#162 - Choice, Control, Agency, and Predictability

You've heard the buzzwords: agency, choice, control, predictability. But if you've ever tried to implement all of them at once and you know it can feel like trying to juggle 100 balls. Emily and Allie break down why agency isn't a pass/fail ethical litmus test, but rather a set of individual dials you can turn up or down depending on your learner, your context, and your real-life constraints.

Whether you're working with a rescue dog who's never seen an open door as an option, a senior pup navigating the stairs, or yourself trying to make it through a brutal work sprint, this conversation reframes how to think about autonomy, empowerment, and what it actually means to give someone more agency in the real world.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ Agency Has More Dials Than You Think — Skill and bandwidth are missing from most conversations about agency, and leaving them out sets up both trainers and learners to struggle.

2️⃣ Dials, Not Checklists — You don't need to have all the dials turned up at once. Knowing which specific dial to adjust makes you more effective, more sustainable, and less overwhelmed.

3️⃣ Predictability Is Often the Most Accessible Place to Start — When choice and control aren't possible, a simple predictability cue can meaningfully restore a sense of agency for your learner.

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: When we're looking at agency like that, like we wanna give animals as much autonomy as possible within the constraints of our reality, the components of that are choice and choice is not do it or else that's not a real choice.

Choice is an availability of desirable options. It doesn't have to be unlimited options. And in fact, unlimited options is rarely realistic. But it needs to be more than one desirable option. It's not do it or else that's not actually a choice. It's not TM cake or death. That's not actually a choice. 

[00:00:45] 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...

[00:00:55] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:57] 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.

[00:01:17] Emily: One of the things that I love for our industry is how much we have started to care about agency for our both human and non-human learners. And that's a beautiful thing. I'm here for it. I'm so excited that like this, that's kind of a, a trend in our industry and also we can keep moving that trend forward by refining how we think about agency, how we talk about it, how we assess it. So let's keep going. Let's keep the progress going. And I like to think of agency as. Three dials, three different components, choice, control, and predictability. But lately, I'm just gonna say this now and I'll probably circle back to it later. I feel like the fourth dial is skill and, and I'll talk about that more later, but I feel like agency actually is four dials, choice, control, predictability and skill. But the reason that I'm calling them dials is because as, as is always the case, when there's like a new concept that's introduced and like the first decade or so, everybody's trying to figure out what it's all about. When and the, the concept of agency got introduced to our industry. Kind of these things became buzzwords, right?

Choice, control, predictability, agency, they all became buzzwords. And what happens I see, is that a lot of people are, are thinking of them as like checklists or like they get bundled together, like, some kind of morality litmus test. Like if you're not offering choice, control, predictability agency you're, you're not an ethical trainer, right? And and the where that kind of makes things hard for people is that if you are trying to add all three choice, control, and predictability all at once, every single time, you are almost guaranteed to end up overwhelmed or stalling out or confused. And and yes, there's nothing wrong with you. That's, that's a function of the way that you have been taught to think about and approach agency. And we are here to help you shift your mindset of how you think about and work with agency as a concept and as a, a real applicable thing that we do for the learners in our lives. So it's not about doing it more or doing it better, it's about being able to see it more clearly and see it as dials, that you're sort of dialing up and dialing down those individual things.

Choice, control, and predictability separately. And, and also I'm gonna add the dial of, of skill and we'll, I'll talk more about that in a little bit. But Allie, I know you have thoughts about this. I know you do.

[00:04:14] Allie: Yeah, I do. As I was removing my dog's agency while you were talking about it,

[00:04:19] Emily: Putting his little socky on.

[00:04:21] Allie: putting his a little socky on so he can't lick his foot.

[00:04:24] Emily: Also had a booboo a couple days ago, and he's, he's wearing a sock and we, I think you didn't actually have the opportunity to teach him how to wear it, which is why you're just putting it on now, right?

[00:04:36] Allie: This, this is one of those situations which will probably make people feel good about themselves. And because it's very much a cobbler's, kids have no shoes situation in that to be fair, this injury is not common. Like he broke his whole toenail off. Like all of that. That's not a thing that's happening every day.

But before we like really figured out his allergies his. And actually pain too. His norm when he's uncomfortable is to lick his back right foot. And so like he would destroy his foot during allergy season before we figured out like a good med protocol for him before we figured out the right gabapentin dosage for him.

Now that he's having like the, the hind end neuro issues, he would, he would just incessantly lick his, his right hind. So we've had to sock him. It's a verb by the way. We've had to sock him for much of his life, and I have never actually taught it. So,

This is a, a cobbler's kids have no shoes situation.

[00:05:42] Emily: And also I just watched you do it, and he really didn't care. So you weren't flooding him. He was just like, oh yeah, this is a thing Mom puts my sock on. So I think we can say that he, he is consenting because you weren't restraining him and he had, he had zero feels about it. He was like, yep, the socks coming on.

So I think that's a really good, like really apropos example in this moment of like, in a perfect world we would be doing cooperative care and doing all this training to train him to, participate. And that what you actually were doing was a really good example of care with consent, where you were assessing his stress levels, which were non-existent.

He was not stressed, you weren't restraining him. You have a routine and you did it to him, but with his ascent, he was like, yeah, socks going on. It's fine. Right? I.

That's a much more realistic and accessible approach for many, many people in this world than the rigorous training that goes into actual cooperative care.

[00:06:46] Allie: For sure. And then I, and I, I think part of it is, I don't know that you noticed that he walked several times and then came back without his sock.

[00:06:55] Emily: I didn't see that. No.

[00:06:56] Allie: We have to tape and like y'all, the, okay, this is, I should not admit to this. It's so janky. We duct tape it. Necessity is the mother of invention. I don't know, like,

[00:07:07] Emily: that? But does it? Is it hard to take the duct tape off?

[00:07:10] Allie: oh, we don't duct tape his fur. 

[00:07:13] Emily: You just duct tape the sock itself to

like hold it tight. 

[00:07:16] Allie: Yeah, so that like around the small points of the joints

[00:07:20] Emily: Oh, okay. Okay.

