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The Everyday Trainer Podcast
The Everyday Trainer Podcast
Mindfully Training Dogs: Enhancing Canine Behavior Through Owner Mental Health and Meditation
Ever wondered how your mental health can shape your dog's behavior? In this episode, I share my insights on how our state of mind profoundly impacts our pets. Drawing comparisons between the relaxed dogs of Santa Teresa and the more anxious counterparts in the U.S., I uncover the reasons behind these behavioral differences. From cultural interactions to environmental factors, discover how a more balanced and mindful approach can enhance both your life and your dog's well-being.
I chat about Thoma and his reactive Malinois, Hawk, and see how a journey of self-improvement led to remarkable transformations in both their lives. Through Thoma's story, learn the pivotal role of owner confidence and calmness in managing reactive dogs. Insights from Cesar Millan and practical tips on leash handling underscore the importance of a composed and assured demeanor while training. This chapter resonates with every dog owner struggling with similar issues, offering a blueprint for success through improved mental states.
Lastly, I delve into my personal battles with anxiety and how meditation became my anchor amid academic and career pressures. Drawing parallels between mindfulness and dog training, I reveal how practices like meditation and even psychedelics have deepened my understanding and effectiveness as a dog trainer. Tune in for compelling stories, practical advice, and exciting news about upcoming retreats and training opportunities in California. This episode promises to inspire you to foster a harmonious relationship with your furry friend by nurturing your mental well-being.
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Hello y'all and welcome back to the Everyday Trainer podcast. My name is Meg and I am a dog trainer. Today's episode I'm still in Costa Rica and I've really enjoyed filming this podcast here. I feel like it's a really good check in and it gives me a little bit of an outside perspective on the dog world, because when you're in it, like when you have a house full of dogs and you know, it's tough to get that kind of like aerial view on the industry. So I decided to bring the podcast here with me. So today I really want to talk with you guys about the impact that our mental health and internal well-being has on our dogs, and I know that this is a topic that I speak on very frequently, but it's just so valuable. So we're kind of playing off of last week's episode, which really touched on, you know, the state of our dogs. You know, particularly in the US or if you're living more so in like a big city, versus the dogs that are here in this city in Costa Rica. And the reason why I, you know, kind of brought this up is because the dogs here are just so chill and relaxed and, honestly, there's no need for dog trainers here, whereas in the States we're kind of seeing the opposite. So I think a big part of that is that these dogs are just more naturally fulfilled. They get more time outside, they get to, you know, run along the beach, just be dogs essentially. But another big part of that is the owner's well-being and the owner's state of mind, and you know just how they interact with their dogs and other dogs around. So today we're going to touch on that how our state of mind and you know what's kind of going on internal with us really influences our dogs and what are some things that we can do to, you know, work on ourselves and help our dogs overcome these behavioral issues. So you know the drill Grab yourself a tasty drink and meet me back here.
Speaker 1:Alright, y'all, welcome back. I am sitting in my little hammock chair on the porch outside my Airbnb in Costa Rica. This is my last Friday here, so you know we're taking it all in. Enjoy the sounds of the motorbikes and the ATVs and the birds chirping in the background. This will be the last time we hear this for quite some time me hear this for quite some time.
Speaker 1:But last week I talked a lot about just how you know the dogs. Here I'm in Santa Teresa, costa Rica. The dogs here are just so naturally fulfilled. They're spending all day outside. Essentially they're getting to run along the beach I talked a lot about I you know I've met a few people and they talk about their dogs just taking themselves to the beach and meeting people and getting fed and like playing and playing with other dogs. And then they come back home and sleep at home and start all over and do again.
Speaker 1:And I was talking to my stepsister, who is who I'm here with, about that and I was like, oh my gosh, my dogs would like thrive here. They would love that. Like that's what Lucy, my golden, my red golden, would live for. Like she would love to just run away in the morning, go make friends, hang out with people on the beach, go swimming and then come back home at night. Like she's just that type of dog. Millie too. Millie would do that right there with her. And then I have Zoe and Minka who are like so clingy they would like never leave my side.
Speaker 1:But still, essentially life here revolves around like everything is within walking distance. To some extent, obviously, people have like cars and motorcycles and ATVs that they use to get around, but even the dogs will like sit on the ATVs and go everywhere with the people. And yesterday I was like sitting in a cafe and there's three dogs sitting around me because their owners are just like working in the cafe and it's all like open air, everything is open air. So you know, dogs are like allowed, they don't have to be on leashes, they're all like open air, everything is open air. So you know, dogs are like allowed, they don't have to be on leashes, they're all very well behaved. And I look around and there's just like three dogs sitting in a down stay at their owner's feet. And in the US that would be like so unheard of. So I think you know a big part of the calm state of mind that these dogs have here is obviously like they're living a more natural life, they're more fulfilled in that sense.
Speaker 1:But I think another big, big influencer in the dog's behavior here is the owner's state of mind and also how people interact with dogs here. So my stepsister Kayla is one of the people that's like every time she says she's a dog, she's like oh, a dog. And I was like you have to stop doing that, like you can't do that because you look around and nobody is doing that with the dogs, like it's just a normal thing, as it should be, like we shouldn't be freaking out every time we see a dog. And even I know, when you go to like other countries in Europe, like when people have dogs, you don't talk to other people's dogs, like you don't need to make a big scene every time you see a dog. And that's a huge issue in the U?
