Enrichment for the Real World

#115 - Present Over Perfect: Enrichment That Matters

• Pet Harmony Animal Behavior and Training • Season 10 • Episode 115

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Episode Overview:

Raise your hand if you've ever felt like you’re not doing enough for your pet. 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️ Whether you're a devoted pet parent or a seasoned pro, enrichment burnout is real—and it’s sneaky. In this episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Emily (she/they) and Pet Harmony Behavior Consultant Claire Horvat (she/her) explore how perfectionism, comparison traps, and even well-meaning advice can lead to overwhelm.

They dive into how cognitive biases—like the Nirvana fallacy and wishful thinking—can shape our expectations, and more importantly, how to break free from them. You’ll walk away with practical strategies for simplifying enrichment, prioritizing what really matters, and finding joy and effectiveness in what you can do, rather than getting lost in what you can’t.


TLDL (Too Long, Didn’t Listen): 3 Key Takeaways

  1. Something is better than nothing – Once a week may feel like a drop in the bucket, but it adds up. Don’t underestimate the power of small, consistent actions.
  2. Burnout affects more than behavior – Enrichment burnout doesn’t just impact your pet; it can erode your own mental health and the relationship you’re building together.
  3. Use what you’ve got – You don’t need to spend money or time you don’t have. Start with what’s already in your house—and what lights your pet up.


Links & Resources from the Episode
Transcript: Arial | OpenDyslexic


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[00:00:00] Claire: I can be very much a box checker. I like to be able to check boxes and recently especially, but just in life in general, sometimes I don't have the time for that box to be checked. Sometimes that box isn't what my dog needs at that moment. Sometimes I think that I have boxes, and then realize that they're like squiggly amoebas, and they're not actually the thing that I needed it to be. And so, that is something that I've had to think about, and then of course, like always social comparison and like bandwagon fallacy, are a constant part of, of my life, especially considering that I follow a bunch of different accounts, and creators, and, and pet parents and all those types of things that like to share their journeys.

And I try to share some of my downfalls with Olivia as well. Especially because she's a bit of a complex lady in that she has a bunch of interweaving issues. And so, I'll often see things that people post, like for example, I might see like a beautiful safari somebody is doing and I'm like, I wanna go do that, I should go do that with. Olivia and then I think about, okay, I made time on an off hour that one day to go and we got swarmed by dogs, and she ended up having huge reactions and we just had to go home. And it was like, that's what I spent 30 minutes doing. That day was like, oh, nevermind. Um, and it's so individualized, right? 

[00:01:25] 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...

[00:01:42] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:43] 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.

[00:02:04] Emily: In this episode, you're gonna hear Claire and me talk about sunbathing can be a substitute for fetch, why I was totally cool with Miley destroying my watering can, how training should be like judo, and how we make things harder for ourselves than they need to be by borrowing trouble from the future.

Alright, let's get into it.

Okay, so today we're gonna be talking about enrichment burnout, and I think we can expand that to just, I think a lot of people don't think of it as enrichment burnout as much as like pet care burnout, or training burnout. But what I mean by that is the burnout that people feel when they feel like they're never doing enough to perfectly meet the needs of the animals in their care, never like perfectly take care of them. And they're always like, oh, if only X, Y, Z, then, they would be, this would be perfect for them. 

And that is something that I think anybody who has ever shared their life with an animal, has the capacity to experience. I, I find in, in my, my selection bias of people that I've worked with, it comes in waves. So like, like when you first start out, you're excited about having, working with a new species and then you immediately are like, oh God, what did I get myself into? I can't do enough. 

And then you get into a groove and you're like, Nope, I've got this. I've done all the internet research, I've learned all the things, like I know what I'm doing, and the, you know, like the internet experts who like give advice 'cause they're like, I've got this. And then like, if you can continue to learn, then you're like, oh God, I don't got this I'm not doing this right. And then eventually one hopes you can get to a place where you are able to objectively assess what's actually going on with the animals in your care.

So I feel like there are like waves like people go through of experiencing this. But I also think that it's compounded when you are an animal welfare professional and particularly a behavior professional because you have that added peer pressure of like, I have to prove that I'm actually really good at taking care of these animals and that I know what I'm doing and if my own pet isn't perfect and I'm not able to perfectly meet the needs of the animals in my care, then what business do I have, charging other people for my services. So I feel like it gets next level difficult for those of us who work in the animal welfare fields um, just because of that feeling of having to prove yourself right.

[00:04:28] Claire: Yeah, I think one of the things that I care a lot about sharing with clients when we're working through enrichment plans or ways to meet their pet's needs is that. I, I'm huge on showing them what they can do with what they already have. We don't need to go get a bunch of things, look how easy this can be and how quick it can be, but I still have times where I'm like, even that is hard for me to get done. Or my go-to easy thing because I'm burnt out, my dog has decided she has met that need, and it isn't the one she needs right now. So I think that that especially has a little bit of guilt attached to it when I work on that with clients, but I feel difficulty in doing it for myself.

[00:05:11] Emily: I mean, I feel like that's kind of a necessary thing that behavior professionals have to experience. Maybe not, maybe there are people who are just able to, like 100% get what they needed from observational learning. But I think a lot of us have to go through the feeling of oh God, this is really hard, why am I expecting all of my clients to do this? Should I maybe make it easier on my clients? Because if I don't want to do it, should I really be expecting my clients to do it? So, I feel like that's like a valuable experience for people to have because I, I know a lot of behavior professionals at some point in their career give their clients way too much to do. Their expectations are way too high, and they don't realize it until they've experienced for themselves what they're expecting their clients to do. And they're like, oh, this is not realistic.

[00:06:05] Claire: I think too, like I watch clients go through that process too, especially the ones that are really dealing with a multitude of issues that are all overlapping, and I always appreciate when they come into it like, a gung ho and they're like, give me 50 things to do. And I always have in the back of my head I, I know what that feels like, but I also know what's gonna happen when you have no spoons and you're so drained and like, what do you have available to you that takes so little effort on your part.

