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.

But we'll start today's episode where I'll be talking to one Ellen Yocum.

Ellen, she, her, hers, is a Certified Separation Anxiety Pro Behaviour Consultant at KPA CTP and is co-owner and mentor and Behaviour Consultant with Pet Harmony, along with Ellie Bender and Emily Strong, who we love here as part of our ACA family.

She helps other families communicate with their pets and co-habituate successfully by creating strategies and plans that meet everyone's needs.

Ellen's passion for animal welfare and training began during her undergraduate studies at the University of Washington, where she worked as a research assistant focusing on captive animal welfare and enrichment.

Over the past decade, she has worked in dog daycare and boarding, wildlife rehabilitation, zoological settings, captive animal research and private training.

In 2015, Ellen moved to Winter Haven, Florida to work with Natural Encounters, Incorporated, specializing in free flight avian education.

She returned to Seattle in 2018, joining Ashima Dog Training to focus on puppy development and dog skills.

And in 2020, she joined Pet Harmony to help pets and people live harmoniously using enrichment, empathetic listening, and collaborative problem solving.

So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Ellen to the show today, who's patiently waiting.

Bye, Ellen.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and geek out with us at Animal Training Academy.

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm so excited.

This is going to be fantastic.

Now, I've got to test my knowledge here.

Ashima Dog Training, that's Chris's?

Ahimsa.

What you said.

Like you got around with Natural Encounters, working with Steve Martin and Ali, Ari Bailey and Chris Jenkins.

And Vowter was Vowter there at the time?

Vowter came and worked with us a few times, but he wasn't still a part of the company.

He was at Columbus, Columbus, I think, by then.

And then working with Grisha and then now working with Ali and Emily.

We just did some podcast episodes with Megan Young.

You know Megan?

She works with Susan as one of her zoo consultants.

The name is familiar.

And I imagine if I saw a face, it would, it would strike a memory.

And she talked about surrounding herself with great tennis players, which is a Susanism.

I haven't heard that one.

To say, to get uncomfortable, place yourself in learning situations, you know, where you're not the smartest person in the room, there's a getting uncomfortable part.

And is that something that you've intentionally done?

Like, have you, have you been like, I'm going to work in these places because they're all places that I think the listeners of our show would appreciate, would be incredibly fun to work with for lots of reasons.

But one of those reasons being the great tennis players that you would have been surrounded with in those locations.

Or was it more that you kind of just ended up in these places because opportunities presented themselves to you?

I mean, I think it's a little bit of both.

The opportunities had to be present, which I'm incredibly grateful and privileged that all of them lined up the way that they did.

But it's also, I've always taken kind of the same idea.

I want to feel like the least knowledgeable person in the room.

I find great comfort in feeling like I am the least knowledgeable person in the room because I can, I can pull brilliance from all sorts of walks of life.

Like in our mentorship program, I was just geeking out about this for with somebody that I think the most delightful thing for me to watch is to see people take these concepts that are like second nature to me at this point, because I'm so well rehearsed and I like to be fluent in them, but to watch them pull on experiences and concepts from other aspects of life and the way to be able to generalize these things that are just across the world experiences and say, Oh yeah, I had this same concept come up back when I was designing shoes or we have an entomologist and she was able to take some marketing lessons and put it in the context of speaking to the audience that you want to capture, isn't going to necessarily exclude people by proxy of that.

She used to go out and set up traps for a very specific type of insect, and she would still get all of these other types of insects.

And so to be able to watch people pull all of this brilliance and put these links together is just one of the most delightful things that I get to do.

And I have also taken it to heart that I want to surround myself with people that if I started to emulate them and see them in me, I would be proud of that fact.

And that's one of the things that really drove me to work with Allie and Emily is that I could, if they rubbed off on me, I'd be entirely happy about it.

And I'm so glad that they did.

Well, that is like the best introduction to part ones of the conversations we have on the show, because they're all about people's journeys.

And I always get so interested, for example, two people ago we had Mari Volgma on here from Estonia, and I was like, wow, what is dog training and animal welfare like in Estonia?

So I don't know if I'm going to have much to talk about, which is what everyone says.

Everyone, you have lots to talk about.

But you're from Estonia.

That is amazing.

Tell me about Estonia.

And she was an engineer.

And I was like, you're like got a PhD in engineering.

Like, why are you teaching?

Like what?

So like perfect segue into part one of our episode of you thinking about this entomologist and their insect traps that they set.

Tell us about your journey, Ellen, take us back to to where you got started, where you first learned about animal training, positive reinforcement.

And tell us your story.

Yeah, I mean, kind of kind of basic story.

I was a kid and really liked animals and wanted to work with animals.

And it was just more comfortable for me.

But then I went to the University of Washington to get my undergrad and I got incredibly lucky.

This was not intentional that within our psychology department, we had a stellar animal behavior department.