Speaker 1:S and, like I said, I can only speak on the US because, like that's where I live and train dogs and every time a dog is out in public it's like oh my gosh, a dog, can I pet them? And so our dogs have this mentality that like, oh a person, I get to get super excited they're gonna pet me, like there's no neutrality in that regard. And then also to like the same thing with other dogs. You either get other dogs, other dog people that are like, oh my gosh, can my dog say hi? Or you get the people that are like, don't let your dog come up to me, like, keep your dog away. Like you know, there's just like these extreme responses to dog ownership.
Speaker 1:I feel, like in the US and here, like people are just more chill and more relaxed and I think obviously a big part of that is just what this type of place attracts. Like it's attracting people that like to surf and do yoga and like are escaping in some sense. Right, like you don't have to wear shoes anywhere I've worn like a bikini for like the past 10 days, you know like I don't even have to wear like real clothes, and it's just like a very different lifestyle. So I feel like it attracts a different type of person, but also like people are just so much more neutral to everything. So yesterday I was walking or the day before yesterday I was walking on the beach and this guy had a dog on the leash which is like the first dog that I've ever seen on the leash and he's walking down the beach and like there are guys, there are so many dogs here, like it's it's literally a town that is like a dog park, like everybody has a dog and they're all off leash.
Speaker 1:You walked on the beach and you see like 50 dogs within like 10 minutes, like there are literally so many dogs. So I'm on the beach and this guy is like walking down the beach. He has his dog in like a loose lead heel, basically, like you can tell, this dog is just like following his lead and like has been trained and like doing well, is just like following his lead and like has been trained and like doing well. And a like off-leash dog rushes up and is like bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, like at this dog and the guy just keeps moving forward, like he just keeps walking forward. He ignores the dog. His dog looks to him, sees that he's not reacting and then continues to move forward and I was like wow, that would literally never happen.
Speaker 1:If there was an off-leash dog like rushing somebody, like it would be just such a situation Like you would have the owner screaming like get your off-leash dog, and you would have like the owner pulling back on their dog and it would just like be this big emotional experience. And it would just like be this big emotional experience. And I cannot emphasize enough how damaging that is to your dog's well-being and your dog's state of mind. Like, imagine if you're a child and your parent is having these like huge reactions over situations. Like you are going to grow up and have big reactions because you think that that's like the normal response. So like, let's say, you're out with a parent and like a stranger approaches you and starts like talking to you the child and it's like, oh my gosh, hello. And your parent is like, get away from my kid. Like has this huge big reaction? As a child, you would be like, oh my gosh, this is like the appropriate response, like it's scary, this is a threat. People coming up to me. As a child, like that would greatly impact you and, for whatever reason, that has become the norm in like dog culture.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking back to a dog trainer who would post videos of him working dogs outside of a dog park and he would take these like highly reactive dogs and obviously they're on leash. But when you go to a dog park, like the dogs are about to be off leash and so people just let their dogs out of the car and like let them run over to the entrance of the dog park, and that would happen all the time. And then this guy would just like absolutely lose it on these people and be like get your effing dog and like scream at them and be like this your dog needs to be on a leash. Like you're not following leash laws and literally start fights with people outside of the dog park while he's actively trying to work through reactivity with dogs. In my mind I just think that that is absolutely insane. Because I am so big on we need to act how we want our dogs to act and if you are having these major outbursts, you're like literally leading by example. So when I am working dogs especially reactive dogs my state of mind is, without a doubt, the most important influence over that dog's behavior.
Speaker 1:So a good example of this is Toma's dog, and I always bring up his Malinois, hawk, because we've actually been like working through stuff with him. Like Toma has kind of struggled with his dog Hawk. So we're like walking down the street and Hawk has like big reactions to like loud noises. But it's literally because Toma has big reactions to loud noises, like I I'm sure I've talked about this before on the podcast but like Toma is literally a reactive dog, we'll be standing like talking to owners and there's like a noise and he like whips his head around and like tries to find the noise and then he like freaks my owners out and then they start looking around and looking for the noise and I'm like hey, like snapping at them, like bring it back here, like we're having a conversation, don't pay attention to him.
Speaker 1:He's just reacting to a random noise and so he was struggling with his Malinois for a while, like reacting to noises and like he just kept telling himself like oh, hawk has like big reactions to like fireworks and like gunshots and if you're doing sport, training like gunshots is like the sound of a gunshot is one of the things that is integrated into one of the like PSA levels. They like shoot a gun and your dog has to like not respond to it. Right, that was something that he like. He was just perpetually like telling himself of. Like, oh, hawk struggles with gunshots and, um, you know he struggles with loud noises and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:So we're like walking hawk around the fourth of july and I have him, I'm walking him and I'm trying to like walk toma through like what levels he needs to use on the e-collar and how I'm not allowing him to put any pressure, like I want him visually paying attention to me I'm not going to put him into a like formal heel and a firework goes off and Toma literally like reacts to it. I am completely neutral and I just keep moving forward and I'm like staring forward and so Hawk has a little bit of reaction and then looks at me and realizes that I'm not having a reaction and then he just keeps moving forward and Toma's like wow, he never does that. And I was like yeah, but like look at your response, right, like you literally reacted to the sound, like you have to get a hold of yourself and not react. And another thing that he struggles with with Hawk is Hawk redirecting.