[00:07:22] Allie: so that it doesn't slip off. 

[00:07:23] Emily: I'm glad you clarified that. 'cause I was like, why not use medical tape that's gonna be so much easier to remove.

[00:07:29] Allie: Okay. If I was taping his fur, I would use medical tape, but No, I'm, I'm just taping the sock itself so that it, it's, it can't slip off. But, we're recording a podcast so I didn't have time to, to tape it.

So he has tricks for getting his sock off

and, and, and I'm sure he knows when it's taped, when it's not, like I'm sure he feel all of that.

And so literally what just happened is I socked him, he walked the length of the house a few times until the sock came off, came back in here, and now he's lying down on the ground.

[00:08:02] Emily: He is. Oh, so clever.

[00:08:03] Allie: He is like, I don't, I don't want this sock. And it's like, as long as you don't lick your foot, then you don't have to have a sock. Yeah. And it's the, it's the better of the two options. 'cause the other option is he has to be in a cone if he can't,

'Cause sometimes he'll just de straight up destroy the sock

and, rip it off and, and we have to cone him then.

[00:08:24] Emily: like, we're maybe getting ahead of ourself in this episode, but while we're talking about it, I'm just gonna go ahead and add that I also do an ROI assessment, ROI is return on investment because like with Brie, before she got the diagnosis that she had Schmidt syndrome, she kept getting these weird, like, the one side of one eyeball, the sclera would get really inflamed. And so she had to wear the cone on a regular basis, so it made sense for me to do the work of training her to love her cone. And we did that work and every time she had a little eye flare up, I would hold up the cone and she would get so excited and she would run and shove her head into the cone.

She loved it so much, but it was worth the work to do that because she had to wear the cone so often. Miley on the other hand, when. Copper bit her face, and she, she was messing with the wound on her face, understandably. She was a puppy in pain. And I was like, this is not going to continue happening.

We're not, we're not doing this anymore. The likelihood of her needing a cone as often as breeded is incredibly low. I do not want to put that effort in, especially because I'm doing so many other things to take care of my puppy. And so I didn't bother to teach her to use the cone. I just came up with other strategies instead.

And I wish I could remember what I did instead. But that was a year ago. Friends, and I have a very bad memory, so I don't remember what I did instead of the cone, but whatever I did, it worked. I know I put some kind of like analgesic thing that the Yvette gave on the wound itself and. Something else. I did something else, I just don't remember what it was.

But I didn't do the training with her because the ROI wasn't there. Even though yes, ideally I would have given her the same level of agency that I gave Brie.

If, if we lived in a perfect world where we all have unlimited time and resources and bandwidth but when I have to budget my time, resources, and bandwidth, and it's something that's not gonna happen very often, that loses out. That's not where I'm gonna put my energy. So we found other ways to make it minimally aversive for her.

And I will say I never had to restrain her. I would like gently cup her head in my hand just for stability while I was applying the analgesic to her face. But like there was no other restraint, she never showed any signs of distress. She never opted out. So even with the sort of like lack of choice and control, she still had predictability.

We still minimized how aversive it was. And she still there. We still DI don't know how else to say this other than like, we just weren't using restraint. It was a no restraint procedure. Right. So we still gave her lots of, I don't know why I am just talking the royal, we, I don't know where this comes from.

I don't, I am not multiple people. I, I don't know why I'm saying we. I think when I started this point, I meant you and I and the decisions that we make, but I just like slid into my very specific story with Miley and just kept using the we pronoun.

[00:11:53] Allie: little did you know that I'm just living in your walls and I was also helping during that time. Yeah.

[00:12:02] Emily: That's what I meant by we you're here in, in spirit and in my walls being a creepy mc kreton. It's fine. So anyway, the point is that like there are, that's why we talk about them being dials. It's not either they have choice or they don't, either they have control or they don't. Either they have predictability or don't. We can dial those things up or down to make them more realistic, practical, sustainable for us and for the animals in our care in the moment. And and. That works very well, and it's more sustainable and less likely to overwhelm people or get them to a place where they're feeling stuck. Right? So let's break down the, the three dials that I think everybody agrees are a part of agency choice, control, and predictability. And then I'm going to break down skill as the fourth dial and why I think it belongs in the definition of agency.

Let's talk about the umbrella term of agency first, because I think. The people have a really good general idea of what agency is, but I have seen enough people have their minds blown when I talk about it in the context of enrichment that I think it's worth digging into. That agency is more than about us relinquishing control in these little moments in time. But think of agency as autonomy and think of autonomy as our natural state of existence because as, as, sentient beings, we evolved in a world that did not have this like strict control, these, these systems of control, right? So if you observe wild animals, there's nobody who's telling them what they can and cannot do, where they can and cannot go. They have. Total control over their own lives to an extent. We could hair split that like in certain species they have to fight for the right to breed, and then the dog, the not the dogs.

I don't know why I said dogs. The, the individuals who lose the fight don't get to mate with other animals. So they don't have unlimited choices, but they still have total control over themselves as individuals. 

[00:14:29] Allie: I'm just gonna insert my existential crisis of do any of us have free will and then just walk away from this conversation.

[00:14:38] Emily: No, but thank you for saying that because Right. I mean, If anybody has read Determined by Robert Sapolsky, like you know that like I am oversimplifying things because. We, yes, there is just a limit as to how much, how much free will any of us have. And also we're not gonna get into that level of existentialism in this podcast. But my point is that there's nobody who's putting animals behind a fence or on a leash or making them sit or heal in the wild animals have the, they drive themselves, right? They're the ones driving the bus for their lives. So our goal for agency is to give animals as much autonomy as possible in the, within the, the constraints of our real all. Wow, that's not a word. Let me try that again. Within the constraints of our reality, right? We can't just open our doors and be like, run free Willie. Like you, I, I believe in autonomy. You make all the good choices and you get to decide where you live and where you go and what you do. That would go badly for everybody.

So that's not what we're saying. But that preview, that's why I think skills should be one of the dials and agency. But we'll get there. We'll get there.