So we had experts in birdsong and social development.

We had individuals working in captive animal research and welfare.

We had individuals looking at all sorts of insect communication, communication in skates and rays.

I got I got incredible exposure to everything that animal welfare and well-being could be.

I got to participate in zoological research through those programs.

And I think it was like five or six species by the time that I graduated.

And then I got to strike it.

And we call it strike it.

Nina Harmony around some of my mentors that included Dr.

Eduardo Fernandez and Dr.

James Ha and Dr.

Renee Ha.

And they were very, very kind and very sweet and very patient with my little undergrad self ready to take on the world.

And from there, I just immersed myself in it.

And so I worked in the zoological setting.

I did voluntary work there.

I went and did wildlife rehab to get a different experience with that for I think I worked with that organization for four or five summers until my partner, who also works in animal welfare and well-being and zoologic.

We found the opportunity to go to Florida and start working with Steve and the team.

And we did that for a few years.

And it's really cool to put yourself out of, I think, your comfort zone, because I will tell you, birds terrified me for a while.

I didn't understand their body language was so different from the mammals that I was used to working with.

It was a really interesting experience and also very humbling.

I remember being in an enclosure with some blue-throated macaws.

And if you've ever been with blue-throated macaws, they are they will outwit you.

And just remember getting run in circles by these parrots and thinking, I have a very wrinkly brain and thumbs.

And yet, I guess I live here now.

I don't think I get to leave anymore like I don't.

They run the show.

And it was a great time.

And then when it was time to move back to the Pacific Northwest, I got to go work at AHIMSA, which was Grisha's facility at the time.

Grisha had already moved on, and that team was incredible.

And I learned so much about dog socialization and puppy rearing.

We specialized in helping people raise really confident, well-adjusted puppies and helping reactive dogs.

And then when the pandemic hit, everything got a little different.

And my partner had moved to San Jose to take a job at a zoo down there.

And that's when I started working remotely with Allie and Emily, focusing really on helping families live lives with pets with really high support needs and trying to find ways to get creative and make sure that nobody's needs are getting ignored.

In those scenarios, which can be quite challenging sometimes.

Well, I think that wrinkly brains and zygodactyl feet win every time.

For those non-bird nerds, zygodactyl feet refer to the morphology, the setup of parrot feet.

So that doesn't surprise me at all.

Who is your partner?

I know your partner works for NEI as well.

He did at the time.

Now he works at Cairn Prior Academy.

He's the director of Cairn Prior Academy, Nathan Andrews.

Ah, there you go.

Learn something every day.

What zoo research?

There's so much in your story there that we went over very quickly.

So let's go right back.

Yeah, that's fine.

And let's talk about research.

I'm fascinated to learn what zoo research you did and how important that was to who you became now, who you became today.

Yeah, probably hugely considering the entirety of the the way that I approach behavior consulting and helping families live with their pets and helping other professionals come up with sustainable ways of melding needs without anybody losing themselves comes largely from the ethological influence I got from Dr.

James Ha, Dr.

Rene Ha and Dr.

Eduardo Fernandez.

Those were my three main influences in my undergrad and the three that helped me through the majority, if not all of that research.

So I did a study looking at activity budgets and enclosure use in the gray wolves that they had at the University of Washington.

I was lucky that I got to do two years worth of that.

So we got to have a little kind of longitudinal data on that.

I did exhibit use with the ostrich that were there for one of the quarters.

And then as a part of the behavioral enrichment.

Oh, Eddie, if you're listening, I'm so sorry.

I applied behavioral enrichment applied research lab there.

We looked at activity budgets in penguins with different types of feeding.

We did activity budget research with the elephants, the brown bears, the hippos.

And I think there was one more.

And in all of those scenarios, we were looking at different correlates with behavioral behavioral indicators and or activity budgets.

So maybe some different feeding strategies, pool cleaning schedules, I think, was part of the hippo one.

And then in my senior year, I facilitated and helped my partner with his research on brown bears.

And so we it was one of my favorite stories.

We were looking at ways that we could create foraging for the summertime for two brown bears at Northwest Trek out in the foothills of Mount Tahoma slash Mount Rainier, depending on who you ask.

And we wanted something that was going to spread unpredictably, relatively unpredictably, something that was going to be able to go off at different times.

So we were trying to take this big body of research in foraging enrichment from ursids and canids and all of these large carnivores and see what we could come up with for the brown bears there.

And we found some my partner found some scatter feeders that you can automate the different times and you could have a range of times that it would go off.

And we hung those up.

Well, the keeper hung those up in a tree and we got to see what the different foraging patterns did for the activity budget of those bears.

And it was a really astronomical change in their activity budget, having somewhat randomized scatter feeding of dog food throughout the enclosure during those high activity months.

And the first day they hung the feeder up and they let the big the two bears out.

One of them was a big male.

And you saw his nose go and then he saw the feeder.

