#110 - Q&A: Enrichment Strategies for Pets with Allergies

Anyone who has a pet with allergies knows that it can be rough to create an enrichment strategy that fits their needs. Depending on the type and severity of that allergy there can be a lot of restrictions. In this episode, we discuss the allergy journies we've gone on with our own dogs and how we've created enrichment strategies around allergy restrictions. After that, we tie in how we can measure success for allergy kiddos and non-allergy kiddos. 

You can find the full episode show notes here.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: So I love what you said about like starting with the, the restrictions and thinking about how can we operate within these constraints? that really emphasizes the purpose of a descriptive approach, because if we understand what our goal is. And we understand which paths up the mountain are not available to us. It helps us to be creative about how we can get to the top of the mountain. Um, When the paths that we usually would take are blocked off. So if you're like, well, my dog needs food puzzles and your vet says absolutely no food puzzles for, because allergies, then you're like, well, I can't enrich my dog that is a prescriptive approach.

But if you ask yourself, well, what is the goal of the food puzzles? What are we trying to, do with those? And usually the answers are like mental and physical exercise and opportunities to perform species, typical behaviors and foraging. Okay. So. What are some other ways that we can provide mental and physical exercise? What are some other ways that we can provide whatever species typical behavior you're, you see your dog offering? What are some other ways that we can encourage them to do those activities and, and then build a path to that goal that circumnavigates the food puzzle issue.

[00:01:13] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:31] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:32] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.  

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hello and welcome to Season 9 Q& A. We are talking today primarily about kiddos with allergies. We are also going to be talking about just like, what is success? The two go hand in hand. So Ellen, kick us off with our first question.

[00:02:12] Ellen: Absolutely. So as you already alluded to, I think we're going to meld the two questions together. I'll tell you both now. And then I think it's a natural flow to talk about them both at the same time. The first one from a fantastic listener was my dog has allergies and I don't know how to meet their needs and provide them enrichment while taking that into account. And then the second question we got is what are ways to measure the outcomes of an enrichment activity? and I love this topic because I have Griffey and he is the delightful love of my life and also taught me everything that I never asked to learn about so many things. 

And so I have gotten to see just how a lot of different types of allergies because, caveat asterisk, allergies is a really big question. Like we could be talking about environmental, we could be talking about dietary, we could be talking about a whole lot of things. We don't know that about your specific animal. So we might put a lot of the context of this within Griffey because I can talk to about him very personally and also give very concrete, finite examples of what that may look like. I know Oso also has allergies that he combats seasonally, so they are a thing. 

And I think that 1 of the hard things about allergies is, obviously there are some really severe ones, but there are a lot of things like griffies are very, very low level. So, there are moments where it's not an obvious yes or no. Do I do this activity? Do I not do this activity? What is the risk? What aren't the risks? Like, what is the payoff for this. It's like, he might be a little itchy, so is it worth taking him out for a walk on the grass even though I know that's one of his allergies? I have to actively make a decision and weigh the pros and cons constantly versus it be in this hard set yes or no.

There are times where it is a definite no for him. Like, There are certain times of year, he does not go out and touch grass. I would love him to be able to do that. And the consequences of that are very clear. He gets ear infections. He gets blisters and boils and hives and scabs, and he loses hair. 

And he, I love him and I am so sorry that he is uncomfortable and also makes me not my best self. Let's say that because sleep deprivation happens when he's licking and really uncomfortable and agitated and all of those things. So I think there are some things that it's very nice that we have cut and dry. Yes or no, this is harmful. This is not within the wheelhouse of what we can do. And then there are things where it's like a little bit of sacrifice. What is, what is the cost of a little bit of sacrifice either for him being slightly uncomfortable or for us having to do a bath and then wash all of the fabric in the house and extra time a week.

[00:04:51] Emily: And I think that what that's what makes allergy so hard is that it it's so complicated. There are so many kind of touch points where the allergies impacts the light your life and and your environment and the choices that you make. And so, it's, it's really frustrating. And if you go ask for advice, People are like, well, have you tried this super basic thing?

And you're like, yeah I'm, I'm on, I'm on plan, plan Z and you're suggesting plan A. So thanks, but no thanks. Right. And it's really like, all of that is mentally and emotionally taxing, like living with it, managing it, having to make those decisions every single day about what risks do I take. And then having to deal with the unsolicited input of literally everybody who, who you talk to about it it, it's exhausting.

