27 MayEpisode 207 | Elise Mac Adam, SFTD CPT, on how the grief of rehoming a dog led her to the School For The Dogs Professional Course
Elise Mac Adam and Annie first met in 2002 when Annie wrote up Elise's engagement announcement for her column in The New York Observer. Both of them were terrier lovers, writers, and native Manhattanites: They became fast friends. When Annie and Kate first started School For The Dogs in 2011 and running classes out of Annie's Manhattan living room, Elise and her dogs were among their first clients. Elise, her sons, and her husband, have worked with half a dozen of School For The Dogs trainers over the last decade, with three of their dogs. She has, overall, clocked more sessions than any other single client. Eventually, she had to make the difficult decision to rehome one of her terriers. She and Annie discuss how rehoming a dog can feel like both a success and failure at the same time, and the silver lining of this difficult experience: It led her to decide to enroll in the School For The Dogs Professional Course.
Apply to the School For The Dogs Professional Course here. Next cohort begins August 31.
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Episodes featuring other graduates:
Episode 93 | School For The Dogs' trainer Erin Whelan on how dog training changed her life
Transcript:
Annie:
Elise Macadam is here with me today. I am excited to talk to you because I think you're the only person – you're probably the person I've known longest who's been on this podcast. No, I guess I talked to my friend, Daisy, who I've known since I was 14, but second to maybe Daisy, in 200 plus episodes. You are someone who knew me from my previous life.
Elise:
I knew you from many previous lives, probably.
Annie:
And who I have now known as a friend, as a client and as an apprentice.
Elise:
Yeah. We go way back.
Annie:
And you've known me as well. You wanna tell the story of how we first met?
Elise:
So I met you when I was ghostwriting a book about wedding resources in New York City. And you were writing engagement column.
Annie:
Yeah, I was writing, I was at the New York Observer in, it must have been 2002?
Elise:
Yeah, probably.
Annie:
And I was the assistant to the editor and I wrote a weekly column where I interviewed three different couples who were getting married, and it was called The Love Beat: Countdown to Bliss. And it was a bit of a scramble sometimes to find couples, ‘cause this was long before social media. I had all these like hacks of finding couples. I remember seeing a woman with a big diamond ring on the subway and like writing her a note, slipping her a note once or going to places where people register and like going up to people.
Elise:
Oh, that's so awesome. I didn't know you did that.
Annie:
Oh my God. Yeah. I was like, I had all these tactics to try – and I mean, I would also just email everyone I knew periodically. But yeah, I think you called looking for like, I guess you were like, how do you get your announcement in the paper, writing this guide. And you and I got to talking and you were like, Oh, well I'm getting married. And I was like, stop everything! I have to have her in the column! Not knowing anything about you, but I was sure that you would be interesting.
Elise:
Right. No, it was funny, ‘cause I talked to you first for the book, and then we talked more after that, and yeah.
Annie:
Yeah. And you were one of like four or five, mostly women, that I'm still friends with whose weddings I wrote about who now have teenage kids and actually all of them that I can think of are still married. So you're funny, you're a little like, you don't know each other, but you are like a little club in my mind of people.
Elise:
That's great
Annie:
If you are one of these people, you know who you are. Yeah, I remember early on when we were first starting School For The Dogs, I must have emailed you in some email blast and you wrote back and you were like, oh my God, I've always wanted to be an animal trainer. This is so cool. Something like that, right?
Elise:
Yeah.
Annie:
Is that how it was, in an email that I sent that you first heard that I was doing this? Or did I tell you in person? I don't remember.
Elise:
I can't remember how and at the time, so I had Sherry, right? He was like a few years ago.
Annie:
Sherry was a cairn terrier.
Elise:
He was a cairn terrier, he was –
Annie:
Sheridan
Elise:
Sheridan. We called him Sherry.
Annie:
And how did Sheridan come into your life?
Elise:
So my parents had a rescue cairn terrier. So in New York, our dog in New York was a rescued cairn terrier named Muffin.
Annie:
This is you growing up in Manhattan?
Elise:
When we moved to New York, I was in the middle of high school.