And this giant bear decided to climb the tree to go get the like 20 pounds of dog food that was in that.

And that was that was a lesson and a thing to witness.

And not the desirable behavior in the outcome of that.

But we adjust.

They made some adjustments and were able to execute the rest of the study.

So you're looking was there was there a like intervention with regards to undesirable from the human perspective, of course, behavior with the bears, or was it just general curiosity about the activity budget?

Yeah, there was a we were looking primarily at pacing.

So lots of bears and lots of zoos will display some element of pacing.

That was one of the metrics that we were looking for.

So can we is there a reduction in pacing or stereotopies?

Is there an increase in rest and foraging?

Is there an increase in other active or restful behaviors?

There was a whole ethogram that we followed for it.

And I will say we only collected data for the the trial of the determined experiment.

But the keeper stayed at that zoo for a long time and they continued to use those feeders.

And one of the things that was really fantastic is we didn't see a dissipation of the effect with those feeders the same way that you may see with some of the others, where you see like a really positive effect in reduction in stereotopies and increase in rest.

But maybe a week later, everything is back to baseline with this.

They were able to maintain a reduced stereotopy and increased foraging and rest for those bears.

Sensational.

It's very interesting to me, because some work I do.

Is that, I'm not going to say study because it's not a study, but is it a study?

Yeah, it's published.

Ah, cool.

I'll get that off you after.

Well, maybe you can chuck it to me.

We can link to it in the show notes for this episode, because I'm sure other would be interested as well.

So from there, you went on to, oh, well, actually, before we move on.

Yeah, I can.

I can appreciate that learning how to do ethograms and learning how to collect data would play significantly into your role now.

Can you explain what, assuming I'm correct, and people can't see that you're nodding your head, but assuming I'm correct, can you explain how important that experience was and building those skills up and getting your repertoire up in those skills?

How important that has been throughout your career and now?

Yeah.

For any listeners that may not notice, ethogram is just a defined set of behaviors that we're observing.

So we go in and we say stereotopy is pacing.

We define that even deeper.

So it might be pacing from A to B to A to B, depending on what we're seeing from the individual active rest for bears.

The metric we used, if I'm remembering correctly and check the paper, I will send both this and the other paper we published on bears to Ryan because this was like this was a very long time ago, friends.

So my ethogram may not be fully settled, but was the majority of the contact with the body, but head up and scanning or observing the environment.

And so being able to operationalize those behaviors has been incredibly important for helping families define what they want and what they need and what we are trying to achieve.

So it is I don't expect a pet parent to come to me and say, I want my dog to be able to station on this climb for three minutes while I bring in groceries.

I don't expect that from them.

But being able to translate I don't want my dog to do a dash into something that I can change so that positive things that we can move approximations towards and I can shape and I can teach and all of those things has been so helpful in creating plans that I can quickly identify for making progress.

I can quickly identify when we are getting stalled and I can quickly identify when this isn't going to work for either the human or the pet.

When we look at the influence of understanding and seeing and experiencing environmental enrichment, that is something that has followed me across the entirety of my career.

So I got exposure to it in the in my undergrad when it comes to assessing welfare and well-being through naturalistic or species typical behaviors.

So reading how Markowitz's work in particular is something that I think about often.

And I think I have two species in this home.

I might have more species, but generally speaking, I have two species in this home.

I have a primate and I usually have a canid.

Sometimes I have a felid.

Sometimes I have an ave.

Sometimes I have something else.

But usually I'm going to have a primate and I'm going to have a canid.

And so what are the species typical?

Like what is human?

Because there are needs that humans are going to have that are going to be really hard to meet with a need that this particular canid may have.

Is there something that is going to work for both of them in some way, shape or form?

So looking at it as though I am building a care plan for everybody has been really helpful.

And then going back and saying, what makes a dog a dog?

Not what does this breed do?

Not necessarily even what does this individual do yet?

But what makes a dog a dog?

What is this background data that I can work off of from observing thousands of dogs at this point?

What can I assert for 80 percent of them is going to be really important.

And then when I see that maybe that's not true for this individual, I can adjust.

But I'm going to make assertions that dogs need to sniff.

Dogs need to use their nose.

How this dog and this human are going to work together to get this dog's nose working adequately and effectively and efficiently and empathetically for this individual is what is going to change.

But they probably need to get some some sense engaged in some way, shape or form.

How the primate can follow up with that is the question for me.

I use the word earthling a lot, which is because of my time spent with Susan Freeman, I would say.

But I notice sometimes I say that the human learner and the non-human learner in their raw earthlings and notice the responses of some learners, especially those who aren't necessarily as interested in animal training as myself.

That that gives them a different perspective, one that doesn't take any behavior knowledge to understand.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

But not one that they've necessarily thought about before.

And I'm noticing you're using the word primate.

Is that intentional or is it just it's become obviously reinforced for you because you're using it with me now?