So I think the, like, biggest thing that I learned from my therapist about managing my chronic pain and, and chronic illness also applies to people who are working on an enrichment plan for the dog, which is your own self care. Like, how do you manage the cyclical grief? The, the, the, like, death by thousand paper cuts. So that's the first part is like making sure that you have a strategy for taking care of yourself because you are taking care of a complex chronic issue that impacts every aspect of your animal's life and therefore. Many aspects of your own life as well. So I think that's the place to start with it as like, take care of yourself. And, and part of taking care of yourself means learning how to recognize when it's good enough to get going instead of trying to aim for something that's perfect, because you're never going to reach perfect. And so. You have to just like celebrate the wins that you have and be okay with the fact that that it's going to be imperfect. So I think those are the, that's the first thing I want to say about like enrichment and allergies is like take care of yourself because when I was a vet tech in Austin. Which we lovingly refer to as the allergy capital of the world. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sure as heck felt that way. It was like every other dog who came into the clinic had some kind of severe allergy that was really hard to diagnose and manage and treat. And so it was really common. And I just saw over and over and over again the toll it took on the caregivers. not just the dogs themselves. So that's, that's my first thing. As people who live with an animal with allergies, Allie and Ellen what are some things that you do to sort of like navigate an enrichment plan for your kiddos?

[00:07:29] Allie: I can start because I think mine is far easier than Ellen's, because Oso's allergies are far easier to manage than Griffey's. So for Oso, he has seasonal allergies, I don't know exactly to what, we're gonna say pollen. That's a good just blanket, when it's warm sometimes, plant things happen. That was almost words. So. For Oso, his allergies are quite well managed on Apoquel. We did have to try several medications until we landed on the correct medication, the correct dosage, etc. I will say that At the time that we're recording this, it's 2024. This year was so hard for environmental allergy kiddos in my area, not just for Oso, but for many of my clients, for many of the humans in my life, including myself.

It was a really hard allergy year. We've, we've actually changed the growing zones as of this year. So it's, it's just warmer in this area, which means that pollen is happening more frequently, and I'm upset about that for multiple reasons. 

So, for Oso, Apiquel is the answer. I start it when I start seeing itchiness, outside of the normal kind of itchiness. Every dog will like scratch every now and then, but when it's multiple times within an hour, there's something else going on. So when I see him excessively scratching, when I wake up at two in the morning to him licking, that is usually because allergies are happening. And when he's just licking more in general. Typically for him, that's allergies. So when I start to see those things, we go on Apiquel. I will test to see how long he has to be on that Apoquel. And just a side note, we get a lot of questions all the time about non food related enrichment. I am talking about a very large part of Oso's enrichment strategy, which is managing his allergies so that he can have a better quality of life.

So, no food involved other than, the little bit of peanut butter that happens on the Apoquel. But otherwise, like, this is a really, key component of his enrichment strategy, and it's not food based. Okay going back to that. So I will see how long he needs to take that Apoquel, and I do that by just, I stop giving it to him when I'm less stuffy, and see what happens. And and if a few days later he's itchy again, then we go back on it, and, and all of that. Part of that is Mindset thing for me in that I don't feel amazing having him on daily medication He's really good He's, turning 13 pretty soon. I've asked my vet and my vet was like, it's truly fine. And I was like, ugh, but is it?

So like, regardless of the truth or validity to that, it's what my brain is doing. The other reason is just expenses. Like Apiquel is expensive and I have a big dog, y'all. So I would love to not give it to him every day if I don't have to. So, for him, Apoquel is the main strategy. We do have something else that goes into that strategy, and that is his diet.

So I did play around with diet for him, and I should preface this by, I would never have expected him to have a diet. any dietary sensitivities. This boy has an iron stomach. I have watched him, not that I've condoned it, but I have watched him eat things where it's like No! That was a choice that should not have been made. And he passes it very well and has, like, no upset tummy troubles to show for it. I, in one of my worst brain fog moments, went to the grocery store, put the groceries down on the ground, and then went up to bed and went to sleep because, brain fog is a hell of a drug, and in the morning came down to Oso having eaten an entire box of granola bars that had chocolate chips in them, and he passed the wrappers from those granola bars. Sorry to get gross, so, this boy has an iron stomach. And I was experimenting with grain diets versus grain free diets for him. And what I learned is that on a grain diet, his allergies got worse. His environmental allergies got worse. I did not see any changes to his stool or any GI related things when I switched to a grain diet.

