Dawn Walton, a human therapist, and Jess Probst, a dog behaviourist, sit in Dawn's car and discuss the latest social media trend where you have to decided if you'd rather be alone in a forest with a bear, or a man.

Dawn was surprised when most people choose bear. What would you choose?

Dawn talks about the theme that clients have where their expectations stop them actually seeing progress - expectation is the killer of progress. And they go on to discuss how this also affects dog owners and the trainers that work with them.

This is also the episode where they talk about their exciting new mentorship programme for dog trainers that will be running in 6 month blocks.

This episode is recorded in Dawn's car so will include the random noises you'd expect of a public setting!

Dawn Walton, a human therapist, and Jess Probst, a dog behaviourist are taking a trip to Costco and decide to do a podcast to record their conversation as they drive (Dawn is driving while Jess holds the microphone. All safe!)

Along with the normal meandering conversation, this episode includes a discussion of the difference between Tonic Immobility (as experienced by sharks and chickens when they are upside down, possums and fainting goats, among others) and the Shutdown state. As with everything, the conversation involves exploring how this applies to dogs, and how we can see this in autistic humans. They discuss what we can actually do to help a dog or person in a shutdown state, particularly by activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

They also discuss the favourite topic of labels. Particularly how important it is to treat every individual (dog or human!) based on what you see in front of you. Decision trees can be used to ask the right questions and eliminate things that aren't relevant. So instead of A =B you can instead ask a series of yes or no questions to narrow things down. This can avoid falling into the trap of making assumptions, and of thinking that what you are doing is automatically right just because that is what you were taught.

Dawn Walton, a human therapist, and Jess Probst, a dog behaviourist sit in Dawn's car and discuss Jess’s current existential crisis.

Jess discusses the different ways we can see our dogs and how some things are really obvious to her, but tricky to help others see. They explore ideas around how we can see ourselves and our dogs, and the ethical conundrum of doing something short term, that may be unpalatable, but creates permanent and profound change in the dogs - leading to much happier dogs, and humans!

Dawn explains the 3 A’s that she asks her clients to practice:

Awareness (I am in this different state)

Acceptance (of course I’m in this state because…)

Action (what am I actually going to do next)

This allows you to throw away the spiky stick and focus on what’s important. Resilience is not about the absence of a reaction - it’s about speed of recovery.