What is it?

What is it about using that terminology when thinking about helping clients in their home that you find reinforcing?

I tend to think of creatures.

So I usually talk about creatures.

You use earthly and I typically think of creatures because I don't know.

Like, I don't know what's going in.

But when I'm making that plan, so I know I know that humans, there are things that are very human.

They're not uniquely human.

Like primates tend to be very handsy.

We use our hands and a lot of primates, if not all primates.

I don't have enough primate experience to know if all is the appropriate word.

But there are things that I know are going to be really, really hard for a human because that's human.

It's primate.

And so putting that in the context for me as someone who believes like deeply in letting creatures be who they were evolved to be.

I mean, within reason, we don't we follow some rules, friends.

But when I put it into the structure of like, if I'm having a hard time watching a pet parent like reach and be really handsy with the dog, it's really easy for me to go back and be like, but they're a primate.

This isn't they are being who they are.

And that's OK.

We don't have to approach that with judgment.

Now that shifts my brain to say, oh, OK, I see that you have a primate need here.

How do I meet your primate need in a way that is not invading your dog space or is going to lead to conflict or is going to lead to avoidance or any of those things?

Is there a way that I can meet this need that you are just displaying in a way that is going to also work for your pet or your your dog or your cat or any of those things?

So for me, sometimes it comes down to the things that are so human are the things that are going to be so hard for us as a consultant or a trainer to just be like, can you not?

And it's not as simple as can you not?

Because that is that is how humans interact with the world.

So to expect a pet parent to like put their hands in their pockets and never reach towards their dog is just it's not a kindness to me.

Well, that is a very unique perspective that I've never thought about before.

So thank you.

And I'm glad that I asked.

Of course, I just want to share with the listeners of the show that today is the third of October when we were recording this and yesterday, regrettably, the world lost Jane Goodall.

And I was listening to a recording excuse me, I was listening to a recording of Jane yesterday talking about how she first observed chimpanzees using tools with their hands, which you're talking just reminded me of.

I haven't been one of the people to do a public Facebook post or anything or Instagram about Jane Goodall.

So let's take this opportunity now to just express gratitude for that amazing human being and the legacy that they leave behind.

I'm going to I'm going to ask a question that maybe you don't have an answer to, but it's just something I picked up on as we've been talking today and is interacting with an area of huge curiosity in my life at the moment.

And that is that is weird.

You know, I've just asked you about primates.

I've asked you about the reason behind why you say that.

And in my own life, I'm just exploring radically, I would say, my use of language to stop the to to to anchor the ridiculousness of the swirling of thoughts that are in my brain and realizing that I don't even know if I have a word that emphasizes enough how large it is.

I think the value of language obviously we talk about labels in our industry and the cons of that.

But I think for your own internal dialogue, some of those cons are removed and they can be hugely beneficial to be able to to label things so that the thoughts stop swirling and you get clarity and you can think better and speak better and articulate better and educate better and loads of different things.

So one of the words I've seen you pick, one of the words, and I hope it's OK to ask this, but I'll try to give you a little bit of context as to why I'm asking is the word is the word friends.

So you're talking to the ATA podcast audience as friends, which I love.

But explain, explain, if you don't think about it, right.

I just thought that's also fine.

But if friends is an essential part of your thinking about how you address a cohort of people, then how is how is this evolved into your verbal behavior?

Some of it is in an attempt to be inclusive.

So friends is gender neutral.

And so it's a word that comes very easily to me.

I think something that has also been really influential, if I think about the people who have influenced me throughout my career that I deeply respect and like again, if I if I was a little observer of myself and saw me reflecting these same behaviors out into the world, I would be proud of it is that they make an an effort to have language that doesn't other.

And so I haven't met probably most of your audience.

And I probably would like to I don't want to close a door and say, this is me and Ryan.

Don't contact me.

Don't talk to me.

Any of those things.

I want to have some sort of collective name for the group of people who I interact with that is going to hopefully be inviting.

If nothing else, hopefully just maybe put people at ease that we're just having a conversation, nothing, nothing that we're going to talk about today is going to be that deep.

It could be very deep, but it's we can all breathe through anything.

Again, again, I'm glad I asked.

And I sensed that you would have a reason because that's the and that and that was potentially a poorly, but a compliment.

Pauline, there's a compliment.

Why did I see and see you had a reason?

What have I seen from your behavior that makes me think that I haven't seen your Instagram posts pop up on my feet.

Try to stay off Instagram, to be honest, but behavior goes with reinforcement flows.

And so when I get to see amazing post in my thread, obviously, that's why I go back there.

But one recently which caught my attention was you talking about people not stealing your or not using your I can't remember what was marketing or just ideas.

She will do what I'm talking about.

And it will circle back to where I am and what I was about to say.

Yeah.

So we put we put a lot of effort into our content.