I did see a little bit of a difference in coat quality, but that was it. And then allergy season hit, and oh boy, it was rough until we switched back to a grain free diet and he got sick. All of that inflammation out of his system. So that is another kind of extra layer of our enrichment strategy for him, is I learned that grain free is better for him because he does have low level inflammation, even though I couldn't see it other than during allergy season. But otherwise, Apicoel and we're good to go.

[00:13:03] Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. You touched on a lot of things that I'm going to circle back to in that. But before we get into like the, I get into the nitty gritty details, I'm going to zoom up just a little bit and say we started with the constraints. So for a lot of people, it can be really easy to get bogged down in the details, if you haven't put up the bumpers, under which you're going to build that plan. So for him, it was working with our vet team and other professionals and things like that to identify what the potential constraints would be for him. And so his allergies were so bad. We did. We do have him on daily. 

They were so bad that the vet was like, let's, let's test, let's do some allergen testing for him. And we have actually done it twice because we did the initial round in California and then we moved to Seattle and you know, my environment's changed. So we have done it both times. It turns out real allergic to everywhere.

So he came up with mostly environmental with caveat asterisk dust mites and grain mites and those kinds of things, which are naturally occurring in foods, wheats, flowers, all of those things. I guess you could label those a food allergy, but like, it's a form, not an actual ingredient of the thing.

So we put up the constraints. Can't have kibble. It's really, really hard, if not impossible, to get rid of dust mites in kibble. Sorry, if this is gross. So we said no more kibble, which also meant Kong Wobbler was going to not be a standard part of his diet because that was going to be a special treat.

The Snuffle Mat, because it is both cloth, which we have to rush weekly, and also no longer doing kibble, we're doing canned food for reasons, does put up some constraints, which meant we were knocking a lot of stuff out of our possibilities by putting those up, and it made it a lot easier to look at what was there. So one, start with your constraints. 

Two, know what you're trying to avoid. Usually we focus on like, what does, what do you want? But in this case, we started with his symptoms and said reduction in symptom is the goal for whatever it was for him. It was healing of scabs. It was no more ear infections. It was, all of those things. So have a metric because the two things that Allie pointed out, one, his enrichment plan is not only about managing his allergies, it's also about managing the potential side effects of the medication and the other things that we have to do in order to manage his allergies. 

So he has to have the blood work, and we have to do all of those things, and make sure that the long term medications that we do use for him are still the right choice for us to be doing. Which means we have to have vet stuff, so part of his enrichment that mental stuff is training for people doing weird stuff to you, because people gotta do weird stuff to you, whether it's me or somebody else. Like oral medication is one of the things that we have worked on a lot because the desensitization drops which went by the wayside because priorities, but also our sedative is oral for his blood draws. So having those things taken care of were really important to us. 

So we identified the constraints. Then we figured out what do we not want anymore? We put a plan in place. We hit it hard because for us that felt easier than titrating, and also if we were able to get things stabilized, then we were able to play.

And so we talked to our vet and said, yes. All of the resources were available to us, what would you recommend? And she gave us a plan and we went and we did that for a couple of weeks, got his stuff under control, and then we were able to do what Allie said and trial and eval and say, all right, his skin is good. His hair growth is coming back. Got the ear infections taken care of. We were not seeing flares. His scabs were healing all of that. He was healthy at a good baseline. That meant we could adjust dials as needed. 

So for example, we have to wash all dog beds, all bedding, all couch covers, anything fabric that he comes in contact with once a week, which is a lot of laundry friends.

For those of you that can't see my office, I have three dog beds in my office, because agency is important. And so that's a lot of laundry. Can we do eight days? Can we do nine days? Can we do 10 days? Can we do 10 days year round? Do we have to do seven days during some seasons and 10 days during others? What is the optimum amount to give him his month or his bath, cause he has to have a medicated bath. Turns out once a week is about what we need for that. We can go 10 days if we need to, for whatever reason, but all of that was just very careful trial and eval.