Speaker 1:And Toma's been bit a few times by his dog and Hawk is like a very big Malinois, like he's kind of scary if you don't know what you're doing, but like deep down he's a big baby. And I definitely have more dog handling experience than Toma and I've worked with a lot of aggressive dogs. Like I just I don't really get scared of dogs too much anymore, I'm like confident in my handling abilities. So Toma has this experience of being bit by Hawk and so now he's like a little twitchy around him. He's not super confident in his handling and that communicates to Hawk that like it's time to bite and so they're kind of like stuck in this cycle of Hawk is reacting because of Toma and Toma is reacting because of Hawk, and so they're not able to work through their issues because Toma can't get a hold of his confidence around his dog.
Speaker 1:And the other day he had a session with him and he was like Hawk did so good, like I was so worried about him redirecting, but like he did great. And I was like it's because you've gotten better. And days before that I saw videos of him working him and I was like you've gotten a lot better, like you've gotten just a lot more comfortable and confident handling him and I was like you have gotten better, toma, like Hawk has not gotten better. Hawk has always had that in him. It's you and your confidence and your handling and your communication with your dog that has improved, which has then improved Hawk and has made Hawk feel more confident in you as a handler. And this is something that I see all the time. Right, when you have a reactive dog, we have these big emotional responses to our dog being reactive, like it is not fun, it is not an enjoyable experience. And then you get to the point where you want to take your dog out and you want to work through these things, but you as the owner and handler are so, so anxious in doing that and it travels down the leash. The leash is more than just a tether between us and our dogs. It's really like our first line of communication. That's how dogs communicate. They communicate very physically and so when you are anxious and you are tense, you're just traveling that message down the leash.
Speaker 1:And I was recently watching Oscar Mora's podcast with Cesar Millan and I loved Cesar's approach to this because he talked about this and Cesar Millan is so big on energy and owner training and I think that that is so, so valuable. And people love to bash Cesar Millan, but he is such a like intuitive dog handler and he's doing what so many people and professional dog trainers cannot do, like I would urge you to try to walk as many dogs as Caesar does, like no one has done it. No one can do it the way that Caesar does. So I think we have a lot to learn from him. And he speaks a lot on the energy of us right, like making sure that we're better so that our dogs can be better.
Speaker 1:And one of his approaches for working through reactivity with dogs is he has the owner work the dogs around his alpacas, because the owner has such a negative experience working the dog around other dogs that as soon as you bring out another dog, like, that person tenses up right Because their past experience just like the reactive dog has been, you know, emotional, it's been uncomfortable, and so you're anticipating that in your body language and it travels down the leash and you're never going to get to work through reactivity if you cannot work on yourself and get a hold of your state of mind in those moments and you have full control over it. So essentially what he does is he practices with the owner on the handling and building up their confidence around another animal that's not a dog, because the owner has no experience working their dog around alpacas and so they're not bringing these like emotional, like baggages with them in these training sessions and it helps to build the owner's confidence as a handler to be able to work through their dog's reactivity. So first he builds up the confidence with these alpacas and then slowly integrates dogs into these training sessions and builds up the handler's confidence around dogs, because we know that that's the most important thing when working through reactivity with our dogs. And it could be reactivity, it could be fearfulness, like it can essentially be anything. We have to check in with ourselves emotionally in these moments in order for us to work through these behavioral issues with our dogs and I've talked a lot about this in previous episodes and if you guys have listened for a while, you kind of know my backstory and like how I got into training.
Speaker 1:But one thing that really kind of saved me as a person was getting into meditation. I've always been a pretty anxious person, like I was a very anxious child. It's just. It's just always how I've been Like, it's always how I've gone about life and I have to work very, very hard to be calm. And I always get people that are like oh, you're so calm, you're so chill, like you don't react. I do not react. But also like I work very, very hard at it, like I am a I'm just naturally a more anxious person. Or, like my past life experiences, I've been a more anxious person and I have to work like very hard and very intentionally to not bring that with me each day. And one thing that has really helped with that is meditation. And I talk about meditation all the time and it's for good reason, because it's just helped me so much and I feel like it's made me be a significantly better dog trainer and handler.
Speaker 1:So I spent five years of undergrad in a biology program at the University of Central Florida, which is how I came to live in Orlando. And if you've done a hard science degree, it is not easy. And on top of that I didn't really have any financial help. So I had to have a lot of jobs. So I had a full-time schedule with school and then I had typically about two to three jobs at a time during my undergrad and I just feel like I was perpetually anxious, like I was perpetually worried about studying for exams, going to work, like paying for my life, like doing all the things as a college student, and I kind of buried this anxiety beneath staying busy. And when I left for grad school, that was like the summer before I left for grad school was the summer that I got Lucy. So I had about three months with Lucy.