Okay. 

[00:15:59] Allie: I am just, I'm just dying because literally the past, like two days with Oso being out of my sight, I'm like, make good choices.

[00:16:07] Emily: You're like run pri so making choices.

but, but you're not letting 'em at the front door at a 10 day. You

like you're letting him out in the backyard.

[00:16:15] Allie: in the backyard, unattended without a cone.

[00:16:18] Emily: right. So some degree of autonomy, but. As much autonomy as he can have, But.

he's still in the yard. Right, so, so let's break down. When we're looking at agency like that, like we wanna give animals as much autonomy as possible within the constraints of our reality, the components of that are choice and choice is not do it or else that's not a real choice.

Choice is an availability of desirable options. It doesn't have to be unlimited options. And in fact, unlimited options is rarely realistic. But it needs to be more than one desirable option. It's not do it or else that's not actually a choice. It's not TM cake or death. That's not actually a choice. I wanna also point out that choice includes the learners' knowledge that they have, choice and ability to make those choices. So there's oftentimes we have this illusion of choice where we're like, while I'm giving you the option to either, I don't know, go outside or stay inside. But if you're working with a puppy mill dog who has spent their entire lives in a two by two foot crate, they have no idea that the open door signifies that they have the option to go outside. They may have never been outside, they don't know what outside is, they don't know how to go outside. They don't know what they would, why they would make that choice. So giving choice includes. I don't even know how to say this. Hold on, let me think about it. So giving them choice includes making sure that they know what choices are available to them and they know how to make those choices and they can make those decisions because they know what the pros and cons of, of each decision is, right? So it's not enough to just make the choices available. We have to make sure that they are aware of what those choices actually mean for them. If I go outside, I get to play in the yard, I get to go potty, but I have no shelter and I'm exposed to the elements. If I stay inside, I don't have as much room to run around.

I can't go to the bathroom, but I'm protected from the elements. Those are the decisions that they need to be able to make in order to truly have the choice.

[00:18:51] Allie: I want to, to give a silly human example to make it clear that it. Let me step back. Because you used a fantastic example of like a, like a puppy male dog who has not had all of these experiences and all of that. And sometimes I'm gonna say this for humans, but it also seems to be true for some animals.

Like I, there's some, some EC data there of just like not even thinking of that being a possibility. That is, that is also a part of it. So you and I were talking about before we hit record that I, for my entire life have have been a, a guesser. I am guessing what people want. I'm trying to navigate, like if I say this, they'll say this and then I'll say this and then they'll say this.

And social anxiety is a trip, friends. Um, And. A, a month or two ago someone who works at a vet clinic, we pair with uh, or we partner with reached out to me and said, Hey, I see you're doing a local seminar. Could we have a table at your seminar? And literally the first words outta my mouth, where, oh, I didn't know you could do that.

You can just ask you, you can just ask to have a table at a seminar of somebody who you have a relationship with. What, like it was, I literally would never have thought of that. So, yeah, so it, it's not just based off of having like a traumatic past or having these, these really aversive things happen when you make decisions, it can sometimes just be like, I literally never thought that was a possibility.

I, it wouldn't occurred. Occurred to me.

[00:20:31] Emily: Yeah. The more we're talking, the more I'm convinced that skill is the fourth dial for agency. Let's talk about control and what that means in this context. So when we're talking about control giving animals control as, as a facet of agency, we're really talking about giving them the ability to influence their own outcomes instead of making all those decisions for them and influencing all the outcomes on their behalf. So, we want animals to realize, I mean, learners of all species, including humans. Like our, one of the things that we do at Pet Harmony is try to empower the human learners that we work with as well. But we want our learners to know that their behavior matters in whatever context that we're in with them, right? That how they behave actually does impact the world around them. And that is. So important. And what I find really telling about our culture is that when we see that animals have learned that their behavior matters and that they can influence their outcomes, our culture brands that as the animals being manipulative and that is so telling of how we think about agency and control and, and who, which learners which, which sentient beings are allowed to impact their environment and which ones if they do it, they're considered manipulative. Yeah. Ally just made a mic drop motion. So, we say in our book, and I'm just gonna say it again here, if you're worried about your pets controlling you or training you, because they have learned to give you signals to tell you what behaviors they would like you to do, I'm just gonna let you take a deep exhale and let go of that fear.

Because by definition, all of us are learning from each other in every interaction. We are all receiving consequences from other, so in every interaction, we are both teaching and learning from each other. So you can't interact with your pet without learning from them. Which means that they are teaching you, and that is not manipulation.

That is not a bad thing. That is what we're looking for. That's the goal. The goal is good two-way collaborative communication where you influence each other and you can ask each other for things and you can support each other. So this fear of being manipulated or trained by your pet is because we live in a coercive culture, not because there's anything wrong with a non-human learning, that their behavior matters and that they are capable of influencing their own outcomes. So that's control. Predictability is the ability to anticipate what happens next. It's an important part of agency because it reduces cognitive load. And so when you live in a very complex world where you're having to make lots of decisions, decision fatigue is real. It's so real. Business owners know acutely how real decision fatigue is. And when an animal knows what to expect, when a learner knows what to expect and they know what happens next, it. It empowers them to make those choices that we talked about earlier. If you know that when you make this choice X, Y, Z, outcome will happen, that is predictability. If you make a choice and the outcome is unpredictable, it's not really a choice, right?

Then you're just like gambling, then you're just like rolling the dice and seeing what happens. The thing that makes choice, choice is that the outcomes of your choices are predictable, and obviously there's a lot about life that is not predictable. The world is an unpredictable place and the decisions that humans make make no kind of sense, and weather is confusing and everything.

Climate is confusing. The entire world is confusing. So obviously nobody can have ally's just dying. Y'all. I just need you to know that Ally is dying at me right now. But the point is that like, obviously nobody has 100% predictability or certainty. That is not realistic. That's not practical, that it doesn't happen in the real world and in nature either. We evolved to live on an unpredictable planet, and that's just life, but we can provide as much predictability as possible in the context where it matters. Like, for example, when you want your your pet to learn how to make good life choices, you should probably set up the environment so that the choices result in predictable outcomes, right? That's, that is within the sphere of our influence that we can, we can do that for the learners in our care.