And I, I let people go through that process on their own. I give my advice, but people need to work through what they need to work through. But I think finding a way to also let them know like, Hey, I'm not gonna be mad at you, or I'm not going to judge you if you're like, we were able to do that, we were gonna do it two times a day, seven days a week, this weekend we did it three times. And I'm like, good for you, because it sounds like your week was insane, and that's enough. If that's what you can do right now, that's enough.

[00:07:02] Emily: Yeah, for sure. So that's, I think that's like the. The title of this episode is Present Over Perfect, and I feel like that's that's the theme that, you just hit on the theme, right? Is that like you were present, you did the thing, and it wasn't perfect and you didn't do it as often as you planned, but like you showed up for your pet, and you did the thing and not only once, but you did it three times. That's not something to feel ashamed about. That's something to celebrate, right? Which I think is really important.

[00:07:31] Claire: This episode couldn't be more timely in my life too, because I'm going through a bunch of different things that are causing me to be on like a 10 to 12 hour days, seven days a week type life for the moment. And I was just telling my friend today, we just took our dogs to a sniff spot and I kept talking about how much, olivia deserved her time at the stiff spot 'cause she's been so patient since my life has been hectic. And we had that whole conversation about, I felt so guilty. I felt like she needs, she deserves more. I'm not giving her what she needs. I'm just trying to balance life at the moment. And she, my friend even just pointed out, you're here right now. You brought her this hour away to the sniff spot and we're hanging out for an hour and a half and like we did it, and now she's conked out on the bed behind me enjoying her well-earned nap. So it's, it's very real.

[00:08:22] Emily: Yeah. I love that your friend was like, present over perfect. I don't, she probably didn't even know. Know that this episode was gonna happen, but there she was demonstrating that for you. Yeah. Shout out to Susie for, for embracing the present over perfect model. 

So speaking of that, let's talk about some of the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that play into this experience. It is such a common experience and I think at least for, for my neurotype, it's helpful to, I, I think like understanding that these are like really common errors and reasoning and perception normalizes it for me. So I, I just share that with everybody and people can take it or leave it as they so desire.

But so okay, there's this combination of a logical fallacy called the Nirvana fallacy that kind of works in conjunction with two cognitive biases, wishful thinking and the optimism bias. And I think these all kind of gang up on us to like really beat us up. So the Nirvana fallacy is a logical fallacy that that's kind of like, because this strategy, or this technique, or this political system, or whatever, isn't perfect therefore it's garbage and we should throw it out like it, it's a very dichotomous mindset, an all or nothing. It's either gonna be the, the, the total package solution to all of our problems, panacea, or it's garbage and we should throw it out. 

And then we, that combines with these two different errors in, in perception. One is wishful thinking, which is, if I, if I do this thing, I'm going to have this outcome of like an animal who is always perfectly content, and perfectly skilled. And, if, if I train this, and I proof it, and I do all the things, or, if I give my animal this, this food puzzle, or if I take my animal on a run every day, whatever then, the, my, my dog will be perfectly content at all times. My dog will respond to the queue every time. And then that's, that's, that is, the wishful thinking that that cognitive bias like flies in the face of, of evidence of everything that we know that's true about behavior about physiology, about needs, about how brains work, all everything. But because that's how we we're operating in this sort of like wishful thinking, cognitive bias, when it doesn't turn out that way, we're like, oh God, I have failed. I am, I am a, a failure as a pet parent. And then that, that really, it kind of ties in, there's this like dual star relationship between wishful thinking and the optimism bias, which is that rose colored glasses of I'm gonna do all these things for my pet and then it's gonna be perfect and my animal's gonna be perfect, and I'm perfect, and everything's perfect.

So we can see how the nirvana fallacy, wishful thinking and the optimism bias. I'll work together to set us up to fail because we, we do a thing, we expect perfection, and then when perfection doesn't happen, our conclusion is I'm just garbage as a pet parent, I have failed, I have no business being in this profession, I have no business taking care of whatever species you, you work with. So that's, that's one of them. 

And then I think another one that, that really compounds this. And like I said before, like this is true for behavior professionals, but it's also true for pet parents thanks to social media. The logical fallacy is the bandwagon fallacy. So this idea is because all of these people are doing this, therefore it must be right. It's a just cause because everyone is doing it right? So if everybody has food puzzles, then food puzzles must be the quote unquote right way to enrich your dog. Or if everybody is doing sari, then sari must be the right way. So I should also do sn, right?

And it pairs up nicely with a cognitive bias called social comparison where think of it as keeping up with the Joneses, right? Oh my God, I'm looking on Instagram and look at this person who's doing all this incredible training and they've got all these like food puzzles and they're doing all this amazing safari and adventure walks and blah, blah, blah, and oh my God, if I don't do that exact same thing, I am less of an awesome pet parent. I'm a terrible pet parent if I'm not keeping up with this person on social media. And so those two things, the bandwagon fallacy and the social comparison bias really set us up to feel like we have to constantly keep up with what other people, like a standard that other people are setting, right?

And I will tell you, as somebody who is documenting my experience with Miley and posting a lot of it on social media. I'm really struggling with how do I also post the failures so that I don't contribute to this bandwagon fallacy and social comparison. The thing that's hard though, is that like the times when we're making errors, the times when things are a hot mess are not the times when I have my camera. Because usually when Miley is running zoomies and getting into everything and pulling things off counters, the reason she's doing that is because I'm cooking dinner, so I can't be filming her being the Tasmanian devil. Right? So it's hard for me to film our imperfections because the imperfections are happening when life is happening.

And so I, I wanna say that it's not always that people are trying to portray a better version of themselves and their pets than reality than what's really happening. I think a lot of people who post stuff on social media are like me, and they're only posting stuff when they have the time and bandwidth to pull out their camera, and set it up on a gorilla pod. And film themselves working with their dogs. And so you see, or their parrots or their horses, whatever species, so you see them at their best because by definition they're only filming when they're at their best. But the outcome of that, of that reality, of that like logistical reality of social media is that people see. All of these, all people, including me, who are posting stuff on social media about how they're working with their pets, and they're like, I'm not doing that, oh my God, I'm not, I'm, I'm failing as a pet parent, or I'm failing as a professional. 