[00:17:40] Emily: Yeah. So I love what you said about like starting with the, the restrictions and, and, and thinking about how can we operate within these constraints? And I think that that is, that really emphasizes the, the, the purpose of a descriptive approach, because if we understand what our goal is, and we understand which paths up the mountain are not available to us. It helps us to be creative about how we can get to the top of the mountain. When the paths that we usually would take are blocked off, right. So if you're like, well, my dog needs food puzzles and your vet says absolutely no food puzzles for, because allergies, then you're like, well, I can't enrich my dog that is a prescriptive approach, right. But if you ask yourself, well, what is the goal of the food puzzles? What are we trying to, to, to do with those? And usually the answers are like mental and physical exercise and opportunities to perform species, typical behaviors and foraging. Okay. So. What are some other ways that we can provide mental and physical exercise? What are some other ways that we can provide whatever species typical behavior you're, you see your dog offering? What are some other ways that we can encourage them to do those activities and, and then build a path to that goal that circumnavigates the food puzzle issue. Right. 

So I had a client, I'm, I'm going to talk about like the worst case scenario. that I personally have ever worked with where allergies were a contributing factor. And the problem was actually the vet, not the dog. Because the vet was like, this dog can have nothing but ZD for the rest of his life. There are no other foods he can eat, only ZD. There is no other plan. And then when the client was like, well, how do we use food and training, the vet was like, well, you don't use food and training because like dogs should just obey, obey, like, you're, you should just be the alpha and then you don't need to bribe your dog with food. So this was a vet who was not ideologically aligned, was not interested in listening. And honestly I don't, I don't say things like this very often especially not on recording, but I'm just going to say it definitely had room to learn more about how to manage allergies because what he was suggesting was not even a best practices protocol for, for how to deal with allergies. 

So I worked with the client to find ways for us to be able to do the things that the dog. To meet the dog's needs without food, because of course the dog hated ZD and there was no way that we could, we tried, we tried baking the canned food. We tried soaking the wet food. We tried all different things and the dog was like, I don't know how many ways I need to tell you that this is disgusting and I'm only eating it because otherwise I'll starve. And so, the the temporary strategy for that client was let's find other ways to meet the stock's needs that don't involve food. 

So we did a lot of, scent work with just essential oil trails and artificial urine trails. And then at the end of the trails, there was something that the dog could destroy, but was not meant to be ingested. So, that was how we got foraging. We got scent work, we got mental and physical exercise in for that dog. And we just circumnavigated the food thing all together, right? 

But in the meantime, I tried to work with that vet collaboratively. To, to try to come up with solutions. He made it very clear that he was the man in the situation and he was the alpha and he would not be questioned by some little lady dog trainer who grabs dogs with food. And after a lot of, a lot of time, sorry, y'all I I've, I've lost my ability to mask. So, I'm just sharing my frustrations with this one particular guy. So, after it became abundantly clear that he was not interested in being part of my client's support team, I referred her to a veterinarian who had a better understanding of how to treat You allergies and was interested in a collaborative partnership with everybody on this dog support team. So we had our interim strategy, which was playing games that didn't involve food. And our long term strategy was getting her transitioned over to a veterinarian who could be more supportive and come up with more realistic solutions and care about the dog's experience. 

So when we started working with the other vet, she did bring another support member onto the team, which was an allergy specialist who was able to do better and more accurate allergy testings. And was able to give us a list of whole foods, by which I mean, unprocessed in any way. The most that she wanted to process the food was boiling the vegetables. But no other processing involved that were safe for this dog. And we did a food preference test with the fruits and vegetables that were on the approved list from the veterinarian. And the dog told us that he absolutely loved sweet potatoes and squashes. 

And so then we had lots of different ways that we could make those, those foods deliverable in different ways. So we, you could boil them and squish them up and then turn them, freeze them and make them lickable. And we could like slice the thin slice them and air, dry them to give ourselves little like chewable treats that could go in a bait bag. And she even had a dehydrator. And so, we learned that this, Oh, the other thing he loved was melons. Melons were on his approved list. And so, she freeze dried like watermelon and cantaloupe, and he had his little like freeze dried fruit snacks, which he absolutely loved. 