Annie: Where'd you go to high school again?
Elise:
I went to the last three years of high school at Trinity.
Annie:
In Manhattan, I forgot. That's also something we have in common is we're Manhattan kids.
Elise:
And, so she was around, Muffin was around for a really long time and I'd be, I love cairn terriers. And right after I moved in with Steve, I was like, before anything I wanted to get, I was recovering from the death of Muffin and I wanted to, and so we just kind of looked around and we found this breeder. She was reputable and also an enormous Star Trek fan. Like her house was full of these. Like what do you call it? The black velvet portraits of Star Trek characters. Anyway. And then and that, so we got Sherry from her and this was right before September 11th. We got him in the summer, and literally the first day that he was allowed to go out after getting his shots was September 11th. So.
Annie:
Wow. So you had Sherry and then 10 or so years later you got an email from me being like, Hey, I'm a dog trainer now.
Elise:
Yeah. So, and I remember we just had him like jumped, we brought him into work with you actually, even though he was no spring chicken mm-hmm.
Annie:
Do you remember writing me that being like, oh my God, I wanted to be an animal trainer?
Elise:
Yes. Yeah, I do. I do because you know, I actually –
Annie
Did it seem random to hear from me and being like, oh, you're a dog trainer now?
Elise:
It did. And it didn't. Cause I think you and I had had a lot of dog conversations. Because you know, I, I think, I think you and I may share this, like I sort of tell a lot of the stories of my life through the dogs that I have known, like from the time I was like really little. Like even dogs that weren't my dog, dogs that were like –
Annie:
You remember the world through dogs.
Elise:
I remember the world through the dogs that I remember.
Annie:
I guess I ask about myself and like what it was like to hear that for me, because I feel like there were some people for whom it seemed like a really random thing when I was like, I'm gonna become a dog trainer. I remember someone was like, so that you can write about the experience of becoming a dog trainer for a magazine? And I was like, no so that I can train dogs! And other people were like, oh yeah, that makes sense as something that Annie should be doing for a living.
But then now on the other side, I feel like there are people – well, I mean, I think a lot of people I know have no idea that I ever did anything else other than dog training professionally, so.
Elise:
Right. No. I remember thinking that first of all, it made total sense and it just sounded like this amazing idea.
Annie:
I remember thinking about making this career transition in a way that felt like, no one's gonna take me seriously ever about anything again. [laughs] I guess that's just, we all have our like, insecurities about anything.
Elise:
I think we all do that. But the funny thing is, and I can say this for you. I cannot say this for me, but I can say it for you because I believe this for you, that it's the kind of thing that actually gives you more credibility. Because to engage in such a big transition means you have to take it seriously, and you have to really believe in what you're doing and you have to, you know, it is a big course of study. Like what you –
Elise:
Yeah. Although there are certainly people who take no course of study.
Elise:
Yeah. There's that.
Annie:
And do quite well for themselves. So I remember Sherry. I don't remember doing training with Sherry, but then I remember you got – I don't know how much you wanna talk about the, the Linus and –
Elise:
Yeah. We can talk about it. I mean, yeah. So we got Linus –
Annie:
Which is actually an interesting, I mean, if you feel like sharing about it, which you don't have to.
Elise:
Sure. Well, I can, because in some ways it led me to, you know, the apprenticeship. So I'll tell the just short version without crying.
Annie:
I'll elaborate – without crying. Aw, I know it’s so –
Elise:
So we got Linus who
Annie:
Was as a cairn terrier.
Elise:
Who was also a cairn terrier as Sherry was getting older.
Annie:
And you got, you came to puppy kindergarten at School For The Dogs. Then located in my living room. OG.
Elise:
Which was awesome. And this was sort of the moment where, when he was a puppy, this wasn't really an issue, but as he got older, Linus started developing a lot of anxiety that, in the end, I sort of really realized was related to being in the city. And then Sherry died really suddenly. He just was kind of weird one day, and I took him to the vet, and the vet happened to have a sonogram person in the vet that day. And they did a sonogram and there was a gigantic cancerous tumor on his heart. And he just, he just couldn't make it.