[00:25:54] Allie: I'm just dying because you spiraled so quickly.

It was just. It's just it, that it wasn't even like a snowball, it was like an avalanche that just happened.

[00:26:02] Emily: Because let's be real, the world's on fire right now and nothing is predictable, and I

have no idea what tomorrow's gonna look like.

[00:26:10] Allie: and, but I think, like aside from the, the humor your spiral brought me I think the, the salient point there is like we're living in a world that is very unpredictable right now, at least in the United States. And, we are getting to see firsthand how stressful that is. That from from moment to moment, we don't necessarily know what's going to happen in our lives.

And so I think of like, oh man, this is how some dogs feel. This is how some, some pets feel of like not knowing what to expect on a daily basis,

and it is taxing.

[00:26:52] Emily: Yeah, and I'll say that, i, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, and my parents are amazing. And also I had a parent who could be unpredictable and the anxiety that, that brought me as a child of not knowing what the responses were going to be had ripple effects out into adulthood.

And I've been in therapy for years and I have a great relationship with my parents. And again, I'm not throwing them under the bus. They were extraordinary in so many ways, and they did the best that they could. And I'm not a parent, so I don't get to criticize like, it, it is what it is. And also, the, the unpredictable parent was not intentionally unpredictable. Like there, there were valid struggles there as well, right? So I'm not saying this to you to shame anybody. But even with therapy and even with a, a really beautifully restored relationship where we have a really good trust and communication, I still see myself almost reflexively acting in ways or having anxiety spirals about things related to predictability because of those childhood experiences. And so, it's really the, the, the concept of secure attachment and how that impacts the agency that we can give our. Pets and how predictability is such an important part of secure attachment and how secure attachment is such an important part of agency. It's all just, it's all interrelated and it is so, so, so impactful.

It is so important to have, if nothing else, predictability in your relationship with your pets as much as possible. All right, now I'm gonna talk about why I think skill is the fourth dial of agency. And you've probably figured it out based on all the context, but learners have to have the skill to make the choices and to know what outcomes the choices will be. The outcomes of their choices will be in order to actually have agency. So I'm gonna tell on myself as, consultant back in the day, I would say about a decade ago, I was really, really invested in giving my clients agency. I wanted them to have the freedom to make their own choices. And so it felt really coercive to me to tell them when they needed to schedule their next, their next session. So I would tell them, I want you to work on this. When you get to this part in the plan email me and we can set up your next session. But, take whatever time you need to work on it, and then we'll, we'll pick it up again when you're ready. And it took me a while to figure out that. That was a terrible model and that was not helping and supporting my clients because they did not have the skill to recognize when they actually needed help and support and when it was actually time to book another session with me. And so they would just wander off and we weren't actually getting follow through, not because they didn't wanna keep working with me, not because they were unhappy with the job that I was doing, but because I had given them more agency than they had the skill to utilize. So they couldn't make good choices about when to schedule with me because I was assuming that they had skills that they didn't have. And as soon as I realized that, that I was not in fact giving them agency because they didn't have the skill to make good choices. And I just started telling them, let's meet every two weeks, we're gonna do this, and then in two weeks we're gonna work on this, and then in two weeks we're gonna work on this. My follow through shot through the roof, it got so much better. And I realized that when I had been practicing as a behavior consultant in Austin, I had that structure built in just because of where I was seeing clients. Like I was, like, I was working with birds through Austin Parent Society, which I co-ran, and people couldn't adopt their birds until we saw that they could actually successfully work through the behavior issues in their homes. As fosters and in the the barn where I was working. The horses were there. People had to come to see their horses, and so they had to work with us every week. And the, I, I can't remember everything that I, all of the structure that I had, but that, those are examples of how, like I had built in structure in Austin and that was why my outcomes were so much better in Austin than they were in Utah. There were other mitigating factors as to why I struggled in Utah with, with client follow through. But that was a big one for me. And I saw a huge shift when I realized that I wasn't giving my clients, I wasn't setting up my clients for success because I was giving them more agency than they had the skill to handle. And this is critical because there is, I'm seeing more and more people in our industry talk about training as being intrinsically coercive. And we don't need to use training because. If we really want animals to be enriched and live their best lives and be the dogs that they, they're meant to be, and we want them to have their kind of natural behaviors, we shouldn't be training them skills. And that is not fair to either the animals themselves or the humans who live with those animals because there are no unskilled animals in the wild. The reason that animals in the wild are completely empowered as much as any being can be empowered is because they learn skills from their parents or social group or whoever, however, their social structure works out, but they are highly skilled at surviving in their environment, and so it is not okay to deprive the learners in our care of the skills that empower them to make good choices.

[00:33:21] Allie: I'm gonna add an unformed addendum to skills that may be its own dial. I don't know, it just struck me as you were talking of not just having the skills, knowing how to do a thing, but also having the bandwidth to be capable of doing the thing.

And this is true. I actually, I have human hand dog examples.

So I the thing that I was thinking about as you were talking two things. One is in Brene Brown's book, Atlas of the Heart which I think everybody in the world should read, honestly. We should all better understand our emotions and be able to talk about it and verbalize them.

But one of the things that she talks about in that book that like really, really struck home for me as somebody who works with. Challenging cases and people who are having a rough go of it, let's just say that, is that when you are overwhelmed, you truly can't make a choice. Your brain is like, I can't do that.

There is no, neurons are not available for this. We're doing other things right now. As you were using that example of the booking process for clients, I think of once I learned things like that, I'm like, okay, let me suss out. Do you just need me to tell you what to do?

Like, does, is it a kindness to you to just say, here is the choice, and you're like, cool. That is exactly what I wanted. So that, that was one thing I was thinking of. And I, I've seen this in my own healing journey. So I, I told you that today it was my last PT day, and so I've been in PT for, sorry, physical therapy for many, many, many months.