And that's just not true. That's not true. Everybody's enrichment plan is going to be unique. Everybody's going to need to do different things, and not everybody has to film it. And putting, put it on social media, honestly, the only reason I'm doing it is because I am in this position and I wanted to use my living with a puppy as an opportunity to create resources.

But, but also like my plan for Miley would, would be a terrible plan for many, many other puppies. So yeah, that, I just wanna discuss that because I think it's an important thing to bring up is that like, i, a lot of times this feeling of burnout and, and that we're not good enough is directly caused by these kind of combinations of logical fallacies and cognitive biases that can really, really mess us up, like really negatively impact our mental health, right. I.

[00:15:21] Claire: Yeah, I would say, I resonate so closely with both of those kind of categories. The first one that you talked about makes me think like I can be very much a box checker. I like to be able to check boxes and recently especially, but just in life in general. Sometimes I don't have the time for that box to be checked.

Sometimes that box isn't what my dog needs at that moment. Sometimes I think that I have boxes and then realize that they're like squiggly amoebas and they're not actually the thing that I needed it to be. And so that is something that I've had to think about. And then of course, like always social comparison and like bandwagon fallacy, are a constant part of, of my life, especially considering that I follow a bunch of different accounts and creators and, and pet parents and all those types of things that like to share their journeys, and I try to share some of my downfalls with Olivia as well. Especially because she's a bit of a complex lady in that she has a bunch of interweaving issues. And so I'll often see things that people post. Like for example, I might see like a beautiful safari somebody is doing and I'm like, I wanna go do that.

I should go do that with. Olivia and then I think about, okay, I made time on an off hour that one day to go and we got swarmed by dogs and she ended up having huge reactions and we just had to go home. And it was like, that's what I spent 30 minutes doing, that day was like, oh, nevermind. And it's so individualized, right? And like I live in the middle of a busy city, so getting to a green area where there might be less dogs is a very time consuming endeavor. She has some back problems that we have to consider, so some of the other more physical activity stuff that we have access to in our condo aren't necessarily great for her. And also just her preferences. Like I, we often will take her, we are really, really lucky. We have as close to a backyard as you can have in a city, we have a fully walled, four foot tall walled private rooftop, and that's about as lucky as you can get in our situation, especially with having a leash reactive dog.

And I'll go up there lots and be like, we're gonna play fetch. Like I go up with that mindset, we're gonna play fetch so you can run around and we can burn some energy, and Olivia is so a sunbathing girl, and she might enjoy chasing that ball a couple times, and she's I just wanna lay, and enjoy myself in the sunshine, and sniff the air. And for her, that's her enrichment, right? She chooses that more often than anything else. And some days, that's a really easy way to meet her needs too, is just sliding our, our sliding door open or going and sitting upstairs on the roof with her for 30 minutes to an hour so she can enjoy that sniffing and, and sunbathing.

[00:18:10] Emily: Yeah. I love that you let her tell you, even though you come in with a plan, which I think is a good thing, right? I love that you let her go, actually, nah, that's not it for me today, because that is. More enriching. Giving her that agency and giving her the power to choose what she wants to do at that time is actually more enriching than if you had forced her to play fetch. So that's beautiful.

[00:18:34] Claire: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a long journey and definitely my timeline has been very interesting with when I, Olivia came into my life and how at the same time I was learning how to be first just a, a trainer, not to say just in, in any sort demeaning way, but starting at that foundation of how do I teach dogs things. How do I teach animals concepts?

And then starting to move more into the behavior consultant side of things, because, little did I know, even though I got a 10 week old puppy, we were on quite the road to some very interesting things and a fast learning curve. And so it has been quite the journey, realizing the things that she's telling me I do.

I don't like this, I want do this right now. I don't want to do this right now. And as we've clarified that communication, I think our balance and our lives have gotten a lot clearer because she's able to, like you're saying, let me know that it's not something she's interested in right now. But I've also learned her little cues for things like, I do wanna play with you, and sometimes they look a little different than what I would expect.

So building that relationship and that open pathway for communication has also allowed her to tell me what she wants when she wants it.

[00:19:46] Emily: Yeah. And that's absolutely beautiful. As I have really big feelings about the breed specific enrichment stuff. Because breed X, therefore they should do this activity. And I'm like, did you ask the learner? Just because they're whatever breed they are doesn't necessarily mean that they wanna do that today, right in this moment or ever. Like, why, why are we making that decision for them instead of letting them tell us what works for them? So I love that you do that for her.

[00:20:17] Claire: I think too, a lot of times people just don't know what the cues are of their dog telling them. That's the thing I think happens more often than not, and that's why I always end up circling back and talking about how. The communicate communication in general is the foundation to everything. Being able to understand and interpret, not always possible, we're always learning. And it can be challenging, but I think the more you start to understand the cues and the tells, the easier, I use that word, not lightly, but the easier kind of those meeting those needs can become as communication clarifies and we understand those cues better.

[00:20:54] Emily: Yeah, absolutely. That's, that to me is fundamental. The more that you become fluent at a learner's communication and their language, the more effective you're going to be at not just communicating to them, but listening to what they're communicating to you. So, Yeah, for sure. I, I super agree with that. So yeah, the reason that we're talking about this is because that that enrichment burnout that we feel is so, so detrimental. It's very, it's expensive, first of all, because if you have that social comparison feeling then you're gonna buy a bunch of stuff that you may not actually need. You're gonna spend a lot of money on activities that you may not actually need. 

How many people in Pet Pro come to us and they're like, I feel overwhelmed and I don't have time to work on the pet pro material because I'm taking 14 courses right now. And when we ask them, why, why are you taking these courses? What are you hoping to get out of them? 