And right after that Linus became super, super anxious. And I could barely get him to, you know, like he was barking all the time, but he didn't wanna walk very much. And he would only do certain things.
Annie:
How old was he by that point?
Elise:
He was, I think probably about 18 months old, maybe a little –
Annie:
I don't remember the specifics ‘cause it was like 10 years ago. I remember he was a difficult puppy in puppy kindergarten.
Elise:
He was, yeah.
Annie:
I don't remember what was difficult. I don't have memory of very many puppies, to be honest.
Elise:
He was kind of like, I think he was like almost like a little ADHD in his like, like he could learn things really quickly. But he would kind of just sail off into another arena. And if I look back, I think probably the city was always an issue, but it became really pronounced after Sherry died. And time went past and there was an opportunity. Someone said we have this puppy you know, of a cesky terrier. And once again.
Annie:
I remember when you were like, I think we should get another dog. I was like, great, good idea. Just maybe don't get another terrier. Annie you're like, I'm getting a cesky terrier! I was like, great!
Elise:
I know. But the funny thing is that, so Preston the cesky terrier that we have was kind of the opposite in personality.
Annie:
Oh God. Yeah. Well mellow's the wrong word. Preston is a very unusual dog personality wise, but –
Elise:
He's very unusual personality.
Annie:
How would, how would you describe him?
Elise:
He's I mean, he's very nervous, but very like he's nervous around new people and new things, but once he's used to you, he is just like a shmoo. He's just this kind of marshmallow that kind of settles. He's like an old man kind of, sort of.
Annie:
And he still, does he go outside yet or still no?
Elise:
He goes, well, I usually take him out on the, we have a little balcony with the little balcony with grass on it now I've put like grass. But yeah, he gets very nervous outside. But you haven't seen him in a really long time.
Annie:
He doesn't go for walks outside still, right?
Elise:
No, no. Although he now does a lot of things that he didn't used to do. Like he loves to run out into the apartment hallway. He runs onto the elevator.
Annie:
But it's intense anxiety. Yeah.
Elise:
He has intense anxiety, but he's made enormous strides in terms of his ability to be around new people and things like that.
Annie:
He’s such a sweetie.
Elise:
He's also a real sweetie. So the long
Annie:
Doo doo doo back in time.
Elise:
The long story is that in the end, after a lot of a ton of work, we just ended up rehoming.
Annie:
A ton of work after a ton of work to do what, cause you didn't really describe that.
Elise:
Right. So Linus suddenly it felt very sudden. They were, the dogs were fine together for kind of a long time. And then right when Preston turned one Linus kind of really changed his mind, like very suddenly and became very antagonistic towards Preston and through multiple efforts with School For The Dogs, we had trainers and medication and all sorts of things. We did a lot of different sessions and a lot of different work and –
Annie:
To try and get them to coexist.
Elise:
Exactly, sorry. Yes. To try to get them to coexist and also to try to get both of them to be happy together, you know.
Annie:
And to be clear, like he was attacking Preston.
Elise:
He was attacking Preston.
Annie:
And what were some of the triggers?
Elise:
It could be sometimes it was sort of out of nowhere, it felt like if he just sort of saw him. Sometimes it would be, you know, sort of standard things. Like if they got cornered in an area together or if the doorbell rang and they both ran up to the front door. I think in retrospect it might have been like, you could see elements of resource guarding, but it was never clear in terms of, Oh, he has my food or he has my toy and I want that from him. It was not an obvious kind of resource guarding that you could see.
Annie:
So what were some of the solutions that didn't work, or that were attempted? I should say.
Elise:
So the medication, we tried medicating both of them with different medications.
Annie:
And you worked with Dr. Christensen, Dr. Tu?
Elise:
Mm-hmm both of them.
Annie:
Behavior vets.
Elise:
Yeah. Who are, they're awesome. And I also worked with our vet to kind of coordinate with all of that.
Annie:
Who's your vet?