And for several months I was going three times a week. I was doing my at home exercises religiously and. I have fallen off the bandwagon a little bit and I realized that in the last few weeks, as you know, I go to, to my physical therapist and she's like, how you doing? And I'm like, I am doing well and I can do things.

And also, I didn't necessarily do the things that you told me to do. So, and so, and thinking back through that journey of like what made me ideal cooperative client to like kinda meh, like, eh, it is happening client. And I realized it was a bandwidth issue of you and I have been working round the clock on some different projects and that means that I'm working extra long days.

I am working some weekends, all of that. And so by the time I have time for, for physical therapy in the evening, I'm like, I do not have the bandwidth. Like, let me just sit here and stare into oblivion. So even though I have the skills to do those things, I don't have the bandwidth necessarily to, to do those things.

Um, And the other, the uh, the dog example that I realized is for oso. We, and I've, I've talked about our house setup a bit but before on the podcast where we have three stairs that go down to our back door and as his mobil Yep, that's the word. As his mobility decreases, those stairs have become increasingly harder.

And y'all, I just have to say, I, after this like whole healing journey and breaking my legs and like having to relearn how to walk stairs are so flipping hard. I can't believe that any dog learns how to use stairs with four legs. Like it took me so long to learn stairs with two legs.

I can't even, it's amazing.

Anywho and our stairs are particularly steep, narrow, very difficult which I learned. The hard way. So, for him, we, we open the back door of like, he says like, I want to go outside. We open the back door. And he is like, but I can't go downstairs. He knows how to go down the stairs.

He has the skills he doesn't currently have at some points in time, he doesn't have the physical ability to do that. So, it's not just, it's not just knowing the skill cognitively, it's also being able to perform that, whether that's having the mental and emotional bandwidth or the physical ability to perform that skill.

[00:38:00] Emily: Yeah, and I will just say your stairs are particularly steep. The ones, especially down to your basement. I've always had, even as a child, I've had a hard time walking downhill and downstairs because. I, my knees and hips have always hurt, like since I was a child. And I, I know I don't have arthritis.

I just know now that I have a, a connective tissue disorder that has always made it painful to walk downhill or, or downstairs. And getting down your basement stairs is mildly anxiety inducing for me. 

[00:38:35] Allie: Bra, same.

[00:38:35] Emily: So, so yeah, it's, it's an exercise in empathy to see how hard it is for us bipedal creatures and, and then map that onto a Quadra pet who maybe doesn't even understand the concept of stairs.

[00:38:49] Allie: And like, I can use a handrail. He can't, like,

it's just, I just knew respect for animals using stairs.

[00:38:58] Emily: Who navigate hard places. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot where I was going with this. Oh, yeah. So, so we'll say for sure, we've got four dials, choice, control, predictability, skill, and then maybe there's a fifth dial of bandwidth. Although that might just be like, you know how some dials have actually two dials built into one. I'm thinking of like in a sound studio, like some of the dials are like double dials. That it might, the bandwidth might be a double dial of, of skill, but it might be its own. Let's just make, for simplicity's sake, ignore everything I just said and, and say that it has five dials. Agency has five dials. Choice, control, predictability, skill, and bandwidth. There we go. So now let's talk about how to use the dials when we are thinking about meeting our learners' needs. So think about a dog who has lots of choices. Like, you've got unlimited types of toys in your house, but, but this dog has no control. They don't get to choose when they play with the toys. They don't get to choose where they play with them. They don't actually have the skill to use most of the toys that are available to them. So, you can have lots of choice and still have no control if you're not the one who gets to make those decisions, or if the choices that you make don't result in different outcomes, right?

So no matter what you do, the outcome is the same or is controlled by somebody else. That's, that's the, the choice dial is dialed way down or way up, and the control dial is dialed way down. Or we can think of an animal who has. Lots of predictability, but no choice and control. They know exactly how their day is laid out by the humans, but they don't have any choices available to them.

They have no control over their outcomes. Their day is just dictated from dawn to dusk. That's a high predictability dial. Really low choice and control dials, right? Or we have a well-meaning. Plan where we have no skills because we believe that skill, that training is coercive. And we also don't have predictability because we're chaos goblins and we don't provide our animals with any kind of predictability, but we're trying to give them agency.

So we give them lots of choice and control. They just have no predictability or skill to, to deal with that. Those are the animals who usually end up creating chaos or harming themselves, putting themselves in harm's way because they don't have the skill to navigate their environment. So if you're aware of these different dials and you have the ability to change the individual aspects of agency for your learner, it's first of all more sustainable. Secondly, more efficient, efficient first. And then sustainability comes from efficiency. Whatever. I didn't say this is gonna be a linear list, y'all. But also it's less stressful for the humans because you can see exactly why what you're doing isn't working and you know which dials to turn to make it work better, right? So it's not necessarily a training failure, it's just you haven't yet learned how to see the exact component that's, that is that needs adjustment, right? And a lot of times behavior issues are context problems wearing a skill shaped costume where the, the learner has lots of skill. They're exercising that skill in a context that we don't want them to exercise that skill, but they don't have the skill to do, make better choices in this context. So a good example of that is, honestly, anything I just, my brain was like literally any behavior. But okay, let's say, let's, let's pick digging because I'm doing truffle hunting with Miley. So digging is on the brain. It digging actually requires quite a bit of skill and, and physical ability. It's great core exercise. So Miley has great digging skill and if she were to dig up my bon's eyes again, like she did when she was a puppy, that context would. Be incorrect. That is not the place to exercise that skill, Miley, and it would cause me great distress. And also the reason that she did that last year is because she didn't have the skill to be around my bon size and make better choices around the bonsai. So she did have skill. She just didn't have the skills for the context, and so she was applying a skill that's great in other contexts like truffle hunting to a context where it was super not great and made me very sad. Right? So when you think about behavior problems as instead of being like, this behavior is bad, I don't like it.

