Hey there lovely folk… Monday and May is on the horizon. Can you believe I’ve had my wellies on standby since November? It feels like the grey has been all kinds of long this year.
Life’s all kinds of chaos at the moment - plenty of referrals keeping me busy! Four new clients squashed in last week and so many complicated living arrangements for dogs. I can’t always believe so many people manage such complexity when it comes to their dogs. Definitely feels like there’s a lot of fizzy dogs out there at the moment and people struggling to cope. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how far we’ve come from the toughest of times. I was looking back at some photos last night of my beloved Heston. It was right around the time Flika had died in 2020. He’d returned to frequent seizures and Flika had left a huge absence. It’s fair to say that Lidy had been managed strategically for the last ten months she’d lived with me - most of my focus was on Flika. I was actually pretty thankful of lockdown that year. We had just enough work to survive on anyway, but it gave me reasons to stay home with Flika.
That first walk I took with Heston and Lidy together, I had no idea how I’d cope. She’d been mostly on short walks around the neighbourhood for the last ten months and the first walk in the forest was awful. It was like she’d forgotten everything we ever did. Heston had a seizure mid-walk as well, and I think I stood in the forest and wept for about an hour. Losing Flika, realising how challenging life with Lidy was really about to get, and Heston at peak-seizure before we added potassium bromide to the mix… it was absolutely exhausting.
And yet I know it wasn’t as complex and complicated as some of the lives my clients live - strength to everybody I say. We never know what people are going through, and when they’re at their most fragile is when they can be the hardest to communicate with. Sometimes, I wish I had a bit of a time-travel machine so that I could tell them things will get better.
Anyway, pure cheesy as it may sound, let me be the first to tell you this week that you’re doing an amazing job. You’re up. You’re awake. You’re here. Small wins, right?
Let’s get to the stuff, people.
Last Week’s Compendium
Two new folk joined the mentorship - glad to have you with me if you’re there. I’m just loving the space and the kindness and the energy. It’s a happy place to be for me, and I’m glad to have it. I’ve already had a whole bunch of lightbulb moments and clarity.
The Mayhem to Maestro course closed its doors again until 2025. The third module dropped and we had a life session looking at ways to build up impulse control in various different ways. I can see so often the benefits of being able to refrain from things - how we teach it can seem elusive but I’m happy to say I’ve seen huge progress with a whole bunch of dogs over the last 8 years. The pieces finally dropped into place this winter with the Success With Impulsive Dogs course, I think.
There was a blog on sensitisation and emotional intensity. Along with arousal, it’s the other piece of the puzzle when it comes to why dogs sensitise or not. It makes a lot of sense as well as to whether our puppies sensitise to things or they don’t.
There were a few Facebook posts on various topics. One on Woof Like To Meet for the (occasional) people who want a rescue puppy because they’re “easy to train” and they’re a “blank slate”… these myths are still pervasive in the rescue world, implying that adult dogs can’t learn, that they’re in some way damaged or won’t adapt, whilst simultaneously failing to acknowledge just how much hard work puppies are. We know we get what we invest, but sometimes it feels there are still quite a few people unwilling to invest anything at all and then reaching for the quick fixes. And yes, there are still posts in the rescue world from some associations who market rescue puppies as if they are free from the traumas of their early days…
Another post on Facebook was looking at why I spend a couple of weeks building up a dog’s frustration tolerance before embarking on any exposure plan or training protocol. Learning can be frustrating, especially in a multi-species relationship! The follow-up was a ‘what happens if we don’t?’ post. Having had a couple of dogs this week whose guardians had seen the sharp end of ‘what happens if we don’t?’ when it comes to building up frustration tolerance, I really felt that in my bones. I think it’s so important we start seeing frustration as more than the simple “plus-one” of fear & anxiety. I’ve heard a surprising number of talks recently where it’s simply become the add-on for ‘fear, anxiety and frustration’ without either a real understanding of the difference or a real understanding of how to change things for the better and how different this is from working with anxiety or fear, or working alongside them. As a person who looked at the teeth marks in the trim of my car (Flika!) this week, I wish I knew back when she arrived in 2018 how to build up frustration tolerance especially in senior dogs! I just put it under the ‘stress’ label back then rather than seeing that so many of the things she found challenging in life would have been much easier had she been specifically taught the things I now do with dogs… her separation issues, her confinement issues, the bark she had broken from persistently using it when no results were forthcoming, the curtains she pulled down, the teeth marks she left in the trim of my car… and yes, the seven homes she’d had before me.
There was also a paid substack on the media representations of dog bites - both fatal and non-fatal. It felt a bit icky to write, especially when people have died. Then on the same day it was published, The Mirror posted a headline about a woman who watched a small dog eat a chunk of skin they’d taken from her face - and I realised the media play on that fear and disgust for readership in ways that I wish were better scrutinised. I wondered if the person who’d written it felt any qualms at all or had any sensitivity in how they revelled in the drama.