 They're like, well, I thought I should know how to do this for my clients, or for my dogs, or for my cats, or my horses, or my parrot, whatever. And it's look, I'm not saying that those courses are bad or, or useless, but it is if we're, if we are making decisions based on an enrichment plan, you really need to understand what your goal is and you're wasting so much money and time taking courses that don't move you closer to your goal.

So enrichment burnout is expensive, first of all. But secondly, enrichment burnout leads to avoidance. Like the, when we start feeling guilty about not doing enough we typically, as humans respond in one of two ways. One is like overcompensating, burning ourselves out, running ourselves into the ground to try to meet those needs.

Putting yourself into selective poverty. The other one is avoidance, just like moving away. I mean, This is why I worked so many neglect cases when I was in Austin and, and then for the sanctuary that where Allie and I met and so many of those cases weren't people who started out neglecting their, their animals.

It was absolutely caregiver overwhelm that led to avoidance that just snowballed, right? We definitely want to avoid that. Enrichment burnout deteriorates our relationships with the, the animals in our care, because if we aren't feeling like we're succeeding with them, it can make them feel like a burden.

And then we start to feel resentful and we start to feel anxious and like we're a failure and all of that stuff. Can absolutely deteriorate the relationship. And then ironically, enrichment burnout actually prevents you from reducing harm and improving welfare and wellbeing. It actually negates any enrichment tips that you are doing because if the outcome is not harm reduction and improving welfare and wellbeing, it's not enrichment by definition.

So like you can be doing so much work to attempt to enrich, and in doing so, you're actually not enriching anybody. It's really important to address it, normalize it, and then let's figure out how to move through it and make it better, right.

[00:23:44] Claire: It relates to a blog post that I wrote a while back called, for the dogs who don't like peanut butter. And the main point of that blog post was to explore the number of choices that we have and some things we maybe don't think about and how we can do some preference testing and things like that.

But I think it also overarching, can apply to enrichment in general in that if my dog, and I see this a lot with clients too, is my dog doesn't like Kongs. I gave my dog a frozen Kong and they didn't like it, so therefore they don't like licking activities. And we don't realize how much variation there can be in one category of thing.

One of the things I've been talking to clients a lot about recently we've, we've, I've had a lot of clients where we've talked about long-term calming projects recently. And, one of the things I talk about is in my journey with Olivia and figuring out what kind of licking project she liked, because she did fall into that category of a dog who at first glance maybe assumed to not like licking projects.

And I started to realize that something as simple as the orientation of the object could drastically change whether she interacted with it or not. So, I even figured out what shape of leaky thing would encourage her to lay down, and then what orientation versus one that she was going to stay up and therefore probably was going to be more difficult for her to relax in the end of. So it can get that specific, like you can get that far down the rabbit hole, which in some ways I think can feel really overwhelming. And then in some ways can actually feel like a little bit of a lifesaver because you don't have to write off an entire category of something just because. The Kong with peanut butter was not interesting to your pup the first time you tried it or your, whichever species you're working with.

[00:25:36] Emily: Yeah. Yeah, I think that definitely plays in to that, that enrichment burnout is like when people are like I tried this thing and it didn't work, and then I tried this other thing and it didn't work, and nothing works. That can also lead to that feeling of like frustration, and avoidance, and it takes skill to do the troubleshooting, and instead of throwing the baby out with the bath bathwater saying, okay, why didn't it work, and how can we adjust it to make it more impactful for our learner? 

So that's like a whole other podcast episode that we'll have to do at some point because it's such a good point. And also we just don't have time to cover that today. So for now Claire, can you talk a little bit about your experience with Olivia and, and like your journey with enrichment burnout and how you got through that?

[00:26:23] Claire: The very, very long made short version is that Olivia was a classic Covid puppy. We got her from a rescue at 10 weeks in 2020. And I, at the time was not training professionally, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I did the classic like, I'm gonna get a dog and this is gonna be my training dog. Kind of the thing I think most of us do when we realize the profession that we want to go into. And it didn't become apparent to me, until she was about a year in change, that there was something else going on with her behaviorally, and that whole first year, it was very difficult to get her to eat anything. It was very difficult to get her to want to engage with toys. Um, She loved people. She tolerated dogs, like she had a couple friends and she tolerated other dogs, but walks became really difficult. And I just started to realize that there was a lot more going on with her, especially through help through professionals that I worked with, including Allie, which is part of the, the way that I learned about Pet Harmony and, and got involved was because I said, help, I dunno what to do with this dog who won't eat food and won't do these other things. 

So of course there's a lot of, medical that we took care of and are still working on, there was a lot of behavioral modification we worked on, there were lifestyle changes, there was a lot of stuff. But a huge part of it, and I think it is probably more a part of our lives now than it was before, is simply, especially when I learned the enrichment framework and seeing the chart of meeting needs and the categories, and started to break that down, realizing some of those things that I could help give her in ways that were less traditional.

So I've mentioned already that she's very leash reactive and we've done a lot of work on that, but I am also in one of those situations where the environment we are in is just constantly over threshold for Olivia. So we have to be very strategic about when we take walks and how we do that. So I try to meet those needs in a lot of other ways.

And I have, again, calling back a little bit to what we were just talking about, learn how to do that because I let her tell me, and I didn't give up on some of the things in the beginning that she said no to by offering them, again, giving her multiple chances in multiple different environments, types of days, when she would have, there would be a storm the day before, and that would carry over for her in her anxiety levels for the next day or two, continuing to give options and seeing what she would choose when, so that we could start to curate, how can I help you, even though we're not getting some of this other stuff back again, I'm giving parentheses with my fingers here, our traditional ways of exercising and enriching our dogs. How can I offer alternatives? 

So that has been something that I have really loved going on the journey with Olivia for. And I would also say. That it is really enticing all of the new things that come out, the new toys and the new ideas. And I'm definitely a sucker for a new enrichment toy I haven't seen or had my hands on for a while. But the other thing I've learned is that I almost always can find something in my house. I almost always can find a shreddable something. I almost always can find an interesting smelling object that she can investigate.