We're very cautious about the influence of the information that we are putting out there.

We are very we take a lot of time, energy and effort to make sure that if we are going to elicit a strong emotional response from anyone, that we are doing it with intention.

So are we don't want to be out there rage baiting?

I'm going to be honest.

There are things that we didn't know we're going to rage bait, and they definitely did.

And we have lessons learned.

Wait to find rage.

It's new for me.

I kind of think I know what it means, but you put something out there that elicits a lot of really big feelings about things with social media loves social media loves.

It's not our goal.

I we we have stumbled upon.

We call them soapboxes in our mentorship program where you just like somebody brings something up and all of a sudden you feel that like that boiling in for me.

I will I will flush.

I'll get really hot and then my thighs clench.

And that is me impeding my flight response, because I would like to just like bolt.

I have a very large flight response before anything else.

And it's a moment where we all go because we practice a lot of crucial conversation skills.

Take a moment.

Assess where you are.

Reflect on the fact that you're having a big feeling moment and then you can name it.

I'm having a lot of feelings about that.

You might have stumbled across the soapbox, and that's just a way to defuse that tension that we have.

That it's nobody's responsibility to manage our triggers.

We all have them.

We're working on them.

But on our social media, we had seen that people were.

I don't know that stealing is the right word.

I think it's very sweet when somebody takes something that we have said, because I'm going to let you on a little secret, friends, everything that we know we learned from other individuals like we didn't.

We're not making a bunch of fun stuff up.

We're just putting ideas that we've learned together when they go and they learn and then they apply and they give us credit.

That is very sweet.

It lights me up.

What we were seeing is an influx in individuals taking the same graphics, the same captions, maybe changing the colors and then posting it into their own social media.

Yeah, it was well articulated.

And I know that you work with Ali and Emily, so I know that you put a lot of time, energy and effort into what you put out there and how you operate.

So therefore, back to words and back to me sensing that you would have a reason for using the word friends and you articulating that to me and then to Alice this because it's not just right and Ellen here.

Thanks for reminding us.

What's how do you think about words and how do you think about language?

How do you think about it?

And I'm asking this because I'm of the listeners of the show who are caring, compassionate people, which is an exhausting thing to be.

And so we've got to we've got to learn how to navigate being that person, being in this industry and doing what we do.

And therefore, I'm asking because I think that it has a lot of potential to be really valuable to people to build language and metaphors for things they have swirling around in their minds and the words.

How important is it to you if it is important and kind of like how do you see it being valuable for the listeners of the show?

I think it's hugely important.

I think this is one of the things that I talk about with people in our mentorship program a lot, because there's so much that is said in body language, nonverbal communication.

There's a lot that you can pick up on.

And also, if you are a trainer or a consultant, it can take a really long time to be to the point where you can attend to the humans, nonverbal body language, comprehend and engage in this verbal communication back and forth, and then also pay attention to whatever other learners are going to be in the environment.

If you depending on if you're consulting for a zoo or a show or whatever it happens to be.

So I think paying attention to the people that you typically interact with and see what's the language that comes out when they're struggling takes a lot of that guesswork away.

And so like one of the things that I recommend people in our mentorship program pay attention to is the word just.

Now, caveat asterisk.

The other issue with language is that it is highly regionalized.

And so like even though you and I are both speaking English, this may not be the same effect in New Zealand as it does in everywhere.

I've worked in the United States.

So I'm pretty comfortable saying across the US, if you hear the word just like your spidey senses should start tingling, that there is more than what this person is about to say.

So when I hear my clients or my mentees or anybody in my life say, I just need to or he just needs to.

That is steeped in pain to me.

That is somebody who is struggling and they are probably beating themselves up thinking it's just loading the snuffle mat.

It's just being quiet like to them.

They're not in a place where they can see all of the other stuff that goes into this, what they are perceiving or judging to be a little thing.

And that's a time where we should, if we are trying to meet them, where they are, pause and say, oh, you might be drowning.

You may be hiding it really well, but when you just need a weekend or you just need to go get the mail or I just need to do things.

I have often seen that that word just is a trigger to say, and it's a huge boulder for me.

It's not just that.

And that has helped me with my clients who, generally speaking, are very anxious, put way too much on themselves, have a long history of punishment.

Like it just knowing that allows me to take some of that weight off of them having to dig into all of that, because then I can come in and say, how about we do something else?

I think that that doesn't sound like it's working for you.

I don't need you to tell me why I don't.

I don't need you to be that vulnerable if you don't want to be.

But I can change that for you.

I hope the direction we're taking this conversation is beneficial to you.

But it's not the user, people in users.

I guess they use this podcast.

The listener is what I mean to say.

I'm sensing that it is.

And so gratitude if you're still here listening to all of us.

And so we think about it with just and I just need to go like that snuffle mat.

And I think about my recent life and me saying to you, Ellen, that we've just been on vacation, but we need a holiday to get over the vacation.