On The Cards
Module 4 drops of the Mayhem to Maestro course. This is where things move into the real world. Unsurprisingly, this ties in hugely with the sticky learning course I’m running on Saturday. I’ve found time and time again that if the first three sessions go well because they’re highly controlled, tight and short, there are SUCH lightbulb moments for the dog that the rest is easy. Getting it right, especially in urban settings or in busy shelters can be a real challenge. Several of the membership dog trainers & behaviour consultants live in very urban areas and getting that lightbulb moment can be more challenging - but also much more fun. In fact, creating set-ups in more idyllic settings can be tougher! Today, Lidy and I stopped for some impromptu practice in a town centre car park - it’s been a while! - and three dobies went past in three minutes - with different humans. Are they the new fashion?! The Live session on Friday on FB in the group will look at cooperative care routines for dogs. The link between frustrated greeting or barrier frustration is often mirrored in frustration around handling and even simple things like putting a lead on, so it’s a useful Live, I hope!
There’s a blog post on the Lighten Up site, this time focusing on stimulus intensity.
There’s some Lighten Up FB posts and Woof Like To Meet posts on stuff. One will be vaguely cross-posted I feel, since it focuses on rehomed dogs and what they really need - rather than tea and sympathy. Or as well as tea and sympathy. Understanding and beverages are useful!
There’s a paid substack reviewing Bronwen Dickey’s amazing book, Pit Bull. It’s an exceptionally well-written book that could almost have been written about XL bullies. I noticed that the legislation relating to XL Bullies is still going through the legal appeals mill with a judge concluding that it was hasty, ill-informed and not based on data. Some 60000 XL bully type dogs are believed to live in the UK. If this is true and it’s not the 10000 the government first thought, it means there are many, many, many more XL bullies that are Very Good Boys And Very Good Girls who are now totally stigmatised by society, subjected to legal extermination, with neighbours grassing on each other for owning a big dog. It’s at such a fever pitch that I noticed highly esteemed and experienced expert witness Kendal Shepherd, she of the ladder of aggression, harassed on social media for a comment she made about the escaped horses in London last week. She’d pointed out that there is more sympathy for animals that tend to flight behaviours when spooked, rather than fight behaviours only for some quite irrational individuals to come along and repeat the ridiculous mantra that XL bullies are bred to kill and horses are not (I’m guessing they have NO idea that cows and horses often top the charts for deadly animals in countries that don’t have either hippos or rabies) and accuse Dr Kendal Shepherd, caring and lovely expert veterinary behaviourist and aggression specialist, of being inept and causing people’s deaths… I am glad that the comments are now gone and sad that she should have to face such wrath, but understanding why people believe dogs are bred to kill is part and parcel of Dickey’s book.
Saturday, I’m doing the Sticky Learning webinar if anyone’s up for it?!
Miscellany & Paraphernalia
It’s a busy one for me! Putting together the final touches on the Sticky Learning slides (because, let’s face it, nobody wants weak sauce learning, do they?!) and trying to make sure I’m entirely ready for the madness of exam season is the main agenda. I’m trying to decide whether to do another 2h webinar on Saturday May 25th, but not sure I have the time or space to squeeze things in now. I’ll see! Sales have been pretty floppy for the sticky learning and I don’t know if people are exhausted or it’s just not relevant! It felt relevant to me, but then everything I do feels relevant to me or else I wouldn’t do it!
I’m already thinking ahead to August & October when I’ll be writing the materials for next year’s Anxiety, Fear and Phobias 12-weeker. That will be live by April 2025 - I’m not sure people realise that over 600 hours of preparation, writing and creation goes into those six modules, but I realised that once I’ve got that done, I’m only four years away from completing the entire Lighten Up roadmap from A to Z and beyond. I’m sure hoping that one will be relevant!
Because it’s sensible to think of things six years ahead as I did back in 2022, isn’t it? What a weirdo I am.
Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’ve been drinking. I could have been sitting in a bar, drinking a coffee, reading the paper…
I’d intended to write a bunch of blog posts to carry me through until August, but that plan went by the wayside with last-minute clients, so I’ll be trying to catch up I think! Story of my life!
Anyway, lovely folk, have a great week. Let’s hope that there are some May blossoms and sunny days ahead. Summer is going to hit us in the face this year, isn’t it? And then do a runner. Best be prepared!
Sooooo much to look forward to. Yes fever pitch is definitely the correct term for the XLBullies.
I’m glad you aren’t drinking coffee in a cafe Emma as I hear everything you say, and whilst I still can’t relay most of it 😬, some of it filters through and lightbulb moments happen, so I keep going knowing more and more will ‘stick’. It just all makes sense to me and it’s been exactly what I’ve needed without even knowing it.
Looking forward to another great week of lightbulb moments. Thank you ☺️