I almost always can find some time to open a door and let her stick her nose out the door and enjoy the smells and listen to the sounds and all of that kind of stuff. So I've, I think another part of our enrichment journey that has been really beneficial to me and very helpful is just learning what can I do with what I have.

[00:30:12] Emily: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Work with what you've got. I've been saying this for, I think, the entire time that I have been in this profession, but the, the longer I've been in this profession, the more I realize I really, really, really believe this. But I think training should be like judo and, and also that extends to enrichment.

And what I mean by that is instead of trying to like, come, like combat a behavior or a tendency or a preference or whatever, you just take that behavior or tendency and preference and redirect it into a way that is more physically, behaviorally and emotionally healthy. It's more safe. It's, it's more appropriate for the environment that they're in.

So just like judo as, as, as a, I hate calling it even a combat style, but as a, as a practice, judo is more about taking the energy in the direction that somebody already has and then just working with it and moving it in a different direction. And I, I really love that analogy, aside from the combat part of it.

I love that analogy because so often we're working against our environment, our needs, the animals' preferences, their tendencies, the behaviors they're offering, instead of just working with those things. And when you start just working with the reality that you, that you have, it's so much easier for everybody involved, right.

[00:31:36] Claire: And I have realized, again, talking about working with stuff that you already have. One of my favorite examples of enrichment, not only that Olivia showed me she wanted, but also that just existed in my home, was I got married and we recently and we got some gifts off a registry. And one of the things that we had gotten was a new comforter that we really wanted for our bed, and it was in this zip plastic kind of case with a handle on it. And the plastic had ripped open. So the folded up comforter in the package was sitting on the floor of the living room. And Olivia, I would hear this like crinkling, and I looked over and Olivia's got her whole head like inside the folds of the comforter. And slowly over time, every day she would kind of like put herself a little further into the comforter in the plastic. And I would love to say that I left it there for her. I did partially, but also just didn't wanna put it away. But she loved that thing, and she would climb in there and roll around and it, I did have a moment of being like, don't do that. Because it was that expectation that I've been, that has been set over time of, I didn't tell my dog that she could go in there, and that's not an object that dogs play with and things like that. 

But I stopped myself and I like witnessed the joy she was feeling of rolling around in it and that thing's gonna get dog hair on it the second it goes on our bed anyway, so it was, it was a really good example to me of she was loving the textures, the sounds. It was new smells for her. That was like a beautiful enrichment opportunity for her that she showed me she was enjoying and wanted. And I still, to this day, when I hear crinkling and I realize that she's getting in a bag, I, I, I do still have to stop myself of it from being like, don't, what are you doing?

But I will always glance over, I did this literally today, I heard crinkle crinkle and I like glanced over and there had been a little plastic shopping bag that I had brought groceries home in and she was just like shuffling it around, engaging with it. And I was like, girl, you go have fun with that. Enjoy yourself.

[00:33:43] Emily: Yeah, I'm going through something very similar with Miley where she, she craves novelty. She's, she's starting to chill out about this a little bit. We'll see what happens when adolescence hits, but for the first at least month that she was here. We're only 10 days past a month at this point. So it's not like we're talking about ancient history.

But she craved novelty to a degree that I don't remember experiencing with another animal. It was like everything, it was like the new thing was the only thing she cared about. If, if anything, if she'd already put her mouth on it. It was old news and she did not care about it. So she was constantly getting into everything.

And I had the, the, my initial reaction was like, she can't get in, she can't do this, this, she, she's not allowed to just, and then I had to stop myself and say like, why, why can't she? And so I have I was like, actually I kind love this because in many ways this is a foundation for anywhere but here.

And I just have to like curate what it is that she investigates. But like I, she's already doing the investigation part on her own so beautifully, why would I squelch that? So, I shifted my mentality and I was like, okay, I just need to keep the things that she absolutely can't get into, just out of her ability to investigate and then let her get into whatever she wants to get into.

Because I've, I've made sure that anything that she can get into is it, for the most part, is gonna be acceptable. And then, you know, of course, because this is how animals work, she does occasionally get into something that I'm like, how in the hell did you get that? Ugh. And then I have to ask myself, can she get into it? So like one of the things that she found that, I have no idea how she got to it. I don't know how she got to it, but she found, she got my watering can. And this was like a $4 piece of plastic little watering can that is so cheap and easy to replace. It is cheaper than most dog toys.

And I was like, do I care about her chewing this up? And I was like, no, actually, because I've been thinking for a while that it would be nice to have a better designed watering can. So I'm gonna let her, she found it, what an Easter egg. Amazing job doing that anywhere but here protocol, girlfriend like you go.

And I just watched her destroy my watering can and I was like, I am so okay with this right now. And, and what I've found is that because I let her do that, first of all, it is so much easier to care for her because she is entertaining herself. But secondly, in the moments when I do have to be like, nope, sorry, this is not for you, and take it from her. I, when I give her something else, she accepts it. Whereas before she was like, that's not new, I'm not interested. But I think because I'm not constantly trying to keep her doing the old things, when I do take a new thing and trade it with an old thing, she's yeah, okay. Like I, I can, I can do this now.

Because like, it's not, she hasn't been forced to interact with old things all day every day. She's got lots and lots of novelty and the old things are just the occasional things. And so, she's started to be able to circle back to things that she had previously been like, no, I've already put my mouth in that, why would I care about that? So it's been an interesting journey, just learning to let her do what she's gonna do. And, to obviously to an extent, we still manage, we, we still prevent her from accessing the overwhelming majority of things that she can't get into. I'm not saying I let my dog have a free for and destroy the house.

But the, the managed experience of just letting her discover whatever she wants to discover has been incredibly valuable.

So let's talk about how we combat enrichment burnout, like what steps we take to combat enrichment burnout, first stuff, and to assess whether or not we are actually meeting our animals' needs.