Speaker 1:So by the time I got to Kentucky, I went to the University of Kentucky for a year to study biology. By the time that I got to Kentucky with Lucy she was around six months old and if you know, six months old is literally the worst age for puppyhood. They are horrible, it's like the terrible twos. They are destructive. They're going through like the worst phase of puppyhood around that age and Lucy was horrible. So essentially I like rushed from my you know busy schedule.
Speaker 1:In Orlando at UCF I took summer classes that I needed to be able to get into grad school because I didn't pass calculus. So I had to take calc over the summer, the semester before I had to go to grad school, in order for me to actually be accepted into grad school. Like they're waiting for me to finish that class. Anyways, I passed calculus. I moved to Kentucky. I had a new job, a new apartment that I was living in by myself. This was the first time that I was really like living by myself on my own in my own apartment and I had like new job, new school, new apartment, new city, new, everything Right and it like I like new experiences.
Speaker 1:But that was a lot and I feel like just coming out of my very stressful like undergrad career and then moving right into that, I found myself back in the same place. I was back to working 24 seven. I was essentially not really sleeping because I was staying up all the time writing these like crazy long research papers. Like my graduate program was intense. It was so intense. I thought my undergrad was intense but my grad program was intense and I was like in classes with like PhD students who had been there forever and they were so smart and like I felt like I was the dumbest person in my class so I had to work like very, very hard just to like keep up and maintain school and on top of that I had a full-time job and I had kind of this like love-hate relationship with my job.
Speaker 1:I went from like UCF, which was very progressive and student-focused and they really took the time to listen to their students and trust their students in leading their programs, fitness person at the gym all for all five years. I was in my undergrad for five years but all five years of my undergrad career and my last two years I worked as a personal trainer and I had just been there for so long. So they kind of like trusted me in, you know, helping run the programs and I was kind of like a senior employee there and you know it was just like a very different way of life than the program at the University of Kentucky. So when I was at the University of Kentucky I was a personal trainer graduate assistant, so I essentially ran the personal training program there and the fitness programs there were just kind of outdated. It was Kentucky, which is very different from progressive Orlando, and the people who had worked at the gym had been there since they were in their undergrad, and so it was very much like a we don't change our ways and this is how things are.
Speaker 1:And I was the new person coming in seeing that the program really needed a lot of changes and we didn't have a lot of trainers. They weren't passionate about their work, they weren't doing any sort of like continued education, which is really important when you're in the fitness industry, because it's an industry that, similar to dog training, is constantly changing. So it's important that my trainers stay up to date on all of that sort of stuff. So I came in and I came in pretty hot. I wanted to change a whole lot and I was getting a lot of pushback from my boss and they were like yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, just kind of like do do the bare minimum Right, and like that's not me, I'm not a been bare minimum girly. So I had this like love hate relationship with my job and it was like kind of stressful because I didn't really like my bosses and I felt like they didn't really like me, and then I had this like extremely difficult, uh, school program and I had a very difficult dog program and I had a very difficult dog and on top of that I started having medical issues.
Speaker 1:I have had like these visual they're called ocular migraines, where I essentially go blind, I lose my vision for an hour or so, and it only really happens when I'm like really stressed and I'm like not taking care of myself. So I've had these since I was literally like 12 years old and when I started getting more stressed in Kentucky, like I started getting these migraines every single day and it got to the point where, like it was debilitating. I couldn't do my schoolwork, I had no memory, I could not remember like anything that I studied or was writing about, and so I would go to take these tests or like do these presentations, and I just was completely blank, like my brain was literally just shutting down and I was just not in a good place mentally and I feel like that was a huge influence on. You know, the beginning stages of, like my relationship with Lucy. Like I'll be totally real with you, I did not like Lucy, like I was so upset because me and Zoe have always just like clicked and I've always been able to have a really good relationships with Zoe and take her everywhere and she like listened to me and we just had this level of mutual respect and like Lucy was just not that like she was so like deviant like she.
Speaker 1:If I turned around for two seconds she would try to like run out the door or like shred something or like destroy my plants, like she just could not be trusted. And honestly, it wasn't until she was about like five years old that I could trust her, like being out of a crate, unsupervised, for more than two seconds. But I feel like my state of mind really influenced Lucy's behavior, because I was so high strung and so stressed out and like Lucy was just mirroring that right back at me and she was awful. She was running away. Like we had no level of mutual respect. She just like her biggest thing was running away at any moment that she could. And I tried the long line right, I tried the positive reinforcement, I literally tried everything. But running away was so rewarding to her and like self-fulfilling that there was no amount of like treats or rewards that would counter that. And on top of that, she was not a food motivated dog, she just did not like to eat. So I couldn't really use that in our training. So I needed to do something.
Speaker 1:I was in and out of the hospital because I would literally feel like I was having a stroke, with these migraines, like one side of my face would go completely numb and I would lose my vision for like hours on end. I had to get like medical notes because I was like failing my classes and it was just like a whole ass thing. I had to go see a neurologist and then when I went to go see the neurologist, he had me do this test and I like failed the test so badly, like a memory test and he was like you don't have migraines like you're just depressed. And I was like, okay, I think I'm depressed because I like can't see for like a couple hours a day, but it's fine. So he like put me on this anti-depression medicine. And he was like you got to like get ahold of yourself or you're never going to be able to see again. And I was like, okay, so he put me on this anti-depression medicine and then it ultimately made me lose my memory even more and I was like failing tests to the point where, like, my professors are coming up to me and they're like you're like a smart person, like what's going on?