I need to make it stop. And instead you're recognizing this behavior is an expression of skill in a context that we don't want it, that makes it so much easier. It makes it so much easier because then you're like, okay, well what context do I want my dog to utilize these skills and what skills do I want my dog to utilize in this context where that other skill's not awesome? Right? And that's just easier, that's emotionally easier. That's much more simple than just trying to get a dog to stop doing. Like, I don't know why people think punishment is faster. It might be faster in this moment, but like you just have to keep doing it over and over and over again until they figure it out. It's not faster in the long run, y'all. I don't know why people think it is, but it's also more sustainable and it's emotionally easier, et cetera. Right? So when something like that isn't working, if you learn how to examine the system first and. Know which dials to turn. It's just an easier way to exist honestly. And who doesn't need an easier way to exist? We're all tired because the world is on fire. Ali's dying at me again.

[00:45:30] Allie: You're just a rollercoaster today.

[00:45:32] Emily: Sorry that I'm a rollercoaster.

[00:45:34] Allie: Oh, I, you know what, like, it's, it's not far from your norm to be honest, and so I'm just, I'm just delighting in you. How about that?

[00:45:43] Emily: Okay. I accept that you're delighting in the emotional rollercoaster. That is me.

[00:45:48] Allie: Yes, yes.

[00:45:49] Emily: I feel, feels intensely friends.

So, hopefully by now you've figured out that you don't necessarily need to have all the dials turned up all the time. And i, I feel like this is a really precarious thing to tell people because there are so many people in this world who justify coercive techniques because they're like, well, this animal doesn't have the skill in bandwidth to make good choices.

So we've, we have to apply this aversive or coercive strategy. Like we're making the choices for them 'cause they don't have the bandwidth to make the choice. And I have such big feelings about that because like, as Allie knows, because she had to listen to me rant about this earlier today, stop using terms you don't understand. You might as well, if you're gonna learn the terminology, you might as well learn what those things actually mean and what they actually look like in the real world. I, I just, this is something I'm very salty about. But in the defense of people who do that. It is legitimately complex and it is easy to miss the mark. So, setting salt aside, I think it's important to acknowledge that it, you, you will make mistakes. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, because we are humans and we all make mistakes and this stuff is hard and complicated. I just have been pitching all day that it's easier, but it's, at least, it's still hard because everything in life is hard because the world is on fire. I'm fine, everything's fine. We're all fine over here at Pet Harmony friends. But no, I do wanna acknowledge the complexity of. of. the situation. And that sometimes it can be genuinely hard to tell. But what I do when I have a moment where I'm like, I just need to make a decision for you, either because you don't have the bandwidth, you don't have the skill, or I don't have the bandwidth. I don't treat that as a permanent thing. I'm not like, well, this is, this is how we roll. I'm like, okay, this is what I had to do in this moment because it was the best choice that I could make in this moment. But what is our plan moving forward to give this learner more autonomy in the future? What do I need to change in the future so that I don't have to keep depriving this animal of choice?

Right? So if I have to deprive an animal of agency or my autonomy because they lack a skill, then that tells me that in the future I need to. Teach that animal the skill to make better choices, right? If I don't have, if I have to make a choice for a learner in the moment 'cause they don't have the bandwidth, then that tells me that I need to figure out why. My learner is chronically stressed and change their environment so that they're not chronically stressed so that they have the bandwidth to make better life choices moving forward. So I think that's the difference between what we're talking about and what I see so often is trainers justifying coercion because, their learners don't have the skill or the bandwidth to make better choices. I don't see that as a justification. I see that as something that I need to do in this moment to get through this situation. And also it is a signal to me that I can change. I need to change at least one of those dials that we talked about so that we don't have to keep doing that in the future.

[00:49:16] Allie: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this topic in the last few days because of this whole toenail nonsense that that is happening. And having to evaluate, is there something that I have to teach? Is there something that I have to do? Like how, how do we do this moving forward? This is now the second time that this has happened.

The first time was better 'cause he just broke the whole toenail off and we didn't have to deal with a vet visit and, and all of that. And so, we, we talked a lot about how do we fix this moving forward? Because once is a fluke twice is the beginnings of a pattern. Then that means that we have to now truly address this issue.

The nice thing is we think that we can do it through just environmental management and, and fix. The part not fix, it's not broken. Change the part where he's getting his, his toenail caught and all of that. But it also allowed me to, or it also shed some light on, are there other things in our strategy and our plan that we need to address.

So, for example, we had to go to the vet this time around. He had to be sedated, they had to remove the toenail. It was a whole thing. And as we were there, I was like, Ooh, I really need to get back to doing Happy Vet visits. I am seeing a difference in his behavior going to the vet than it used to be.

He used to, readily walk in, not not displace and try to postpone, going into the building. Whereas we have seen that the past couple of times. 'cause the past couple of times we've had to go to the vet have been emergencies. And so I, you know, I was telling them as I was there, I was like, I really need to get back to Happy Vet visits now that I'm able to handle him again.

it was a plan and then had to be postponed while while I was healing. so that was one where it was like, okay, this is a skill we had. We no longer have it, we need to get back to, to doing that again. The other thing that I've been noodling on as we've been going through this, because his, his little foot is in pain.

We're seeing a change in his gait because of that, and that is causing additional hind end pain and gait wonkiness and just like all sorts of, like it's just a snowball effect when, when a foot is affected. And so he's needed a lot more help the last few days with us holding, keeping his back end up, walking, going down.

Uh, We're not even attempting the back stairs. We go out the front now for, with that one step and help him down that one step. And so I was like, okay, I'm, I'm getting a glimpse into the future. I've been saying this for years. We know mobility is going to be a thing for him. It is currently, it's going to continue being a thing.

I'm getting a glimpse of what does this look like as it continues to, to deteriorate. And so yesterday was the first time that he, you know, he, he like half falls, half chooses where he's like, my legs are tired and I'm just gonna lie down. But it's very much like a, like a plop,

like it's a, it's a controlled fall that's happening.