So first of all, I know y'all are gonna be shocked to hear this, use evidence. We get so lost in our heads, we get so lost in our ideologies, and our beliefs, that we forget to look at is hap what is happening right in front of us. We've said it before, I don't know how many times I'm gonna say it again, observe with your senses, not your stories, right? So often, with so many people, I work with so many professionals in Pet Pro and we work with so many clients who are, who are terrified that they're not meeting their animal's needs. And when I ask them, what evidence do you have for that, they can't answer, right?

And that's the problem is we get so overwhelmed by those logical fallacies and cognitive biases, we get lost in our own beliefs, that we forget to observe what's happening right in front of us. The best way to know if you're adequately meeting your animals' needs is to observe their behavior. So use evidence, observe the animals to see what's going on, and and there are a few different things that you can use to assist yourself in that. 

First of all. We even for ourselves will sometimes use the, our, our Needs Being Met checklist, which we'll put in the show notes. If we are working on a case where we're overwhelmed, we're like, there's a lot going on here, feel like we're missing something. Let's just quickly do an inventory to make sure that we're not missing anything. Let's just make sure that all of our bases are covered. And a lot of times when we are kind of lost in the weeds on a case, by using that checklist, we are able to identify, aha, this is the thing that we've been missing, or the, the missing piece of the puzzle, why things have been janky for us. Feel free to use that checklist as a way of inventorying if you feel like you're, you're missing something and, and what you're trying isn't quite working, and inventory can help. 

But secondly, to Claire's point from earlier, become a really good observer of behavior. If you can learn to tell what your animal looks like when they're saying, no thanks. I don't wanna do this. Or, yes, please, I wanna do this, or I think I wanna do this, but I'm not sure. Or I have no idea how to do this, so I don't know yet whether or not I want to do it. If you know how to tell when your animal is telling you those things, you are going to be so much more effective at, at meeting their needs because you'll be able to tell when it's a yes. It's a no, it's a maybe conditionally, and it's an, I don't know enough to know yet. And when you can tell those things apart you're gonna be more effective at meeting their needs.

[00:40:13] Claire: I think too, this is something I, that Pet Harmony has said a lot in our meetings and things like that, so it's something that sticks with me a lot, but as primates, we like to try to fill in the gaps for our animals really quickly. And, and I'm super guilty of that also. But, and we even made, I think a reel about it where it was like when you do a find it and your dog's missing the one treat, and your eye's just like twitching. 'cause you're like, I see that one treat. Like you're missing it. You can't find it. And the number of times I've had to tell clients, you can just let them keep looking for it. It's okay. I want your dog to be a problem solver. I want your, your animal to work through things, and process the problem in front of them, so that they can learn and gain that confidence to keep solving that this new puzzle, this new issue, there are lines to that, right? 

We, it is not enriching if the learner is becoming really frustrated or anything like that, but there are times where we want to jump in and show how it's done really quickly. And there might even be reasons our animal is doing it the way they're doing it. It might be more enjoyable for them the way they're doing it. I often will see Olivia, when I do food scatters for her, I will see her go hunt down like the tiny little tidbits and crumbs before she goes for some of the bigger pieces at the other end. And that's just how she does it. And that's fine. That's, she's enjoying it. She's working through it at her pace, she gets to do her thing. 

[00:41:44] Emily: She's a completionist like me. I won't move to a next zone in a video game until I have done every single side quest and it collected every single treasure chest and discovered every single like waypoint in a one zone. I can't move to the next zone until it's all been done in this zone.

[00:42:01] Claire: You're like, what if this checkpoint doesn't allow me to go back? I need to be able to go back.

[00:42:06] Emily: Yep. Yes. So if, if Olivia played video games, she would be a completionist like me. I enjoy that. Yeah. And then the, the next thing to do, or for in terms of like gathering evidence is simple and sustainable data collection. I know we harp on this all the time and we had a really good conversation in the KPA course that I did recently.

One of the people who was in the course was like, I hate this data collection. It's terrible, it's so hard to do. And I was like, cool, what are you getting out of it? And she was like, actually I think I've discovered actually that this isn't a pain point for me. The pain point was this other thing that we discovered as we worked through the enrichment framework.

And I was like, cool. So you don't need to do data collection here because this is not the thing that you're testing. This is not the thing that's, and it's a pain for you because you're not getting anything out of it, right? I think as we collectively as an industry are learning how to do data collection, we're doing exactly what humans do, where we're swinging to the opposite end of the, the spectrum where we're like, we have to do data collection on everything, or we're not good science-based trainers and behavior consultants.

And that's not true either, right? So when I say simple and sustainable, I mean, if there's a thing that you are really worried about, if there's a pain point where you're like, I am terrified that my dog is not getting enough rest or not getting enough physical activity or not getting enough, whatever, then that's the thing that you need to be doing data collection on.

Like, What, what does good look like for you? What would you expect the outcome to be if you were giving your dog enough of whatever you feel like they're not getting enough of? And then when would you expect to see those outcomes? And then document what happens during that time and see if your expectations align with reality and how often they do and how often they don't to get a really good picture of whether or not the thing that you're doing is actually producing the outcome that you want. And if it's really obvious, if you do the thing and then suddenly the problem goes away and the dog does exactly what you wanted them to do every time, then obviously you don't need data collection for that, right?

Data collection is for like those fuzzy in between, of like the extremes of they always do it or they never do it. The outcome is always what you want or it's never what you want. Um, Data collection is really good for the in-between, where it's sometimes what you want and sometimes not, and you don't have a clear picture of whether or not you're, you're actually making any progress, right?

So you, you can use data collection as a way of like gathering evidence. So that's the first use evidence you can use and checklists and like inventories. Be a really good observer of your animal's behavior. Listen to your learner. 

The second is triage, prioritize, and simplify.

So what I mean by that is again, people try to do so much. They're like, oh, I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this. I've had so many people bring me their enrichment plan where they very diligently have an activity for all 14 categories of enrichment.