So that's, that's, that was on the approved list of processing. We could boil, dehydrate and freeze dry. And that was it. And we had to do it in house because if you buy any foods, you can't guarantee like what they came into contact with in the facilities and all that. So it was all homemade stuff, but suddenly we had a whole long list of treats that we could use with this dog that, stayed within the confines of the, the allergy treatment prescribed by the veterinarian and the allergy specialist. And we were all working together as a collaborative team. And suddenly that dog's life was quality of life was a lot better, right? Even before then, even when we were stuck without any food options, we were still able to find a different path up the mountain by saying, okay, well, if food is not an option right now, then how can we, right?

Let this dog do the things that he wants to do and the things that will improve his quality of life and his welfare and well being without food being involved. So that's, I think, the, the thing that you really struck on, Ellen, was like, figure out what your confinements are first, or your constraints are first, and then figure out how to reach your goal by circumnavigating those constraints or operating within them, however, however you want to visualize that, right?

[00:24:37] Ellen: Yeah. And I think that's, it's a skill set. That you develop over time of saying, well, like, all right, the thing that I worked, I did for 30 years of owning dogs is not an option for me anymore. And we get to be creative. 

And I think the 2nd part of that is, all 3 of us have touched on this, that none of us have done this alone. We have all had at least one other individual on the team that is helping to run support for this kiddo. And so I cannot stress how important that is. Whether it's a behavior consultant to help you go through the process that Emily just talked about. Or a vet that is listening to you and listening to your dog's experience. Or a collaboration with another specialist. Because if you have food allergies, or GI stuff, you may want one type of vet, you may want something else for managing the skin, or any of those things, but if you're out there and you say, everyone says my dog needs to do this, on the internet, I will tell you, that on the internet, they're not telling you the goal, they're telling you the activity.

And if you don't know what the goal is, why this is recommended and why this is so effective for so many individuals. Let's use sniffy walks, for example. While I would love to take Griffey on sniffy walks, it is not worth his physical health. We do it once a month, that is what we can do once a month when we go to the rehab vet. So we are stacking the outside exposure. He comes home, he gets a bath. We wash all of the things. 

His sniffy walks aren't what he needs. He needs elements of what the sniffy walk provides. And that can be really hard to find and identify because that is not the internet content that gets the clicks. So if you need help with that, there are people who can help you with that.

[00:26:17] Emily: My two favorite questions are, but why though? And how do you know that what you believe is true? Right. And that's the thing all the time. But why though? Like, why is the internet telling me this? And how does the internet know that what they believe is true? That's, that's the like fundamental question of epistemology is how do you know that what you believe is true? And when you, when you get down to the bottom of that, you often can find ways around it. So find ways to meet the goal without doing the thing that everybody tells you you should do. So I think that's, that's one thing. 

The other thing that I want to add to what you said, Ellen, is that. When we talk about like, when we don't do this alone, we have a team, a collaborative team. I think that also applies to that creative problem solving part of finding alternative paths up the mountain. Nobody has to be the most creative person who has all the ideas all by themselves. And one of the many, many values of being in community with trusted colleagues who support you and listen to you and actually are rooting for you. And are not judging you is that you can get together with them and brainstorm. Here's my goal. Here are my constraints. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to reach my goal without constraints. What ideas do you have for me? 

And because we all come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, different experiences, not just within the field, but from other fields, totally different lifestyles as well you'd be surprised at how people can come up with a really brilliant solutions because they have a different perspective and, and, skillset and knowledge and background than you do. So, you don't have to be the one that always comes up with these ideas. You can lean on your community and say, help me, help me carve a new path up the mountain because I cannot for the life of me find it on my own. So I think that's another part of it is like, yeah, if you're having a hard time figuring out how to meet a need because of the constraints that you're operating within, lean on your community and ask them for the, for that help.

[00:28:14] Ellen: Because brains are funny. Brains are delightfully adorable at times. And we will hold rules to be true that are, in fact, not rules. Well, they might be rules. The rules are all made up anyway. So we made up the rules. My brain, I was, very specifically, thinking about this at Costco yesterday, when I went to do weekly Costco, because in my head, Costco is not a place you go to get one or two things.