Speaker 1:Luckily, a lot of my professors were like very understanding and I actually remember like sitting down with one of them having a conversation, because I was like I don't know what to do, like I'm so unhappy and I'm so unwell, like I don't know how I can continue doing this for any longer, and he was like you know what, meg, you got to take care of your health. Like grad school is not going anywhere. You can always come back to it. Like you are like you have to take care of yourself. So after that conversation I knew like all right, I gotta like I gotta take responsibility. I have to take my own mental health into like consideration here. And that's where I really started getting into meditation.
Speaker 1:And meditation for me wasn't really like a woo, woo, like oh, I'm doing this because I want to like sit with myself and like get better. It was literally just like I need to sleep, like first and foremost, like let's just practice something that will help us sleep at night, because I wasn't sleeping. So I first got into meditation through the app Headspace, and Headspace is just a guided meditation app and it's not woo-woo, it doesn't really get into too much of meditation. It just helps you breathe, which so many of us need help with. But it just walks you through a a 10 minute meditation on breathing and I started using this every night before I would go to bed. It would just help me fall asleep at night. So I started seeing like huge benefits just with this 10 minute meditation every day and I was like I want more, like I want to learn more about this. It has helped me so much just in being able to sleep and like seeing my baseline right, like I was so just jacked up 24 seven and I feel like it kind of like brought my baseline down a little bit. So I got into and I don't remember how I got into this, but I was like a huge podcast listener at the time into and I don't remember how I got into this, but I was like a huge podcast listener at the time and I think I got into.
Speaker 1:His name is Dan Harris Shoot. I can't remember the name of his podcast 10% Happier. He has a podcast called 10% Happier and he also has a book called 10% Happier and essentially his podcast is. He was in the same position as me and he was a news anchor for ABC and he was so high, strung and doing coke and all these drugs and not sleeping and one day he had a panic attack on live TV and that was kind of the tipping point for him is he was like, all right, I need to get myself in check. So he got into meditation. I just think through like his connections that he had made in like interviews and started really diving deep into meditation and state of mind and just bringing awareness to the thoughts that we have.
Speaker 1:Because if you've ever gotten into like mindfulness, meditation, it's essentially not about not having thoughts, it's about bringing awareness to your thoughts and creating some space between them, because we are not our thoughts. So I'm going to bring it back to dog training for a second. When you're having these thoughts of like, oh my gosh, my dog is so aggressive, my dog is so reactive, right, we kind of take those thoughts as gospel and as fact. But the fact of the matter is those are just thoughts and we are the ones who are giving meaning to them because we take them as fact and so we carry them into every new situation with us, just like Toma and his reactive dog. Right, he's like oh, I've. He's not really reactive, but redirecting dog, oh, I've been bit by him before, hawk's going to bite me. Hawk's going to bite me and so he's taking these thoughts as gospel and bringing them with him in every given situation. So that's sort of the foundation of mindfulness.
Speaker 1:Meditation is essentially you sit and focus on your breathing. When you focus on your breathing, you're going to notice your thoughts. It's okay to notice your thoughts and then you're going to start to wander off in those thoughts. And the part of meditation is when you recognize that you've been led astray by your thoughts and you bring yourself back to your breathing. And your breathing is just there as something to essentially ground you. It doesn't have to be your breathing, it can really be focusing your intention on anything. But the important part is to notice when you wander off and to bring yourself back.
Speaker 1:And I compare this to dogs on place. When we're teaching our dogs place, they typically don't stay there for a long time in the beginning, right, like it takes a lot of repetitions to build that up. So you put your dog on place, something happens they wander off, right, you go. Nope, I'm going to bring you back over to place. They go back on place. They lay down. It happens again. They get off of place. You bring them back over to place.
Speaker 1:You do that 20 times in, let's say, the first 10 minutes of a place session and eventually your dog is going to have more awareness and be like oh, I'm not going to get off of place because I'm always going to be brought back here. It's the exact same thing with meditation. So whenever you're meditating, your mind is going to wander, it's going to go into oh my gosh, I forgot to check this email and I need to uh, you know, do the laundry and I left my clothes in the washer. Now they're going to smell and then in that moment, oh, I lost my train of thought. I need to go back to my breath. You go back to your breath and then three seconds later, your brain wanders off onto something else and it's in realizing that that is the mindfulness practice that we are gaining to achieve.
Speaker 1:And when you first start meditating, sitting for five minutes is absolutely excruciating and for me, when I started getting into the actual practice of this not so much the guided meditations it was horrible, absolutely horrible. Like sitting with yourself is awful, and that's what we're asking our dogs to do when we put them on place, and this is why I emphasize, like the importance for us to meditate so much is because how can we ask our dogs to do that when we can't even do it? Like we are constantly grabbing our phones because we don't want to sit with our thoughts long enough, and that is like that. Right, there is the problem, like our state of mind and our wellbeing and our lack of just a want to want to sit with ourselves and our own thoughts, like how unfair of us to ask our dogs to do that in return and to have self-awareness to not be reactive when we are not even working on ourselves enough to not be reactive. So I really got deep into the world of meditation and Buddhism. I read all of the you know mindfulness books. I read all all of the things. I started, you know, reading more about Buddhism and religions and, uh, how a lot of these messages that are in Buddhism is actually seen across multiple religions, and I'm gonna share here for a second.