Elise:
Well, at the time we were seeing Dr. Mary Zanthos but she is subsequently retired. So, but that was the, that was the vet at the time. So we tried that and we did a lot of, sort of just positive conditioning them to each other. We trained them separately. So we would work with Linus one week and then Preston another week. We would have sort of special walk times for Linus. And I had the kids, my two children who were also School For The Dogs volunteers for a while. They were kid decoys for dogs who are nervous around kids.
And this was over the course of years, you know, we really worked – well when I say we, I think I probably just mean me. I worked really hard to try to get things, to work together for them. And our neighbors who always hated us, because if it wasn't the dogs it was the children.
Annie:
Yeah. Gonna, while we're talking, I'm just gonna look up to try and give an exact number of the sessions that we did.
Elise:
Oh, okay.
Annie:
To give numbers to this.
Elise:
Yeah. So it lasted for a really long time. And then finally, like, I just didn't want to, I didn't wanna really accept defeat because obviously I –
Annie:
I think it's an important thing to talk about this because I, I think, you know,
Elise:
Yes, it happens. It was also like, I was really, I loved and continue to love Linus deeply. So I admit my refusal to accept failure. But I think it just became an issue where clearly there was unhappiness. And my pride or whatever you wanna call it really should not have taken precedence over Linus in particular’s happiness. And his particular kind of anxiety, which definitely you could feel, I could feel it in the city. Once he got to a new home and his owner occasionally writes to me and sends me pictures and stuff, just very rare, you know, occasionally. He's much happier. And he's a happy guy now.
Annie:
You did the hard thing, but you did, I think the right thing.
Elise:
Yeah.
Annie:
Did you start out thinking like this is a solvable problem if I just put in the effort and the time?
Elise:
Yeah. This is a solvable problem if I love enough, exert myself enough, take this problem super, super seriously, which I definitely did. I wasn't like, you know, cavalier, but I just think ultimately it's an important thing that I would want to impart to people that it's not always about effort. You know?
Annie:
Do you feel like – you have been a client with us for 3037 days, according to this. What was it like for your family to do that?
Elise:
I think the truth of the matter is I think it was the worst for me. I think that at the time the children were developing lives outside of the home. And the idea of Linus being in a different house that made him happier was really comfortable for them. However, now the children have become completely obsessed with Preston now, and they're older. They're significantly older now. So it's interesting how this bond goes in these funny cycles.
Annie:
So it made them, well, maybe it just opened them up to be able to bond with Preston in a way, rather than having to navigate between the two of them.
Elise:
Yeah. Although I would say that the closest Preston has really solidified in this fascinating way in the last year, which might be pandemic based, or it might be just the age that they're at right now, where they feel maybe they feel more –
Annie:
They’re teenagers!
Elise:
They're teenagers. They may feel more comfortable expressing physical love toward the dog than to their parents right now, which is also very possible. But it was hardest for me. It continues to be hard for me.
Annie:
Tell me what the upside was. I mean, I'm guessing the upside is you, you decided maybe you wanted to learn more about dog training.
Elise:
Yeah, well, I decided that this experience for me was something that might make me a good trainer. Because, first of all, I love working with dogs and I love that work, but also I think, there are times when people I know have worked with trainers and the kind of message that they get from them is –
Annie:
It's your fault?
Elise:
It's your fault.
Annie:
Why is that so sticky? I just, I'm putting together this episode this week, which by the time this airs, I guess I will have posted, but it's Caesar Milan talking to Jada Pinkett Smith and about like their long time friendship with her mother. And so much of it seems like it always comes around to like, well, it's all about the human. You know, it's all about the human seems sort of like the, the refrain, you know, they're learning it from you. And like, I don't know why that's such a sticky idea.
Elise:
I think it comes from –
Annie:
Are we just so egocentric that we think it's all about us all the time?
Elise:
Well, it is that kind of the American thing of like, you know, you – almost libertarian, like you're responsible for everything you're in charge of everything. You can control everything and you have to like, take responsibility and –
Annie:
It's like the Ayn Rand-ian take on like –
Elise:
Own your, you know, and I think it's very popular at this particular moment, culturally,
Annie:
Because I don't think Linus’ issues had anything to do with you.
Elise:
No, I don't think so either. I don't think that –
Annie:
I think it was not a reflection of your anxiety. By the way.