Because we're sorry, but we're so stretched with meeting needs of two of two human primates under the age of six in a highly stimulating environment for a seven day strength when we took them on holiday.

And at the end of that, then when the overstimulation is so much that I snap and I'm and I judge myself as a parent.

And so is my wife.

And we're like, good God, that I've just gone to sleep.

We love them.

Definitely.

I don't want to give the wrong impression, but it's parent city.

Like it's it's it's full on sometimes.

And my wife sent me this beautiful article after she's like, read this.

It was like the good enough parent.

And we've had Nancy Tucker on the show before talking about the good enough dog.

And I love this concept of like just 30 percent of the time.

But there was a study.

I don't know if it's been replicated.

Don't know anything about it.

It's one study of this thing, whether it's true or not.

I couldn't tell you.

I don't know the methodology used, but what this one study suggested and this idea that was helpful to me was that kids need about 30 to be good about.

Then we can define it, operationalize it about 30 percent of the time.

And they're pretty resilient.

If you ever get it, get it wrong, they have a 70 percent of the time.

And so I was just taking and I think that's relevant to our primate clients who are just needing to learn this now, no matter whatever it is.

I think it's quite I think it's relevant to the listeners of this show who are just needing to get that information to their clients after the paid billing hours are finished and they're at home with their family in the evening.

And one thing that I'm learning to do and I'm bringing it back to something you talked about, is to be with me, I'm going to be with me.

This is the strategically imperfect, imperfect, imperfect.

So I would like write an email to someone and I'll be like, I'd like write it and like I'd spend like the last 10 percent of my time.

Well, the last 10 percent of like getting that email right.

Like I'd spend like 90 percent of my time on that.

And I would be like, oh, crap, like an hour and a half's gone.

Mm hmm.

So learning to be strategically imperfect.

Oh, OK, cool.

Maybe it's not right.

But like probably I don't need to be right about it again.

This is just this isn't proven in science literature at all.

It's just something that's helped me.

Probably only need to be right about 30 percent of the time.

It's just send this email and get it done.

Boom.

Cool.

Move on to the next thing.

What I love about Pea Harmony and Ellie and Emily and the work that I've done with them and what I'm learning about how you operate as well is that you do put a lot of time, energy and effort into things.

So how does this like I've been really contemplating on this idea of strategic imperfection and if it's beneficial for others than myself, I get the sense that it would be.

But you guys are so good at putting deep thought into things in your messaging and to a level that I imagine is quite time consuming, takes resources.

So you've got to kind of I'm sure I mean, I'm sure you've got to kind of like make those major decisions about like when do we send this out?

How much time do we invest in getting these things wrong?

How do you navigate all of it?

Yeah, we use good enough to get going.

And so that is our that is our shorthand.

When somebody is striving for perfection, which we're not.

Spoiler perfect doesn't exist.

Don't we don't try for perfect anymore because we all came to the realization that perfect doesn't exist.

We could put on our best work and we could still find ways to improve it.

So we use good enough to get going.

And that is the way that somebody on our team signals.

I think you might be putting too much into this.

And the nice thing about that is it has no judgment.

There's no harshness to it.

It's just, yeah, it's good enough to get going.

And then you can move on and we can start from there.

Trial and eval, whatever we need to do.

And then we'll see.

We'll see what comes of it.

We may need to refine and adjust.

And that's just a part of the process.

Just a part of the process.

See that?

You know what it is?

A very laborious process to try and eval and adjust your messaging and all of those things.

But it's a part of the process.

My spotty senses went off then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it can be pretty labor intensive.

I think the nice thing that happens is we've gotten more proficient at it.

It's like any other skill that we do.

And so we have started to learn because, friends, if you don't know, the Internet is full of consequences.

We get reinforced for certain messaging and language.

We know that it resonates with our people.

It makes sense to them.

They understand it.

It may be nice to hear that, you know, sometimes I really just would like my dogs to leave me alone.

And that's just a human experience.

It is.

And I need quiet time.

I need alone time.

It's a lot to ask sometimes.

I understand.

But I think people have given us really good feedback.

And then there are times where we have gotten what I think people intend to be punishers.

Sometimes they're effective.

Sometimes that's an indicator that we're moving in the right direction, too, because there are some things that we will predict fiercely.

And we still know that we're going to get some feedback on it.

It's a let's say that that let's not let me define what I mean when I say that punishing feedback that you might use the word punishing in all your understandings of what that word means, both in the behavior literature and in common dialogue between non behavior people that use that word.

There might be an indication that you're moving in the right direction.

This thing that you've just said links me back to something you said right at the start of this episode.

As you take great comfort in being the least knowledgeable person.

Explain explain what you just said.

That is to explain what you said.

Why why is punishment and uncomfortableness for you?

And how do you know that you are?