He is like, I just, I'm just gonna be down for a moment. And so yesterday was the first time that I experienced at least, I don't know if Alex has, has, I'm sure he has because Osos Mobility has been such a roller coaster while I was healing and, all of that. But. Yesterday was the first time that I experienced that he needed help getting up from lying down from me.

And so I did it once. It was a little awkward and all of that. And so, you know, as he's continuing and, and I'm like, okay, this is going to be a thing. I started thinking of how can I make this better for him? I can't necessarily teach a skill per se.

It's, it's a physical issue we are working on, I call it his PT now. So like I am working on strength building for him. I am working on proprioception and also he's a 14-year-old dog with neuro hind end issues. Like there's only so much I can do.

Um. So it's like, well, I can't really give him a, a skill per se more than what I'm doing. Um, Choice at some point in time we do have to leave this spot. So yeah, like we can hang out and he and he can rest for a little bit and watch the world go by. And at some point in time, maybe six hours from now, I would like to go back inside my house

and not be here.

And so one of the dials that I was like, oh, you know what could work for this would be predictability and adding a predictability cue to this. So, and we've been doing more and more of that as we have had to physically help him more which is a decrease in agency us having to, to physically help him more.

So we have a, are you ready? And, uh, we've been using that for other things. So he, he knows like something's going to happen. So I did a, the next time that he control fault um, I did an, are you ready? And I saw him like shift a little bit, like, okay, something's gonna happen. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna take that as consent.

And then a 1, 2, 3 lift lifted him up, we continued walking. Um, He then, that I feel bad for him because I helped him get into the raised bed.

He was like, I won't be in there where it's soft. And I was like, okay, buddy. I'll help him get in. For as much as I try to keep him out, like no. So, you know, he, he hung out in the raised bed for a while, then barked that he wanted to come in. And so I, I went out there and I was like, okay, we're gonna do our predictability queue again.

So I did, I did the same 1, 2, 3 lift. But on the three I, he like started like, he was like, okay, we're doing it. Like he did the little, like pushup with his muscles. Like, we're doing it. Oh my God. It's, it was so cute. And the, I mean, the nice thing is, is that he learns associations from me very quickly.

Like I, I'm a very, very predictable person for him.

And it's very clear when I am teaching a thing, when I am purposefully saying something to him, you know, like he and I have that lockdown. So like, it truly only took like the one trial and then he was like, 1, 2, 3 lift means you're going to lift me up while I'm lying down, so I'm gonna help you this time.

And it, yeah, so that's an example of going through the process of, okay, this thing has happened. I realized that it is suboptimal. What do I need to change? What do I need to focus on? What can't I change? But where can I, where can I make this better?

[00:56:13] Emily: Yeah, I mean we've got something similar with copper. He's 17 as of this month and when Chuck has to get up like way earlier than I do and so he had been taking copper downstairs with him and doing his morning routine and then leaving for work and copper. Would sleep on the sofa until Miley and I got up and then Miley would be like, copper, you're gonna wake up and go outside with me?

And Copper was like, yeah, okay. He would, he would struggle to wake up, but then like once he was up, he's like, oh, outside. Okay, let's go on an adventure, Miley. But we saw that he was just really struggling to like wake up when Miley was waking him up and I was like, I think he needs more sleep.

He's older. So we decided to let him stay upstairs and sleep that because like then Miley leaves him alone. He can sleep as long as he needs to, and we open the top baby gate so that when he's ready to wake up in the morning, he can come downstairs. But I leave the bottom, the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs closed so that Miley can't go up and wake him up.

And so he'll just come down and wait at the, the baby gate, at the bottom of the stairs for me to let him out. That's actually where I went. 'cause I heard him barking at me like, I'm up, let me out. So like get, creating some predictability and giving him choice to come downstairs. But now we're, we're struggling with this because he, I'm wa I've watched him walk downstairs and in order to do it, he has to. Splay, his hind legs out really far, and he sort of like frog or like crab crawls with his back legs. And his front legs are like doing most of the work. But I've asked him, do you want me to carry you down? And he's like, no, I got this. I don't need your help. I'm a strong independent man and I can walk down the stairs myself. So we're navigating now. What does it look like? So I actually tried a, let actually keeping the top baby gate closed. So he'll bark at me and then I use a little sling. So he still gets to walk on his own, but I'm giving him some support because he said hard no, to me picking him up. But I just don't, I can't watch him do the crab watch.

It's just so sad. It's stressful. So we're navigating like, just slightly turning those dials to give him as much autonomy as possible while still giving him the support he needs. But now he, he barks to let me know that he's, he's like, I'm ready. Lemme out. So we're, so it's, it's an ongoing iterative process.

You're never done what you know, autonomy looks like for animals at any given moment in any given context changes. And so you have to adjust accordingly. But if you know that the dials exist and you know how to assess which dials need to be tweaked, it's just easier. Like that was a much, it was a much easier process for me to problem solve that and go, okay, well the solution to this is close the top baby gate two and use a sling. That was so much easier than like, oh, we need to teach him a different way to walk down the stairs. Like now we have to train him to do sideways, which would be a ton of training and I don't wanna do that. Or to be like, no, you don't get to go upstairs anymore. And where he wouldn't get as much sleep because he sleeps much better in the family bed than he does downstairs. Or to say, I, you don't get a choice. I'm gonna carry you regardless, buddy. Like there are, knowing that I have those dials available to me. Helped me to adjust our plan and still give him as much choice, control, predictability as possible while still giving him support. Right.

[01:00:15] Allie: Also also does the, I can do it.

It's like you can't, but, okay.

[01:00:20] Emily: Right. You reminded me of my grandfather who was hostile when we suggested that he should stop driving and we tried to take his keys

away. Like you we're trying to take your keys away, buddy, and you're, you're not having,

[01:00:32] Allie: Yeah. Also, ha we, I, I've started with the, with going up the back stairs. 'cause up is easier than down for him, but still sometimes up is hard. I, we have a, do you need help? And and if he like I, I wait a little bit until I'm like, okay, this is, this is now longer than just like, collecting himself to go up the stairs.