Elise:
And thank you. But I do think that that's also a trend you see in parenting a little bit as well.
Annie:
One thing that I think that was in the Cesar interview was he kept saying like, ‘you have to love yourself and you have to believe in yourself and you have to want to,’ you know, cause he was also talking about like his, like, you know, how he lived his dream of jumping the border and becoming a dog training. It was all about following his dream. Like ‘you have to want it and believe it and love yourself.’
And I was like, thinking to myself, I know a lot of really wonderful dog trainers who I think struggle probably with a degree of self love or self care, who struggle with anxiety and depression, and have all the like normal human behaviors and problems that we all have and personality quirks and traits. And like, they also know how to train dogs really well. And maybe that does help inform some parts of their lives. But the two things seem kind of –
Elise:
I think self consciousness is okay in almost every profession. And I think having had negative experiences is probably a good thing in terms of figuring out sort of how to deal with somebody else having a similar, if not the same, but similar negative experience.
Annie:
Good way to put it. So your experience of people find, I just kind of interrupted you ‘cause you were saying your experience of people was people finding people, going to dog trainers and being told it was their fault.
Elise:
Yeah, exactly. I mean the other thing also is, I think this is something I can say. I don't always practice what I preach, but I also think that living from a perspective of regret is not helpful when you're working with dogs. That it's better to sort of posit how to move forward. Like, okay, this is an issue that the dog has, whatever happened, whatever previous training happened, it's over.
Annie:
Yeah. I feel like similarly to that, I often think about how people obsess about the reason why a dog did something, which is like kind of like that, like rooted in the past or rooted in imagining rather than like rooted in, you know, moving forward and addressing what's in front of you and the solution.
Elise:
Yes, I mean to a certain extent, like you're like the dog peed over there. Well, there's a lot possible for it. Some of which may be obvious and useful to know like, oh, is there a medical problem or whatever, but other of those possibilities are not gonna help you moving forward. I think that that's the case also, you know, I have two kids and I, in some ways I also think that that relates to my children as well. Like you can look at endless amounts of reasoning why.
And so when my younger child, Sebastian was in nursery school, he was eventually diagnosed with ADHD. But before that, I just got a lot of complaints from the school and the complaints were very vague because he was doing stuff that was not like classic ADHD stuff. It was like weird and anxious stuff. And in retrospect, I think the school again was doing the thing that we just talked about with dog training, which was like, this is your fault, make him better. And it was completely unhelpful and I still resent the school for it. Instead of saying, you know, something about this environment is having an effect on him, can we talk about how to work with it? Or, you know, just, just, just asking what is going on, you know, I think is better than fix it.
But whether it's because we're in New York, although I actually think that this is probably more of a common cultural thing in the United States right now, people just wanna fix it. People just wanna fix your kid, your dog, your, you know, faucet, whatever, as fast as possible. The idea that there's gonna be a process and that actually investing in the process might actually be just as interesting and rewarding as the quick fix is something that I think we would really benefit from understanding.
Annie:
Yeah. So when you first started training with us, then, was it surprising to you? Was it what you thought dog training would be, what animal training would be?
Elise:
Yeah. I mean, it was basically what I felt training would be like. I had done some puppy class with Sherry obviously many, many years before. And a lot of the practices were different. Like I remember one of the things that we were that happened was the shake the can of pennies.
But a lot of the stuff that we worked on really made sense to me in terms of, you know –
Annie:
In Sherry's class?
Elise:
In, no, sorry, in School For The Dog's classes.
Annie:
So it made sense to you. And do you remember sort of realizing that there were like different kinds of dog training out there then? Did that ever gel for you?
Elise:
Not until much later actually, like I was just sort of thinking this is the way. Because I didn't really shop around for a training philosophy. I didn't sort of pursue – like, I knew what I responded to well, and I know what kind of turned me off. But I remember actually this came up as a bit of conversation in the apprenticeship program, because there are a lot more named styles of training now than when I first got into any kind of dog training. And I got very, what is it? Is it control?
Annie:
Control unleashed, or?