Is that a rule at Costco? No. But it's a rule that my brain has, and as I'm watching people that have, like, they don't need a cart at Costco, I was like, this rule probably isn't serving me. I can make it up. I made it up. I can change it. And that might be the way that some of your enrichment strategies and activities for your pet might be too. And you just need somebody to be like, nah, that's not necessary. Or you got this many spoons, tickets, whatever resources you want to call it. Let's spend them here rather than on this thing that we don't have a payoff for.

[00:29:11] Emily: Yeah. My favorite tattling on myself example of this was when I was complaining to Allie about how I have two different accounts for our, our website for good reasons, but like Chrome doesn't let me have two accounts open on the same window and it won't even let me have two different windows if it's Chrome, it like automatically logs me in to the account that I was on on the other window. And I was like complaining to Allie about this and she just looks at me and she goes, why don't you just open a window in a different browser? And I was like, why don't I? Like such an obvious solution that like had never occurred to me. And it was so obvious to Allie because she is more tech savvy than I am. And she does stuff on the computer a lot more. She was an objective third party observer, so she wasn't wrapped up in all of the emotions that I was wrapped up in, so it was really helpful to complain to her about that and then have her be like, just use a different browser, and I was like, yeah, that's, that's, that's a thing.

Yep. So, that's not really related to allergies or, or pets at all, but it's a good example of how, like, I had a genuine constraint, a barrier that was getting in my way, and I needed to lean on my community to find the alternate path up the mountain.

[00:30:26] Allie: So I think we've alluded to the second question that we were just like rolling into this allergy question a few times of how do we know when we have been successful? How do we? Know that things have worked for us? What are ways to measure the outcomes of an enrichment activity. 

So, Ellen mentioned several things for Griffey that were about his physical body. He doesn't have scabs anymore. That made me so sad that that was a thing that had to be a metric for you. 

I mentioned one of my metrics is I sleep throughout the night because my dog does not wake me up because he's licking at 2am. That is a legitimate metric for me when it comes to allergies. 

So, the metric can be whatever is relevant to the behavior that you're looking for. And there are going to be some things that are a little bit easier to, to pair together like scabs and allergies. And then there are going to be things that might be a little bit harder to see. Like what I was saying with Oso's diet, he should be on grain free, and I didn't know that until allergy season came about. So there are going to be some metrics that are a little bit harder for you to discern, but the biggest thing is, find metrics that attach to the goal that you have, whether the goal is to reduce a certain thing or to increase a certain thing, and keep in mind that when we talk about observing behavior as a goal, a lot of times people think in more of the like, training route, or like the big doing route, where it's like, oh yeah, they can walk past quietly past another dog, and that's a measure of success for reactivity. 

For me, I am focused a lot on Oso's mobility, and so success for me looks like he jumps up onto the couch. I've actually added another layer to that metric now that that we're starting to see some neuro things with his hind end. He jumps up onto the couch and doesn't immediately sit. So one of the things that we we noticed is that he will step onto the couch if he's in pain instead of jumping, but with his neuro stuff he was jumping on the couch and just like jump sit as one motion because he didn't have the strength in his hind end. And so as proprioception work we're seeing he can jump on the couch, remain in a standing position. And that to me is a measure of success. So a lot of times your metrics are going to be just these little things that you're observing throughout the day with your dog. And those I think are the best metrics out there as opposed to again, what you're going to find on the internet.

[00:33:21] Emily: Yeah, I think a lot of people think that, like, data collection and, coming up with metrics has to be really complex, but it just has to be really effective. And if you can do that in a really simple, straightforward way, then, you don't need spreadsheets. So find them the simplest, most effective way to objectively assess whether or not your strategies are effective or actually working. Your outcomes are what you had wanted them to be. That's it.

[00:33:48] Allie: All right, on that note, that is a wrap on Season 9. Thank you, as always, for listening, for submitting your questions, and for just generally nerding out about enrichment with us. We'll be back in a few months with Season 10. Happy training, y'all!

If you're anything like me, you listened to a podcast episode, and the little gremlin toddler in your brain is like, the world needs to know this! So, if that's you right now, and while you were listening to this episode, you thought of someone who could benefit from it, go ahead and text them the link to this right now. I'm tasking you with being an enrichment ambassador so that together we can improve the quality of life for pets and their people.

Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.