Speaker 1:But another big player in this for me was psychedelics. I got into taking mushrooms in more of like a, I want to say not like medical way, but as a way to kind of like deepen my relationship with like this mindfulness practice and just to be like completely transparent and completely overshare. I have done like I've taken psilocybin in high school, which, like I obviously would not recommend, but it was just that's where I was at in high school, so I have experience with it. And then when I graduated from high school and went to college, I feel like I really like focused so much on my studies and like making my body healthy. But I wasn't really like focusing on my mental state as much until after grad school, when I had like been doing this mindfulness practice for such a long time and a lot of these practitioners were speaking on how mushrooms could really help you deepen your mindfulness practice, and so I had had the experience from high school and I was like all right, I want to get back into this.
Speaker 1:So I took mushrooms like quite a few times and I had gotten very like experienced with it and sometimes it would be like me just going to the beach and like meditating and sitting with myself and taking more of kind of like a a medical approach to it, and sometimes I would like do it with friends as more fun. But one thing that I always did when I would take them is I would have an intention before going into it. I always needed to have an intention, whether that intention was to let's just have fun versus I, you know, want to sit with myself on, let's say, a problem that I was having. So I've always kind of looked to mushrooms as a way to help me in those moments when I feel a little bit stuck and it's always helped me work through that, always helped me work through that.
Speaker 1:So if you don't know how psilocybin works, is it actually activates all the regions of your brain at once, and how our brains work, is we kind of get into these grooves and they're like literal, like neural pathways in our brain. So I'm going to use dogs as an example. When your dog is reactive, that creates a groove, so a little highway for neurons to go there. It's like if water is running through a stream. The more water that runs there, the more experiences you have, the easier it is for that water to flow there. So the easier it is your brain to just go down that groove. And we are very conditioned dogs and people easily conditionable, I should say so through experiences we create these grooves in our brain that's essentially like this neural highway, and every time we encounter an experience that's similar to one in the past, our brain goes down what it knows. It goes down this groove. So we've conditioned these patterns in our brain and I talk a lot about being an anxious person and that's just those neural grooves.
Speaker 1:Right, I have big emotional responses to something. Or let's say, you have a traumatic event. Your brain is going to keep going down those grooves until we actively work against it, and meditation can help us do that. But psilocybin is so useful in this and it's especially useful in helping people with PTSD for this reason as well, because when we have these big, one-off emotional experiences, like it has a huge impact on our neural biology and so the next time something similar happens like that, our brain goes right into that groove because it was such an emotional experience. It's it's conditioned after just one event. And this is what happens with you know things like dog fights or big reactive moments, and then you know a dog becomes aggressive, is it's like this one time emotional event that has a huge impact on the dog's state of mind moving forward. And in order for us to work through that, we have to get a ton of less emotional events to balance out that one big emotional event. So psilocybin really helped me. You know work through these grooves and what it does is it lights up all the regions of your brain at once to lessen these grooves.
Speaker 1:So, after have meditation and psilocybin to thank for my current mental stability, because I don't really like talk too much about, you know, my night, my personal life, but I feel like throughout high school and I would say like up until now I've gone through a lot Like I've I've just I've gone through a lot in psilocybin and meditation have been things that I've really been able to lean on to help make sure that I stay a sane person to be quite honest with you, person to be quite honest with you and I bring this up not to like encourage you to do mushrooms, but the thing that mushrooms does is it lights up our brain so that we're able to essentially rewire our brain through these like past experiences or emotional experiences, and it's very similar like when we have, let's say, a reactive dog or an aggressive dog, like it's such an emotional experience. It's one of these like one-off events that changes our, our neurobiology, and so you have to actively work against your thoughts going into those grooves in order to like, in order to work through those past experiences, like you have to actively work through those thought patterns, right and so like. For me, psilocybin was a way to do that, but for a lot of us I'm not saying to go and do this, like if you're not willing to do that, like if you're not willing to do that, you have to bring a lot of intention to your thoughts and actively changing them. You have full control over your thoughts. So in those moments when you're taking your dog out and you have to bring awareness to your body, tensing up or your breathing increasing and physically dial yourself back, relax, take a deep breath A lot of times when I'm working with owners, that's something that I'll have them do, is I'll actually have them take a deep breath before we go on our walk, because it has a huge, huge impact on our dog's well-being and their behavior in those moments.
Speaker 1:So one dog that I'm thinking of particular, in particular, is Mabel. She was a reactive dog and she still is a little bit reactive, but she was. So she wasn't like verbally reactive, but like she would like huff and like hit the end of the leash and was putting so much pressure on the leash Every time that she would see another dog like you could not get through to her. And the owner was like this soft, quiet, compassionate person and he had this very, very intense dog. I could handle Mabel a lot better than he could, but it's because, like I have the experience right, like I'm the dog trainer, I hope that I can handle his dog better.