Elise:
No there's control. And then there was one –
Annie:
Balanced?
Elise:
Balanced.
Annie:
Oh, balanced, okay. Balanced training. Ok.
Elise:
Yeah. And that I was, and so it's funny because –
Annie:
That wasn't a term that you'd heard before?
Elise:
I had not heard that term before. And then when I saw it, I was really turned off by it.
Annie:
How would you describe what balance training is to someone listening who has no idea what that is? You're like making a face.
Elise:
Yeah. That to me did not strike me as balanced. That to me, struck me as, and the word I wanted, the word that came to mind more is like bossy. Like, it didn't strike me as balancing at all. It struck me as much more like being very controlling. In what I saw.
Annie:
Yeah. I think people, I think balanced trainers sort of define it as using a mix of positive reinforcement and punishment as called for, in order to achieve the best, fastest and most humane, in their opinion, result that you can achieve, within what's right for the dog. And I mean, it's complicated because no one is a purely positive reinforcement dog trainer. Like you can't go through life training any animal without sometimes even accidentally –
Elise:
Right. Right. But at the same time, I feel like the thing about the balance training, it seems like kind of a well intentioned philosophy that when put into practice is so hard to enact, it skews more towards the punishment than to the positive. So all the videos that we kind of discussed in the apprenticeship group were always like, well, this is a balance training situation. And it was always like, the dog was always looking kind of miserable and really confused. And it never seemed to produce the kind of, sort of happy result that – you know, even in demo videos, it just felt a little, it felt very forced and not entirely successful. And also not something that I felt like would be easily replicated.
Annie:
Well, especially with dogs like yours, like you have had a lot of experience with these very anxious –
Elise:
Yeah, different kinds of anxiety.
Annie:
Yeah. Different types of anxiety that like, those are not dogs who I think would've responded well to.
Elise:
Yeah. That may have been, yeah. That may have been why I always was always like, even when we were discussing these videos, I was like, this just doesn't. Also interestingly, a lot of the dogs in the apprenticeship program, people also had different kinds of anxiety as well. So like all of us together were like, my dog would never have been able to handle that. And like, there were four of us, all of our dogs had different anxieties.
Annie:
So you expressed interest to me about doing the professional course after having done. I think I finally have it here. Oh, here. Okay. I got it. Still loading. Behavior day trainings, you wanna take some guesses here of how many?
Elise:
No I don't. Just lay it on me.
Annie:
Puppy basic manners follow up sessions. You did about 15 of those. 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. Day training. You did 72 day training sessions. You did puppy kindergarten. You did behavior therapy follow up sessions. 65 of those.
Elise:
We did a lot. We worked really hard.
Annie:
And that doesn't include the overnights. Yep. And dog buddying, which is what we used to do, a service that we don't offer anymore. Basically we'll hang out with your dog. That's a lot of training.
Elise:
It's a lot of training.
Annie:
Yeah. So after working with us for all that time, at some point you expressed interest in doing the professional course. And I said, do it. And you're like, I don't know. I was like, Do it!
Elise:
What's funny, when you said you should do it. I was like, Oh, I realized, as I really thought a lot about it, because it was a, you know, the application process is non-trivial. And I was like, I finally had to do this thing where, I got very anxious about it of course. And I finally had to do this thing where I was like, okay, it's due by this time, if I cannot complete everything by an hour before it's due, then it's not meant to be. So I really –
Annie:
And you did it.
Elise:
Yes.
Annie:
And no regrets.
Elise:
And no regrets. No, it was really good. It was a really good experience to set –
Annie:
To set that intention.
Elise:
To set that intention and do it. And, it also meant a lot to do it.
Annie:
So, yeah. So, I mean, before sort of talking, I guess, about the process, like, how do you see yourself now compared to how you see yourself going in? Then versus now.
Elise:
It was a big transformation, in part because I came into the apprenticeship group with a lot of different experience. I was like older, my dog was older. I was the only person with children. So that gave me a really different perspective on, I feel like everything. I remember a lot of the sort of times we were talking about how to talk to clients about things. And I remember saying a few times like, well, this is something that I sort of experienced on a playground once and it’s very similar to this.
