the information together. I don't,  I just love dogs so much.  would never diminish them to being just this one thing because  even within each breed, there are these  nuanced differences. So.

12:52
I don't know where I was going with that exactly, other than  to echo that each dog really is different. And it's another beautiful part of virtually training the way that we do. I feel like we get to break things down so much more. We get to know our clients so much more. We get to know the dog in a much more nuanced way that isn't really available if you just do in-person training, because the frequency of the sessions or whatever you want to call them is, much less than doing this daily method.

13:22
approach, it's just taught me so much more about dogs than I realized. think three weeks is about the same time. It makes me too, to start getting like very used to the dogs. I would go like with Emma's dogs are siblings and little maids. so I initially I was telling them off by Galaxy has white spots.

13:51
So I was like, that's galaxy just by the physical appearance. But  by the end I could tell them apart by having them move around and  oh, there goes Bounty. Exactly. The way that they move is their own unique voice and you get to know their voice. That's exactly what it is for us. It's actually a really fun process and a fun homework assignment to get to assign to our clients. Okay. Now you're going to get to know your dog and you're going to get to know.

14:21
their language and what they're trying to say to you. Yeah. And it was,  think one of the beautiful things that blossomed in the training were like how the dog became more confident and their body language showed that.  I think it's a big win because they struggled with their  active behaviors and having the dogs be more confident  is something very meaningful.

14:50
Yeah. It's to be celebrated. When you, oh, absolutely. And that can impact a lot of areas of behavior,  When you first stepped in  with Emma,  what felt the most  urgent  or foundational,  or did you really feel like with kind of her strong management instincts that you were able to shift pretty quickly to like new patterns and moving the needle forward? Emma is very committed,  very dedicated.

15:20
guardian  and very hands-on, willing to work. And that was great because she had good management in the home. Outside the home, we put in place food games using different patterns to help the dogs  and arousal management strategies, a little bit of defensive handling for challenging spots in the neighborhood  and strategies to deal with people who might.

15:49
like a little common face because people might bark at the dogs and kind of thing. Again, you're putting it mildly, being very kind. we talked about all those things and it wasn't difficult to get into training. We found a training spot in the neighborhood. So she practiced all the skills we were doing at home when they were ready.

16:18
They were taken to the training spot. you find that that sort of missing piece  of taking things back to the home to practice and build them first? Did you find that getting past  that made it like even just less stressful in their day-to-day walk of being able to actually have something to fall back on when they were in the moment? Yeah, I think it was helpful. And I think also it was that step back that makes you walk faster afterwards.

16:48
Yeah.  And Emma understood that she understood the process. So I think when the  owner is on the same page and so on board by her things tend to go really well.  Yeah. That's a tagline for this episode. When the owner is on board,  right?  Things tend to go well. Yes, they do. They really do. It's

17:15
I think that there is this misconception about virtual training because of zoom. So everybody just thinks that virtual training is zoom. I agree. And it's not even remotely what we're doing. We are not doing zoom. We are not. I mean, we're doing one right now because we got all talk at the same time, but unless I am required to be somewhere synchronously.

17:40
the same time as another human being. And they can convince me that there's a reason for that. I'm just not going to do it because we're wasting time. We're wasting time  unnecessarily. We are not allocating the time in the way that would yield the highest success rate. So the way that we're doing it with this asynchronous  daily coaching that we have now been practicing for literally five, I've been doing this for five years. I've been doing it for almost four.

18:10
Yeah. And Madison's way more organized than me. So she's probably doing it better, but it just goes to show like we went all in on this for a reason. It wasn't because we liked it and we thought, oh, this is the most fun it, which it ended up being, but it was because we were like, Oh my God, there's a reason why people are having success. And it's not always just because they're not trying. It's because the way we're delivering this to them, we're barfing out all this information.

18:39
in these  one hour sessions in a park.  were performative. They were when people today asked me, Oh man, I wish you could come and train my dog. wish I could put the session with you. wish I could, I'm like, for what? You want to give me $400  to walk your dog on a leash for you? I'm going to look awesome.  am a fantastic handler.  I really am.  It's a thing to watch, it doesn't really help anyone. And while I would love to

19:08
that around performing in parks with dogs on the ends of leashes, my conscience will not allow me to continue to do things that I believe are not for the benefit of everyone involved. And if anybody out there wants to give me $400 for something, we're going to train your dog because it will not, it does not sit right with me to do it any other way. So that's the foundation of all this is not that we're saying something that's so different than

19:38
What I mean, we're just talking about arousal management. We're talking about basic concepts. Yeah. Patterning. We're talking about basic concepts inside behavior modification, but we're doing it in such a way that the learner is able to retain and keep that information and build on that information throughout their lifetime. If they ever need us again, if they got a question, we're here, but we're trying to equip people with the skills to move forward in their future with all of the dogs that they have.

20:07
moving forward, not just  back to train the dog in front of you. It's yeah, I want to train the dog in front of me, but I also want them to know about dogs in general so that they feel equipped. No matter what dog they get in the future, they know that there are these  specific tenants that they have to look at, that they have to pay attention to arousal management, patterning, counter conditioning. If their dog needs it, how to help their dog through stressful moments, how to build confidence.

20:37
how to build relationship. Those things are lasting.  And I think in that way, I always, when I finish  a package with a client, I say, I hope you don't need me in the future. Because the idea is that unless you have a dog that has a different issue or something, but also I think this is also a way that we give back to the community.  As we mentioned  before,

21:06
very important to me. It's something that a core value in TUSAPEC and for me, it's also something that I try to do since last year I have rescued and placed three animals. Amazing.  And I think  it's when we empower the people to take care of the dogs, they don't abandon the animals. Yeah. So the last one was placed on Sunday.

21:34
Congratulations.  I already missed him, but now he has a good family. But that's the thing to empower people and to  offer services that actually serve the community. Because if I do a performative. That's a bar Sophia services that actually serve. Let's go.  Because it can make a good performance and the client can still be left doing nothing.

22:02
That's such a good point. Dog training has,  is  regardless of what your ideology is, has become a very self-serving, performative, clinical. There's a lot of adjectives I could use there, but that was a wonderful way to say that. And Madison certainly highlighted it when you said it, that we need to be coming up with things that actually serve the community. Yes, we all have to make a living.  We have to live just like anybody else.

22:31
We deserve to get paid, those kinds of things. But there are ways to do that and still serve the community and make sure that people are really getting help. It's not a mystery.  It's not a mystery. We just need to be creative and we need to keep telling these stories of these successes and the human lives and the dog lives that are changed just by getting back to community and doing this together and being inclusive to everyone that wants to be involved.

23:01
giving them a place to come and learn, think is just so critical for where we are right now in the dog industry. I could not agree more. Sophia brought such  a thoughtful  and compassionate lens to this case. And we're so proud of the work that Emma and Bounty and Galaxy have done. And you can find more information on Sophia and her business and a link to her work in the show notes. And just know that if you're out there and you're navigating multiple dogs,

23:28
and a new environment or behavior that just feels way too big to handle on your own, know that change is possible. Just gotta break it down into simple steps. You don't have to do it alone. We're here to help.