'cause sometimes you need to, you need a moment to collect yourself. And and so I, I have a, do you need help? And if he just like, goes up the stairs, like, no, I don't need help. And then if, if he stays there, he is like, 

[01:01:07] Emily: I need a little help. The reluctance is hilarious to me.

It's so delightful.

Yeah.

So I think the way, and this is relevant to both pet professionals and pet parents, the way to learn how to use those dials better is to ask like, where does this animal already have lots of choice? Is this a situation where we can restrict choice without impacting overall autonomy or even improving overall autonomy? Where do they lack control? Can we give them more choice and control now or do we need to first onboard a skill before we can give them more choice and control? Is the reason that they can't currently have choice and control because they lack a skill? What feels unpredictable right now? Can we add more predictability?

Like allie's 1, 2, 3 up is a really beautiful example of adding predictability. Who is initiating it? Who is soliciting it? Are you doing it to them or are they saying, Hey, let's do this thing together? And I think a, another one that I would add is to your point with the bandwidth dial. If they can't do it because they're chronically overwhelmed, how can we change their environment and routine so that they're not chronically overwhelmed anymore? Like, how can we get rid of chronic stress? So those are the questions that you can ask yourself to identify which dial or dials you need to tweak to be more targeted in, in solving agency related problems. And being able to do this reduces burnout. It prevents over training and it protects your relationship with the learners in your care. And also, this applies to you too, and I recognize that I have been. Openly exhausted this entire episode and Allie and I talked about how we've been burning the candle at both ends because we've got this major project on our plate on top of all of our regular work. So, it might sound hypocritical for us to be talking about this at the end of this episode of all episodes, but I think our current situation is actually a really good example of how like, life isn't perfect and sometimes you just are overwhelmed and sometimes you just are overworked and no amount of zing.

Your enrichment plan for yourself is going to change that, but there are still things that you can do to prevent or reduce burnout, overwhelm, give yourself more agency. And so, like before we started this recording, Allie and I talked about how we both. Probably should have worked our over the weekend. But because we have been working weekends every weekend this year to get these projects done and launched we both made the decision separately from each other.

But this is how Allie and I operate. We're, we're very, we're kind of a hive mind. We both made the decision to take the weekend off, even though we probably, like our work, demanded that we work the weekends and we said, no, we need to take this weekend off so that we don't get burned out so that we can do some self-care, take care of our house, all that stuff.

Right. So, there are, there are ways that you can, exercise choice and control, even in a low choice, low control scenario to make life just a little bit better. We chose to opt out for the weekend to give ourselves a break. And also, I don't know, I can't speak for you, Allie, but for me, I, when I'm in these periods, I fold in a lot of predictability for myself by spending the extra money on pre-made meals.

And so, like, my normal meal service is amazing and also it still requires you to do some cooking. And in periods like this, I will switch to a slightly more expensive meal service that just gives you, like, everything's just ready to eat. Like maybe you have to heat it up, maybe not. And I'll spend the extra money on that because I, it helps the predictability of knowing that when I'm done with work, I don't have to then cook.

I can just. Feed myself is amazing. I also know I plan that I'm gonna have to be sleeping more than I usually do. Usually I need six hours of sleep a night. I have been folding into my schedule eight to 10 hour nights of sleep because I've been working so much and I'm so tired. So I have that predictability of this is hard, we're tired.

We've been in this marathon that's also somehow a sprint for months now. But I know that at the end of the day, I'm going to get plenty of sleep, right? So there are ways that we can tweak those dials for ourselves, even in times when we are tired and being an emotional rollercoaster live in front of an, an audience that we can, we can make it easier for ourselves, make it better, get through the hard times.

[01:06:18] Allie: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think having really solid systems whether you're business owners like us or just in your, your daily life, household, whatever, just having really solid systems where you're like, this works for me and it reduces my cognitive load. It, it doesn't add a ton of extra.

Work. It doesn't lead to decision fatigue, all of that. I think that is so, so helpful in these periods. One of my favorite systems that I've created for myself, and it's been so helpful during these times so that I can, can make choices about things I actually wanna make choices about is I have a set of daily alarms that I just click once and for the next two hours it tells me what to do.

And it's based off of my time audit and how long it takes me to do things, and the, the best way that my brain works for moving one task to another task and, and all of this stuff. It's been a, it's been a labor of love figuring out the system. And honestly it's like so wonderful that I can just like hit the button and then at some point in time it's like, take a break and go outside.

And I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. Okay. And then and then, I can use my brain for the things I actually wanna use it for, like, figuring out how to better enrich my dog.

[01:07:45] Emily: So to recap, we've decided that there are five dials in agency, I guess surprise industry. There's five of them. Choice, control, predictability, skill and bandwidth. And being able to ask questions to help you identify which of those dials needs to be tweaked can help you be more effective and efficient and sustainable in how you address. Problems that arise or conundrums that happen. So, so that you can give everybody in your care more agency without it being a overwhelming slog.

[01:08:26] 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. 

[01:09:19] Emily: You had a, you had a face. Did you wanna say something?

[01:09:22] Allie: No, my face is that my fingers are hypermobile and so pulling the, the ribbon taut is sometimes ouchy. That's, that's what's happening here.

[01:09:35] Emily: I couldn't tell because you were looking down. I couldn't tell if it was a smile, a grimace or you were opening your mouth to say something, but

it was a grimace. 

[01:09:44] Allie: I am attaching, tags to 600 can lids what I'm doing. That's not a hyperbole. It, it's actually 600 can lid.

[01:09:53] Emily: did not assume that was a hyperbole. I assumed that was an

[01:09:56] Allie: That's, that's an accurate count

[01:09:58] Emily: because

[01:09:59] Allie: because

[01:09:59] Emily: what you're doing,

[01:10:01] Allie: of course, that's what I'm doing.

[01:10:01] Emily: and then you're like, why am I wearing too many hats and why am I overworked and why don't I ever have enough time to do things? 

[01:10:09] Allie: Okay. You know what? I have only, I have only been multitasking this particular project. So time is not, it's not a problem.