Speaker 1:And so I did a lot of follow-up sessions with him, not necessarily for the dog but for him. I needed to build up his confidence in navigating those reactive moments because even though the dog went through training, she's not going to change overnight and she's especially not going to change overnight if the owner doesn't change. And so a huge part of my training with him was really making sure that he had the confidence and knew how to get through those moments when she was reactive, because it was intense, like she was an intense dog and he would get so stressed out and he was doing his absolute best and I'm honestly like so, so proud of him. But we did a lot of follow-up lessons because I wanted to be able to coach him through those moments and he was the type of person where he would see another dog and he would just instinctively tense up and so to have me there and be like take a deep breath, relax, just keep walking forward. You're doing great. Like that, like verbal communication to him helped him build up his confidence in being able to handle her and navigate those reactive moments. And so what I want for you guys, if you're struggling with a dog that has behavioral issues I know that it's hard Like I don't want you to think that I'm belittling you or saying like hey, it's all on you. Like it is hard, okay, but you have to be your own coach in those moments. You have to have that inner dialogue in your head saying relax, take a deep breath, keep moving forward. If my dog has a reaction, it's fine, we're going to work through it, we're going to overcome it and we're going to relax and calm down.
Speaker 1:And yesterday I made a poll asking you guys to speak on your experiences of this and I've had quite a few people reach out to me, people that I've worked with personally or online, saying that I've helped them build up their confidence as a handler. I've had a few. I had a few old trainers reach out to me and they're like do you remember how I was before I met you? And I was like, yes, I definitely do, but just their confidence in handling dogs has improved so much and so they're dogs with behavioral issues.
Speaker 1:Like I had a person who was in the virtual shadow program. She reached out to me and she was like I just have to let you know that, like, because of the virtual shadow program, like before I was doing all the things but I was just going through the motions. And she was like, because of the virtual shadow program, like before I was doing all the things but I was just going through the motions. And she was like because of the virtual shadow program, like you gave me the confidence to overcome those reactive moments and because of that, like my dog's reactivity has been day and night and we're no longer having these big explosive reactions because I've been able to like be confident and to like navigate these situations. And so, because of that, my dog is confident in me and being able to navigate that. And I had quite a few past uh clients reach out to me and they were like you know, before working with you, I was so stressed out about my dog being reactive and like, well, yes, we're still working through it, I know how to handle it and I know that, like after my dog has a reaction, they're fine, like the situation is out of their brain.
Speaker 1:It's me who kind of lingers in that and because of you I've been able to address that and I've been able to like move past that like mental barrier that I have with my dog. And even talking with Toma we were talking about this yesterday because he was like hey, you can tell people publicly that I struggle with my dog because I do. But he was like a dog training groupie, like he followed all of the people, he did all the courses. He's been to more seminars than I have and he told me, like you have helped me so much in just my confidence in my handling and clarity in communication with my dog that I've actually like been able to improve so much since being with you and since we've been together, and that's like my biggest thing.
Speaker 1:I do not claim to be the most talented dog trainer. I do not claim to be the most knowledgeable, the most skilled handler. That is not me, like I know that but one thing that I do think that I'm very good at is the mental practice that comes with being a calm, confident leader for our dogs. Because I have been through so much and so I'm kind of taking my past experiences and my natural tendency to be this anxious person and you know the effort that I have put in to working on that and to not be reactive and to not be anxious or fearful or reactive in myself and trust me, there are moments when I could just go in on people. Like I have been screwed over by people so many times.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you all, someday I'm gonna have a book and I'm gonna write everything that has happened to me. It's absolutely insane, just like not even getting into like my high school and beyond, but like my experience in trying to start a dog training business on my own. Like I'm serious, I'm gonna write a book someday and y'all are gonna be like holy shit. But all of that to say I I've just worked very, very hard at at being the calm, confident person that I am today and I haven't gotten here without that inner work and so I might not be the most skilled hard on myself and I try to show up for myself as my best for the dogs and the owners that I work with, and I really just want to help you all do the same, because, just like how I'm seeing here, the owners are calm, they're neutral, right, and they're probably the type of people that are taking mushrooms and doing ayahuasca retreats and working on themselves as well.
Speaker 1:But I feel like in the US there's this huge, huge tendency of reactivity. Huge tendency of reactivity. Just think of, like the Karen videos that we see online, or the videos of people screaming at other dog owners or freaking out if a dog is, you know, rushing up to them, like I really want us to just be intentional in acting how we want our dogs to act. So I told you that I would give you a few pointers in what we can do and for me, I don't want to get off like too woo-woo because I know that's not for everybody, but I do think that there is so much value in a meditation practice, especially if you're somebody who puts your dog on place. It's so unfair to ask our dogs to go and sit on place when we can't do the same.