You can't because because you can't because you can't just create a black and white rule, right?

If I've ever said that if I feel uncomfortable and I'm punished, I'm moving in the right direction.

You have to be able to discern when and when that is not applicable.

What do you mean by that?

Because I love it.

But I think it's fairly fluid.

I mean, some of it comes down to Emily has done a really nice job of cultivating all of us to have an idea of are we is this engagement in good faith?

And so when we're talking about a good faith engagement, do we have mutual respect on both sides?

Are we coming to this scenario in hopes of understanding and growing our knowledge and growing our skill set and coming out the other end of a conversation maybe stronger than we were before?

Are we asking questions or are we making attacks?

If we're making attacks, not a good faith conversation.

If we're asking questions like what?

Can you help me understand your thought process or can you help me understand?

I said this to a team member today.

I was like, I'm having a hard time understanding where your resistance is coming from.

Can you help me understand that?

Because I would like to help you.

Like I was genuinely curious.

I'm not going to come into my team and be like, get over it.

That's that's not the ethos, the ethics that we live by.

So if we have somebody who's coming to us in good faith and they're like, I think you missed the mark a little bit, that's a punisher.

It's one that I welcome because that is somebody who is invested enough in me to to let me know that we missed the mark.

They care enough about me to provide me that feedback versus somebody out of nowhere.

I don't know you who is going to come in with name calling or something along those lines.

Those are those are going to be those what I perceive to be intended punishers that are not going to be functional punishers.

So just checking back again towards the start of this episode and what you've just said reminds me of something shared with me.

It's something I've been thinking about recently from a mutual colleague, Ari Bailey from Natural Encounters.

And she said that in there, in her teams, she tries to create the, what's the word, excuse me now, it's really annoying.

Assumes good intent, right?

So if someone comes to you with some feedback, you're assuming good intent.

And the value of that in culture to to have that assumption of good intent.

And then how this circles back to which which isn't an easy thing to do.

Yeah.

How that comes back to what we're talking about at the start of this episode is surrounding yourself with better tennis players.

And why I say it isn't an easy thing, it isn't an easy thing to do.

And why I always pause to give feedback, Alan, is because often on time, if I frame the feedback this way, what I'm really trying to do is say to this person that behavior you're doing, stop it or modify it, which is the definition of punishment, right?

So for me, that's why I say it's not an easy thing to do.

So I'm curious for yourself to have that perception of events.

If someone comes to you with feedback, has that been, where did that come from for you?

Did that come from your parents?

Did that come or did that come from surrounding yourself with good tennis players for the last 15, 20 years of your career or both or something else?

It's probably all of the above, to be honest.

But I think a large portion of it is surround yourself with people where you can assume good intent, because I have been around people where I assumed good intent.

I am a very trusting person as a baseline to a fault where I have assumed good intent and it was ill intent.

And so the lesson I learned there was don't surround yourself with people where you have to play the game to guess.

Surround yourself in people where they have to prove ill intent, not that you have to guess whether or not that is true.

And so it's really easy for me in our professional mentorship program or with some of the people I consider my mentors to go and be like, I don't understand this thing.

I don't I need help with whatever this is.

Can somebody clarify this for me or can somebody like take this concept and flip it in a way that I can think about it differently?

Because I know that they have good intent.

I'm not guessing about this.

I know that if they provide me feedback and they just look at me with a face that says, but why are you the way that you are?

It comes with love and compassion.

It is not from a place of actual like I cannot believe you would ask me this question.

How could you not know this?

And so one is I surround myself with people and I seek feedback and mentorship and accountability from people who I know have good intent and we're in a good faith relationship.

I will not be seeking feedback from individuals who I suspect may have ill intent and or are coming to this conversation in bad faith, or I know I'm coming to the conversation in bad faith because I don't want people to think that my mind is always malleable.

There are some things that I'm very steadfast and very set on.

And so there are times where I don't go into a conversation with good faith and then I just don't go in.

One more question before we wrap up part one.

Firstly, well done earlier on.

I can't remember what we're talking about now, but you were talking about if you found yourself in a situation you would feel and then you kind of stopped yourself and you operationalised what that feeling would be by saying you're flush and your sides get tense or whatever it was.

So nice job.

Secondly, after you talked about naming your emotions, we were talking about language a lot about in this episode and as caring, compassionate people who care deeply about the non-human learners we work of and the all the learners we work with, including the human ones.

We feel a range of emotions.

Well, I mean, regardless of if we do that when we're humans or on this planet, we feel emotions.

Why is naming them?

What did you specifically say before you have to name it?

So I am not someone where any of that comes naturally.

I have a lot of challenges with interoception.

And so interoception is the perception of feelings in your body, sensations in your body.

And so it has been a long, long journey to be able to identify, oh, I flushed or my thigh muscles tighten.