And I'm like, oh my God, bless your heart. I am so sorry that we made you do all this work. The categories are not real. They're not for our learners, they're for us to understand concepts. You don't have to have an activity for all 14 categories that is not sustainable. Your pet should not be your full-time job.

the way that we recommend doing this is like figuring out where is the hemorrhage? Like What is the biggest pain point for you? So think of it like an actual triage. What is the biggest barrier to reducing harm and improving welfare and wellbeing in your household. That's the thing that gets top priority, right?

And then look at what activity or activities are gonna get you the most bang for your buck? Is there something that you, like a small step, big win where you change one thing and it makes a big difference for you? Is there something that like you can do one activity that meets multiple categories of in the enrichment.

Framework. There's, there's just like lots of different ways to find the things that will do the most for you with the least amount of effort, and more importantly, will address the biggest pain points for you, and then you can prioritize from there, right? What is, what is a now benefit? What is an urgent benefit versus what is a, it can wait benefit.

For example, with Miley, we really wanna do mushroom hunting with her. She is in many ways, not in all ways, but in many ways she is exactly what you would expect a baji to be. There are actually many surprising ways where she didn't get the memo that she's a baji. But one of the ways that she, her full baji is definitely showing her like little baji flag is flying is that she is a very dedicated hunter and so we wanna do mushroom hunting.

And also she's a puppy and she has so many foundations. Skills that she, she still needs to learn. Mushroom hunting classes are so far down on the priority list. I haven't even started researching them yet. So just because I want to do that for her for the future does not mean that it even rates on her enrichment plan right now.

It's not even on the radar. So that really being able to prioritize like what is urgent now? What is the next urgent thing? What's the next urgent thing? What is a like pipe dream like someday I would like to do this will really help you to simplify what your plan is. And then once you simplify your plan to, you've got the things that matter the most, address the biggest pain points and give you the most bang for your buck.

Then you can ask yourself, could I do this every day for a year? And if the answer is no, then figure out if you need to further simplify your plan or your. Or you're okay with temporarily having to do more work? When I first got Miley, the first three days were very hard. I'd just come back from being in Chicago for a week.

I didn't sleep well the entire time I was there, so I was exhausted. I was sick because I caught the conference plague and I had a brand new puppy. And a lot of our management stuff that we had planned to do failed, and I was okay with that. I allowed myself to be all consumed by puppy care for the first three days.

I anticipated that it was gonna be difficult at the beginning and over time we got our management strategies in place. We started building skills, we started developing a routine, and things got easier and they have continued to get easier. I'm saying this before. Adolescence starts. Progress is not linear. We will go through another hard time. 

But my point is that it's, so there may be periods of time where you're like, I could not do this for a year. And also I know that this period in our life is not going to last for a year, so that's okay. But if this is supposed to be your maintenance plan and you can't do it every day for a year, then you need to adjust your maintenance plan.

And then if that's the case, you need to look for ways to streamline your process. Can you get all the benefit from multiple activities out of one activity? Are you trying too hard to make your dog do something that they really don't wanna do? Which is so often the case. I can't, I, we had a, a professional come to us, it was like, I'm supposed to, she had a golden retriever and she's I'm supposed to be playing fetch with my golden retriever for an hour every day, and it's terrible, and my dog doesn't wanna do it. And I was like, why are you supposed to do this? Because she's a golden retriever. And I was like, no, no. You know what you're supposed to do? Meet your needs and meet your dog's needs, and if your dog is saying no to playing fetch every day for an hour then don't do that.

[00:49:25] Claire: I had this beautiful client interaction the other day, and this was totally, this client did this of their own volition and I just need to applaud them for it, but. Their relationship with their dog recently has suffered because, so this is a very high needs dog and a fairly complicated behavior case, and they were very forthcoming with me about being burnt out, and feeling that the relationship was a little more fragile, because there were so many needs for this dog that they were trying to meet. 

And something I really appreciated from them was I, we did our session it was an initial consult, so we like went, we talked a ton about this dog's history, and behaviors, and then talked about recommendations and things like that.

And this, this client was so willing to let me know what hit their maximum. Like when, when they were like, that is what I can accomplish. I don't think I can go further than that. And I was so grateful that they said that. Because it allowed me to also reinforce them, and make sure that they understood that that was fine. They didn't have to do all of these X, Y, Z things. We found the couple things that we could do to meet some of the struggles that we were having already, and that was going to be enough for now. And we can always come back and do some of those other things. 

So I think that's really, really important, especially for clients to advocate, i, I don't know that I can do this and I've been trying to be much more forward asking clients, does that actually feel sustainable to you? And show them that I actually want them to answer that question. It's not a trick question. I want you to tell me. Actually, no. There's three days a week where I have to go into work early, and I'm really tired already. And I'm not going to then, guilt or shame, I want them to let me know, 'cause we can make it more realistic. We really can.

[00:51:21] Emily: Yes. Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. We, yes, we need to give people space to say, no, this is not sustainable, right? And then that segues beautifully into the next kind of sub point, which is if you can't figure out how to streamline your process, or you as a professional can't figure out how to streamline your client's process, then that's what community is for.

Reach out to your trusted friends, your colleagues, your, your teammates, whoever, and ask them for a brainstorming session because first of all, as we've discussed on this podcast before, nobody can be their own behavior consultant all of the time, so sometimes you just need an objective third party to point something out that you're like, oh, yeah, I know that I just had a hard time seeing it because I'm, I am too deep into it. 

And sometimes people have had experiences that you don't have, so they ha have ideas that you wouldn't have because they have a different learning history than you do, right? And sometimes it just takes like multiple brains to work on a problem and troubleshoot.

So if you can't figure out how to streamline the process for yourself or for a client, then reach out to your community and ask for community support. That's, that's why we're here. We're here to support each other. And then, and then when we do figure out how to streamline, what I tell people is. We humans, we have a tendency to over index and over cluster too much.