Speaker 1:So my challenge to you is to take five minutes five minutes everybody has five minutes out of their day to bring some awareness to our thoughts. So what that looks like is. You'll find a quiet room in your house. Put your phone on, do not disturb, set a timer, find a nice comfortable position, relax your shoulders, put your hands on your knees. You're just going to focus on your breath, focus on just a regular pace of breathing for you, breathe in and out and, if you need to, you can have kind of this verbal dialogue in your brain of breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, and what's going to happen is your thoughts are going to wander and they're going to wander off to oh, breathing.
Speaker 1:Breathing is so hard. I feel like I'm like trying to force it when you have those thoughts oh, go back, breathe in, breathe out. Oh, my gosh, I forgot to check my email yesterday. This person was supposed to get back to me. Oh, we're going to notice that. Go back, breathe in, breathe out. What this is going to do is it's going to help you realize that you are going to wander off about 100 times per minute and you're going to wander off on these thoughts. And I want this to help you bring awareness to the fact that you have thousands and thousands of thoughts each hour. And if we were to take those thoughts as gospel and say that these thoughts are fact. That would be absolutely insane, just because of the sheer number of thoughts that we have just in those five minutes that you practice this meditation.
Speaker 1:And when you're having anxious thoughts, the anxious thoughts that say, oh my gosh, a dog is approaching us, stop right there, bring awareness to that thought and come back to some sort of center. I think it's helpful for your breathing, especially if you're practicing your focus being on your breathing in your meditation. Go back to your breathing in those moments, have something that can ground you in the present moment instead of letting your thoughts run, because they're just thoughts, they are not you, you are not your thoughts, they are not facts, they're just little clouds floating by moving in the sky. And the more that we practice this mindfulness meditation, the more we come to realize that there is, in fact, a space between us and our thoughts and the person that is witnessing those thoughts. That's how we know that there's a space, right, something. Our consciousness is witnessing these thoughts. And so you know, this practice is not just to help us be better handlers and less reactive as owners and more confident in ourselves, but to also show up as better people, you know, in the moments where somebody cuts you off and you want to flip them off, we can. We can create some space between that stimulus and our reaction to that stimulus, and that's all reactivity is is there's a stimulus, whether it's a dog or a person or a car, and then our dogs have a reaction to it, and our goal in our training is to create space between this stimulus. And so, while that might be very physical for our dogs, for us it's a mental game and we have to bring awareness to our body language, to our state of mind, to our level of reactivity as people and as a society if we are to be able to work through this in our dogs. And it's no surprise that dog reactivity is rampant. When us, as a society, we are high strung, we are reactive, of course our dogs are going to mimic that.
Speaker 1:And I was even on TikTok this morning and I was watching a post by a she's like an influencer, but she gets into like dog training every now and then and her dog does not have confidence around other dogs and so she made a video of an off-leash dog approaching her dog and she's kind of narrating it and she was like you know, my dog, like, is not confident with dogs, and this off-leash dog approached us and, instead of immediately recalling him, I wanted to see how he responded to the dog and so she let her dog like make a good decision. He ended up recalling back to her and in that moment I'm watching this video and I like feel proud, not because of how her dog acted in that moment, but because of how she responded like. You can see her confidence changing and because of that, her, her dog's confidence changing around other dogs and I've followed her for a while and I love following her and in her account I I feel like she's gone from this person who was very reactive of like when an off-leash dog was approaching she would, you know, have a pretty intense response, and so I feel like it was it was making her dog have this intense response and so to be able to see her grow as a handler, I was like having this proud moment of like, wow, like she's getting so much better and that is so awesome and I love this like message that she's sharing with us and that, like we have to trust our dogs like and we have to trust ourselves too. I think a lot of reactive dog owners. A lot of dogs with behavioral issues struggle because they have had those big emotional experiences and we just fall back into those grooves. We fall back into our response and we really have to learn to check ourselves and start each day and each walk as a new experience. So I hope that gives you some practical advice into how you can work through this and hopefully bring some level awareness in your day-to-day.
Speaker 1:Whenever you are taking your dog out for a walk or you are working them in training or, let's say, you're a trainer, you're working with owners. How can we help them become more confident and less reactive in their own behavior and their own tendencies? And you know, I'm seeing it firsthand how here in Costa Rica, everybody is so chill with their dogs and the dogs are mirroring that right back to them. And I'm interested to see, when I go back to the States, my perspective on this and how it kind of changes as I move forward as a trainer. But I'll leave you all there. As always, I appreciate you all so, so much.
Speaker 1:If you don't know, we have a dog training community where we have a ton of dogs, dogs. We have a ton of dog owners and trainers working through things just like this. It's where I answer your questions. I cannot answer questions through DMs, but the community is where I connect with you all, so I'll include the links in the show notes for you all to join the community. That's like my place. It's a safe space for like-minded owners to work through behavioral issues with their dogs. We also have one spot open for the retreat in California next month, so we're about 12 days away from that.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited. I'll also include the link to apply for that in the show notes. And, yeah, I'm very excited to start our new journey out west with this retreat. If you're a dog owner out there who wants to work with me, I'll be opening up some training slots out in California here very soon as well, so stay tuned for that. But, as always, here very soon as well, so stay tuned for that. But, as always, thank you all. So so much for being here and joining me and listening to me rant about dog training. I hope this allows you to bring some mindfulness into your dog training practice. So, as always, we'll see you next week.