And so I felt like in a way, a lot of other life experience really connected well with the sort of School For The Dogs training philosophy. That it actually, it pairs really well. And something that you kind of talk about a lot is like training dogs and training humans. There's a lot of parallels between in terms of how you work with especially small children.
And I would say that this is something that had a lot of ebbs and flows for me over the course of the course, which was learning how to really take myself seriously. Like there would occasionally be these kind of setbacks where I would really doubt myself and feel like this is not something I can do. I'm a real disappointment. And my instructor thinks I'm really bad at this and I shouldn't continue. And then I would just be like, okay, I've gotta regroup and buckle down and redouble my efforts here.
And I found that some of the – we do have a few recordings of sessions that I, I think I did. I used a few of them in the end, and they're really good, as a student they're really good to work with because you can rewind and watch things again and see how the dog and the owner react to things. And that's really helpful because there are times when you're like live in a session you're watching, you're writing things down and you might miss something, or you're watching the trainer and then you might wanna go back and watch what the dog does, or the other way around.
One of the things that I really learned is that Preston, my nervous dog, who I was told not to say this, but he's actually not that bright. He's a little dumb. But he works really so much better with an object. It is really interesting the difference between asking him to do something without an object, and then teaching him to do something with an object, because it is night and day. Like,
Annie:
That’s so interesting.
Elise:
It's so interesting. And that was like a really exciting and fascinating thing to learn. And he also found it exciting and fascinating and like, you know, he learned how to do these crazy things and you get really –
Annie:
Yeah. But if you try and use like a hand target, he's like –
Elise:
Yeah, he gets this like, kind of like, oh, okay. You know, like hand target's okay. But if you tell him to do things like, even sit he's a little, like really? Okay. Like, it takes him a while. Whereas if you tell, now like rolling a ball. Absolutely. No problem. Walk through a hoop, get up on that thing. Yep. Totally. All those things. Yeah. So he learned a lot of that. And then, but then the other things were like, okay. And even like, I tried to train my children to train him and they cannot figure out how to get 'em to do a hand touch. Like they cannot do it at all.
And I I loved the class shadowing. Like I loved, I did puppy kindergarten and I shadowed a lot of day school and puppy day school just because it really helped me practice on dogs who weren't Preston.
Annie:
Well, where do you see yourself as far as animal training goes going forward, where do you see yourself in five years when both your boys are in college, in their twenties?
Elise:
So I think I told you back when I started this, that one thing, I really love the classes. I love watching people learn in the classroom setting and I would be really into TAing, first of all, and then learning how to eventually move on to sort of teaching classes and working with people. I do not know, like when we had these long discussions, especially after a couple of the guest lectures, several of the people that I was in a class with were really interested in working with dogs with real behavior problems.
I don't a hundred percent know if I would feel comfortable at this, certainly at this point, with that responsibility. In part, because I know what it's like to have had the experience of dogs with real behavior problems and, and want solutions so badly. And knowing that you can't always find them. But at the moment, I think where I'm sort of most keyed in is the idea of teaching in classes and just sort of watching people in those like kind of intense learning environments.
Annie:
That's so interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's so many people who wanna work with dogs who have severe behavior issues, but I actually liked teaching classes. I mean, I'm not teaching classes right now, but I liked being on my feet and kind of juggling the room, which a lot of people are like, this makes me crazy. How do you have six dogs and 12 people? And the room's only 400 square feet. Yeah, that, I somehow never felt that overwhelmed. I somehow was able to just be in the moment about it.
Well, I'm excited that you did the program.
Elise:
I am excited.
Annie:
I’m proud of you for going through it and doing so amazingly well with not the easiest dog and with two kids, which makes everything harder. I think.
Elise:
Yes. Well now, you know, so.
Annie:
Yeah. I used to think people just use kids as an excuse for not getting things done. And now I know.
Elise
I know. They take up a lot of your, like
Annie:
Time and mental energy.
Elise:
It's like your head space, really, you know.
Annie:
My physical space!
Elise:
And your physical space, yeah.
Annie:
I know. But they're so great.
[music and outro]