So when we're adding things, we tend to add too many things at once. And when we're trying to remove things, we tend to remove too many things at once. as you are streamlining, change one thing at a time and observe the impact before making another change. And that change is whether you're adding something or you're removing something.

Now, there may be outlier situations where you just can't do that. You need to radically strip things away, or you need to radically, like throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Um, I've definitely been in situations like that, but that's not that is not common practice for me. That's not how I operate in the world.

I had to make those decisions in very specific circumstances for very specific reasons. For the most part, add or remove one thing at a time, observe the impact, and then adjust as needed. A lot of times we just need to make one change to make the experience so much better. And I will tell you like with Miley, what Copper who has no history of any kind of conflict or aggression in his entire life has developed resource guarding, food guarding specifically with Miley.

And you know, I should have seen it coming because lately he's gotten a lot more fixated on food. I think he's starting to develop CCD, I'm not sure. But that's definitely a possibility. And also new overwhelming puppy. It, it makes sense, right? But I didn't see it coming. And so we had to do a lot of really, really heavy management in the house of not, not quite crate and rotate, but like pretty close to that.

And when they finally, we really just focused on developing their relationship. And when they finally had a good enough relationship that Miley could be attended, free roaming in the house with Copper. That one change made a massive difference for our quality of life and, and the ease of the plan, it became so much easier overnight, instantly.

Everything else about Miley's care became easier. A lot of times just that one change can really impact everything else in, in delightful and unexpected ways. 

And then the last step is take a trial and eval mindset. So try the thing and see what happens, observe the outcomes, and then adjust as needed. Don't anticipate, adjust based on your anticipations of what you think will happen, adjust based on the evidence that you gather from your trial and eval process. And then I'm just gonna reiterate this, wait and see what your outcomes are instead of borrowing trouble again, this is such a common thing that I see that people are like well, I stopped doing this, or I added this and then I did this, and uh, and I can't do this because of this.

And it's like, why, why, why? And because I'm afraid that blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, do you have any evidence for that? And they're like no. And I'm like, okay. So you made your life so much harder. Not because of evidence, but because you are borrowing trouble from the future. You're afraid of something that hasn't happened yet. So let's slow our role, make our changes, and wait for the outcomes before we make decisions instead of borrowing trouble. That hasn't happened yet, and we don't know if it ever will happen, right?

[00:55:41] Claire: I would say too, I think one of the biggest bullet points that was a huge game changer for me was the ask, ask your friends and colleagues. I always tell this story because I think it's hilarious and like a great example of not being able to be your own consultant. I was still pretty new at this point, but I met with Allie before I worked for Pet Harmony, for a follow-up session with my pup. And she, I, I brought up, there's this new behavior happening, and it came outta nowhere, and it's really odd. And, and Allie very politely listened to me and nodded, and then just goes, we'll, have you checked with the vet?

And I could have just thrown myself down the stairs. I was so embarrassed. I was like well, of course that's what I tell everybody else, right? But of course, that wasn't where my brain went, and guess what? It was a, it was a medical related issue. So, sometimes even the stuff, already just having someone say some of those things to you, even just friends who know your dog really well. Friends who watch my dog, they're not behavior professionals. They're not, they don't work with animals for a living, but they see things in my dog that I don't notice. And it's really helpful actually to have that, that outside perspective. And then the other thing I wanted to mention was that it's okay if those enrichment activities or what have you that you're using change.

It's okay that your pup was really into shredding and has now decided that they actually really enjoy settling down with the chew. That is normal for things to evolve and change. And I think sometimes we can find one thing that works so well that we just like glom onto it and are like, this is my lifeline. And then things shift and we panic because, oh no, they're not into that anymore. And I'm including myself in that 'cause I have done that, but it's really lovely for us to see that evolution and our, our animals and our learners shifting what they enjoy just like we do.

[00:57:49] Emily: Yes. I love that. Give your learners space to change their minds, to have a change in preferences, to have a change in taste and opinions and interests. We experienced that, why can't we allow our learners to experience that as well? 

[00:58:05] Claire: And it doesn't mean you were wrong. It doesn't mean you were wrong, it just meant that things changed.

[00:58:10] Emily: It just meant that things changed. Yeah. I'm having a hard time accepting the fact that Miley no longer cares about her collagen shoes and she might, she may change her mind again. She may decide later that collagen shoes are awesome, but they were such a lovely way to watch her sort of like settle down for her, like pre-AP sort of relaxation time and it was very cute to watch her munch on them. And there are other chewy that she likes, no, it's not that she doesn't like chewy anymore, she just specifically doesn't like her collagen chews. And I don't know why I have such an emotional attachment to that, but I've offered them to her several times and she goes, I don't use those anymore. I'm really into this braided bully stick now. So I'm gonna need you to step off with that collagen chew. It is so last month.

[00:58:58] Claire: Yeah. The, the panic that I felt when, I finally got Olivia to want to use like frozen topples and things like that. That was not something that she was interested in for a long time. And I found some things that worked really well and I was so stoked. And then I remember like the first couple times I offered those and she decided she didn't want them anymore.

And I was like, that's all we have. I'm holding on, I'm trying to hold onto the life preserver and swim my way back to the boat. And we found other stuff. It was a, it was annoying for me. It was frustrating for me to feel like that thing, the, the golden ticket that I had found wasn't applicable anymore. But we found other things and now she has other favorites and we've actually rotated back to the ones that she said no to before. So it's, it just changes. It's it's nature. It's totally part of the process.

[00:59:46] Emily: Yeah, we're all living changing beings, right? Yeah. Okay, so to recap, to combat enrichment burnout, step one, use evidence. Step two, triage, prioritize and simplify. And step three, take a trial and eval mindset. 

[01:00:07] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony. 

[01:00:59] Emily: Here's a little bonus enrichment tip to thank you for listening to this episode. If the animal in your care says, no thank you to something, it's all right.

Just put it away. Maybe wait a week or two, maybe a month or two, and reintroduce it later to see if they've changed their mind.