And for me, the way that I perceive the world, which is very different from the way that Ali and Emily perceive the world, which is, I think, one of the ways that has helped me, again, surround yourself by people who you think are brilliant.

It's helped me grow in a lot of ways.

I was able to start saying, oh, I'm feeling these physiological changes.

So first up was that for me.

And then be able to say, like, oh, I'm feeling defensive.

Like something about that felt like an attack.

I'm not saying you attacked me.

That's totally that's not at all what it is.

But my body is perceiving this as an attack for some reason.

So, like, let me try to convince my brain that there is not a mountain lion in my office and that we can circle back to this or some of the other things.

So it's been a long journey for me to try to figure out one, feel things in my body in a way that is helpful, maybe not even helpful, just like adequate feedback.

And then the second part of that is figuring out, like, what do I need to do about it?

And so I may not have the emotional intelligence to be able to say I am feeling despair or I am feeling I'm trying to think of there's a graphic that a social worker or a therapist put out.

That's the emotion wheel.

And they get to really small, small pies.

So I may not be able to pinpoint that, but I can say, oh, I'm having a fight response or oh, I'm having a flight response or oh, I'm having a freeze response.

Like these are the paths that I am going into.

And then I'm able to reroute and say, I need to have this conversation later.

Like I can't do this right now because I want to enter this in good faith.

And the part of my brain that is convinced there's a mountain lion in my office is not going to let me enter this in good faith.

Or, you know, client, you're my fourth client of the day and you have a lot of despair.

And the question that you're asking me is not unreasonable.

And I can't do it justice right now.

And that's not on you.

So I'm going to defer this conversation until our next appointment to give it the attention that it deserves.

Because I may not be able to muster it and you still deserve it.

And so being able to work with people, being able to name it and say, oh, I'm having a fight response.

I don't.

I'm having a hard time with this.

Or I really just don't want to be here anymore.

Has helped me to navigate and let people know what I am capable of at any given time.

Well, thank you for sharing that.

I was thinking as you're talking, a conversation I was having with Chris Jenkins, who we mentioned before, also part of Natural Encounters team.

And I explained some introspection that I did.

And he was like, yeah, I think that's called being an adult.

I was like, I was like, and also what you just described, I would label as process.

That's what processing your emotions is like for me, like naming it and then kind of saying, what do I do next?

Like, what is this?

What is this telling me?

Like, how do I learn from this?

And I'm 41 years old at the time of this recording, and I was 41 years old when I figured that out.

So you are not alone in taking a long, long time to figure these things out.

I live 41 years old, not being able to process my emotions in that specific way of intention.

So let's wrap up part one here.

Hopefully this was helpful for you listeners.

And before we do, though, just share with everyone, share with our friends where they can go to find you online, find Pet Harmony, any other places additionally of value to you to send people to, share with our listeners where they would go online to webs to do that.

Yeah, they can find us at PetHarmonyTraining.com and at Pet Harmony Training on Facebook and Instagram and at Pet Harmony, if you're a professional, at Pet Harmony Pro on Instagram and TikTok.

Awesome.

And as I listen to your answers of that and you say send people to Pet Harmony, I realize that I, we haven't done justice to explain to the listeners of the show what Pet Harmony is.

Oh, we kind of glazed over that, didn't we?

Yeah.

Which, you know, in some other episode, I might be like, cool, and thanks so much.

It's been great talking to you.

And we might wrap the episode up here.

But I'm not going to do that today.

And I shouldn't do that either.

But I'm going to do it today because how much value I place on Pet Harmony and how fantastic I think the work that you, Ellie and Emily are doing and the the cultural elements of your work, what you express in your work and some of the things we've talked about today, which is partly why I ask the questions I ask today, because I'm because of your work with Pet Harmony and because of my collaborations with Ellie and Emily in the past and understanding how they operate, was an assumption of mine that you would be very similar.

But that's because it's so beneficial to everyone.

So a little bit more about what Pet Harmony is and then we'll wrap up.

Yeah, Pet Harmony, we do a lot of things.

So we have a private behavior consulting side where we work both in home in the Chicagoland area and remotely with people worldwide to help them find out how to live with pets with pretty high support needs, typically.

And that can be separation, anxiety, aggression, dog and kid introductions, whatever it happens to be, we we tackle it with kindness and compassion for everybody in the household.

And then we have another side of the business that is primarily focused on mentorship for pet professionals, whether you're a behavior consultant, you consider yourself a trainer, you own a facility or not.

We're there and we help them apply an enrichment framework to their clients, their life, their business, so that we're going with a goal based approach, a needs based approach to building our plans, being strategic and making sure that everything is sustainable for them, their clients and the pets that they care for.

Amazing.

Do yourself a favor, listeners, friends, and go check that out.

We will, of course, link to all of it in the show notes.

Now I can do my normal spiel.

This has been so much fun, Ellen, from myself and on behalf of everyone listening.

We really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, 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 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.